About the time of King David and Solomon the Assyrians began to move northward and westward in their military expansions. They were searching for booty such as metals like gold, iron and bronze, and horses.
Tiglath Pileser III
A New King Tiglath Pileser III Seizes the Throne of Assyria
A usurper came to the throne of Assyria in 745 B.C. and ushered in a new era filled with famous rulers. The first monarch to rise during this time was Tiglath-pileser III, also known as Pul in the Bible, and Pulu by the Babylonians. When Tiglath-pileser III seized the throne it was only five months when he was ready to go to war. His first conquest was Babylon, the arch rival within the region. It wasn't long before the powerful Assyrians conquered Babylon and brought it under their control.
The Assyrians conquered many cities in the east and large numbers of people were imported into the region of the Assyrians. In fact the Assyrians took pleasure in deporting people away from their homeland, this would break people of their sense of national identity and consciousness and make it hard to revolt.
Tiglath-pileser III soon looked to the north, and as far west as possible. He needed to expand his wealth and noticed that the tributaries in Syria and Israel were withholding their annual payments. It was time to reinforce taxation, and his experience in this area was greatly developed. He organized the Assyrian army and began about 150 years of intense warfare.
The kingdom of Israel was known to the Assyrians after its founder as Bit-Humri, 'House of Omri'. Together with the kingdoms of Hamat and Damascus, it dominated the political landscape of Syro-Palestine in the 9th and 8th centuries BC and, like them, it eventually fell victim to the Assyrian expansion to the Mediterranean.
Israel's relations with Assyria oscillated between neutral, cordial and hostile. The submission of king Jehu before Shalmaneser III of Assyria (858-824 BC) is prominently depicted on one of the central panels of the so-called Black Obelisk, highlighting the importance of this alliance to Assyria. But before the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (744-727 BC), the nature of the relationship with Assyria was primarily defined by Israel's rapport with Damascus, its eastern neighbour and main rival in the region: frosty when in league with Damascus and close whenever the two were at odds.
Israel was directly affected when Assyria's western frontier was moved from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean coast and the Lebanon mountain range. The year 732 BC saw the first Assyrian invasion of Israel. This event is well documented in the Bible, albeit not from the viewpoint of Israel but of its southern neighbour, the kingdom of Judah. It is possible to juxtapose this narrative with passages in the royal inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III which, although fragmentary, provide valuable insight into the Assyrian view on the matter.
The invasion of 732 BC
"Ahaz sent messengers to say to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, 'I am your servant and vassal. Come up and save me out of the hand of the king of Aram (i.e. Damascus) and of the king of Israel, who are attacking me'. And Ahaz took silver and gold... and sent it as a gift to the king of Assyria. The king of Assyria complied." (2 Kings 16:7-9)
the Assyrian invasion of Israel was the direct consequence of Judah's vassal treaty with Assyria. In exchange for his loyalty and his tribute, king Ahaz was able to summon his overlord Tiglath-pileser who was bound by the treaty to protect his vassal against his enemies' aggression.
he invasion of Israel was part of a much wider military offensive designed to establish political and economic dominance over the routes across the Syrian Desert to the harbours of the Mediterranean.
Tiglath-pileser's previous conquests in northern Syria (Arpad PGP in 740 BC, Unqu in 738 BC, northern parts of Hamat PGP in 738 BC) had resulted in an Assyrian corridor linking the Euphrates with the northernmost stretches of the east Mediterranean coast. This cut off Syro-Palestine from the important overland connection to Anatolia and caused an intensification of commercial, and consequently political, interests in Egypt and the Arabian peninsula.
