Another question that may be asked is how the Assyrian monarch can say that twelve princes were arrayed in arms against him, when, according to his own enumeration, the forces of only eleven nations were present, some of which do not seem to have been under the command of any king. The only answer that can be given is that Shalmaneser is guilty of a similar arithmetical inaccuracy to that which makes him say that 14,000 of the enemy fell in battle, whereas, according to other accounts, the number was really 20,500; though it is possible that the latter number may include the loss in other battles that took place during the campaign besides the decisive one at Karkar. When, however, we find such arithmetical corruptions as these in contemporaneous documents, we need not wonder that the numerical statements of the Old Testament have become changed and uncertain in their passage through the hands of generations of copyists.
We may infer from the fifth chapter of 2 Kings that the god Rimmon was the chief object of worship of Hadadezer or Ben-hadad, the Syrian king. The Assyrian inscriptions have shown us why this was so. Rimmon is the Assyrian Ramman, the Air-god, and Ramman is specially identified with the Syrian deity Hadad, whose name enters into that of Hadadezer. Hadad-Rimmon, in fact, was the supreme divinity of Damascus, where he represented, not the god of the air, as among the Assyrians, but Baal, the Sun-god, himself. Hence it is that in Zechariah xii. 11, reference [pg 105] is made to the “mourning of Hadad-Rimmon in the valley of Megiddo,” that is to say, to the yearly festival, when the women mourned for the death of the Sun-god, slain, as it was imagined, by the winter. In Phœnicia the god was known as Adônis, the “lord,” or under his old Babylonian title of Tammuz. It was for Tammuz, it will be remembered, that Ezekiel saw the women sitting and weeping within the precincts of “the Lord's house” itself in Jerusalem (Ezek. viii. 14).
Hadadezer was murdered between the fourteenth and eighteenth years of Shalmaneser, and the crown seized by Hazael. In his eighteenth year the Assyrian king moved against the usurper, and captured his camp along with 1,121 chariots and 470 war-magazines. The battle took place on the summit of Sanir or Shenir—the name given to Mount Hermon by the Amorites according to Deut. iii. 9—“which lies over against Lebanon.” Here 16,000 of the Syrians fell in battle, and Hazael fled to Damascus, whither he was followed by the Assyrians. Damascus, however, proved too strong to be captured, and Shalmaneser accordingly contented himself with cutting down the trees by which it was surrounded, and retiring into the Haurân, where he burnt the unwalled towns, and carried away their inhabitants into captivity. He then followed the high road from Damascus to the Mediterranean, and on the promontory of Baal-rosh, at the mouth of the Dog River, near Beyrût, had an image of himself carved upon the rocks. At the same place he received the tribute of Tyre and Sidon, as well as of “Yahua, the son of Khumri,” that is to say, of Jehu, the descendant of Omri. In calling Jehu a descendant of Omri, the Assyrian king was misinformed; he had heard nothing [pg 106] of the revolution which had extirpated the house of Omri, and had placed Jehu upon the throne. Like Ahab, therefore, Jehu was supposed to be a son of Omri, the founder of Samaria, which is frequently termed Beth-Omri, “the house of Omri,” in the Assyrian inscriptions, though in the later days of Tiglath-Pileser II and Sargon, “Beth-Omri” is superseded by “Samirina.” This was the Aramaic form of the native name—Shimrôn, and must consequently have been derived by the Assyrians from the Aramaic neighbours of the Israelites.
In the Assyrian Hall of the British Museum there now stands a small obelisk of black marble, which was brought from Calah by Sir A. H. Layard, on which Shalmaneser records the annals of his reign. The upper portion of the monument is occupied by a series of reliefs representing the tribute brought to the Assyrian monarch by the distant nations which had sought his favour. Among the reliefs is one in which the ambassadors of Jehu are depicted bearing their offerings of gold and silver bars, of a golden vase and a golden spoon, of cups and goblets of gold, of pieces of lead, of a royal sceptre and of clubs of wood. Their features are those which are still characteristic of the Jewish race, and their fringed robes descend to their ankles.
The death of Shalmaneser brought with it a period of peace for Damascus and Palestine. His son and successor turned his arms in other directions, and Hazael and his successor, Ben-hadad III, were left free to ravage Israel (2 Kings xiii. 3). It was not until the Israelites, under Jeroboam II, had taken ample revenge upon the Syrians, and the coast of Israel was restored “from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain,” that an [pg 107] Assyrian monarch once more marched towards the west. This was Rimmon-nirari, grandson of Shalmaneser, who reigned from b.c. 810 to 781, and reduced the kingdom of Damascus to a condition of vassalage. Damascus was now under the government of a king called Marih, the successor, probably, of Ben-hadad III, who, after undergoing a siege at the hands of the Assyrians, was glad to make terms with them by acknowledging the supremacy of Rimmon-nirari, and by giving him 2,300 talents of silver, 20 talents of gold, 3,000 talents of copper, 5,000 talents of iron, embroidered robes and clothes of fine linen, a couch inlaid with ivory and an ivory parasol, besides other treasures and furniture without number which his palace contained. It is very possible that Jeroboam's successes against the Syrians were in large measure due to the extent to which they had been weakened by the Assyrians. Rimmon-nirari also claims to have received tribute from Tyre and Sidon, from Beth-Omri, from Edom, and from Palastu or Palestine—a name under which we should probably include not only the district inhabited by the Philistines, but the kingdom of Judah as well. The tribute was no doubt sent to him after his triumphal entry into Damascus.
