Adad-nirari reigned 29 years, and was succeeded by Shalmaneser III. in 783 B.C. The expeditions of this king were principally against Armenia and Itu’u, a region on the Euphrates. In the year 775 B.C. he went to the cedar-country, but whether the mountain region of the Amanus, Lebanon, or of a district called Ḫašur be intended, is unknown. The necessity of expeditions against Syria, however, still continued, for in 773 B.C. we find Shalmaneser at Damascus, probably to bring the king then ruling there again into subjection. Although doubt is now expressed as to whether Ḫatarika, whither Shalmaneser III. marched in 772 B.C., the last year of his reign, be really Hadrach (Zech. ix. 1) or not (the consonants do not agree so well as they ought to do), in all probability it was a district not far from Damascus to which he went. Aššur-dan, his successor, ascended the throne in the following year, and at once began warring in Babylonia and on the east. In 765 B.C. he marched to Ḫatarika. Signs of revolt seem at this time to have broken out in Assyria, probably on account of the pestilence with which the land was afflicted, and it must have been for this reason that no expedition was undertaken in the year 764 B.C. Next year the rising, which was evidently expected, took place in the city of Aššur, and there was an eclipse of the sun in the month Sivan, an important astronomical occurrence which has been identified with an eclipse which passed over Assyria on the 15th of June, 763 B.C., and was supposed by Mr. Bosanquet to be referred to in Amos viii. 9, “I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and will darken the earth in the clear day.” To all appearance this eclipse, taken in conjunction with the presence of pestilence and rebellion, was regarded as an evil omen. This revolt lasted into the next year, and spread, in 761 B.C., into Arrapḫa, where it continued three years. In 759 the revolt reached Gozan, and there was a recrudescence of the plague. There is no reference to the stamping out of the revolt in Assyria, but it seems very probable that the king and his supporters were active to that end, as he was able to march in the year 758 B.C., to Gozan, after which there is the entry, “Peace in the land.” Two years were to all appearance occupied in reorganizing the country and providing against a repetition of such risings, unless it be that Aššur-dan was too ill to take the field, for according to the received chronology, he died in 755 B.C. when Aššur-nirari II. ascended the throne. This new ruler is represented to have made two expeditions, one in the year of his accession, to Ḫatarika, and the other, in 754 B.C., to Arpad. What the additional statement, “Return from the city of Aššur,” really refers to, is exceedingly doubtful—perhaps troops had been stationed there during the whole period since the breaking out of the revolt there in 763 B.C.