of the governor of Uruk marching to battle against the
Gambulu.
On the other hand, the finances of the kingdom were put on a more stable and systematic basis. For nearly the whole of the two previous centuries, during which Assyria had resumed its victorious career, the treasury had been filled to some extent by taxes in kind or in money, and by various dues claimed from the hereditary kingdom and its few immediate dependencies, but mainly by booty and by tribute levied after each campaign from the peoples who had been conquered or had voluntarily submitted to Assyrian rule. The result was a budget which fluctuated greatly, since all forays were not equally lucrative, and the new dependencies proved so refractory at the idea of perpetual tribute, that frequent expeditions were necessary in order to persuade them to pay their dues. We do not know how Tiglath-pileser III. organised the finances of his provinces, but certain facts recorded here and there in the texts show that he must have drawn very considerable amounts from them. We notice that twenty or thirty years after his time, Carchemish was assessed at a hundred talents, Arpad and Kuî at thirty each, Megiddo and Manzuatu at fifteen, though the purposes to which these sums were applied is not specified.
on the gates of Balawat. The breed here represented seems to
have been common in Urartu, as well as in Cappadocia and
Northern Syria.
On the other hand, we know the precise object to which the contributions of several other cities were assigned; as, for instance, so much for the maintenance of the throne in the palace, or for the divans of the ladies of the harem; so much for linen garments, for dresses, and for veils; twenty talents from Nineveh for the armaments of the fleet, and ten from the same city for firewood. Certain provinces were expected to maintain the stud-farms, and their contributions of horses were specially valuable, now that cavalry played almost as important a part as infantry in military operations. The most highly prized animals came, perhaps, from Asia Minor; the nations of Mount Taurus, who had supplied chargers to Israel and Egypt five centuries earlier, now furnished war-horses to the squadrons of Nineveh. The breed was small, but robust, inured to fatigue and hard usage, and in every way similar to that raised in these countries at the present day. In war, horses formed a very considerable proportion of the booty taken; in time of peace, they were used as part of the payment of the yearly tribute, and a brisk trade in them was carried on with Mesopotamia.
Gudin, from the
restoration published
by Luschan.
After the king had deducted from his receipts enough to provide amply for the wants of his family and court, the salaries of the various functionaries and officials, the pay and equipment of his army, the maintenance and construction of palaces and fortresses, he had still sufficient left over to form an enormous reserve fund on which he and his successors might draw in the event of their ordinary sources of income being depleted by a series of repeated reverses.
Tiglath-pileser thus impressed upon Assyria the character by which it was known during the most splendid century of its history, and the organisation which he devised for it was so admirably adapted to the Oriental genius that it survived the fall of Nineveh, and served as a model for every empire-maker down to the close of the Macedonian era and even beyond it.
The wealth of the country grew rapidly, owing to the influx of capital and of foreign population; in the intervals between their campaigns its rulers set to work to remove all traces of the ruins which had been allowed to accumulate during the last forty years. The king had built himself a splendid palace at Calah, close to the monuments of Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmaneser III., and its terraces and walls overhung the waters of the Tigris. The main entrance consisted of a Bît-khilâni, one of those porticoes, flanked by towers and supported by columns or pillars, often found in Syrian towns, the fashion for which was now beginning to spread to Western Asia.*
inscriptions under the name of Bît-khilâni is still a matter
of controversy. It has been identified with the pillared
hall, or audience-chamber, such as we find in Sargon’s
palace at Khorsabad, and with edifices or portions of
edifices which varied according to the period, but which
were ornamented with columns. It seems clear, however, that
it was used of the whole series of chambers and buildings
which formed the monumental gates of Assyrian palaces,
something analogous to the Migdol of Ramses III. at
Medinet-Habu, and more especially to the gates at Zinjirli.
Those discovered at Zinjirli afford fine examples of the arrangements adopted in buildings of this kind; the lower part of the walls was covered with bas-reliefs, figures of gods and men, soldiers mounted or on foot, victims and fantastic animal shapes; the columns, where there were any, rested on the back of a sphinx or on a pair of griffins of a type which shows a curious mixture of Egyptian and Semitic influences.
