Chapter II: Tiglath-Pileser III. and the Organisation of the Assyrian (2)

In their eyes Jahveh was the one God, compared with Whom the pagan deities were no gods at all, and could not even be said to exist. He might, had He so willed it, have bestowed His protection on any one of the numerous races whom He had planted on the earth: but as a special favour, which He was under no obligation to confer, He had chosen Israel to be His own people, and had promised them that they should occupy Canaan so long as they kept free from sin. But Israel had sinned, Israel had followed after idols; its misfortunes were, therefore, but the just penalty of its unfaithfulness. Thus conceived, Jahveh ceased to be merely the god of a nation--He became the God of the whole world; and it is in the guise of a universal Deity that some, at any rate, of the prophets begin to represent Him from the time of Jeroboam II. onwards.

This change of view in regard to the Being of Jahveh coincided with a no less marked alteration in the character of His prophets. At first they had taken an active part in public affairs; they had thrown themselves into the political movements of the time, and had often directed their course,* by persuasion when persuasion sufficed, by violence when violence was the only means that was left to them of enforcing the decrees of the Most High. Not long before this, we find Elisha secretly conspiring against the successors of Ahab, and taking a decisive part in the revolution which set the house of Jehu on the throne in place of that of Omri; but during the half-century which had elapsed since his death, the revival in the fortunes of Israel and its growing prosperity under the rule of an energetic king had furnished the prophets with but few pretexts for interfering in the conduct of state affairs.

* Cf. the part taken by Nathan in the conspiracy which
raised Solomon to the throne (1 Kings i. 8, et seq.), and
previous to this in the story of Davids amour with
Bathsheba (2 Sam. xii. 1-25). Similarly, we find prophets
such as Ahijah in the reign of Jeroboam I. (1 Kings xi. 29-
39; cf. xiv. 1-18; xv. 29, 30), and Shemaîah in the reign of
Rehoboam (1 Kings xii. 22-24), Jehu son of Hananiah under
Baasha (1 Kings xvi. 1-4, 7, 12, 13), Micaiah son of Imla,
and Zedekiah under Ahab (1 Kings xxii. 5-28), not to speak
of those mentioned in the Chronicles, e.g. Azariah son of
Oded (2 Ghron. xv. 1-8), and Hanani under Asa (2 Ghron. xvi.
7-10), Jahaziel (2 Ghron. xx. 14-19), and Eliezer, son of
Dodavahu (2 Ghron. xx. 37), in the time of Johoshaphat. No
trace of any writings composed by these prophets is found
until a very late date; but in Chronicles, in addition to a
letter from Elijah to Jehoram of Juda (2 Ghron. xxi. 12-15),
we find a reference to the commentary of the prophet Iddo in
the time of Abijah (2 Ghron. xiii. 22), and to the History
of Jehu the son of Hanani, which is inserted in the book of
the kings of Israel (2 Chron. xx. 34), in the time of
Jehoshaphat.

They no longer occupied themselves in resisting the king, but addressed themselves to the people, pointed out the heinousness of their sins, and threatened them with the wrath of Jahveh if they persisted in their unfaithfulness: they came to be spiritual advisers rather than political partisans, and orators rather than men of action like their predecessors. Their discourses were carefully prepared beforehand, and were written down either by themselves or by some of their disciples for the benefit of posterity, in the hope that future generations would understand the dangers or witness the catastrophes which their contemporaries might not live to see. About 760 B.C., Amos of Tekôa,* a native of Judaea, suddenly made his appearance at Bethel, in the midst of the festivals which pilgrims had flocked to celebrate in the ancient temple erected to Jahveh in one of His animal forms.

* The title of the Book of Amos fixes the date as being in
the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of
Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel (i. 1), and the
state of affairs described by him corresponds pretty closely
with what we know of this period. Most critics fix the date
somewhere between 760 and 750 B.C., but nearer 760 than 750.

His opening words filled the listening crowd with wonder: The high places of Isaac shall be desolate, he proclaimed, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword. *

* Amos vii. 9.

Yet Jeroboam had by this time gained all his victories, and never before had the King of Samaria appeared to be more firmly seated on the throne: what, then, did this intruder mean by introducing himself as a messenger of wrath in the name of Jahveh, at the very moment when Jahveh was furnishing His worshippers with abundant signs of His favour? Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, interrupted him as he went on to declare that Jeroboam should die by the sword, and Israel should surely be led away captive out of his land. The king, informed of what was going on, ordered Amos into exile, and Amaziah undertook to communicate this sentence to him: O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there: but prophesy not again any more at Bethel: for it is the kings sanctuary, and it is a royal house. And Amos replied, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophets son; but I was a herdman, and a dresser of sycomore trees: and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto My people Israel. Now therefore hear thou the word of the Lord: Thou sayest, Prophesy not against Israel, and drop not thy word against the house of Isaac: therefore thus saith the Lord: Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line; and thou thyself shalt die in a land that is unclean, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land. *

* Amos vii. 9-17.

