* 2 Kings viii. 20-22; cf. 2 Ghron. xxi. 8-10.

** This war is mentioned only in 2 Ghron. xxi. 16, 17, where it is represented as a chastisement from Jahveh; the Philistines and "the Arabs which are beside the Ethiopians" (Kush) seem to have taken Jerusalem, pillaged the palace, and carried away the wives and children of the king into captivity, "so that there was never a son left him, save Jehoahaz (Ahaziah), the youngest of his sons."

*** Kuenen has proposed to take the whole account of the reign of Joram, son of Ahab, and transfer it to that of Jehoahaz, son of Jehu, and this theory has been approved by several recent critics and historians. On the other hand, some have desired to connect it with the account of the siege of Samaria in Ahab's reign. I fail to see any reasonable argument which can be brought against the authenticity of the main fact, whatever opinion may be held with regard to the details of the biblical narrative.

Ben-hadad did not long survive the reverse he had experienced; he returned sick and at the point of death to Damascus, where he was assassinated by Hazael, one of his captains. Hebrew tradition points to the influence of the prophets in all these events. The aged Elijah had disappeared, so ran the story, caught up to heaven in a chariot of fire, but his mantle had fallen on Elisha, and his power still survived in his disciple. From far and near Elisha's counsel was sought, alike by Gentiles as by the followers of the true God; whether the suppliant was the weeping Shunamite mourning for the loss of her only son, or Naaman the captain of the Damascene chariotry, he granted their petitions, and raised the child from its bed, and healed the soldier of his leprosy. During the siege of Samaria, he had several times frustrated the enemy's designs, and had predicted to Joram not only the fact but the hour of deliverance, and the circumstances which would accompany it. Ben-hadad had sent Hazael to the prophet to ask him if he should recover, and Elisha had wept on seeing the envoy—"Because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel; their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash in pieces their little ones, and rip up their women with child. And Hazael said, But what is thy servant which is but a dog, that he should do this great thing? And Elisha answered, The Lord hath showed me that thou shalt be king over Syria." On returning to Damascus Hazael gave the results of his mission in a reassuring manner to Ben-hadad, but "on the morrow... he took the coverlet and dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that he died."

The deed which deprived it of its king^ seriously affected Damascus itself. It was to Ben-hadad that it owed most of its prosperity; he it was who had humiliated Hamath and the princes of the coast of Arvad, and the nomads of the Arabian desert. He had witnessed the rise of the most energetic of all the Israelite dynasties, and he had curbed its ambition; Omri had been forced to pay him tribute; Ahab, Ahaziah, and Joram had continued it; and Ben-hadad's suzerainty, recognised more or less by their vassals, had extended through Moab and Judah as far as the Bed Sea. Not only had he skilfully built up this fabric of vassal states which made him lord of two-thirds of Syria, but he had been able to preserve it unshaken for a quarter of a century, in spite of rebellions in several of his fiefs and reiterated attacks from Assyria; Shalmaneser, indeed, had made an attack on his line, but without breaking through it, and had at length left him master of the field. This superiority, however, which no reverse could shake, lay in himself and in himself alone; no sooner had he passed away than it suddenly ceased, and Hazael found himself restricted from the very outset to the territory of Damascus proper.* Hamath, Arvad, and the northern peoples deserted the league, to return to it no more; Joram of Israel called on his nephew Ahaziah, who had just succeeded to Jehoram of Judah, and both together marched to besiege Bamoth.

* From this point onward, the Assyrian texts which mentioned the twelve kings of the Khati, Irkhulini of Hamath and Adadidri (Ben-hadad) of Damascus, now only name Khazailu of the country of Damascus.

The Israelites were not successful in their methods of carrying on sieges; Joram, wounded in a skirmish, retired to his palace at Jezreel, where Ahaziah joined him a few days later, on the pretext of inquiring after his welfare. The prophets of both kingdoms and their followers had never forgiven the family of Ahab their half-foreign extraction, nor their eclecticism in the matter of religion. They had numerous partisans in both armies, and a conspiracy was set on foot against the absent sovereigns; Elisha, judging the occasion to be a propitious one, despatched one of his disciples to the camp with secret instructions. The generals were all present at a banquet, when the messenger arrived; he took one of them, Jehu, the son of Nimshi, on one side, anointed him, and then escaped. Jehu returned, and seated himself amongst his fellow-officers, who, unsuspicious of what had happened, questioned him as to the errand. "Is all well? Wherefore came this mad fellow to thee? And he said unto them, Ye know the man and what his talk was. And they said, It is false; tell us now. And he said, Thus and thus spake he to me, saying, Thus saith the Lord, I have anointed thee king over Israel. Then they hasted, and took every man his garment and put it under him on the top of the stairs, and blew the trumpet, saying, Jehu is king." He at once marched on Jezreel, and the two kings, surprised at this movement, went out to meet him with scarcely any escort. The two parties had hardly met when Joram asked, "Is it peace, Jehu?" to which Jehu replied, "What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?" Whereupon Joram turned rein, crying to his nephew, "There is treachery, O Ahaziah." But an arrow pierced him through the heart, and he fell forward in his chariot. Ahaziah, wounded near Ibleam, managed, however, to take refuge in Megiddo, where he died, his servants bringing the body back to Jerusalem.*

* According to the very curtailed account in 2 Chron. xxii. 9, Ahaziah appears to have hidden himself in Samaria, where he was discovered and taken to Jehu, who had him killed. This account may perhaps have belonged to the different version of which a fragment has been preserved in 2 Kings x. 12-17.

When Jezebel heard the news, she guessed the fate which awaited her. She painted her eyes and tired her head, and posted herself in one of the upper windows of the palace. As Jehu entered the gates she reproached him with the words, "Is it peace, thou Zimri—thy master's murderer? And he lifted up his face to the window and said, Who is on my side—who? Two or three eunuchs rose up behind the queen, and he called to them, Throw her down. So they threw her down, and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall and on the horses; and he trode her under foot. And when he was come in he did eat and drink; and he said, See now to this cursed woman and bury her; for she is a king's daughter." But nothing was found of her except her skull, hands, and feet, which they buried as best they could. Seventy princes, the entire family of Ahab, were slain, and their heads piled up on either side of the gate. The priests and worshippers of Baal remained to be dealt with. Jehu summoned them to Samaria on the pretext of a sacrifice, and massacred them before the altars of their god. According to a doubtful tradition, the brothers and relatives of Ahaziah, ignorant of what had happened, came to salute Joram, and perished in the confusion of the slaughter, and the line of David narrowly escaped extinction with the house of Omri.*

* 2 Kings x. 12-14. Stade has shown that this account is in direct contradiction with its immediate context, and that it belonged to a version of the events differing in detail from the one which has come down to us. According to the latter, Jehu must at once have met Jehonadab the son of Rechab, and have entered Samaria in his company (vers. 15-17); this would have been a poor way of inspiring the priests of Baal with the confidence necessary for drawing them into the trap. According to 2 Chron. xxii. 8, the massacre of the princes of Judah preceded the murder of Ahaziah.

Athaliah assumed the regency, broke the tie of vassalage which bound Judah to Israel, and by a singular irony of fate, Jerusalem offered an asylum to the last of the children of Ahab. The treachery of Jehu, in addition to his inexpiable cruelty, terrified the faithful, even while it served their ends. Dynastic crimes were common in those days, but the tragedy of Jezreel eclipsed in horror all others that had preceded it; it was at length felt that such avenging of Jahveh was in His eyes too ruthless, and a century later the Prophet Hosea saw in the misery of his people the divine chastisement of the house of Jehu for the blood shed at his accession.

The report of these events, reaching Calah, awoke the ambition of Shalmaneser. Would Damascus, mistrusting its usurper, deprived of its northern allies, and ill-treated by the Hebrews, prove itself as invulnerable as in the past? At all events, in 842 B.C., Shalmaneser once more crossed the Euphrates, marched along the Orontes, probably receiving the homage of Hamath and Arvad by the way. Restricted solely to the resources of Damascus, <Hazael did not venture to advance into Coele-Syria as Ben-hadad had always done; he barricaded the defiles of Anti-Lebanon, and, entrenched on Mount Shenir with the flower of his troops, prepared to await the attack. It proved the most bloody battle that the Assyrians had up to that period ever fought. Hazael lost 16,000 foot-soldiers, 470 horsemen, 1121 chariots, and yet succeeded in falling back on Damascus in good order. Shalmaneser, finding it impossible to force the city, devastated the surrounding country, burnt numberless villages and farms, and felled all the fruit trees in the Hauran up to the margin of the desert. This district had never, since the foundation of the kingdom by Bezon a century before, suffered at the hands of an enemy's army, and its population, enriched as much by peaceful labour as by the spoil of its successful wars, offered a prize of incalculable value. On his return march Shalmaneser raided the Bekaa, entered Phoenicia, and carved a triumphal stele on one of the rocks of Baalirasi.*

* The site of Baalirasi is left undecided by Assyriologists. The events which follow enable us to affirm with tolerable certainty that the point on the coast where Shalmaneser received the tributes of Tyre and Sidon is none other than the mouth of the Nahr-el-Kelb: the name Baalirasi, "the master of the head," would then be applicable to the rocky point which rises to the south of the river, and on which Egyptian kings had already sculptured their stelae.

The Kings of Tyre and Sidon hastened to offer him numerous gifts, and Jehu, who owed to his presence temporary immunity from a Syrian invasion, sent his envoys to greet him, accompanied by offerings of gold and silver in bars, vessels of gold of various forms, situlae, salvers, cups, drinking-vessels, tin, sceptres, and wands of precious woods. Shalmaneser's pride was flattered by this homage, and he carved on one of his monuments the representation of this first official connection of Assyria with Israel.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the scenes represented on the Black Obelisk.

