256 F. GARD FLEAY, ESQ., ON THE SYNCHRONOUS 



forty-six years, calculated to suit his date, 1017, for Solomon, 

 is too long, and his separation of Pul and Tiglath Pileser is 

 disproved by the Assyrian monuments. 



I defer farther discussion of this important crux to a later 

 stage of the argument when all the data necessary thereto shall 

 have been set forth ; but here I may remark that it is only in 

 comparatively recent years that Assyriologists, who previously 

 held to Oppert's views, have discovered (without any new 

 evidence having arisen) that the eponym list must he 

 continuous ; and about the same time also discovered that 

 so many ancient authorities, Herodotus, the Old Testament 

 writers, Manetho, etc., were utterly untrustworthy. 



Now we come to the fourth and last difficulty, the contem- 

 poraneity of Menahem and Pul. 



[744-3] Pekah and Eezin King of Syria invade Judah, 2 Kings 

 XV, 37 ; xvi, 5, " The Lord began to send them " near the end 

 of the reign of Jotham, and in the first years of Ahaz (743) they 

 besieged him in Jerusalem. He applied to Tiglath Pileser to 

 aid him, and became tributary to him. In 743 Tiglath was 

 in Arpad, which town he besieged for three years and took in 

 741. 



738 : Tiglath P., Menahem and Eezin pay tribute to Tiglath. 

 This is the crucial date. According to the ordinary chronology 

 Pekah (not Menahem) was on the throne. Oppert accounts for 

 this discrepancy by inventing a second Menahem with arbitrary 

 dethronements and restorations of Jeroboam and Pekah. The 

 Assyriologists for the most part alter the years for the reigns of 

 Jotham, Ahaz, Menahem, and Pekah as may suit their 

 hypotheses. 



734. Ahaz pays tribute to Tiglath (Schrader i. 255, transl.) 



Tiglath in Philistia. 

 733-2. Tiglath besieges and takes Damascus, where Ahaz 



meets him. 2 Kings xvi, 10. 

 732. Eezin of Syria is slain in the 14th year of Tiglath. 

 731. Paqaha is slain and Hoshea appointed in his place 



by Tiglath. 



At this point I insert the undated annals, iii Eawl. 10, No. 2, 

 which Schrader puts 734 B.C. In this crucial fragment we find 

 Tiglath at Shi-mir-ra and Ar-ga-a, tov/ns west of Lebanon, Ga-al 

 (G-ilead), [A]bel [Beth Manchah], Beth Omri (Samaria) and 

 Gaza ; then follows : " The whole of its (Samaria's) inhabitants 

 I . . . deported to Assyria ; Pa-qa-ha their king I slew, 

 Hosea I appointed over them." This comes in quite naturally 



