Sargon was undoubtedly a great and successful war- rior. In his annals, which cover a space of fifteen years, he gives an account of his warlike expeditions against Babylonia and Susiana, on the south; Media, on the east; Armenia and Cappadocia, towards the north ; Sj'ria, Pal- estine, Arabia, and Egypt, towards the west and south- west (see Records of the Past, vii, 25 sq.). In Babylo- nia he deposed INIerodach - Baladan and established a viceroy; in Media he built a number of cities which he peopled with captives from other quarters; in Armenia and the neighboring countries he gained many victo- ries; while in the far west he reduced Philistia, pene- trated deep into the Arabian peninsula, and forced Egypt to submit to his arms and consent to the pay- ment of a tribute. In this last direction he seems to
SARGON
358
SARPEDON"
have waged three wars— one in his second year, for the possession of Gaza; another in his sixth year, when Egypt itseh' was the object of attack ; and a third in his ninth, when the special subject of contention was Ashdod, which Sargon took by one of his generals. This is the event which causes the mention of Sargon's name in Scripture. Isaiah was instructed at the time of this expedition to "put off his shoe, and go naked and barefoot," for a sign that " the king of Assyria should lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, to the shame of Egypt" (Isa. xx, 2-4). We may gatli- er from this either that Ethiopians and Egyptians form- ed part of tlie garrison of Ashdod, and were captured with the city, or that the attack on the Philistine town was accompanied by an invasion of Egypt itself, which was disastrous to the Egyptians. The year of the at- tack, it is thought, would fall into the reign of the first Ethiopian king, Sabaco I (Kawlinson, Herodotus, i, 386, note 7, "id ed.), and it is in agreement with this Sargon speaks of Egypt as being at this time subject to Meroe. Besides these expeditions of Sargon, his monuments mention that he took Tyre, and received tribute from the Greeks of C}'prus, against whom there is some rea- son to think that he conducted an attack in person. The statue of Sargon, now in the Berlin Museum, was found at Idalium in Cyprus. It is not very likely that the king's statue would have been set up unless he had made the expedition in person.
Sai'gou iu his Chariot. (From the SculpLnies at Kliursabad.)
It is not as a warrior only that Sargon deserves spe- cial mention among the Assyrian kings. He was also the builder of usefid works and of one of the most mag- nificent of the Assyrian palaces. He relates that he thoroughly repaired the walls of Nineveh, which he seems to have elevated from a provincial city of some importance to the first position in the empire ; and adds, further, that iu its neighborhood he constructed the pal- ace and town which he made his principal residence. This was the city now known as " the French Nine- veh," or " Khorsabad," from which the valuable series of Assyrian monuments at present in the Louvre was derived almost entirely. Traces of Sargon's buildings have been found also at Nimrud and Koyunjik ; antl his time is marked by a considerable advance in the useful and ornamental arts, which seem to have profited by the connection that he established between Assyria and Egypt. He left the throne to his son, the celebrated Sennacherib (q. v.).— Smith. The length of Sargon's reign is variously reckoned by Assyriologists as from fifteen to nineteen years. See Chkoxology. Comp., in addition to the above, the following monographs by Oppert: Les Fautesde Sarrjon (Paris, 1803); Les Inscrip- tions des 8(trgoni(ks (ibid, eod.) ; also Strachey, Time of Sarr/on and Sennachei-ib (Lond. 185G). See Assyiua.
Sa'rid (Heb. Sarid', ^"^^b, survivor, as often [Fiirst, place of refutje'] ; Sept. "S-apiO v. r. ^apdiS, yiE(?Sovx, etc.), the point of departure on the southern boundary of Zebulon, lying west of Chisloth Tabor, and south of Daberath and Japhia (Josh, xix, 10, 12). It was unknown to Eusebius and Jerome (Onomast. s. v. " Sarith"), and the name has not been discovered by modern research. Knobel, holding the word to mean an "'incision," thinks it designates merely the southern opening of the deep and narrow wady which comes down from the basin of Nazareth (q. v.), between two steep mountains (Seetzen, ii, 151 sq. ; Robinson, iii, 183). Keil more definitel)' suggests that it may be found in one of the two heaps of ruins on the south side of the modern "Mount of Precipitation," namely those near el-Mezrach, on the north-west. See Tribe;. Zebulon.
Sarigani. An Arabian sect of this name is men- tioned by Assemann. He considers them to have been a branch of the Mendiuans (q. v.). They held the opin- ions of Paul of Samosata and of Arius, but were con- verted and admitted to Catholic communion by Mara- names, metropolitan of Adjabenus, in the year 760. Some, however, were found a hundred years later in Babylon. See Blunt, Diet, of Sects, s. v.
Sarmentitii, one of the numerous opprobrious ep- ithets with which the enemies of the earl}^ Christians accosted them. It is derived from the word surmentu, surmina, the piles of fagots around the stake to which the martyr was fastened.