The chief of the embassage is shown prostrating himself and kissing the dust before the king, while the rest advance in single file, some with vessels in their hands, some carrying sceptres, or with metal bowls supported on their heads. The prestige of the house of Omri was still a living influence, or else the Ninevite scribes were imperfectly informed of the internal changes which had taken place in Israel, for the inscription accompanying this bas-relief calls Jehu the son of Omri, and grafts the regicide upon the genealogical tree of his victims. Shalmaneser's victory had been so dearly bought, that the following year the Assyrians merely attempted an expedition for tree-felling in the Amanos (841 B.C.). Their next move was to push forward into Kui, in the direction of the Pyramos and Saros (840 B.C.). In the summer of 839 they once more ventured southwards, but this time Hazael changed his tactics: pitched battles and massed movements, in which the fate of a campaign was decided by one cast of the dice, were now avoided, and ambuscades, guerilla warfare, and long and tedious sieges became the order of the day. By the time that four towns had been taken, Shalmaneser's patience was worn out: he drew off his troops and fell back on Phoenicia, laying Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos under tribute before returning into Mesopotamia. Hazael had shown himself possessed of no less energy than Ben-hadad; and Damascus, isolated, had proved as formidable a foe as Damascus surrounded by its vassals; Shalmaneser therefore preferred to leave matters as they were, and accept the situation. Indeed the results obtained were of sufficient importance to warrant his feeling some satisfaction. He had ruthlessly dispelled the dream of Syrian hegemony which had buoyed up Ben-hadad, he had forced Damascus to withdraw the suzerainty it had exercised in the south, and he had conquered Northern Syria and the lower basin of the Orontes. Before running any further risks, he judged it prudent to strengthen his recently acquired authority over these latter countries, and to accustom the inhabitants to their new position as subjects of Nineveh.

He showed considerable wisdom by choosing the tribes of the Taurus and of the Oappadocian marches as the first objects of attack. In regions so difficult of access, war could only be carried on with considerable hardship and severe loss. The country was seamed by torrents and densely covered with undergrowth, while the towns and villages, which clung to the steep sides of the valleys, had no need of walls to become effective fortresses, for the houses rose abruptly one above another, and formed so many redoubts which the enemy would be forced to attack and take one by one. Few pitched battles could be fought in a district of this description; the Assyrians wore themselves out in incessant skirmishes and endless petty sieges, and were barely compensated by the meagre spoil which such warfare yielded.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Alfred Boissier.

In 838 B.C. Shalmaneser swept over the country of Tabal and reduced twenty-four of its princes to a state of subjection; proceeding thence, he visited the mountains of Turat,* celebrated from this period downwards for their silver mines and quarries of valuable marbles.

* The position of the mountains of Turat is indicated by the nature of their products: "We know of a silver mine at Marash and an iron mine not worked, and two fine quarries, one of pink and the other of black marble." Turat, therefore, must be the Marash mountain, the Aghir-Uagh and its spurs; hence the two sorts of stone mentioned in the Assyrian text would be, the one the pink, the other the black marble.

In 837 he seized the stronghold of Uetash in Melitene, and laid Tabal under a fresh contribution; this constituted a sort of advance post for-Assyria in the sight of those warlike and continually fluctuating races situated between the sources of the Halys and the desert border of Asia Minor.* Secure on this side, he was about to bring matters to a close in Cilicia, when the defection of Ianzu recalled him to the opposite extremity of the empire. He penetrated into Namri by the defiles of Khashmur,** made a hasty march through Sik-hisatakh, Bit-Tamul, Bit-Shakki, and Bit-Shedi, surprised the rebels and drove them into the forests; he then bore down on Parsua*** and plundered twenty-seven petty kings consecutively.

* A fragment of an anonymous list, discovered by Delitzsch, puts the expedition against the Tabal in 837 B.C. instead of in 838, and consequently makes the entire series of ensuing expeditions one year later, up to the revolt of Assur-dain- pal. This is evidently a mistake of the scribe who compiled this edition of the Canon, and the chronology of a contemporary monument, such as the Black Obelisk, ought to obtain until further light can be thrown on the subject.

** For the site of Khashmur or Khashmar, cf. supra, p. 35, note 3. The other localities cannot as yet be identified with any modern site; we may conjecture that they were scattered about the basin of the upper Diyalah.

*** Parsua, or with the native termination Parsuash, has been identified first with Persia and then with Parthia, and Rost still persists in its identification, if not with the Parthia of classical geographers, at least with the Parthian people. Schrader has shown that it ought to be sought between Namri on the south and the Mannai on the north; in one of the valleys of the Gordysean mountains, and his demonstration has been accepted with a few modifications of detail by most scholars. I believe it to be possible to determine its position with still further precision. Parsua on one side lay on the border of Namri, which comprises the districts to the east of the Diyalah in the direction of Zohab, and was contiguous to the Medes on the other side, and also to the Mannai, who occupied the southern regions of Lake Urumiah; it also lies close to Bit-Khamban, the principal of the Cossaean tribes, as it would appear. I can find only one position on the map which would answer to all these requirements: this is in the main the basin of the Gave-rud and its small affluents, the Ardelan and the sources of the Kizil-Uzen, and I shall there place Parsua until further information is forthcoming on the subject.

Skirting Misi, Amadai, Araziash,* and Kharkhar, and most of the districts lying on the middle heights of the table-land of Iran, he at length came up with Ianzu, whom he seized and brought back prisoner to Assyria, together with his family and his idols.

* Amadai is a form of Madai, with a prothetical a, like Agusi or Azala, by the side of Guzi and Zala. The inscription of Shalmaneser III. thus gives us the first mention of the classical Medes. Araziash, placed too far to the east in Sagartene by Fr. Lenormant, has been located further westwards by Schrader, near the upper course of the Kerkha; but the documents of all periods show us that on one side it adjoined Kharkhar, that is the basin of the Gamas- ab, on the other side Media, that is the country of Hamadan. It must, therefore, be placed between the two, in the northern part of the ancient Cambadene in the present Tchamabadan. Kharkhar in this case would be in the southern part of Cambadene, on the main road which leads from the gates of the Zagros to Hamadan; an examination of the general features of the country leads me to believe that the town of Kharkhar should occupy the site of Kirmanshahan, or rather of the ancient city which preceded that town.

It was at this juncture, perhaps, that he received from the people of Muzri the gift of an elephant and some large monkeys, representations of which he has left us on one of his bas-reliefs. Elephants were becoming rare, and it was not now possible to kill them by the hundred, as formerly, in Syria: this particular animal, therefore, excited the wonder of the Ninevites, and the possession of it flattered the vanity of the conqueror. This was, however, an interlude of short duration, and the turbulent tribes of the Taurus recalled him to the west as soon as spring set in.

He laid waste Kui in 836 B.C., destroyed Timur, its capital, and on his return march revenged himself on Arame of Agusi, whose spirit was still unbroken by his former misfortunes.



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

Tanakun and Tarsus fell into his hands 835 B.C.; Shalmaneser replaced Kati, the King of Kui, by his brother Kirri, and made of his dominions a kind of buffer state between his own territory and that of Pamphylia and Lycaonia. He had now occupied the throne for a quarter of a century, not a year of which had elapsed without seeing the monarch gird on his armour and lead his soldiers in person towards one or other points of the horizon. He was at length weary of such perpetual warfare, and advancing age perchance prevented him from leading his troops with that dash and vigour which are necessary to success; however this might be, on his return from Cilicia he laid aside his armour once for all, and devoted himself to peaceful occupations.

But he did not on that account renounce all attempts at conquest. Conducting his campaigns by proxy delegated the command of his army to his Tartan Dayan-assur, and the northern tribes were the first on whom this general gave proof of his prowess. Urartu had passed into the hands of another sovereign since its defeat in 845 B.C., and a second Sharduris* had taken the place of the Arame who had ruled at the beginning of Shalma-neser's reign.

* The name is written Siduri or Seduri in the text of the Obelisk, probably in accordance with some popular pronunciation, in which the r was but slightly rolled and finally disappeared. The identity of Seduri and Sharduris, has been adopted by recent historians. Belck and Lehmann have shown that this Seduri was not Sharduris, son of Lutipris, but a Sharduris II., probably the son of Arame.