The wood-work of the Ninevite Bît-khilâni was of cedar from Mount Amanus, the door-frames and fittings were of various rare woods, inlaid with ivory and metal. The entrance was guarded by the usual colossal figures, and the walls of the state reception-rooms were covered with slabs of alabaster; on these, in accordance with the usual custom,* were carved scenes from the royal wars, with explanatory inscriptions. The palace was subsequently dismantled, its pictures defaced and its inscriptions obliterated,** to mark the hatred felt by later generations towards the hero whom they were pleased to regard as a usurper; we can only partially succeed in deciphering his annals by the help of the fragmentary sentences which have escaped the fury of the destroyer.
the Nimroud Inscription. It stood near the centre of the
platform of Nimroud.
** The materials were utilised by Esarhaddon, but it does
not necessarily follow that the palace was dismantled by
that monarch; this was probably done by Sargon or by
Sennacherib.
photograph published by Luschan.
The cities and fortresses which he raised throughout the length and breadth of Assyria proper and its more recently acquired provinces have similarly disappeared; we can only conjecture that the nobles of his court, fired by his example, must have built and richly endowed more than one city on their hereditary estates, or in the territories under their rule. Bel-harrân-beluzur, the marshal of the palace, who twice gave his name to years of the king’s reign, viz. in 741 and 727 B.C., possessed, it would seem, an important fief a little to the north of Assur, near the banks of the Tharthar, on the site of the present Tel-Abta. The district was badly cultivated, and little better than a wilderness; by express order of the celestial deities—Marduk, Nabu, Shamash, Sin, and the two Ishtars—he dug the foundations of a city which he called Dur-Bel-harrân-beluzur. The description he gives of it affords conclusive evidence of the power of the great nobles, and shows how nearly they approached, by their wealth and hereditary privileges, to the kingly rank. He erected, we are told, a ziggurât on a raised terrace, in which he placed his gods in true royal fashion; he assigned slaves, landed property, and a yearly income to their priests, in order that worship might be paid to them in perpetuity; he granted sanctuary to all freemen who settled within the walls or in the environs, exemption from forced labour, and the right to tap a water-course and construct a canal. A decree of foundation was set up in the temple in memory of Bel-harrân-beluzur, precisely as if he were a crowned king. It is a stele of common grey stone with a circular top. The dedicator stands erect against the background of the carving, bare-foot and bare-headed, his face cleanshaven, dressed in a long robe embroidered in a chessboard pattern, and with a tunic pleated in horizontal rows; his right elbow is supported by the left hand, while the right is raised to a level with his eyes, his fist is clenched, and the thumb inserted between the first and second fingers in the customary gesture of adoration.
What the provost of the palace had done on his land, the other barons in all probability did on theirs; most of the departments which had fallen away and languished during the disturbances at the close of the previous dynasty, took a new lease of life under their protection. Private documents—which increase in number as the century draws to an end—contracts, official reports, and letters of scribes, all give us the impression of a wealthy and industrious country, stirred by the most intense activity, and in the enjoyment of unexampled prosperity. The excellent administration of Tiglath-pileser and his nobles had paved the way for this sudden improvement, and had helped to develop it, and when Shalmaneser V. succeeded his father on the throne it continued unchecked.* The new-comer made no changes in the system of government which had been so ably inaugurated. He still kept Assyria separate from Karduniash; his Babylonian subjects, faithful to ancient custom, soon devised a nickname for him, that of Ululai, as though seeking to persuade themselves that they had a king who belonged to them alone; and it is under this name that their annalists have inscribed him next to Pulu in the list of their dynasties.**
His reign was, on the whole, a calm and peaceful one; the Kaldâ, the Medes, Urartu, and the races of Mount Taurus remained quiet, or, at any rate, such disorders as may have arisen among them were of too trifling a nature to be deemed worthy of notice in the records of the time. Syria alone was disturbed, and several of its independent states took advantage of the change of rulers to endeavour to shake off the authority of Assyria.
