TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE RELATIONS OF BABYLONIA WITH OTHER SEMITIC COUNTRIES
Written Specially for the Present Work
By JOSEPH HALÉVY
Professor in the Collège de France, Paris
Ingratitude in masses, as in individuals, is very apt to be the reward of great benefactors. Egypt, taciturn, proud, and self-contained, was respected and admired by all her neighbours, while Greece and Judea, the shining beacons of Mediterranean civilisation, from the point of view of morals and science, have had the mortification of receiving ineffaceable stigmas. In the popular language of our own day, “Greek” and “Jew” are such offensive sobriquets that the descendants of these two glorious races seek to avoid the use of those names when describing their origins.
Babylonia, after her conquest and disappearance from the scene of the world, although she was vastly superior to her destroyers, did not escape this little-deserved fate. To the contemporaries of her fall, Babylon is only the city of courtesans and insipid magic; nevertheless, in the days of her strength, she ruled the barbarian world that surrounded her by other means than naked flesh and empty formulas of incantation. For thousands of years she shone with an unparalleled brilliancy, and illuminated with her vivifying rays the rude peoples with which she was in contact. Her influence left indelible traces even on the civilisations of western Asia and of the Greek world, partly through the agency of the Phœnicians and Aramæans. And if her disappearance caused no disturbance in the march of progress, it is because her mission was fulfilled long before the epoch of her decline. From the reign of Xerxes, plundered Babylon gradually decayed; on the arrival of Alexander she was already three-fourths in ruins. The war of the Diadochi and the advent of the Parthian dynasty completed her entombment. There was none to assume her moral heritage at that time, for the heir had already taken all that was precious and truly imperishable.
A truly intellectual culture is manifested in the possession of a form of writing. The existence of it in Babylon is proved by documents that go back to the fifth millennium B.C. The letters consist as yet of linear strokes representing certain parts of the human body, various kinds of animals, plants, and natural or manufactured objects. It was not until later that these strokes assumed the wedge form that has caused the name “cuneiform” system to be applied to them. The primitive characters are few in number—about fifteen—and are joined with one another to form a syllabary that is both ideographic and phonetic.
The intrinsic nature of these values is a striking proof of the Semitic origin of the system, and completely refutes the hypothesis of the earlier decipherers that there existed on Babylonian soil prior to the Semites an alien race called “Sumerian” or “Accadian,” from whom came the cuneiform characters, as well as the entire Semitic civilisation of Babylonia. Such syllables as ab, “father”; an, “god”; el, “pure, bright”; en, “lord”; sal, “servant, woman”; il, “high”; is, “tree, wood”; ul, “past”; mu, “name”; rat, “canal”; sag, “summit, head”; rig, “plant, green leaf,” etc., are taken from fundamental Semitic words of the Babylonian language, which, except for slight variations, was also that of Elam and Assyria. Nowhere, and at no period of their existence, is any linguistic modification noticed which could be attributed to the intrusion of a foreign element.
Without risk of being accused of exaggeration, we may place the beginning of writing in the sixth, or even in the seventh, millennium before our era; and yet the Babylonian language has the worn and phonetically impoverished character which it always preserved in comparison with its sister languages. This is an astonishing phenomenon, and gives an idea of the extreme antiquity, not only of the existence of the Semites in Babylonia, but of the development of the great civilisation of which they were the creators.
For, after the appearance of the written documents on stone and on clay tablets, we meet with a most remarkable ancient civilisation: monarchical institutions, communal organisations, flourishing agriculture, systematic canalisation, metal working, proprietorship of land, extensive commercial transactions, fixed taxes, the establishment of governors in subject countries. With regard to science, astronomy was cultivated and there were observatories for the study of the movements of the stars and the eclipses. The Babylonians had the divisions of the year, the month, and the day; they fixed weights and measures, and calculated square and cube roots. A rational classification facilitated the knowledge of botany and zoology. Dynastic lists were drawn up with care, in which the principal historical events of the reigns were recorded. Finally, the spiritual needs of the nation were satisfied by a vast mythological system which is lost in the night of time, and on the basis of which innumerable epic tales were developed. Among these the stories of the creation and of the deluge, the descent of Ishtar into Hades, the adventures of Gilgames and Etanna, etc., rank among the most beautiful products of the poetic imagination. On the other hand, the fetichistic mysticism of prehistoric times was transformed into a learned magic, which was combined with religious and moral elements, and claimed to be based upon miraculous facts that had, however, been proved by experience.
A Babylonian furnished with these elements of intellectual culture must, in spite of his superstitions and the real gaps in his knowledge, have seemed a superior being to the neighbouring tribes which had the same racial instincts, but whose development was still embryonic and had taken place under totally different conditions. It is nothing astonishing, then, that the most capable of these semi-savages hastened to adopt, in different degrees, a large part of the Babylonian civilisation, the advantages of which they had learned to appreciate. As usual, it is the apparent and material side that was accepted first; after a more intimate acquaintance with the Babylonian mode of life, these peoples were captivated by the religious conceptions and the powerful attraction of the legends and the magic. All this slowly filtered into the mind of the other Semitic peoples, and became so well embodied there that some centuries later it formed an integral part of their national substance, and to such a degree that it has been possible to disentangle their true origin only by means of an arduous research which has not yet said the last word.
The extension of Babylonian civilisation beyond its primitive cradle had its greatest strength during the glorious reign of Sargon I, the first monarch known to have made military expeditions into the countries of the west. We shall have, then, to consider, first, the pre-Sargonic, second, the post-Sargonic, epochs.
Before the reign of Sargon, about thirty-eight hundred years before our common era, Babylonia had succeeded in forming itself into a national body, having the same manners, speaking the same language, and using the same alphabet. No alien people broke into this unity of race and genius, which included on its eastern side the inhabitants of the Elamitic plain, forming a simple annex to Babylonia on that side of the Tigris. The great excess of population flowed into the fertile plains extending between the Tigris and the mighty chain of the Zagros, and founded the little kingdoms of Suti, Lulubi, Namar, and with greater success the powerful kingdom of Assyria, which during the years of its prosperity became the most powerful military state of the oriental world.
These very ancient colonies were often in conflict with the mother country, and Assyria even succeeded in imposing its iron yoke for several generations; but, save for Sennacherib’s moment of violent passion, Babylonia remained for all of them a centre of light and of religious mystery. The Babylonian divinities have their temples and serve as types for various localisations. In Assyria, especially, Ishtar of Nineveh, Ishtar of Arbela, Ishtar of Kidmur, etc., are worshipped. The Babylonian origin is perpetuated in the new capital Ninua (Nineveh), which is the name of a locality of Babylonia, while the ancient capital Asshur recalls the name of the most ancient god of the Babylonian epic of creation.
It goes without saying that among the neighbouring tribes of different languages Babylonian influence could not penetrate so completely. In the south the numerous Aramæan tribes persisted in their nomadic state; in the mountainous districts of the east the Susio-Amardians, in the north the Vannians and the Mitannians, while accepting Babylonian civilisation, use along with the ordinary Babylonian syllabary a more limited one for writing their own languages. Traces of Assyrian influences in ancient epochs have been proved in Cappadocia, which shows the great antiquity of the kingdom of Assyria. But the most important and most enduring influence manifests itself in the Semitic region of the extreme west, in Syrio-Phœnicia and in Palestine.
Through the discovery of the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna, which date from the reigns of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV, it was learned with astonishment that in the fourteenth century before our era, Babylonian was the diplomatic language, not only of the western Semites, but also of the sovereigns of Egypt. Syria and Phœnicia then formed a vassal province of the Pharaohs, probably as a result of the conquests of Tehutimes III; the use of Egyptian writing, or at least of the special Assyrian type, was to be expected there, but it is the Babylonian alphabet, the Babylonian dialect, that we find in use. We are forced to conclude that the extension of Babylonian culture was due to an occupation of Syria by the Babylonians at an extremely early period, when Assyria was still too feeble to bar the way to the country of its origin. History shows the truth of this, for it tells us that Sargon I spent three years in Syria, and finally made himself master of it; in one of his maritime expeditions he even crossed to the island of Cyprus and took possession. It is probable that this vassalage of Syria to Babylonia underwent frequent reactions and interruptions of continuity, due in great part to the policy of Egypt, which was seeking an outlet to the north. The plan of thwarting the covetousness of the Pharaohs for this province, if not of simply annexing the valley of the Nile to the great empire of the East, was carried out by Sargon I in an invasion of Egypt, the success of which is recorded in the account of the haruspices [Tablet of Omens]. His son Naram-Sin, according to the same documents, likewise invaded Egypt and killed its king, whose name has unfortunately disappeared on account of the breaking of the tablet. Egypt, intimidated, made no hostile movement for several centuries, which undoubtedly strengthened the Babylonian authority in Syria under all the dynasties that successively occupied the throne in the capital of Chaldea.
In the age of Abraham, when Elam exercised supremacy over Babylonia, the king of the latter country, Khammurabi, the Amraphel of Genesis, figures among the kings who had accompanied the Elamite suzerain in his expedition against several tribes of eastern and southern Palestine (Gen. xiv.). Seven centuries later the Egyptian functionaries of Syrio-Phœnicia correspond in Babylonian with the court of Thebes. This province had been conquered a half-century before by Tehutimes III; and the Egyptian supremacy left its trace in the invention of the Phœnician alphabet, which marks the decision to break with Babylonian sympathies in favour of the intellectual culture of Egypt, of which the city of Byblus was to be the principal centre.
A remarkable circumstance furnished the occasion for this decision. In this city, where mystic tendencies seem to have prevailed over the desire for the riches that navigation and commerce bring, a local goddess was worshipped, called Baal-Gebal, “Lady of Byblus,” who represented one of the numerous Semitic goddesses known under the name of Baalat or Belit. She was identified with the great Egyptian goddess Isis, and the myth of Osiris was attached to the shore of this city to such an extent that the priesthood of Byblus was believed to be in possession of the true meaning of these mysteries. At the bottom of this process was the desire of finding a ground of agreement for all the religious conceptions of the civilised nations of the age. In the matter of religion, as in the arts and industry, the rôle of the Phœnicians consisted in serving as intermediaries, as zealous apostles who saw the advantage of being useful to the barbarians after having obtained profit from them, and hoped to profit further in the future.
So, after this reconcilement with the Egyptian religion, the exportation of manufactured articles to the valley of the Nile, or of imitations of Egyptian art, which was so strongly marked with a religious stamp, could develop indefinitely in all the Mediterranean regions and contribute to the prosperity of the mother country and her colonies. So, after the fourteenth century before the common era, the invention of alphabetic writing had barred the way for the extension of Babylonian writing into the European world. The ancient spiritual legacy of Babylonia’s thousand years of domination, a natural product of the Semitic genius, was too strongly anchored in Syrio-Phœnicia to be totally eclipsed, or even to descend to an inferior rank under the pressure of Egyptian influence.
Egypt, with its language deprived of all outlet and with its essentially funereal mythology, was incapable of producing a movement of renaissance in foreign peoples. The spiritual condition remained without notable change, but, direct contact with Babylonia having become more difficult, the Phœnicians were obliged to record in their own language their ancestral and divine traditions, in which the universal elements received from Babylonia always remained preponderant.
Of Phœnician literature nothing is known in the original language, but some cosmogonic data taken from the book of Sanchoniathon by Philo of Byblus reflect myths that can have been produced only on the soil of Babylon, although the Philhellenic author is unable to interpret them with exactness. The primordial couple of chaos, Apason and Tomoth, are in reality the Babylonian divinities prior to the creation: Apsu, “ocean, abyss,” and Tiamat, “sea”; but Philo, carried away by Neoplatonic doctrine and confounding similar consonants, attributes to Apason the meaning of “desire,” and seems to discern in Tiamat the divinity Mot, “death,” symbolical of matter. Another goddess, Chosartes, recalls the consort of Asshur, Kishar, of cosmogonic character. On the Syrio-Phœnician monuments we often read the name of the goddess Anath, bearing the title of “force of life or of the living,” but the masculine consort is not met with. The Babylonian inscriptions fill the gap by very frequently furnishing the couple Anu and Anata. Philistia worshipped principally the ichthyomorphous god Dagon, who is no other than the Babylonian Daganu, associated with Anu.
Among other divine personages we note in the first place Tammuz, consort of Astarte, who was slain by a boar in the flower of his youth. His death was mourned for a month each year, and his resurrection was later celebrated with frenzied demonstrations of joy. This myth of nature, symbolical of the passing of summer and metaphorically of that of ardent and passionate youth, has as its basis the Babylonian tale of Du’uzu, eponym of the month of that name (Tammuz), who died prematurely, and whom the goddess Ishtar (Astarte), the incarnation of ardent passion, endeavours, though in vain, to bring back from the kingdom of death. The grief and the heroic effort of the goddess are told in a touching manner in the beautiful poem, entitled The Descent of Ishtar into Hades. The Phœnicians mourned Tammuz under the honorary title of Adon, Adonim, “lord,” whence the Greek Adonis. From Phœnicia this rite passed to Greece, and was celebrated there with no less pomp, while the descent of Ishtar became there the point of departure for several analogous legends.
Less known is the cult of the Babylonian god of war, Nergal, who had sanctuaries in Phœnicia. Among celestial gods we identify Hadad or Hadod, styled “king of the gods,” Rimmon, Nabu, Sin, and Mar, called among the Babylonians Adad, Ramman (god of the air), Nabu, Sin, Allat, and Marduk (god of Babylon). The inscriptions of Sam’al add to these Nusk and Be’el-Kharran, one of whom is the Babylonian Nusku, the other a local Bel of the Babylonian city of Kharran, whose cult was transplanted to the city of the same name in Upper Mesopotamia.
Since very remote antiquity certain names of Babylonian divinities have been fixed in Syrio-Phœnicia as names of places and persons: the city of Nebo in Moab, the desert of Sin, and probably also Mount Sinai in Arabia Petræa, the fortress of Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin; Ana, a chief of Esau, Anath, a judge of Israel, Hadad, the common name of a king of Aram and a king of Idumæa. So many reminiscences of the superior rank of the Babylonian religion clearly prove how the mind of the western Semites was imbued and moulded into permanent form by their ancient masters in the ages preceding the occupation of Syria by the Egyptians. Egypt did almost nothing to modify the tendencies of the subject peoples; she contented herself with collecting the taxes, and gave nothing in exchange. We must not then be surprised that, if we except the maritime coast, Egyptian dominion left no trace on the civilisation of the interior of Syria. These peoples, when they became independent, continued to cultivate the germs of civilisation they had received in such abundance, but regarded them as their own creations.
Passing to the nomads of northern Arabia we find ourselves before an ethnographic unknown, the ancient tribes having disintegrated and new ones formed, a transformation that was certainly repeated several times. There is as yet no agreement on the question whether the tribes called in ancient times Ishmaelites and Ceturians spoke Arabic or Aramæan. It is, however, certain that fragments of southern tribes of true Arabian race moved to the north at periods very difficult to determine. It is not very long since it was affirmed that these unstable populations lacked every element of civilisation, and it was even claimed that they were a pure example of unmixed Semitic race, to which an instinctive monotheism was attributed.
These speculations have been dissipated by the testimony of the Assyrian texts, which show that the Arabs possessed statues of their gods. These proud children of the desert even signed their submission to the government of Nineveh, in order to recover the statues which the Assyrians had taken from them in the course of an expedition into the interior of Arabia. The possession of statues implies the existence in the oases of fixed sanctuaries, of religious rites, and of a traditional priesthood.
When we consider that the conquering nation of the Persians did not arrive at the idea of anthropomorphic gods until the time of Artaxerxes II, and then solely under the influence of the Babylonian cult, we cannot doubt that the worship of statues by the nomadic Arabs in the seventh century before our era was due to the same influence. The Ishmaelites were particularly devoted to Atar Celeste, that is, to the great goddess Ishtar, whose cult spread from Babylon among all the Semites of Syria.
In the oasis of Teyma a stele has been found that fixes the revenues of a priest, who had lately been installed, to provide for the expenses of the cult of an adopted divinity, and this priest is dressed in the mode of the Babylonian priesthood. Such a borrowing is all the more remarkable because the garments of sacrificing priests had in antiquity a meaning intimately connected with the religious mysteries. This fact supposes the presence of Babylonian instructors at some previous epoch.
Hedjaz forms the first province, whose inhabitants belong to the Arabian race, properly so called, whose idiom and whose writing are very different from those of the Aramæan populations of the north. Some of these tribes settled in the east of Syria, on the edge of the desert, especially in the oasis of Safa, south of Damascus. We must wait until the numerous graffiti, discovered in recent times, are published, before we can get an exact idea of the theophorous names used among these tribes. The names Bel and Hadad figure here, however; but this may be a late borrowing from their Aramæan neighbours. From northern Hedjaz we have a considerable number of inscriptions and graffiti, copies of which are still to be regarded with caution, and there, too, the names Bel, Hadad and compounds of the Babylonian Nabu, are found in the list of names of the nomads.
More interesting is the ancient name of Mecca, Macoraba, which originally designated the celebrated central sanctuary of the region. This name is derived front the verb karaba, which in Babylonian means “worship, bless, pray”, in evident proof of an ancient borrowing from the idiom of the cuneiform texts. We shall know some day what the inscriptions of middle and southern Hedjaz contain in the way of theophorous names. These inscriptions certainly exist, and await a traveller courageous enough to save them from total destruction at the stupid hands of the pilgrims. The famous black stone of Kaaba seems to bear an inscription of which it would be well to have a photograph.
We know still less what is reserved for us in the graffiti scattered in the intermediate region between Hedjaz and Yemen; the graphic chain cannot have been interrupted in this latitude, which from great antiquity formed the entrance to the highly civilised kingdom of Sheba, and which, owing to its production of aromatic essences, had commercial relations with the peoples of the Mediterranean.
Yemen was composed of four kingdoms, of which that of Sheba seems to have been the most ancient and most powerful; the other three are Catabania, Hadramaut, Mahrah or Tafat. Of the latter we have no indigenous information prior to Islamism, and there is reason to believe that it formed a vassal state of Hadramaut. The latter is pre-eminently the spice-producing region, and Catabania may be considered as an ancient colony of Hadramaut, which was founded on the northern route for a commercial purpose, and later gained its independence.
In its turn Catabania founded, again, on the northern route, another colony, which, on gaining its freedom, called itself the Minyæan people, after the principal city, Ma’in. The Minyæi left traces of their activity at Egra on the frontier of Nabatia, and in central Egypt at Oxyrhyncus, where they had a settlement at the time of the first Ptolemies; but their presence in Egypt in the Persian period is proved by a votive inscription, thanking their gods for having saved their caravan from the danger by which it had been threatened during the war between the Egyptians and the Medes, i.e., the Persians. From Egypt they sent their caravans to Gaza in Phœnicia and into all Syria.
Prior to this the trade in incense and spices seems to have been in the hands of the Sabæans. Solomon (about the year 1000 B.C.) sought to make a treaty with this people, whose queen had made him an official visit at Jerusalem. It is to be presumed that the Sabæans also sent caravans directly to Nineveh and Babylon by way of the oases of Negran, Wady Dawassir, and Gebel-Sammar. Owing to these almost uninterrupted visits, the peoples of southern Arabia were in a position to learn and practise customs and rites peculiar to the eastern Semites; for example, the employment of aromatic fumigation as a means of purification after sexual intercourse. The Sabæan pantheon contained El (the Assyrio-Babylonian Ilu) under the guise of a divine personage, and not simply as an abstract term for “god.” The Babylonian Ishtar, daughter of Sin, is transformed into a male divinity, Athtar, son of Sin. The manifold diversification of the Babylonian goddess appears also in the Sabæan Athtar; the great religious centres of Sheba each possess their own Athtar. Nabu, the Babylonian god of writing and prophecy, was also worshipped by the Catabanians under the somewhat disguised form of Anbai. From the point of view of art, the technique of sculpture and decoration often recalls the Babylonian style. Finally, we meet in the kingdom of Sheba the Assyrian institution of the limmi, or annual archons, an institution that existed also at Carthage, but nowhere else on the Asiatic continent, least of all in a monarchical state.
We know very little of the religion of the Agazi or Semites of Abyssinia; a pre-Christian inscription asserts, however, that the cult of El and of Astar (Astarte) flourished among them. Their pantheon included also a god of war called Mahram, the equivalent of the Ninib or Adar of the Semites of the north.
On the opposite side, at the extreme east of the Arabian peninsula, along the Persian gulf, the most important agglomeration formed the kingdom of Gerrha. The Gerrhæans maintained commercial relations with both Egypt and Chaldea. One of their cities bore the name of Bilbana, “Bil (Bel) has built,” a certain indication that it had adopted the cult of the most popular Babylonian god. Facing this coast is the Bahrein group of islands, the largest of which contains a number of tombs in which cuneiform inscriptions in the Babylonian language have been found.
We have now made the round of the whole Semitic region, and everywhere we have been able to show striking Babylonian influences in spite of the enormous distance in time and space that separates the converging rays from their point of radiation. But before concluding, we must halt upon a particular territory, a territory that forms but an imperceptible point in this vast region, but which in spite of its material diminutiveness brought forth a nation that was destined to assume the glorious rôle of being the legitimate heir of the great Babylonian ancestor, and of directing the conscience not only of the Semitic race, but of the most civilised portion of the human race in general.
This nation, which chance seems to have thrown into the world without defence, in the midst of hostile elements that were furious for its destruction, and whose name, Israel, exactly symbolises the unremitting struggle against the terribly destructive powers that surround it, this nation, I say, had the strength to transform the splendid polytheistic heritage that had fallen to it from Babylon into a monotheistic theory of an astounding originality. The transformation of the antique legacy took place only after centuries of struggle between the best part of the nation, the party of the prophets, and the conservatism of the mass of the people, who were everywhere attached to the ancient traditions.
The writings of this monotheistic minority, which finally imposed itself upon the entire nation, enable us to appreciate the importance of the ancient elements, the dross of which was rejected in the refining process of the prophets. Genesis has preserved two great and very characteristic Babylonian epics,—the Creation, and the Deluge,—but how different in spirit, in spite of the close similarity in outline and external form.
In the Babylonian cosmogony, chaos, incarnate in the female dragon Tiamat, the primordial ocean, brings forth at the same time the gods and the most horrible, malevolent monsters. Having learned that the gods wish to build themselves a more commodious residence in her domain, she gathers her forces, furiously attacks the clan of gods, and puts them to flight. They unite again and choose as their champion Marduk, the son of Yan, who succeeds in vanquishing the terrible ancestress. Marduk cuts the body of Tiamat into two pieces, and of them he constructs heaven and earth. Then he proceeds to make the heavenly bodies, and arranges them in an immutable order; he stocks the earth with plants and animals, and has man made by the goddess Arura, who fashions him out of the dust of the earth.
This myth, splendid as an epic invention, is too rude to contain the least philosophical principle. The Hebrew thinker, while retaining the general outline, has eliminated the whole crowd of monstrous or ugly divinities unworthy to receive the homage of the human race. The picture has lost nothing in extent; but a single, all-powerful god first creates chaotic matter, and then organises it, step by step, for the sole benefit of the human race. The cycle of the ten antediluvian patriarchs, which includes millions of years, is reduced to sixteen hundred years, and thus brought within the range of actual humanity. Finally, the deluge, in the primitive legend the result of the mad arrogance of the god Bel, is justified by the extraordinary corruption of the men of that epoch.
Like a true reformer the prophetic narrator has raised upon the Babylonian basis a new system whose rational and moral side need not fear comparison with any other religious doctrine of humanity. Among the Greeks, no religious or social reform could be developed and preserved that took for a basis their castes of irresponsible gods. Egypt perished without having attempted to rise from its coarse animal-worship. Babylonianism alone, by its hymns and its epics, still lives to-day as an important factor in universal religion, although under a form idealised by genius. Materially, Babylon is but a memory, but a delicate part of its atoms passed into the vigorous constitution of its spiritual heir, the sacred book of Hebrew monotheism, to become the common property of humanity.
MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE
A PRELIMINARY SURVEY COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SOURCES OF MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY AND OF THE SWEEP OF EVENTS, AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY
The Babylonians and Assyrians were two very important peoples of remote antiquity, inhabiting the region of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southwestern Asia. The Greeks regarded these peoples as constituting one nation and called their country Mesopotamia, a name that could properly be applied to only a part of their territory. The Babylonians and Assyrians, themselves, on the other hand, regarded each other as alien peoples, though both belonged to the same Semitic stock. The Babylonians were the more ancient, and their territory lay to the south, where, many scholars believe, they had been preceded by a people of a different race.
Though the seat of this early civilisation is geographically small in extent, yet the peoples who entered into it were by no means homogeneous, nor was their history a continuous record of unbroken political succession. On the contrary, at least two different races of people were involved,—a Turanian stock in the early Babylonian history, a Semitic stock in all the later periods,—and at least three successive kingdoms or empires, not to speak of mere changes of dynasty. The earliest period known to us—that which left records at Nippur and Shirpurla, in old Babylonia—had its seat in the southern portion of the territory bordering on the sea; thence, seemingly, civilisation spread northward. Assyriologists are not fully agreed as to the share which the non-Semitic race had in this early civilisation. It has even been questioned whether these so-called Sumerians really existed at all.[15] In any event the Semitic Babylonians acquired full control at a very early period.
The Assyrian kingdom—which came to be a veritable world-empire—had its seat at Calah and afterwards at Nineveh. It conquered and absorbed the old Babylonian kingdom, and then reached out for domination to the east and to the west, finally overrunning even Egypt.
The Bible accounts preserve records of some of its most famous kings, including Sennacherib. The Greek legends are chiefly concerned with a mythical Semiramis, the alleged founder of Nineveh, and with a seemingly mythical Sardanapalus, who perished after an inglorious reign, in the destruction of Nineveh, which came about suddenly and dramatically in the year 606 B.C.—the Sardanapalus myth being, however, based on an actuality.
After the destruction of Nineveh, Babylon, the capital of Babylonia, resumed renewed importance as a world metropolis. Nebuchadrezzar, the most famous king of this period, besieged Jerusalem and carried the Israelites to his capital (the Babylonian capital). The classical accounts preserve reminiscences of the magnificence of Babylon in this period. The course of the New Babylonian empire, though brilliant, was brief, ending with the overthrow of Babylon by the Persians under Cyrus in the year 538 B.C. Babylon was not, like Nineveh, totally destroyed; but it never regained autonomy or anything approaching its former importance. It was one of the Persian capitals for two centuries, until in 331 B.C., with the downfall of the Persian empire, it passed into the hands of Alexander the Great, who, after his eastern conquests, chose it as the capital of his newly acquired empire. But Alexander died in his new capital almost immediately, and his death was the last great world-historic event that occurred in Mesopotamia. In the course of a few centuries thereafter, the whole region that for so many years had been the very heart of the world’s civilisation, became a barren wilderness, and Babylon itself, like Nineveh before it, was reduced to a mere earth-covered mound of ruins, the very location of which was practically forgotten.
Such a fate was tragic enough; yet after all it seems less cruel than the destiny of such nations as Egypt, and in later time, Greece, which live on in senescence long after all vestige of their power has departed. And in any event, Mesopotamia had had its full share of glory, for no other region of the globe, within historic times, with the possible exception of Egypt alone, has so long held rank as a centre of influence and civilisation. If the earlier walls of the Temple of Bel (Baal) at Nippur really date from 6000 or 7000 years B.C. as the records seem to prove, there was a continuous, powerful empire in Mesopotamia for at least five or six thousand years. The civilisations of Greece, of Rome, or of any modern state, seem mere mushroom growths in comparison.
In studying the history of Egypt we have caught occasional glimpses of this oldest Asiatic civilisation of Babylonia and Assyria, and it is almost impossible to avoid drawing comparisons between these two countries, so closely related are the two peoples in the minds of all students. It is true that the ethnological types are quite different, and that the two peoples, during the greater part of their existence, did not mingle much with one another. Often they were at war, and it is traditional that for the most part the Egyptians repelled rather than invited any advances from their Asiatic neighbours. Nevertheless, their own interests dictated a commercial policy that led first and last to an extensive intermingling between all the contemporary civilisations of western Asiatic antiquity, and there are abundant evidences that the same influence extended also to the Nile Valley.
But even had this not been the case,—even had Egypt and Mesopotamia been shut off absolutely one from the other,—it would still be impossible for the modern student to disassociate the two, so many are the links of association between them. The fact that these two are the oldest civilisations known to us, and the further fact that there has been a constant question in the minds of investigators as to which one of these ancient peoples can claim priority of development, form in themselves an indissoluble bond of union. Yet in some respects the story of the Babylonians and Assyrians is unique; because this well-nigh greatest of civilisations was blotted out absolutely almost before the oldest European civilisation was under way. Egypt, indeed, declined in power at about the same period and permanently lost autonomy, but its pyramids and temples and numberless antiquities remain as obvious testimonials of its former greatness; whereas the monuments of Mesopotamia—the ruins of such wonderful cities as Nippur, Babylon, and Nineveh—were completely buried under the accumulating earth deposits of centuries, and almost absolutely lost to view. For more than two thousand years the names of these once famous cities were only reminiscences. No one knew accurately even their site, and scarcely an antiquity of any description was known to be preserved that evidenced the sometime greatness of the Mesopotamian civilisation.
During this long period a few reminiscences preserved in the writings of Berosus, Diodorus, Herodotus, and a few other classical writers, and in the text of Hebrew writings, gave all the clews that were obtainable, and apparently all that could ever be obtained regarding one of the most remarkable peoples of antiquity.
We have said that the entire destruction of the Mesopotamian civilisation gave it peculiar interest. It should not be forgotten, however, that at least one other very important people of antiquity, namely the Hittites, met with a like fate. Probably there were still others whose names even are unknown to us. But the story of Mesopotamia stands quite by itself in the fact that it has been very largely restored to us through the efforts of modern explorers. We have seen that the decipherment of the hieroglyphics led to a much fuller understanding of Egyptian history than had previously been possible; yet, after all, these new revelations sufficed to fill in the outlines of an old story, rather than to create an altogether new one. But in the case of Babylonia and Assyria the modern investigators had virtually a blank canvas upon which to work in reconstructing the history. The Bible references and the classical myths gave but the most shadowy outlines. Yet traditions are all powerful for the transmission of knowledge in a vague form, and throughout all generations it had never been doubted that the reminiscences of Mesopotamian greatness had a firm foundation in fact, though few historians were visionary enough to dare hope that more tangible evidence would ever be forthcoming, and not even the most enthusiastic dreamer could have suspected that such records as the nineteenth century has restored to us had been preserved.
Even now, looking back from the standpoint of accomplishment, it seems almost incredible that the monuments of a great civilisation—treasures of art, and voluminous literary records—should have been absolutely hidden from human view for a minimum period of more than two thousand years, and should then have been restored in almost their original condition. Yet such is the fact regarding the antiquities of Mesopotamia.
THE ASSYRIAN GOD NABU
OUR SOURCES FOR MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY
The reports that have come down to us from antiquity dealing with the history of Babylonia and Assyria are relatively meagre in extent and decidedly untrustworthy from an historical standpoint. Without doubt numerous classical writers dealt with the subject, but of such writings, only a few have been preserved. So far as known, the principal native historian of the later period of Babylonian history was Berosus. He was a Chaldean priest living in the time of Alexander the Great, as his own writings testify. He had access to the ancient documents of his country, and is believed to have made excellent use of them. Unfortunately, only meagre remnants of his history have come down to us, and these more or less distorted through the medium of transcribers, the chief of these being Alexander Polyhistor and Eusebius. Had we the entire work of Berosus, he would, perhaps, perform some such function for Mesopotamia as Manetho performed for Egypt; but as the case stands, the remnants of Berosus serve to transmit certain interesting traditions, particularly with reference to Babylonian cosmogony, rather than to preserve any considerable historical records.
The classical historian whose account of the Babylonians and Assyrians has been most largely copied was Ctesias. This writer was a Greek who served for seventeen years (415-398 B.C.) as court physician to the Persian king Artaxerxes Mnemon, and who wrote a history of Persia alleged to be based upon native documents. In this history Ctesias considered the contemporary civilisation, but he was interested rather in picturesque traditions than in the sober historical narratives, and the records he preserved are chiefly of a nature which the modern critical historian pronounces fabulous. The original work of Ctesias has perished, but its character is fairly established through the writings of other authors who used Ctesias as a source. Foremost among the latter is Diodorus, whose account of the Assyrians represents the ideas that were current throughout classical times, and continued in vogue until the nineteenth century.
The most authentic classical accounts of the Babylonians are those given by Herodotus and by Strabo, both of whom spoke as eye-witnesses. Unfortunately, these writers did not have access to the native materials, and their accounts, while throwing interesting sidelights upon the later civilisation, do very little towards enlightening us as to the actual history of the greatest of Asiatic peoples of antiquity.
A few other fragments have been preserved from the classical writings, notably some bits from Abydenus, preserved through Eusebius. To these must be added numerous references to the Babylonians and Assyrians in the biblical writings. Taken altogether, however, these classical and oriental traditions fail to give us more than the vaguest picture of Mesopotamian history.
The real sources of that history are the original chronicles of the Babylonians and Assyrians themselves, which were inscribed on stone slabs and on tablets of clay. The clay tablets, after being inscribed, were dried, forming almost imperishable bricks. Tens of thousands of these were preserved beneath the ruins of Mesopotamian cities, and were first brought to light in the nineteenth century. Among these are several lists of kings, and other chronological documents of a somewhat general character. One document attempts the synchronism of Babylonian and Assyrian history. Then there are numerous tablets and cylinders and wall inscriptions which record the deeds of individual kings, including such famous monarchs as Sennacherib. Vast quantities of documents are doubtless still buried in Mesopotamia, and a large proportion of the inscriptions that have been exhumed are still undeciphered. But enough of these documents have been discovered and read to restore the outline of Babylonian and Assyrian history as a whole; and for certain periods, including the time of greatest Assyrian power, very full records are at hand. The result of these recent discoveries has been the practical substitution of secure historical records for the old classical and oriental traditions regarding the Babylonians and Assyrians.
The modern workers who have assisted in the restoration of Mesopotamian history through the recovery and decipherment of the monumental inscriptions make up in the aggregate a large company. The chief explorers of the earliest period were Botta and Layard. Then came Fresnel, Thomas, and Oppert, followed by Rassam, George Smith, Ernest de Sarzec; the Germans, Koldewey and Moritz, and the Americans, Peters, Hilprecht, and Haynes.
The work of interpreting the newly found Assyrian records began with Sir Henry Rawlinson in England, Eberhard Schrader in Germany, and a small company of other workers, about the middle of the nineteenth century. The difficulties of deciphering records in an unknown language, and of an extremely intricate character, at first seemed almost insuperable; but with the aid of the knowledge of Ancient Persian, already acquired earlier in the century through the efforts of Grotefend and his followers, together with the hints gained by comparison with the Hebrew language and other extant Semitic tongues, a working knowledge of the Assyrian language was at last attained. Since then the decipherment of the inscriptions has gone on unceasingly, and a constantly growing band of workers has added to our knowledge.
Most of the excavators and explorers have, very naturally, given us personal accounts of their labours. Botta’s labours, however, were chiefly made public through the publications of Victor Place; and in more recent times, Heuzey has published the chief accounts of the excavations of De Sarzec. Layard, on the other hand, the greatest of all Assyrian explorers, gave full accounts of his own discoveries, and interpreted the monuments as well as described them. He restored to us a picture of Mesopotamian civilisation somewhat as Wilkinson had done for Egypt. Of the more recent workers who have written about Babylonia and Assyria the most important are Meyer, Hommel, Winckler, Muerdter, and Delitzsch in Germany; Tiele in Holland; Lenormant, Babelon, Menant and Halévy in France; Sayce in England, and Peters, Hilprecht, Harper and Rogers in America.
Thanks to the records thus made available, the history of this most ancient civilisation is no longer a mere hazy figment of tradition, but has become a sharply outlined picture. We are able to trace, not indeed the origin of the Mesopotamian civilisation—for the beginnings of national life evade us here as elsewhere—but its very early development in the cities of old or southern Babylonia. Antiquarian documents, aided by estimates as to the rate of deposit of sediment at the mouth of the rivers, enable us to fix, at least approximately, the dates for this early civilisation. These figures cannot pretend to exact accuracy, but the Assyriologist assures us with some confidence that they carry us back to a period something like six or seven thousand years B.C. At this remote time the civilisation of southern Babylonia was already established in its main features. The people of Ur, Nippur, Shirpurla, and Babylon were able even then to build elaborate palaces and temples, to carve interesting sculptures, to make ornaments of glass, and to record their thought in words traced in the most complex script. In a word, the main characteristics of Mesopotamian civilisation were fully established several millenniums before the Christian era, and abundant proofs of this fact have been preserved to us.
It must not be supposed, however, that the records exhumed from the ruins of these ancient capitals have given us full information regarding the entire stretch of this long material existence. The fact is quite otherwise. Only comparatively short periods are covered fully by the historical records in the wedge writing, and there are reaches of some thousands of years in the aggregate, regarding which our knowledge is still most fragmentary. Indeed, the history of the old Babylonian kingdom in its entirety is known at present only in the most general way. But it seems almost miraculous that we should know even the outlines of this ancient story.
THE ANCIENT KINGDOMS OF BABYLONIA
The earliest known inhabitants of Babylonia were a people of whose origin nothing is known except that they were not Semites. After a time they are called sometimes Sumerians, sometimes Accadians. Sumer was the southern portion of Babylonia, Accad the northern. The Accadian language is now considered a dialect of the Sumerian, the older form.
Civilisation in the land goes back at least to 6000 B.C. Between 5000 and 4000 B.C. this people was invaded by a warlike Semitic race, the Babylonians of history, who came, perhaps, from Arabia. What portion of the aborigines the invaders did not expel or destroy they assimilated, gradually assuming the older civilisation.
The chronology of the earlier period is largely speculative. Recent chronology begins with the kingdom of Babylon about the time of Khammurabi. For the earlier kingdoms, we, for the most part, follow the dates of Professor Rogers.
Without referring to the legendary history of Babylonia, related by Berosus, which is mentioned elsewhere, our earliest knowledge of the land is of a country of independent kingdoms, the cities with the temples forming their centres. The ruler is often the patesi or high priest.
THE KINGDOM OF KENGI
Before 4500 B.C. En-shag-kush-anna is king of Kengi, in southern Babylonia, but whether he was Sumerian or Semite, we do not know. He is patesi of En-lil, the later Bel. Of his kingdom, Shirpurla-Girsu (or Sungir) is the capital and Nippur the religious centre. Later, Sungir is called Sumer and gave its name to the whole of southern Babylonia. The chief rival of Kengi is the Semitic kingdom of Kish in the north, which En-shag-kush-anna defeated but only temporarily checked. We know of no other king of Kengi.
Monuments.—Several vase inscriptions found at Nippur.
THE KINGDOM OF KISH
Recovers itself quickly after its reverse by En-shag-kush-anna. A certain U-dug is patesi of Kish at the time of this revival.
4400 Mesilim, king of Kish, subjugates Shirpurla, at the time of Lugal-shug-gur. This supremacy is maintained for a short period, 4200 until E-anna-tum, king of Shirpurla, shakes off the yoke. Kish is left very feeble after this, but gradually recovers its power.
3850 Alusharshid, the last great king of Kish before the conquest of Sargon I.
Monuments.—Many vase inscriptions.
THE KINGDOM OF GISHBAN
4400 Ush is patesi, contemporary of Mesilim of Kish. He wages war with Shirpurla on the question of boundaries. Gishban is subjugated 4200 by E-anna-tum of Shirpurla. At the latter’s death, Ur-lumma, patesi, invades Shirpurla and probably suffers a slight defeat.
4120 Great defeat of Ur-lumma by Entemena of Shirpurla.
4000 Lugal-zaggisi, patesi, son of Ukush, leads a victorious army against the south. The whole of Babylonia to the southern gulf is subjugated. He becomes king of Erech and is styled “king of the whole world.” He revives the ancient cults of Lower Mesopotamia.
Monuments.—Vase inscriptions.
THE KINGDOM OF SHIRPURLA
Shirpurla, sometimes called Lagash—the modern Telloh—is situated north of Mugheir on the east side of the Shatt-el-Khai. The oldest king that we know is
4500 Urukagina.—A great warrior and administrator. He builds and restores temples and also a canal for the capital Sungir (Girsu). 4400 One of his successors is En-ge-gal, and another, Lugal-shug-gur, is reduced by Mesilim of Kish to a patesi.
4300 In the enfeebled kingdom, dominated by the rulers of Kish, a new family headed by Ur-Nina comes to the throne. He is famous as a temple builder, but also begins to prepare his kingdom to throw off the yoke of Kish. He calls himself king though his son is still patesi.
Monuments.—Vase inscriptions.
4250 Akurgal succeeds Ur-Nina. He is the father of E-anna-tum and En-anna-tum I.
4200 E-anna-tum, the hero who delivers his country from the thraldom of Kish, and resumes the royal title. After this he puts Gishban under his yoke, and wages successful wars against Erech, Ur, Larsa, Az, and Ukh. He builds a wall around one of the suburbs of Shirpurla, digs canals for boundary lines, etc. Is a great and wise administrator as well as a mighty warrior.
Monuments.—The famous “Vulture Stele” now in the Louvre—many inscriptions.
En-anna-tum I succeeds his brother E-anna-tum. An unsuccessful invasion of Shirpurla by the patesi of Gishban.
4120 En-teme-na, son of En-anna-tum I, defeats and destroys army of the patesi of Gishban.
Monuments.—The Cone of En-teme-na. The “silver vase”—an exquisite piece of art placed on the altar of the god Nina at Singur.
4100 En-anna-tum II, the last patesi of the dynasty of Ur-Nina, since his son, Lummadu, bears no title. Conquest of Shirpurla by Lugal-zaggisi of Gishban.
4100-3800 There are patesis in Shirpurla, ruled over by Lugal-zaggisi and his successors.
3800-3100 The darkest age of Babylonian history. Lugal-ushumgal was patesi and vassal of Sargon I. In all probability the kings of Agade ruled over Shirpurla until dispossessed by the second dynasty of Ur. Of all the patesis, the vassal rulers, of this period Ur-Bau 3500 (?) and Gudea 3300 (?) are the most prominent. Ur-Bau’s rule seems to have been peaceful; Gudea is a warrior; he wrests the territory of Anshan from Elam. Builds the temple of Nina at Singur.
Monuments.—Many inscriptions.
The civilisation of Shirpurla was a high one, and it contained no Semitic elements.
THE KINGDOM OF UR (THE BIBLICAL “UR OF THE CHALDEES”)
Ist DYNASTY
The first king of this dynasty appears after the conquest of Erech by Lugal-zaggisi of Gishban. He would appear to have overthrown Lugal-zaggisi.
3900 Lugal-kigubni-dudu.
Lugal-kisali, his son.
Their rule includes Ur, Erech, and Nippur, and possibly they conquered Shirpurla. The fate of this dynasty with the names of its other rulers is unknown, but it probably falls before the power of Agade.
Monuments.—Inscriptions of the two above-mentioned kings.
THE KINGDOM OF GUTI AND LULUBI
There are inscriptions relating to two kings, Lasirab of Guti and Anu-banini of Lulubi. They seem to have been contemporaneous with Sargon I (3800 B.C.).
THE KINGDOM OF AGADE
3800 The earliest known dynasty is Semitic, and the first ruler is Sargon I (Shargani-shar-ali), son of Itti-Bel. By conquest he founds an empire from Elam to the Mediterranean, and from the extreme south of Babylonia to Apirak and Guti.
Monuments.—Engraved seals of wonderful execution, inscriptions, and contract tablets.
3750 Naram-Sin, son of Sargon, succeeds him. First to assume title “King of the Four Quarters of the World”—a great conqueror and builder. Campaigns against Apirak and Magan (Arabia).
Builds temples at Nippur and Agade. Temple E-barra of Shamash at Sippar. This temple is the one in which Nabonidus found the “tablet with the writing of the name of Naram-Sin,” by which we are able to fix the date of his reign.
Under Sargon I and Naram-Sin there is a high state of organisation and civilisation in the kingdom. There were judges, musicians, physicians, good roads, etc. Thureau-Dangin says: “The epoch of Sargon and Naram-Sin certainly marks a culminating point in the history of the old Orient.”
Monuments.—Inscriptions.
3700 Bingani-shar-ali, son of Naram-Sin.
Further history of the kingdom of Agade is still unknown. Apparently the later kings gradually lose their power before that of the second dynasty of Ur.
The first period of Babylonian history is now closed. The Semites are in full possession of the land. We have the main seat of power at Agade with the rulers of Shirpurla reduced to patesis.
THE SECOND DYNASTY OF UR
These kings add the title “King of Sumer and Accad” to that of Ur, combining the hostile elements of the North and South under one rule; “restoring,” says Radau, “in old Babylonia the peace which had been disturbed for many centuries, even from the time of the original Semitic invasion.”
3200 Ur-gur holds sway over both Semites and Sumerians (Agade and Shirpurla). His capital is at Ur. Famous as a temple builder. Builds temple Teimila to Nannar (moon god) at Ur, temple E-anna to Ishtar at Erech, temple E-barra to Shamash at Larsa.
Monuments.—Pyramidal tower at Nippur. Inscriptions.
3150 Dun-gi I succeeds. Continues his father’s work.
Builds temples of Nin-mar, Nina, Ningirsu, Dam-gal-nunna, and Ea, in Sungir, Nippur, and Kutha.
These two were ancestors of a long line of kings, concerning whom history is still silent. Apparently ground in southern Babylonia was soon lost, for we find
THE KINGDOM OF ERECH
3100-3000 Two kings of pure Semitic names are known at this period. Singashid, probably the founder of the dynasty, and Sin-gamil. The probable history of this kingdom is that of a strong Semitic colony in southern Babylonia making itself independent and establishing a king and capital at Erech. With Sin-gamil, the thread of its history is lost.
Monuments.—Inscriptions relating to building of palace, temples, and restoration of temples at Erech.
THE KINGDOM OF ISIN
A Semitic kingdom, similar to that of Erech, is established at Isin in the north. These kings extend their power to Nippur, Ur, Eridu, and finally to Erech, extinguishing the dynasty ruling there.
The kings add “king of Sumer and Accad” to that of Isin, showing also that the second dynasty of Ur has ceased to exist.
3000 Libit-Ishtar.
Monuments and cylinder inscriptions.
Other kings are, Ishbigarra, Bur-Sin I, Ur-Ninib, Idin-Dagan.
2850 Ishme Dagan, the last to bear the title of Sumer and Accad. His son En-anna-tum is a vassal of the third dynasty of Ur.
Monuments.—Tablet inscriptions.
THE THIRD DYNASTY OF UR
The early kings call themselves simply Kings of Ur.
2800 Gungunu puts an end to the dynasty of Isin. He is succeeded by Ur-gur II and Dungi II, order uncertain.
They build many temples, and Ur-gur II fortifies the wall of his capital, hence he must have been harassed by enemies. We have records that the patesis of Shirpurla still existed at this time.
Monuments.—Votive and seal inscriptions.
2700 Dungi III.—The kings from now on add “King of the Four Quarters of the World” to their title, and for this reason some scholars reckon this king as the first of a fourth dynasty. He is followed by Bur-Sin II, Gamil-Sin, and Ine-Sin; the latter ruling about 2580. We have no knowledge of other kings, but about 2450-2400 the “Kingship of the Four Quarters of the World” is overthrown in the north by the Ist Dynasty of Babylon and in the south by Nur-Adad of Larsa.
Monuments.—Building records and contract tablets.
THE KINGDOM OF LARSA
2400 Successful rebellion of southern Babylonia against the kings of Ur. The kingdom of Larsa founded by Nur-Adad.
2370 Sin-iddin succeeds his father and extends his kingdom over Sumer and Accad.
2350 Kudur-nankhundi, king of Elam, invades southern Babylonia. Under Kudur-nankhundi’s successor, Kudur-lagamar 2340 (Kudur-dugmal, probably the Hebrew Chedoriaomer) the Elamites establish a kingdom in Larsa with Rim-Sin (Eri-aku) at its head. He adopts Sin-iddin’s titles. 2312 The latter appeals to Khammurabi, king of Babylon, who overpowers Rim-Sin.
THE KINGDOM OF BABYLON
Ist DYNASTY, 2450-2150 B.C.
In the days of Sumer and Accad there is no mention of Babylon, which must, however, have developed into some importance during the supremacy of Isin (3000-2850). Dates are now more reliable.
2450 Sumu-abi overthrows the Ur Dynasty in Babylon, but the rebellion does not extend beyond that city.
2440 Sumu-la-ilu.—He builds six strong fortresses in Babylon.
2405 Zabu.—He builds temple E-dubar in Sippar. The country is evidently in revolution, for mention is made of a pretender, Immeru.
2290 Apil-Sin.
2370 Sin-muballit.
Only monuments of these reigns, contract tablets.
2342 Khammurabi.—Probably the Amraphel of the Bible, a contemporary of Abraham. The maker of a united Babylon, for in 2312 called upon by Sin-iddin, he expels Rim-Sin and the Elamites from Larsa, and adding southern Babylonia to his dominions, resumes the titles of the kings of Ur, Isin, and Larsa. He begins to develop his new kingdom, digging canals for water supply. Builds a great storehouse for wheat in Babylonia. Enlarges temples of E-zida and E-sagila in Borsippa.
Monuments.—Letters and inscriptions.
2287-2150 The remaining kings of the dynasty lived in complete peace. The few remains of their age witness a high civilisation and great prosperity.
Monuments.—Contract tablets.
IInd DYNASTY, 2150-1783 B.C.
2150-1783 Called the dynasty of Uru-Azag (probably referring to a district of the city of Babylon). Eleven kings of Sumerian origin reign for 368 years. There is but little known of them.
No monuments of this dynasty.
IIIrd DYNASTY, 1783-1207 B.C.
1783 The Kossæans or Kassites (Kasshu) from the mountains of Elam establish a dynasty with Gandish or Gaddash the first king. They had entered the country as roving bands, had overrun it, and finally attained the power. Culture and civilisation are assimilated by the newcomers.
1700 Agum-kakrime, the first king of the dynasty of whom we have any details. His kingdom is greater than that of Khammurabi. The land of Padan is subject to him. Some statues of gods that had been previously carried away are restored to Babylon.
1450 Karaindash.—In this reign we have the first evidence of intercourse between the kingdoms of Assyria and Babylonia—a treaty with Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, king of Assyria, concerning boundary line. Builds a temple to Nana, goddess of E-Anna.
1430 Kadashman-Bel.—He corresponds with Amenhotep III, of Egypt.
Monuments.—Letters found at Tel-el-Amarna.
1420 Burnaburiash I.—Contemporary with Puzur-Asshur of Assyria, with whom he seems to have had difficulties regarding questions of boundary. Builds a temple to the Sun-god at Larsa.
1410 Kurigalzu I.—The city of Dur-Kurigalzu is named after him. He probably rebuilds it.
Monuments.—Correspondence with Pharaoh of Egypt. (Tel-el-Amarna.)
1400 Burnaburiash II.—His successor. Long and prosperous reign.
Monuments.—Correspondence with Amenhotep IV, of Egypt. (Tel-el-Amarna.)
1370 Kharakhardash, marries a daughter of Asshur-uballit, king of Assyria. His son, Kadashman-Kharbe I, conducts a campaign against the Sutu, whom he conquers, and among whom he settles some of his subjects.
1360 Rebellion of the Kassites, who, jealous of the growing Assyrian influence, kill the king and place on the throne Nazibugash, who is defeated and killed by Asshur-uballit, the king of Assyria.
1350 Kurigalzu II.—Placed on the throne by the Assyrian king, invades Elam, and conquers the city of Susa (or Shushan). Battle with Bel-nirari, king of Assyria, with doubtful result.
1340-1286 Continuous struggle between Babylonia and Assyria under the following kings: Nazi-Maruttash (1340), Kadashman-Turgu, Kadashman-Buriash (1330), Kudur-Bel (1304-1299), Shagarakti-Buriash (1298-1286).
1285-1270 The king of Assyria, Tukulti-Ninib I, invades Babylon, enters the town, removes the treasures of the temple, and carries away the god Marduk to Assyria. This invasion took place probably under the reign of Bibeiashu, whose successors, Bel-shum-iddin, Kadashman-Kharbe II (1277-1275), and Adad-shum-iddin (1274-1269), were very likely only vassals of Tukulti-Ninib, who was the real king of Babylon for seven years.
1270 The Babylonians rise in revolt, drive the Assyrians from Babylon, 1269 and make Adad-shum-usur king, under whom the power of Babylon begins to revive. Assyria attacked, the king, Bel-kudur-usur, slain, and a portion of Assyrian territory annexed.
1238-1224 Meli-Shipak.—Successful against the Assyrian king, Ninib-apal-esharra, 1223-1211 so that under Marduk-apal-iddin, the Babylonian dominion extends over nearly the whole of the valley.
1210 Under the last two kings of this dynasty, Zamamu-shum-iddin and 1209 Bel-shum-iddin, Babylonia threatened by the Assyrian Asshur-dan.
1207 End of the dynasty as result of a Semitic revolution.
IVth DYNASTY, 1207-1075 B.C.
The origin of this (Isin) dynasty still doubtful. There are eleven kings, of whom four or five are unknown to us.
1135 Nebuchadrezzar I, sixth king, exhibits the old-time spirit. Invades Assyria, but is repulsed. Is successful in campaigns against the people of Elam and Lulubi, even penetrates into Syria.
Monuments.—Monolithic inscription concerning grant of land to Ritti Marduk of Bit-Karziyabku.
1110 In the reign of Marduk-nadin-akhe, Tiglathpileser I of Assyria invades Babylon and takes the capital.
1083 At death of Marduk-shapik-zer-mati, a usurper, Adad-apal-iddin takes the throne.
1078 End of dynasty with death of Nabu-shum.
Vth, VIth, VIIth, VIIIth DYNASTIES, 1075-728 B.C.
A series of short-lived dynasties all struggling with the rising power of Assyria.
1075 Dynasty of Sea Lands, at the estuaries of the Tigris and the Euphrates upon the Persian Gulf, which later exercises great influence upon the history of Babylonia. This dynasty numbers only three kings, who reign together twenty-one years five months, or, according to the Babylonian chronicle, twenty-three years; viz. Sibar-Shipak, slain and buried in palace of Sargon. In his reign the Elamites pillage Sippar and do much damage; Ea-mukin-zer, of whom nothing is known, and Kasshu-nadin-akhe. These kings engaged on rebuilding the temple of the Sun at Sippar.
1053-1033 The dynasty of Sea Lands in Babylonia followed by the dynasty of Bit-Bazi, numbering also only three kings: Eulbar-shakin-shum, Ninib-kudur-usur, and Silanim-shukamuna, followed by a dynasty of Elam with only one king, whose name is unknown.
1027 The VIIIth Dynasty. Babylonian stock having exhausted its vigour, now intermixed with Kassite and other foreign blood.
747 Nabu-nasir (Nabonassar) of the VIIIth Dynasty comes to the throne. A time of literary activity.
732 Nabu-nadinzer, his successor, slain by Nabu-shum-ukin.
731 Ukinzer replaces Nabu-shum-ukin. Tiglathpileser III invades Babylon and determines to end the rule of native princes in the land.
728 Tiglathpileser, king of Babylon. End of the Old Babylonian Empire.
THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE
FIRST PERIOD, 1830-1120 B.C.
Assyria was colonised from Babylonia. The date is uncertain, but Nineveh was in existence in 3000 B.C. The early rulers appear to have been subject priest-princes of the kings of Babylonia.
1830-1810 The first known rulers (Ishakke) are Ishme-Dagan and his son, Shamshi-Adad I, who builds a great temple in the city of Asshur, dedicated to the gods Anu and Adad.
1800-1700 Little known of their successors Igur-kapkapu, Shamshi-Adad II, while the dates of Khallu and Irishum are unknown.
Monuments.—A few inscriptions.
1700 Bel-Kapkapu.—The first to take the title of king, and therefore considered the real founder of the monarchy, probably the Bel-bani, of whom Esarhaddon claimed to be a direct descendant.
1700-1450 A dark age of Assyrian history. We know nothing of it, except that after the battle of Megiddo (ca. 1525) the ruler of Assyria sends presents to Tehutimes III.
1450 Assyria is now recognised by Babylonia as an independent kingdom. Its ruler, Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, makes a treaty with Karaindash, king of Kardunyash (Babylonia) concerning boundaries.
1420 Puzur-Asshur, treats with the Babylonians concerning the boundary.
1400 Asshur-nadin-akhe II, his successor, contemporary of Amenhotep IV, king of Egypt. Builds or restores a palace in Asshur.
Monuments.—Friendly correspondence with Amenhotep IV in the Tel-el-Amarna letters.
1370 Succeeded by Asshur-uballit, whose daughter, Muballitat Sheru’a, is married to Karakhardash, king of Babylon. The murder of his son, Kadashman-Kharbe I, brought about Assyrian intervention, and a grandson of Asshur-uballit, Kurigalzu, is placed on the throne. Babylonia now partially subject to Assyria. Campaigns of Asshur-uballit against the Shubari.
1360 His son Bel-nirari said to have conquered the inhabitants of the neighbouring Elamite foothills. These Assyrian conquests lead to a conflict between Kurigalzu II and Bel-nirari, in which the latter is victorious. A rearrangement of the boundary lines between the two countries is the result.
1350 His son, Pudu-ilu, a great warrior, considerably extends his kingdom.
Monuments.—A few brief inscriptions.
1345 His son and successor, Adad-nirari I, continues conquests in neighbouring territory. Rebuilds captured cities. Struggle with Babylonian king. He adds considerably to strength of kingdom.
Monuments.—A bronze sword, on which he calls himself king of Kishshati; an inscription, the oldest yet found with an eponym date.
1330 His son, Shalmaneser I, establishes colonies between the Euphrates and Tigris as a bulwark against the nomadic populations of the farther north. Subjects the Musri in northern Syria. Assyrians cross the Euphrates for the first time. The rapidly growing kingdom firmly established as far as the Balikh and perhaps the Euphrates. New capital built at Calah.
Monuments.—Two broken tablets.
1290 Under his son and successor, Tukulti-Ninib I, there is renewed trouble between Assyria and Babylonia. Invasion of Babylonia; capital taken. Conquered city governed from Calah, Assyrian officers stationed both in the north and south of the country. Tukulti-Ninib adopts the title of “King of Sumer and Accad” in addition to his former titles, “King of Kishshati” and “King of Asshur.” This rule over Babylonia maintained for seven years only. The king is killed in civil war. The most brilliant reign in Assyrian history up to this time. The steady and rapid progress of the Assyrians now checked.
1280 Rapid decline of Assyrian power under Asshurnazirpal I, Tukulti-Ninib’s son. An attack of Babylonia is repulsed with difficulty.
1250 Under his successors, Asshur-narara and Nabu-daian, the Assyrian power continues to wane, while the Babylonian increases.
1240-1235 Under Bel-kudur-usur and Ninib-apal-esharra Assyria is invaded by the Babylonians under Meli-shipak and Marduk-apal-iddin. All the southern and part of the northern and western conquered territory lost.
1210 Under Asshur-dan I rehabilitation of Assyrian power. He crosses the Lower Zab, invades Babylonian territory, and restores a small section of it to Assyria.
1150 Further Assyrian gains under Mutakkil-Nusku and Asshur-rish-ishi, who 1140 restores temple of Ishtar at Calah.
SECOND PERIOD, 1120-885 B.C.
1120 Tiglathpileser I (Tukulti-apal-esharra, my help is the god Ninib).—He builds up anew the Assyrian Empire, and thus records his work of conquest: “In all forty-two countries and their kings from the Lower Zab (and) the border of the distant mountains to beyond the Euphrates to the land of the Hittites and the Upper Sea of the Setting Sun, from the beginning of my sovereignty until my fifth year my hand has conquered.” His great success in war equalled by a marvellous story of peaceful achievements. The capital of Assyria brought back from Calah to Asshur; the temples of Ishtar, Adad, and Bel rebuilt, palaces restored and rebuilt.
Monuments.—The eight-sided prism found at Calah: several fragmentary annals of the early years of his reign.
1090 Under his successors, Asshur-bel-kala and Shamshi-Adad III, both sons of Tiglathpileser, further peaceful development, with gradually a falling off in the power and dignity of the kingdom. The former king maintains terms of peace with the king of Babylonia, Marduk-shapik-zer-mati, who thereby seems to be considered an independent monarch. As to Shamshi-Adad I, he is known to us only as the rebuilder of the temple of Ishtar in Nineveh.
1050-950 A dark age. The fortunes of Assyria are at low ebb. In this period reigned Asshurnazirpal II, Erba-Adad, Asshur-nadin-akhe, and Asshur-erbi. The last loses territory to the Aramæans, but he seems to have invaded Phœnicia.
950 Tiglathpileser II, who calls himself “King of Kishshati and King of Asshur.”
930 Asshur-dan II, his son.
911 Adad-nirari II.—Revival of struggle with Babylonia. Defeats Shamash-mudammik of Babylon in battle of Mount Yalman, also his successor Nabu-shum-ishkun. Assyrian cities given to Babylonia. Treaty of peace between the two nations.
890 Tukulti-Ninib II.—The period of weakness is passing. Babylon ceases to be troublesome, and the Assyrians begin to seek tribute in the north and west. The king ravages Armenia and the land of Kummukh.
THIRD PERIOD, 885-722 B.C.
885 Asshurnazirpal III, begins campaigns of conquest at once. In ten years all of Tiglathpileser I’s empire in the north, east, and west, conquered or intimidated into subjection with atrocious cruelties and barbarous devastations, is under heavy tribute.
876 A great invasion of the west. At his approach all the cities from Carchemish to Tyre hasten to send presents and arrange for tribute. The campaign ends in the gathering of timber for the temple of Ishtar at Nineveh.
867 A short and bloody campaign against Kummukh, Qurkhi and the country around Mount Masius. Asshurnazirpal rebuilds Calah, and constructs a canal to supply the city with water from the Lower Zab.
Monuments.—The royal palace unearthed at Nimrud; monolith containing accounts of his reign discovered by Layard at Nimrud; several lesser inscriptions.
860 Shalmaneser II, his son, continues his father’s conquests with similar cruelty. Campaign against Nairi and first of many campaigns in the north and east lasting until 830 with no real success.
857 The Aramæans of Bit-Adini in the Mesopotamian valley finally conquered and their land placed under Assyrian government.
854 Shalmaneser proceeds successfully against a coalition of North Syrian princes, Israel and Phœnicia. Battle of Qarqar. Yearly tribute imposed on states of northern Syria.
852 Marduk-nadin-shun of Babylon calls Shalmaneser to help him against his rebellious brother Marduk-bel-usati. Shalmaneser attacks and vanquishes the rebels and Marduk-nadin-shum rules under an Assyrian protectorate. The king of Assyria is once more the real ruler of Babylon.
849-834 Campaigns against the west. The results are not definite, and little is done except to pave the way for the future. Attack upon Ben-Hadad II of Damascus and his allies. Jehu sends aid against Damascus and the Assyrians get their first hold upon Israel.
827 Rebellion of Shalmaneser’s son Asshur-danin-apli which splits the kingdom into two discordant parts.
825 Death of Shalmaneser.
Monuments.—The black basalt obelisk containing story of his wars; monolith with portrait in bas-relief; gate inscriptions from Balauat.
823 Shamshi-Adad IV, after two years of civil war with his brother, is acknowledged legitimate king.
822-814 Campaigns in north, east, and west to receive allegiance.
813 Invasion of Chaldea.
812 Invasion of Babylon where Marduk-balatsu-iqbi refuses to pay tribute—a decisive victory.
Monuments.—Inscriptions.
811 Adad-nirari III succeeds his father—a ruler who increases Assyrian prestige immensely. Successful campaigns in the west. Eight brilliant campaigns against the Medes.
796-795 Babylon invaded—now practically an Assyrian province. The king tries to efface all national differences. Temples built in Assyria similar to those of Babylon, and Babylonian forms introduced into the ritual.
Monuments.—A statue of Nabu from the temple of Calah; inscriptions.
782 Shalmaneser III, a period of decline sets in. Of his ten campaigns, six are against the growing power of Urartu, which is trying to wrest the land of Nairi from the Assyrians.
772 Asshur-dan III.—The decay continues. Campaigns against Damascus, and Khatarikka in Syria. Two invasions of Babylon (771-767).
763-758 A series of rebellions in various parts of the kingdom.
754 Asshur-nirari II.—A reign of decadence. Campaigns against Arpad and Nairi, but no attempt to collect tribute.
746 Rebellion in Calah. Asshur-nirari disappears and with him the royal family that has ruled Assyria for centuries.
FOURTH PERIOD, 745-606 B.C.
745 Pulu.—A man of obscure origin obtains the throne, probably as the outcome of the Calah rebellion. He takes the name of Tiglathpileser (III), and begins at once the formation of a great world-empire and proceeds first against Babylonia. Reconquers the country as far south as Nippur and reorganises the government. Makes a fixed policy of planting colonies and transporting captives. He next subdues the troublesome land east of Assyria, and sends his general, Asshur-danin-ani, into Media. Second expedition into Media (737), but withal the country remains practically independent. He takes up a difficult problem in the north where Argistis of Urartu had regained much territory, and his successor, Sarduris II, has formed an alliance with many northern princes. The armies of Sarduris and Tiglathpileser meet and the former is forced to retire.
742 Tiglathpileser, free from Sarduris, attacks Arpad, which falls, 740. Many neighbouring states send presents. The king of Unqi resists, but is soon taken and his country annexed to Assyria.
739 Part of Nairi taken. Tiglathpileser sets out to break the coalition of Syrian princes against him, aiming at Uzziah of Judah, the ringleader. Menahem of Israel weakens and pays the Assyrian heavy tribute, whereupon he abandons attacks on Judah, but subdues, and returns home with tribute from, all the other members of the league.
735 Campaign against Urartu—does not conquer but breaks the spirit of the country.
734-732 Campaigns in Syria. Damascus taken. Ahaz of Judah gives homage. Other lands incorporated with Assyria. Gaza captured.
731-729 He invades Babylonia to settle the internal strife raging there. Determines to do away with native princes. Ukinzer deposed. Merodach-baladan of Bit-Yakin gives homage.
728 Proclaimed legitimate king of Babylon.
Monuments.—The annals badly defaced by Esarhaddon; the slabs of Nimrud; inscription on clay tablets.
726 Shalmaneser IV succeeds.
725 Hoshea of Israel in alliance with Shabak of Egypt refuses tribute. Shalmaneser lays siege to Samaria.
THE SARGONIDES, 722-606 B.C.
722 Sargon II—a usurper succeeds. Samaria falls in this year. The inhabitants are removed to the Median mountains and replaced by colonists from Kutha.
721 Merodach-baladan rebels and is proclaimed king of Babylon. Sargon proceeds unsuccessfully against him. Rebellion in Hamath, joined by Gaza and Samaria.
720 The confederation defeated at Raphia.
720-710 Continuous campaigns. Successful attack on Urartu. Coalition in the north broken up.
717 Assyrian governors installed throughout the country. The career of Carchemish ended.
710 Merodach-baladan defeated. Sargon adopts title “Shakkanak,” Governor, of Babylon.
707 The great palace in his city of Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad) is finished. The walls are covered with magnificent inscriptions. He enters it the next year.
Monuments.—The palace of Dur-Sharrukin with inscriptions—other inscriptions.
705 Sennacherib (Sin-akhe-erba) succeeds his father.
702 Visits rebellious Babylonia and makes Bel ibni king.
701 Coalition against Sennacherib of Syrian princes and Tirhaqa of Egypt. The Assyrian attacks Phœnician cities and most of Syria submits. Battle of Altaku. Sennacherib’s army ravaged by pestilence, and he returns to Nineveh which he has made his capital.
700 Bel-ibni becomes hostile to Assyria through force of public opinion. Merodach-baladan and Marduk-ushezib of Chaldea join him. Sennacherib defeats them and has his own son Asshur-nadin-shum proclaimed king of Babylon.
694 Campaigns against the Chaldeans settled in Elam. Asshur-nadin-shum captured by the Elamites and Nergal-ushezib crowned.
692 Mushezib-Marduk made king of Babylon. With the Elamites, the Babylonians oppose Sennacherib at Khalule (691) and are utterly defeated.
689 Destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib.
688-682 Sennacherib absent in Arabia.
681 Murder of Sennacherib by his sons Nergal-shar-eser and Adarmalik.
681 Esarhaddon (Asshur-akhe-iddin) succeeds his father.
681-672 Nine campaigns to repress rebellions in different parts of the empire.
672 Destruction of Sidon. City of Kar-Asshur-akhe-iddin built on the same spot.
670 Esarhaddon appears in Egypt to punish Tirhaqa. Memphis taken. The whole country surrenders to Esarhaddon who reorganises the government.
668 Esarhaddon abdicates. He appoints his son Shamash-shum-ukin viceroy of Babylonia, and another son, Asshurbanapal, receives the throne of Assyria.
Monuments.—The “Black Stone,” the stele of Zenjirli; other inscriptions.
668 Asshurbanapal begins his reign.
667 Sends an army to Egypt which defeats Tirhaqa who has retaken Memphis. Conspiracy of Egyptian princes to restore Tirhaqa. They are taken and punished. Exacts tribute from King Baal of Tyre, and other princes.
655 Psamthek I of Egypt throws off the Assyrian yoke.
Campaign against Elam.
War with Shamash-shum-ukin, who plots against Assyria, and severe punishment of Babylonia. Cruel onslaught on Elam for assistance to Shamash-shum-ukin and his allies. The same fate is meted out to the Arabians.
Asshurbanapal is famous as a builder. Temple of E-kur-gal-kurra in Nineveh adorned. Rebuilding of E-sagila in Babylon completed. E-zida in Borsippa is embellished. The palace of Nineveh reconstructed and a great library built and equipped. Vast building operations in Babylonia and Arbela. His reign is one of great glory in works of peace, but Egypt has been lost, and many foreign provinces are on the verge of regaining their liberty.
Monuments.—Many records from the library of Nineveh.
626-609 Asshurbanapal succeeded by Asshur-etil-ili-ukinni, Sin-shum-lishir, and Sin-shar-ishkum (Saracus), of whom we have but little knowledge.
625 First appearance of the Scythian tribes in Assyria. They invade the land and burn Calah.
609 Sin-shar-ishkum attacks Babylonia, of which Nabopolassar is now king. The latter allies himself with the Scythian tribe of the Manda, which attacks Nineveh.
