The military revival of Assyria was as sudden as had been its decline.
In B.C. 885, Assur-nazir-pal II. ascended the throne. His reign of
twenty-five years was passed in constant campaigns, in ferocious
massacres, and the burning of towns. In both his inscriptions and his
sculptures he seems to gloat over the tortures he inflicted on the
defeated foe. Year after year his armies marched out of Nineveh to
slaughter and destroy, and to bring back with them innumerable captives
and vast amounts of spoil. Western Asia was overrun, tribute was
received from the Hittites and from Phoenicia, and Armenia was
devastated by the Assyrian forces as far north as Lake Van. The policy
of Assur-nazir-pal was continued by his son and successor Shalmaneser
II., with less ferocity, but with more purpose (B.C. 860-825). Assyria
became dominant in Asia; its empire stretched from Media on the east to
the Mediterranean on the west. But it was an empire which was without
organisation or permanency. Every year a new campaign was needed to
suppress the revolts which broke out as soon as the Assyrian army was
out of sight, or to supply the treasury with fresh spoil. The campaigns
were in most cases raids rather than the instruments of deliberately
planned conquest. Hence it was that the Assyrian monarch found himself
checked in the west by the petty kings of Damascus and the neighbouring
states. Ben-Hadad and Hazael, it is true, were beaten again and again
along with their allies, while Omri of Israel offered tribute to the
invader, like the rich cities of Phoenicia; but Damascus remained
untaken and its people unsubdued.

The war with Assyria, however, saved Israel from being swallowed up by
its Syrian neighbour. Hazael's strength was exhausted in struggling for
his own existence; he had none left for the conquest of Samaria.
Shalmaneser himself, towards the end of his life, was no longer in a