Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from the sketch by Pinches.
The respite thus obtained gave Marduk-balatsu-ikbi sufficient time to collect the main body of his troops: the army was recruited from Kaldâ and Ela-mites, soldiers from Namri, and Aramaean contingents, and the united force awaited the enemy behind the ruins of Dur-papsukal, along the banks of the Dabân canal. Five thousand footmen, two hundred horsemen, one hundred chariots, besides the king’s tent and all his stores, fell into the hands of the Assyrians. The victory was complete; Babylon, Kuta, and Borsippa capitulated one after the other, and the invaders penetrated as far as the land of the Kaldâ, and actually reached the Persian Gulf. Samsi-rammân offered sacrifices to the gods, as his father had done before him, and concluded a treaty with Marduk-balatsu-ikbi, the terms of which included rectification of boundaries, payment of a subsidy, and the other clauses usual in such circumstances; the peace was probably ratified by a matrimonial alliance, concluded between the Babylonian princess Sammuramat and Bammân-nirâri, son of the conqueror. In this manner the hegemony of Assyria over Karduniash was established even more firmly than before the insurrection; but all available resources had been utilised in the effort necessary to secure it. Samsi-rammân had no leisure to reconquer Syria or Asia Minor, and the Euphrates remained the western frontier of his kingdom, as it had been in the early days of Shalmaneser III. The peace with Babylon, moreover, did not last long; Bau-akhiddîn, who had succeeded Marduk-balatsu-ikbi, refused to observe the terms of the treaty, and hostilities again broke out on the Turnat and the Tigris, as they had done six years previously. This war was prolonged from 813 to 812 B.C., and was still proceeding when Samsi-rammân died. His son Bammân-nirâri III. quickly brought it to a successful issue. He carried Bau-akhiddîn captive to Assyria, with his family and the nobles of his court, and placed on the vacant throne one of his own partisans, while he celebrated festivals in honour of his own supremacy at Babylon, Kuta, and Borsippa. Karduniash made no attempt to rebel against Assyria during the next half-century. Bammân-nirâri proved himself an energetic and capable sovereign, and the thirty years of his reign were by no means inglorious. We learn from the eponym lists what he accomplished during that time, and against which countries he waged war; but we have not yet recovered any inscription to enable us to fill in this outline, and put together a detailed account of his reign. His first expeditions were directed against Media (810), Gozân (809), and the Mannai (808-807); he then crossed the Euphrates, and in four successive years conducted as many vigorous campaigns against Arpad (806), Kkazaiu (808), the town of Baali (804), and the cities of the Phoenician sea-board (803). The plague interfering with his advance in the latter direction, he again turned his attention eastward and attacked Khubushkia in 802, 792, and 784; Media in 801-800, 794-793, and 790-787; Lushia in 799; Namri in 798; Diri in 796-795 and 785; Itua in 791, 783-782; Kishki in 785. This bare enumeration conjures up a vision of an enterprising and victorious monarch of the type of Assur-nazir-pal or Shalmaneser III., one who perhaps succeeded even where his redoubtable ancestors had failed. The panoramic survey of his empire, as unfolded to us in one of his inscriptions, includes the mountain ranges of Illipi as far as Mount Sihina, Kharkhar, Araziash, Misu, Media, the whole of Gizilbunda, Man, Parsua, Allabria, Abdadana, the extensive territory of Istaîri, far-off Andiu, and, westwards beyond the Euphrates, the Khâti, the entire country of the Amorites, Tyre, Sidon, Israel, Edom, and the Philistines. Never before had the Assyrian empire extended so far east in the direction of the centre of the Iranian tableland, nor so far to the south-west towards the frontiers of Egypt.*
* Allabria or Allabur is on the borders of Parsua and of
Karalla, which allows us to locate it in the basins of the
Kerkhorâh and the Saruk, tributaries of the Jagatu, which
flow into Lake Urumiah. Abdadana, which borders on
Allabria, and was, according to Rammân-nirâri, at the
extreme end of Naîri, was a little further to the east or
north-east; if I am not mistaken, it corresponds pretty
nearly to Uriâd, on the banks of the Kizil-Uzên.