It would appear that the accession of this prince, who was probably young and active, was the signal for a disturbance among the people of the Upper Tigris and the Masios—a race always impatient of the yoke, and ready to make common cause with any fresh enemy of Assyria. An insurrection broke out in Bit-Zamani and the neighbouring districts. Dayan-assur quelled it offhand; then, quitting the basin of the Tigris by the defiles of Armash, he crossed the Arzania, and entered Urartu. Sharduris came out to meet him, and was defeated, if we may give credence to the official record of the campaign. Even if the account be an authentic one, the victory was of no advantage to the Assyrians, for they were obliged to retreat before they had subjugated the enemy, and an insurrection among the Patina prevented them from returning to the attack in the following year. With obligations to their foreign master on one hand and to their own subjects on the other, the princes of the Syrian states had no easy life. If they failed to fulfil their duties as vassals, then an Assyrian invasion would pour in to their country, and sooner or later their ruin would be assured; they would have before them the prospect of death by impaling or under the knife of the flayer, or, if they escaped this, captivity and exile in a far-off land. Prudence therefore dictated a scrupulous fidelity to their suzerain. On the other hand, if they resigned themselves to their dependent condition, the people of their towns would chafe at the payment of tribute, or some ambitious relative would take advantage of the popular discontent to hatch a plot and foment a revolution, and the prince thus threatened would escape from an Assyrian reprisal only to lose his throne or fall by the blow of an assassin. In circumstances such as these the people of the Patina murdered their king, Lubarna II., and proclaimed in his room a certain Sum, who had no right to the crown, but who doubtless undertook to liberate them from the foreigner. Dayan-assur defeated the rebels and blockaded the remains of their army in Kinalua. They defended themselves at first energetically, but on the death of Surri from some illness, their courage failed them and they offered to deliver over the sons of their chief if their own lives might be spared. Dayan-assur had the poor wretches impaled, laid the inhabitants under a heavy contribution, and appointed a certain Sasi, son of Uzza, to be their king. The remainder of Syria gave no further trouble—a fortunate circumstance, for the countries on the Armenian border revolted in 832 B.C., and the whole year was occupied in establishing order among the herdsmen of Kirkhi. In 831 B.C., Dayan-assiir pushed forward into Khubushkia, and traversed it from end to end without encountering any resistance. He next attacked the Mannai. Their prince, Ualki, quailed before his onslaught; he deserted his royal city Zirtu,* and took refuge in the mountains. Dayan-assur pursued him thither in vain, but he was able to collect considerable booty, and turning in a south-easterly direction, he fought his way along the base of the Gordysean mountains till he reached Parsua, which he laid under tribute. In 830 B.C. it was the turn of Muzazir, which hitherto had escaped invasion, to receive a visit from the Tartan. Zapparia, the capital, and fifty-six other towns were given over to the flames. From thence, Dayan-assur passed into Urartu proper; after having plundered it, he fell back on the southern provinces, collecting by the way the tribute of Guzan, of the Mannai, of Andiu,** and Parsua; he then pushed on into the heart of Namri, and having razed to the ground two hundred and fifty of its towns, returned with his troops to Assyria by the defiles of Shimishi and through Khalman.

* The town is elsewhere called Izirtu, and appears to have been designated in the inscriptions of Van by the name of Sisiri-Khadiris.

** Andia or Andiu is contiguous to Nairi, to Zikirtu and to Karalla, which latter borders on Manna; it bordered on the country of Misa or Misi, into which it is merged under the name of Misianda in the time of Sargon. Delattre places Andiu in the country of the classical Matiense, between the Mationian mountains and Lake Urumiah. The position of Misu on the confines of Araziash and Media, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Talvantu-Dagh, obliges us to place Andiu lower down to the south-east, near the district of Kurdasir.

This was perhaps the last foreign campaign of Shalmaneser III.'s reign; it is at all events the last of which we possess any history. The record of his exploits ends, as it had begun more than thirty years previously, with a victory in Namri.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the cast in the Louvre. [The original is in the Brit. Mus.—Tr.]

The aged king had, indeed, well earned the right to end his allotted days in peace. Devoted to Calah, like his predecessor, he had there accumulated the spoils of his campaigns, and had made it the wealthiest city of his empire. He continued to occupy the palace of Assur-nazir-pal, which he had enlarged. Wherever he turned within its walls, his eyes fell upon some trophy of his wars or panegyric of his virtues, whether recorded on mural tiles covered with inscriptions and bas-reliefs, or celebrated by statues, altars, and triumphal stelae. The most curious among all these is a square-based block terminating in three receding stages, one above the other, like the stump of an Egyptian obelisk surmounted by a stepped pyramid. Five rows of bas-reliefs on it represent scenes most flattering to Assyrian pride;—the reception of tribute from Gilzan, Muzri, the Patina, the Israelitish Jehu, and Marduk-abal-uzur, King of the land of Sukhi. The latter knew his suzerain's love of the chase, and he provided him with animals for his preserves, including lions, and rare species of deer.



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

The inscription on the monument briefly relates the events which had occurred between the first and the thirty-first years of Shalmaneser's reign;—the defeat of Damascus, of Babylon and Urartu, the conquest of Northern Syria, of Cilicia, and of the countries bordering on the Zagros. When the king left Calah for some country residence in its-neighbourhood, similar records and carvings would meet his eye. At Imgur-Bel, one of the gates of the palace was covered with plates of bronze, on which the skilful artist had embossed and engraved with the chisel episodes from the campaigns on the Euphrates and the Tigris, the crossing of mountains and rivers, the assault and burning of cities, the long lines of captives, the melee with the enemy and the pursuit of the chariots. All the cities of Assyria, Nineveh,* Arbela, Assur, even to the more distant towns of Harran** and Tushkhan,***—vied with each other in exhibiting proofs of his zeal for their gods and his affection for their inhabitants; but his predilection for Calah filled them with jealousy, and Assur particularly could ill brook the growing aversion with which the Assyrian kings regarded her. It was of no avail that she continued to be the administrative and religious capital of the empire, the storehouse of the spoil and annual tribute of other nations, and was continually embellishing herself with fresh monuments: a spirit of discontent was daily increasing, and merely awaited some favourable occasion to break out into open revolt. Shalmaneser enjoyed the dignity of limmu for the second time after thirty years, and had celebrated this jubilee of his inauguration by a solemn festival in honour of Assur and Eamman.****

* Nineveh is mentioned as the starting-place of nearly all the first campaigns in the inscription on the Monolith; also in the Balawat inscription, on the other hand, towards the end of the reign, Calah is given as the residence of the king on the Black Obelisk

** Mention of the buildings of Shalmaneser III. at Harran occurs in an inscription of Nabonidus.

*** The Monolith discovered at Kurkh is in itself a proof that Shalmaneser executed works in this town, the Tushkhan of the inscriptions.

**** Any connection established between this thirty-year jubilee and the thirty years' festival of Egypt rests on facts which can be so little relied on, that it must be accepted with considerable reserve.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by Pinches.

It is possible that he may have thought this a favourable moment for presenting to the people the son whom he had chosen from among his children to succeed him. At any rate, Assur-dain-pal, fearing that one of his brothers might be preferred before him, "proclaimed himself king," and nearly the whole of Assyria gathered around his standard. Assur and twenty-six more of the most important cities revolted in his favour—Nineveh, Imgur-bel, Sibaniba, Dur-balat, Arbela, Zaban in the Chaldaean marches, Arrapkha in the valley of the Upper Zab, and most of the colonies, both of ancient and recent foundation—Amidi on the Tigris, Khindanu near the mouths of the Kha-bur and Tul-Abni on the southern slopes of the Masios. The aged king remained in possession only of Calah and its immediate environs—Nisibis, Harran, Tushkhan, and the most recently subdued provinces on the banks of the Euphrates and the Orontes. It is probable, however, that the army remained faithful to him, and the support which these well-tried troops afforded him enabled the king to act with promptitude. The weight of years did not permit him to command in person; he therefore entrusted the conduct of operations to his son Samsi-ramman, but he did not live to see the end of the struggle. It embittered his last days, and was not terminated till 822 B.C., at which date Shalmaneser had been dead two years. This prolonged crisis had shaken the kingdom to its foundations; the Syrians, the Medes, the Babylonians, and the peoples of the Armenian and Aramaean marches were rent from it, and though Samsi-ramman IV. waged continuous warfare during the twelve years that he governed, he could only partially succeed in regaining the territory which had been thus lost.*

* All that we know of the reign of Samsi-ramman IV. comes from an inscription in archaic characters containing the account of four campaigns, without giving the years of each reign or the limmu, and historians have classified them in different ways.

His first three campaigns were-directed against the north-eastern and eastern provinces. He began by attempting to collect the tribute from Nairi, the payment of which had been suspended since the outbreak of the revolution, and he re-established the dominion of Assyria from the district of Paddir to the township of Kar-Shulmanasharid, which his father had founded at the fords of the Euphrates opposite to Carchemish (821 B.C.). In the following campaign he did not personally take part, but the Rabshakeh Mutarriz-assur pillaged the shores of Lake Urumiah, and then made his way towards Urartu, where he destroyed three hundred towns (820). The third expedition was directed against Misi and Gizilbunda beyond the Upper Zab and Mount Zilar.* The inhabitants of Misi entrenched themselves on a wooded ridge commanded by three peaks, but were defeated in spite of the advantages which their position secured for them;** the people of Gizilbunda were not more fortunate than their neighbours, and six thousand of them perished at the assault of Urash, their capital.***

* Mount Zilar is beyond the Upper Zab, on one of the roads which lead to the basin of Lake Urumiah, probably in Khubushkia. There are two of these roads—that which passes over the neck of Kelishin, and the other which runs through the gorges of Alan; "with the exception of these two points, the mountain chain is absolutely impassable." According to the general direction of the campaign, it appears to me probable that the king crossed by the passes of Alan; Mount Zilar would therefore be the group of chains which cover the district of Pishder, and across which the Lesser Zab passes before descending to the plain.

** The country of Misi adjoined Gizilbunda, Media, Araziash, and Andiu. All these circumstances incline us to place it in the south-eastern part of Kurdistan of Sihmeh, in the upper valley of Kisil-Uzen. The ridge, overlooked by three peaks, on which the inhabitants took refuge, cannot be looked for on the west, whore there are few important heights: I should rather identify it with the part of the Gordysean mountains which bounds the basin of the Kisil-Uzen on the west, and which contains three peaks of 12,000 feet—the Tchehel- tchechma, the Derbend, and the Nau-Kan.

*** The name of the country has been read Giratbunda, Ginunbunda, Girubbunda; a variant, to which no objections can be made, has furnished Gizilbunda. It was contiguous on one side to the Medes, and on the other to the Mannai, which obliges us to place it in Kurdistan of Gerrus, on the Kizil- Uzon. It may be asked if the word Kizil which occurs several times in the topographical nomenclature of these regions is not a relic of the name in question, and if Gizil-bunda is not a compound of the same class as Kizil-uzen, Kizil- gatchi, Kizihalan, Kizil-lok, whether it be that part of the population spoke a language analogous to the dialects now in use in these districts, or that the ancient word has been preserved by later conquerors and assimilated to some well- known word in their own language.

