Chapter II: Tiglath-Pileser III. and the Organisation of the Assyrian (4)

He extended his favour to all alike, merely stipulating that they should give him the best of their horses, and undertake to keep careful watch over the prosperity of their stud farms. But Tafnakhti still held out, and seemed determined to defy him to the end; he had set fire to his palace and taken refuge in the islands on the river, and had provided a hiding-place for himself at Masudît among the marshes on the coast in case of final defeat. A victory gained over him by the Ethiopian generals suddenly induced him to sue for peace. He offered to disband his men and pay tribute, provided he was guaranteed undisturbed possession of Sais and of the western districts of the Delta; he refused, however, to sue for pardon in person, and asked that an envoy should be sent to receive his oath of allegiance in the temple of Nit. Though deserted by his brother princes and allies, he still retained sufficient power to be a thorn in his conquerors side; his ultimate overthrow was certain, but it would have entailed many a bloody struggle, while a defeat might easily have shaken the fidelity of the other feudatory kings, and endangered the stability of the new dynasty. Piônkhi, therefore, accepted the terms offered him without modification, and asked for no guarantee beyond the oath taken in the presence of the gods. News was brought him about this time that Cynopolis and Aphroditopolis had at last thrown open their gates, and accordingly he summoned his vassals for the last time to his camp near Athribis. With the exception of Tafnakhti, they all obeyed the call, including two minor kings of Upper and two of Lower Egypt, together with barons of lesser rank; but of these, Namrôti alone was admitted to the royal apartments, because he alone was circumcised and ate no fish; after this the camp was broken up, and the Ethiopians set out on their return journey southwards. Piônkhi may well have been proud of the result of this campaign, both for himself and for his country. The empire of the Pharaohs, which had for the last hundred and fifty years been divided, was now re-established from the confluence of the Niles to the shores of the Mediterranean, but it was no longer Egypt that benefited by the change. It was now, after many years of slavery, the turn of Ethiopia to rule, and the seat of power was transferred from Thebes or Memphis to Napata. As a matter of fact, the fundamental constitution of the kingdom underwent no great modification; it had merely one king the more to rule over it--not a stranger, as we are often tempted to conclude, when we come to measure these old-world revolutions by our modern standards of patriotism, but a native of the south, who took the place of those natives of the north who had succeeded one another on the throne since the days of Smendes. In fact, this newly crowned son of Râ lived a very long way off; he had no troops of his own further north than Siut, and he had imposed his suzerainty on the rival claimants and reigning princes without thereby introducing any change in the constitution of the state. In tendering their submission to him, the heads of the different nomes had not the slightest intention of parting with their liberty; they still retained it, even though nominally dependent, and continued, as in the past, to abuse it without scruple. Namrôti was king at Khmunu, Pefzââbastît at Khninsu, Auputi at Tentramu, and Osorkon III. at Bubastis; the prestige investing the Tanite race persisted so effectively that the annalists give to the last-named precedence over the usurpers of the Ethiopian dynasty; the Tanites continued to be the incarnate representatives of legitimate power, and when Osorkon III. died, in 732, it was his son Psamutis who was regarded as the Lord of Egypt. Tafnakhti had, in his defeat, gained formal recognition of his royalty. He was no longer a mere successful adventurer, a hero of the hour, whose victories were his only title-deeds, whose rights rested solely on the argument of main force. Piônkhi, in granting him amnesty, had conferred official investiture on him and on his descendants. Henceforth his rule at Sais was every whit as legitimate as that of Osorkon at Bubastis, and he was not slow in furnishing material proof of this, for he granted himself cartouches, the uraeus, and all the other insignia of royalty. These changes must have been quickly noised abroad throughout Asia. Commercial intercourse between Syria and Egypt was maintained as actively as ever, and the merchant caravans and fleets exported with regularity the news of events as well as the natural products of the soil or of industry. The tidings of an Ethiopian conquest and of the re-establishment of an undivided empire in the valley of the Nile, coming as they did at the very moment when the first effects of the Assyrian revival began to be so keenly felt, could not fail to attract the attention and arouse the hopes of Syrian statesmen. The Philistines, who had never entirely released themselves from the ties which bound them to the Pharaohs of the Delta, felt no repugnance at asking for a renewal of their former protection.

Drawn by Boudier, from Mallets photograph of the stele in
the Museum at Athens.