Assyriologists whether or not Shalmaneser and Sargon were
different names for one and the same monarch. As for
monuments, we possess only one attributed to Shalmaneser, a
weight in the form of a lion, discovered by Layard at Nimroud,
in the north-west palace. The length of his reign, and
the scanty details we possess concerning it, have been
learnt from the Eponym Canon and Pinches’ Babylonian
Chronicle, and also from the Hebrew texts (2 Kings xvii. 3-
6; xviii. 9-12).
** The identity of Ululai and Shalmaneser V., though still
questioned by Oppert, has been proved by the comparison of
Babylonian records, in some of which the names Pulu and
Ululai occur in positions exactly corresponding with those
occupied, in others, by Tiglath-pileser and Shalmaneser. The
name Ululai was given to the king because he was born in the
month of Ulul; in Pinches’ list we find a gloss, “Dynasty
of Tinu,” which probably indicates the Assyrian town in
which Tiglath-pileser III. and his son were born.
Egypt continued to give them secret encouragement in these tactics, though its own internal dissensions prevented it from offering any effective aid. The Tanite dynasty was in its death-throes. Psamuti, the last of its kings, exercised a dubious sovereignty over but a few of the nomes on the Arabian frontier.*
attributed to him by Lepsius really belong to the Psammuthis
of the XXIXth dynasty. It is possible that one of the marks
found at Karnak indicating the level of the Nile belong to
the reign of this monarch.
His neighbours the Saites were gradually gaining the upper hand in the Delta and in the fiefs of middle Egypt, at first under Tafnakhti, and then, after his death, under his son Bukunirînif, Bocchoris of the Greek historians. They held supremacy over several personages who, like themselves, claimed the title and rank of Pharaoh; amongst others, over a certain Rudamanu Mîamun, son of Osorkon: their power did not, however, extend beyond Siut, near the former frontier of the Theban kingdom. The withdrawal of Piônkhi-Mîamun, and his subsequent death, had not disturbed the Ethiopian rule in the southern half of Egypt, though it somewhat altered its character. While an unknown Ethiopian king filled the place of the conquerer at Napata, another Ethiopian, named Kashta, made his way to the throne in Thebes.
after Prisse d’Avennes.
It is possible that he was a son of Piônkhi, and may have been placed in supreme power by his father when the latter reinstated the city in its place as capital. With all their partiality for real or supposed descendants of the Ramesside dynasty, the Thebans were, before all things, proud of their former greatness, and eagerly hoped to regain it without delay. When, therefore, they accepted this Kushite king who, to their eyes, represented the only family possessed of a legitimate claim to the throne, it was mainly because they counted on him to restore them to their former place among the cities of Egypt. They must have been cruelly disappointed when he left them for the Sacred Mountain. His invasion, far from reviving their prosperity, merely served to ratify the suppression of that pontificate of Amon-Râ which was the last remaining evidence of their past splendour.
All hope of re-establishing it had now to be abandoned, since the sovereign who had come to them from Napata was himself by birth and hereditary privelege and hereditary sole priest of Anion: in his absence the actual head of the Theban religion could lay claim only to an inferior office, and indeed, even then, the only reason for accepting a second prophet was that he might direct the worship of the temple at Karnak. The force of circumstances compelled the Ethiopians to countenance in the Thebaid what their Tanite or Bubastite predecessors had been obliged to tolerate at Hermopolis, Heracleopolis, Sais, and in many another lesser city; they turned it into a feudatory kingdom, and gave it a ruler who, like Auîti, half a century earlier, had the right to use the cartouches. Once installed, Kashta employed the usual methods to secure his seat on the throne, one of the first being a marriage alliance. The disappearance of the high priests had naturally increased the importance of the princesses consecrated to the service of Amon. From henceforward they were the sole visible intermediaries between the god and his people, the privileged guardians of his body and his double, and competent to perpetuate the line of the solar kings. The Theban appanage constituted their dowry, and even if their sex prevented them from discharging all those civil, military, and religious duties required by their position, no one else had the right to do so on their behalf, unless he was expressly chosen by them for the purpose. When once married they deputed their husbands to act for them; so long as they remained either single or widows, some exalted personage, the prophet of Amon or Montu, the ruler of Thebes, or the administrator of the Said, managed their houses and fiefs for them with such show of authority that strangers were at times deceived, and took him for the reigning monarch of the country.*
over the servants of the “Divine Worshipper.” Mantumihâit,
in the time of Taharqa and of Tanuatamanu, was ruler of
Thebes, and fourth prophet of Amon, and it is he who is
described in the Assyrian monuments as King of Thebes.
