Assyria, Its Princes, Priests and People Part 1

a.s.syria, Its Princes, Priests and People.

by A. H. (Archibald Henry) Sayce.

PREFACE.

Among the many wonderful achievements of the present century there is none more wonderful than the recovery and decipherment of the monuments of ancient Nineveh. For generations the great oppressing city had slept buried beneath the fragments of its own ruins, its history lost, its very site forgotten. Its name had pa.s.sed into the region of myth even in the age of the cla.s.sical writers of Greece and Rome; Ninos or Nineveh had become a hero-king about whom strange legends were told, and whose conquests were fabled to have extended from the Mediterranean to India.

Little was known of the history of the mighty a.s.syrian Empire beyond what might be learnt from the Old Testament, and that little was involved in doubt and obscurity. Scholars wrote long treatises to reconcile the statements of Greek historians with those of Scripture, but they only succeeded in evolving theories which were contradicted and overthrown by the next writer. There was none so bold as to suggest that the history and life of a.s.syria were still lying hidden beneath the ground, ready to rise up and disclose their secrets at the touch of a magician's rod. The rod was the spade and the patient sagacity which deciphered and interpreted what the spade had found. It might have been thought that the cuneiform or wedge-shaped inscriptions of a.s.syria could never be forced to reveal their mysteries. The language in which they were written was unknown, and all clue to the meaning of the mult.i.tudinous characters that composed them had long been lost. No bilingual text came to the aid of the decipherer like the Rosetta Stone, whose Greek inscription had furnished the key to the meaning of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Nevertheless the great feat was accomplished.

Step by step the signification of the cuneiform characters and the words they concealed was made out, until it is now possible to translate an ordinary a.s.syrian text with as much ease and certainty as a page of the Old Testament.

And the revelation that awaited the decipherer was startling in the extreme. The ruins of Nineveh yielded not only sculptures and inscriptions carved in stone, but a whole library of books. True, the books are written upon clay, and not on paper, but they are none the less real books, dealing with all the subjects of knowledge known at the time they were compiled, and presenting us with a clear and truthful reflection of a.s.syrian thought and belief. We can not only trace the architectural plans of the a.s.syrian palaces, and study the bas-reliefs in which the a.s.syrians have pictured themselves and the life they led; we can also penetrate to their inmost thoughts and feelings, and read their history as they have told it themselves.

It is a strange thing to examine for the first time one of the clay tablets of the old a.s.syrian library. Usually it has been more or less broken by the catastrophe of that terrible day when Nineveh was captured by its enemies, and the palace and library burnt and destroyed together.

But whether it is a fragment or a complete tablet, it is impossible not to handle it reverently when cleaning it from the dirt with which its long sojourn in the earth has encrusted it, and spelling out its words for the first time for more than 2,000 years. When last the characters upon it were read, it was in days when a.s.syria was still a name of terror, and the destruction that G.o.d's prophets had predicted was still to come. When its last reader laid it aside, Judah had not as yet undergone the chastis.e.m.e.nt of the Babylonish exile, the Old Testament was an uncompleted volume, the kingdom of the Messiah a promise of the distant future. We are brought face to face, as it were, with men who were the contemporaries of Isaiah, of Hezekiah, of Ahaz; nay, of men whose names have been familiar to us since we first read the Bible by our mother's side.

Tiglath-Pileser and Sennacherib can never again be to us mere names. We possess the records which they caused to be written, and in which they told the story of their campaigns in Palestine. The records are not copies of older texts, with all the errors that human fallibility causes copyists and scribes to make. They are the original doc.u.ments which were recited to the kings who ordered them to be compiled, and who may have held them in their own hands. The gulf of centuries and forgetfulness that has divided us from Sennacherib is filled up when we read the account of his invasion of Judah, which seems to come from his own lips.

Never again can the heroes of the Old Testament be to us as lay-figures, whose story is told by a voice that comes from a dark and unreal past.

The voice is now become a living one, and we can realise that Isaiah and those of whom Isaiah wrote were men of flesh and blood like ourselves, with the same pa.s.sions, the same needs, the same temptations.

