Queen Semiramis too failed in the Indian campaign.

The Assyrian Misadventure

Assyrians in India

Queen Semiramis too failed in the Indian campaign. The story of Semiramis, the Assyrian Queen and the Indian King Stabrobates by a Greek ‘historian,’ Ctesias (in Diodorus Siculus) is of interest. Her army consisted, informs Ctesias, of an (over?) estimated 100,000 chariots, 5000 cavalry and300,000 foot soldiers.

Semiramis prepared for her Indian campaign for two years. But, face to face with the menacing Indian armies with real elephants, Assyrian soldiers panicked – and some defected to the Indian army.

Only to spill the beans.

The elephants in the Assyrian army were camels – dressed as elephants. During the two years of preparation, the army of Semiramis made costumes for thousands of her camels – to look like elephants.

She selected three hundred thousand dark colored oxen … she then sewed the hides together and stuffed them full of hay to make imitation elephants that mimicked the appearance of these beasts in every detail. Inside each of these mock elephants was a man to operate it and a camel by which it was moved (from The antiquities of Asia By Diodorus Siculus, Diodorus, Edwin Murphy).

Apparently, foreign armies used ‘faux’ elephants to frighten enemies.

Ctesias in Diodorus Siculus mentions Semiramis commissioned an inscription at Bagistan – later known as The Behistun /Besitoon /Bisitoon Inscription –  a rock-face carving.

When Semiramis had finished all her works, she marched with a great army into Media, and encamped near to a mountain called Bagistan ; there she made a garden twelve furlongs in compass. It was in a plain champaigne country, and had a great fountain in it, which watered the whole garden. Mount Bagistan is dedicated to Jupiter, and towards one side of the garden has steep rocks seventeen furlongs from the top to the bottom. She cut out a piece of the lower part of the rock, and caused her own image to be carved upon it ; and a hundred of her guards, that were lanceteers, standing round about her. She wrote likewise in Syriac letters upon the rock, that Semi- ramis ascended from the plain to the top of the mountain, by laying the packs and fardels of the beasts that followed her, one upon another.

But what we see today at Behistun is a message by Darius – a tri-lingual message which helped in decipherment of Elamite, Akkadian and Old Persian scripts. So, what happened?

The Behistun inscription is on a limestone rock face. Darius (could have) simply scraped away Semiramis’ carving – and overwrote his message. Could Darius have let go of such a site – and not used it to glorify himself? Subsequently, a figure of Hercules was also carved in 139 (some writers mention 148) BC by Seleucid Greeks – Demetrius II Nicator.

The Assyrian Empire in Asia Minor, (1300 BC – 500 BC) expanded by the conquests of Semiramis their legendary Queen, was one of history’s largest and the longest lasting Empire.

Semiramis was possibly Queen Sammurammit /Sammurammat, ruling over Assyria and Babylon in late ninth and early eight centuries B.C. The identity of her husband is in question with different names like King Shamshi-Adad V, Adad-nirari IV (probably co-regent, son of ShamshiAdad V and Semiramis), and some say Rammannirar, and yet some others Vul Lush III.

Between Herodotus and Ctesias, we have Greek accounts of the rise of Semiramis. The Assyrian Empire in Asia Minor, of Semiramis, rivalled Alexander’s Asian territories. She wasdeposed by her son Ninyas /Ninus (probably co-regent, Adad-nirari IV, son of Shamshi Adad V and Semiramis), after her loss to the Indian king, Stabrobates.

Clearly a historical figure, Semiramis was elevated to godhood in the Assyrian pantheon of goddesses, deified and worshiped – much like  cannonization of saints by the Christian Church.

To the Greeks and Romans, Semiramis was the foremost of women, the greatest queen who had ever held a sceptre, the most extraordinary conqueror that the that the East had ever produced. Beautiful as Helen or Cleopatra, brave as Tomyris, lustful as Messaline, she had the virtues and vices of a man rather than woman, and performed deeds scarcely inferior to those of Cyrus or Alexander The Great. (from The Seven Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World By George Rawlinson).

For her achievements, Semiramis was personified in the cult of ‘Mother and Child’, which Vatican was at great pains to exterminate, as it was the continuation of the worship of the Mother figure of Gnosticism and other Christian streams.