606 Sin-shar-ishkum sets fire to palace and perishes in the flames.
Nineveh taken and destroyed, as well as Dur-Sharrukin and Asshur.
The Manda secure the old land of Assyria, together with the northern provinces as far as the river Halys. The Babylonians take the southern and the Syrio-Phœnician possessions. End of the Assyrian Empire.
THE NEW EMPIRE OF BABYLON
606-538 B.C.
Nabopolassar (Nabu-apal-usur), an Assyrian governor of Babylonia about 625, finally becomes king, and a powerful rival of Assyria. After the destruction of Nineveh he receives his share of the old empire, and continues his reign in peace. Neku II of Egypt marches upon Babylonia. Country developed by canals and great buildings. Temple of Belit at Sippar rebuilt.
604-562 Nebuchadrezzar (Nabu-kudur-usur). Before he becomes king, he has defeated Neku at Carchemish (605). Campaign against Judah. Jerusalem twice besieged in 597, when Jehoiachin had to surrender, in whose place Mattaniah, a son of Josiah, was made king under the name of Zedekiah; and again in 586 when the city is taken, plundered, and destroyed. Population deported and Gedaliah placed as governor.
585-573 Investment of Tyre for thirteen years. Finally taken in 573 and King Ithobaal II deposed.
567 Invasion of Egypt in the reign of Aahmes II; heavy booty secured, but no lasting results. Splendid works of peace shown in numerous inscriptions. Extensive building operations. The walls of Babylon rebuilt and rendered impregnable. Canals repaired and temples reconstructed. Temples of Borsippa repaired and the walls reconstructed, also at Sippar, Larsa, Ur, Dilbat, Baz, and Erech.
Monuments.—Many inscriptions.
562 Amil-Marduk (the biblical Evil-merodach). No inscriptions found. 560 Assassinated by Nergal-shar-usur (Neriglissor).—Under him Babylon adorned and enlarged. The temple E-sagila beautified. Canal system regulated. Succeeded by 556 Labashi-Marduk, who was killed after a reign of only nine months, and succeeded by 555 Nabu-Na’id (Nabonidus), a usurper. Chiefly engaged in building and restoring temples. The temple E-ulbar restored and temples at Sippar and Kharran in Babylonia rebuilt.
539 Babylonia invaded by Cyrus of Elam and Persia.
538 Sippar taken. Babylon surrenders. Triumphal entrance of Cyrus into the city. Babylonia a Persian province.
FOOTNOTES
[15] [The theories of those who deny the existence of the Sumerians have been already given in the Introductory Essay, pages 309-317, by Professor Halévy, the leader of the anti-Sumerian school. The present trend of opinion is, however, largely toward the Sumerian theory.]
CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE
Cities have been, and vanished; fanes have sunk,
Heaped into shapeless ruin; sands o’erspread
Fields that were Edens; millions too have shrunk
To a few starving hundreds, or have fled
From off the page of being. Now the dead
Are the sole habitants of Babylon;
Kings, at whose bidding nations toiled and bled,
Heroes, who many a field of carnage won,
Their names—their boasted names to utter death are done.—James Gates Percival.
It should be explained here at the very beginning that in speaking of the Mesopotamian civilisation as a unit, we are adopting for the sake of convenience a form of expression that is not historically accurate. Even the word “Mesopotamia” cannot be justified on strict analysis. The word is from the Greek, and means, literally, “between the rivers,” an obvious reference to the fact that the important portion of the territory in question lies between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The word was used by the Greeks in indiscriminate application to Babylonia and Assyria, and its extreme convenience as a generic term has led to its retention in lieu of a better one; yet, as has been said, it cannot be applied with strict accuracy unless its etymological significance be quite overlooked; for, curiously enough, neither Babylon nor Nineveh was wholly situated in the territory which the Greek word describes. Babylon lay partly on the western shore of the Euphrates river, and Nineveh was situated on the eastern shore of the Tigris. But in common usage, as so often happens, the exact implication of the word “Mesopotamia” has been overlooked, and the word itself has come to be applied to the entire region of Babylonia and Assyria. In this sense, rather than in the more restricted one, we shall find it convenient as a substitute for the more cumbersome appellation, Babylonia-Assyria.
It has already been pointed out that we have to do with different races of people in dealing with Mesopotamian history. After a long dispute, carried on chiefly by philologists, it is now generally conceded that the earliest civilisation of southern Babylonia was due to a non-Semitic people, the Sumerians.[16] To this people, it would seem, must be ascribed the honour of developing the chief features of Mesopotamian civilisation, including the invention of the cuneiform system of writing. It is not at all clear at precisely what time the Semitic people, destined ultimately to become predominant in this region, made their appearance. Nor is the place of Semitic origin agreed upon among students of the subject. Some authors,[17] as Von Kremer, Guidi, and Hommel, hold that Babylonia was itself originally the cradle of the race. Others, including Sprenger, Sayce, Schrader, De Goeje, Wright, and Barton, contend that the Semites invaded Babylonia from Arabia. Yet others, including Palgrave, Gerland, Bertin, Brinton, Nöldeke, Jastrow, Keane, and Schmidt, hold to the African origin; while a modification of these views advocated by Wiedemann, De Morgan, and Erman supposes that both the Semites and Hamites rose in Arabia, and had their common civilisation before the Hamites went to Africa. Confronted with such conflict of opinions, the historian must be content to regard the exact antecedents of the Semites, previous to their appearance in Babylonia, as quite unknown.
As to the date of the beginnings of Semitic civilisation in Mesopotamia, Dr. John P. Peters, making use of Ainsworth’s estimates as to the amount and rate of alluvial deposit at the head of the Persian Gulf, computes that the seacoast must have been established this side of the site of the city of Ur about 6600 B.C., which date must, therefore, represent the earliest possible period for the foundation of that city. Ur was apparently the most southerly city of old Babylonia, and Nippur apparently the most northerly. Dr. Peters’ excavations at Nippur lead him to base its foundation at some period previous to 6000 B.C., and possibly previous to 7000 B.C.[a] He sums up his theory as follows:
“My suggestion, from the various facts here marshalled, would be that the original home of civilisation in Babylonia was the strip of land from Nippur southward to the neighbourhood of Ur, and not, as has sometimes been argued, the region about Babylonia and northward to Sippara; while the latter region is in itself older, it does not seem to have been older as the home of civilised man.
“The ancestors of the civilisation of Babylonia seem to have come from the region between Nippur and what was then the coast of the Persian Gulf. This would accord also with the tradition preserved to us in later sources that civilisation came to Babylonia out of the Persian Gulf. Possibly Eridu, on the Arabian plateau near the western shore and not far from the head of what was then the Persian Gulf, may represent the oldest seat of that civilisation. However that may be, at a very early period Nippur became the centre of civilisation and religion, being founded at a time when everything below Ur probably was still under water. As early as the close, if not the beginning, of the seventh millennium B.C., this strip of land at the head of the then Persian Gulf seems to have been the home of the civilised men, and from here civilisation spread northward.”[f]
THE LAND
The land of the Euphrates and Tigris lies between the Iranian country on the east and the Syrio-Arabian district on the west, from the chain of mountains of the Zagros to the rocky heights of the Lebanon and the Syrian desert. From the mountains of Armenia, in which both rivers have their source, the land gradually declines to the plain, extending from the point of their union to where they fall into the Persian Gulf.
The upper-river beds, winding through a high-lying, sometimes fertile steppe country, are surrounded by heights, where plane and cypress groves alternate with green meads and a rich growth of many-coloured flowers and plants.
As the land grows flatter, these valleys widen to fertile pastures on the river-banks, whilst the wide central plain grows more and more bare and treeless, until it ends at last in a desert trodden only by a few wandering shepherds with their flocks, and full of ostriches, bustards, and wild game. This is known as the between-river (Mesopotamia) district, which extends into a wide plain of rich brown soil, about a hundred miles above the mouth, where the two rivers approach most nearly, and the banks touch the so-called Median wall.
This plain, famous for its uncommon fertility as well as for its historic importance, the “Shinar” Land of the Semites, and the Babylonia of the Greeks, is as rainless as Egypt, and would have dried up into a sandy desert, had not nature and human artifice contrived means of irrigation.
For in the spring, when the snow melts on the Armenian mountains, both rivers overflow their banks and water the thirsty land. This overflowing of the gently moving Euphrates is as regular as that of the Nile; the wide tract of water is unopposed in its inundation of the plain and, like the Nile, it deposits a rich mud soil, and man’s resources are called into play to aid nature by the artificial conduct of water and by means of dams to give the neighbouring district a share in the fertilising irrigation.
But the bed of the Tigris growing decidedly more narrow as it nears the sea, receives the devastating stream from the eastern and northern mountains, and the force of the waters transports the fertile soil from the fields and transforms the plains into a wide swampy land, covered with reeds and rushes.
The inhabitants, therefore, had the double task of stemming the force of the stream to prevent destructive inundations, and of securing a course for the fertilising waters by canals and lakes. So the Babylonian plains were sown with such a number of small and great canals, dams and ditches, that the waterworks and means of irrigation were a source of wonder and astonishment to the whole of antiquity. These canals, cut in every direction and decreasing in size until they were almost rivulets, were furnished with countless machines and pump-works. Many of these canals, which should have been kept free by continuous clearing from the stoppage of mud, were lost in the sand; others, emptying into the Tigris, increased its size, the nearer it approached the sea, while the waters of the Euphrates were decreased through the drain of the canals.[b]
The Tigris and the Euphrates have both flood seasons and carry their waters over a wide extent of country, exactly as the Nile. This fact is so perfectly clear that there can be no doubt concerning it, though Herodotus directly asserts the contrary, saying, “The river does not, as in Egypt, overflow the corn lands of its own accord, but is spread over them by the help of engines.” The rise is indeed not so prolonged as the rise of the Nile, but its influence is, nevertheless, distinctly to be seen. Furthermore, the water was retained in sufficient quantity to supply an irrigation system far back from the river for the grain harvest, after the fall of the river. This entire system is now a vast ruin. The river rises and falls as it wills, and sweeping far over the western bank, turns the country into a morass. The harm of this is both negative and positive. It makes impossible any such great ingathering of grain as existed when this great valley was the world’s granary, and it fills the land with a dangerous miasma, which produces fevers and leaves the inhabitants weak and sickly. There are few instances in the world of a sadder waste of a beautiful and fertile country.[e]
Old writers give the most brilliant descriptions of the wonders of the district. Xenophon praises the quality and quantity of the dates, of the groves of palms which line the banks of the lower course of the two rivers and break the uniformity of the landscape, and are still very productive where the cruel Turkish rule has not changed the garden into a desert.
Herodotus lays particular stress upon the natural fertility of the country, for he writes: “Babylon is, as we know, famed for the best tillage of all lands, producing always two hundredfold of fruit and, in very good years, three hundredfold. The leaves of the wheat and barley are all four fingers wide, and I very well know, but I would rather not say, to what size the millet and seed grow; for I am certain that those who have not been in Babylon, will not believe it. There are few trees, no fig trees, no vine, no olive. They have no oil but what they make from sesame. But palm trees grow all over the country, and the fruit is eaten and honey and wine made from it.”
This country is now almost a desert, without buildings and vegetation, a world of tower-like ruins, which vary the monotony of the vast plains.
“From these heights,” says Ritter in his Geography, “one sees in the solemn stillness of this ruined world the far-reaching wide mirror of the Euphrates, winding majestically through that solitude like a royal pilgrim among the silent ruins of his departed kingdom. The palaces and temples, and the magnificent buildings, have all dropped into dust and ruin; hanging gardens and blooming paradises have fallen into gray, rush-grown, swampy marshes; and even there, where once the captive Israelites hung up their harps in the royal capital, and sang their songs of mourning over fallen Jerusalem, only a few imperishable willows remain, and the silence is unbroken by a voice of joy or mourning.”
Assyria, a mountainous district between the Tigris and the mountainous western boundary of Iran, is not so fertile as Babylonia, but its high position gives it a bracing climate.
Like the southern plains, it has little rain, but it is partially watered by the numerous rivers which flow eastward and westward to the Tigris, and partially by the canals and water conduits, and is rendered tolerably fertile by careful cultivation.
In the south only a few palm trees and cypresses break the monotony of the wide tilled fields, as in the Babylonian plain, but in the centre of the country are Aturia and Arbelitis (Adiabene) where the Upper Zab, the Zabatus or Lycus of classical writers, pours its blue waters into the Tigris, and there are fruitful hills, with protected valleys, full of corn, wine, sesame, figs, olives, and oranges; naphtha streams give forth their precious oil, and farther northward on the borders of Armenia and Media there are mountainous districts, the heights of which are crowned with woods of oak and pine. The eastern district at the foot of the Zagros (Chalonitis) is particularly prized for its wealth of palms, fruit trees, and olives, and the country of Arpakha (Arrapachitis) in the Chaldean mountains is considered the home of Abraham. From hence he descended into the river district of the centre and settled in the land around Kharran.
Northward lies the pasture land of Mesopotamia, whose wide plains became the scenes of bloody battles, and where races and royal families sought to eternalise their transitory power by the foundation of cities, which have mostly vanished, leaving no trace behind them. Like the Assyrian hill country, it gradually declines into grass-grown steppes until, in the south, it becomes a desert whose waterless wastes are trodden only by wandering Arabs.[b]
So far back as we have yet been able to penetrate, we find in the southern part of Mesopotamia a number of petty independent kingdoms, governed from their capital cities. Our present knowledge of this land and its inhabitants may be briefly summed up.
After the river Euphrates, with countless windings and sharp falls, has cleft the Syrio-Mesopotamian plain where it fertilises the districts contiguous on its banks, it approaches to within a few miles of the Tigris, and both streams water a completely flat plain, intersected by numerous rivers and canals, and, for the most part, flooded by the Euphrates in the summer.
The numerous districts on both sides of the lower Tigris and west of the Euphrates which are out of reach of the irrigation have a desert character, as rain is as rare here as in Egypt. But the irrigated land was proportionately fertile; at least it was so in antiquity and the Middle Ages. The district at the mouth of the streams was of a marshy character with numerous swamps and lakes. In olden times the confluence of both rivers, at latitude about 31° N., formed a long narrow bay which has now been filled up by their deposits. The Arabian Desert lies at the west of the Euphrates, or rather on its western arm, the Pallakopas. The country on the east of the Tigris rises gradually to the wild mountainous boundary of the Iranian highlands, which descends in terrace form to the Tigris, to which it sends numerous rivers, which in earlier times flowed direct into the sea.
At the present time the greater part of this district is a swampy desert traversed only by wandering tribes, whilst in antiquity, and again at the time of the Caliphs, it was made one of the most fertile countries in the world by dint of careful irrigation, regulation, and the construction of dams and canals.[18]
The most ancient population of this country formed several closely related races which had no connection with the other nations of Western Asia, but in the course of historical evolution they lost their language and nationality and were submerged in the neighbouring races.
In the land of Makan, the district of the mouth of the two chief rivers, were the Sumerians (Sumer, with its chief city of Ur, on the Euphrates); and in the northern part of the river country (Melucha land) from Erech, now Warka, upwards to the borders of the Mesopotamian steppes, lived the Accadians, so called from Agade, their capital, north of Babylon. To the east of the Tigris, far into the pathless districts of the Zagros Mountains, dwelt the warlike races of the Kossæans (Assyrian Kasshu). From their home, mode of life and character, they were evidently the predecessors of the modern Kurds, who belong, by language, to the Iranians. Next came the land of Elam, or Anshan, as it was called in the language of the country, the district of the rivers Choaspes and Eulæos, called by the Greeks Kissian, with the capital Shushan, the Susa of the Greeks.
Whilst the Kossæans were always a wild mountainous people, and the inhabitants of the plains of Elam, although they had a firmly established state organization, were dependent on their western neighbours for culture, Sumer and Accad (i.e. Babylonia) possessed an ancient and a complete, independently evolved culture, which, although second to that of the Lower Nile in innate worth and exclusive evolution, perhaps exceeded it in historical influence. The surplus of water from inundations was distributed over the country by means of canals and dykes. Thus ensued a better-ordered life of the state from the closer union of the different provinces. The temples of the great gods formed the centres of the different districts from which, as with the Egyptians, the cities of Babylonia arose first everywhere.
In Ur (now El-Mugheir) there was a temple of the moon-god Sin (or Nannar). In Eridu (now Abu Shahrein) was the temple of Ea, the ancient god of the ocean, and in Larsa (now Senkereh) that of the sun-god Babbar (or Shamash), the lord of the city. The latter was worshipped in like manner in Sippar (now Abu Habba), whilst in the neighbouring Agade (Accad) the goddess Anunit was the deity of the city. On the south lay the sacred “Gate of the Gods” Ka-Dingira, the Semitic Babel (Babylon), the capital of the country. [With it was later united the city of Borsippa.] The city Erech (Orchoë, now Warka), the sanctuary of the goddess Nana (Ishtar), was held in special veneration. North of Larsa was Girsu; on the canal Shatt-el-Khai was probably Lagash (now Telloh); north of this the city of Isin; near it was for a time the chief city of all Babylonia, Nippur, which was the home of the god Bel. It is here that the excavations of the University of Pennsylvania have been so fruitful. About fifteen miles northeast of Babylon was Kutha (now Tel-Ibrahim), whose god was Nergal; near Kutha was Kish. In the northern limit of Babylonia were Dur-Kurigalzu, nearly opposite the present Baghdad; and Upi [or Opis.]
It seems therefore that the lay dynasty arose mainly from the priesthood of these temples, for the kings are universally found in closest relation to the city deities, in whose honour they built or restored the temples, and down to their last day the priestly dignity ranked foremost in the title of the Babylonian kings.[c]
ORIGINAL PEOPLES OF BABYLON: THE SUMERIANS
It is coming to be a common agreement among Assyriologists that the original peoples of Babylon were of a race that was not Semitic. Just what it was these scholars are not yet prepared to say; although the inclination of belief is that it was an Indo-European race and most likely of the Turanian family. An attempt has recently been made to connect the aborigines with the Ugro-Finnish branch of the Ural-Altaic family, but with what success it is still too soon to say. But whatever these people, the Sumerians, may have been, they occupied the land of Babylonia until dislodged by a great wave of Semitic migration. This fact has not gone unchallenged, and from the ranks of Philology there has come a strong contention for a Semitic origin of the Babylonians, and the assertion that the Sumerian texts “do not represent a real language, but a kind of cipher written according to an artificial system of grammar.” And throughout the following discussion, written by Professor Hommel, it must not be forgotten that Professor Halévy, the originator of the theory of the Sumerian texts summarised above, still champions his contention and adduces evidence for it that seems to him conclusive.[a]
It has often been observed that southern Babylonia was originally the proper home of the Sumerians, while as early as the beginning of the fourth millennium before the Christian era the Semitic Babylonians were already settled in northern Babylonia, and, as is proved by the Naram-Sin inscription and several dating from the time of Sargon, his father (circa 3800 B.C.) had already acquired the Sumerian character (and, by inference, the Sumerian civilisation). In the case of southern Babylonia, the discoveries at Telloh have put us in possession of a number of sculptures—some of them in relief, others severed heads of statues, dating from the period between circa 4000 B.C., or earlier, and circa 3000. These present two different types. One is characterised by a rounded head with slightly prominent cheek bones, always beardless, and usually with clean-shaven crown. To this type certainly belong the representations of vanquished foes on the archaic sculpture, known as the Vulture stele, though the primitive method of representing the brow and nose by a single slightly curved line gives a merely superficial resemblance to the Semitic cast of countenance. The other is a longer-skulled (dolichocephalous) type, with thick, black hair and long, flowing beard.
It is certainly by no mere accident that the heads of the Telloh statues, most of which are supposed to represent kings, are of the first-mentioned (Sumerian) type, while the bronze votive offerings, which likewise bear the name of Gudea, are carried, as is evident at a glance, by Semites. And as there were Semites among the subjects of Gudea, where the Sumerians were the dominant race, so we find the same Semitic type clearly marked in the figures round the stem of a vase; while the party of musicians, who are seen approaching with submissive gestures on the fragment of a bas-relief, which probably also dates from the reign of Gudea, must likewise be of Semitico-Babylonian descent.
Fortunately, ancient Babylonian art gives us the opportunity, not merely of studying the wholly non-Semitic language of the earliest inhabitants of Babylonia in lengthy bilingual original inscriptions such as many of the statues of Gudea bear, but of seeing with our own eyes the bodily semblance of this singular people, and so observing the striking correspondence of non-Semitic elements in speech and facial type. In this connection we would draw attention to an ancient Babylonian statue of a female figure, now in the Louvre at Paris. We may confidently assume that the woman represented is a Sumerian and not a Semitic Babylonian; and it may thus be regarded as a splendid counterpart to the Gudea statues, which by the whole character of workmanship it calls to mind. Whether we have here a queen or some other lady of high rank (the supposition that she is a goddess appears to be excluded by the absence of the head-dress goddesses are wont to wear) cannot, of course, be determined with certainty. It is only natural that various mixed types should have developed in course of time, especially in northern Babylonia; and many of the faces we meet with—on the seal-cylinders more particularly—may be representations of such.
That the Sumerians, like the Semites, were not an autochthonous race in Babylonia follows from the condition of the soil, which had to be rendered fit for agriculture, and indeed, for human habitation, by a system of canals. Whence, then, did the Sumerians originally come, before they took possession of the swampy Euphrates valley and settled there?
There is a word in Sumerian, “Kar” (Turkish yer), which means “country” (as does the Turkish word). But in Sumerian it has also come to signify “mountain” and likewise “east” (since the mountains lie only in the east of Babylonia)—meanings which the Turkish word does not bear. This is, therefore, a clear indication that, even after the Sumerians had settled in Babylonia, the range on the Median frontier and what lay behind it always passed with them for their true country, the original home whence they had come. There is also extreme significance in the fact that they were originally unacquainted with both the lion and the horse, as also with wine (and consequently with the vine) and the palm tree; for they had no names for them, and called the lion “great dog” (nug magh), the horse “ass of the mountains” or “of the east,” wine the “drink of life” (gish-tin, from gash-tin), and the palm “tree of Magan” (mis-magan), or “the upright” (ügin, in its Semitic form mus-ukannu).
THE SEMITIC BABYLONIANS
By far the greater part of Babylonian literature, as well as the many official documents of the kings of Babylon (in the more restricted sense of the term) and Asshur is written in a language which was clearly perceived, as early as 1849, to be intimately related to the so-called Semitic languages of Anterior Asia. The relationship is but confirmed by the type presented to us in various statues and sculptures in relief, apart, of course, from the Sumerian sculptures of the very oldest period; though in Babylonia we frequently meet with a hybrid type, yet even in this the Semitic element is unmistakable. In the heads of Assyrian figures the Semitic characteristics are very strikingly marked. But since the Babylonians and Assyrians were a single nation as far as language is concerned, and differed in blood only by the fact that there seems to have been a strong admixture of some foreign element in the former, while the latter presents a strongly marked and far purer racial type, it may be taken as proved that this type is that of the Semitic races, a conclusion which is doubly vouched for by language and by facial conformation. It has already been remarked in the foregoing chapter, that (unlike the Sumerians) the Semitic population of Babylonia, which we meet with in northern Babylonia as early as 3800 B.C., and which predominated there from 2500 B.C. (or even earlier) onwards, was distinguished by an abundant growth of black hair and long beards.
A Religious Procession
From the circumstance that in the third millennium before the Christian era the old Babylonian kings who resided in Middle Babylonia (particularly at Nisin and Erech) and in Ur and Larsa bore Semitic names, though the inscriptions that have come down to us from their reigns are written entirely in Sumerian, we are probably justified in concluding that in Middle Babylonia, where the dominant Sumerian population of the south and the dominant Semitic population of the north must have come most directly into contact, the interfusion of the two races was at that time taking place on a very large scale. On the other hand, in northern Babylonia, where Sumerians had lived from the very earliest period, but had never risen to any political importance as compared with the Semitic immigrants, the two must have lived strictly apart down to 2000 B.C. (the latest date of which we can be certain), for not long before that time colonists went out from northern Babylonia and founded the empire of Assyria. The far greater purity of the Semitic type among the Assyrians, together with the absolute identity of their language and civilisation with that of Babylonia, leads inevitably to the inference that the intermixture of Sumerian blood with Semitic in North Babylonia had either not begun, or had as yet proceeded but a very little way.
An Assyrian God
Tested thus by philology, the Assyrio-Babylonian language, together with Canaanitish (under which title we include Phœnician, Hebrew, and Moabitish), Aramaic (Syrian, the so-called Biblical Chaldee, Palmyrene, etc.), and Arabic (and under this heading not only the Sabæan tongue of southern Arabia, but the Ethiopian and Amharic languages of Abyssinia, should be placed), belong to a single well-defined group which we have long been accustomed to call Semitic (cf. Stade’s Geschichte des Volkes Israel) and the races which spoke and speak them are known to ethnology as Semites. From the remotest antiquity down to modern times these races have maintained a singular purity of blood and racial type; the Canaanites represented in Egyptian tombs of the XIIth Dynasty, the Assyrian heads in the bas-reliefs of Nineveh, the features of Jews at the present time living in the midst of Indo-Germanic nations, and the Bedouins who to-day roam the Syrian and Arabian deserts, all exhibit a family likeness so remarkable that we see that throughout the whole course of history they can have mingled but little with alien races. The question of how and from what causes the Semitic type in Assyria came to be preserved in greater purity than in Babylonia itself, whence the Assyrians emigrated, is one that has been briefly touched upon above.
Under these circumstances it is only to be expected that the constant type of character proper to other Semites should be discoverable, or, at least, in part recognisable in the Babylonians and Assyrians; although we are bound to take into account the fact that even in later days the Hebrews retained much of their old nomadic habits, that the Aramæans of the Assyrian period were for the most part nomadic, and that the Arabs are so still; while from the very beginning of their appearance in history the Semitic inhabitants of the regions about the Euphrates and Tigris are a home-dwelling people on a high level of civilisation. Many traits of primitive national character tend to be obliterated or modified by such an advance to a superior stage of civilisation, while others, foreign to the brother or kindred races which remained longer or still remain in the nomadic stage, are developed.
In the Assyrians and Babylonians, as a matter of fact, we must meet with so much that recalls instinctively their kin with those whom the Bible and universal history have long rendered us familiar that it offers the fullest confirmation of the conclusions arrived at by a study of their language and physical type. It is very difficult to compress into a few words a correct description of Semitic national character.
Siege of a City (Nineveh)
Eduard Meyer, in his otherwise admirable Geschichte des Alterthums, says, “A very matter of fact habit of thought, keen observation of detail, a calculating intellect ever directed to practical aims, keeping the creations of the imagination completely under control and averse from any freer flight of the spirit into the Illimitable, such are the characteristics that distinguish the Arabs and Phœnicians, Hebrews and Assyrians,”—a judgment which, though in the main correct, is nevertheless not exhaustive. [Some of Professor Meyer’s other estimates are less satisfactory to Professor Hommel, who quotes the following with entire disapproval, claiming that they quite misrepresent the true character of the Semitic mind: “This same abominably matter-of-fact habit of thought, which dominates the Koran and by means of which it wrought its effect, lies at the root of the human sacrifices of the Canaanites, the religious phrases of the Assyrians, and, finally, of Yahvism” (i.e. the religion of the Old Testament). “The relation of the individual to the god is regarded in a strictly rationalistic and calculating spirit. An ethical or mystical relation to the Deity is wholly alien to the Semitic mind.”] Compare these and other passages of the same sort [Professor Hommel continues] with the fact that, on the contrary, a monotheistic tendency stronger than in any other race in the world, and combining with it the idea of a heartfelt surrender of the whole man to the Deity, was one of the principal characteristics of the Semitic mind as a whole (though most highly developed among the Israelites).
It is true that the cruelty of the Assyrians to foreign prisoners of war, which often shocks us and estranges our sympathies from the whole nation, recall certain instances of a like defect among the ancient Israelites too strongly not to tempt us to think of it as a Semitic propensity; but nevertheless these are mere excesses and excrescences which must not be set to the account of national character. The Semite is not naturally cruel. If he were so, the trait must have come out most strongly in the Bedouin Arabs, who for centuries have remained at the barbaric stage in religious matters; whereas this is not so, but rather the reverse. With many races (some of them Indo-Germanic) of whom the most unspeakable horrors and acts of violence are recorded in the course of history, sheer lust of blood and torture has been the motive of such actions (or rather crimes), while the cruelties just referred to sprang from the dark side (revolting, it must be confessed) of a national virtue: true zeal for the Holiest.
THE ORIGINAL HOME OF THE BABYLONIAN SEMITE
On such questions as the degree of kinship in which the Babylonians and Assyrians stood to other Semites, their original home, their last halting-places, and consequently the sequence of Semitic migrations, Eduard Meyer holds the same views as the famous orientalist, Sprenger, to wit, that Arabia, i.e. the desert as distinct from the arable land, used from the very earliest times to send forth the surplus of her predatory and rapacious Bedouin population to the great pastoral districts in the vicinity, that is, to Palestine, the plain of Mesopotamia (Aram), and, in times long out of mind, to northern Babylonia also; that they were, so to speak, deposited there from time to time, and that all Semitic nations whom we meet with in a state of civilisation in the course of subsequent history have come into being in this manner.
“But this ingenious theory has been directly refuted by later investigations set on foot by A. von Kremer, and followed up by Ign. Guidi at Rome, and, more especially, by myself, with a view to discovering what domestic animals and cultivated plants were known to the original Semitic stock. By the year 1879 Guidi and I had come independently and, to some extent, by different ways to the conclusion that the original home of the Semites could not possibly be Arabia, but must be sought farther to the northeast. In the treatise, Die sprachgeschichtliche Stellung des Babylonisch-Assyrischen, I succeeded in proving further that the people who afterwards became the Babylonians and Assyrians must have separated from the common stock in some part of central Asia where the lion was indigenous, and emigrated into northern Babylonia through one of the passes of the Medio-Elamite range certainly no later than the fifth millennium B.C. The rest, however, came by way of the southern shore of the Caspian Sea—probably towards the end of the fourth millennium and at all events later than the Hamites of northern Babylonia—and entered what was afterwards Aramæan Mesopotamia from the north, then occupied it, and spread gradually from thence to Syria, Palestine, and Arabia.” (Hommel.) So, by subsequent offshoots and migrations, they became the Aramæans, Canaanites, and Arabs.
This theory furnishes, on the one hand, the first satisfactory explanation of many points in which Babylonian development, in language and various respects, differs from that of other Semites. On the other hand, it sets the large amount they have in common in a most interesting light, since it proves to be the primitive heritage of the Semitic race.
The whole question of the manner of Semitic migrations and offshoots is one that cannot be a matter of indifference to the historian, as may be objected in some quarters; and for a right understanding of the history of Babylonia in the earliest times, it is of the utmost consequence that we should know whether the Semitic Babylonians were a distinct branch, as compared with their brethren, whose relations among themselves were much closer, and whether the beginning of their migration had led their steps through the land where grew the olive, fig, vine, and other cultivated plants not to be found in Babylonia; and lastly, it is imperative for a right comprehension of the history of Semitic civilisation to arrive at a decision on these questions. The fact that we find in the Assyrio-Babylonian language no trace of the common Semitic name (found in Aramaic, Canaanitish, and Arabic) for the three plants just mentioned, and others of the same nature, constitutes, together with weighty philological considerations, the positive argument in favour of the theory I have set forth: namely, that the route by which the Semitic settlers of the lower Euphrates came did not lie through regions where these plants are indigenous, but that they migrated in advance of the rest of the Semites straight from the east or northeast into anterior Asia and so to their new home of Babylonia.[d]
FOOTNOTES
[16] [Compare, however, Professor Halévy’s Introductory Essay.]
[17] [See Sketch of Semitic Origins, by G. A. Barton, Ph.D. New York and London, 1902.]
[18] [This entire system is now a vast ruin, according to Rogers, who adds: “The great valley has a climate which appears little fitted to produce men of energy and force, for the temperature over its entire surface is very high in the summer season. It is, however, altogether probable that in the period of the ancient history neither the heat nor the sand was such a menace.… During the period of the glory of Babylon these sand waves (from Arabia) had certainly not gone beyond the Euphrates, and they could hardly have reached it.”]
CHAPTER II. OLD BABYLONIAN HISTORY
We have here the mere dust of history, rather than history itself; here an isolated individual makes his appearance in the record of his name, to vanish when we attempt to lay hold of him; there the stem of a dynasty which breaks abruptly off, pompous preambles, devout formulas, dedications of objects or buildings; here and there the account of some battle, or the indication of some foreign country with which relations of friendship or commerce were maintained—these are the scanty materials out of which to construct a connected narrative.—Maspero.
Recent researches in old Babylonia have brought to light a very large quantity of historical documents which tell a most important story, inasmuch as they have to do with the very remotest periods of antiquity. At Telloh, the site of the ancient city of Shirpurla, the French explorers have found an abundance of interesting material, while the Americans have exhumed, and are still exhuming, at Nippur, a mass of documents which bids fair to rival in quantity the voluminous records from the libraries of the Assyrian kings. In a single season’s excavating, Mr. Haynes has very recently brought to light thousands of inscribed tablets, some of which date from a period as long anterior to the time of the great Assyrian kings as that time is to our own.
The historian is to be particularly congratulated in that many of these ancient documents have the most direct bearing upon his studies. It has already been pointed out that the Babylonians were much more amply endowed with historical sense than were the Egyptians. They had a tolerably full appreciation of the importance of chronology, and though, like the Egyptians, they lacked a fixed era from which to reckon, they, to some extent, compensated for this defect by the ample series of king lists and “synchronisms” which various monarchs caused to be written. Several of these chronological documents have been restored to us by the various excavators, and, thanks to these, the outlines of considerable periods of early Babylonian history are now more accurately known than many much more recent epochs of occidental history.
Unfortunately, these ancient lists consist, for the most part, of tables of names having strange and unfamiliar sounds. To the average reader these names are necessarily repellant. Such words as E-anna-tum, Urumush or Alusharshid, Samsu-iluna, Kadashman-Kharbe cannot well be otherwise than mystifying when unconnected with any vivid sequence of tangible events. And for the most part the names of these earliest rulers of Babylonia stand, in the present state of our knowledge, as mere names, with only here and there a suggestion of tangibility. Now and then we hear that a bas-relief of a certain king has been preserved, as in the case of one Ur-Nina, “builder of an edifice attached to the temple of Nina at Lagash,”[19] and in such a case the mind conjures a curious world of associations at thought of an actual likeness, real or alleged, being preserved for a period of more than six thousand years. The king whose image is thus tangibly brought to view after all these centuries of oblivion must seem a very real personage, however little else is known of him or of his achievements.
Again, in the case of certain other monarchs, there are brief records of campaigns and conquests against neighbouring peoples whose very names, perhaps, have been preserved to us only through this incidental mention. In such cases the mind is stimulated to the formation of vague pictures of unknown peoples of that remote era, and the least imaginative person must feel a bewildered sense of wonderment as to what these peoples were like, whence they came, and whither they vanished. But for that matter the Babylonian kings themselves, and the peoples over whom they ruled, seem shadowy and mysterious enough, to say nothing of their neighbours. The present knowledge does not by any means suffice to give us a full list of the names of these early monarchs.
In all probability there are lists still in existence buried in the ruins of various cities, as yet unexplored, that in time will restore to us a reasonably full record of those long stretches of time which now seem so hazy. In numerous places the excavations are still going on, discoveries are daily being made, undeciphered material is being read; in a word, new chapters of this oldest past are being almost daily brought to light. Whatever is written to-day regarding early Babylonian history must then, in the nature of the case, be subject to possible revision to-morrow. At least this is true to the extent that additions are sure to be made to the present incomplete knowledge in the near future. It does not follow, however, that the knowledge of the present will be altogether superseded. Such king lists as have been already deciphered, covering in the aggregate considerable periods of time, may be depended upon, in general, as accurate and permanent records, which will be supplemented rather than supplanted by the new records of future discovery. Meantime, we must be content with the glimpses into here and there an epoch, and with the citation of here and there a name, covering as best we may some three or four thousand years of Babylonian history in a few meagre chapters.
Tantalising as it is to catch such mere glimpses into realms that must be fascinating could we but know their fuller history, there is at least a certain consolation in the thought that our generation is the first within the past two thousand years to gain even a glimpse of these epochs of history. Even in classical times nothing was known of early Babylonia: such reminiscences of Mesopotamian greatness as were preserved pertained to the later Assyrian history and to New Babylonia. And the Assyrians and New Babylonians themselves were possessed of but little information regarding their remote ancestors, whose records were, in the main, as completely hidden from them as they have been from all succeeding generations of men until our own time.
To co-ordinate properly the great mass of information, unearthed of late years concerning the numerous states that existed in Babylonia in the earliest historic period, is the task that Dr. Hugo Radau has undertaken with great success. The following extract from his recently published work[20] will give the reader the latest knowledge of these petty kingdoms, and enable him to understand how the greater ones absorbed the lesser, and how the way was thus paved for the union of all Babylonia under one ruler.[a]
THE BEGINNINGS OF HISTORY
[ca. 4500 B.C.]
The oldest king of Babylonia of whom we have any record, is Enshagkushanna, whose date we have placed before 4500 B.C. He calls himself “lord of Kengi,” the southern part of Babylonia. As to his nationality, whether he was a so-called “Sumerian” or a “Semite,” we have no means of knowing. Besides “lord of Kengi,” he seems to have had another title, viz. “king of … “ The lacuna probably contained the names of the capital of the kingdom. He must have waged war against Kish in northern Babylonia, which city he terms “wicked of heart.” He was the victor, and presented the spoil to “Enlil, king of the lands.” Enlil—the later Bel—was the chief god in Nippur; Nippur accordingly was called En-lil-ki, the “city of Enlil.” Hence Enlil of Nippur seems to have been the god who wielded the chief influence over the inhabitants of Early Babylonia. From inscriptions of certain patesis[21] of Shirpurla, as well as from those of Lugalzaggisi, we know that this temple was under the control of the king, who called himself accordingly patesi-gal, “the great patesi.” But it also had its own “chief local administrator,” the dam-kar-gal, who in his turn had several minor priests or patesis under him. The cult of this god seems to have been well arranged; the king, being the summus episcopus, had a host of other officers (priests) under him, who exercised the ordinary functions of the so-called priesthood of Bel. Few as the historical notices are, yet they enable us to get an insight into the condition of the land and of the people at this remote time. They show us that a struggle went on between the south (Kengi) and the north (Kish) which struggle lasted undoubtedly for several centuries.
Prominent cities at this time were the capital of Kengi, i.e. Shirpurla-Girsu, as we shall see later on; not Erech (Hilprecht), Nippur, and Kish.
It is necessary, however, before tracing the different steps in the development of Kish, to turn our attention to a kingdom called in the inscriptions “Shirpurla.” The inscriptions of the rulers of this kingdom give us an impression of a power and might which presupposes centuries for its development. All that we know of its art and civilisation tends in the same direction.
THE RULERS OF SHIRPURLA
[ca. 4500-4100 B.C.]
Shirpurla is the modern Tel-Loh (or Telloh) where De Sarzec found the inscriptions relating to the rulers of this dynasty. It is situated fifteen hours north of Mugheir, on the east side of the Shatt-el-Khai, and about twelve hours east of Warka. At this early time the city of Shirpurla seems to have included four component parts, viz. Girsu, Nina, Uruazagga, Erim. Thus it happened that one and the same king might call himself either “king of Shirpurla” or “king of Girsu.” These suburbs were built by various rulers in honour of their favourite gods or goddesses. Whether Shirpurla is the right reading, or Sirgulla (Hommel), we do not know. According to Pinches, Guide to the Kuyunjik Gallery, p. 7, London, 1883, and Babyl. Records, iii, p. 24, Shirpurla may read Lagash, which reading is adopted throughout by Jensen in K. B. iii. We retain the old reading Shirpurla, because this writing occurs most frequently in the monuments.
The rulers of Shirpurla may conveniently be grouped under four divisions:
(1) The dynasty of Urukagina—beginning with this ruler or his predecessor(s) and ending with Lugalshuggur and his successor(s).
(2) The dynasty of Ur-Nina, ending with Lummadur.
(3) The patesis between Lummadur and Ur-Ba’u.
(4) Ur-Ba’u and his successors, ending with Gala-Lama.
To Urukagina, the oldest member of the first dynasty of Shirpurla, we have assigned the approximate date of 4500 B.C. His greatness consisted not so much in successful wars against the neighbouring cities, as in securing a peaceful administration for his country and city. As “king of Girsu-Shirpurla,” he devoted his energy to the building of different storehouses, that should take up “the abundance of the countries,” and erected temples for different gods—thus showing his devotion and piety. He built “for Nina the beloved canal, the canal Nina-ki-tum-a,” and thus supplied his city with water. Bel of Nippur still exercises the highest influence. Ningirsu (“the lord of Girsu”) is the chief city-god, under whose control the capital stands. He is the Gud or “hero” of Enlil. In somewhat later inscriptions, Ningirsu has the title gud-lig-ga, “the strong hero” of Enlil. Many other gods are mentioned in his inscriptions.
To this oldest dynasty of Shirpurla belongs also a certain En-gegal (“lord of abundance” or “very rich”). He, like Urukagina, calls himself “lugal Pur-shir-la,” “king of Shirpurla.” Besides this he bears the proud title “lugal ki-gal-la,” “the great king,” and terms himself shib (dingir) Nin-gir-su, “the priest of Ningirsu,” a title similar to that of patesi-gal. From the title “the great king” we may venture to conclude that he, unlike his predecessor, must have carried his arms successfully against his enemies, who had previously succeeded in plundering Shirpurla; but fate decreed that his royal capital should be reduced to the seat of a patesi. Kish, having been defeated some time before by Enshagkushanna, seems to have acquired new strength. Its king, Mesilim, became lord paramount of Shirpurla, thus reducing its rulers to mere patesis. The name of only one of these earliest patesis is preserved to us, i.e. Lugal-shug-gur, who is mentioned in the inscription of Mesilim. The sovereignty of Kish over Shirpurla does not seem to have lasted very long. Shirpurla regained its former glory under a new dynasty, namely, that of Ur-Nina.
[ca. 4300-4200 B.C.]
With Ur-Nina begins a new dynasty, probably the mightiest of early Babylonia, the duration of its sovereignty extending from 4300 B.C. to 4100 B.C. Looking at the art and the inscriptions of these kings, we cannot help thinking that in Shirpurla civilisation must have been far advanced, so far advanced as to force upon us the conclusion that “several centuries have elapsed before men could reach this stage of civilisation.” The greater number of these art treasures are preserved in the Louvre; the inscriptions found on them have been published in Découvertes en Chaldée and in the Revue d’Assyriologie.
The first king of this dynasty was Ur-Nina (servant of Nina). The dynasty of Urukagina must have been reduced to mere nothingness by the kings of Kish, so that Ur-Nina found it easy to take possession of the throne. He must have been of an old family, for he mentions the name of his father and grandfather, who have the title neither of patesi nor of king. He, like his predecessor seems to have been great in peace. He built temples and various storehouses. A passage in his inscriptions where he records the building of the “wall of Shirpurla,” suggests that the old enemy, Kish, was still troublesome, so that he found it necessary to fortify his capital against the deadly enemies from the north.
The son of Ur-Nina, who succeeded him upon the throne of Shirpurla, was Akurgal. As yet no inscriptions of this monarch have been found. All that is known about him is gathered either from the inscriptions of his son (Eannatum) or from those of his father (Ur-Nina). In these inscriptions eight sons of Ur-Nina are mentioned. If we classify them according to their height, and take this as a basis for determining their age, we would get the following result:
UR-NINA
(1) Lid-da, (2) Mu-ri-kur-ta, (3) A-ni-kur-ra, (4) Lugal-shir,
(5) A-kur-gal, (6) Nun-pad, (7) E-ud-bu, (8) Nina-ku-tur-a.
It is remarkable that the first-born, Lidda, is mentioned in only one inscription. Did he never succeed his father upon the throne of Shirpurla? Did Akurgal, his fifth son, in preference to all the others, inherit the royal sceptre, and thus become the immediate successor of Ur-Nina? Interesting as these questions are, we are yet, with the means on hand, unable to decide them. This much only we know, that both Eannatum and Enannatum I, call themselves, “son of Akurgal.” Another interesting fact is that Eannatum, in his “Stèle des Vautours,” calls his father lugal (“king”) of Shirpurla, while in his other inscriptions he only terms him “patesi of Shirpurla.” Not very much can be concluded from this, because even Ur-Nina is styled by Eannatum “patesi of Shirpurla.” The translation of this latter passage, is not yet certain. Ur-Nina’s successor, however,—either Lidda or Akurgal,—may have lost the title “king” in consequence of an unsuccessful war. Eannatum, on the other hand, being more successful, resumes again for a short time the title “king” after his victory over Kish. This latter fact is very important. Eannatum expressly tells us that Innanna gave him the nam-lugal Kish-ki, “the kingship of Kish,” while as ruler of Shirpurla he was only patesi. The state of affairs then was as follows:
Ur-Nina, a usurper, was able to constitute himself king of Shirpurla in consequence of the weakness of the patesis of Shirpurla who preceded him, they having been reduced by the kings of Kish to complete powerlessness. Ur-Nina’s successors, however, were not able to retain the title of their father. Was it internal disharmony between the sons of Ur-Nina which caused this? They lost the title “king,” and had to accept that of patesi. Undoubtedly they were forced to do this by one of the successors of Mesilim, i.e. by a king of Kish. Eannatum—a great hero—was able to overcome the old enemy Kish. He even was so fortunate as to add to his old title, “patesi of Shirpurla,” that of “king” (sc. of “Kish”) and by a stretch of this latter title he may have also called himself “king of Shirpurla.” The successors of Eannatum called themselves, and are called without exception “patesis of Shirpurla.”
[ca. 4200 B.C.]
After these preliminary remarks about the titles of the different members of the dynasty of Ur-Nina, we now turn our attention to Eannatum (i.e. “The house of heaven is stable”), the son of Akurgal himself. Whether he reigned contemporaneously with his brother Enannatum I or not, we cannot tell. The fact that the sons of Enannatum I succeeded upon the throne of Shirpurla makes it reasonable to suppose that Eannatum preceded Enannatum I. This latter ruler seems to have played only a minor rôle in early Babylonia history. Only two of his inscriptions have so far come down to us. Eannatum, his brother, on the contrary, is the greatest of the whole dynasty. The deeds of this monarch have been preserved to us on different monuments, among which the “Stèle des Vautours” is the most important. In order to obtain a full conception of his time we must compare this “Stèle” with the so-called “Cone” of Entemena. Those monuments in connection with the Galet A, give us the following interesting piece of history:
The god of Shirpurla (Ningirsu) and the god of Gishban, at the instigation of Enlil (god of Nippur), agree to settle the boundaries between their respective territories (Cone i, 1-7). Mesilim, king of Kish,—a contemporary of Lugalshuggur, patesi of Shirpurla,—in the quality of lord paramount of Shirpurla, corroborates the result of this “settling of boundaries,” and erects a statue on the junction of the two territories, to mark out the boundaries of the territory of Shirpurla on the one side and of Gishban on the other (Cone i, 8-12). Ush, however, a certain ambitious patesi of Gishban, is not satisfied with this decision. He takes away the statue which Mesilim had erected, and then invades Shirpurla, undoubtedly to extend his territory beyond the boundary previously fixed (13-21). A war between Shirpurla and Gishban ensues.
Mesilim, who feels dishonoured by this action of Ush, takes the side of Shirpurla and defeats Gishban (22-31). Gishban in course of time again becomes restless. It invades, under its patesi Gunammide, the territory of Shirpurla, and more specifically the Guedin, a district sacred to Ningirsu. “Gunammide, the patesi of Gishban, according to the command of his god … the Guedin, the beloved territory of Ningirsu he destroyed.” Eannatum, after having fortified Shirpurla sufficiently (“the wall of Uruazagga he built”), and having led his armies victoriously against Elam and Gishgal, feels himself strong enough to deal a deadly (?) blow at Gishban. “Gishban he put under the yoke, twenty of its dead ones he buried.” Having done this, he restores the sacred territory, the Guedin, to Ningirsu; concludes a treaty with Enakalli, (one of) the successor(s) of Gunammide; digs a canal “from the great river (i.e. the Euphrates?) to the Guedin,” and makes the Gishbanites swear never to invade the sacred territory of Ningirsu again, nor to trespass this boundary.
“In the future time the territory of Ningirsu, when (the Gishbanites) should invade it again, the dyke and the canal, if they should trespass it, the statue, if they should take it away—at that time when they invade it, then the sa-shush-gal (i.e. Eannatum) of Utu, the powerful king by whom they have sworn, shall rise against Gishban.”
“The Stèle des Vautours” has for its main object the commemoration of this treaty with Enakalli, patesi of Gishban, after the latter city had been defeated by Eannatum. But Eannatum was not satisfied with this; he imposes a heavy tribute upon Gishban, consisting of one karu of grain for Nina and one karu for Ningirsu, besides 144,000 (?) great karu. (Cone ii, 19 ff.) After having reduced Gishban to tranquillity, Eannatum also carries his victorious weapons against Erech (Warka) and Ur (the Ur of the Chaldeans), Ki-Utu (Larsa?) and Az (on the Persian Gulf)—the patesi of which latter city he kills—against Melimme and Arua. These latter cities were all in the neighbourhood of Shirpurla. Last of all he crushes and defeats Zuzu, king of Ukh. But even this does not exhaust the record of his victories. He becomes king of Kish—Kish, which for so long had itself been sovereign over Shirpurla. How this victory was accomplished is not evident from the inscriptions so far extant. Probably at some future time we may find an account of this war.
Eannatum was not only a hero in war, but also a wise administrator. He not only renewed three suburbs of his capital, one of which—Uruazagga—he even surrounded by a wall, but also improved the condition of Shirpurla itself by digging different canals, which he consecrated to his god Ningirsu: the Kishedin, which probably marked the boundary between the Guedin and Gishban, and which the Gishbanites had to swear never to cross; the Lummagirnuntashagazaggipadda along the territory of Ningirsu; and the Lummadimshar.
Urukagina, we have seen, was the first to build a canal, viz. one for Nina, which he called Nina-ki-tum-a. In the Cone of Entemena are also mentioned the canal Lummasirta, the Imdubba, and the Namnundakiggara. Here, then, we have the beginning of the most characteristic feature of Babylonia. Babylonia becomes the “land of canals,” such as the Psalmist had in mind when he wrote that touching psalm, “By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept.” Further, Eannatum was not unmindful of his duty to the gods. He confesses that all that he is and that he has comes from his gods. Accordingly, he shows his gratitude by erecting sanctuaries for Enlil, Ninkharsag, Ningirsu, and Utu, and by restoring old buildings, which had been erected by his predecessors in honour of the gods, among which is to be found the Tirash.
In spite of the solemn promise of Gishban never to invade the territory of Shirpurla again, or to pass over the boundary canal, it very soon—probably at the end of the reign of Eannatum, or better, at the beginning of that of Enannatum I—becomes rebellious as before. It invades the territory of Girsu, under the leadership of a certain Urlumma, patesi of Gishban, passes over the boundary canals which Eannatum had made, removes the steles erected on those canals in honour of Ningirsu, casts them into the fire, and even destroys the sanctuaries which Eannatum had built on one of these canals (i.e. the Namnundakigarra) in honour of Enlil, Ninkharsag, Ningirsu, and Utu, and lays waste the country. Enannatum promptly arises to chastise “those dogs” who had dared to break their solemn promise. Whether this battle was decisive or not, is not evident. It seems, however, that Enannatum I gained but a slight victory over Gishban.
For Entemena, the son of Enannatum, finds it necessary to renew the war with Gishban. “He puts Urlumma under the yoke,” i.e. subdues him, forces him to return to his own country, and pursues him to the very midst of Gishban. This triumphant victory began with the decisive battle at the canal Lummasirta in the territory of Shirpurla. “Of his (i.e. Urlumma’s) army sixty men on the side of the Lummasirta he left.” On account of the severe loss Gishban fled. Entemena pursued after it, of which pursuit he records that “he left the bones of the soldiers (of Urlumma) in the field.” Many of these soldiers of Gishban must have fallen, so many that Entemena was obliged “to bury their dead in five different places.”
Arrived in Gishban, Entemena makes a certain priest of Innannaab-ki (or Nin-ab-ki), Ili by name, patesi of Gishban, probably after having deposed Urlumma. As a compensation for the new dignity thus conferred, Entemena commands Ili to build in the territory of Karkar—which latter had also become rebellious—boundary canals and some other buildings. The canal which Eannatum had built “from the great river (Euphrates?) to the Guedin” Entemena prolongs to the Tigris, and also repairs the other canals, which had been destroyed more or less by the Gishbanites, and dedicates them anew to Ningirsu and Nina.
Interesting also is the subscription of this Cone:
“When the men of Gishban the boundary canal of Ningirsu and the boundary canal of Nina—for the purpose of ravaging these territories—shall pass over, then may Enlil destroy the men of Gishban and the men of the mountains; may Ningirsu bring his curse over them; may he lift up his great power; may the soldiery of his (Entemena’s) city be filled with bravery; may in the midst of the city be courage in their hearts.”
With Lummadur, the son of Enannatum II, we arrive at the last representative of the house of Ur-Nina. Nothing but his name is known to us. From the absence of the title patesi behind his name, we may conclude that Enannatum II was the last patesi of the line of Ur-Nina, and that the old enemies, Kish and Gishban, have finally succeeded in overpowering Shirpurla.
It is hardly possible to look back upon this dynasty of Ur-Nina—which, as we have seen, dates from before 4000 B.C.—without being impressed by the high civilisation, cult, the many buildings and canals, military skill, and style of writing. Surely such a people as this could not have sprung into existence as a deus ex machina; it must have had its history—a history which presupposes a development of several centuries more. We would gladly follow up the history of the successors of Lummadur, but the lack of material prevents us from so doing. Passing, therefore, over an interval of about two hundred years in the history of Shirpurla, we turn now to the enemies of the “hero Ningirsu,” i.e. Kish and Gishban (or, better, Gishukh).
KINGS OF KISH AND GISHBAN
[ca. 4200-4000 B.C.]
Various changes had befallen the land of Kish. When speaking of Enshagkushanna, we saw that Kish was defeated. It had, however, in course of time again increased in strength. Mesilim was able to establish himself as ruler over Shirpurla at the time of Lugalshuggur. His successors may have retained their glory for a considerable period. They were, however, not able to withstand the mighty weapons of Eannatum. This latter king not only shook off the old yoke which Kish had fastened upon Shirpurla, but even became “king of Kish.” He must have reduced Kish to total impotence. Hence it came about that Kish was vanquished by another power, of which we shall hear shortly.
Just as Gishban, after its defeat by Eannatum, felt strong enough to disregard the solemn promise never to invade the territory of Shirpurla, so Kish, after its overthrow by Eannatum, seems to have rapidly regained its old power. For we find a certain En-ne-ugun, “king of Kish,” who is also termed “king of the hordes of Gishban,” desirous with the help of this latter city to extend the power of his capital. He was, however, defeated by a certain king of a certain country (the names cannot be read on account of the mutilated condition of the tablets). “His statue”—this unknown victorious king records, while relating his victory over En-ne-ugun—“his shining silver, the utensils, his property, he carried away, and presented them to Bel at Nippur.”
In course of time, however, and probably not very long after this defeat, Kish seems to have recovered from this blow. A certain Urzaguddu must have been very successful in his wars, for, in addition to his title “king of Kish,” he calls himself also “king of …” Unfortunately here again we have a gap, so that we cannot determine of what city he became king.
Very little is known of the next king of Kish, Lugaltarsi. At what time subsequent to Urzaguddu he lived we cannot tell. So much only is certain, that he reigned some time before Alusharshid, about 3850 B.C. His inscription—the only one so far known to us—is preserved in the British Museum in which he records the building of Bad-kisal in honour of Bel and Ishtar. We can now place Manishtusu and Alusharshid also among the kings of Kish. Both flourished somewhere about 3850 B.C., before Sargon I.
When reading the inscriptions of these kings, it is as if a new race were speaking to us, so widely different is the language used by these rulers from that of their predecessors, or of any other kings we have so far met with. We here find for the first time the so-called Semitic-Babylonian inscriptions. It is the same language which is also employed in the inscriptions of Sharganisharali and his successors, in that of Lasirab, king of Guti, and of Annubanini, king of Lalubu, all of whom were more or less contemporary with these kings of Kish. Scholars who believe that we must postulate two different races among the inhabitants of early Babylonia call the kings who wrote in this style “Semitic kings,” while the others are referred to the Sumerian population. As a result of this they read the names of these kings in a Semitic way. Manishtusu becomes Ma-an-is-tu-iro (so Winckler). Urumush becomes Alu-usharshid (i.e. “He—some deity—founded the city”).
The inscription of Manishtusu, whom we place provisionally before Urumush, runs, “Manishtuirba, king of Kish, has presented (this) to Belit-Malkatu.”
Of more importance, from the historical point of view as well as from the linguistic, is the next ruler who followed soon after the former. This ruler is Alusharshid. From his inscriptions—to be found in fifty-one fragments of vases, which have been excavated by the expedition of the University of Pennsylvania under Dr. Peters, and partly published by Hilprecht—we learn that he subdued Elam, on the eastern side of the Tigris, and the country of Bara’se (Para’se), from which lands he brought back these marble vases, and dedicated them to his gods at Nippur and Sippar.
For but a short period subsequent to Alusharshid does Kish seem to have enjoyed its old power. The might of Kish gave place to that of Agade, as we shall see shortly. Leaving, therefore, Kish for the present, we turn our attention to the other enemy of Old Shirpurla, viz. Gishban.
[ca. 4000 B.C.]
At about 4000 B.C., not long after the time of Eannatum, Gishban seems to have acquired new power and might. It directed its chief attention not so much towards Shirpurla as towards the south. Probably the rulers of Shirpurla had at this time been reduced to utter weakness by its old enemies (i.e. Kish and Gishban), of which enemies Gishban was destined to play the most important rôle in the development of ancient Babylonian history.
Lugalzaggisi, the son of Ukush, patesi of Gishban, we find at the head of the armies of Gishban, which he leads victoriously against the south. After Erech had opened its doors, the whole of Babylonia to the Persian Gulf fell an easy prey to the conquering hero. He, although originally only the son of a patesi, becomes king of Erech, nay, even king of the “whole world.” “Enlil, king of the lands, has given to Lugulzaggisi the kingship of the world; he has made him to prosper before the world; he it was that had placed the lands under his sceptre—the lands ‘from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same.’ He it also was that gave him the tribute of those lands, which he made to dwell in peace, notwithstanding that they had been brought under a new régime.” With these words Lugalzaggisi acknowledges, as the kings of Shirpurla did, that Enlil, and Enlil alone, had granted to him so unprecedented a dominion, extending from the lower sea of the Tigris and the Euphrates (i.e. the Persian Gulf) to the upper sea (i.e. the Mediterranean). Constituted thus “lord of the world,” he now becomes its “summus episcopus.” “In the sanctuaries of Kengi, as patesi of the lands, and in Erech, as high priest, they (the gods) established him.”
To quote Hilprecht: “Babylonia, as a whole, had no fault to find with this new and powerful régime. The Sumerian civilisation was directed into new channels from stagnation; the ancient cults between the lower Tigris and Euphrates began to revive and its temples to shine in new splendour.” Thus, endowed with the highest temporal and spiritual power, he “makes Erech to abound in rejoicing.” Nor does he forget the other representative cities of his domain: “Ur, like a steer, to the top of the heavens he raised.” “Over Larsa, the beloved city of Shamash, he poured out waters of joy.” His own native town and land receive chief attention: “Gishban, the beloved city of … to an unheard-of power he raised.” He, as wise ruler and statesman, not only shows his good will and favour towards the larger and more influential cities, but also protects the weaker ones: “Ki-Innanna-ab he kept in an enclosure, like a sheep that is to be shorn.”
Indeed, “Lugalzaggisi stands out from the dawn (?) of Babylonian history as a giant who deserves our full admiration for the work he accomplished.”
Seeing that Semitisms occur in almost all the earliest inscriptions so far known to us, and that the rulers themselves may have been and probably were Semites—let us confess this—then the other question arises: At what time did the Semites come into the country, so as to induce the original inhabitants to employ expressions foreign to their own language? Where did they come from? To the last question, which has been repeatedly discussed by scholars, different answers have been given. Some make Africa the original home of the Semites; others Arabia; and Hilprecht, who last spoke of this problem, assigns for this purpose Kish, or better, Kharran some distance north of Babylonia. According to his theory, Lugalzaggisi, the great conqueror from Gishban (Kharran), was the first Semite to occupy any territory in Babylonia, and thus opened the way for the Semitic population. But Lugalzaggisi does not antedate Ur-Nina. Ur-Nina is a Semite, as we have seen, consequently Semites were in the country before Lugalzaggisi.
Gishban is not Kharran, but the neighbouring state of Shirpurla; hence the Semites did not come from Kharran, but actually occupied already the whole country of Babylonia. Thus the two questions—when did the Semites invade Babylonia? and, whence did they come?—are still awaiting an answer. It is possible that some tablets may give us a key to this problem, but so far these tablets have not been found.
ca. 6000-3800 B.C.
But further, if the Semites at so early a time as 4500 B.C. (Urukagina) had possession of Babylonia and had adopted the old language of the country, which language they interspersed with their own idiom, they must have been for a long time resident in the land. This would bring the immigration of the Semites back to at least 5000 B.C. and earlier, when the Sumerian power began to decay. We must therefore push back the height of Sumerian influence to a yet more remote period.
Hence, whatever view we take in regard to the two peoples and their languages, we are led to the same general result: Civilisation and history must go back to at least 6000 B.C.
THE FIRST DYNASTY OF UR
Of Ur—the Biblical “Ur of the Chaldees”—we have already heard at the time of Eannatum. It was situated at the western side of the Euphrates, opposite the place where the Shatt-el-Khai flows into it. Up to the time of Lugalzaggisi it may not have been of very great importance. This latter ruler, however, “raised it like a steer to the top of the heaven,” hence at no long period subsequent to Lugalzaggisi we meet two kings, father and son, ruling at Ur. It is not impossible that this dynasty may itself have brought about the overthrow of Lugalzaggisi, as to whose successors we have no information. Probably, also, it took possession of the more northern part of Babylonia (Nippur), for we find that both these kings present vases to Enlil, the “lord of the lands.”
The names of these two monarchs forming the first dynasty of Ur are:
Lugalkigubnidudu, and his son (?); Lugalkisalsi.
Their dominion extended over Ur, Erech, and Nippur, probably also over Shirpurla, for the kings of the south could not have gained possession of Nippur without passing Shirpurla. This would explain why we know so very little about Shirpurla at this time. It is, however, remarkable that both these kings should call themselves first “kings of Erech,” and then “kings of Ur”; while on the other hand, Lugalkigubnidudu expressly says that Enlil added (tab) the lordship (nam-en) to the kingship (nam-lugal), which lordship so added was Erech. We would expect that, if he were originally king of Ur, the title, “king of Ur,” would come first. Here, then, we have an analogy to and a confirmation of the argument used in regard to Urzaguddu. The latter king had also two titles, viz. “king of Kish” and “king of …,” and it was argued that the latter title, “king of …,” was the original, i.e. Urzaguddu became later on “king of Kish.” So here “king of Ur” was the original title; Lugalkigubnidudu subsequently became “king of Erech.”
[ca. 4000-3800 B.C.]
How long this dynasty flourished, how many rulers were comprised in it, and when and by whom it was overthrown, we cannot tell. Probably, however, it was replaced by a mighty kingdom which arose in the north (that of Agade), destined to bear sway over “the four corners of the world.”
Once more—before we leave southern Babylonia and pass over to the north—we have to direct our attention to Shirpurla. The traces which we possess of the life of Shirpurla and its patesis during this time (i.e. 4100-3800 B.C.) are but fragmentary. Only one patesi is known to us from a tablet recently published by Thureau-Dangin, in the Revue d’Assyriologie. This patesi, Lugalanda by name, cannot have lived very long after Lummadur, for the writing of that tablet shows all the palæographic peculiarities of the inscriptions of Eannatum. Probably he belonged to those patesis over whom Lugalzaggisi or his successors may have ruled.
With the next two patesis, Lugalushumgal and his son (?) Ur-E, we arrive at the time of Sharganisharali [Sargon], 3800 B.C. A considerable gap in this period has still to be filled up. Let us hope that the future excavations, combined with the industry of the decipherer, will bring some light into this darkest of all periods in Old Babylonian history.
Mentioning only another patesi that belongs to this period, Ur-(dingir) Utu(?)—whose name is followed by [nam?] patesi Uru-um-ki-ma (i.e. Ur)—we pass from the south to the north of Babylonia, i.e. to the city of Agade.
KINGS OF AGADE
Agade, near the modern Abu-Habba, formed in olden times with Sippar a double city. It was situated near the Euphrates and north of Babylon. As early as 3800 B.C. Semitic kings ruled in this city, extending their sceptres over the whole of Babylonia.
The finding of the Infant Sargon
[ca. 3800 B.C.]
The first king, as far as our knowledge goes, was Sharganisharali, cited by us as Sargon I. He was the son of a certain Itti-Bel. This latter is neither called a king nor even a patesi. In this we may see a confirmation of the so-called “legend of Sargon,” according to which this monarch was “of an inferior birth on his father’s side,” and so either a usurper or the founder of the dynasty of Agade. This legend—probably written in the eighth century B.C.—purports to be a copy of an inscription written on a statue of this great king, and bears a certain similarity to the Biblical account of Moses. It reads: “Shargena, the powerful king, the king of Agade, am I. My mother was of noble family (?) [others: was poor], my father I did not know, whereas the brother of my father inhabited the mountains. My town was Azipiranu, which is situated on the bank of the Euphrates. My mother of noble family (?) (or, who was poor) conceived me and gave birth to me secretly. She put me into a basket of shurru (reeds?), and shut up the mouth (?) of it (?) with bitumen; she cast me into the river, which did not overwhelm (?) me. The river carried me away and brought me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, took me up in … Akki, the drawer of water, reared me to boyhood. Akki, the drawer of water, made me a gardener. During my activity as gardener, Ishtar loved me. X + IV years I exercised dominion, … years I commanded the black-headed people (i.e. the Semites) and ruled them,” etc. The rest of this legend tells us something about his campaign against Dur-ilu on the borders of Elam; it is, however, too fragmentary to be coherent.
In connection with this legend we would call the attention of the reader once more to the fact that not merely the identity of this Shargena with our Sharganisharali, his deeds and warlike expeditions recorded in the so-called “Tablet of Omens,” with the date of his rule, have been doubted, but even his very existence. A series of new facts connected with the time of Naram-Sin and Sharganisharali have since come to light by the publication of a great number of contract-tablets written during the reign of these kings. These tablets are to be found in Revue d’Assyriologie, iv, No. iii. Hence it is now impossible to doubt the historicity of Sharganisharali, as was done by Niebuhr.
Down to the time of Hilprecht’s publication of Old Babylonian Inscriptions, Part I, our knowledge of Sargon I was almost entirely drawn from the “legend” and the “Tablet of Omens.” Hence it happened that the great deeds which were attributed to Sargon and Naram-Sin in the “Tablet of Omens” were said to be “purely legendary” (so by Winckler, Geschichte Babylon. und Assyr., p. 38). Others thought that his deeds had been simply projected backwards (so Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, New York, 1895, p. 599; “Sargon II is he who projected backward”); others again, not believing that Sargon I could have undertaken such expeditions and have become practically the “king of the four corners of the earth,” invented another king Sargon (so Hommel, Gesch. Baby. und Assyr., Berlin, 1883, p. 307, note 4; this Sargon he places at about 2000 B.C.).
Thanks to the excavations at Telloh and the industry of Thureau-Dangin, we are now in a position to prove that the statements of the “Tablet of Omens” are correct in almost every particular.
Let us hear what this “Tablet of Omens” has to say. Eleven of these “omens” are ascribed to Sargon and two to Naram-Sin. They generally begin with the phrase: “When the moon was in such and such position,” then Sargon, etc.
The first omen records Sargon’s expedition to and subjection of Elam.
The second tells how he marched to the land Akharri (i.e. the West-land), and subjected it, and that his army subjugated the kibrati irbitta, i.e. “the four corners of the world.”
The third tells us that he brought sorrow upon Kish and Babylon, and built a city after the pattern (?) of Agade, and called it Ub-da-ki, i.e. “place (city) of the world.”
The fourth records another expedition against the West and the taking possession of the four corners of the earth. So also the fifth omen.
The sixth omen is too fragmentary to yield any certain sense.
The seventh gives us a fuller account of the expedition against Akharri; he crosses the sea of the West and wages war against it for three years, takes it, erects there his statues, and transports the prisoners, whom he had taken, over land and sea.
The eighth describes the repairing of one of his palaces, which he calls “E-ki-a-am i-ni-lik,” i.e. “the house”: “so let us walk.”
In the next we hear of a campaign against a certain Kashtubilla of Kasalla, who had revolted. Sargon goes against him, conquers him and his army, and destroys the rebellious country.
The tenth probably is one of the most important. It reads: “Sargon, against whom under this omen the elders of the whole country had revolted, and in Agade had shut him up—Sargon went out, conquered them, and cast them down, subdued their army, and.…”
The last omen tells us something about Sargon’s campaign against the land Suri, how he overcame it, and took it, and how he destroyed its army.
The two omens relating to Naram-Sin record a campaign against Apirak (Omen i) and against Magan (Omen ii). In both expeditions Naram-Sin was so successful, that he even took captive the kings of these countries, viz.: Resh-Ramman (Adad), king of Apirak, and N. N. king of Magan.
According to this “Tablet of Omens,” then Sargon I subdued Elam, the “West-land,” brought woe upon Babylon and Kish, conquered the country Kasalla, suppressed a revolt which had arisen against him while on his expeditions, and finally subdued the land Suri “in its totality.”[b]
[ca. 3750-2700 B.C.]