Mutarriz-assur at once turned upon the Medes, vanquished them, and drove them at the point of the sword into their remote valleys, returning to the district of Araziash, which he laid waste. A score of chiefs with barbarous names, alarmed by this example, hastened to prostrate themselves at his feet, and submitted to the tribute which he imposed on them. Assyria thus regained in these regions the ascendency which the victories of Shalmaneser III. in their time had won for her.

Babylon, which had endured the suzerainty of its rival for a quarter of a century, seems to have taken advantage of the events occurring in Assyria to throw off the yoke, by espousing the cause of Assur-dain-pal. Samsi-ramman, therefore, as soon as he was free to turn his attention from Media (818), directed his forces against Babylonia. Metur-nat, as usual, was the first city attacked; it capitulated at once, and its inhabitants were exiled to Assyria. Kami to the south of the Turnat, and Dibina on Mount Yalrnan, suffered the same fate, but Gananate held out for a time; its garrison, however, although reinforced by troops from the surrounding country, was utterly routed before its walls, and the survivors, who fled for refuge to the citadel in the centre of the town, were soon dislodged. The Babylonians, who had apparently been taken by surprise at the first attack, at length made preparations to resist the invaders. The Prince of Dur-papsukal, who owned allegiance to Marduk-balatsu-ikbi, King of Babylon, had disposed his troops so as to guard the fords of the Tigris, in order to prevent the enemy from reaching his capital. But Samsi-ramman dispersed this advanced force, killing thirteen thousand, besides taking three thousand prisoners, and finally reduced Dur-papsukal to ashes.

[148.jpg MONOLITH OF SAMSI-RAMMAN IV]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Mansell. The original is in the British Museum.

The respite thus obtained gave Marduk-balatsu-ikbi sufficient time to collect the main body of his troops: the army was recruited from Kalda and Ela-mites, soldiers from Namri, and Aramaean contingents, and the united force awaited the enemy behind the ruins of Dur-papsukal, along the banks of the Daban canal. Five thousand footmen, two hundred horsemen, one hundred chariots, besides the king's tent and all his stores, fell into the hands of the Assyrians. The victory was complete; Babylon, Kuta, and Borsippa capitulated one after the other, and the invaders penetrated as far as the land of the Kalda, and actually reached the Persian Gulf. Samsi-ramman offered sacrifices to the gods, as his father had done before him, and concluded a treaty with Marduk-balatsu-ikbi, the terms of which included rectification of boundaries, payment of a subsidy, and the other clauses usual in such circumstances; the peace was probably ratified by a matrimonial alliance, concluded between the Babylonian princess Sammuramat and Bamman-nirari, son of the conqueror. In this manner the hegemony of Assyria over Karduniash was established even more firmly than before the insurrection; but all available resources had been utilised in the effort necessary to secure it. Samsi-ramman had no leisure to reconquer Syria or Asia Minor, and the Euphrates remained the western frontier of his kingdom, as it had been in the early days of Shalmaneser III. The peace with Babylon, moreover, did not last long; Bau-akhiddin, who had succeeded Marduk-balatsu-ikbi, refused to observe the terms of the treaty, and hostilities again broke out on the Turnat and the Tigris, as they had done six years previously. This war was prolonged from 813 to 812 B.C., and was still proceeding when Samsi-ramman died. His son Bamman-nirari III. quickly brought it to a successful issue. He carried Bau-akhiddin captive to Assyria, with his family and the nobles of his court, and placed on the vacant throne one of his own partisans, while he celebrated festivals in honour of his own supremacy at Babylon, Kuta, and Borsippa. Karduniash made no attempt to rebel against Assyria during the next half-century. Bamman-nirari proved himself an energetic and capable sovereign, and the thirty years of his reign were by no means inglorious. We learn from the eponym lists what he accomplished during that time, and against which countries he waged war; but we have not yet recovered any inscription to enable us to fill in this outline, and put together a detailed account of his reign. His first expeditions were directed against Media (810), Gozan (809), and the Mannai (808-807); he then crossed the Euphrates, and in four successive years conducted as many vigorous campaigns against Arpad (806), Kkazaiu (808), the town of Baali (804), and the cities of the Phoenician sea-board (803). The plague interfering with his advance in the latter direction, he again turned his attention eastward and attacked Khubushkia in 802, 792, and 784; Media in 801-800, 794-793, and 790-787; Lushia in 799; Namri in 798; Diri in 796-795 and 785; Itua in 791, 783-782; Kishki in 785. This bare enumeration conjures up a vision of an enterprising and victorious monarch of the type of Assur-nazir-pal or Shalmaneser III., one who perhaps succeeded even where his redoubtable ancestors had failed. The panoramic survey of his empire, as unfolded to us in one of his inscriptions, includes the mountain ranges of Illipi as far as Mount Sihina, Kharkhar, Araziash, Misu, Media, the whole of Gizilbunda, Man, Parsua, Allabria, Abdadana, the extensive territory of Istairi, far-off Andiu, and, westwards beyond the Euphrates, the Khati, the entire country of the Amorites, Tyre, Sidon, Israel, Edom, and the Philistines. Never before had the Assyrian empire extended so far east in the direction of the centre of the Iranian tableland, nor so far to the south-west towards the frontiers of Egypt.*

* Allabria or Allabur is on the borders of Parsua and of Karalla, which allows us to locate it in the basins of the Kerkhorah and the Saruk, tributaries of the Jagatu, which flow into Lake Urumiah. Abdadana, which borders on Allabria, and was, according to Ramman-nirari, at the extreme end of Nairi, was a little further to the east or north-east; if I am not mistaken, it corresponds pretty nearly to Uriad, on the banks of the Kizil-Uzen.

In two only of these regions, namely, Syria and Armenia, do native documents add any information to the meagre summary contained in the Annals, and give us glimpses of contemporary rulers. The retreat of Shalmaneser, after his partial success in 839, had practically left the ancient allies of Ben-hadad II. at the mercy of Hazael, the new King of Damascus, but he did not apparently attempt to assert his supremacy over the whole of Coele-Syria, and before long several of its cities acquired considerable importance, first Mansuate, and then Hadrach,* both of which, casting Hamath into the shade, succeeded in holding their own against Hazael and his successors. He renewed hostilities, however, against the Hebrews, and did not relax his efforts till he had thoroughly brought them into subjection. Jehu suffered loss on all his frontiers, "from Jordan eastward, all the land of Gilead, the Gadites, the Keubenites, and the Manassites, from Aroer, which is by the valley of Arnon, even Gilead and Bashan,"** Israel became thus once more entirely dependent on Damascus, but the sister kingdom of Judah still escaped its yoke through the energy of her rulers.

* Mansuati successfully resisted Ramman-nirari in 797 B.C., but he probably caused its ruin, for after this only expeditions against Hadrach are mentioned. Mansuati was in the basin of the Orontes, and the manner in which the Assyrian texts mention it in connection with Zimyra seems to show that it commanded the opening in the Lebanon range between Cole-Syria and Phoenicia. The site of Khatarika, the Hadrach of Zech. ix. 1, is not yet precisely determined; but it must, as well as Mansuati, have been in the neighbourhood of Hamath, perhaps between Hamath and Damascus. It appears for the first time in 772.

** 2 Kings x. 32, 33. Even if verse 33 is a later addition, it gives a correct idea of the situation, except as regards Bashan, which had been lost to Israel for some time already.

Athaliah reigned seven years, not ingloriously; but she belonged to the house of Ahab, and the adherents of the prophets, whose party had planned Jehu's revolution, could no longer witness with equanimity one of the accursed race thus prospering and ostentatiously practising the rites of Baal-worship within sight of the great temple of Jahveh. On seizing the throne, Athaliah had sought out and put to death all the members of the house of David who had any claim to the succession; but Jeho-sheba, half-sister of Ahaziah, had with difficulty succeeded in rescuing Joash, one of the king's sons. Her husband was the high priest Jehoiada, and he secreted his nephew for six years in the precincts of the temple; at the end of that time, he won over the captains of the royal guard, bribed a section of the troops, and caused them to swear fealty to the child as their legitimate sovereign. Athaliah, hastening to discover the cause of the uproar, was assassinated. Mattan, chief priest of Baal, shared her fate; and Jehoiada at once restored to Jahveh the preeminence which the gods of the alien had for a time usurped (837). At first his influence over his pupil was supreme, but before long the memory of his services faded away, and the king sought only how to rid himself of a tutelage which had grown irksome. The temple had suffered during the late wars, and repairs were much needed. Joash ordained that for the future all moneys put into the sacred treasury—which of right belonged to the king—should be placed unreservedly at the disposal of the priests on condition that they should apply them to the maintenance of the services and fabric of the temple: the priests accepted the gift, but failed in the faithful observance of the conditions, so that in 814 B.C. the king was obliged to take stringent measures to compel them to repair the breaches in the sanctuary walls:* he therefore withdrew the privilege which they had abused, and henceforth undertook the administration of the Temple Fund in person. The beginning of the new order of things was not very successful. Jehu had died in 815, after a disastrous reign, and both he and his son Jehoahaz had been obliged to acknowledge the supremacy of Hazael: not only was he in the position of an inferior vassal, but, in order to preclude any idea of a revolt, he was forbidden to maintain a greater army than the small force necessary for purposes of defence, namely, ten thousand foot-soldiers, fifty horsemen, and ten chariots.**

* 2 Kings xii. 4-16; cf. 2 Chron. xxiv. 1-14. The beginning of the narrative is lost, and the whole has probably been modified to make it agree with 2 Kings xxii. 3-7.

** 2 Kings xiii. 1-7. It may be noticed that the number of foot-soldiers given in the Bible is identical with that which the Assyrian texts mention as Ahab's contingent at the battle of Qarqar, viz. 10,000; the number of the chariots is very different in the two cases. Kuenen and other critics would like to assign to the reign of Jehoahaz the siege of Samaria by the Syrians, which the actual text of the Book of the Kings attributes to the reign of Joram.

