East of Assyria proper, the territorial empire of Sargon does not seem to have extended quite up to the Zagros watershed; but his sphere of influence included not only the heads of the Zab valleys, but also a region on the other side of the mountains, reaching as far as Hamadan and south-west Azerbaijan, although certainly not the eastern or northern districts of the latter province, or Kaswan, or any part of the Caspian littoral. On the north, the frontier of Assyrian territorial empire could be passed in a very few days' march from Nineveh. The shores of neither the Urmia nor the Van Lake were ever regularly occupied by Assyria, and, though Sargon certainly brought into his sphere of influence the kingdom of Urartu, which surrounded the latter lake and controlled the tribes as far as the western shore of the former, it is not proved that his armies ever went round the east and north of the Urmia Lake, and it is fairly clear that they left the northwestern region of mountains between Bitlis and the middle Euphrates to its own tribesmen.
Westwards and southwards, however, Sargon's arm swept a wider circuit. He held as his own all Mesopotamia up to Diarbekr, and beyond Syria not only eastern and central Cilicia, but also some districts north of Taurus, namely, the low plain of Milid or Malatia, and the southern part of Tabal; but probably his hand reached no farther over the plateau than to a line prolonged from the head of the Tokhma Su to the neighbourhood of Tyana, and returning thence to the Cilician Gates. Beyond that line began a sphere of influence which we cannot hope to define, but may guess to have extended over Cappadocia, Lycaonia and the southern part of Phrygia. Southward, all Syria was Sargon's, most of it by direct occupation, and the rest in virtue of acknowledged overlordship and payment of tribute. Even the seven princes of Cyprus made such submission. One or two strong Syrian towns, Tyre and Jerusalem, for example, withheld payment if no Assyrian army was at hand; but their show of independence was maintained only on sufferance. The Philistine cities, after Sargon's victory over their forces and Egyptian allies at Raphia, in 720, no longer defended their walls, and the Great King's sphere of influence stretched eastward right across the Hamad and southward over north Arabia. Finally, Babylonia was all his own even to the Persian Gulf, the rich merchants supporting him firmly in the interests of their caravan trade, however the priests and the peasantry might murmur. But Elam, whose king and people had carried serious trouble into Assyria itself early in the reign, is hardly to be reckoned to Sargon even as a sphere of influence. The marshes of its south-west, the tropical plains of the centre and the mountains on the east, made it a difficult land for the northern Semites to conquer and hold. Sargon had been wise enough to let it be. Neither so prudent nor so fortunate would be his son and successors.