Sargon’s son and successor, Naram-Sin, followed up the successes of his father by marching into Magan, whose king he took captive. He assumed the imperial title of “king of the four zones,” and, like his father, was addressed as a “god.” He is even called “the god of Agade” (Accad), reminding us of the divine honours claimed by the Pharaohs of Egypt, whose territory now adjoined that of Babylonia. A finely executed bas-relief, representing Naram-Sin, and bearing a striking resemblance to early Egyptian art in many of its features, has been found at Diarbekir. Babylonian art, however, had already attained a high degree of excellence; two seal cylinders of the time of Sargon are among the most beautiful specimens of the gem-cutter’s art ever discovered. The empire was bound together by roads, along which there was a regular postal service, and clay seals, which took the place of stamps, are now in the Louvre bearing the names of Sargon and his son. A cadastral survey seems also to have been instituted, and one of the documents relating to it states that a certain Uru-Malik, whose name appears to indicate his Canaanitish origin, was governor of the land of the Amorites, as Syria and Palestine were called by the Babylonians. It is probable that the first collection of astronomical observations and terrestrial omens was made for a library established by Sargon.
Bingani-shar-ali was the son of Naram-Sin, but we do not yet know whether he followed his father on the throne. Another son was high priest of the city of Tutu, and in the name of his daughter, Lipus-Eaum, a priestess of Sin, some scholars have seen that of the Hebrew deity, Yahveh. The Babylonian god, Ea, however, is more likely to be meant.
THE KINGS OF UR
The fall of Sargon’s empire seems to have been as sudden as its rise. The seat of supreme power in Babylonia was shifted southward to Erech, Isin, and Ur. At least three dynasties appear to have reigned at Ur and claimed suzerainty over the other Babylonian states. One of these, under Gungunu, succeeded in transferring the capital of Babylonia from Isin to Ur. It is still uncertain whether Gungunu belonged to the second or third dynasty of Ur; if to the second, among his successors would have been Ur-Gur, a great builder, who built or restored the temples of the Moon-god at Ur, of the Sun-god at Larsa, of Ishtar at Erech, and of Bel at Nippur. His son and successor was Dungi II, one of whose vassals was Gudea the patesi or high priest of Lagash [Shirpurla]. Gudea was also a great builder, and the materials for his buildings and statues were brought from all parts of western Asia, cedar wood from the Amanus Mountains, quarried stones from Lebanon, copper from northern Arabia, gold and precious stones from the desert between Palestine and Egypt, dolerite from Magan (the Sinaitic peninsula), and timber from Dilmun in the Persian Gulf. Some of his statues, now in the Louvre, are carved out of Sinaitic dolerite, and on the lap of one of them is the plan of his palace, with the scale of measurement attached. Six of the statues bore special names, and offerings were made to them as to the statues of the gods. Gudea claims to have conquered Anshan in Elam, and was succeeded by his son, Ur-Ningirsu. His date may be provisionally fixed at 2700 B.C.
[ca. 2700-2340 B.C.]
The high priests of Lagash still owned allegiance to Ur, when the last dynasty of Ur was dominant in Babylonia. The dynasty was Semitic, not Sumerian, though one of its kings was Dungi II. He was followed by Bur-Sin II, Gimil-Sin, and Ine-Sin, whose power extended to the Mediterranean, and of whose reigns we possess a large number of contemporaneous monuments in the shape of contracts and similar business documents, as well as chronological tables. After the fall of the dynasty, Babylonia passed under foreign influence.
ACCESSION OF A SOUTH ARABIAN DYNASTY
Sumu-abi (“Shem is my father”), from southern Arabia (or perhaps Canaan), made himself master of northern Babylonia, while Elamite invaders occupied the South. After a reign of fourteen years, Sumu-abi was succeeded by his son, Sumu-la-ilu, in the fifth year of whose reign the fortress of Babylon was built, and the city became for the first time a capital. Rival kings, Pungun-ila and Immeru, are mentioned in the contract tablets as reigning at the same time as Sumu-la-ilu (or Samu-la-ilu); and under Sin-muballit, the great-grandson of Sumu-la-ilu, the Elamites laid the whole of the country under tribute, and made Eri-Aku, or Arioch, called Rim-Sin by his Semitic subjects, king of Larsa. Eri-Aku was the son of Kudur-Mabuk, who was prince of Yamudbal [or E-mutbal], on the eastern border of Babylonia, and also “governor of Syria.”
The Elamite supremacy was at last shaken off by the son and successor of Sin-muballit, Khammurabi, whose name is also written Ammurapi and Khammuram, and who was the Amraphel of Genesis xiv. 1. The Elamites, under their king, Kudur-Lagamar or Chedorlaomer, seem to have taken Babylon and destroyed the temple of Bel-Merodach; but Khammurabi retrieved his fortunes, and in the thirtieth year of his reign (in 2340 B.C.), he overthrew the Elamite forces in a decisive battle and drove them out of Babylonia. The next two years were occupied in adding Larsa and Yamudbal to his dominion, and in forming Babylonia into a single monarchy, the head of which was Babylon.
A great literary revival followed the recovery of Babylonian independence, and the rule of Babylon was obeyed as far as the shores of the Mediterranean. Vast numbers of contract tablets, dated in the reigns of Khammurabi and other kings of the dynasty, have been discovered, as well as autograph letters of the kings themselves, more especially of Khammurabi. Among the latter is one ordering the despatch of two hundred and forty soldiers from Assyria and Situllum, a proof that Assyria was at the time a Babylonian dependency. Constant intercourse was kept up between Babylonia and the West, Babylonian officials and troops passing to Syria and Canaan, while “Amorite” colonists were established in Babylonia for the purposes of trade. One of these Amorites, Abi-ramu or Abram by name, is the father of a witness to a deed dated in the reign of Khammurabi’s grandfather. Ammi-satana, the great-grandson of Khammurabi, still entitles himself “king of the land of the Amorites,” and both his father and son bear the Canaanitish (and South Arabian) names of Abesukh or Abishua [Ebishum], and Ammi-zadok [or Ammi-sadugga].
[ca. 2287-1100 B.C.]
Samsu-satana, the son of Ammi-zadok, was the last king of the first dynasty of Babylon, which was followed by a dynasty of eleven Sumerian kings for 368 years. We know but little of them; their capital has not yet been discovered, and no trading documents dated in their reigns have been found. They were overthrown and Babylonia was conquered by Kassites or Kossæans from the mountains of Elam, under Kandish [Gandish] or Gaddas (in 1800 B.C.), who established a dynasty which lasted for 576 years and nine months.
THE KASSITE DYNASTY
Under this foreign domination, Babylonia lost its empire over western Asia. Syria and Palestine became independent, and the high priests of Asshur made themselves kings of Assyria. The divine attributes with which the Semitic kings of Babylonia had been invested disappeared at the same time; the title of “god” is never given to a Kassite sovereign. Babylon, however, remained the capital of the kingdom and the holy city of western Asia. Like the sovereigns of the Holy Roman Empire, it was necessary for the prince, who claimed rule in western Asia, to go to Babylon and there be acknowledged as the adopted son of Bel before his claim to legitimacy could be admitted. Babylon became more and more a priestly city, living on its ancient prestige and merging its ruler into a pontiff. From henceforth, down to the Persian era, it was the religious head of the civilised East.
One of the earlier Kassite kings was Agum-kakrime, who recovered the images of Merodach and his consort, which had been carried away to Khani. At a later date Kadashman-Bel and Burna-buriash I corresponded with the Egyptian Pharaohs, Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV (1400 B.C.). The Assyrian king Asshur-uballit still owned allegiance to his Babylonian suzerain, and intermarriages took place between the royal families of Assyria and Babylonia. Babylonia, moreover, still sought opportunities of recovering its old supremacy in Palestine, which the conquests of the XVIIIth Dynasty had made an Egyptian province, and along with Mitanni or Aram-Naharain and the Hittites intrigued against the Egyptian government with disaffected conspirators in the West. After the death of Burna-buriash, however, civil war in Babylonia led to Assyrian interference in the affairs of the country, and from this time forward even the nominal obedience of Assyria to its old suzerain was at an end.
ASSYRIAN CONQUEST OF BABYLON
Frequent wars broke out between the two nations, and eventually (about 1280 B.C.) Tukulti-Ninib of Assyria, in the fifth year of his reign, captured Babylon and sent the treasures of E-sagila, the temple of Bel-Merodach, to Asshur. For seven years the Assyrian monarch reigned over Babylonia, then a revolt obliged him to retire; Adad-shum-usur of the native dynasty was placed on the Babylonian throne; and Tukulti-Ninib was shortly afterwards murdered by his son, Asshurnazirpal I. Assyria steadily increased in power, while Babylonia fell more and more into decay. Shalmaneser I, the builder of Calah (now Nimrud) in 1300 B.C., carried his victorious arms in all directions, and Tiglathpileser I extended the Assyrian Empire as far as the Mediterranean (1100 B.C.).
[ca. 1230-745 B.C.]
The Kassite Dynasty had fallen about 1230 B.C., in consequence of an attack on the part of the Elamites, and a new dynasty which sprang from Isin took its place, and lasted for 132½ years. Then came a series of short-lived dynasties, ending with that of Nabu-nasir, the Nabonassar of classical writers, who ascended the throne of Babylon in 747 B.C. Assyria was at the time in the throes of a revolution. Civil war and pestilence were devastating the kingdom, and its northern provinces had been wrested from it by Ararat (or Van) [Urartu]. In 746 B.C. Calah rebelled, and on the thirteenth of Airu (April), in the following year, Pulu or Pul, who took the name of Tiglathpileser III, seized the throne, and inaugurated a new and vigorous policy.[c]
At this point it seems well to interrupt the story of Babylonia for a time until we have traced the origins and rise of that Assyrian power in which the fortunes of Babylon were soon involved and subordinated until the destruction of Nineveh, when the New Babylonian Empire emerged into historic prominence.[a]
FOOTNOTES
[19] [Such is the way in which a few Assyriologists read the more commonly accepted “Shirpurla.” Professor Hommel interprets it “Sirgulla,” in favour of which there is something to be said.]
[20] [Quoted by permission from “Early Babylonian History,” New York and London, 1902.]
[21] [The patesi was an official whose office was sacerdotal as well as administrative. We find him at the head of a state before the ruler assumes the title of king and also a viceregent when the country has been conquered by a more powerful nation. The custom seems to have been in this case for the victorious monarch to reduce the vanquished to the rank of patesi, and in such capacity he and his successors continue the local administration.]
CHAPTER III. THE RISE OF ASSYRIA
Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs.
The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of the field.
Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth.
All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations.
Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his root was by great waters.—Ezekiel xxxi. 3-7.
The Assyrian Empire is in some respects unique in history. Despite the proverbial tendency of history to repeat itself, there has been no duplication of the tragic history of this wonderful body politic. It rose to be the most powerful of nations; it reached out and gained the widest empire that had hitherto been seen; its capital, Nineveh, was for a few centuries the metropolis of the world. But in the very fulness of its imperial flight it was struck down and utterly destroyed.
Other empires have been subjugated; Nineveh was annihilated. The very name “Assyrian” became only a memory and a tradition. Late in the seventh century B.C. Nineveh was the boasted mistress of the world; two centuries later the mounds that covered her ruins were noted by the Greek historian Xenophon, who marched past them with the ill-fated Ten Thousand, merely as the relics of some ancient city of unknown name. So brief may be the highest fame! Yet the sequel is stranger still. As we have seen, these forgotten mounds treasured secrets of history which they have since given up to the explorer, and our own generation has seen Assyria restored to its place in history. The details of its career are more fully known to us than those of almost any other nation of antiquity. Such a phœnix-like regeneration is a fitting sequel to the fantastic career with its tragic dénouement, which is about to claim our attention.
[ca. 3000-1120 B.C.]
It must not be supposed that the Assyrian Empire came suddenly to the height of power just suggested. On the contrary, its rise was slow, and accomplished by intermittent impulses. Naturally enough, the growing nation has left us no such exhaustive records of its history during earlier days as have come to us from its time of might. Indeed, for some centuries after Assyria began to assume importance, we have but fragmentary records of its history. Only here and there a great monarch puts the stamp of his achievements upon an epoch so indelibly that time itself cannot wipe it out. Such names as Sargon II, Shalmaneser, and Tiglathpileser were remembered by posterity as the names of great heroes whose deeds various successors strove to emulate, and whose names were taken up, sometimes by usurpers of the throne, sometimes by legitimate descendants of royalty, and thus doubly perpetuated.
It is not till we are well within the last thousand years of the pre-Christian era, however, that the monarchs of Assyria come to be so well known to us as to seem like true historic personages in the same sense in which these terms would be applied to the Alexanders and Cæsars of a later period. Such kings as Sargon II, Asshurnazirpal, Tiglathpileser III, Shalmaneser II and a little later, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Asshurbanapal, left records so voluminous and so perfectly authenticated as to bring their authors into the clearest light of history. Nowhere else outside of Egypt have such full records been preserved of the deeds of ancient monarchs as in the case of these Assyrian kings. Naturally enough, the record ceases before the destruction of Nineveh; there was no Assyrian scribe left to tell of that tragic event.
But now the scene shifts to Babylon; the kings of that principality take up the broken record, and for a few generations supply us with historical documents of the utmost importance. And where the Babylonian records end, the Persian chronicles begin. These are supplemented in due course by the reports of the Grecian historians, beginning with Herodotus, so that the historical sequence is practically unbroken.
We have seen that these Assyrian and Babylonian records were quite unknown throughout later classical times, and from then on until restored late in the nineteenth century. A peculiar interest, then, attaches to the comparison of these records with the traditions of Babylonian and Assyrian heroes which the classical writers have preserved. In general, it can hardly be said that the comparison is flattering to the classical mind. No Assyrian tablet tells us of any such person as Ninus, the alleged founder of Nineveh. Nor is there any royal cylinder that tells of the mighty conquests of Queen Semiramis. There is, indeed, a queen of that name mentioned, but she is the consort of a late king of Nineveh, and there is nothing recorded to suggest that her achievements were in any respect noteworthy. We are forced to conclude, then, that the Greek historians, in recording the alleged history of Assyria, depended upon verbal traditions. They appear to have been altogether ignorant of the contents of the authentic historical documents, many of which were still accessible in the libraries of Babylonia when Herodotus visited that city. It is interesting to note, however, that the Greeks had a vivid realisation of the sometime greatness of Assyria, even though they were unable to form a clear and correct image of the picture. Semiramis was really an idealised impersonation of the general conception of the Assyrian conqueror. Sargon, Tiglathpileser, and their successors were forgotten in name, but their deeds were vaguely remembered, and out of the reminiscences of their actual conquests arose the conception of a mythical ruler, whose name was destined for centuries to supplant the names of actual heroes. What happened here is but a repetition of what has happened elsewhere under similar conditions. There is no myth without its background of fact. Had there never been great conquerors ruling over Assyria, there would never have arisen the legend of Semiramis. That “there is no smoke without some fire” is a maxim which the historian should never overlook; it is a maxim to which the story of Assyrian history gives peculiar emphasis.
So much has been said about the sources of Assyrian history that only a word need be added here. We shall have occasion as we proceed, to call attention in greater detail to the specific records of various kings. In addition to these, however, there are certain historical documents of a more general character, which have been largely instrumental in enabling the modern investigator to reconstruct Babylonian and Assyrian history. The most important of these are certain Babylonian king-lists and a so-called Synchronistic History, in which the succession of rulers in Babylonia and in Assyria is synchronised. These chronological documents taken together do not enable us fully to reconstruct the history of the long periods in question, but the gaps are relatively insignificant, in particular after about the year 1000 B.C.; and for the later monarchs of Assyria the records are often so voluminous as to furnish accurate details regarding all the events of importance.
It has already been pointed out that the earliest history of Assyria is no less obscure than that of early Babylonia. As nearly as the facts can now be restored to us, it would appear that for some centuries the people to the north of Babylonia were struggling for supremacy against the older civilisation of the South. Gradually the northerners—the Assyrians, as they became known—gained in strength until, finally, about the beginning of the fourteenth century B.C., under Shalmaneser I, Asshur obtained a position at least equal to Babylonia. After the death of this monarch Assyria seems to have weakened for a time, and it is not until about 1100 B.C. that another great monarch appeared to put the stamp of his personality upon the epoch. This new ruler was known as Tiglathpileser I. He has been called the first of the great Assyrian conquerors, though perhaps this estimate does scant justice to certain of his predecessors. In any event, he restored the influence of Assyria, subjugated Babylonia, and is said to have been the first Assyrian ruler to be crowned as “King of the Four Corners of the Earth.” It is believed that Nineveh was established as the capital of the empire in the reign of the son and successor of Tiglathpileser, who bore the unfamiliar name of Asshur-bel-kala.
An Assyrian Prince
[ca. 950-825 B.C.]
It is curious how largely the personality of an individual monarch dominates the history of an epoch among oriental nations. An illustration of this familiar fact is shown by antithesis in the scantiness of the records for about a century after the death of Tiglathpileser. Imperfect records reappear about 950 B.C., but it is not till about three-quarters of a century later that Assyria rises again to a time of might. Then, under Asshurnazirpal, one of the most enterprising and most cruel of conquerors, the stamp of Assyrian influence was put upon all surrounding nations. Shalmaneser II largely sustained the traditions of his father, and the power of Assyria was upheld, if not extended, by the next rulers, Tiglathpileser III and Shalmaneser IV.
How fully the deeds of these later Assyrian monarchs are known to us will appear in the succeeding pages. Monarchs of even greater celebrity were to come after; yet perhaps the reign of Asshurnazirpal (885-860 B.C.) may not unjustly be regarded as the period when Assyria obtained its greatest power and its highest civilisation. The bas-reliefs from the palace of Asshurnazirpal, which were exhumed by Layard and which are now exhibited in the British Museum, are in some respects the most perfect examples of Assyrian art that have been preserved. It is true that the artists of two centuries later had developed a more elaborate fashion in the matter of details; but the rugged outlines of the earlier masters tell of art in its creative period. The models produced in this epoch were never to be altered in their essentials during the entire course of Assyrian history. Such hunting scenes as that in which Asshurnazirpal, standing in his chariot, is seen shooting an arrow at an enraged and wounded lion, were perhaps never quite equalled by any Assyrian artist of a later epoch. The art of this time shows examples also of massive sculptures, such as the human-headed bulls and lions, in relative abundance. A curious feature of the later sculptures is that they usually present inscriptions written across pedestal and figure alike. Needless to say, these inscriptions record deeds of the great conqueror. Unfortunately, many of them are repetitions, but even so they preserve relatively comprehensive records of the achievements of the great king.
Even fuller records are preserved of Shalmaneser II. In particular, the black obelisk on which the deeds of this king are presented, both in graphic pictures and in extensive inscriptions, is one of the most famous of Assyrian antiquities. The exact character of this inscription and of the other records in question will be detailed in the succeeding pages.[a] Before proceeding to the history proper, let us study the theatre where the drama was played and the origins of the actors.
LAND AND PEOPLE
The land of Assyria, in the more restricted sense of the term, lies for the most part on the left bank of the Tigris, and is bounded on the south by the Lower Zab. Hence, strictly speaking, it would not form part of Mesopotamia were it not that the capital importance of the Tigris to the country and the trend of its other rivers make it a kind of appendage to the alluvial plain, and that the mountain ranges of the North constitute a boundary which cuts it off from the rest of the world, and thus naturally assigns it to Mesopotamia. Consequently, as soon as the Assyrians gained their independence and started on a career of conquest, it was natural that they should first extend their borders in that direction.
Mesopotamia consists of a great low-lying plain divided by no physical barrier. It was natural, therefore, that the policy of all powerful rulers in that region should have had for its aim the political unification of all parts of the country, united as they were already by a common civilisation and economic interdependence. The efforts of the Assyrians were likewise directed towards this end, though it was long before they obtained it. In the kingdom of Babylonia, which asserted its sway over the whole southern portion of the plain and its dependent provinces, they were at first confronted by an adversary strong enough to resist them, and all that fell to them for the time being was the northern half of Mesopotamia, the greater part of which remained under their dominion, and was merged into an Assyrian empire, just as the whole of Babylonia had been merged into a Babylonian empire. We shall see, however, that the memory of the separate existence of the two component parts of the empire at an earlier stage still subsisted in certain customs and relics of civil law, just as it did in Babylonia.
The Assyrians were a Semitic race, and, but for slight differences of dialect, spoke the same language as the Semitic-Babylonians. The Assyrian branch of the race constituted, in the first instance, an outpost on the left bank of the Tigris, where it developed on somewhat different lines from the Semites who remained in Mesopotamia. We have every reason for assuming that, before the Assyrians made their way into the country, the whole of Mesopotamia, the north no less than the south, was occupied by a Semitic population, distinct from the Aramæans—themselves probably recent immigrants—and united by a common civilisation. This is the race which we have styled Babylonians, as distinguished from the Sumerians, or, more exactly, Semitic-Babylonians, in treating of Babylonia. We are absolutely in the dark as to the extent to which these Semites of the North may have absorbed elements of an elder Sumerian population that may have survived, for in the earliest times concerning which we have any historic testimony the Semites were predominant even in northern Babylonia, much more, therefore, in northern Mesopotamia.
The Assyrians must have developed on independent lines, for in all other respects they differ materially from the Babylonians. In the latter we have made the acquaintance of a people peaceably disposed, nay, actually unwarlike, concerned mainly with the development of their civilisation—qualities which, when we compare them with the Assyrians, we are inclined to set to the account of their Sumerian blood. The latter were probably the most warlike of all the Semitic nations of the East, and maintained the purity of their racial type; for the features of the figures in their sculptures exhibit to a marked degree the characteristics which strike us nowadays as peculiar to the Jewish race. They also differ from the Babylonians in figure, for the latter are usually represented as short and thick-set, while the Assyrians are of somewhat lofty stature and powerful build.
The land of Assyria is very different from Mesopotamia proper. The nearness of the mountain ranges makes the climate cooler, and the soil is probably less productive than that of the lowlands along the river. Nor were the means of transport within its borders as good as in Mesopotamia proper, for the Tigris only constituted the frontier, and the swiftness of its current made it less well adapted for traffic than the Euphrates, which formed the most convenient natural line of communication in the plain of Mesopotamia.
In Babylonia we made the acquaintance of a country which had developed its own civilisation, and one where the inhabitants held in proud and honourable remembrance the various stages of its economic and political development,—a sentiment reflected in the religious cults of the ancient cities, the centres of civilisation. With Assyria it is otherwise. That country began to play its part in Mesopotamian history with the set purpose of appropriating what Babylonia had achieved. The Assyrians had no such gains, hallowed by the associations of thousands of years to boast of in their own country. They were a tardy supplement to the Semitic immigration. They felt themselves an appendage to the Semitic population already settled in Mesopotamia, and consequently regarded its ancient cults as, in a measure, their own. The fact implies an unconscious confession that they had nothing analogous or equivalent to set against the old centres of Babylonian civilisation, and, as a matter of fact, the chief towns of Assyria cannot for a moment be compared in importance with those of Babylonia. The most famous of the former owed their day of splendour to the rise of the Assyrian Empire or even, to some extent, to the fancy of individual kings; and when the Assyrian Empire passed from the stage of history these, its artificial creations, were abolished with it.
Babylonia rose again after every fresh blow, because her rise to the position she held had its root in a vital need of the peoples of anterior Asia; while soon after the fall of the Assyrian Empire the very names of the great cities of Assyria had passed from the memory of the dwellers in the land. The case is different with the cities of northern Mesopotamia, which belonged to the Assyrian Empire, but existed before its rise, and survived its fall. The only other exception among the large Assyrian cities is Arbela, which, being situate at the junction of the trade routes to northern Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Media, had probably been in existence before the time of the Assyrian Empire, and likewise retained its importance to a later period.
ASSYRIAN CAPITALS: ASSHUR AND NINEVEH
The oldest capital of Assyria was Asshur, situated on the right bank of the Tigris, on the site of the present Kalah Sherghat. It was originally the seat of rulers called patesis, who were probably subjects of the Babylonian monarchy. In the first half of the second millennium B.C. these rulers extended their sway over the district which they styled “the land of the city of Asshur,” and assumed the title of “king.” Asshur was always held in honour as the ancient capital, but it lay so far to the south (being, in fact, almost beyond the borders of the country), that it soon became imperative for the “kings of Assyria” to transfer the centre of government to a more convenient place. Shalmaneser I (circa 1300) accordingly chose Calah for his residence. The natural result was the decline of the importance of Asshur, since its situation was not such as to assure it a leading position. In later times it subsisted mainly upon its old reputation, and enjoyed special privileges, which were confirmed even by Sargon. It was the seat of Asshur, the chief national divinity. The kings of Assyria, from Shalmaneser I to Sargon, held their court at Calah (Nimrud). Its consequence seems to have declined after the reign of Tiglathpileser I, for his son, Asshur-bel-kala removed to Nineveh, which remained the royal residence till the reign of Asshurnazirpal. The latter rebuilt Calah and so improved it that it remained the capital until Sargon chose Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad), which in turn Nineveh replaced as capital.
Nineveh (Ninua), situated above Calah, on the left bank of the Tigris, and opposite the present town of Mosul, is now represented by the two mounds of Kuyunjik and Neby-Yunus. It was one of the oldest and most important cities of the province of Assyria, and was highly esteemed from the very earliest times of the Assyrian Empire as being the seat of a cult of an Ishtar known as “Ishtar of Ninua,” to distinguish her from the Ishtar of Arbela. We must therefore look upon it as a city which originally stood on an equal footing with Asshur, and was subjugated by the patesi of the latter city. It became the royal residence in the reign of Asshur-bel-kala, the son of Tiglathpileser (or even earlier), and remained so until the reign of Asshurnazirpal. But it really owed its fame as the capital and chief city of Assyria, which it represented in the eyes of other nations, to Sennacherib. He built an entirely new Nineveh, which was to show forth worthily the power and glory of the Assyrian Empire. His successors continued to reside there, and contributed to its splendour. Esarhaddon and Asshurbanapal built palaces there, and Nineveh formed the last bulwark of the Assyrian Empire.
In the Euphrates Valley, and mainly on the right bank, between the bank where the river turns towards the southwest and Babylonia, various states had come into being which, by the force of their natural connection with Babylonia, inclined towards that kingdom rather than towards Assyria and northern Mesopotamia. There are Laqi, Khindanu, and (east of the latter) Sukhi, or Shuhi, which last extended from somewhere near the mouth of the Khabur to Babylonia, and was under Babylonian ascendency down to a late period. These states had probably in the first instance been dependencies of the Babylonian Empire, but had enjoyed virtual independence from the time of the fall of Babylonia and the rise of Assyria. Asshurnazirpal was the first to subjugate these “governors,” who, up to this time, had “paid no tribute” to the Assyrian kings, and who were supported by Babylonia in their struggle with Assyria. The population of these states was composed of the same elements as that of Mesopotamia. The original Semitic-Babylonian settlers had been ousted by Aramæan immigrants. This was most evident in Laqi, the westernmost, which was not a homogeneous body politic in the reign of Asshurnazirpal, but was governed by various sheikhs. And, generally speaking, these states were semi-nomadic commonwealths.
THE RISE OF ASSYRIA
[ca. 1741-1300 B.C.]
The city of Asshur was originally a patesi-ship. The situation of Asshur seems to point to a close connection with Babylonia rather than with northern Mesopotamia, and for the present, at least, it seems most likely that we ought to regard it as a vassal state to Babylonia or the Kingdom of the Four Quarters of the World. Nor must we ignore the possibility that it may have formed part of the realm of the “Kishshati.”
A record left by an Assyrian king enables us to determine one point of time, at least, when Asshur was still a dependency and ruled by a patesi. Tiglathpileser I built that part of the great temple of Asshur which was intended for the worship of the gods Anu and Ramman (Adad), and in the record he has left he observes that this temple was built by the patesi Shamshi-Adad, the son of Ishme-Dagan, patesi of Asshur, six hundred and forty-one years before the reign of his own great-grandfather Asshur-dan, sixty years earlier. Accordingly Asshur must have been ruled by patesis sixty plus six hundred and forty-one years before 1100, when Tiglathpileser was on the throne, and its exaltation to the rank of a kingdom must have taken place later than that. The names of two patesis of Asshur and those of their fathers are known to us from inscriptions of their own. One of them, Shamshi-Adad, and his father, Igur-Kapkapu, we may place before or after Shamshi, the son of Ishme-Dagan, with equal probability, while the form of the other two names, Irishum and his father Khallu, being simple and exhibiting nothing of the compound character of later Assyrian names, leads us to conjecture that they belong to an earlier period.
The names of these six patesis and their work in the building of the temple of Asshur represent our whole stock of knowledge concerning Asshur before it rose to be a royal city. The first king of Assyria of whom we know anything is Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, who is introduced to us by the Synchronistic History as a contemporary of the Kossæan[22] king Karaindash of Babylon. As this monarch reigned some time about the first half of the fifteenth century B.C., there is an interval of over three hundred years between him and the patesi Shamshi-Adad, an interval of which we know nothing except that the rise of Asshur and the establishment of the kingdom of Assyria must fall within it. Of the circumstances and conditions under which these events took place we know nothing in detail, but an explanation naturally suggests itself from the state of Babylonia. During this same period Babylonia had sunk to such a depth of decrepitude that her own strength was no longer adequate to secure her against hordes of invaders, and she could continue to exist only under the protection of the Kossæan kings and their armies. These disorders, which inevitably attend such a state of things, served, as they invariably do in the East, to promote the formation of new states under energetic and enterprising leaders, and to these circumstances the kingdom of Asshur probably owed its rise.
From the reign of Shalmaneser I (circa 1300) onwards the kings of Assyria bear the title of “Shar Kishshati” and even place it before that of “King of Asshur.” “Shar Kishshati” means “King of the World,” and the title is thus formed in the same fashion as the Babylonian “King of the Four Quarters of the World.” And the Assyrian title, like the Babylonian, was not merely general in scope, but was bound up with the possession of a particular district and particular cities.
It is doubtful whether Assyria subdued the kingdom of the Kishshati from the outset, or gained possession of it at a later period. According to the scanty records at present open to us, the latter hypothesis seems the more probable. The first Assyrian king to bear the title of “Shar Kishshati” is Shalmaneser I (about 1300), and he gives it to his father, Adad-nirari I (or Ramman-nirari), although the latter does not assume it in his own inscription. Shalmaneser attaches so much weight to this title that on a couple of bricks, which date from his reign, he actually styles himself “King of Kishshati” alone, and omits the royal title of Assyria; and we therefore may conclude that the union of northern Mesopotamia and Assyria was the work of Adad-nirari and of Shalmaneser.
This would be at least one fixed point in the earliest history of Assyria from which to trace the development of the empire. Before Shalmaneser we have to do only with the little kingdom of Asshur, which was chiefly engaged in struggles with Babylonia and its eastern neighbours, and after his time with the united dominions of Assyria and northern Mesopotamia, the leading power of Mesopotamian civilisation against the West and the attacks of barbarians on every side. The Synchronistic History is our principal guide to Assyrian history, as it was to the history of Babylonia before it came into touch with Assyria. We have but few inscriptions of the kings of this early stage of Assyria’s existence, and only by the aid of the above-mentioned document can we more or less connectedly trace the course of history. Before the reign of Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, at which the chronicle now begins, we can be sure of nothing but a great blank.
[ca. 1450-1325 B.C.]
With Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, who reigned in the first half of the fifteenth century, begins a line of kings with a certain degree of continuity. Of himself we only know what is told in the Synchronistic History, namely, that he concluded an alliance with Karaindash of Babylon by which they guaranteed one another in possession of their dominions. He was presently—though perhaps not immediately—succeeded by Puzur-Asshur [probably about 1420 B.C.] of whom we are told the same thing. He entered into friendly alliance with Burna-buriash.
Of his supposed successor, Asshur-nadin-akhe, we know, from the letters of his son Asshur-uballit to Amenhotep IV, that he, like his Babylonian contemporary, held communication with the kings of Egypt. In an inscription of a later king mention is made of a building of his, the foundation of a palace at Asshur. For the rest, it is by no means impossible that he may have reigned before Puzur-Asshur, and that the latter, as well as Asshur-uballit, was his son.
We possess a letter written by Asshur-uballit to Amenhotep IV of Egypt. It gives an account of presents made to the king of Egypt—a war chariot yoked to two white horses, and a seal cylinder—makes excuse for the tardy return of Egyptian ambassadors on the plea that they had been stopped by the (nomadic) Sutu, and contains the usual importunate requests for richer presents in return. In Babylonia, Asshur-uballit succeeded in making a way for Assyrian interference, and thus came a step nearer to the goal all kings of Assyria longed to reach, the suzerainty of Babylon. Apart from the attempt of Asshur-narara and Nabu-daian, which presumably came to nothing, the little kingdom of Assyria had been on friendly terms with Babylonia, and had made alliance which probably contributed more to her own security than that of the other party. Internal troubles were the pretext which first rendered feasible his successful interference in Babylonian affairs.
The assassination of the Babylonian king by the malcontent Kossæans, and the elevation of Nazibugash to the throne, gave Asshur-uballit an admirable pretext for restoring “order” in Babylonia and placing Kurigalzu, his other grandson, on the throne. Adad-nirari mentions another expedition of his against the Shubari. His successor, Bel-nirari I [about 1370 B.C.], boasts in his inscription that he conquered the Kasshu (Kossæans) and enlarged the borders of the land. This probably refers to a distinct campaign against the Kasshu, and not to the war with Kurigalzu II, in which he was likewise victorious. The latter enterprise also resulted in territorial expansion, which does not necessarily seem to have been made permanent.
[ca. 1325-1275 B.C.]
Pudi-ilu (about 1350), the son and successor of Bel-nirari, waged war, we are told by his son, Adad-nirari, against the otherwise unknown Turuki and Nigimkhi, who probably dwelt somewhere in the direction of Armenia, and extended the Assyrian frontier to the north (Gutium). Adad-nirari I (about 1325) has left an inscription which has been discovered at Kalah Shergat (Asshur). According to it, he, like his predecessors, waged most of his wars on the northeastern frontier of his kingdom, and endeavoured, by building cities, to revive the prosperity of the region occupied by the Shubari, Lulumi, Guti, and Kasshu of the northeast, which had been laid waste by previous wars. His inscription relates mainly to the buildings he erected in connection with the temple of Asshur. It is the first from Assyria with a definite date. It was indited in the limmu (i.e. the year of office) of Shulman-kharradu.
His son, Shalmaneser I (about 1300), was one of the mightiest Assyrian kings, and probably the first who raised Asshur to a position equal, if not superior, to that of Babylonia. We do not know much about him from inscriptions left by himself, and are therefore obliged to depend on occasional statements of succeeding kings. He ruled over Mesopotamia westward to the Balikh at least, if not to the Euphrates, and assured to Assyria the possession of the northern tract between the Euphrates and Tigris, which was afterward the provinces of Gumathene and Sophene. He founded colonies there, and planted them with Assyrian settlers to form a bulwark to Mesopotamia against the tribes of the North. Afterwards, when the power of Assyria was impaired, these colonies were in great straits, but they held their own, and were then reinforced by Asshurnazirpal, to whom they served as a welcome basis for the new Assyrian province of Tuskhan which he established there.
With the extension of the kingdom and the inclusion of northern Mesopotamia, the need of another capital than Asshur, which lay too far to the south, made itself felt. The city Shalmaneser chose for this purpose was Calah, which remained the capital down to the time of Sargon, except during the period of decline which followed upon the reign of Tiglathpileser I. His object in this change of residence was clearly to give expression to the altered state of things which had come about in Assyria and Mesopotamia. Assyria was not to be the privileged kingdom, but the two political organisations, Asshur and the Kingdom of the Kishshati, were to be equal members of the new empire, each retaining its own centre in Asshur and Kharran respectively, while the king founded his own capital for himself, to avoid giving the preference to either.
Shalmaneser’s son, Tukulti-Ninib I (about 1275) [but probably somewhat earlier] was no less fortunate in his enterprises than his father. He was the first to achieve the object of every king in Assyria—dominion over Babylon. Adad-nirari III, in his list of his ancestors, styles him “King of Sumer and Accad,” from which we may certainly conclude that he held the same sort of position toward the whole of Babylonia, and the kingdom of Babylon more particularly, as was afterward attained by Shalmaneser II—that is to say, he must have ruled over the several provinces of all Babylonia and exercised a kind of suzerainty over Babylon.
The rapid rise of Assyria seems to have been followed by equally rapid decline. For a hundred years we have hardly any information concerning it, and do not even know the names of the kings who reigned during that period. The lack of inscriptions, or, at any rate, of vaunting records in the reigns of later kings, seems in itself to indicate a time of humiliation, while the conditions which we find prevailing when our sources of information become more copious, show that soon after the reign of Tukulti-Ninib, and therefore probably before the end of the thirteenth century B.C., the power of Assyria must have been seriously curtailed and exposed to grievous shocks. Whence they arose we shall presently see.[b]
There is scarcely a year in which additional information concerning this obscure period does not come to light. A recently deciphered fragment of the Babylonian Chronicle mentions an Assyrian king, Tukulti-Asshur-Bel, contemporaneous with Tukulti-Ninib, but of the relation of the two kings nothing is stated. Professor Winckler in Altorientalische Forschungen, suggests that the former was the latter’s son, and co-regent while he was engaged in ruling and reducing Babylon. Professor Rogers sums up the end of Tukulti-Ninib’s life: “For seven years was this rule over Babylonia maintained. The Babylonians rebelled, drove out the Assyrian conquerors, and set up once more a Babylonian, Adad-shum-usur (about 1268-1239 B.C.), over them. When Tukulti-Ninib returned to Assyria he found even his own people in rebellion under the leadership of his son. In the civil war that followed he lost his life, and the most brilliant reign in Assyrian history up to that time was closed.”
[ca. 1275-1235 B.C.]
This rebellious son was not the above mentioned Tulkulti-Asshur-Bel, but Asshurnazirpal I. His reign continues the period of decline, and in it it is believed that Adad-shum-usur actually attacked Assyria. Next come two kings, Asshur-narara and Nabu-daian, whose reigns seem to have been contemporaneous (about 1250 B.C.). A fragment of a clay tablet was found containing a letter from Adad-shum-usur to these two kings, in which he remonstrates on their folly in taking up arms against him, which shows that Babylon’s power was still waxing.[a]
We do not know how it came to pass that Assyria lost the ascendancy she had gained over Babylonia under Tukulti-Ninib, but it is certain that some fifty years later Bel-kudur-usur found himself relegated to Assyria proper, and was obliged to fight for the possession of his capital. [According to Professor Rogers, Meli-Shipak (about 1238) and Marduk-apal-iddin (about 1223-1211) were the Babylonian kings in this war. He places Adad-shum-iddin’s death at 1269, and Adad-shum-usur’s at 1238 B.C., basing these dates on some recent illuminative suggestions of Professor Hommel.] The Synchronistic History, which is incomplete at this point, states that Ninib-apal-esharra (who was probably the son of Bel-kudur-usur) was forced to retreat. The Babylonians appear to have pursued and besieged him in his own capital of Asshur, and there a battle was fought, in which, according to the apparent purport of the Synchronistic History, the Assyrians were beaten. But the victory, if victory it were, cannot have been decisive, for after the battle the Babylonians withdrew without making any further attempt to invade the remoter parts of the country. The defeat of the Assyrians must, therefore, have been more like a successful defence of their city. Slight as this clew is, it makes it evident that for a while Assyria had to fight for her life against Babylon, and that she held her own with difficulty. The development of this state of things must be sought in the great hiatus made by the reign of Bel-kudur-usur. The titles of the Babylonian kings of the period also go to prove that at this time Babylonia had actually repossessed herself of northern Mesopotamia.
Since we find Tiglathpileser in possession of much the same dominions as Tukulti-Ninib (though Sumer and Accad did not belong to him), the course of events during all the twelfth century, from Ninib-apal-esharra to Asshur-rish-ishi, is self-evident. The business in hand was the reconquest of what had been lost, and at it the succeeding rulers steadily and successfully laboured.
Of Ninib-apal-esharra, the Synchronistic History says nothing except that he successfully withstood the Babylonian attack, nor does Tiglathpileser mention any other deeds of his. The latter, however, expressly gives him the character of a capable commander, “who led the troops of Asshur aright,” presumably with reference to his retreat after the death of Bel-kudur-usur and the repulse of the Babylonian king.
[ca. 1200-1116 B.C.]
His son and successor, Asshur-dan (about 1200 B.C.), won some victories over Babylon and reconquered some parts beyond the Zab from Samana-shum-iddin (king of Babylonia). Tiglathpileser lays stress upon the fact that he lived to a great age (to about 1150 B.C.). Of his son, Mutakkil-Nusku, no particulars are known. He probably carried on the work of his predecessors, for Assyria gradually regained all she had lost.
Then Asshur-rish-ishi (about 1140 B.C.), the father of Tiglathpileser I, reports that he had reconquered the Lulumi and Kuti, whom Adad-nirari had formerly subjugated, and who had either fallen under the sway of Babylon or made themselves independent; and that he had repulsed the nomads, whom Adad-nirari had likewise driven back, and who had naturally taken advantage of Assyria’s weakness to press forward again. His war with Nebuchadrezzar I, king of Babylon, seems to have been waged mainly for the possession of Mesopotamia, which the defeat of the nomads was also intended to secure. It is most probable that he gained his end, the evacuation of the kingdom of Kishshati, of which Nebuchadrezzar styles himself king in one of his inscriptions.[b]
THE FIRST GREAT ASSYRIAN CONQUEROR
[ca. 1116-1050 B.C.]
Asshur-rish-ishi’s son, Tiglathpileser I (Tu-kulti-apal-esharra, meaning “My help is the son of Esharra,” i.e. the god Ninib), is the first of the great Assyrian conquerors. Directly after his accession to the throne he marched against the Mushke (Mushkaya) to conquer the districts previously taken by them. The Mushke (the Meshech of the Old Testament, and the Moschi of the Greeks) were defeated, as well as the people of Kummukh and the mountainous races of the Kharia and Qurkhi country stretching from the north of the Tigris to the Upper Zab. In the next campaign the same district was traversed, but the king then crossed the Lower Zab, and thence proceeded northward into the mountains. The whole mountainous district was then incorporated with the Assyrian kingdom, and Tiglathpileser was then able to proceed to the subjugation of the lands of western Armenia and Pontis, never before entered by the Assyrian rulers.
An Assyrian King
He crossed sixteen mountains, reached (what he calls the land of the Nairi) the upper Euphrates, which he crossed, and defeated in a great battle twenty-five kings [twenty-three according to others], who encountered him with their troops and war chariots. The enemies were pursued as far as the banks of the Black Sea, when all the princes swore fealty and bound themselves to pay tribute. On the return march the town Milidia, i.e. Melitene on the Euphrates, was taken and forced to pay tribute.
The next, the fourth campaign of the king was directed against the Aramæans, of the North Mesopotamian steppe; he penetrated as far as the Euphrates, and conquered several places in the vicinity of Carchemish. Then followed an expedition to the east against [the Musri and] the then unknown race of the Qumani. In later years Tiglathpileser undertook campaigns in the west. An inscription at the source of the Supnat, the first easterly tributary of the Tigris, tells us that he traversed the country of Nairi (Armenia) three times, and that he subjugated all the country “from the great sea of the west country to the sea of Nairi.” In particular we learn that he made a voyage in ships from Arvad (Aradus) on the Mediterranean Sea, that he hunted in Lebanon (he was a passionate hunter), and that the kings of Egypt sent him some rare sea fishes as a present. It is very probable that one of the mutilated inscriptions which the Assyrian kings had put up on the Dog River (the Nahr-el-Kelb, north of Beirut), quite close to the victory monuments of Ramses II, related to Tiglathpileser. He also made war against Marduk-nadin-akhe of Babylon, but with no success; at least we learn that the Babylonian king, in the year 1110 B.C., carried off images of gods from an Assyrian city. [According to Professor Rogers, Tiglathpileser marched to Babylon and was there acknowledged King of the Four Quarters of the World.]
However, Tiglathpileser in a second campaign was completely victorious in a battle of the Lower Zab, and took all the capitals of the northern half of Accad: Dur-Kurigalzu, the double town Sippar, Babylon, and Upi. The steppe district on the western bank of the Euphrates (the land of the Shuhi or Sukhi) was also subjugated by him. Thus did Tiglathpileser create a great kingdom, which included the whole district of the Euphrates and Tigris, as far as Babylon, as well as the mountainous country of western Armenia and eastern Asia Minor, as far as Pontis; and his supremacy was also recognised by northern Syria.
Of the organisation of the kingdom, we only know that the contiguous districts, such as the valley of the Khabur, eastern Kummukh, and Qurkhe were incorporated with the state, and governed by Assyrian ministers, whilst the more distant countries retained their native rulers, and were only bound to the payment of tribute. The kingdom has no enduring position. We hear that Asshur-bel-kala (about 1090 B.C.), the son of Tiglathpileser, lived in the greatest peace with Marduk-shapik-zer-mati, the Babylonian king. When, after the latter’s fall, Adad-apal-iddin, the son of Esagila-shaduni, was raised to the throne, Asshur-bel-kala married his daughter and brought her home to Assyria, with many presents. [In this reign, according to Rogers, the seat of empire was probably established at Nineveh.]
[ca. 1050-884 B.C.]
Babylonia had evidently regained her complete independence, though the Assyrian chronicles fail to relate the means whereby it was achieved. Asshur-bel-kala was succeeded by his brother Shamshi-Adad (about 1080 B.C.), of whom we know nothing further; and then follows a great gap in the line of kings. [Here may be inserted the names of Asshurnazirpal II about 1050 B.C., Erba-Adad, and Asshur-nadin-akhe.]
Of King Asshur-erbi it is only mentioned that under him the districts conquered by Tiglathpileser, namely, the country Pitru on the Sagur near Carchemish, and the city of Mutkinu, east of the Euphrates, were taken by the Aramæan king. This was evidently the king of the country of Bit-Adini, whose chief dominion lay east of the Euphrates, the capital being Tel-Barsip, which is probably Birejik, opposite the Zeugma of the Greeks. At the beginning of the ninth century we again have more accurate information about Assyria, and so find that, beyond a part of the mountainous district east and southeast of Nineveh, the kings now have only the country on the upper Tigris (around Amida), Kummukh, and a great part of the cultivated land of Mesopotamia.
The district on the Euphrates, opposite Carchemish, is independent and split up into several princedoms (Bit-Adini, Nila, Bit-Bachiani, and farther north, Tel-Abnai), the exact boundaries of which it has hitherto been impossible to determine. The country on the Balikh seems to have remained Assyrian; it is very remarkable that the city of Kharran is not mentioned in any of the later campaigns. The district farther east, Nisibis and the neighbouring Gozan, the fruitful valleys of the Khabur and its tributaries, even the city of Suru in the land of Bit-Khalupe on the Euphrates (Sura, east of Thapsachos), were governed by Assyrian ministers. The government of Assyrian ministers in the lower valley of the Khabur is of special interest to us.
The whole district of this river, as well as the land of Sangara farther east, is full of heaps and ruins, which mark the localities of old and later times. The most important are the ruins at the place now called Arban on the Khabur. Here are the remains of an ancient palace, built in the Assyrian style, with four winged oxen, with men’s heads, an open-mouthed lion, the portrait in relief of a warrior, etc. The oxen bear the inscription “Palace of the Mushesh-Ninib.” The possibility of getting at a satisfactory date for this palace is unfortunately not yet apparent. That scarabs of Tehutimes III and Amenhotep III have been found in Arban and Calah, is no sufficient clew. As King Asshurnazirpal III of Assyria went down the Khabur in the year 884 B.C., Shulman-khaman-ilani of Sadikkan and Ilu-Adad of Shuma brought him heavy tribute. Doubtless one of these two places is the Arban of to-day, and their governors were semi-independent Assyrian ministers, known as the Mushesh-Ninib, for the names, writing, and style of art show us that we have not here to do with a native government. The population of the valley of the Khabur was doubtless Aramæan, like that of Kharran and Nisibis.
[ca. 1090-885 B.C.]
The eleventh and tenth centuries B.C. confirmed the complete freedom of the local government of the countries of Western Asia. Whilst the kingdom of the Pharaohs was decaying from age, a new nation was rising in Syria and evolving an active intelligent life of its own.
The Phœnician merchants circulated the products of the civilisation of Syria along all the coasts of the Mediterranean, and the dwellers on the Ægean Sea having already entered the circle of cultured races, competing with the Phœnicians in trade and the traverse of the sea, took possession of the coasts one after another and thereby developed a complete political and intellectual life. The fate of Western Asia was determined by the evolution of Syria’s culture not taking a wide-reaching, powerful, political form, but rather hindering it. Since the days of the Kheta kingdom’s glory, there has been no great power in Syria. So when a conquering, military state was now formed on the Tigris, under a fearless, warlike prince, it met with no sustained resistance.
The success of Assyria was due to her military organisation. Little as we know of its particulars, there can be no doubt that the whole race regarded war and conquest as the real aims of existence, and the more successful they were, the more they ignored all other sides of life; whereas the little states of Syria made tillage, trade, and industry the chief occupations of their life, albeit every inhabitant was presumably bound, like the Israelites, to take up arms in case of need, in the defence of his country. The sole great military power was Egypt, but her warrior caste was composed of foreign mercenaries who exploited the country, although from a military point of view they evidently did not benefit it more than the generality of their class in similar cases.
The outcome of events was thus a foregone conclusion. The Assyrian campaigns of two centuries ended in the political and national fall of the races of Syria. The progress of events then led further to the annihilation of nationality in the whole of Western Asia. The kingdom of Tiglathpileser I fell, soon after his death, and there now ensues a little later a gap of more than a century in our information about Assyria. The very scanty notices commence about 950 B.C. Asshur-dan II, mentioned as “the maker of a canal,” reigned at that time. [A recently discovered inscription of Adad-nirari II speaks of his grandfather Tiglathpileser. Therefore, a new Tiglathpileser, the second of his name, is now reckoned in the list of kings, and the approximate dates 950-930 B.C. assigned to his reign. Nothing is known of him except that he is called “King of Kishshati and King of Asshur.” Asshur-dan II’s reign is now put down as beginning 930 B.C., and Adad-nirari II’s at 911.] Asshur-dan’s successor, Adad-nirari II, mentioned with the building at the “Gate of the Tigris” (890 B.C.), conquers King Shamash-mudammik of Babylon in a battle on Mount Yalman, and made war against his successor, Nabu-shum-ishkun [who was also defeated and yielded certain cities]. In the peace made by an alliance, the boundary was fixed near the city of Tel-Bari, south of the Lower Zab.
The next king, Tukulti-Ninib II (890-885 B.C.), fought in the northwest mountains, and at the source of Supnat, the first tributary of the Tigris, he had his statue (stele) erected near that of Tiglathpileser. In spite of repeated attacks, the mountainous districts on the east as far as the lake of Van, the chief part of the land of Qurkhi, retained essentially their independence. The warlike efforts of these rulers had been hitherto directed against the races of the mountains of Kasjar (Masius), the south of the Tigris, and close to Aramæan Mesopotamia, which, in spite of numerous campaigns, had never been subjugated. If Nisibis, Gozan, and the valley of the Khabur, and apparently also Kharran, belonged to the Assyrians under Asshurnazirpal, they either remained independent after the twelfth century, or were subjugated by the kings of this period. In the east, the mountainous races of Khubushkia and Kirruri (on the Upper Zab, and as far as the lake of Urumiyeh) are tributary, and on the Lower Zab, we find under Asshurnazirpal, an Assyrian governor of Dagara, in the land of the Euphrates, whose fortified citadels were mostly situated on the banks of the river, or like Anat, on an island, paid tribute. Tukulti-Ninib’s son, Asshurnazirpal III (885 to 860), entered on fresh conquests directly after his accession to the throne.[c]
THE REIGN AND CRUELTY OF ASSHURNAZIRPAL
[885-880 B.C.]
Tiglathpileser’s work of conquest was to be begun over again; Asshurnazirpal felt the full force of the mission, and he accomplished it with a cruelty worthy of the hero he took for pattern, and his successors applied themselves, as did he, to avenge, arms in hand, Asshur’s temporary humiliation.
Scarcely was Asshurnazirpal seated on the throne, when he turned attention to his armies,—his war chariots and armed men were numerous and well equipped; they were ready to take the march. It was the land of Numme which received the first blow. Accustomed to prolonged and uninterrupted peace, the inhabitants had never even thought of measures for defence, and they fled to the mountains at the approach of the Assyrians, who made bloodless captures of the towns of Libe, Surra, Abuku, Arura, and Arubi, situated at the base of Mounts Rime, Aruni, and Etini. “These majestic peaks,” relates Asshurnazirpal, “rise up like daggers’ blades, and only the birds of the sky in their flight can reach their summits. The natives entrenched themselves among them as though in eagles’ nests. None of the kings, my fathers, had ever penetrated so far. In three days I reached those heights; I brought terror in the midst of their hiding places, I shook their nests; two hundred defenders perished by the sword, and I seized their flock and a rich booty. Their corpses strewed the mountains like leaves from the trees, and those who escaped had to take refuge in caves.” These proceedings terrified the peaceful inhabitants of the Kirruri district, who hastened from Simirra, Ulmania, Adanit, Khargai, and Kharasi, to throw themselves at the conqueror’s feet and offered all that he was wont to seize—horses, oxen, sheep, and brazen vessels. They were given an Assyrian governor. Such was the fright throughout the whole of Nairi that while he still lingered in Kirruri, Asshurnazirpal received ambassadors from the people of Gozan and Khubushkia who came from far to the east, bringing presents asking for the chains of slavery.
Asshurnazirpal
(Based on Sculptures in the British Museum)
From Kirruri the Assyrian king went a little to the east into the district of Qurkhi, pillaging in turn at least a dozen towns and finally arrived at the borders of Urartu. The only serious resistance he encountered was under the walls of Nishtum, which paid dear for its courage. These beginnings were a forecast of the future, and Asshurnazirpal did not even wait for the following year to recommence. While still wearing the dignity of “limmu,” on the 24th day of the month Abu (July-August), he set out to lay waste the country now called the Bohtan district, between the Tigris and the western spurs of the Judi Mountains. Here were the districts of Nippur and Pazati, comprising more than twenty important towns, among which Atkun and Pilazi were burned. Asshurnazirpal then crossed the Tigris and invaded Kummukh to claim the annual tribute it had forgotten to furnish. [It is possible that he went for the purpose of quelling a rebellion.]
At the moment he was thinking of going on to the Moschi, more to the northwest, a messenger brought him a letter which contained the following news: “The city of Suru (Surieh of the present day), which is subject to Bit-Khalupe, is in revolt; the inhabitants have put Khamitai, their governor, to death, and have proclaimed Akhi-yababa, son of Lamaman, whom they have brought from Bit-Adini, as their king.” Furious at this information, Asshurnazirpal invoked Asshur and Adad, counted his chariots and soldiers, and flew to the seat of trouble by descending the course of the Khabur. His progress was hampered by the arrival of many persons, their hands filled with presents and their mouths with protestations of fidelity. There were Shulman-khaman-ilani of Sadikkan, Ilu-Adad of Shuma, and a hundred others.
The city of Suru took fright, and the rebels came out to meet him, bringing the keys of the citadel. They kissed his feet, but Asshurnazirpal was inflexible. “I killed one out of every two of them,” he says, and one-half of the remainder was reduced to slavery. Akhi-yababa, a prisoner, witnessed the pillage of his palace, he saw his wives, sons, and daughters in chains, and his tutelary gods, his chariot, his armour, and his treasure carried off. He saw all his ministers flayed alive as well as the leaders of the rebellion. A pyramid erected at the city gate was covered with their skins; some were walled up in the masonry, others were crucified and exposed on stakes along the side of the pyramid. One would hesitate to believe all this and would willingly take the Assyrian monarchs for boasters of their cruelty, if the bas-reliefs with which they decorated their palace walls, and which to-day ornament our museums, did not speak to our eyes or their accompanying inscriptions speak to our intelligence. We must tax our wits to imagine more refinement of torture or of methods of execution.
Before Asshurnazirpal returned to Nineveh, he made a military tour of the regions about the junction on the Khabur and Euphrates, which formed the country of Laqi. All the petty dynasties of this land brought their tribute. Then he advanced as far as Khindanu, on the Euphrates, the frontier of the Shuhi country. On returning to his capital the king was followed by an endless file of slaves, horses, oxen, sheep, chariots laden with stuffs of wool and linen, ingots of gold, bronze and iron, copper and leaden vessels, and wooden framework; the booty, he says, was as numberless as the stars of the sky. The soldiers had laid hold of every manner of object, and in the division a use was found for everything.
At Nineveh the king occupied himself with embellishing his palace while he waited for the spring. In one of the inner courts he erected a statue to himself of colossal size, and the history of his recent conquests was engraved on the palace gates. He was daily obliged to receive the homage of ambassadors who arrived from all parts to acknowledge his suzerainty, offer presents, and claim the sad honour of serving such a master, for they had learned by experience that it was too late for a city to offer its submission when the king was at its gates.
[880-876 B.C.]
It happened that Asshurnazirpal was en pleine fête surrounded by his court when news came of a rebellion in the region situated around the sources of the Tigris. The leader of this insurrection was an Assyrian, Khula by name, whom in former days Shalmaneser had appointed governor of Darudamusa and Khalzilukha. The king set out at once, and, arriving at the sources of the Tigris, he sought out the steles which his predecessors, Tiglathpileser and Tukulti-Ninib, had erected, and by their side set up one for himself. On the way he stopped to levy tribute on the country of Izalla and took by assault the cities of Kinabu, Mariru, and Tela. After a bloody contest under the walls of the last place he put out the eyes and cut off the noses and ears of the prisoners whose lives he spared. Khula was flayed alive.
There stood in this region, within the land of Nirbu, a city which bore the name of Asshur and had probably been built by Tiglathpileser in order to control the surrounding country. Since this town had also taken part in the rebellion, Asshurnazirpal caused it to be razed to its foundations as well as the city of Tushka, upon whose ruins he built a pyramid surmounted by his statue and bearing an inscription which related the conquest of the land of Nairi. Here he received tribute of the kings of Nairi. The districts of Urumi and Bituni also brought their gifts. But scarcely had Asshurnazirpal turned his back when all the tribes of Nairi revolted, and he had to return and prosecute a regular man-hunt among the mountains.
The year had been very full, and it was easy to foresee that the disasters following the reign of Tiglathpileser would soon be repaired. In three campaigns Asshurnazirpal had carried the torch over a portion of the land of Nairi, to the south and east of Lake Van, to the sources of the Tigris, through the Khabur Valley, and down the Euphrates. But like the effect of a tempest which passes and devours everything, the Assyrian domination founded only in fear was fatally ephemeral and became shaky just as soon as the chastising arm was observed to withdraw.
[876-854 B.C.]
Feeling secure in the direction of Nairi, which he had treated so harshly, Asshurnazirpal turned his attention to the fertile slopes along the left bank of the Tigris. He risked encountering the Babylonians, but these latter had no longer any fear for him, and the weakened, scattered Kassite (or Kossæan) tribes could scarcely be called formidable. Babitu, Dagara, Bara, Kakzi, and twenty other places underwent the fate reserved for cities taken by assault; one hundred and fifty towns were pillaged and burnt, and the whole land of Nishir was devastated. The rainy season suspended hostilities, and Asshurnazirpal returned to winter quarters at Nineveh, but as soon as the weather permitted on the first of Sivan (May) he returned to Zamua. The capital of Zamua was Zamri, and there King Amikha resided, in no condition to resist. He fled to the mountains where Asshurnazirpal dared not pursue him, and contented himself with laying hands on the riches of the palace. All the surrounding districts hastened to offer their submission with the exception of the city of Mizu, which was taken by assault.
The following year was consumed in military expeditions to the sources of the Tigris, in the lands of Kummukh, Qurkhi, and Kashiari, where certain cities like Mattiate and Irisia had neglected to pay tribute or manifested symptoms of rebellion. Asshurnazirpal experienced no serious or well-organised resistance except beneath the walls of Bit-Ura in the land of Dirra. “The city,” he says, “crowns a height, is surrounded by a strong double enceinte and lifts itself like a great thumb above the mountain. With the help of Asshur—my lord—I attacked it with my valorous soldiers, and besieged it for two days from the side of the rising sun. Arrows fell upon it like the hail of the god Adad. Finally, my warriors, whose zeal I had encouraged, fell upon the city like vultures. I took the citadel, I put eight hundred men to the sword, and I cut off their heads. I made a mound with their corpses before the city gate; the prisoners were beheaded and I put seven hundred of them to the cross. The city was pillaged and destroyed; I transformed it into a heap of ruins.” Passing thence into the land of Qurkhi, Asshurnazirpal committed the same atrocities: two hundred captives had their heads cut off, and two thousand others were reduced to slavery. One of the kinglets of the land who had succeeded in winning the king’s good graces from the time of the first war, Ammibaal, by name, son of Zamani, had become odious to his people, because of his friendship for the tyrant, and he was put to death by his own officers. The king of Assyria hastened to avenge his faithful vassal. When the culprits saw the storm advancing, they tried to ward it off by offering all they possessed to the invader, and for once he remained satisfied.
He had under his authority all the regions between the source of the Supnat and the borders of the land of Shabitani on one side; between the land of Kirruri and that of Kilzani on the other, from the banks of the Zab to the city of Tel-Bari which is above Zaban from Tel-Sa-abtan to Tel-Sa-zabtan; besides this he annexed to his empire the cities of Kimiru and Kuratu, the land of Birut and of Kardunyash, and he imposed tribute upon the whole of Nairi.
Bas-reliefs showing Assyrians torturing Prisoners
(After Layard)
What was to be done with so much wealth constantly accumulating in the storehouses of Nineveh, and for whom was this gold, these jewels, this bronze, these rich stuffs? To what use could he put these thousands of slaves who ran the risk of becoming so many idle mouths to feed? Asshurnazirpal had the idea of building a palace which would surpass the wildest dreams of his predecessors, and he fixed its location in the city of Calah, which was particularly the city of his dynasty.
British archæologists, who have made a special study of the ruins of Calah, astonished at the treasures they found buried under the mound Nimrud, have attempted to reconstruct from their own imaginations and the recovered documents the general aspect of the city in the days of Asshurnazirpal, who has left his name and inscriptions in every corner of it. “In a strong and healthy position,” says George Rawlinson, “on a low spur of the Jebel Maklub, protected on either side by a deep river, the new capital grew to greatness. Palace after palace rose on its lofty platforms, rich with carved woodwork, gilding, painting, sculpture, and enamel, each aiming to outshine its predecessors; while stone lions, sphinxes, obelisks, shrines, and temple towers embellished the scene, breaking its monotonous sameness by variety. The lofty ziggurat (pyramid) attached to the temple of Ninib, dominating over the whole, gave unity to the vast mass of palatial and sacred edifices. The Tigris, skirting the entire western base of the mound, glossed in its waves, and, doubling the apparent height, rendered less observable the chief weakness of the architecture. When the setting sun lighted up the whole with the gorgeous lines seen only under an eastern sky, Calah must have seemed to the traveller who beheld it for the first time like a vision of fairyland.”
From the pyramid of the temple of Ninib the Assyrian priests observed the motions of the heavens, calculated the return of eclipses, and questioned the future. In the temple searched by Layard traces were everywhere found of Asshurnazirpal and what he himself calls “the glory of his name.” His portrait has been found repeated a dozen times on the bas-reliefs; he has all the features of a corrupt and cruel monarch. His low, retreating forehead lacks nobility; the eyes are unusually large; the cheekbones stand out prominently; the nostrils of the round, aquiline nose are too large; the clipped moustache, brushed and curled at the ends, reveals thick, sensual lips, while the chin and face are covered with that heavy false beard which falls upon the breast in symmetrical twists, and was worn by all the kings. The thick, short neck, the broad shoulders and thick-set body, gave the king a robust, vigorous aspect. His statue in the British Museum represents him standing. In one hand he holds a scythe, in the other a sceptre. On his breast is written, “Asshurnazirpal, great king, powerful king, king of legions, king of Assyria, son of Tukulti-Ninib (?), great king, powerful king, king of legions, king of Assyria, son of Adad-nirari, great king, powerful king, king of Assyria. He possesses lands from the shores of the Tigris as far as Labana [Lebanon]; he has subjected to his power the great sea, and all the lands from the rising to the setting of the sun.”
Several years after this statue was erected Asshurnazirpal would not have fixed the Lebanon range as the western limit of his empire, for the fortunes of war still smiled upon him. The last portion of his reign is filled with two great expeditions in which he covered himself with glory. The definite submission of the middle and lower Euphrates region, including the land of Kardunyash, and the conquest of a part of Syria and Phœnicia. A revolt in the lands of Laqi and Shuhi, on the Middle Euphrates, was an excellent pretext for recommencing the war interrupted by the work of embellishing Calah. [He marched upon Suru, levying tribute at every step.] For a long time this little land of Shuhi had been warring with the Assyrians, and though unceasingly beaten and ransomed, it nevertheless managed to hold up its head, and had been able hitherto to maintain its independence. Its sovereigns appear to have had continual friendly relations with their neighbours the kings of Babylon, at least on the occasions when it was necessary to resist the men of the North.
This time the Shuhites again appealed to the Chaldeans, whom the inscription, through tradition, doubtless, still calls the Kassites or Kossæans. [Suru was taken, and among the prisoners were the brother and the general of Nabu-apal-iddin, king of Babylon.]
Then terror seized the soul of the weak Nabu-apal-iddin, king of Babylon, and all Chaldea trembled. Unfortunate wars and intestine quarrels had put Babylon out of condition to fight against the all-pervading Assyrian superiority. Nevertheless Asshurnazirpal does not say that he entered Babylonia, which he even seems to have prudently respected. He contents himself with telling us that he erected his statue in the city of Suru, and spread terror throughout Chaldea and all the lands watered by the Euphrates.
The following year he was compelled to suppress a revolt of the mountaineers inhabiting the southern slopes of Mount Masius in the very heart of Mesopotamia. This was the state of Bit-Adini, whose principal cities were Kaprabi and Tel-Aban. Asshurnazirpal scattered an army of eight thousand horsemen, and brought back to Calah two thousand four hundred slaves to work at the embellishment of his capital.
In spite of the peace which ruled in the Tigris and Euphrates basins, whose resources were, moreover, completely exhausted, Asshurnazirpal now resolved to strike a great blow on their western side, which would be a field for rapine in which no Assyrian had ever yet set foot. The occasion seemed favourable, for on the west of the Euphrates the Hittites were in no condition to wage war; they had not yet recovered from the terrible blows dealt them by Tiglathpileser, and their resistance in any case would not be very great.
Asshurnazirpal went right ahead [starting on the 8th day of Airu (April), 876.—Rogers], traversing the states of Bit-Bahian, Amila, and Bit-Adini as far as the Euphrates, which he crossed on floats in sight of Carchemish. Into the city he made a bloodless entry, receiving the homage and tribute of King Sangara. A Hittite prince, Lubarna, who ruled in the valley of the river Apre (modern Afrin) [in a state called Patin] and possessed places of considerable importance such as Hazaz and Kunulua (the capital). Lubarna made preparations to oppose the march of the invader, but on seeing him approach fell on his knees and stripped himself of all he possessed for offerings. He was soon master of both slopes of the Lebanon, and he could see the great Phœnician Sea (Mediterranean). There, in astonishment, and grateful to the gods for all their blessings, he offered them a sacrifice of thanks on a wave-washed rock. “I received,” he says, “the tribute of the kings of the land of the sea, the people of Tyre, Sidon, Byblus, Makhallat, Maiz, Kaiz,[23] Akharri, and of Arvad, which is situated full on the sea; they brought me silver, gold, tin, iron, iron utensils, garments of wool and linen, ‘pagut,’ large and small, of sandal and ebony wood, skins of marine animals, and they kissed my feet.”
Asshurnazirpal, protected by Ninib and Nergal, the gods of strength, embarked on a vessel which he captured in the harbour of Arvad and took a sea trip, during which he killed a dolphin. Several days later he hunted among the steep gorges of Lebanon, killed buffaloes and boars, capturing a number of them alive, which he sent to Assyria. He boasts of having killed one hundred and twenty lions himself, and claims that these animals succumbed to fright before his almightiness. He further enumerates troops of wild animals which he drove back to their lairs,—antelopes, deer, ibexes, gazelles, tigers, foxes, leopards; he also killed some eagles and vultures. Among these mountains this true son of Nimrod quite forgot himself until the king of Egypt, whom the fame of his deeds had reached, sent a congratulatory embassy asking for his friendship. When later the kings of Egypt and Assyria met on the shore of the Mediterranean, it was by no means for mutual congratulation and the exchange of presents.
After this, Asshurnazirpal turned northward into the Amanus Mountains, where he cut down cedar, pine, and cypress trees for his great buildings in Calah. No one will ever know how much effort, nor the lives of how many slaves it cost, to transport those gigantic logs cut in the Amanus forests over the mountainous and trackless country to the banks of the Tigris.
Asshurnazirpal never revisited the shores of the Mediterranean, and like Moses he but caught a glimpse of the promised land which his successors were destined to conquer, and whose inexhaustible riches they so long exploited. What we know of the remainder of his reign is the story of unimportant expeditions, principally for the collection of tribute in the north of Mesopotamia and around the sources of the Tigris. The district of Khipani and its capital, Khuzirina, as well as the states of Assa, Qurkhi, and Adini, underwent new trials; the city of Amida, the modern Diarbekir, witnessed a pyramid of human skulls rising before its walls, and three thousand slaves—those whose eyes were not put out or who were not crucified—were sent to Nineveh, where they were employed in digging a great irrigation canal to make use of the waters of the Upper Zab, the borders of which were planted with trees torn from the forests of Syria.
The last eight years of his life seem to have been more peaceful than their predecessors, although we can scarcely suppose that he passed them in profound peace, which would be as hard to reconcile with his turbulent and sanguinary nature as with the terrible condition of the lands he had conquered, all of which were trying to regain their freedom. At all events, he left his successors an immense empire, an unbroken frontier, and an Assyrian domination recognised from the Zagros to the Amanus Mountains, and from the sources of the Euphrates to the gates of Babylon.[d]
SHALMANESER II AND HIS SUCCESSORS
Aside from the ruthlessness of his conquests, Asshurnazirpal was chiefly remarkable for rebuilding the city of Calah, constructing a canal, erecting himself a wonderful palace, whose ruins have been found at Nimrud, and the building or rebuilding of a great aqueduct. He, who had butchered and battled so liberally, died in 860 B.C. in peace.
