Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the photograph in Luschan.

These deities were mostly of the Assyrian type, and if one may draw any conclusion from the few representations of them already discovered, their rites must have been celebrated in a manner similar to that followed in the cities on the Lower Euphrates. Scarcely any signs of Egyptian influence survived, though here and there a trace of it might be seen in the figures of calf or bull, the vulture of Mut or the sparrow-hawk of Horus. Assur-nazir-pal, marching from the banks of the Khabur to Bit-Adini, and from Bit-Adini passing on to Northern Syria, might almost have imagined himself still in his own dominions, so gradual and imperceptible were the changes in language and civilisation in the country traversed between Nineveh and Assur, Tul-Barsip and Samalla.

His expedition was unattended by danger or bloodshed. Lubarna, the reigning prince of the Patina, was possibly at that juncture meditating the formation of a Syrian empire under his rule. Unki, in which lay his capital of Kunulua, was one of the richest countries of Asia,* being well watered by the Afrin, Orontes, and Saluara;** no fields produced such rich harvests as his, no meadows pastured such cattle or were better suited to the breeding of war-horses.

* The Unki of the Assyrians, the Uniuqa of the Egyptians, is the valley of Antioch, the Amk of the present day. Kunulua or Kinalia, the capital of the Patina, has been identified with the Gindaros of Greek times; I prefer to identify it with the existing Tell-Kunana, written for Tell-Kunala by the common substitution of n for l at the end of proper names.

** The Saluara of the Assyrian texts is the present Kara-su, which flows into the Ak-Deniz, the lake of Antioch.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the impression taken from a Hittite cylinder.

His mountain provinces yielded him wood and minerals, and provided a reserve of semi-savage woodcutters and herdsmen from which to recruit his numerous battalions. The neighbouring princes, filled with uneasiness or jealousy by his good fortune, saw in the Assyrian monarch a friend and a liberator rather than an enemy. Carchemish opened its gates and laid at his feet the best of its treasures—twenty talents of silver, ingots, rings, and daggers of gold, a hundred talents of copper, two hundred talents of iron, bronze bulls, cups decorated with scenes in relief or outline, ivory in the tusk or curiously wrought, purple and embroidered stuffs, and the state carriage of its King Shangara. The Hittite troops, assembled in haste, joined forces with the Aramaean auxiliaries, and the united host advanced on Coele-Syria. The scribe commissioned to record the history of this expedition has taken a delight in inserting the most minute details. Leaving Carchemish, the army followed the great caravan route, and winding its way between the hills of Munzigani and Khamurga, skirting Bit-Agusi, at length arrived under the walls of Khazazu among the Patina.*

* Khazazu being the present Azaz, the Assyrian army must have followed the route which still leads from Jerabis to this town. Mount Munzigani and Khamurga, mentioned between Carchemish and Akhanu or Iakhanu, must lie between the Sajur and the Koweik, near Shehab, at the only point on the route where the road passes between two ranges of lofty hills.

The town having purchased immunity by a present of gold and of finely woven stuffs, the army proceeded to cross the Aprie, on the bank of which an entrenched camp was formed for the storage of the spoil. Lubarna offered no resistance, but nevertheless refused to acknowledge his inferiority; after some delay, ifc was decided to make a direct attack on his capital, Kunulua, whither he had retired. The appearance of the Assyrian vanguard put a speedy end to his ideas of resistance: prostrating himself before his powerful adversary, he offered hostages, and emptied his palaces and stables to provide a ransom. This comprised twenty talents of silver, one talent of gold, a hundred talents of lead, a hundred talents of iron, a thousand bulls, ten thousand sheep, daughters of his nobles with befitting changes of garments, and all the paraphernalia of vessels, jewels, and costly stuffs which formed the necessary furniture of a princely household. The effect of his submission on his own vassals and the neighbouring tribes was shown in different ways. Bit-Agusi at once sent messengers to congratulate the conqueror, but the mountain provinces awaited the invader's nearer approach before following its example. Assur-nazir-pal, seeing that they did not take the initiative, crossed the Orontes, probably at the spot where the iron bridge now stands, and making his way through the country between laraku and Iaturi,* reached the banks of the Sangura* without encountering any difficulty.

* The spot where Assur-nazir-pal must have crossed the Orontes is determined by the respective positions of Kunulua and Tell-Kunana. At the iron bridge, the modern traveller has the choice of two roads: one, passing Antioch and Beit- el-Ma, leads to Urdeh on the Nahr-el-Kebir; the other reaches the same point by a direct route over the Gebel Kosseir. If, as I believe, Assur-nazir-pal took the latter route, the country and Mount laraku must be the northern part of Gebel Kosseir in the neighbourhood of Antioch, and Iaturi, the southern part of the same mountain near Derkush. laraku is mentioned in the same position by Shalmaneser III., who reached it after crossing the Orontes, on descending from the Amanos en route for the country of Hamath.

** The Sangura or Sagura has been identified by Delattre with the Nahr-el-Kebir, not that river which the Greeks called the Eleutheros, but that which flows into the sea near Latakia. Before naming the Sangura, the Annals mention a country, whose name, half effaced, ended in -ku: I think we may safely restore this name as [Ashtama]kou, mentioned by Shalmaneser III. in this region, after the name of laraku. The country of Ashtamaku would thus be the present canton of Urdeh, which is traversed before reaching the banks of the Nahr-el-Kebir.

After a brief halt there in camp, he turned his back on the sea, and passing between Saratini and Duppani,* took by assault the fortress of Aribua.** This stronghold commanded all the surrounding country, and was the seat of a palace which Lubarna at times used as a similar residence. Here Assur-nazir-pal took up his quarters, and deposited within its walls the corn and spoils of Lukhuti;*** he established here an Assyrian colony, and, besides being the scene of royal festivities, it became henceforth the centre of operations against the mountain tribes.

* The mountain cantons of Saratini and Duppani (Kalpani l'Adpani?), situated immediately to the south of the Nahr-el- Kebir, correspond to the southern part of Gebel-el-Akrad, but I cannot discover any names on the modern map at all resembling them.

** Beyond Duppani, Assur-nazir-pal encamped on the banks of a river whose name is unfortunately effaced, and then reached Aribua; this itinerary leads us to the eastern slope of the Gebel Ansarieh in the latitude of Hamath. The only site I can find in this direction fulfilling the requirements of the text is that of Masiad, where there still exists a fort of the Assassins. The name Aribua is perhaps preserved in that of Rabao, er-Rabahu, which is applied to a wady and village in the neighbourhood of Masiad.

*** Lukhuti must not be sought in the plains of the Orontes, where Assur-nazir-pal would have run the risk of an encounter with the King of Hamath or his vassals; it must represent the part of the mountain of Ansarieh lying between Kadmus, Masiad, and Tortosa.

The forts of the latter were destroyed, their houses burned, and prisoners were impaled outside the gates of their cities. Having achieved this noble exploit, the king crossed the intervening spurs of Lebanon and marched down to the shores of the Mediterranean. Here he bathed his weapons in the waters, and offered the customary sacrifices to the gods of the sea, while the Phoenicians, with their wonted prudence, hastened to anticipate his demands—Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, Mahallat, Maiza, Kaiza, the Amorites and Arvad,* all sending tribute.

* The point where Assur-nazir-pal touched the sea-coast cannot be exactly determined: admitting that he set out from Masiad or its neighbourhood, he must have crossed the Lebanon by the gorge of the Eleutheros, and reached the sea- board somewhere near the mouth of this river.

One point strikes us forcibly as we trace on the map the march of this victorious hero, namely, the care with which he confined himself to the left bank of the Orontes, and the restraint he exercised in leaving untouched the fertile fields of its valley, whose wealth was so calculated to excite his cupidity. This discretion would be inexplicable, did we not know that there existed in that region a formidable power which he may have thought it imprudent to provoke. It was Damascus which held sway over those territories whose frontiers he respected, and its kings, also suzerains of Hamath and masters of half Israel, were powerful enough to resist, if not conquer, any enemy who might present himself. The fear inspired by Damascus naturally explains the attitude adopted by the Hittite states towards the invader, and the precautions taken by the latter to restrict his operations within somewhat narrow limits. Having accepted the complimentary presents of the Phoenicians, the king again took his way northwards—making a slight detour in order to ascend the Amanos for the purpose of erecting there a stele commemorating his exploits, and of cutting pines, cedars, and larches for his buildings—and then returned to Nineveh amid the acclamations of his people.

In reading the history of this campaign, its plan and the principal events which took place in it appear at times to be the echo of what had happened some centuries before. The recapitulation of the halting-places near the sources of the Tigris and on the banks of the Upper Euphrates, the marches through the valleys of the Zagros or on the slopes of Kashiari, the crushing one by one of the Mesopotamian races, ending in a triumphal progress through Northern Syria, is almost a repetition, both as to the names and order of the places mentioned, of the expedition made by Tiglath-pileser in the first five years of his reign. The question may well arise in passing whether Assur-nazir-pal consciously modelled his campaign on that of his ancestor, as, in Egypt, Ramses III. imitated Ramses II., or whether, in similar circumstances, he instinctively and naturally followed the same line of march. In either case, he certainly showed on all sides greater wisdom than his predecessor, and having attained the object of his ambition, avoided compromising his success by injudiciously attacking Damascus or Babylon, the two powers who alone could have offered effective resistance. The victory he had gained, in 879, over the brother of Nabu-baliddin had immensely flattered his vanity. His panegyrists vied with each other in depicting Karduniash bewildered by the terror of his majesty, and the Chaldaeans overwhelmed by the fear of his arms; but he did not allow himself to be carried away by their extravagant flatteries, and continued to the end of his reign to observe the treaties concluded between the two courts in the time of his grandfather Ramman-nirari.*

* His frontier on the Chaldaean side, between the Tigris and the mountains, was the boundary fixed by Ramman-nirari.