The power of Israel had so declined that Hazael was allowed to march through its territory unhindered on his way to wage war in the country of the Philistines; which he did, doubtless, in order to get possession of the main route of Egyptian commerce. The Syrians destroyed Gath,* reduced Pentapolis to subjection, enforced tribute from Edom, and then marched against Jerusalem. Joash took from the treasury of Jahveh the reserve funds which his ancestors, Jehoshaphat, Joram, and Ahaziah, had accumulated, and sent them to the invader,** together with all the gold which was found in the king's house.

* The text of 2 Kings xii. 17 merely says that Hazael took Gath. Gath is not named by Amos among the cities of the Philistines (Amos. i. 6-8), but it is one of the towns cited by that prophet as examples to Israel of the wrath of Jahveh (vi. 2). It is probable, therefore, that it was already destroyed in his time.

** 2 Kings xii. 17, 18; cf. 2 Chron. xxiv. 22-24, where the expedition of Hazael is represented as a punishment for the murder of Mechariah, son of Jehoiada.

From this time forward Judah became, like Israel, Edom, the Philistines and Ammonites, a mere vassal of Hazael; with the possible exception of Moab, all the peoples of Southern Syria were now subject to Damascus, and formed a league as strong as that which had successfully resisted the power of Shalmaneser. Ramman-nirari, therefore, did not venture to attack Syria during the lifetime of Hazael; but a change of sovereign is always a critical moment in the history of an Eastern empire, and he took advantage of the confusion caused by the death of the aged king to attack his successor Mari (803 B.C.). Mari essayed the tactics which his father had found so successful; he avoided a pitched battle, and shut himself up in Damascus. But he was soon closely blockaded, and forced to submit to terms; Ramman-nirari demanded as the price of withdrawal, 23,000 talents of silver, 20 talents of gold, 3000 of copper, 5000 of iron, besides embroidered and dyed stuffs, an ivory couch, and a litter inlaid with ivory,—in all a considerable part of the treasures amassed at the expense of the Hebrews and their neighbours. It is doubtful whether Ramman-nirari pushed further south, and penetrated in person as far as the deserts of Arabia Petrsae—a suggestion which the mention of the Philistines and Edomites among the list of his tributary states might induce us to accept. Probably it was not the case, and he really went no further than Damascus. But the submission of that city included, in theory at least, the submission of all states subject to her sway, and these dependencies may have sent some presents to testify their desire to conciliate his favour; their names appear in the inscriptions in order to swell the number of direct or indirect vassals of the empire, since they were subject to a state which had been effectually conquered.

Ramman-nirari did not meet with such good fortune in the North; not only did he fail to obtain the brilliant successes which elsewhere attended his arms, but he ended by sustaining considerable reverses. The Ninevite historians reckoned the two expeditions of 808 and 807 B.C. against the Mannai as victories, doubtless because the king returned with a train of prisoners and loaded with spoil; but the Vannic inscriptions reveal that Urartu, which had been rising into prominence during the reign of Shalmaneser, had now grown still more powerful, and had begun to reconquer those provinces on the Tigris and Euphrates of which the Assyrians thought themselves the undoubted lords. Sharduris II. had been succeeded, about 828, by his son Ishpuinis, who had perhaps measured his strength against Samsi-raniman IV. Ishpuinis appears to have conquered and reduced to the condition of a province the neighbouring principality of Biainas, which up to that time had been governed by a semi-independent dynasty; at all events, he transferred thence his seat of govern-and made Dhuspas his favourite residence. Towards the end of his reign he associated with him on the throne his son Menuas, and made him commander-in-chief of the army. Menuas proved a bold and successful general, and in a few years had doubled the extent of his dominions. He first delivered from the Assyrian yoke, and plundered on his father's account, the tribes on the borders of Lake Urumiah, Muzazir, Gilzan, and Kirruri; then, crossing the Gordygean mountains, he burnt the towns in the valley of the Upper Zab, which bore the uncouth names of Terais, Ardis, Khanalis, Bikuras, Khatqanas, Inuas, and Nibur, laid waste the more fertile part of Khubushkia, and carved triumphal stelas in the Assyrian and Vannic scripts upon the rocks in the pass of Rowandiz.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by J. de Morgan.

It was probably to recover this territory that Ramman-nirari waged war three times in Khubushkia, in 802, 792, and 785, in a district which had formerly been ruled by a prefect from Nineveh, but had now fallen into the hands of the enemy.*

* It is probable that the stele of Kelishin, belonging to the joint reign of Ishpuinis and Menuas, was intended to commemorate the events which led Ramman-nirari to undertake his first expedition; the conquest by Menuas will fall then in 804 or 803 B.C. The inscription of Meher-Kapussi contains the names of the divinities belonging to several conquered towns, and may have been engraved on the return from this war.

Everywhere along the frontier, from the Lower Zab to the Euphrates, Menuas overpowered and drove back the Assyrian outposts. He took from them Aldus and Erinuis on the southern shores of Lake Van, compelled Dayaini to abandon its allegiance, and forced its king, Udhupursis, to surrender his treasure and his chariots; then gradually descending the valley of the Arzania, he crushed Seseti, Kulme, and Ekarzu. In one year he pillaged the Mannai in the east, and attacked the Khati in the west, seizing their fortresses of Surisilis, Tarkhigamas, and Sarduras; in the province of Alzu he left 2113 soldiers dead on the field after one engagement; Gupas yielded to his sway, followed by the towns of Khuzanas and Puteria, whereupon he even crossed the Euphrates and levied tribute from Melitene. But the struggle against Assyria absorbed only a portion of his energy; we do not know what he accomplished in the east, in the plains sloping towards the Caspian Sea, but several monuments, discovered near Armavir and Erzerum, testify that he pushed his arms a considerable distance towards the north and north-west.* He obliged Etius to acknowledge his supremacy, sending a colony to its capital, Lununis, whose name he changed to Menua-lietzilinis.**

* The inscription of Erzerum, discovered by F. de Saulcy and published by him, shows that Menuas was in possession of the district in which this town is situated, and that he rebuilt a palace there.

** Inscriptions of Yazli-tash and Zolakert. It follows from these texts that the country of Etius is the district of Armavir, and Lununis is the ancient name of this city. The now name by which Menuas replaced the name Lununis signifies the abode of the people of Menuas; like many names arising from special circumstances, it naturally passed away with the rule of the people who had imposed it.

Towards the end of his reign he partly subjugated the Mannai, planting colonies throughout their territory to strengthen his hold on the country. By these campaigns he had formed a kingdom, which, stretching from the south side of the Araxes to the upper reaches of the Zab and the Tigris, was quite equal to Assyria in size, and probably surpassed it in density of population, for it contained no barren steppes such as stretched across Mesopotamia, affording support merely to a few wretched Bedawin. As their dominions increased, the sovereigns of Biainas began to consider themselves on an equality with the kings of Nineveh, and endeavoured still more to imitate them in the luxury and display of their domestic life, as well as in the energy of their actions and the continuity of their victories. They engraved everywhere on the rocks triumphal inscriptions, destined to show to posterity their own exploits and the splendour of their gods. Having made this concession to their vanity, they took effective measures to assure possession of their conquests. They selected in the various provinces sites difficult of access, commanding some defile in the' mountains, or ford over a river, or at the junction of two roads, or the approach to a plain; on such spots they would build a fortress or a town, or, finding a citadel already existing, they would repair it and remodel its fortifications so as to render it impregnable. At Kalajik, Ashrut-Darga, and the older Mukhrapert may still be seen the ruins of ramparts built by Ishpuims. Menuas finished the buildings his father had begun, erected others in all the districts where he sojourned, in time of peace or war, at Shushanz, Sirka,* Anzaff, Arzwapert, Geuzak, Zolakert, Tashtepe, and in the country of the Mannai, and it is possible that the fortified village of Melasgerd still bears his name.**

* The name of the ancient place corresponding to the modern village of Sirka was probably Artsunis or Artsuyunis, according to the Vannic inscriptions.

** A more correct form than Melas-gerd is Manas-gert, the city of Manas, where Manas would represent Menuas: one of the inscriptions of Aghtamar speaks of a certain Menuakhinas, city of Menuas, which may be a primitive version of the same name.

His wars furnished him with the men and materials necessary for the rapid completion of these works, while the statues, valuable articles of furniture, and costly fabrics, vessels of silver, gold, and copper carried off from Assyrian or Asiatic cities, provided him with surroundings as luxurious as those enjoyed by the kings of Nineveh. His favourite residence was amid the valleys and hills of the south-western shore of Lake Van, the sea of the rising sun. His father, Ishpuinis, had already done much to embellish the site of Dhuspas, or Khaldinas as it was called, from the god Khaldis; he had surrounded it with strong walls, and within them had laid the foundations of a magnificent palace. Menuas carried on the work, brought water to the cisterns by subterranean aqueducts, planted gardens, and turned the whole place into an impregnable fortress, where a small but faithful garrison could defy a large army for several years. Dhuspas, thus completed, formed the capital and defence of the kingdom during the succeeding century.

Menuas was gathered to his fathers shortly before the death of Eamman-nirari, perhaps in 784 B.C.*

* This date seems to agree with the text of the Annals of Argistis, as far as we are at present acquainted with them; Mueller has shown, in fact, that they contain the account of fourteen campaigns, probably the first fourteen of the reign of Argistis, and he has recognised, in accordance with the observations of Stanislas Guyard, the formula which separates the campaigns one from another. There are two campaigns against the peoples of the Upper Euphrates mentioned before the campaigns against Assyria, and as these latter follow continuously after 781, it is probable that the former must be placed in 783-782, which would give 783 or 784 for the year of his accession.

