Editing Sargon II (section)

=== Sargon forgotten ===
[[File:Nuremberg Assyrian kings.png|thumb|Section of the 1493 [[Nuremberg Chronicle]] depicting [[Assyrian kings]]. This portion shows Tiglath-Pileser III, Shalmaneser V and Sennacherib, omitting Sargon II.|alt=Renaissance depiction of Assyrian kings|upright=0.8]]
Sargon's legacy in ancient Assyria was severely damaged by the manner of his death; in particular, the failure to recover his body was a major psychological blow for Assyria.{{Sfn|Frahm|2017|p=183}} The shock and theological implications plagued the reigns of his successors for decades.{{Sfn|Helle|2021|loc=A Poem for the Ages}} The ancient Assyrians believed that unburied dead became ghosts that could come back and haunt the living.{{Sfn|Frahm|2017|p=183}}{{Sfn|Elayi|2017|p=213}} Sargon was believed to be doomed to a miserable afterlife; his ghost would wander the Earth, eternally restless and hungry.{{Sfn|Foster|2016|p=278}}{{Sfn|Helle|2021|loc=A Poem for the Ages}} Soon after the news of Sargon's death reached the Assyrian heartland, the influential advisor and scribe [[Nabu-zuqup-kena]] copied Tablet XII of the ''Epic of Gilgamesh''.{{Sfn|Frahm|2017|p=183}} This tablet contains a section eerily similar to Sargon's death, with the miserable implications described in detail,{{efn|Tablet XII contains a section wherein Gilgamesh and his associate [[Enkidu]] discuss the fates of a "man killed in battle" ("his father and mother hold up his head, his wife weeps for him"), a "man left unburied" ("his ghost has no rest in the underworld") and a "man who cannot be provided with funerary offerings" ("he heats scraps from the pot and breadcrumbs strewn in the streets").{{Sfn|Helle|2021|loc=A Poem for the Ages}}}} which must have left the scribe stunned and distressed.{{Sfn|Frahm|2017|p=183}} In the Levant, Sargon's [[hubris]] was mocked. It is believed that a foreign ruler chided in the Biblical [[Book of Isaiah]] is based on Sargon.{{Sfn|Frahm|2017|p=183}}

Sennacherib was horrified by his father's death. The Assyriologist [[Eckart Frahm]] believes that Sennacherib was so deeply affected that he began suffering from [[posttraumatic stress disorder]].{{Sfn|Frahm|2014|p=203}} Sennacherib was unable to acknowledge and mentally deal with what had transpired.{{Sfn|Frahm|2014|p=202}} Sargon's dishonorable death in battle and his lack of a burial was seen as a sign that he must have committed some serious and unforgivable sin that made the gods completely abandon him.{{Sfn|Elayi|2017|p=241}} Sennacherib concluded that Sargon had perhaps offended Babylon's gods by taking control of the city.{{Sfn|Brinkman|1973|p=91}}

Sennacherib did everything he could to distance himself from Sargon and never wrote or built anything to honor Sargon's memory.{{Sfn|Frahm|2017|p=183}}{{Sfn|Elayi|2017|p=213}} One of his first building projects was restoring a temple dedicated to [[Nergal]], god of the underworld, perhaps intended to pacify a deity possibly involved with Sargon's fate.{{Sfn|Frahm|2017|p=|pp=183–184}} Sennacherib also moved the capital to Nineveh, despite the fact that Dur-Sharrukin was entirely new and built to house the royal court.{{Sfn|Helle|2021|loc=A Poem for the Ages}} Given that Sargon modelled parts of his reign on Gilgamesh, Frahm believes that it is possible that Sennacherib abandoned Dur-Sharrukin on account of the ''Epic of Gilgamesh''.{{Sfn|Helle|2021|loc=A Poem for the Ages}} The furious and hungry spirit of a mighty king might have been feared to mean that Sennacherib would be unable to hold court there.{{Sfn|Helle|2021|loc=A Poem for the Ages}} Sennacherib spent a lot of time and effort to rid the empire of Sargon's imagery and work. Images Sargon had created at the temple in Assur were made invisible through raising the level of the courtyard and Sargon's queen Atalia was buried hastily when she died, without regard to traditional burial practices and in the same coffin as another woman.{{Sfn|Frahm|2014|p=203}} Despite this, Sennacherib attempted to avenge his father, sending an expedition to Tabal in 704 to kill Gurdî and perhaps retrieve Sargon's body; whether it was successful is not known.{{Sfn|Frahm|2014|p=203}}{{Sfn|Elayi|2017|p=212}}

After Sennacherib's reign, Sargon was sometimes mentioned as the ancestor of later kings.{{efn|He is mentioned as such in the inscriptions of his grandson Esarhaddon ({{Reign}}681–669 BC),{{Sfn|Luckenbill|1927|pp=224–226}} his great-grandson [[Shamash-shum-ukin]] ({{Reign}}668–648 BC in Babylonia){{Sfn|Karlsson|2017|p=10}} and his great-great-grandson [[Sinsharishkun]] ({{Reign}}627–612 BC).{{Sfn|Luckenbill|1927|p=413}}}} Assyria fell in the late 7th century BC. Though the local population of northern Mesopotamia never forgot ancient Assyria, knowledge of Assyria in [[Western Europe]] throughout the centuries thereafter derived from the writings of classical authors and the Bible.{{Sfn|Trolle Larsen|2017|p=|pp=583–584}} Due to the efforts of Sennacherib, Sargon was poorly remembered by the time these works were written. Sargon was obscure in [[Assyriology]] prior to the rediscovery of Dur-Sharrukin in the 19th century. His name appears once in the Bible (Isaiah 20.1).{{Sfn|Holloway|2003|p=68}} Many Assyriological commentators were puzzled by the name's appearance in the Bible and believed that Sargon was merely an alias for one of the better-known kings, typically Shalmaneser, Sennacherib or Esarhaddon.{{Sfn|Holloway|2003|p=|pp=69–70}}