Nabonassar also called Shalmaneser

by Damien F. Mackey “[Copernicus] seems to identify Nabonassar with the biblical Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, whom, following Eusebius, he calls Salmanassar, king of the Chaldeans”. N. M. Swerdlow, O. Neugebauer Having tradition supply an extra name for a potentate can sometimes serve to change the order of things. Thus, thanks to the Chronicle of John [of] Nikiu (supposedly C7th AD), I learned that Cambyses had the other name of Nebuchednezzar (Nebuchadnezzar), thus enabling me to associate the mad, Egypt-conquering Cambyses with the mad, Egypt-conquering Nebuchednezzar. See e.g. my six-part series: Cambyses also named Nebuchadnezzar beginning with: (5) Cambyses also named Nebuchadnezzar? | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And, now, the above information opens the door to the possibility that Nabonassar may have been an Assyrian king, “Shalmaneser”. This could be very helpful, because, whilst Nabonassar is now well-known by name: https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-pauly/nabonassar-e815690 “(Ναβονάσσαρος; Nabonássaros). Graecised form of the Babylonian royal name Nabû-nāṣir. N.'s reign (747-734 BC) is not marked by any spectacular events. His fame is due to the fact that Claudius Ptolemaeus (Cens. 21,9) chose the beginning of the first year of N.'s reign (calculated to 26 February 747 BC) as the epoch for his astronomical calculations (‘Nabonassar Era’; in the ‘Ptolemaic Canon’, a continuous list of the kings ruling over Babylonia until Alexander [4] the Great, then continued by the rulers of Egypt …” he is otherwise quite poorly known, as is apparent from what William W. Hallo wrote (in The Nabonassar Era and other Epochs in Mesopotamian Chronology and Chronography, 1988, p. 189): The numerous innovations thus associated with Nabonassar stand in sharp contrast to the actual circumstances of his reign. Whatever high hopes he may have harbored at its outset, they were very soon dashed on the rocks of hard political reality. We have no royal inscriptions of the fourteen-year reign, and two private inscriptions of the time may be regarded as evidence of the relative strength of private dignitaries and corresponding weakness of the monarchy …. Only three years after Nabonassar’s accession in Babylonia, there occurred that of Tiglatpileser III in Assyria. He was a truly heroic figure, destined to lay the foundations of the neo-Assyrian empire. He too tampered with traditional historiographic conventions, reviving the age-old concept of the bala (in its Akkadian guise of palû) to date and count his annual campaigns, but beginning these with his accession year instead of waiting, like his predecessors, for the first full year of his reign. …. [End of quote] Some queries, and some suggestions, are immediately necessary here, I find. That so apparently innovative and substantially reigning a king, of such a well-documented era as that of the neo-Assyrians, could have left “no royal inscriptions”, can only mean that - as according to my custom - an alter ego for him needs to be identified. And the most obvious candidate for this would be the likewise innovative, and contemporaneous, king, Tiglath-pileser so-called III, who is known to have ruled Babylon - and that under a non-Assyrian name. Especially if Tiglath-pileser was also named - as Nabonassar is said to have been - “Shalmaneser”. And that I have often argued to have been the case, for instance: King Tiglath-pileser was Tobit’s “Shalmaneser” (8) King Tiglath-pileser was Tobit’s “Shalmaneser” | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu So, it was the innovative Tiglath-pileser who had presumably, under his adopted name “Nabonassar”, as ruler of Babylon, inaugurated a new chronological era. Tiglath-pileser was multi-facetted This Tiglath-pileser was too larger-than-life a character for him not to have absorbed various alter egos, apart from Nabonassar. In I Chronicles 5:26, he is also called Pul (or Pulu) in a waw consecutive construction: So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, that is, Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria. He carried the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh into captivity. He took them to Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river of Gozan to this day. And Tiglath-pileser so-called III was also Tiglath-pileser so-called I, according to my reconstructions, such as: Tiglath-pileser King of Assyria (8) Tiglath-pileser King of Assyria | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And, with the necessary folding of