Editing Shalmaneser III (section)

==Construction and the Black Obelisk==
[[File:The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 9th century BC, from Nimrud, Iraq. The British Museum.jpg|thumb|The [[Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III]], 9th century BC, from Nimrud, Iraq. The British Museum.]]
{{main|Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III}}
He had built a palace at [[Kalhu]] (Biblical [[Calah]], modern [[Nimrud]]), and left several editions of the royal [[annals]] recording his military campaigns, the last of which is engraved on the [[Black Obelisk]] from Calah.

The Black Obelisk is a significant artifact from his reign.  It is a black [[limestone]], [[bas-relief]] [[sculpture]] from [[Nimrud]] (ancient Kalhu), in northern [[Iraq]]. It is the most complete Assyrian [[obelisk]] yet discovered, and is historically significant because it displays the earliest ancient depiction of an [[Israelite]]. On the top and the bottom of the reliefs there is a long cuneiform inscription recording the annals of Shalmaneser III. It lists the military campaigns which the king and his commander-in-chief headed every year, until the thirty-first year of reign. Some features might suggest that the work had been commissioned by the commander-in-chief, Dayyan-Assur.

The second [[Register (sculpture)|register]] from the top includes the earliest surviving picture of an Israelite: the Biblical [[Jehu]], king of [[Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)|Israel]].<ref>This is "the only portrayal we have in ancient Near Eastern art of an Israelite or Judaean monarch"in {{cite book |last1=Cohen |first1=Ada |last2=Kangas |first2=Steven E. |title=Assyrian Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II: A Cultural Biography |date=2010 |publisher=UPNE |isbn=978-1-58465-817-7 |page=127 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uRKU0YXBWtgC&pg=PA127 |language=en}}</ref> [[Jehu]] severed [[Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)|Israel's]] alliances with [[Phoenicia]] and [[Kingdom of Judah|Judah]], and became subject to [[Assyria]]. It describes how Jehu brought or sent his tribute in or around 841 BC.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kuan |first1=Jeffrey Kah-Jin |title=Neo-Assyrian Historical Inscriptions and Syria-Palestine: Israelite/Judean-Tyrian-Damascene Political and Commercial Relations in the Ninth-Eighth Centuries BCE |date=2016 |publisher=Wipf and Stock Publishers |isbn=978-1-4982-8143-0 |pages=64–66 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zMOqCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA65 |language=en}}</ref><ref name="AC">{{cite book |last1=Cohen |first1=Ada |last2=Kangas |first2=Steven E. |title=Assyrian Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II: A Cultural Biography |date=2010 |publisher=UPNE |isbn=978-1-58465-817-7 |pages=127–128 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uRKU0YXBWtgC&pg=PA127 |language=en}}</ref> The caption above the scene, written in Assyrian cuneiform, can be translated:

<blockquote>"The tribute of [[Jehu]], son of [[Omri]]: I received from him silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden vase with pointed bottom, golden tumblers, golden buckets, tin, a staff for a king [and] spears."<ref name="AC"/></blockquote>

It was erected as a public monument in 825 BC at a time of civil war. It was discovered by archaeologist Sir [[Austen Henry Layard]] in 1846.