Homer turns the metropolitan Assyria

into the mighty city of Troy. The Assyrian custom of abducting women as spoils of war becomes the abduction of Helena. The death of Sargon II in battle becomes the death of the Trojan hero Hector.

Sargon’s father and predecessor Tiglatpilesar III became the aged Trojan king Priamos. Sargon’s brother and predecessor, the short-ruling Salmanasser V, who turned Cilicia into an Assyrian province, became the unheroic Paris, which provided the reason for the war with the theft of Helena.

The wild Cimmerians, who left Sargon unburied, became the raging Achilles, who refused to bury Hector. The later war campaigns of Sanherib and Asarhaddon against the Cimmerians turned into the quick death of the fighter Achill. The mother right of the Cimmerians became the descent of Achilles from a goddess.

The Assyrian sun and oracle god Shamash became he god Apollo, the arguing for Troy sun and oracle god.

The religious self-doubts of the Assyrian elite became the Trojan fear of the inevitable downfall. From the feared destruction of the Assyrian cities, the prophecy of the downfall of the city of Troy.

The new Assyrian capital Dur Sharrukin, “Sargon’s castle”, today Khorsabad, inaugurated by Sargon in 706 BC with great pomp, became a provincial village after Sargon’s death.

The city of Babylon, the capital of Babylon, which competed with Assyria, was destroyed by Sanherib in 689 BC.

Intertextual References of the Iliad to Assyrian Texts