Black Obelisk

Also called Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser

A two-metre limestone pillar from Nimrud carrying five bands of carved tribute scenes — one of which is captioned with the name of an Israelite king, and is the only image we have of one.

Object: Four-sided black limestone obelisk with a stepped top, just under 2 m tall and 45 cm to a face, carved with five registers of tribute reliefs
Found at: The centre of the citadel mound at Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), northern Iraq
Found in: 1846
Found by: Austen Henry Layard's excavators. Layard had left the mound when the stone was struck; the superintendent of the digging party ordered it uncovered
Dates from: Erected 825 BC
Now held at: British Museum, London (BM 118885), where it arrived in October 1848

Layard's Obelisk

Austen Henry Layard's excavators uncovered the obelisk in 1846 at Nimrud, the Assyrian city the Bible calls Calah, during the digs that first brought Assyria back into European view. By Layard's own account he had just left the mound when a corner of dark stone appeared and the superintendent of the digging party ordered the spot opened up — so the moment of discovery, strictly, belongs to his workmen rather than to him. It is a slim four-sided pillar of black limestone, just under two metres tall and 45 centimetres to a face, with a stepped top, carved on all four faces with five registers of relief, each register running round the monument as a single scene of foreigners bringing tribute to Shalmaneser III. A cuneiform caption above each register says who is paying. It reached the British Museum in October 1848 and is there still.

The second register from the top shows a man prostrate on the ground before the Assyrian king, with a line of bearers behind him carrying metal vessels and bars. The caption reads, in the Nimrud Project's translation: "I received tribute from Iaua, son of Omri: silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden tureen, golden pails, tin, the staffs 'of the king's hand' and a spear." Iaua is Jehu. Older renderings of the last two items differ — Luckenbill has javelins, and some print the Akkadian word untranslated — so the wording here is the one the source cited below actually gives.

Jehu, Son of Omri

Jehu is the army commander who, in 2 Kings 9-10, is anointed to destroy the house of Ahab, kills two kings in a single day, and wipes out Omri's dynasty root and branch. So "son of Omri" looks like a mistake — Jehu was emphatically not Omri's son, and had killed the last of his line. It is not a mistake. Assyrian scribes routinely named a kingdom after the dynasty that founded it and kept the label long after the dynasty was gone; Israel appears in Assyrian records as "the house of Omri" for over a century. The caption means roughly "Jehu of the land of Omri."

The date is around 841 BC, early in Jehu's reign, and the payment fits a moment when Assyria was pressing hard on Damascus and a new king in Samaria had every reason to buy protection. The Bible does not mention this tribute at all — 2 Kings simply does not record it, which is a useful reminder that the biblical historians were selecting, not transcribing.

Is That Actually Jehu?

The figure on the ground is often described as the only surviving picture of a named king of Israel, and that is probably right, but it is worth stating the caveat that specialists state. Assyrian tribute reliefs frequently depict a delegation rather than the ruler in person, and it is entirely possible that the prostrate figure is Jehu's envoy delivering Jehu's tribute. The caption names the tribute, not the man's face. Most scholars still take the figure as Jehu himself, and the register is fairly described that way, but with "probably" in the sentence rather than left out of it.

What is not in doubt is the name. A contemporary Assyrian monument, cut within a few years of the events of 2 Kings 9-10, names a king of Israel called Jehu and locates him in the land of Omri. Alongside the Mesha Stele's Omri and the Tel Dan Stele's kings, it puts the ninth-century royal houses of Israel and Judah firmly into the documented history of the ancient Near East.

Scripture references

2 Kings 9:1-13 — Jehu anointed king over Israel
2 Kings 10:28-36 — Jehu's reign, and Hazael's pressure on Israel's borders
1 Kings 16:21-28 — Omri, whose dynastic name Assyria kept using
Genesis 10:11-12 — Calah, the Assyrian city where the obelisk was found

Sources

Holding institutionNimrud: Materialities of Assyrian Knowledge Production — the Black Obelisk — The Nimrud Project (University College London), published on Oracc · "a monument (or stela) carved from black limestone, which stands just under two metres high. It has four sides, each 45 cm wide"; erected 825 BC; arrived at the British Museum in October 1848 as ME 118885. The same page carries the Scene 2 caption quoted in the second section, word for wordSupports: The material, dimensions, erection date, museum number, arrival date, and the wording of the Jehu caption
Holding institutionThe Nimrud Project: the discovery of the Black Obelisk — The Nimrud Project (University College London), published on Oracc · Quotes Layard's own account: he "had scarcely left the mound, when a corner of black marble was uncovered", noticed by "the superintendent of the party digging"Supports: That the find belongs to Layard's workmen, and that Layard's own word for the stone was marble
Primary textAusten Henry Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains (1849) — Austen Henry Layard · The excavator's own published account of the Nimrud digs, including the discovery of the obelisk. Public domain, full text at the Internet ArchiveSupports: Layard's first-hand account of how the obelisk came to light
ReferenceBible Odyssey (SBL): Kingdom of Israel — Society of Biblical Literature
EncyclopediaWikipedia: Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III