The Black Obelisk

From as far back as the second millennium BC, Assyrian kings would detail their achievements on stone panels and monuments adorning palaces and public spaces. Several Judahite or Israelite kings are named in these royal inscriptions, but only one was ever portrayed pictorially. This honour — or perhaps disgrace, depending on your point of view — goes to the Israelite king Jehu.

Jehu is famous in the Bible for bringing the dynasty of Ahab to an end. 2 Kings 9 tells how Jehu, one of the commanders of the Israelite army, was anointed by a servant of the prophet Elisha as king of Israel. Jehu proceeded to assassinate both Joram, king of Israel, and Ahaziah, king of Judah — a son and a grandson of Ahab, respectively — and then to wipe out most of the remaining family of Ahab.

Jehu went on to initiate his own dynasty, and four generations of kings of Israel were descended from him. It was under these auspices that Jehu, in 841 BC, took a tribute to the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser III (who reigned from 858 to 824 BC). Shalmaneser had been campaigning to the north of Israel against King Hazael of Aram-Damascus, and Jehu was undoubtedly attempting to keep Shalmaneser from attacking Israel. This event is not mentioned in the Bible, but its relevance for Shalmaneser’s royal ideology is evident in the fact that he not only mentioned it in his inscriptions, but he portrayed it on a monument called the Black Obelisk.

The Black Obelisk was discovered in 1846 during British excavations of the Assyrian capital of Kalḫu, biblical Calah (Genesis 10:11), and is now on display in the British Museum. Visitors will find it hard to miss as it stands almost two metres tall. Carved into its sides are five relief scenes, stacked vertically, which wrap around the entire obelisk in a series of four connected panels, one per side. These scenes portray processions of people from various places bringing tribute to the king of Assyria. Above each scene is an epigraph which tells the viewer what is depicted below. The space above and below the entire set of relief scenes is inscribed with cuneiform writing, recounting the yearly campaigns of Shalmaneser III, one of Assyria’s greatest kings.

The second relief scene from the top (see top image) portrays Jehu, centre right, bowing before Shalmaneser III, who is standing at centre left wearing the typical Assyrian crown. Behind each are two eunuchs (no beards) and directly above Jehu are divine symbols. The text above the relief scene explains: “I received the tribute of Jehu son of Omri: silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden tureen, golden vessels, golden buckets, tin, a staff of the king’s hand, and spears.” The other panels in this scene portray a connected procession of Israelite tribute-bearers, led by Assyrian officials, terminating at the image of Jehu bowing down.

You may remember that the Bible calls Jehu “the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi” (2 Kings 9:2, 14, 29). It may seem strange, then, that on the Black Obelisk he is called “son of Omri.” According to the Bible, Omri was the father of Ahab, whose family Jehu wiped out. How is this to be explained?

The Bible and the Black Obelisk are not actually in disagreement here. Both the Bible and Assyrian royal inscriptions often use the word “son” in the sense of “affiliated with” rather than “direct male descendant of”. So the Bible refers to “the sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem” (Joel 4:6) or “the sons of Babylon” (Ezekiel 23:15), as well as “sons of the prophets” (1 Kings 20:35). The Assyrian royal inscriptions, similarly, refer to the “sons of Babylon and Borsippa” (citizens of Babylon and Borsippa) or the “sons of the craftsmen” (members of the guild of craftsmen). This raises the possibility that “son” might have this sense of affiliation when it refers to Jehu.

The Bible’s description of Jehu’s ancestry seems to indicate that Jehu’s father was Jehoshaphat and his grandfather (or a more distant ancestor) was Nimshi. When the Black Obelisk refers to Jehu as “son of Omri”, this is best explained as the Assyrians’ way of saying “Jehu, ruler of Israel”, rather than implying anything in particular about Jehu’s real father or even ancestor. The Assyrians would sometimes refer to countries as “House of (PERSONAL NAME)”, for example Bit-Adini, which literally means “House of Adini”, where Adini was regarded as the founder of the dynasty ruling the country at the time the Assyrians came into contact with it. This was kept up even if a new dynasty replaced it and the phrase became a kind of fossilised country name, with little relevance for the ancestry of the currently ruling dynasty. Rulers of the country were then referred to by name and designated “son” of this founder, as in “Ahuni, son of Adini”, which, for all intents and purposes, meant “Ahuni, member of the ruling dynasty of the country Bit-Adini,” or simply, “Ahuni, ruler of Bit-Adini.”

This is helpful because the Assyrians in fact called Israel Bit-Humri, “House of Omri”, presumably since Omri was the founder of the dynasty in power when Assyria first came into contact with Israel in the ninth century BC. It is Ahab who appears first of the Israelite kings in the Assyrian texts, in the royal inscriptions of Shalmaneser III, the king of the Black Obelisk, during a time when Omri would, according to the Bible, have been the founder of the ruling dynasty of Israel. It is not a surprise, then, that the Assyrians continue to refer to Israel as Bit-Humri, “House of Omri”, even long after the demise of Omri’s dynasty, and that they refer to Jehu as “son of Omri”.