In two only of these regions, namely, Syria and Armenia, do native documents add any information to the meagre summary contained in the Annals, and give us glimpses of contemporary rulers. The retreat of Shalmaneser, after his partial success in 839, had practically left the ancient allies of Ben-hadad II. at the mercy of Hazael, the new King of Damascus, but he did not apparently attempt to assert his supremacy over the whole of Coele-Syria, and before long several of its cities acquired considerable importance, first Mansuate, and then Hadrach,* both of which, casting Hamath into the shade, succeeded in holding their own against Hazael and his successors. He renewed hostilities, however, against the Hebrews, and did not relax his efforts till he had thoroughly brought them into subjection. Jehu suffered loss on all his frontiers, “from Jordan eastward, all the land of Gilead, the Gadites, the Keubenites, and the Manassites, from Aroer, which is by the valley of Arnon, even Gilead and Bashan,” ** Israel became thus once more entirely dependent on Damascus, but the sister kingdom of Judah still escaped its yoke through the energy of her rulers.
* Mansuati successfully resisted Rammân-nirâri in 797 B.C.,
but he probably caused its ruin, for after this only
expeditions against Hadrach are mentioned. Mansuati was in
the basin of the Orontes, and the manner in which the
Assyrian texts mention it in connection with Zimyra seems to
show that it commanded the opening in the Lebanon range
between Cole-Syria and Phoenicia. The site of Khatarika, the
Hadrach of Zech. ix. 1, is not yet precisely determined; but
it must, as well as Mansuati, have been in the neighbourhood
of Hamath, perhaps between Hamath and Damascus. It appears
for the first time in 772.
** 2 Kings x. 32, 33. Even if verse 33 is a later addition,
it gives a correct idea of the situation, except as regards
Bashan, which had been lost to Israel for some time already.
Athaliah reigned seven years, not ingloriously; but she belonged to the house of Ahab, and the adherents of the prophets, whose party had planned Jehu’s revolution, could no longer witness with equanimity one of the accursed race thus prospering and ostentatiously practising the rites of Baal-worship within sight of the great temple of Jahveh. On seizing the throne, Athaliah had sought out and put to death all the members of the house of David who had any claim to the succession; but Jeho-sheba, half-sister of Ahaziah, had with difficulty succeeded in rescuing Joash, one of the king’s sons. Her husband was the high priest Jehoiada, and he secreted his nephew for six years in the precincts of the temple; at the end of that time, he won over the captains of the royal guard, bribed a section of the troops, and caused them to swear fealty to the child as their legitimate sovereign. Athaliah, hastening to discover the cause of the uproar, was assassinated. Mattan, chief priest of Baal, shared her fate; and Jehoiada at once restored to Jahveh the preeminence which the gods of the alien had for a time usurped (837). At first his influence over his pupil was supreme, but before long the memory of his services faded away, and the king sought only how to rid himself of a tutelage which had grown irksome. The temple had suffered during the late wars, and repairs were much needed. Joash ordained that for the future all moneys put into the sacred treasury—which of right belonged to the king—should be placed unreservedly at the disposal of the priests on condition that they should apply them to the maintenance of the services and fabric of the temple: the priests accepted the gift, but failed in the faithful observance of the conditions, so that in 814 B.C. the king was obliged to take stringent measures to compel them to repair the breaches in the sanctuary walls:* he therefore withdrew the privilege which they had abused, and henceforth undertook the administration of the Temple Fund in person. The beginning of the new order of things was not very successful. Jehu had died in 815, after a disastrous reign, and both he and his son Jehoahaz had been obliged to acknowledge the supremacy of Hazael: not only was he in the position of an inferior vassal, but, in order to preclude any idea of a revolt, he was forbidden to maintain a greater army than the small force necessary for purposes of defence, namely, ten thousand foot-soldiers, fifty horsemen, and ten chariots.**
* 2 Kings xii. 4-16; cf. 2 Chron. xxiv. 1-14. The beginning
of the narrative is lost, and the whole has probably been
modified to make it agree with 2 Kings xxii. 3-7.
** 2 Kings xiii. 1-7. It may be noticed that the number of
foot-soldiers given in the Bible is identical with that
which the Assyrian texts mention as Ahab’s contingent at the
battle of Qarqar, viz. 10,000; the number of the chariots is
very different in the two cases. Kuenen and other critics
would like to assign to the reign of Jehoahaz the siege of
Samaria by the Syrians, which the actual text of the Book of
the Kings attributes to the reign of Joram.
The power of Israel had so declined that Hazael was allowed to march through its territory unhindered on his way to wage war in the country of the Philistines; which he did, doubtless, in order to get possession of the main route of Egyptian commerce. The Syrians destroyed Gath,* reduced Pentapolis to subjection, enforced tribute from Edom, and then marched against Jerusalem. Joash took from the treasury of Jahveh the reserve funds which his ancestors, Jehoshaphat, Joram, and Ahaziah, had accumulated, and sent them to the invader,** together with all the gold which was found in the king’s house.