Asnapper

Asnapper was a great and noble Assyrian prince who resettled conquered peoples in the cities of Samaria following the deportation of the northern Israelite population. His name appears in a letter quoted to the Persian king Artaxerxes, where the transplanted colonists invoke his authority to establish their long tenure in the region.

The Resettlement of Samaria

The letter preserved in Ezr 4:10 names Asnapper as the imperial official responsible for bringing foreign nations to Samaria and settling them beyond the River — the Euphrates frontier of the Persian administrative district. The colonists whom he relocated wrote to Artaxerxes to protest the rebuilding of Jerusalem, citing their loyalty to the crown: "the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar brought over, and set in the city of Samaria, and in the rest [of the country] beyond the River, and so forth" (Ezr 4:10).