During the short reign which followed interest again reverted to the west. Hoshea refused to pay tribute in 725 B.C., looking to Egypt for help. He was taken captive and Samaria made ready for a siege. Strange to say, the town held out for three years and the king of Assyria died before it was taken. Sargon II. at once succeeded. (722-705 B.C.) He again was not of royal blood and he too chose a popular crown name.
Samaria soon fell, and quite possibly neither the besieging army or the stricken town knew of any change in rulers. Twenty-seven thousand two hundred and ninety of the inhabitants of Samaria—the flower of the land,—were deported to the Median mountains, while colonists were brought in from Babylonia and other provinces to take their places. This loss it was impossible to retrieve. Assyrian governors were set over the land, now merely an Assyrian province.
In 721 B.C. attention focused once more in Babylonia, where the Chaldeans had again usurped the crown. In the battle Sargon waged, the result was so indecisive that neither side gained much. The usurpers were simply checked.
Suddenly an alliance was formed in the west, made up of stricken Samaria, Damascus and Gaza. Sargon marched rapidly west before their armies were ready, and defeated them separately and carried "the ten tribes into captivity." Now again more strangers were brought in, and more citizens sent out. It is little wonder, after all these mixtures of peoples, that in later years the Jews regarded the Samarians as not of their kin, but an inferior race, so that in the time of Christ one could say: "How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans!"
It was during this campaign that the Hittite king was taken prisoner and his kingdom, once so powerful, was merged into the Assyrian Empire.
Not long after, Hezekiah, king of Judah, attempted to stir up an opposition to the Assyrian tribute payment. Isaiah, the far-seeing statesman, again counselled against it,—vainly to be sure, yet constantly, for this was an unfavorable moment. As might have been foreseen, the coalition was short-lived.
Sargon's work in time of peace was extensive. He built a palace, like his predecessors, but outdoing them, he constructed a royal city for its location. This was a custom new in Assyria, but we have seen that it was usual in Egypt, during the Middle and New Empires. Choosing a spot not far from Nineveh, at the base of a mountain, he had a rectangular area laid out, its corners pointing to the four cardinal points. First temples were built to the gods, whose favor he sought in every possible way, even going to the length of paying for the site of the city, and compensating those who asked no money. After the temples, the palace itself arose—built of ivory, palm-wood, cedar, cypress, having gates of wood overlaid with bronze. The eight gates of the city were named for the eight leading divinities, the walls for Asshur, and the ramparts for Niveb. An invocation was inscribed to the gods: "May Asshur bless this city, and this palace! May he invest these constructions with an eternal brightness! May he grant that they shall be inhabited until the remotest days! May the sculptured bull, the guarding spirit, stand forever before his face! May he keep watch here night and day, and may his feet never move from this threshold!" The palace is said to have contained "twenty-four bulls in relief and two miles of sculptured slabs." Since the work was only begun in 712 B.C., and he came to reside within in 707 B.C., he was apparently able to command a large army of workmen. This was the palace whose ruins Botta unearthed in 1846, and each part remaining appeared to be as perfect as workmanship could make it.
The new city was peopled in a unique way. "People from the four quarters of the world, of foreign speech, of manifold tongues, who had dwelt in mountains and valleys, ... whom I, in the name of Asshur my lord, by the might of my arms had carried into captivity, I commanded to speak one language and settled them therein. Sons of Asshur of wise insight in all things, I placed over them, to watch over them; learned men and scribes to teach them the fear of God and the King."
It is supposed that Sargon II. was murdered in 705 B.C. and his son Sennacherib succeeded to the throne. He had observed his father's difficulties in keeping order in Babylonia, and had concluded before ever he came to the throne that to indulge the pride of Babylon by longer conforming to her venerated custom of crowning her king each year—thus requiring his annual appearance,—was mere folly. He believed that Babylonia, whatever her history, was now an Assyrian province, and hence the king of Assyria was her king. So he himself did not go at all to Babylon, but was merely crowned in Nineveh as King of Assyria. Now the Babylonians, far from submitting to this train of logic, in course of a brief time, crowned their own king. Thereupon the Chaldeans, ever watchful for an opportunity to re-establish their power, set up a ruler in the same country, farther south. In 702 B.C., because of this confusion, Sennacherib marched to Babylon, laid waste many Chaldean cities, deported 200,000 people and crowned as king a young nobleman, Babylonian by birth but educated at the Assyrian court. Having so vigorously asserted his strength, he was soon needed in the west.
The situation there was critical. Hezekiah, king of Judah, had successfully conducted a war against the Philistines, and was therefore regarded by his subjects as a great and mighty warrior. There was a strong faction in the kingdom who opposed the annual payment of tribute to Assyria and who believed that against them also Hezekiah might assert himself and free them from this hated tribute service. Isaiah, understanding the vast difference in the resources of the two countries, counselled against a war, but it remained for future generations to discern the clear, far sighted reasoning of this statesman, and the king, even had he chosen to heed good counsel, was shortly plunged into a war which was the popular demand of his people. Jerusalem prepared for a siege, and water was brought into the city from some distance by an aqueduct. Egypt promised aid, for the Ethiopian king who ruled that country and the native princes who were struggling to regain the throne, all felt that an opportunity opened in this way to win glory in Asia which should serve as a lever to them at home. Judah had yet to learn how fallen was this ancient state and how incapable of giving material assistance.