As for the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Damascus, they began to consider whether they had not here, in Africa, among the members of a race favourably disposed towards them by the memories of the past and by its ambition, hereditary allies against Nineveh. The fact that Egypt was torn by domestic dissensions and divided into a score of rival principalities in no way diminished their traditional admiration for its wealth or their confidence in its power; Assyria itself was merely an agglomeration of turbulent provinces, vassal cities, and minor kingdoms, artificially grouped round the ancient domain of Assur, and yet the convulsions by which it was periodically shaken had not prevented it from developing into the most formidable engine of war that had ever threatened the peace of Asia. The African hosts, whether led by ordinary generals or by a king of secondary rank, formed none the less a compact army well fitted by numbers and organisation to hold its own against any forces which Tiglath-pileser might put into the field; and even should the supreme Pharaoh be unwilling to throw the full weight of his authority into the balance, yet an alliance with one of the lesser kings, such as the lord of Sais or of Bubastis, would be of inestimable assistance to any one fortunate enough to secure it. It is true that, in so far as the ultimate issue was concerned, there was little to be gained by thus pitting the two great powers together and persuading one to fight against the other; the victor must, in the long run, remain master alike of those who had appealed for help and of those who had fought against him, and if Egypt emerged triumphant, there would be nothing for it but to accept her supremacy. In either event, there could be no question of independence; it was a choice between the hegemony of Egypt or that of Assyria.

From the moment that Tiglath-pileser had made his appearance on the northern horizon, the nations of Southern Syria had instinctively looked to Pharaoh for aid. There seems to have been an Egyptian faction in Samaria, even during the disorders which broke out after the death of Jeroboam II., and perhaps it was a hope of overcoming it easily which led Menahem of his own accord to invoke the still remote suzerainty of Nineveh, after the fall of Unki in 738;* later on, when Pekah had assassinated Pekahiah and entered into alliance with Eezin, he adopted the view of those who saw no hope of safety save from the banks of the Nile, his only reason for doing so being, apparently, because the kings of the fallen dynasty had received support from the valley of the Tigris. Hosea continually reproached his countrymen with this vacillating policy, and pointed out the folly of it: Ephraim is like a silly dove without understanding; they call unto Egypt, they go unto Assyria; when they shall go I will spread My net upon them, said the Eternal.**

* The existence of an Egyptian faction at this period has
been admitted by Kittel. Winckler has traced to the Arabian
or Idumæan Muzri everything previously referred to Egypt.
His arguments seem to me to be, in many cases, convincing,
as I shall point out where necessary, but I think he carries
his theory too far when he systematically excludes Egypt and
puts Muzri in its place. Egypt, even in its decadent state,
was a far more important power than the Arabian Muzri, and
it seems unreasonable to credit it with such a limited share
in the politics of the time. I cannot believe that any other
power is intended in most of those passages in the Hebrew
writings and Assyrian inscriptions in which the words
Mizraîm and Muzri occur.

** Hos. vii. 11, 12.

They were to be given up to Assyria and dispersed, and while some were to go into Assur and eat unclean food, Ephraim was to return into Egypt; for, lo, they are gone away from destruction, yet Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them. * Nevertheless, they persisted in negotiating with Egypt, and though there was as yet no formal alliance between Samaria and Sais or Tanis, their relations were so close that no enemy of Israel could look for protection from Psamuti or his vassals. Ahaz had, therefore, nothing to hope from this quarter, and was compelled by the force of circumstances to throw himself into the arms of Assyria, if he decided to call in outside aid at all. His prophets, like those of Pekah, strenuously forbade him to do so, and among them was one who was beginning to exert a marvellous influence over all classes of society--Isaiah, the son of Amoz. He had begun his career in the year that Uzziah died,** and had continued to prophesy without interruption during the brief reign of Jotham.***

* Hos. ix. 3-6.

** Isa. vi. 1.

*** The fragments which can be assigned to this period now
occur as follows: chap. ii. 2-5 (verses 2-4 are also found
in _Micah_ iv. 1-3, and were, perhaps, borrowed from some
third prophet), ii. 6-22, iii., iv., v. 1-24 (the Parable of
the Vineyard), and lastly, chap, vi., in so far as the
substance is concerned; it seems to have been put into its
present form long after the events.