This prophecy, first expanded, and then written down with a purity of diction and loftiness of thought which prove Amos to have been a master of literary art,* was widely circulated, and gradually gained authority as portents indicative of the divine wrath began to accumulate, such as an earthquake which occurred two years after the incident at Bethel,* an eclipse of the sun, drought, famine, and pestilence.*** It foretold, in the first place, the downfall of all the surrounding countries--Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and Judah; then, denouncing Israel itself, condemned it to the same penalties for the same iniquities. In vain did the latter plead its privileges as the chosen people of Jahveh, and seek to atone for its guilt by endless sacrifices. I hate, I despise your feasts, declared Jahveh, and I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Yea, though ye offer Me your burnt offerings and meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from Me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. ****

* S. Jerome describes Amos as rusticus and imperitus
sermone, but modern writers are generally agreed that in
putting forward this view he was influenced by the statement
as to the peasant origin of the prophet.

** Amos i. 1; reference is made to it by the unknown prophet
whose words are preserved in Zech. xiv. 5.

*** The famine is mentioned in Amos iv. 6, the drought in
Amos iv. 7, 8, the pestilence in Amos iv. 10.

**** Amos v. 21-24.

The unfaithfulness of Israel, the corruption of its cities, the pride of its nobles, had sealed its doom; even at that moment the avenger was at hand on its north-eastern border, the Assyrian appointed to carry out sentence upon it.* Then follow visions, each one of which tends to deepen the effect of the seers words--a cloud of locusts,** a devouring fire,*** a plumb-line in the hands of the Lord,**** a basket laden with summer fruits--till at last the whole people of Israel take refuge in their temple, vainly hoping that there they may escape from the vengeance of the Eternal. There shall not one of them flee away, and there shall not one of them escape. Though they dig into hell, thence shall Mine hand take them; and though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down. And though they hide themselves in the top of Oarmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from My sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them. And though they go into captivity before their enemies, thence will I command the sword, and it shall slay them; and I will set Mine eyes upon them for evil and not for good.

* Most commentators admit that the nation raised up by
Jahveh to oppress Israel from the entering in of Hamath
unto the brook of the Arabah (Amos vi. 14) was no other
than Assyria. At the very period in which Amos flourished,
Assurdân made two campaigns against Hadrach, in 765 and 755,
which brought his armies right up to the Israelite frontier
(Schrader, Keilinschrift. Bibliothec, vol. i. pp. 210-
213).

** Amos vii. 1-3.

*** Amos vii. 4-6.

**** Amos vii. 7-9. It is here that the speech delivered by
the prophet at Bethel is supposed to occur (vii. 9); the
narrative of what afterwards happened follows immediately
(Amos vii. 10-17).

^ Amos viii. 1-3.; Amos ix. 1-4.

For the first time in history a prophet foretold disaster and banishment for a whole people: love of country was already giving place in the heart of Amos to his conviction of the universal jurisdiction of God, and this conviction led him to regard as possible and probable a state of things in which Israel should have no part. Nevertheless, its decadence was to be merely temporary; Jahveh, though prepared to chastise the posterity of Jacob severely, could not bring Himself to destroy it utterly. The kingdom of David was soon to flourish anew: Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt. And I will bring again the captivity of My people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be plucked up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God. *

The voice of Amos was not the only one raised in warning. From the midst of Ephraim, another seer, this time a priest, Hosea, son of Beeri,** was never weary of reproaching the tribes with their ingratitude, and persisted in his foretelling of the desolation to come.

* Amos ix. 13-15.

** Hoshea (or Hosea) was regarded by the rabbis as the
oldest of the lesser prophets, and his writings were placed
at the head of their collected works. The title of his book
(Hos. i. 1), where he begins by stating that he preached
in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash (Jehoash), King of
Israel, is a later interpolation; the additional mention of
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, is due
to an attempted analogy with the title of Isaiah. Hosea was
familiar with the prophecies of Amos, and his own
predictions show that the events merely foreseen by his
predecessor were now in course of fulfilment in his day. The
first three chapters probably date from the end of the reign
of Jeroboam, about 750 B.C.; the others were compiled under
his successors, and before 734-733 B.C., since Gilead is
there mentioned as still forming part of Israel (Hos. vi. 8;
xii. 12), though it was in that year laid waste and
conquered by Tiglath-pileser III. Duhm has suggested that
Hosea must have been a priest from the tone of his writings,
and this hypothesis is generally accepted by theologians.

The halo of grandeur and renown with which Jeroboam had surrounded the kingdom could not hide its wretched and paltry character from the prophets eyes; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease. And it shall come to pass at that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. * Like his predecessor, he, too, inveighed against the perversity and unfaithfulness of his people. The abandoned wickedness of Gomer, his wife, had brought him to despair. In the bitterness of his heart, he demands of Jahveh why He should have seen fit to visit such humiliation on His servant, and persuades himself that the faithlessness of which he is a victim is but a feeble type of that which Jahveh had suffered at the hands of His people. Israel had gone a-whoring after strange gods, and the day of retribution for its crimes was not far distant: The children of Israel shall abide many days without king and without prince, and without sacrifice and without pillar, and without ephod or teraphim; afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall come with fear unto the Lord and to His goodness in the latter days. **

* Hos. i. 4, 5.