The Pharaohs had, therefore, a stronger incentive than ever to secure exclusive possession of these women, and if they could not get all of them safely housed in their harems, they endeavoured, at any rate, to reserve for themselves the chief among them, who by purity of descent or seniority in age had attained the grade of Divine Worshipper. Kashta married a certain Shapenuapît, daughter of Osorkon III. and a Theban pallacide;* it is uncertain whether he eventually became king over Ethiopia and the Sudan or not. So far, we have no proof that he did, but it seems quite possible when we remember that one of his children, Shabaku (Sabaco), subsequently occupied the throne of Napata in addition to that of Thebes. Kashta does not appear to have possessed sufficient energy to prevent the Delta and its nomes from repudiating the Ethiopian supremacy. The Saites, under Tafnakhti or Bocchoris, soon got the upper hand, and it was to them that the Syrian vassals of Nineveh looked for aid, when death removed the conqueror who had trampled them so ruthlessly underfoot. Ever since the fall of Arpad, Hadrach, and Damascus, Shabaraîn, a town situated somewhere in the valley of the Orontes or of the Upper Litany,** and hitherto but little known, had served as a rallying-point for the disaffected Aramaean tribes: on the accession of Shalmaneser V. it ventured to rebel, probably in 727 B.C., but was overthrown and destroyed, its inhabitants being led away captive.
during the generations that followed, and which possibly
originated about this period, this daughter of Osorkon III.
was only the adoptive mother of Amenertas.
** Shabaraîn was originally confounded with Samaria by the
early commentators on the Babylonian Chronicle. Halévy, very
happily, referred it to the biblical Sepharvaîm, a place
always mentioned in connection with Hamath and Arpad (2
Kings xvii. 24, 31; xviii. 34; xix. 13: cf. Isa. xxxvi. 19;
xxxvii. 13), and to the Sibraim of Ezekiel (xlvii. 16),
called in the Septuagint Samarêim. Its identification with
Samaria has, since then, been generally rejected, and its
connection with Sibraim admitted. Sibraim (or Sepharvaîm, or
Samarêîm) has been located at Shomerîyeh, to the east of the
Bahr-Kades, and south of Hamath.
This achievement proved, beyond the possibility of doubt, that in spite of their change of rulers the vengeance of the Assyrians was as keen and sharp as ever. Not one of the Syrian towns dared to stir, and the Phonician seaports, though their loyalty had seemed, for a moment, doubtful, took care to avoid any action which might expose them to the terrors of a like severity.* The Israelites and Philistines, alone of the western peoples, could not resign themselves to a prudent policy; after a short period of hesitation they drew the sword from its scabbard, and in 725 war broke out.**
passage quoted by Josephus, places in the reign of
Shalmaneser, ought really to be referred to the reign of
Sennacherib, or the fragment of Menander must be divided
into three parts dealing with three different Assyrian
campaigns against Tyre, under Tiglath-pileser, Sennacherib,
and Esarhaddon respectively.
** The war cannot have begun earlier, for the Eponym
Canon, in dealing with 726, has the words “in the country,”
thus proving that no expedition took place in that year; in
the case of the year 725, on the other hand, it refers to a
campaign against some country whose name has disappeared.
