If this be the true solution of the difficulty which has here presented itself, we must conclude that the first actual collision between the powers of Egypt and Assyria took place at a time very unfavorable to the former. Egypt was, in fact, divided against itself, the fertile tract of the Delta being under one king, the long valley of the Nile under another. If war was not actually going on, jealousy and suspicion, at any rate, must have held the two sovereigns apart; and the Assyrian monarch, coming at such a time of intestine feud, must have found it comparatively easy to gain a triumph in this quarter.
The armies of the two great powers met at the city of Rapikh, which seems to be the Raphia of the Greeks and Romans, and consequently the modern Refah a position upon the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, about half-way between Gaza and the Wady-el-Arish, or “River of Egypt.” Here the forces of the Philistines, under Khanun, king of Gaza, and those of Shebek, the Tar-dan (or perhaps the Sultan) of Egypt, had effected a junction, and awaited the approach of the invader. Sargon, having arrived, immediately engaged the allied army, and succeeded in defeating it completely, capturing Khanun, and forcing Shebek to seek safety in flight. Khanun was deprived of his crown and carried off to Assyria by the conqueror.
Such was the result of the first combat between the two great powers of Asia and Africa. It was an omen of the future, though it was scarcely a fair trial of strength. The battle of Raphia foreshadowed truly enough the position which Egypt would hold among the nations from the time that she ceased to be isolated, and was forced to enter into the struggle for preeminence, and even for existence, with the great kingdoms of the neighboring continent. With rare and brief exceptions, Egypt has from the time of Sargon succumbed to the superior might of whatever power has been dominant in Western Asia, owning it for lord, and submitting, with a good or bad grace, to a position involving a greater or less degree of dependence. Tributary to the later Assyrian princes, and again, probably, to Nebuchadnezzar, she had scarcely recovered her independence when she fell under the dominion of Persia. Never successful, notwithstanding all her struggles, in thoroughly shaking off this hated yoke, she did but exchange her Persian for Greek masters, when the empire of Cyrus perished. Since then, Greeks, Romans, Saracens, and Turks have, each in their turn, been masters of the Egyptian race, which has paid the usual penalty of precocity in the early exhaustion of its powers.
After the victories of Aroer and Raphia, the Assyrian monarch appears to have been engaged for some years in wars of comparatively slight interest towards the north and the north-east. It was not till B.C. 715, five years after his first fight with the Egyptians, that he again made an expedition towards the south-west, and so came once more into contact with nations to whose fortunes we are not wholly indifferent. His chief efforts on this occasion were directed against the peninsula of Arabia. The wandering tribes of the desert, tempted by the weak condition to which the Assyrian conquest had reduced Samaria, made raids, it appears, into the territory at their pleasure, and carried off plunder. Sargon determined to chastise these predatory bands, and made an expedition into the interior, where “he subdued the uncultivated plains of the remote Arabia, which had never before given tribute to Assyria,” and brought under subjection the Thamudites, and several other Arab tribes, carrying off a certain number and settling them in Samaria itself, which thenceforth contained an Arab element in its population. Such an effect was produced on the surrounding nations by the success of this inroad, that their princes hastened to propitiate Sargon’s favor by sending embassies, and excepting the position of Assyrian tributaries. The reigning Pharaoh, whoever he may have been, It-hamar, king of the Sabaeans, and Tsamsi, queen of the Arabs, thus humbled themselves, sending presents, and probably entering into engagements which bound them for the future.
Four years later (B.C. 711) Sargon led a third expedition into these parts, regarding it as important to punish the misconduct of the people of Ashdod. Ashdod had probably submitted after the battle of Raphia, and had been allowed to retain its native prince, Azuri. This prince, after awhile, revolted, withheld his tribute, and proceeded to foment rebellion against Assyria among the neighboring monarchs; whereupon Sargon deposed him, and made his brother Akhimit king in his place. The people of Ashdod, however, rejected the authority of Akhimit, and chose a certain Yaman, or Yavan, to rule over them, who strengthened himself by alliances with the other Philistine cities, with Judaea, and with Edom. Immediately upon learning this. Sargon assembled his army, and proceeded to Ashdod to punish the rebels; but, before his arrival, Yaman had fled away, and “escaped to the dependencies of Egypt, which” (it is said) “were under the rule of Ethiopia.” Ashdod itself, trusting in the strength from which it derived its name, resisted; but Sargon laid siege to it and in a little time forced it to surrender. Yaman fled to Egypt, but his wife and children were captured and, together with the bulk of the inhabitants, were transported into Assyria, while their place was supplied by a number of persons who had been made prisoners in Sargon’s eastern wars. An Assyrian governor was set over the town.