**Hos. i.-iii. Is the story of Hosea and his wife an
allegory, or does it rest on a basis of actual fact? Most
critics now seem to incline to the view that the prophet has
here set down an authentic episode from his own career, and
uses it to point the moral of his work.

Whether the decadence of the Hebrews was or was not due to the purely moral and religious causes indicated by the prophets, it was only too real, and even the least observant among their contemporaries must have suspected that the two kingdoms were quite unfitted, as to their numbers, their military organisation, and monetary reserves, to resist successfully any determined attack that might be made upon them by surrounding nations. An armed force entering Syria by way of the Euphrates could hardly fail to overcome any opposition that might be offered to it, if not at the first onset, at any rate after a very brief struggle; none of the minor states to be met upon its way, such as Damascus or Israel, much less those of Hamath or Hadrach, were any longer capable of barring its progress, as Ben-hadad and Hazael had arrested that of the Assyrians in the time of Shalmaneser III. The efforts then made by the Syrian kings to secure their independence had exhausted their resources and worn out the spirit of their peoples; civil war had prevented them from making good their losses during the breathing-space afforded by the decadence of Assyria, and now that Nature herself had afflicted them with the crowning misfortunes of famine and pestilence, they were reduced to a mere shadow of what they had been during the previous century. If, therefore, Sharduris, after making himself master of the countries of the Taurus and Amanos, had turned his steps towards the valley of the Orontes, he might have secured possession of it without much difficulty, and after that there would have been nothing to prevent his soldiers from pressing on, if need be, to the walls of Samaria or even of Jerusalem itself. Indeed, he seems to have at last made up his mind to embark on this venture, when the revival of Assyrian power put a stop to his ambitious schemes. Tiglath-pileser, hard pressed on every side by daring and restless foes, began by attacking those who were at once the most troublesome and most vulnerable--the Aramæan tribes on the banks of the Tigris. To give these incorrigible banditti, who boldly planted their outposts not a score of leagues from his capital, a free hand on his rear, and brave the fortune of war in Armenia or Syria, without first teaching them a lesson in respect, would have been simply to court serious disaster; an Aramæan raid occurring at a time when he was engaged elsewhere with the bulk of his army, might have made it necessary to break off a successful campaign and fall back in haste to the relief of Nineveh or Calah (Kalakh), just as he was on the eve of gaining some decisive advantage. Moreover, the suzerainty of Assyria over Karduniash entailed on him the duty of safeguarding Babylon from that other horde of Aramæans which harassed it on the east, while the Kaldâ were already threatening its southern frontier. It is not quite clear whether Nabunazîr who then occupied the throne implored his help:* at any rate, he took the field as soon as he felt that his own crown was secure, overthrew the Aramæans at the first encounter, and drove them back from the banks of the Lower Zab to those of the Uknu: all the countries which they had seized to the east of the Tigris at once fell again into the hands of the Assyrians.

* Nabunazîr is the Nabonassar who afterwards gave his name
to the era employed by Ptolemy.

This first point gained, Tiglath-pileser crossed the river, and made a demonstration in force before the Babylonian fortresses. He visited, one after another, Sippar, Nipur, Babylon, Borsippa, Kuta, Kîshu, Dilbat, and Uruk, cities without peer, and offered in all of them sacrifices to the gods,--to Bel, to Zirbanît, to Nebo, to Tashmît, and to Nirgal. Karduniash bowed down before him, but he abstained from giving any provocation to the Kaldâ, and satisfied with having convinced Nabunazîr that Assyria had lost none of her former vigour, he made his way back to his hereditary kingdom.*

* Most historians believe that Tiglath-pileser entered
Karduniash as an enemy: that he captured several towns, and
allowed the others to ransom themselves on payment of
tribute. The way in which the texts known to us refer to
this expedition seems to me, however, to prove that he set
out as an ally and protector of Nabonazir, and that his
visit to the Babylonian sanctuaries was of a purely pacific
nature.

The lightly-won success of this expedition produced the looked-for result. Tiglath-pileser had set out a king _de facto_; but now that the gods of the ancient sanctuaries had declared themselves satisfied with his homage, and had granted him that religious consecration which had before been lacking, he returned a king de jure as well (745 B.C.). His next campaign completed what the first had begun. The subjugation of the plain would have been of little advantage if the highlands had been left in the power of tribes as yet unconquered, and allowed to pour down with impunity bands of rapacious freebooters on the newly liberated provinces: security between the Zab and the Uknu could only be attained by the pacification of Namri, and it was, therefore, to Namri that the sea of war was transferred in 744 B.C. All the Cossæan and Babylonian races intermingled in the valleys on the frontier were put to ransom one after another.

