the
regions in the neighbourhood of the isthmus alone had been regularly
administered by the officers of Pharaoh, and when the country between
Mount Seir and Lebanon seemed on the point of being organised into a
real empire the invasion of the Peoples of the Sea had overthrown and
brought to nought the work of three centuries. The Assyrians, under the
leadership of ambitious kings, had in their turn carried their arms over
the countries of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, but, like those
of the Egyptians before them, their expeditions resembled rather the
destructive raids of a horde in search of booty than the gradual and
orderly advance of a civilised people aiming at establishing a permanent
empire. Their campaigns in Cole-Syria and Palestine had enriched their
own cities and spread the terror of their name throughout the Eastern
world, but their supremacy had only taken firm root in the plains
bordering 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