from an Assyrian point of view, the increased contacts with Egypt and the Arabs endangered its control over the region and therefore constituted high treason. Rahianu (Rezin) of Damascus and Peqah of Israel, who feature so prominently in the Bible as Judah's enemies, were among the treacherous vassals that also included Hiram of Tyre and Hanunu of Gaza
Assyria employed a strategy that was initially aimed at preventing any military intervention via Egypt where the powerful Kushites were increasingly gaining in influence. The conquest of Tyre and Gaza in 734 BC resulted in an Assyrian cordon of loyal vassals stretching from the Brook of Egypt to the eastern bank of the Jordan, blocking the land route into Egypt and also into Arabia. Judah, which is not at all mentioned in Tiglath-pileser's accounts, was one of these vassals. It must remain open whether its king Ahaz had allied himself with the Assyrians only in reaction to the capture of nearby Gaza or whether this had happened already before
Thereafter, the war was thus confined to the north Israel a. It culminated in the Assyrian siege of Damascus and the conquest of this great city in 732 BC. The annexation of the northern part of the kingdom of Israel followed. The events are related briefly in two passages of Tiglath-pileser's surviving inscriptions:
"The land Bit-Humri (= Israel), all of whose cities I had utterly devastated in my former campaigns, whose [people] and livestock I had carried off and whose (capital) city Samaria alone had been spared: (now) they overthrew Peqah, their king." (Tiglath-pileser III 44, 17-18)
"The land Bit-Humri (= Israel): I brought to Assyria [...], its auxiliary army, [...] and an assembly of its people. [They (or: I) killed] their king Peqah and I placed Hoshea [as king] over them." (Tiglath-pileser III 42, 15'b-17'a)
722 BC: the taking of Samaria
The north of the kingdom was lost, but as long as Hoshea proved himself a faithful Assyrian vassal the south remained independent. But during the reign of Shalmaneser V, the Assyrian army invaded the kingdom and conquered the city of Samaria. Because of the very limited range of available Assyrian sources for Shalmaneser's reign, the reconstruction of the events depends largely on Biblical evidence and details are unclear and debated. According to the Bible, Shalmaneser attacked Israel after Hoshea had sought an alliance with "So, king of Egypt", possibly Osorkon IV of Tanis, and it took the Assyrians three years to take Samaria (2 Kings 17).
It was the standard practice of the time to incorporate enemy troops into the conquering forces but after decades of absorbing defeated armies, the Assyrians only extended this privilege to a chosen few. A hand-selected 200 (later versions: 50) chariot crews of the famous Samaritan chariot corps made the cut according to the inscriptions of Sargon II; the remainder of the troops were discharged. A number of administrative documents excavated inKalhu demonstrate that the Samaritan chariot corps was subsequently stationed in that city. Very unusually, it was allowed to retain its group identity and organisational structure. This must be due to its specialised expertise which provide a valuable addition to the existing array of Assyrian battle techniques.
Already in the 9th century, the Israelites emerge from the Assyrian sources as master charioteers. They used heavily fortified, tank-like chariots which were drawn by a particularly large breed of horses originating from Kush (Nubia). The Samaritan chariot corps introduced these vehicles and horses to the Assyrian army and, over the following decades, their use and strategic importance increased markedly so that by the 7th century, it was no longer associated exclusively with the chariot crews of Samaria.
The lost tribes of Israel
Just like in 732 BC, substantial parts of the Israelite population were resettled elsewhere in the Assyrian Empire after the fall of Samaria in 722 BC. They are the "lost tribes of Israel" of the Bible:
Halahhu lies in central Assyria: it is the territory that came to constitute the province of Sargon's new capital city of Dur-Šarruken. The Israelite presence in Guzana, in what is today northeastern Syria, is confirmed by 7th century texts such as the letter SAA 16 63, featuring persons whose names invoke the god Yahwe. The cities of the Medes under Assyrian control are situated in three provinces in the Zagros mountain range: Parsua PGP , Harhar PGP and Kišessim. If one assumes that the Israelites were resettled immediately, then Parsua is the only option as the other two provinces were only established in 716 BC.
Samaria itself became the centre of a new Assyrian province which is attested in several letters of Sargon's state correspondence (SAA 1 220, SAA 1 255, SAA 5 291 and SAA 15 280). The Assyrian conquest of southern Palestine continued when Ashdod was defeated in 711 BC. This Philistine city became the centre of the most southern of Assyria's provinces on the Mediterranean coast. The kingdom of Judah, however, remained independent and proved a loyal ally to Assyria until the death of Sargon II.
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