History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 7 (eBook)

Athaliah reigned seven years, not ingloriously; but she belonged to the house of Ahab, and the adherents of the prophets, whose party had planned Jehu's revolution, could no longer witness with equanimity one of the accursed race thus prospering and ostentatiously practising the rites of Baal-worship within sight of the great temple of Jahveh. On seizing the throne, Athaliah had sought out and put to death all the members of the house of David who had any claim to the succession; but Jeho-sheba, half-sister of Ahaziah, had with difficulty succeeded in rescuing Joash, one of the king's sons. Her husband was the high priest Jehoiada, and he secreted his nephew for six years in the precincts of the temple; at the end of that time, he won over the captains of the royal guard, bribed a section of the troops, and caused them to swear fealty to the child as their legitimate sovereign. Athaliah, hastening to discover the cause of the uproar, was assassinated. Mattan, chief priest of Baal, shared her fate; and Jehoiada at once restored to Jahveh the preeminence which the gods of the alien had for a time usurped (837). At first his influence over his pupil was supreme, but before long the memory of his services faded away, and the king sought only how to rid himself of a tutelage which had grown irksome. The temple had suffered during the late wars, and repairs were much needed. Joash ordained that for the future all moneys put into the sacred treasury—which of right belonged to the king—should be placed unreservedly at the disposal of the priests on condition that they should apply them to the maintenance of the services and fabric of the temple: the priests accepted the gift, but failed in the faithful observance of the conditions, so that in 814 B.C. the king was obliged to take stringent measures to compel them to repair the breaches in the sanctuary walls:* he therefore withdrew the privilege which they had abused, and henceforth undertook the administration of the Temple Fund in person. The beginning of the new order of things was not very successful. Jehu had died in 815, after a disastrous reign, and both he and his son Jehoahaz had been obliged to acknowledge the supremacy of Hazael: not only was he in the position of an inferior vassal, but, in order to preclude any idea of a revolt, he was forbidden to maintain a greater army than the small force necessary for purposes of defence, namely, ten thousand foot-soldiers, fifty horsemen, and ten chariots.**

* 2 Kings xii. 4-16; cf. 2 Chron. xxiv. 1-14. The beginningof the narrative is lost, and the whole has probably beenmodified to make it agree with 2 Kings xxii. 3-7.
** 2 Kings xiii. 1-7. It may be noticed that the number offoot-soldiers given in the Bible is identical with thatwhich the Assyrian texts mention as Ahab's contingent at thebattle of Qarqar, viz. 10,000; the number of the chariots isvery different in the two cases. Kuenen and other criticswould like to assign to the reign of Jehoahaz the siege ofSamaria by the Syrians, which the actual text of the Book ofthe Kings attributes to the reign of Joram.
 

The power of Israel had so declined that Hazael was allowed to march through its territory unhindered on his way to wage war in the country of the Philistines; which he did, doubtless, in order to get possession of the main route of Egyptian commerce. The Syrians destroyed Gath,* reduced Pentapolis to subjection, enforced tribute from Edom, and then marched against Jerusalem. Joash took from the treasury of Jahveh the reserve funds which his ancestors, Jehoshaphat, Joram, and Ahaziah, had accumulated, and sent them to the invader,** together with all the gold which was found in the king's house.

* The text of 2 Kings xii. 17 merely says that Hazael tookGath. Gath is not named by Amos among the cities of thePhilistines (Amos. i. 6-8), but it is one of the towns citedby that prophet as examples to Israel of the wrath of Jahveh(vi. 2). It is probable, therefore, that it was alreadydestroyed in his time.
** 2 Kings xii. 17, 18; cf. 2 Chron. xxiv. 22-24, where theexpedition of Hazael is represented as a punishment for themurder of Mechariah, son of Jehoiada.
 

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by J. de Morgan.
 