His son, Shalmaneser II (Shulman-asharid) (860-824 B.C.) commenced warlike operations at once. After a campaign eastward (860) he entered upon a systematic conquest of the western countries. After several campaigns (859-856) Akhuni’s district of Bit-Adini, on both sides of the Euphrates, was completely subjugated, incorporated with the kingdom, and peopled with Assyrian colonists, and Tel-Barship on the Euphrates was changed into an Assyrian residence city under the name of Kar-Shulman-asharid (City of Shalmaneser). Finally he succeeded in capturing the prince who had fled across the Euphrates into the mountains. Next followed the campaigns on the west of the Euphrates. In the year 859 he twice defeated a coalition of North Syrian princes, the rulers of Carchemish, Patin, Sama’al, etc., joined by the kings of Que, and Khilukha; then he subjugated the Amanus district and the district on the lower Orontes (the country of Patin). In the following year, the annual tribute of all the North Syrian states was definitely settled.
[854-829 B.C.]
In the year 854 B.C. Shalmaneser advanced farther south. Khalman made submission, but a strong coalition was formed against him in the district of Hamath by Hadad-ezer, or Ben-Hadad II, of Damascus, Irkhulina of Hamath, and Ahab of Israel. The adjacent smaller states of the princes, Matinu-Baal of Arvad (Aradus), Baasha of Ammon, etc., followed suit.
The Syrian states evidently recognised the full extent of the danger threatening them; Ahab of Israel probably made peace with Damascus so as to be able to withstand the Assyrians. Only the Phœnician cities were obdurate; whilst the Arabian prince, Gindibu, sent a thousand camel riders, and even the Egyptian king sent one thousand men. A battle took place at Qarqar in the vicinity of the Orontes. Shalmaneser boasts of a complete victory. [His inscription says: “Fourteen thousand of their warriors I slew with arms; like Adad I rained a deluge upon them, I strewed hither and yon their bodies, I filled the face of the ruins with their widespread soldiers; chariots, saddle-horses, and yoke-horses I took from them.”]
But he attained no further successes, and his power was limited to northern Syria. In the years 850, 849, and 846, Shalmaneser renewed his attacks upon central Syria, the last time with one hundred and twenty thousand men, but without great success. Their tribute money was not much safeguard to the North Syrian princes, the places in the district of Carchemish and in the Amanus Mountains were again and again plundered and burned, and the inhabitants massacred. Only the king of Patin, who was farthest away, and therefore the most powerful of the vassals, seems to have been better treated.
The fifth campaign, in 842, was more successful, but in the meanwhile the revolutions in Damascus and Samaria overthrew the old dynasties, and Hazael and Jehu ascended the throne. In a battle at the foot of Mount Lebanon, Hazael was conquered and shut up in his capital; but Damascus was not taken. Shalmaneser laid waste the Hauran, then repaired to the coast, where Tyre and Sidon, and also Jehu of Israel, paid him tribute. The tribute payment of the latter (gold, lead, vessels, etc.) is depicted on Shalmaneser’s black obelisk. In the year 839 the campaign was repeated without any far-reaching success; and Tyre, Sidon, and Byblus paid tribute. When the people of Patin slew their king, the Assyrian general, Asshur-daian (or Dan-Asshur), took fearful revenge for the death of the faithful vassal. But Shalmaneser extended his dominion in this district northward only. In the years 838 and 837, twenty-four kings of Tabal (in Cappadocia), as well as the king of Milid (Melitene), were compelled to pay tribute; and in 835 and 834, King Kati of Que; i.e. East Cilicia west of Mount Amanus, was vanquished, and the town Tarzi (i.e. in all probability Tarsus), was taken and given to his brother Kirri.
Shalmaneser II had the same success in the east and north of his kingdom. After the mountainous district on the Tigris had been conquered, the Assyrians came into direct contact with the powerful race of the Alarodians, whose territory extended on both sides of the Lake of Van, from the source of the Euphrates to the land of Garzan, or Gozan, on Lake Urumiyeh. After making a fearful visitation to Khubushkia and its vicinity, Shalmaneser had already attacked their king, Arame, on the east in 860. In 857 he invaded his district on the west, after crossing the Arsanias. In 845 he penetrated as far as the source of the Euphrates, and in 833 Asshur-daian, his commander-in-chief, repeated the same campaign. It seems that Arame and his successor, Siduri (or Sarduris), in the year 833, made, on the whole, a valiant defence.
Much greater success attended the campaigns against the southeasterly mountainous races of Urartu on the “sea of the land of the Nairi,” i.e. the lake of Urumiyeh, and the districts of Manna, Parsua, Amada[24] (Media), etc., at the south and east of the same as well as that against the land of Namri southeast of the Zab. In the years 844, 836, 830, and 829 the campaigns in these districts were conducted sometimes by the king himself, and sometimes by his commander-in-chief.
THE OBELISK OF SHALMANESER II
The famous representations on Shalmaneser’s black obelisk show how King Sua of Gozan and the Lord of Musri (i.e. the eastern mountainous district) sent him a collection of wonderful animals, double-humped camels, apes, a rhinoceros, an elephant, and a yak, besides gold, silver, bronze vessels, and horses.
Between the great campaigns there were a few smaller struggles; in 855 in the Masius Mountains, in 853 against the kings of Tel-Abnai, and in 847 against the town of Ishtarat and the country of Yati, districts south of the source of the Tigris; in 848 against the unknown land of Paqarakhubuni, west of the Euphrates, and finally in 831 against the Qurkhi. The black obelisk records that the desert district of Sukhi, on the other side of the Euphrates, subjected by Asshurnazirpal, remained dependent, and Marduk-bel-usur of Sukhi brings to the king as tribute silver and gold, elephants’ teeth, garments, and also stags and lions. In the years 852 and 851 Shalmaneser advanced to Babylon. The king of Babylon, Nabu-apal-iddin, had just died, and his brother Marduk-bel-usate had taken up arms against Marduk-nadin-shum, the son of Nabu-apal-iddin. Shalmaneser went to the assistance of the rightful king, defeated the rebels in two expeditions, and presented rich gifts in the sacred cities of Babylon, Borsippa, and Kutha to the chief gods enthroned there. Then repairing farther southward into the land of Chaldea proper, he vanquished the kings of Bit-Adini and of Bit-Dakkuri, and exacted tribute from Mussallim-Marduk and Yakin, who was ruler of the sea country, which was subsequently called Bit-Yakin after him.
We see that the unity of the kingdoms of Sumer and Accad was now no more; but that south of Kardunyash, the district of Babylon, there arose a line of smaller states. Perhaps the South was always separated from Kardunyash after the Kossæan conquest.
[829-783 B.C.]
In the last years of Shalmaneser’s reign his son Asshur-danin-apli rebelled against him with a great portion of the kingdom, including Asshur, Arbela, the town of Imgur-Bel, founded by Asshurnazirpal, Amido, and Tel-Abnai, on the upper Tigris, Zaban on the Zab, etc. But another son, Shamshi-Adad IV, quelled the insurrection [and it took him four years of hard fighting to dissipate the opposition] and succeeded his father on the throne. The first campaigns of the new ruler were directed against the Nairi countries, the mountains on the north and east of the Tigris, and his general, Mushaqqil-Asshur, penetrated as far as the “Sea of the Sunset,” which means as far as the Black Sea. Then the king attacked Babylonia; a line of frontier places was taken, and [in the battle of Dur-Papsukal, in northern Babylonia] King Marduk-balatsu-iqbi, who had been supported by the rulers of Chaldea, Elam, Namri, and the Aramæan races of eastern Babylonia, was slain.
This expedition was repeated in the years 813 and 812; and other wars the king mentioned, in shorter notices, cannot be more accurately localised. He made no attempt of any encroachment of Syria’s rights.
[806-774 B.C.]
The successes of [his son] Adad-nirari III (811-783 B.C.) are of greater importance. In the North and South all the races hitherto subjugated, including the Medes, the people of Parsua, etc., were kept in subjection. Frequent mention is made of expeditions against Manna, Khubushkia, Namri, and Aa. The king says that his kingdom was extended as far as the coasts of the “great Sea of the Sunrise,” i.e. the Caspian Sea. In 803 mention was made of an expedition “to the sea coasts” (i.e. Babylonia, not Syria). As in Shalmaneser’s time, all the kings of the land of Kaldi (Chaldea) paid tribute; in the chief cities of Babylonia the king offers sacrifice, gains rich booty, and fixes boundaries. Many expeditions were moreover made against the Aramæan race of Itu’a which dwelt in Babylonia, and these were repeated in subsequent reigns. “On the west of the Euphrates,” says Adad-nirari, “I subjugated the land of Khatti, the whole land of Akharri, Phœnicia, Tyre, Sidon, the kingdom of Israel (Bit-Khumri), Edom and Philistia as far as the coasts of the West Sea, and imposed taxes and tribute upon them.” He makes special mention of an expedition against Mari, king of Damascus, who was besieged in his capital and forced to capitulate, and pay 2300 talents of silver, 20 talents of gold, 300 talents of bronze, 5000 talents of iron, so that the loot of the Assyrian king was very considerable. These events cannot be accurately fixed, chronologically. The chronological lists mention campaigns in 806, 805, and 797, against Arpad, Khazaz, and Mansuate in northern Syria. The war against Damascus was included in one of them, for it led to the payment of tribute by the Phœnician cities and the southern states (Israel, Edom, and Philistia). [There exists an inscription of this reign referring to Sammuramat as “Lady of the Palace and its Mistress.” There is some reason for conjecturing that this might have been the woman round whose name and undoubted prestige in so glorious a reign, clustered the legends of Semiramis. No previous Assyrian king ruled over so great a territory, or collected so much tribute as Adad-nirari III, or, as it is sometimes written, Ramman-nirari III. After him came a period of decline in which there are no royal inscriptions, and of which our knowledge comes from brief notes in the Eponym lists.]
[774-745 B.C.]
The next king Shalmaneser III (782-773) also went to Syria and made war against Damascus, 773, the land of Khatarikka, 772, and the land of Lebanon.
His successor Asshur-dan III (772-754) also made war against Lebanon in the years 767 and 755, and against Arpad in the year 754. The subjugation of Hamath probably occurred in one of these expeditions. Battles are mentioned against Babylonia (in the district of the Aramæan race, Itu’a and the city of Gannanat) in 777, 771, 769, and 767, in which the city of Kalneh was presumably taken. But Shalmaneser III was chiefly concerned in the subjugation of the land of Urartu, the Alarodians. He is mentioned not less than six times as taking the field against them (781-778, 776, 774); but his efforts met with no, or at least no enduring, success.
In all probability the formation of a great Armenian kingdom with the city of Van (Thuspa of the Greeks) as the central point dates from this period. Its founder was Sarduris, the son of Litipris, who was probably identical with the king Sarduris who was conquered in 833 by Shalmaneser. In two inscriptions written in Assyrian, he calls himself “King of the land of Nairi.” His successors (Ispuinish, Minuas, Argistis I, Sarduris II) then utilised the Assyrian writing for inscribing the language of their country. For in the same record they call their kingdom Biaina, whilst it is called Urartu by the Assyrians. The inscriptions of the rulers are rather numerous and written quite in the Assyrian style. They record the buildings of the kings in Van itself, where a citadel was built by Argistis, sacrifices and gifts to Khaldi and the numerous other deities of the Armenian Pantheon, campaigns and conquests.
When still co-regent with Ispuinish, his father, Minuas erected monuments in the two high passes south of Lake Urumiyeh which record his conquests, and other inscriptions also relate his successes against the land of Manna and its vicinity. These battles presumably occurred in the latter time of Adad-nirari III, and are the continuation of his campaigns in the eastern mountains. Minuas also fought against the land of Alzi, against the king of the city of Milid (Melitene), and against the Kheta. An inscription on a wall of rock on the Arsanias below an old castle (near Palu) records among others his successes in this direction. In the north he penetrated to and beyond the Araxes; one of his inscriptions is to be found on the right bank of the river opposite Armavir, and two others, written by his son Argistis, north of Eriwan. The latter seems to have been the most powerful ruler of Urartu. A long inscription on the rock of the citadel of Van records his successes in the land of Manna, which he seems to have subjugated, and also in the west, against Melitene, the land of Khatti (Kheta), etc.
Repeated victories over the Assyrians are mentioned, which were evidently won against Shalmaneser III and Asshurdan III, or their generals. Sarduris II, the son of Argistis, was also very successful in both districts. For it appears from his inscriptions, confirmed by later events, that Melitene, Kummukh, Gurgum, and other princedoms on the Amanus, became feudal states of the kingdom of Urartu, which included the whole Armenian plateau from the sources of the Euphrates and Araxes across Lake Urumiyeh. How Sarduris II succumbed to the Assyrian will be shown later.
The reign of Asshur-dan III seems to have been much more peaceful than the preceding ones, for the short chronicle of this period repeatedly records that the king remained “in the land,” and therefore undertook no campaign.
The successes of Argistis were of great importance. Insurrections also broke out in the interior in the years 763 to 758, first in the city of Asshur, then in Arrapachitis (Arpakha), a city situated in the vicinity of the Upper Zab, east of Nineveh, and finally in Guzanu, in the Khabur country. After its subjugation, Asshur-dan, as already related, repaired twice more to Syria (755 and 754), but it was not possible with the increasing extension of the Armenian power in this direction to retain supremacy over the smaller states of Syria.
[747-740 B.C.]
The next reign, that of Asshur-nirari II (754-745) was still less eventful. He took the field only in the years 749 and 748 against the mountainous country of Namri, in the southeast [and in 754 against Arpad]. Otherwise, he remained “in the land.” In the last year of his reign the chronicle mentions an insurrection in Calah. The fact doubtless was that in the spring of the following year (746) the throne was ascended by a usurper who called himself after the first of the great Assyrian conquerors, Tiglathpileser.
The overthrown dynasty, which went back to Ishme-dagan and Shamshi-Adad and the ancient Bel-kap-kapu, had held the throne in uninterrupted succession for more than a thousand years.[c]
TIGLATHPILESER III (745-727 B.C.)
The eminent Dutch historian Tiele calls the new monarch Tiglathpileser II, but a recently discovered inscription of Adad-nirari II speaks of his grandfather, Tiglathpileser, and so the latter, of whom nothing is known beyond his name, is now denoted the second ruler of his name. Therefore the subject of the present chapter is here called Tiglathpileser III.
Tiglathpileser III mounted the throne of Assyria on the 13th Airu (about April) of the year 745 B.C., and resided, says Tiele, during the greater part of his reign at Calah and Nineveh, where he built palaces. He was without any doubt an Assyrian, and not a Chaldean, as has been supposed. Whether he was the rightful heir, or whether he was even of royal blood, remains undecided. His real name was Pulu (Pul, Poros), and there is reason to suppose that he was either a military commander or a younger son of the king, who took advantage of the confusion during the last years of the reign of Asshurnirari II to put the crown on his own head. He assumed the name of the great conqueror, Tiglathpileser.
He may have employed the first months of his reign in restoring quiet in the country and establishing himself securely on the throne. It is only in September of the year 745 (month Tasrit) that he marches into the field and turns his arms against Babylonia. Nabonassar (Nabu-nasir) had ruled at Babylon since 747, but nothing else is known of him, though he seems to have been the founder of a new method of reckoning time. Tiglathpileser’s first campaign was not, however, directed against him, at least not immediately; his first object was to destroy the Aramæans’ and Chaldeans’ ever-increasing power in that country. After he had won possession of the city of Sippar, which lay between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and perhaps even of Nippur also, and had conquered Dur-Kurigalzu, together with some other less important strongholds of Kardunyash, as far as the Ukni, he subdued the nomadic Aramæans east of the Tigris, reorganised the government of the conquered territory, dividing it into four provinces, over which Assyrian governors were placed, founded two cities [Kar-Asshur was one and probably Dur-Tukulti-apal-esharra the other] as administrative centres to preserve the allegiance of the new territory, and peopled the new settlements with the prisoners of war. The priesthood of Babylon, Borsippa, and Kutha brought gifts from the temples of their gods into the king’s headquarters, and thus averted the danger which threatened their towns also. For the time Tiglathpileser contented himself with the successes gained. It was not at present his intention to subdue all Babylonia, or perhaps he was not yet strong enough to do so. Apparently all he desired was to secure the southern frontiers of Assyria against the invasions of the Aramæans and Chaldeans, who were becoming more and more audacious, before he ventured farther afield.
The security of the eastern border was of scarcely less importance. In the year 744 he marched against the ever turbulent Namri which lay in this direction; here, too, he compelled all to bow to his victorious arms, even penetrated the western portion of the future Media, and exacted tribute from all the Median princes as far as the eastern mountains of Biknu. He did not proceed in person to further conquests, but entrusted the punishment of those Medians who dwelt farther east to his general, Asshur-daninani, who returned victorious, bringing with him rich booty, especially in horses. However, this country was not incorporated in the empire.
His hand was now free for the re-establishment of the weakened power of Assyria in the west. But one of his most powerful enemies who had, perhaps, already stirred up Namri to resistance, namely Sarduris II of Urartu, or Chaldia, sought to prevent this. When Tiglathpileser had reached Arpad in Syria, he found his flank, and when he would have marched still farther, his rear, threatened by a considerable army at whose head was Sarduris, and which besides the latter’s troops consisted of those of the northern Hittite states of Melid, Gurgum, Kummukh, and Agusi. The defeat of the allies was complete. Sarduris had to abandon his camp and seek refuge in flight. About seventy-three thousand prisoners fell into the Assyrians’ hands.
[740-732 B.C.]
The three following years were not fortunate. When Tiglathpileser marched against Kummukh he does not appear to have left an adequate garrison behind him in Arpad, for in the year 742 the town, and with it the key of the west country, was in the power of his enemies, and he found himself obliged to besiege it for three years. Not till the year 740 did he take it, and thither came Kushtashpi of Kummukh, Rezin of Damascus, Hiram of Tyre, Uriakki of Que, Pisiris of Carchemish, and Tarkhulara of Gurgum, to offer him rich presents. One of the Hittite princes, Tutammu of Unqi, a district between the Orontes and the Afrin, refused his submission. His capital, Kinalia, was taken for the second time and the whole country placed under an Assyrian governor. In the year 739 Tiglathpileser continued his conquest northeast of Arpad, devastated Kilkhi, a district belonging to Nairi, and conquered Ulluba, where he founded an Assyrian capital under the name of Asshuriqisha. But it was long before the land of the Khatti (Syria) was pacified. Between 740 and 738 no less than nineteen districts belonging to the Syrian kingdom of Hamath, and some other adjacent districts, broke away from Assyria, and from some mutilated parts of the inscriptions it is believed we may conclude that they asked for help from Azariah [Uzziah], the warlike king of Judah. At all events, the latter at that time ventured to defy the power of Assyria, and Tiglathpileser connected this hostile attitude with the rising of the people of Hamath. About 738 Azariah was defeated and the country of Hamath added to Assyria. Then the king had recourse to his favourite means for the suppression of the sentiment of nationality—namely, the transplantation of prisoners of war in the most extensive fashion. Whilst all princes of any consideration and even an Arabian queen now offered the conqueror their submission and presents, he received the joyful tidings of important successes won by his generals on the other frontiers of the empire. The eastern Aramæans had shaken off the Assyrian yoke and advanced to the Zab, but were driven back, though with some difficulty. At the same time the governor of Lullume was harassing the Babylonians, whilst the governor of Nairi held in check the populations on the northern frontier. Booty and prisoners were sent to the king in the land of the Khatti.
The three following years (737-735) he was occupied with expeditions in the east and northeast. Some districts of Media were then under the Babylonian rule, and now passed to that of the Assyrians. But the most important event of this year was the march to Turushpa, the capital of Urartu [Chaldia], the residence of Sarduris, on the Lake of Van. No Assyrian conqueror had penetrated so far as this, nor did Tiglathpileser succeed in taking the town in which Sarduris had fortified himself after his first defeat; but the power of this dangerous rival was broken for a long time.
[732-731 B.C.]
Tiglathpileser now determined to bring the west under his yoke, and did not rest until he had brought all the Hittite and Semitic countries to the coast of the Mediterranean and the frontiers of Egypt, except some Arabian districts, under his sway. This took him three years, from 734-732. The immediate inducement to this expedition was probably that Ahaz of Judah, threatened by Rezin of Damascus and Pekah of Israel, called in the aid of Assyria. Moreover, the last two had probably paid no tribute, and, generally speaking, Assyria needed little persuasion to fish in troubled waters. The first attack was directed against Rezin. Beaten in the open field, he was compelled to retreat to his capital. Here Tiglathpileser shut him in “like a bird in its cage”; he conquered all the towns round about, including the important city of Sam’ala, and marched on, after having destroyed, according to his wont, all crops around Damascus, and thus increased the difficulty of transporting the means of existence. He marched into Israel (Bit-Khumri), wasting whole districts, some of which he added to his empire,—for the present, however, leaving the capital undisturbed. The immediate goal was now the Philistine Gaza, whose king, Hanno (Khanunu), probably trusting in Damascus and Israel, had at first renounced his allegiance, but now on the approach of the Assyrian army fled to Egypt. The town was taken, and a rich booty fell into the hands of the victors. Askalon, whose prince Mitinti had made an attempt at rebellion, was punished—though probably not till later—and Rukipti, Mitinti’s son, raised to the throne. Shamshi, “the queen of Arabia in the land of Sheba,” also offered resistance, but was likewise utterly defeated and with difficulty escaped with bare life. Her country, which is certainly not to be confounded with the Sheba of the South, became an Assyrian province. Other Arab tribes submitted voluntarily, and amongst them the well-known Tema; and Tiglathpileser appointed the powerful tribe of the Idibi’il, as being nearest to Egypt, to be wardens of the marches at the gates of that still mighty empire. Now came the turn of Samaria, the only city of Israel which the conqueror had not yet reduced. He appears, indeed, to have visited it, but not to have besieged and taken it, yet he raised Hoshea, who had meantime slain Pekah, to the throne, or confirmed him in its possession. It was longer before Damascus fell. It continued to hold out for two years more. That it was then taken is probable.
Of all the kingdoms of the West there now remained only Tyre and Tabal, which latter lay much farther north. The king did not go in person against either of these towns, but he sent Rabshakeh, who subdued them and changed the government in Tabal, while on Tyre he imposed a tax of not less than one hundred and fifty talents [about £60,000, or $300,000]. Whether this took place now or later, cannot be said with certainty.
[731-726 B.C.]
Victorious over all rebellious subjects in his colossal empire, and dreaded by all his neighbours, Tiglathpileser now felt himself strong enough to make a direct attack on the Aramæans and Chaldeans of Babylonia, and to conquer the holy city itself. In the year 731 he ventured and accomplished this act of daring. In Babylonia itself no one seems to have resisted him, and the population seem rather to have received him as a deliverer. He entered Sippar, Nippur, Babylon, Borsippa, Kutha, Kish, Dilbat, and Erech, each in their turn, and received the protection of the great gods, by offering them sacrifices. Then he fell on the Aramaic-Chaldean tribe of Pekud (Pekod), subdued it as far as the frontiers of Elam, continued his victorious march through the Chaldean states of Bit-Silani and Bit-Sha’alli, which soon succumbed to his arms. Nabu-ushabshi, the king of the former state, was impaled before the gate of his capital, Sarrabani, and the town levelled with the ground; Zakiru of Sha’alli was sent to Assyria in chains, and the capital, which still offered resistance, was starved into surrender. Bit-Amukkani, whose king, Ukinzer (Chinziros), who appears to have been at that time the leading chief of the Chaldeans, and consequently regarded as king of Babylon, was not so easily overcome. It is true that the whole country was ravaged and the king shut up in his capital of Sapia; that a sortie of the garrison miscarried; that in fear of the overwhelming strength of Assyria, Balasu of Bit-Dakkuri, Nadin of Larak (Bit-Shala), and even Marduk-bal-iddin [Merodoch-baladan] of Bit-Yakin on the seacoast, the man who was later to become so terrible an enemy to Assyria, came here to offer their costly gifts and their submission; but Sapia was not taken and Ukinzer not conquered, so that nominally he shared the rule over Babylon for yet another year. Still, from this time forward it was not without reason that Tiglathpileser styled himself king or overlord of Babylon, king of Sumer and Accad; he might boast that he ruled from the Persian Gulf to the far East, over the coasts of the Mediterranean as far as Egypt, and that he had extended his kingdom farther than any of his predecessors. He reigned for three years more, for the most part in peace, as far as we know. Of his last two years it is reported that he clasped the hands of Bel; that is, that he received the highest religious consecration as king of Babylon. In the year 727 Shalmaneser IV succeeded him on the throne. The latter only ruled for five years, and of his short reign little is known.
SHALMANESER IV
Assyrian King in his War Chariot
In the list of the Babylonian kings for these five years, there stands, not his name, but that of Ulule, who was neither, as has been believed hitherto, an independent prince nor a viceroy appointed by Shalmaneser, but none other than Shalmaneser himself, who also probably resided at Babylon. Perhaps his expedition against Phœnicia and Israel falls as early as the year of his accession. The occasion of the war against Tyre, whose king, Elulæus, at that time stood at the head of the Phœnician towns, is said to have been an expedition undertaken by the latter against the Khittim of Cyprus. It is more probable that the Tyrian king, like Hoshea of Israel, had taken advantage of Tiglathpileser’s death to renounce his allegiance to Assyria. Shalmaneser again subdued Hoshea and raised tribute from him. At the same time he sent into Phœnicia a part of his army, which devastated the whole country, and once more made it tributary. After this the whole empire seems to have quieted down, for the following year (726) was a year of peace. But the calm was not of long duration. Scarcely had the Assyrian troops marched away, when Hoshea turned to the Egyptian king, in the hope that with his aid he might free himself from the yoke of Assyria, and from thenceforward once more refused the tribute.
We have here probably a great conspiracy, in which Elulæus was also concerned, for Shalmaneser now marched against both kings. He took Hoshea prisoner, evidently after a struggle, wasted the whole land of Israel, but at Samaria, whose population may very likely have incited the king to revolt, he encountered an obstinate resistance. Meantime the whole Phœnician mainland, either from fear or under pressure from the superior force of Assyria, hastened to desert from Elulæus and to submit to Shalmaneser. The Tyrian king found himself under the necessity of retreating to his fortress on the island of Tyre, where he was at once besieged. It was only under Shalmaneser’s successor that Samaria was taken after a three years’ siege, and Tyre after one of five years. We cannot but experience a feeling of respect for these two cities, which ventured unaided—for the help from Egypt failed, as usual, to appear—to defy the gigantic power of Assyria.
[It is by no means undisputed that Shalmaneser marched against both Elulæus and Hoshea, as Professor Tiele states. Some of the historians believe that no action was taken against the king of Tyre, and that since there are no allusions to the five years’ siege in any of the inscriptions, Josephus, the sole authority, made a mistake in attributing to Shalmaneser an attack on Tyre that was really made by Sennacherib.]
The scanty records of Shalmaneser’s reign bear witness to material prosperity. That he was, as has been thought, a feeble ruler, under whose administration the empire declined, is entirely unproved. His early death prevented him from acquiring the same glory as his predecessor, and if, immediately after his decease, the vassals of the empire raised the standards of rebellion in every direction, this speaks rather for than against the influence of his personality.[e]
FOOTNOTES
[22] [It is so uncertain that Karaindash, etc., were actually Kossæans that the word Kassite or Kasshite is kept by some scholars, as Hilprecht,
i]
[23] [According to the best authority Makhallat, Maiz, and Kaiz formed Tripolis.]
[24] [Also written “Mada” in a later inscription of Adad-nirari III. This is the true land of Media, which the Greeks confused with that of Manda.]
CHAPTER IV. FOUR GENERATIONS OF ASSYRIAN GREATNESS (722-626 B.C.)
After the death of Shalmaneser IV, the throne of Assyria was taken by a man of doubtful antecedents, who became the founder of a very powerful dynasty. This king, like some previous usurpers, adopted a name famous in Assyrian history. He became known to the world as Sargon II, and Rogers says he was not of royal blood; Tiele, however, from whom we shall quote, thinks differently.[a]
[722-716 B.C.]
In the year 722 B.C. Sargon became king in Asshur. He was an Assyrian of royal blood, who seems, however, to have belonged to another branch than that of the dynasty which had ruled before Tiglathpileser III, nor does he appear to have been closely related to the latter and his successor. He boasts that he restored to the ancient seat of government, the city of Asshur, her long usurped rights, and to Kharran, the object of his especial favour, her former liberties, which had also long been curtailed. Evidently, therefore, he appeared to a certain extent in the character of an innovator, or rather as the restorer of the ancient order.
Samaria fell shortly after his accession, and a part of its inhabitants were led away into banishment, to be replaced later on by others. Whether or no Sargon was present in person is not clear, but it is certain that he could not long devote his attention to the western portion of the empire. Scarcely was Shalmaneser IV dead before the Chaldeans revenged themselves for the humiliation they had suffered at the hands of Tiglathpileser. Marduk-baliddin [Merodach-baladan] of Bit-Yakin, at that time the most powerful amongst them, since through his timely submission to the Assyrians his country had been preserved from the miseries of war, had made himself master of the city of Babylon, and now ruled as king over the whole Babylonian country. Sargon marched south, perhaps in the hope of recovering what was lost. But in this he was unsuccessful. He did not venture to attack Babylon itself, but turned his arms against an Aramæan tribe, the Tu’mun, who had surrendered their chief to the Chaldean king. The tribe was subjugated and carried to Syria. Sargon now pressed on as far as the town of Dur-ilu in whose suburb he sustained with Babylon’s ally, the Elamite king Khumbanigash, a hotly contested fight, from which he asserts that he came off victor. This campaign, however, yielded no further advantages. Elam retained its independence and Merodach-baladan possession of Babylon. An indirect result was that the South had learned to know Sargon as a military commander, and, for the future, good care was taken not to molest him.
The danger threatened from another quarter. Syria was up in arms. At the head of the rising was Hamath, where a man of mean origin, Ya-ubidi or Il-ubidi, had seized the government. Arpad, Simirra, Damascus, and Samaria followed his example. He found a support in Hanno (Khanunu) of Gaza, who had resumed his throne, and even in Shabak,[25] the Ethiopian king of Egypt, whom Hoshea’s unhappy fate does not seem to have frightened from endeavouring to measure his strength with the imperial might of Assyria. Even before the allies could unite their forces, Sargon, who probably received early intelligence of what was going on in the countries of the Mediterranean coast, encamped before Qarqar, where Ya-ubidi had fixed his headquarters, stormed and burnt the city, had the ringleader flayed alive and his principal adherents put to death, increased his host with three hundred warriors who fought in chariots, and six hundred horsemen from amongst the conquered, and then marched south against the allied armies of Hanno and Shabak. At Raphia on the Egyptian frontier was fought the decisive battle, which turned out a brilliant victory for the Assyrians. Hanno was taken and carried off to Assyria with nine thousand of his subjects, and Shabak owed his safety only to his precipitate flight in which he was accompanied only by his chief herdsman. Hezekiah seems to have thought it wise not to defy the victor; perhaps he even sent Sargon a present. Tyre also must have been pacified in this year (720).
Meantime the other enemies of the empire were not yet cowed. The whole north, northeast and northwest, longed impatiently to shake off the Assyrian yoke. In this they were supported by Mitatti of Zikirtu, Rusas of Urartu and Mita of Muskhe, who had secretly formed a league over which Sargon was to triumph only after a long and fierce struggle. In the year 719 Mitatti contrived to persuade some towns of the loyal Iranzu of Man to revolt, whilst Rusas brought several other towns under his sway. Sargon proceeded against them with so much energy that the instigators themselves held cautiously aloof, while they beheld their country laid waste and most of its inhabitants carried into the west, especially to Damascus. In the year 718 unrest revealed itself in Tabal, where Kiakki, prince of Sinukhtu, refused to pay his tribute. But he, too, was soon led away captive to Assyria, together with seven thousand of his subjects, and Matti of Atun, a faithful vassal, was invested with Kiakki’s province. In the year 717 Sargon had to suppress a dangerous rising. Pisiris, the Hittite prince of Carchemish, which was one of the keys of the West, attempted, with the support of Mita of Muskhe, to make himself independent. But his city was taken, the majority of his subjects carried off, and an enormous booty stored in Asshurnazirpal’s palace at Calah, which Sargon had restored for himself.
[716-715 B.C.]
These disturbances were nothing compared with the war which now, in the year 716, broke out against Sargon and lasted several years. Rusas of Urartu had persuaded the chief men of the Assyrian provinces of Karalla and Man to secede, in which he was supported by Zikirtu and by the mountain region of Umildish, which was governed by a certain Bagdatti. It appears that the rebellion had spread all over the eastern frontier, and the princes of western Media also took arms. Sargon boldly attacked his enemies. He began with the country of Man, which lay nearest, soon got Bagdatti into his power, and had him flayed. The chief men of Man raised Ullusunu, the brother of Aza, whom Bagdatti had murdered, to the throne and compelled him to join Rusas’s party, to which the princes of the Nairi states, Karalla and Allabra, whose names, Asshurli and Itti, denote them as Assyrian deserters, also went over. But scarcely had Sargon set out against them before Ullusunu and his nobles found themselves obliged to offer their submission. Sargon confirmed the former in his kingdom, and compelled his two allies with other petty chiefs to return to their allegiance. The territory of the city of Kisheshim was ruled by a governor, Bel-shar-usur, probably a Babylonian. Sargon gave it the name of Kar-Nergal and made it into an Assyrian province. A like fate befell the west Median town of Kharkhar, which had expelled its sovereign, Kibaba, and solicited support from Dalta of Ellipi; henceforth it was called Kar-Sharrukin [City of Sargon]. On this the governors of other Median towns made their submission.
[715-711 B.C.]
But after these isolated successes it was still long before the eastern states were quieted. In the following year (715) Rusas wrested twenty-two towns from Ullusunu, and a certain Daiukku, who is called viceregent of Man, was involved in the affair. Khubushkia, a state of Nairi, and the neighbouring districts, became refractory, and the territory of Kar-Sharrukin, incorporated only the year before, again seceded. At the same time in the west Mita of Muskhe made an invasion into the Assyrian district of Que [in eastern Cilicia] with considerable success. Nevertheless, Sargon succeeded in maintaining the upper hand at all points. He reconquered Kar-Sharrukin, fortified it more strongly than before, and received the homage of the governors of twenty-two Median cities. His general in the west was not content with reconquering the towns taken by Mita, but even pressed southward as far as the Arabian Desert, and transferred the tribes subdued there to Samaria.
Secure of the west, Sargon now felt in a condition to strike at the real authors of all the trouble in the east. After Man and some Median districts had paid their tributes, the next thing was to proceed against Mitatti of Zikirtu. So complete was the overthrow of this prince that, after the burning of his capital, Parda, and the desolation of his country, he with his whole people sought another home. It was a harder task to subdue Rusas, the soul of the confederacy. But this, too, was accomplished by the warlike king. Rusas was defeated among his high hills. His whole royal house, amounting to some 250 persons, fell with his horsemen into the victor’s hands, and he himself only escaped with much difficulty and hid in the mountains. Rusas still built hopes on one of his allies; if he would make a stand all was not yet lost. This was Urzana of Muzazir, a former vassal of Asshur, who had, however, joined Rusas as the chief of a kindred tribe. In his mountain country, protected by its natural strength and almost impenetrable, he believed himself entirely safe. But the dauntless spirit of the ancient Assyrian warriors was not extinct in Sargon. He piously commended himself to the protection of the gods, assembled a carefully selected body of troops, and ventured with them on the almost impossible enterprise. When Urzana understood that the valiant hero was actually approaching with his veterans, he fled, according to the praiseworthy custom of Asiatic despots, with all speed into the higher mountains, leaving his capital and his own family to the mercy of the enemy. Muzazir’s fate was now soon decided; with a large number of prisoners, and an extraordinarily rich booty, including the two great gods of the country, Sargon returned to his own country. This was the death-blow for Rusas. The whole structure so laboriously prepared lay in ruins, and filled with despair he fell upon his sword.
When Sargon had thus secured his empire against the danger threatening from the half-savage barbarians of the north, he re-established order in the northwest and west. Next he turned, not against the chief author of the trouble, Mita of Muskhe himself, but against Tabal, which lay not far and somewhat to the south of Muskhe. Ambaris of Tabal, to whom previously, while his father Khulle was still alive, Sargon had amongst other tokens of favour given one of his daughters to wife, and whose kingdom he had increased by the grant of Cilicia, had been ungrateful enough to join with Rusas and Mita. In the year 713 Sargon punished him as he had deserved, and made his country into an Assyrian province. The same thing happened to Khamman and Melid in the following year. Sargon peopled the country with foreign prisoners of war, and endeavoured by the erection of ten fortresses to secure it against Urartu and Muskhe. Continuing its southward march, the Assyrian army remained for a time in the region of the Amanus, and then, in the year 711, attacked Gurgum in the neighbourhood of Kummukh, which became an Assyrian province.
[711-709 B.C.]
It is very doubtful whether Sargon took a personal share in these expeditions. It was during just these years that he was occupied with the construction of his new residence of Dur-Sharrukin. It is certain that the devastation of Ashdod, which concluded the campaign of 711, was effected not under the king’s superintendence, but under that of the king, Akhimiti, whom Sargon had installed there, but who had been expelled, and Yaman, a man of mean origin, raised to the throne by the people. On the approach of the Assyrian army this hero fled to Egypt, but the king of Melukhkha (Egypt), fearing the vengeance of Assyria, sent him back loaded with iron bands. The population of Ashdod was also carried away and replaced by other tribes. Fortified by these triumphs, Sargon could now collect his forces in order to undertake a war which should set the crown to all his achievements. This was the conquest of Babylon, which had been for the last twelve years in the possession of the Chaldean king, Merodach-baladan.
Two years were required for this undertaking, in which Sargon proceeded with great caution. Merodach-baladan was ready for the attack. He had not neglected to make the necessary dispositions and to strengthen his fortresses. In one of them, Dur-Atkhara, which was probably the nearest to Assyria, and whose defensive works he had caused to be raised, he had concentrated the whole military power of the Aramæan tribe of Gambuli, and had sent to their assistance a portion of his own choicest troops, six hundred horsemen and four thousand foot. Sargon directed himself against this fortress, and whilst he was besieging it, it is probable that another division of his army won several successes in the east, where it had to keep the Elamite king, Shutur-nakhundi, occupied, and prevent him from joining hands with his ally. Dur-Atkhara fell; more than eighteen thousand prisoners and a great booty became the spoil of the conqueror, and the rest of the defenders hastily took to flight. The Assyrian king made the town his headquarters; he subsequently gave it the name of Dur-Nabu, and placed it under an Assyrian governor. The Khamarani tribe which dwelt on the banks of the Euphrates, in their terror at the approach of his army, had already taken refuge in the town of Sippar. At the news of the surrender of Dur-Atkhara, and the defeat of the Gambuli, the Aramæan tribes of Rubu, Khindaru, Yatburu, and Puqudu, who dwelt east of the Tigris, and relied on the protection of Babylon and Elam, withdrew behind the river Ukni. The Assyrians threw a bridge across the Umlias, a river to the north of Elam, and took several strongholds there, whereupon some chiefs of the Aramæans did homage to the king at Dur-Atkhara. They were assigned to the new government of Gambuli. The remainder were attacked and defeated in the territory of the Ukni, so that of them also many submitted, and were made subject to Gambuli. Now the army of Assyria operating east of the Tigris attacked Elam from Yatburu, subdued all the surrounding country, the seven principalities of Yatburu, with which two fortresses conquered from Elam were incorporated, and a part of the Elamite territory itself. It compelled the forces of the land of Rash, which belonged to Elam, to retire to a fortress, and the Elamite king to seek refuge in the high mountains of his country. Secured against any surprise from this quarter, Sargon himself with the main body now crossed the Euphrates into the Chaldaic-Babylonian state of Bit-Dakkuri, whose capital, Dur-Ladinna, henceforth became his headquarters.
There was now no room for Merodach-baladan in Babylon. Threatened on three sides, and in danger of being cut off by Sargon from his own principality, he and his troops left the city during the night and directed their steps to the Elamite part of Yatburu, whence they might advance against the enemy in co-operation with Shutur-nakhundi. But, although he offered the latter the most costly presents, the Elamite had not yet forgotten the lesson he had received. He declined to expose himself to new defeats, and so, perhaps, lose both land and people. Merodach-baladan left Yatburu, having gained nothing, and collected his army in a stronghold of his own country, called Iqbi-Bel.
Meantime, at Dur-Ladinna, in Bit-Dakkuri, not only did Sargon receive the submission of the inhabitants and the neighbouring Bit-Amukkani, but the authorities of Babylon also came in solemn embassy, bringing an invitation to enter the holy city, with which he immediately complied. At the great festival of the lord of the gods in the month of Shabat (January) he was permitted “to clasp the hands” of that great Bel-Marduk and Nabu, the king of the universe.
But still the south of Babylonia was not yet subjugated, for there Merodach-baladan was still in arms. He collected all his forces in the immediate neighbourhood of his capital, and at the same time, for fear of treachery, led thither the population of the ancient cities of Ur, Larsa, Kishik, etc. Strong defences were set up and special canals dug, behind which he entrenched himself with his allies. But the great king did not shrink before all these obstacles. Scarcely was the campaign of the year 709 begun, before he marched south, distributed his troops along the enemy’s whole line of defence, and inflicted on the latter so terrible a defeat that the trenches appeared as though full of blood, and the Suti, who had marched from Bit-Yakin to the rescue, did not venture an attack, but hurriedly retreated. Then Sargon fell on the auxiliaries and slaughtered them like sheep. Terror now seized on the Chaldeans’ main army; Merodach-baladan left his camp with all speed and retreated to his city. But it, too, was soon taken after a short siege, and with this the power of Merodach-baladan was broken. It is uncertain whether he himself fell into his enemy’s hands or saved himself by flight; but probably the latter was the case, for immediately after Sargon’s death he is again in a position to take action, at least if the Merodach-baladan, who then revolted against Sennacherib, is the same who was conquered by Sargon and his son. But for the time Babylonia was freed from the Aramaic-Chaldean domination, and breathed again. Sargon restored the ancient rights of the natives which the oppressors had curtailed in favour of the foreigners. To the towns of southern Babylonia he gave back their stolen gods; he everywhere showed himself extremely liberal to the temples and the ancient religion of the country. In all directions he appeared as deliverer, avenger of the insulted gods, restorer of the ancestral religion, protector of the priests and of all the natives of the country. His triumph did not signalise the commencement of foreign rule, but, on the contrary, it was he who put an end to it.
[709-708 B.C.]
Sargon’s rejoicings over his victory were still further increased by the embassies and reports which he received one after the other. Uperi, the king of the island of Dilmun, in the Persian Sea, did homage to him while he was still at Bit-Yakin, and gave costly presents. When he had marched from southern Babylonia to consolidate his dominion in the conquered countries, still more welcome tidings reached him at Irma’i. Even his great enemy in the northwest, Mita of Muskhe, who had stood with Rusas at the head of the confederacy against Asshur, but who had been overcome by the governor of Que, now sent ambassadors to Sargon with presents and protestations of homage and devotion. When, finally, the king had again returned to Babylon, there came envoys from seven districts of Cyprus, “whose names had never been known to the kings, his fathers, since the rule of the god Sin,” and who offered him valuable gifts and kissed his feet. Thus the empire of the mighty conqueror stretched from the island of Dilmun, in the Persian Gulf, to the Isle of Cyprus, in the Mediterranean.
Sargon returned to Calah in the beginning of 708, his fourteenth year as king of Assyria, and third as king of Babylon, after spending some time in the latter city. Whilst he was at Calah, resting on his laurels—he did not again, himself, take the field—and from thence prosecuting the construction of his new residence of Dur-Sharrukin, not far from Nineveh, his armies had still to conduct two wars, one in the year 708, the other, perhaps, in the same, but probably in the following year. Urartu had to a certain extent recovered from the blows it had suffered in the defeats and death of its king, Rusas; and the new king, Argistis, began to grow restless, and persuaded Prince Mutallu of Kummukh to a revolt against the Assyrian domination. Sargon sent a high official with a powerful army and full royal authority, who put Mutallu to flight, taking the capital of the province, and so restoring the Assyrian dominion. The rich booty was sent to Calah to the king, and the latter placed a very strong garrison at the disposal of the new viceroy, to prevent any further attempts at risings, and at the same time to constitute a defence against Argistis. But it was once more apparent that the Assyrian Empire, as a purely military power, rested on a tottering foundation, and could only be sustained by continued wars and victories.
The other war was that for the succession in Ellipi to the north of Elam. There, after the death of Dalta, who after some resistance had become a loyal vassal of Assyria, a dispute over the inheritance broke out between his two sons, Nibe and Ishpabara. The first applied for help to Shutur-nankhundi of Elam; the second to Sargon. The latter sent seven of his commanders, who succeeded in defeating Nibe, taking his capital, Marubishti, and there installing Ishpabara as king.
[708-705 B.C.]
Sargon, who, even in the early years of his reign, in the midst of his most terrible wars, had not neglected the reconstruction of palaces and temples at Nineveh and Calah, now devoted himself entirely to the realisation of a long cherished plan, whose execution he had begun long ago. A new suburb of Nineveh, called by his name, was to come into existence as a permanent memorial of his fame and piety, and at the same time serve as a summer residence. This was Dur-Sharrukin with its temples to various gods, with its palaces and gardens, whose walls and gates, like those of a sacred city, looked to the four quarters of the heavens and were named after the high gods, and whose inhabitants, selected from the prisoners of war of all the nations whom the king had conquered and placed under Assyrian magistrates, afforded a living testimony to his mighty deeds. On the 22nd Tasrit (September) 707, the gods were solemnly introduced into their temples, and on the 6th Airu (April) of the following year, the king took possession of the new residence. He was not permitted to enjoy it long. In the year 705 he fell by an assassin’s hand. [This is doubted by some authorities, who believe that he died a natural death.]
Sargon was, without doubt, one of the greatest princes who sat on the throne of Assyria and Babylon. He was no mere conqueror, who thought merely of increasing the size of his empire, but also a true king who occupied himself for its welfare. What chiefly strikes us in him is the comparative moderation by which he was distinguished from his predecessors and in particular from his son and successor. The horrors and devastations of war were the inevitable accompaniment of the forcible subjugation of the whole of western Asia, and some obstinate rebels were punished according to the barbarous custom of his age and race. But in general he contented himself with expelling the conquered prince or making him prisoner. He also remained faithful to the policy first pursued by Tiglathpileser III, namely that of furthering the unity of the empire by transplanting whole populations to other districts. But in his records it is only now and then that we encounter the refined cruelties perpetrated by the other Assyrian kings, and he never dwells on them with so much complacency as they display.[b]
SENNACHERIB
[705-681 B.C.]
Sargon II was succeeded by his son Sin-akhe-erba, the Sennacherib of the Bible, who reigned long and gloriously. The period now in question has a double interest. It is a time when Assyria is at the height of its power; and the interest that attaches to any strong empire is enhanced by the fact that the Assyrians of this period came in contact with the people of Israel. Sennacherib, in particular, bears a name familiar to all succeeding generations because of the repeated mention of this ruler in the Hebrew scriptures. Until the records of the Assyrian monuments were brought to light, nothing was known of him, except what referred to his disastrous campaign against Jerusalem, together with the brief reference to his murder by his son. Now, however, an abundance of material is at hand telling of the deeds of Sennacherib. The most important of these records are contained on large cylinders of the type which many Assyrian kings employed. These cylinders tell of various campaigns of the great conqueror, including several attacks upon Israel. Two or three brief excerpts from the chronicles of Sennacherib will serve to give an idea of the phraseology in which these royal documents are couched. The first two excerpts here selected were translated by George Smith from a cylinder now in the British Museum.
Column I of this cylinder begins as follows:
“Sennacherib the great king, the powerful king, king of Assyria, king of the four regions, the appointed ruler, worshipper of the great gods, guardian of right, lover of justice, maker of peace, going the right way, preserver of good. The powerful prince, the warlike hero, leader among kings, giant devouring the enemy, breaker of bonds. Asshur, the great mountain, an empire unequalled, has committed to me, and over all who dwell in palaces has exalted my servants. From the upper sea of the setting sun to the lower sea of the rising sun all the dark races he has subdued to my feet, and stubborn kings avoided war, their countries abandoned, and, like Sudinni birds, … fled to desert places.”[26]
Column II contains a record of the campaign against the Hittites:
“In my third expedition to the land of the Hittites I went. Elulæus king of Sidon, fear of the might of my dominion overwhelmed him, and to a distance in the midst of the sea he fled, and his country I took. Great Sidon, Lesser Sidon, Bit-Sitte, Sarepta Machalliba, Ushu Alhzibu, and Akko his strong cities, fortresses, walled and enclosed, his castles; the might of the soldiers of Asshur my lord overwhelmed them, and they submitted to my feet. Tubahal in the throne of the kingdom over them I seated, and taxes and tribute to my dominion yearly, unceasing, I fixed upon him. Of Menahem of Samsimuruna, Tubahal of Sidon, Abdilihiti of Arvad, Urumilki of Gubal (Byblos), Mitinti of Ashdod, Buduilu of Beth-Ammon, Kammusunadab of Moab, Malikrammu of Edom, kings of the Hittites, all of them of the coast, the whole, their presents and furniture, to my presence they carried, and kissed my feet, and Zidqa, king of Askalon, who did not submit to my yoke; the gods of the house of his father, himself, his wife, his sons, his daughters, and his brothers, the seed of the house of his father I removed, and to Assyria I sent him. Sharruludari, son of Rukipti their former king, over the people of Askalon I appointed, and the gifts of taxes due to my dominion I fixed on him, and he performed my pleasure.”
Full of interest is the record of an invasion of Palestine. Sennacherib, it will be recalled, was the Assyrian that came down like a wolf on the fold, as recorded in Byron’s stirring lines. The Hebrew account is from 2 Kings xix. 35:
Sennacherib on his Throne
(Layard)
“And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh. And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead.”[a]
It is hardly necessary to state that no such record as this is to be found on the cylinder before us. The oriental scribe, whether of Egypt, Assyria, or Persia, rarely made the mistake of putting details of unfortunate expeditions on record. Doubtless Sennacherib once invaded western Asia unsuccessfully, and quite likely a plague may have decimated his hosts, but that particular invasion is not likely to furnish a favourable theme for the court chronicler.
An invasion of Palestine is, indeed, recorded on the present cylinder, but it is an invasion with very different results. Listen to the official account of the conquest of Jerusalem furnished by this cylinder of Sennacherib, as translated by Dr. Budge. The scribe reports the king as speaking in the first person:
“I drew nigh to Ekron and I slew the governors and princes who had transgressed, and I hung upon poles round about the city their dead bodies; the people of the city who had done wickedly and had committed offences I counted as spoil, but those who had not done these things I pardoned. I brought their king, Padi, forth from Jerusalem and I stablished him upon the throne of dominion over them, and I laid tribute upon him.
“I then besieged Hezekiah of Judah who had not submitted to my yoke, and I captured forty-six of his strong cities and fortresses and innumerable small cities which were round about them, with the battering of rams and the assault of engines, and the attack of foot-soldiers, and by mines and breaches (made in the walls). I brought out therefrom 200,150 people, both small and great, male and female, and horses, and mules, and asses, and camels, and oxen, and innumerable sheep I counted as spoil. (Hezekiah) himself, like a caged bird, I shut up within Jerusalem his royal city. I threw up mounds against him, and I took vengeance upon any man who came forth from his city. His cities which I had captured I took from him and gave to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, and Padi, king of Ekron, and Silli-bel, king of Gaza, and I reduced his land. I added to their former yearly tribute, and increased the gifts which they paid unto me. The fear of the majesty of my sovereignty overwhelmed Hezekiah, and the Urbi and his trusty warriors, whom he had brought into his royal city of Jerusalem to protect it, deserted. And he despatched after me his messenger to my royal city Nineveh to pay tribute and to make submission with thirty talents of gold, eight hundred talents of silver, precious stones, eye paint … ivory couches and thrones, hides and tusks, precious woods, and divers objects, a heavy treasure, together with his daughters, and the women of his palace, and male and female musicians.”
It must not be supposed, however, that either this record of a successful invasion or the Hebrew account of that other disastrous one is altogether false, however much the facts may have been exaggerated, or however poetical the guise in which they are presented. It is merely to be understood that the two records refer to different campaigns or to different portions of the same campaign, as explained later by Professor Tiele. It is supposed by some modern interpreters that the destruction of Sennacherib’s hosts actually occurred through the plague. The king himself, however, escaped to return to Nineveh and there to continue his rule for many years. He was finally killed by his own sons, as is recorded on a contemporary Babylonian document. What would not the Hebrew scholar give, could he find contemporary documents of these events from the Hebrew standpoint, instead of being obliged to depend on records handed down, perhaps, by tradition for many generations, or at best, copied from one hand to another for centuries?
The value of contemporary documents as records of fact may, indeed, be overestimated, for it is possible to pervert, exaggerate, or understate the facts even in the day of their occurrence; but in any event the contemporary document has obvious advantage over documents of subsequent generations, which can be nothing more than copies, variously distorted, of earlier records. As for such mere matters of fact as the dates of ancient kings, and the particular details of campaigns and conquests, the historic importance of the contemporary record cannot be questioned; hence the enormous value of these tablets of Assyria and Babylon. But, questions of historical value aside, a peculiar charm attaches to whatever is old, and it is nothing less than fascinating to look at such a document as this cylinder, and feel that the very lines you scan were once read by Sennacherib himself before he met his untimely end “on the 20th day of the month Tebet” some twenty-five centuries ago.
h
[705-702 B.C.]
It was in the year 705 B.C. that Sennacherib, who was not, perhaps, entirely guiltless of Sargon’s death, mounted the throne and became the supreme king both in Babylon and Assyria. To Merodach-baladan, who may have been either the recognised king of the Sea Lands, or the son or namesake of the latter, the occasion now seemed favourable for recovering the throne lost to Sargon. Sennacherib and his army marched up in all haste, and though it appears that Merodach-baladan had all the Aramæan and Chaldean tribes on his side, and was moreover supported by Elamite auxiliaries, he suffered a defeat and so lost his kingdom. According to the Assyrian narrator, this defeat was so complete that the Chaldean was forced to take flight in the greatest haste, leaving behind him his whole baggage-train, as well as his family and court. He had reigned nine months. The land was heavily scourged, great and small towns were taken and laid waste, and the inhabitants dragged into exile. The same fate was meted out to all Arabians, Aramæans, and Chaldeans who were living in the Babylonian towns.
When the campaign in Chaldea was at an end, the troops were sent against the Aramæan tribes, which dwelt on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. Here, too, there was devastation and plundering. A considerable booty, as was to be expected from these nomads, consisting chiefly of cattle, but also including camels, fell into the hands of the conquerors, and no less than two hundred thousand men and women were carried off to Assyria as slaves. It fared still worse with one small, heroic tribe, the Hirimmi, who offered an obstinate resistance to the Assyrians. When, finally, the latter succeeded in overcoming them, of all the rebels they left no prisoner of war alive, and hanged the corpses on poles upon the wall surrounding the town. Sennacherib annexed the whole territory to his realm, while he laid on it a very moderate tax for the benefit of the Assyrian god.
We may assume it as probably certain that the king did not personally take part in the campaign, but occupied himself the while with the adjustment of Babylonian state affairs. His policy may be distinctly followed. It was only toward the Chaldeans and their allies that he appeared in the character of an enemy. They alone were punished or carried off. The actual citizens of Babylon, Erech, Nippur, Kish, and Kharsag-kalama he left unmolested, and to propitiate them still further, he even gave them a king belonging to the ruling Babylonian house—namely, the young Bel-ibni, whose father held an important office, and who had himself been brought up from childhood at the Assyrian court. Of him Sennacherib might hope that he would be faithful to Assyria and at the same time not unfriendly to the Babylonians, and therefore he now bestowed on him the title of “King of Sumer and Accad.”
The establishment of order in Babylon was turned to account by Sennacherib for the purpose of averting the danger with which his eastern frontier was threatened by the nomads who wandered there, and by the mountain people, and also for extending his empire in every direction. He now attacked the Kasshu and Yasubigallu, by which names we doubtless have to understand those barbarous Kossæans, and their allies, whose successors, centuries later, according to Diodorus, still made the Mesopotamian frontier insecure, and who were related to those Kassites who had so long reigned over Babylon. Their surest protection was the inaccessible nature of the country. Steep mountain paths and thick forests made it difficult for an Assyrian army to advance, while for vehicles it was impossible.
The king himself led the march, and thus showed himself a worthy successor of the undaunted heroes who in earlier centuries had founded the Assyrian power. His chariot had frequently to be carried behind him, and then he mounted on horseback or performed the journey on foot at the head of his troops. Sennacherib succeeded in taking their three strongholds. The smaller places he laid in ashes and the nomads’ tents were burnt. But for greater security he desired to bring the wild tribes under Assyrian rule, and to force them to settle in fixed abodes. He selected Bit-Kilamzakh as a centre, fortified it far more effectually than before, making it a formidable fortress to keep the inhabitants of the country in check, and peopled it with captives whom he had carried off in former warlike expeditions. He caused a tablet inscribed with the history of this campaign to be set up in the capital, in order that the terror of the Assyrian arms might be kept perpetually alive. As soon as he had subdued the Kasshu he marched against Ellipi. Sennacherib fell on the country like a tempest. The two royal seats Marubishti and Accudu, with all the smaller towns, were taken by him and given up to be plundered and burnt, whilst all crops were destroyed and even the cornfields delivered over to the fire. It was with a certain satisfaction that Sennacherib boasted of having transformed Ellipi into a desert, and led away the whole population with its goods and chattels. When these successes became known, a number of Median princes, dwelling at a more remote distance, hastened to offer their submission.
Meantime the king’s attention was directed to events in the west. The elevation of the young and high-spirited Tirhaqa to the throne of Egypt, probably as husband of King Shabak’s widow, and guardian of his son who was a minor, had aroused in some princes of the strips of land along the Mediterranean coast the hope that by an alliance with him they might shake off the Assyrian yoke. To these belonged Elulæus (Luli) king of Tyre and Sidon, Zedekiah, (Zidga) king of Askalon, and above all Hezekiah, the king of Judah. The latter took on himself the leadership, at least in the southwest.
Sennacherib’s third campaign was directed against this coalition, and is probably to be assigned to the year 702 B.C. With its usual promptitude, the Assyrian army marched on Phœnicia, and thus attacked one of the allies before the rest had a chance to unite their forces. Elulæus fled in haste to Cyprus, where Citium still belonged to him; and all his towns on the continent, within a short space of time, fell into the hands of the Assyrian. All the princes of the other petty Phœnician states came that they might offer their submission.
[701 B.C.]
Sennacherib immediately starts along the seacoast for Askalon, southernmost of the revolted states, and soon overpowers it. Zedekiah, the king, suffers the usual fate; with the hereditary gods of his house, his wife, his sons, daughters, brothers, and his whole family he is dragged away to Assyria.
Now that the whole coast-line had submitted, Sennacherib turned to Ekron, which lay farther to the north, but more inland. But in Altaku [Eltekeh], which lay south of Ekron and belonged to it, he encountered some resistance, and was at the same time caught by an Egyptian army, which at last appeared to the rescue of the Philistine towns. According to the Assyrian account it was very numerous and was composed of the troops of the king of Musuri, and of the bowmen, chariots, and horses of the king of Melukhkha. Still, whatever these two names may mean here, it is certain that neither Tirhaqa himself nor any other Egyptian king was leading the army, but that it was merely commanded by Egyptian princes and two generals belonging to the horsemen. These did not show themselves a match for the powerful Assyrian conqueror. In spite of the number of their followers they suffered a total defeat, and it does not say much for their skill and courage that they all, princes and commanders, fell alive into the enemy’s hands. In consequence of this, the relieving army appears to have retraced its march to Egypt, so that nothing now stood in the way of Sennacherib continuing his conquests in Philistia and Canaan. The ruling high priest and the princes who had stirred up the rebellion, he caused to be put to death and their corpses displayed on stakes on the town walls; such of the inhabitants as had made common cause with the rebels were led away captive; the innocent, on the contrary, went free.
Now at last came the turn of Hezekiah. The following is the main outline of what the Assyrians relate concerning the campaign against Judah. When it became apparent that even after the overthrow of his allies, Hezekiah was not inclined to give himself up readily to the mercy of his powerful enemy, the latter marched into his country. Forty strong towns besides the citadels and countless smaller places were beleaguered, taken by storm, razed to the ground or burned, and more than two hundred thousand prisoners, with a great number of horses, asses, and camels were carried away from them. Hezekiah himself, Sennacherib shut up in his capital, Jerusalem (Ursalimmu), like “a bird in its cage.” But the town was in a strong position and provided with a good garrison. Hezekiah had not only assembled his faithful warriors, but had also enlisted a number of Arabian soldiers. When these, however, required pay, and in case of refusal threatened to withdraw, Hezekiah—the Assyrian says from dread of the glory of Asshur—paid the heavy tribute which Sennacherib demanded of him—namely, thirty talents of gold [about £9000 or $45,000] and three hundred talents of silver, besides precious stones, woods, and other articles, and also sent to Nineveh his daughters and the women of the palace, accompanied by male and female slaves together with an envoy, who was at the same time commissioned to proffer his master’s homage.
From this narrative no one who did not know the official style of the Assyrian historical writers would guess that Jerusalem was not taken, and that Sennacherib, with the remainder of his army, was obliged to quit Judah with all possible speed. But it was not their business to report failures of this kind. Doubtless in this account of the course of Sennacherib’s campaign, the main features are correct and also described in the right chronological order. It is certain that, after the overthrow of Phœnicia, the king found it advisable first to reduce the small Philistine states on the seacoast to obedience that he might then attack the Jewish king, who at last, when he had been deprived of everything save his capital, and when his own soldiers were deserting him, saw himself compelled to produce the war-tax demanded. The assertion that he sent it by an envoy to Nineveh cannot possibly be correct, and must have been invented for the purpose of rounding off the narrative without relating the true issue of the affair.
We possess two traditions concerning the close of the war which, though they may differ from one another in other respects, agree in this, that an extraordinary event unexpectedly compelled Sennacherib to return with some precipitation to Assyria. One is the biblical tradition; the other is the account of Herodotus.[b]
The biblical account, as found in 2 Kings, we have already quoted. The account of Herodotus relates to a certain king Sethos, a priest of Vulcan (believed to represent Shabak of the XXVth Dynasty). This king, says Herodotus, treated the military of Egypt with extreme contempt, and as if he had no occasion for their services. Among other indignities he deprived them of their aruræ, or fields of fifty feet square, which, by way of reward, his predecessors had given to each soldier; the result was that, when Sennacherib, king of Arabia and Assyria, attacked Egypt with a mighty army, the warriors whom he had thus treated refused to assist him. In this perplexity the priest retired to the shrine of his god, before which he lamented his danger and misfortunes; here he sunk into a profound sleep, and his deity promised him, in a dream, that if he marched to meet the Assyrians, he should experience no injury, for that he would furnish him with assistance. The vision inspired him with confidence; he put himself at the head of his adherents and marched to Pelusium, the entrance of Egypt: not a soldier accompanied the party, which was entirely composed of tradesmen and artisans. On their arrival at Pelusium, so immense a number of mice infested by night the enemy’s camp that their quivers and bows, together with what secured their shields to their arms, were gnawed in pieces. In the morning the Arabians, finding themselves without arms, fled in confusion, and lost great numbers of their men. There is now to be seen in the temple of Vulcan a marble statue of this king, having a mouse in his hand, and with this inscription, “Whoever thou art, learn, from my fortune, to reverence the gods.”[c]
Taking together all the circumstances in which the somewhat contradictory reports are agreed, we may picture the course of events as follows: On the advance of the Assyrian king, Hezekiah collects his picked men, who are reinforced by foreign soldiers, in his capital, and resolves to defend it. Meantime the Assyrian army overruns the whole of Judah, takes one fortified town after another, and all the citadels and smaller places, and Sennacherib has penetrated as far as Libnah, a small town lying in the southwest of the Jewish territory. There he learns that Tirhaqa is approaching with an Egyptian army, to fight against him and liberate Judah. So long as the capital is not yet in his power, and Judah consequently not wholly subdued, he cannot go out against him without losing all the advantages gained. He will therefore try whether he cannot, by threatening Hezekiah, induce him to deliver up the town of his own accord; and he sends him messengers with letters peremptorily calling on him to submit. But with prophetic fire Isaiah pours out his wrath at the insults offered to Jehovah by this servant of Asshur, and vehemently urges steadfast resistance.
[701-696 B.C.]
Sennacherib meantime continues his victorious march, and now that he is master of all Judah with the sole exception of the capital, he can detach a part of his army. If Hezekiah will not yield of his own free will he must be compelled to do so. A strong body of troops under the leadership of the Rabshakeh, or generalissimo, marched against the strong fortress and closely beset it on all sides. But it is the Rabshakeh who chiefly figures in the foreground of the affair. The Hebrews tell of his efforts to induce the people and the garrison of Jerusalem to desert their king. He sought to attain this end by means of scornful speeches on the helplessness of Judah.
Hezekiah, perhaps again spurred on by Isaiah, who still continues to trust in a miraculous deliverance, does not give way at once, but defends the city against a superior foe for some time, though it was the only town that remained to him and was as isolated and forsaken “as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers.” But at last, when famine in the town has reached its highest pitch and signs of impatience and discontent manifest themselves among the garrison, he makes up his mind to submission, and sends a messenger to Lachish to inquire the terms of surrender. They are very hard. But there is no longer any choice, and he tenders the Assyrian conquerors the amount required at the hand of the envoy, who subsequently accompanied it to Nineveh. Whether the siege was thereupon immediately raised, or whether it was thought well to keep the town still under observation until the contest with Egypt was decided, we cannot say positively. But, as a great misfortune, either pestilence or some other natural phenomenon, actually did soon after smite the Assyrian army, and the whole of the conqueror’s force, reduced to a miserable handful, quitted Judah and the West, the true believers among the Egyptians and Israelites saw in it a miraculous deliverance which the gods had sent them, and the latter at the same time regarded it as a fulfilment of the prophecies of Isaiah, which at first did not seem to be coming true.
Of course the event had not in reality the importance which the grateful Egyptians and Israelites attributed to it. Although it secured them relief, and Sennacherib’s army was so weakened that he thought it advisable to beat a hasty retreat, yet his supremacy over Phœnicia and Canaan remained for a long time unshaken, and in the following year he was again in the field with a powerful army. Subsequently he appears again to have marched westward and to have made a particular fight against Arabia and Edom. But it does not appear that in this campaign he also made war against Phœnicia, Philistia, and Judah, as he certainly would not have failed to do had traces of insubordination showed themselves. The chastisement had been too severe, and the country was too greatly exhausted.
In the year 700 B.C. Sennacherib’s presence was again required in Babylonia. It was the third and last year of Bel-ibni’s rule at Babylon. Sennacherib had him brought to Assyria, together with his whole family. He had proved unequal to the task which Sennacherib had assigned him.
After the victories, which intimidated even Elam, Sennacherib went to Babylon, and there in place of Bel-ibni, set up his own eldest son Asshur-nadin-shum on the throne as king of Sumer and Accad. His six years’ reign began in the year 700 B.C., and now Sennacherib thought himself safe from the machinations of Chaldean pretenders.
For some years he had really had his hands free in the south. He employed the time in bringing into subjection some of the northwestern neighbours of his empire. This campaign, which the Assyrians reckon as the fifth, and which must have taken place somewhere between 699 and 696, ended with a war in Cilicia. According to Berosus it was occasioned by a Greek invasion, and the Assyrian army obtained the victory only after suffering great loss. Abydenus even speaks of a sea-fight on the Cilician coast, in which the Greek fleet was worsted. Both historians agree in this, that Sennacherib immortalised his famous deeds by the erection of his statue or the setting up of bronze pillars with inscriptions, and that he built the town of Tarsus, which he called Tharsin, so that the Cydnus flowed through it as the Arazanes (Aralshtu) through Babylon. Strange as it may seem, the Assyrians themselves make no mention of the foundation of this important town, but Berosus is too credible a witness for his statement to be rejected.
Even before 694 Sennacherib had busied himself in the preparations of a great plan. Merodach-baladan had sought and found in Nagitu, on the coast of Elam, a refuge and place of security where he believed his deadly enemy could not reach him. After the latter’s expedition against Bit-Yakin in the year 700, the remainder of the population of that territory had found it expedient to take ships with their gods, as their master had done, and cross to the region where the latter had taken up his abode. Sennacherib apparently feared that this new state would prove a source of danger to the province entrusted to his son; all the more since Merodach-baladan had now become a vassal of Elam, Asshur’s ancient and hereditary enemy. The difficulty was great, particularly as Nagitu was not accessible from the land side, without passing through Elamite territory. He had among his captives shipbuilders from Khatti, and he set them to work at Nineveh on the Tigris and Tel-Barsip on the Euphrates. The ships were towed down the Euphrates and the Tigris [or they may have been transported overland by camels]. They were manned by Tyrian, Sidonian, and Ionic seamen, who were also prisoners of war. He, himself, had meantime marched to the Persian Gulf with his army, and had fixed his camp close to the ships. From the description of the voyage it is evident what a deep impression this very unusual expedition made on the Assyrians. Even before they set sail they made an unexpected acquaintance with the sea, which they believed four hours’ distance away; they may perhaps have been aware that, even so far up as Bab-Salimeti, the river was subject to the ebb and flow; but a spring flood, which suddenly laid the camp under water, and even made its way into the royal tent, took them by surprise. They had to seek refuge on the ships and remain on them five days and nights, “as in a great bird-cage,” says Sennacherib. Whether this experience of life on shipboard was enough for the bold monarch, or whether he had no intention of taking part in the maritime expedition, it is certain that he did not leave the shore. The transports were taken to the mouth of the Euphrates; costly sacrifices to Ea, the sea god, among which were a golden ship and a golden fish, were thrown into the rivers to obtain his protection for the fleet, and then it set sail. It is not told how long the voyage lasted, but merely that the country whither they went lay at the mouth of the Eulæus (Ulai), the chief river of Elam. There the great battle was fought, and of course the Assyrians came off the victors. They took possession of various Elamite towns, and carried off the Chaldeans and all the goods from Bit-Yakin, together with a number of Aramæans and captured ships, to Bab-Salimeti, where the king awaited them. Of Merodach-baladan not a word is said. Therefore he did not fall into the hands of the Assyrians, and was not robbed of his sovereignty by the defeat. Thus far, at least, the victory was of no lasting significance for the Assyrians. It appears simply to have destroyed the prosperity of the Chaldean colony for some time, and to have deterred the indefatigable adversary from direct attacks. But this extraordinary and costly expedition shows how greatly he was dreaded and with what implacable hatred his house was pursued by that of Sargon.
[696-692 B.C.]
