* This was so in the case of Tiglath-pileser III.'s immediate successor, Shalmaneser V., of Esarhaddon, and of Assur-bani-pal; Shalmaneser was known at Babylon by the name of Ululai, Assur-bani-pal by that of Kanda-lanu.

This combination, while gratifying to the ambition of its rulers, was, perhaps, more a source of loss than of gain to Assyria itself. It is true that the power of Karduniash had decreased under the previous dynasty, but it had still been strong enough to hold back the Aramaeans of the Persian Gulf on one side, and the Elamite hordes on the other. It lay like a broad barrier between these barbarians and the cities of the Middle Tigris; when an unusually vigorous attack compelled it to give way at some point, it appealed to Nineveh for help, and an Assyrian army, entering the country at the fords of the Zab, hastened to drive back the aggressors to the place from which they had set out. When, however, the kings of Assyria had become kings of Babylon as well, the situation was altered. Several branches of the Kalda had hitherto held possession of the city, and still possessed representatives and allies among the other tribes, especially among the Bit-Yakin, who believed themselves entitled to reassert their supremacy within in. The Elamite princes, on their part, accustomed to descend at will into the plains that lay between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and to enrich themselves by frequent raids, could not make up their minds to change the habits of centuries, until they had at least crossed swords with the new despot, and put his mettle to the test. The Ninevite King of Babylon was thus in duty bound to protect his subjects against the same enemies that had ceaselessly harassed his native-born predecessors, and as the unaided resources of Karduniash no longer enabled him to do so effectively, he was, naturally, obliged to fall back on the forces at his disposal as King of Assyria. Henceforward it was no longer the Babylonian army that protected Nineveh, but rather that of Nineveh which had to protect Babylon, and to encounter, almost every year, foes whom in former days it had met only at rare intervals, and then merely when it chose to intervene in their affairs. Where the Assyrian sovereigns had gained a kingdom for themselves and their posterity, Assyria itself found little else but fresh battle-fields and formidable adversaries, in the effort to overcome whom its energies were all but exhausted. In Syria and on the shores of the Mediterranean, Tiglath-pileser had nations of less stubborn vitality to deal with, nor was he bound by the traditions of a common past to show equal respect to their prejudices. Arpad, Unki, the Bekaa, Damascus, and Gilead were all consecutively swallowed up by Assyria, but, the work of absorption once completed, difficulties were encountered which now had to be met for the first time. The subordinate to whom he entrusted the task of governing these districts* had one or two Assyrian regiments assigned him as his body-guard,** and these exercised the same ascendency over the natives as the Egyptian archers had done in days gone by: it was felt that they had the whole might of Assyria behind them, and the mere fact of their presence in the midst of the conquered country was, as a rule, sufficient to guarantee the safety of the Assyrian governor and ensure obedience to his commands.

* The governor was called Shaknu = "he whom the king has established in his place," and pekhu = "the pilot," "the manager," whence pikhatu = "a district," and bel-pikhati = "the master of a district." It seems that the shaknu was of higher rank than the bel-pikhati, and often had the latter under his command.

** Thus Assur-nazir-pal selected the horsemen and other soldiers who were to form the body-guard of the governor of Parzindu.

This body-guard was never a very numerous one, for the army would have melted away in the course of a campaign or two, had it been necessary, after each fresh conquest, to detach from it a sufficient force to guard against rebellion. It was strengthened, it is true, by auxiliaries enlisted on the spot, and the tributary chiefs included in the provincial district were expected to furnish a reasonable quota of men in case of need;* but the loyalty of all these people was, at the best, somewhat doubtful, and in the event of their proving untrustworthy at a critical moment, the little band of Assyrian horse and foot would be left to deal with the revolt unaided until such time as the king could come and relieve them.

* In a despatch from Belibni to Assur-bani-pal we find Aramaeans from the Persian Gulf submitting to the authority of an Assyrian officer, and fighting in Elam side by side with his troops. Again, under Assur-bani-pal, an army sent to repress a revolt on the part of Kedar and the Nabatseans included contingents from Ammon, Moab, and Edom, together with the Assyrian garrisons of the Hauran and Zobah.

The distance between the banks of the Jordan or Abana and those of the Tigris was a long one, and in nearly every instance it would have been a question of months before help could arrive. Meanwhile, Egypt was at hand, jealous of her rival, who was thus encroaching on territory which had till lately been regarded as her exclusive sphere of influence, and vaguely apprehensive of the fate which might be in store for her if some Assyrian army, spurred by the lust of conquest, were to cross the desert and bear down upon the eastern frontiers of the Delta. Distrustful of her own powers, and unwilling to assume a directly offensive attitude, she did all she could to foment continual disturbances among the Hebrews and Phoenicians, as well as in Philistia and Aram; she carried on secret intrigues with the independent princes, and held out tempting hopes of speedy intervention before the eyes of their peoples; her influence could readily be traced in every seditious movement. The handful of men assigned to the governors of the earlier provinces close to the capital would have been of little avail against perils of this kind. Though Tiglath-pileser added colony to colony in the distant regions annexed by him, he organised them on a different plan from that which had prevailed before his time. His predecessors had usually sent Assyrians to these colonies, and filled the villages vacated by them with families taken from the conquered region: a transfer of inhabitants was made, for instance, from Nairi or from Media into Assyria, and vice versa. By following this system, Tiglath-pileser would soon have scattered his whole people over the dependencies of his empire, and have found his hereditary states peopled by a motley and incoherent collection of aliens; he therefore left his Assyrians for the most part at home, and only effected exchanges between captives. In his earlier campaigns he brought back with him, on one occasion, 65,000 prisoners from the table-land of Iran, in order to distribute them over a province which he was organising on the banks of the Turnat and the Zab: he levied contributions of this kind without mercy from all the states that he conquered from year to year, and dispersed the captives thus obtained over the length and breadth of his empire; he transplanted the Aramaeans of the Mesopotamian deserts, and the Kalda to the slopes of Mount Amanus or the banks of the Orontes, the Patinians and Hamathaeans to Ulluba, the inhabitants of Damascus to Kir or to the borders of Elam,* and the Israelites to some place in Assyria.**

* 2 Kings xvi. 9.

** 2 Kings xv. 29.

He allowed them to take with them their wives and their children, their herds, their chattels, their gods, and even their money. Drafted into the towns and country districts in batches sufficiently numerous to be self-supporting, but yet not large enough to allow of their at once re-establishing themselves as a distinct nation in their new home, they seem to have formed, even in the midst of the most turbulent provinces, settlements of colonists who lived unaffected by any native influence or resentment. The aborigines hated them because of their religion, their customs, their clothing, and their language; in their eyes they were mere interlopers, who occupied the property of relations or fellow-countrymen who had fallen in battle or had been spirited away to the other end of the world. And even when, after many years, the native owners of the soil had become familiarised with them, this mutual antipathy had struck such deep root in their minds that any understanding between the natives and the descendants of the immigrants was quite out of the question: what had been formerly a vast kingdom, occupied by a single homogeneous race, actuated by a common patriotic spirit, became for many a year a region capriciously subdivided and torn by the dissensions of a number of paltry antagonistic communities. The colonists, exposed to the same hatreds as the original Assyrian conquerors, soon forgot to look upon the latter as the oppressors of all, and, allowing their present grudge to efface the memory of past injuries, did not hesitate to make common cause with them. In time of peace, the governor did his best to protect them against molestation on the part of the natives, and in return for this they rallied round him whenever the latter threatened to get out of hand, and helped him to stifle the revolt or hold it in check until the arrival of reinforcements. Thanks to their help, the empire was consolidated and maintained without too many violent outbreaks in regions far removed from the capital and beyond the immediate reach of the sovereign.* We possess very few details with regard to the administration of these prefects.**

* This was the history of the only one of those colonies whose fate is known to us—that founded at Samaria by Sargon and his successors.

** The texts contain a certain number of names of offices, the precise nature of which it is not easy to ascertain, e.g. the Khazanu, the Labuttu, and others. One of them, apparently, should be read Shuparshak, and identical with one of the titles mentioned in Ezra (v. 6, vi. 6) as being in existence during the Persian epoch.

The various functionaries, governors of towns, tax-collectors, heads of stations, and officers whose duty it was to patrol the roads and look after the safety of merchants, were, for the most part, selected from among natives who had thrown in their lot with Assyria, and probably few Assyrians were to be found outside the more turbulent cities and important fortresses. The kings and chiefs whose territory was attached to a given province, either took their instructions direct from Nineveh, or were sometimes placed under the control of a resident, or kipu, with some sort of escort at his back, who kept watch over their movements and reported them to the suzerain, and saw that the tribute was paid regularly, and that the military service provided for in the treaties was duly rendered. Governors and residents alike kept up a constant correspondence with the court, and such of their letters as have chanced to come down to us show what a minute account of even the most trifling occurrences was required of them by the central authorities. They were not only obliged to report any fluctuation in the temper or attitude of their subordinates, or any intrigues that were being entered into across the frontier; they had also to record the transfer of troops, the return of fugitives, the pursuit of deserters, any chance scuffle between soldiers and natives, as well as the punishment inflicted on the rebellious, the appearance of a portent in the heavens, or omens noticed by the augurs. There were plenty of envious or officious tongues among their followers to report to headquarters the slightest failure of duty, and to draw attention to their negligence. Moreover, it seems certain that the object of thus compelling them to refer to the king at every turn, was not merely in order to keep him informed of all that took place in his dependencies, but also to lay bare the daily life of his prefects before his eyes. The latter were entrusted with the command of seasoned troops; they had considerable sums of money passing through their hands, and were often obliged to take prompt decisions and enter into diplomatic or military transactions on their own responsibility; in short, most of them, at any rate, who were stationed at the furthest confines of the empire were really kings in all but title, insignia, and birth. There was always the danger lest some among them should be tempted to reassert, in their own interest, the independence of the countries under their rule, and seek to found a dynasty in their midst. The strict supervision maintained over these governors generally nipped any ambition of this kind in the bud; in some cases, however, it created the very danger it was intended to prevent. If a governor who had been recalled to Nineveh or Calah in order to explain his conduct failed to clear himself completely, he at once fell into disgrace; and disgrace in Assyria, as in other countries of the East, meant, nine times out of ten, confiscation of property, mutilation and lifelong imprisonment, or death in its most hideous form. He would, therefore, think twice before quitting his post, and if he had any reason to suppose himself suspected, or viewed with disfavour in high quarters, he would be in no hurry to obey a summons to the capital. A revolt was almost certain to be crushed without fail, and offered merely a very precarious chance of escape, but the governor was seldom likely to hesitate between almost certain condemnation and the vague possibility of a successful rising; in such a case, therefore, he staked everything on a single throw.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Mansell.