When Jahveh first appeared to him, in the smoke of the altar, seated on a throne and surrounded by seraphim, a sense of his own unworthiness filled him with fear, but an angel purified his lips with a live coal, and he heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? and he replied, Here am I; send me, whereupon Jahveh gave him this message: Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again and be healed. Then the prophet asked, Lord, how long? And Jahveh answered, Until cities be waste without inhabitant and houses without man, and the land become utterly waste, and Jahveh have removed men far away, and the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land. And if there be yet a tenth in it, it shall be eaten up; as a terebinth, and as an oak, whose stock remaineth when they are felled, so the holy seed is the stock thereof. *

* An explanatory gloss, the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria
and of the son of Remaliah, which formed no part of the
original prophecy, is here inserted in the text.

Judah, though less powerful, was quite as corrupt as his brethren of Israel, and the divine wrath threatened him no less than them; it rested with himself, however, to appease it by repentance, and to enter again into divine favour after suffering his punishment; the Eternal would then gather together on Mount Sion those of His faithful people who had survived the crisis, and would assure them a long period of prosperity under His law. The prophet, convinced that men could in no wise alter the decrees of the Highest, save by repentance alone, was astonished that the heads of the state should strive to impede the progress of events that were happening under their very eyes, by the elaborately useless combinations of their worldly diplomacy. To his mind, the invasion of Pekah and Eezin was a direct manifestation of the divine anger, and it filled him with indignation that the king should hope to escape from it by begging for an alliance against them with one of the great powers: when Jahveh should decide that the punishment was sufficient for the crime, He would know how to shatter His instruments without any earthly help. Indeed, Isaiah had already told his master, some days before the allied kings appeared, while the latter was busy superintending the works intended to supply Jerusalem with water, to Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither let thy heart be faint, because of these two tails of smoking firebrands.... Because Syria hath counselled evil against thee, Ephraim also, and the son of Bemaliah, saying, Let us go up against Judah, hem it in, carry it by storm, and set up the son of Tabeel as king: thus saith the Lord God, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. If, however, the course of the divine justice was to be disturbed by the intervention of a purely human agency, the city would doubtless be thereby saved, but the matter would not be allowed to rest there, and the people would suffer even more at the hands of their allies than they had formerly endured from their enemies. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel--God with us.... For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken, and yet Jahveh shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy fathers house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah. * And then, employing one of those daring apologues, common enough in his time, the prophet took a large tablet and wrote upon it in large letters two symbolical names--_Spoil-speedeth, Prey-hasteth_--and set it up in a prominent place, and with the knowledge of credible witnesses went in unto the prophetess his wife. When the child was born in due course, Jahveh bade him call it _Spoil-speedeth, Prey-hasteth_, for before he shall have knowledge to cry, My father and, My mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be carried away before the King of Assyria. But the Eternal added, Forasmuch as this people hath refused the waters of Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in Rezin and Remaliahs son; now therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river [the Euphrates], strong and many:* and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks: and he shall sweep onward into Judah; he shall overflow and pass through; he shall reach even to the neck, and the stretching of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel [God-with-us]!*** Finding that Egypt was in favour of his adversaries, Ahaz, in spite of the prophets warnings, turned to Assyria.****

* Isa. vii. 10-17.

** A marginal gloss has here been inserted in the text,
indicating that it was «the King of Assyria and all his
glory » that the prophet referred to

*** Isa. viii. 1-8.

**** The following portions of Isaiah are accepted as
belonging to the period of this Syrian war: in addition to
chap, vii., chaps, viii.-ix 6. xi 1-9. xxii. 1-11; i. 4-9,
18-32; to these Kuenen adds chap, xxiii. 1-8

At one time he had found himself so hard pressed that he invoked the aid of the Syrian gods, and made his eldest son pass through the fire in order to propitiate them:* he collected together all the silver and gold he could find in his own treasury or in that of the temple and sent it to Tiglath-pileser, with this message: I am thy servant and thy son: come up and save me out of the hand of the King of Syria, and out of the hand of the King of Israel, which rise up against me. **

* 2 Kings xvi. 3 (cf. 2 Chron. xxviii. 3). There is nothing
to indicate the date, but most historians place the event at
the beginning of the Syrian war, a little before or during
the siege.

