his chiefs against him . . . he said thus.

Behold this .

ask as to this, truly you know . . . I have sent thee as a

present one manah of precious stones

ily.

truly my brother has known

my envoy speeddo not blame my

(889-626 B.C.)

RECORDS OF THE KINGS

"Their fighting men I slew. Their spoil I carried away, Their cities I threw down, dug over, and burned with fire."

- A COMMON PHRASE OF THE INSCRIPTIONS.

"

"Hezekiah I shut up like a caged bird in Jerusalem, his royal

city."

-KING SENNACHERIB.

RECORDS OF THE ASSYRIAN KINGS

(INTRODUCTION)

ASSYRIA began to rise to military power as early as

the period of the Tel-el-Amarna letters (1400 B.C.). At that time her rulers had become rivals of Babylon. But the fighting Assyrian kings met many a rebuff, and the age of their actual world-empire scarcely begins until we come to King Shalmaneser III., who ruled from 858 to 824 B.C. Shalmaneser was not, like the earlier Assyrian kings, a mere marauder, a ravager of other lands. He was a statesman, an organizer, who tried to retain permanent hold of the regions he had conquered, and to restore them to prosperity under his control. Shalmaneser III. is also the first Assyrian king of whom we know definitely that he came in contact with the kings of Bible story, the Hebrew rulers of Judah and Samaria, and the Aramaic kings of Damascus.

Shalmaneser asserts his victory over all these western kings; but when we allow for the boastful tone of Assyrian inscriptions it seems probable that they fairly held their own against him. The consolidation and extension of his power were mainly in his own valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. Several of Shalmaneser's inscriptions have come down to us, the most noted being the one here given and known as "the black obelisk" inscription. It is engraved on an obelisk of black marble, about five feet high, which was set up in his capital. On all four sides of the obelisk there are sculptured figures of vassals bringing tribute, among them being the tribute of "Jehu of Israel," of Bible fame.

The second inscription here given is that of TiglathPileser IV. (745-727 B.C.). This king carried his arms farther eastward in Asia than any other Assyrian general. The names of conquered cities on his list gradually become strange to us and we can only guess to what point he really

penetrated. Some scholars have thought he even crossed the Indus River, capturing northwestern India.

Next come the longer and still more boastful inscriptions of Sargon II. (721-705 в.c.) and his son Sennacherib (705681 B.C.). Both of these grim and furious destroyers ravaged the surrounding lands with a cruelty and a breadth of successful destruction previously unknown even to Assyrian annals. Again and again Sargon II. records of a captured city, "its king I flayed " or " its warriors I set up on stakes." It was in Sargon's reign that the kingdom of Israel was finally destroyed, though the Jewish history rightly attributes the final attack to his predecessor, Shalmaneser V., who began the campaign but died before completing it. Thus the actual destruction of Samaria, the capital of Israel, was accomplished by Sargon, and it was he who dragged the "ten tribes" of the Hebrews away to Assyria as his captives and so utterly dispersed them that we know them only as the "ten lost tribes." Sargon in his inscription describes this capture of Samaria, its rebellion, and its second capture.

Sennacherib also tells of warring in Palestine, and boasts of his success against Hezekiah, King of Judah. He makes no mention of the story which the Bible tells of his losing an army by pestilence; but then the Assyrian kings never mention their defeats. We know that their campaigns were sometimes failures; but we have to read between the lines of their boasting to discover these. Sennacherib admits quite plainly that he did not conquer Jerusalem, but only held its king besieged "like a caged bird," and then abandoned the attack, for some reason which he did not care, in his pompous record, to admit.

History knows no more astounding story than this, of these Assyrian kings marching forth, year after year, to battle. It is tragic as it is terrible to follow any one of their records. Each year had its campaign, and each summoned tens of thousands of men from their homes to go marching into unknown lands whence many never returned. "Like an ibex I climbed to the high peaks against them," boasts one king, "wherever my knees had a resting-place, I sat