He had, however, sufficiently enlarged his dominions, in less than ten years, to justify some display of pride. He himself described his empire as extending, on the west of Assyria proper, from the banks of the Tigris near Nineveh to Lebanon and the Mediterranean;* besides which, Sukhi was subject to him, and this included the province of Rapiku on the frontiers of Babylonia.**

* The expression employed in this description and in similar passages, ishtu ibirtan naru, translated from the ford over the river, or better, from the other side of the river, must be understood as referring to Assyria proper: the territory subject to the king is measured in the direction indicated, starting from the rivers which formed the boundaries of his hereditary dominions. From the other bank of the Tigris means from the bank of the Tigris opposite Nineveh or Oalah, whence the king and his army set out on their campaigns.

** Rapiku is mentioned in several texts as marking the frontier between the Sukhi and Chaldaea.

He had added to his older provinces of Amidi, Masios and Singar, the whole strip of Armenian territory at the foot of the Taurus range, from the sources of the Supnat to those of the Bitlis-tchai, and he held the passes leading to the banks of the Arzania, in Kirruri and Gilzan, while the extensive country of Nairi had sworn him allegiance. Towards the south-east the wavering tribes, which alternately gave their adherence to Assur or Babylon according to circumstances, had ranged themselves on his side, and formed a large frontier province beyond the borders of his hereditary kingdom, between the Lesser Zab and the Turnat. But, despite repeated blows inflicted on them, he had not succeeded in welding these various factors into a compact and homogeneous whole; some small proportion of them were assimilated to Assyria, and were governed directly by royal officials,* but the greater number were merely dependencies, more or less insecurely held by the obligations of vassalage or servitude. In some provinces the native chiefs were under the surveillance of Assyrian residents;** these districts paid an annual tribute proportionate to the resources and products of their country: thus Kirruri and the neighbouring states contributed horses, mules, bulls, sheep, wine, and copper vessels; the Aramaeans gold, silver, lead, copper, both wrought and in the ore, purple, and coloured or embroidered stuffs; while Izalla, Nirbu, Nirdun, and Bit-Zamani had to furnish horses, chariots, metals, and cattle.

* There were royal governors in Suru in Bit-Khalupi, in Matiate, in Madara, and in Nairi.

** There were "Assyrian" residents in Kirruri and the neighbouring countries, in Kirkhi, and in Nairi.

The less civilised and more distant tribes were not, like these, subject to regular tribute, but each time the sovereign traversed their territory or approached within reasonable distance, their chiefs sent or brought to him valuable presents as fresh pledges of their loyalty. Royal outposts, built at regular intervals and carefully fortified, secured the fulfilment of these obligations, and served as depots for storing the commodities collected by the royal officials; such outposts were, Damdamusa on the north-west of the Kashiari range, Tushkhan on the Tigris, Tilluli between the Supnat and the Euphrates, Aribua among the Patina, and others scattered irregularly between the Greater and Lesser Zab, on the Khabur, and also in Nairi. These strongholds served as places of refuge for the residents and their guards in case of a revolt, and as food-depots for the armies in the event of war bringing them into their neighbourhood. In addition to these, Assur-nazir-pal also strengthened the defences of Assyria proper by building fortresses at the points most open to attack; he repaired or completed the defences of Kaksi, to command the plain between the Greater and Lesser Zab and the Tigris; he rebuilt the castles or towers which guarded the river-fords and the entrances to the valleys of the Gebel Makhlub, and erected at Calah the fortified palace which his successors continued to inhabit for the ensuing five hundred years.

Assur-nazir-pal had resided at Nineveh from the time of his accession to the throne; from thence he had set out on four successive campaigns, and thither he had returned at the head of his triumphant troops, there he had received the kings who came to pay him homage, and the governors who implored his help against foreign attacks; thither he had sent rebel chiefs, and there, after they had marched in ignominy through the streets, he had put them to torture and to death before the eyes of the crowd, and their skins were perchance still hanging nailed to the battlements when he decided to change the seat of his capital. The ancient capital no longer suited his present state as a conqueror; the accommodation was too restricted, the decoration too poor, and probably the number of apartments was insufficient to house the troops of women and slaves brought back from his wars by its royal master. Built on the very bank of the Tebilti, one of the tributaries of the Khusur, and hemmed in by three temples, there was no possibility of its enlargement—a difficulty which often occurs in ancient cities. The necessary space for new buildings could only have been obtained by altering the course of the stream, and sacrificing a large part of the adjoining quarters of the city: Assur-nazir-pal therefore preferred to abandon the place and to select a new site where he would have ample space at his disposal.



Drawn by Boudier, from Layard. The pointed mound on the left near the centre of the picture represents the ziggurat of the great temple.

He found what he required close at hand in the half-ruined city of Calah, where many of his most illustrious predecessors had in times past sought refuge from the heat of Assur. It was now merely an obscure and sleepy town about twelve miles south of Nineveh, on the right bank of the Tigris, and almost at the angle made by the junction of this river with the Greater Zab. The place contained a palace built by Shalmaneser I., which, owing to many years' neglect, had become uninhabitable. Assur-nazir-pal not only razed to the ground the palaces and temples, but also levelled the mound on which they had been built; he then cleared away the soil down to the water level, and threw up an immense and almost rectangular terrace on which to lay out his new buildings.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Mansell.

The king chose Ninip, the god of war, as the patron of the city, and dedicated to him, at the north-west corner of the terrace, a ziggurat with its usual temple precincts. Here the god was represented as a bull with a man's head and bust in gilded alabaster, and two yearly feasts were instituted in his honour, one in the month Sebat, the other in the month Ulul. The ziggurat was a little over two hundred feet high, and was probably built in seven stages, of which only one now remains intact: around it are found several independent series of chambers and passages, which may have been parts of other temples, but it is now impossible to say which belonged to the local Belit, which to Sin, to Gula, to Ramman, or to the ancient deity Ra. At the entrance to the largest chamber, on a rectangular pedestal, stood a stele with rounded top, after the Egyptian fashion. On it is depicted a figure of the king, standing erect and facing to the left of the spectator; he holds his mace at his side, his right hand is raised in the attitude of adoration, and above him, on the left upper edge of the stele, are grouped the five signs of the planets; at the base of the stele stands an altar with a triangular pedestal and circular slab ready for the offerings to be presented to the royal founder by priests or people. The palace extended along the south side of the terrace facing the town, and with the river in its rear; it covered a space one hundred and thirty-one yards in length and a hundred and nine in breadth. In the centre was a large court, surrounded by seven or eight spacious halls, appropriated to state functions; between these and the court were many rooms of different sizes, forming the offices and private apartments of the royal house. The whole palace was built of brick faced with stone. Three gateways, flanked by winged, human-headed bulls, afforded access to the largest apartment, the hall of audience, where the king received his subjects or the envoys of foreign powers.* The doorways and walls of some of the rooms were decorated with glazed tiles, but the majority of them were covered with bands of coloured** bas-reliefs which portrayed various episodes in the life of the king—his state-councils, his lion hunts, the reception of tribute, marches over mountains and rivers, chariot-skirmishes, sieges, and the torture and carrying away of captives.

* At the east end of the hall Layard found a block of alabaster covered with inscriptions, forming a sort of platform on which the king's throne may have stood.

** Layard points out the traces of colouring still visible when the excavations were made.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Layard.

Incised in bands across these pictures are inscriptions extolling the omnipotence of Assur, while at intervals genii with eagles' beaks, or deities in human form, imperious and fierce, appear with hands full of offerings, or in the act of brandishing thunderbolts against evil spirits. The architect who designed this imposing decoration, and the sculptors who executed it, closely followed the traditions of ancient Chaldaea in the drawing and composition of their designs, and in the use of colour or chisel; but the qualities and defects peculiar to their own race give a certain character of originality to this borrowed art. They exaggerated the stern and athletic aspect of their models, making the figure thick-set, the muscles extraordinarily enlarged, and the features ludicrously accentuated.



Drawn by Boudier, after Layard.

Their pictures produce an impression of awkwardness, confusion and heaviness, but the detail is so minute and the animation so great that the attention of the spectator is forcibly arrested; these uncouth beings impress us with the sense of their self-reliance and their confidence in their master, as we watch them brandishing their weapons or hurrying to the attack, and see the shock of battle and the death-blows given and received. The human-headed bulls, standing on guard at the gates, exhibit the calm and pensive dignity befitting creatures conscious of their strength, while the lions passant who sometimes replace them, snarl and show their teeth with an almost alarming ferocity.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph of the sculpture in the British Museum.

The statues of men and gods, as a rule, are lacking in originality. The heavy robes which drape them from head to foot give them the appearance of cylinders tied in at the centre and slightly flattened towards the top. The head surmounting this shapeless bundle is the only life-like part, and even the lower half of this is rendered heavy by the hair and beard, whose tightly curled tresses lie in stiff rows one above the other. The upper part of the face which alone is visible is correctly drawn; the expression is of rather a commonplace type of nobility—respectable but self-sufficient. The features—eyes, forehead, nose, mouth—are all those of Assur-nazir-pal; the hair is arranged in the fashion he affected, and the robe is embroidered with his jewels; but amid all this we miss the keen intelligence always present in Egyptian sculpture, whether under the royal head-dress of Cheops or in the expectant eyes of the sitting scribe: the Assyrian sculptor could copy the general outline of his model fairly well, but could not infuse soul into the face of the conqueror, whose "countenance beamed above the destruction around him."

The water of the Tigris being muddy, and unpleasant to the taste, and the wells at Calah so charged with lime and bitumen as to render them unwholesome, Assur-nazir-pal supplied the city with water from the neighbouring Zab.* An abundant stream was diverted from this river at the spot now called Negub, and conveyed at first by a tunnel excavated in the rock, and thence by an open canal to the foot of the great terrace: at this point the flow of the water was regulated by dams, and the surplus was utilised for irrigation** purposes by means of openings cut in the banks.

