Chapter I: The Assyrian Revival and the Struggle for Syria (4)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Alfred Boissier.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Nineveh is mentioned as the starting-place of nearly all
the first campaigns in the inscription on the _Monolith_;
also in the Balawât inscription, on the other hand, towards
the end of the reign, Calah is given as the residence of the
king on the _Black Obelisk_

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

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

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

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