The passages in the Book of Kings (2 Kings xvii. 1-6, and
xviii. 9-12) which deal with the close of the kingdom of
Israel, have been interpreted in such a way as to give us
two campaigns by Shalmaneser against Hoshea: (1) Hoshea
having failed to pay the tribute imposed upon him by
Tiglath-pileser, Shalmaneser made war upon him and compelled
him to resume its payment (2 Kings xvii. 1-3); (2) Hoshea
having intrigued with Egypt, and declined to pay tribute,
Shalmaneser again took the field against him, made him
prisoner, and besieged Samaria for three years (2 Kings
xvii. 4-6; xviii. 9-12). The first expedition must, in this
case, have taken place in 727, while the second must have
lasted from 725-722. Most modern historians believe that the
Hebrew writer has ascribed to Shalmaneser the subjection of
Hoshea which was really the act of Tiglath-pileser, as well
as the final war against Israel. According to Winckler, the
two portions of the narrative must have been borrowed from
two different versions of the final war, which the final
editor inserted one after the other, heedless of the
contradictions contained in them.
Hoshea, who had ascended the throne with the consent of Tiglath-pileser, was unable to keep them quiet. The whole of Galilee and Gilead was now an Assyrian province, subject to the governor of Damascus; Jerusalem, Moab, Ammon, and the Bedâwin had transferred their allegiance to Nineveh; and Israel, with merely the central tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin left, was now barely equal in area and population to Judah. Their tribute weighed heavily on the Israelites; passing armies had laid waste their fields, and townsmen, merchants, and nobles alike, deprived of their customary resources, fretted with impatience under the burdens and humiliations imposed on them by their defeat; convinced of their helplessness, they again looked beyond their own borders for some nation or individual who should restore to them their lost prosperity. Amid the tottering fortunes of their neighbours, Egypt alone stood erect, and it was, therefore, to Egypt that they turned their eyes. Negotiations were opened, not with Pharaoh himself, but with Shabi, one of the petty kings on the eastern frontier of the Delta, whose position made him better qualified than any other to deal with Syrian affairs.*
text (2 Kings xvii. 4), and the Septuagint gives the
transliteration Sebek side by side with Sêgôs. He is found
again under the forms Shibahi, Shabi, Shabé, in Sargon’s
inscriptions.
Hannon of Gaza had by this time returned from exile, and it was, doubtless, owing to Shabi’s support that he had been able to drive out the Assyrian generals and recover his crown.* The Israelite aristocracy was led away by his example, but Shalmaneser hastened to the spot before the Egyptian bowmen had time to cross the isthmus. Hoshea begged for mercy, and was deported into Assyria and condemned to lifelong imprisonment.** Though deserted by her king, Samaria did not despair; she refused to open her gates, and, being strongly fortified, compelled the Assyrians to lay regular siege to the city. It would seem that at one moment, at the beginning of operations, when it was rumoured on all sides that Pharaoh would speedily intervene, Ahaz began to fear for his own personal safety, and seriously considered whether it would not be wiser to join forces with Israel or with Egypt.***
in which he is referred to as relying on the army of Shabi,
the tartan of Egypt.
** 2 Kings xvii. 4.
*** The Second Book of Kings (xviii. 9,10; cf. xvii. 6)
places the beginning of the siege of Samaria in the seventh
year of Hoshea ( = fourth year of Hezekiah), and the capture
of the town in the ninth year of Hoshea ( = sixth year of
Hezekiah); further on it adds that Sennacherib’s campaign
against Hezekiah took place in the fourteenth year of the
latter’s reign (2 Kings xviii. 13; cf. Isa. xxxvi. 1). Now,
Sennacherib’s campaign against Hezekiah took place (as will
be shown later on, in vol. viii. Chapter I.) in 702 B.C.,
and Samaria was captured in 722. The synchronisms in the
Hebrew narrative are therefore fictitious, and rest on no
real historical basis—at any rate, in so far as the king
who occupied the throne of Judah at the time of the fall of
Samaria is concerned; Ahaz was still alive at that date, and
continued to reign till 716 or 715, or perhaps only till
720.
