Shalmaneser, having first wreaked his vengeance upon Gananatê, attacked his adversary in his self-chosen position; Annan fell after a desperate defence, and Marduk-belusâtê either perished or disappeared in a last attempt at retaliation. Marduk-nadîn-shumu, although rid of his rival, was not yet master of the entire kingdom. The Aramæans of the Marshes, or, as they called themselves, the Kaldâ, had refused him their allegiance, and were ravaging the regions of the Lower Euphrates by their repeated incursions. They constituted not so much a compact state, as a confederation of little states, alternately involved in petty internecine quarrels, or temporarily reconciled under the precarious authority of a sole monarch. Each separate state bore the name of the head of the family—real or mythical—from whom all its members prided themselves on being descended,—Bît-Dakkuri, Bît-Adini, Bît-Amukkâni, Bît-Shalani, Bît-Shalli, and finally Bît-Yakîn, which in the end asserted its predominance over all the rest.*
* As far as we can judge, Bît-Dakkuri and Bît-Adini were the
most northerly, the latter lying on both sides of the
Euphrates, the former on the west of the Euphrates, to the
south of the Bahr-i-Nejîf; Bît-Yakîn was at the southern
extremity near the mouths of the Euphrates, and on the
western shore of the Persian Gulf.
In demanding Shalmaneser’s help, Marduk-nadîn-shumu had virtually thrown on him the responsibility of bringing these turbulent subjects to order, and the Assyrian monarch accepted the duties of his new position without demur. He marched to Babylon, entered the city and went direct to the temple of E-shaggîl: the people beheld him approach with reverence their deities Bel and Belît, and visit all the sanctuaries of the local gods, to whom he made endless propitiatory libations and pure offerings. He had worshipped Ninip in Kuta; he was careful not to forget Nabo of Borsippa, while on the other hand he officiated in the temple of Ezida, and consulted its ancient oracle, offering upon its altars the flesh of splendid oxen and fat lambs. The inhabitants had their part in the festival as well as the gods; Shalmaneser summoned them to a public banquet, at which he distributed to them embroidered garments, and plied them with meats and wine; then, after renewing his homage to the gods of Babylon, he recommenced his campaign, and set out in the direction of the sea. Baqâni, the first of the Chaldæan cities which lay on his route, belonged to Bît-Adini,* one of the tribes of Bît-Dakkuri; it appeared disposed to resist him, and was therefore promptly dismantled and burnt—an example which did not fail to cool the warlike inclinations which had begun to manifest themselves in other parts of Bît-Dakkuri.
* The site of Baqâni is unknown; it should be sought for
between Lamlum and Warka, and Bît-Adini in Bît-Dakkuri
should be placed between the Shatt-et-Kaher and the Arabian
desert, if the name of Enzudî, the other royal town,
situated to the west of the Euphrates, is found, as is
possible, under a popular etymology, in that of Kalaat ain-
Saîd or Kalaat ain-es-Saîd in the modern maps.
He next crossed the Euphrates, and pillaged Enzudî, the fate of which caused the remainder of Bît-Adini to lay down arms, and the submission of the latter brought about that of Bît-Yakîn and Bît-Amukkani. These were all rich provinces, and they bought off the conqueror liberally: gold, silver, tin, copper, iron, acacia-wood, ivory, elephants’ skins, were all showered upon the invader to secure his mercy. It must have been an intense satisfaction to the pride of the Assyrians to be able to boast that their king had deigned to offer sacrifices in the sacred cities of Accad, and that he had been borne by his war-horses to the shores of the Salt Sea; these facts, of little moment to us now, appeared to the people of those days of decisive importance. No king who was not actually master of the country would have been tolerated within the temple of the eponymous god, for the purpose of celebrating the rites which the sovereign alone was empowered to perform. Marduk-nadîn-shumu, in recognising Shalmaneser’s right to act thus, thereby acknowledged that he himself was not only the king’s ally, but his liegeman. This bond of supremacy doubtless did not weigh heavily upon him; as soon as his suzerain had evacuated the country, the two kingdoms remained much on the same footing as had been established by the treaties of the three previous generations. Alliances were made between private families belonging to both, peace existed between the two sovereigns, interchange of commerce and amenities took place between the two peoples, but with one point of difference which had not existed formerly: Assur protected Babel, and, by taking precedence of Marduk, he became the real head of the peoples of the Euphrates valley. Assured of the subordination, or at least of the friendly neutrality of Babylon, Shalma-neser had now a free hand to undertake a campaign in the remoter regions of Syria, without being constantly haunted by the fear that his rival might suddenly swoop down upon him in the rear by the valleys of the Badanu or the Zabs. He now ran no risks in withdrawing his troops from the south-eastern frontier, and in marshalling his forces on the slopes of the Armenian Alps or on the banks of the Orontes, leaving merely a slender contingent in the heart of Assyria proper to act as the necessary guardians of order in the capital.
Since the indecisive battle of Qarqar, the western frontier of the empire had receded as far as the Euphrates, and Shalmaneser had been obliged to forego the collection of the annual Syrian tribute. It would have been an excellent opportunity for the Khâti, while they enjoyed this accidental respite, to come to an understanding with Damascus, for the purpose of acting conjointly against a common enemy; but they let the right moment slip, and their isolation made submission inevitable. The effort to subdue them cost Shalmaneser dear, both in time and men; in the spring of each year he appeared at the fords of Tul-barsip and ravaged the environs of Carchemish, then marched upon the Orontes to accomplish the systematic devastation of some fresh district, or to inflict a defeat on such of his adversaries as dared to encounter him in the open field. In 850 B.C. the first blow was struck at the Khâti; Agusi* was the next to suffer, and its king, Aramê, lost Arniê, his royal city, with some hundred more townships and strongholds.**
* Historians have up to the present admitted that this
campaign of the year 850 took place in Armenia. The context
of the account itself shows us that, in his tenth year,
Shalmaneser advanced against the towns of Aramê, immediately
after having pillaged the country of the Khâti, which
inclines me to think that these towns were situated in
Northern Syria. I have no doubt that the Aramê in question
is not the Armenian king of that name, but Aramê the
sovereign of Bit-Agusi, who is named several times in the
Annals of Shalmaneser.
** The text of Bull No. 1 adds to the account of the war
against Aramê, that of a war against the Damascene league,
which merely repeats the account of Shalmaneser’s eleventh
year. It is generally admitted that the war against Aramê
falls under his tenth year, and the war against Ben-hadad
during his eleventh year. The scribes must have had at their
disposal two different versions of one document, in which
these two wars were described without distinction of year.
The compiler of the inscription of the Bulls would have
considered them as forming two distinct accounts, which he
has placed one after the other.
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 Ahab’s 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-hadad’s 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.” *