* The ideas which Orientals held on the subject of comets
renders the connection between the two events very likely,
if not certain.
From Assur the movement spread to Arrapkha, and wrought havoc there from 761 to 760; it then passed on to Gozân, where it was not finally extinguished till 758. The last remains of Assyrian authority in Syria vanished during this period: Assurdân, after two years’ respite, endeavoured to re-establish it, and attacked successively Hadrach (755) and Arpad (754). This was his last exploit. His son Assur-nirâri III. spent his short reign of eight years in helpless inaction; he lost Syria, he carried on hostilities in Namri from 749 to 748—whether against the Aramaeans or Urartians is uncertain—then relapsed into inactivity, and a popular sedition drove him finally from Calah in 746. He died some months later, without having repressed the revolt; none of his sons succeeded him, and the dynasty, having fallen into disrepute through the misfortunes of its last kings, thus came to an end; for, on the 12th of Iyyâr, 742 B.C., a usurper, perhaps, the leader of the revolt at Calah, proclaimed himself king under the name of Tiglath-pileser.* The second Assyrian empire had lasted rather less than a century and a half, from Tukulti-ninip II. to Assur-nirâri III.**
* Many historians have thought that Tiglath-pileser III. was
of Babylonian origin; most of them, however, rightly
considers that he was an Assyrian. The identity of Tiglath-
pileser III. with Pulu, the Biblical Pul (2 Kings xv. 19)
has been conclusively proved by the discovery of the
Babylonian Chronicle, where the Babylonian reigns of
Tiglath-pileser III. and his son Shalmaneser V. are inserted
where the dynastic lists give Pulu and Ululai, the Poros and
Eluloos of Ptolemy.
** Here is the concluding portion of the dynasty of the
kings of Assyria, from Irba-rammân to Assur-nirâri III.:—
In the manner in which it had accomplished its work, it resembled the Egyptian empire of eight hundred years before. The Egyptians, setting forth from the Nile valley, had overrun Syria and had at first brought it under their suzerainty, though without actually subduing it. They had invaded Amurru and Zahi, Naharaim and Mitanni, where they had pillaged, burnt, and massacred at will for years, without obtaining from these countries, which were too remote to fall naturally within their sphere of influence, more than a temporary and apparent submission; the regions in the neighbourhood of the isthmus alone had been regularly administered by the officers of Pharaoh, and when the country between Mount Seir and Lebanon seemed on the point of being organised into a real empire the invasion of the Peoples of the Sea had overthrown and brought to nought the work of three centuries. The Assyrians, under the leadership of ambitious kings, had in their turn carried their arms over the countries of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, but, like those of the Egyptians before them, their expeditions resembled rather the destructive raids of a horde in search of booty than the gradual and orderly advance of a civilised people aiming at establishing a permanent empire. Their campaigns in Cole-Syria and Palestine had enriched their own cities and spread the terror of their name throughout the Eastern world, but their supremacy had only taken firm root in the plains bordering on Mesopotamia, and just when they were preparing to extend their rule, a power had sprung up beside them, over which they had been unable to triumph: they had been obliged to withdraw behind the Euphrates, and they might reasonably have asked themselves whether, by weakening the peoples of Syria at the price of the best blood of their own nation, they had not merely laboured for the benefit of a rival power, and facilitated the rise of Urartu. Egypt, after her victory over the Peoples of the Sea, had seemed likely, for the moment, to make a fresh start on a career of conquest under the energetic influence of Ramses III., but her forces proved unequal to the task, and as soon as the master’s hand ceased to urge her on, she shrank back, without a struggle, within her ancient limits, and ere long nothing remained to her of the Asiatic empire carved out by the warlike Pharaohs of the Theban dynasties. If Tiglath-pileser could show the same courage and capacity as Ramses III., he might well be equally successful, and raise his nation again to power; but time alone could prove whether Nineveh, on his death, would be able to maintain a continuous effort, or whether her new display of energy would prove merely ephemeral, and her empire be doomed to sink into irremediable weakness under the successors of her deliverer, as Egypt had done under the later Ramessides.
