sfer their
allegiance to the Elymaean king. Carrying with them their gods and their
treasures, they embarked in their ships, and crossing "the Great Sea of
the Rising Sun"--i.e., the Persian Gulf--landed on the Elamitic coast,
where they were kindly received and allowed to take up their abode. Such
voluntary removals are not uncommon in the East; and they constantly
give rise to complaints and reclamations, which not unfrequently
terminate in an appeal to the arbitrament of the sword. Sennacherib does
not inform us whether he made any attempt to recover his lost subjects
by diplomatic representations at the court of Susa. If he did, they were
unsuccessful; and in order to obtain redress, he was compelled to resort
to force, and to undertake an expedition into the Elamitie territory. It
is remarkable that he determined to make his invasion by sea. Their
frequent wars on the Syrian coasts had by this time familiarized the
Assyrians with the idea, if not with the practice, of navigation; and as
their suzerainty over Phoenicia placed at their disposal a large body of
skilled shipwrights, and a number of the best sailors in the world, it
was natural that they should resolve to employ naval as well as military
force to advance their dominion. We have seen that, as early as the time
of Shalmaneser, the Assyrians ventured themselves in ships, and, in
conjunction with the Phoenicians of the mainland, engaged the vessels of
the Island Tyre. It is probable that the precedent thus set was followed
by later kings, and that both Sargon and Sennacherib had had the
permanent, or occasional services of a fleet on the Mediterranean. But
there was a wide difference between such an employment of the navies
belonging to their subjects on the sea, to which they were accustomed,
and the transfer to the opposite extremity of the empire of the naval
strength hitherto confined to the Mediterranean. This thought--certainly
not an obvious one--seems to have first occurred to Sennacherib. He
conceived the idea of having a navy on both the seas that washed his
dominions; and, possessing on his western coast only an adequate supply
of skilled shipwrights and sailors he resolved on transporting from his
western to his eastern shores such a body of Phoenicians as would enable
him to accomplish his purpose. The shipwrights of Tyre and Sidon were
carried across Mesopotamia to the Tigris, where they constructed for the
Assyrian monarch a fleet of ships like