This realisation of Old Testament history is not the only result of the recovery of a.s.syria upon Biblical studies. It is a very important result, but there are others besides of equal importance. One of these is the unexpected confirmation of the correctness of Holy Writ which a.s.syrian discovery has afforded. The later history of the Old Testament no longer stands alone. Once it was itself the sole witness for the truth of the narratives it contains. Cla.s.sical history or legend dealt with other lands and other ages; there were no doc.u.ments besides those contained in the Old Testament to which we could appeal in support of its statements. All is changed now. The earth has yielded up its secrets; the ancient civilisation of a.s.syria has stepped forth again into the light of day, and has furnished us with records, the authenticity of which none can deny, which run side by side with those of the Books of Kings, confirming, explaining, and ill.u.s.trating them. It has been said that just at the moment when sceptical criticism seemed to have achieved its worst, and to have resolved the narratives of the Old Testament into myths or fables, G.o.d's Providence was raising up from the grave of centuries a new and unimpeachable witness for their truth.

Indeed, so strikingly was this the case, that one of the objections brought against the correctness of a.s.syrian decipherment in its early days was that a.s.syrian monarchs could never have concerned themselves with petty kingdoms like those of Samaria and Judah, as the decipherers made them do. Before the cuneiform monuments were interpreted, no one could have suspected that they would have poured such a flood of light upon Old Testament history.

This light is manifold. The very language of the inscriptions has helped to explain difficult pa.s.sages in the Hebrew Bible. a.s.syrian turns out to be very closely related to Hebrew, as closely related, in fact, as two strongly marked English dialects are to one another. There is no other Semitic language (except, of course, Phnician, which is practically the same as Hebrew) which is so nearly allied to it. And thanks to the library of Nineveh, and its lexicons and lists of synonymous words, we have a larger literature, and a larger vocabulary, to draw upon in the case of a.s.syrian than we have in the case of Hebrew. The consequence is that a.s.syrian may sometimes settle the meaning of a word which occurs only once or very rarely in the Old Testament. Thus the word _z'bhl_, which Hebrew scholars had supposed to mean 'a dwelling,' is shown by the a.s.syrian texts to signify a 'height,' so that in 1 Kings viii. 13, Solomon does not declare to G.o.d that he had built Him 'an house to dwell in,' as the Authorised Version renders the pa.s.sage, but 'a lofty temple.' Naturally words of a.s.syrian origin, like Rab-shakeh and Tartan, have first received their explanation from the decipherment of the a.s.syrian inscriptions. They are not proper names, but t.i.tles, the Rab-shakeh being 'the chief of the princes,' or Vizier, and the Tartan, the commander-in-chief.

But not only do we find parallels to Hebrew in the individual words of a.s.syrian, we also find parallel expressions which ill.u.s.trate and explain those of the Hebrew text. We all remember the statement that the 'Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.' The same phrase occurs in an unpublished Accadian hymn addressed to a deity whose name is lost, but who was probably Rimmon the Air-G.o.d. The Accadian original describes him as 'raining fire and stones upon the enemy,' which the a.s.syrian translation changes into 'raining stones and fire upon the foe' in exact conformity with the Hebrew phrase. The familiar expression 'the Lord of Hosts,' similarly finds its a.n.a.logue and ill.u.s.tration in the common a.s.syrian t.i.tle of the supreme G.o.d a.s.sur: 'lord of the legions of heaven and earth,' these legions being the mult.i.tudinous spirits and angels whose home was in 'the heaven above and the earth below.'

We can hardly speak here of the accounts of the Creation, the Deluge, and the Tower of Babel, to which Mr. George Smith gave the name of 'the Chaldean Genesis,' and which agree so closely with the corresponding accounts in the Hebrew Book of Genesis. Though found in the library of Nineveh, they are really copies of older Babylonian works, and therefore belong rather to Babylonian than to a.s.syrian history. It is only the account of the Creation in six days which may perhaps be of purely a.s.syrian origin. What a resemblance it offers to the first chapter of Genesis will be seen from the extracts from it in the chapter on a.s.syrian Religion.

It is in the domain of history that the light cast upon Old Testament Scripture by a.s.syrian research has been fullest and strongest. No one can read the sketch of a.s.syrian history as revealed by the monuments which is given in the following pages, without perceiving how important it is for the proper understanding of the ancient Scriptures. For the first time the prophecies in Isaiah which refer to a capture of Jerusalem receive their explanation, and the sceptical criticism is answered which found in them a prediction of events that never took place. The chapter in which Isaiah describes the onward march of the a.s.syrian host against Jerusalem (ch. x.) is no 'ideal' description of 'an ideal campaign,' the verses in which he tells us of the sufferings endured by the beleaguered inhabitants of the Jewish capital (ch. xxii.) are no 'exaggerated account of a possible catastrophe,' the prophecies in which he declares that the devoted city was about to fall into the hands of its enemies (x. 34, xxii. 14) were not unfulfilled threats. We learn from the inscriptions of Sargon that already, ten years before the campaign of his son Sennacherib, the a.s.syrian monarch had swept through 'the wide-spread land of Judah,' and had made it a tributary province.