* The presence of bitumen in the waters of Calah is due to the hot springs which rise in the bed of the brook Shor- derreh.

** The canal of Negub—Negub signifies hole in Arabic— was discovered by Layard. The Zab having changed its course to the south, and scooped out a deeper bed for itself, the double arch, which serves as an entrance to the canal, is actually above the ordinary level of the river, and the water flows through it only in flood-time.

The aqueduct was named Babilat-khigal—the bringer of plenty—and, to justify the epithet, date-palms, vines, and many kinds of fruit trees were planted along its course, so that both banks soon assumed the appearance of a shady orchard interspersed with small towns and villas. The population rapidly increased, partly through the spontaneous influx of Assyrians themselves, but still more through the repeated introduction of bands of foreign prisoners: forts, established at the fords of the Zab, or commanding the roads which cross the Gebel Makhlub, kept the country in subjection and formed an inner line of defence at a short distance from the capital.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Rassam.

Assur-nazir-pal kept up a palace, garden, and small temple, near the fort of Imgur-Bel, the modern Balawat: thither he repaired for intervals of repose from state affairs, to enjoy the pleasures of the chase and cool air in the hot season. He did not entirely abandon his other capitals, Nineveh and Assur, visiting them occasionally, but Calah was his favourite seat, and on its adornment he spent the greater part of his wealth and most of his leisure hours. Only once again did he abandon his peaceful pursuits and take the field, about the year 897 B.C., during the eponymy of Shamashnuri. The tribes on the northern boundary of the empire had apparently forgotten the lessons they had learnt at the cost of so much bloodshed at the beginning of his reign: many had omitted to pay the tribute due, one chief had seized the royal cities of Amidi and Damdamusa, and the rebellion threatened to spread to Assyria itself. Assur-nazir-pal girded on his armour and led his troops to battle as vigorously as in the days of his youth. He hastily collected, as he passed through their lands, the tribute due from Kipani, Izalla, and Kummukh, gained the banks of the Euphrates, traversed Grubbu burning everything on his way, made a detour through Dirria and Kirkhi, and finally halted before the walls of Damdamusa. Six hundred soldiers of the garrison perished in the assault and four hundred were taken prisoners: these he carried to Amidi and impaled as an object-lesson round its walls; but, the defenders of the town remaining undaunted, he raised the siege and plunged into the gorges of the Kashiari. Having there reduced to submission Uda, the capital of Lapturi, son of Tubisi, he returned to Calah, taking with him six thousand prisoners whom he settled as colonists around his favourite residence. This was his last exploit: he never subsequently quitted his hereditary domain, but there passed the remaining seven years of his life in peace, if not in idleness. He died in 860 B.C., after a reign of twenty-five years. His portraits represent him as a vigorous man, with a brawny neck and broad shoulders, capable of bearing the weight of his armour for many hours at a time. He is short in the head, with a somewhat flattened skull and low forehead; his eyes are large and deep-set beneath bushy eyebrows, his cheek-bones high, and his nose aquiline, with a fleshy tip and wide nostrils, while his mouth and chin are hidden by moustache and beard. The whole figure is instinct with real dignity, yet such dignity as is due rather to rank and the habitual exercise of power, than to the innate qualities of the man.*

* Perrot and Chipiez do not admit that the Assyrian sculptors intended to represent the features of their kings; for this they rely chiefly on the remarkable likeness between all the figures in the same series of bas-reliefs. My own belief is that in Assyria, as in Egypt, the sculptors took the portrait of the reigning sovereign as the model for all their figures.

The character of Assur-nazir-pal, as gathered from the dry details of his Annals, seems to have been very complex. He was as ambitious, resolute, and active as any prince in the world; yet he refrained from offensive warfare as soon as his victories had brought under his rule the majority of the countries formerly subject to Tiglath-pileser I. He knew the crucial moment for ending a campaign, arresting his progress where one more success might have brought him into collision with some formidable neighbour; and this wise prudence in his undertakings enabled him to retain the principal acquisitions won by his arms. As a worshipper of the gods he showed devotion and gratitude; he was just to his subjects, but his conduct towards his enemies was so savage as to appear to us cruel even for that terribly pitiless age: no king ever employed such horrible punishments, or at least none has described with such satisfaction the tortures inflicted on his vanquished foes.

Perhaps such measures were necessary, and the harshness with which he repressed insurrection prevented more frequent outbreaks and so averted greater sacrifice of life. But the horror of these scenes so appals the modern reader, that at first he can only regard Assur-nazir-pal as a royal butcher of the worst type.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Mansell, taken from the original stele in the British Museum.

Assur-nazir-pal left to his successor an overflowing treasury, a valiant army, a people proud of their progress and fully confident in their own resources, and a kingdom which had recovered, during several years of peace, from the strain of its previous conquests. Shalmaneser III.* drew largely on the reserves of men and money which his father's foresight had prepared, and his busy reign of thirty-five years saw thirty-two campaigns, conducted almost without a break, on every side of the empire in succession. A double task awaited him, which he conscientiously and successfully fulfilled.

* [The Shalmaneser III. of the text is the Shalmaneser II. of the notes.—TR.]

Assur-nazir-pal had thoroughly reorganised the empire and raised it to the rank of a great power: he had confirmed his provinces and vassal states in their allegiance, and had subsequently reduced to subjection, or, at any rate, penetrated at various points, the little buffer principalities between Assyria and the powerful kingdoms of Babylon, Damascus, and Urartu; but he had avoided engaging any one of these three great states in a struggle of which the issue seemed doubtful. Shalmaneser could not maintain this policy of forbearance without loss of prestige in the eyes of the world: conduct which might seem prudent and cautious in a victorious monarch like Assur-nazir-pal would in him have argued timidity or weakness, and his rivals would soon have provoked a quarrel if they thought him lacking in the courage or the means to attack them. Immediately after his accession, therefore, he assumed the offensive, and decided to measure his strength first against Urartu, which for some years past had been showing signs of restlessness. Few countries are more rugged or better adapted for defence than that in which his armies were about to take the field. The volcanoes to which it owed its configuration in geological times, had become extinct long before the appearance of man, but the surface of the ground still bears evidence of their former activity; layers of basaltic rock, beds of scorias and cinders, streams of half-disintegrated mud and lava, and more or less perfect cones, meet the eye at every turn. Subterranean disturbances have not entirely ceased even now, for certain craters—that of Tandurek, for example—sometimes exhale acid fumes; while hot springs exist in the neighbourhood, from which steaming waters escape in cascades to the valley, and earthquakes and strange subterranean noises are not unknown. The backbone of these Armenian mountains joins towards the south the line of the Grordyasan range; it runs in a succession of zigzags from south-east to northwest, meeting at length the mountains of Pontus and the last spurs of the Caucasus.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by A. Tissandier.

Lofty snow-clad peaks, chiefly of volcanic origin, rise here and there among them, the most important being Akhta-dagh, Tandurek, Ararat, Bingoel, and Palandoeken. The two unequal pyramids which form the summit of Ararat are covered with perpetual snow, the higher of them being 16,916 feet above the sea-level. The spurs which issue from the principal chain cross each other in all directions, and make a network of rocky basins where in former times water collected and formed lakes, nearly all of which are now dry in consequence of the breaking down of one or other of their enclosing sides. Two only of these mountain lakes still remain, entirely devoid of outlet, Lake Van in the south, and Lake Urumiah further to the south-east. The Assyrians called the former the Upper Sea of Nairi, and the latter the Lower Sea, and both constituted a defence for Urartu against their attacks. To reach the centre of the kingdom of Urartu, the Assyrians had either to cross the mountainous strip of land between the two lakes, or by making a detour to the north-west, and descending the difficult slopes of the valley of the Arzania, to approach the mountains of Armenia lying to the north of Lake Van. The march was necessarily a slow and painful one for both horses and men, along narrow winding valleys down which rushed rapid streams, over raging torrents, through tangled forests where the path had to be cut as they advanced, and over barren wind-swept plateaux where rain and mist chilled and demoralized soldiers accustomed to the warm and sunny plains of the Euphrates. The majority of the armies which invaded this region never reached the goal of the expedition: they retired after a few engagements, and withdrew as quickly as possible to more genial climes. The main part of the Urartu remained almost always unsubdued behind its barrier of woods, rocks, and lakes, which protected it from the attacks levelled against it, and no one can say how far the kingdom extended in the direction of the Caucasus. It certainly included the valley of the Araxes and possibly part of the valley of the Kur, and the steppes sloping towards the Caspian Sea. It was a region full of contrasts, at once favoured and ill-treated by nature in its elevation and aspect: rugged peaks, deep gorges, dense thickets, districts sterile from the heat of subterranean fires, and sandy wastes barren for lack of moisture, were interspersed with shady valleys, sunny vine-clad slopes, and wide stretches of fertile land covered with rich layers of deep alluvial soil, where thick-standing corn and meadow-lands, alternating with orchards, repaid the cultivator for the slightest attempt at irrigation.



History does not record who were the former possessors of this land; but towards the middle of the ninth century it was divided into several principalities, whose position and boundaries cannot be precisely determined. It is thought that Urartu lay on either side of Mount Ararat and on both banks of the Araxes, that Biainas lay around Lake Van,* and that the Mannai occupied the country to the north and east of Lake Urumiah;** the positions of the other tribes on the different tributaries of the Euphrates or the slopes of the Armenian mountains are as yet uncertain.

* Urartu is the only name by which the Assyrians knew the kingdom of Van; it has been recognised from the very beginning of Assyriological studies, as well as its identity with the Ararat of the Bible and the Alarodians of Herodotus. It was also generally recognised that the name Biainas in the Vannic inscriptions, which Hincks read Bieda, corresponded to the Urartu of the Assyrians, but in consequence of this mistaken reading, efforts have been made to connect it with Adiabene. Sayce was the first to show that Biainas was the name of the country of Van, and of the kingdom of which Van was the capital; the word Bitani which Sayce connects with it is not a secondary form of the name of Van, but a present day term, and should be erased from the list of geographical names.