These included the Bît-Sangibuti, the Bît-Khambân, the Barrua, the Bit-Zualzash, the Bît-Matti, the Umliash, the Parsua, the Bît-Zatti, the Bît-Zabdâdani, the Bît-Ishtar, the city of Zakruti, the Nina, the Bustus, the Arakuttu, by which the conqueror gradually made his way into the heart of Media, reaching districts into which none of his predecessors had ever penetrated. Those least remote he annexed to his own empire, converting them into a province under the rule of an Assyrian governor; he then returned to Calah with a convoy of 60,500 prisoners, and countless herds of oxen, sheep, mules, and dromedaries. Whilst he was thus employed, Assur-dainâni, one of his generals to whom he had entrusted the pick of his army, pressed on still further to the north-east, across the almost waterless deserts of Media. The mountainous district on the shores of the Caspian had for centuries enjoyed a reputation for wealth and fertility among the races settled on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris. It was from thence that they obtained their lapis-lazuli, and the hills from which it was extracted were popularly supposed to consist almost entirely of one compact mass of this precious mineral. Their highest peak, now known as the Demavend, was then called Bikni,* a name which had come to be applied to the whole district.

* The country of Bikni is probably Rhagian Media and Mount
Bikni, the modern Demavend.

To the Assyrians it stood as the utmost boundary mark of the known world, beyond which their imagination pictured little more than a confused mist of almost fabulous regions and peoples. Assur-dainâni caught a distant glimpse of the snow-capped pyramid of Demavend, but approached no nearer than its lower slopes, whence he retraced his steps after having levied tribute from their inhabitants. The fame of this exploit spread far and wide in a marvellously short space of time, and chiefs who till then had vacillated in their decision now crowded the path of the victor, eager to pay him homage on his return: even the King of Illipi thought it wise to avoid the risk of invasion, and hastened of his own accord to meet the conqueror. Here, again, Tiglath-pileser had merely to show himself in order to re-establish the supremacy of Assyria: the races of the plain, for many years familiar with defeat, made no pretence of serious resistance, but bowed their necks beneath a fresh yoke almost without protest.

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

Having thus secured his rear from attack for some years at any rate, Tiglath-pileser no longer hesitated to try conclusions with Urartu. The struggle in which he now deliberately engaged could not fail to be a decisive one; for Urartu, buoyed up and borne on the wave of some fifty years of prosperity, had almost succeeded in reaching first rank among the Asiatic powers: one more victory over Nineveh, and it would become--for how long none might say--undisputed mistress of the whole of Asia. Assyria, on the other hand, had reached a. point where its whole future hung upon a single issue of defeat or victory. The prestige with which the brilliant campaigns of Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmaneser III. had invested its name, if somewhat diminished, had still survived its recent reverses, and the terror inspired by its arms was so great even among races who had witnessed them from a distance, that the image of Assyria rose involuntarily before the eyes of the Hebrew prophets as that of the avenger destined to punish Israel for its excesses.*

* Cf. Amos vi. 4.

No doubt, during the last few reigns its prosperity had waned and its authority over distant provinces had gradually become relaxed; but now the old dynasty, worn out by its own activity, had given place to a new one, and with this change of rulers the tide of ill-fortune was, perhaps, at last about to turn. At such a juncture, a successful campaign meant full compensation for all past disasters and the attainment of a firmer position than had ever yet been held; whereas another reverse, following on those from which the empire had already suffered, would render their effect tenfold more deadly, and, by letting loose the hatred of those whom fear alone still held in check, complete its overthrow. It was essential, therefore, before entering on the struggle, to weigh well every chance of victory, and to take every precaution by which adverse contingencies might be, as far as possible, eliminated. The army, encouraged by its success in the two preceding campaigns, was in excellent fighting order, and ready to march in any direction without a moments hesitation, confident in its ability to defeat the forces of Urartu as it had defeated those of the Medes and Aramæans; but the precise point of attack needed careful consideration. Tiglath-pileser must have been sorely tempted to take the shortest route, challenge the enemy at his most vulnerable point on the shores of Lake Van, and by a well-aimed thrust deal him a blow from which he would never, or only by slow degrees, recover. But this vital region of Urartu, as we have already pointed out, presented the greatest difficulties of access. The rampart of mountain and forest by which it was protected on the Assyrian side could only be traversed by means of a few byways, along which bands of guerrillas could slip down easily enough to the banks of the Tigris, but which were quite impassable to any army in full marching order, hampered by its horses, chariots, and baggage-train: compelled to thread its way, with columns unduly extended, through the woods and passes of an unknown country, which daily use had long made familiar to its adversaries, it would have run the risk of being cut to pieces man by man a dozen times before it could hope to range its disciplined masses on the field of battle. Former Assyrian invasions had, as a general rule, taken an oblique course towards some of the spurs of this formidable chain, and had endeavoured to neutralise its defences by outflanking them, either by proceeding westwards along the basins of the Supnat and the Arzania, or eastwards through the countries bordering on Lake Urumiah; but even this method presented too many difficulties and too little certainty of success to warrant Tiglath-pileser in staking the reviving fortunes of his empire on its adoption. He rightly argued that Sharduris would be most easily vulnerable in those provinces whose allegiance to him was of recent date, and he resolved to seek out his foe in the heart of Northern Syria.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. Binder. Taken at
Julamerk, near the junction of the mountain tracks leading
from the Zab valley to the south-eastern corner of the basin
of Lake Van.