The system was a defective on, in that it exposed to strong temptation the very functionaries whose loyalty was most essential to the proper working of the administration, but its dangers were out weighed by such important advantages that we cannot but regard it as a very real improvement on the haphazard methods of the past. In the first place, it opened up a larger recruiting-ground for the army, and, in a measure, guaranteed it against that premature exhaustion which had already led more than once to an eclipse of the Assyrian power. It may be that the pick of these provincial troops were, preferably, told off for police duties, or for the defence of the districts in which they were levied, and that they seldom left it except to do battle in the adjacent territory;* but, even with these limitations they were none the less of inestimable value, since they relieved the main army of Assyria from garrison duties in a hundred scattered localities, and allowed the king to concentrate it almost in its entirety about his own person, and to direct it en masse upon those points where he wished to strike a decisive blow.

* Thus, in the reign of Assur-bani-pal, we find the militia of the governor of Uruk marching to battle against the Gambulu.

On the other hand, the finances of the kingdom were put on a more stable and systematic basis. For nearly the whole of the two previous centuries, during which Assyria had resumed its victorious career, the treasury had been filled to some extent by taxes in kind or in money, and by various dues claimed from the hereditary kingdom and its few immediate dependencies, but mainly by booty and by tribute levied after each campaign from the peoples who had been conquered or had voluntarily submitted to Assyrian rule. The result was a budget which fluctuated greatly, since all forays were not equally lucrative, and the new dependencies proved so refractory at the idea of perpetual tribute, that frequent expeditions were necessary in order to persuade them to pay their dues. We do not know how Tiglath-pileser III. organised the finances of his provinces, but certain facts recorded here and there in the texts show that he must have drawn very considerable amounts from them. We notice that twenty or thirty years after his time, Carchemish was assessed at a hundred talents, Arpad and Kui at thirty each, Megiddo and Manzuatu at fifteen, though the purposes to which these sums were applied is not specified.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bronze bas-reliefs on the gates of Balawat. The breed here represented seems to have been common in Urartu, as well as in Cappadocia and Northern Syria.

On the other hand, we know the precise object to which the contributions of several other cities were assigned; as, for instance, so much for the maintenance of the throne in the palace, or for the divans of the ladies of the harem; so much for linen garments, for dresses, and for veils; twenty talents from Nineveh for the armaments of the fleet, and ten from the same city for firewood. Certain provinces were expected to maintain the stud-farms, and their contributions of horses were specially valuable, now that cavalry played almost as important a part as infantry in military operations. The most highly prized animals came, perhaps, from Asia Minor; the nations of Mount Taurus, who had supplied chargers to Israel and Egypt five centuries earlier, now furnished war-horses to the squadrons of Nineveh. The breed was small, but robust, inured to fatigue and hard usage, and in every way similar to that raised in these countries at the present day. In war, horses formed a very considerable proportion of the booty taken; in time of peace, they were used as part of the payment of the yearly tribute, and a brisk trade in them was carried on with Mesopotamia.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. Alfred Boissier.

After the king had deducted from his receipts enough to provide amply for the wants of his family and court, the salaries of the various functionaries and officials, the pay and equipment of his army, the maintenance and construction of palaces and fortresses, he had still sufficient left over to form an enormous reserve fund on which he and his successors might draw in the event of their ordinary sources of income being depleted by a series of repeated reverses.

Tiglath-pileser thus impressed upon Assyria the character by which it was known during the most splendid century of its history, and the organisation which he devised for it was so admirably adapted to the Oriental genius that it survived the fall of Nineveh, and served as a model for every empire-maker down to the close of the Macedonian era and even beyond it.



Reproduced by Faucher-Gudin, from the restoration published by Luschan.

The wealth of the country grew rapidly, owing to the influx of capital and of foreign population; in the intervals between their campaigns its rulers set to work to remove all traces of the ruins which had been allowed to accumulate during the last forty years. The king had built himself a splendid palace at Calah, close to the monuments of Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmaneser III., and its terraces and walls overhung the waters of the Tigris. The main entrance consisted of a Bit-khilani, one of those porticoes, flanked by towers and supported by columns or pillars, often found in Syrian towns, the fashion for which was now beginning to spread to Western Asia.*

* The precise nature of the edifices referred to in the inscriptions under the name of Bit-khilani is still a matter of controversy. It has been identified with the pillared hall, or audience-chamber, such as we find in Sargon's palace at Khorsabad, and with edifices or portions of edifices which varied according to the period, but which were ornamented with columns. It seems clear, however, that it was used of the whole series of chambers and buildings which formed the monumental gates of Assyrian palaces, something analogous to the Migdol of Ramses III. at Medinet-Habu, and more especially to the gates at Zinjirli.

Those discovered at Zinjirli afford fine examples of the arrangements adopted in buildings of this kind; the lower part of the walls was covered with bas-reliefs, figures of gods and men, soldiers mounted or on foot, victims and fantastic animal shapes; the columns, where there were any, rested on the back of a sphinx or on a pair of griffins of a type which shows a curious mixture of Egyptian and Semitic influences.



Drawn by Boudier, from a sketch published by Luschan.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph published by Luschan.

The wood-work of the Ninevite Bit-khilani was of cedar from Mount Amanus, the door-frames and fittings were of various rare woods, inlaid with ivory and metal. The entrance was guarded by the usual colossal figures, and the walls of the state reception-rooms were covered with slabs of alabaster; on these, in accordance with the usual custom,* were carved scenes from the royal wars, with explanatory inscriptions. The palace was subsequently dismantled, its pictures defaced and its inscriptions obliterated,** to mark the hatred felt by later generations towards the hero whom they were pleased to regard as a usurper; we can only partially succeed in deciphering his annals by the help of the fragmentary sentences which have escaped the fury of the destroyer.

* The building of Tiglath-pileser's palace is described in the Nimroud Inscription. It stood near the centre of the platform of Nimroud.

** The materials were utilised by Esarhaddon, but it does not necessarily follow that the palace was dismantled by that monarch; this was probably done by Sargon or by Sennacherib.

The cities and fortresses which he raised throughout the length and breadth of Assyria proper and its more recently acquired provinces have similarly disappeared; we can only conjecture that the nobles of his court, fired by his example, must have built and richly endowed more than one city on their hereditary estates, or in the territories under their rule. Bel-harran-beluzur, the marshal of the palace, who twice gave his name to years of the king's reign, viz. in 741 and 727 B.C., possessed, it would seem, an important fief a little to the north of Assur, near the banks of the Tharthar, on the site of the present Tel-Abta. The district was badly cultivated, and little better than a wilderness; by express order of the celestial deities—Marduk, Nabu, Shamash, Sin, and the two Ishtars—he dug the foundations of a city which he called Dur-Bel-harran-beluzur. The description he gives of it affords conclusive evidence of the power of the great nobles, and shows how nearly they approached, by their wealth and hereditary privileges, to the kingly rank. He erected, we are told, a ziggurat on a raised terrace, in which he placed his gods in true royal fashion; he assigned slaves, landed property, and a yearly income to their priests, in order that worship might be paid to them in perpetuity; he granted sanctuary to all freemen who settled within the walls or in the environs, exemption from forced labour, and the right to tap a water-course and construct a canal. A decree of foundation was set up in the temple in memory of Bel-harran-beluzur, precisely as if he were a crowned king. It is a stele of common grey stone with a circular top. The dedicator stands erect against the background of the carving, bare-foot and bare-headed, his face cleanshaven, dressed in a long robe embroidered in a chessboard pattern, and with a tunic pleated in horizontal rows; his right elbow is supported by the left hand, while the right is raised to a level with his eyes, his fist is clenched, and the thumb inserted between the first and second fingers in the customary gesture of adoration.



Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph published by Father Scheil.

What the provost of the palace had done on his land, the other barons in all probability did on theirs; most of the departments which had fallen away and languished during the disturbances at the close of the previous dynasty, took a new lease of life under their protection. Private documents—which increase in number as the century draws to an end—contracts, official reports, and letters of scribes, all give us the impression of a wealthy and industrious country, stirred by the most intense activity, and in the enjoyment of unexampled prosperity. The excellent administration of Tiglath-pileser and his nobles had paved the way for this sudden improvement, and had helped to develop it, and when Shalmaneser V. succeeded his father on the throne it continued unchecked.* The new-comer made no changes in the system of government which had been so ably inaugurated. He still kept Assyria separate from Karduniash; his Babylonian subjects, faithful to ancient custom, soon devised a nickname for him, that of Ululai, as though seeking to persuade themselves that they had a king who belonged to them alone; and it is under this name that their annalists have inscribed him next to Pulu in the list of their dynasties.**



His reign was, on the whole, a calm and peaceful one; the Kalda, the Medes, Urartu, and the races of Mount Taurus remained quiet, or, at any rate, such disorders as may have arisen among them were of too trifling a nature to be deemed worthy of notice in the records of the time. Syria alone was disturbed, and several of its independent states took advantage of the change of rulers to endeavour to shake off the authority of Assyria.

* It was, for a long time, an open question with the earlier Assyriologists whether or not Shalmaneser and Sargon were different names for one and the same monarch. As for monuments, we possess only one attributed to Shalmaneser, a weight in the form of a lion, discovered by Layard at Nimroud, in the north-west palace. The length of his reign, and the scanty details we possess concerning it, have been learnt from the Eponym Canon and Pinches' Babylonian Chronicle, and also from the Hebrew texts (2 Kings xvii. 3- 6; xviii. 9-12).