** Kings xvi. 7, 8; cf. 2 Chron. xxviii. 16, 20, 21.

Tiglath-pileser came in haste, and Rezin and Pekah, at the mere tidings of his approach, desisted from their attack on Jerusalem, separated, and retired each to his own kingdom. The Assyrian king did not immediately follow them up. He took the road leading along the coast, after leaving the plains of the middle Orontes, and levied tribute from the Phoenician cities as he passed; he then began by attacking the western frontier of Israel, and sent a body of troops against the Philistines, who were ceaselessly harassing Judah. Hannon, King of Gaza, did not await the attack, but fled to Egypt for safety, and Ahaz breathed freely, perhaps for the first time since his accession. This, however, was only a beginning; the real struggle took place in the following year, and was hotly contested. In spite of the sorry pass to which its former defeats and present discords had brought it, Damascus still possessed immense wealth, and its army, when reinforced by the Arabian and Israelite contingents, was capable of holding its own for a long time against the battalions of Assyria, even if it could not hope to conquer them. Unfortunately for its chances, Eezin had failed to inherit the military capacity of his great predecessors, Ben-hadad and Hazael; he allowed Tiglath-pileser to crush the Hebrews without rendering them any effective assistance. Pekah fought his best, but he lost, one after another, the strongholds which guarded his northern frontier--Ijon, Abel-beth-maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, and Hazor; he saw the whole of Naphtali and Gilead laid waste, and their inhabitants carried off into Assyria without his being able to prevent it; he himself being obliged to evacuate Samaria and take refuge in the mountains almost unattended. Judah followed, with mingled exultation and disquietude, the vicissitudes of the tragic drama which was thus enacted before its eyes, and Isaiah foretold the speedy ruin of the two peoples who had but yesterday threatened to enslave it. He could already see the following picture in his minds eye: Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid. *

* Both of these Aroêrs lay beyond Jordan--one in Reuben,
afterwards Moab (Judg. xi. 26; Jer. xlviii. 19); the other
in Amnion, afterwards Gad (Josh. xiii. 25; 2 Sam. xxiv. 5);
here they stand for the countries beyond Jordan which
Tiglath-pileser had just laid waste. The tradition preserved
in 1 Citron, v. 26 stated that these inhabitants of Gad and
Reuben were led into captivity by Pul, i.e. Tiglath-pileser.

The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria: they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith the Lord of hosts! And it shall come to pass in that day, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean. And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the standing corn, and his arm reapeth the ears; yea, it shall be as when one gleaneth ears in the valley of Ephraim. Yet there shall be left therein gleanings, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost branches of a fruitful tree, saith Jahveh, the God of Israel!... In that day shall his strong cities be as the forsaken places in the wood, and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the children of Israel:* and it shall be as a desolation. For thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation. **

* This is probably an allusion to the warlike exploits
performed during Rezin and Pekahs invasion of Judaea, a
year or two previously.

** Isa. xvii. 1-6, 9, 10.

Samaria was doomed to helplessness for many a day to come, if not for ever, but it had taken a whole year to lay it low (733); Tiglath-pileser returned in 732, and devoted yet another year to the war against Damascus. Eezin had not been dismayed by the evil fortune of his friends, and had made good his losses by means of fresh alliances. He had persuaded first Mutton II. of Tyre, then Mitinti of Askalon, and with the latter a section of the Philistines, to throw in their lot with him; he had even won over Shamshieh, queen of the Arabs, and with her a number of the most warlike of the desert tribes; for himself, he had taken up a position on the further side of Anti-Lebanon, and kept strict watch from Mount Hermon on the roads leading from the valley of the Jordan to the plains of the Abana, in order to prevent the enemy from outflanking him and taking him in the rear. But all to no purpose; Tiglath-pileser bore directly down upon him, overwhelmed him in a pitched battle, obliged him to take refuge behind the walls of Damascus, and there besieged him.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph brought back by Lortet.

The city was well fortified, amply supplied with provisions, and strongly garrisoned; the siege was, therefore, a long one, and the Assyrians filled up the time by laying waste the fertile country at the foot of Anti-Lebanon. At last Rezin yielded, gave himself up unconditionally, and was forthwith executed: eight thousand of his followers were carried off to Kîr, on the confines of Elam,* his kingdom was abolished, and a Ninevite governor was installed in his palace, by whom the former domain of Damascus and the territory lately wrested from Israel were henceforth to be administered.

* 2 Kings xvi. 9. Kîr is generally located in Armenia,
Media, or Babylonia; a passage in Isaiah (xxii. 6), however,
seems to point to its having been somewhere in the direction
of Elam, and associated with the Aramæans on the banks of
the Tigris. The Assyrian monuments have not, as yet, yielded
confirmation of the details given by the _Book of the Kings_
in regard to the captivity of the inhabitants of Damascus. A
fragmentary tablet, giving an account of the death of Rezin,
was discovered by H. Raw-linson, but it was left in Assyria,
and no one knows what has since become of it.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

The coalition he had formed did not long survive its leader.* Mutton hastily came to an understanding with the conqueror; Mitinti, like Hannon, fled into Egypt, and his place was taken by Kukibtu, a partisan of Assyria. Hoshea, son of Elah, rebelled against Pekah, assassinated him, and purchased the right to reign over what was left of Israel for ten talents of gold.** Shamshieh alone held out.

