in their dignities, subject to payment of
the usual tribute, and Mutton of Tyre was obliged to give one hundred
talents of gold to ransom his city. Ahaz came to salute his preserver,
and to obtain a nearer view of the soldiers to whom he owed continued
possession of Jerusalem;* the kings of Ammon, Moab, Edom, and Askalon,
the Philistines and the nomads of the Arabian desert, carried away by
the general example, followed the lead of Judah, until there was not a
single prince or lord of a city from the Euphrates to the river of Egypt
who had not acknowledged himself the humble vassal of Nineveh.

* 2 Kings xvi. 10-12. The _Nimroud Inscrip_. merely mentions
his tribute among that of the Syrian kings.

With the downfall of rezin, Syria's last hope of recovery had vanished;
the few states which still enjoyed some show of independence were
obliged, if they wished to retain it, to make a parade of unalterable
devotion to their Ninevite master, or--if they found his suzerainty
intolerable--had to risk everything by appealing to Egypt for help.

Much as they may have wished from the very first to do so, it was too
early to make the attempt so soon after the conference at Damascus;
Tiglath-pileser had, therefore, no cause to fear a rebellion among them,
at any rate for some years to come, and it was just as well that
this was so, for at the moment of his triumph on the shores of the
Mediterranean his interests in Chaldaea were threatened by a serious
danger. Nabonazir, King of Karduniash, had never swerved from the
fidelity which he had sworn to his mighty ally after the events of 745,
but the tranquillity of his reign had been more than once disturbed by
revolt. Borsippa itself had risen on one occasion, and endeavoured to
establish itself as an independent city side by side with Babylon.

When Nabonazir died, in 734, he was succeeded by his son Nabunadinziri,
but at the end of a couple of years the latter was assassinated during
a popular outbreak, and Nabushumukin, one of his sons, who had been
implicated in the rising, usurped the crown (732). He wore it for
two months and twelve days, and then abdicated in favour of a certain
Ukinzir.*

* The following is as complete a list as can at present be
compiled of this Babylonian dynasty, the eighth of those
registered in Pinches' Canons (cf. Rost, _Untersucli. zur
altorient. Gesch._, p. 27):--

[Illustration: 292.jpg TABLE OF THIS BABYLONIAN DYNA