The cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament - The Search For ...

16 THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS AND THE 0. T.
331 The Assyrian sources of information say nothing about
""
Sanherib's assassination. How the matter stands in this
respect iu the case of Sargon may be gathered from the
remarks on Is. XX. I ad fin.*
and they escaped into the land Ararat (lD"l^f<
l'^?)-
^
have abeady shown (Vol. I, pp. 53 foil.) that Ar&.rat,
Assyr. Urartu, is not so much the name of the mountain
so-called, but rather of the great plain watered by the
AraxeS; south of which stood the mountain Ararat. It is
no longer possible to determine with any certainty in how
broad and in how narrow a sense this territorial designation
was understood by the Hebrews, According to Abydenus
quoted in Eusebius (ed. Schoene I. 35), Asarhaddon, in
the pursuit of his defeated foes, cast them into the "city of
the Byzantines" (m Byzantinorum urbem injecit). By this
"Byzantium" A. von Gutschmid understands the BiC,ava of
Procopius** to be meant, which lay somewhere on the
frontier of Lesser and Greater Armenia. With this hypo-
332 thesis agrees the cuneiform account which Asarhaddon has
left us respecting these occurrences. According to this
which differs from that of the Bible, coincides with Abydenus accord-
ing to the emended reading (see the preceding footnote).
The definite hypothesis that the Nergilus of Abydenus and the
Sharezer of the Bible are identical, as well as the combination of both
names into a single complete one : Nergal-S harezer, were originated
by Ferd. Hitzig (Begriff der Kritik, Heidelberg, 1831, p. 195). He was
followed by F. C. Movers, Phonizier I (1841) p. 342; Joh. Brandis,
rerum Assyr. tempor. emend. (1853) p. 37 annot. ; M. von Niebuhr, Ge-
schichte Asurs und Babels (Berlin 1857) p. 37; A. von Gutschmid in the
Leipzig. Centralblatt 1870, Sp. 1157; Neue Beitrage, Leipzig 1876, p. 152;
and by the author himself in the first edition of the present work pp. 206 foil.
* Compare with the above the author's comprehensive article
Sanherib in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexikon, as well as in Eiehm's Eand-
worterh. des hihl. Alterthums.
** Procopius de aedif. III. 4. 5, pp. 254—6 (ed. Dindorf); compare
the Notitiae Graecae Episcopatuum III, 483.