Besides Ahab and Omri, Jehu and Hezekiah, the cuneiform tablets mention
Menahem, Pekah, and Hoshea, kings of Israel; and Azariah, Ahaz, and
Manasseh, kings of Judah. Ahaz is called Jehoahaz, his name, like so
many more, being compounded with the name of Jehovah; and it would
seem that on account of his perversion to foreign worship the Bible
writers would not use the Lord’s name in such association. Further,
the kings of Assyria and Babylon spoken of in the Bible come before us
again in the cuneiform texts, with many particulars of their warlike
expeditions,--Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Shalmaneser, Tiglath-Pileser,
Nebuchadnezzar, &c. Tiglath-Pileser, we find, was not the first of
that name, for there had been a monarch so designated as early as
1300 B.C. In fact the real name of the later king was Pul or
Pulu, and it is doubtful whether he was the rightful heir; but when
he ascended the throne (in B.C. 745) he took the name of the
earlier conqueror, a circumstance which led the Bible writer to suppose
there were two kings. [S. A. Strong, in “Records of the Past.” New
Series. Vol. v.]
The other palace found at Kouyunjik belonged, as stated before, to
Assurbanipal. He was the Sardanapalus of Greek writers and was a
great conqueror. His date is about 640 B.C. Mr Rassam, the
native co-worker with Mr Layard, was fortunate enough to discover
Assurbanipal’s library--the library of the Assyrian kings. The “books”
of the Assyrians differed very much from our own. They used to take
a tablet of clay, to write upon it with an iron stylus, bake it into
terra cotta, and then place the record on the library shelf. These clay
tablets were more durable than leaves of paper or rolls of parchment,
and the Assyrian records, covered up more than two thousand years ago,
are in many cases so well preserved that scholars can read them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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