Tag: Sanherib

229

Homer turns the metropolitan Assyria

Giant tortoise, Darwin Station, Galapagos
Giant tortoise, Darwin Station, Galapagos

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.

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225

(3) Wrath and reconciliation:

Homer leads us with his epic

Rapida, Galapagos
Rapida, Galapagos

into the Assyrian occupied Cilicia of the fateful year 705 B.C. In the long war between the Greeks of Cilicia and the Assyrian great power a turning point is foreseeable.

 

At the beginning of his campaign the great king still triumphs, but his days are numbered. The Iliad depicts the the previous events over several weeks of the devastating defeat and glorious death of the Assyrian king Sargon II (in the Iliad: the Trojan hero Hector), whose body remains unburied in the hands of his enemies.

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