Shalmaneser III

Shalmaneser III (r. 904-869 BC) was a King of Assyria during the time of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. He was the first Assyrian king to record any sort of contact with any Kings of the Kingdom of Israel. This contact is disputed, primarily because the Bible does not mention this contact; however, this is one of three self-consistent contacts that strongly suggest a correction to the Assyrian chronology requiring the addition of 45 years.

Overview of Reign
He fought a series of campaigns in an effort to extend the boundaries of his kingdom toward the Mediterranean Sea. He fought four different wars against Syria and succeeded in the last campaign only because the king of Syria had fallen out with his previous coalition partner, the Kingdom of Israel. In later years, two of his sons started a civil war with one another.

Battle of Qarqar
In 898 BC (conventional date: 853 BC), Shalmaneser marched westward and encountered the forces of a twelve-member coalition led by King Ben-hadad II of Syria. A second and prominent member of that coalition was King Ahab of the Kingdom of Israel, listed as A-ha-a-bu Si-ri-la-a-a on the Qarqar Stele that commemorates this battle. Though Shalmaneser boasts of winning, the more likely story is that the Syrian-Israelite coalition repulsed him.

Shalmaneser would fight three more battles with Ben-hadad. In the last of these, on 891 BC, he defeated Ben-hadad, who did not have the benefit of an alliance with the Kingdom of Israel. (Ahab had fought against Ben-hadad shortly after Qarqar and died in that action. Ahab's eventual successor Jehoram would not renew the alliance.)

Second Contact with Israel
Shalmaneser's second contact with Israel is also a matter of dispute. On his Black Obelisk, Shalmaneser states that he accepted tribute from a king of Israel named I-au-a mar Hu-um-ri-i. Conventional Assyriologists identify this person as King Jehu of Israel. But this cannot be true, for two reasons:


 * 1) Jehu was not related to King Omri in any way. In fact, Jehu destroyed Omri's entire family on his accession.
 * 2) Jehu was not the sort of man who would bow and scrape to anyone for any reason.

However, another king exists who would likely have made the contact with Shalmaneser at the time that the Black Obelisk suggests (886 BC, twelve years after Qarqar): Jehoram, son of Ahab and grandson of Omri. Jehoram had recently withstood a siege by King Hazael of Syria that had pressed the people of his capital city, Samaria, to resort to cannibalism.

Death and Succession
In 877 BC Shalmaneser, now grown old, handed over his armies to his Tartan (commander-in-chief), Dayyan-Ashur. Within six years, Nineveh (the future capital) and several other cities revolted under the banner of Shalmaneser's son, Ashur-danin-pal. Two years later, another son of Shalmaneser, Shamshi-Adad, crushed the revolt. Shalmaneser died shortly thereafter, and this son took over as King Shamshi-Adad V, or Shemshi-Ramman IV.