He was engaged up to the last in a quarrel with the princes who occupied the mountainous country to the north of the Araxes, and his son Argistis spent the first few years of his reign in completing his conquests in this region.* He crushed with ease an attempted revolt in Dayaini, and then invaded Etius, systematically devastating it, its king, Uduris, being powerless to prevent his ravages. All the principal towns succumbed one after another before the vigour of his assault, and, from the numbers killed and taken prisoners, we may surmise the importance of his victories in these barbarous districts, to which belonged the names of Seriazis, Silius, Zabakhas, Zirimutaras, Babanis, and Urmias,** though we cannot definitely locate the places indicated.

* The Annals of Argistis are inscribed on the face of the rock which crowns the citadel of Van. The inscription contains (as stated in note above) the history of the first fourteen yearly campaigns of Argistis.

** The site of these places is still undetermined. Seriazis and Silius (or Tarius) lay to the north-east of Dayaini, and Urmias, Urme, recalls the modern name of Lake Urumiah, but was probably situated on the left bank of the Araxes.

On a single occasion, the assault on Ureyus, for instance, Argistis took prisoners 19,255 children, 10,140 men fit to bear arms, 23,280 women, and the survivors of a garrison which numbered 12,675 soldiers at the opening of the siege, besides 1104 horses, 35,016 cattle, and more than 10,000 sheep. Two expeditions into the heart of the country, conducted between 784 and 782 B.C., had greatly advanced the work of conquest, when the accession of a new sovereign in Assyria made Argistis decide to risk a change of front and to concentrate the main part of his forces on the southern boundary of his empire. Ramman-nirari, after his last contest in Khubushkia in 784, had fought two consecutive campaigns against the Aramaean tribes of Itua, near the frontiers of Babylon, and he was still in conflict with them when he died in 782 B.C. His son, Shalmaneser IV., may have wished to signalise the commencement of his reign by delivering from the power of Urartu the provinces which the kings of that country had wrested from his ancestors; or, perhaps, Argistis thought that a change of ruler offered him an excellent opportunity for renewing the struggle at the point where Menuas had left it, and for conquering yet more of the territory which still remained to his rival. Whatever the cause, the Assyrian annals show us the two adversaries ranged against each other, in a struggle which lasted from 781 to 778 B.C. Argistis had certainly the upper hand, and though his advance was not rapid, it was never completely checked. The first engagement took place at Nirbu, near the sources of the Supnat and the Tigris: Nirbu capitulated, and the enemy pitilessly ravaged the Hittite states, which were subject to Assyria, penetrating as far as the heart of Melitene (781). The next year the armies encountered each other nearer to Nineveh, in the basin of the Bitlis-tchai, at Khakhias; and, in 779, Argistis expressly thanks his gods, the Khaldises, for having graciously bestowed upon him as a gift the armies and cities of Assur. The scene of the war had shifted, and the contest was now carried on in the countries bordering on Lake Urumiah, Bustus and Parsua. The natives gained nothing by the change of invader, and were as hardly used by the King of Urartu as they had been by Shalmaneser III. or by Samsiramman: as was invariably the case, their towns were given over to the flames, their fields ravaged, their cattle and their families carried into captivity. Their resistance, however, was so determined that a second campaign was required to complete the conquest: and this time the Assyrians suffered a serious defeat at Surisidas (778), and a year at least was needed for their recovery from the disaster. During this respite, Argistis hastened to complete the pacification of Bustus, Parsua, and the small portion of Man which had not been reduced to subjection by Menuas. When the Assyrians returned to the conflict, he defeated them again (776), and while they withdrew to the Amanus, where a rebellion had broken out (775), he reduced one by one the small states which clustered round the eastern and southern shores of Lake Urumiah. He was conducting a campaign in Namri, when Shalmaneser IV. made a last effort to check his advance; but he was again victorious (774), and from henceforth these troubled regions, in which Nineveh had so persistently endeavoured for more than a century to establish her own supremacy, became part of the empire of Urartu. Argistis's hold of them proved, however, to be a precarious and uncertain one, and before long the same difficulties assailed him which had restricted the power of his rivals.



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

He was forced to return again and again to these districts, destroying fortresses and pursuing the inhabitants over plain and mountain: in 773 we find him in Urmes, the territory of Bikhuras, and Bam, in the very heart of Namri; in 772, in Dhuaras, and Gurqus, among the Mannai, and at the city of Uikhis, in Bustus. Meanwhile, to the north of the Araxes, several chiefs had taken advantage of his being thus engaged in warfare in distant regions, to break the very feeble bond which held them vassals to Urartu. Btius was the fountain-head and main support of the rebellion; the rugged mountain range in its rear provided its chiefs with secure retreats among its woods and lakes and valleys, through which flowed rapid torrents. Argistis inflicted a final defeat on the Mannai in 771, and then turned his forces against Etius. He took by storm the citadel of Ardinis which defended the entrance to the country, ravaged Ishqigulus,* and seized Amegu, the capital of Uidharus: our knowledge of his wars comes to an end in the following year with an expedition into the land of Tarius.

* Sayce shows that Ishqigulus was the district of Alexandropolis, to the east of Kars; its capital, Irdanius, is very probably either the existing walled village of Kalinsha or the neighbouring ruin of Ajuk-kaleh, on the Arpa-tohai.

The monuments do not tell us what he accomplished on the borders of Asia Minor; he certainly won some considerable advantages there, and the influence which Assyria had exercised over states scattered to the north of the Taurus, such as Melitene, and possibly Tabal and Kummukh, which had formed the original nucleus of the Hittite empire, must have now passed into his hands. The form of Argistis looms before us as that of a great conqueror, worthy to bear comparison with the most indefatigable and triumphant of the Pharaohs of Egypt or the lords of Chaldaea. The inscriptions which are constantly being discovered within the limits of his kingdom prove that, following the example of all Oriental sovereigns, he delighted as much in building as in battle: perhaps we shall some day recover a sufficient number of records to enable us to restore to their rightful place in history this great king, and the people whose power he developed more than any other sovereign.

Assyria had thus lost all her possessions in the northern and eastern parts of her empire; turning to the west, how much still remained faithful to her? After the expedition of 775 B.C. to the land of Cedars, two consecutive campaigns are mentioned against Damascus (773) and Hadrach (772); it was during this latter expedition, or immediately after it, that Shalmaneser IV. died. Northern Syria seems to have been disturbed by revolutions which seriously altered the balance of power within her borders. The ancient states, whose growth had been arrested by the deadly blows inflicted on them in the ninth century by Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmaneser III., had become reduced to the condition of second-rate powers, and their dominions had been split up. The Patina was divided into four small states—the Patina proper, Unki, Iaudi, and Samalla, the latter falling under the rule of an Aramaean family;* perhaps the accession of Qaral, the founder of this dynasty, had been accompanied by convulsions, which might explain the presence of Shalmaneser IV. in the Amanos in 775.

* The inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III. mention Unku, Iaudi, Samalla, and the Patin, in the districts where the texts of Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmaneser III., only know of the Patina.

All these principalities, whether of ancient or recent standing, ranged themselves under one of two kingdoms—either Hadrach or Arpad, whose names henceforth during the following half-century appear in the front rank whenever a coalition is formed against Assyria. Carchemish, whose independence was still respected by the fortresses erected in its neighbourhood, could make no move without exposing itself to an immediate catastrophe: Arpad, occupying a prominent position a little in front of the Afrin, on the main route leading to the Orontes, had assumed the role which Carchemish was no longer in a position to fill. Agusi became the principal centre of resistance; all battles were fought under the walls of its fortresses, and its fall involved the submission of all the country between the Euphrates and the sea, as in former times had been the case with Kinalua and Khazazu.*

* That Arpad was in Agusi is proved, among other places, by the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III., which show us from 743 to 741 the king at war with Matilu of Agusi and his suzerain Sharduris III. of Urartu.

Similar to the ascendency of Arpad over the plateau of Aleppo was that of Hadrach in the valley of the Orontes. This city had taken the position formerly occupied by Hamath, which was now possibly one of its dependencies; it owed no allegiance to Damascus, and rallied around it all the tribes of Coele-Syria, whose assistance Hadadezer, but a short while before, had claimed in his war with the foreigner. Neither Arpad, Hadrach, nor Damascus ever neglected to send the customary presents to any sovereign who had the temerity to cross the Euphrates and advance into their neighbourhood, but the necessity for this act of homage became more and more infrequent. During his reign of eighteen years Assurdan III., son and successor of Shalmaneser IV., appeared only three times beneath their walls—at Hadrach in 766 and 755, at Arpad in 750, a few months only before his death. Assyria was gradually becoming involved in difficulties, and the means necessary to the preservation of its empire were less available than formerly. Assurdan had frankly renounced all idea of attacking Urartu, but he had at least endeavoured to defend himself against his enemies on the southern and eastern frontiers; he had led his armies against Gananate (771,767), against Itua (769), and against the Medes (766), before risking an attack on Hadrach (765), but more than this he had not attempted. On two occasions in eight years (768, 764) he had preferred to abstain from offensive action, and had remained inactive in his own country. Assyria found herself in one of those crises of exhaustion which periodically laid her low after each outbreak of ambitious enterprise; she might well be compared to a man worn out by fatigue and loss of blood, who becomes breathless and needs repose as soon as he attempts the least exertion. Before long, too, the scourges of disease and civil strife combined with exhaustion in hastening her ruin. The plague had broken out in the very year of the last expedition against Hadrach (765), perhaps under the walls of that city. An eclipse of the sun occurred in 763, in the month of Sivan, and this harbinger of woe was the signal for an outbreak of revolt in the city of Assur.*

* The ideas which Orientals held on the subject of comets renders the connection between the two events very likely, if not certain.