While the Assyrian king was engaged in the seacoast war, Khallus, the king of Elam, instigated by the Babylonians who had left the town in good time with Merodach-baladan and had sought refuge with him, invaded Accad with his army, penetrated as far as Sippar, where he instituted a massacre, and brought Asshur-nadin-shum prisoner to Elam. On the Babylonian throne he set up a Babylonian, Suzub, son of Gakhul. It is a characteristic trait that the Assyrian account is silent as to the unhappy fate which overtook Sennacherib’s oldest son. Suzub, on his accession to the throne, took the name of Negal-ushezib. He is the Regebelos of the Ptolemaic Canon, and must be carefully distinguished from the Chaldean Suzub who did not reign over Babylon till a later date (692) and under another name.
But the new king was lord over only part of the country. The whole South was still in the hands of the Assyrians and had to be conquered by him.
About June, 694 or 693, he succeeded in getting possession of Nippur, but his farther advance was checked by the tidings that the Assyrians had meantime marched as far as Erech. Sennacherib immediately despatched a large force against the king of Elam, whom he rightly regarded as the chief author of all the trouble. Erech fell and was sacked, and, laden with rich booty, including even the chief gods of the sacred city, the Assyrians marched forward. At Nippur, Nergal-ushezib awaited them, and in the battle which followed he remained victor. But his rule was of short duration. As to the end of his reign the Babylonian and Assyrian records are agreed. The former asserts that, after the Assyrians had carried away the gods and inhabitants of Erech, Nergal-ushezib was taken prisoner in the battle at Nippur and conducted to Assyria. According to the second, he was thrown from his horse in the battle, taken prisoner and brought in chains before Sennacherib, who then shut him up in prison at the gate of Nineveh. The two accounts seem to make the story complete.
After the misfortune that had overtaken their king, the Babylonians bestowed the crown on Suzub the Chaldean, who had also fled to Elam. He reigned independently for four years, under the name of Mushezib-Marduk. The Assyrians consequently content themselves with mentioning several advantages won by them over the Elamites, and also relating that they took Suzub prisoner on their march from Erech to Asshur. They themselves practically acknowledged that Babylon did not fall into their hands, when they inform us that, after Suzub’s capture, the Babylonians closed their city gates against the Assyrians and offered an obstinate resistance.
So far as we may judge, the whole of this campaign of Sennacherib’s was a political blunder, which does not speak well for his sagacity. There was in fact nothing to be feared from Merodach-baladan; the real peril, which threatened from Elam, escaped the Assyrian king. The maritime expedition undertaken at so much labour and expense, was more adventurous than glorious, and failed in its main object: the arch enemy, at whom it was aimed, retained his liberty and his kingdom. And meantime Babylon was left without protection, and Sennacherib’s own son was bereft of throne and freedom. He had not even provided himself with sufficient forces to avenge the descent of the Elamites and reconquer the lost territory. The sole fruit of the campaign (exclusive of booty and prisoners) was the carrying away of a Babylonian king, whose place was at once taken by another prince, not less hostile. A poor compensation for the loss of the capital, the whole territory belonging to it and of his own son! Under Sennacherib’s government it was continually apparent that only under compulsion had the Babylonians submitted to the yoke of the Assyrians, and that they preferred to unite with Elam rather than again obey a Sargonid.
[692-689 B.C.]
In Elam, meantime, a rising took place against Khallus, possibly because he had been unsuccessful in his war against Assyria. [He was killed in the uprising.] Kudur-nankhundi became king in his stead. Sennacherib thought this a favourable opportunity to attack his old enemies, the Elamites. It was in 692, probably, that he took advantage of Elam’s disordered condition to inflict a heavy punishment on that country. From Rasa to Bit-Burnaki he ravaged and plundered to his heart’s content. He introduced Assyrian garrisons and placed the territory under the care of a governor. Besides this, he took thirty-five fortified towns. Such was the devastation “that the smoke of the flames covered the face of the wide heaven like a heavy storm,” and so great was the terror he spread that Kudur-nankhundi left his residence at Madaktu in all haste, and fled to a town called Khaidala, which lay far up in the mountains. But nature saved him from the hands of the Assyrians. Sennacherib did indeed give orders to march to Madaktu, but he could not carry his intention into effect. It was winter, and in (Tebet) December an earthquake, coupled with storms of rain and snow, compelled him to retreat. The mountain streams were so swollen that no army could now cross them with safety. Only three months afterwards Kudur-nankhundi died “suddenly, before his time,” and his own brother Umman-minanu mounted the throne. Scarcely had Umman-minanu assumed the sceptre of Elam than he allowed himself to be beguiled into an alliance with Babylon against Asshur. At Babylon now reigned Suzub II, the Chaldean, Mushezib-Marduk. After his flight from Sennacherib, in the year 700 or 699, he had returned to Babylon, where, after the misfortunes that overtook his namesake, he was made king, no doubt to the great chagrin of the Assyrians. When he sent gold and silver from the treasury of E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk and Zarpanit, to the Elamite king, he found the latter prepared to collect an army at once and march with it to Babylon for a joint attack upon Asshur. Sennacherib was astounded that the lesson he had imparted to Elam in the previous year had borne no better fruit. But the Chaldeans and Elamites had good ground to hope for success. The Assyrian’s latest victories had not been rich in lasting results. He had not succeeded in conquering Babylon. He had been obliged to retreat hastily from Elam. He had not been able to defend Chaldea. Moreover, the kings of Babylon and Elam could now count on a number of allies. The number of the enemy impressed the Assyrians, who likened them to a swarm of locusts. “Like a violent gale which drives the rain-clouds across the firmament, so rose the cloud of dust at their approach.” But calling on the gods, his heavenly protectors, Sennacherib ventures an attack.
It was a fierce battle; both sides fought with the greatest fury. Sennacherib, himself, was distinguished by his personal courage. With helm and mail, spear and bow, Asshur’s sacred bow, which none but the kings of Assyria carried, he stands in his war chariot like an angry lion, and like a heavy storm from Adad, the god of tempests, he rushes on the enemy, covering the plain with corpses as with grass. His horses wallow in blood; blood and fragments of the slain cleave to the pole of his war chariot. A choice troop of Elamite nobles, equipped with golden daggers and bracelets, are slaughtered like sheep, and the Elamite commander and grand vizier, Khumbanundash, a man of great ability, also falls. Others are taken prisoners. Yet the kings of Elam and Babylon and the Chaldean chiefs got away, according to the Assyrian writer, who delights in depicting their sufferings in a very imaginative fashion, with a loss of tents and baggage and of one hundred and fifty thousand dead left on the battle-field. They were pursued for a distance of some miles, but their capture was not effected. There is something loathsome in the lively colours in which the scene is painted; the pitiless slaughter and horrible mutilation of the slain are described with bloodthirsty complacency. The writer of the Assyrian tablet knew well that his savage, revengeful master based his renown on such inhuman acts. And yet it was no victory for the Assyrians. They may have remained in possession of the field, but the murderous battle was so undecisive that the Elamites and Babylonians could claim the victory as well. The losses on both sides must have been so great that neither of the two parties ventured to continue the war. Both sides assumed the attitude of waiting for a more favourable opportunity. The prevalent idea that after the battle of Khalule Sennacherib immediately conquered Babylon is decidedly false and is contradicted by the true reading of both Assyrian and Babylonian records.
Not till the year 690 or 689 did Sennacherib find a favourable opportunity to risk another attack on Babylon. From Elam there was now nothing more to fear. The power of Umman-minanu was much weakened and he was soon to lose it altogether. The Assyrian king marched on Babylon with the impetuousity which distinguished all his warlike expeditions, and was at times disadvantageous to him; and on this occasion his effort was crowned with the desired success. Now he directed his arms against Mushezib-Marduk’s town, not as his predecessors, including his own father, had done, as a rescuer bringing deliverance from a usurper and therefore striking at the latter and his dependents, and sparing the inhabitants: upon the town which had so long withstood him, so repeatedly and obstinately lifted its head against him, a fearful vengeance was to be taken. It was literally wiped out; nothing was spared; corpses lay piled up in the streets; all its treasures were pillaged and divided amongst the soldiers; the temples were desecrated, and the gods torn from their sanctuaries. Then the whole town was delivered up to the flames; the walls and ramparts, the temples and the ziggurat, (probably the two towers of Babylon and Borsippa), were thrown down and hurled into the Arakhtu or other canals, and the water from the river and the canals was turned on the ruins that they might be flooded. The very place where the sacred town had stood became unrecognisable and was changed into a marsh. Mushezib-Marduk escaped and sought refuge in Elam, but Umman-minanu, fearing Assyrian vengeance, surrendered his ally, and the latter and his family were brought prisoners to Nineveh.
Such a deed may well have spread fear and horror even in Assyria itself. Sennacherib had done what none had even ventured before. Towards the town which many an Assyrian king had treated with respect and which had never been sacked, he had behaved with a relentlessness which hitherto had only been exhibited to foreign rebels. He was now master of Babylon. For the remaining eight years of his life, he was called King of Babylon, even according to the Babylonian list of kings, although the Ptolemaic canon mentions this period as an interim. King Ummanaldash [Khumba-Khaldashu] who (the 7th of Adar 690 or 689?) succeeded Umman-minanu on the throne of Elam, and who reigned eight years, left the Assyrian king in peaceful possession. There are sufficient grounds for the assumption that this supremacy over Babylon of a tyrant embittered by earlier reverses was a reign of terror.
For the last years of Sennacherib’s reign authentic accounts are almost entirely wanting. An expedition to Arabia, against a certain king Hazael (Khazailu), in which the capital of Edom is stormed and the deity of the place falls into his hands, certainly belongs to this period of his reign.
[695-681 B.C.]
Like most of the Assyrian princes, Sennacherib, in spite of his unsettled existence, was a great builder. But he bestowed the most care on the re-establishment and embellishment of his beloved Nineveh. In the earlier part of his reign he had also strengthened this town with an outer wall and an inner rampart (duru and shalkhu), and in the year 695 he had built a great palace by the northwest wall, after pulling down a small palace which stood there. The latter had fallen into decay, partly as a result of the overflowings of the canal on which it stood, partly from the heat of the sun. The canal was now diverted, and on its margin was built a new and loftier palace, in which ivory and costly woods were not spared. There the king had a park laid out and irrigated by the waters of the Khushur (Khosr) which were made to flow through it, and it was planted with trees from the Amanus Mountains. At the same time the town was extended and embellished.
Scarcely was this structure completed when Sennacherib caused another palace, which lay farther south of the same wall, to be pulled down. It had served former kings as armoury, magazine, and stables, and had now become not only too small but also decayed. Some fields were added to it and earth brought to raise them, and upon this now rose a palace, not of tiles, but of hewn stone after the fashion of the land of Khatti (Aram). For this also cedars from Amanus and great lion and animal colossi, which had been hewn out of stone in the town of Baladai and then cased in bronze, were employed, and cunning architects disposed them with great care and magnificence. The purpose of the building remained the same; horses and every sort of cattle found stabling, stuffs and weapons were laid up there, but it had now also to serve as a barrack for the national troops. The king’s name is displayed on every wall.
Immediately after the completion of this building on the 20th day of Adar, 691, that is, in the same year in which the battle of Khalule took place, Sennacherib began another and not less important work, which was only completed and inaugurated after the sack of Babylon. This was an undertaking intended to provide the city of Nineveh with good drinking water. A number of canals had to be dug, which served at the same time to fertilise some uncultivated strips of land. In the capital which was thus, as it were, born again, the old warrior now probably rested on his laurels for a few years longer.
In the latter period of his life, Sennacherib appears to have handed over a part of his royal functions to his son Esarhaddon (Asshur-akhe-iddin), if he did not actually make him co-ruler. The latter was not his eldest son, for his name, “Asshur grants brothers, or, a brother,” shows the contrary, but he was perhaps, the second, and therefore direct heir to the throne after the death, or at least in the absence of, the king’s eldest son, Asshur-nadin-shum, who had been carried off by the Elamites. Esarhaddon was certainly destined to the succession by his father, and was the latter’s favourite. Sennacherib issued a decree by which the whole of his booty brought from the Babylonio-Chaldean district of Bit-Amukkani was assigned to him, and his name was at the same time changed to Asshur-etilli-ukinnibal (Asshur, the lord has lent a son)—a name which was more appropriate for one who now took the place of eldest son, but which Esarhaddon himself does not appear to have adopted. His brothers, whether younger or older, were not pleased at this. Two of them at least, Sharezer, whose full name was probably Nergal-shar-usur (or the Nergilus of Berosus), and Adarmalik, disputed the succession, taking advantage of the circumstance that Esarhaddon, at the head of the army, was absent in the northwest, most probably in a war with Armenia. Whilst Sennacherib was praying in a temple, they fell on him and slew him, and Nergal-shar-usur took possession of the throne, [but was at once superseded. Some histories deny his accession]. Thus died Sennacherib, on the 20th Tebet (about December) 681, by the hands of his own sons.
From the official sources, which are the only ones we possess, it is difficult to obtain an idea of the character of the Assyrian sovereign, but the records of Sennacherib’s reign certainly make a far more unfavourable impression than those which Sargon left behind. Both were conquerors, but the one shows more respect for law and justice. Stern, at times to harshness, against uncompromising adversaries, Sargon yet gives place to mildness where mercy can be made to harmonise with the interests of the empire. Sennacherib, on the other hand, takes an obvious delight in scenes of blood and desolation, in inflicting punishments which only awaken disgust at their brutish cruelty. The destruction of Babylon, the burning and blotting out of a town venerable from its age and importance, and so sacred to the pious Assyrians, was indeed a blind vengeance which fixes an indelible blot on the name of the author of the crime. Not less courageous and warlike than his predecessors, he was rash and presumptuous rather than bold, and his plans were rather venturesome than well calculated. Impetuous in attack, he neglected the needful precautions, and attained the immediate goal, often only to lose more than he gained. Whether he was concerned in his father’s murder cannot be determined; that he was, as his name indicates, a younger son, is no certain evidence of this, but it is a suspicious circumstance that he nowhere mentions his celebrated father’s name. If he was guilty, Nemesis overtook him. As a king he was far inferior to Sargon. Nineveh alone had much to thank him for. Babylon, on the contrary, which had called in Sargon as her deliverer, sought to secure her independence of him, and preferred to his yoke the dearly bought protection of Elam. After he died, having reigned something like twenty-four years, it was a long time before the empire was as powerful and flourishing as at the commencement of his rule. In thinking of Sargon and Sennacherib we are involuntarily reminded of Cyrus and Cambyses, who differed from one another in the same way.[b]
ESARHADDON AND ASSHURBANAPAL
[681-668 B.C.]
Sennacherib, as we have seen, was murdered by his sons. It appears that this event did not occur at once after the return from the disastrous campaign against the Israelites, as might be inferred from the Hebrew record, but a good many years later. Esarhaddon, who succeeded his father, was obliged to win back the kingdom from the regicides before he could securely occupy the throne of Assyria. He seems to have had no great difficulty in this, however, and for many years he continued in undisputed sway, not merely sustaining but extending the influence that his father had wielded. The greatest glory of his reign was his successful invasion of Egypt. Opinions have differed considerably as to the character of Esarhaddon. Professor Tiele’s verdict, which we give in extenso later, is somewhat less favourable than that of various other authorities. The opinion of Professor Maspero is perhaps worth quoting in some detail. He says:
“Esarhaddon is one of the finest and most attractive characters of Assyrian history. He was as active and resolute as Asshurnazirpal or Tiglathpileser, without being hard on his subjects or cruel to those he conquered, as they were. He delighted in being merciful as much as his predecessors had rejoiced in being merciless, and the accounts of his wars no longer make constant mention of captives being burnt alive, kings impaled on the gates of their cities, or whole populations being burnt out by fire. He took pleasure in restoring the ruins with which his father and grandfather had covered the land, and in the first year of his reign he gave orders for the rebuilding of Babylon, which was commenced on a grand scale.
“All the Chaldean prisoners were set free, and those who liked to work under the architects could do so for payment in oil, wine, honey, and other commodities of life; and when laying the foundation stones of different edifices, he himself wore the special dress of the masons. The temple of Bit-Zaggaton, the seat of Marduk, the protector of the town, issued from the ruins and the walls, and royal castles were raised beyond their former height. Beyond Babylon Esarhaddon consecrated thirty-six temples at Asshur and Agade; and they were lined with shining sheets of gold and silver.
“The palace which he built at Nineveh on the site of an old building surpassed all that had hitherto been seen. The quarries of alabaster in the mountains of Gordyene and the forests of Phœnicia furnished material for the halls; thirty-two Hittite kings on the Mediterranean coast sent great beams of pines, cedars, and cypresses. The roof was made of carved cedar wood, supported by columns of cypress encircled with gold and silver; stone lions and bulls stood at the doorways; the panels of the doors were made of ebony and cypress, encrusted with iron, silver, and ivory. The palace of Babylon was entirely destroyed, and the one commenced at Calah with Egyptian booty was never finished. The conquerors had been much impressed by the long avenues of sphinxes at the entrance of the Memphite temples, and in imitation of the idea Esarhaddon had sphinxes, lions, and bulls at the entrances of his buildings. The construction lasted three years (671-669), and it was only just far enough completed for the decoration to be started, when he fell seriously ill in 669.” Two years later he died.
It will probably be felt by most readers of the records left by Esarhaddon himself—which are, of course, our sole authority in the matter, save for a few chance biblical references—that Professor Maspero’s verdict as just quoted is over-enthusiastic. Nevertheless, it can hardly be doubted that Esarhaddon was in many ways a much more admirable character than his father. The following excerpt from one of Esarhaddon’s inscriptions, contained on a hexagonal prism of baked clay found near Nineveh, and now in the British Museum, will suggest something as to the precise interpretation one should place upon the words “attractive” and “merciful” as applied to an Assyrian conqueror:
“Esarhaddon, king of Sumer and Accad, (son of Sennacherib, king of) Assyria, (son of Sargon) king of Assyria, (who in the name of Asshur, Bel,) the Moon, the Sun, Nabu Marduk, Ishtar of Nineveh, and Ishtar of Arbela, the great gods his lords from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun marched victorious without a rival.
“Conqueror of the city of Sidon, which is on the sea, sweeper away of all its villages; its citadel and residence I rooted up, and into the sea I flung them. Its place of justice I destroyed. Abd-milkot its king who away from my arms into the middle of the sea had fled; like a fish from out of the sea I caught him, and cut off his head. His treasure, his goods, gold and silver and precious stones, skins of elephants, teeth of elephants, dan wood, ku wood, cloths, dyed purple and yellow, of every description, and the regalia of his palace I carried off as my spoil. Men and women without number, oxen and sheep and mules, I swept them all off to Assyria. I assembled the kings of Syria and the seacoast, all of them. (The city of Sidon) I built anew, and I called it ‘The City of Esarhaddon.’ Men, captured by my arms, natives of the lands and seas of the East, within it I placed to dwell, and I set my own officers in authority over them.
“And Sanduarri king of Kundu and Sizu, an enemy and heretic, not honouring my majesty, who had abandoned the worship of the gods trusted to his rocky stronghold and Abd-milkot king of Sidon took for his ally. The names of the great gods side by side he wrote and to their power he trusted; but I trusted to Asshur, my lord. Like a bird from out of the mountains I took him, and I cut off his head. I wrought the judgment of Asshur my lord on the men who were criminals. The heads of Sanduarri and Abd-milkot by the side of those of their chiefs I hung up: and with captives young and old, male and female, to the gate of Nineveh I marched.
“Trampler on the heads of the men of Khilakki and Duhuka, who dwell in the mountains, which front the land of Tabal, who trusted to their mountains and from days of old never submitted to my yoke: twenty-one of their strong cities and smaller towns in their neighbourhood I attacked, captured, and carried off the spoil; I ruined, destroyed, and burnt them with fire. The rest of the men, who crimes and murders had not committed, I only placed the yoke of my empire heavily upon them.”
It is notable that the successor of Esarhaddon, his son Asshurbanapal, seems to have placed the same favourable opinion upon the character of his father, as compared with his grandfather Sennacherib, that moderns are disposed to adjudge. This is suggested by the fact that Asshurbanapal in various inscriptions refers to “Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, the father, my begetter,” and never to his grandfather, whom he probably would have mentioned, following custom, had he held him in any particular regard. Asshurbanapal himself was, at least in his earlier years, a warrior of no mean quality; but he was, it would appear, primarily a lover of the arts of peace. There is a marked difference in the tone of his inscriptions, as compared with those of his predecessors, even when describing his conquests. Many times they suggest one who loves the pleasures of life rather than one who gloats over the infliction of death. The following are the words in which he describes the expedition against Egypt and Ethiopia, and against Tyre, as recorded on a cylinder now preserved in the British Museum:
“In my second expedition to Egypt and Ethiopia I directed the march. Tandamani [Tanut-Amen] of the progress of my expedition heard, and that I had crossed over the borders of Egypt. Memphis he abandoned, and to save his life he fled into Thebes. The kings, prefects, and governors, whom in Egypt I had set up, to my presence came, and kissed my feet. After Tandamani the road I took, I went to Thebes the strong city. The approach of my powerful army he saw, and Thebes he abandoned, and fled to Kipkip. That city (Thebes) the whole of it, in the service of Asshur and Ishtar, my hands took; silver, gold, precious stones, the furniture of his palace, all there was, garments of wool and linen, great horses, people male and female, two lofty obelisks covered with beautiful carving, two thousand five hundred talents (over ninety tons) their weight, standing before the gate of a temple, from their places I removed and brought to Assyria. The spoil great and unnumbered, I carried off from the midst of Thebes. Over Egypt and Ethiopia, my soldiers I caused to march, and I acquired glory. With a full hand peacefully I returned to Nineveh, the city of my dominion.
“In my third expedition against Baal, king of Tyre, dwelling in the midst of the sea, I went; who my royal will disregarded, and did not hear the words of my lips. Towers round him I raised, on sea and land his roads I took, their spirits I humbled and caused to melt away, to my yoke I made them submissive. The daughter proceeding from his body and the daughters of his brothers, for concubines he brought to my presence. Yahimelek his son, the glory of the country, of unsurpassed renown, at once he sent forward to make obeisance to me. His daughter and the daughters of his brothers with their great dowries I received. Favour I granted him, and the son proceeding from his body, I restored and gave him. Yakinlu, king of Arvad, dwelling in the midst of the sea, who to the kings my fathers was not submissive, submitted to my yoke. His daughter with many gifts, for a concubine to Nineveh he brought, and kissed my feet. Mukallu, king of Tabal, who against the kings my fathers made attacks, the daughter proceeding from his body, and her great dowry, for a concubine to Nineveh he brought, and kissed my feet. Over Mukallu great horses an annual tribute I fixed upon him. Sandasharme of Cilicia, who to the kings my fathers did not submit, and did not perform their pleasure, the daughter proceeding from his body, with many gifts, for a concubine to Nineveh he brought, and kissed my feet.”
Assyrians crossing River by Means of Air Bags
Of Asshurbanapal as patron of art and literature we shall have occasion to speak more fully in a later chapter, in referring to the contents of his famous library. Not less noteworthy than this library was the gallery of art constituting the walls of the great king’s dining room. We turn now to the more detailed consideration of the life-histories of Esarhaddon and Asshurbanapal, as interpreted by a modern authority.[a]
ESARHADDON’S REIGN (681-668 B.C.)
[681 B.C.]
Sennacherib’s murderers did not stand alone, but had a considerable following. Asshur-akhe-iddin (Asshur is brother), Esarhaddon, as the Hebrews call him, who had been already destined to the throne by his father, had therefore to conquer the crown assigned him at the point of the sword. Although it was (Tebet) December—Sennacherib, as we have seen, had fallen on the 20th of this month—and consequently the time favourable for warlike operations had gone by, yet he perceived that this was a case for prompt action. He lay with his army in the northwest, but without waiting a single day, without stopping to collect men, horses, chariots, or material, without even supplying himself with provisions, and in spite of snow and tempest, which might be feared at that season, he hurried straight to Nineveh; “like a bird of prey with outstretched wings.” At Khanigalbat, a neighbourhood the position of which is unknown to us, but which must be sought in or near North Aramæa [probably near Melid], the army of the rebels intercepted him. But these were soon defeated and scattered. A great part very probably went over to Esarhaddon. The two chiefs of the rebellion, his brothers, sought safety in flight and were received in Urartu. That one of them, as Abydenus would have us believe, fell in the battle, is not very probable. Still it is certain that they never again attempted to get possession of the government. On the 2nd of Adar (February) the rising was extinguished, and five weeks later, on the 8th of Nisan, that is, the beginning of the year 681 B.C. [Professor Rogers gives the month of Siran, 680, for this date], Esarhaddon mounted the throne of his father.
When his brothers’ rebellion was suppressed, Esarhaddon was indeed in safe possession of the Assyrian throne, but by no means in undisputed enjoyment of the sovereignty over the whole of his father’s empire. He was continually obliged to engage in wars and to quell risings.
The son of that arch-enemy of the Assyrians, Merodach-baladan, who is generally called Nabu-ziru-kinish-lishir (Nabu, guide the true scion!), had naturally taken advantage of the confusion resulting from the murder of Sennacherib and the war of the succession, to repudiate his allegiance, and may perhaps have already thought of reconquering Babylon. From Esarhaddon’s accession he had ceased to send the presents required from a vassal, and had also omitted to appoint an envoy to offer his homage to the new king, and thus to recognise his overlordship. He had evidently overestimated the difficulties with which the king had to contend, and had not anticipated that the latter would so soon repress the rebellion and be in a position to proceed against him with decisive energy. It is uncertain whether he himself risked the attack; it appears, however, that he had already penetrated as far as Ur. Esarhaddon, who was at Nineveh when he received the news of his defection, could certainly not now be spared there. But he ordered the governors of the province bordering on the maritime country to go out against the rebellious Chaldean at the head of an army which was despatched to them, and this proved sufficient. According to the Assyrian accounts Nabu-ziru-kinish-lishir did not await the attack, but fled to Elam. But this realm was no longer what it once had been. Ummanaldash II, who now reigned there, was not inclined to endanger the peace of his kingdom and involve himself in a war with Assyria for a stranger’s sake; the fugitive was seized and put to death. Na’id-Marduk, who accompanied him on his expedition to Elam, feared a like fate. He chose the wiser course; he hastened to Assyria, made his submission, and in reward was invested with the sovereignty of his brother’s kingdom, that is, of the whole seacoast. Henceforth he faithfully paid the annual tribute.
[677-676 B.C.]
It was not so easy to put down another movement at another end of the empire. Very soon after Esarhaddon’s accession, perhaps even before, certain kings of the west country planned an attempt to free themselves from the Assyrian yoke. These were the kings of Sidon and of two other cities whose position is uncertain, but is certainly to be sought east of Sidon, namely Kundu and Sizu. Over the two last ruled Sanduarri, whose name proclaims him as one of the Hittites or related to them, and over Sidon, Abd-milkot. They had to bind themselves by an oath to recover their independence with their united forces, and fought with great persistence. This is shown by the fact that they were not subdued till the fourth year of Esarhaddon, and also of the fearful vengeance of the Assyrians, so little in accordance with this king’s customary procedure. In the year 677 Sidon succumbed to the besieging force. The city was plundered, wasted, and depopulated. Town and citadel were “thrown into the sea” and the place where they had stood made unrecognisable. The population was brought to Assyria, with all its goods and cattle and all the treasures of that rich commercial city. But Esarhaddon did not, like his father, take pleasure in mere destruction. A new town rose in the place where the former had stood. He called it by his own name [Kar-Asshur-akhe-iddin], and allowed conquered mountain peoples and inhabitants of the coast of the Persian Gulf to settle there—the old means, devised by Tiglathpileser, for absorbing sentiments of nationality and independence into the unity of the great empire. Abd-milkot had meantime fled, probably to Cyprus; for Esarhaddon says that he “took him out of the sea like a fish.” He was overtaken, made prisoner, and put to death, and in the month Tasrit of the following year, 676, his severed head reached Assyria. It was some time before Sanduarri was conquered in his mountain country, but in the month Adar of the same year he suffered a like fate to that which had overtaken his ally. Then the barbarous triumph took place in Nineveh. All the captured subjects of the defeated kings, with the great and distinguished men at their head, were led through the broad streets of the capital, and two of the noblest carried the severed heads of the rulers round their necks. Revolt against the supreme king, which meant sin against Asshur, the god of the gods, when conducted with much obstinacy as was displayed by these two men, could not be severely enough punished.
If Esarhaddon intended by these severities to spread terror among the kings of the west country, he attained his object. Although according to the wont of the Assyrian annalists, the scribe places the narrative of the war in the king’s own mouth, he took no personal part in it, but remained quietly at Nineveh. Thither now came the ambassadors of some twelve kings, whom the Assyrians called simply Khatti-kings and kings of the seacoast, and with them those of ten kings who ruled in Cyprus, to offer him their homage and presents.
When the ten Cypriote rulers, whose names have for the most part a Greek sound, joined in the homage of the Assyrian, Phœnician, and Canaanite kings, it is obvious that Esarhaddon’s army, when it pursued the flying king to Cyprus, had there re-established the Assyrian rule which had not been exercised since the time of Sargon.
All these princes had to bring him costly material for the building of his great palace at Nineveh. There is an inclination to credit Esarhaddon with a special preference for Babylon, and to assume that he had made that town his headquarters, at least towards the end of his life. Our knowledge of the building he erected is, however, not favourable to this view. He certainly governed directly and not merely by vassal-kings that part of his realm of which Babylon was the capital, and there are good grounds for the assumption that he actually cherished the intention of establishing himself at Babylon; but it is none the less certain that for him, as for his fathers, until the nomination of Asshurbanapal as vassal-king of Assyria, the centre of the dominion was Assyria, and the Assyrian capital was his chief home.
[676-673 B.C.]
Although Esarhaddon now imitated his father in his care for the decoration of the Assyrian capital, he did not limit himself to this so exclusively as his predecessors. On the contrary he boasts of having built the temples of the town of Asshur and Accad, and of having adorned them with silver and gold. That he did not neglect Accad or Babylonia is shown by the work, which surpassed all other undertakings, completed in his reign and for which he gave orders in his early years,—the reconstruction of the ruined capital itself.
In Elam it was with disapproving eyes that men regarded this renovation of Babylon by an Assyrian king and with it the re-establishment of the Assyrian rule in that territory. The king of Elam, Ummanaldash II, therefore decided to attack Esarhaddon in this part of the country. In 675, the sixth year of Esarhaddon’s reign, he invaded Babylon with an army, we know not on what pretext, and penetrated as far as Sippar. The misfortune was not, however, a lasting one. In that very year Ummanaldash died in his palace. Perhaps there is some connection between these Elamite disturbances and Esarhaddon’s campaign against the (to us) unknown country of Ruriza which he conquered in Tebet of the year 673. This may be said with certainty of the measures which he took against the Gambuli. That warlike Aramaic-Chaldean race, which had once constituted the vanguard of Merodach-baladan’s army, had then, at least, dwelt in a swampy tract of country where they lived “like fish in the midst of the rivers.” At this time their king was Belbasha (En-basha?), the son of Bananu, and in his impracticable country he had been able to preserve his independence. It was not he and his Gambulians that Esarhaddon now feared, but rather that he might easily be won over to ally himself with his neighbour Elam. Belbasha is pressed to choose and Esarhaddon makes ready to convince him by the unanswerable argument of his arms. But the Aramæan does not wait for the struggle. Knowing well that he has now no help from Elam to look to, he decides of his own accord to attest his submission to Assyria and sends the required presents. Thus Esarhaddon gains his object. The submission is accepted, the country spared, the capital, Shapi-Bel, extraordinarily fortified, the command laid on the prince to furnish it with bowmen and to defend it as “the door which unlocks Elam.” How well Esarhaddon had judged was to be shown later, when his heir had to punish the son and successor of Bel-basha for his intrigues with Elam.
[673-672 B.C.]
These few facts, with the circumstance that, in the same year, 673, probably while the court was at Babylon, the queen died, are all that we know concerning the history of the southern realm under the reign of Esarhaddon.
More is known of the king’s warlike expeditions, or at least those of his army, for it is not likely that he himself took part in them all. Some of them are of little importance to history, or were directed against tribes whose locality we can no longer determine. We pass them over in silence here. Attention may, however, be called to an expedition against Teushpa, the king of the Kimmirri or Cimmerians, or more accurately against the Umman-manda, who dwelt at a great distance, and who were afterwards to be the cause of so much trouble to Asshur and Babylon. The Cimmerians are also referred to in other records as the enemies of Assyria in Esarhaddon’s day. According to these they joined in a great coalition which was formed against Asshur; at its head stood Kashtariti of Kar-Kasshi, a Median prince, who evidently dwelt on the borders of Elam, and Mamitiarsu, governor of the Medes, and to which the Manneans also belonged. At the outset, at least, they were successful, took several towns now unknown to us (Khartam, Kishassu, and five others), and so great was the fear which they thus spread through Assyria, that in order to propitiate the gods, the priest (amelu khalti) was commanded to perform sacred rites and celebrate festivals in their honour from 3rd Airu to the 15th Abu—that is, during one hundred days. The issue of the struggle is not given in the Assyrian records, but it appears that the Babylonian chronicle told of the invasion of Assyria by the Kimmirri and of their defeat.
Perhaps this gave Esarhaddon an opportunity to revenge himself on the Medes and to conduct a war against their country with great persistence. He penetrated farther into it than any of his forefathers—namely, to the land of Patusharra (Patiskhoria?) which lay deep in Median territory, in the neighbourhood of the Bikni Mountains, where so much crystal was found. There ruled Shitir-parna and Eparna, two powerful princes whose names appear to be Iranian. They were subdued by the Assyrians and carried to Assyria with a rich booty, consisting chiefly of cattle, horses, and chariots. This visitation had the result that other princes from farther Media, who had not hitherto acknowledged the Assyrian supremacy, came of their own accord and tendered their submission.
At the other extremity of his empire, Esarhaddon maintained his sovereignty in the same fashion. The means by which Assyria had made herself, and remained during many centuries, the mistress of western Asia, was the pursuit of a traditional policy whose principles the impulsive Sennacherib had forsaken in the most deplorable fashion, but which distinguished Esarhaddon, as well as his grandfather Sargon. By a judicious blending of gracious forgiveness on the one hand and severe punishment on the other, he managed not only to confirm Assyrian sovereignty in the northern regions of Arabia, but also to extend it. Faithful to the rule by which those who had submitted of their own accord must be at once taken in favour, and admitted as allies, he listened to the petition of King Hazael (Khazailu) of Kedar when the latter came to Nineveh and requested that the images of the gods which had been carried thither, might be given back. Esarhaddon had them restored, caused his name and his famous deeds to be inscribed on them, and gave them back to Hazael. But on this king’s death he took care that the latter’s son Ya’lu, whom he raised to be king in his father’s stead, should be still more closely bound to Assyria and pay higher tribute. Under the same condition he restored to another tribe, together with the gods of which they had been previously despoiled, a certain princess Tabua who had been carried away from their midst and had grown up in the royal palace at Nineveh, and thus reinstated her in her position. It was soon evident that he had an object in these tokens of favour. He wished by this means to smooth himself a path to some Arabian tribes beyond, which were still independent and therefore dangerous to the frontiers, and who roamed about in the land of Bazu and in the mountains of Khazu. The march thither was very difficult, 180 kashbu kakkar (double hours) through an arid desert full of snakes and scorpions, so that it appeared almost advisable to secure a safe retreat. If the expedition against these remote tribes had failed, we should have learned nothing of it, at least from Assyrian sources; but it was successful. Six Arabian kings and two queens were defeated and probably put to death, and their treasures, gods, and subjects were then carried to Assyria; so many of the latter, at least, that the remainder were unable to defend themselves.
[672-671 B.C.]
The glory of Esarhaddon’s reign is the conquest of Egypt, for which the Arabian campaign, just described, no doubt served as a preparation. A decisive contest with Egypt was sooner or later unavoidable, especially since Tirhaqa had just brought the divided kingdom into a certain unity and was evidently striving again to raise it to the position of a great power.
In the year 672 Egypt took the first step. As usual, the prize was the overlordship of the West. Tirhaqa managed to persuade Baal, the king of Tyre, to break with Assyria, and thus threatened to draw the whole of the Mediterranean coast into rebellion. Prompt measures were taken, and in Nisan of 671 a powerful Assyrian army marched westward. The immediate goal is Tyre. It is surrounded and the water-supply cut off. Without waiting for the town to fall, Esarhaddon now proceeds south and halts at Aphek, not far from Samaria, thence within fifteen days, with a certain caution and perhaps not without encountering resistance, he leads his army to Rapikhu [Raphia] on the Egyptian stream which forms the boundary between that country and Canaan. Unfortunately the text breaks off abruptly where the narrative of the actual struggle with Egypt begins. But we learn from other sources that the object was attained and Egypt conquered. On the 3rd, 16th, and 18th Tammuz (June) three battles were fought, in which the Assyrians remained victorious. Memphis was taken on the 12th of the month, and although Tirhaqa succeeded in fleeing to his own land of Ethiopia, his son and his brother’s sons were taken prisoners.
[671-668 B.C.]
Esarhaddon was now actually king over Egypt, and here again shows himself to be a prudent ruler. He was content with the title of dignity of “King of the Kings of Egypt”—that is, with the overlordship of the country. Had he incorporated it into Assyria, he would have weakened rather than strengthened his empire. His sole aim was to keep it disunited and consequently weak, and by the expulsion of the Ethiopian to put an end to the latter’s dangerous intrigues in the west. Therefore he did not put in his own generals, courtiers, or governors, but sought to bind the provincial princes to him by granting them a certain measure of independence. The sole danger for him lay in a united Egypt under the warlike king on whose assistance the ever restless kings of Phœnicia, Philistia, and Canaan might reckon; and he therefore contented himself with obtaining from the provincial princes an oath of fidelity to Assyria. Only the supremacy of Asshur must be distinctly apparent, so the Egyptian name of the northern capital, Saïs, was altered to the Assyrian one of Kar-bel-matati (fortress of the lord of the lands), and that of Neku’s son into Nabu-shezib-anni (Nabu preserved me!). After this Esarhaddon went back to Assyria, and on his homeward march he gave orders to carve his royal image and the account of his conquest of Egypt on the rocks by the Dog River (Nahr-el-Kelb) at Beirut, where, besides inscriptions and images of various Egyptian kings, some of his forefathers had caused theirs also to be cut.
THE PRISMS OF SENNACHERIB, ESARHADDON AND ASSHURBANAPAL
The conquest of Egypt is the last great undertaking of Esarhaddon’s reign, which was to last only two or three years longer. In the year 670 he was occupied with Assyrian affairs, all details of which are, however, wanting. But by the following year it had become manifest that conditions in Egypt were not permanently settled. It was evident that a new expedition to the valley of the Nile was imperative. Esarhaddon assembled his forces and proposed to head his troops himself, to assert upholding the Assyrian domination in Egypt. Yet first—perhaps because he already had a presentiment of his approaching end, or because he did not trust the aspect of internal affairs—he appointed his eldest son, Asshurbanapal, as co-ruler in Assyria; if we are not to assume, what is also possible, that this was done before the campaign of the year 671. The expedition came to nothing. On the 10th of the month Arakhsamnu (Marsheshwan, about October), of the year 668, in the twelfth year of his reign, the king died, either in Egypt or, as it is probable, before he reached it.
As the great king of a mighty empire Esarhaddon indeed stands very high; for although he was not more soft hearted, or, indeed, where insubordination had to be punished, less harsh than his predecessor, yet he did not act in obedience to ungoverned passion, but with deliberation, and this foresighted policy allowed him always to choose the golden mean between needless severity and dangerous indulgence. In a few years he strengthened the foundations of the Assyrian rule, and considerably extended it; he erected magnificent buildings, and made desolated Babylon rise again from her rubbish-heaps. By raising his son, Asshurbanapal, to the throne during his own lifetime, he made a struggle for the possession of the crown such as that with which his own reign had begun an impossibility, while by his wise and firm government he had laid the foundations for his son’s long, and, at least in the beginning, brilliant and glorious reign. Sennacherib had little in common with his great father; Esarhaddon was worthy to be the grandson of Sargon.
ASSHURBANAPAL’S EARLY YEARS (668-652 B.C.)
We have already seen that Esarhaddon made his son Asshurbanapal vassal-king of Assyria during his own lifetime. With festive display the young prince entered the royal palace which his grandfather Sennacherib had built, where his father Esarhaddon was born, and grown to manhood and had since held his court, and where he himself, as a friend of learning and science, now began to collect that extensive library which, after centuries had passed, was to make his deeds and the traditions of his nation known to the learning of the West. There in the presence of his father and his brothers, of the princes, captains, and great men of Assyria, he received the oath of fealty from the dependent kings and courtiers, calling on the name of the gods and binding themselves to obedience to his commands, and the maintenance of the ancient laws and institutions. It was an important step on the part of the old king. He did not indeed resign the government of Assyria. He remained king over this part of his kingdom as well as of the others, and the dignity to which he raised his son was only the petty or vassal-kingship, a filial government under his own still existing supremacy, whilst he was himself apart from this primarily king of Babylon, Sumer, and Accad, as well as king of the kings of the Egyptian countries. But for this very reason the appointment of the crown-prince as vassal-king of Assyria, in reality implied the transformation of that country, hitherto the centre of the empire, and whose capital had been the seat of the central government, into a kingdom occupying merely a secondary position, whilst Babylon became the seat of the chief rule and assumed the first place. It had become manifest that the true centre of the empire had shifted to Babylon, and that the latter now possessed more vital energy than Assyria.
[668-664 B.C.]
Esarhaddon’s death had opened up to the Ethiopian the prospect of a reconquest of his lost territory. It was to be expected that Tirhaqa would take advantage of an opportunity so favourable to him, and soon, no doubt as early as the year 668, there came a messenger to Nineveh with the announcement that the king of Cush had marched into Egypt and not only overrun the whole south of the country, but had even made a triumphant entry into Memphis, the town which Esarhaddon had included in Assyria. The governors whom the last Assyrian king had set up had not indeed gone over to the enemy, but neither had they ventured to resist him. On his advance they had deserted their chief towns and retired with their armed forces to the desert. Asshurbanapal recognised the gravity of the event, for it endangered the peace of the coast districts along the Mediterranean. He did not himself take the field, but he immediately sent a considerable force into the west under the leadership of the Tartan and other captains. The latter proceeded to Egypt by those forced marches for which the Assyrian army was distinguished, and hastened to the assistance of the governors who were hard pressed by Tirhaqa. At Karbanit, or Karbana, a town which lay west of the Canopic branch of the Nile, near its mouth, the armies joined battle. The defeat of the Egyptians was so complete that Tirhaqa thought it advisable to evacuate Memphis without giving himself time to break up his camp. This and all the Ethiopians’ armed river-boats fell into the hands of the Assyrians. Tirhaqa withdrew to Thebes and entrenched himself there.
Asshurbanapal, who had been informed of these successes of his army, decided to attack the enemy in Thebes. But as the Tartan’s army had also greatly suffered, he ordered the Rabshakeh, who apparently commanded the garrisons of the West, to collect a new army from the soldiers and auxiliaries under his command belonging to all governors and vassal-kings west of the Euphrates. Impressed by the defeat which Tirhaqa had sustained, the twenty-two kings of the seacoast, the plain, and the island of Cyprus hastened to obey this command, and not only to furnish soldiers, but also on demand of the supreme king to supply ships for the purpose of blockading the coast and prevent possible attempts at risings on the part of the maritime states on the banks of the Mediterranean, and perhaps also for sailing up the Nile. This army pushed on to join that of the Tartan and the troops of the loyal Egyptian vassals, and the united forces then marched against Thebes, which was reached a month and ten days later.
Meanwhile Tirhaqa had abandoned the town itself while it was still time, and had entrenched himself on the other bank of the river in the city of the tombs. Besides this, he had persuaded three of the principal vassal-kings to desert from the Assyrian and go over to his side. These were Sharludari, prince of Pelusium (Si’nu), Pakruru, ruler of Pisept in Egyptian Arabia, and no less a person than Neku himself, the king whom Esarhaddon had placed at the head of all. They even seem to have taken the initiative, because they preferred to have a ruler of kindred race as overlord, rather than obey a foreigner. So they offered to conclude an alliance with the Ethiopian, by which his supremacy was recognised, and they undertook the defence of Lower Egypt. Had their design succeeded, the Assyrian army would also have had a hostile power in its rear and have seen its retreat cut off. But fortunately for the Assyrians the conspiracy was discovered. Their messengers were seized, the letters intercepted, and their cunning plans thus cunningly frustrated.
But first Asshurbanapal had followed the example of his father and pardoned Neku. After he had exacted from him an oath of fealty to Asshur, and laid him under heavier burdens than before, he again put upon him the royal purple and furnished him with the symbols of his office: golden rings on hands and feet, a carved sword in a golden sheath, horses, and chariots; and so he sent him back to Egypt, that he might rule it as chief of the other vassals in Asshur’s name. He himself was again invested with Kar-bel-matati,—that is, Saïs,—and his son, Nabu-shezib-anni, received the principality of Athribis in Lower Egypt, to which also a significant Assyrian name, Limir-shakku-Asshur (let the governor of Asshur beware) was given. The other kings also renewed their alliance with Assyria. But Asshurbanapal did not omit to strengthen the garrisons, and to give those whom he had pardoned Assyrian officers intended to keep a watchful eye upon them.
For a time Egypt enjoyed peace under Neku’s sway and Assyria’s lordship. But after the death of Tirhaqa, Tamut-Amen, too, began to think of a reconquest of Egypt. He set out with his army, and like the former Ethiopian king, is hailed with delight in Elephantine and Thebes as a deliverer; then after he has fortified the southern capital, he continues his march to Memphis, where he first encounters resistance. But the rebels, as the king calls them—these were of course the Assyrian garrison with the troops of Neku who ruled over Memphis and Saïs—were so thoroughly beaten in a desperate sally, that they evacuated Memphis and retired to the strongholds of the Delta. Some princes headed by that Pa-Kerer (Pakruru) of Pisept, who had always borne the Assyrian yoke with reluctance, came to offer their submission, which was graciously accepted. This was the last time that an Assyrian army undertook a campaign against Egypt.
While Asshurbanapal had restored his supremacy in Egypt for a certain time, for the present at least, it was unshaken in the northern provinces of the West. The most important event mentioned by the Assyrian record of these days (evidently about 664) is the accession of Lydia. Asshurbanapal relates that the Lydian king, prompted by a dream which revealed to him the magnanimity of Asshur, sent his ambassadors to Nineveh to request the alliance and protection of the great ruler. For the deity had said to him that by the renown of this name he should overcome his enemies. He did in fact succeed in doing so. The Cimmerians were beaten by him. It may be assumed, though it is not stated, that Gyges received other help from the Assyrians besides the recognition as their ally. However that may be, he conquered, and, on the successful termination of the war, sent two Cimmerian rebels with a great present to Nineveh. There they were no little flattered at this homage, but also no little embarrassed to make themselves understood by the newcomers, or to understand them; for even at a court where, as the Assyrian writer says, the languages of East and West were met together, there was no one acquainted with the speech of these barbarians.
Probably for the same reason as Gyges, Mukallu of Tabal, his eastern neighbour, and Yakinlu of Arvad, with perhaps also Sandasharme, of Cilicia, placed themselves under the protecting wing of Assyria. Knowing the tastes of the great ruler of nations, each of them sent him a daughter for his harem, with a rich present, and it appears that this was the custom. Some even, that they might exhibit the more zeal, sent him, besides their own daughters, those of their brothers and other relatives.
In the east, too, Asshurbanapal manifested the still unbroken superiority of his arms. There, shortly after or at the same time as the Egyptian campaigns, he had already chastised a mountain people whose raids had greatly distressed the inhabitants of Yamudbal [E-mutbal], on the borders of Elam, so that the chiefs of the town of Dur-ilu had made complaints concerning them. He had sent a force which subdued the tribe, brought the chieftain Tandai alive to Assyria and carried off a great number of captives. The king had them taken to Egypt and in their place peopled the wasted country with prisoners of war from other regions.
[664 B.C.]
Of far greater importance was the campaign against Man. The cause is not stated, but may well have been that the king of Man, Akhsheri, declared himself independent, or had shown an evident disposition to attack Assyria. If this were so, he had been over-hasty in his proceedings. However little of the warrior there may have been in Asshurbanapal’s nature, the Assyrian army, in the early periods of his reign at least, was yet too fearless and its commanders too valiant for any man to be able to defy the powerful monarchy. Akhsheri attempted a night surprise of the troops sent against him, before they had even crossed his frontiers; but in this he was not successful. The Manneans were defeated in a bloody battle, and for a distance of six leagues round their dead covered the battle-field. Nothing retarded the victorious army from entering Man, where it laid waste eight great towns whose position is unknown to us, as well as a crowd of small places, and so reached the domain of the capital, Izirtu. It was surrounded, together with the towns of Urbija and Armijate, and after the inhabitants, driven to the last extremity, had surrendered, they were led away and their whole territory conquered and laid waste.
But the object was attained. The frightful misery of the war which had visited that unhappy country had embittered the population against the man to whom they ascribed its guilt, namely, their old king, Akhsheri. In any case, he had shown his incapacity to defend his country. With all his brothers and his father and family, he was put to death, and so great was the nation’s fury that they would not even concede him an honourable tomb, but threw the corpse on to the streets of his city. His son Ualli, himself already a middle-aged man, was raised to the throne, and he hastened to acknowledge Assyria’s supreme authority. He sent his young son to Nineveh, to kiss the monarch’s feet, and did not neglect to send his daughter also, to add to Asshurbanapal’s crowd of women. His submission was of course accepted, but his annual tribute was raised by some thirty horses. Other attempts at rebellion in the northeast were soon suppressed.
[ca. 664-648 B.C.]
But whilst these disturbances in the northeast were suppressed without much difficulty, in the southeast signs soon appeared which gave warning of that great storm which in a few years was to be raised there and to threaten the empire with destruction. The throne of Elam was still occupied by Urtaki, who had always preserved a friendship with Esarhaddon, and had received from him repeated tokens of good will. Asshurbanapal had followed up this policy of his father and treated Urtaki as an ally, and when Elam was suffering from a severe famine after a prolonged drought he had not even refrained from extending a helping hand. He sent grain into the afflicted country, and not only permitted those of Urtaki’s subjects who fled to his country to settle there, but also allowed them to return to their native land, unhindered, when the rains had again appeared and a sufficient harvest secured. If in this he was prompted by motives of policy it was at least an intelligent and peaceable one. In a proclamation to the Elamite tribe of the Rash, and the tribes of the Sea Lands, he could appeal with truth to these tokens of neighbourliness. But they did not prevent Urtaki from taking arms against him and invading Babylonia.
It seems that Asshurbanapal could scarcely believe the news which he received. Instead of hurrying to the spot to avert the danger, as had been the custom of his warlike father, he sent a messenger to inquire into the state of affairs and to report to him upon it. The latter returned with the tidings that the Elamites had poured themselves over Accad like a swarm of locusts, and had even set up a fortified camp in sight of the city of Babylon. He now hastily collected an army which drove the invaders from Accad, and even inflicted a defeat on them on the frontier. It is with a certain unction that the Assyrian scribe recounts the melancholy fate which soon after overtook all these enemies of his king. In the year which followed these events they all died: Bel-basha, as it seems, from a poisonous bite; Nabu-shum-eresh in a flood; Urtaki and his generals, in their despair, by their own hands in each other’s presence. Whether the narrator learned this on good authority or had only heard it from rumour, can scarcely be determined; but that in reality they all died soon after is certain; for in the subsequent war with Elam, sons or successors are found in their places.
The crown of Elam fell to Teumman, brother of the two previous kings, who was “like a devil,” says our Assyrian informant. That he was a tyrant who would shrink from no means of preserving his power, was also the conviction of the relatives of Ummanaldash and Urtaki, the last two kings of Elam. The one had left two sons, Kudurru and Paru, the other three, Ummanigash, Ummanappa, and Tammaritu. Well aware that their uncle was determined to remove them from his path, with all that belonged to them, in order to secure the succession to his own son, they abandoned their country with a great following, among which were included sixty members of the royal family and a bodyguard of bowmen, and sought shelter and protection with Asshurbanapal.
Naturally Teumman could not let this pass unnoticed. He therefore hastened to despatch two ambassadors to Nineveh, Umbadara, an Elamite, and a Chaldean, Nabu-dammik, and to demand through them the surrender of the fugitives. But Asshurbanapal, encouraged by favourable omens, dreams of his seers, and oracles of the gods; in other words, incited by his priesthood to whose guidance he always submitted in pious zeal, steadfastly refused to comply with Teumman’s demand and assembled an army. In the month of Ulul it was ready to march. He did not himself take the field, for in fact his army, led by one of his generals, had merely to support the Elamite force of Ummanigash, his brothers and cousins. Ummanigash himself was generalissimo, if only in name. The Assyrian general was empowered to set Ummanigash on the throne of Elam in the name of the Assyrian supreme king, after the conquest of the country.
Teumman was also in the field with an army. But when he learned that the troops of his rival and of the Assyrians had already marched into the towns of Dur-ilu, which lay not far from the frontier of his country, and several times therefore had been the scene of a struggle between the two powers, he turned back, abandoning the western provinces of his kingdom, and entrenched himself in his capital, Shushan [Susa], which lay on the eastern bank of the river Ulai [modern Karun]. Meanwhile the allied Assyrians and Elamites entered the royal city of Mataktu, which lay to the west of that river, and there Ummanigash is crowned king. Teumman, indeed, makes one more effort; owing to the damage which the text had undergone it is not exactly shown of what kind, but from the context it is plain that he sent out an army in vain to hinder the advance of his enemies. The latter, once more encouraged by a dream, cross the river after Teumman’s troops have suffered a defeat at Tul-Liz, and now attack Shushan itself. There the decisive battle takes place. It ends with the complete defeat of the Elamites: a great massacre begins, the river is filled with corpses, and innumerable women wander about the neighbourhood lamenting. Many distinguished and a large number of lesser prisoners fall into the hands of the Assyrians. All seek safety in flight. One of Teumman’s sons, who had advised him against the war and had foretold the issue, rends his clothes in his despair. The eldest son, Tammaritu, follows his father in his flight to the forest, and when the king’s chariot breaks down there, they are overtaken and both slain. The king’s head is sent as a trophy to Assyria, where it was set up on the great gate of Nineveh, an eloquent witness to the nation of the might of Asshur and Ishtar. His son-in-law, Urtaki, himself begged an Assyrian to cut off his head and send it as good tidings to Asshurbanapal. Yet others of the great men of the kingdom come of their own accord and make their submission. The chief magistrates of the province of Khidali behead their own prince, Ishtarnandi, and one of them himself brings his master’s severed head into the Assyrian camp. Tammaritu, the third brother of Ummanigash, entrusts the government of this principality to the Assyrian generals, and Ummanigash himself now makes his entry into Shushan, and is there crowned as a vassal of Assyria. As pledge of his loyalty he delivers a grandson of Marduk-bal-iddin, better known by the Hebrew appellation Merodach-baladan, probably the author of the whole resistance to the Assyrian king, to the latter’s representatives.
But the war was not ended with the punishment of Elam. Dunanu, the son of Bel-basha, prince of Gambul, was now to be taught what it was to side with the enemy. The army, on its return from Elam, breaks into his territory, conquers the capital Shapi-Bel, carries away from it all who have not fallen by the sword, lays the whole place waste, and flings the ruins into the waters of the stream which flows around it; whereupon a motley crew of human beings are raked together and brought there to re-people the desolate country.
It was a grim revenge that was taken on all enemies, even when they were already dead, on their corpses. At the triumphal entry of the army into Nineveh, Dunanu was compelled to carry the head of his ally, Teumman, round his neck. When Teumman’s ambassadors, who had remained in Nineveh, saw this, one of them tore out his beard in his despair, and the other plunged a dagger into his own heart. Dunanu was placed on the rack in Arbela and died in tortures. All his brothers, including Samgunu, as well as Merodach-baladan’s grandson and his brothers, were also put to death; the chiefs of the Gambuli were even flayed, after they had had their tongues torn out as blasphemers of the high gods, after which all corpses were cut in pieces, and were then sent all over the empire, in token of the overlordship of Assyria. With a refinement of cruelty Asshurbanapal even caused the corpse of his old opponent, the Tigenna Nabu-shum-eresh, which he had had brought to Assyria from Gambul for the purpose, to be disfigured in the great gate of Nineveh by the latter’s own sons. Even before all this was brought to a conclusion, Sarduris III of Urartu, perhaps because he was already threatened by the Iranian enemies, who were soon to put an end to the Kingdom of Van, and was anxious to obtain the help of his powerful neighbour, despatched an ambassador to the latter. Asshurbanapal did not omit to make use of the occasion to bring Teumman’s ambassadors before the newcomers, in order to inspire the former with a consciousness of his greatness, and to give the latter a warning example in case their sovereign also should prove unfaithful.
Thus the greatest danger that had hitherto threatened the empire seemed permanently averted, and if ever a pitiless revenge was qualified to deprive the conquered nations of the desire to fight for their independence, this must certainly have been the case after such a sanguinary judgment. But it was soon to be manifested that it had availed nothing. Assyria had only succeeded in making herself more detested than before, and had only stirred up princes and peoples alike to resist everything rather than any longer endure the yoke of the hangman of Asia.
THE BROTHERS’ WAR (652-648 B.C.)
About the year 652 a formidable war broke out against Assyria. It had, perhaps, long been secretly preparing before Asshurbanapal had any suspicion of the danger which threatened him. He believed that his conciliatory policy had secured the permanent attachment of the Babylonians. He had invested his brother, Shamash-shum-ukin, with the royal dignity, raised him to be lord of all Sumer and Accad, and had placed an army of foot-soldiers, horses, and chariots at his disposal. Those of the inhabitants of towns, plains, and farms who had left the country during the period of anarchy, or had been carried off, he had permitted to return. As for the Babylonians who had settled in Assyria, he did not merely place them on a level with his own immediate subjects, but treated them with especial distinction, continued the privileges which Esarhaddon had granted them, and raised them to important offices, and they even moved about his royal court unmolested, clad in magnificent garments with golden ornaments. They still continued to protest their submission to the Assyrian domination, yet all the time they were conspiring with Shamash-shum-ukin against the king.
An Assyrian Bowman
The first intimation of this conspiracy came to the king from Kudur, the governor of Erech. This faithful servant had received from Sin-tabni-usur, the governor of Ur, information to the effect that envoys from the king of Babylon had been there and that some of the people had already risen. Sin-tabni-usur had no mind to give ear to the proposals from Babylon, and had consequently requested reinforcements. Kudur sent him five hundred men, who, at his request, were afterwards increased by troops belonging to the governor of Arpakha and Amida. But it seems that Sin-tabni-usur was unable to maintain himself until these supports came up, and even before their arrival found himself constrained to go over to the party of the rebels.
Asshurbanapal was soon to learn with horror that the movement, the soul of which was his disloyal brother, had spread with great swiftness, and that Kudur’s anxiety was not without foundation. Shamash-shum-ukin sent messengers in all directions, and they did not work in vain. All Accad and Chaldea, all the Aramæans of Babylonia, all the inhabitants of the Sea Lands joined with him. His chief ally in this district was: Nabu-bel-shume, grandson of Merodach-baladan, that irreconcilable enemy of Assyria, who was now king of Chaldea; Mannuki-Babili, prince of Bit-Dakkuri; Ea-shum-basha, prince of Bit-Amukkani, and Nadan of Puqudu. Ummanigash, king of Elam, who owed his throne to Asshurbanapal, was also gained over by Shamash-shum-ukin. Asshurbanapal had fancied that he might venture to impose on the Elamite, who owed him so much, conditions which the latter could certainly only fulfil with great difficulty. He had demanded the restoration of the goddess Nana of Erech, which had been in the possession of Elam for centuries, and whose worship had become so popular that the kings still sent their gifts to the goddess of Erech. Ummanigash could not comply with this demand without exciting universal discontent in his kingdom, and, doubtless, in consequence of this, was all the more inclined to listen to the proposals of the Babylonian prince. They were supported by a rich gift, for which the temple treasures of Bel-Marduk in Babylon, of Nabu in Borsippa, and of Nergal in Kutha had been plundered. Ummanigash immediately sent auxiliaries to Chaldea. The Guti nomads on the Assyrio-Babylonian frontier, the kings of the West, with Baal of Tyre at their head, and the king of Melukhkha, by whom Psamthek is here doubtless meant; these, too, Shamash-shum-ukin found prepared to join him in a rising against Assyria. The secession of Gyges, king of Lydia, who had previously concluded an alliance with the Egyptian king, probably also belongs to this time, and it is certain that various Egyptian sheikhs also sided with Babylon. Only the peoples of the northeast and north of the empire appear to have taken no part in the movement. They were held in check by the energetic governors of Amida and Arpakha, the last of whom even prevented the north of Elam from rising against the supreme king.
There was need of energy and wisdom to exorcise the storm, which was approaching from so many sides at once. Asshurbanapal, with whom religion occupied so prominent a place, of course turned first to his gods. But he did not neglect active measures. Yet it is not clear or probable that he himself took up arms. When Tammaritu came to him in the year 650, he was at Nineveh. But in the preceding years he had sent out various armies to attack the allies at different points. As soon as the news from Babylon reached him, he issued a proclamation to the Babylonians, in which he denounced his brother’s treachery as ingratitude and exhorted those whom he had so favoured not to join Shamash-shum-ukin. It is true that these words found no echo amongst the nobility of Babylon, but they were not perhaps without influence on the temper of the nation. At any rate, the latter finally turned against their king. When Ummanigash’s troops invaded Chaldea and Kardunyash, in the year 657, they encountered an Assyrian force. At the head of the Elamites was the son of Teumman, that Elamite king whom Asshurbanapal had put to death, and who had been chosen by Ummanigash as his general, because he had the death of his father to revenge on the Assyrians. With him came the governors of Billate and Khilmu, Zazaz and Paru; Attumetu, the captain of the bowmen, Neshu the Elamite commander, and a Babylonian division joined them. The account of the battle is too much damaged for us to form any conclusion about it. But it is evident that the Assyrians obtained some success, to which the severed head of Attumetu, which was sent to Asshurbanapal at Nineveh, bore witness.
It was not so easy to coerce the chief author of the war. Shamash-shum-ukin’s first measure was to close all the gates of Babylon, Borsippa, and Sippar, to place garrisons in all places of any importance, and make himself master of all the towns in Babylonia. As a sign that he renounced his allegiance, he caused all the sacrifices to the highest gods, which Asshurbanapal had instituted, to be suspended, and appropriated all the gifts assigned to them, a measure which excited the indignation of the supreme king more than anything else.
This happened in the year 650, for it must have been in the April of that year that Bel-ibni was appointed governor of the lands on the coast. Chaldea and the surrounding territories were now also subdued. These had revolted in the previous year after Shamash-shum-ukin had raised the standard of rebellion in the year 652. On the 4th Nisan 651, Merodach-baladan’s grandson, Nabu-bel-shume, had collected an army of Accadians, Chaldeans, and Kardunyashu (the men of the coast) in which he had included the Assyrians whom Asshurbanapal had sent him as auxiliaries or garrison. Between the 22nd Tammuz and 22nd Abu of the same year, Sin-tabni-usur, the governor, had joined them, and between 7th Abu and the 7th Ulul the Elamite auxiliaries had also marched up. But in the end the Assyrian army had defeated them all and compelled the Elamites to retreat. Nabu-bel-shume had followed them with his troops to Elam. The Assyrians, on whom he could not depend, he had previously sent under a reliable commander in the same direction, very probably under pretence of letting them march against Elam, and thus had delivered into the hands of Indabigash. Perhaps this defeat was the cause of Tammaritu’s fall. It must have at least followed soon after. The south of Babylonia was certainly again brought under the Assyrian dominion towards the end of year 651.
Asshurbanapal could now turn his thoughts to attacking the arch-rebel in his own territory. It seems that the latter had again entered into relations with Elam, and either now went there in person or sent messengers. But on the 17th Arakhsamnu (Marsheshwan) 651, Asshurbanapal’s warriors advanced against his brother. In the year 650 they stormed in fearful fashion through northern Babylonia, instituted a formidable massacre of Shamash-shum-ukin’s subjects in town and country, made themselves masters of the canals, and finally surrounded Sippar, Babylon, and Borsippa, which the Babylonian king had fortified. The siege must have lasted a year or two, for it was not till 648 that the capital was taken.
And it would not have fallen then—so obstinately was it defended—had not the misery within the walls reached the acme. The famine was so dreadful that the besieged fed on the flesh of their own children, and famine was followed by plague. The gods themselves fought for the Assyrians, as the historian remarks. Then despair fell upon the people. In their fury they laid hold on Shamash-shum-ukin, and threw him, doubtless together with some of his satellites, into the fire. The town was then, of course, handed over to the enemy, and thus escaped the fate which Sennacherib had already inflicted on it. A strict trial was held. Those who had been concerned in the rebellion, such of them as had escaped the sword, hunger, and plague, who had saved themselves betimes during the rising and so could not be burnt with their master, were dragged from the hiding-place where they had concealed themselves into the light of day, and slain without grace or mercy, so that not one of them escaped. Those who had incited to rebellion and defamed Asshur had their tongues torn out of their mouths before they were sent to death. But the heaviest punishment overtook those who had already been punished as rebels by the king’s grandfather, Sennacherib, and whose severed limbs were now thrown to the dogs and all kinds of beasts of prey. The corpses of those who had been destroyed by disease, hunger, and wretchedness, and which filled the streets of Babylon, Sippar, Kutha, and the surrounding country, were dragged away and piled up in heaps, and the insulted gods and angry goddesses were appeased by the care which was now bestowed upon their sanctuaries and altars. All fugitives were pardoned and granted life; they were permitted to settle in Babylon. Nor was the town plundered in any way. Asshurbanapal contented himself with the spoil from the palace of his rebellious brother, with his harem, household chariots, munitions of war, and the tokens of his royal dignity, and all this he had carried to Assyria with the captured warriors.
[648 B.C.
In the south of the country the ferment seems to have lasted longer. The Accadians, Chaldeans, Aramæans, and inhabitants of the coast, who had formerly served Shamash-shum-ukin and then submitted to the Assyrian governor, Bel-ibni, had now of their own accord once more risen against Asshurbanapal; but the Assyrian army, now the army of Babylon, marched into their territory, and soon brought the whole country back to the Assyrian dominion. Governors and princes appointed by the king reintroduced the Assyrian laws, and saw that the yearly tribute was henceforth paid regularly.
THE LAST WARS OF ASSHURBANAPAL (648-626 B.C.)
As before related, Merodach-baladan’s grandson, Nabu-bel-shume, had delivered those troops which Asshurbanapal had sent him for the defence of his country against the Elamites and insurgent Babylonians into Indabigash’s hand. Even before Babylon was taken, the Assyrian king had sent an envoy to the latter to demand the release of these men. Indabigash had answered with proposals for peace. He does not seem to have dared to risk a struggle with Assyria, nor yet to have been prepared to comply with Asshurbanapal’s request; the party of the Chaldeans and their friends was probably too powerful in Elam for this. After Babylon had fallen, the Assyrian sent a fresh messenger, supported by a numerous army, with a vigorous ultimatum to Elam. “If thou restorest not these men,” so ran the message, “then will I come and destroy thy cities, carry away the people of Shushan, Madaktu, and Khidalu, thrust thee from thy royal throne, and put another in thy place. As formerly I destroyed Teumman, so will I destroy thee.” But the envoy had not yet got so far as Deri, when the war party killed Indabigash from a natural fear lest he should yield, and had made Ummanaldash, the son of Attumetu, king.
Of course the latter refused Asshurbanapal’s request, and the war broke out afresh. Asshurbanapal now intended to establish Tammaritu for the second time in the government of Elam, a policy which again was destined not to be realised. A powerful army, led by this claimant, marched into the enemy’s country, and several border-towns immediately submitted through fear, and came to offer their men and cattle. The first resistance was encountered at Bit-Imbi, once a royal city of Elam, “which shut in the front of Elam like a great bulwark,” and had been conquered by Sennacherib and razed to the ground. But a later Elamite king had built a new Bit-Imbi opposite the old town and surrounded it with a strong wall and outworks. This town defended itself obstinately, but it was conquered, and those who would not submit were beheaded and their lips sent to Assyria as trophies of victory. The captain of the bowmen, Imbappi, who was a son-in-law of the Elamite king and had commanded in the city, fell alive into the enemy’s hands, together with the harem, the sons of the former king Teumman, and the rest of the population, and was led away to Assyria.
This feat of arms appears to have been of great importance, for no sooner did it reach Ummanaldash’s ears than he fled from Madaktu into the mountains. The same course was followed by another prince (Umbahabua?) who had reigned in Elam for a time, before Ummanaldash, but, in face of a rebellion, had retreated to Bubilu. He too left his dwelling, and hid himself in the low-lying districts on the seacoast. Elam was now open to the Assyrian army, which made use of the opportunity to march into Shushan and there again consecrate Tammaritu king. But the latter perceived that it was only as a shadow king that he had been set up. When the Assyrian troops who had accompanied him withdrew to their own country with the greater part of the population as prisoners and an enormous spoil, he was completely undeceived and sought to prevent this impoverishment of the land by force. But he was unsuccessful. In the eyes of the Assyrians this was base ingratitude; he was deposed and again carried off, and before the return march was finally entered upon, a regular drive was made over the whole of Elam, during which the chief towns were sacked. But no Assyrian garrison remained behind in the country, and there is no word of its permanent annexation. Immediately after the withdrawal of the Assyrian army, Ummanaldash II came out from his hiding-place and once more obtained possession of the government.
But Asshurbanapal was not satisfied with this non possum, and this time he sent Tammaritu himself as ambassador with another demand. The oracle he had asked from the goddess of Erech had enjoined on him to fetch back the image of the goddess Nana, which had been carried off to Elam centuries before. It will be remembered that this oracle had already served as an excuse to draw Ummanigash into a war. It was now again made use of. But Ummanaldash, no more than his predecessor, could comply with the demand without setting throne and life at stake. No other choice remained for him than to try the fortune of war.
