“Then the King of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it for three years.  In the ninth year of Hoshea, the King of Assyria took Samaria.” – II Kings 18:4

Toward the end of the eighth century BC, the Kushite priest-kings of Napata reunified Egypt under Nubian rule.  Sargon II continued to extend Assyrian domination over the Near East, even as Elamite armies bolstered Chaldean resistance in Babylonia.  And a desperate gambit by King Hoshea resulted in the destruction of the ancient state of Israel.

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