There, if anywhere, every chance was in his favour and against the Armenian. The scene of operations, while it had long been familiar to his own generals and soldiers, was, on the other hand, entirely new ground to those of the enemy; the latter, though unsurpassed in mountain warfare, lost much of their superiority on the plains, and could not, with all their courage, make up for their lack of experience. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that a victory on the banks of the Afrîn or the Orontes would have more important results than a success gained in the neighbourhood of the lakes or of Urartu. Not only would it free the Assyrians from the only one of their enemies whom they had any cause to fear, but it would also bring back the Hittite kings to their allegiance, and restore the Assyrian supremacy over the wealthiest regions of Western Asia: they would thus disable Urartu and reconquer Syria at one and the same time. Tiglath-pileser, therefore, crossed the Euphrates in the spring of 743 B.C., neither Matîlu of Agusi, Kushtashpi of Kummukh, nor their allies daring to interfere with his progress. He thus advanced as far as Arpad, and, in the first moment of surprise, the town threw open its gates before him.*

* Different writers have given different versions of this
campaign. Some think that Arpad resisted, and that Tiglath-
pileser was laying siege to it, when the arrival of
Sharduris compelled him to retire; others prefer to believe
that Arpad was still in the hands of the Assyrians, and that
Tiglath-pileser used it as his base of operations. The
formula ina Arpadda in the Eponym Canon proves that Tiglath-
pileser was certainly in Arpad: since Arpad belonged to the
Bit-Agusi, and they were the allies or vassals of Sharduris,
we must assume, as I have done here, that in the absence of
the Urartians they did not dare to resist the Assyrians, and
opened their gates to them.

There, while he was making ready to claim the homage of the surrounding countries, he learnt that Sharduris was hastening up to the rescue. He at once struck his camp and marched out to meet his rival, coming up with him in the centre of Kummukh, not far from the Euphrates, between Kishtân and Khalpi. Sharduris was at the head of his Syrian contingents, including the forces of Agusi, Melitene, Kummukh, and Gurgum--a formidable army, probably superior in point of numbers to that of the Assyrians. The struggle lasted a whole day, and in the course of it the two kings, catching sight of one another on the field of battle, engaged in personal combat: at last, towards evening, the chariots and cavalry of Urartu gave way and the rout began. The victors made their way into the camp at the heels of their flying enemies. Sharduris abandoned his chariot, and could find nothing but a mare to aid him in his flight; he threw himself upon her back, careless of the ridicule at that time attached to the use of such a mount in Eastern countries,* fled at a gallop all through the night, hard pressed by a large body of cavalry, crossed the hills of Sibak, and with much difficulty reached the bridge over the Euphrates.

* So, too, later on, in the time of Sargon, Rusas, when
defeated, gets on the back of a mare and rides off.

His pursuers drew rein on the river-bank, and Sharduris re-entered his kingdom in safety. He had lost nearly 73,000 men, killed or taken prisoners, in addition to his chariots, and nearly the whole train of horses, asses, servants, and artisans attached to his army; he left his tent still standing, and those who were first to enter it laid hands on his furniture and effects, his royal ornaments, his bed and portable throne, with its cushions and bearing-poles, none of which had he found time to take with him. Tiglath-pileser burnt them all on the spot as a thank-offering, to the gods who had so signally favoured him; the bed alone he retained, in order that he might dedicate it as a trophy to the goddess Ishtar of Nineveh.

He had covered himself with glory, and might well be proud of his achievement, yet the victory was in no way a decisive one. The damage inflicted on the allies, considerable though it was, had cost him dear: the forces left to him were not sufficient to enable him to finish the campaign, and extort oaths of allegiance from the Syrian princes before they had recovered from the first shock of defeat. He returned to Nineveh, and spent the whole winter in reorganising his troops; while his enemies, on the other hand, made preparations to repel the attack energetically. Sharduris could not yet venture outside his mountain strongholds, but the hope of being reinforced by him, as soon as he had got together another army, encouraged the Syrian kings to remain faithful to him in spite of his reverses.*

* The part played by Sharduris in the events of the years
which followed, passing mention of which was made by
Winckler (_Gesch. Bab. und Ass_,, pp. 224, 225), have been
fully dealt with by Belck and Lehmann (Chaldische
_Forschungen, in Veriiand. der Berliner anthropol.
Gesellschaft_, 1895, pp. 325-336).

Matîlu of Agusi, unable to carry the day against the Assyrians in the open field, distributed his men among his towns, and resisted all attacks with extraordinary persistence, confident that Sharduris would at length come to help him, and with this hope he held out for three years in his town of Arpad. This protracted resistance need no longer astonish us, now that we know, from observations made on the spot, the marvellous skill displayed in the fortification of these Asiatic towns. The ruins of Arpad have yet to be explored, but those of Samalla have been excavated, and show us the methods adopted for the defence of a royal residence about the middle of the century with which we are now concerned. The practice of building citadels on a square or rectangular plan, which prevailed so largely under the Egyptian rule, had gradually gone out of fashion as the knowledge of engineering advanced, and the use of mines and military engines had been more fully developed among the nations of Western Asia. It was found that the heavily fortified angles of the enclosing wall merely presented so many weak points, easy to attack but difficult to defend, no matter how carefully they might be protected by an accumulation of obstacles. In the case of fortresses built on a plain, where the plan was not modified by the nature of the site, the enclosing wall was generally round or oval in shape, and free from useless angles which might detract from its strength. The walls were surmounted by battlements, and flanked at short intervals by round or square towers, the tops of which rose but little, if indeed at all, above the level of the curtain. In front of this main wall was a second lower one, also furnished with towers and battlements, which followed the outline of the first all the way round at an interval of some yards, thus acting as a sort of continuous screen to it. The gates were little less than miniature citadels built into each line of ramparts; the gate of the outer wall was often surrounded by lower outworks, two square bastions and walls enclosing an outer quadrangle which had to be crossed before the real gate was reached.

