SECTION 5. SYRIAN EXPANSION OF ASSYRIA
Such were the dangers which, as we now know, lurked on the horizon of the Northern Semites in 800 B.C. But they had not yet become patent to the world, in whose eyes Assyria seemed still an irresistible power pushing ever farther and farther afield. The west offered the most attractive field for her expansion. There lay the fragments of the Hatti Empire, enjoying the fruits of Hatti civilization; there were the wealthy Aramaean states, and still richer Phoenician ports. There urban life was well developed, each city standing for itself, sufficient in its territory, and living more or less on the caravan trade which perforce passed under or near its walls between Egypt on the one hand and Mesopotamia and Asia Minor on the other. Never was a fairer field for hostile enterprise, or one more easily harried without fear of reprisal, and well knowing this, Assyria set herself from Ashurnatsirpal's time forward systematically to bully and fleece Syria. It was almost the yearly practice of Shalmaneser II to march down to the Middle Euphrates, ferry his army across, and levy blackmail on Carchemish and the other north Syrian cities as far as Cilicia on the one hand and Damascus on the other. That done, he would send forward envoys to demand ransom of the Phoenician towns, who grudgingly paid it or rashly withheld it according to the measure of his compulsion. Since last we looked at the Aramaean states, Damascus has definitely asserted the supremacy which her natural advantages must always secure to her whenever Syria is not under foreign domination. Her fighting dynasty of Benhadads which had been founded, it seems, more than a century before Shalmaneser's time, had now spread her influence right across Syria from east to west and into the territories of Hamath on the north and of the Hebrews on the south. Ashurnatsirpal had never ventured to do more than summon at long range the lord of this large and wealthy state to contribute to his coffers; but this tributary obligation, if ever admitted, was continually disregarded, and Shalmaneser II found he must take bolder measures or be content to see his raiding-parties restricted to the already harried north. He chose the bold course, and struck at Hamath, the northernmost Damascene dependency, in his seventh summer. A notable victory, won at Karkar on the Middle Orontes over an army which included contingents from most of the south Semitic states - one came, for example, from Israel, where Ahab was now king, - opened a way towards the Aramaean capital; but it was not till twelve years later that the Great King actually attacked Damascus. But he failed to crown his successes with its capture, and reinvigorated by the accession of a new dynasty, which Hazael, a leader in war, founded in 842, Damascus continued to bar the Assyrians from full enjoyment of the southern lands for another century.
Nevertheless, though Shalmaneser and his dynastic successors down to Adadnirari III were unable to enter Palestine, the shadow of Assyrian Empire was beginning to creep over Israel. The internal dissensions of the latter, and its fear and jealousy of Damascus had already done much to make ultimate disaster certain. In the second generation after David the radical incompatibility between the northern and southern Hebrew tribes, which under his strong hand and that of his son had seemed one nation, reasserted its disintegrating influence. While it is not certain if the twelve tribes were ever all of one race, it is quite certain that the northern ones had come to be contaminated very largely with Aramaean blood and infected by mid-Syrian influences, which the relations established and maintained by David and Solomon with Hamath and Phoenicia no doubt had accentuated, especially in the territories of Asher and Dan. These tribes and some other northerners had never seen eye to eye with the southern tribes in a matter most vital to Semitic societies, religious ideal and practice. The anthropomorphic monotheism, which the southern tribes brought up from Arabia, had to contend in Galilee with theriomorphic polytheism, that is, the tendency to embody the qualities of divinity in animal forms. For such beliefs as these there is ample evidence in the Judaean tradition, even during the pre-Palestinian wanderings. Both reptile and bovine incarnations manifest themselves in the story of the Exodus, and despite the fervent missionary efforts of a series of Prophets, and the adhesion of many, even among the northern tribesmen, to the more spiritual creed, these cults gathered force in the congenial neighbourhood of Aramaeans and Phoenicians, till they led to political separation of the north from the south as soon as the long reign of Solomon was ended. Thereafter, until the catastrophe of the northern tribes, there would never more be a united Hebrew nation. The northern kingdom, harried by Damascus and forced to take unwilling part in her quarrels, looked about for foreign help. The dynasty of Omri, who, in order to secure control of the great North Road, had built himself a capital and a palace (lately discovered) on the hill of Samaria, relied chiefly on Tyre. The succeeding dynasty, that of Jehu, who had rebelled against Omri's son and his Phoenician queen, courted Assyria, and encouraged her to press ever harder on Damascus. It was a suicidal policy; for in the continued existence of a strong Aramaean state on her north lay Israel's one hope of long life. Jeroboam II and his Prophet Jonah ought to have seen that the day of reckoning would come quickly for Samaria when once Assyria had settled accounts with Damascus.