** The identity of Ululai and Shalmaneser V., though still questioned by Oppert, has been proved by the comparison of Babylonian records, in some of which the names Pulu and Ululai occur in positions exactly corresponding with those occupied, in others, by Tiglath-pileser and Shalmaneser. The name Ululai was given to the king because he was born in the month of Ulul; in Pinches' list we find a gloss, "Dynasty of Tinu," which probably indicates the Assyrian town in which Tiglath-pileser III. and his son were born.

Egypt continued to give them secret encouragement in these tactics, though its own internal dissensions prevented it from offering any effective aid. The Tanite dynasty was in its death-throes. Psamuti, the last of its kings, exercised a dubious sovereignty over but a few of the nomes on the Arabian frontier.*

* He is the Psammous mentioned by Manetho. The cartouches attributed to him by Lepsius really belong to the Psammuthis of the XXIXth dynasty. It is possible that one of the marks found at Karnak indicating the level of the Nile belong to the reign of this monarch.

His neighbours the Saites were gradually gaining the upper hand in the Delta and in the fiefs of middle Egypt, at first under Tafnakhti, and then, after his death, under his son Bukunirinif, Bocchoris of the Greek historians. They held supremacy over several personages who, like themselves, claimed the title and rank of Pharaoh; amongst others, over a certain Rudamanu Miamun, son of Osorkon: their power did not, however, extend beyond Siut, near the former frontier of the Theban kingdom. The withdrawal of Pionkhi-Miamun, and his subsequent death, had not disturbed the Ethiopian rule in the southern half of Egypt, though it somewhat altered its character. While an unknown Ethiopian king filled the place of the conquerer at Napata, another Ethiopian, named Kashta, made his way to the throne in Thebes.



It is possible that he was a son of Pionkhi, and may have been placed in supreme power by his father when the latter reinstated the city in its place as capital. With all their partiality for real or supposed descendants of the Ramesside dynasty, the Thebans were, before all things, proud of their former greatness, and eagerly hoped to regain it without delay. When, therefore, they accepted this Kushite king who, to their eyes, represented the only family possessed of a legitimate claim to the throne, it was mainly because they counted on him to restore them to their former place among the cities of Egypt. They must have been cruelly disappointed when he left them for the Sacred Mountain. His invasion, far from reviving their prosperity, merely served to ratify the suppression of that pontificate of Amon-Ra which was the last remaining evidence of their past splendour.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Prisse d'Avennes.

All hope of re-establishing it had now to be abandoned, since the sovereign who had come to them from Napata was himself by birth and hereditary privelege and hereditary sole priest of Anion: in his absence the actual head of the Theban religion could lay claim only to an inferior office, and indeed, even then, the only reason for accepting a second prophet was that he might direct the worship of the temple at Karnak. The force of circumstances compelled the Ethiopians to countenance in the Thebaid what their Tanite or Bubastite predecessors had been obliged to tolerate at Hermopolis, Heracleopolis, Sais, and in many another lesser city; they turned it into a feudatory kingdom, and gave it a ruler who, like Auiti, half a century earlier, had the right to use the cartouches. Once installed, Kashta employed the usual methods to secure his seat on the throne, one of the first being a marriage alliance. The disappearance of the high priests had naturally increased the importance of the princesses consecrated to the service of Amon. From henceforward they were the sole visible intermediaries between the god and his people, the privileged guardians of his body and his double, and competent to perpetuate the line of the solar kings. The Theban appanage constituted their dowry, and even if their sex prevented them from discharging all those civil, military, and religious duties required by their position, no one else had the right to do so on their behalf, unless he was expressly chosen by them for the purpose. When once married they deputed their husbands to act for them; so long as they remained either single or widows, some exalted personage, the prophet of Amon or Montu, the ruler of Thebes, or the administrator of the Said, managed their houses and fiefs for them with such show of authority that strangers were at times deceived, and took him for the reigning monarch of the country.*

* Thus Harua, in the time of Amenertas, was prince and chief over the servants of the "Divine Worshipper." Mantumihait, in the time of Taharqa and of Tanuatamanu, was ruler of Thebes, and fourth prophet of Amon, and it is he who is described in the Assyrian monuments as King of Thebes.

The Pharaohs had, therefore, a stronger incentive than ever to secure exclusive possession of these women, and if they could not get all of them safely housed in their harems, they endeavoured, at any rate, to reserve for themselves the chief among them, who by purity of descent or seniority in age had attained the grade of Divine Worshipper. Kashta married a certain Shapenuapit, daughter of Osorkon III. and a Theban pallacide;* it is uncertain whether he eventually became king over Ethiopia and the Sudan or not. So far, we have no proof that he did, but it seems quite possible when we remember that one of his children, Shabaku (Sabaco), subsequently occupied the throne of Napata in addition to that of Thebes. Kashta does not appear to have possessed sufficient energy to prevent the Delta and its nomes from repudiating the Ethiopian supremacy. The Saites, under Tafnakhti or Bocchoris, soon got the upper hand, and it was to them that the Syrian vassals of Nineveh looked for aid, when death removed the conqueror who had trampled them so ruthlessly underfoot. Ever since the fall of Arpad, Hadrach, and Damascus, Shabarain, a town situated somewhere in the valley of the Orontes or of the Upper Litany,** and hitherto but little known, had served as a rallying-point for the disaffected Aramaean tribes: on the accession of Shalmaneser V. it ventured to rebel, probably in 727 B.C., but was overthrown and destroyed, its inhabitants being led away captive.

* It may be that, in accordance with a custom which obtained during the generations that followed, and which possibly originated about this period, this daughter of Osorkon III. was only the adoptive mother of Amenertas.

** Shabarain was originally confounded with Samaria by the early commentators on the Babylonian Chronicle. Halevy, very happily, referred it to the biblical Sepharvaim, a place always mentioned in connection with Hamath and Arpad (2 Kings xvii. 24, 31; xviii. 34; xix. 13: cf. Isa. xxxvi. 19; xxxvii. 13), and to the Sibraim of Ezekiel (xlvii. 16), called in the Septuagint Samareim. Its identification with Samaria has, since then, been generally rejected, and its connection with Sibraim admitted. Sibraim (or Sepharvaim, or Samareim) has been located at Shomeriyeh, to the east of the Bahr-Kades, and south of Hamath.

This achievement proved, beyond the possibility of doubt, that in spite of their change of rulers the vengeance of the Assyrians was as keen and sharp as ever. Not one of the Syrian towns dared to stir, and the Phonician seaports, though their loyalty had seemed, for a moment, doubtful, took care to avoid any action which might expose them to the terrors of a like severity.* The Israelites and Philistines, alone of the western peoples, could not resign themselves to a prudent policy; after a short period of hesitation they drew the sword from its scabbard, and in 725 war broke out.**

* The siege of Tyre, which the historian Menander, in a passage quoted by Josephus, places in the reign of Shalmaneser, ought really to be referred to the reign of Sennacherib, or the fragment of Menander must be divided into three parts dealing with three different Assyrian campaigns against Tyre, under Tiglath-pileser, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon respectively.

** The war cannot have begun earlier, for the Eponym Canon, in dealing with 726, has the words "in the country," thus proving that no expedition took place in that year; in the case of the year 725, on the other hand, it refers to a campaign against some country whose name has disappeared. The passages in the Book of Kings (2 Kings xvii. 1-6, and xviii. 9-12) which deal with the close of the kingdom of Israel, have been interpreted in such a way as to give us two campaigns by Shalmaneser against Hoshea: (1) Hoshea having failed to pay the tribute imposed upon him by Tiglath-pileser, Shalmaneser made war upon him and compelled him to resume its payment (2 Kings xvii. 1-3); (2) Hoshea having intrigued with Egypt, and declined to pay tribute, Shalmaneser again took the field against him, made him prisoner, and besieged Samaria for three years (2 Kings xvii. 4-6; xviii. 9-12). The first expedition must, in this case, have taken place in 727, while the second must have lasted from 725-722. Most modern historians believe that the Hebrew writer has ascribed to Shalmaneser the subjection of Hoshea which was really the act of Tiglath-pileser, as well as the final war against Israel. According to Winckler, the two portions of the narrative must have been borrowed from two different versions of the final war, which the final editor inserted one after the other, heedless of the contradictions contained in them.

Hoshea, who had ascended the throne with the consent of Tiglath-pileser, was unable to keep them quiet. The whole of Galilee and Gilead was now an Assyrian province, subject to the governor of Damascus; Jerusalem, Moab, Ammon, and the Bedawin had transferred their allegiance to Nineveh; and Israel, with merely the central tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin left, was now barely equal in area and population to Judah. Their tribute weighed heavily on the Israelites; passing armies had laid waste their fields, and townsmen, merchants, and nobles alike, deprived of their customary resources, fretted with impatience under the burdens and humiliations imposed on them by their defeat; convinced of their helplessness, they again looked beyond their own borders for some nation or individual who should restore to them their lost prosperity. Amid the tottering fortunes of their neighbours, Egypt alone stood erect, and it was, therefore, to Egypt that they turned their eyes. Negotiations were opened, not with Pharaoh himself, but with Shabi, one of the petty kings on the eastern frontier of the Delta, whose position made him better qualified than any other to deal with Syrian affairs.*

* This individual is called Sua, Seveh, and So in the Hebrew text (2 Kings xvii. 4), and the Septuagint gives the transliteration Sebek side by side with Segos. He is found again under the forms Shibahi, Shabi, Shabe, in Sargon's inscriptions.

Hannon of Gaza had by this time returned from exile, and it was, doubtless, owing to Shabi's support that he had been able to drive out the Assyrian generals and recover his crown.* The Israelite aristocracy was led away by his example, but Shalmaneser hastened to the spot before the Egyptian bowmen had time to cross the isthmus. Hoshea begged for mercy, and was deported into Assyria and condemned to lifelong imprisonment.** Though deserted by her king, Samaria did not despair; she refused to open her gates, and, being strongly fortified, compelled the Assyrians to lay regular siege to the city. It would seem that at one moment, at the beginning of operations, when it was rumoured on all sides that Pharaoh would speedily intervene, Ahaz began to fear for his own personal safety, and seriously considered whether it would not be wiser to join forces with Israel or with Egypt.***

* This seems to be the inference from Sargon's inscription, in which he is referred to as relying on the army of Shabi, the tartan of Egypt.