A reproduction by Faucher-Gudin of the first plan published
by Luschan.

When a breach had been made in this double enclosure, though the town itself might be taken, the labours of the attacking force were not yet over. In the very centre of the place, on a sort of artificial mound or knoll, stood the royal castle, and resistance on the part of its garrison would make it necessary for the enemy to undertake a second siege no less deadly and protracted than the first. The keep of Zinjirli had only a single gate approached by a narrow causeway.

Reproduction by Faucher-Gudin of the sketch published by
Luschan.

Within, it was divided by walls into five compartments, each of which was independent of the rest, and had to be attacked separately. Ma-tîlu knew he could hope for no mercy at the hands of the Assyrians; he therefore struggled on to the last, and when at length obliged to surrender, in the year 740 B.C., he paid for his obstinacy by the loss of his throne, and perhaps also of his life.*

* Our knowledge of these events is imperfect, our only
information being derived from the very scanty details given
in the _Eponym Canon_; up to the present we can do no more
than trace the general course of events.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the plan published in Luschan.

The inaction of Sharduris clearly showed that he was no longer in a position to protect his allies, and that the backbone of his kingdom was broken; the kings who had put faith in his help now gave him up, and ambassadors flocked in from all parts, even from those which were not as yet directly threatened. Kushtashpi of Kummukh, Tark-hulara of Gturgum, Pisiris of Carchemish, Uriaîk of Kuî, came to Arpad in person to throw themselves at the conquerors feet, bringing with them offerings of gold and silver, of lead and iron, of ivory, carved and in the tusk, of purple, and of dyed or embroidered stuffs, and were confirmed in the possession of their respective territories; Hiram II. of Tyre, moreover, and Eezin of Damascus sent their greetings to him.*

* _Annals of Tiglath-pileser III_., where the statement at
the close indicates that Tiglath-pileser received the
tributary kings of Syria in Arpad, after he had captured
that city.

The Patina, who in days gone by had threatened the fortunes of Assur-nazir-pal, once again endeavoured to pose as the rivals of Assyria, and Tutammû, sovereign of Unki, the most daring of the minor states into which the Patina had been split up, declined to take part in the demonstrations made by his neighbours. Tiglath-pileser marched on Kinalua, sacked it, built a fortress there, and left a governor and garrison behind him: Agusi and Unki henceforth sank down to the level of mere provinces, administered by royal officers in the kings name, and permanently occupied by Assyrian troops.

Northern Syria was thus again incorporated with the empire, but Urartu, although deprived of the resources with which Syria had supplied it, continued to give cause for apprehension; in 739 B.C., however, a large proportion of the districts of Naîri, to which it still clung, was wrested from it, and a fortress was built at Ulluba, with a view to providing a stable base of operations at this point on the northern frontier. A rebellion, instigated, it may be, by his own agents, recalled Tiglath-pileser to the Amanus in the year 738. The petty kings who shared with Assyria the possession of the mountains and plains of the Afrîn could not succeed in living at peace with one another, and every now and then their disputes broke out into open warfare. Samalla was at that time subject to a family of which the first members known to history, Qaral and Panammu, shared Yaudi equally between them. Barzur, son of Panammu I., had reigned there since about 765 B.C., and there can be little doubt that he must have passed through the same vicissitudes as his neighbours; faithful to Urartu as long as Sharduris kept the upper hand, and to Assyria as soon as Tiglath-pileser had humiliated Urartu, he had been killed in a skirmish by some rival. His son, Panammu IL, came to the throne merely as a nominee of his suzerain, and seems to have always rendered him faithful service; unfortunately, Yaudi was no longer subject to the house of Panammu, but obeyed the rule of a certain Azriyahu, who chafed at the presence of an alien power.*

* Azriyahu of Yaudi was identified with Azariah of Judah by
G. Smith, and this identification was for a long time
accepted without question by most Assyriologists. After a
violent controversy it has finally been shown that the
_Yaudi_ of Tiglath-pileser III.a inscriptions ought to be
identified with the _Yadi_ or _Yaudi_ of the Zinjirli
inscriptions, and consequently that Azriyahu was not king of
Judah, but a king of Northern Syria. This view appears to me
to harmonise so well with what remains of the texts, and
with our knowledge of the events, that I have had no
hesitation in adopting it.