The submission of Ethiopia followed. Ashdod, like Samaria, had probably been encouraged to revolt by promises of foreign aid. Sargon’s old antagonist, Shebek, had recently brought the whole of Egypt under his authority, and perhaps thought the time had come when he might venture once more to measure his strength against the Assyrians. But Sargon’s rapid movements and easy capture of the strong Ashdod terrified him, and produced a change of his intentions. Instead of marching into Philistia and fighting a battle, he sent a suppliant embassy, surrendered Yaman, and deprecated Sargon’s wrath. The Assyrian monarch boasts that the king of Meroe, who dwelt in the desert, and had never sent ambassadors to any of the kings his predecessors, was led by the fear of his majesty to direct his steps towards Assyria and humbly bow down before him.
At the opposite extremity of his empire, Sargon soon after-wards gained victories which were of equal or greater importance. Having completely reduced Syria, humiliated Egypt, and struck terror into the tribes of the north and east, he determined on a great expedition against Babylon. Merodach-Baladan had now been twelve years in quiet possession of the kingdom. He had established his court at Babylon, and, suspecting that the ambition of Sargon would lead him to attempt the conquest of the south he had made preparations for resistance by entering into close alliance with the Susianians under Sutruk-Nakhunta on the one hand, and with the Aramaean tribes above Babylonia on the other. Still, when Sargon advanced against him, instead of giving him battle, or even awaiting him behind the walls of the capital, he at once took to flight. Leaving garrisons in the more important of the inland towns, and committing their defence to his generals, he himself hastened down to his own city of Beth-lakin, which was on the Euphrates, near its mouth, and, summoning the Aramaeans to his assistance, prepared for a vigorous resistance in the immediate vicinity of his native place. Posting himself in the plain in front of the city, and protecting his front and left flank with a deep ditch, which he filled with water from the Euphrates, he awaited the advance of Sargon, who soon appeared at the head of his troops, and lost no time in beginning the attack. We cannot follow with any precision the exact operations of the battle, but it appears that Sargon fell upon the Babylonian troops, defeated them, and drove them into their own dyke, in which many of therm were drowned, at the same time separating them from their allies, who, on seeing the disaster, took to flight, and succeeded in making their escape. Merodach-Baladan, abandoning his camp, threw himself with the poor remains of his army into Beth-Yakin, which Saigon then besieged and took. The Babylonian monarch fell into the hands of his rival, who plundered his palace and burnt his city, but generously spared his life. He was not, however, allowed to retain his kingdom, the government of which was assumed by Sargon himself, who is the Arceanus of Ptolemy’s Canon.
The submission of Babylonia was followed by the reduction of the Aramaeans, and the conquest of at least a portion of Susiana. To the Susianin territory Sargon transported the Comnumkha from the Upper Tigris, placing the mixed population under a governor, whom he made dependent on the viceroy of Babylon.
The Assyrian dominion was thus firmly established on the shores of the Persian Gulf. The power of Babylon was broken. Henceforth the Assyrian rule is maintained over the whole of Chaldaea and Babylonia, with few and brief interruptions, to the close of the Empire. The reluctant victim struggles in his captor’s grasp, and now and then for a short space shakes it off; but only to be seized again with a fiercer gripe, until at length his struggles cease, and he resigns himself to a fate which he has come to regard as inevitable. During the last fifty years of the Empire, from B.C. 650 to B.C. 625, the province of Babylon was almost as tranquil as any other.
The pride of Sargon received at this time a gratification which he is not able to conceal, in the homage which was paid to him by sovereigns who had only heard of his fame, and who were safe from the attacks of his armies. While he held his court at Babylon, in the year B.C. 708 or 707, he gave audience to two embassies from two opposite quarters, both sent by islanders dwelling (as he expresses it) “in the middle of the seas” that washed the outer skirts of his dominions. Upir, king of Asmun, who ruled over an island in the Persian Gulf,—Khareg, perhaps, or Bahrein,—sent messengers, who bore to the Great King the tribute of the far East. Seven Cyprian monarchs, chiefs of a country which lay “at the distance of seven days from the coast, in the sea of the setting sun,” offered him by their envoys the treasures of the West. The very act of bringing presents implied submission; and the Cypriots not only thus admitted his suzerainty, but consented to receive at his hands and to bear back to their country a more evident token of subjection. This was an effigy of the Great King carved in the usual form, and accompanied with an inscription recording his name and titles, which was set up at Idalium, nearly in the centre of the island, and made known to the Cypriots the form and appearance of the sovereign whom it was not likely that they would ever see.