From Assur the movement spread to Arrapkha, and wrought havoc there from 761 to 760; it then passed on to Gozan, where it was not finally extinguished till 758. The last remains of Assyrian authority in Syria vanished during this period: Assurdan, after two years' respite, endeavoured to re-establish it, and attacked successively Hadrach (755) and Arpad (754). This was his last exploit. His son Assur-nirari III. spent his short reign of eight years in helpless inaction; he lost Syria, he carried on hostilities in Namri from 749 to 748—whether against the Aramaeans or Urartians is uncertain—then relapsed into inactivity, and a popular sedition drove him finally from Calah in 746. He died some months later, without having repressed the revolt; none of his sons succeeded him, and the dynasty, having fallen into disrepute through the misfortunes of its last kings, thus came to an end; for, on the 12th of Iyyar, 742 B.C., a usurper, perhaps, the leader of the revolt at Calah, proclaimed himself king under the name of Tiglath-pileser.* The second Assyrian empire had lasted rather less than a century and a half, from Tukulti-ninip II. to Assur-nirari III.**

* Many historians have thought that Tiglath-pileser III. was of Babylonian origin; most of them, however, rightly considers that he was an Assyrian. The identity of Tiglath- pileser III. with Pulu, the Biblical Pul (2 Kings xv. 19) has been conclusively proved by the discovery of the Babylonian Chronicle, where the Babylonian reigns of Tiglath-pileser III. and his son Shalmaneser V. are inserted where the dynastic lists give Pulu and Ululai, the Poros and Eluloos of Ptolemy.

** Here is the concluding portion of the dynasty of the kings of Assyria, from Irba-ramman to Assur-nirari III.:—



In the manner in which it had accomplished its work, it resembled the Egyptian empire of eight hundred years before. The Egyptians, setting forth from the Nile valley, had overrun Syria and had at first brought it under their suzerainty, though without actually subduing it. They had invaded Amurru and Zahi, Naharaim and Mitanni, where they had pillaged, burnt, and massacred at will for years, without obtaining from these countries, which were too remote to fall naturally within their sphere of influence, more than a temporary and apparent submission; the regions in the neighbourhood of the isthmus alone had been regularly administered by the officers of Pharaoh, and when the country between Mount Seir and Lebanon seemed on the point of being organised into a real empire the invasion of the Peoples of the Sea had overthrown and brought to nought the work of three centuries. The Assyrians, under the leadership of ambitious kings, had in their turn carried their arms over the countries of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, but, like those of the Egyptians before them, their expeditions resembled rather the destructive raids of a horde in search of booty than the gradual and orderly advance of a civilised people aiming at establishing a permanent empire. Their campaigns in Cole-Syria and Palestine had enriched their own cities and spread the terror of their name throughout the Eastern world, but their supremacy had only taken firm root in the plains bordering on Mesopotamia, and just when they were preparing to extend their rule, a power had sprung up beside them, over which they had been unable to triumph: they had been obliged to withdraw behind the Euphrates, and they might reasonably have asked themselves whether, by weakening the peoples of Syria at the price of the best blood of their own nation, they had not merely laboured for the benefit of a rival power, and facilitated the rise of Urartu. Egypt, after her victory over the Peoples of the Sea, had seemed likely, for the moment, to make a fresh start on a career of conquest under the energetic influence of Ramses III., but her forces proved unequal to the task, and as soon as the master's hand ceased to urge her on, she shrank back, without a struggle, within her ancient limits, and ere long nothing remained to her of the Asiatic empire carved out by the warlike Pharaohs of the Theban dynasties. If Tiglath-pileser could show the same courage and capacity as Ramses III., he might well be equally successful, and raise his nation again to power; but time alone could prove whether Nineveh, on his death, would be able to maintain a continuous effort, or whether her new display of energy would prove merely ephemeral, and her empire be doomed to sink into irremediable weakness under the successors of her deliverer, as Egypt had done under the later Ramessides.



CHAPTER II—TIGLATH-PILESER III. AND THE ORGANISATION OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE FROM 745 TO 722 B.C.

TIGLATH-PILESER III. AND THE ORGANISATION OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE FROM 745 to 722 B.C.

FAILURE OF URARTU AND RE-CONQUEST Of SYRIA—EGYPT AGAIN UNITED UNDER ETHIOPIAN AUSPICES—PIONKHI—THE DOWNFALL OF DAMASCUS, OF BABYLON, AND OF ISRAEL.

Assyria and its neighbours at the accession of Tiglath-pileser III.: progress of the Aramaeans in the basin of the Middle Tigris—Urartu and its expansion into the north of Syria—Damascus and Israel—Vengeance of Israel on Damascus—Jeroboam II.—Civilisation of the Hebrew kingdoms, their commerce, industries, private life, and political organisation—Dawn of Hebrew literature: the two historians of Israel—The priesthood and the prophets—The prophecy of Amos at Bethel; denunciation of Israel by Hosea.

Early campaigns of Tiglath-pileser III. in Karduniash and in Media—He determines to attach Urartu in Syria: defeat of Sharduris, campaign around Arpad, and capture of that city—Homage paid by the Syrian princes, by Menahem and Rezin II—Second campaign against the Medes—Invasion of Urartu and end of its supremacy—Alliance of Pekah and Rezin against Ahaz: the war in Judaea and siege of Jerusalem.

Egypt under the kings of the XXIIth dynasty—The Theban principality, its priests, pallacides, and revolts; the XXIIIrd Tanite dynasty—Tafnakhti and the rise of the Saite family—The Egyptian kingdom, of Ethiopia: theocratic nature of its dynasty, annexation of the Thebaid by the kingdom of Napata—Pionkhi-Miamun; his generals in Middle Egypt; submission of Khmunu, of Memphis, and of Tafnalchti—Effect produced in Asia by the Ethiopian conquest.

The prophet Isaiah, his rise under Aliaz—Intervention of Tiglath-pileser III. in Hebrew affairs; the campaign of 733 B.C. against Israel—Capture of Rezin, and the downfall of Damascus—Nabunazir; the Kaldd and the close of the Babylonian dynasty; usurpation of Ukinzir—Campaign against Ukinzir; capture of Shapia and of Babylon—Tiglath-pileser ascends the throne in the last-named city under the name of Fulu (729 B.C.)—Death of Tiglath-pileser III. (727 B.C.)

Reorganisation of the Assyrian empire; provinces and feudatory states—Karduniash, Syria—Wholesale deportation of conquered races—Provincial administrators, their military and financial arrangements—Buildings erected by Tiglath-pileser at Calah—The Bit-Khilani—Foundation of feudal lordships—Belharrdn-beluzur—Shalmaneser V. and Egypt: rebellion of Hoshea, the siege of Samaria, and the prophecies of Isaiah—Sargon—Destruction of the kingdom of Israel.



CHAPTER II—TIGLATH-PILESER III. AND THE ORGANISATION OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE FROM 745 TO 722 B.C.

Failure of Urartu and re-conquest of Syria—Egypt again united under Ethiopian auspices—Pionkhi—The downfall of Damascus, of Babylon, and of Israel.

* Drawn by Boudier, from Layard. The vignette, also by Boudier, represents a bronze statuette of Queen Karomama, now in the Louvre.

Events proved that, in this period, at any rate, the decadence of Assyria was not due to any exhaustion of the race or impoverishment of the country, but was mainly owing to the incapacity of its kings and the lack of energy displayed by their generals. If Menuas and Argistis had again and again triumphed over the Assyrians during half a century, it was not because their bands of raw recruits were superior to the tried veterans of Ramman-nirari in either discipline or courage. The Assyrian troops had lost none of their former valour, and their muster-roll showed no trace of diminution, but their leaders had lost the power of handling their men after the vigorous fashion of their predecessors, and showed less foresight and tenacity in conducting their campaigns. Although decimated and driven from fortress to fortress, and from province to province, hampered by the rebellions it was called upon to suppress, and distracted by civil discord, the Assyrian army still remained a strong and efficient force, ever ready to make its full power felt the moment it realised that it was being led by a sovereign capable of employing its good qualities to advantage. Tiglath-pileser had, doubtless, held a military command before ascending the throne, and had succeeded in winning the confidence of his men: as soon as he had assumed the leadership they regained their former prestige, and restored to their country that supremacy which its last three rulers had failed to maintain.*

* The official documents dealing with the history of Tiglath-pileser III. have been seriously mutilated, and there is on several points some difference of opinion among historians as to the proper order in which the fragments ought to be placed, and, consequently, as to the true sequence of the various campaigns. The principal documents are as follows: (1) The Annals in the Central Hall of the palace of Shalmaneser III. at Nimroud, partly defaced by Esarhaddon, and carried off to serve as materials for the south-western palace, whence they were rescued by Layard, and brought in fragments to the British Museum. (2) The Tablets, K. 3571 and D. T. 3, in the British Museum. (3) The Slabs of Nimrud, discovered by Layard and G. Smith.