To some extent, but unfortunately not in all detail, we can trace in the royal records the advance of Assyrian territorial dominion in the west. The first clear indication of its expansion is afforded by a notice of the permanent occupation of a position on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, as a base for the passage of the river. This position was Til Barsip, situated opposite the mouth of the lowest Syrian affluent, the Sajur, and formerly capital of an Aramaean principate. That its occupation by Shalmaneser II in the third year of his reign was intended to be lasting is proved by its receiving a new name and becoming a royal Assyrian residence. Two basaltic lions, which the Great King then set up on each side of its Mesopotamian gate and inscribed with commemorative texts, have recently been found near Tell Ahmar, the modern hamlet which has succeeded the royal city. This measure marked Assyria's definite annexation of the lands in Mesopotamia, which had been under Aramaean government for at least a century and a half. When this government had been established there we do not certainly know; but the collapse of Tiglath Pileser's power about 1100 B.C. so nearly follows the main Aramaean invasion from the south that it seems probable this invasion had been in great measure the cause of that collapse, and that an immediate consequence was the formation of Aramaean states east of Euphrates. The strongest of them and the last to succumb to Assyria was Bit-Adini, the district west of Harran, of which Til Barsip had been the leading town.
The next stage of Assyrian expansion is marked by a similar occupation of a position on the Syrian side of the Euphrates, to cover the landing and be a gathering-place of tribute. Here stood Pitru, formerly a Hatti town and, perhaps, the Biblical Pethor, situated beside the Sajur on some site not yet identified, but probably near the outfall of the stream. It received an Assyrian name in Shalmaneser's sixth year, and was used afterwards as a base for all his operations in Syria. It served also to mask and overawe the larger and more wealthy city of Carchemish, a few miles north, which would remain for a long time to come free of permanent Assyrian occupation, though subjected to blackmail on the occasion of every western raid by the Great King.
With this last westward advance of his permanent territorial holding, Shalmaneser appears to have rested content. He was sure of the Euphrates passage and had made his footing good on the Syrian bank. But we cannot be certain; for, though his known records mention the renaming of no other Syrian cities, many may have been renamed without happening to be mentioned in the records, and others may have been occupied by standing Assyrian garrisons without receiving new names. Be that as it may, we can trace, year by year, the steady pushing forward of Assyrian raiding columns into inner Syria. In 854 Shalmaneser's most distant base of operations was fixed at Khalman (Aleppo), whence he marched to the Orontes to fight, near the site of later Apamea, the battle of Karkar. Five years later, swooping down from a Cilician raid, he entered Hamath. Six more years passed before he made more ground to the south, though he invaded Syria again in force at least once during the interval. In 842, however, having taken a new road along the coast, he turned inland from Beirut, crossed Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, and succeeded in reaching the oasis of Damascus and even in raiding some distance towards the Hauran; but he did not take (perhaps, like the Bedawi Emir he was, he did not try to take) the fenced city itself. He seems to have repeated his visit three years later, but never to have gone farther. Certainly he never secured to himself Phoenicia, Coele-Syria or Damascus, and still less Palestine, by any permanent organization. Indeed, as has been said, we have no warrant for asserting that in his day Assyria definitely incorporated in her territorial empire any part of Syria except that one outpost of observation established at Pitru on the Sajur. Nor can more be credited to Shalmaneser's immediate successors; but it must be understood that by the end of the century Adadnirari had extended Assyria's sphere of influence (as distinct from her territorial holding) somewhat farther south to include not only Phoenicia but also northern Philistia and Palestine with the arable districts east of Jordan.