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Deportation Policy of Sargon II

Type Event Region Assyria Time c. -720–-715

Around 720 BCE, after conquering Samaria, Assyrian king Sargon II systematically carried out population transfers: deporting some 27,000 Israelites i…

Timeline

  1. c. -720–-719Samaria · IsraelIn his palace inscriptions (Display Inscription), Sargon II claimed that after conquering Samaria he ordered the Israelite inhabitants deported in batches to break up the local political and religious community.
  2. c. -720–-718Northern Mesopotamia and the Median border · MesopotamiaAccording to Sargon's inscriptions, some 27,000 Israelites were relocated to Halah, Gozan, and Media, dispersed and settled in the border zones of the Assyrian Empire, engaged in agriculture and forced labor, cut off from their homeland.
  3. c. -719–-715Former Israelite lands · IsraelAssyria brought in foreign populations from Babylon, Gutium, Hamath, Arabia, and elsewhere to fill the former Israelite lands, rebuilt Samaria as the administrative center of an Assyrian province, and thereby laid the historical origins of the later Samaritan people.

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