It was not the army of Sennacherib to which Isaiah was alluding on the day whereon he declared that the a.s.syrian host was at n.o.b, only a short half-hour to the north of Jerusalem, but the more terrible veterans of Sargon who marched against the holy city along the northern road.

Similar light is thrown by the a.s.syrian monuments upon another prophecy of Isaiah, in which he p.r.o.nounces the doom upon the land of Egypt (ch.

xix.). The prophecy has sometimes been referred by critics to a later age than that of the great prophet; but the records of Esar-haddon prove that it is strictly applicable to his time, and to his time only. The unexpected revelation they have made to us of the a.s.syrian conquest of Egypt, and its division into twenty va.s.sal satrapies shows us who was the 'cruel lord' and 'fierce king' into whose hands the Egyptians were given, and paints the picture of an epoch in which 'the Egyptians'

fought 'every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom.' The Isaianic authorship of 'the burden of Egypt' can never again be denied.

Nahum, again, we can now read with a new interest and a new understanding. The very date of his prophecy, so long disputed, can be fixed approximately by the reference it contains to the sack of No-Amon or Thebes (iii. 8). The prophecy was delivered hard upon sixty years before the fall of Nineveh, when the a.s.syrian Empire was at the height of its prosperity, and mistress of the Eastern world. Human foresight could little have imagined that so great and terrible a power was so soon to disappear. And yet at the very moment when it seemed strongest and most secure, the Jewish prophet was uttering a prediction which the excavations of Botta and Layard have shown to have been carried out literally in fact. As we thread our way among the ruins of Nineveh, or trace the after history of the deserted and forgotten site, we see everywhere the fulfilment of Nahum's prophecy. Of the words that he p.r.o.nounced against the doomed city, there is none which has not come to pa.s.s.

Those who would learn how marvellously the monuments of a.s.syria ill.u.s.trate and corroborate the pages of sacred history, need only compare the records they contain with the narratives of the Books of Kings which relate to the same period. The one complements and supplies the missing chapters given by the other. The Bible informs us why Sennacherib left Hezekiah unpunished, and never despatched another army to Palestine; the cuneiform annals explain the causes of his murder, and the reason of the flight of his sons to Ararat or Armenia. The single pa.s.sage in Scripture in which the name of Sargon is mentioned, no longer remains isolated and unintelligible; we have no longer any need to identify him with Tiglath-Pileser, or Shalmaneser, or any other a.s.syrian prince with whom the fancy of older commentators confounded him; we now know that he was one of the most powerful of a.s.syrian conquerors, and we have his own independent testimony to that siege and capture of Ashdod which is the occasion of the mention of his name in Scripture. Between the history of the monuments and the history of the Bible there is perpetual contact; and the voice of the monuments is found to be in strict harmony with that of the Old Testament.

Before concluding this Preface, I have to thank Mr. W. G. Hird for his kindness in undertaking the task of compiling an Index to the volume.

CHAPTER I.

THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE.

a.s.syria was the name given to the district which had been called 'the land of a.s.sur' by its own inhabitants. a.s.sur, however, had originally been the name, not of a country, but of a city founded in remote times on the western bank of the Tigris, midway between the Greater and the Lesser Zab. It was the primitive capital of the district in which it stood, and to which, accordingly, it lent its name. It seems to have been built by a people who spoke an agglutinative language, like the languages of the modern Fins and Turks, and who were afterwards supplanted by the Semitic a.s.syrians. The name in their language probably signified 'water-boundary.' When the country was occupied by the Semitic a.s.syrians the name was slightly changed, so as to a.s.sume the form of a word which in a.s.syrian meant 'gracious.'

