The Vulgate Tobit 1:18 employs, in the case of Shalmaneser, the Latin phrase,post multum vero temporis - “after a long time”.
This statement cannot apply appropriately to Shalmaneser V as conventionally dated (c. 726-722 BC), since his reign is estimated to have lasted less than five years.
Once again, though, the text books have it all wrong.
That short span of time does not adequately account for a king who was so dominant as to have claimed to have laid siege to the city of Tyre. Josephus wrote that he laboured for five years over it (that is more than the length of his reign). Later not even Nebuchednezzar the Great was able successfully to conquer Tyre, though he expended considerable effort on it (Ezekiel 29:18-20). Thirteen years of effort, according to Josephus.
It was left to Alexander the Great to conquer Tyre completely.
Shalmaneser also famously besieged Samaria for 3 years, and conquered it (2 Kings 17:5-6):
"[Shalmaneser] .... The king of Assyria invaded the entire land, marched against Samaria and laid siege to it for three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the Israelites to Assyria. He settled them in Halah, in Gozan on the Habor River and in the towns of the Medes".
Yet of this Shalmaneser we are told: "... no historical descriptions of his reign have come down to us" (D. D. Luckenbill), and there are no known portraits of him.
Obviously, Shalmaneser V needs to be, like Sargon II, subsumed into an alter ego, in Shalmaneser's case the well-known and longer -reigning Tiglath-pileser (another biblical name, along with "Shalmaneser"; "Sargon"; "Sennacherib" and "Esarhaddon").
Now, since Tiglath-pileser is supposed to have been the contemporaray of the Babylonian king, Nabonassar, this has huge ramifications for "The Era of Nabonassar", thereby affecting Cardinal Duca's calculations.
