Israelite Embassies to Assyria in the First Half of the Eighth Century * I. Introduction: Israel and Assyria between 853 and 720 The history of diplomatic relations between the kingdom of Israel and the neo-Assyrian empire spans a period of at least 133 years, from the battle of Qarqar in 853 to the conquest of Samaria by Sargon II in 720 1. yet scholarship tends to focus on two periods within this lengthy span: the reign of Shalmaneser III of Assyria (853-841), and the years following the accession of Tiglath-Pileser III to the throne of Assyria in 745 2. For these two periods, we possess extensive documentation of the contacts between Israel and Assyria, while there is a general lack of documentation in the intervening 96 years. This article will examine some important but often-ignored documentation of contact between Israel and Assyria early in the eighth century BCe, which sheds light on the nature of the relationship in part of the intervening 96 years. * The roots of this article lie in my supervision of a paper for Mrs. Leah Cohen, a student in one of my undergraduate seminars, for whose interest in the subject I am grateful. My thanks go also to Abraham Jacob Berkovitz and Alec Goldstein for their helpful editing and to Dr. Douglas Frayne of the University of Toronto for permission to use the Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia project library and helpful information regarding the historical geography of Syria. 1 For a comprehensive survey of Israelite-Assyrian relations in the ninth and early eighth centuries, see G. GALIL, Israel and Assyria (Haifa 2001) (Hebrew). Regnal dates in this essay generally follow GALIL, Israel and Assyria, 145. For the date of the destruction of Samaria, see H. TADMoR, “The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur: A Chronological-Historical Study”, JCS 12 (1958) 22-40, 77-100; B. BeCkInG, The Fall of Samaria: An Historical and Archaeological Study (Studies in the History of the Ancient near east; Leiden 1992); J.H. HAyeS – J.k. kUAn, “The Final years of Samaria (730-720 B.C.)”, Bib 72 (1991) 153-181; k.L. yoUnGeR, “The Fall of Samaria in Light of Recent Research”, CBQ 61 (1999) 461-482; S.J. PARk, “A new Historical Reconstruction of the Fall of Samaria”, Bib 93 (2012) 98-106. 2 For the period of Shalmaneser III, see S. yAMADA, The Construction of the Assyrian Empire. A Historical Study of the Inscriptions of Shalmaneser III (859- 824 BC) Relating to His Campaigns to the West (Culture and History of the Ancient near east; Leiden 2000). For the period of Tiglath-Pileser III, see the supplement- ary studies in H. TADMoR, The Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III, King of Assyria (Jerusalem 1994); M. CoGAn – H. TADMoR, II Kings: A New Translation, with In- troduction and Commentary (AB; new york 1988); P. DUBovSky´, “Tiglath-Pileser BiBlica 97.2 (2016) 175-198