105 A NEW HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FALL OF SAMARIA a rebellion of the alliance in the West. About 725 BCE, he sent his troops probably under the command of Sargon II. Although there is no textual evidence that Sargon was a general of Shalmaneser V, it is evident that he had a military force strong enough to usurp Shalmaneser’s throne. It was a common practice for the princes of Assyria who set out for battle as sec- ond-in-command for military maneuvering tactics. It is thus plausible to consider Sargon to be a military general of his half-brother, Shalmaneser V. The case of Sargon II is very similar to that of Assur-uballit II, the last king of the Assyrian empire. He usurped the throne of his half-brother Sin-shar-ishkun as a military general. Thereafter, Sargon defeated Yaubi’di of Hamath as well as many other cities and besieged Samaria for three years. During that time, Sargon went on to destroy Gaza and Re’e, turtānu of Egypt. After the conquest of Samaria, he deported its inhabitants to various places of the Assyrian Empire 26. With his victory, Sargon came back to Assur, usurped the throne of Shalmaneser V, suppressed the internal conflict by deporting 6,300 Assyrian soldiers ― prob- ably the royal guards of Shalmaneser V ― to Hamath, and granted the priv- ilege concerning corvée service to the ancient city Assur. Contrary to the record of the Khorsabad Annals, it is evident that Sar- gon II did not conduct any military engagement in his first regnal year. Tad- mor’s explanation of the scribes’ ideological, rather than actual, historical concern is valid in this case. Based on the record of the Annals, the military conquest was considered a great achievement for the Assyrian king. The Assyrian scribes might therefore record the defeat of the whole known world ― the South and the West, including Samaria ― as the first heroic feat of this usurper king 27. However, the conquest of the Westland by Sar- gon II had already occurred under Shalmaneser V, not in Sargon II’s reign. In reality, Sargon turned his attention to the South as his first royal campaign (720 BCE, his second regnal year) and engaged the combined forces of the Elamites (under Humbanigash) and the Babylonians (under Marduk-apla-iddina) . His army, however, suffered severe losses. Conse- quently, he had to withdraw from Der and did not engage with the Elamites until 710 BCE. Thus, the new historical reconstruction of the fall of Samaria can be summarized as follows: 26 N. NA’AMAN, “Population Changes in Palestine Following Assyrian De- portation”, Tel Aviv 20 (1993) 104-24; N. NA’AMAN – R. ZADOK, “Sargon II’s Deportations to Israel and Philistia”, JCS 40 (1988) 36-46; B. ODED, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wiesbaden 1979) esp. chapter 1 and 2; K.L. YOUNGER, “The Deportations of the Israelites”, JBL 117 (1998) 201-227. 27 TADMOR, “History and Ideology”, 13-33. 28 GRAYSON, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, 73.