The empire still included the original patrimony of Assur and its ancient colonies on the Upper Tigris, the districts of Mesopotamia won from the Aramaeans at various epochs, the cities of Khabur, Khindanu, Laqi, and Tebabni, and that portion of Bit-Adini which lay to the left of the Euphrates. It thus formed a compact mass capable of successfully resisting the fiercest attacks; but the buffer provinces which Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmaneser III. had grouped round their own immediate domains on the borders of Namri, of Nairi, of Melitene, and of Syria had either resumed their independence, or else had thrown in their lot with the states against which they had been intended to watch. The Aramaean tribes never let slip an opportunity of encroaching on the southern frontier. So far, the migratory instinct which had brought them from the Arabian desert to the swamps of the Persian Gulf had met with no check. Those who first reached its shores became the founders of that nation of the Kalda which had, perhaps, already furnished Babylon with one of its dynasties; others had soon after followed in their footsteps, and passing beyond the Kalda settlement, had gradually made their way along the canals which connect the Euphrates with the Tigris till they had penetrated to the lowlands of the Uknu. Towards the middle of the eighth century B.C. they wedged themselves in between Elam and Karduniash, forming so many buffer states of varying size and influence. They extended from north to south along both banks of the Tigris, their different tribes being known as the Gambulu, the Puqudu, the Litau, the Damunu, the Ruua, the Khindaru, the Labdudu, the Harilu, and the Rubuu;* the Itua, who formed the vanguard, reached the valleys of the Turnat during the reign of Kamman-nirari III. They were defeated in 791 B.C., but obstinately renewed hostilities in 783, 782, 777, and 769; favoured by circumstances, they ended by forcing the cordon of Assyrian outposts, and by the time of Assur-nirari had secured a footing on the Lower Zab. Close by, to the east of them, lay Namri and Media, both at that time in a state of absolute anarchy. The invasions of Menuas and of Argistis had entirely laid waste the country, and Sharduris III., the king who succeeded Argistis, had done nothing towards permanently incorporating them with Urartu.** Sharduris, while still heir-apparent to the throne, had been appointed by his father governor of the recently annexed territory belonging to Etius and the Mannai:*** he made Lununis his headquarters, and set himself to subdue the barbarians who had settled between the Kur and the Araxes. When he succeeded to the throne, about 760 B.C., the enjoyment of supreme power in no way lessened his activity. On the contrary, he at once fixed upon the sort of wide isthmus which separates the Araxes from Lake Urumiah, as the goal of his incursions, and overran the territory of the Babilu; there he carried by storm three royal castles, twenty-three cities, and sixty villages; he then fell back upon Etius, passing through Dakis, Edias, and Urmes on his way, and brought back with him 12,735 children, 46,600 women, 12,000 men capable of bearing arms, 23,335 oxen, 58,100 sheep, and 2,500 horses; these figures give some idea of the importance of his victories and the wealth of the conquered territory.

* The list of Aramaean tribes, and the positions occupied by them towards the middle of the eighth century, have been given us by Tiglath-pileser III. himself.

** Tiglath-pileser did not encounter any Urartian forces in these regions, as would almost certainly have been the case had these countries remained subject to Urartu from the invasions of Menuas and Argistis onwards.

*** Argistis tells us in the Annals that he had made his son satrap over the provinces won from the Mannai and Etius: though his name is not mentioned, Sayce believes this son must have been Sharduris.

So far as we can learn, he does not seem to have attacked Khubushkia,* nor to have entered into open rivalry with Assyria; even under the rule of Assur-nirari III. Assyria showed a bold enough front to deter any enemy from disturbing her except when forced to do so. Sharduris merely strove to recover those portions of his inheritance to which Assyria attached but little value, and his inscriptions tell us of more than one campaign waged by him with this object against the mountaineers of Melitene, about the year 758. He captured most of their citadels, one after another: Dhumeskis, Zapsas, fourteen royal castles, and a hundred towns, including Milid itself, where King Khitaruadas held his court.**

* It is evident from the account of the campaigns that Tiglath-pileser occupied Khubushkia from the very commencement of his reign; we must therefore assume that the invasions of Argistis had produced only transient effects.

** These campaigns must have preceded the descent into Syria, and I believe this latter to have been anterior to the expedition of Assur-nirari against Arpad in 754 B.C. Assur-nirari probably tried to reconquer the tribes who had just become subject to Sharduris. The descent of this latter into Syria probably took place about 756 or 755 B.C., and his wars against Melitene about 758 to 757 B.C.

At this point two courses lay open before him. He could either continue his march westwards, and, penetrating into Asia Minor, fall upon the wealthy and industrious races who led a prosperous existence between the Halys and the Sangarios, such as the Tabal, the Chalybes, and the Phrygians, or he could turn southwards.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Alfred Boissier.

Deterred, apparently, by the dreary and monotonous aspect of the Asianic steppes, he chose the latter course; he crossed Mount Taurus, descended into Northern Syria about 756, and forced the Khati to swear allegiance to him. Their inveterate hatred of the Assyrians led the Bit-Agusi to accept without much reluctance the supremacy of the only power which had shown itself capable of withstanding their triumphant progress. Arpad became for several years an unfailing support to Urartu and the basis on which its rule in Syria rested. Assur-nirari had, as we know, at first sought to recover it, but his attempt to do so in 754 B.C. was unsuccessful, and merely served to demonstrate his own weakness: ten years later, Carchemish, Grurgum, Kummukh, Samalla, Unki, Kui—in a word, all the Aramaeans and the Khati between the Euphrates and the sea had followed in the steps of the Agusi, and had acknowledged the supremacy of Sharduris.*

* The minimum extent of the dominions of Sharduris in Syria may be deduced from the list of the allies assigned to him by Tiglath-pileser in 743 in the Annals.

This prince must now haye been sorely tempted to adopt, on his own account, the policy of the Ninevite monarchs, and push on in the direction of Hamath, Damascus, and the Phoenician seaboard, towards those countries of Israel and Judah which were nearly coterminous with far-off Egypt. The rapidity of the victories which he had just succeeded in winning at the foot of Mount Taurus and Mount Amanus must have seemed a happy omen of what awaited his enterprise in the valleys of the Orontes and the Jordan. Although the races of southern and central Syria had suffered less than those of the north from the ambition of the Ninevite kings, they had, none the less, been sorely tried during the previous century; and it might be questioned whether they had derived courage from the humiliation of Assyria, or still remained in so feeble a state as to present an easy prey to the first invader.

The defeat inflicted on Mari by Ramman-nirari in 803 had done but little harm to the prestige of Damascus. The influence exercised by this state from the sources of the Litany to the brook of Egypt * was based on so solid a foundation that no temporary reverse had power to weaken it.

* [Not the Nile, but the Wady el Arish, the frontier between Southern Syria and Egypt. Cf. Josh. xv. 47; 2 Kings xxiv. 7, called "river" of Egypt in the A.V.—Tr.]

Had the Assyrian monarch thrown himself more seriously into the enterprise, and reappeared before the ramparts of the capital in the following year, refusing to leave it till he had annihilated its armies and rased its walls to the ground, then, no doubt, Israel, Judah, the Philistines, Edom, and Ammon, seeing it fully occupied in its own defence, might have forgotten the ruthless severity of Hazael, and have plucked up sufficient courage to struggle against the Damascene yoke; as it was, Bamman-nirari did not return, and the princes who had, perhaps, for the moment, regarded him as a possible deliverer, did not venture on any concerted action. Joash, King of Judah, and Jehoahaz, King of Israel, continued to pay tribute till both their deaths, within a year of each other, Jehoahaz in 797 B.C., and Joash in 796, the first in his bed, the second by the hand of an assassin.*

* Kings xii. 20, 21, xiii. 9; cf. 2 Citron, xxiv. 22-26, where the death of Joash is mentioned as one of the consequences of the Syrian invasion, and as a punishment for his crime in killing the sons of Jehoiada.

Their children, Jehoash in Israel, Amaziah in Judah, were, at first, like their parents, merely the instruments of Damascus; but before long, the conditions being favourable, they shook off their apathy and initiated a more vigorous policy, each in his own kingdom. Mari had been succeeded by a certain Ben-hadad, also a son of Hazael,* and possibly this change of kings was accompanied by one of those revolutions which had done so much to weaken Damascus: Jehoash rebelled and defeated Ben-hadad near Aphek and in three subsequent engagements, but he failed to make his nation completely independent, and the territory beyond Jordan still remained in the hands of the Syrians.** We are told that before embarking on this venture he went to consult the aged Elisha, then on his deathbed. He wept to see him in this extremity, and bending over him, cried out, "My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof!" The prophet bade him take bow and arrows and shoot from the window toward the East. The king did so, and Elisha said, "The Lord's arrow of victory *** over Syria; for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek till thou have consumed them."

* 2 Kings xiii. 24, 25. Winckler is of opinion that Mari and Ben-hadad, son of Hazael, were one and the same person.

** 2 Kings xiii. 25, The term "saviour" in 2 Kings xiii. 5 is generally taken as referring to Joash: Winckler, however, prefers to apply it to the King of Assyria. The biblical text does not expressly state that Joash failed to win back the districts of Gilead from the Syrians, but affirms that he took from them the cities which Hazael "had taken out of the hand of Jehoahaz, his father." Ramah of Gilead and the cities previously annexed by Jehoahaz must, therefore, have remained in the hands of Ben-hadad.

*** [Heb. "salvation;" A.V. "deliverance."—Tr.]

Then he went on: "Take the arrows," and the king took them; then he said, "Smite upon the ground," and the king smote thrice and stayed. And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, "Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it, whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice."* Amaziah, on his side, had routed the Edomites in the Valley of Salt, one of David's former battle-fields, and had captured their capital, Sela.** Elated by his success, he believed himself strong enough to break the tie of vassalage which bound him to Israel, and sent a challenge to Jehoash in Samaria. The latter, surprised at his audacity, replied in a parable, "The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife." But "there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon and trode down the thistle. Thou hast indeed smitten Edom, and thine heart hath lifted thee up: glory thereof and abide at home; for why shouldest thou meddle to thy hurt that thou shouldest fall, even thou, and Judah with thee?" They met near Beth-shemesh, on the border of the Philistine lowlands. Amaziah was worsted in the engagement, and fell into the power of his rival. Jehoash entered Jerusalem and dismantled its walls for a space of four hundred cubits, "from the gate of Ephraim unto the corner gate;" he pillaged the Temple, as though it had been the abode, not of Jahveh, but of some pagan deity, insisted on receiving hostages before he would release his prisoner, and returned to Samaria, where he soon after died (781 B.C.).***