Editing Sennacherib (section)

=== Death of Sargon II and succession ===
[[File:Ancient Near East 0700BC.svg|thumb|alt= Map of the Near East in 700 BC |upright=1.6|Map of the Near East in 700&nbsp;BC, showing the extent of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Aššur)]]
In 705&nbsp;BC, Sargon, probably in his sixties, led the Assyrian army on a campaign against King Gurdî of Tabal in central [[Anatolia]]. The campaign was disastrous, resulting in the defeat of the Assyrian army and the death of Sargon, whose corpse the Anatolians carried off.{{Sfn|Kalimi|2014|p=20}}{{Sfn|Frahm|2014|p=201}} Sargon's death made the defeat significantly worse because the Assyrians believed the gods had punished him for some major past misdeed. In Mesopotamian mythology, the afterlife suffered by those who died in battle and were not buried was terrible, being doomed to suffer like beggars for eternity.{{Sfn|Frahm|2014|p=202}} Sennacherib was about 35 years old when he ascended to the Assyrian throne in August of 705&nbsp;BC.{{Sfn|Elayi|2018|p=3}} He had a great deal of experience with how to rule the empire because of his long tenure as crown prince.{{Sfn|Frahm|2014|p=204}} His reaction to his father's fate was to distance himself from Sargon.{{Sfn|Frahm|2008|p=15}} Frahm characterized Sennacherib's reaction as "one of almost complete denial", writing that Sennacherib "apparently felt unable to acknowledge and mentally deal with what had happened to Sargon". Sennacherib immediately abandoned Sargon's great new capital city, Dur-Sharrukin, and moved the capital to Nineveh instead. One of Sennacherib's first actions as king was to rebuild a temple dedicated to the god [[Nergal]], associated with death, disaster and war, at the city of Tarbisu.{{Sfn|Frahm|2014|p=202}}

Even with this public denial in mind, Sennacherib was superstitious and spent a great deal of time asking his diviners what kind of sin Sargon could have committed to suffer the fate that he had, perhaps considering the possibility that he had offended Babylon's deities by taking control of the city.{{Sfn|Brinkman|1973|p=91}} A text, though probably written after Sennacherib's death, says he proclaimed he was investigating the nature of a "sin" committed by his father.{{Sfn|Frahm|2002|p=1113}} A minor 704&nbsp;BC{{Sfn|Frahm|2003|p=130}} campaign (unmentioned in Sennacherib's later historical accounts), led by Sennacherib's [[magnate]]s rather than the king himself, was sent against Gurdî in Tabal to avenge Sargon. Sennacherib spent much time and effort to rid the empire of Sargon's imagery. Raising the level of the courtyard made images that Sargon had created at the temple in Assur invisible. When Sargon's wife Ataliya died, she was buried hastily and in the same coffin as another woman, the queen of the previous king Tiglath-Pileser. Sargon is never mentioned in Sennacherib's inscriptions.{{Sfn|Frahm|2014|p=203}}