** 2 Kings xvii. 4.

*** The Second Book of Kings (xviii. 9,10; cf. xvii. 6) places the beginning of the siege of Samaria in the seventh year of Hoshea ( = fourth year of Hezekiah), and the capture of the town in the ninth year of Hoshea ( = sixth year of Hezekiah); further on it adds that Sennacherib's campaign against Hezekiah took place in the fourteenth year of the latter's reign (2 Kings xviii. 13; cf. Isa. xxxvi. 1). Now, Sennacherib's campaign against Hezekiah took place (as will be shown later on, in vol. viii. Chapter I.) in 702 B.C., and Samaria was captured in 722. The synchronisms in the Hebrew narrative are therefore fictitious, and rest on no real historical basis—at any rate, in so far as the king who occupied the throne of Judah at the time of the fall of Samaria is concerned; Ahaz was still alive at that date, and continued to reign till 716 or 715, or perhaps only till 720.



After Painting by Gerome

The rapid sequence of events, however, backed by the counsel of Isaiah, speedily recalled him to a more reasonable view of the situation. The prophet showed him Samaria spread out before him like one of those wreaths of flowers which the guests at a banquet bind round their brows, and which gradually fade as their wearers drink deeper and deeper. "Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley of them that are overcome with wine. Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one; as a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, as a tempest of mighty waters overflowing, shall be cast down to the earth with violence. The crown of the pride of the drunkards of Ephraim shall be trodden underfoot, and the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be as the first ripe fig before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up." While the cruel fate of the perverse city was being thus accomplished, Jahveh Sabaoth was to be a crown of glory to those of His children who remained faithful to Him; but Judah, far from submitting itself to His laws, betrayed Him even as Israel had done. Its prophets and priests were likewise distraught with drunkenness; they staggered under the effects of their potations, and turned to scorn the true prophet sent to proclaim to them the will of Jehovah. "Whom," they stammered between their hiccups—"whom will He teach knowledge? and whom will He make to understand the message? them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts? For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little!" And sure enough it was by the mouth of a stammering people, by the lips of the Assyrians, that Jahveh was to speak to them. In vain did the prophet implore them: "This is the rest, give ye rest to him that is weary;" they did not listen to him, and now Jahveh turns their own gibes against them: "Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little,"—"that they may go and fall backward, and be broken and snared and taken." There was to be no hope of safety for Jerusalem unless it gave up all dependence on human counsels, and trusted solely to God for protection.*

* Isa. xxviii. Giesebrecht has given it as his opinion that only verses 1-6, 23-29 of the prophecy were delivered at this epoch: the remainder he believes to have been written during Sennacherib's campaign against Judah, and suggests that the prophet added on his previous oracle to them, thus diverting it from its original application. Others, such as Stade and Wellhausen, regard the opening verses as embodying a mere rhetorical figure. Jerusalem, they say, appeared to the prophet as though changed into Samaria, and it is this transformed city which he calls "the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim."

Samaria was doomed; this was the general belief, and men went about repeating it after Isaiah, each in his own words; every one feared lest the disaster should spread to Judah also, and that Jahveh, having once determined to have done with the northern kingdom, would turn His wrath against that of the south as well. Micah the Morashtite, a prophet born among the ranks of the middle class, went up and down the land proclaiming misery to be the common lot of the two sister nations sprung from the loins of Jacob, as a punishment for their common errors and weaknesses. "The Lord cometh forth out of His place, and will come and tread upon the high places of the earth. And the mountains shall be molten under Him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, as waters that are poured down a steep place. For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem?" The doom pronounced against Samaria was already being carried out, and soon the hapless city was to be no more than "an heap of the field, and as the plantings of a vineyard; and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley," saith the Lord, "and I will discover the foundations thereof. And all her graven images shall be beaten to pieces, and all her hires shall be burned with fire, and all her idols will I lay desolate; for of the hire of an harlot hath she gathered them, and into the hire of an harlot shall they return." Yet, even while mourning over Samaria, the prophet cannot refrain from thinking of his own people, for the terrible blow which had fallen on Israel "is come even unto Judah; it reacheth unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem." Doubtless the Assyrian generals kept a watchful eye upon Ahaz during the whole time of the siege, from 724 to 722, and when once the first heat of enthusiasm had cooled, the presence of so formidable an army within striking distance must have greatly helped the king to restrain the ill-advised tendencies of some of his subjects. Samaria still held out when Shalmaneser died at Babylon in the month of Tebeth, 722. Whether he had no son of fit age to succeed him, or whether a revolution, similar to that which had helped to place Tiglath-pileser on the throne, broke out as soon as he had drawn his last breath, is not quite clear. At any rate, Sargon, an officer who had served under him, was proclaimed king on the 22nd day of Tebeth, and his election was approved by the whole of Assyria. After some days of hesitation, Babylon declined to recognise him, and took the oath of allegiance to a Kaldu named Marduk-abalidinna, or Merodach-baladan. While these events were taking place in the heart of the empire, Samaria succumbed; perhaps to famine, but more probably to force. It was sacked and dismantled, and the bulk of its population, amounting to 27,280 souls, were carried away into Mesopotamia and distributed along the Balikh, the Khabur, the banks of the river of Gozan, and among the towns of the Median frontier.*

* Sargon does not mention where he deported the Israelites to, but we learn this from the Second Book of Kings (xvii. 6; xviii. 11). There has been much controversy as to whether Samaria was taken by Shalmanoser, as the Hebrew chronicler seems to believe (2 Kings xvii. 3-6; xviii. 9, 10), or by Sargon, as the Assyrian scribes assure us. At first, several scholars suggested a solution of the difficulty by arguing that Shalmaneser and Sargon were one and the same person; afterwards the theory took shape that Samaria was really captured in the reign of Shalmaneser, but by Sargon, who was in command of the besieging army at the time, and who transferred this achievement, of which he was naturally proud, to the beginning of his own reign. The simplest course seems to be to accept for the present the testimony of contemporary documents, and place the fall of Samaria at the beginning of the reign of Sargon, being the time indicated by Sargon in his inscriptions.

Sargon made the whole territory into a province; an Assyrian governor was installed in the palace of the kings of Israel, and soon the altars of the strange gods smoked triumphantly by the side of the altars of Jahveh (722 B.C.).*

* Kings xvii. 24-41, a passage to which I shall have occasion to refer farther on in the present volume. The following is a list of the kings of Israel, after the division of the tribes:—



[In this table father and son are shown by a perpendicular line. The king's name in italics signifies that he died a violent death.—Tr.]

Thus fell Samaria, and with Samaria the kingdom of Israel, and with Israel the last of the states which had aspired, with some prospect of success, to rule over Syria. They had risen one after another during the four centuries in which the absence of the stranger had left them masters of their own fate—the Hittites in the North, the Hebrews and the Philistines in the South, and the Aramaeans and Damascus in the centre; each one of these races had enjoyed its years of glory and ambition in the course of which it had seemed to prevail over its rivals. Then those whose territory lay at the extremities began to feel the disadvantages of their isolated position, and after one or two victories gave up all hope of ever establishing a supremacy over the whole country. The Hittite sphere of influence never at any time extended much further southwards than the sources of the Orontes, while that of the Hebrews in their palmiest days cannot have gone beyond the vicinity of Hamath. And even progress thus far had cost both Hebrews and Hittites a struggle so exhausting that they could not long maintain it. No sooner did they relax their efforts, than those portions of Coele-Syria which they had annexed to their original territory, being too remote from the seat of power to feel its full attraction, gradually detached themselves and resumed their independence, their temporary suzerains being too much exhausted by the intensity of their own exertions to retain hold over them. Damascus, which lay almost in the centre, at an equal distance from the Euphrates and the "river of Egypt," could have desired no better position for grouping the rest of Syria round her.



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

If any city had a chance of establishing a single kingdom, it was Damascus, and Damascus alone. But lulled to blissful slumbers in her shady gardens, she did not awake to political life and to the desire of conquest until after all the rest, and at the very moment when Nineveh was beginning to recover from her early reverses. Both Ben-hadads had had a free hand given them during the half-century which followed, and they had taken advantage of this respite to reduce Coele-Syria, the Lebanon, Arvadian Phoenicia, Hamath, and the Hebrews—in fact, two-thirds of the whole country—to subjection, and to organise that league of the twelve kings which reckoned Ahab of Israel among its leaders. This rudimentary kingdom had scarcely come into existence, and its members had not yet properly combined, when Shalmaneser III. arose and launched his bands of veterans against them; it however successfully withstood the shock, and its stubborn resistance at the beginning of the struggle shows us what it might have done, had its founders been allowed time in which to weld together the various elements at their disposal. As it was, it was doomed to succumb—not so much to the superiority of the enemy as to the insubordination of its vassals and its own internal discords. The league of the twelve kings did not survive Ben-hadad II.; Hazael and his successors wore themselves out in repelling the attacks of the Assyrians and in repressing the revolts of Israel; when Tiglath-pileser III. arrived on the scene, both princes and people, alike at Damascus and Samaria, were so spent that even their final alliance could not save them from defeat. Its lack of geographical unity and political combination had once more doomed Syria to the servitude of alien rule; the Assyrians, with methodical procedure, first conquered and then made vassals of all those states against which they might have hurled their battalions in vain, had not fortune kept them divided instead of uniting them in a compact mass under the sway of a single ruler. From Carchemish to Arpad, from Hamath to Damascus and Samaria, their irresistible advance had led the Assyrians on towards Egypt, the only other power which still rivalled their prestige in the eyes of the world; and now, at Gaza, on the frontier between Africa and Asia, as in days gone by on the banks of the Euphrates or the Balikh, these two powers waited face to face, hand on hilt, each ready to stake the empire of the Asiatic world on a single throw of the dice.