** The Mannai are the Minni of Jeremiah (li. 27), and it is in their country of Minyas that one tradition made the ark rest after the Deluge.

The country was probably peopled by a very mixed race, for its mountains have always afforded a safe asylum for refugees, and at each migration, which altered the face of Western Asia, some fugitives from neighbouring nations drifted to the shelter of its fastnesses.



The principal element, the Khaldi, were akin to that great family of tribes which extended across the range of the Taurus, from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Euxine, and included the Khalybes, the Mushku, the Tabal, and the Khati. The little preserved of their language resembles what we know of the idioms in use among the people of Arzapi and Mitanni, and their religion seems to have been somewhat analogous to the ancient worship of the Hittites. The character of the ancient Armenians, as revealed to us by the monuments, resembles in its main features that of the Armenians of the present time. They appear as tall, strong, muscular, and determined, full of zest for work and fighting, and proud of their independence.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Hormuzd Rassam.

Some of them led a pastoral life, wandering about with their flocks during the greater part of the year, obliged to seek pasturage in valley, forest, or mountain height according to the season, while in winter they remained frost-bound in semi-subterranean dwellings similar to those in which descendants immure themselves at the present day. Where the soil lent itself to agriculture, they proved excellent husbandmen, and obtained abundant crops. Their ingenuity in irrigation was remarkable, and enabled them to bring water by a system of trenches from distant springs to supply their fields and gardens; besides which, they knew how to terrace the steep hillsides so as to prevent the rapid draining away of moisture. Industries were but little developed among them, except perhaps the working of metals; for were they not akin to those Chalybes of the Pontus, whose mines and forges already furnished iron to the Grecian world? Fragments have been discovered in the ruined cities of Urartu of statuettes, cups, and votive shields, either embossed or engraved, and decorated with concentric bands of animals or men, treated in the Assyrian manner, but displaying great beauty of style and remarkable finish of execution.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. Binder.

Their towns were generally fortified or perched on heights, rendering them easy of defence, as, for example, Van and Toprah-Kaleh. Even such towns as were royal residences were small, and not to be compared with the cities of Assyria or Aram; their ground-plan generally assumed the form of a rectangular oblong, not always traced with equal exactitude.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Hormuzd Rassam.

The walls were built of blocks of roughly hewn stone, laid in regular courses, but without any kind of mortar or cement; they were surmounted by battlements, and flanked at intervals by square towers, at the foot of which were outworks to protect the points most open to attack. The entrance was approached by narrow and dangerous pathways, which sometimes ran on ledges across the precipitous face of the rock. The dwelling-houses were of very simple construction, being merely square cabins of stone or brick, devoid of any external ornament, and pierced by one low doorway, but sometimes surmounted by an open colonnade supported by a row of small pillars; a flat roof with a parapet crowned the whole, though this was often replaced by a gabled top, which was better adapted to withstand the rains and snows of winter. The palaces of the chiefs differed from the private houses in the size of their apartments and the greater care bestowed upon their decoration. Their facades were sometimes adorned with columns, and ornamented with bucklers or carved discs of metal; slabs of stone covered with inscriptions lined the inner halls, but we do not know whether the kings added to their dedications to the gods and the recital of their victories, pictures of the battles they had fought and of the fortresses they had destroyed. The furniture resembled that in the houses of Nineveh, but was of simpler workmanship, and perhaps the most valuable articles were imported from Assyria or were of Aramaean manufacture. The temples seemed to have differed little from the palaces, at least in external appearance. The masonry was more regular and more skilfully laid; the outer court was filled with brazen lavers and statues; the interior was furnished with altars, sacrificial stones, idols in human or animal shape, and bowls identical with those in the sanctuaries on the Euphrates, but the nature and details of the rites in which they were employed are unknown. One supreme deity, Khaldis, god of the sky, was, as far as we can conjecture, the protector of the whole nation, and their name was derived from his, as that of the Assyrians was from Assur, the Cossaeans from Kashshu, and the Khati from Khatu.



This deity was assisted in the government of the universe by Teisbas, god of the air, and Ardinis the sun-god. Groups of secondary deities were ranged around this sovereign triad—Auis, the water; Ayas, the earth; Selardis, the moon; Kharubainis, Irmusinis, Adarutas, and Arzi-melas: one single inscription enumerates forty-six, but some of these were worshipped in special localities only.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Botta. Scribes are weighing gold, and soldiers destroying the statue of a god with their axes.

It would appear as if no goddesses were included in the native Pantheon. Saris, the only goddess known to us at present, is probably merely a variant of the Ishtar of Nineveh or Arbela, borrowed from the Assyrians at a later date.

The first Assyrian conquerors looked upon these northern regions as an integral part of Nairi, and included them under that name. They knew of no single state in the district whose power might successfully withstand their own, but were merely acquainted with a group of hostile provinces whose internecine conflicts left them ever at the mercy of a foreign foe.* Two kingdoms had, however, risen to some importance about the beginning of the ninth century—that of the Mannai in the east, and that of Urartu in the centre of the country. Urartu comprised the district of Ararat proper, the province of Biaina, and the entire basin of the Arzania.

* The single inscription of Tiglath-pileser I. contains a list of twenty-three kings of Nairi, and mentions sixty chiefs of the same country.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of Balawat.

Arzashkun, one of its capitals, situated probably near the sources of this river, was hidden, and protected against attack, by an extent of dense forest almost impassable to a regular army. The power of this kingdom, though as yet unorganised, had already begun to inspire the neighbouring states with uneasiness. Assur-nazir-pal speaks of it incidentally as lying on the northern frontier of his empire,* but the care he took to avoid arousing its hostility shows the respect in which he held it.

* Arzashku, Arzashkun, seems to be the Assyrian form of an Urartian name ending in -ka, formed from a proper name Arzash, which recalls the name Arsene, Arsissa, applied by the ancients to part of Lake Van. Arzashkun might represent the Ardzik of the Armenian historians, west of Malasgert.

He was, indeed, as much afraid of Urartu as of Damascus, and though he approached quite close to its boundary in his second campaign, he preferred to check his triumphant advance rather than risk attacking it. It appears to have been at that time under the undisputed rule of a certain Sharduris, son of Lutipri, and subsequently, about the middle of Assur-nazir-pal's reign, to have passed into the hands of Arame, who styled himself King of Nairi, and whose ambition may have caused those revolts which forced Assur-nazir-pal to take up arms in the eighteenth year of his reign. On this occasion the Assyrians again confined themselves to the chastisement of their own vassals, and checked their advance as soon as they approached Urartu. Their success was but temporary; hardly had they withdrawn from the neighbourhood, when the disturbances were renewed with even greater violence, very probably at the instigation of Arame. Shalmaneser III. found matters in a very unsatisfactory state both on the west and south of Lake Van: some of the peoples who had been subject to his father—the Khubushkia, the pastoral tribes of the Gordaean mountains, and the Aramaeans of the Euphrates—had transferred their allegiance elsewhere. He immediately took measures to recall them to a sense of their duty, and set out from Calah only a few days after succeeding to the crown. He marched at first in an easterly direction, and, crossing the pass of Simisi, burnt the city of Aridi, thus proving that he was fully prepared to treat rebels after the same fashion as his father. The lesson had immediate effect. All the neighbouring tribes, Khargaeans, Simisaeans, the people of Simira, Sirisha, and Ulmania, hastened to pay him homage even before he had struck his camp near Aridi. Hurrying across country by the shortest route, which entailed the making of roads to enable his chariots and cavalry to follow him, he fell upon Khubushkia, and reduced a hundred towns to ashes, pursuing the king Kakia into the depths of the forest, and forcing him to an unconditional surrender. Ascending thence to Shugunia, a dependency of Arame's, he laid the principality waste, in spite of the desperate resistance made on their mountain slopes by the inhabitants; then proceeding to Lake Van, he performed the ceremonial rites incumbent on an Assyrian king whenever he stood for the first time on the shores of a new sea. He washed his weapons in the waters, offered a sacrifice to the gods, casting some portions of the victim into the lake, and before leaving carved his own image on the surface of a commanding rock. On his homeward march he received tribute from Gilzan. This expedition was but the prelude of further successes. After a few weeks' repose at Nineveh, he again set out to make his authority felt in the western portions of his dominions.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of Balawat.

Akhuni, chief of Bit-Adini, whose position was the first to be menaced, had formed a league with the chiefs of all the cities which had formerly bowed before Assur-nazir-pal's victorious arms, Gurgum, Samalla, Kui, the Patina, Car-chemish, and the Khati. Shalmaneser seized Lalati* and Burmarana, two of Akhuni's towns, drove him across the Euphrates, and following close on his heels, collected as he passed the tribute of Gurgum, and fell upon Samalla.

* Lalati is probably the Lulati of the Egyptians. The modern site is not known, nor is that of Burmarana.

Under the walls of Lutibu he overthrew the combined forces of Adini, Samalla, and the Patina, and raised a trophy to commemorate his victory at the sources of the Saluara; then turning sharply to the south, he crossed the Orontes in pursuit of Shapalulme, King of the Patina.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of Balawat.

Not far from Alizir he encountered a fresh army raised by Akhuni and the King of Samalla, with contingents from Carchemish, Kui, Cilicia, and Iasbuki:* having routed it, he burnt the fortresses of Shapalulme, and after occupying himself by cutting down cedars and cypress trees on the Amanos in the province of Atalur, he left a triumphal stele engraved on the mountain-side.

* The country of Iasbuki is represented by Ishbak, a son of Abraham and Keturah, mentioned in Genesis (xxv. 2) in connection with Shuah.



