astation of some fresh district, or to
inflict a defeat on such of his adversaries as dared to encounter him
in the open field. In 850 B.C. the first blow was struck at the Khati;
Agusi* was the next to suffer, and its king, Arame, lost Arnie, his
royal city, with some hundred more townships and strongholds.**

* Historians have up to the present admitted that this
campaign of the year 850 took place in Armenia. The context
of the account itself shows us that, in his tenth year,
Shalmaneser advanced against the towns of Arame, immediately
after having pillaged the country of the Khati, which
inclines me to think that these towns were situated in
Northern Syria. I have no doubt that the Arame in question
is not the Armenian king of that name, but Arame the
sovereign of Bit-Agusi, who is named several times in the
Annals of Shalmaneser.

** The text of Bull No. 1 adds to the account of the war
against Arame, that of a war against the Damascene league,
which merely repeats the account of Shalmaneser's eleventh
year. It is generally admitted that the war against Arame
falls under his tenth year, and the war against Ben-hadad
during his eleventh year. The scribes must have had at their
disposal two different versions of one document, in which
these two wars were described without distinction of year.
The compiler of the inscription of the Bulls would have
considered them as forming two distinct accounts, which he
has placed one after the other.

In 849 B.C. it was the turn of Damascus. The league of which Ben-hadad
had proclaimed himself the suzerain was still in existence, but it had
recently narrowly escaped dissolution, and a revolt had almost deprived
it of the adherence of Israel and the house of Omri--after Hamath,
the most active of all its members. The losses suffered at Qarqar had
doubtless been severe enough to shake Ahab's faith in the strength of
his master and ally. Besides this, it would appear that the latter had
not honourably fulfilled all the conditions of the treaty of peace he
had signed three years previously; he still held the important fortress
of Bamoth-gilead, and he delayed handing it over to Ahab in spite of his
oath to restore it. Finding that he could not regain possession of it by
fair means, Ahab resolved to take it by force. A great change in feeling
and politics had taken place at Jeru