The Cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament; - The Search For ...

260 THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS AND TEE 0. T.
we can only resort for information respecting the events
of his reign to the newly discovered fragment of the List
of Governors above described, and to non-Assyrian sources,
i. e. apart from the Bible to Menander's statements con-
tained in Josephus (Archaeol. IX. 14, 2). According to
the latter it was Salmanassar who undertook an expedition
against Tyre, which city must be considered to have been
in alliance with Samaria, an expedition which occupied
five years, in other words lasted over the death of Salman-
assar into the reign of the next king, Sargon*. The clay
fragment is in harmony with this. Contemporary with
this enterprise occurred the other operation directed against
Northern Israel, and the siege of Samaria which was
likewise prolonged beyond the king's death (see below).
Whether that death was natural, or resulted from a revo-
lution (as several Assyriologists have assumed), cannot be
definitely settled. No reference to it exists on the clay frag-
ment. It is a fact that his successor Sargon never calls him-
self son of Salmanassar** on the monuments with which we
have hitherto become acquainted. There is therefore at all
events a possibility that Sargon came to the throne as a
269 usurper. The fact that he repeatedly (e.g. in Botta 37. 41)
boasts of his 350 ancestors ("fathers") who were kings over
Assyria, constitutes no objection, for this statement is cer-
tainly not to be taken in a strictly literal sense, and may
* On this see my essay in Studien u. Kritiken 1870 pp. 531 foil.,
and comp. my articles Salmanassar in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexikon and
in Riehm's Handwort. des Bibl. Alterth.
** That he even expressly calls himself the son of some one else,
as Oppert at least formerly supposed on the ground of an inscription
not rightly interpreted (Exped. en M^sopot. II pp. 328 foil.), cannot be
proved. See note on Is. XX. 1.