The war proceeded as it had the first time, but was conducted with more energy and certainly lasted longer. Bit-Imbi was again taken, then the Rashi country and the city of Khamanu with its territory, a conquest which the Assyrians thought important enough to be perpetuated in a relief. Although all this was only frontier territory, Ummanaldash thought it advisable to leave Madaktu, the western capital of his country, and to retreat to Dur-Undasi, a town on the farther side of the Ulai, but west of the river Ididi, which formed a strong natural defence. Thus he abandoned a great part of his country, but even there he did not feel himself safe and crossed the Ididi that he might range his troops behind it in order of battle. The Assyrians pursued their triumphal march, took one town after the other, and at last came to Dur-Undasi. But here the army refused to go farther, and two days went by before they could make up their minds to cross the apparently dangerous river. However, in the nick of time, Ishtar of Arbela, the warlike goddess, whose priesthood doubtless accompanied the army with a portable sanctuary or ark, sent one of her seers a dream in which she promised her help, and this restored the army’s courage. The crossing was a success, the army of Ummanaldash was beaten, and twelve Elamite provinces east of the Ididi with fourteen royal cities and a number of smaller places were abandoned to destruction.
Still there was no intention of taking possession of the country, and when Ummanaldash with the remnant of his army had gone farther into the mountains, and consequently there was no longer a dangerous enemy on the east side of the Ididi to hinder the operations on the west side, the Assyrians marched back into Shushan. There was the goddess for whose sake the whole expedition had been undertaken. On former occasions, when Shushan had been taken, the object of the war was to set the Elamite pretender on the throne, then the restoration could hardly be demanded. But now Asshur was in arms against Elam itself, and consideration need no longer be shown. The goddess was brought back to Erech to her sanctuary, E-khili-anha, “the house of power in the heavens,” and the king caused new and permanent sanctuaries to be erected for her.
To all appearances and contrary to his practice, he had himself come to Shushan. At least, it is related that he clasped the hands of the goddess, that is, performed a religious ceremony in her sanctuary and that he also had the gratification of entering the palace of Shushan and seating himself on the throne of the hereditary enemy of Assyria. Elam was one of the oldest and most famous monarchies of Asia, and Shushan was the sacred city, the seat of the gods and the place of their oracles. In the treasure chamber of the royal citadel were heaped up all those valuables which the kings of Elam had collected “down to the kings of those days,” and which had never yet been touched by a victorious enemy. No little of the treasure had been taken away by former Elamite kings from Sumer, Accad, and Kardunyash, and there was also a collection of valuables and jewels with royal insignia, which former kings of Accad, down to Shamash-shumukin, had presented to Elam in exchange for her help. All this, with all the glories of the royal palace, where a rich and splendour-loving court had resided, Asshurbanapal took with him to his own states. The very tombs of the kings were not spared by the conqueror: they were destroyed and exposed to the light of day; even the corpses were carried off, so that the shades had to wander about homeless. In order to mortify the enemy as much as possible, the Assyrian soldiers were allowed to desecrate those sacred forests, whose precincts no unhallowed foot might ever tread, and then to burn them.
Whilst the Elamite war was still raging in the west, the Arabs had again arisen. Abiyate, whom Asshurbanapal had appointed in the place of Yauta-ben-Hazael as Assyrian vassal-king of Aribi, entered into negotiations with Natnu, prince of Nabathea, to whom Yauta had formerly fled, but who had at that time thought it safer to seek the friendship of Assyria. He now allowed himself to be persuaded to trouble the borders of the western provinces of Assyria, in conjunction with Abiyate. Lest the forces in this district should not be strong enough to face the joint attacks of the Arabs, a powerful army was despatched from Assyria to quell the rising. Arrived on the 25th Sivan at Khadata, which probably lay at the eastern extremity of this desert, the army pursued its way unchallenged to Laribda, a well-watered oasis, where the camp was fixed, and then marched on to Khurarina, not far from Yarki and Azalli, still in the same desert, where the first encounter took place. There the Isamme, the Bedouins, who worship the god Atarsamain and the Nabatheans, sought to stop the further progress of the Assyrian army, but were defeated. The victors, having provided themselves with water from Azalli, marched on to Kurasiti. There again stood Bedouins who worship Atarsamain, with Yauta-ben-Bir-Dadda and the men of Kedar, but they too gave way, and not only a rich booty, but Yauta’s gods and women, with his mother, fell into the Assyrians’ hands and were carried with them to Damascus. On the night of the 3rd Abu, after a rest of about forty days, the Assyrian army marched to the town of Khulkhuliti, south of Damascus, and in the mountain region of Khulkurina a battle was fought with the two sons of Te’ri, namely, the leaders of the rebellion, Abiyate and Aamu. Aamu was taken alive, chained hand and foot, and sent to Nineveh, where Asshurbanapal had him flayed. The remainder of the troops sought refuge in the hiding-places in the mountains; but when the Assyrians set guard in all the surrounding places and cut off their supplies of water, they found themselves under the necessity first of killing their camels and then of surrendering themselves. They, too, were taken to Assyria, and thus the country was as though “inundated with Arabs and camels.” Yauta-ben-Bir-Dadda still kept the field with his troops; but when disease and famine had made terrible havoc among them, they came to the conclusion that they were no match for the might of the Assyrian gods, rose against their king, and drove him from them. He was seized by the enemy and sent to Assyria. There his son was killed before his eyes by Asshurbanapal’s own hand, and he and his cousin bound with a dog-chain to Nerib-mashuakti-atuati, the eastern gate of Nineveh. The king counted it as a favour that he escaped with his life.
Even Ummanaldash was also destined to fall into the Assyrians’ hands. His own subjects rose against him, perhaps at the instigation of a certain Ummanigash, a son of Ametirra, and he sought refuge in the mountains. The Assyrians made use of these disturbances to march into Elam, fan the fire of rebellion, and lead Ummanaldash in triumph to their own country. The ancient monarchy, which had so often threatened Assyria, was now entirely broken. For a time Elam still prolonged a melancholy existence. She was not annexed to the Assyrian Empire. But when, within a few years, the latter’s power had disappeared, Elam fell an easy prey to the Persians, when Prince Sispis, or Teispes, of the race of the Achæmenidæ, placed himself on the throne of Shushan.
Little dreaming that the hour of Asshur’s downfall was so soon to strike, Asshurbanapal revelled in the joy of victory. In memory of all these triumphs, and in order to show his gratitude for the help of the gods, he built a new sanctuary for the great goddess of Nineveh, the spouse of Asshur, and when it was ready and he presented himself in it in order to consecrate it with ceremonial sacrifices, he had his royal chariot dragged to the gate of the temple by four captive kings,—Tammaritu, Pa’e, Ummanaldash, and Yauta. This barbarous triumph was his last, and the last also of the renowned Assyrian army.[b]
FOOTNOTES
[25] [The word is Sib’e, who is possibly Sewe or So, but many scholars differ as to his identity. See Winckler,
f]
[26] [Rogers,[g] whose more recent translation differs in some respects, reads this last line, “like a falcon which dwells in the clefts they fled alone to inaccessible places.” In Column II he reads the names Alhzibu, Akko, Tubahal, and Hittites as respectively Ekdippa, Arko, Ethobal, and West Lands.]
CHAPTER V. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA
We have followed the fortunes of Assyria through several dynasties of clearest historical record. But, curiously enough, as we now proceed the landmarks disappear, and we enter a realm of myth, as if we were going backward instead of forward in time. Even while Asshurbanapal lives, the record becomes vague, and after him there is almost nothing securely known of its details. Even the names of his successors are somewhat in doubt. The only sure thing is the broad historical fact that the empire declined in power until it was completely overthrown by the Scythians and Babylonians about twenty years after the death of Asshurbanapal—the precise date of this closing scene being, like all other details of the epoch, more or less in doubt.
Our surprise at this cataclysmic overthrow is the greater in that we have just seen the Assyrian Empire at such a height of apparent power under Asshurbanapal. The palaces, libraries, and art treasures of that king as now known to us convey an irresistible impression of a powerful monarch. Yet it is held that the decline in Assyrian affairs had begun even during the life of Asshurbanapal.[a]
Professor Rogers has well summed up an impression as to the cause of this decline. After noting the glories of the reign in matters of literature, sciences, and art, and giving Asshurbanapal a full meed of praise as regards his attainment in this direction, Professor Rogers continues:
In war only had he failed. But by the sword the kingdom of Assyria had been founded, by the sword it had added kingdom unto kingdom until it had become a world-empire. By the sword it had cleared the way for the advance of its trader, and opened up to civilisation great territories, some of which, like Urartu, had even adopted its method of writing. It had held all the vast empire together by the sword, and not by beneficent and unselfish rule. Even unto this very reign barbaric treatment of men who yearned for liberty had been the rule and not the exception. That which had been founded by the sword and maintained by the sword would not survive if the sword lost its keenness or the arm which wielded it lost its strength or readiness. This had happened in the days of Asshurbanapal. He had conquered but little new territory, made scarcely any advance, as most of the kings who preceded him had done. He had not only not made distinct advances, he had actually beaten a retreat, and the empire was smaller. Worse even than this, he had weakened the borders which remained, and had not erected fortresses, as had Sargon and Esarhaddon and even Sennacherib, for the defence of the frontier against aggression. He had gained no new allies, and had shown no consideration or friendship for any people who might have been won to join hands with Assyria when the hour of struggle between the Semites and the Indo-Europeans should come. On the contrary, his brutality, singularly unsuited to his period and his position of growing weakness, his bloodthirstiness, his destructive raids into the territories of his neighbours, had increased the hatred of Assyria into a passion. All these things threatened the end of Assyrian prestige, if not the entire collapse of the empire.
The culture which Asshurbanapal had nurtured and disseminated was but a cloak to cover the nakedness of Assyrian savagery. It never became a part of the life of the people. It contributed not to national patriotism, but only to national enervation. Luxury had usurped the place of simplicity, and weakness had conquered strength. The most brilliant colour of all Assyrian history was only overlaid on the palace and temple walls. The shadows were growing long and deep, and the night of Assyria was approaching.[b]
Whatever our precise estimate of this criticism of Asshurbanapal, it is clear that the successors of that monarch were unable to sustain the traditions of their fathers. Assyriologists have recently restored to us the names of Bel-zakir-ishkun or Asshur-etil-ili, Sin-shar-ishkun, as the immediate successors of Asshurbanapal, the last named being the one who is believed to have been the occupant of the throne when the conquering hosts of Cyaxares finally razed Nineveh to the ground.
It may fairly be presumed that there exist somewhere among the yet unrecovered treasures of Mesopotamia, inscriptions giving more or less full accounts of the destruction of Nineveh. But be that as it may, no such inscription has yet come to light; at least none such has been deciphered. There is an abundance of material in the various museums of Europe and America that has not yet been fully investigated. The reading of inscriptions in the arrow-head script is an extremely difficult task; indeed, it has been claimed, perhaps half jestingly, by one of the greatest of living orientalists, that only four scholars in the world are competent to read securely Assyrian or Babylonian texts from the original clay tablet. Doubtless this is an exaggeration, but it is one full of suggestion as to the difficulties encountered by the would-be investigator of Mesopotamian history; and at the same time offering an explanation of the fact that so much material is awaiting its turn, and must long remain unpublished, notwithstanding the importance and interest of the historical secrets thus entombed. Possibly, as has been suggested, the story of the destruction of Nineveh may be among these secrets, but as to the validity of this surmise time must decide.
Meanwhile the twentieth-century historian is but little better off than his predecessor of the times before the advent of modern Assyriology in regard to this particular problem. Whoever would picture to himself the destruction of Nineveh has no resource but to turn back to such classical accounts as that of Diodorus, giving whatever degree of credence he may choose to the details of the story. One qualification, however, may be added. We at least are tolerably sure, as our predecessors could not be, that the last ruler of Nineveh did not bear the name which classical tradition ascribed to him. Just as there was no Ninus, founder of Nineveh, so there was no Sardanapalus last ruler of that famous city. In regard to this detail, tradition was at fault here as so often elsewhere. None the less will the name of Sardanapalus long continue to symbolise the idea of the last ruler of Nineveh, whose effeminate reign and tragic end form so interesting a theme for the classical writer.[a]
LAST YEARS AND FALL OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE (626-609 B.C.)
In all probability, Asshurbanapal lived until 626, and during the whole of his reign he remained firmly established in possession of the Assyrian throne and also of the kingdom of Babylon. Elam had been rendered powerless, Babylon had been conquered, and the desert dwellers of the west were too much weakened and impoverished by the severe lesson taught them, as well as by hunger and disease, to be dangerous. Media was only in her youth, and Assyria was still strong enough to resist the first onrush of this new, conquering state. Besides her northeastern and northern neighbours, the states of Asia Minor and the inhabitants of the Mediterranean coast had enough to do to defend themselves against the barbarians who were pressing upon them from the north and east. Egypt was indeed independent, but could not seriously think of conquests in Asia. The condition of the Assyrian Empire resembled the calm before the storm.
Assyrian King in Sacerdotal Robes
In his latter years the king doubtless devoted himself by preference to the works of peace. He had already erected many buildings, even during the period of his great wars. He had continued and completed the work on the temples of Assyria and Babylonia, which Esarhaddon had begun. Unfortunately the inscription which enumerates the principal structures belonging to the first half of his reign only occasionally mentions the places in which the temples he erected stood. In the later years of the king’s reign the walls of Nineveh demanded his attention. They were loosened by annual rains and the violent showers of Adad, and had sunk. Asshurbanapal restored them and made them stronger than before. When he had seen his great campaigns crowned with victory, he at last undertook an important work in Nineveh, the town of Bel and Ishtar. Bit-Riduti, the great palace, which Sennacherib had built and established as a royal dwelling, had fallen to ruins. This king did nothing without the gods. It was now again a dream which made known to him their will that he should repair the damage to the palace. This was done. The forced labour of Assyrian subjects brought the stone in carts from the spoil of Elam; and the captive Arabian kings, decked out with appropriate marks of distinction, shared in the labour as workmen. When the palace was completed to the pinnacles and enlarged, it was surrounded with noble grounds; and when the victims were slaughtered at the consecration, the king made his entry carried in a gorgeous palanquin and with festive rejoicings.
Of all the objects assembled in this palace the king set the highest value on the library which he had founded and which has now for the most part been unearthed and brought to Europe. Asshurbanapal was, without any doubt, an admirer and patron of learning and a prince who loved art. He did not allow the libraries of Babylonia to be plundered, but he had the literary treasures which were buried there, including whole works on philosophical, mythological, and poetic subjects, copied in Assyrian characters and added to the historical records of his own predecessors. He even seems to have studied them diligently himself, and to have encouraged their perusal. The fruit of this study is shown in his own memorials. In fact these have some literary value, which cannot be said of the dry chronicles of former kings. He was not, however, the first to found a library. Not only had the ancient Babylonian kings—it is said even Sargon I of Agade—preceded him in this respect, but the Assyrian kings had also set him an example. This was certainly true of Sennacherib, in whose palace at Nineveh, according to the calculation made by George Smith, probably twenty thousand fragments are now awaiting the investigator who can find the time and means to dig them out and make them accessible to western learning. But it cannot be denied that Asshurbanapal earned the gratitude of scholars by rendering so many treasures of the Babylonian libraries accessible to his compatriots, and also by founding libraries in other places; as, for example, in Babylon, and that he devoted more attention to these things than any of his predecessors.
[626-609 B.C.]
The popular tradition of the downfall of the Assyrian Empire, which took shape in later years and came from the Persians to the Greeks, represents Sardanapalus (by whom none other than Asshurbanapal can be meant) as the type of a luxurious, effeminate, oriental despot, who forgets his kingly duties in the enjoyments of his harem, abandons his empire to the enemies rising against him on all sides, and finally, shut up in his capital, delivers himself in despair to the flames with his wives and all his treasures. We now know how little this picture agrees with the truth, but from what is historically credible we can gather how it arose. Asshurbanapal did indeed take pleasure in filling his women’s palace with the daughters of all the princes subdued by him, and with those of their nearest relatives; and these princes knew well what was pleasing to the supreme king. It is true that this proceeded as much from love of display as from an inclination to voluptuousness; it is true that policy also had a share in it, because by this means his supremacy was confirmed and a pledge given for further submissiveness; it is true that the custom was a usual one with oriental monarchs; but a king who pursued it to such an extent must have been easily transformed into a voluptuary in the minds of his people.
There was also some reason for regarding him as weak and effeminate. The great Assyrian monarchs, at least during the years of their youth and vigorous manhood, had themselves frequently led their armies to victory. It was seldom, if ever, that Asshurbanapal joined in the fight. His official historians do, indeed, ascribe to him the honour of all the victories during his reign, but they have not succeeded in hiding the fact that his generals fought the battles. Yet he was by no means a weakling. That he was an eager hunter is testified by a number of hunting inscriptions, some of them accompanied by reliefs. In any case, a prince who could find pleasure in so manly a pastime was no effeminate voluptuary, little warlike though he may have shown himself to be.
The king’s tragic end in the flames of his own palace, of which the legend speaks, may have been shifted on to him from his brother, Shamash-shum-ukin, or, still more probably, from the last Ninevite king. That he, the last great king of Assyria, should have been supposed to continue reigning until the end of the empire, while the insignificant kings who really followed him were forgotten, is natural enough. In short, Asshurbanapal was not a hero who strove to reap the laurels of the battle-field through difficulty and privations on distant campaigns. He preferred to linger in his luxurious palace, and to alternate the delights of the harem and the pursuit of learning with the royal lion-hunting. He was very pious, and did nothing without consulting the oracles of his gods or the dreams of his seers. If he thought the dignity of his empire, and with it the honour of his gods, insulted by an obstinate rebellion, he would avenge them as his predecessors had done by punishments of ingenious cruelty, inflicted both on individuals and on whole countries. The fearful suffering which the war on Asshur’s enemies wrought in its train, the pestilence which filled the streets with corpses, the famine which drove parents to destroy their own children, filled him with transports of joy. His ruling idea was the unity and vastness of his empire. If he left the sword in its sheath, the love of pleasure did not make him neglect his duties as a ruler. He took care that his armies should always be ready to take the field, which would not have been possible without good organisation; and they triumphed over almost all his enemies, maintained his sway against a powerful coalition, crushed the formidable Elam so severely that she never recovered from the blows she had received, and, if not during his reign, at least shortly after it, repelled the advancing Medes. He regularly transmitted his orders to all the governors in his empire, and was by them kept carefully informed of anything of importance which happened in their provinces. No one of his victorious military leaders ever ventured to turn his arms against him. All, including the governors, recognised him and honoured him as their king. Such he was in the fullest sense of the word. In his palace at Nineveh, during two-and-forty years, he held the reigns of government with a strong hand. And this is all the more creditable to the influence of his personality, since the empire was internally weakened by his own political mistakes, in particular by the removal of the centre of government from Babylon, which Esarhaddon had made its seat, to Nineveh, and by other causes, so that it went to pieces a few years after his death.
After him at least two kings ruled over Assyria, who were probably brothers, for one of them, Bel-zakir-ishkun, was the son of a king of Assyria, and grandson of a king of Sumer and Accad, and though their names are missing from the inscriptions, they can have been none other than Asshurbanapal and Esarhaddon; and the other, Asshur-etil-ili [who is sometimes known by a lengthened form of his name, Asshur-etil-ili-ukinni] is expressly called the son and grandson of these rulers. Probably Bel-zakir-ishkun reigned first, and then the other.[27] No historical records have been preserved, dealing either with the fortunes and achievements of these kings or with the fall of Assyria. Certain texts have led some to conclude that a third king, a namesake of Esarhaddon, may have swayed the sceptre at this period, but this has been shown to be extremely questionable.
[612-609 B.C.]
Immediately after Asshurbanapal’s death, or perhaps even in the last year of his reign, Babylon broke away from the Assyrian rule, and this time the separation was permanent. The empire was much weakened by it. The north and northwest, Urartu and the states of Asia Minor, gradually fell into the power of the ever-advancing Medes. The Assyrian lordship over the countries on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea now existed in name only, so that King Josiah of Judah was able to effect his reform unhindered, and to act as master in the territory of the ancient kingdom of Israel, which for years had been an Assyrian province. And in the year 608 Neku II, king of Egypt, was able to think of extending his empire to the Euphrates, as in days long past, and to take arms against Assyria with the idea of wresting from her all her western provinces. The foundation of the new Babylonian Empire and the invasion of the Egyptians, who could no longer be repelled by the Assyrians, but were only to give way before the Babylonian arms, are described elsewhere. Here we only mention them as among the causes which brought about the fall of the Assyrian Empire. That empire no longer had any real existence, at least as a ruling power. Thrust back to its old frontiers, the ancient Assyrian state slowly languished and only awaited the death-blow.
That blow was to come from the Medes in alliance with the Babylonians, and was partly hastened, partly stayed, by the great migratory streams of the Cimmerians and Scythians.[c]
Though Professor Tiele’s admirable history is recent, much new information concerning the last days of the Assyrian rule at Nineveh has come to light, and historians are now able to place the conquest of the city by the Manda in the reign of Sin-shar-ishkun. Without overlooking a certain Sin-shum-lishir, who is mentioned in several places as an Assyrian king, and must have ruled about this time, but whose personality has not yet been unwrapped from the historic gloom, it is safe to say that this Sin-shar-ishkun was Asshur-etil-ili’s successor. From contract tablets found at Sippar and Erech we know that he occupied the Assyrian throne in 612 B.C., and that his dominion included a part of Babylonia as well. Later records would show him to be of much stronger character than the man he succeeded. In 610 or 609 he attempted to wrest more of the Babylonian provinces from Nabopolassar, and the harassed king took the fatal step of appealing to that people from the north, who for the most part had formed part of the great Indo-European migration into western Asia. Already these Scythian hordes, the Manda, had their eye on the rich Mesopotamian Valley, and therefore Nabopolassar’s appeal did not fall upon unwilling ears. Sin-shar-ishkun was indeed driven back, but when that happened the Manda were in the coveted land. The reader will observe that we have just spoken of the Manda and not the Medes as the assailants of Nineveh. This is because of the recent clearing up of a historical error that was our heritage from the Greek historians. They simply confused the Manda, the nomadic tribes that lived northeast of Assyria towards the Caspian Sea and were the classical Scythians, with the Mada, or true Medes. As Professor Sayce says: “It was not until the discovery of the monuments of Nabonidus and Cyrus that the truth at last came to light and it was found that the history we had so long believed was founded upon a philological mistake.” This matter will be more fully explained in the account of Persia.[a]
Like his father, Cyaxares perceived that it would not be possible for the Medes to extend and maintain their conquests westward so long as he had to dread the rivalry of the Assyrian Empire, so lately the mistress of those regions. Consequently he put into practice the lesson which his father had received from the Assyrians. The as yet untrained hordes of Medians were evidently no match for the better military organisation of the Assyrians and the military skill of the Assyrian generals. Cyaxares, therefore, began as became a warlike prince with the remodelling of his army, dividing his troops, after the pattern of the Assyrians, into the various arms—spearmen, bowmen, and horsemen—and fortifying his citadel, Ecbatana. Then he again ventured to attack Assyria, this time with better success. The Assyrian army was beaten in Nineveh at last, and was surrounded. But an unexpected event came to the assistance of the hard-pressed Ninevites—the Scythians invaded Media.
Their invasion compelled Cyaxares to evacuate Assyria, and for a time Nineveh breathed again. But only for a short time. Cyaxares succeeded in putting an end to the Scythian domination in his kingdom in the course of a few years.
[609-401 B.C.]
About 609 the Median army under the command of Cyaxares appeared for the second time at the gates of Nineveh. According to Berosus, the Babylonian king, whose son Nebuchadrezzar had married the Median king’s daughter, also took part in this siege. It is easy to understand how it was that Herodotus knew nothing of this, for the Persians were his authorities. But he is certainly right in assigning the chief rôle to the Medes, of whom Abydenus says nothing, for from this time forward they kept possession of Assyria itself; and he is also right in placing the taking of Nineveh during the period of Cyaxares’ government, and not, like Berosus and the authors who follow him, in the time of Astyages, since the latter did not ascend the throne of Media before 584 B.C. It is sufficient that Nineveh fell, and Assyria passed to the power of the Medes, who at the same time acquired the dominion over the North and the countries of Asia Minor as far as the Halys. All other provinces of the fallen empire as far as the Mediterranean Sea, including probably that part of ancient Assyria whose capital was the city of Asshur, and also Kharran and Carchemish, fell to Babylonia.
We have no historical account of the details connected with the fall of Nineveh. The story of the last Assyrian king, Asshur-etil-ili, or, as some authorities call him, Saracus,[28] which represents him in his despair burning himself with his palace and his treasures, is a popular tale which is not indeed impossible, but probably arose by confusion with Shamash-shum-ukin’s end. Nineveh was so completely desolated that when Xenophon passed with the Ten Thousand in the year 401 B.C. he took the ruins for the remains of Median towns destroyed by the Persians. Subsequently a fortress, Ninus, seems to have been built there by the Parthians. Calah also once more rose from its rubbish heaps after lying desolate for a long time. Arbela remained untouched, and it is therefore probable that it fell unresisting into the hands of the conquerors. But the Assyrian monarchy was gone forever.
[606 B.C.]
The Assyrian monarchy was gone, but not the empire at whose head the kings of Asshur had stood. It has been matter of astonishment that so powerful an empire, to which through a series of centuries the whole of western Asia had been subdued, could have been so suddenly overturned by the fall of the capital. But this surprise proceeds from an incorrect conception of history. Events had long prepared the fall of Nineveh. The keen eye of Esarhaddon had already perceived that it would be safer to remove the centre of the empire to Babylon. His son Asshurbanapal, a less acute statesman than he, but a great king and a strong administrator, had once more attempted to secure the hegemony for Assyria. In this he had succeeded, being supported by favourable circumstances and the influence of his own personality. But when the sceptre fell from his strong hand, little more was needed to put an end to the Assyrian dominion, and that end was only a question of time. However, the empire survived for a few years longer, though not in its full vigour. The hegemony now passed again to Babylon; but not unimpaired, for, since Media had conquered Nineveh, the lion’s share of Assyria itself fell to the Median kingdom, together with those northern and northwestern provinces which had been lost long before. But the Assyrian survived in the new Babylonian Empire, which continued its policy of conquest, and the Greeks, who not long afterwards called the Babylonians themselves Assyrians, were in this not so very far from the truth. But the days of the Semitic dominion were hastening to their end. Even the new monarchy under Babylon’s hegemony could only be propped up by the force of Nebuchadrezzar’s personality. His feeble successors were in no condition to prevent the spread of the Median power nor the rise of the Persian monarchy, which had grown to such proportions by the conquest of Elam, until the genius of Cyrus founded a dominion which soon embraced the four ancient empires—the Median, the Elamite, the Assyrio-Babylonian, and the Egyptian—and gave the sceptre of western Asia to the Aryans.
The sense of relief which fell on the oppressed nations at the downfall of the scourge of Asia can be gathered from the rejoicing accents of the Jewish prophets. What an Isaiah, a Micah, had not dared to hope, Nahum and Zephaniah saw approach and actually happen. Nahum is convinced that the fate of Thebes will soon overtake Nineveh. Her merchants, multiplied as the stars of heaven, her crowned, her captains, her whole people, they shall be scattered like flying grasshoppers, and no man shall gather them. “All that hear the bruit of thee shall clap their hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?” (Nahum iii. 19.) And Zephaniah (ii. 13-15), his contemporary, sees with satisfaction the desolation of the proud city, who thought herself so safe and boasted herself to be the first and the only one, but now had become desolate and a place for beasts, in whose ruins the bittern and the screech-owl lodge.[c]
FOOTNOTES
[27] [It is now believed that these two kings were one and the same person. See Professor Hilprecht in Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, Vol. IV, p. 164 et seq. “The name of this king (Asshur-etil-ili),” says Professor Rogers, “was originally read Bel-zakir-ishkun.”]
[28] [The most recent revelations in Assyrian history incline the authorities to the belief that Saracus is identical with Sin-shar-ishkun.]
CHAPTER VI. RENASCENCE AND FALL OF BABYLON
“Belshazzar’s grave is made,
His kingdom passed away,
He, in the balance weighed,
Is light and worthless clay,
The shroud his robe of state,
His canopy the stone;
The Mede is at his gate,
The Persian on his throne.”—Byron’s “Vision of Belshazzar.”
Nowhere is there a more striking illustration of national regeneration than is furnished by the story of the new Babylonian Empire. Freed from Assyrian thraldom, Babylon, the old, old city, came forward to take the place of the fallen Nineveh as the world-metropolis.
It has been customary to think and speak of the new Babylonian Empire as evidencing the rejuvenation of an old people. In one sense this view has full validity. But it must not be supposed that the new Babylonians who came to power when Nineveh fell were the bona fide descendants of the rulers of old Babylonia. New blood had made itself felt in the old race; indeed, without its influence it is highly improbable that the rejuvenation could have been effected. The outsiders who made their influence felt with such potency to restore and rejuvenate the old empire, are known as the Chaldeans. The precise origin of this people is in doubt. It is held to be established, however, that they were Semitic, and hence could claim cousinship with the Babylonians and Assyrians. They inhabited the Sea Lands to the south of Mesopotamia at an early date, and have been supposed to come originally from Arabia. They are heard of from time to time in Babylonian and Assyrian annals as a half-barbaric and often troublesome people, divided into various tribes or clans or petty principalities, bearing such unfamiliar names as Bit-Silani, Bit-Sa’alli, and Bit-Sala.
It is supposed by modern orientalists that the Chaldeans long had their eyes upon the fertile regions of the North, and even, from time to time, been presumptuous enough to cross swords with the Babylonians and Assyrians in the hope of dethroning them. Certain it is that the rulers of the North had at various times waged war against their less civilised cousins of the Sea Lands. Yet the evidence does not seem to be very clear as to the precise share which the Chaldeans took in the new movement inaugurated in Babylon with the death of the last really powerful Assyrian king, Asshurbanapal. The name of the new ruler who now came to power in Babylon was Nabopolassar; but it cannot be asserted with confidence that he was of Chaldean origin. It is held, however, that the influences that dominated the kingdom under his reign were clearly Chaldean; though considering the vagueness that surrounds the entire subject, it must be admitted that this assertion is much easier to make than to prove. Still, all that we know about the degeneration of old nations elsewhere, and the extreme difficulty of resuscitating a senescent people, except by a mixture of races, tends to confirm the theory that a race relatively new to civilisation was chiefly instrumental in working the miracle of Babylonian regeneration.
In any event, the people who for something less than a century made Babylon a great centre of world-influence were known to their contemporaries and to succeeding generations as Chaldeans rather than as Babylonians. Just to what extent the old Babylonian people shared in the new work, can perhaps never be known; but the question is relatively unimportant, because in any event it was a people of the same old Semitic stock that carried on the historic story.
The most brilliant period of the new Babylonian Empire came soon after the fall of Nineveh, in the reign of the world-famous king, Nebuchadrezzar, the monarch who built the marvellous wall about the city and the fabulous hanging gardens; the conqueror who overthrew the Phœnicians and carried the Israelites into captivity.
A peculiar interest attaches to the period of the immediate successors of Nebuchadrezzar because the Babylonian captivity of the Israelites still continued, to which the Hebrew writers made such extended references. The famous account in the Book of Daniel of the feast of Belshazzar, with its brief but graphic reference to the alleged tragic end of the Babylonian king, and the overthrow of Babylon itself at the hands of “Darius the Mede,” have furnished never-to-be-forgotten pictures to all subsequent generations. The modern archæologist has rudely shattered some of these treasured images. Thus the Book of Daniel makes allusion to the overthrow of Babylon in these words: “Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein.… In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old.” (Daniel v. 1, 2, 30, 31.)
[555 B.C.]
But within the past generation inscriptions have come to light proving, to the amazement of a keenly interested world, that no king named Belshazzar ever reigned in Babylon; and that the name of the monarch overthrown by Cyrus the Persian or Elamite—not by “Darius the Mede”—was Nabonidus. Nabonidus had a son, Belshazzar, but he never ruled. This Nabonidus was not the son of Nebuchadrezzar or his immediate successor, three successive rulers after Nebuchadrezzar having reigned before he came to the throne. It is clear from inscriptions of Nabonidus and of Cyrus his conqueror that Babylon was overthrown without a struggle. A cylinder inscription by Cyrus tells the story: the first part of which, translated by the Rev. C. J. Ball, is as follows: “The continual offering he made to cease … he (es)tablished in the cities the worship of Merodach, the King of the Gods, he exalted (?) His name … by a yoke unrelaxing he ruined them all. At their lamentation the Lord of the Gods waxed very wroth … the Gods who dwelt among them forsook Their abode. In wrath because he brought them into Shu-anna (i.e. Babylon), Merodach … He turned towards all the districts whose dwellings were thrown down. And (to) the people of Shinar and Accad, who were become as dead, He turned (His regard?): He showed compassion upon all the lands together. He looked for, He found him, yea, He sought out an upright Prince, after His own heart, whom He took by his hand, Cyrus, king of the city of Anshan; He named his name; to the kingdom of the whole world He called him by na(me). The land of Qutû (and) all the Umman-Manda he humbled to his feet; the Blackheaded folk, whom his hands subdued,—in faithfulness and righteousness he looked after them. Merodach, the great Lord, the guardian of His people, joyfully beheld his good deeds and his upright heart. To His own city Babylon his march He commanded; He put them on the road to Tin-tir (i.e. Babylon); like a comrade and helper He marched at his side. His great hosts, whose number like the waters of a river could not be known, with their weapons girded on, advanced beside him. Without skirmish or battle He made him enter Shu-anna. His own city Babylon He spared from distress; Nabonidus the king, who feared him not, He delivered up to him. The people of Tin-tir in a body, the entire land of Shinar and Accad, the nobles and grandees, bowed down before Him, kissed His feet, rejoiced at His accession; their faces brightened.”
The accounts given by Nabonidus himself confirm this record of Cyrus. It would appear, then, that the Hebrew chroniclers, gifted rather with the poetical imagination than with the calm historical sense, confused the Babylonian conquest of Cyrus with a later campaign of his successor, Darius. But no mere substitution of the cold facts of history can ever rob the world of the beautiful traditional picture of the feast of Belshazzar. Here, as elsewhere, myth must be allowed to hold its own as the embodiment of the spirit of history. Myth and history coincide as to the fact that the old dynasty in new Babylonia was overthrown. And with that overthrow the sceptre of world-influence passed from the hands of the Semitic race forever.
CONTEMPORARY CHRONOLOGY
[615-538 B.C.]
The epoch of the new Babylonian Empire covers a period of time from about 615 to 538 B.C., approximately three-quarters of a century. We have already, at the beginning of this book, outlined the position of contemporary civilisations during the entire sweep of Assyrian and new Babylonian history; but it may be well briefly to recapitulate the position of other nations during the epoch of new Babylonian domination, that a clearer picture of the time may be before the eyes as we view the details of Babylonian history.
While reading of the achievements of Nebuchadrezzar and his successors, then, it will be well to recall that:
Egypt under the XXVIth Dynasty enjoys a brief period of rejuvenescence as a world-power; curiously linked in time with the new awakening of her old-time rival, Babylonia;
In India, at about this period, Buddha lives and founds the religion that is to bear his name;
Greece and Rome are in a relative youth, not yet reckoning time from a fixed era, and only beginning to make secure records on which future generations may build. Their civilisation does not compare in importance with that of Babylon, which is the recognised centre of culture, looking upon these “new” nations in the west as utter barbarians;
Phœnicia is far past the zenith of its power; Samaria has fallen; Jerusalem is to become subject to Babylon itself;
In Asia Minor, Sardis, the capital of Lydia, is waxing in power.
But the coming nation of the epoch is Persia, which turns the tables on its fellow, Manda, hitherto the stronger of the half-civilised pair of nations, and which finally, under Cyrus, captures Babylon itself, and assumes undisputed sovereignty over the whole of southwestern Asia.[a]
NABOPOLASSAR AND NEBUCHADREZZAR
[626-562 B.C.]
Nabopolassar (Nabu-apal-usur, i.e. “Nabu protect the heir”), according to the Ptolemaic canon, reigned from 625 B.C. (the date of his accession thus being 626) until 605 B.C., in which year he died, shortly before the victory won by his son Nebuchadrezzar over the Egyptians at Carchemish, having been in ill health before Nebuchadrezzar started for Syria. We have seen how immediately upon his accession to the throne of the Pharaohs, Neku II profited by the impotence of the Assyrian kingdom, which was enfeebled to the last degree by long years of Scythian incursions, to penetrate into the Hamath district.
[He encountered the army of Judah at Meggido—the same historical locality where, a thousand years before, Tehutimes III had vanquished the combined forces of Syria and Phœnicia. The king of Jerusalem was slain on the field, and his army, retreating in terror to the capital, made his young son, Jehoahaz, king, ignoring the claims of Eliakim, the eldest, probably because he was in favour of submitting to Neku. Pharaoh now proceeded, unmolested, to Riblah in Cœle-Syria, where he made his headquarters, and confident in his mastery over Judah, ordered Jehoahaz to appear before him. When the new king arrived he was thrown into chains and Eliakim put in his place under the name of Jehoiakim.]
Neku’s ambition was next directed to the conquest of the whole of northern Syria; a project which he actually accomplished to a great extent during the years 608 to 606, whilst the Babylonians, with their Median allies, were besieging Nineveh. He must certainly have advanced as far as Carchemish, since that was the spot where the Egyptian and Babylonian forces met in 605. The fate of Syria was sealed thereby; it became a province of Babylonia even as it had once been a province of Assyria, and Judah became a vassal kingdom to Babylonia.
[602-587 B.C.]
Thus Nabopolassar, who died in 605, while his son was on the march for Syria, only just missed the satisfaction of seeing the new kingdom of Babylonia which he had founded enter upon the heritage of the Assyrian Empire, out of which the western province could least of all be spared. He did not see it: instead the news of his father’s death reached the young Nebuchadrezzar (Nabu-kudur-usur, i.e. “Nabu protect the crown”) shortly after the victory of the Egyptians, which decided the fate of Syria for the time being; and leaving his generals to follow up the victory, he had to return to Babylon in hot haste to assume the royal dignity that awaited him. There he received the crown at the hands of the great nobles without encountering any obstacles, and for the long period of his glorious reign, which lasted forty-two years (604-562) he guided the destinies of his country, extended and strengthened its borders, and thus made Babylonia a great power, and Babylon one of the most splendid and illustrious cities of ancient times. If we further take into consideration that it was he who likewise conquered Syria for Babylonia, we cannot but acknowledge his claim to be counted the first ruler who entered upon the full possession of Assyria and consolidated it.
Amid all the many and sometimes detailed inscriptions of Nebuchadrezzar which have been found in the ruins of Babylon and other cities, not one contains any account of his campaigns; but from a passage in the preamble of the great inscription of the kingdom, we see that in spite of his preference for building and other peaceful labours he was a mighty warrior. It runs: “Under his mighty protection (i.e. that of the god Marduk) I have passed through far countries, distant mountains, from the upper sea even to the lower sea (i.e. probably from the Gulf of Issus to the mouth of the Nile) far-reaching ways, closed paths where my step was stayed and my foot could not stand, a road of hardships, a way of thirst; the disobedient I subdued and took the adversaries captive, the land I guided aright, the people I caused to be seized; I carried away the bad and the good among them, silver and gold and precious stones, copper, palm wood and cedar wood, whatsoever was costly, in gorgeous abundance; the products of the mountains and that which the sea yielded, brought I as a gift of great weight, as a rich tribute into my city of Babylon before his (the god’s) face.” And although the different campaigns of which we know are distributed over almost the whole of his long reign, we find mention of only one short war against Aahmes of Egypt in the thirty-seventh year of it.
With regard to these wars, most of them aimed at completing the work begun at the battle of Carchemish, and more particularly at preventing further interference on the part of Egypt, and at banishing her influence completely from Babylonian territory, which had now been extended to her very frontier. It was probably in the third year after Nebuchadrezzar’s battle (therefore in 602 B.C.) that Syria was completely incorporated into the Babylonian kingdom, leaving him free to think of displaying his power in the eyes of Jehoiakim, whom Neku had set up as king in Jerusalem, by advancing against him with an army. The desired result promptly followed, and from 601 to 599 Jehoiakim became tributary to the king of the Chaldeans. In the fourth year, 598, the king of Judah withheld the tribute, probably at the instigation of Egypt. When the Babylonians invaded Judah (probably at the beginning of 587) Jehoiakim was just dead; his son Jehoiachin (known also as Jeconiah) was besieged at Jerusalem and, seeing further resistance useless, surrendered to Nebuchadrezzar. He was carried away captive to Babylon with his family and nearly all the princes, warriors, masons, and smiths; but, once there, their lot was no hard one, for they were permitted to settle without molestation and to exercise their own religion. A great number of them lived thus at Tel-Abib (i.e. “heap of ruins”) on the canal Chebar In 589 Psamthek II (Neku’s successor) himself was succeeded by the young and warlike Uah-ab-Ra (the Hophra of the Bible and the Apries of the Greeks), who sent a fleet to the assistance of the Phœnicians in an attempt they made to revolt. Thereupon Nebuchadrezzar marched his troops into Syria and set up his headquarters at Riblah, the old headquarters of Neku, so as to operate from thence against Zedekiah, Tyre, and Pharaoh. How Jerusalem was besieged (589-587) and destroyed, how in the meantime Uah-ab-Ra’s army was vanquished, and how Tyre was then invested (the siege lasting thirteen years) and forced to pay tribute, if no more—all these events are likewise known to us only from other sources than cuneiform inscriptions, and the detailed description of them, at least in so far as they relate to the downfall of the kingdom of Judah, and thus form a part of (not the opening era of) Jewish history, lies ready to every reader’s hand in the books of the Bible of which we have given a brief outline. As for Tyre (after the siege) she remained under the rule of her own kings, though as a vassal to Babylonia. All the worse was the fate which, in 587, overtook Judah, whose hopes had been so cruelly deceived, for not only was the city utterly destroyed (see the moving laments in the so-called Book of Lamentations), and the king, blinded and fettered, carried away into captivity after seeing his sons slain before his face; but with the exception of the poor, the day labourers absolutely necessary for the cultivation of the soil and vineyards, all who had escaped the previous deportation were carried away by the Babylonian king to the “waters of Babylon” (Psalm 137). [587-568 B.C.] [While his soldiers were keeping their long and weary station under the walls of Tyre, Nebuchadrezzar turned his attention to another important matter. Because the people of Judah and Tyre had looked to Egypt for assistance, they had given the Babylonian king much trouble. Egypt, therefore, must suffer for this; so that she would not feel inclined to repeat her action of sending an army to Zedekiah’s aid. A new Egyptian campaign was planned.] A fragment at the beginning of which a prayer (“Thou destroyest my enemies and makest my heart to rejoice”) was set down, assigns the above-mentioned campaign in Egypt to the year 568 (i.e. the thirty-seventh year of the reign). The passage which refers to it,—“Year 37 of Nebuchadrezzar, king of (Babylonia to the land of) Misir, (i.e. Egypt) to give a battle, he marched and (his troops A-ma)-a-su, the king of Misir assembled and …” leaves no doubt that Aahmes or Amasu is the king here meant, for only the year before, in 569, Aahmes had revolted against Uah-ab-Ra and forced him to recognise him (Aahmes) as co-regent. He soon afterward became sole ruler in Egypt; and, as such, he died in the year 528, shortly before the conquest of Egypt by the Persians. Nebuchadrezzar meanwhile contented himself with humbling the pride of Egypt, and refrained from conquering the country, which even had it been successfully done would but have raised difficulties for the Babylonian kingdom to cope with. His chief aim, to keep Syria and Palestine clear of Egyptian influence, was attained by the campaign. Of Nebuchadrezzar’s other military expeditions, the one mentioned (Jeremiah xlix. 28-33) against the Bedouins of Kedar and the Arab tribes, which had settled to the east of Palestine, leads us again to the borders of the Occident. The town of Teredon, at the mouth of the Euphrates, was founded at this time as a bulwark against the Bedouins, and by reason of its situation became, like Gerrha, on the Persian Gulf, and Thapsacus, Tiphsah, on the middle Euphrates, a mercantile station of some importance. Not until the time of the New Kingdom of Babylonia did a flourishing trade develop along the Euphrates, with Armenia and the east coast of Arabia for its extreme poles; and from the reign of Nebuchadrezzar dates the part played by Babylon, his capital, as the greatest emporium of the ancient world, and the proverbial meaning which the name of Babylon has retained down to our times, to signify the worst aspects (luxury and license) of a capital city. From Babylon and the mention of her trade it would be a natural transition to the buildings erected by Nebuchadrezzar, if we were not first bound to mention the northwest and east, which are of extreme importance from an historical point of view, and in which Nebuchadrezzar took the part of a mediator, if no more, between the Medes and the Lydians. [604-560 B.C.] To return to the buildings erected by Nebuchadrezzar, which, up to this time form the subject of nearly all the inscriptions discovered, the latter all show his character in a favourable light. In all we find evidence of the paternal care of a prince zealous for the welfare of his dominions, and of a sincere and heartfelt piety which by no means leaves the impression that it is a mere form of speech. We can listen to his own words prefixed to his account of the buildings he erected and revealing something of his heart. “Since the Lord, Marduk, created me, and made fair preparation for my birth from the womb, from that time forward, when I was born and created, I have visited the holy places of God, and walked in the ways of God. To Marduk, my Lord, I prayed; I took up my parable in prayer to him, the speech of my heart came (before him) to him I spoke: ‘Eternal, Holy, Lord of all things, for the king, whom thou lovest, whose name thou callest according to thy good pleasure, guide his name well, lead (or guard) him in a straight path. I, the prince, who obeyeth thee, am the work of thy hands, thou didst create me, thou didst commit unto me the royal dominion over the whole people, according to thy grace, O Lord which thou sendest forth upon all. Teach me to love thy august sovereignty, let the fear of thy divinity be in my heart, bestow (upon me) that which is pleasing unto thee, thou who preparest my life.’ Thereupon the Highest, the Glorious, the first among the gods, the august Marduk, heard my supplication and accepted my prayers, he caused his great majesty to rule favourably, he caused the fear of God to abide in my heart, I fear his majesty.” And the conclusion runs: “Babylon, the capital of the land, I established with the hills of the forest. To Marduk, my lord, I prayed and lifted up my hand: ‘Marduk, lord, the first of gods, thou mighty prince, thou hast created me, thou hast committed to me royal dominion over the multitude of the people, I love the majesty of thy courts as my precious life. Save thy city of Babylon. I have made me no other capital out of all inhabited places. As I love the fear of thy divinity and seek thy majesty, so incline graciously to my supplication (literally, to the raising of my hands), hear my prayers. I am the King, the Restorer, who delights thy heart, the zealous ruler, the restorer of all thy cities. At thy command, O merciful Marduk, may the house which I have built endure to all eternity, may I satisfy myself in its abundance. May I come to old age therein, may I satisfy myself with my glory, may I receive the weighty tribute therein from the kings of all regions of the world and from all mankind. From the horizon of the heavens unto the meridian and at (?) the rising sun may I have no enemies nor possess any adversaries (lit. them that put me in fear). May my posterity bear rule therein over the black-headed people to all eternity.’” Nebuchadrezzar, himself, attached the greatest importance to the restoration of the temples of E-sagila and E-zida, as being the most ancient sanctuaries of Babylon, and in his briefest inscriptions, the stamp-marks on bricks, whether used for the building of these two temples or any other edifice, always had added to his title of king, that of restorer of the temples of E-sagila and E-zida. Of greater interest to us, however, since we can still admire the ruins of it, is a temple which is only briefly referred to in a few words in the long inscription, but of which we have a detailed account in another, shorter inscription, namely, the Temple of the Seven Spheres of Heaven and Earth, which was built in seven stories near (or as a ziggurat of) E-zida at Borsippa. But although Nebuchadrezzar devoted most thought to his beloved Babylon (and to Borsippa) he in nowise neglected other seats of worship of the country. The temple of the Sun, at Sippar, the temple of a god as yet unidentified, in the city of Baz (Paszitu), the temple of Idi-Anu (the Eye of Anu), at Dilbat, the temple of Lugal-Amarda (Marad), E-Anna, the temple of Ishtar, at Erech, the temple of the Sun, at Larsa, and the temple of the Moon, at Erech, are enumerated one after another as having been rebuilt by Nebuchadrezzar. With better right than his father he calls himself on one of the Abu-Habba cylinders “the ruler of Sumer and Accad, who laid the foundation of the land” (or as Winckler translates it, “made fast the foundations of the land”), for in truth his new creations extended over the whole territory that had been Sumer and Accad as we are familiar with it in ancient Babylonian history, from the reigns of Ur-Ba’u of Ur onward. Under him, after a long sleep (lasting in places for a thousand years) among her ruins, the whole of Babylonia kept the festival of her resurrection, and joyous sacrificial hymns resounded through the length and breadth of the land during Nebuchadrezzar’s long and prosperous reign, as in the days of her distant prime. To complete the picture of Nebuchadrezzar’s capital, we must in conclusion cast a glance at the vast fortifications with which this king girdled the city he had created, and so insured it against the most formidable assault. Nebuchadrezzar did not rest satisfied with completely restoring and enlarging these fortifications (a work that his father had begun, since they had again been impaired); he included a strip of arable land some four thousand cubits (about two to three kilometres) in breadth, on the farther side of the rampart Nimitti-Bel, within another “mountain high” wall, and made it a part of the outworks, thus casting a gigantic threefold girdle of ramparts (or walls) and moats about the city. Nor was that enough: “To quell the countenance of the enemy that he should not harass the (threefold) encompassment of Babylon, I surrounded the land with mighty streams, comparable unto the waters of the sea; to cross them was as it were to cross the ocean. To render an inundation from their midst (the midst of these artificial courses) impossible, I heaped up masses of earth, I set up brick dams round about them.” And herewith we must take leave of this truly great ruler, and turn to his successors, who, unhappily, did not resemble him, and of whom the last, Nabonidus by name, could alone be compared to him in his zeal for the restoration and adornment of the various temples of the country, though in all other respects he fell far below the greatness of his mighty ancestor. This inferiority is the reason that the New Babylonian Kingdom hurried so swiftly to its unexpected end. [560-555 B.C.] We know from the Ptolemaic canon, Hommel goes on, that after Nebuchadrezzar’s death (562) Illoarudamos (probably a clerical error for Illoarudakos, i.e. Amil-Marduk), the biblical Evil-Merodach, ascended the throne and died in the second year of his reign (560). Berosus calls him a son of Nebuchadrezzar, and describes his short reign as unjust and licentious, this being the reason why he was murdered by Neriglissor (Nergal-shar-usur), his sister’s husband, and thus son-in-law to Nebuchadrezzar. As a matter of fact, in direct confirmation of the chronological statements of the Ptolemaic canon, the only contract tablets that have been discovered of the reign of this king, date from his accession, about July 22, 560 B.C. He is mentioned in the Old Testament, in the last four verses of the 2nd Book of Kings; “And it came to pass in the seven and thirtieth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, that Evil-Merodach, king of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, did lift up the head of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, out of prison. And he spake kindly to him and set his throne above the throne of the kings that were with him in Babylon; and changed his prison garments, and he did eat bread continually before him all the days of his life. And his allowance was a continual allowance given him of the king, a daily rate for every day, all the days of his life.” It is evident that the Bible here refers to Amil-Marduk, for on the twenty-seventh Adar 560 this king was still upon the throne (see the above date, 4th Abu), whilst the first well-authenticated date of Neriglissor is 25th Marsheshwan, i.e. about 10th November of that same year. From the reign of Amil-Marduk we have no inscription, but we are in better case as regards his successor, Nergal-shar-usur (the Nergal-sharezer of the Bible; Berosus, Neriglissor, Ptolemaic canon, Neriga-solasar). He reigned from 559-556, for there are two inscriptions on cylinders and a brief inscription on brick which we may assign to this reign. The subject appears to be some restoration in the shrine of E-zida at Babylon. Where the inscription again becomes legible, the king gives an account of the construction of a canal, the waters of which had gone away and withdrawn, and of palace building. The following questions are suggested by these inscriptions. Firstly, who was his father, the Bel-shum-ishkum twice mentioned in them? Let it suffice here to note the possibility that he may be identical with a former king of Assyria, the son of Asshurbanapal, who certainly did not reign more than a few months. The chronology presents no obstacle to the acceptance of this hypothesis. Let us then assume that Bel-shum-ishkum was born about 645; he would then be about twenty years of age at the death of Asshurbanapal, and about forty at the fall of Nineveh, after which he probably found a refuge at the Babylonian court. By that time (606) his son Nergal-shar-usur might very well be about eighteen years old; if we take this for granted, then the latter was thirty-seven in the year 587, in which two persons of the same name (Nergal-sharezer, Jeremiah xxxix. 3) are mentioned among Nebuchadrezzar’s nobles (one among the “princes” in general, the other amongst the officials of highest rank), sixty-four at his accession in 560 B.C. and not quite seventy when he died, which gives a great show of probability to his identity with one or other of these two Nergal-sharezers. Another question to which it would be very interesting to find an answer is that of the wars of Nergal-shar-usur, for, short as his reign was, it is evident from the two cylinder inscriptions that he did wage wars. Unfortunately we have no more exact information on the subject; but if we consider that as early as the year 555, that is, only a year after Nergal-shar-usur’s death, disorders of such magnitude had broken out in Mesopotamia, due to the “Manda warriors” under the leadership of their king Ishtuvegu (Astyages), that is to say, to Median hordes, that the Babylonians appealed to Kurush (Cyrus), king of Anshan, who did, in fact, succeed in driving the Medes back, we may be sure that the earliest incursions of the Manda into Babylonian territory (of which Mesopotamia had formed a part since the fall of Nineveh) took place in the reign of Neriglissor. This hypothesis is directly confirmed by the tenor of Nabonidus’ account of the invasion. In that case Neriglissor’s warlike enterprises were not crowned with brilliant success, or at all events did not expel the Manda from Mesopotamia altogether. On the death of Neriglissor in 556, he was succeeded, according to Berosus, by his son Labassarachos or Labarosoarchodos (in inscriptions Labashi-Marduk), but it appears that a Babylonian of high rank, Nabu-naidu (“Nabu is glorious”), the son of Nabu-balatsu-iqbi (“Nabu hath foretold his life”), was immediately proclaimed king by an opposition party, and although Labashi-Marduk made head against Nabu-naidu (or Nabonidus, as he is usually known) for nine months, the latter dates the beginning of his reign from the death of Neriglissor. According to Berosus, Labashi-Marduk was a child, and fell victim to a conspiracy, having already betrayed tokens of a bad disposition. According to the Ptolemaic canon, Nabonidus reigned seventeen years, which agrees with the circumstance that the latest of the numerous contract tablets belonging to his reign up to this time discovered are dated the 5th of Ulul (the middle of August) in his seventeenth year. He concerned himself chiefly with the restoration of old temples elsewhere than in Babylon, as those at Ur, Larsa, Sippar, and even at Kharran in Mesopotamia, that is, the oldest sanctuaries in the country; while in Babylon, where he certainly resided, if only at intervals, he seems to have done nothing except to proceed with the building of the walls on the river bank.[29] Nabonidus was actuated not merely by religious motives, but by an interest in history and archæology, which grew to be an absolute mania with him. His inscriptions give us minute information as to how he dug and hunted for the foundation cylinders of these primitive temples, nor does he fail to deal many a sly hit at his predecessors (Nebuchadrezzar, for example), who had not always conscientiously done this, and had consequently many a time built something that was not in the original plan. When, after long search, Nabonidus found these cylinders, often buried deep down in the ground, he reproduced the tenor of them exactly, frequently giving the precise number of years between his own reign and that of the ancient Babylonian king in question, and so providing us with the most valuable data for determining the earliest periods of Babylonian history. In this way we have learned the date of Naram-Sim, the ancient king of Agade, of Shagarakti-Buriash [sometimes read Shagarakti-Shuriash], and lastly, as it would appear, of Khammurabi (although in this case the computation is incorrect), together with many other data of historical importance. For this reason the reign of Nabonidus is to us among the most important in Babylonian history, but his passion for archæology—which seems to have made him forget the world entirely, and, in particular, overlook the danger with which the victories of Cyrus menaced Babylonia—was of less service to himself, and ultimately cost him his throne and liberty. [555-547 B.C.] We have already mentioned the fragment of the Babylonian chronicle treating of the reign of Nabonidus and the conquest of Babylon and the whole Babylonian empire by Cyrus. We will now regard the public events of the reign of the last native king of Babylonia in the light of this text. In the first year mention is made of a military expedition with the object of subjugating a prince of whose name, unfortunately, nothing (or at most the termination, shu’ishshi) has been preserved, but whom we should, perhaps, be justified in regarding as the chieftain of a Median tribe. From the first section of the cylinder-inscription of Abu-Habba we see that if, after the deliverance of Kharran, Nabonidus summoned his troops from the frontier of Egypt and onward to the Gulf of Issus and the Persian Gulf, to the work of building, or the collection of building material; these were not military enterprises in the strict sense of the term (and this is characteristic), but merely expeditions for peaceful ends, which were all the easier for Nabonidus to achieve, because, since the reign of Nebuchadrezzar the Babylonians had held undisputed possession of the “Occident” right up to the Egyptian frontier. The only exception to this rule seems to be the account of the beginning of the first year (or the beginning of his reign) given in the chronicle, where, among other things, it is said, “the king summoned his warriors.” But this expedition was, in all likelihood, only the less laborious gleaning left to Nabonidus after the conquest of the Medes by Cyrus. The next event narrated in the chronicle is the final defeat of the Medes by Cyrus, which cannot, therefore, have taken place later than the sixth year of the reign of Nabonidus, that is, 550 B.C., and may have been earlier. The account of the seventh year is difficult to understand, but this much is plain, that in those years Nabonidus was not present at the New Year’s celebration at E-sagila, nay, that the festival in question did not take place at all. We do not know why this was so, but we may conjecture that the reason was a hierarchical revolution, a kind of vote of want of confidence in the king, who was pursuing his works and researches in the temples of Sippar, Ur, Larsa, and other cities, heedless of the danger that menaced the country from Cyrus. [547-538 B.C.] Of greater importance, historically, is the account of the ninth year (547 B.C.). After repeating the statement concerning the non-celebration of the feast of Bel, it proceeds: On the 5th of Nisan the king’s mother died in the fortified camp on the far side (Sha am? = sha ammat) of the Euphrates above Sippar; for three days mourning prevailed and lamentation, in the month of Sivan there was mourning (official) for the queen-mother throughout the (whole) land of Accad. In the Nisan (of this year) Kurush (Cyrus), king of the land of Parsu, had summoned his warriors and crossed the Tigris below Arbela, in order to invade Asia Minor in the following month, Airu, “from the king he took away his silver and goods, his own children he caused to mount the [funeral pyre], after his children and the king (he himself, Cyrus?) were therein.” We know from Herodotus that an expedition of Cyrus against King Crœsus of Lydia took place at this very time, and ended with the siege and reduction of Sardis and the fall of the kingdom of Lydia, after an indecisive battle had been fought in Cappadocia, near Pteria (Boghaz-köi), a place since made famous by the discovery of a Hittite bas-relief. Nabonidus had joined the alliance between Lydia, Sparta and Aahmes of Egypt, on which Crœsus relied when he began the war against Cyrus; probably he thought he could make an easy conquest of Media and Elam after the defeat he expected Cyrus to suffer in Asia Minor. The Babylonians do not seem to have taken any active part in the struggle after Cyrus’ speedy victory over the Lydians, but nevertheless with that victory the fate of Babylonia was practically sealed. For it was obvious that Cyrus, who had not only ruled over the whole of Media, since the taking of Ecbatana, but was also undisputed master of Armenia right up to the western coast of Asia Minor, and thus had really become emperor (or great king) would take the first opportunity of seizing upon Babylonia and its wealthy Syrian provinces. Moreover, from this time forth he had the best of reasons for regarding Nabonidus as a disloyal neighbour who deserved condign punishment. In the tenth and eleventh years the chronicle first notes the omission of the Feast of Bel in exactly the same terms as in the case of the seventh and ninth years, and when the narration begins we find ourselves in the seventeenth and last year of the reign of Nabonidus (539 B.C.). After a series of sentences which are very much defaced the narrative proceeds: “In the month of Tammuz (June-July, 539), Kurush [Cyrus] fought a battle at Kish (?) above the canal of Illat (?) against the warriors of the land of Accad; the people of the land of Accad rose up against the ranks of soldiers, on the 14th day (of Tammuz) the city of Sippar was taken without a battle, Nabonidus fled. On the 17th day (i.e. about July 5, 539), Ugbaru (Gobryas), governor of Guti (i.e. the district to the east of Arbela), and the warriors of Kurush marched into E-ki (Babylon); when Nabonidus thereupon entrenched himself in E-ki (Babylon) he was taken captive. Even unto the end of the month the tukkimi (troops?) of the land of Guti encompassed the gates of E-sagila, yet were not weapons of any sort laid upon E-sagila and the (other) temples, nor was the embellishment (i.e. the images and vessels of the temple) taken away. On the 3rd of Marsheshwan (Arakhsamnu, i.e. about October 19), Kurush marched into E-ki, the streets were filled in view of his entry, he established peace in the city; Kurush proclaimed peace to the whole of Tintir (Babylon), he set Ugbaru (Gobryas), his vicegerent, as vicegerent over Babylon, and from the month Kislev even until Adar (November-December, 539—February-March, 538), he caused the gods of the land of Accad, which Nabonidus had caused to be brought into Babylon, to be carried back into their own places. In the same (?) month, on the 11th day, Ugbaru went over and the king dies; from the 27th of the month Adar, even to the 3rd of Nisan (the end of March, 538), there is mourning in Accad, all the people loose (lit. cleave) their hair (?); on the 4th, Kambujiya (Cambyses), the son of Kurush, goes to the temple of the city (?) of Khadkalamasummu.…” What follows is defaced beyond translation, and, to judge from the scraps of lines still decipherable, contains nothing of historic interest; for example, it goes on to speak of the temple of E-Anna at Erech. [538 B.C.] Thus we see that Babylon itself received King Cyrus with open arms, and that, even as the Kossæans had usurped and long maintained the mastery of Accad, so now the Persians superseded the native dynasty. The event was therefore no new thing, and, as a matter of fact, Babylonian history proceeds upon the old lines under Cyrus and his successors, so that it is hard to see why most narratives should break off at this point. The national literature and mode of writing continued to flourish, but the history of Babylonia and Assyria, of which the short-lived prosperity of the New Babylonian Kingdom was the last chapter, concluded with the entry of Cyrus into Babylon; the subsequent history of Babylonia is of local interest only, and has no further significance for the world. Lastly, as regards the important original Babylonian inscription of the reign of Cyrus, which has been referred to before, it most fully confirms the correctness of the impression made by the narrative of the chronicle on every unprejudiced reader. The Babylonians, with the hierarchy of the city of Babylon at their head, were utterly weary of the feeble rule of Nabonidus, who does not seem even to have been of the blood-royal, and hailed Cyrus as deliverer. At the bidding of Cyrus the learned Babylonian scribes were charged to draw up an inscription, and from its contents and wording (which can hardly have been dictated by the king of Persia) we can clearly realise the view of the situation taken by the priestly circles of the country (which governed the populace). From the very beginning, defaced as it is, we perceive that Nabonidus is made the scapegoat for everything. He is represented with having sent forth “to Ur and the other cities oracles that did not beseem them” (i.e. the gods), with “thinking daily upon evil” (?), with having “caused the daily sacrifice to cease” and grossly neglected the worship of the god Marduk; further, with having “let the fortifications of Babylon fall into ruin, so that the lord of the gods was greatly incensed in lamentation thereat,” as well as “with wrath that he had brought in (into E-sagila) the gods (of other Babylonian cities), who were thus constrained to forsake their (former) temples. Then it came to pass that Marduk “looked upon his friend,” and “laid hold of his hand, Kurush, king of Anshan, was his name called”; “he subdued the land of the Kuti and the whole host of the Manda hordes beneath his feet; he caused the black-headed people to fall into his hands; in righteousness and justice came he unto them.” The god Marduk “bade him to go to Babylon and take the road to Tintir, like a friend and comrade went he at his side, the multitude of his troops, whereof the number, like unto the waters of a river, was not known, girt on the weapons and marched at his side; he (Marduk) caused him to enter Shu-anna (Babylon) without strife or battle; Babylon, his city, he spared with difficulty; Nabonidus the king, who did not fear him, he gave over into his (Kurush’s) hands; all the people of Tintir, the whole multitude of Sumer and Accad, the princes and the ruler who submitted to his dynasty, kissed his feet and rejoiced in his royal dominion; their faces shone. The Lord, who (draweth nigh) with succour, who raiseth the dead to life, who in might bestoweth benefits upon the whole earth, graciously blesseth him (Cyrus) and hath respect unto his name. I, Kurush, King of the world, the mighty King, King of Babylon, King of Sumer and Accad, King of the four quarters of the Earth, son of Kambujiya, the great King, the King of the city of Anshan, grandson of Kurush, the great King, the King of the city of Anshan, descendant (libbalbal) of Sispis, the great King, the King of Anshan, the eternal shoot of royalty, whose government Bel and Nabu love, to do good unto his heart and for the superabundance of his joy.” Cyrus then proceeds to lay stress upon his peaceful entry into Babylon and the gladness and rejoicing amidst which he took up his abode there, on how his troops occupied the city in peace and he himself visited the other cities in peace, how he repaired their ruins and loosed their chains (?), how Marduk was gracious towards him and his son Kambujiya (Cambyses), and how, “at Marduk’s august bidding all the kings who dwelt in royal chambers, from all quarters under heaven, from the upper sea even to the lower sea, and likewise the kings of the Occident who inhabit [the desert] and they that dwell in tents,” all brought weighty tribute and kissed his feet at Babylon. “From … even unto the cities of Asshur and Ishtar-Damiktu (?), the city of Agade, the land of Ishnunnak, the cities of Zambaru, Mi-Turnu and Dur-ilu, even unto the region of the land of Kuti, the cities on the (bank of) Tigris, where their dwelling-place was from of old, I carried the gods that dwelt there back to their places,” “the gods of Sumer, and Accad, whom Nabonidus, to the great indignation of the lord of gods, had caused to be brought into Babylon, I set once more into their shrines in peace at the command of Marduk.” Such is practically the tenor (and wording) of the Cyrus inscription, which, considered in connection with the chronicle which has come down to us from the reign of Nabonidus, sets this important matter of the transference of the new Babylonian Empire to Cyrus the Achæmeniad in an entirely new light. The termination of the political independence of Babylon came about in quite other guise than the end of Nineveh; there was no bloodshed, no siege, no judgment with fire and devastation. A further act of peace was the permission given by Cyrus to the Jews who dwelt in and about Babylon to return to the Holy Land. This is referred to in the prophecy of the great unknown prophet of the latter half of the Babylonian exile, the so-called Second Isaiah (Isaiah xliv. to the end). “The Lord that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built, and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations (the Medes and Lydians) before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut.” The last words involuntarily recall to our minds the gates of Babylon, which opened of themselves to the clement conqueror. And this prophecy, no less than the conduct of the Babylonian priests, shows that Cyrus was preceded by a reputation for clemency; for what would their ready submission have availed the latter, had Cyrus been a savage conqueror like other semi-barbaric tribal chiefs? Pillage and many horrors would then have been the lot of Babylon when she opened her gates to the foreign king. It seems probable, however, that the Babylonians nourished the certain hope that Cyrus would spare them. Thus the history of Babylonia closes peaceably upon the noble figure of Cyrus, the Achæmeniad prince, who commands our warmest sympathies. Planted in Babylonian soil at the beginning of time, the primitive civilisation of the Sumerians was brought to the flower by the Babylonian Semites, then further developed and transplanted to Asshur and Nineveh. There the conditions grew ripe under which Assyria became the ruling power of the world. After the fall of her empire, the ancient mother-country became for a brief season the centre of the civilisation which had taken its rise there two thousand years before, and this civilisation now passed on as a legacy to the Persians, not to die among them, but to revivify and educate, even as, on the other hand, it drew fresh strength from the youthful vigour of the Indo-Germanic race, untutored as yet, but abundantly endowed with all intellectual gifts.[b] [29] [The authorities seem to be in dispute as to Nabonidus’ place of residence. Professor Rogers says (History of Babylon and Assyria, Vol. II, p. 361), “He [Nabonidus] did not reside at Babylon at all, but at Tema, probably an insignificant place, with no other influence in history.”] Bas-relief of Eunuch Warriors in Battle (Found at Nimrud) (Layard) The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear: and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; and there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses.—Nahum iii. 3. In following the political fortunes of Babylonia and Assyria we have necessarily caught glimpses from time to time of the conditions of civilisation which form everywhere the background of the picture. But it is desirable to view some phases of this civilisation more in detail, and an attempt will be made in the present book to summarise these conditions as a whole, and to elaborate certain details in reference to the more interesting or more important themes. Such an attempt within the spacial limits necessarily imposed cannot hope to be altogether satisfactory. In particular it must be borne in mind that we are dealing, or attempting to deal, with a period of time not less than three thousand years in extent, even if we consider only the minimum epoch covered by a tolerably sure chronology. It is obvious that in such a sweep of time numerous changes must take place in the manners and customs of the people, and multiform alterations must be developed in the various phases of civilisation. This would necessarily be true even if the history of a single people were involved. But, in point of fact, as we have seen, we have here to do with four tolerably distinct peoples—the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Chaldeans. To attempt a brief exposition of the varied civilisations of these four peoples during a period of several millenniums within brief bounds, would clearly be a presumptuous task were full details accessible as to all the periods involved. But we have already seen that such details are not accessible. Meagre details have come down to us from the Sumerians, and only less meagre ones Babylonians; and the reminiscences of the Chaldeans, notwithstanding their later period in history, are but slightly less vague. It is the Assyrians that must be looked to chiefly for data that can afford us, at best, an inferential knowledge of their predecessors; and we must all along remember that we are to a certain extent seeing with Assyrian eyes in attempting to view the Babylonian civilisation. Still, it should be recalled that important changes in the manners and customs of any people are usually of slow development everywhere, and that they were perhaps particularly so here, because we have to do with the most conservative of races. The Babylonians and Assyrians were own cousins to the Hebrews, and no doubt partook in full measure of what Goethe styles the “obstinate persistency” of that race. The main outline of their civilisation, therefore, probably remained unchanged generation after generation. On the other hand, it must be understood that the Sumerians, whatever their precise racial affinities, were a very different people from the Semitic races that superseded them. There is reason to believe that they were essentially a creative race, whereas the Semites, and in particular the Assyrians, were pre-eminently copyists and adapters rather than originators. It would appear that all the chief features of the later Assyrian civilisation were adumbrated, if not indeed fully elaborated, in that early day when the Sumerians were dominant in southern Babylonia. Even the cuneiform system of writing, with all its extraordinary complexities, is believed by philologists to give unequivocal evidence of Sumerian origin. But however correct this view may be, we are constrained to view the Sumerians solely in the light of their successors. The monumental remains exhumed from amid the ruins of the palace of Asshurbanapal supply us with the chief documents for the interpretation of a civilisation that had passed away something like three thousand years before this palace itself or its documentary treasures came into being. This is somewhat as if one were to study the manners and customs of the Italians of to-day in order to gain a knowledge of the civilisation of Rome in the time of the Tarquinians. The parallel is really not quite so complete as it might at first sight appear, for in many respects practical civilisation changed more in the nineteenth century than in all the previous centuries of recorded history. Beyond cavil, the civilisation of the time of Sargon I had far greater resemblance to the time of Asshurbanapal than the Rome of the early kings bears to the Rome of King Victor Emmanuel. Nevertheless, we should bear this corrective view in mind in the alleged attempt to deal with Mesopotamian civilisation as a whole. The sources of our knowledge of Mesopotamian history have been pretty fully discussed in previous chapters. Beyond the classical traditions, our sole reliance must be placed upon the monuments. And of these the sculptures are by far the most important in their bearings upon the civilisation of the people. Very little is said, except inferentially, by the written inscriptions, that throws any definite light upon the manners and customs of the people. But fortunately the Assyrians in particular were much given to pictorial presentation of the scenes of at least certain features of their everyday life; their bas-reliefs, therefore, furnish us with the clearest index as to their life customs. The interpretation of these bas-reliefs in this light was first taken up in detail by Sir Henry Layard, and his expositions remain to this day the most complete and satisfactory. We shall have occasion to turn frequently to his pages in the present book, supplementing his accounts with certain elaborations, in particular with reference to the religious and legal documents, based on the more recent readings of the inscriptions. However much the customs of the Babylonians and Assyrians may have changed in the course of ages, there was one important regard in which there was probably no conspicuous alteration from first to last. This was the character of the government. Like other orientals, the Mesopotamians had no conception of any government except a thoroughly despotic one. They were ruled by kings whose authority was absolute, and whose will was accepted as the sole law. A change of government meant merely the overthrow of one king by some one who, attaining supreme authority, was himself to be recognised as king. But the assumption and retention of exclusive power in a body politic by one individual presupposes a triumph of physical force. Kingship in its oriental manifestation has its foundation in military power. We find, therefore, that the Babylonian or Assyrian monarch is able to make himself felt and remembered just in proportion as he is a competent military leader. To be a great king he must be a great conqueror. A record of conquests is substantially the whole story of the royal annals. It is a very sanguinary and inhuman story as we have seen. The texts of the inscriptions deal with results rather than with methods. We are told the names of peoples against whom warfare was waged; lists of captives and booty are not forgotten, the idea being of course to perpetuate the glory of the conqueror. To that end the name of the conqueror himself is always given, the narrative being usually told in the first person; but one never hears so much as the name of a subordinate. It is the king alone to whom credit is to be given. What the inscriptions lack in the way of reference to details of the art of warfare is supplied by the Assyrian bas-reliefs. These represent armies in action and enable us to form a very clear picture of the war costumes, the weapons, and to a certain extent of the battle methods of the Assyrians. In particular the details are given of the methods of assault by which the Assyrians were accustomed to break down the walls of a rebellious city. Battering-rams and scaling-towers are depicted in the most realistic manner, and are a favourite subject of the artist—partly, no doubt, because they lend themselves to pictorial presentation; partly, perhaps, because the Assyrians excelled in this particular phase of warfare. But other phases of warfare are by no means overlooked. Even such details as the beheading or flaying alive of captives are presented with gruesome realism. For the reason already stated, our text will have to do chiefly with the art of war as practised by the Assyrians, rather than by their predecessors. Whether any of the implements or methods employed in this relatively late period originated with the Assyrians themselves, we have no present means of deciding. The presumption is, however, that the Assyrian king pursued the art of war in much the same way it had been practised by the old Babylonian kings from time immemorial.