The rapid sequence of events, however, backed by the counsel of Isaiah, speedily recalled him to a more reasonable view of the situation. The prophet showed him Samaria spread out before him like one of those wreaths of flowers which the guests at a banquet bind round their brows, and which gradually fade as their wearers drink deeper and deeper. “Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley of them that are overcome with wine. Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one; as a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, as a tempest of mighty waters overflowing, shall be cast down to the earth with violence. The crown of the pride of the drunkards of Ephraim shall be trodden underfoot, and the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be as the first ripe fig before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up.” While the cruel fate of the perverse city was being thus accomplished, Jahveh Sabaoth was to be a crown of glory to those of His children who remained faithful to Him; but Judah, far from submitting itself to His laws, betrayed Him even as Israel had done. Its prophets and priests were likewise distraught with drunkenness; they staggered under the effects of their potations, and turned to scorn the true prophet sent to proclaim to them the will of Jehovah. “Whom,” they stammered between their hiccups—“whom will He teach knowledge? and whom will He make to understand the message? them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts? For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little!” And sure enough it was by the mouth of a stammering people, by the lips of the Assyrians, that Jahveh was to speak to them. In vain did the prophet implore them: “This is the rest, give ye rest to him that is weary;” they did not listen to him, and now Jahveh turns their own gibes against them: “Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little,”—“that they may go and fall backward, and be broken and snared and taken.” There was to be no hope of safety for Jerusalem unless it gave up all dependence on human counsels, and trusted solely to God for protection.*
only verses 1-6, 23-29 of the prophecy were delivered at
this epoch: the remainder he believes to have been written
during Sennacherib’s campaign against Judah, and suggests
that the prophet added on his previous oracle to them, thus
diverting it from its original application. Others, such as
Stade and Wellhausen, regard the opening verses as embodying
a mere rhetorical figure. Jerusalem, they say, appeared to
the prophet as though changed into Samaria, and it is this
transformed city which he calls “the crown of pride of the
drunkards of Ephraim.”
Samaria was doomed; this was the general belief, and men went about repeating it after Isaiah, each in his own words; every one feared lest the disaster should spread to Judah also, and that Jahveh, having once determined to have done with the northern kingdom, would turn His wrath against that of the south as well. Micah the Morashtite, a prophet born among the ranks of the middle class, went up and down the land proclaiming misery to be the common lot of the two sister nations sprung from the loins of Jacob, as a punishment for their common errors and weaknesses. “The Lord cometh forth out of His place, and will come and tread upon the high places of the earth. And the mountains shall be molten under Him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, as waters that are poured down a steep place. For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem?” The doom pronounced against Samaria was already being carried out, and soon the hapless city was to be no more than “an heap of the field, and as the plantings of a vineyard; and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley,” saith the Lord, “and I will discover the foundations thereof. And all her graven images shall be beaten to pieces, and all her hires shall be burned with fire, and all her idols will I lay desolate; for of the hire of an harlot hath she gathered them, and into the hire of an harlot shall they return.” Yet, even while mourning over Samaria, the prophet cannot refrain from thinking of his own people, for the terrible blow which had fallen on Israel “is come even unto Judah; it reacheth unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem.” Doubtless the Assyrian generals kept a watchful eye upon Ahaz during the whole time of the siege, from 724 to 722, and when once the first heat of enthusiasm had cooled, the presence of so formidable an army within striking distance must have greatly helped the king to restrain the ill-advised tendencies of some of his subjects. Samaria still held out when Shalmaneser died at Babylon in the month of Tebeth, 722. Whether he had no son of fit age to succeed him, or whether a revolution, similar to that which had helped to place Tiglath-pileser on the throne, broke out as soon as he had drawn his last breath, is not quite clear. At any rate, Sargon, an officer who had served under him, was proclaimed king on the 22nd day of Tebeth, and his election was approved by the whole of Assyria. After some days of hesitation, Babylon declined to recognise him, and took the oath of allegiance to a Kaldu named Marduk-abalidinna, or Merodach-baladan. While these events were taking place in the heart of the empire, Samaria succumbed; perhaps to famine, but more probably to force. It was sacked and dismantled, and the bulk of its population, amounting to 27,280 souls, were carried away into Mesopotamia and distributed along the Balîkh, the Khabur, the banks of the river of Gozân, and among the towns of the Median frontier.*
to, but we learn this from the Second Book of Kings (xvii.