With Rimmon-nirari the power of the older dynasty of the Assyrian kings came to an end. His successors were scarcely able to defend themselves against the attacks of their neighbours on the north and south; diseases and insurrections broke out in the great cities of the kingdom, and finally, in b.c. 746, there was a rising in Calah; the king either died or was put to death, and before the year was over, in the month of April, b.c. 745, the crown was seized by a military [pg 108] adventurer, named Pul, who assumed the title of Tiglath-Pileser II. Tiglath-Pileser I had been the most famous monarch and most extensive conqueror of the older dynasty, and had reigned over Assyria five centuries previously; by assuming his name, therefore, the usurper wished to show that he intended to emulate his deeds. According to later tradition, the new king had begun his career as a gardener; whether this were true or not, he showed great military and executive capacities after he had established himself on the throne, and it was to him that the second Assyrian empire owed its origin.
Tiglath-Pileser determined to cement the various states of Western Asia into a single empire, governed by satraps appointed at Nineveh, and accountable only to the king. Each satrapy, or province, had to provide a certain number of men for the imperial army, and to pay a fixed annual tribute to the imperial treasury. Thus, Nineveh itself was assessed at 30 talents, ten of which went to the general expenditure, while the remaining twenty were devoted to the maintenance of the fleet. Calah paid 9 talents; Carchemish, once the rich capital of the Hittites, paid 100; Arpad 30; and Megiddo but 15. Besides gold and silver, the cities and provinces were called upon to furnish chariots, clothing, and other similar contributions.
Two years after his accession (b.c. 743) Tiglath-Pileser II turned his attention to the west. Arpad, now Tel-Erfad, near Aleppo, was the first object of attack. It held out for three years, and did not fall until b.c. 740. But, meanwhile, the kingdom of Hamath had been shattered by the Assyrian arms. Nineteen of its districts were placed under Assyrian governors, and the Assyrian forces made their way as far as the Mediterranean [pg 109] Sea. Azri-yahu, or Azariah (Uzziah), the Jewish king, had been the ally of Hamath, and from him also punishment was accordingly exacted. He was compelled to purchase peace by the offer of submission and the payment of tribute. The alliance between Judah and Hamath had been of long standing. David had been the friend of its king Tou or Toi; and at the beginning of Sargon's reign the king of Hamath bears a distinctively Jewish name. This is Yahu-bihdi, or, as it is elsewhere written, Ilu-bihdi, where the word ilu, “god,” takes the place of the name of the covenant God of Israel. It is even possible that Yahu-bihdi was a Jew who had been placed on the throne of Hamath by Azariah. At any rate, the alliance between Judah and Hamath explains a passage in 2 Kings xiv. 28, which has long presented a difficulty. It is now clear that Jeroboam is here stated to have won over Hamath to Israel, though previously it had “been allied with Judah.” But after Jeroboam's death, Jewish influence must once more have gained an ascendency among the Hamathites.
Two years after the fall of Arpad, Tiglath-Pileser was again in the west. On this occasion he held a levée of subject princes, among whom Rezon of Damascus and Manahem of Samaria came to offer their gifts and do homage to their sovereign lord.[7] The tribute which Tiglath-Pileser states that he then received from the Israelitish king was given, according to the Book of [pg 110] Kings, to Pul. We may infer from this, therefore, that the Assyrian monarch was still known to the neighbouring nations by his original name, and that it was not until later that they became accustomed to the new title he had assumed. The inference is further borne out by the statement of an ancient Greek astronomer, Ptolemy. When speaking of the eclipses which were observed at Babylon, Ptolemy gives a list of Babylonian kings, with the length of their reigns, from the so-called era of Nabonassar, in b.c. 747, down to the time of Alexander the Great. In this list, Tiglath-Pileser, after his conquest of Babylon, is named Poros or Por, Por being the Persian form of Pul.
During the lifetime of Menahem Israel remained tributary to Assyria, and the Assyrian king did not again turn his arms against the west. After the death of Menahem and the murder of his son Pekahiah, however, important changes took place. The usurper, Pekah, in alliance with Rezon of Damascus, attacked Judah with the intention of overthrowing the dynasty of David and placing on the throne of Jerusalem a vassal king whose father's name, Tabeel, shows that he must have been a Syrian. Jotham, the Jewish king, died shortly after the war began, and the youth and weakness of his son and successor Ahaz laid Judah open to its antagonists, who were further aided by a disaffected party within the capital itself (Isa. viii. 6). In his extremity, therefore, Ahaz appealed to the Assyrian monarch, who was already seeking an excuse for crushing Damascus, and reducing the Jewish kingdom, with its important fortress of Jerusalem, to a condition of vassalage. In b.c. 734, accordingly, Tiglath-Pileser marched into Syria. Rezon was defeated in a pitched [pg 111] battle, his chariots broken in pieces, his captains captured and impaled, while he himself escaped to Damascus, where he was closely besieged by the enemy. The territory of Damascus was now devastated with fire and sword, its sixteen districts were “overwhelmed as with a flood,” and the beautiful gardens by which the capital was surrounded were destroyed, every tree being cut down for use in the siege. The city itself, however, proved too strong to be taken by assault; so, leaving a sufficient force before it to reduce it by famine, Tiglath-Pileser proceeded against the late allies of the Syrian king. Israel was the first to be attacked. The north of the country was overrun, and the tribes beyond the Jordan carried into captivity. Gilead and Abel-beth-maachah are mentioned by name as among the towns that were taken and sacked.[8] The Assyrians then fell upon Ammon and Moab, which had aided Israel and Syria in the attack on Judah, and next made their way along the sea-coast into the country of the Philistines, who had seized the opportunity of the late war to shake off the yoke of the Jewish king. Their leader, Khanun or Hanno of Gaza, fled into Egypt; but Gaza itself was captured and laid under tribute, its gods carried away, and an image of the Assyrian king set up in the temple of Dagon. Ekron and Ashdod were also punished, and Metinti of Ashkelon committed suicide in order to escape the vengeance of the conqueror.