[a] As the Assyrians possessed disciplined and organised troops, it is probable that they were also acquainted, to a certain extent, with military tactics, and that their battles were fought upon some kind of system. We know that such was the case with the Egyptians; and their monuments show that amongst their enemies, also, there were nations not unacquainted with the military science. They had bodies of troops in reserve; they advanced and retreated in rank, and performed various manœuvres. Although, in the Assyrian sculptures, we have no attempt at an actual representation of the general plan of a battle, as in some Egyptian bas-reliefs, yet from the order in which the soldiers are drawn up before the castle walls, and from the phalanx which they then appear to form, it seems highly probable that similar means were adopted, to resist the assaults of the enemy in the open field. The king himself, attended by his vizier, his eunuchs, and principal officers of state, was present in battle, and not only commanded, but took an active part in the affray. Even [the traditional] Sardanapalus, when called upon to place himself at the head of his armies to meet the invading [traditional] Medes, showed, a courage equal to the occasion, and repulsed his enemies. Like the Persian monarchs who succeeded, him in the dominion of Asia, the Assyrian king was accompanied to the war, however distant his seat might be, by his wives, his concubines, and his children, and by an enormous retinue of servants. Even his nobles were similarly attended. Their couches were of gold and silver, and the hangings of the richest materials. Vessels of the same precious metals were used at their tables; their tents were made of the most costly stuffs, and were even adorned with precious stones. The canopy or tent of Holofernes was of purple, gold, and emeralds and precious stones; and every man had gold and silver (vessels) out of the king’s house. (Judith ii. 18.) This book contains an interesting account of the luxurious manner of living of the great Assyrian warriors, confirming what has been said in the text, and showing that the Persians were, in this respect, as almost in every other, imitators of the Assyrians. Herodotus (Lib. IX., c. 82 and 83) describes the equipage, furnished with gold and silver, and with various coloured hangings, and the gold and silver couches and tables, found in the tents of Mardonius after the defeat of the Persian army. They had been left by Xerxes when he fled from Greece. They were also accompanied by musicians, who are represented in the sculptures as walking before the warriors, on their triumphant return from battle. The army was followed by a crowd of sutlers, servants, and grooms; who, whilst adding to its bulk, acted as an impediment upon its movements, and carried ruin and desolation into the countries through which it passed. As this multitude could not depend entirely for supplies upon the inhabitants, whom they unmercifully pillaged, provisions in great abundance, as well as live-stock, were carried with them. Holofernes, in marching from Nineveh with his army, took with him “camels and asses for their carriage, a very great number, and sheep, and oxen, and goats without number, for their provision; and plenty of victuals for every man.” Quintus Curtius thus describes the march of a Persian army: The signal was given from the tent of the king, on the top of which, so as to be seen by all, was placed an image of the sun, in crystal. The holy fire was borne on altars of silver, surrounded by the priests, chanting their sacred hymns. They were followed by three hundred and sixty-five youths, according to the number of the days in the year, dressed in purple garments. The chariot, dedicated to the supreme deity, or to the sun, was drawn by snow-white horses, led by grooms wearing white garments, and carrying golden wands. The horse especially consecrated to the sun was chosen from its size. It was followed by ten chariots, embossed with gold and silver, and by the cavalry of twelve nations, dressed in their various costumes, and carrying their peculiar arms. Then came the Persian immortals, ten thousand in number, adorned with golden chains, and wearing robes embroidered with gold, and long-sleeved tunics, all glittering with precious stones. At a short interval fifteen thousand nobles, who bore the honourable title of relations of the king, walked in garments which, in magnificence and luxury, more resembled those of women than of men. The doryphori (a chosen company of spearmen) preceded the chariot in which the king himself sat, high above the surrounding multitude. On either side of this chariot were effigies of the gods in gold and silver. The yoke was inlaid with the rarest jewels. From it projected two golden figures of Ninus and Belus, each a cubit in length. A golden eagle with outspread wings was placed between them. The king was distinguished, from all those who surrounded him, by the magnificence of his robes, and by the cidaris, or mitre, upon his head. By his side walked two hundred of the most noble of his relations. Ten thousand warriors, bearing spears whose staffs were of silver and heads of gold, followed the royal chariot. The king’s led horses, forty in number, and thirty thousand footmen, concluded the procession. At the distance of one stadium followed the mother and wife of the king, in chariots. A crowd of women, the handmaidens and ladies of the queens, accompanied them on horseback. Fifteen cars, called armamaxæ, carried the children of the king, their tutors and nurses, and the eunuchs. The king’s three hundred and sixty concubines, who accompanied him, were adorned with royal splendour. Six hundred mules and three hundred camels bore the royal treasury, guarded by the archers. The friends and relations of the ladies were mingled with a crowd of cooks and servants of all kinds. The procession was closed by the light-armed troops. The Enemy asking Quarter of Assyrian Horsemen The armies were provided with the engines and materials necessary for the siege of the cities they might meet with in their expedition. If any natural obstructions impeded the approach to a castle, such as a forest or a river, they were, if possible, removed. Rivers were turned out of their courses, if they impeded the operations of the army; and warriors are frequently represented in the sculptures cutting down trees which surround a hostile city. The first step in a siege was probably to advance the battering-ram. If the castle was built, as in the plains of Assyria and Babylonia, upon an artificial eminence, an inclined plane, reaching to the summit of the mound, was formed of earth, stones, or trees, and the besiegers were then able to bring their engines to the foot of the walls. This road was not unfrequently covered with bricks, forming a kind of paved way, up which the ponderous machines could be drawn without much difficulty. This mode of reaching the walls of a city is frequently alluded to by the prophets, and is described by Isaiah: “Thus saith the Lord, concerning the king of Assyria, he shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it.” Similar approaches were used by the Egyptians. They not only enabled the besiegers to push their battering-rams up to the castle, but at the same time to escalade the walls, the summit of which might otherwise have been beyond the reach of their ladders. The battering-rams were of several kinds. Some were joined to movable towers which held warriors and armed men. The whole then formed one great temporary building, the top of which is represented in the sculptures, as on a level with the walls, and even turrets, of the besieged city. In some bas-reliefs the battering-ram is without wheels; it was then perhaps constructed on the spot, and was not intended to be moved. The movable tower was probably sometimes unprovided with the ram; but I have not met with it so represented in the sculptures. When Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, besieged Jerusalem, he “built forts against it round about.” These forts or towers, if stationary, were solidly constructed of wood; if movable, they consisted of a light frame covered with wickerwork. The Jews were forbidden to cut down and employ, for this purpose, trees which afford sustenance to man. “Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down: and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee until it be subdued.” When the machine containing the battering-ram consisted of a simple framework, not forming an artificial tower, a cloth of some kind of drapery edged with fringes and otherwise ornamented appears to have been occasionally thrown over it. Sometimes it may have been covered with hides. It moved either on four or on six wheels, and was provided with one ram or with two. The mode of working the rams cannot be determined from the Assyrian sculptures. It may be presumed, from the representations in the bas-reliefs, that they were partly suspended by a rope fastened to the outside of the machine, and that men directed and impelled them from within. Such was the plan adopted by the Egyptians, in whose paintings the warriors, working the ram, may be seen through the frame. Sometimes this engine was ornamented by a carved or painted figure of the presiding divinity, kneeling on one knee and drawing a bow. The artificial tower was usually occupied by two warriors: one discharged his arrows against the besieged, whom he was able from his lofty position to harass more effectually than if he had been below; the other held up a shield for his companion’s defence. Warriors are not unfrequently represented as stepping from the machine to the battlements. Ezekiel alludes to all these modes of attack. “Lay siege against it,” he exclaims, speaking of the city of Jerusalem, “and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it, and set battering-rams against it round about.” Archers on the walls hurled stones from slings, and discharged their arrows against the warriors in the artificial towers; whilst the rest of the besieged were no less active in endeavouring to frustrate the attempts of the assailants to make breaches in their walls. By dropping a doubled chain or rope from the battlements, they caught the ram, and could either destroy its efficacy altogether or break the force of its blows. Those below, however, by placing hooks over the engine, and throwing their whole weight upon them, struggled to retain it in its place. The besieged, if unable to displace the battering-ram, sought to destroy it by fire and threw lighted torches or firebrands upon it. But water was poured upon the flames, through pipes attached to the artificial tower. Other engines and instruments of war were employed by the besiegers. With a kind of catapult, apparently consisting of a light wooden frame covered with canvas or hides, they threw large stones and darts against the besieged, who, in their turn, endeavoured to set fire to it by torches. A long staff with an iron head, resembling a spear, was used to force stones out of the walls. Mines were also opened, and the assailants sought to enter the castle through concealed passages. Those who worked on them, or advanced to the attack, were perhaps protected by the testudo, as represented in the Egyptian paintings; but this defence is not seen in the Assyrian sculptures. Attempts were made to set fire to the gates of the city by placing torches against them, or to break them open with axes. An Assyrian Archer Mounting to the assault by ladders was constantly practised, and appears to have been the most general mode of attacking a castle; for ladders are found on those bas-reliefs in which neither the battering-ram nor other engines are introduced. It is remarkable that the battering-ram is not introduced in the sculptures hitherto discovered at Kuyunjik, nor, as far as I am aware, in those of Khorsabad. It would appear, therefore, that at the period of the building of those edifices it had fallen into disuse. Scaling-ladders appear in Egyptian sculptures as early as the XIXth Dynasty. Ramses III is seen taking a city, by their means, at Medinet Habu. They reached to the top of the battlements, and several persons could ascend them at the same time. Whilst warriors, armed with the sword and spear, scaled the walls, archers posted at the foot of the ladders kept the enemy in check and drove them from the walls. The troops of the besieging army were ranged in ranks below. The king was frequently present during the attack. Descending from his chariot, which remained stationary at a short distance behind him, he discharged his arrows against the enemy. He was attended by his shield bearer and eunuchs, one of whom generally held over him the emblem of royalty, the umbrella, whilst the others bore his arms. He is sometimes represented in his chariots, superintending the operations, or repulsing a sally. Warriors of high rank likewise came in chariots, accompanied by their shield bearers and charioteers. The vizier and the chief of the eunuchs are frequently seen in the midst of the combatants. The besieging warriors were protected, as I have already mentioned, by large shields of wickerwork, sometimes covered with hides, which concealed the entire person. Three men frequently formed a group; one held the shield, a second drew the bow, and a third stood ready with a sword to defend the archer and shield bearer, in case the enemy should sally from the castle. The besieged manned the battlements with archers and slingers, who discharged their missiles against the assailants. Large stones and hot water were also thrown upon those below. A woman from the battlement of Thebez cast a millstone upon Abimelech’s head, and broke his skull (Judges ix. 53). When the battering-ram had made a breach, and the assault had commenced, the women appeared upon the walls; and, tearing their hair or stretching out their hands, implored mercy. The men are not unfrequently represented as joining in asking for quarter. When the assailants were once masters of the place, an indiscriminate slaughter appears to have succeeded, and the city was generally given over to the flames. In the bas-reliefs warriors are seen decapitating the conquered and plunging swords or daggers into their hearts, holding them by the hair of their heads. The prisoners were either impaled and subjected to horrible torments or carried away as slaves. The manner of impaling, adopted by the Assyrians, appears to have differed from that still in use in the East. A stake was driven into the body immediately under the ribs. When Darius took Babylon he impaled three thousand prisoners (Herod, iii. 159). In a bas-relief discovered at Khorsabad, a man was represented flaying a prisoner with a semicircular knife. The Scythians scalped and flayed their enemies, and used their skins as horse-trappings (Herod, iv. 64). The women, children, and cattle were led away by the conquerors; and that it was frequently the custom of the Assyrians to remove the whole population of the conquered country to some distant part of their dominions, and to replace it by colonies of their own, we learn from the treatment of the people of Samaria. Eunuchs and scribes were appointed to take an inventory of the spoil. They appear to have stood near the gates, and wrote down with a pen, probably upon rolls of leather, the number of prisoners, sheep, and oxen, and the amount of the booty, which issued from the city. The women were sometimes taken away in bullock carts, and are usually seen in the bas-reliefs bearing a part of their property with them—either a vase or a sack perhaps filled with household stuff. They were sometimes accompanied by their children, and are generally represented as tearing their hair, throwing dust upon their heads, and bewailing their lot. After the city had been taken, a throne for the king appears to have been placed in some conspicuous spot within the walls. He is represented in the sculptures as sitting upon it, attended by his eunuchs and principal officers, and receiving the prisoners brought bound into his presence. The chiefs prostrate themselves before him, whilst he places his foot upon their necks, as Joshua commanded the captains of Israel to put their feet upon the necks of the captive kings. This custom long prevailed in the East. In the rock sculpture of Behistun, Darius is seen with his foot upon the neck of Gometes, the rebellious Magian, who declared himself to be Bardius, the son of Cyrus. When inferior prisoners were captured, their hands were tied behind, or their arms and feet were bound by iron manacles. They were urged onward by blows from the spears or swords of the warriors to whom they were entrusted. In a bas-relief from Khorsabad, captives are led before the king by a rope fastened to rings passed through the lip and nose. This sculpture illustrates the passage in 2 Kings xix. 28: “I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips.” The king is represented in the bas-relief as holding a rope fastened to a ring, which passes through the lips of a prisoner, one of whose eyes he appears to be piercing with his spear. In the sculptures of Khorsabad and Kuyunjik, captives are seen bringing small models of their cities to the victorious king, as a token of their subjection. Similar models are borne in triumphal processions. The heads of the slain were generally collected, and brought either to the king or to an officer appointed to take account of their number. When Ahab’s seventy sons were killed, their heads were cut off, and brought in baskets to Jezreel. They were afterwards, laid “in two heaps at the entering in of the gate” (2 Kings x. 8). The Egyptians generally counted by hands. This mode of reckoning the loss of the enemy was long resorted to in the East. As soon as the soldiers entered the captured city, they began to plunder, and then hurried away with the spoil. They led off the horses, carried forth on their shoulders furniture and vessels of gold, silver, and other metals, and made prisoners of the inhabitants, who, probably, became the property of those who seized them. The Assyrian warriors are seen in the sculptures bearing away in triumph the idols of the conquered nations, or breaking them into pieces, weighing them in scales, and dividing the fragments. Thus Hosea prophesied that the calf, the idol of Samaria, should be carried away by the Assyrians. When the city had been sacked it was usually given up to the flames and utterly destroyed. The surrounding country was also laid waste. If it had been a capital—a place of strength and renown—it was seldom rebuilt on the same spot, which was avoided as unfortunate by those who survived the catastrophe and returned to the ruins. The costume of the warriors differed according to their rank and the nature of the service they had to perform. Those who fought in chariots, and held the shield for the defence of the king, are generally seen in coats of scale armour, which descend either to the knees or to the ankles. A large number of the scales were discovered in the earliest palace of Nimrud. They were generally of iron, slightly embossed or raised in the centre, and some were inlaid with copper. They were probably fastened to a shirt of felt or coarse linen. Such is the armour always represented in the most ancient sculptures. At a later period other kinds were used; the scales were larger, and appear to have been fastened to bands of iron or copper. The armour was frequently embossed with groups of figures and fanciful ornaments; but there is no reason to believe that the rich designs on the breasts of the kings were on metal. The warriors were frequently dressed in an embroidered tunic, which was probably made of felt or leather, sufficiently thick to resist the weapons then in use. On the sculptures of Kuyunjik they are generally seen in this attire. Their arms were bare from above the elbow, and their legs from the knees downward, except when they wore shirts of mail which descended to the ankles. They had sandals on their feet. The warriors on the later Assyrian monuments, particularly on those of Khorsabad, are distinguished by a peculiar ornament, somewhat resembling the Highland phillibeg. It appears to be fastened to the girdle, and falls below the short tunic. In the sculptures of Kuyunjik and of monuments of the same period, the dress of the soldiers appears to vary, according to the manner in which they are armed. Those with spear and shield wear pointed or crested helmets, and plain or embroidered tunics, confined at the waist by a broad girdle. A kind of cross belt passes over the shoulders, and is ornamented in the centre of the breast by a circular disk, probably of metal. The slingers are attired in the embroidered tunic, which I conjecture to be of felt or leather; and wear a pointed helmet, with metal lappets falling over the ears. Both the spearmen and slingers have greaves, which appear to have been laced in front. The archers are dressed in very short embroidered tunics, which scarcely cover half the thigh, the rest of the leg being left completely bare. They are chiefly distinguished from other warriors by the absence of the helmet. A simple band round the temples confines the hair, which is drawn up in a bunch behind. Costume of an Assyrian Spearman It is probable that these various costumes indicate people of different countries, auxiliaries in the Assyrian armies, who used the weapons most familiar to them, and formed different corps or divisions. Thus, in the army of Xerxes were marshalled men of many nations, each armed according to the fashion of his country, and fighting in his own peculiar way. We may, perhaps, identify, in the Assyrian sculptures, several of the costumes described by the Greek historian as worn by those who formed the vast army of the Persian king. The arms of the early Assyrians were the spear, the bow, the sword, and the dagger. The sling is not represented in the most ancient monuments as an Assyrian weapon, although used by a conquered nation; it was, perhaps, introduced at a later period. The bows were of two kinds: one long and slightly curved, the other short and almost angular; the two appear to have been carried at the same time by those who fought in chariots. The arrows were probably made of reeds, and were kept in a quiver slung over the back. The king, however, and the great officers of the state were followed by attendants, who carried the quivers and supplied their masters with arrows. The bow was drawn to the cheek or to the ear, as by the Saxons, and not to the breast, after the fashion of the Greeks. The barbs were of iron and copper, several of both materials having been found in the ruins. When in battle it was customary for the archer to hold two arrows in reserve in his right hand; they were placed between the fingers, and did not interfere with the motion of the arm whilst drawing the bow. When marching he usually carried the larger bow over his shoulders, having first passed his head through it. The bow of the king was borne by an attendant. The smaller bows were frequently placed in the quiver, particularly by those who fought in chariots. A leather or linen guard was fastened by straps to the inside of the left arm to protect it when the arrow was discharged. The swords were worn on the left side, and suspended by belts passing over the shoulders or round the middle; some were short and others long. I have already alluded to the beauty of the ornaments on the hilt and sheath. The dagger appears to have been carried by all, both in time of peace and war; even the priests and divinities are represented with them. They were worn indifferently on the left and right side, or perhaps on both at the same time. Generally two, or sometimes three, were inserted into one sheath, which was passed through the girdle. The handles, as I have already mentioned, were most elaborately adorned, and were frequently in the shape of the head of a ram, bull, or horse, being made of ivory or rare stones. A small chain was sometimes fastened to the hilt or to the sheath, probably to retain it in its place. A dagger, resembling in form those of the sculptures, was found amongst the ruins of Nimrud; it is of copper. The handle is hollowed, either to receive precious stones, ivory, or enamel. The spear of the Assyrian footman was short, scarcely exceeding the height of a man; that of the horseman appears to have been considerably longer. The iron head of a spear from Nimrud is in the British Museum. The shaft was probably of some strong wood, and did not consist of a reed, like that of the modern Arab lance. The large club pointed with iron, mentioned by Herodotus amongst the weapons carried by the Assyrians, is not represented in the sculptures; unless, indeed, the description of the historian applies to the mace, a weapon in very general use amongst them, and frequently seen in the bas-reliefs. This weapon consisted of a short handle, probably of wood, to which was fixed a head, evidently of metal, in the shape of a flower, rosette, lion, or bull. To the end of the handle was attached a thong, apparently of leather, through which the hand was passed. I have not found any representation of warriors using the hatchet, except when cutting down trees, to clear the country preparatory to a siege. It is, however, generally seen amongst the weapons of those who fought in chariots, and was carried in the quiver, with the arrows and short angular bow. In the bas-reliefs of Kuyunjik, slingers are frequently represented amongst the Assyrian troops. The sling appears to have consisted of a double rope, with a thong, probably of leather, to receive the stone; it was swung round the head. The slinger held a second stone in his left hand, and at his feet is generally seen a heap of pebbles ready for use. That the Persian slingers were exceedingly expert, used very large stones, and could annoy their enemies whilst out of the reach of their darts or arrows, we learn from several passages in Xenophon. The javelin is frequently included amongst the weapons of the Assyrian charioteers; but the warriors are not represented as using it in battle. It was carried in the quiver amongst the arrows. The shields of the Assyrians were of various forms and materials. In the more ancient bas-reliefs a circular buckler, either of hide or metal, perhaps in some instances of gold and silver, is most frequently introduced. King Solomon made three hundred shields of beaten gold, three pounds of gold to each shield (1 Kings x. 17). The servants of Hadad-ezer, king of Zobah, carried shields of gold (2 Samuel viii. 7). The shield of Goliath was of brass. It was held by a handle fixed to the centre. Light oblong shields of wickerwork, carried in a similar manner, are also found in the early sculptures; but those of a circular form appear to have been generally used by the charioteers. Suspended to the backs of the chariots, and also carried by warriors, are frequently seen shields in the shape of a crescent, narrow and curved outwards at the extremities. The face is ornamented by a row of angular bosses, or teeth, in the centre of which is the head of a lion. In the sculptures of Khorsabad the round shield is often highly ornamented. It resembles, both in shape and in the devices upon it, the bucklers now carried by the Kurds and Arabs, which are made of the hide of the hippopotamus. In the bas-reliefs of Kuyunjik some warriors bear oval shields, very convex, and sufficiently large to cover the greater part of the body. The centre and outer rim are decorated with bosses. The shield used during a siege concealed the whole person of the warrior, and completely defended him from the arrows of the enemy. It was made either of wickerwork or of hides, and was furnished at the top with a curved point, or with a square projection, like a roof, at right angles to the body of the shield, which may have served to defend the heads of the combatants against missiles discharged from the walls and towers. Such were probably the shields used by the Persian archers at the battle of Platæa. The archers, whether fighting on foot or in chariots, were accompanied by shield bearers, whose office it was to protect them from the shafts of the enemy. Sometimes one shield covered two archers. The shield bearer was usually provided with a sword, which he held ready drawn for defence. The king was always attended in his wars by this officer, and even in peace one of his eunuchs usually carried a circular shield for his use. This shield bearer was probably a person of rank, as in Egypt. On some monuments of the later Assyrian period he is represented carrying two shields, one in each hand. A great part of the strength of the Assyrian armies consisted in chariots and horsemen, to which we have frequent allusion in the inspired writings. The chariots appear to have been used by the king and the highest officers of state, who are never seen in battle on horseback nor, except in sieges, on foot. They contained either two or three persons. The king was always accompanied by two attendants—the warrior protecting him with a shield (who was replaced during peace by the eunuch bearing the parasol), and the charioteer. The principal warriors were also frequently attended by their shield bearers, though more generally by the driver alone. The chariot was used during a siege, as well as in open battle. The king and his warriors are frequently represented as fighting in chariots with the enemy beneath the walls of a castle, or as having dismounted from their cars, to discharge their arrows against the besieged. In the latter case, grooms on foot hold the horses. When the king in his chariot formed part of a triumphal procession, armed men led the horses. The chariot was also preceded and followed by men on foot. The horsemen formed a no less important part of the Assyrian army than the charioteers.—“Assyrians clothed in blue, captains and rulers, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding upon horses” (Ezekiel xxiii. 6). Horsemen are seen in the most ancient sculptures of Nimrud. It is singular, as observes Sir Gardner Wilkinson (Ancient Egyptians, Vol. I, p. 288), that horsemen are nowhere represented on the monuments of Egypt, although there can be no doubt, from numerous passages in the sacred writings, that cavalry formed an important part of the Egyptian armies. I have already mentioned that disciplined bodies of cavalry were represented in the bas-reliefs of Kuyunjik. We learn from the Book of Judith that Holofernes had twelve thousand archers on horseback (Judith ii. 15). Solomon had twelve thousand horsemen (1 Kings x. 26). The king himself is never represented on horseback, although a horse richly caparisoned, apparently for his use,—perhaps to enable him to fly, should his chariot horses be killed,—is frequently seen led by a warrior, and following his chariot. In the earliest sculptures the horses, except such as are led behind the king’s chariot, are unprovided with cloths or saddles. The rider is seated on the naked back of the animal. At a later period, however, a kind of pad appears to have been introduced; and in a sculpture at Kuyunjik was represented a high saddle not unlike that now in use in the East.[b] Nothing else, perhaps, is so vitally important in the life-history of a nation as its contact with other nations. Such contact alone, it would seem, can enable a nation in some measure to ward off the lethargy of age, or to overcome the incubus of custom and superstition. The isolated nation does not get beyond a certain stage of evolution. It learns a few secrets, and seems powerless to learn others of itself. Only through contact with another community can it improve its customs, get new ideas, acquire better habits of thought and action. We have already pointed out how Egypt profited in this regard through the foreign associations that came with the inroad of conquering tribes from the south and east. Babylon, however, occupied a far more favourable position than Egypt for contact with other nations, not alone through such warlike channels, but also through the yet more beneficent channels of peaceful commerce. A glance at the map shows that Mesopotamia occupies the very centre of the world of ancient civilisation. By reaching out its hand, so to speak, this way or that, it came in contact with every civilised nation of the period except China. It was the connecting link between Persia and India on the one hand, and Lydia, Syria, and Egypt on the other. Even Chinese ideas were to some extent accessible through the mediation of India. No other great nation of antiquity compares with Babylonia in this regard; and perhaps this was the most important reason why this little strip of fertile land between the two great rivers supported a continuous civilisation, on the whole ever advancing, millennium after millennium. If one would correctly understand the development of that Mesopotamian civilisation, of which our own culture is the direct outgrowth, one must give heed to the commercial relations which were so important a factor of national growth, without which, indeed, no such civilisation as that of Babylon and Nineveh could have come into existence. But, of course, commerce builds up local industries. A nation must be a producer of useful commodities before it can hope to secure, by peaceful means, the commodities produced by other nations. In connection with the commercial relations of a nation we must study also its home industries, that is to say, broadly speaking, its agricultural and manufacturing conditions. We must see something also of the social customs that grow out of, and rest upon these industrial conditions; and of the laws that are the official expression of the communal intelligence—the index of the communal conscience of the epoch.[a] And first we have the privilege of quoting from one who himself saw Babylon, that is, of course, Herodotus. The Assyrians are masters of many capital towns; but their place of greatest strength and fame is Babylon, which, after the destruction of Nineveh, was the royal residence. It is situated on a large plain, and is a perfect square; each side, by every approach, is 120 furlongs in length; the space, therefore, occupied by the whole is 480 furlongs. [The different reports of the extent of the walls of Babylon are given as follows: By Herodotus at 120 stadia each side, or 480 in circumference. By Pliny and Solinus at 60 Roman miles, which, at eight stadia to a mile, agrees with Herodotus. By Strabo at 385 stadia. By Diodorus, from Ctesias, 360; but from Clitarchus, who accompanied Alexander, 365; and, lastly, by Curtius, 368. It appears highly probable that 360 or 365 was the true statement of the circumference.] So extensive is the ground which Babylon occupies, its internal beauty and magnificence exceeds whatever has come within my knowledge. It is surrounded by a trench, very wide, deep, and full of water; the wall beyond this is two hundred royal cubits high, and fifty wide; the royal exceeds the common cubit by three digits. [These measures, being taken from the proportions of the human body, are more permanent than any other. The foot of a moderate-sized man and the cubit, that is the space from the end of the fingers to the elbow, have always been near twelve and eighteen inches respectively.—Beloe.] I here think it right to describe the use to which the earth dug out of the trench was converted, as well as the particular manner in which they constructed the wall. The earth of the trench was first of all laid in heaps, and, when a sufficient quantity was obtained, made into square bricks and baked in a furnace. They used as cement a composition of heated bitumen, which, mixed with tops of reeds, was placed betwixt every thirtieth course of bricks. Having thus lined the sides of the trench, they proceeded to build the wall in the same manner, on the summit of which, and fronting each other, they erected small watch-towers of one story, leaving a space betwixt them, through which a chariot and four horses might pass and turn. In the circumference of the wall, at different distances, were an hundred massy gates of brass, whose hinges and frames were of the same metal. Within an eight days’ journey from Babylon is a city called Is [Hit], near which flows a river of the same name, which empties itself into the Euphrates. With the current of this river, particles of bitumen descend towards Babylon, by the means of which its walls were constructed. The great river Euphrates, which, with its deep and rapid streams, rises in the Armenian Mountains, and pours itself into the Red Sea, divides Babylon into two parts. The walls meet and form an angle with the river at each extremity of the town, where a breastwork of burnt bricks begins, and is continued along each bank. The city, which abounds in houses from three to four stories in height, is regularly divided into streets. Through these, which are parallel, there are transverse avenues to the river, opened through the wall and breastwork, and secured by an equal number of little gates of brass. The first wall is regularly fortified; the interior one, though less in substance, is of almost equal strength. Besides these, in the centre of each division of the city, there is a circular space surrounded by a wall. In one of these stands the royal palace, which fills a large and strongly defended space. The temple of Jupiter Belus occupies the other, whose huge gates of brass may still be seen. It is a square building, each side of which is of the length of two furlongs. In the midst a tower rises, of the solid depth and height of one furlong, upon which, resting as a base, seven other turrets are built in regular succession. The ascent is on the outside, which, winding from the ground, is continued to the highest tower; and in the middle of the whole structure there is a convenient resting-place. In the last tower is a large chapel, in which is placed a couch magnificently adorned, and near it a table of solid gold; but there is no statue in the place. No man is suffered to sleep here; but the apartment is occupied by a female, who, as the Chaldean priests affirm, is selected by their deity from the whole nation as the object of his pleasures. They themselves have a tradition, which cannot easily obtain credit, that their deity enters this temple and reposes by night on this couch. A similar assertion is also made by the Egyptians of Thebes; for, in the interior part of the temple of the Theban Jupiter, a woman in like manner sleeps. Of these two women, it is presumed that neither of them has any communication with the other sex. In which predicament the priestess of the temple of Pataræ in Lycia is also placed. Here is no regular oracle; but whenever a divine communication is expected, the priestess is obliged to pass the preceding night in the temple. In this temple there is also a small chapel, lower in the building, which contains a figure of Jupiter in a sitting posture, with a large table before him; these, with the base of the table and the seat of the throne, are all of the purest gold, and are estimated by the Chaldeans to be worth eight hundred talents. On the outside of this chapel there are two altars: one is of gold, the other is of immense size, and appropriated to the sacrifice of full-grown animals; those only which have not left their dams may be offered on the altar of gold. Upon the larger altar, at the time of the anniversary festival in honour of their god, the Chaldeans regularly consume incense, to the amount of a thousand talents. There was formerly in this temple a statue of gold, twelve cubits high; this, however, I mention from the information of the Chaldeans, and not from my own knowledge. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, endeavoured by sinister means to get possession of this, not daring openly to take it; but his son Xerxes afterwards seized it, putting the priest to death who endeavoured to prevent its removal. The temple, besides those ornaments which I have described, contains many offerings of individuals. Among the various sovereigns of Babylon, who contributed to the strength of its walls, and the decoration of its temples, and of whom I shall make mention when I treat of the Assyrians, there were two females; the former of these was named Semiramis, who preceded the other by an interval of five generations. This queen raised certain mounds, which are indeed admirable works. Till then the whole plain was subject to violent inundations from the river. The other queen was called Nitocris. She being a woman of superior understanding, not only left many permanent works, which I shall hereafter describe, but also having observed the increasing power and restless spirit of the Medes, and that Nineveh, with other cities, had fallen a prey to their ambition, put her dominions in the strongest posture of defence. To effect this she sunk a number of canals above Babylon, which by their disposition rendered the Euphrates, which before flowed to the sea in an almost even line, so complicated by its windings that in its passage to Babylon it arrives three times at Ardericca, an Assyrian village; and to this hour they who wish to go from the sea up the Euphrates to Babylon are compelled to touch at Ardericca three times on three different days. The banks also, which she raised to restrain the river on each side, are really wonderful from their enormous height and substance. At a considerable distance above Babylon, turning aside a little from the stream, she ordered an immense lake to be dug, sinking it till they came to the water. Its circumference was no less than four hundred and twenty furlongs. The earth of this was applied to the embankments of the river, and the sides of the trench or lake were strengthened and lined with stones brought thither for that purpose. She had in view by these works, first of all to break the violence of the current by the number of circumflexions and also to render the navigation to Babylon as difficult and tedious as possible. These things were done in that part of her dominions which was most accessible to the Medes, and with the further view of keeping them in ignorance of her affairs by giving them no commercial encouragement. Having rendered both of these works strong and secure, she proceeded to execute the following project. The city being divided by the river into two distinct parts, whoever wanted to go from one side to the other was obliged in the time of the former kings to pass the water in a boat. For this, which was a matter of general inconvenience, she provided this remedy, and the immense lake which she had before sunk became the further means of extending her fame. Having procured a number of large stones, she changed the course of the river, directing it into the canal prepared for its reception. When this was full the natural bed of the river became dry, and the embankments on each side, near those smaller gates which led to the water, were lined with bricks hardened by fire, similar to those which had been used in the construction of the wall. She afterwards, nearly in the centre of the city, with the stones above-mentioned, strongly compacted with iron and with lead, erected a bridge. Over this the inhabitants passed in the daytime by a square platform, which was removed in the evening to prevent acts of mutual depredation. When the above canal was thoroughly filled with water, and the bridge completely finished and adorned, the Euphrates was suffered to return to its original bed; thus both the canal and the bridge were confessedly of the greatest utility to the public. The above queen was also celebrated for another instance of ingenuity. She caused her tomb to be erected over one of the principal gates of the city, and so situated as to be obvious to universal inspection. It was thus inscribed: “If any of the sovereigns, my successors, shall be in extreme want of money let him open my tomb and take what money he may think proper; if his necessity be not great, let him forbear; the experiment will perhaps be dangerous.” The tomb remained without injury till the time and reign of Darius. He was equally offended at the gate’s being rendered useless, and that the invitation thus held out to become affluent should have been so long neglected. The gate, it is to be observed, was of no use, from the general aversion to pass through a place over which a dead body was laid. Darius opened the tomb; but instead of finding riches, he saw only a dead body, with a label of this import: “If your avarice had not been equally base and insatiable, you would not have disturbed the repose of the dead.” Such are the traditions concerning this queen. The following exists amongst many other proofs which I shall hereafter produce of the power and greatness of Babylon. Independent of those subsidies which are paid monthly to the Persian monarch, the whole of his dominions are obliged throughout the year to provide subsistence for him and for his army. Babylon alone raises a supply for four months, eight being proportioned to all the rest of Asia, so that the resources of this region are considered as adequate to a third part of Asia. The government also of this country, which the Persians call a satrapy, is deemed by much the noblest in the empire. When Tritantæchmes, son of Artabazus, was appointed to this principality by the king, he received every day an artaby of silver. The artaby is a Persian measure which exceeds the Attic medimnus by about three chænices. Besides his horses for military service this province maintained for the sovereign’s use a stud of eight hundred stallions and sixteen thousand mares, one horse being allotted to twenty mares. He had, moreover, so immense a number of Indian dogs that four great towns in the vicinity of Babylon were exempted from every other tax but that of maintaining them. The Assyrians have but little rain; the lands, however, are fertilised and the fruits of the earth nourished by means of the river. This does not, like the Egyptian Nile, enrich the country by overflowing its banks, but is dispersed by manual labour or by hydraulic engines. The Babylonian district, like Egypt, is intersected by a number of canals, the largest of which, continued with a southeast course from the Euphrates to that part of the Tigris where Nineveh stands, is capable of receiving vessels of burden. Of all countries which have come within my observation this is far the most fruitful in corn. Fruit trees, such as the vine, the olive, and the fig, they do not even attempt to cultivate; but the soil is so particularly well adapted for corn, that it never produces less than two hundredfold. In seasons which are remarkably favourable it will sometimes rise to three hundred. The ear of their wheat as well as barley is four digits in size. The immense height to which millet and sesamum will grow, although I have witnessed it myself, I know not how to mention. I am well aware that they who have not visited this country will deem whatever I may say on this subject a violation of probability. They have no oil but what they extract from the sesamum. The palm is a very common plant in this country and generally fruitful. This they cultivate like fig trees, and it produces them bread, wine, and honey. The process observed is this: they fasten the fruit of that which the Greeks term the male tree to the one which produces the date; by this means the worm which is contained in the former entering the fruit ripens and prevents it from dropping immaturely. The male palms bear insects in their fruit in the same manner as the wild fig trees. Of all that I saw in this country, next to Babylon itself, what to me appeared the greatest curiosity were the boats. These which are used by those who come to the city are of a circular form and made of skins. They are constructed in Armenia, in the parts above Assyria, where the sides of the vessels being formed of willow are covered externally with skins, and having no distinction of head or stern, are modelled in the shape of a shield. Lining the bottom of the boats with reeds, they take on board their merchandise, and thus commit themselves to the stream. The principal article of their commerce is palm wine, which they carry in casks. The boats have two oars, one man to each; one pulls to him, the other pushes from him. These boats are of very different dimensions; some of them are so large as to bear freights to the value of five thousand talents; the smaller of them has one ass on board, the larger several. On their arrival at Babylon they dispose of all their cargo, selling the ribs of their boats, the matting, and everything but the skins which cover them; these they lay upon their asses and with them return to Armenia. The rapidity of the stream is too great to render their return by water practicable. This is perhaps the reason which induces them to make their boats of skin rather than of wood. On their return with their asses to Armenia they make other vessels in the manner we have before described. Their clothing is of this kind: they have two vests, one of linen which falls to the feet, another over this which is made of wool, a white sash connects the whole. The fashion of their shoes is peculiar to themselves, though somewhat resembling those worn by the Thebans. They wear their hair long, and covered with a turban, and are lavish in their use of perfumes. Each person has a seal ring, and a cane, or walking-stick, upon the top of which is carved an apple, a rose, a lily, an eagle, or some figure or other, for to have a stick without a device is unlawful. In my description of their laws I have to mention one, the wisdom of which I must admire, and which, if I am not misinformed, the Eneti, who are of Illyrian origin, use also. In each of their several districts this custom was every year observed: such of their virgins as were marriageable were, at an appointed time and place, assembled together. Here the men also came, and some public officer sold by auction the young women one by one, beginning with the most beautiful. When she was disposed of, and, as may be supposed, for a considerable sum, he proceeded to sell the one who was next in beauty, taking it for granted that each man married the maid he purchased. [Herodotus here omits one circumstance of consequence, in my opinion, to prove that this ceremony was conducted with decency. It passed under the inspection of the magistrates, and the tribunal superintended the marriage of the young women. Three men, respectable for their virtue, and who were at the head of their several tribes, conducted the young women that were marriageable to the place of assembly, and there sold them by the voice of the public crier.—Larcher. If the custom of disposing of the young women to the best bidder was peculiar to the Babylonians, that of purchasing the person intended for a wife, and of giving the father a sum to obtain her, was much more general. It was practised amongst the Greeks, the Trojans and their allies, and even amongst the deities.—Bellanger.] The more affluent of the Babylonian youths contended with much ardour and emulation to obtain the most beautiful; those of the common people who were desirous of marrying, as if they had but little occasion for personal accomplishments, were content to receive the more homely maidens, with a portion annexed to them. For the crier, when he had sold the fairest, selected next the most ugly, or one that was deformed; she also was put up to sale, and assigned to whoever would take her with the least money. This money was what the sale of the beautiful maidens produced, who were thus obliged to portion out those who were deformed, or less lovely than themselves. No man was permitted to provide a match for his daughter, nor could any one take away the woman whom he purchased without first giving security to make her his wife. To this, if he did not assent, his money was returned to him. There were no restrictions with respect to residence; those of another village might also become purchasers. This, although the most wise of all their institutions, has not been preserved to our time. One of their later ordinances was made to punish violence offered to women, and to prevent their being carried away to other parts; for after the city had been taken, and the inhabitants plundered, the lower people were reduced to such extremities that they prostituted their daughters for hire. They have also another institution, the good tendency of which claims applause. Such as are diseased among them they carry into some public square; they have no professors of medicine, but the passengers in general interrogate the sick person concerning his malady, that if any person has either been afflicted with a similar disease himself, or seen its operation on another, he may communicate the process by which his own recovery was effected, or by which, in any other instance, he knew the disease to be removed. No one may pass by the afflicted person in silence, or without inquiry into the nature of his complaint. Previous to their interment, their dead are anointed with honey, and, like the Egyptians, they are fond of funeral lamentations. Whenever a man has had communication with his wife, he sits over a consecrated vessel, containing burning perfumes; the woman does the same. In the morning both of them go into the bath; till they have done this they will neither of them touch any domestic utensil. This custom is also observed in Arabia. The Babylonians have one custom in the highest degree abominable. Every woman who is a native of the country is obliged once in her life to attend at the temple of Venus, and prostitute herself to a stranger. Such women as are of superior rank do not omit even this opportunity of separating themselves from their inferiors; these go to the temple in splendid chariots, accompanied by a numerous train of domestics, and place themselves near the entrance. This is the practice with many, whilst the greater part, crowned with garlands, seat themselves in the vestibule, and there are always numbers coming and going. The seats have all of them a rope or string annexed to them, by which the stranger may determine his choice. A woman, having once taken this situation, is not allowed to return home till some stranger throws her a piece of money, and leading her to a distance from the temple, enjoys her person. It is usual for the man, when he gives the money, to say, “May the goddess Mylitta be auspicious to thee!” Mylitta being the Assyrian name of Venus. The money given is applied to sacred uses, and must not be refused, however small it may be. The woman is not suffered to make any distinction, but is obliged to accompany whoever offers her money. She afterwards makes some conciliatory oblation to the goddess, and returns to her house, never afterwards to be obtained on similar or on any terms. Such as are eminent for their elegance and beauty do not continue long, but those who are of less engaging appearance have sometimes been known to remain from three to four years unable to accomplish the terms of the law. It is to be remarked that the inhabitants of Cyprus have a similar observance. In addition to the foregoing account of Babylonian manners, we may observe that there are three tribes of this people whose only food is fish. They prepare it thus: having dried it in the sun, they beat it very small in a mortar, and afterwards sift it through a piece of fine cloth; they then form it into cakes, or bake it as bread.[c] The foregoing description by Herodotus refers to the condition of Babylon in the early part of the fifth century B.C., something like fifty years after the overthrow of the new Babylonian empire by Cyrus. The city still remained under Persian influence, Babylon being one of the capitals of the “Great King.” The account given has a peculiar value because it is the only description given by an eye-witness from the Western world that has come down to us from so early a period. Herodotus saw with the eyes of a Greek of the age of Pericles, and it is now admitted that when he describes his personal experiences, he is altogether dependable. His account, therefore, still has full value as supplementing the records of the monuments. It is greatly to be regretted that the Greek historian remained ignorant of the monumental records themselves, though it would have been strange had he been able to decipher them, since the Greeks were notoriously unfamiliar with any language but their own. The account of Babylon given by the great geographer, Strabo, which will be presented in the next chapter, relates to a period not far from the beginning of the Christian era, and hence carries us ahead of the political story as told in the preceding books. At this time Babylon had ceased to be the capital city, though still important. Since Herodotus wrote, some five hundred years have passed. Alexander has overthrown the Persians, and Alexander’s empire in turn has been overthrown. Yet we may suppose that the old city of Babylon—the most ancient city retaining influence at that day—has not very greatly changed, except that its ancient monuments are falling into ruins. A peculiar interest attaches to this description of the last stages in the life-history of a city that has seen so many rotations of fortune, and has lived on through so many shiftings of the political kaleidoscope. It is probable that Strabo, like Herodotus, writes as an eye-witness. In any event his account has full authority, coming from one of the greatest and most scientific of ancient geographers, who in addition to his geographical learning had a keen historical sense.[a] Babylon is situated in a plain. The wall is 385 stadia in circumference and 32 feet in thickness. The height of the space between the towers is 50, and of the towers, 60 cubits. The roadway upon the walls will allow chariots with four horses when they meet to pass each other with ease. Whence, among the seven wonders of the world, are reckoned this wall and the hanging garden; the shape of the garden is a square, and each side of it measures four plethra. It consists of vaulted terraces, raised one above another, and resting upon cube-shaped pillars. These are hollow and filled with earth, to allow trees of the largest size to be planted. The pillars, the vaults, and the terraces are constructed of baked bricks and asphalt. The ascent to the highest story is by stairs, and at their side are water-engines, by means of which persons, appointed expressly for the purpose, are continually employed in raising water from the Euphrates into the garden; for the river, which is a stadium in breadth, flows through the middle of the city, and the garden is on the side of the river. The tomb, also, of Belus is there. At present it is in ruins, having been demolished, it is said, by Xerxes. It was a quadrangular pyramid of baked brick, a stadium in height, and each of the sides a stadium in length. Alexander intended to repair it. It was a great undertaking, and required a long time for its completion (for ten thousand men were occupied two months in clearing away the mound of earth), so that he was not able to execute what he had attempted before disease hurried him rapidly to his end. None of the persons who succeeded him attended to this undertaking; other works also were neglected, and the city was dilapidated, partly by the Persians, partly by time, and through the indifference of the Macedonians to things of this kind, particularly after Seleucus Nicator had fortified Seleucia, on the Tigris, near Babylon, at the distance of about three hundred stadia. Both this prince and all his successors directed their care to that city, and transferred to it the seat of empire. At present it is larger than Babylon; the other is in great part deserted, so that no one would hesitate to apply to it what one of the comic writers said of Megalopolitæ in Arcadia: “The great city is a great desert.” On account of the scarcity of timber, the beams and pillars of the houses were made of palm wood. They wind ropes of twisted reed round the pillars, paint them over with colours, and draw designs upon them; they cover the doors with a coat of asphaltus. These are lofty, and all the houses are vaulted on account of the want of timber. For the country is bare, a great part of it is covered with shrubs, and produces nothing but the palm. This tree grows in the greatest abundance in Babylonia. It is found in Susiana; also, in great quantity, on the Persian coast, and in Carmania. They do not use tiles for their houses, because there are no great rains. The case is the same in Susiana and in Sitacene. In Babylon a residence was set apart for the native philosophers called Chaldeans, who are chiefly devoted to the study of astronomy. Some, who are not approved of by the rest, profess to understand genethlialogy, or the casting of nativities. There is also a tribe of Chaldeans who inhabit a district of Babylonia in the neighbourhood of the Arabians and of the sea called the Persian Sea. There are several classes of the Chaldean astronomers. Some have the name of Orcheni, some Borsippeni, and many others, as if divided into sects, who disseminate different tenets on the same subjects. The mathematicians make mention of some individuals among them, as Cidenas, Naburianus, and Sudinus. Seleucus, also, of Seleucia, is a Chaldean, and many other remarkable men. Borsippa is a city sacred to Diana and Apollo. Here is a large linen manufactory. Bats of much larger size than those in other parts abound in it. They are caught and salted for food. The country of the Babylonians is surrounded on the east by the Susans, Elymæi, and Parætaceni; on the south by the Persian Gulf, and the Chaldeans as far as the Arabian Messeni; on the west by the Arabian Scenitæ as far as Adiabene and Gordyæa; on the north by the Armenians and Medes as far as the Zagros, and the nations about that river. The country is intersected by many rivers, the largest of which are the Euphrates and the Tigris; next to the Indian rivers, the rivers in the southern parts of Asia are said to hold the second place. The Tigris is navigable upward from its mouth to Opis and to the present Seleucia. Opis is a village and a mart for the surrounding places. The Euphrates also is navigable up to Babylon, a distance of more than three thousand stadia. The Persians, through fear of incursions from without and for the purpose of preventing vessels from ascending these rivers, constructed artificial cataracts. Alexander, on arriving there, destroyed as many of them as he could, those particularly (on the Tigris from the sea) to Opis. But he bestowed great care upon the canals, for the Euphrates, at the commencement of summer, overflows. It begins to fill in the spring, when the snow in Armenia melts; the ploughed land, therefore, would be covered with water and be submerged, unless the overflow of the superabundant water of the Nile is diverted. Hence the origin of canals. Great labour is requisite for their maintenance, for the soil is deep, soft, and yielding, so that it would easily be swept away by the stream; the fields would be laid bare, the canals filled, and the accumulation of mud would soon obstruct their mouths. Then again, the excess of water discharging itself into the plains near the sea forms lakes and marshes and reed grounds, supplying the reeds with which all kinds of platted vessels are woven; some of these vessels are capable of holding water when covered over with asphaltus; others are used with the material in its natural state. Sails are also made of reeds; these resemble mats or hurdles. It is not, perhaps, possible to prevent inundations of this kind altogether, but it is the duty of good princes to afford all possible assistance. The assistance required is to prevent excessive overflow by the construction of dams, and to obviate the filling of rivers produced by the accumulation of mud, by cleansing the canals and removing stoppages at their mouths. The cleansing of the canals is easily performed, but the construction of dams requires the labour of numerous workmen. For the earth being soft and yielding does not support the superincumbent mass, which sinks, and is itself carried away, and thus a difficulty arises in making dams at the mouth. Expedition is necessary in closing the canals to prevent all the water flowing out. When the canals dry up in the summer-time they cause the river to dry up also; and if the river is low (before the canals are closed) it cannot supply the canals in time with water, of which the country, burnt up and scorched, requires a very large quantity, for there is no difference, whether the crops are flooded by an excess or perish by drought and a failure of water. The navigation up the rivers (a source of many advantages) is continually obstructed by both the above-mentioned causes, and it is not possible to remedy this unless the mouths of the canals were quickly opened and quickly closed, and the canals were made to contain and preserve a mean between excess and deficiency of water. Aristobulus relates that Alexander himself, when he was sailing up the river and directing the course of the boat, inspected the canals, and ordered them to be cleared by his multitude of followers; he likewise stopped up some of the mouths, and opened others. He observed that one of these canals, which took a direction more immediately to the marshes and to the lakes in front of Arabia, had a mouth very difficult to be dealt with, and which could not be easily closed on account of the soft and yielding nature of the soil; he (therefore) opened a new mouth at the distance of thirty stadia, selecting a place with a rocky bottom, and to this the current was diverted. But in doing this he was taking precautions that Arabia should not become entirely inaccessible in consequence of the lakes and marshes, as it was already almost an island from the quantity of water (which surrounded it). For he contemplated making himself master of this country, and he had already provided a fleet and places of rendezvous, and had built vessels in Phœnicia and at Cyprus, some of which were in separate pieces, others were in parts, fastened together by bolts. These, after being conveyed to Thapsacus in seven distances of a day’s march, were then to be transported down the river to Babylon. He constructed other boats in Babylonia, from cypress trees in the groves and parks, for there is a scarcity of timber in Babylonia. Among the Cossæi [Kossæans] and some other tribes the supply of timber is not great. The pretext for the war, says Aristobulus, was that the Arabians were the only people who did not send their ambassadors to Alexander; but the true reason was his ambition to be lord of all. When he was informed that they worshipped two deities only, Jupiter and Bacchus, who supply what is most requisite for the subsistence of mankind, he supposed that, after his conquests, they would worship him as a third, if he permitted them to enjoy their former national independence. Thus was Alexander employed in clearing the canals, and in examining minutely the sepulchres of the kings, most of which are situated among the lakes. Eratosthenes, when he is speaking of the lakes near Arabia, says, that the water, when it cannot find an outlet, opens passages underground, and is conveyed through these as far as the Cœle-Syrians, it is also compressed and forced into the parts near Rhinocolura and Mount Casius, and there forms lakes and deep pits. But I know not whether this is probable. For the overflowings of the water of the Euphrates, which form the lakes and marshes near Arabia, are near the Persian Sea. But the isthmus which separates them is neither large nor rocky, so that it was more probable that the water forced its way in this direction into the sea, either under the ground, or across the surface, than that it traversed so dry and parched a soil for more than six thousand stadia: particularly, when we observe, situated midway in this course, Libanus, Antilibanus, and Mount Casius. Such, then, are the accounts of Eratosthenes and Aristobulus. But Polycleitus says, that the Euphrates does not overflow its banks, because its course is through large plains; that of the mountains (from which it is supplied) some are distant two thousand, and the Kossæan Mountains scarcely one thousand stadia, that they are not very high, nor covered with snow to a great depth, and therefore do not occasion the snow to melt in great masses, for the most elevated mountains are in the northern parts above Ecbatana; towards the south they are divided, spread out, and are much lower; the Tigris also receives the greater part of the water (which comes down from them) and thus overflows its banks. The last assertion is evidently absurd, because the Tigris descends into the same plains (as the Euphrates); and the above-mentioned mountains are not of the same height, the northern being more elevated, the southern extending in breadth, but are of a lower altitude. The quantity of snow is not, however, to be estimated by altitude only, but by aspect. The same mountain has more snow on the northern than on the southern side, and the snow continues longer on the former than on the latter. As the Tigris therefore receives from the most southern parts of Armenia, which are near Babylon, the water of the melted snow, of which there is no great quantity, since it comes from the southern side, it should overflow in a less degree than the Euphrates, which receives the water from both parts (northern and southern), and not from a single mountain only, but from many, as I have mentioned in the description of Armenia. To this we must add the length of the river, the large tract of country which it traverses in the Greater and in the Lesser Armenia, the large space it takes in its course in passing out of the Lesser Armenia and Cappadocia, after issuing out of the Taurus in its way to Thapsacus (forming the boundary between Syria below and Mesopotamia), and the large remaining portion of country as far as Babylon and to its mouth, a course in all of thirty-six thousand stadia. This, then, on the subject of the canals (of Babylonia). Babylonia produces barley in larger quantity than any other country, for a produce of three hundredfold is spoken of. The palm tree furnishes everything else—bread, wine, vinegar, and meal; all kinds of woven articles are also procured from it. Braziers use the stones of the fruit instead of charcoal. When softened by being soaked in water, they are food for fattening oxen and sheep. It is said that there is a Persian song in which are reckoned up three hundred and sixty useful properties of the palm. They employ for the most part the oil of sesamum, a plant which is rare in other places. Asphaltus is found in great abundance in Babylonia. Eratosthenes describes it as follows: The liquid asphaltus, which is called naphtha, is found in Susiana; the dry kind, which can be made solid, in Babylonia. There is a spring of it near the Euphrates. When this river overflows at the time of the melting of the snow, the spring also of asphaltus is filled and overflows into the river, where large clods are consolidated, fit for buildings constructed of baked bricks. Others say that the liquid kind also is found in Babylonia. With respect to the solid kind, I have described its great utility in the construction of buildings. They say that boats (of reeds) are woven, which, when besmeared with asphaltus, are firmly compacted. The liquid kind, called naphtha, is of a singular nature. When it is brought near the fire, the fire catches it; and if a body smeared over with it is brought near the fire, it burns with a flame, which it is impossible to extinguish, except with a large quantity of water; with a small quantity it burns more violently, but it may be smothered and extinguished by mud, vinegar, alum, and glue. It is said that Alexander, as an experiment, ordered naphtha to be poured over a boy in a bath, and a lamp to be brought near his body. The boy became enveloped in flames, and would have perished if the bystanders had not mastered the fire by pouring upon him a great quantity of water, and thus saved his life. Poseidonius says that there are springs of naphtha in Babylonia, some of which produce white, others black, naphtha; the first of these, I mean the white naphtha, which attracts flame, is liquid sulphur; the second, or black naphtha, is liquid asphaltus, and is burnt in lamps instead of oil. In former times the capital of Assyria was Babylon; it is now called Seleucia upon the Tigris. Near it is a large village called Ctesiphon. This the Parthian kings usually made their winter residence, with a view to spare the Seleucians the burden of furnishing quarters for the Scythian soldiery. In consequence of the power of Parthia, Ctesiphon may be considered as a city rather than a village; from its size it is capable of lodging a great multitude of people; it has been adorned with public buildings by the Parthians, and has furnished merchandise, and given rise to arts profitable to its masters. The kings usually passed the winter there, on account of the salubrity of the air, and the summer at Ecbatana and in Hyrcania, induced by the ancient renown of these places. As we call the country Babylonia, so we call the people Babylonians, not from the name of the city, but of the country; the case is not precisely the same, however, as regards even natives of Seleucia, as, for instance, Diogenes, the stoic philosopher [who had the appellation of the Babylonian, and not the Seleucian].[d] We turn now from the classical accounts having to do with the manners and customs of the Mesopotamians to more modern interpretations. The account of the commercial relations of the Babylonians given in the succeeding section still has full authority, notwithstanding it was written before modern excavations had created the new science of Assyriology. No later writer has so profoundly studied the conditions of commerce and trade in antiquity as Heeren, and his accounts are still the most illuminative accessible. The monumental pictures and inscriptions, much as they have told us of the political history, and of the art, literature, and science of the Mesopotamians, have added singularly little to our knowledge of the peaceful relations of oriental nations as evidenced by their commercial dealings. The chance references of classical writers still furnish us the foundation of our knowledge of this subject, and the Assyrian monuments, where they have thrown any light on the subject at all, have chiefly served to substantiate our previous inferences. Thus, to cite a single example, the pictures on the black obelisk of Shalmaneser II show us such beasts as apes and elephants being brought as tribute to the conqueror, confirming in the most unequivocal way the belief, based on Ctesias and Strabo, that the Assyrians held commercial relations with India. The narrative of Heeren will be supplemented, however, by accounts of the manners and customs of the people in question based upon a more recent study of the monuments, both pictorial and documentary. We have already noted that the sculptures rather than the written documents furnish us a view of the everyday life of the people. Certain matters, however, such as those pertaining to legal transactions, could not possibly be known to us except through the medium of inscriptions.