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Sennacherib’s description of the battle in Halule shows many common topoi with the battle descriptions in Homer.
Sennacherib’s royal inscription:
The gathering (of Elamite and Babylonian troops) joined up; like the onset of a swarm of locusts in springtime they were rising up against me all together to do battle. The dust from their feet covered the face of the broad heavens like a heavy storm in severe cold weather. They had established their line before me at Halule of the bank of the Tigris; they had seized the approach to my watering-place, and were sharpening their weapons. As for me, to Aššur, Sin, Šamaš, Bel, Nabû, Nergal, Ištar of Nineveh, Ištar of Arbela, the gods in whom I trust, I prayed for success over the mighty foe. They at once heard my prayers and came to my aid. I raged like a lion. I put on my corslet; my helmet, emblem of battle, I placed on my head; my excellent battle-chariot, which flattens the foe, I hastily mounted in my heart’s fury. The strong bow which Aššur gave me I seized in my hands; the arrow that cuts off lives I grasped in my palm. Against the whole army of the evil enemy I gave forth a savage shout like a storm, I roared like Adad. … I made their blood run down on the broad earth like an inundation; my galloping steeds, my chariot-team, were plunging into the streams of their blood as into a river; the wheels of my battle-chariot, which lays low the wicked and the evil, were bathed in blood and guts.
Homer, Iliad 11.531-537:
So saying he (= Hector) smote the fair-maned horses with the shrill-sounding lash, and they, feeling the blow, fleetly bare the swift car amid the Trojans and Achaeans, trampling on the dead and on the shields, and with blood was all the axle sprinkled beneath, and the rims round about the car, with the drops that smote upon them from the horses’ hooves and from the tires.
Homer, Iliad 2.469-473; Even as the many tribes of swarming flies that buzz to and fro throughout the herdsman’s farmstead in the season of spring, when the milk drenches the pails, even in such numbers stood the long-haired Achaeans upon the plain in the face of the men of Troy, eager to rend them asunder.
Homer, Iliad 3.10-14:
Even as when the South Wind sheds a mist over the peaks of a mountain, a mist that the shepherd loves not, but that to the robber is better than night, and a man can see only so far as he casts a stone; even in such wise rose the dense dust-cloud from beneath their feet as they went; and full swiftly did they speed across the plain.
Homer, Iliad 18.215-226:
Then strode he from the wall to the trench, and there took his stand, yet joined him not to the company of the Achaeans, for he had regard to his mother’s wise behest. There stood he and shouted, and from afar Pallas Athene uttered her voice; but amid the Trojans he roused confusion unspeakable. Clear as the trumpet’s voice when it sounds aloud beneath the press of murderous foemen that beleaguer a city, so clear was then the voice of the son of Aeacus. And when they heard the brazen voice of the son of Aeacus the hearts of all were dismayed; and the fair-maned horses turned their cars backward, for their spirits boded bane.
Sources (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Homer, Iliad 11.531-537
Homer, Iliad 2.469-473
Homer, Iliad 3.10-14
Homer, Iliad 18.215-226
Royal Inscriptions, Sennacherib
Bibliography
| West 1997, 375-376 | West, Martin L. The East Face of Helicon. West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1997. |
Amar Annus
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