Next turning eastwards, he received the homage offered with alacrity by the towns of Taia, Khazazu, Nulia, and Butamu, and, with a final tribute from Agusi, he returned in triumph to Nineveh. The motley train which accompanied, him showed by its variety the immense extent of country he had traversed during this first campaign. Among the prisoners were representatives of widely different races;—Khati with long robes and cumbrous head-dresses, following naked mountaineers from Shugunia, who marched with yokes on their necks, and wore those close-fitting helmets with short crests which have such a strangely modern look on the Assyrian bas-reliefs. The actual results of the campaign were, perhaps, hardly commensurate with the energy expended. This expedition from east to west had certainly inflicted considerable losses on the rebels against whom it had been directed; it had cost them dearly in men and cattle, and booty of all kinds, and had extorted from them a considerable amount of tribute, but they remained, notwithstanding, still unsubdued. As soon as the Assyrian troops had quitted their neighbourhood, they flattered themselves they were safe from further attack. No doubt they thought that a show of submission would satisfy the new invader, as it had satisfied his father; but Shalmaneser was not disposed to rest content with this nominal dependence. He intended to exercise effective control over all the states won by his sword, and the proof of their subjection was to be the regular payment of tribute and fulfilment of other obligations to their suzerain. Year by year he unfailingly enforced his rights, till the subject states were obliged to acknowledge their master and resign themselves to servitude.

The narrative of his reiterated efforts is a monotonous one. The king advanced against Adini in the spring of 859 B.C., defeated Akhuni near Tul-barsip, transported his victorious regiments across the Euphrates on rafts of skins, seized Surunu, Paripa, and Dabigu* besides six fortresses and two hundred villages, and then advanced into the territory of Carchemish, which he proceeded to treat with such severity that the other Hittite chiefs hastened to avert a similar fate by tendering their submission.

* Shalmaneser crossed the Euphrates near Tul-barsip, which would lead him into the country between Birejik, Rum-kaleh, and Aintab, and it is in that district that we must look for the towns subject to Akhuni. Dabigu, I consider, corresponds to Dehbek on Rey's map, a little to the north-east of Aintab; the sites of Paripa and Surunu are unknown.

The very enumeration of their offerings proves not only their wealth, but the terror inspired by the advancing Assyrian host: Shapalulme of the Patina, for instance, yielded up three talents of gold, a hundred talents of silver, three hundred talents of copper, and three hundred of iron, and paid in addition to this an annual tribute of one talent of silver, two talents of purple, and two hundred great beams of cedar-wood. Samalla, Agusi, and Kummukh were each laid under tribute in proportion to their resources, but their surrender did not necessarily lead to that of Adini. Akhuni realised that, situated as he was on the very borders of Assyrian territory, there was no longer a chance of his preserving his semi-independence, as was the case with his kinsfolk beyond the Euphrates; proximity to the capital would involve a stricter servitude, which would soon reduce him from the condition of a vassal to that of a subject, and make him merely a governor where he had hitherto reigned as king. Abandoned by the Khati, he sought allies further north, and entered into a league with the tribes of Nairi and Urartu. When, in 858 B.C., Shalmaneser III. forced an entrance into Tul-barsip, and drove back what was left of the garrison on the right bank of the Euphrates, a sudden movement of Arame obliged him to let the prey escape from his grasp. Rapidly fortifying Tul-barsip, Nappigi, Aligu, Pitru, and Mutkinu, and garrisoning them with loyal troops to command the fords of the river, as his ancestor Shalmaneser I. had done six centuries before,* he then re-entered Nairi by way of Bit-Zamani, devastated Inziti with fire and sword, forced a road through to the banks of the Arzania, pillaged Sukhmi and Dayaini, and appeared under the walls of Arzashkun.

* Pitru, the Pethor of the Bible (Numb. xxii. 5), is situated near the confluence of the Sajur and the Euphrates, somewhere near the encampment called Osheriyeh by Sachau. Mutkinu was on the other bank, perhaps at Kharbet-Beddai, nearly opposite Pitru. Nappigi was on the left bank of the Euphrates, which excludes its identification with Mabog- Hierapolis, as proposed by Hommel; Nabigath, mentioned by Tomkins, is too far east. Nappigi and Aligu must both be sought in the district between the Euphrates and the town of Saruj.

Arame withdrew to Mount Adduri and awaited his attack in an almost impregnable position; he was nevertheless defeated: 3400 of his soldiers fell on the field of battle; his camp, his treasures, his chariots, and all his baggage passed into the hands of the conqueror, and he himself barely escaped with his life. Shalmaneser ravaged the country "as a savage bull ravages and tramples under his feet the fertile fields;" he burnt the villages and the crops, destroyed Arzashkun, and raised before its gates a pyramid of human heads, surrounded by a circle of prisoners impaled on stakes. He climbed the mountain chain of Iritia, and laid waste Aramali and Zanziuna at his leisure, and descending for the second time to the shores of Lake Van, renewed the rites he had performed there in the first year of his reign, and engraved on a neighbouring rock an inscription recording his deeds of prowess.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the Black Obelisk.

He made his way back to Gilzan, where its king, Shua, brought him a war-horse fully caparisoned, as a token of homage. Shalmaneser graciously deigned to receive it, and further exacted from the king the accustomed contributions of chariot-horses, sheep, and wine, together with seven dromedaries, whose strange forms amused the gaping crowds of Nineveh. After quitting Gilzan, Shalmaneser encountered the people of Khubushkia, who ventured to bar his way; but its king, Kakia, lost his city of Shilaia, and three thousand soldiers, besides bulls, horses, and sheep innumerable. Having enforced submission in Khubushkia, Shalmaneser at length returned to Assur through the defiles of Kirruri, and came to Calah to enjoy a well-earned rest after the fatigues of his campaign.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of Balawat.

But Akhuni had not yet lost heart. Though driven back to the right bank of the Euphrates, he had taken advantage of the diversion created by Arame in his favour, to assume a strong position among the hills of Shitamrat with the river in his rear.*

* The position of Shitamrat may answer to the ruins of the fortress of Rum-kaleh, which protected a ford of the Euphrates in Byzantine times.

Shalmaneser attacked his lines in front, and broke through them after three days' preliminary skirmishing; then finding the enemy drawn up in battle array before their last stronghold, the king charged without a moment's hesitation, drove them back and forced them to surrender. Akhuni's life was spared, but he was sent with the remainder of his army to colonise a village in the neighbourhood of Assur, and Adini became henceforth an integral part of Assyria.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the Black Obelisk.

The war on the western frontier was hardly brought to a close when another broke out in the opposite direction. The king rapidly crossed the pass of Bunagishlu and fell upon Mazamua: the natives, disconcerted by his impetuous onslaught, nevertheless hoped to escape by putting out in their boats on the broad expanse of Lake Urumiah. Shalmaneser, however, constructed rafts of inflated skins, on which his men ventured in pursuit right out into the open. The natives were overpowered; the king "dyed the sea with their blood as if it had been wool," and did not withdraw until he had forced them to appeal for mercy.

In five years Shalmaneser had destroyed Adini, laid low Urartu, and confirmed the tributary states of Syria in their allegiance; but Damascus and Babylon were as yet untouched, and the moment was at hand when he would have to choose between an arduous conflict with them, or such a repression of the warlike zeal of his opening years, that, like his father Assur-nazir-pal, he would have to repose on his laurels. Shalmaneser was too deeply imbued with the desire for conquest to choose a peaceful policy: he decided at once to assume the offensive against Damascus, being probably influenced by the news of Ahab's successes, and deeming that if the King of Israel had gained the ascendency unaided, Assur, fully confident of its own superiority, need have no fear as to the result of a conflict. The forces, however, at the disposal of Benhadad II. (Adadidri) were sufficient to cause the Assyrians some uneasiness. The King of Damascus was not only lord of Coele-Syria and the Hauran, but he exercised a suzerainty more or less defined over Hamath, Israel, Ammon, the Arabian and Idumean tribes, Arvad and the principalities of Northern Phoenicia, Usanata, Shianu, and Irkanata;* in all, twelve peoples or twelve kings owned his sway, and their forces, if united to his, would provide at need an army of nearly 100,000 men: a few years might see these various elements merged in a united empire, capable of withstanding the onset of any foreign foe.**

* Irkanata, the Egyptian Arqanatu, perhaps the Irqata of the Tel-el-A marna tablets, is the Arka of Phoenicia. The other countries enumerated are likewise situated in the same locality. Shianu (for a long time read as Shizanu), the Sin of the Bible (Gen. x. 17), is mentioned by Tiglath-pileser III. under the name Sianu. Ushanat is called Uznu by Tiglath-pileser, and Delitzsch thought it represented the modern Kalaat-el-Hosu. With Arvad it forms the ancient Zahi of the Egyptians, which was then subject to Damascus.

** The suzerainty of Ben-hadad over these twelve peoples is proved by the way in which they are enumerated in the Assyrian documents: his name always stands at the head of the list. The manner in which the Assyrian scribes introduce the names of these kings, mentioning sometimes one, sometimes two among them, without subtracting them from the total number 12, has been severely criticised, and Schrader excused it by saying that 12 is here used as a round number somewhat vaguely.

Shalmaneser set out from Nineveh on the 14th day of the month Iyyar, 854 B.C., and chastised on his way the Aramaeans of the Balikh, whose sheikh Giammu had shown some inclination to assert his independence. He crossed the Euphrates at Tul-harsip, and held a species of durbar at Pitru for his Syrian subjects: Sangar of Carchemish, Kundashpi of Kummukh, Arame of Agusi, Lalli of Melitene, Khaiani of Samalla, Garparuda who had succeeded Shapalulme among the Patina, and a second Garparuda of Gurgum, rallied around him with their presents of welcome, and probably also with their troops. This ceremony concluded, he hastened to Khalmaa and reduced it to submission, then plunged into the hill-country between Khalman and the Orontes, and swept over the whole territory of Hamath. A few easy victories at the outset enabled him to exact ransom from, or burn to the ground, the cities of Adinnu, Mashga, Argana, and Qarqar, but just beyond Qarqar he encountered the advance-guard of the Syrian army.*

* The position of these towns is uncertain: the general plan of the campaign only proves that they must lie on the main route from Aleppo to Kalaat-Sejar, by Bara or by Maaret-en- Noman and Kalaat-el-Mudiq. It is agreed that Qarqar must be sought not far from Hamath, whatever the exact site may be. An examination of the map shows us that Qarqar corresponds to the present Kalaat-el-Mudiq, the ancient Apamasa of Lebanon; the confederate army would command the ford which led to the plain of Hamath by Kalaat-Sejar.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the Black Obelisk.

