Page:The Hittites - the Story of a Forgotten Empire.djvu/47

Rh age of David. Its Syrian enemies would in that case have been the same as the enemies of David, and a common danger would thus have united it with Israel in an alliance which ended only in its overthrow by the Assyrians.

As late as the time of Uzziah, we are told by the Assyrian inscriptions, the Jewish king was in league with Hamath, and the last independent ruler of Hamath was Yahu-bihdi, a name in which we recognise that of the God of Israel. Indeed, the very fact that the Syrians imagined that 'the kings of the Hittites' were coming to the rescue of Samaria, when besieged by the forces of Damascus, goes to show that Israel and the Hittites were regarded as natural friends, whose natural adversaries were the Arameans of Syria. As the power and growth of Israel had been built up on the conquest and subjugation of the Semitic populations of Palestine, so too the power of the Hittites had been gained at the expense of their Semitic neighbours. The triumph of Syria was a blow alike to the Hittites of Carchemish and to the Hebrews of Samaria and Jerusalem.

With Assur-natsir-pal, whose reign extended from B.C. 885 to 860, contemporaneous Assyrian history begins afresh. His campaigns and conquests rivalled those of Tiglath-pileser I., and indeed exceeded them both in extent and in brutality. Like his predecessor, he exacted tribute from Kummukh as well as from the kings of the country in which Malatiyeh was situated; but with better fortune than Tiglath-pileser he succeeded in passing the Euphrates, and obliging Sangara of Carchemish to pay him homage. It is clear that Carchemish was no longer as strong as it had been two centuries before, and that the power of its defenders was gradually