CHAPTER III—SARGON OF ASSYRIA (722-705 B.C.)

SARGON AS A WARRIOR AND AS A BUILDER.

The origin of Sargon II.: the revolt of Babylon, Merodach-baladan and Elam—The kingdom of Elam from the time of the first Babylonian empire; the conquest's of Shutruh-nalkunta I.; the princes of Malamir—The first encounter of Assyria and Elam, the battle of Durilu (721 B.C.)—Revolt of Syria, Iaubidi of Hamath and Hannon of Gaza—Bocchoris and the XXIVth Egyptian dynasty; the first encounter of Assyria with Egypt, the battle of Raphia (720 B.C.).

Urartu and the coalition of the peoples of the north-east and north-west—Defeat of Zikartu (719 B.C.), of the Tabal (718), of the Khati (717), of the Mannai, of the Medes and Ellipi (716), and of the Modes (715)—Commencement of XXVth Ethiopian dynasty: Sabaco (716)— The fall of Urzana and Rusas (714) and the formation of an Assyrian province in Cappadocia (713-710)—The revolt and fall of Ashdod.

The defeat of Merodach-baladan and of Shutruk-nakhunta II.: Sargon conquers Babylon (710-709 B.C.)—Success of the Assyrians at Mushhi: homage of the Greeks of Cyprus (710)—The buildings of Sargon: Dur-sharrukin—The gates and walls of Dur-sharrukin; the city and its population—The royal palace, its courts, the ziggurat, the harem—Revolt of Kummukh (709 B.C.) and of Ellipi (708 B.C.)—Inauguration of Dur-sharrukin (706 B.C.)—Murder of Sargon (705 B.C.): his character.



CHAPTER III—SARGON OF ASSYRIA (722-705 B.C.)

Sargon as a warrior and as a builder.

Whether Sargon was even remotely connected with the royal line, is a question which for the present must remain unanswered. He mentions in one of his inscriptions the three hundred princes who had preceded him in the government of Assyria, and three lines further on he refers to the kings his ancestors, but he never mentions his own father by name, and this omission seems to prove that he was not a direct descendant of Shalmaneser V., nor of Tiglath-pileser III. nor indeed of any of their immediate predecessors. It is, however, probable, if not certain, that he could claim some sort of kinship with them, though more or less remote. It was customary for the sovereigns of Nineveh to give their daughters in marriage to important officials or lords of their court, and owing to the constant contraction of such alliances through several centuries, there was hardly a noble family but had some royal blood in its veins; and that of Sargon was probably no exception to the rule. His genealogy was traced by the chroniclers, through several hundred generations of princes, to the semi-mythical heroes who had founded the city of Assur; but as Assur-nazir-pal and his descendants had claimed Bel-kapkapi and Sulili as the founders of their race, the Sargonids chose a different tradition, and drew their descent from Belbani, son of Adasi. The cause and incidents of the revolution which raised Sargon to the throne are unknown, but we may surmise that the policy adopted with regard to Karduniash was a factor in the case. Tiglath-pileser had hardly entered Babylon before the fascination of the city, the charm of its associations, and the sacred character of the legends which hallowed it, seized upon his imagination; he returned to it twice in the space of two years to "take the hands of Bel," and Shalmaneser V. much preferred it to Calah or Nineveh as a place of residence. The Assyrians doubtless soon became jealous of the favour shown by their princes to their ancient enemy, and their discontent must have doubtless conduced to their decision to raise a new monarch to the throne. The Babylonians, on the other hand, seem to have realised that the change in the dynasty presaged a disadvantageous alteration of government; for as soon as the news reached them a movement was set on foot and search made for a rival claimant to set up in opposition to Sargon.*

* The succession of events, as indicated in Pinches' Babylonian Chronicle, seems indeed to imply that the Babylonians waited to ascertain the disposition of the new king before they decided what line to adopt. In fact, Shalmaneser died in the month Tebeth, and Sargon ascended the throne at Assur in the same month, and it was only in the month Nisan that Mero-dach-baladan was proclaimed king. The three months intervening between the accession of Sargon and that of Merodach-baladan evidently represent a period of indecision., when it was not yet known if the king would follow the policy of his predecessors with regard to Babylon, or adopt a different attitude towards her.

Of all the nations who had in turn occupied the plains of the Lower Euphrates and the marshes bordering on Arabia, the Kalda alone had retained their full vitality. They were constantly recruited by immigrants from their kinsfolk of the desert, and the continual infiltration of these semi-barbarous elements kept the race from becoming enervated by contact with the indigenous population, and more than compensated for the losses in their ranks occasioned by war. The invasion of Tiglath-pileser and the consequent deportations of prisoners had decimated the tribes of Bit-Shilani, Bit-Shaali, and Bit-Amuhkani, the principalities of the Kalda which lay nearest to Babylonian territory, and which had borne the brunt of attack in the preceding period; but their weakness brought into notice a power better equipped for warfare, whose situation in their rear had as a rule hitherto preserved it from contact with the Assyrians, namely, Bit-Yakin. The continual deposit of alluvial soil at the mouths of the rivers had greatly altered the coastline from the earliest historic times downwards. The ancient estuary was partly filled up, especially on the western side, where the Euphrates enters the Persian Gulf: a narrow barrier of sand and silt extended between the marshes of Arabia and Susiana, at the spot where the streams of fresh water met the tidal waters of the sea, and all that was left of the ancient gulf was a vast lagoon, or, as the dwellers on the banks called it, a kind of brackish river, Nar marratum. Bit-Yakin occupied the southern and western portions of this district, from the mouth of the Tigris to the edge of the desert. The aspect of the country was constantly changing, and presented no distinctive features; it was a region difficult to attack and easy to defend; it consisted first of a spongy plain, saturated with water, with scattered artificial mounds on which stood the clustered huts of the villages; between this plain and the shore stretched a labyrinth of fens and peat-bogs, irregularly divided by canals and channels freshly formed each year in flood-time, meres strewn with floating islets, immense reed-beds where the neighbouring peasants took refuge from attack, and into which no one would venture to penetrate without hiring some friendly native as a guide. In this fenland dwelt the Kalda in their low, small conical huts of reeds, somewhat resembling giant beehives, and in all respects similar to those which the Bedawin of Irak inhabit at the present day.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief reproduced in Layard.

Dur-Yakin, their capital, was probably situated on the borders of the gulf, near the Euphrates, in such a position as to command the mouths of the river. Merodach-baladan, who was King of Bit-Yakin at the time of Sargon's accession, had become subject to Assyria in 729 B.C., and had paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser, but he was nevertheless the most powerful chieftain who had borne rule over the Chaldaeans since the death of Ukinzir.*

* Dur-Yakin was situated on the shores of the Persian gulf, as is proved by a passage in the Bull Inscription, where it is stated that Sargon threw into the sea the corpses of the soldiers killed during the siege; the neighbourhood of the Euphrates is implied in the text of the Inscription des Fastes, and the Annals, where the measures taken by Merodach-baladan to defend his capital are described. The name of Bit-Yakin, and probably also that of Dur-Yakin, have been preserved to us in the name of Aginis or Aginne, the name of a city mentioned by Strabo, and by the historians of Alexander. Its site is uncertain, but can be located near the present town of Kornah.

It was this prince whom the Babylonians chose to succeed Shalmaneser V. He presented himself before the city, was received with acclamation, and prepared without delay to repulse any hostilities on the part of the Assyrians.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph in Peters.

He found a well-disposed ally in Elani. From very ancient times the masters of Susa had aspired to the possession of Mesopotamia or the suzerainty over it, and fortune had several times favoured their ambitious designs. On one occasion they had pressed forward their victorious arms as far as the Mediterranean, and from that time forward, though the theatre of their operations was more restricted, they had never renounced the right to interfere in Babylonian affairs, and indeed, not long previously, one of them had reigned for a period of seven years in Babylon in the interval between two dynasties. Our information with regard to the order of succession and the history of these energetic and warlike monarchs is as yet very scanty; their names even are for the most part lost, and only approximate dates can be assigned to those of whom we catch glimpses from time to time.* Khumban-numena, the earliest of whom we have any record, exercised a doubtful authority, from Anshan to Susa, somewhere about the fourteenth century B.C., and built a temple to the god Kirisha in his capital, Liyan.**

* These names are in the majority of cases found written on stamped and baked bricks. They were first compared with the names contained in the Annals of Sargon and his successors, and assimilated to those of the princes who were contemporary with Sennacherib and Assur-bani-pal; then they were referred to the time of the great Elamite empire, and one of them was identified with that Kudur-Nakhunta who had pillaged Uruk 1635 years before Assur-bani-pal. Finally, they were brought down again to an intermediate period, more precisely, to the fourteenth or thirteenth century B.C. This last date appears to be justified, at least as the highest permissible, by the mention of Durkurigalzu, in a text of Undasgal.

** Jensen was the first to recognise that Liyan was a place- name, and the inscriptions of Shilkhak-Inshusinak add that Liyan was the capital of the kingdom; perhaps it was the name of a part of Susa. Khumban-numena has left us no monuments of his own, but he is mentioned on those of his son.

His son Undasgal carried on the works begun by his father, but that is all the information the inscriptions afford concerning him, and the mist of oblivion which for a moment lifted and allowed us to discern dimly the outlines of this sovereign, closes in again and hides everything from our view for the succeeding forty or fifty years.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Marcel Dieulafoy.

About the thirteenth century a gleam once more pierces the darkness, and a race of warlike and pious kings emerges into view—Khalludush-In-shushinak, his son Shutruk-nakhunta, the latter's two sons, Kutur-nakhunta and Shilkhak-Inshu-shinak,* and then perhaps a certain Kutir-khuban.

* The order of succession of these princes is proved by the genealogies with which their bricks are covered. Jensen has shown that we ought to read Khalludush-Inshushinak and Shilkhak-Inshushinak, instead of the shorter forms Khalludush and Shilkhak read previously.

