#addad

At the height of his power, the Assyrian king Esarhaddon (680-669 BCE) led his troops all the way to Egypt to subdue his rival, Taharqa. During the campaign he plundered Memphis, taking capitve the Egyptian crown prince portraied here on his knees. On the homeward march, the king also stopped several times in Syria to exact obedience and tribute from the rulers of Syrian cities. To commemorate this successful campaign, he ereced a number of victory stelae, inclding this one at Sam’al.

The message of the stele would have been obvious even to those whou could not read: the fate of the two prisoners on the obverse, with their mouths gagged and their feet shackled, was intended to deter any vassals wishing to free themselves from Assyrian rule. The stele also bore a message about the internal politics of the empire: by showing, on the side panels, the crown princes Shamash-shum-ukin and Ashurbanipal wearing Babylonian and Assyrian costume respectively, Esarhaddon was also settling the question of the royal succession.