Jehu, king of Israel, and the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III

Jehu son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshi, was the army commander who, according to the Second Book of Kings, overthrew the dynasty of Omri and Ahab in a single bloody campaign and ruled the northern kingdom of Israel for 28 years, from about 841 BCE. He is also the first king of Israel, and arguably the only one, whose likeness may survive from his own lifetime. On the Black Obelisk of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III, a black limestone monument from Nimrud now in the British Museum, a bearded man in a pointed cap kneels with his face to the ground before the Assyrian king, and the caption above names the tribute of "Jehu, son of Omri." Whether the man on his knees is Jehu himself or an envoy sent in his name is still argued. This page tells the biblical story, then the Assyrian one, and explains how they fit together and where they do not.

Photograph: Nate Loper, May 13, 2013, British Museum. Source and licence: Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab). CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/. Original photograph displayed without retouching.

The coup in the Book of Kings

The account in 2 Kings 9 and 10 is among the most vivid narratives in the Bible. Israel was at war with Aram-Damascus over Ramoth-gilead, east of the Jordan. King Joram (also called Jehoram) son of Ahab had been wounded and had withdrawn to recover at his palace in Jezreel, where his ally and kinsman King Ahaziah of Judah came to visit him. At Ramoth-gilead, a young prophet sent by Elisha took Jehu aside and anointed him king, charging him to destroy the house of Ahab. The officers spread their cloaks under him, blew the shofar and proclaimed him.

Jehu drove his chariot to Jezreel; the watchman, the text says, recognized him from afar because he drove furiously. Joram rode out to meet him and was shot with an arrow between the shoulders. Ahaziah fled and was struck down on the ascent of Gur near Ibleam and died at Megiddo. In Jezreel the queen mother Jezebel was thrown from a window on Jehu's orders. Jehu then demanded that the guardians of Ahab's seventy sons in Samaria choose between resistance and obedience; they chose obedience and killed the princes. On the road he killed forty-two kinsmen of Ahaziah, and in Samaria he gathered the worshippers of Baal in their temple and had them put to death.

The text is not unanimous in approving. It praises Jehu for removing the cult of Baal but faults him for keeping the golden calves of Bethel and Dan. A century later the prophet Hosea announced punishment on the house of Jehu "for the blood of Jezreel" (Hosea 1:4), a striking reversal of the verdict in Kings.

A reign under pressure

The biblical account of the rest of the reign is brief. According to 2 Kings 10:32 to 33, in those days the Lord began to cut off parts of Israel: Hazael of Damascus struck Israel in all its territory east of the Jordan, the land of Gilead, Gad, Reuben and Manasseh, as far as the Arnon. Jehu reigned 28 years in Samaria, and his dynasty lasted about a century, the longest in the history of the northern kingdom, through his son Jehoahaz, his grandson Joash and his great-grandson Jeroboam II, until Zechariah was murdered after six months on the throne.

Archaeology adds a little. At Jezreel, excavations led by David Ussishkin and John Woodhead in the 1990s uncovered a large fortified royal enclosure built in the 9th century BCE and destroyed not long after; its end has been linked by some scholars to the upheavals of Jehu's coup or to the Aramean wars that followed, though the evidence does not name an attacker.

The Black Obelisk: what it is

The Black Obelisk is a four-sided pillar of black limestone, just under two meters high (the British Museum gives a height of 197.48 cm), with a stepped top. It was set up in 825 BCE, according to the British Museum, at Kalhu, the Assyrian royal city known today as Nimrud in northern Iraq, during the last years of Shalmaneser III, who reigned from 859 to 824 BCE. Austen Henry Layard excavated it in 1846, and it reached London in 1848; the registration number 1848,1104.1 records its arrival. It is displayed in the British Museum's Assyrian galleries, in Room 6, alongside the bronze bands from the gates of Balawat.

The obelisk carries two kinds of record: - a long cuneiform inscription that summarizes the king's military campaigns year by year, through his 31st regnal year; - five registers of carved reliefs running around all four sides, twenty panels in all, each register showing a different ruler or land bringing tribute, with a short caption above it.