* The following is a list of the kings of Damascus from the
time of David, as far as is known up to the present time:--

** 2 Kings xv. 30. The inscription published by H.
Rawlinson, merely states that they overthrew Pekah, their
king, and I promoted Auzi [to the kingship] over them. I
received [from him] X talents of gold and... talents of
silver....

She imagined herself to be safe among the sands of the desert, and it never occurred to her that the heavy masses of the Assyrian army would dream of venturing into these solitudes. Detachments of light cavalry were sent in pursuit of her, and at first met with some difficulties; they were, however, eventually successful; the Armenian and Cappadocian steeds of the Ninevite horsemen easily rode down the queens meharis.

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

Their success made a great impression on the Arab tribes, and induced the Mashaî, Timaî Sabasans, Khaiapæans, Badanæans, and Khattiæans to bend the knee before Assyria. They all sent envoys bearing presents of gold and silver, camels, both male and female, and spices:* even the Muzri, whose territory lay to the south of the Dead Sea, followed their example, and a certain Idibiel was appointed as their chief.**

* Delitzsch has identified the names of several of these
races with names mentioned in the Bible, such as the Temah,
Massah, Ephah, Sheba.

** The name Muzri, as Winckler has shown, here refers, not
to Egypt, but to a canton near Edom, the Nabatsea of the
Greco-Roman geographers.

While his lieutenants were settling outstanding issues in this fashion, Tiglath-pileser held open courts at Damascus, where he received the visits and homage of the Syrians. They came to assure themselves by the evidence of their own eyes of the downfall of the power which had for more than one hundred years checked the progress of Assyria. Those who, like Uassarmi of Tabal, showed any sign of disaffection were removed, the remainder were confirmed in their dignities, subject to payment of the usual tribute, and Mutton of Tyre was obliged to give one hundred talents of gold to ransom his city. Ahaz came to salute his preserver, and to obtain a nearer view of the soldiers to whom he owed continued possession of Jerusalem;* the kings of Ammon, Moab, Edom, and Askalon, the Philistines and the nomads of the Arabian desert, carried away by the general example, followed the lead of Judah, until there was not a single prince or lord of a city from the Euphrates to the river of Egypt who had not acknowledged himself the humble vassal of Nineveh.

* 2 Kings xvi. 10-12. The _Nimroud Inscrip_. merely mentions
his tribute among that of the Syrian kings.

With the downfall of rezin, Syrias last hope of recovery had vanished; the few states which still enjoyed some show of independence were obliged, if they wished to retain it, to make a parade of unalterable devotion to their Ninevite master, or--if they found his suzerainty intolerable--had to risk everything by appealing to Egypt for help.

Much as they may have wished from the very first to do so, it was too early to make the attempt so soon after the conference at Damascus; Tiglath-pileser had, therefore, no cause to fear a rebellion among them, at any rate for some years to come, and it was just as well that this was so, for at the moment of his triumph on the shores of the Mediterranean his interests in Chaldæa were threatened by a serious danger. Nabonazîr, King of Karduniash, had never swerved from the fidelity which he had sworn to his mighty ally after the events of 745, but the tranquillity of his reign had been more than once disturbed by revolt. Borsippa itself had risen on one occasion, and endeavoured to establish itself as an independent city side by side with Babylon.

When Nabonazîr died, in 734, he was succeeded by his son Nabunâdinzîri, but at the end of a couple of years the latter was assassinated during a popular outbreak, and Nabushumukîn, one of his sons, who had been implicated in the rising, usurped the crown (732). He wore it for two months and twelve days, and then abdicated in favour of a certain Ukînzîr.*

* The following is as complete a list as can at present be
compiled of this Babylonian dynasty, the eighth of those
registered in Pinches Canons (cf. Rost, _Untersucli. zur
altorient. Gesch._, p. 27):--

It included twenty-two kings, and lasted for about three hundred and fifty years.

The latter was chief of the Bît-Amukkâni, one of the most important among the Chaldæan communities;* the descendants of the Aramaean nomads were thus once more placed upon the throne, and their accession put an end to the relations which had existed for several centuries between Assyria and Karduniash.