From this time forward Judah became, like Israel, Edom, the Philistines and Ammonites, a mere vassal of Hazael; with the possible exception of Moab, all the peoples of Southern Syria were now subject to Damascus, and formed a league as strong as that which had successfully resisted the power of Shalmaneser. Rammân-nirâri, therefore, did not venture to attack Syria during the lifetime of Hazael; but a change of sovereign is always a critical moment in the history of an Eastern empire, and he took advantage of the confusion caused by the death of the aged king to attack his successor Mari (803 B.C.). Mari essayed the tactics which his father had found so successful; he avoided a pitched battle, and shut himself up in Damascus. But he was soon closely blockaded, and forced to submit to terms; Rammân-nirâri demanded as the price of withdrawal, 23,000 talents of silver, 20 talents of gold, 3000 of copper, 5000 of iron, besides embroidered and dyed stuffs, an ivory couch, and a litter inlaid with ivory,—in all a considerable part of the treasures amassed at the expense of the Hebrews and their neighbours. It is doubtful whether Rammân-nirâri pushed further south, and penetrated in person as far as the deserts of Arabia Petrsæ—a suggestion which the mention of the Philistines and Edomites among the list of his tributary states might induce us to accept. Probably it was not the case, and he really went no further than Damascus. But the submission of that city included, in theory at least, the submission of all states subject to her sway, and these dependencies may have sent some presents to testify their desire to conciliate his favour; their names appear in the inscriptions in order to swell the number of direct or indirect vassals of the empire, since they were subject to a state which had been effectually conquered.

Rammân-nirâri did not meet with such good fortune in the North; not only did he fail to obtain the brilliant successes which elsewhere attended his arms, but he ended by sustaining considerable reverses. The Ninevite historians reckoned the two expeditions of 808 and 807 B.C. against the Mannai as victories, doubtless because the king returned with a train of prisoners and loaded with spoil; but the Vannic inscriptions reveal that Urartu, which had been rising into prominence during the reign of Shalmaneser, had now grown still more powerful, and had begun to reconquer those provinces on the Tigris and Euphrates of which the Assyrians thought themselves the undoubted lords. Sharduris II. had been succeeded, about 828, by his son Ishpuinis, who had perhaps measured his strength against Samsi-ranimân IV. Ishpuinis appears to have conquered and reduced to the condition of a province the neighbouring principality of Biainas, which up to that time had been governed by a semi-independent dynasty; at all events, he transferred thence his seat of govern-and made Dhuspas his favourite residence. Towards the end of his reign he associated with him on the throne his son Menuas, and made him commander-in-chief of the army. Menuas proved a bold and successful general, and in a few years had doubled the extent of his dominions. He first delivered from the Assyrian yoke, and plundered on his father's account, the tribes on the borders of Lake Urumiah, Muzazir, Gilzân, and Kirruri; then, crossing the Gordygean mountains, he burnt the towns in the valley of the Upper Zab, which bore the uncouth names of Teraîs, Ardis, Khanalis, Bikuras, Khatqanas, Inuas, and Nibur, laid waste the more fertile part of Khubushkia, and carved triumphal stelas in the Assyrian and Vannic scripts upon the rocks in the pass of Rowandiz.

It was probably to recover this territory that Rammân-nirâri waged war three times in Khubushkia, in 802, 792, and 785, in a district which had formerly been ruled by a prefect from Nineveh, but had now fallen into the hands of the enemy.*

* It is probable that the stele of Kelishin, belonging tothe joint reign of Ishpuinis and Menuas, was intended tocommemorate the events which led Rammân-nirâri to undertakehis first expedition; the conquest by Menuas will fall thenin 804 or 803 B.C. The inscription of Meher-Kapussi containsthe names of the divinities belonging to several conqueredtowns, and may have been engraved on the return from thiswar.
 

Everywhere along the frontier, from the Lower Zab to the Euphrates, Menuas overpowered and drove back the Assyrian outposts. He took from them Aldus and Erinuis on the southern shores of Lake Van, compelled Dayaîni to abandon its allegiance, and forced its king, Udhupursis, to surrender his treasure and his chariots; then gradually descending the valley of the Arzania, he crushed Seseti, Kulmê, and Ekarzu. In one year he pillaged the Mannai in the east, and attacked the Khâti in the west, seizing their fortresses of Surisilis, Tarkhigamas, and Sarduras; in the province of Alzu he left 2113 soldiers dead on the field after one engagement; Gupas yielded to his sway, followed by the towns of Khuzanas and Puteria, whereupon he even crossed the Euphrates and levied tribute from Melitene. But the struggle against Assyria absorbed only a portion of his energy; we do not know what he accomplished in the east, in the plains sloping towards the Caspian Sea, but several monuments, discovered near Armavir and Erzerum, testify that he pushed his arms a considerable distance towards the north and...