Page:The Hittites - the Story of a Forgotten Empire.djvu/50

48 more Carchemish gave up its gold and silver, its bronze and copper, its purple vestures and curiously-adorned thrones, and the daughter of Sangara himself was carried away to the harem of the Assyrian king. Pethor, the city of Balaam, was turned into an Assyrian colony, its very name being changed to an Assyrian one. The way into Hamath and Phœnicia at last lay open to the Assyrian host. At Aleppo Shalmaneser offered sacrifices to the native god Hadad, and then descended upon the cities of Hamath. At Karkar he was met by a great confederacy formed by the kings of Hamath and Damascus, to which Ahab of Israel had contributed 2000 chariots and 10,000 men. But nothing could withstand the onslaught of the Assyrian veterans. The enemy were scattered like chaff, and the river Orontes was reddened with their blood. The battle of Karkar (in B.C. 854) brought the Assyrians into contact with Damascus, and caused Jehu on a later occasion to send tribute to the Assyrian king.

The subsequent history of Shalmaneser concerns us but little. The power of the Hittites south of the Taurus had been broken for ever. The Semite had avenged himself for the conquest of his country by the northern mountaineers centuries before. They no longer formed a barrier which cut off the east from the west, and prevented the Semites of Assyria and Babylon from meeting the Semites of Phœnicia and Palestine. The intercourse which had been interrupted in the age of the nineteenth dynasty of Egypt could now be again resumed. Carchemish ceased to command the fords of the Euphrates, and was forced to acknowledge the supremacy of the Assyrian invader. In fact, the Hittites of Syria had become little more than tributaries of the