* The chronicle is silent with regard to the origin of
Ukînzîr, but Tiglath-pileser, who declines to give him the
title of King of Babylon, says that he was _mar Amuhlcâni_
= son of Amukkâni. Pinches _Canon_ indicates that Ukînzîr
belonged to a dynasty the name of which may be read either
Shashi or Shapi. The reading Shapi at once recalls the name
of Shapîa, one of the chief cities of the Bît Amukkâni; it
would thus confirm the evidence of the Nimroud Inscription.

These marauders, who had always shown themselves impatient of any settled authority, and had never proffered more than a doubtful submission to even the most triumphant invader, were not likely to accept the subordinate position which members of the presiding dynasty had been, for the most part, content to occupy. It was more probable that they would, from the very first, endeavour to throw off the suzerainty of Nineveh. Tiglath-pileser gave the new dynasty no time to settle itself firmly on the throne: the year after his return from Syria he got together an army and marched against it. He first cleared the right bank of the Tigris, where the Pukudu (Pekod) offered but a feeble resistance; he annexed their territory to the ancient province of Arrapkha, then crossed the river and attacked the Kaldi scattered among the plains and marshes of the Shatt el-Haî.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a woodcut published by Tomkins.

The Bît-Shilâni were the first to succumb; their king Nabushabshi was impaled before one of the gates of his capital, Sarrabânu, the town itself was taken by storm, plundered and dismantled, and 55,000 of its inhabitants were led captive into Assyria. After the Bît-Shilâni, came the turn of the Bît-Shaali. Dur-Illataî, their capital, was razed to the ground, and its population, numbering 50,400 men and women, was deported. Their chief, Lakiru, who had shown great bravery in the struggle, escaped impalement, but was sent into captivity with his people, a Ninevite governor being appointed in his place. Ukînzîr, who was, as we know, hereditary prince of the Bit-Amuk-kâni, came up in haste to defend his appanage, and threw himself into his fortress at Shapîa: Tiglath-pileser cut down the gardens and groves of palms which lent it beauty, burnt the surrounding farms and villages, and tried, without success, to make a breach in the walls; he still, however, maintained the siege, but when winter came on and the place still held out, he broke up his camp and retreated in good order, leaving the districts which he had laid waste occupied by an Assyrian force. Before his departure, he received homage and tribute from most of the Aramæan chiefs, including those of Balasu and the Bît-Dakkuri, of Nadînu, and even of the Bît-Yakîn and Merodach-baladan, whose ancestors had never before kissed the foot of an Assyrian conqueror. In this campaign he had acquired nearly three-fourths of the whole Babylonian kingdom; but Babylon itself still refused to yield, and it was no easy task to compel it to do so. Tiglath-pileser spent the whole of the year 730 in preparing for another attack, and in 729 he again appeared in front of Shapîa, this time with greater success: Ukînzîr fell into his hands, Babylon opened its gates, and he caused himself to be proclaimed King of Sumir and Akkad within its walls.* Many centuries had passed since the two empires had been united under the rule of a single master, or an Assyrian king had taken the hands of Bel. Tiglath-pileser accepted the condition attached to this solemn investiture, which obliged him to divide his time between Calah and Babylon, and to repeat at every festival of the New Year the mystic ceremony by which the god of the city confirmed him in his office.**

* Contemporary documents do not furnish us with any
information as to these events. The _Eponym Canon_ tells us
that _the king took the hands of Bel_. Pinches
_Chronicle_ adds that in the third year of Ukînzîr,
Tiglath-pileser marched against Akkad, laid waste the Bît-
Amukkâni, and took Ukînzîr prisoner; Ukînzîr had reigned
three years in Babylon. Tiglath-pileser followed him upon
the throne of Babylon.

** The _Eponym Canon_ proves that in 728 B.C., the year of
his death, he once more took the hands of Bel.

His Babylonian subjects seem to have taken a liking to him, and perhaps in order to hide from themselves their dependent condition, they shortened his purely Assyrian name of Tukulti-abal-esharra into the familiar sobriquet of Puru or Pulu, under which appellation the native chroniclers later on inscribed him in the official list of kings: he did not long survive his triumph, but died in the month of Tebeth, 728 B.C., after having reigned eighteen years over Assyria, and less than two years over Babylon and Chaldæa.

