Strange as it may seem, the historical Semiramis/Sammuramat was a contemporary of the only character from Assyrian history whose name is unquestionably identical to that of the classical Sardanapalus: this is Ashur da’in apla, son of Shalmaneser III and leader of a great rebellion against his father. Yet though these two names are identical, Ashur da’in apla is never identified with Sardanapalus. After all, according to the ancient historians, Sardanapalus was the last independent ruler of Assyria; and is thus placed near the end of the seventh century BC. Ashur da’in apla, by contrast, is placed in the latter years of the ninth century BC, alongside his father Shalmaneser III.
Yet Ashur da’in apla really was Sardanapalus. The identification was missed because of the faulty and skewered chronology of the ancient world, which, as Velikovsky first demonstrated in the 1950s, has made a nonsense of the history of the ancient Near East. For, as I show in great detail in my Empire of Thebes (2006), Shalmaneser III and Ashur da’in apla did not live in the ninth century; they lived in the seventh; and the great rebellion which Ashur da’in apla led against his father represented the last attempt to re-establish Assyria as an independent kingdom.
The bare facts, which represent a serious conundrum to conventional historians, are as follows:
Towards the end of Shalmaneser III’s reign, the entire Assyrian heartland, with the support of the Hittite states and the Urartians, rose against the latter. This was not, supposedly, an insurrection of conquered territories, but a revolt of the major centres of Assyria itself, including the cities of Ashur, Nineveh, Arbela, and Arrapha, as well as six of the provinces of the north-west and isolated districts here and there in other provinces. (See eg. A.T. Olmstead A History of Assyria (1933) pp.153-4)
The revolt against Shalmaneser III is one of the great mysteries of ancient times. Why, it has been asked, should the people of Assyria so unanimously rise against their legitimate king, a man who had successfully led their armies in war after war; a man who had enriched the land with booty and tribute from far and wide; a man who had made Assyria the most wealthy and powerful kingdom in the known world. No other comparable rebellion against a divinely-appointed king of antiquity is known. Various explanations have been offered. Most bizarrely, perhaps, it has been suggested that Shalmaneser III may have become the victim of a desire to resurrect the Sacrificial King cult, which Frazer claimed to have observed amongst primitive peoples. (See eg. H.W.F. Saggs The Greatness that was Babylon (London,1962) pp.100-1) It has otherwise been suggested that Ashur da’in apla became jealous of the favours bestowed upon the turtanu (Major General) Daian Ashur, and staged the rebellion to forestall his usurpation of the throne. (Olmstead, op cit., p. 155) Neither of these explanations, nor any of the others offered, has proved convincing, or has gained widespread support. However, the rebellion provides not the slightest mystery as soon as we realise that Shalmaneser III was not an Assyrian, but a Mede, whose Assyrian satrapy had become a mainstay of the Empire.
As I explain in detail in Empire of Thebes, the early “Neo-Assyrian” kings, who all bear typically “Middle Assyrian” names (such as Shalmaneser, Tukulti-Ninurta, Adad-Nirani, etc), actually represent the final sequence of Middle Assyrian kings; and the Middle Assyrian kings were themselves Mede (or Mitanni) rulers using Assyrian names. Shalmaneser III was also called Khwakhshatra (Cyaxares) and was the second Great King of the Medes to bear this name. His son Ashur da’in apla was the satrap of Assyria, and probably – on his mother’s side – a descendant of the ancient kings of Assyria: the so-called “Old Assyrian” Empire of Sargon I and Naram-Sin.
The war initiated by Ashur da’in apla was one of the greatest conflicts ever to occur in antiquity. Ctesias of Cnidus, whose work is quoted by Xenophon, refers to this epic struggle, which he names the “Battle of the Nations” – a sort of early World War. Ctesias informs us that the last king of an independent Assyria was the rebellious satrap of a Mede king named Cyaxares, and he describes a devastating conflict in which the Assyrian rebel threw together a mighty coalition against the Great King. According to Xenophon, the rebel satrap (who is not named) enlisted the support first of Syria, Arabia and Hyrcania, and then of Lydia, Phrygia and Cappadocia. (Xenophon Cyropaedia, i, v, 3) In this epic struggle for mastery of the Near East, only Persia remained loyal to the Medes. It was said that the support of the Persian king, named Cambyses by Xenophon but Atradates by Ctesias, was crucial to the outcome, and that the Assyrian was defeated in a great battle not far from his capital city.
The evidence would suggest that this last Assyrian king was none other than Ashur-da’in-apla, the defeat of whose rebellion is reflected in the classical traditions of the defeat and death (by fire, and his own hand) of Sardanapalus. The cuneiform records seem to suggest that in order to achieve this, Shamshi-Adad IV, Shalmaneser’s successor, had to enlist Babylonian help. Indeed for a while Shamshi-Adad IV became a virtual vassal of the Babylonians, his alliance to the latter power probably being sealed by his marriage to Sammuramat, whom many commentators have suggested was of Babylonian origin. (Olmstead, op cit., pp. 154-9) This Shamshi-Adad must be identified with Arbaces, the Mede conqueror of Sardanapalus.
Although no ancient source specifically links the epoch of Sardanapalus to that of Semiramis, Herodotus hints at such when he says that Semiramis lived five generations (about a hundred years, given the early marriage and mortality of ancient times) before Labynetus (Nabonidus), the last native Babylonian king, who was defeated by Cyrus c.550 BC. (Herodotus, I, 182) This would place Semiramis in the middle of the 7th century - not too far from the time of Sardanapalus.
The great war initiated by Ashur da’in apla/ Sardanapalus drew in all the nations of the region, including the Egyptians. In my Empire of Thebes, I show that Shalmaneser III, who was a contemporary of the early pharaohs of the Nineteenth Dynasty, called on the support of Seti I, who then marched northwards to the Euphrates. Before he could join forces with Shalmaneser III however he was intercepted by the army of Hatti (Lydia) and thrown back towards Egypt. A further attempt by the Egyptians, this time by Seti’s son Ramses II, to come to the aid of the Medes/Mitannians, resulted in a second and decisive defeat for the Egyptians at the Battle of Kadesh. (The allies of the Hittites listed by Hattuslis III are headed by the people of Naharin – Assyria). In spite of these setbacks, however, the Medes were eventually victorious against the Assyrian-Hittite coalition, and Shamshi-Adad/Arbaces’ son Adad-Nirari/Astyages was able to proclaim the rebellion crushed.
The real history of the ancient Near East, which we are only now beginning to recover, is at once new and strikingly familiar; strikingly in accord with what was told us by the historians of ancient Hellas.