The inscriptions on their bricks boast of their power, their piety, and their inexhaustible wealth. One after another they repaired and enlarged the temple built by Khumban-numena at Liyan, erected sanctuaries and palaces at Susa, fortified their royal citadel, and ruled over Habardip and the Cossaeans as well as over Anshan and Elam. They vigorously contested the possession of the countries on the right bank of the Tigris with the Babylonians, and Shutruk-nakhunta even succeeded in conquering Babylon itself. He deprived Zamama-shumiddin, the last but one of the Cossaean kings, of his sceptre and his life, placed his own son Kutur-nakhunta on the throne, and when the vanquished Babylonians set up Bel-nadinshumu as a rival sovereign, he laid waste Karduniash with fire and sword. After the death of Bel-nadinshumu, the Pashe princes continued to offer resistance, but at first without success. Shutruk-nakhunta had taken away from the temple of Esagilla the famous statue of Bel-Merodach, whose hands had to be taken by each newly elected king of Babylon, and had carried it off in his waggons to Elam, together with much spoil from the cities on the Euphrates.*

* The name of the king is destroyed on the Babylonian document, but the mention of Kutur-nakhunta as his son obliges us, till further information comes to light, to recognise in him the Shutruk-nakhunta of the bricks of Susa, who also had a son Kutur-nakhunta. This would confirm the restoration of Shutruk-nakhunta as the name of a sovereign who boasts, in a mutilated inscription, that he had pushed his victories as far as the Tigris, and even up to the Euphrates.

Nebuchadrezzar I. brought the statue back to Babylon after many vicissitudes, and at the same time recovered most of his lost provinces, but he had to leave at Susa the bulk of the trophies which had been collected there in course of the successful wars. One of these represented the ancient hero Naram-sin standing, mace in hand, on the summit of a hill, while his soldiers forced their way up the slopes, driving before them the routed hosfcs of Susa. Shutruk-nakhunta left the figures and names untouched, but carved in one corner of the bas-relief a dedicatory inscription, transforming this ancient proof of Babylonian victories over Elam into a trophy of Blamite victories over Babylon.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. de Morgan.

His descendants would assuredly have brought Mesopotamia into lasting subjection, had not the feudal organisation of their empire tolerated the existence of contemporary local dynasties, the members of which often disputed the supreme authority with the rightful king. The dynasty which ruled Habardip* seems to have had its seat of government at Tarrisha in the, valley of Malamir.**

* The prince represented on the bas-reliefs gives himself the title Apirra, the name of Apir, Apirti, or Habardip.

** Tarrisha is the name of a town, doubtless the capital of the fief of Malamir; it is probably represented by the considerable ruins which Layard identified as the remains of the Sassanid city of Aidej.

Three hundred figures carved singly or in groups on the rocks of Kul-Firaun portray its princes and their ministers in every posture of adoration, but most of them have no accompanying inscription. One large bas relief, however, forms an exception, and from its legend we learn the name of Khanni, son of Takhkhi-khikhutur.*

* The name of Khanni has been explained by Sayce as the desirable, and that of his father, Takhkhi-khikhutur, as help this thy servant.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Babin and Houssay.

This prince, even if possessed of no royal protocol, was none the less a powerful and wealthy personage. His figure dominates the picture, the central space of which it completely fills;* his expression is calm, but somewhat severe. His head is covered by a low cap, from which long locks escape and flow over his shoulders; the hair on his face is symmetrically curled above the level of his mouth, and terminates in a pointed beard. The figure is clothed from head to foot in a stiff robe and mantle adorned with tufted fringes, and borders of embroidered rosettes; a girdle at the waist completes the misleading resemblance to the gala-dress of a Nine vite, monarch. The hands are crossed on the breast in an attitude of contemplation, while the prince gazes thoughtfully at a sacrifice which is being offered on his behalf. At the bottom of the picture stands a small altar, behind which a priest in a short tunic seems to be accomplishing some ceremonial rite, while two men are cutting the throat of a ram. Higher up the heads of three rams lie beside their headless trunks, which are resting on the ground, feet in the air, while a servant brandishes a short sword with which he is about to decapitate the fourth beast. Above these, again, three musicians march in procession, one playing on a harp, another on a five-stringed lyre, and the third on a tambourine. An attendant holding a bow, and the minister Shutsururazi, stand quietly waiting till the sacrifice is accomplished. The long text which runs across several of the figures is doubtless a prayer, and contains the names of peoples and princes mingled with those of deities.

* Perrot and Chipiez, misled by the analogy of the Hittite bas-relief at Ibriz, took the largest figure for the image of a god. The inscription engraved on the robe, U Khanni shak Takkhi-khikutur, "I am Khanni, son of Takhkhi- khikhutur," leaves no doubt that the figure represents the prince himself, and not a divinity.

The memory of these provincial chiefs would be revived, and more of their monuments discovered, if the mountains and inaccessible valleys of ancient Elam could be thoroughly explored: it is evident, from the small portion of their history which has been brought to light, that they must have been great sources of trouble to the dynasties which reigned in Susa, and that their revolts must often have jeopardised the safety of the empire, in spite of the assistance afforded by the Aramaeans from the tenth or eleventh centuries onwards. All the semi-nomadic tribes which densely peopled the banks of the Tigris, and whose advance towards the north had been temporarily favoured by the weakness of Assyria—the Gambulu, the Pukudu, the Eutu, and the Itua—had a natural tendency to join forces with Elam for the purpose of raiding the wealthy cities of Chaldaea, and this alliance, or subjection, as it might be more properly termed, always insured them against any reprisals on the part of their victims. The unknown king who dwelt at Susa in 745 B.C. committed the error of allowing Tiglath-pileser to crush these allies. Khumban-igash, who succeeded this misguided monarch in 742 B.C., did not take up arms to defend Bit-Amuk-kani and the other states of the Kalda from 731 to 729, but experience must have taught him that he had made a mistake in remaining an unmoved spectator of their misfortunes; for when Merodach-baladan, in quest of allies, applied to him, he unhesitatingly promised him his support.*

* The date of his accession is furnished by the passage in Pinches' Babylonian Chronicle, where it is stated that he ascended the throne of Elam in the fifth year of Nabonazir. The Assyrian and Babylonian scribes assimilated the Susian b to the m, and also suppressed the initial aspirate of the Elamite name, writing generally Umman-igash for Khumban- igash.

Assyria and Elam had hitherto seldom encountered one another on the field of battle. A wide barrier of semi-barbarous states had for a long time held them apart, and they would have had to cross the territory of the Babylonians or the Cossaeans before coming into contact with each other. Tiglath-pileser I., however, had come into conflict with the northern districts of Elam towards the end of the twelfth century B.C., and more recently the campaigns of Assur-nazir-pal, Shalmaneser III., and Ramman-nirari had frequently brought these sovereigns into contact with tribes under the influence of Susa; but the wildness and poverty of the country, and the difficulties it offered to the manoeuvres of large armies, had always prevented the Assyrian generals from advancing far into its mountainous regions.* The annexation of Aramaean territory beyond the Tigris, and the conquest of Babylon by Tiglath-pileser III., at length broke through the barrier and brought the two powers face to face at a point where they could come into conflict without being impeded by almost insurmountable natural obstacles, namely, in the plains of the Umliash and the united basins of the Lower Ulai and the Uknu. Ten years' experience had probably sufficed to convince Khumban-igash of the dangers to which the neighbourhood of the Assyrians exposed his subjects. The vigilant watch which the new-comers kept over their frontier rendered raiding less easy; and if one of the border chieftains were inclined to harry, as of old, an unlucky Babylonian or Cossaean village, he ran the risk of an encounter with a well-armed force, or of being plundered in turn by way of reprisal.

* Sargon declares distinctly that Merodach-baladan had invoked the aid of Khumban-igash.

An irregular but abundant source of revenue was thus curtailed, without taking into consideration the wars to which such incidents must perforce lead sooner or later. Even unaided the Elamites considered themselves capable of repelling any attack; allied with the Babylonians or the Kalda, they felt certain of victory in any circumstances. Sargon realised this fact almost as fully as did the Elamites themselves; as soon, therefore, as his spies had forewarned him that an invasion was imminent, he resolved to take the initiative and crush his enemies singly before they Succeeded in uniting their forces. Khumban-igash had advanced as far as the walls of Durilu, a stronghold which commanded the Umliash, and he there awaited the advent of his allies before laying siege to the town: it was, however, the Assyrian army which came to meet him and offered him battle. The conflict was a sanguinary one, as became an engagement between such valiant foes, and both sides claimed the victory. The Assyrians maintained then-ground, forcing the Elamites to evacuate their positions, and tarried some weeks longer to chastise those of their Aramaean subjects who had made common cause with the enemy: they carried away the Tumuna, who had given up their sheikh into the hands of the emissaries of the Kalda, and transported the whole tribe, without Merodach-baladan making any attempt to save his allies, although his army had not as yet struck a single blow.*

* The history of this first campaign against Merodach- baladan, which is found in a mutilated condition in the Annals of Sargon, exists nowhere else in a complete form, but the facts are very concisely referred to in the Fastes and in the Cylinders. The general sequence of events is indicated by Pinches' Babylonian Chronicle, but the author places them in 720 B.C., the second year of Merodach- baladan, contrary to the testimony of the Annals, and attributes the victory to the Elamites in the battle of Durilu, in deference to Babylonian patriotism. The course of events after the battle of Durflu seems to prove clearly that the Assyrians remained masters of the field.