The formulae employed by the scribes in recording historical events vary so little from one reign to another, that it is, in most cases, a difficult matter to make out, under the mask of uniformity by which they are all concealed, the true character and disposition of each successive sovereign. One thing, however, is certain--the monarch who now came upon the scene after half a century of reverses, and in a brief space restored to his armies the skill necessary to defeat such formidable foes as the Armenians or the Syrians of Damascus, must have been an able general and a born leader of men. Yet Nineveh had never suffered long from a lack of capable generals, and there would be little to distinguish Tiglath-pileser from any of his predecessors, if we could place nothing more than a few successful campaigns to his credit. His claim to a pre-eminent place among them rests on the fact that he combined the talents of the soldier with the higher qualities of the administrator, and organised his kingdom in a manner at once so simple and so effective, that most of the Oriental powers down to the time of the Grecian conquest were content to accept it as a model. As soon as the ambition of the Assyrian kings began to extend beyond the region confined between the Khabur and the Greater Zab, they found it necessary to parcel out their territory into provinces under the authority of prefects for the purpose of preserving order among the vanquished peoples, and at the same time of protecting them from the attacks of adjacent tribes; these representatives of the central power were supported by garrisons, and were thus enabled to put down such minor insurrections as broke out from time to time. Some of these provinces were already in existence in the reigns of Shalmaneser or Tiglath-pileser I.; after the reverses in the time of Assurirba, their number decreased, but it grew rapidly again as Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmaneser III. gradually extended the field of their operations and of their victories. From this epoch onwards, the monuments mention over a score of them, in spite of the fact that the list thus furnished is not a complete one; the provinces of which we know most are those whose rulers were successively appointed to act as _limmi_, each of them giving their name to a year of a reign. Assyria proper contained at least four, viz. Assur (called _the country_, as distinguished from all others), Calah, Nineveh, and Arbela. The basin of the Lesser Zab was divided into the provinces of Kakzi, Arrapkha, and Akhizukhîna;* that of the Upper Tigris into those of Amidi, Tushkhân, and Gôzan. Kirruri was bounded by Mazamua, and Mazamua by Arrapkha and Lake Urumiah. We hear of the three spheres of Nazibina (Nisibis), Tela, and Kazappa in Mesopotamia,** the two former on the southern watersheds of the Masios, on the highways leading into Syria; the latter to the south of the Euphrates, in the former kingdom of the Laqî.

* Akhizukhîna is probably identical with Arzukhîna = the
City of Zukhma, which is referred to as being situated in
the basin of the Lesser Zab.

** Razappa is the biblical Rezeph (2 Kings xix. 12; Isa.
xxxvii. 12) and the Resapha of Ptolemy, now Er-Rasafa, to
the south of the Euphrates, on one of the routes leading to
Palmyra.

Most of them included--in addition to the territory under the immediate control of the governor--a number of vassal states, kingdoms, cities, and tribes, which enjoyed a certain measure of independence, but were liable to pay tribute and render military service.

Each new country was annexed, as soon as conquered, to the nearest province, or, if necessary, was converted into a distinct province by itself; thus we find that Assur-nazir-pal, after laying hands on the upper valleys of the Radanu and the Turnat, rebuilt the ruined city of Atlîla, re-named it Dur-Assur, placed a commandant, cavalry, and eunuchs there, and established within it storehouses for the receipt of contributions from the neighbouring barbarians. He followed the same course on each occasion when the fortune of war brought him fresh subjects;* and his successors, Shalmaneser III., Samsi-rammân IV., and Rammân-nirâri did the same thing in Media, in Asia Minor, and in Northern Syria;** Tiglath-pileser III. had only to follow their example and extend the application of their system to the countries which he gradually forced to submit to his rule.***

* We read of the appointment of a governor in Bît-Khalupi,
at Tush-khân, in Naîri, and in the country of the Patina.

** The territory of the Bit-Adini was converted into a
province by Shalmaneser III.

*** We find the formation of an Aramæan province, with Kar-
Assur as its capital, mentioned in the _Annals of Tiglatli-
pileser III_. Provinces were also established in Media, in
Unki, in the basin of the Orontes, and in Lebanon, from
nineteen districts formerly belonging to Hamath, six
maritime provinces in Northern Phoenicia and in Coele-Syria,
in Galilee, at Gaza.