It so happened that a.s.syrian mythology knew of a deity who represented the firmament, and was addressed as Sar. The name of Sar came in time to be confused with that of a.s.sur, the divine patron of the a.s.syrian capital, the result being that a.s.sur signified not only a city and country, but also the supreme deity worshipped by their inhabitants.

a.s.sur, in fact, became the divine impersonation of the power and const.i.tution of a.s.syria; at the same time he was also 'the gracious' G.o.d and the primaeval firmament of heaven.

a.s.sur, whose ruins are now called Kalah Sherghat, did not always remain the capital of a.s.syria. Its place was taken by a group of cities some 60 miles to the north, above the Greater Zab, and on the eastern side of the Tigris, namely, Nineveh, Calah, and Dur-Sargon. The foundation of Nineveh, the modern Kouyunjik, probably goes back to as early an age as that of a.s.sur, but it was not until a much later period that it became an important city, and supplanted the older capital of the kingdom.

Calah, now called Nimrd, though built some four centuries before, was not made the seat of royalty until the reigns of a.s.sur-natsir-pal and Shalmaneser II, in the 9th century B.C., and Dur-Sargon (the modern Khorsabad), as its name implies, was the creation of Sargon. Instead of Dur-Sargon the Book of Genesis (x. 11) mentions Resen 'between Nineveh and Calah.' The site of Resen has not been identified, though its name has been met with in the a.s.syrian inscriptions under the form of Res-eni, 'the head of the spring.'

The pa.s.sage of Genesis in which Resen is referred to unfortunately admits of a double translation. If we adopt the rendering of the margin, and translate 'out of that land he went forth into a.s.syria and builded Nineveh,' we might infer that Nineveh and its neighbouring towns had no existence before the days when Babylonian emigrants settled in the territory of the city of a.s.sur, and superseded its older inhabitants.

However this may be, we know from the cuneiform monuments that the rise of a.s.syria did not take place until the Babylonian monarchy was already growing old. The country afterwards known as a.s.syria had been comprised in Gutium or Kurdistan, a name which has been identified, with great probability, by Sir H. Rawlinson, with the Goyyim or 'nations' of Genesis xiv. over which Tidal was king. There seems to have been a time when the rulers of a.s.sur were mere governors appointed by the Babylonian monarchs; at all events, the earliest of whom we know do not give themselves the t.i.tle of king, but use a word which signifies 'viceroy'

in the Chaldean inscriptions.

These viceroys, however, managed eventually to shake off the yoke of their Babylonian masters, and one of them, Bel-kapkapi by name, established an independent kingdom at a.s.sur in the 17th or 16th century before our era. His kingdom extended on both sides of the Tigris, and doubtless included the country north of the Greater Zab, where Nineveh was situated. The exact frontiers of a.s.syria, however, were never accurately fixed. They varied with the military power and conquests of its monarchs. Sometimes portions of the plateau of Mesopotamia on the west were comprehended within it, as well as the country through which the Tigris flowed, as far south as the borders of Babylonia, and as far north as the Kurdish mountains. At other times a.s.syria was confined to the narrow s.p.a.ce within which its great cities stood.

The inhabitants of a.s.syria belonged to the Semitic stock, that is to say, they were allied in blood and language to the Hebrews, the Aramaeans, and the Arabs. The older population had been either expelled or destroyed. The a.s.syrians thus differed from the Babylonians, who were a mixed race, partly Semitic and partly non-Semitic. The non-Semitic element is generally termed Accadian; it spoke agglutinative dialects, and was the original possessor of the plain of Chaldaea. The Accadians invented the cuneiform system of writing, founded the chief cities and civilisation of Babylonia, and erected the earliest Babylonian monuments with which we are acquainted. It was only gradually that they yielded to the advance of the Semites; in fact, the final triumph of the Semites in Babylonia was only effected by their amalgamation with the old population of the country, and their complete acceptance of Accadian culture. The Accadian language lingered long, and when it died out was preserved as a learned language, like Latin in our own day, which every educated Babylonian was expected to know.

It was natural, therefore, that the pure-blooded Semites of a.s.syria and the mixed population of Babylonia should differ from one another in many respects. The Babylonians were agriculturists, fond of literature and peaceful pursuits. The a.s.syrians, on the contrary, have been appropriately termed the Romans of the East: they were a military people, caring for little else save war and trade. Their literature, like their culture and art, was borrowed from Babylonia, and they never took kindly to it. Even under the magnificent patronage of a.s.sur-bani-pal, a.s.syrian literature was an exotic. It was cultivated only by the few; whereas in Babylonia the greater part of the population seems to have been able to read and write. If the a.s.syrian was less luxurious than his Babylonian neighbour, he was also less humane.