6; xviii. 11). There has been much controversy as to whether
Samaria was taken by Shalmanoser, as the Hebrew chronicler
seems to believe (2 Kings xvii. 3-6; xviii. 9, 10), or by
Sargon, as the Assyrian scribes assure us. At first, several
scholars suggested a solution of the difficulty by arguing
that Shalmaneser and Sargon were one and the same person;
afterwards the theory took shape that Samaria was really
captured in the reign of Shalmaneser, but by Sargon, who was
in command of the besieging army at the time, and who
transferred this achievement, of which he was naturally
proud, to the beginning of his own reign. The simplest
course seems to be to accept for the present the testimony
of contemporary documents, and place the fall of Samaria at
the beginning of the reign of Sargon, being the time
indicated by Sargon in his inscriptions.
Sargon made the whole territory into a province; an Assyrian governor was installed in the palace of the kings of Israel, and soon the altars of the strange gods smoked triumphantly by the side of the altars of Jahveh (722 B.C.).*
occasion to refer farther on in the present volume. The
following is a list of the kings of Israel, after the
division of the tribes:—
line. The king’s name in italics signifies that he died a
violent death.—Tr.]
Thus fell Samaria, and with Samaria the kingdom of Israel, and with Israel the last of the states which had aspired, with some prospect of success, to rule over Syria. They had risen one after another during the four centuries in which the absence of the stranger had left them masters of their own fate—the Hittites in the North, the Hebrews and the Philistines in the South, and the Aramæans and Damascus in the centre; each one of these races had enjoyed its years of glory and ambition in the course of which it had seemed to prevail over its rivals. Then those whose territory lay at the extremities began to feel the disadvantages of their isolated position, and after one or two victories gave up all hope of ever establishing a supremacy over the whole country. The Hittite sphere of influence never at any time extended much further southwards than the sources of the Orontes, while that of the Hebrews in their palmiest days cannot have gone beyond the vicinity of Hamath. And even progress thus far had cost both Hebrews and Hittites a struggle so exhausting that they could not long maintain it. No sooner did they relax their efforts, than those portions of Coele-Syria which they had annexed to their original territory, being too remote from the seat of power to feel its full attraction, gradually detached themselves and resumed their independence, their temporary suzerains being too much exhausted by the intensity of their own exertions to retain hold over them. Damascus, which lay almost in the centre, at an equal distance from the Euphrates and the “river of Egypt,” could have desired no better position for grouping the rest of Syria round her.
from a sketch by Flandin.
If any city had a chance of establishing a single kingdom, it was Damascus, and Damascus alone. But lulled to blissful slumbers in her shady gardens, she did not awake to political life and to the desire of conquest until after all the rest, and at the very moment when Nineveh was beginning to recover from her early reverses. Both Ben-hadads had had a free hand given them during the half-century which followed, and they had taken advantage of this respite to reduce Coele-Syria, the Lebanon, Arvadian Phoenicia, Hamath, and the Hebrews—in fact, two-thirds of the whole country—to subjection, and to organise that league of the twelve kings which reckoned Ahab of Israel among its leaders. This rudimentary kingdom had scarcely come into existence, and its members had not yet properly combined, when Shalmaneser III. arose and launched his bands of veterans against them; it however successfully withstood the shock, and its stubborn resistance at the beginning of the struggle shows us what it might have done, had its founders been allowed time in which to weld together the various elements at their disposal. As it was, it was doomed to succumb—not so much to the superiority of the enemy as to the insubordination of its vassals and its own internal discords. The league of the twelve kings did not survive Ben-hadad II.; Hazael and his successors wore themselves out in repelling the attacks of the Assyrians and in repressing the revolts of Israel; when Tiglath-pileser III. arrived on the scene, both princes and people, alike at Damascus and Samaria, were so spent that even their final alliance could not save them from defeat. Its lack of geographical unity and political combination had once more doomed Syria to the servitude of alien rule; the Assyrians, with methodical procedure, first conquered and then made vassals of all those states against which they might have hurled their battalions in vain, had not fortune kept them divided instead of uniting them in a compact mass under the sway of a single ruler. From Carchemish to Arpad, from Hamath to Damascus and Samaria, their irresistible advance had led the Assyrians on towards Egypt, the only other power which still rivalled their prestige in the eyes of the world; and now, at Gaza, on the frontier between Africa and Asia, as in days gone by on the banks of the Euphrates or the Balîkh, these two powers waited face to face, hand on hilt, each ready to stake the empire of the Asiatic world on a single throw of the dice.