Ben-hadad had called together, to give him a fitting reception, the whole of the forces at his disposal: 1200 chariots, 1200 horse, 20,000 foot-soldiers from Damascus alone; 700 chariots, 700 horse and 10,000 foot from Hamath; 2000 chariots and 10,000 foot belonging to Ahab, 500 soldiers from Kui, 1000 mountaineers from the Taurus,* 10 chariots and 10,000 foot from Irk and 200 from Arvad, 200 from Usanata, 30 chariots and 10,000 foot from Shianu, 1000 camels from Gindibu the Arab, and 1000 Ammonites.

* The people of the Muzri next enumerated have long been considered as Egyptians; the juxtaposition of their name with that of Kui shows that it refers here to the Muzri of the Taurus.

The battle was long and bloody, and the issue uncertain; Shalmaneser drove back one wing of the confederate army to the Orontes, and forcing the other wing and the centre to retire from Qarqar to Kirzau, claimed the victory, though the losses on both sides were equally great. It would seem as if the battle were indecisive—the Assyrians, at any rate, gained nothing by it; they beat a retreat immediately after their pretended victory, and returned to their own land without prisoners and almost without booty. On the whole, this first conflict had not been unfavourable to Damascus: it had demonstrated the power of that state in the eyes of the most incredulous, and proved how easy resistance would be, if only the various princes of Syria would lay aside their differences and all unite under the command of a single chief. The effect of the battle in Northern Syria and among the recently annexed Aiamoan tribes was very great; they began to doubt the omnipotence of Assyria, and their loyalty was shaken. Sangar of Carchemish and the Khati refused to pay their tribute, and the Emirs of Tul-Abni and Mount Kashiari broke out into open revolt. Shalmaneser spent a whole year in suppressing the insurrection; complications, moreover, arose at Babylon which obliged him to concentrate his attention and energy on Chaldaean affairs. Nabu-baliddin had always maintained peaceful and friendly relations with Assyria, but he had been overthrown, or perhaps assassinated, and his son Marduk-nadin-shumu had succeeded him on the throne, to the dissatisfaction of a section of his subjects. Another son of Nabu-baliddin, Marduk-belusate, claimed the sovereign power, and soon won over so much of the country that Marduk-nadin-shumu had fears for the safety of Babylon itself. He then probably remembered the pretensions to Kharduniash, which his Assyrian neighbours had for a long time maintained, and applied to Shalmaneser to support his tottering fortunes. The Assyrian monarch must have been disposed to lend a favourable ear to a request which allowed him to intervene as suzerain in the quarrels of the rival kingdom: he mobilised his forces, offered sacrifices in honour of Bamman at Zaban, and crossed the frontier in 853 B.C.*

The war dragged on during the next two years. The scene of hostilities was at the outset on the left bank of the Tigris, which for ten centuries had served as the battle-field for the warriors of both countries. Shalmaneser, who had invested Me-Turnat at the fords of the Lower Diyalah, at length captured that fortress, and after having thus isolated the rebels of Babylonia proper, turned his steps towards G-ananate.**

* The town of Zaban is situated on the Lesser Zab, but it is impossible to fix the exact site.

** Me-Turnat, Me-Turni, "the water of the Turnat," stood upon the Diyalah, probably near the site of Bakuba, where the most frequented route crosses the river; perhaps we may identify it with the Artemita of classical authors. Gananate must be sought higher up near the mountains, as the context points out; I am inclined to place it near the site of Khanekin, whose gardens are still celebrated, and the strategic importance of which is considerable.

Marduk-belusate, "a vacillating king, incapable of directing his own affairs," came out to meet him, but although repulsed and driven within the town, he defended his position with such spirit that Shalmaneser was at length obliged to draw off his troops after having cut down all the young compelled the fruit trees, disorganised the whole system of irrigation,—in short, after having effected all the damage he could. He returned in the following spring by the most direct route; Lakhiru fell into his hands,* but Marduk-belusate, having no heart to contend with him for the possession of a district ravaged by the struggle of the preceding summer, fell back on the mountains of Yasubi and concentrated his forces round Arman.**

* Lakhiru comes before Gananate on the direct road from Assyria, to the south of the Lower Zab, as we learn from the account of the campaign itself: wo shall not do wrong in placing this town either at Kifri, or in its neighbourhood on the present caravan route.

** Mount Yasubi is the mountainous district which separates Khanekin from Holwan.

Shalmaneser, having first wreaked his vengeance upon Gananate, attacked his adversary in his self-chosen position; Annan fell after a desperate defence, and Marduk-belusate either perished or disappeared in a last attempt at retaliation. Marduk-nadin-shumu, although rid of his rival, was not yet master of the entire kingdom. The Aramaeans of the Marshes, or, as they called themselves, the Kalda, had refused him their allegiance, and were ravaging the regions of the Lower Euphrates by their repeated incursions. They constituted not so much a compact state, as a confederation of little states, alternately involved in petty internecine quarrels, or temporarily reconciled under the precarious authority of a sole monarch. Each separate state bore the name of the head of the family—real or mythical—from whom all its members prided themselves on being descended,—Bit-Dakkuri, Bit-Adini, Bit-Amukkani, Bit-Shalani, Bit-Shalli, and finally Bit-Yakin, which in the end asserted its predominance over all the rest.*

* As far as we can judge, Bit-Dakkuri and Bit-Adini were the most northerly, the latter lying on both sides of the Euphrates, the former on the west of the Euphrates, to the south of the Bahr-i-Nejif; Bit-Yakin was at the southern extremity near the mouths of the Euphrates, and on the western shore of the Persian Gulf.

In demanding Shalmaneser's help, Marduk-nadin-shumu had virtually thrown on him the responsibility of bringing these turbulent subjects to order, and the Assyrian monarch accepted the duties of his new position without demur. He marched to Babylon, entered the city and went direct to the temple of E-shaggil: the people beheld him approach with reverence their deities Bel and Belit, and visit all the sanctuaries of the local gods, to whom he made endless propitiatory libations and pure offerings. He had worshipped Ninip in Kuta; he was careful not to forget Nabo of Borsippa, while on the other hand he officiated in the temple of Ezida, and consulted its ancient oracle, offering upon its altars the flesh of splendid oxen and fat lambs. The inhabitants had their part in the festival as well as the gods; Shalmaneser summoned them to a public banquet, at which he distributed to them embroidered garments, and plied them with meats and wine; then, after renewing his homage to the gods of Babylon, he recommenced his campaign, and set out in the direction of the sea. Baqani, the first of the Chaldaean cities which lay on his route, belonged to Bit-Adini,* one of the tribes of Bit-Dakkuri; it appeared disposed to resist him, and was therefore promptly dismantled and burnt—an example which did not fail to cool the warlike inclinations which had begun to manifest themselves in other parts of Bit-Dakkuri.

* The site of Baqani is unknown; it should be sought for between Lamlum and Warka, and Bit-Adini in Bit-Dakkuri should be placed between the Shatt-et-Kaher and the Arabian desert, if the name of Enzudi, the other royal town, situated to the west of the Euphrates, is found, as is possible, under a popular etymology, in that of Kalaat ain- Said or Kalaat ain-es-Said in the modern maps.

He next crossed the Euphrates, and pillaged Enzudi, the fate of which caused the remainder of Bit-Adini to lay down arms, and the submission of the latter brought about that of Bit-Yakin and Bit-Amukkani. These were all rich provinces, and they bought off the conqueror liberally: gold, silver, tin, copper, iron, acacia-wood, ivory, elephants' skins, were all showered upon the invader to secure his mercy. It must have been an intense satisfaction to the pride of the Assyrians to be able to boast that their king had deigned to offer sacrifices in the sacred cities of Accad, and that he had been borne by his war-horses to the shores of the Salt Sea; these facts, of little moment to us now, appeared to the people of those days of decisive importance. No king who was not actually master of the country would have been tolerated within the temple of the eponymous god, for the purpose of celebrating the rites which the sovereign alone was empowered to perform. Marduk-nadin-shumu, in recognising Shalmaneser's right to act thus, thereby acknowledged that he himself was not only the king's ally, but his liegeman. This bond of supremacy doubtless did not weigh heavily upon him; as soon as his suzerain had evacuated the country, the two kingdoms remained much on the same footing as had been established by the treaties of the three previous generations. Alliances were made between private families belonging to both, peace existed between the two sovereigns, interchange of commerce and amenities took place between the two peoples, but with one point of difference which had not existed formerly: Assur protected Babel, and, by taking precedence of Marduk, he became the real head of the peoples of the Euphrates valley. Assured of the subordination, or at least of the friendly neutrality of Babylon, Shalma-neser had now a free hand to undertake a campaign in the remoter regions of Syria, without being constantly haunted by the fear that his rival might suddenly swoop down upon him in the rear by the valleys of the Badanu or the Zabs. He now ran no risks in withdrawing his troops from the south-eastern frontier, and in marshalling his forces on the slopes of the Armenian Alps or on the banks of the Orontes, leaving merely a slender contingent in the heart of Assyria proper to act as the necessary guardians of order in the capital.