Indeed, the a.s.syrian annals glory in the record of a ferocity at which we stand aghast. On the other hand, the a.s.syrian was not so superst.i.tious as the Babylonian, though he ascribed his successes to the favour of a.s.sur, and impaled the inhabitants of conquered towns or burnt them alive because they did not believe in his national deity. He was, as Nahum declared, the lion which 'did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin.'

a.s.syria was so wholly a military power, that the destruction of Nineveh not only destroyed the a.s.syrian Empire but blotted out the a.s.syrian nation itself. When 'the gates of the rivers' of Nineveh-the Tigris and Khusur-were opened, and 'the palace dissolved,' a.s.syria ceased to exist. In the Sa.s.sanian period the mounds which covered the ruins of the old city were for a short time occupied by the houses of a village, but these, too, disappeared after a while, and the very site of Nineveh remained for centuries unknown. Rich, in 1818, conjectured that the mounds of Kouyunjik, opposite the modern town of Mosul, concealed its ruins beneath them, but it was not until the excavations of the Frenchman Botta, in 1842, and the Englishman Layard, in 1845, that the remains first of Dur-Sargon, and then of Nineveh itself, were revealed to the eyes of a wondering world. The capital of the a.s.syrian Empire was recovered, and with it the sculptured monuments of its kings, and the relics of its clay-inscribed library. The discovery came at an opportune moment. The cuneiform inscriptions of Persia had at last yielded up their secrets to the patient sagacity of European scholars, and had furnished the key to other inscriptions,-also in cuneiform characters, but of a wholly different kind, and expressing a wholly different language-which now proved to be the long-lost records of the a.s.syrian people. Little by little the records were deciphered; fresh expeditions to the buried cities of a.s.syria and Babylonia returned to Europe with fresh spoils, and it is now possible to describe the history and even the daily life and thoughts of a people who but half a century ago were but a mere name. The following pages are intended to give a picture of that history and life.

CHAPTER II.

a.s.sYRIAN HISTORY.

a.s.syrian history, as we have seen, begins with the _patesis_ or viceroys of the city of a.s.sur. We know little about them except their names; contemporaneous annals do not commence until a.s.syria has ceased to be the dependency of a foreign power, and has become an independent kingdom. It was in the 17th or 16th century before the Christian era that Bel-kapkapi first gave himself the t.i.tle of king. For two or three centuries afterwards our chief information about the monarchy he founded is derived from the relations, sometimes hostile and sometimes peaceable, which his successors had with Babylonia. One of them, however, Rimmon-nirari I by name (about B.C. 1320), has left us an inscription in which he recounts the wars he waged against the Babylonians, the Kurds, the Aramaeans, and the Shuites, nomad tribes who extended along the western bank of the Euphrates. It was his son, Shalmaneser I, to whom the foundation of Calah is ascribed. For six generations his descendants followed one another on the throne; then came Tiglath-Pileser I, who may be regarded as the founder of the first a.s.syrian Empire. He carried his arms as far as Cilicia and Malatiyeh on the west, and the wild tribes of Kurdistan on the east; he overthrew the Moschi or Meshech, defeated the Hitt.i.tes and their Colchian allies, and erected a memorial of his conquests at the sources of the Tigris. The Hitt.i.te city of Pethor, at the junction of the Euphrates and Sajur, was garrisoned with a.s.syrian soldiers, and at Arvad the a.s.syrian monarch symbolised his subjection of the Mediterranean by embarking in a ship and killing a dolphin in the sea. In Nineveh he established a botanical garden, which he filled with the strange trees he had brought back with him from his campaigns. In B.C. 1130 he marched into Babylonia, and, after a momentary repulse at the hands of the Babylonian king, defeated his antagonists on the banks of the Lower Zab. Babylonia was ravaged, and Babylon itself was captured.

With the death of Tiglath-Pileser I, a.s.syrian history becomes for awhile obscure. The sceptre fell into feeble hands, and the distant conquests of the empire were lost. It was during this period of abeyance that the kingdom of David and Solomon arose in the west. The a.s.syrian power did not revive until the reign of a.s.sur-dan II, whose son, Rimmon-nirari II (B.C. 911-889), and great-grandson, a.s.sur-natsir-pal (B.C. 883-858), led their desolating armies through Western Asia, and made the name of a.s.syria once more terrible to the nations around them. a.s.sur-natsir-pal was at once one of the most ferocious and most energetic of the a.s.syrian kings. His track was marked by impalements, by pyramids of human heads, and by other barbarities too horrible to be described. But his campaigns reached further than those of Tiglath-Pileser had done.

Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Kurdistan, were overrun again and again; the Babylonians were forced to sue for peace; Sangara, the Hitt.i.te king of Carchemish, paid tribute, and the rich cities of Phnicia poured their offerings into the treasury of Nineveh. The armies of a.s.syria penetrated even to Nizir, where the ark of the Chaldaean Noah was believed to have rested on the peak of Rowandiz. In a.s.syria itself the cities were embellished with the spoils of foreign conquest; splendid palaces were erected, and Calah, which had fallen into decay, was restored. A library was erected there, and it became the favourite residence of a.s.sur-natsir-pal.

He was succeeded by his son Shalmaneser II, so named, perhaps, after the original founder of Calah. Shalmaneser's military successes exceeded even those of his father, and his long reign of thirty-five years marks the climax of the first a.s.syrian Empire. His annals are chiefly to be found engraved on three monuments now in the British Museum. One of these is a monolith from Kurkh, a place about twenty miles from Diarbekr. The full-length figure of Shalmaneser is sculptured upon it, and the surface of the stone is covered with the inscription. Another monument is a small 'obelisk' of polished black stone, the upper part of which is shaped like three ascending steps. Inscriptions run round its four sides, as well as small bas-reliefs representing the tribute offered to 'the great king' by foreign states. Among the tribute-bearers are the Israelitish subjects of 'Jehu, son of Omri.' The third monument is one which was discovered in 1878 at Balawat, about nine miles from Nimrd or Calah. It consists of the bronze framework of two colossal doors, of rectangular shape, twenty-two feet high and twenty-six feet broad. The doors opened into a temple, and were made of wood, to which the bronze was fastened by means of nails. The bronze was cut into bands, which ran in a horizontal direction across the doors, and were each divided into two lines of embossed reliefs. These reliefs were hammered out, and not cast, and the rudeness of their execution proves that they were the work of native artists, and not of the Phnician settlers in Nineveh, of whose skill in such work we have several specimens. Short texts are added to explain the reliefs, so that the various campaigns and cities represented in them can all be identified.

Among the cities is the Hitt.i.te capital Carchemish, and the warriors of Armenia are depicted in a costume strikingly similar to that of the ancient Greeks.

Shalmaneser's first campaign was against the restless tribes of Kurdistan. He then turned northward, and fell upon the Armenian king of Van and the Manna or Minni (see Jer. li. 27), who inhabited the country between the mountains of Kotr and Lake Urumiyeh. The Hitt.i.tes of Carchemish, with their allies from Cilicia and other neighbouring districts, were next compelled to sue for peace, and the acquisition of Pethor, which had been lost after Tiglath-Pileser's death, again gave the a.s.syrians the command of the ford over the Euphrates. The result of this was, that in B.C. 854 Shalmaneser came into conflict with the kingdom of Hamath. The common danger had roused Hadadezer of Damascus, called Benhaded II in the Bible, to make common cause with Hamath, and a confederacy was formed to resist the a.s.syrian advance. Among the confederates 'Ahab of Israel' is mentioned as furnishing the allies with 2,000 chariots and 10,000 infantry. But the confederacy was shattered at Karkar or Aroer, although Shalmaneser had himself suffered too severely to be able to follow up his victory. For a time, therefore, Syria remained unmolested, and the a.s.syrian king turned his attention to Babylonia, which he reduced to a state of va.s.salage, under the pretext of a.s.sisting the Babylonian sovereign against his rebel brother.

Twelve years, however, after the battle of Karkar, Shalmaneser was once more in the west. Hadadezer had been succeeded by Hazael on the throne of Damascus, and it was against him that the full flood of a.s.syrian power was turned. For some time he managed to stem it, but in B.C. 841 he suffered a crushing defeat on the heights of Shenir (see Deut. iii.

9), and his camp, along with 1,121 chariots and 470 carriages, fell into the hands of the a.s.syrians, who proceeded to besiege him in his capital, Damascus. The siege, however, was soon raised, and Shalmaneser contented himself with ravaging the Hauran and marching to Beyrout, where his image was carved on the rocky promontory of Baal-rosh, at the mouth of the Nahr el-Kelb. It was while he was in this neighbourhood that the amba.s.sadors of Jehu arrived with offers of tribute and submission. The tribute, we are told, consisted of 'silver, gold, a golden bowl, vessels of gold, goblets of gold, pitchers of gold, a sceptre for the king's hand and spear-handles,' and Jehu is erroneously ent.i.tled 'the son of Omri.'