SARGON OF ASSYRIA (722-705 B.C.).
SARGON AS A WARRIOR AND AS A BUILDER.
The origin of Sargon II.: the revolt of Babylon, Merodach-baladan and Elam—The kingdom of Elam from the time of the first Babylonian empire; the conquest’s of Shutruh-nalkunta I.; the princes of Malamîr—The first encounter of Assyria and Elam, the battle of Durilu (721 B.C.)—Revolt of Syria, Iaubîdi of Hamath and Hannon of Gaza—Bocchoris and the XXIVth Egyptian dynasty; the first encounter of Assyria with Egypt, the battle of Raphia (720 B.C.).
Urartu and the coalition of the peoples of the north-east and north-west—Defeat of Zikartu (719 B.C.), of the Tabal (718), of the Khâti (717), of the Mannai, of the Medes and Ellipi (716), and of the Modes (715)—Commencement of XXVth Ethiopian dynasty: Sabaco (716)— The fall of Urzana and Rusas (714) and the formation of an Assyrian province in Cappadocia (713-710)—The revolt and fall of Ashdod.
The defeat of Merodach-baladan and of Shutruk-nakhunta II.: Sargon conquers Babylon (710-709 B.C.)—Success of the Assyrians at Mushhi: homage of the Greeks of Cyprus (710)—The buildings of Sargon: Dur-sharrukîn—The gates and walls of Dur-sharrukîn; the city and its population—The royal palace, its courts, the ziggurât, the harem—Revolt of Kummukh (709 B.C.) and of Ellipi (708 B.C.)—Inauguration of Dur-sharrukîn (706 B.C.)—Murder of Sargon (705 B.C.): his character.
CHAPTER III—SARGON OF ASSYRIA (722-705 B.C.)
Sargon as a warrior and as a builder.
Whether Sargon was even remotely connected with the royal line, is a question which for the present must remain unanswered. He mentions in one of his inscriptions the three hundred princes who had preceded him in the government of Assyria, and three lines further on he refers to the kings his ancestors, but he never mentions his own father by name, and this omission seems to prove that he was not a direct descendant of Shalmaneser V., nor of Tiglath-pileser III. nor indeed of any of their immediate predecessors. It is, however, probable, if not certain, that he could claim some sort of kinship with them, though more or less remote. It was customary for the sovereigns of Nineveh to give their daughters in marriage to important officials or lords of their court, and owing to the constant contraction of such alliances through several centuries, there was hardly a noble family but had some royal blood in its veins; and that of Sargon was probably no exception to the rule. His genealogy was traced by the chroniclers, through several hundred generations of princes, to the semi-mythical heroes who had founded the city of Assur; but as Assur-nazir-pal and his descendants had claimed Bel-kapkapi and Sulili as the founders of their race, the Sargonids chose a different tradition, and drew their descent from Belbâni, son of Adasi. The cause and incidents of the revolution which raised Sargon to the throne are unknown, but we may surmise that the policy adopted with regard to Karduniash was a factor in the case. Tiglath-pileser had hardly entered Babylon before the fascination of the city, the charm of its associations, and the sacred character of the legends which hallowed it, seized upon his imagination; he returned to it twice in the space of two years to “take the hands of Bel,” and Shalmaneser V. much preferred it to Calah or Nineveh as a place of residence. The Assyrians doubtless soon became jealous of the favour shown by their princes to their ancient enemy, and their discontent must have doubtless conduced to their decision to raise a new monarch to the throne. The Babylonians, on the other hand, seem to have realised that the change in the dynasty presaged a disadvantageous alteration of government; for as soon as the news reached them a movement was set on foot and search made for a rival claimant to set up in opposition to Sargon.*