Colonization

The UPDV records colonization as a two-sided imperial policy: a conquering power deports the inhabitants of a defeated territory and then imports populations from elsewhere to occupy the emptied land. The topic is gathered under a single sub-heading, "Of conquered countries and people," and points to the Assyrian dismantling of the northern kingdom and the mixed population that resulted, traceable a century later in the Persian-period correspondence of Ezra.

Deportation of the Northern Kingdom

The first half of the policy falls on Israel under Hoshea. Samaria is taken in his ninth year, and the population is carried away across the empire and settled in named regions: "In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes" (2Ki 17:6). The verse fixes the basic shape of the practice: a defeated people is removed from its land, transported under imperial authority, and settled at scattered sites distant from home.

Importation into Samaria

The second half of the policy fills the emptied cities. Assyria moves populations from five named regions — Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim — into the towns that Israel had vacated: "And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Avva, and from Hamath and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the sons of Israel; and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in its cities" (2Ki 17:24). The phrase "instead of the sons of Israel" makes the substitution explicit: the colonists do not merely live alongside the original population but take their place. They "possessed Samaria, and dwelt in its cities" — language of permanent settlement rather than temporary garrisoning.

The Mixed Population in the Persian Period

Ezra preserves a later view of the same policy, looking back from the time of Persian administration. The opposition letter sent to Artaxerxes is signed by officials representing a catalogue of transplanted peoples: "then [wrote] Rehum the chancellor, and Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their fellow slaves, the Dinaites, and the Apharsathchites, the Tarpelites, the Apharsites, the Archevites, the Babylonians, the Shushanchites, the Dehaites, the Elamites" (Ezr 4:9). The list reads as a roster of the colonist communities now resident in the trans-Euphrates region — the descendants and successors of the populations that 2Ki 17:24 records being placed in Samaria.

The next verse names the imperial agent and generalises the policy: "and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar brought over, and set in the city of Samaria, and in the rest [of the country] beyond the River, and so forth" (Ezr 4:10). Two verbs carry the colonization motion — "brought over" and "set" — and the geography widens from the cities of Samaria to "the rest [of the country] beyond the River." The Assyrian-era resettlement is here remembered as a still-current demographic fact, the population base from which the petition itself is written.

The Pattern as a Whole

Read across these four references, the UPDV traces colonization as a single mechanism in two motions and one outcome. The defeated population is carried away and placed in distant regions (2Ki 17:6). Foreign populations are brought in and placed in the emptied cities (2Ki 17:24). Generations later, those imported populations are still identifiable as the resident community of the region, organised enough to send a formal letter to the Persian court (Ezr 4:9-10). The agency throughout is imperial — "the king of Assyria" in Kings, "the great and noble Osnappar" in Ezra — and the verbs are consistent: "carried away," "placed," "brought," "brought over," "set." The vocabulary itself outlines the topic.