Having accomplished this act of vengeance, the Assyrians suspended operations and returned to Nineveh to repair their losses, probably intending to make a great effort to regain the whole of Babylonia in the ensuing year. Grave events which occurred elsewhere prevented them, however, from carrying this ambitious project into effect. The fame of their war against Elam had spread abroad in the Western provinces of the empire, and doubtless exaggerated accounts circulated with regard to the battle of Durilu had roused the spirit of dissatisfaction in the west. Sargon had scarcely seated himself securely on a throne to which he was not the direct heir, when he was menaced by Elam and repudiated by Chaldaea, and it remained to be seen whether his resources would prove equal to maintaining the integrity of his empire, or whether the example set by Merodach-baladan would not speedily be imitated by all who groaned under the Assyrian yoke. Since the decline of Damascus and Arpad, Hamath had again taken a prominent place in Northern Syria: prompt submission had saved this city from destruction in the time of Tiglath-pileser III., and it had since prospered under the foreign rule; it was, therefore, on Hamath that all hopes of deliverance still cherished by rulers and people now centred. A low-born fellow, a smith named Iaubidi, rose in rebellion against the prince of Hamath for being mean-spirited enough to pay tribute, proclaimed himself king, and in the space of a few months revived under his own leadership the coalition which Hadadezer and Rezon II. had formed in days gone by. Arpad and Bit-Agusi, Zimyra and Northern Phoenicia, Damascus and its dependencies, all expelled their Assyrian garrisons, and Samaria, though still suffering from its overthrow, summoned up courage to rid itself of its governor. Meanwhile, Hannon of Gaza, recently reinstated in his city by Egyptian support, was carrying on negotiations with a view to persuading Egypt to interfere in the affairs of Syria. The last of the Tanite Pharaohs, Psamuti, was just dead, and Bocchoris, who had long been undisputed master of the Delta, had now ventured to assume the diadem openly (722 B.C.), a usurpation which the Ethiopians, fully engaged in the Thebaid and on the Upper Nile, seemed to regard with equanimity. As soon as the petty kings and feudal lords had recognised his suzerainty, Bocchoris "listened favourably to the entreaties of Hannon, and promised to send an army to Gaza under the command of his general Shabe. Sargon, threatened with the loss of the entire western half of his empire, desisted for a time from his designs on Babylon, Khumban-igash was wise enough to refrain from provoking an enemy who left him in peace, and Merodach-baladan did not dare to enter the lists without the support of his confederate: the victory of Durilu, though it had not succeeded in gaining a province for Nineveh, had at least secured the south-eastern frontier from attack, at all events for so long as it should please Sargon to remain at a distance.



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

The league formed by Hamath had not much power of cohesion. Iaubidi had assembled his forces and the contingents of his allies at the town of Qarqar as Hadadezer had done before: he was completely defeated, taken prisoner, and flayed alive. His kingdom was annexed to the Assyrian empire, Qarqar was burnt to the ground, the fortifications of Hamath were demolished, and the city obliged to furnish a force of two hundred charioteers and six hundred horsemen, probably recruited from among the families of the upper classes, to serve as hostages as well as auxiliaries. Arpad, Zimyra, Damascus, Samaria, all succumbed without serious opposition, and the citizens who had been most seriously compromised in the revolt paid for their disaffection with their lives. This success confirmed the neighbouring states of Tyre, Sidon, Judah, Ammon, and Moab in their allegiance, which had shown signs of wavering since the commencement of hostilities; but Gaza remained unsubdued, and caused the more uneasiness because it was perceived that behind her was arrayed all the majesty of the Pharaoh. The Egyptians, slow to bestir themselves, had not yet crossed the Isthmus when the Assyrians appeared beneath the walls of Gaza: Hannon, worsted in a preliminary skirmish, retreated on Raphia, where Shabe, the Egyptian general, had at length arrived, and the decisive battle took place before this town. It was the first time that the archers and charioteers of the Nile valley had measured forces with the pikemen and cavalry of that of the Tigris; the engagement was hotly contested, but the generals and soldiers of Bocchoris, fighting according to antiquated methods of warfare, gave way before the onset of the Assyrian ranks, who were better equipped and better led. Shabe fled "like a shepherd whose sheep had been stolen," Hannon was taken prisoner and loaded with chains, and Raphia fell into the hands of the conqueror; the inhabitants who survived the sack of their city were driven into captivity to the number of 9033 men, with their flocks and household goods. The manifest superiority of Assyria was evident from the first encounter, but the contest had been so fierce and the result so doubtful that Sargon did not consider it prudent to press his advantage. He judged rightly that these troops, whom he had not dispersed without considerable effort, constituted merely an advanced guard. 4 Egypt was not like the petty kingdoms of Syria or Asia Minor, which had but one army apiece, and could not risk more than one pitched battle. Though Shabe's force was routed, others would not fail to take its place and contend as fiercely for the possession of the country, and even if the Assyrians should succeed in dislodging them and curbing the power of Bocchoris, the fall of Sais or Memphis, far from putting an end to the war, would only raise fresh complications. Above Memphis stretched the valley of the Nile, bristling with fortresses, Khininsu, Oxyrhynchus, Hermopolis, Siut, Thinis, and Thebes, the famous city of Amon, enthroned on the banks of the river, whose very name still evoked in the minds of the Asiatics a vivid remembrance of all its triumphal glories.*

* Thebes was at that time known among the Semites by its popular name of the city of Amon—which the Hebrew writers transcribed as No-Amon (Nahum iii. 8) or No alone (Jer. xlvi. 25; Ezek. xxx. 14, 15, 16), and the Assyrians by Ni.

Thebes itself formed merely one stage in the journey towards Syene, Ethiopia, Napata, and the unknown regions of Africa which popular imagination filled with barbarous races or savage monsters, and however far an alien army might penetrate in a southerly direction, it would still meet with the language, customs, and divinities of Egypt—an Egypt whose boundary seemed to recede as the invader advanced, and which was ever ready to oppose the enemy with fresh forces whenever its troops had suffered from his attacks. Sargon, having reached Kaphia, halted on the very threshold of the unexplored realm whose portals stood ajar ready to admit him: the same vague disquietude which had checked the conquering career of the Pharaohs on the borders of Asia now stayed his advance, and bade him turn back as he was on the point of entering Africa. He had repulsed the threatened invasion, and as a result of his victory the princes and towns which had invoked the aid of the foreigner lay at his mercy; he proceeded, therefore, to reorganise the provinces of Philistia and Israel, and received the homage of Judah and her dependencies. Ahaz, while all the neighbouring states were in revolt, had not wavered in his allegiance; the pacific counsels of Isaiah had once more prevailed over the influence of the party which looked for safety in an alliance with Egypt.*

* Sargon probably alludes to homage received at this time, when he styles himself "the subduer of far-off Judah." It is not certain that Ahaz was still King of Judah; it was for a long time admitted that Hezekiah was already king when these events took place, in accordance with 2 Kings xviii. 9, 10, where it is stated that Samaria was destroyed in the sixth year of Hezekiah. I consider, in agreement with several historians, that the date of Sennacherib's invasion of Judah must have remained more firmly fixed in the minds of the Jewish historians than that of the taking of Samaria, and as 2 Kings xviii. 13 places this invasion in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, which corresponds, as we shall see, to the third year of Sennacherib, or 702 B.C., it seems better to place the accession of Hezekiah about 715, and prolong the reign of Ahaz till after the campaign of Sargon against Hannon of Gaza.

The whole country from the Orontes to the mountains of Seir and the river of Egypt was again reduced to obedience, and set itself by peaceful labours to repair the misfortunes which had befallen it during the previous quarter of a century. Sargon returned to his capital, but fate did not yet allow him to renew his projects against Babylon. Barely did an insurrection break out in any part of the country on the accession of a new king at Nineveh without awaking echoes in the distant provinces of the empire. The report of a revolt in Chaldaea roused a slumbering dissatisfaction among the Syrians, and finally led them into open rebellion: the episodes of the Syrian campaign, narrated in Armenia or on the slopes of the Taurus with the thousand embellishments suggested by the rancour of the narrators, excited the minds of the inhabitants and soon rendered an outbreak inevitable. The danger would have been serious if the suppressed hatred of all had found vent at the same moment, and if insurrections in five or six different parts of his empire had to be faced by the sovereign simultaneously; but as a rule these local wars broke out without any concentrated plan, and in localities too remote from each other to permit of any possible co-operation between the assailants; each chief, before attempting to assert his independence, seemed to wait until the Assyrians had had ample time to crush the rebel who first took the field, having done which they could turn the whole of their forces against the latest foe. Thus Iaubidi did not risk a campaign till the fall of Elam and Karduniash had been already decided on the field of Durilu; in the same way, the nations of the North and East refrained from entering the lists till they had allowed Sargon time to destroy the league of Hamath and repel the attack of Bharaoh.

They were secretly incited to rebellion by a power which played nearly the same part with regard to them that Egypt had played in Southern Syria. Urartu had received a serious rebuff in 735 B.C., and the burning of Dhuspas had put an end to its ascendency, but the victory had been effected at the cost of so much bloodshed that Tiglath-pileser was not inclined to risk losing the advantage already gained by pushing it too far: he withdrew, therefore, without concluding a treaty, and did not return, being convinced that no further hostilities would be attempted till the vanquished enemy had recovered from his defeat. He was justified in his anticipations, for Sharduris died about 730, without having again taken up arms, and his son Busas I. had left Shalmaneser V. unmolested:* but the accession of Sargon and the revolts which harassed him had awakened in Busas the warlike instincts of his race, and the moment appeared advantageous for abandoning his policy of inactivity.

* The name of this king is usually written Ursa in the Assyrian inscriptions, but the Annals of Sargon give in each case the form Rusa, in accordance with which Sayce had already identified the Assyrian form Ursa or Rusa with the form Rusas found on some Urartian monuments. Belck and Lehmann have discovered several monuments of this Rusas I., son of Sharduris.

The remembrance of the successful exploits of Menuas and Argistis still lived in the minds of his people, and more than one of his generals had entered upon their military careers at a time when, from Arpad and Carchemish to the country of the Medes, quite a third of the territory now annexed to Assyria had been subject to the king of Urartu; Eusas, therefore, doubtless placed before himself the possibility of reconquering the lost provinces, and even winning, by a stroke of fortune, more than had been by a stroke of fortune wrested from his father. He began by intriguing with such princes as were weary of the Assyrian rule, among the Mannai, in Zikartu,* among the Tabal, and even among the Khati.

* Zikruti, Zikirtu, Zikartu, may probably be identified with the Sagartians of Herodotus.