In his case, however, certain elements came into play which forced him to modify several of their methods, and to have recourse to others which they had seldom or never employed. The majority of the countries hitherto incorporated had been near enough to the capital--whether it were Assur, Calah, or Nineveh--to permit of strict watch being kept for any sign of disaffection, and they could be promptly recalled to order if they attempted to throw off the yoke. These provinces were, moreover, of moderate area and sparsely populated: once drawn within the orbit of Assyrias attraction, they were unable to escape from its influence by their own unaided efforts; on the contrary, they gradually lost their individuality, and ended by becoming merged in the body of the nation. The Aramaean tribes of the Khabur and the Balikh, the Cossæans of the Turnat, the marauding shepherds of the Gordyæan hills and the slopes of the Masios, gradually became assimilated to their conquerors after a more or less protracted resistance, till at length--in spite of differences of origin, creed, and speech--they became the best of Assyrians, every whit as devoted to the person of their king and as jealous of his honour as the aboriginal Assyrians themselves. A similar result could not be looked for in the case of the cities recently subdued. It was not to be expected that Babylon and Damascus--to name but two of the most important--would allow themselves to be influenced and to become reconciled to their lot by artifices which had been successful enough with the Medes and in the country of Tul-Abnî.

To take the case of Babylon first. It was no mere conglomeration of tribes, nor a state of minor importance, but an actual empire, nearly as large as that of Assyria itself, and almost as solidly welded together. It extended from the Turnat and the mountains of Blam to the Arabian desert and the Nâr-Marratûtn, and even though the Cossæans, Elamites, Kaldâ, Sumerians, Akkadians, and other remnants of ancient peoples who formed its somewhat motley population, had dwelt there for centuries in a state of chronic discord, they all agreed--in theory, at any rate--in recognising the common suzerainty of Babylon. Babylon was, moreover, by general acknowledgment, the ancient metropolis to which Assyria owed its whole civilisation; it was the holy city whose gods and whose laws had served as a prototype for the gods and laws of Assyria; from its temples and its archives the Assyrian scribes had drawn such knowledge as they had of the history of the ancient world, their religious doctrines and ceremonies, their methods of interpreting the omens and of forecasting the future--in short, their whole literature, both sacred and profane. The King of Nineveh might conquer Babylon, might even enter within its gates in the hour of triumph, and, when once he had it at his mercy, might throw down its walls, demolish its palaces, destroy its _ziggurât_, burn its houses, exterminate or carry off its inhabitants, and blot out its name from the list of nations; but so long as he recoiled from the sacrilege involved in such irreparable destruction, he was not merely powerless to reduce it to the level of an ordinary leading provincial town, such as Tela or Tushkhân, but he could not even deprive it in any way of its rank as a capital, or hope to make it anything less than the second city of his empire. As long as it remained in existence, it necessarily took precedence of all others, thanks to its extensive area, the beauty and antiquity of its buildings, and the number of its inhabitants. The pride of its nobles and priests, subdued for a moment by defeat, would almost instantly have reasserted itself, had the victor sought to lower the dignity of their city; Babylon only consented to accept an alien master provided he bowed himself respectfully before its superiority, and was willing to forget that he was a stranger within its gates, and was ready to comply with its laws and masquerade as a Babylonian. Tiglath-pileser III. never dreamt, therefore, of treating the Babylonians as slaves, or of subordinating them to their Assyrian descendants, but left their liberties and territory alike unimpaired. He did not attempt to fuse into a single empire the two kingdoms which his ability had won for him; he kept them separate, and was content to be monarch of both on similar terms. He divided himself, as it were, into two persons, one of whom reigned in Calah, while the other reigned in Karduniash, and his Chaldæan subjects took care to invest this dual _rôle_ --based on a fiction so soothing to their pride--with every appearance of reality; he received from them, together with all the titles of the Babylonian kings, that name of Pulu, which later on found its way into their chronicles, and which was so long a puzzle to historians, both ancient and modern. Experience amply proved that this was the only means by which it was possible to yoke temporarily together the two great powers of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Among the successors of Tiglath-pileser, the only sovereigns to rule over Babylon without considerable difficulty were those who followed the precedent set by him and were satisfied to divide their functions and reign as dual kings over a dual kingdom.*

* 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 Aramæans 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 Kaldâ had hitherto held possession of the city, and still possessed representatives and allies among the other tribes, especially among the Bît-Yakîn, 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 Bekâa, 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
Aramæans 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 Haurân 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 Naîri or from Media into Assyria, and _vice versâ_. 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 Aramæans of the Mesopotamian deserts, and the Kaldâ to the slopes of Mount Amanus or the banks of the Orontes, the Patinians and Hamathæans to Ulluba, the inhabitants of Damascus to Kîr or to the borders of Elam,* and the Israelites to some place in Assyria.**

* 2 Kings xvi. 9.

** 2 Kings xv. 29.