Since the indecisive battle of Qarqar, the western frontier of the empire had receded as far as the Euphrates, and Shalmaneser had been obliged to forego the collection of the annual Syrian tribute. It would have been an excellent opportunity for the Khati, while they enjoyed this accidental respite, to come to an understanding with Damascus, for the purpose of acting conjointly against a common enemy; but they let the right moment slip, and their isolation made submission inevitable. The effort to subdue them cost Shalmaneser dear, both in time and men; in the spring of each year he appeared at the fords of Tul-barsip and ravaged the environs of Carchemish, then marched upon the Orontes to accomplish the systematic devastation of some fresh district, or to inflict a defeat on such of his adversaries as dared to encounter him in the open field. In 850 B.C. the first blow was struck at the Khati; Agusi* was the next to suffer, and its king, Arame, lost Arnie, his royal city, with some hundred more townships and strongholds.**

* Historians have up to the present admitted that this campaign of the year 850 took place in Armenia. The context of the account itself shows us that, in his tenth year, Shalmaneser advanced against the towns of Arame, immediately after having pillaged the country of the Khati, which inclines me to think that these towns were situated in Northern Syria. I have no doubt that the Arame in question is not the Armenian king of that name, but Arame the sovereign of Bit-Agusi, who is named several times in the Annals of Shalmaneser.

** The text of Bull No. 1 adds to the account of the war against Arame, that of a war against the Damascene league, which merely repeats the account of Shalmaneser's eleventh year. It is generally admitted that the war against Arame falls under his tenth year, and the war against Ben-hadad during his eleventh year. The scribes must have had at their disposal two different versions of one document, in which these two wars were described without distinction of year. The compiler of the inscription of the Bulls would have considered them as forming two distinct accounts, which he has placed one after the other.

In 849 B.C. it was the turn of Damascus. The league of which Ben-hadad had proclaimed himself the suzerain was still in existence, but it had recently narrowly escaped dissolution, and a revolt had almost deprived it of the adherence of Israel and the house of Omri—after Hamath, the most active of all its members. The losses suffered at Qarqar had doubtless been severe enough to shake Ahab's faith in the strength of his master and ally. Besides this, it would appear that the latter had not honourably fulfilled all the conditions of the treaty of peace he had signed three years previously; he still held the important fortress of Bamoth-gilead, and he delayed handing it over to Ahab in spite of his oath to restore it. Finding that he could not regain possession of it by fair means, Ahab resolved to take it by force. A great change in feeling and politics had taken place at Jerusalem. Jehoshaphat, who occupied the throne, was, like his father Asa, a devout worshipper of Jahveh, but his piety did not blind him to the secular needs of the moment. The experience of his predecessors had shown that the union of the twelve tribes under the rule of a scion of Judah was a thing of the past for ever; all attempts to restore it had ended in failure and bloodshed, and the house of David had again only lately been saved from ruin by the dearly bought intervention of Ben-hadad I. and his Syrians. Jehoshaphat from the outset clearly saw the necessity of avoiding these errors of the past; he accepted the situation and sought the friendship of Israel. An alliance between two princes so unequal in power could only result in a disguised suzerainty for one of them and a state of vassalage for the other; what Ben-hadad's alliance was to Ahab, that of Ahab was to Jehoshaphat, and it served his purpose in spite of the opposition of the prophets.1 The strained relations between the two countries were relaxed, and the severed tribes on both sides of the frontier set about repairing their losses; while Hiel the Bethelite at length set about rebuilding Jericho on behalf of Samaria,* Jehoshaphat was collecting around him a large army, and strengthening himself on the west against the Philistines and on the south against the Bedawin of the desert.** The marriage of his eldest son Jehoram*** with Athaliah subsequently bound the two courts together by still closer ties;**** mutual-visits were exchanged, and it was on the occasion of a stay made by Jehoshaphat at Jezreel that the expedition against Eamoth was finally resolved on.

* The subordinate position of Jehoshaphat is clearly indicated by the reply which he makes to Ahab when the latter asks him to accompany him on this expedition: "I am as thou art, my people as thy people, my horses as thy horses" (1 Kings xxii. 4).

** 1 Kings xvi. 34, where the writer has preserved the remembrance of a double human sacrifice, destined, according to the common custom in the whole of the East, to create guardian spirits for the new building: "he laid the foundation thereof with the loss of Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof with the loss of his youngest son Segub; according to the word of the Lord." [For the curse pronounced on whoever should rebuild Jericho, see Josh. vi. 26.—Tr.]

*** [Following the distinction in spelling given in 2 Kings viii. 25, I have everywhere written Joram (of Israel) and Jehoram (of Judah), to avoid confusion.—Tr.]

**** Athaliah is sometimes called the daughter of Ahab (2 Kings viii. 18), and sometimes the daughter of Omri (2 Kings viii. 26; cf. 2 Ohron. xxii. 2), and several authors prefer the latter filiation, while the majority see in it a mistake of the Hebrew scribe. It is possible that both attributions may be correct, for we see by the Assyrian inscriptions that a sovereign is called the son of the founder of his line even when he was several generations removed from him: thus, Merodach-baladan, the adversary of Sargon of Assyria, calls himself son of Iakin, although the founder of the Bit-Iakin had been dead many centuries before his accession. The document used in 2 Kings viii. 26 may have employed the term daughter of Omri in the same manner merely to indicate that the Queen of Jerusalem belonged to the house of Omri.

It might well have appeared a more than foolhardy enterprise, and it was told in Israel that Micaiah, a prophet, the son of Imlah, had predicted its disastrous ending. "I saw," exclaimed the prophet, "the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing on His right hand and on His left. And the Lord said, Who shall entice Ahab that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will entice him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And He said, Thou shalt entice him, and shalt prevail also: go forth, and do so. Now therefore, behold, the Lord hafch put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee."*

* 1 Kings xxii. 5-23, reproduced in 2 Chron. xviii. 4-22.

The two kings thereupon invested Ramoth, and Ben-hadad hastened to the defence of his fortress. Selecting thirty-two of his bravest charioteers, he commanded them to single out Ahab only for attack, and not fight with others until they had slain him. This injunction happened in some way to come to the king's ears, and he therefore disguised himself as a common soldier, while Jehoshaphat retained his ordinary dress. Attracted by the richness of the latter's armour, the Syrians fell upon him, but on his raising his war-cry they perceived their mistake, and turning from the King of Judah they renewed their quest of the Israelitish leader. While they were vainly seeking him, an archer drew a bow "at a venture," and pierced him in the joints of his cuirass. "Wherefore he said to his charioteer, Turn thine hand, and carry me out of the host; for I am sore wounded." Perceiving, however, that the battle was going against him, he revoked the order, and remained on the field the whole day, supported by his armour-bearers. He expired at sunset, and the news of his death having spread panic through the ranks, a cry arose, "Every man to his city, and every man to his country!" The king's followers bore his body to Samaria,* and Israel again relapsed into the position of a vassal, probably under the same conditions as before the revolt.

* 1 Kings xxii. 28-38 (cf. 2 Ohron. xviii. 28-34), with interpolations in verses 35 and 38. It is impossible to establish the chronology of this period with any certainty, so entirely do the Hebrew accounts of it differ from the Assyrian. The latter mention Ahab as alive at the time of the battle of Qarqar in 854 B.C. and Jehu on the throne in 842 B.C. We must, therefore, place in the intervening twelve years, first, the end of Ahab's reign; secondly, the two years of Ahaziah; thirdly, the twelve years of Joram; fourthly, the beginning of the reign of Jehu—in all, possibly fourteen years. The reign of Joram has been prolonged beyond reason by the Hebrew annalists, and it alone lends itself to be curtailed. Admitting that the siege of Samaria preceded the battle of Qarqar, we may surmise that the three years which elapsed, according to the tradition (1 Kings xxii. 1), between the triumph of Ahab and his death, fall into two unequal periods, two previous to Qarqar, and one after it, in such a manner that the revolt of Israel would have been the result of the defeat of the Damascenes; Ahab must have died in 835 B.C., as most modern historians agree. On the other hand, it is scarcely probable that Jehu ascended the throne at the very moment that Shalmaneser was defeating Hazael in 842 B.C.; we can only carry back his accession to the preceding year, possibly 843. The duration of two years for the reign of Ahaziah can only be reduced by a few months, if indeed as much as that, as it allows of a full year, and part of a second year (cf. 1 Kings xxii. 51, where it is said that Ahaziah ascended the throne in the 17th year of Jehoshaphat, and 2 Kings iii. 1, where it states that Joram of Israel succeeded Ahaziah in the 18th year of the same Jehoshaphat).; in placing these two years between 853 and 851, there will remain for the reign of Joram the period comprised between 851 and 843, namely, eight years, instead of the twelve attributed to him by biblical tradition.

Ahaziah survived his father two years, and was succeeded by his brother Joram.* When Shalmaneser, in 849 B.C., reappeared in the valley of the Orontes, Joram sent out against him his prescribed contingent, and the conquered Israelites once more fought for their conqueror.

* The Hebrew documents merely make mention of Ahaziah's accession, length of reign, and death (1 Kings xxii. 40, 51- 53, and 2 Kings i. 2-17). The Assyrian texts do not mention his name, but they state that in 849 "the twelve kings" fought against Shalmaneser, and, as we have already seen, one of the twelve was King of Israel, here, therefore necessarily Ahaziah, whose successor was Joram.

