After the rebellion which embittered the closing years of Shalmaneser's life, the great Assyrian king died, and his crown went to his younger son Šamši-Adad III. (825-812 b.c.). The first work of the new ruler was the pacification of his country, and this having been successfully done, he tried to restore Assyrian influence beyond the borders of his kingdom. During his reign of about thirteen years, he warred on the N., N.E., N.W. and S. (Babylonia), but never came nearer to Syria than Kar-Shalmaneser on the Euphrates, near Carchemish.
His son, Adad-nirari, who reigned from 812 to 783 b.c., followed in his footsteps, and began by making conquests on the east. The north and north-west, however, also felt the force of his arms. The [pg 340] only campaign of which details are given is one against Syria, the date of which, however, is not known. G. Smith thought that this could not have taken place earlier than 797 b.c., during the time of Amaziah king of Judah and Joash king of Israel—a conjecture which is based, to all appearance, upon the comparison of Mansuate with Manasseh. As the Assyrian form of this name is Minsē or Minasē, such an identification is impossible, and this being the case, it is more probable that the expeditions to the Holy Land and Syria took place either in 806, when he went to Arpad, 805, when he was at Ḫaza, or 804, when he marched against Ba'ali, the name, apparently, of a Phœnician city. The next year he went to the sea-coast, but whether this was the Mediterranean or not is not indicated, though it may be regarded as very probable, and if so, 803 b.c. must be added to the dates already named, or the operations to which he refers in his slab-inscription may have extended over one or more of the years here referred to.
So, when he was young and enthusiastic, King Adad-nirari III. of Assyria had the inscription carved of which the following is a translation, as far as it is at present known—
“Palace of Adad-nirari, the great king, the powerful king, king of the world, king of the land of Aššur; the king who, in his youth, Aššur, king of the Igigi, called, and delivered into his hand a kingdom without equal; his shepherding he (Aššur) made good as pasture for the people of the land of Aššur, and caused his throne to be firm; the glorious priest, patron of Ê-šarra, he who ceaseth not to uphold the command of Ê-kura, who continually walketh in the service of Aššur, his lord, and hath caused the princes of the four regions to submit to his feet. He who hath conquered from the land of Siluna of the rising of the sun, the mountains (?) of the land [pg 341] of Ellipu, the land of Ḫarḫar, the land of Araziaš, the land of Mesu, the land of the Medes, the land of Gizil-bunda, to its whole extent, the land of Munna, the land of Parsua (Persia), the land of Allapria, the land of Abdadana, the land of Na'iru (Mesopotamia), to the border of the whole of it, the land of Andiu, whose situation is remote, the range (?) of the mountains, to its whole border, as far as the great sea of the rising of the sun (the Persian Gulf); from the river Euphrates, the land of Ḫatti (Heth, the Hittites), the land of Amurri (Amoria, the Amorites), to its whole extent, the land of Tyre, the land of Sidon, the land of Ḫumrî (Omri, Israel), the land of Edom, the land of Palastu (Philistia) as far as the great sea of the setting of the sun (the Mediterranean), I caused to submit to my feet. I fixed tax and tribute upon them. I went to the land of Ša-imēri-šu (Syria of Damascus); Mari'u, king of Ša-imēri-šu, I shut up in Dimašqu (Damascus), his royal city. The fear and terror of Aššur, his lord, struck him, and he took my feet, performed homage. Two thousand three hundred talents of silver, 20 talents of gold, 3000 talents of bronze, 5000 talents of iron, cloth, variegated stuffs, linen, a couch of ivory, an inlaid litter of ivory, (with) cushions (?), his goods, his property, to a countless amount I received in Damascus, his royal city, in the midst of his palace. All the kings of the land of Kaldu (the Chaldean tribes in Babylonia) performed homage, tax and tribute for future days I fixed upon them. Babylon, Borsippa, Cuthah, brought the overplus (of the treasures) of Bêl, Nebo, (and) Nergal, (made) pure offerings....”
(The remainder of the inscription is said to be still at Calah, not yet uncovered.)