the Middle Assyrian era of the c. C12th BC into the Neo Assyrian era of the c. C8th BC: Folding four ‘Middle’ Assyrian kings into first four ‘Neo’ Assyrian kings (8) Folding four ‘Middle’ Assyrian kings into first four ‘Neo’ Assyrian kings | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu as further reinforced by a repetition of Middle and Neo Elamite Shutrukid kings: Horrible Histories: Suffering Shutrukids (8) Horrible Histories: Suffering Shutrukids | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu then Shalmaneser so-called I must likewise be folded into Neo kings “Shalmaneser”. Was Nabonassar’s Assyrian alter ego an innovator? “Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 B.C.E.) introduced a new era in the history of the ancient Near East. He is the ruler who laid the firm foundations of the Neo-Assyrian empire, developing new methods of military occupation, political organisation and communications throughout his vast, subjugated territories. It is not by chance”. Bustanay Oded To find the historical prophet Jonah - and also to fill him out biblically (a task upon which I was able to focus without much distraction during the period of lockdown) - I had to turn upside down, and inside out, the conventional sequence of Assyro-(Babylonian) kings. See e.g. my article: De-coding Jonah (DOC) De-coding Jonah | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Whilst I did not then come to the further conclusion that Nabonassar may have been a powerful Assyrian king who had ruled the city of Babylon, my Assyrian reconstruction around the prophet Jonah has important bearing upon the “Shalmaneser” of whom it was said that he was Nabonassar. Without going back here through all of the complicated details, let me simply summarise the extent of the composite king, Shalmaneser – Tiglath-pileser. My revised neo-Assyrian succession relevant to Jonah is as follows: 1. Adad-Nirari [I-III]; 2. Tiglath-pileser [I-III]/Shalmaneser [I-V]; 3. Tukulti-ninurta [I-II]/Sargon II-Sennacherib; 4. Ashurnasirpal-Esarhaddon-Ashurbanipal-Nebuchednezzar. According to my Jonah article, the last of these kings, my enlarged king 4., was Jonah 3:6’s repentant “king of Nineveh”. Now, was this Assyrian king [no. 2 above] in any way the inaugurator of a new outlook, or a new era?’ (as would seem to befit Nabonassar) Bill Cooper, who has favoured (my potential Nabonassar) this same king 2. above - in his guise as Tiglath-pileser III - as Jonah’s Ninevite king, has written of this king as if he had indeed inaugurated a new sort of era (which Cooper himself would attribute, mistakenly, I believe, to the Jonah effect). Thus he wrote (“The Historic Jonah”, p. 112): https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j02_1/j02_1_105-116.pdf): …. Almost overnight, it seems, the empire underwent a total revival. Where defeat had so recently been staring them in the face, the Assyrians were now enjoying decisive victories. Where there had been economic collapse, there was now available wealth and a reasonable stability. Political turmoil and civil unrest now quietened down. In other words, the disaster-prone empire that Tiglath-pileser III had ‘inherited’ … was almost unrecognisable after the inauguration of his reign. Shortly after he took over the rule of the empire, something dramatic, almost disturbing happened to turn on its head Assyria’s forthcoming and imminent destruction. …. Be that as it may, Tiglath-pileser (so-called III) – {who would also be, in my reconstruction, the enlightened “Shalmaneser” of Tobit 1, Tobit’s royal patron} - is definitely considered by Assyriologists to have inaugurated something of “a new era”. Thus, for example, Bustanay Oded writes (“The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III: Review Article” (Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 47, No. 1/2 (1997), pp. 104-110): “Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 B.C.E.) introduced a new era in the history of the ancient Near East. He is the ruler who laid the firm foundations of the Neo-Assyrian empire, developing new methods of military occupation, political organisation and communications throughout his vast, subjugated territories. It is not by chance”. And again, Shigeo Yamada, “The Reign and Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III, an Assyrian Empire Builder (744-727 BC)” https://journals.openedition.org/annuaire-cdf/1803 “… it has become fully apparent that [T-P III’s] reign marked the beginning of the imperial phase of Assyria, and that this period of time should be regarded as a watershed in the history of the ancient Near East”.