Iranzu, who was at that time reigning over the Mannai, refused to listen to the suggestions of his neighbour, but two of his towns, Shuandakhul and Durdukka, deserted him in 719 B.C., and ranged themselves under Mitatti, chief of the Zikartu, while about the same time the strongholds of Sukkia, Bala, and Abitikna, which were on the borders of Urartu, broke the ties which had long bound them to Assyria, and concluded a treaty of alliance with Rusas. Sargon was not deceived as to the meaning of these events, and at once realised that this movement was not one of those local agitations which broke out at intervals in one or other of his provinces. His officers and spies must have kept him informed of the machinations of Eusas and of the revolutions which the migrations of the last thirty years had provoked among the peoples of the Iranian table-land. A new race had arisen in their rear, that of the Cimmerians and Scythians, which, issuing in irresistible waves from the gorges of the Caucasus, threatened to overwhelm the whole ancient world of the East. The stream, after a moment's vacillation, took a westerly direction, and flooded Asia Minor from one end to the other. Some tribes, however, which had detached themselves from the main movement sought an outlet towards the south-east, on to the rich plains of the Araxes and the country around Lake Urumiah. The native races, pressed in the rear by these barbarians, and hemmed in on either side and in front by Urartu and Assyria, were forced into closer proximity, and, conscious of their individual weakness, had begun to form themselves into three distinct groups, varying considerably in compactness,—the Medes in the south, Misianda in the north, with Zikartu between them. Zikartu was at that time the best organised of these nascent states, and its king, Mitatti, was not deficient either in military talent or political sagacity. The people over whom he ruled were, moreover, impregnated with the civilisation of Mesopotamia, and by constantly meeting the Assyrians in battle they had adopted the general principles of their equipment, organisation, and military tactics. The vigour of his soldiers and the warlike ardour which inspired them rendered his armies formidable even to leaders as experienced, and warriors as hardened, as the officers and soldiers of Nineveh. Mitatti had strongly garrisoned the two rebel cities, and trusted that if the Assyrians were unable to recapture them without delay, other towns would not be long in following their example; Iranzu would, no doubt, be expelled, his place would be taken by a hostile chief, and the Mannai, joining hands with Urartu on the right and Zikartu on the left, would, with these two states, form a compact coalition, whose combined forces would menace the northern frontier of the empire from the Zagros to the Taurus.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the facsimile by Flandin.

Sargon, putting all the available Assyrian forces into the field, hurled them against the rebels, and this display of power had the desired effect upon the neighbouring kingdoms: Busas and Mitatti did not dare to interfere, the two cities were taken by assault, burnt and razed to the ground, and the inhabitants of the surrounding districts of Sukkia, Bala, and Abitikna were driven into exile among the Khati. The next year, however, the war thus checked on the Iranian table-land broke out in the north-west, in the mountains of Cilicia. A Tabal chief, Kiakku of Shinukhta, refused to pay his tribute (718). Sargon seized him and destroyed his city; his family and adherents, 7500 persons in all, were carried away captives to Assyria, and his principality was given to a rival chief, Matti of Atuna, on a promise from the latter of an increased amount of tribute.*

* The name of Atuna is a variant of the name Tuna, which is found in the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III., and Tuna recalls the name of the old city of Tyana, or that of Tynna or Tunna, near Tyana, in the Taurus. Shinukhta, not far from Atuna, must be the capital of a district situated on the Karmalas or the Saros, on the borders of Cilicia or Cataonia.

In 717 B.C. more serious dangers openly declared themselves. The Khati had not forgotten that they had once been the allies of Urartu, and that their king, Pisiris, together with Matilu of Agusi, had fought for Sharduris against Tiglath-pileser III. Pisiris conspired with Mita, chief of the Mushki, and proclaimed his independence; but vengeance swiftly and surely overtook him. He succumbed before his accomplice had time to come to his assistance, and was sent to join Kiakku and his adherents in prison, while the districts which he had ruled were incorporated into Assyrian territory, and Carchemish became the seat of an Assyrian prefect who ranked among the limmi from whom successive years took their names. The fall of Pisiris made no impression on his contemporaries. They had witnessed the collapse of so many great powers—Elam, Urartu, Egypt—that the misfortunes of so insignificant a personage awakened but little interest; and yet with him foundered one of the most glorious wrecks of the ancient world. For more than a century the Khati had been the dominant power in North-western Asia, and had successfully withstood the power of Thebes; crushed by the Peoples of the Sea, hemmed in and encroached upon by the rising wave of Aramaean invasion, they had yet disputed their territory step by step with the Assyrian generals, and the area over which they spread can be traced by the monuments and inscriptions scattered over Cilicia, Lycaonia, Cappadocia, and Northern Syria as far as the basins of the Orontes and the Litany. So lasting had proved their influence on all around them, and so fresh was the memory of their greatness, that it would have seemed but natural that their vitality should survive this last blow, and that they should enjoy a prosperous future which should vie with their past. But events proved that their national life was dead, and that no recuperative power remained: as soon as Sargon had overthrown their last prince, their tribes became merged in the general body of Aramaeans, and their very name ere long vanished from the pages of history.

Up to this time Eusas had not directly interfered in these quarrels between the suzerain and his vassals: he may have incited the latter to revolt, but he had avoided compromising himself, and was waiting till the Mannai had decided to make common cause with him before showing his hand openly. Ever since the skirmish of the year 719, Mitatti had actively striven to tempt the Mannai from their allegiance, but his intrigues had hitherto proved of no avail against the staunch fidelity first of Iranzu and then of Aza, who had succeeded the latter about 718. At the beginning of the year 716 Mitatti was more successful; the Mannai, seduced at length by his promises and those of Eusas, assembled on Mount Uaush, murdered their king, and leaving his corpse unburied, hastened to place themselves under the command of Bagadatti, regent of Umildish. Sargon hurried to the spot, seized Bagadatti, and had him flayed alive on Mount Uaush, which had just witnessed the murder of Aza, and exposed the mass of bleeding flesh before the gaze of the people to demonstrate the fate reserved for his enemies. But though he had acted speedily he was too late, and the fate of their chief, far from discouraging his subjects, confirmed them in their rebellion. They had placed upon the throne Ullusunu, the brother of Aza, and this prince had immediately concluded an alliance with Eusas, Mitatti, and the people of Andia; his example was soon followed by other Eastern chiefs, Assurli of Karallu and Itti of Allabria, whereupon, as the spirit of revolt spread from one to another, most of the districts lately laid under tribute by Tiglath-pileser took up arms—Niksama, Bitsagbati, Bitkhirmami, Kilam-bafci, Armangu, and even the parts around Kharkhar, and Ellipi, with its reigning sovereign Dalta. The general insurrection dreaded by Sargon, and which Eusas had for five years been fomenting, had, despite all the efforts of the Assyrian government, at last broken out, and the whole frontier was ablaze from the borders of Elam to those of the Mushku. Sargon turned his attention to where danger was most urgent; he made a descent on the territory of the Mannai, and laid it waste "as a swarm of locusts might have done;" he burnt their capital, Izirtu, demolished the fortifications of Zibia and Armaid, and took Ullusunu captive, but, instead of condemning him to death, he restored to him his liberty and his crown on condition of his paying a regular tribute. This act of clemency, in contrast with the pitiless severity shown at the beginning of the insurrection, instantly produced the good effects he expected: the Mannai laid down their arms and swore allegiance to the conqueror, and their defection broke up the coalition. Sargon did not give the revolted provinces time to recover from the dismay into which his first victories had thrown them, but marched rapidly to the south, and crushed them severally; commencing with Andia, where he took 4200 prisoners with their cattle, he next attacked Zikartu, whose king, Mitatti, took refuge in the mountains and thus escaped death at the hands of the executioner. Assurli of Karalla had a similar fate to Bagadatti, and was flayed alive. Itti of Allabria, with half of his subjects, was carried away to Hamath. The towns of Niksama and Shurgadia were annexed to the province of Parsuash. The town of Kishisim was reduced to ashes, and its king, Belsharuzur, together with the treasures of his palace, was carried away to Nineveh. Kharkhar succumbed after a short siege, received a new population, and was henceforward known as Kar-Sharrukin; Dalta was restored to favour, and retained his dominion intact. Never had so great a danger been so ably or so courageously averted. It was not without good reason that, after his victory over the Mannai, Sargon, instead of attacking Busas, the most obstinate of his foes, turned against the Medes. Bllipi, Parsuash, and Kharkhar, comprising half the countries which had joined in the insurrection, were on the borders of Elam or had frequent relations with that state, and it is impossible to conjecture what turn affairs might have taken had Elam been induced to join their league, and had the Elamite armies, in conjunction with those of Merodach-baladan, unexpectedly fallen upon the Assyrian rear by the valleys of the Tigris or the Turnat.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the facsimile by Plandin. The figures resembling stags' horns, which crown three of the upper towers, are tongues of flame, as was indicated by the red colouring which still remained on them when the bas- relief was discovered.

Had the Elamites, however, entertained a desire to mingle in the fray, the promptness with which Sargon had re-established order must have given them cause to reflect and induced them to maintain their neutrality. The year which had opened so inauspiciously thus ended in victory, though the situation was still fraught with danger. The agitation which had originated in the east and northeast in 716 reached the north-west in 715, and spread as far as the borders of Southern Syria. Rusas had employed the winter in secret negotiations with the Mannai, and had won over one of their principal chiefs, a certain Dayaukku, whose name seems to be identical with that which the Greeks transliterated as Deiokes.*

* The identity of the name Dayaukku with that of Deiokes is admitted by all historians.

As soon as spring had returned he entered the territory of Ullusunu, and occupied twenty-two strongholds, which were probably betrayed into his hands by Dayaukku. While this was taking place Mita of Mushki invaded Cilicia, and the Arab tribes of the Idumsean desert—the Thamudites, the Ibadites, the Marsimanu, and Khayapa—were emboldened to carry their marauding expeditions into Assyrian territory. The Assyrian monarch was thus called on to conduct three distinct wars simultaneously in three different directions; he was, moreover, surrounded by wavering subjects whom terror alone held to their allegiance, and whom the slightest imprudence or the least reverse might turn into open foes.