The Assyrians had, as usual, maltreated the Khati. After having pillaged the towns of Carchemish and Agusi, they advanced on the Amanos, held to ransom the territory of the Patina enclosed within the bend of the Orontes, and descending upon Hamath by way of the districts of Iaraku and Ashta-maku, they came into conflict with the army of the twelve kings, though on this occasion the contest was so bloody that they were forced to withdraw immediately after their success. They had to content themselves with sacking Apparazu, one of the citadels of Arame, and with collecting the tribute of Garparuda of the Patina; which done, they skirted the Amanos and provided themselves with beams from its cedars. The two following years were spent in harrying the people of Paqarakhbuni, on the right bank of the Euphrates, in the dependencies of the ancient kingdom of Adini (848 B.C.), and in plundering the inhabitants of Ishtarate in the country of Iaiti, near the sources of the Tigris (847 B.C.), till in 846 they returned to try their fortune again in Syria. They transported 120,000 men across the Euphrates, hoping perhaps, by the mere mass of such a force, to crush their enemy in a single battle; but Ben-hadad was supported by his vassals, and their combined army must have been as formidable numerically as that of the Assyrians. As usual, after the engagement, Shalmaneser claimed the victory, but he did not succeed in intimidating the allies or in wresting from them a single rood of territory.*

* The care which the king takes to specify that "with 120,000 men he crossed the Euphrates in flood-time" very probably shows that this number was for him in some respects an unusual one.

Discouraged, doubtless, by so many fruitless attempts, he decided to suspend hostilities, at all events for the present. In 845 B.C. he visited Nairi, and caused an "image of his royal Majesty" to be carved at the source of the Tigris close to the very spot where the stream first rises. Pushing forward through the defiles of Tunibuni, he next invaded Urartu, and devastated it as far as the sources of the Euphrates; on reaching these he purified his arms in the virgin spring, and offered a sacrifice to the gods. On his return to the frontier, the chief of Dayaini "embraced his feet," and presented him with some thoroughbred horses. In 844 B.C. he crossed the Lower Zab and plunged into the heart of Namri; this country had long been under Babylonian influence, and its princes bore Semitic names. Mardukmudammiq, who was then its ruler, betook himself to the mountains to preserve his life; but his treasures, idols, and troops were carried off to Assyria, and he was superseded on the throne by Ianzu, the son of Khamban, a noble of Cossaean origin. As might be expected after such severe exertions, Shalmaneser apparently felt that he deserved a time of repose, for his chroniclers merely note the date of 843 B.C. as that of an inspection, terminating in a felling of cedars in the Amanos. As a fact, there was nothing stirring on the frontier. Chaldaea itself looked upon him as a benefactor, almost as a suzerain, and by its position between Elam and Assyria, protected the latter from any quarrel with Susa. The nations on the east continued to pay their tribute without coercion, and Namri, which alone entertained pretensions to independence, had just received a severe lesson. Urartu had not acknowledged the supremacy of Assur, but it had suffered in the last invasion, and Arame had shown no further sign of hostility. The tribes of the Upper Tigris—Kummukh and Adini—accepted their position as subjects, and any trouble arising in that quarter was treated as merely an ebullition of local dissatisfaction, and was promptly crushed. The Khati were exhausted by the systematic destruction of their towns and their harvests. Lastly, of the principalities of the Amanos, Gurgum, Samalla, and the Patina, if some had occasionally taken part in the struggles for independence, the others had always remained faithful in the performance of their duties as vassals. Damascus alone held out, and the valour with which she had endured all the attacks made on her showed no signs of abatement; unless any internal disturbance arose to diminish her strength, she was likely to be able to resist the growing power of Assyria for a long time to come. It was at the very time when her supremacy appeared to be thus firmly established that a revolution broke out, the effects of which soon undid the work of the preceding two or three generations. Ben-hadad, disembarrassed of Shalmaneser, desired to profit by the respite thus gained to make a final reckoning with the Israelites. It would appear that their fortune had been on the wane ever since the heroic death of Ahab. Immediately after the disaster at Eamoth, the Moabites had risen against Ahaziah,* and their king, Mesha, son of Kamoshgad, had seized the territory north of the Arnon which belonged to the tribe of Gad; he had either killed or carried away the Jewish population in order to colonise the district with Moabites, and he had then fortified most of the towns, beginning with Dhibon, his capital. Owing to the shortness of his reign, Ahaziah had been unable to take measures to hinder him; but Joram, as soon as he was firmly seated on the throne, made every effort to regain possession of his province, and claimed the help of his ally or vassal Jehoshaphat.**

* 2 Kings iii. 5. The text does not name Ahaziah, and it might be concluded that the revolt took place under Joram; the expression employed by the Hebrew writer, however, "when Ahab was dead... the King of Moab rebelled against the King of Israel," does not permit of it being placed otherwise than at the opening of Ahaziah's reign.

** 2 Kings iii. 6, 7, where Jehoshaphat replies to Joram in the same terms which he had used to Ahab. The chronological difficulties induced Ed. Meyer to replace the name of Jehoshaphat in this passage by that of his son Jehoram. As Stade has remarked, the presence of two kings both bearing the name of Jehoram in the same campaign against Moab would have been one of those facts which strike the popular imagination, and would not have been forgotten; if the Hebrew author has connected the Moabite war with the name of Jehoshaphat, it is because his sources of information furnished him with that king's name.

The latter had done his best to repair the losses caused by the war with Syria. Being Lord of Edom, he had been tempted to follow the example of Solomon, and the deputy who commanded in his name had constructed a vessel * at Ezion-geber "to go to Ophir for gold;" but the vessel was wrecked before quitting the port, and the disaster was regarded by the king as a punishment from Jahveh, for when Ahaziah suggested that the enterprise should be renewed at their joint expense, he refused the offer.** But the sudden insurrection of Moab threatened him as much as it did Joram, and he gladly acceded to the latter's appeal for help.

* [Both in the Hebrew and the Septuagint the ships are in the plural number in 1 Kings xxii. 48, 49.—Tr.]

** 1 Kings xxii. 48, 49, where the Hebrew writer calls the vessel constructed by Jehoshaphat a "ship of Tarshish;" that is, a vessel built to make long voyages. The author of the Chronicles thought that the Jewish expedition to Ezion- geber on the Red Sea was destined to go to Tarshish in Spain. He has, moreover, transformed the vessel into a fleet, and has associated Ahaziah in the enterprise, contrary to the testimony of the Book of Kings; finally, he has introduced into the account a prophet named Eliezer, who represents the disaster as a chastisement for the alliance with Ahaziah (2 Ghron. xx. 35-37).

Apparently the simplest way of approaching the enemy would have been from the north, choosing Gilead as a base of operations; but the line of fortresses constructed by Mesha at this vulnerable point of his frontier was so formidable, that the allies resolved to attack from the south after passing the lower extremity of the Dead Sea. They marched for seven days in an arid desert, digging wells as they proceeded for the necessary supply of water. Mesha awaited them with his hastily assembled troops on the confines of the cultivated land; the allies routed him and blockaded him within his city of Kir-hareseth.* Closely beset, and despairing of any help from man, he had recourse to the last resource which religion provided for his salvation; taking his firstborn son, he offered him to Chemosh, and burnt him on the city wall in sight of the besiegers. The Israelites knew what obligations this sacrifice entailed upon the Moabite god, and the succour which he would be constrained to give to his devotees in consequence. They therefore raised the siege and disbanded in all directions.** Mesha, delivered at the very moment that his cause seemed hopeless, dedicated a stele in the temple of Dhibon, on which he recorded his victories and related what measures he had taken to protect his people.***

* Kir-Hareseth or Kir-Moab is the present Kcrak, the Krak of mediaeval times.

** The account of the campaign (2 Kings iii. 8-27) belongs to the prophetic cycle of Elisha, and seems to give merely a popular version of the event. A king of Edom is mentioned (9-10, 12-13), while elsewhere, under Jehoshaphat, it is stated "there was no king in Edom" (1 Kings xxii. 47); the geography also of the route taken by the expedition is somewhat confused. Finally, the account of the siege of Kir- hareseth is mutilated, and the compiler has abridged the episode of the human sacrifice, as being too conducive to the honour of Chemosh and to the dishonour of Jahveh. The main facts of the account are correct, but the details are not clear, and do not all bear the stamp of veracity.

*** This is the famous Moabite Stone or stele of Dhibon, discovered by Clermont-Ganneau in 1868, and now preserved in the Louvre.



From a photograph by Faucher-Gudin, retouched by Massias from the original in the Louvre. The fainter parts of the stele are the portions restored in the original.

He still feared a repetition of the invasion, but this misfortune was spared him; Jehoshaphat was gathered to his fathers,* and his Edomite subjects revolted on receiving the news of his death. Jeho—his son and successor, at once took up arms to bring them to a sense of their duty; but they surrounded his camp, and it was with difficulty that he cut his way through their ranks and escaped during the night.

* The date of the death of Jehoshaphat may be fixed as 849 or 848 B.C. The biblical documents give us for the period of the history of Judah following on the death of Ahab: First, eight years of Jehoshaphat, from the 17th year of his reign (1 Kings xxii. 51) to his 25th (and last) year (1 Kings xxii. 42); secondly, eight years of Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat (2 Kings viii. 17); thirdly, one year of Ahaziah, son of Jehoram (2 Kings viii. 26)—in all 17 years, which must be reduced and condensed into the period between 853 B.C., the probable date of the battle of Ramoth, and 843, the equally probable date of the accession of Jehu. The reigns of the two Ahaziahs are too short to be further abridged; we must therefore place the campaign against Moab at the earliest in 850, during the months which followed the accession of Joram of Israel, and lengthen Johoshaphat's reign from 850 to 849. There will then be room between 849 and 844 for five years (instead of eight) for the reign of Jehoram of Judah.

The defection of the old Canaanite city of Libnah followed quickly on this reverse,* and Jehoram was powerless to avenge himself on it, the Philistines and the Bedawin having threatened the western part of his territory and raided the country.** In the midst of these calamities Judah had no leisure to take further measures against Mesha, and Israel itself had suffered too severe a blow to attempt retaliation. The advanced age of Ben-hadad, and the unsatisfactory result of the campaigns against Shalmaneser, had furnished Joram with an occasion for a rupture with Damascus. War dragged on for some time apparently, till the tide of fortune turned against Joram, and, like his father Ahab in similar circumstances, he shut himself within Samaria, where the false alarm of an Egyptian or Hittite invasion produced a panic in the Syrian camp, and restored the fortunes of the Israelitish king.***