Among the tributaries are Sua of Gilzanu in the northwest of modern Iran, in the top register; Jehu of Israel in the second; a land called Musri, represented by exotic animals including camels, an elephant and apes; Marduk-apil-usur of Suhu on the middle Euphrates; and Qalparunda of Patina in the region of modern Antakya, in the bottom register. Jehu's tribute is therefore one scene in a carefully composed display of the four corners of Shalmaneser's world.

The Jehu panel and its caption

In the main scene of the second register, Shalmaneser III stands under a parasol held by an attendant, with a winged disc and a star above him. Before him a man kneels and bends low, his forehead near the ground. He wears a soft pointed cap, a short beard and a fringed cloak, the dress the Assyrian sculptors used for people from the west. Behind him, on the same and adjoining panels, Assyrian officials lead a line of Israelite porters carrying the tribute.

The caption above the scene names the tribute of Iaua, the Assyrian rendering of Jehu, "son of Omri," and lists what was received from him. In the translation by A. Leo Oppenheim in Pritchard's Ancient Near Eastern Texts, the items include silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden vase with a pointed bottom, golden tumblers and buckets, tin, and a staff for the king's hand; one further word on the list is of uncertain meaning.

Shalmaneser's annals supply the context. In his 18th regnal year, 841 BCE, he campaigned against Hazael of Damascus, besieged him in his city, ravaged the countryside, and then marched to the mountain of Ba'li-ra'si on the coast, where, according to an annalistic text from Kalhu, he received the tribute of Tyre, Sidon and of Jehu, son of Omri. The new king of Israel, facing the same Aramean enemy, evidently chose to place himself under Assyria.

Jehu, an envoy, and the "son of Omri" problem

Three questions keep scholars busy: - Who is kneeling? The caption speaks of the tribute of Jehu, not explicitly of his person. Many scholars, and most museum and textbook descriptions, treat the figure as Jehu himself, which would make it the only known contemporary image of a king of Israel or Judah. Others argue that the prostrate man could just as well be an envoy delivering the tribute in Jehu's name, a common practice, and that Assyrian art shows rulers and their representatives in the same pose. - Why "son of Omri"? Jehu destroyed the house of Omri. The answer accepted by most scholars is that the Assyrians called the kingdom of Israel Bit Humri, "House of Omri," after the dynasty's founder, and used "son of Omri" to mean a ruler of that land, not a biological descendant. Edward Hincks first identified the name as Jehu in 1851; George Smith later doubted it, and P. Kyle McCarter proposed in 1974 that the caption meant Jehoram, a minority reading. - How does it fit Tel Dan? The Aramaic inscription found at Tel Dan in 1993 and 1994, usually attributed to Hazael, claims that its author killed Joram of Israel and Ahaziah of the house of David. Kings credits Jehu with both deaths. Suggested solutions include Jehu acting with Aramean support, Hazael claiming credit for events he set in motion, or simply two rival propagandas; the damaged text cannot settle the matter.

Why the obelisk matters

The Black Obelisk is one of the strongest anchors of biblical chronology. Combined with the Kurkh Monolith, which places Ahab at the battle of Qarqar in 853 BCE, it fixes Jehu's accession to about 841 BCE and allows the reigns in the Books of Kings to be tied to the Assyrian eponym lists, which are themselves dated by a solar eclipse in 763 BCE. It confirms that Jehu existed, that he ruled Israel and that he paid tribute to Assyria, none of which the Bible mentions. It also shows how the same king looked from two capitals: a zealous avenger in Samaria's memory, a minor vassal on his knees in Kalhu.

The wider story of the northern kingdom's wars, from the Omrides to the fall of Samaria, is told in the overview of the wars of ancient Israel, and the dynasty that the Tel Dan inscription names is discussed in the articles on the wars of King David and King Solomon. The object itself, with its museum record and photographs, can be viewed in the British Museum's collection entry for the Black Obelisk.