on Mesopotamia, and just when they were preparing to extend their rule, a power had sprung up beside them, over which they had been unable to triumph:  they had been obliged to withdraw behind the Euphrates, and they might reasonably have asked themselves whether, by weakening the peoples of Syria at the price of the best blood of their own nation, they had not merely laboured for the benefit of a rival power, and facilitated the rise of Urartu.  Egypt, after her victory over the Peoples of the Sea, had seemed likely, for the moment, to make a fresh start on a career of conquest under the energetic influence of Ramses III., but her forces proved unequal to the task, and as soon as the master’s hand ceased to urge her on, she shrank back, without a struggle, within her ancient limits, and ere long nothing remained to her of the Asiatic empire carved out by the warlike Pharaohs of the Theban dynasties.  If Tiglath-pileser could show the same courage and capacity as Ramses III., he might well be equally successful, and raise his nation again to power; but time alone could prove whether Nineveh, on his death, would be able to maintain a continuous effort, or whether her new display of energy would prove merely ephemeral, and her empire be doomed to sink into irremediable weakness under the successors of her deliverer, as Egypt had done under the later Ramessides.

CHAPTER II—­TIGLATH-PILESER III.  AND THE ORGANISATION OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE FROM 745 TO 722 B.C.

TIGLATH-PILESER III.  AND THE ORGANISATION OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE FROM 745 to 722 B.C.

FAILURE OF URARTU AND RE-CONQUEST Of SYRIA—­EGYPT AGAIN UNITED UNDER ETHIOPIAN AUSPICES—­PIONKHI—­THE DOWNFALL OF DAMASCUS, OF BABYLON, AND OF ISRAEL.

Assyria and its neighbours at the accession of Tiglath-pileser III.:  progress of the Aramaeans in the basin of the Middle Tigris—­Urartu and its expansion into the north of Syria—­Damascus and Israel—­Vengeance of Israel on Damascus—­Jeroboam II.—­Civilisation of the Hebrew kingdoms, their commerce, industries, private life, and political organisation—­Dawn of Hebrew literature:  the two historians of Israel—­The priesthood and the prophets—­The prophecy of Amos at Bethel; denunciation of Israel by Hosea.

Early campaigns of Tiglath-pileser III. in Karduniash and in Media—­He determines to attach Urartu in Syria:  defeat of Sharduris, campaign around Arpad, and capture of that city—­Homage paid by the Syrian princes, by Menahem and Rezin II—­Second campaign against the Medes—­Invasion of Urartu and end of its supremacy—­Alliance of Pekah and Rezin against Ahaz:  the war in Judaea and siege of Jerusalem.

Egypt under the kings of the XXIIth dynasty—­The Theban principality, its priests, pallacides, and revolts; the XXIIIrd Tanite dynasty—­Tafnakhti and the rise of the Saite family—­The Egyptian kingdom, of Ethiopia:  theocratic nature of its dynasty, annexation of the Thebaid by the kingdom of Napata—­Pionkhi-Miamun; his generals in Middle Egypt; submission of Khmunu, of Memphis, and of Tafnalchti—­Effect produced in Asia by the Ethiopian conquest.