Thus far, it is clear, the incursions of the Assyrians into the Hittite territory had been rather of the nature of raids for booty and the exaction of tribute; no serious effort had been made as yet to bring the states within the direct government of Assyria, and the operations had been confined practically to the north of Syria. There is a record of 850 B.C. from which it may be thought that a first blow was now aimed at the central Hittite states.[968] In the next year, however, after the Assyrian forces had passed Carchemish and reached the Amanus, and then turning southward had held Hattina to ransom, a league of twelve Hittite kings in the vicinity of Hamath seems to have barred their further progress. These kings are no more mentioned, and possibly their territory was absorbed by Damascus, which had obviously gained influence after the battle of Qarqar. The King of Hamath, however, paid homage to the Assyrian when he once more entered the valley of the Orontes in 842 B.C.
Turning for a moment from the affairs of Syria, the kingdom of Tabal was for the first time invaded in 838 B.C., and the Assyrian claims to have reduced twenty-four of its chieftains to subjection. In Quë the king, Kati, was dethroned and replaced by another named Kirri; while further west Tarsus also fell into the Assyrian hands. At this stage Shalmaneser gave up his military command; for a while the Hittite states had respite, and some of them, like the Hattina, resumed an attitude of independence.
Submergence of the Hittite States in the Eighth Century B.C.
Meanwhile, however, the Vannic kings had been steadily gaining strength and now found themselves powerful enough to more than hold their own. Erelong they began to cause the Assyrians considerable inquietude on their northern frontier, and about 804 B.C. Menuas drove back the Assyrians and attacked the Hittites. Crossing the Euphrates the Urartians exacted tribute from Malatia.[969] The events of the next generation are obscure; but in 776 the Hittite tribes of Syria, notably those under the Amanus, took advantage of the discomfiture of the Assyrians at the hands of the new Urartian king, Argistis of Ararat, to throw off their allegiance; and within a few years most of them were free of the Assyrian yoke. But their freedom was transient. Argistis looms in the history of these times as a great conqueror, and the Hittite states on his immediate frontier, including not only Malatia and Kummukh, but possibly a great part of Tabal, yielded to his authority. After a temporary withdrawal, it would seem, the whole of northern Syria was swiftly brought within the domain of the new power. In 758 B.C. the kingdom of Malatia, which under Khite-ruadas had regained a momentary independence, was invaded once more by the hardy mountaineers: the capital, as well as fourteen castles and a hundred towns, fell into their hands.[970] By 756 B.C. Marash also had probably fallen, for the conquests of the Vannic power extended as far south as had the Assyrian, and the Hittite states of northern Syria were all forced into allegiance. Previous to the year 744 B.C. at any rate, when the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pileser III., with a reinvigorated army, prepared to repel the invaders, Carchemish, Gurgum, Kummukh, Unki and Quë all acknowledged the suzerainty of Sharduris.[971]
The details of the struggle for Syria between two foreign powers can hardly be regarded as Hittite history. The Hittite strength was already gone; their kingdoms in Syria and the Taurus had been broken, ravaged, and weakened by the scourge of constant wars; while in Asia Minor a similar but more vital struggle, all unknown to history, was being waged between the advancing Phrygians and the chief Hittite kingdoms of the interior. All hope of general union was at an end. Yet in the records of the Syrian side of these affairs, it is wonderful to see how the spirit of independence lived on in the old Hittite centres, ready at any time to break out in open rebellion. No ordinary military punishments seemed able to crush it. In 743, Tiglath-Pileser met and routed the great confederate army of Sharduris, with whom fought the Hittite contingents from Agusi, Gurgum, Kummukh, and Malatia.[972] The issue was decisive and momentous. Both kings led their armies in person, and the Assyrian record[973] states that 73,000 of the enemy were slain in battle. Yet undismayed, Matîlu of Agusi, the centre of which was Arpad, seems to have asserted his freedom and to have resisted the Assyrian for nearly three years, when he was overcome and slain in 740 B.C. The downfall of Arpad and the death of its king were not without a reactive effect upon the other states, so that the kings of Kummukh, Gurgum, Carchemish, and Quë came to the victors to humbly tender their formal submission. The Hattina still held out, but the Assyrian moved on their capital, Kinalua, which was carried by assault; and in order to avoid further disturbance in these rebellious quarters, both Agusi and Unki were hereafter administered by Assyrian officers and garrisoned by Assyrian troops. The policy thus initiated, coupled with that of deportation of the natives in large numbers, proved more fateful to the Hittites than the long series of punitive expeditions sent against them.
Samalla was next in arms. Profiting by the absence of the Assyrian forces on their own north-eastern frontiers, Azriyahu, who appears to have been a native prince, laid claim to the throne, though it was occupied by Panammu II.,[974] a Semitic ruler who had been set up by the Assyrian king. Tiglath-Pileser hastened back to restore order, laying waste Kullani[975] on his way. He then passed southwards up the valley of the Orontes, ravaging as he went. Hamath yielded, and the kings of Carchemish, Malatia, and Tabal, with others, were convinced by these exploits that it was their best policy to tender their complete submission and to send their tribute. The Assyrian supremacy was now complete, and it was demonstrated by an arduous expedition which penetrated to the walls of the Urartian capital, in the mountains of the north. The Vannic power was broken, and thereafter its warriors only appear like those of the Hittites, in a series of vain struggles against the greater power that was steadily overwhelming them. In 732 B.C. the fall of Damascus at last laid open the way to the founding of the greatest Assyrian empire.
Our tale is nearly told; the inevitable issue is traceable in a bare statement of the chief events of a dozen years. A last combine in 720 B.C. of the Hittites of Tabal and Carchemish, reinforced by the Urartians, only tended to precipitate the end. In 718 the troops of Sargon passed northwards through the Cilician gates,[976] beyond which Tyana no longer represented the chief Hittite centre, but was now a frontier stronghold of the Phrygian Midas.[977] This monarch was obviously perplexed by the Assyrian advance, and made overtures to Pisiris of Carchemish, who openly revolted. But Midas failed him: his kingdom became an Assyrian colony, and the greatest Hittite stronghold of Syria, that had so long retained a semblance of real independence amid the submergence of the states around, was now garrisoned with Assyrian soldiers.[978] The Tabal were again in arms in 713 B.C., though the rebel leader was a protégé of Assyria.[979] He was duly punished, and his fief was annexed to the Cilician province. Following an incursion led by Tarkhunazi of Malatia, the eastern portion of the Tabal, around Comana, was in 712 B.C. fortified as an Assyrian frontier state, with five forts on the Urartian side, two towards the north, and three as protection against the Phrygians. The kingdom of Malatia itself was in 710 put under the rule of Mutallu of Kummukh, and the whole mountain region was renamed Tulgarimme. Gurgum, with its stout fortress of Marash, was the last to succumb. For something like thirty years its last king, Tarkhulara, had retained his throne by diplomatic presents and submission first to the Urartian, and then to the Assyrian. Upon the outbreak of local hostilities, however, in 709, this state also was created an Assyrian province, and with that event the last element of Hittite freedom disappeared.
In the mountains of Taurus, in the kingdom of Tabal, the smouldering fire might still burst from time to time[980] into a flame. But the Cimmerian hordes put out that spark, as they had done for the Urartu, and did in due time for the Muski; and before they could be driven back the course of history was changed. The story of the Hittites was ended; ‘Meshech and Tubal’[981] were destroyed, and ‘the Land of the Hittites’ became a memory of the past.[982]