Azriyahu took advantage of the events which kept Tiglath-pileser fully occupied in the east, to form a coalition in favour of himself among the states on the banks of the Orontes, including some seventeen provinces, dependencies of Hamath, and certain turbulent cities of Northern Phoenicia, such as Byblos, Arka, Zimyra, Usnû, Siannu, Coele-Syria, and even Hadrach itself. It is not quite clear whether Damascus and the Hebrews took part in this movement. Jeroboam had died in 740, after a prosperous reign of forty-one years, and on his death Israel seems to have fallen under a cloud; six months later, his son Zechariah was assassinated at Ibleam by Shallum, son of Jabesh, and the prophecy of Amos, in which he declared that the house of Jeroboam should fall beneath the sword of Jahveh,* was fulfilled. Shallum himself reigned only one month: two other competitors had presented themselves immediately after his crime;** the ablest of these, Menahem, son of Gadi, had come from Tirzah to Samaria, and, after suppressing his rivals, laid hands on the crown.*** He must have made himself master of the kingdom little by little, the success of his usurpation being entirely due to the ruthless energy invariably and everywhere displayed by him; as, for instance, when Tappuakh (Tiphsah) refused to open its gates at his summons, he broke into the town and slaughtered its inhabitants.****

* Amos vii. 9.

** The nameless prophet, whose prediction is handed down to
us in Zech. ix.--xi., speaks of three shepherds cut off by
Javeh in one month (xi. 8); two of these were Zechariah and
Shallum; the third is not mentioned in the Book of Kings.

*** 2 Kings xiv. 23-29; xv. 8-15.

**** 2 Kings xv. 16. The Massoretic text gives the name of
the town as Tipsah, but the Septuagint has Taphôt, which led
Thenius to suggest Tappuakh as an emendation of Tipsah:
Stade prefers the emendation Tirzah.

All the defects of organisation, all the sources of weakness, which for the last half-century had been obscured by the glories of Jeroboam II., now came to the surface, and defied all human efforts to avert their consequences. Then, as Hosea complains, is the iniquity of Ephraim discovered, and the wickedness of Samaria; for they commit falsehood: and the thief entereth in, and the troop of robbers spoileth without. And they consider not in their hearts that I (Jahveh) remember all their wickedness: now have their own doings beset them about; they are before My face. They make the king glad with their wickedness and the princes with their lies. They are all adulterers; they are as an oven heated by the baker.... They... devour their judges; all their kings are fallen; there is none among them that calleth unto Me. * In Judah, Azariah (Uzziah) had at first shown some signs of ability; he had completed the conquest of Idumsea, Edom, and had fortified Elath,** but he suddenly found himself stricken with leprosy, and was obliged to hand over the reins of government of Jotham.***

* Sos. vii. 1-4, 7.

** 2 Kings xiv. 22; in 2 Ghron. xxvi. 6-15 he is credited
with the reorganisation of the army and of the Judsean
fortress, in addition to campaigns against the Philistines
and Arabs.

*** 2 Kings xv. 5; cf. 2 Ghron. xxvi. 19-21. Azariah is also
abbreviated into Uzziah. Tappuakh was a town situated on the
borders of Ephraim and Manasseh (Josh. xvi. 8; xvii. 7, 8).

His long life had been passed uneventfully, and without any disturbance, under the protection of Jeroboam; but the very same defects which had led to the ruin of Israel were at work also in Judah, and Menahem, in spite of his enfeebled condition, had nothing to fear in this direction.

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

The danger which menaced him came rather from the east and the north, where Damascus, aroused from its state of lethargy by Rezôn [Rezin] II., had again begun to strive after the hegemony of Syria.*

* The name of this king, written Rezin in the Bible (2 Kings
xv. 37; xvi. 5, 6, 9), is given as _Razunu_ in the Assyrian
texts; he was therefore Ilezôn II. A passage in the _Annals_
seems to indicate that Rezins father was prince of a city
dependent on Damascus, not king of Damascus itself;
unfortunately the text is too much mutilated to warrant us
in forming any definite conclusion on this point.

All these princes, when they found that the ambition of Tiglath-pileser threatened to interfere with their own intrigues, were naturally tempted to combine against him, and were willing to postpone to a more convenient season the settlement of their own domestic quarrrels. But Tiglath-pileser did not give them time for this; he routed Azriyahu, and laid waste Kullani,* the chief centre of revolt, ravaged the valley of the Orontes, and carried off the inhabitants of several towns, replacing them with prisoners taken the year before during his campaign in Naîri.

* Kullani is the Calno or Calneh mentioned by Isaiah (x. 9)
and Amos (vi. 2), which lay somewhere between Arpad and
Hamath; the precise spot is not yet known.

After this feat the whole of Syria surrendered. Rezin and Menahem were among the first to tender their homage, and the latter paid a thousand talents of silver for the _firman_ which definitely confirmed his tenure of the throne; the princes of Tyre, Byblos, Hamath, Carchemish, Milid, Tabal, and several others followed their example--even a certain Zabibi, queen of an Arab tribe, feeling compelled to send her gifts to the conqueror.

