he fell first upon Rezin, who was defeated, and fled to
Damascus, where Tiglath-Pileser besieged him for two years, at the end
of which time he was taken and slain. Next he attacked Pekah, entering
his country on the north-east, where it bordered upon the Damascene
territory, and overrunning the whole of the Trans-Jordanic provinces,
together (apparently) with some portion of the Cis-Jordanic region. The
tribes of Reuben and Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, who had
possessed the country between the Jordan and the desert from the time of
Moses, were seized and carried away captive by the conqueror, who placed
them in Upper Mesopotamia, on the affluents of the Bilikh and the
Khabour, from about Harran to Nisibis. Some cities situated on the right
bank of the Jordan, in the territory of Issachar, but belonging to
Manasseh, were at the same time seized and occupied. Among these,
Megiddo in the great plain of Esdraelon, and Dur or Dor upon the coast,
some way below Tyre, were the most important. Dur was even thought of
sufficient consequence to receive an Assyrian governor at the same time
with the other principal cities of Southern Syria.

After thus chastising Samaria, Tiglath-Pileser appears to have passed on
to the south, where he reduced the Philistines and the Arab tribes, who
inhabited the Sinaitic desert as far as the borders of Egypt. Over these
last he set, in lieu of their native queen, an Assyrian governor. He
then returned towards Damascus, where he held a court, and invited the
neighboring states and tribes to send in their submission. The states
and tribes responded to his invitation. Tiglath-Pileser, before quitting
Syria, received submission and tribute not only from Ahaz, king of
Judah, but also from Mit'enna, king of Tyre; Pekah, king of Samaria;
Khanun, king of Gaza; and Mitinti, king of Ascalon: from the Moabites,
the Ammonites, the people of Arvad or Aradus, and the Idumaeans. He thus
completely re-established the power of Assyria in this quarter, once
more recovering to the Empire the entire tract between the coast and the
desert from Mount Amanus on the north to the Red Sea and the confines of
Egypt.

One further expedition was led or sent by Tiglath-Pileser into Syria,
probably in his last year. Disturbances having occurred from the revolt
of Mit'enna of Tyre and the murder of Pekah of Israel by Hoshea, an
Assyrian army marched westward, in B.C. 725, to put them down. The
Tyrian monarch at once