The danger which menaced him came rather from the east and the north, where Damascus, aroused from its state of lethargy by Rezôn [Rezin] II., had again begun to strive after the hegemony of Syria.*
* The name of this king, written Rezin in the Bible (2 Kings
xv. 37; xvi. 5, 6, 9), is given as Razunu in the Assyrian
texts; he was therefore Ilezôn II. A passage in the Annals seems to indicate that Rezin’s father was prince of a city
dependent on Damascus, not king of Damascus itself;
unfortunately the text is too much mutilated to warrant us
in forming any definite conclusion on this point.
All these princes, when they found that the ambition of Tiglath-pileser threatened to interfere with their own intrigues, were naturally tempted to combine against him, and were willing to postpone to a more convenient season the settlement of their own domestic quarrrels. But Tiglath-pileser did not give them time for this; he routed Azriyahu, and laid waste Kullani,* the chief centre of revolt, ravaged the valley of the Orontes, and carried off the inhabitants of several towns, replacing them with prisoners taken the year before during his campaign in Naîri.
* Kullani is the Calno or Calneh mentioned by Isaiah (x. 9)
and Amos (vi. 2), which lay somewhere between Arpad and
Hamath; the precise spot is not yet known.
After this feat the whole of Syria surrendered. Rezin and Menahem were among the first to tender their homage, and the latter paid a thousand talents of silver for the firman which definitely confirmed his tenure of the throne; the princes of Tyre, Byblos, Hamath, Carchemish, Milid, Tabal, and several others followed their example—even a certain Zabibi, queen of an Arab tribe, feeling compelled to send her gifts to the conqueror.
A sudden rising among the Aramæan tribes on the borders of Elam obliged Tiglath-pileser to depart before he had time to take full advantage of his opportunity. The governors of Lullumi and Naîri promptly suppressed the outbreak, and, collecting the most prominent of the rebels together, sent them to the king in order that he might distribute them throughout the cities of Syria: a colony of 600 prisoners from the town of Amlati was established in the territory of Damaunu, 5400 from Dur were sent to the fortresses of Unki, Kunalia, Khuzarra, Taî, Tarmanazi, Kulmadara, Khatatirra, and Sagillu, while another 10,000 or so were scattered along the Phoenician seaboard and among the adjacent mountains. The revolt had meanwhile spread to the nations of Media, where it was, perhaps, fomented by the agents of Urartu; and for the second time within seven years (737 B.C.) Tiglath-pileser trampled underfoot the countries over which he had ridden in triumph at the beginning of his career—the Bît-Kapsi, the Bît-Sangibuti, the Bît-Tazzakki, the Bît-Zulazash, the Bît-Matti, and Umliash. The people of Upash, among the Bît-Kapsi, entrenched themselves on the slopes of Mount Abirus; but he carried their entrenchments by storm. Ushuru of Taddiruta and Burdadda of Nirutakta were seized with alarm, and hid themselves in their mountain gorges; but he climbed up in pursuit of them, drove them out of their hiding-places, seized their possessions, and made them prisoners. Similar treatment was meted out to all those who proved refractory; some he despoiled, others he led captive, and “bursting upon the remainder like the downpour of Bammân,” permitted none of them to escape. He raised trophies all along his line of march: in Bau, a dependency of Bît-Ishtar, he set up a pointed javelin dedicated to Ninip, on which he had engraved a panegyric of the virtues of his master Assur; near Shilkhazi, a town founded, in bygone days, by the Babylonians, he erected a statue of himself, and a pillar consecrated to Marduk in Til-ashshur. In the following year he again attacked Urartu and occupied the mountain province of Nâl, which formed one of its outlying defences (736). The year after he entered on the final struggle with Sharduris, and led the flower of his forces right under the walls of Dhuspas,* the enemy’s capital.
* The name is written Turuspas in the inscriptions of
Tiglath-pileser III.
Dhuspas really consisted of two towns joined together. One of these, extending over the plain by the banks of the Alaîs and in the direction of the lake, was surrounded by fertile gardens and villas, in which the inhabitants spent the summer at their ease. It was protected by an isolated mass of white and red nummulitic chalk, the steep sides of which are seamed with fissures and tunnelled with holes and caverns from top to bottom.