A sudden rising among the Aramæan tribes on the borders of Elam obliged Tiglath-pileser to depart before he had time to take full advantage of his opportunity. The governors of Lullumi and Naîri promptly suppressed the outbreak, and, collecting the most prominent of the rebels together, sent them to the king in order that he might distribute them throughout the cities of Syria: a colony of 600 prisoners from the town of Amlati was established in the territory of Damaunu, 5400 from Dur were sent to the fortresses of Unki, Kunalia, Khuzarra, Taî, Tarmanazi, Kulmadara, Khatatirra, and Sagillu, while another 10,000 or so were scattered along the Phoenician seaboard and among the adjacent mountains. The revolt had meanwhile spread to the nations of Media, where it was, perhaps, fomented by the agents of Urartu; and for the second time within seven years (737 B.C.) Tiglath-pileser trampled underfoot the countries over which he had ridden in triumph at the beginning of his career--the Bît-Kapsi, the Bît-Sangibuti, the Bît-Tazzakki, the Bît-Zulazash, the Bît-Matti, and Umliash. The people of Upash, among the Bît-Kapsi, entrenched themselves on the slopes of Mount Abirus; but he carried their entrenchments by storm. Ushuru of Taddiruta and Burdadda of Nirutakta were seized with alarm, and hid themselves in their mountain gorges; but he climbed up in pursuit of them, drove them out of their hiding-places, seized their possessions, and made them prisoners. Similar treatment was meted out to all those who proved refractory; some he despoiled, others he led captive, and bursting upon the remainder like the downpour of Bammân, permitted none of them to escape. He raised trophies all along his line of march: in Bau, a dependency of Bît-Ishtar, he set up a pointed javelin dedicated to Ninip, on which he had engraved a panegyric of the virtues of his master Assur; near Shilkhazi, a town founded, in bygone days, by the Babylonians, he erected a statue of himself, and a pillar consecrated to Marduk in Til-ashshur. In the following year he again attacked Urartu and occupied the mountain province of Nâl, which formed one of its outlying defences (736). The year after he entered on the final struggle with Sharduris, and led the flower of his forces right under the walls of Dhuspas,* the enemys capital.

* The name is written Turuspas in the inscriptions of
Tiglath-pileser III.

Dhuspas really consisted of two towns joined together. One of these, extending over the plain by the banks of the Alaîs and in the direction of the lake, was surrounded by fertile gardens and villas, in which the inhabitants spent the summer at their ease. It was protected by an isolated mass of white and red nummulitic chalk, the steep sides of which are seamed with fissures and tunnelled with holes and caverns from top to bottom.

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

The plateau in which it terminates, and which rises to a height of 300 feet at its loftiest point, is divided into three main terraces, each completely isolated from the other two, and forming, should occasion arise, an independent fortress, Ishpuinis, Menuas, Argistis, and Sharduris II. had laboured from generation to generation to make this stronghold impregnable, and they had succeeded in the attempt.

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

There can be little or no doubt, however, that this is merely a variant of the name usually written as Tuspas, Tuspana, Dhuspana, the Thospia of classical times; properly speaking, it was the capital of Biainas. The only access to it was from the western side, by a narrow bridle-path, which almost overhung the precipice as it gradually mounted to the summit. This path had been partially levelled, and flanked with walls and towers which commanded the approach throughout its whole length; on the platforms at the summit a citadel had been constructed, together with a palace, temples, and storehouses, in which was accumulated a sufficient supply of arms and provisions to enable the garrison to tire out the patience of any ordinary foe; treason or an unusually prolonged siege could only get the better of such a position. Tiglath-pileser invested the citadel and ravaged its outskirts without pity, hoping, no doubt, that he would thus provoke the enemy into capitulating. Day after day, Sharduris, perched in his lofty eyrie, saw his leafy gardens laid bare under the hatchet, and his villages and the palaces of his nobles light up the country round as far as the eye could reach: he did not flinch, however, and when all had been laid waste, the Assyrians set up a statue of their king before the principal gate of the fortress, broke up their camp, and leisurely retired. They put the country to fire and sword, destroyed its cities, led away every man and beast they could find into captivity, and then returned to Nineveh laden with plunder. Urartu was still undaunted, and Sharduris remained king as before; but he was utterly spent, and his power had sustained a blow from which it never recovered. He had played against Assur with the empire of the whole Asiatic world as the stake, and the dice had gone against him: compelled to renounce his great ambitions from henceforth, he sought merely to preserve his independence. Since then, Armenia has more than once challenged fortune, but always with the same result; it fared no better under Tigranes in the Roman epoch, than under Sharduris in the time of the Assyrians; it has been within an ace of attaining the goal of its ambitions, then at the last moment its strength has failed, and it has been forced to retire worsted from the struggle. Its position prevented it from exercising very wide influence; hidden away in a corner of Asia at the meeting-point of three or four great mountain ranges, near the source of four rivers, all flowing in different directions, it has lacked that physical homogeneity without which no people, however gifted, can hope to attain supremacy; nature has doomed it to remain, like Syria, split up into compartments of unequal size and strength, which give shelter to half a score of independent principalities, each one of them perpetually jealous of the rest. From time to time it is invested with a semblance of unity, but for the most part it drags on an uneventful existence, dismembered into as many fragments as there happen to be powerful states around it, its only chance of complete reunion lying in the possibility of one or other of these attaining sufficient predominance to seize the share of the others and absorb it.