Schrader, in his Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, makes the campaign against Syria to have taken place in 803 b.c., and sees in Adad-nirari the [pg 342] deliverer sent by Yahwah in answer to the prayers of Jehoahaz. According to 2 Kings xiii. 3, the Israelites were subject to Hazael and Ben-Hadad, his son, all their days. There is every probability that the successor of the latter was the Mari'u mentioned in the translation given above, and the same inscription would seem to indicate that the Israelites submitted to the Assyrian king, and paid him tribute in order to secure his intervention, which, judging from the enormous amount of spoil which he secured, he did not regret. The saviour having come, and the tribute paid, “Israel dwelt in their tents, as beforetime” (2 Kings xiii. 5). Verses 22-25 are to all appearance a recapitulation, probably extracted from another source. They show that Joash, son of Jehoahaz, rebelled, and took from Ben-Hadad the cities which the last-named had captured from Israel, and defeated him three times (see ver. 19). Apparently “all their days” in ver. 3 is not to be taken literally, as the war of the Israelites against Syria took place before the death of Ben-Hadad III. It may also be conjectured that the reason of there being no more than three defeats of the Syrians was due to the death of Ben-Hadad, and his sceptre passing into younger and more vigorous hands, so that “a saviour” was still needed, and found in the person of the Assyrian king, as suggested by Schrader. The Syrian forces not being in a condition, after their defeats by the Israelites, to offer battle to Adad-nirari, apparently submitted without fighting, and after such a visit the country had too much need for peace to allow of reprisals being made against the Israelites.
The fame of Adad-nirari was great, and his queen seems to have shared in it. She was named Sammu-ramat, “(the goddess) Sammu loveth (her),” a name which is generally regarded as the original of the somewhat mythical Semiramis of Herodotus. That she [pg 343] was looked up to by the subjects of her royal spouse, however, is proved by the two statues in the British Museum (there were in all four of them, erected at Calah). According to the inscription on them, they were made and dedicated for one of the chief officers of the kingdom, Bêl-tarṣi-îli-ma (“a lord before God”), who furnished them with the following dedication—
“To Nebo, mighty, exalted, son of Ê-saggil,[92] the wise one, high-towering, the mighty prince, son of Nudimmud, whose word is supreme; prince of intelligence, director of the universe of heaven and earth, he who knoweth everything, the wide of ear, he who holdeth the tablet-reed (and) hath the stilus; the merciful one, he who decideth, with whom is (the power of) raising and abasing; the beloved of Ea, lord of lords, whose power hath no equal, without whom there would be no counsel in heaven; the gracious one, pitiful, whose sympathy is good; he who dwelleth in E-zida, which is within Calah—the great lord, his lord—for the life of Adad-nirari, king of the land of Aššur, his lord, and the life of Sammu-ramat, she of the palace, his lady, Bêl-tarṣi-îli-ma, ruler of the city of Calah, the land of Ḫamedu, the land of Sudgana, the land of Temeni, the land of Yaluna, for the saving of his life, the lengthening of his days, the adding of days to his years, the peace of his house and his people (not the one evil to him), he has caused (this statue) to be made as a gift. Whoever (cometh) after: Trust to Nebo—trust not another god.”
It is rare that an Assyrian queen is mentioned in the inscriptions, especially on almost equal terms with the king, and additional interest is added by the fact, that she bears a name commonly regarded as the [pg 344] same as that of Semiramis. In Assyrian and Babylonian history, it is always the king who is the ruler, whatever influence his spouse may have had in determining his policy as such being always unmentioned, and therefore unknown to the world at large. The present inscription, however, seems to testify that Sammu-ramat was known outside the walls of the palace, and that one of the greatest in the kingdom thought fit to do her honour by associating her with the king in the dedication to Nebo which he made for the preservation of the lives of the king, the queen, and himself. Whether the history of Sammu-ramat, queen of Assyria, was laid under contribution to furnish details for the legend of Semiramis, will probably never be known; but it is nevertheless unfortunate that the slab recounting the warlike exploits of Adad-nirari, king of Assyria, her husband, should break off in the middle of his account of his successes in Babylonia.
Adad-nirari reigned 29 years, and was succeeded by Shalmaneser III. in 783 b.c. The expeditions of this king were principally against Armenia and Itu'u, a region on the Euphrates. In the year 775 b.c. he went to the cedar-country, but whether the mountain region of the Amanus, Lebanon, or of a district called Ḫašur be intended, is unknown. The necessity of expeditions against Syria, however, still continued, for in 773 b.c. we find Shalmaneser at Damascus, probably to bring the king then ruling there again into subjection.