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-neser’s 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.
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 suzerain’s 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.