The distance between the banks of the Jordan or Abana and those of the Tigris was a long one, and in nearly every instance it would have been a question of months before help could arrive. Meanwhile, Egypt was at hand, jealous of her rival, who was thus encroaching on territory which had till lately been regarded as her exclusive sphere of influence, and vaguely apprehensive of the fate which might be in store for her if some Assyrian army, spurred by the lust of conquest, were to cross the desert and bear down upon the eastern frontiers of the Delta. Distrustful of her own powers, and unwilling to assume a directly offensive attitude, she did all she could to foment continual disturbances among the Hebrews and Phoenicians, as well as in Philistia and Aram; she carried on secret intrigues with the independent princes, and held out tempting hopes of speedy intervention before the eyes of their peoples; her influence could readily be traced in every seditious movement. The handful of men assigned to the governors of the earlier provinces close to the capital would have been of little avail against perils of this kind. Though Tiglath-pileser added colony to colony in the distant regions annexed by him, he organised them on a different plan from that which had prevailed before his time. His predecessors had usually sent Assyrians to these colonies, and filled the villages vacated by them with families taken from the conquered region: a transfer of inhabitants was made, for instance, from Nairi or from Media into Assyria, and _vice versa_. By following this system, Tiglath-pileser would soon have scattered his whole people over the dependencies of his empire, and have found his hereditary states peopled by a motley and incoherent collection of aliens; he therefore left his Assyrians for the most part at home, and only effected exchanges between captives. In his earlier campaigns he brought back with him, on one occasion, 65,000 prisoners from the table-land of Iran, in order to distribute them over a province which he was organising on the banks of the Turnat and the Zab: he levied contributions of this kind without mercy from all the states that he conquered from year to year, and dispersed the captives thus obtained over the length and breadth of his empire; he transplanted the Aramaeans of the Mesopotamian deserts, and the Kalda to the slopes of Mount Amanus or the banks of the Orontes, the Patinians and Hamathaeans to Ulluba, the inhabitants of Damascus to Kir or to the borders of Elam,* and the Israelites to some place in Assyria.** * 2 Kings xvi. 9. ** 2 Kings xv. 29.