[a] As the European steps into a new world as soon as he has crossed the Alps, says Heeren, so is the contrast equally striking to the Asiatic traveller upon descending from the mountainous country of Persia and Media, or Irak Ajemi, into the plain of ancient Babylon and modern Baghdad, the capital of Irak Arabi. The connection, frequently so mysterious and inexplicable, which exists between climates and countries, and even between climates and inhabitants, is here most remarkably exemplified. The manners of the people, their habitations, their dress, are all different. While in Persia and Media the garments, though long, were closely fitted to the person, they are here, on the contrary, loose and flowing. The black sheepskin cap which covered the head gives way to the lofty and proud folds of the turban, and the girdle, with its single knife, is replaced with the costly shawl and rich poniard. “On my entrance into the city of the Caliphs,” says a modern traveller (Porter, ii, 243, et seq.), “I found the streets crowded with men in every variety of dress, and of every shade of complexion. Instead of the low dwellings peculiar to Persia, the houses were several stories high, with lattice windows closely shut. The great Bazaar was full of people, and I saw on all sides innumerable shops and coffee-houses. The sound of voices and the rustling of silks reminded one of the buzzing of a swarm of bees. For even now, though but the shadow of its former splendour, Baghdad is still the grand caravanserai of Asia.” But what a change has taken place in manners and modes of life! The rigid etiquette of the Persian court has disappeared; the tone of society, the relation of the sexes, is under less constraint, and everything betokens pleasure and voluptuousness. Though in the hot season the glowing sky forces the inhabitants during the day into their underground vaults, yet they enjoy the balmy coolness of night in the open air on their house tops. The delightful temperature of the winter months, from the middle of November to that of February, compensates for the inconveniences of summer, though at the same time it offers irresistible incentives to all manner of sensual enjoyments. It must surely have been the same in former times. Can it be supposed that those who came down the Euphrates from the royal cities of Persia and Media to the great city of traffic had not the same spectacle before their eyes? But what is modern Baghdad compared with the ancient capital of the East? What crowds must have once thronged the streets and squares of that city when the caravans of the East and West, with the crews of ships trading to the south, were there collected together; when the Chaldean and Persian sovereigns, with their numberless attendants, made it their residence; when it was the emporium of the world, and the great centre of attraction to all nations! How bustling and animated must not these desolate places have been formerly, where all now is still, save the call of the Bedouin or the roaring of the lion! The accounts of ancient Babylon given by Jewish and Grecian writers set before us a picture of wealth, magnificence, and pomp, though at the same time a less pleasing representation of luxury and licentiousness. Their banquets were carried to a disgusting excess, and the pleasures of the table degenerated into debauchery; nay, at the very time when the victorious Persians rushed into the city, the princes of Babylon were engaged in festivities; and Belshazzar was given up to intoxication in company with thousands of his lords when the hand which wrote on the wall of the royal banqueting house, and predicted his approaching fate, aroused him to the dreadful reality of his condition. But this total degeneracy of manners was above all conspicuous in the other sex, amongst whom were no traces of that reserve which usually prevails in an eastern harem. The prophet, therefore, when he denounces the fall of Babylon, describes it under the image of a luxurious and lascivious woman, who is cast headlong into slavery from the seat where she sits so effeminately. Moreover, at these orgies the women appeared, where they proceeded so far as to lay aside their garments, and with them every feeling of shame; nay, there was even a religious enactment, as we are informed by Herodotus, according to which every woman was obliged to prostitute herself to strangers in the temple of Mylitta once in her life, and was not allowed to reject any person who presented himself. The principal cause of this profligacy of manners was the riches and luxury consequent upon extended commerce, which Babylon owed to its geographical position. Climate and religion effected the rest. I have already had occasion to notice this advantageous situation of Babylonia, in which respect it was probably superior to every other country in Asia. While this afforded admirable facilities for traffic by land, it was equally convenient for maritime and river navigation. The two large rivers which flowed on each side of it seemed the natural channels of commercial intercourse with the interior of Asia, and the Persian Gulf by no means presented the same difficulties and dangers to the navigator as that of Arabia. If we add to this the accounts which ancient authors have given us of the industry, manners, and civil institutions of Babylon, it will be evident that it owed its splendour and wealth to the same causes which in latter times have been the occasion of an extensive commerce to the cities of Baghdad and Bassorah. They unanimously describe the Babylonians as a people fond of magnificence, and accustomed to a multitude of artificial wants, which they could not have supplied except by commercial relations with many countries, some of them very remote. In their private life, especially in their dress, costliness appears to have been more their object than either convenience or utility. Their public festivals and sacrifices were attended with immense expense, particularly in precious perfumes, with which they could not have been provided but from foreign countries. The raw materials, too, required for their celebrated manufactures—flax, cotton, and wool, and perhaps silk—were either not the produce of their soil, or certainly not in sufficient quantities for their consumption. Lastly, many of their civil institutions were of such a nature as only to be calculated for a city into which there was a continual influx of strangers. On this principle alone can be explained, not only their custom of exposing sick persons in the market-place, that they might meet with some one competent to prescribe for them, but also, and more particularly, the above-mentioned law, which obliged their women to prostitute themselves in the temple of Mylitta, and the public auction of marriageable virgins. It has been already observed that the relations of the sexes are formed in a peculiar manner in large commercial cities, and this will serve to explain many remarkable institutions of several nations in Asia. However certain may be the evidence drawn from these principles, and the accounts of antiquity in general, viz., that Babylon was the great centre where all nations assembled, and whence they departed to their several destinations, yet it is difficult to enter in detail on the commerce of the Babylonians, and to settle with any degree of accuracy its nature and its course. The obscure traces of it which yet remain must be laboriously sought for in the works of Greek and Hebrew writers alone; the labour, however, will not be without its recompense, and the general result of this investigation will be a picture, which, though not complete in its subordinate details, will yet present a generally faithful outline. As a preliminary step, however, let us take a glance at the products of Babylonian skill and industry, amongst which weaving of various kinds deserves our first notice. The peculiar dress of the Babylonians consisted partly of woollen, and partly of linen, or probably cotton stuffs. “They wear,” says Herodotus, “a gown of linen (or cotton) flowing down to the feet, over this, an upper woollen garment, and a white (woollen) tunic covering the whole.” This garb, which must have been too much for so warm a climate, seems to have been assumed rather for ostentation, than to meet their actual wants, and probably some alteration was made in it as the weather became warmer. Their woven stuffs, however, were not confined to domestic use, but were exported into foreign countries. Carpets, one of the principal objects of luxury in the East, the floors of the rich being generally covered with them, were nowhere so finely woven, and in such splendid colours, as at Babylon. Particular representations were seen on them, of those wonderful Indian animals, the griffin and others, with which we have become acquainted by the ruins of Persepolis, whence the knowledge of them was brought to the West. Foreign nations made use of these carpets in the decoration of their harems and royal saloons; indeed, this species of luxury appears nowhere to have been carried farther than among the Persians. With them, not only the floors, but even beds and sofas in the houses of the nobles were covered with two or three of these carpets; nay, the oldest of their sacred edifices, the tomb of Cyrus at Pasargada, was ornamented with a purple one of Babylonian workmanship. Babylonian garments were not less esteemed; those in particular called sindones were in very high repute. It appears that they were usually of cotton, and the most costly were so highly valued for their brilliancy of colour and fineness of texture, as to be compared to those of Media, and set apart for royal use; they were even to be found at the tomb of Cyrus, which was profusely decorated with every description of furniture in use amongst the Persian kings during their lives. The superiority of Babylonian robes and carpets will not be a matter of surprise, when we consider how near Babylon was to Carmania on the one side, and to Arabia and Syria on the other, and that in these countries the finest cotton was produced. Large weaving establishments were not confined to the capital, but existed likewise in other cities and inferior towns of Babylonia, which Semiramis is said to have built on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, and which she appointed as marts for those who imported Median and Persian goods. These manufacturing towns also were, as will soon be shown in respect to Opis, staples for land traffic. The most famous of them was Borsippa, situated on the Euphrates, fifteen miles below Babylon, and mentioned in history before the time of Cyrus. These were the principal linen and cotton manufactories, and they still existed in the age of Strabo. Besides these, the Babylonians appear to have made all kinds of apparel, and every article of luxury: such as sweet waters, which were in common use, and probably necessary, from the heat of the climate; walking-sticks delicately chased with figures of animals and other objects, and also elegantly engraved stones, were in general use amongst the Babylonians. These stones begin to form a particular class, since the curiosities called Babylonian cylinders have become less rare. Many of them have undoubtedly served for seal rings; for in the East the seal supplies the place of a signature, or at any rate makes it valid, as we still see on specimens of Babylonian documents. The same may be said of the cylinders. We have a striking illustration of the perfection to which the Babylonians had brought the art of cutting precious stones in the collection of M. Dorow, which contains a cylinder, formed from a jasper, bearing a cuneiform inscription, and an image of a winged Ized, or Genius, in a flowing Babylonian dress, represented in the act of crushing with each hand an ostrich, the bird of Ahriman. These various manufactures and works of art presuppose an extensive commerce, because the necessary materials must have been imported from foreign countries. From what has been already adduced, no doubt can be entertained that Babylon enjoyed a lively commerce with the principal countries of the Persian Empire. Not only did the Persian and Median lords decorate their houses with the productions of Babylonian skill, but the kings of Persia spent a great part of the year in that city with all their numerous attendants, added to which the satraps exhibited in the same capital a pomp but little inferior to royal magnificence. Owing to this intimate connection between the chief provinces of Persia and Babylonia, the country lying between this and Susa became the most populous and cultivated in Asia; and a highway was made from Babylon to Susa, which was twenty days’ journey distant, sufficiently commodious for the baggage of an army to be conveyed on it without difficulty. The investigation, however, is involved in greater difficulties as we proceed towards the east beyond Persia, though a principal country to which they traded, that is to say, Persian India, or the present Belur-land, and with the parts adjacent, whence the Babylonians imported many of their most highly prized commodities, afford a clear proof of the direction and extent of this commerce. The first article which we may confidently assert the Babylonians to have obtained, at least in part, from these countries, were precious stones, the use of which for seal rings was very general amongst them. Ctesias says expressly, that these stones came from India; and that onyxes, sardines, and the other stones used for seals were obtained in the mountains bordering on the sandy desert. The testimonies of modern travellers have proved that the account of this author is entitled to full credit; and that even at the present time the lapis-lazuli is found there in its greatest perfection; and if it be added to this that what Ctesias relates of India undoubtedly refers for the most part to these northern countries, we must consider it probable that the stones in question were found in the mountains of which we are speaking; while with regard to the sapphire of the ancients, that is to say, our lapis-lazuli, I have no doubt that it is a native of this country. A decisive proof is furnished by Theophrastus, a more recent author, but worthy of credit. “Emeralds and jaspers,” says he, “which are used as objects of decoration, come from the desert of Bactria (of Cobi). They are sought for by persons who go thither on horseback at the time of the north wind, which blows away the sand, and so discovers them.” “The largest of the emeralds called Bactrian,” says he, in another place, “is at Tyre, in the temple of Hercules. It forms a tolerably large pillar.” The passage, however, of Ctesias, to which we have referred, as a modern author has justly remarked, contains some indications, which, relatively to onyxes, appear to refer to the Ghat Mountains; since he speaks of a hot country not far from the sea. The circumstance of large quantities of onyxes coming out of these mountains at the present day, viz., the mountains near Cambaya and Beroach, the ancient Barygaza, must render this opinion so much the more probable, as it was this very part of the Indian coast with which the ancients were most acquainted; and their navigation from the Persian Gulf to these regions, as will be shown hereafter, admits of no doubt. This opinion, however, must not lead us to conclude, that the commerce of Babylon was confined to those countries; for that they were acquainted with the above-mentioned northern districts is equally certain. Hence also the Babylonians imported Indian dogs. This breed is asserted to be the largest and strongest that exist, and on that account the best suited for hunting wild beasts, even lions, which they will very readily attack. The great fondness felt by the Persians for the pleasures of the chase, by whom it was regarded as a chivalrous exercise, must have increased the value and use of these animals, which soon became even an object of luxury. The Persian nobles were obliged to keep a great number of them, as they formed a necessary part of their domestic economy, and their train; and they were also accustomed to take them with them on their journeys and military expeditions. Thus Xerxes, as we are assured by Herodotus, was followed by an innumerable quantity of dogs, when he marched against Greece; and an example taken from the same writer shows to what a pitch the Persian lords and satraps had carried their luxury in this particular. Tritantæchmes, satrap of Babylon, devoted to the maintenance of these Indian dogs no less than four towns of his government, which were exempted from all other taxes. It is easy to settle the extent of this branch of commerce, admitting, as is reasonable, that they were propagated in the country. The native country of these animals, according to Ctesias, was that whence precious stones were obtained. And this account of the ancient author has been confirmed by a modern traveller; for Marco Polo, in his account of these regions, has not forgotten to mention large dogs, which were even able to overcome lions. A third, and no less certain class of productions, which the Persians and Babylonians obtained from this part of the world, were dyes, and amongst them the cochineal, or rather Indian lacca. The most ancient, though not quite accurate description of this insect, and of the tree upon which it settles, is also found in Ctesias. According to him, it is a native of the country near the sources of the Indus, and produces a red, resembling cinnabar. The Indians themselves use it for the purpose of dyeing their garments, to which it gives a colour even surpassing in beauty the dyes of the Persians. Strabo has preserved to us from Eratosthenes a knowledge of the roads by which the commodities of the Indian districts, bordering on the Persian Empire, were conveyed to its principal cities, and especially to Babylon. The usual high-road, through populous and cultivated regions, first ran in a northerly direction, in order to avoid the predatory tribes which infested the desert between Persia and Media. It continued along the southern part of this desert, as far as one of the most celebrated defiles in Asia, called the Caspian gates, through which it proceeded to Hyrcania and Aria. In this latter country, taking its course along the foot of the high and woody Hyrcanian and Parthian Mountains, the road thence turned northward towards Bactra. This is the same which Alexander followed in his expedition against the Bactrians; and though he left it occasionally to attack the inhabitants of the neighbouring mountains, he always returned to it. In Arrian it bears the name of the great military road. The great commercial route to India was the same as this as far as Aria. Here, however, it took a different, that is to say, an easterly direction, while the other proceeded northward towards Bactra. Thence it ran to Prophthasia, Arachotus, and Ortospana, where it divided itself into three branches. One of these went due east to the borders of India; perhaps the second had a similar direction, with a little inclination to the south; and the third turned northward towards Bactria and formed the great road through which India had communication with this country and its capital, Bactra. The city must then be regarded as the commercial staple of eastern Asia. Its name belongs to a people who never cease to afford matter for historical details from the time they are first mentioned. We cannot entertain any doubt as to the persons through whose hands the commodities of India came to Bactra. It is evident, from what has been said before, that the natives of the countries bordering on Little Thibet and others, or the northern Indians of Herodotus and Ctesias, formed the caravans which travelled into the gold desert, and that it was the same people from whom western Asia obtained ingredients for dyeing, and also the finest wool. “The country where gold is found, and which the griffins infest,” says Ctesias, “is exceedingly desolate. The Bactrians, who dwell in the neighbourhood of the Indians, assert that the griffins watch over the gold, though the Indians themselves deny that they do anything of the kind, as they have no need of the metal; but (say they) the griffins are only apprehensive on account of their young, and these are the objects of their protection. The Indians go armed into the desert, in troops of a thousand or two thousand men. But we are assured that they do not return from these expeditions till the third or fourth year.” It is clear, from the foregoing statement, that the Indians here mentioned were no other than the natives of northern India; and by the desert where they found gold, must be understood the sandy desert of Cobi, bounding Tangut on the west and China on the north. With regard, however, to the account of Ctesias, that caravans of a thousand or two thousand men travelled into this desert, and returned after three or four years laden with gold—what other direction could this journey have had than to the rich countries in the most remote and eastern part of Asia? I willingly leave it to the reader to judge what degree of probability there is to support this conjecture. This distant obscurity indeed prevents our having a clear view, yet this very obscurity possesses a certain charm. We are indebted to Strabo for an account of the road by which the wares of Babylon were conveyed to the shores of the Mediterranean. It ran in a due northern direction through the midst of Mesopotamia, and reached the Euphrates near Anthemusia, five and twenty days’ journey distant, where it turned off towards the west to the Mediterranean. This could have been only a caravan road, because a numerous company of merchants would be necessary for mutual defence against the predatory nomad tribes, the Scenites, who infested the desert; or indeed for procuring a safe passage by the payment of a ransom. I cannot advance it as certain that this road was generally used under the Persian dynasty; yet it appears in the highest degree probable from the circumstance that roads were seldom or never altered by the ancients. Another great military road, described by Herodotus, from station to station, and leading to Sardis and other Greek commercial towns in Asia Minor, was made by the Persian kings at a vast expense. It is not, indeed, to be doubted that political reasons were a principal inducement to the formation of this road, because the Persians, when they were engaged in war with the Greeks, scarcely set so high a value upon any of their provinces as they did upon Asia Minor, with which they were very desirous to further and maintain an uninterrupted communication. But we moreover learn from the description of Herodotus, that it was a commercial road, upon which caravans travelled from the chief cities of Persia into Asia Minor. According to him the road began from Susa, and not from Babylon; yet the vicinity of these two cities and their intimate connection, which has been remarked above, renders this a circumstance of no importance. This principal road of Asia, once so famous, having undergone no other alteration than that occasioned by its different limits, is now commonly used by caravans from Ispahan to Smyrna; Tavernier has given us a full description of it. Its present course is from Smyrna to Tokat, and thence to Erivan. Only the last half has varied; for, in order to be in the direction of Ispahan, the traveller now proceeds northeast, beyond the lake of Urumiyeh; whereas the ancients, on the contrary, without going so far east, inclined more to the south, and followed the course of the Tigris. On the whole, however, the ancient and modern roads agree in one particular, the reason of which we are told by Herodotus; that is to say, they chose the longer in preference to the shorter way, that they might travel through inhabited countries, and in security. The direct road would have led them through the midst of the steppes of Mesopotamia, where security would have been quite out of the question, on account of the roving predatory hordes. Therefore in ancient times, as well as the present, they chose the northern route along the foot of the Armenian Mountains, where the traveller enjoyed security from molestation. As to the rest, the division into stations was evidently adopted for the advantage of the caravans. According to Herodotus, the distance between each station was five parasangs, a journey of seven or eight hours; and this we learn from Tavernier is exactly the space which caravans consisting of loaded camels are accustomed to traverse in the course of a day; but those of horses travel much faster. As this road, however, was perfectly safe, there can be no doubt that single merchants and travellers performed the journey alone. A third branch of Babylonian commerce in the interior of Asia had a northern direction, particularly to Armenia. The Armenians had the advantage of the Euphrates to convey their wares to Babylon, and amongst these wine, which the soil of Babylonia did not produce, was the principal. Herodotus has described this navigation; and we learn from him that the ships or floats of the Armenians were constructed similarly to those which are at present seen on the Tigris, under the appellation of kilets. The skeleton only was of wood; this had a covering of skins overlaid with reeds; and an oval form was given to the whole, so that there was no difference between the stern and prow. They were filled with goods, especially large casks of wine, and then guided down the stream by two oars. The size of these barks varied considerably; Herodotus observed some which were rated at more than five thousand talents’ burthen [i.e. about 12,000 tons by the least estimate]. On their arrival at Babylon, the conductors sold not only the cargo, but also the skeleton; the skins, however, were carried back by land on asses, which they brought with them for the purpose; since, as the historian has remarked, the force of the stream rendered it impossible for them to return up the river: thus, in Germany, the market boats which go down the Danube to Vienna never return, but are sold with the commodities which they convey. We shall be led to conclude, that the navigation of the Euphrates must have been very important, if we recollect the great works which were performed in order to secure it. Herodotus speaks of it as extraordinary; and, truly, if we believe, as there is great probability for doing, that this trade was confined to the consumption of Babylon, it must necessarily have been very considerable, from the immense population of the city, and from the peculiarity of its soil, which, as it yielded a superfluity of some things, was necessarily quite deficient in others. Hence the Babylonians were obliged to import from the northern regions those necessaries of life which their own soil failed to produce; and we shall have more distinct notions respecting this trade if we recollect that Herodotus includes under the name of Armenia, in addition to the mountainous district which may be termed Armenia proper, also the whole of that rich and fruitful country, northern Mesopotamia.[e] One does not think of the Assyrians as a naval people, yet that they also went down to the sea in ships, we may learn from Layard’s researches. Although the Assyrians were properly an inland people, yet their conquests and expeditions, particularly at a later period, brought them into contact with maritime nations. We consequently find, on the monuments of Khorsabad and Kuyunjik, frequent representations of naval engagements and operations on the seacoast. In the most ancient palace of Nimrud only bas-reliefs with a river have been discovered; they furnish us, however, with the forms of vessels, evidently of Assyrian construction—all those in the sculptures of Khorsabad and Kuyunjik belonging probably to allies or to the enemy. It may be presumed that the rivers navigated by the early Assyrians, and represented in their bas-reliefs, were the Tigris, Euphrates, and Khabur. Bas-relief of an Assyrian Galley Herodotus thus describes the Babylonian vessels of a later period: “The boats used by those who come to the city (Babylon) are of a circular form, and made of skins. They are constructed in Armenia, in the parts above Assyria. The ribs of the vessels are formed of willow boughs and branches, and covered externally with skins. They are round like a shield, there being no distinction between the head and stern. They line the bottoms of their boats with reeds (or straw), and, taking on board merchandise, principally palm wine, float down the stream. The boats have two oars, one man to each; one pulls to him, the other pushes from him. These vessels are of different dimensions; some of them are so large that they bear freight to the value of five thousand talents [£1,000,000 or $5,000,000]. The smaller have one ass on board, the larger several. On their arrival at Babylon the boatmen dispose of their goods, and also offer for sale the ribs and the reeds (or straw). They then load their asses with the skins, and return with them to Armenia, where they construct new vessels.” I was, at one time, inclined to believe that the description of Herodotus applied to the rafts still constructed on the rivers of Mesopotamia, and used, it will be remembered, for the conveyance of the sculptures from Nimrud to Bassorah. The materials of which they are made are precisely those mentioned by the Greek historian, and they are still disposed of at Baghdad in the same way as they were in his day at Babylon. But the boats which excited the wonder of Herodotus seem to have been more solidly built, and were capable of bearing animals, to which purpose the modern raft could not be applied. They were probably more like the circular vessels now used at Baghdad, built of boughs, and sometimes covered with skins, over which bitumen is smeared, to render the whole waterproof. The boats commonly employed for the conveyance of goods and animals, on the lower part of the Tigris and Euphrates, and for ferries on all parts of those rivers, are constructed of planks of poplar wood, rudely joined together by iron nails or wooden pins, and coated with bitumen. In a bas-relief, from the most ancient palace of Nimrud, two kinds of boats are introduced. The larger vessel contains the king in his chariot, with his attendants and eunuchs. It is both impelled by oars and towed by men. The smaller resembles that described by Herodotus. The head does not differ in form from the stern, and two men sit face to face at the oars. In this bas-relief are also represented men supporting themselves upon inflated skins—a manner of crossing rivers still generally practised in Mesopotamia. The larger boats were steered by a long oar, to the end of which was attached a square or oval board. This oar was held in its place by a rope fastened to a wooden pin at the stern. By this contrivance the steersman had considerable control over the vessel, and could impel it or turn the head at pleasure. This mode of steering and propelling boats still prevails on the Mesopotamian rivers. The vessels of the Khorsabad sculptures show a considerable advance in the knowledge of ship-building. That they did not belong to the Assyrians, but to some allied nation, appears to be indicated by the peculiar costume of the figures in them.[30] The form of the vessel is not inelegant; it is that of a sea monster, the prow being in the shape of the head of a horse, and the stern in that of the tail of a fish. Several men stand at the oars. The mast, supported by two ropes, appears to be surmounted by a box, or what is technically called a crow’s nest, which, in the galleys of the Egyptians, frequently held an archer. But it was in the sculptures of Kuyunjik that vessels were found represented in the greatest perfection. From their position in the bas-reliefs, with reference to the besieging army, it would seem that they did not belong to the Assyrians themselves, but to a people with whom they were at war, and whom they appear to have conquered. The sea was also here indicated by the nature of the fish and marine animals; such as the star or jelly fish and a kind of shark. A castle stood on the shore; and the inhabitants, attacked on the land side, were deserting the city and taking refuge in their vessels. The larger galleys of these bas-reliefs were of peculiar form, and may, I think, be identified with the vessels used to a comparatively late period by the inhabitants of the great maritime cities of the Syrian coast—by the people of Tyre and Sidon. Their height out of the water, when compared with the depth of keel, was very considerable. The fore part rose perpendicularly from a low sharp prow, which resembled a ploughshare, and was probably of iron or some other metal, being intended, like that of the Roman galley, to sink or disable the enemy’s ships. The stern was curved from the keel, and ended in a point high above the upper deck. There were two tiers of rowers; but whether they were divided by a deck or merely sat upon benches placed at different elevations in the hold, does not appear from the sculptures. Above the rowers was a deck, on which stood the armed men. These vessels had only one mast, to the top of which was attached a very long yard, held by ropes. In the sculptures the sails were represented as furled. The number of rowers in the bas-reliefs was generally eight on a side. Only the heads of the upper tier of men were visible; the lower tier was completely concealed, the oars passing through small apertures, or portholes, in the sides of the vessel. Besides the vessel I have described, a smaller is represented in the same bas-reliefs. It has also a double tier of rowers; but the head and stern are differently constructed from those of the larger galley, and both being of the same shape, are not to be distinguished one from the other except by the position of the rowers. They rise high above the water, and are flat at the top, with a beak projecting outward. This vessel had no mast, and was impelled entirely by oars. On the upper deck are seen warriors armed with spears, and women. It is impossible to determine from the sculptures the size of the vessels, as the relative proportions between them and the figures they contain are not preserved. It is most probable that the four rowers in each tier are merely a conventional number, and we cannot, therefore, conjecture the length of the ship from them. No representations of naval engagements, as on the monuments of Egypt, have yet been found in the Assyrian edifices. It is most probable that, not being a maritime people, the Assyrians—as the Persians did afterwards—made use of the fleets of their allies in their expeditions by sea, furnishing warriors to man the ships.[b] The sense of justice and its administration play a large part in the history of any nation; and we are so fortunate as to possess certain light on the courts and customs of Assyria. Asshurbanapal opened his library, not only to the documents emanating from the kings, but also as a depository for collections on law, juridicial decisions, and contracts between private individuals. The Assyrio-Chaldean legislation rested on laws and customs which were already in force under the Sumerian civilisation. A great number of tablets written in both languages give us the primitive text of the law and the corresponding Assyrian translation. Others, written in Assyrian, are full of citations from Sumerian texts. First of all, there is a long fragment of laws relating to the family, written in Assyrian and Sumerian. They read as follows: “It has thus been decided by the sentence of the judge: ‘If a son (is authorised) to say to his father: “Thou art not my father,” he (the son) can sell him, treat him as a forfeit, and give him in payment like money. “‘If a son (is authorised) to say to his mother: “Thou art not my mother,” he will cut her hair off, assemble the people, and make her go out of his house. “‘If a father (is authorised) to say to his son: “Thou art not my son,” he (the father) can shut him up in his dwelling and in the cellar. “‘If a mother (is authorised) to say to her son: “Thou art not my son,” she can shut him up in her dwelling and in the upper chambers. “‘If a wife (is authorised) to repudiate her husband, and to say to him: “Thou art not my husband,” she can have him thrown into the river. “‘If a man (is authorised) to say to his wife: “Thou art not my wife,” he can have half a mina of silver paid to him. “‘If the intendant lets a slave escape, if he dies (the slave), if he becomes infirm, if in consequence of bad treatment he becomes ill, he (the intendant) shall pay half a hin of corn a day (to the master of the slave).’” In these ancient records we likewise find laws concerning property. One tablet seems to pertain to the observations made by a Sumerian agriculturist, which were proposed to the Assyrian agriculturists of the seventh century B.C. First of all are indicated the best conditions of crop-growing, the time for sowing, the calculating of the income, the tillage, irrigation, and the injurious animals which must be destroyed. It is evident that, in spite of the difference in property or wealth, the interest is always the same, the calculation of interest on different sums in contracts showing that the figures bear a relation to one another. Loans could be made with or without interest; they could be made with or without security, and these securities were of different natures: “For the interest of one’s money.… He has given as security.… A house, a field, an orchard, a female slave, a male slave.” Exchanges were frequent, and from the data on the tablets, the principal things exchanged are known: “They exchanged a house for money. They exchanged a field for money. They exchanged an orchard for money. They exchanged a female slave for money. They exchanged a male slave for money.” Trials are inherent to human nature and to all epochs. Pleading took place in Nineveh, Assyria, and Chaldea. On this subject the following axiom used by the judges and the pleaders, holds perfectly to-day: “He who listeneth not to his conscience, the judge will not listen to his right.” There must have been a fairly complicated code of procedure, for traces are found of an appellative jurisdiction in which the sovereign was the final judge. The Sumerian laws likewise fixed the form of individual contracts. The signature, “qatatu,” was the essential feature of the contract. Signature took place by affixing the seal. One fragment of these tablets bears witness to this custom so perpetuated in the East from remotest times to the present. Herodotus mentions the existence of seals as a peculiarity of the Babylonians. “Every Babylonian,” said he, “had his seal for his personal use.” The Assyrian “kunuk” answers, like our word “seal,” both to the instrument and the mark it left on the plastic earth. A large number of contracts of private business concerning all the ordinary transactions of life, between individuals, on which figures the mark of a seal, has been found: contracts of sale or exchange; contracts of loan or hire; acknowledgments of debts, carrying the guaranty of a mortgage or of chattels. They read like the records of a notary’s office. These contracts, like all the documents of the palace library, are written on the traditional bricks. These are easily distinguished from other documents by their outer appearance. After a few lines given up to the names of the contracting parties, we see the imprints of their seals, or sometimes the imprint of three finger nails. The general drift of their contracts is easy to understand; the clauses are worded in formal language which proceeds from the nature of the relations of the two parties according to the object of their agreement. As a usual thing, these contracts are very simply drawn. They begin by stating the names and qualifications of the parties who are going to enter into agreement by the affixment of their seal or by the nail mark, its substitute. All contracting parties are not called upon to fulfil this formality; it is only those who have the title of “dominus negotii” the vendor, the lessor, the lender, those who “hold the pen” as the modern expression is. A place reserved in the text for the fixing of seal or imprint reveals to us that their seals had different shapes. As many of these jewels have descended to us, and as there are a great number in our public and private collections, it is not without interest to describe them in more detail. Generally they are hard stones, cut and polished in different ways. Some are conical or like a truncated pyramid, on the base of which the design is sunk. Sometimes the seal is in the shape of a spheroid or an ellipsoid. Many are cylindrical, the design being engraved on the surface of the cylinder, and the imprint is obtained by rolling it on plastic earth. Every variety of precious stones has been cut for this purpose; the study of these jewels and their designs is of the greatest interest to the student of art. After the imprint of the seals, the object of the contract is stated, then its nature and its amount, which is sometimes paid down, sometimes at quarter-day; in certain cases a security is stipulated. As to money loans, the interest is generally fixed upon by the contracting parties. Where the contract is silent on this subject it seems as if a general law were referred to, probably that which is mentioned above. Measurements, capacities, estimates, and prices are expressed with great precision, and thus one may determine the importance of the matter discussed in the contract. The form of drawing up, indicates that the agreement passed before a magistrate who gave, if I may thus express myself, authenticity to the stipulations agreed on between the parties, from which they could not release themselves without penalty of a fine or damages. Generally the fine was paid into the treasury of Ishtar either at Arbela or Nineveh; then the judge decreed the restitution of the sum paid over, with a certain sum for damages. The contract often contained a more or less extended prayer formula and thus placed the execution of the agreement under the protection of the gods. The contract ends with the names of witnesses and their status, and is dated on the day, month, and year of its drawing up. The contract thus perfected was delivered to a special functionary, who registered it in the public depository, the superintendence of which was confided to him. Here are some contracts which help us to understand the methods of drawing up, and inform us as to the nature of the most usual transactions of that epoch. We give first a contract relating to the sale of a slave; it is thus worded: Seal of Nabu-rikhtav-usur, son of Akhardisu, man of Hasaï, workman of Zikkar Ishtar, of the city of … Seal of Tebetai, his son, seal of Silim Bin his son, owners of the slave sold. The girl Tavat-khasina, slave of Nabu-rikhtav-usur.… And Nitocris obtained her for the price of sixteen drachmas of silver … for Takhu her son, on account of his marriage. She will be slave to Takhu. The price has been definitely fixed. Whoever in days to come and at no matter what epoch shall contest this before me, be it Nabu-rikhtav-usur, his sons, his sons’ sons, his brother, his brother’s sons, or any other, or his attorney, should wish to annul the bargain between Nitocris, her sons, or her sons’ sons, shall pay ten minas of silver for the revocation of this contract, it shall not be sold. Shapimayu, shepherd, Bel-shum-usur, son of Yudanani Rimbel, son of Atu, are the three men, heirs of the woman because of the binding of her hands (her first marriage) and of the interest on the wage of Karmeon who was to inherit (if he lived). Witnesses: Akhardisu, Zikkar-nipika, Mutumhisu, Khasba. In the month of Ulul (August) the last day of the year of Asshur-sadu-sakil. As before Yum-shamash, Putainpaïte, Atu, Nabu-iddin-akhe, presiding. This document is one of the most curious that we have. First of all, it contains the name of an Egyptian woman, Nitocris (Nitit-eqar), then that of Takhu her son, who bears equally an Egyptian name. The vendor is the daughter of Nabu-rikhtav-usur; his sons intervene in their quality of kinsmen for the sale of their slave, that is to say, the servant of their house. The money is not to be paid to Nitocris or direct descendants, but to third persons who are also designated; there are the three heirs of one named Karmeon, who would be the heir if he lived. Here is another of the same kind: Seal of Khataï owner of the slave. Lu-akhi is the slave offered up. And Dannaï obtained him from Khataï for the price of twenty drachmas of silver. The price has been definitely fixed, the slave has been paid for and delivered; no annulment of the bargain can now take place. Whosoever in the future shall claim before me (the nullity of the agreement, shall pay the fine). Witnesses: Shamash, Khimar, Zabda, Kharaman, Mannuakhi, Zikkar, Shamash. In the month of Ulul (August) the fifth day in the year of Nabu-bel-iddin. In the presence of Zikkar Shamash, the officer. Contracts of this nature are numerous, and they raise a question on a point of the history of ancient slavery, which it would be interesting to have cleared up. What was the origin of these slaves who were at that time trafficked in, and who do not seem to have had to undergo the law of the vanquished, and who were so easily carried off after the seizure of a town? We have no information on this subject, and we must limit ourselves to register that which is given us in the above-mentioned texts. The proprietor of the slave, Khataï, is a Syrian, whilst the slave, Lu-akhe, is an Assyrian sold to another Assyrian, Dannaï, for a sum of money equal to £3 [$15]. Sometimes the contract is not so simple. Complications may arise as to titles of the property or in its manner of transmission. It is also interesting to study the status of the contracting parties. One fact seems to be universal, it is that the stranger—Phœnician, Jew, or Egyptian—had the same civil rights of contracting, selling, or buying as Assyrian subjects. Here is a contract of another kind. It concerns the sale of a house. Instead of their seal the parties affixed marks by pressing their thumb-nails into the clay. Nail of Sharludari, nail of Ahasshuru, nail of the woman Amat-Sula, wife of Belduru head of three legions, proprietors of the house to be sold. A house in course of construction with its beams, columns, materials, situate in the city of Nineveh, bounded by the house of Mannuki-akhe, bounded by the house of Ankia, bounded by the market-place. And Sil-asshur, the Egyptian officer, has acquired it by means of a mina of the king’s money, from Sharladuri, Ahasshuru, and the woman Amat-sula, wife of her husband. The price has been definitely fixed, the house paid for and bought, the annulment of the contract cannot be allowed. No matter who, whoever he may be, in days to come, and no matter at what epoch, even among these persons, contests the right and contract of Sil-asshur shall pay ten minas of silver. Witnesses: Shushankhu, officer of the king, Kharmaza, head of three legions, Razu, captain of a vessel, Nabu-dur, officer, Kharmaza, captain of a vessel, Sin-shar-usur, Zidka. The sixteenth day of the month Sivan (May) of the year of Zaza, prefect of the town of Arpad (1692 B.C.). Before Shamash-ukin-akhe, Litturu, Nabu-shum-iddin. This act is, above all, remarkable for the names of the contracting parties, from which we can now recognise that people of different nationalities were allowed to make contracts in Nineveh with the same rights as the Assyrians. Thus the names of the witnesses Shushankhu and Kharmaza are Egyptian, and their original form could easily be restituted. The name of the woman Amat-Sula is Phœnician and reveals the name of an unknown divinity; literally it means servant of Sula.[f] We have purposely approached the subject of Mesopotamian law from the Assyrian side, because the Assyrian laws represent the later forms of elaboration of the old Babylonian codes on which they are based. In conclusion, however, we shall present in its entirety the oldest known, and at present the most famous, of these ancient codes, that of king Khammurabi, that the reader may judge for himself as to the character of the judicial and feudal system that was in vogue in Babylonia in the third millennium before our era. This extraordinary document will repay the closest study on the part of anyone who takes the slightest interest in the evolution of human society. Until a comparatively recent date the name of Khammurabi, the ruler who first united the states of the Euphrates valley under one rule, and thus founded the Babylonian empire, was scarcely known, whereas now we have a large mass of material dating from his reign—his inscriptions, his letters, and lastly, most important of all, his code of laws. It is difficult to obtain more than a vague idea of a country merely from its name, or from the lists of its kings and their military exploits, which is all that we possess of most Assyrian and Babylonian kings. The real life of the people wholly escapes us. This reason alone would make this code inexpressibly valuable, because, by giving the laws which controlled the social and commercial life of the people, even to minute details, it gives a picture of the actual condition of the country. Aside from its bearing on Babylonian civilisation, however, this code is one of the most important monuments in the history of the human race. It is the oldest known legal code in existence, antedating the Mosaic code by at least a thousand years, and older than the laws of Manu. It formed the basis of Babylonian legislation until the fall of the empire, and was compiled by a king living about 2300 B.C., whose rule extended from the Tigris to the Mediterranean. Khammurabi is generally identified with Amraphel, the contemporary of Abraham; and it cannot be questioned that these laws formed a part of the traditions which the Hebrews brought with them to their new home. The monument containing these laws was not found at Babylon, as might have been expected, but at Susa (Shushan) in the so-called Acropolis. The discovery is due to the French excavating expedition under M. de Morgan, and was made in December and January of 1901-1902. The monument is a block of black diorite nearly eight feet high. It has been photographed and published with transcription and translation by Father V. Scheil, g the Assyriologist of the expedition, in the Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse, tome IV, Textes Élamites Sémitiques. The whole inscription has since been translated by Dr. H. Winckler h in Der Alte Orient, 4 Jahrgang, Heft 4, 1902, and the code alone by Rev. C. H. W. Johns, i The Oldest Code of Laws in the World, Edinburgh, 1903. The obverse of the stone contains a representation in bas-relief of Khammurabi receiving the laws inscribed beneath, from Shamash, the sun-god and god of right, who is pictured seated on a throne. The king stands in a respectful attitude before him. The inscription several times mentions the fact that the laws were given by Shamash; so the very interesting theory in The Times, London, of April 14th, 1903, that the god in the picture is Bel has not much foundation. This theory would connect the code more closely with the Biblical narrative. To quote from The Times, j “The old Bel was the god who dwelt on the mountain of the world and gave laws to men and wore on his breast the tablets of destiny. So here we have a curious proof of the existence of the tradition of the mountain-given law long before the Mosaic reception on Sinai.” Below the bas-relief on the obverse are sixteen columns of writing with 1,114 lines, and on the reverse there are twenty-eight columns with 2,510 lines. Five columns of the obverse have been erased and the stone repolished, probably to make room for an inscription of the conquering Elamite king who carried the stone away from Babylon to Susa. Possibly one of the dire calamities which Khammurabi, in the inscription, invokes the gods to send on anyone who should deface his monument, befell the unfortunate Elamite. The writing is in a beautifully clear archaic script often used for royal inscriptions, even after the cursive writing came into use. There are a great many tablets dating from the same period written in the cursive, some of them bearing the impression of seals in the archaic. Some seven hundred lines of the inscription are devoted to proclaiming the titles of the king, his care for his subjects, his reason for erecting the monument, his maledictions on anyone who shall interfere with it. Some passages in it remind one of the majesty of portions of the Psalms. It begins: “When Anu the supreme, king of the Anunnaki, and Bel, lord of heaven and earth, who determines the fate of the universe, to Marduk the eldest son of Ea, god of right, earthly power had assigned, among the Igigi had made him great, Babylon with his august name had named, in all the world had exalted him, in the heart (of that city) an eternal kingdom, whose foundations are firm as heaven and earth, had established,—then did Anu and Bel call me by name, Khammurabi, the great prince, who fears god, to establish justice in the land, to destroy the wicked and base, so that the strong oppress not the weak, to go forth like Shamash (the sun) over the black heads (i.e., men) to give light to the world, to promote the prosperity of the people.…” Immediately following the code Khammurabi resumes: “The just decrees which Khammurabi, the wise king, has established; for the land a sure law and a happy reign he has procured. Khammurabi, the protecting king, I am. From the black heads, which Bel gave me, to be a shepherd over whom Marduk appointed me, I have not held aloof, have not rested; places of peace I have provided for them; I opened up a way through steep passes and sent them aid. With the powerful arms which Zamama and Ishtar endowed me, with the clear glance that Ea granted me, with the bravery which Marduk gave me, the enemy above and below I have rooted out, the deeps I have conquered, established the prosperity of the country, the dwellers in houses have I made to live in safety; a cause for fear I have not suffered to exist. The great gods have chosen me. I am the peace-bringing shepherd whose staff is straight (i.e., sceptre is just), the good shadow which is spread over my city; to my heart the people of Sumer and Accad I have taken, under my protection have I caused them to live in peace, sheltered them in my wisdom, so that the strong may not oppress the weak; to counsel the orphan and the widow, their head have I raised in Babylon, the city of Anu and Bel; in E-sagila, the temple whose foundations are firm as heaven and earth, to speak justice to the land, to decide disputed questions, to remedy evil, have I written my precious words on my monument; before my picture, as of a king of justice I have placed them.… At the command of Shamash, the great judge of heaven and earth, shall justice reign in the land; by the order of Marduk my lord no destruction shall touch my statue. In E-sagila, that I love, shall my name be remembered forever; the oppressed man who has a cause for complaint shall come before my picture of the king of justice, shall read the inscription, shall apprehend my precious words, the writing shall explain to him his case, he shall see his right, his heart shall become glad, (and he shall say) ‘Khammurabi is a lord who is like a father to his subjects, he has made the word of Marduk to be feared.’ … Khammurabi, the king of righteousness, to whom Shamash gave the law, I am.” The inscription contains also many references to public works and historical events which make it one of the most important historical records ever discovered. One reference to Asshur (Assyria) is particularly important. It occurs in the introduction to the code and records the restoration of “its protecting god to the city of Asshur.” The name Asshur occurs again in a letter written by Khammurabi to Sin-idinnam, and also in a private letter of the period, the former published by Mr. L. W. King k in 1901. We now turn to the code proper, and the following points are especially noticeable throughout. The idea of responsibility is very clearly fixed,—a man who hired an animal was responsible for that animal,—if a boat he was responsible for the boat,—if he stored anything for another, or carried anything to another, he was responsible so long as the object was in his hands. Also of builders,—if a man built a house he was responsible for its solidity; a physician was held responsible for the life of his patient. Secondly, we notice the importance of putting everything in writing—a marriage without a written contract was invalid; a man who took goods on deposit, an agent who obtained goods from a merchant, if he had no document to show for it, could claim no legal aid in case of disagreement. We have countless contract tablets from this period, containing the seals and names of witnesses to just such transactions as are provided for in the code, which show how well this principle was observed. The law of retaliation or jus talionis is another important feature, as it is prominent also in the Mosaic code. This is expressed by the familiar phrase “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” The attempt to make the punishment balance the crime exactly is carried to such an extent that if a house fell and killed the owner, the builder was to be put to death, if the owner’s son died, the builder’s son was killed. In several of the laws we notice peculiarly humane provisions, showing that the king really had the interests of his subjects at heart, and that his words on the inscription and his desire to be a father to his people were not a vain boast. This is especially noticeable in a regulation concerning debtors (clause 45), in the provisions for inheritance, and particularly in the clause concerning the sick wife (148). It is not to be supposed that all of the laws found in Khammurabi’s code date from his reign. Some of them were much older, as is shown by a difference in the grades of culture represented. Some even assign different penalties for the same crime (see clauses 6 and 8). As Prof. Jastrow l has pointed out, the ordeal by water cannot have been invented in the same period as the minute provisions for the inheritance of property. The so-called Sumerian domestic laws which are very similar to those before us were known prior to the discovery of Khammurabi’s code, and are known to have been already in use at that time. The code contains something like 280 clauses, and is arranged in comparatively systematic order. Space has not permitted the giving of all the provisions in detail. The plan has been to deal with each class of laws as a whole, in some cases giving merely the synopsis of a class.[31] 1. If a man weaves a spell about another man (i.e., accuses him), and throws a curse on him, and cannot prove it, the one who wove the spell shall be put to death. 2. If a man weaves a spell about another man, and has not proved it, he on whom suspicion was thrown shall go to the river, shall plunge into the river. If the river seizes hold of him, he who wove the spell shall take his house. If the river shows him to be innocent, and he is uninjured, he who threw suspicion on him shall be put to death. He who plunged into the river shall take the house of him who wove the spell on him. 3. If a man has accused the witnesses in a lawsuit of malice and has not proved what he said; if the suit was one of life (and death), that man shall be put to death. 4. If he has sent corn and silver to the witnesses, he shall bear the penalty of the suit. 5. If a judge has delivered a sentence, has made a decision and fixed it in writing, and if afterwards he has annulled his sentence, that judge for having altered his decision shall be brought to judgment; for the penalty inflicted in his decision, twelve-fold shall he pay it, and publicly shall they remove him from his judgment seat. He shall not come back and shall not sit in judgment with the other judges. 6. If a man has stolen property from the god or palace, that man shall be put to death; and he who received the stolen goods from his hands shall be put to death. 7. If a man has bought or received in deposit, silver, gold, a man or woman slave, an ox, a sheep, an ass, or whatever it may be, from the hands of a son of another or a slave of another, without witness or contract, that man shall be put to death as a thief. 8. If anyone has stolen an ox, a sheep, an ass, a pig, or a boat, if it belongs to the god or to the palace, he shall return it thirty-fold; if it belongs to a noble he shall return it ten-fold; if the thief has nothing with which to repay, he shall be put to death. 9. If anyone who has lost something, finds his something that was lost in the hand (possession) of another; if the man in whose hand the lost object was found says: “A trader sold it to me, before witnesses I paid for it,” and if the owner of the lost object says: “Witnesses who know my lost object I will bring,” then shall the purchaser bring the seller who sold it to him, and the witnesses before whom he bought it, and the owner of the lost object shall bring witnesses who know his lost goods: the judge shall consider their words, and the witnesses before whom the purchase was made, and the witnesses who know the object shall bear testimony before God. The seller is a thief and shall be put to death. The owner of the lost object shall receive the object; the buyer shall get back the money he paid from the house of the seller. 10. If the buyer does not bring the seller who sold it to him and the witnesses before whom he bought it; if the owner of the lost object brings the witnesses who know his object, the buyer is a thief and shall be killed; the owner shall get his lost object. 11. If the owner of the lost object does not bring his expert witnesses, then he is a miscreant; he has accused falsely, he shall die. 12. If the seller has gone to his fate, the buyer shall receive from the house of the seller five times the costs of the suit. 13. If that man has not his witnesses at hand, the judge shall give him a respite of six months. If in six months his witnesses do not come, that man is a miscreant and shall bear the costs of the suit. 14. If anyone steals the minor son of a man, he shall be put to death. 15. If anyone has caused a male slave of the palace or a female slave of the palace, the male slave of a noble or the female slave of a noble, to go out of the gate, he shall be put to death. 16. If anyone harbours in his house a runaway male or female slave from the palace or the house of a noble, and does not bring them out at the command of the majordomo, the master of the house shall be put to death. 17. If anyone has caught a runaway male or female slave in the field, and brings him back to his master, the master of the slave shall give him two shekels of silver. 18. If that slave will not name his owner, to the palace he shall bring him; his case shall be investigated; to his owner one shall bring him. 19. If he retains that slave in his house, and if, later, the slave is found in his hands, that man shall be put to death. 20. If the slave escapes from the house of the one who caught him, that man shall swear to the owner of the slave in the name of God and he shall be quit. 21. If anyone has broken a hole in a house, in front of that hole one shall kill him and bury him. 22. If anyone has committed a robbery and is caught, he shall be killed. 23. If the robber is not caught, the man who has been robbed shall make claim before God to everything stolen from him, and the town and its governor within the territory and limits of which the robbery took place shall give back to him everything he has lost. 24. If it was a life, the city and governor shall pay one mina of silver to his people. 25. If a fire breaks out in the house of a man, and some one who has gone thither to put it out raise his eyes to the goods of the master of the house, and take the goods of the master of the house, that man shall be thrown into that fire. Special rules governed the estates of officers or constables in the king’s employ. They seem to have had land given them by the state, which was inalienable; they might not sell it, deed it to wife or daughter, or give it in return for a debt. In the absence of the proprietor he might give the land into the keeping of another to manage it for him. This was usually done by a son or wife. Three years’ absence or neglect forfeited his claim to the land. No man could send a substitute in his place on pain of death for both himself and the substitute. The king’s officers could buy land in their own right which they were free to dispose of at pleasure, and they could also sell the land which was theirs by official right to another officer. 42. If anyone has taken a field to cultivate, and has not made grain to grow in the field, he shall be charged with not having done his duty in the field; he shall give grain equal to that yielded by the neighbouring field to the owner of the field. 43. If he has not tilled the field, has let it lie, he shall give to the owner of the field grain equal to the yield of the neighbouring field; and the field which he left untilled, he shall harrow, sow, and return it to its owner. 44. If anyone has hired an unreclaimed field for three years, to open (cultivate) it, but has neglected it, has not opened the field, in the fourth year he shall harrow the field, hoe it, and plant it and return it to the owner of the field, and 10 GUR of grain for every 10 GAN he shall measure out. 45. If a man has rented his field to a cultivator for the produce and he has received his produce, and then a storm has come and destroyed the harvest, the loss is the cultivator’s. 46. If he has not received the produce from his field, but has given his field on a half or a third share, the grain which is in the field shall the owner and cultivator share according to their contract. 47. If the cultivator, because in the first year he did not obtain his living (?), had the field cultivated by another, the owner of the field shall not blame this cultivator, his field has been cultivated; at the time of harvest he shall receive grain according to his contract. 48. If a man has a debt and a storm has devastated his field and carried off the harvest, or if the grain has not grown on account of a lack of water, in that year he shall give no grain to the creditor; he shall soak his tablet (in water, i.e., alter it), and shall pay no interest for that year. 49. If anyone has borrowed money from a merchant and given a ploughed field sown with grain or sesame to the merchant and said to him: “Cultivate the field, harvest and take the grain or sesame which is thereon;” when the cultivator has raised grain or sesame in the field, at the time of harvest the owner of the field shall take the grain or sesame which is in the field, and shall give to the merchant grain in return for the money with its interest, which he took from the merchant, and for the support of the cultivator. 50. If he has given him an (already) cultivated field (of grain) or a field of sesame, the grain or sesame which is in the field shall the owner of the field receive; money and interest to the merchant he shall give. 51. If he has no money with which to pay him, he shall give to the merchant sesame equal to the value of the money which he received from the merchant, with interest according to the king’s tariff. 52. If the cultivator has not raised grain or sesame in the field, his contract is not altered. The canals built by Khammurabi are frequently referred to in his inscriptions so that we expect to find them mentioned in his laws. Clauses 53-56 are in connection with this subject: 53. If anyone is too lazy to keep his dikes in order and fails to do so, and if a breach is made in his dike and the fields have been flooded with water, the man in whose dike the breach was opened shall replace the grain which he has destroyed. 54. If he is not able to replace the grain, he and his property shall be sold, and the people whose grain the water carried off shall share (the proceeds). 55. If anyone opens his irrigation canals to let in water, but is careless and the water floods the field of his neighbour, he shall measure out grain to the latter in proportion to the yield of the neighbouring field. 56. If anyone lets in the water and it floods the growth of his neighbour’s field, he shall measure out to him 10 GUR of grain for every 10 GAN (of land). Each cultivator had an intricate system of small water-ways covering his land, into which he let water from the main canal at certain times. When he had watered his field he dammed up the connection again, but if he neglected to do so the water would keep on coming in and eventually flood his neighbour’s land. If a shepherd let his flock pasture in a field without permission, he was compelled to return a definite amount of grain to the owner. Anyone cutting down a tree without permission had to pay one-half of a mina of silver. About thirty-five clauses, from 65 to 100, have been erased. This gap has been partly filled in from some old fragments of another supposed copy of this code in the British Museum. One of these supplementary fragments speaks of house rent: if a tenant has paid his rent for a whole year, and the landlord turns him out before the end of his term, the landlord shall pay back to the tenant a proportionate amount of the money which the tenant gave him. The reverse of the stele begins with a continuation of the laws regulating commercial relations, which are extremely important as showing a highly developed system. If an agent found no opening where he went, he was to return the capital to the merchant; also if any mishap befell him in the place to which he went. If he were robbed by the way, he was to swear before God that the loss was through no fault of his and could then go free. The agent was to make out a written statement of the goods received, and received also a receipt for the money paid to the merchant. Without this receipt he could lay no claim to his money in case of disagreement. Curiously enough the wine sellers appear to have been women. We read in clause 109: If a wine merchant when rebels meet in her house does not arrest them and take them to the palace, that wine merchant shall be put to death. 110. If a votary who does not live in the temple shall open a tavern or enter a tavern to drink, she shall be burned. THE GOD SHAMASH DICTATING THE CODE OF LAWS TO KING KHAMMURABI Laws concerning debt are treated of in clauses 113-119. A man might be imprisoned for debt, or, as in the Mosaic code, he might sell his wife and children into bondage for debt, but only for three years. We have a peculiarly doleful picture of a prison of this period, in a letter dating from the reign of Khammurabi. It is written by an imprisoned man to his master. He describes his place of confinement as a “house of want,” and begs for food and clothing, to keep him from death and being devoured by dogs. If the debtor died a natural death in his confinement, the case was at an end, but: 116. If the confined man has died in the house of his confinement as a result of blows or ill-treatment, the owner of the prisoner shall call his merchant to account. If the man was free-born, his son (of the merchant) one shall kill; if he was a slave, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver, and shall lose possession of everything which he gave him. 117. If anyone has an indebtedness, sells wife, son, or daughter for gold or gives them into bondage, three years in the house of their buyer or their taskmaster shall they labour; in the fourth year shall he let them go free. 118. If he gives away a man or woman slave into servitude, and if the merchant passes them on, sells them for money, there is no protest. 119. If anyone has contracted a debt and sells a slave who has borne him children, the money which the merchant paid, the owner of the slave shall pay back to him and buy back his slave. Clauses 120-126 are in regard to depositing grain and other property in another’s keeping. A written document was necessary and the person who received the deposit made responsible for what had been intrusted to him. 120. If anyone has stored his grain in the house of another for keeping, and a disaster has happened in the granary, or the owner of the house has opened the granary and taken out grain, or if he disputes as to the whole amount which was deposited with him, the owner of the grain shall pursue (claim) his grain before God, and the master of the house shall return undiminished to its owner the grain which he took. The laws referring to domestic legislation are especially interesting as showing the position of women. We know from other documents of the period that they could hold property in their own name and carry on business, and we see here that their position was respected. 127. If anyone has caused a finger to be pointed at a votary or the wife of a man and has not proved (his accusation against) that man, one shall bring him before the judge and brand his forehead. A contract was necessary for legal marriage: 128. If anyone has married a wife but has not drawn up a contract with her, that woman is not a wife. If a man was taken captive and if, during his absence, his wife married some one else while there was means of subsistence in the house, she was drowned. But if she had no means of support, her action was considered justifiable. If, in the latter case, the husband returned, his wife was to return to him; but the children of her second marriage remained with their father. If the man was a fugitive and had abandoned his native city, but returned after a time and wanted his wife again, she was not to return to him. The laws concerning divorce were much like those existing in Mohammedan countries to-day. If a woman were childless and her husband wished to divorce her, she received her dowry and marriage portion and returned to her father’s house. If she had borne children and her husband still wanted to divorce her, she received besides her marriage portion sufficient means to bring up her children; and after they were grown, of whatever they received they were to give her a son’s share. She was also free to marry again. If the woman were divorced through a fault of her own, she received nothing. 141. If a man’s wife, who lives in his house, sets her face to go out, causes discord, wastes her house, neglects her husband, to justice one shall bring her. If her husband says, “I repudiate her,” he shall let her go her way, he shall give her nothing for her divorce. If her husband says, “I do not repudiate her,” her husband may take another wife; that (first) wife shall stay in the house of her husband as a slave. A woman who wanted a divorce, if she could show fault in her husband for it, might take her marriage portion and go home; but if the fault were hers she was thrown into the water. A peculiarly humane provision is the following: 148. If anyone has taken a wife and a sickness has seized her, and if his face is set towards taking another wife, he may take (her), but his wife whom the sickness has seized he may not repudiate her, she shall live in the house he has built, and as long as she lives he shall support her. 149. If that woman does not desire to live in the house of her husband, he shall give her the marriage portion she brought from her father’s house, and she shall go. 150. If anyone has given his wife, field, garden, house, or property, and has left her a sealed tablet; after (the death of) her husband, her children shall contest nothing with her. The mother shall leave her inheritance to the child whom she loves; to a brother she shall not give it. Laws of inheritance are more particularly dealt with in clauses 162-184: 162. If anyone has married a wife, and she has borne him children; if that woman has gone to her fate, of her marriage portion her father shall claim nothing; her marriage portion belongs to her children. 163. If anyone has married a wife and she has borne him no children; if that woman has gone to her fate, if the dowry which that man took from the house of his father-in-law his father-in-law has returned; on the marriage portion of that woman the husband shall make no claim, it belongs to the house of her father. 164. If his father-in-law has not returned him the dowry, from her marriage portion he shall deduct all her dowry; and her marriage portion he shall return to the house of her father. 165. If any man to his son, the first in his eyes, has given a field, garden, and house, and has written a tablet for him; if afterwards the father has gone to his fate, when the brothers make a division, the present which the father gave him he shall keep; in addition, the goods of their father’s house in equal parts they shall share (with him). 166. If a man has taken wives for his sons, for his little son a wife has not taken, if afterwards the father has gone to his fate, when the brothers divide the goods of their father’s house, to their little brother, who has not taken a wife, besides his portion, money for a dowry they shall give him, and a wife they shall cause him to take. 167. If a man has married a woman, if she has borne him children, if that woman has gone to her fate; if afterwards he has taken another wife, who has borne him children, and if afterwards the father has gone to his fate: the children shall not divide the property according to their mothers; they shall take the marriage portion of their mother; their father’s property they shall share in equal parts. 168. If anyone has set his face to cut off his son and says to the judge, “I cut off my son,” the judge shall inquire into the matter; and if the son has no grievous offence, which would lead to being cut off from sonship, the father shall not cut off his son from sonship. 169. If he has a grievous crime against his father to the extent of cutting him off from sonship, for the first time he (the father) shall turn away his face; but if he commit a grievous crime a second time, the father shall cut off his son from sonship. 170. If to a man his wife has borne children, and if his servant has borne him children; if the father during his life has said: “You are my children,” to the children which his servant bore him, and has counted them with his wife’s children: afterwards if that father has gone to his fate, the goods of the father’s house shall the children of the wife and the children of the servant share on equal terms. In the division the children of the wife shall choose (first) and take. 171. And if the father, during his life to the children which his slave bore him has not said, “You are my children,” afterwards when the father has gone to his fate, the property of the father’s house the children of the servant shall not share with the children of the wife. The freedom of the servant and her children shall be assured. The children of the wife cannot claim the children of the servant for servitude. The wife shall take her marriage portion and the gift which her husband gave her and wrote on a tablet for her, and shall remain in the house of her husband. As long as she lives she shall keep them, and for money shall not give them; after her they belong to her children. 172. If her husband has not given her a gift, her marriage portion she shall receive entire; and of the property of her husband’s house, a portion like a son she shall take. If her children force her to go out of the house, the judge shall inquire into the matter, and if a fault is imputed to the children, that woman shall not go out of the house of her husband. If that woman has set her face to go, the gift which her husband gave her she shall leave to her children. The marriage portion which came from her father’s house she shall keep, and the husband of her choice she shall take. 173. If that woman, there where she has entered, to her second husband has borne children, and if afterward that woman dies, her marriage portion shall her earlier and her later children divide between them. 174. If to her second husband she has borne no children, her marriage portion shall the children of her first husband take. 175. If a free-born woman has married a palace slave or the slave of a noble, and has borne children; the owner of the slave on the children of the free-born woman shall make no claim for servitude. 176. And if a free-born woman marries a slave of the palace or the slave of a noble, and if when he married her she entered the house of the palace slave or of the nobleman’s slave with a marriage portion from the house of her father, and from the time that they set up their house together have acquired property; if afterward either the slave of the palace or the slave of the nobleman has gone to his fate, the free-born woman shall take her marriage portion, and whatever her husband and she since they began housekeeping have made, into two parts they shall divide; one-half the owner of the slave shall take, one-half the free-born woman shall take for her children. 176 a. If the free-born woman had no marriage portion, everything which her husband and she had acquired since they kept house together, into two parts they shall divide. The owner of the slave one-half shall take: one-half shall the free-born woman take for her children. 177. If a widow, whose children are still young, has set her face to enter the house of another without consulting the judge, she shall not enter. When she enters another house the judge shall inquire into that which was left from the house of her former husband; and the goods of her former husband’s house to her later husband and to that woman (herself) one shall confide, and a tablet one shall make them deliver. They shall keep the house and bring up the little ones; no utensil shall they give for money. The buyer who shall buy a utensil belonging to the children of the widow, shall lose his money; the property shall return to its owner. 178. If a votary or a vowed woman to whom her father has given a marriage portion, a tablet has written, and on the tablet he wrote for her did not write, “After her she may give to whom she pleases,” has not permitted her all the wish of her heart; afterwards when the father has gone to his fate, her field and garden shall her brothers take, and according to the value of her portion they shall give her grain, oil, and wool, and her heart they shall content. If her brothers have not given her grain, oil, and wool according to the value of her portion, and have not contented her heart, she shall give her field and garden to a cultivator who is pleasing to her, and her cultivator shall sustain her. The field, garden, and whatever her father gave her she shall keep as long as she lives, but for money she shall not give it, to another she shall not part with it; her sonship (inheritance) belongs to her brother. 179. If a votary or a vowed woman to whom her father has given a marriage portion, and has written her a tablet, and on the tablet which he wrote her has written, “property where (to whom) it seems good to her to give (let her give),” has allowed her the fulness of her heart’s desire: afterwards when the father has gone to his fate, her property after her death to whomever it pleases her she shall give; her brothers shall not strive with her. 180. If a father to his daughter, a bride or vowed woman, a marriage portion has not given; after the father has gone to his fate, she shall receive of the possession of the father’s house a share like one son. As long as she lives she shall keep it; her property after her death shall belong to her brothers. 181. If a father has vowed to God a hierodule or a temple virgin, and has gone to his fate, she shall have a share in the possession of the father’s house equal to one-third her portion as one of his children. As long as she lives she shall keep it. Her property after her death shall belong to her brothers. 182. If a father to his daughter, a votary of Marduk of Babylon, has not given a marriage portion, a tablet has not written; after the father has gone to his fate she shall share with her brothers in the possession of her father’s house; a third of her share as his child (she shall receive). Control over it shall not go from her. The votary of Marduk shall give her property after her death to whomever it pleases her. 183. If a father to his daughter by a concubine has given a marriage portion, and has given her to a husband and has written her a tablet; after the father has gone to his fate, in the goods of the father’s house, she shall not share. 184. If a man to his daughter by a concubine a marriage portion has not provided, to a husband has not given her; after the father has gone to his fate her brothers shall provide her a marriage portion according to the value of the father’s house, and to a husband they shall give her. 185. If a man has taken a small child as a son in his own name and has brought him up, that foster child shall not be reclaimed. 186. If a man has taken a small child for his son, and if when he took him his father and his mother he offended, that foster child shall return to the house of his father. 187. The son of a familiar slave in the palace service, or the son of a vowed woman, cannot be reclaimed. 188. If an artisan has taken a child to bring up, and has taught him his handicraft, no one can make a complaint. 189. If he has not taught him his handicraft, that foster child shall return to the house of his father. 190. If a man, a small child whom he took for his son and brought him up, with his own sons has not counted, that foster son shall return to his father’s house. 191. If a man who has taken a small child for his son and has brought him up, has afterwards made a home for himself and acquired children, if he sets his face to cut off the foster child; that child shall not go his way. His adoptive father shall give him of his goods one-third a son’s share, and then he shall go. Of the field, garden, and house he shall not give him. 192. If the son of a favourite slave or the son of a vowed woman to the father who brought him up and to the mother who brought him up say, “Thou art not my father, thou art not my mother,” one shall cut out his tongue. 193. If the son of a palace favourite or the son of a vowed woman has known the house of his father and has hated the father who brought him up and the mother who brought him up, and has gone to the house of his father, one shall tear out his eyes. 194. If a man has given his son to a nurse and if his son has died in the hand of the nurse, and if the nurse, without the consent of his father or mother, another child has nourished, she shall be brought to account and because she nourished another child, without the consent of the father and mother, one shall cut off her breasts. 195. If a son has struck his father, one shall cut off his hands. 196. If one destroys the eye of a free-born man, his eye one shall destroy. 197. If anyone breaks the limb of a free-born man, his limb one shall break. 198. If the eye of a nobleman he has destroyed, or the limb of a nobleman he has broken, one mina of silver he shall pay. 199. If he has destroyed the eye of the slave of a free-born man or has broken the limb of the slave of a free-born man, he shall pay the half of its price. 200. If he knocks out the teeth of a man who is his equal, his teeth one shall knock out. 201. If the teeth of a freedman he has made to fall out, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver. 202. If anyone has injured the strength of a man who is high above him, he shall publicly be struck with sixty strokes of a cowhide whip. 203. If he has injured the strength of a man who is his equal, he shall pay one mina of silver. 204. If he has injured the strength of a freedman, one shall cut off his ear. 205. If the slave of a man has injured the strength of a free-born man, one shall cut off his ear. 206. If a man has struck another in a quarrel and has wounded him, and that man shall swear, “I did not strike him wittingly,” he shall pay the doctor. 207. If he dies of the blows, he shall swear again, and if it was a free-born man, he shall pay one-half a mina of silver. 208. If it was a freedman, he shall pay one-third a mina of silver. 209. If anyone has struck a free-born woman and caused her to let fall what was in her womb, he shall pay ten shekels of silver for what was in her womb. 210. If that woman dies, one shall put his daughter to death. 211. If it was a freedwoman whom he caused to let fall that which was in her womb, through his blows, he shall pay five shekels of silver. 212. If that woman dies, he shall pay one-half a mina of silver. 213. If he has struck a man’s maid-servant and caused her to drop what was in her womb, he shall pay two shekels of silver. 214. If that maid-servant dies he shall pay one-third a mina of silver. 215. If a doctor has treated a man for a severe wound with a lancet of bronze and has cured the man, or has opened a tumour with a bronze lancet and has cured the man’s eye; he shall receive ten shekels of silver. 216. If it was a freedman, he shall receive five shekels of silver. 217. If it was a man’s slave, the owner of the slave shall give the doctor two shekels of silver. 218. If a physician has treated a free-born man for a severe wound with a lancet of bronze and has caused the man to die, or has opened a tumour of the man with a lancet of bronze and has destroyed his eye, his hands one shall cut off. 219. If a doctor has treated the slave of a freedman for a severe wound with a bronze lancet and has caused him to die, he shall give back slave for slave. 220. If he has opened his tumour with a bronze lancet and has ruined his eye, he shall pay the half of his price in money. 221. If a doctor has cured the broken limb of a man, or has healed his sick body, the patient shall pay the doctor five shekels of silver. 222. If it was a freedman, he shall give three shekels of silver. 223. If it was a man’s slave, the owner of the slave shall give two shekels of silver to the doctor. 224. If the doctor of oxen and asses has treated an ox or an ass for a grave wound and has cured it, the owner of the ox or the ass shall give to the doctor as his pay one-sixth of a shekel of silver. 225. If he has treated an ox or an ass for a severe wound and has caused its death, he shall pay one-fourth of its price to the owner of the ox or the ass. 226. If a barber-surgeon, without consent of the owner of a slave, has branded the slave with an indelible mark, one shall cut off the hands of that barber. 227. If anyone deceives the barber-surgeon and makes him brand a slave with an indelible mark, one shall kill that man and bury him in his house. The barber shall swear, “I did not mark him wittingly,” and he shall be guiltless. 228. If a builder has built a house for some one and has finished it, for every SAR of house he shall give him two shekels of silver as his fee. 229. If a builder has built a house for some one and has not made his work firm, and if the house he built has fallen and has killed the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death. 230. If it has killed the son of the house-owner, one shall kill the son of that builder. 231. If it has killed the slave of the house-owner, he (the builder) shall give to the owner of the house slave for slave. 232. If it has destroyed property, he shall restore everything he destroyed; and because the house he built was not firm and fell in, out of his own funds he shall rebuild the house that fell. 233. If a builder has built a house for some one and has not made its foundations solid, and a wall falls, that builder out of his own money shall make firm that wall. 234. If a boatman has caulked (?) a boat of 60 GUR for a man, he shall give him two shekels of silver as his fee. 235. If a boatman has caulked a boat for a man, and has not made firm his work; if in that year that ship is put into use and it suffers an injury, the boatman shall alter that boat and shall make it firm out of his own funds; and he shall give the strengthened boat to the owner of the boat. 236. If a man has given his boat to a boatman on hire, if the boatman has been careless, has grounded the boat or destroyed it, the boatman shall give a boat to the owner of the boat in compensation. 237. If a man has hired a boatman and a boat, and has loaded it with grain, wool, oil, dates, or whatever the cargo was; if that boatman has been careless, has grounded the ship and destroyed all that was in it, the boatman shall make good the ship which he grounded and whatever he destroyed of what was in it. 238. If a man has grounded a boat and has refloated it, he shall pay the half of its price in silver. 239. If a man has hired a boatman, he shall give 6 GUR of grain a year. 240. If a freight boat has struck a ferry-boat, and grounded it, the owner of the grounded boat shall make a statement before God of everything that was destroyed in the boat and (the owner of) the freight boat which grounded the ferry-boat shall make good the boat and whatever was destroyed. 241. If a man has forced an ox to too hard labour, he shall pay one-third a mina of silver. 242. If a man hires (the ox) for one year, he shall pay 4 GUR of grain as the hire of a working ox. 243. For the hire of an ox to carry burdens (?) he shall give 3 GUR of grain to its owner. 244. If anyone has hired an ox or an ass, and if in the field a lion has killed it, the loss is its master’s. 245. If anyone has hired an ox and has caused it to die through ill-treatment or blows, he shall return ox for ox to the owner of the ox. 246. If a man has hired an ox and has broken his leg or has cut its nape, he shall return ox for ox to the owner of the ox. 247. If a man has hired an ox and has knocked out its eye, he shall give one-half its value in silver to the owner of the ox. 248. If anyone has hired an ox and has broken its horn, cut off its tail, or has injured its nostrils, he shall pay one-fourth of its price in silver. 249. If anyone has hired an ox and God (an accident) has struck him and he has died, he who hired the ox shall swear by the name of God and be guiltless. 250. If a furious ox in his charge gores a man and kills him, that case cannot be brought to judgment. 251. If an ox has pushed a man (with his horns) and in pushing showed him his vice, and if he has not blunted his horns, has not shut up his ox: if that ox gores a free-born man and kills him, he shall pay one-half a mina of silver. 252. If it is the slave of a man he shall give one-third of a mina of silver. 253. If a man has hired a man to live in his field and has furnished him seed grain (?) and oxen, and has bound him to cultivate the field; if that man has stolen grain or plants and they are seized in his possession, one shall cut off his hands. 254. If he has taken the seed grain (?), for himself exhausted the oxen; he shall make restitution according to the amount of the grain which he took. 255. If he has given out the man’s oxen on hire or has stolen the grain, has not caused it to grow in the field; one shall bring that man to judgment, for 100 GAN of land he shall measure out 60 GUR of grain. 256. If his community (clan) will not take up his cause, one shall leave him in the field among the oxen. (?) 257. If a man has hired a harvester, he shall give him 8 GUR of grain for one year. 258. If a man has hired an ox driver (?), he shall give him 6 GUR of grain for one year. 259. If a man has stolen a watering wheel (Gis-Apin) from the field, he shall pay 5 shekels of silver to the owner of the wheel. 260. If he has stolen a watering bucket[32] or a plough, he shall pay three shekels of silver. 261. If a man has hired a herdsman to pasture cattle and sheep, he shall pay him 8 GUR of grain a year. 262. If a man, oxen or sheep … [the stone is here defaced.] 263. If he has destroyed the oxen or sheep which were given him, ox for ox and sheep for sheep he shall restore to their owner. 264. If a herdsman, to whom oxen and sheep have been given for pasturing, has received his wages, whatever was agreed upon, and his heart is contented; if he has diminished the oxen or the sheep, has lessened the offspring, he shall give offspring and produce according to the words of his agreement. 265. If a herdsman, to whom oxen and sheep have been given for pasturing, has deceived, has changed the price, or has given them for money; he shall be brought to judgment and he shall return to their owner oxen and sheep ten times that which he stole. 266. If in the fold a disaster is brought about from God, or if a lion has killed, the herdsman shall purge himself before God, and the owner of the fold shall bear the disaster to the fold. 267. If the herdsman has been careless and in the fold has caused loss, the shepherd shall make good in oxen and sheep the loss he caused in the fold, and shall give them to their owner in good condition. 268. If a man has hired an ox for threshing, 20 KA of grain is its hire. 269. If he has hired an ass for threshing, 10 KA of grain is its hire. 270. If he has hired a young animal for threshing, 1 KA of grain is its hire. 271. If anyone has hired oxen, a cart, and driver, he shall pay 180 KA of grain for one day. 272. If anyone has hired a cart alone, he shall give 40 KA of grain for one day. 273. If anyone has hired a day labourer, from the first of the year to the fifth month, he shall give him 6 SHE of silver a day; from the sixth month to the end of the year he shall give him 5 SHE of silver a day. 274. If anyone hires an artisan,—The wages of a … are 5 SHE of silver; the wages of a brick maker (?), 5 SHE of silver; the wages of a tailor, 5 SHE of silver; the wages of a stone cutter (?) … SHE of silver; the wages of a … SHE of silver; the wages of a … SHE of silver; the wages of a carpenter, 4 SHE of silver; the wages of a … 4 SHE of silver; the wages of … SHE of silver; the wages of a mason … SHE of silver,—a day he shall give. 275. If anyone has hired a (ferry-boat?) its hire is 3 SHE of silver a day. 276. If he has hired a freight boat, he shall give 2½ SHE of silver a day as its hire. 277. If anyone has hired a boat of 60 GUR he shall give one-sixth of a shekel of silver as its hire. 278. If anyone has bought a man or woman slave and before the end of the month the bennu-sickness has fallen upon him, he shall return him to the seller, and the buyer shall take back the money which he paid. 279. If anyone has bought a man or woman slave and a complaint is made, the seller shall answer for the complaint. 280. If anyone has bought another man’s man or woman slave in a strange land; when he has come into the country and the owner of the man or woman slave recognises his property; if that man or woman slave are natives: without money he shall grant them their freedom. 281. If they are from another country, the buyer shall declare before God the money which he paid; the owner of the man or woman slave shall give to the merchant the money which he paid, and shall recover his man or woman slave. 282. If a slave has said to his master, “Thou art not my master,” one shall bring him to judgment as his slave, and his master shall cut off his ear. Having presented this remarkable code in its entirety, it is hardly necessary to comment upon it at length. It will repay the closest examination on the part of anyone who is interested in the manners and customs of this remote period. Prior to the excavations in Mesopotamia, no historian could have dared hope that we should ever have presented to us so varied and so authoritative an exposition of the laws that governed society in any part of the world in the third millennium before our era. Thanks to the imperishable nature of the materials on which the Babylonians wrote, this seeming miracle has now come to pass, and we are in a fair way to have a much more precise and accurate knowledge of the culture of this ancient people than we are likely ever to possess regarding European nations of two thousand years later. The laws that governed the Greeks and Romans of the earlier period, and the details as to the practicalities of their civilisation, are for the most part preserved to us only through traditions that utterly lack the authenticity of such an original document as this code of Khammurabi. The sands of Egypt have recently given up to us a papyrus roll on which is inscribed the famous treatise on the constitution of Athens by Aristotle; and the eagerness with which this document has been scanned by students of Greek history is in itself an evidence of the paucity of authoritative documents regarding the classical world during this relatively recent period. It is peculiarly gratifying then to be able to go back to so much more remote a period and learn as it were at first hand such interesting details of the laws that governed the social intercourse of these forerunners of the Greeks. The fact that the earliest European civilisation undoubtedly deferred in many ways to this remoter civilisation of the Orient lends additional importance to these wonderful documents from old Babylonia.[a] [30] Small boats similarly constructed are, however, introduced into a bas-relief, which appears to represent a scene on an Assyrian river or lake. [31] [The translation is based on those mentioned in the introduction together with a comparison of the Babylonian text as given in transcription by V. Scheil. g] [32] [The Egyptians call this shaduf. It is an arrangement to draw water from the canal for irrigation, and is worked by hand, whereas the wheel for the same purpose (sakieh) is turned by an animal.] It is always extremely difficult for a writer of any nationality to appreciate the peculiar genius of another nation, even as regards its political and social history. And when we turn to the question of religion, the difficulty becomes well nigh an impassable barrier. Obviously the effort must be made, but we can never feel too secure in the results; certainly not unless we know the particular bias of the individual interpreter. Perhaps we cannot better illustrate the difficulties in question than by making two short quotations, each of which includes an estimate of Babylonian influence in general, and of its religious influence in particular. One of these estimates runs thus: “In spite of the skill and knowledge of the Babylonians, and their wonderful progress in arts and sciences, they had a religion of the lowest and most degrading kind. True insight into natural phenomena was prevented, and progress beyond the surface of things stopped by a religion which had a multitude of gods, which were supposed to bring about in an irregular and capricious manner all the changes in nature and all the misfortunes which happened to the people; thus foresight and medicine were neglected, and unavailing prayers and useless sacrifices offered to propitiate the deities, who were imagined to hold the destiny of the human race in their hands.” The other estimate is quite different: “The history of Babylonia has an interest of a wider kind than that of Egypt; from its more intimate connection with the general history of the human race, and from the remarkable influence which its religion, its science, and its civilisation have had on all subsequent human progress. Its religious traditions, carried away by the Israelites who came out from Ur of the Chaldees (Genesis xi. 31), have through this wonderful people become the heritage of all mankind, while its science and civilisation, through the medium of the Greeks and Romans, have become the basis of modern research and advancement.” Now the curious thing is that these contradictory estimates occur in the same book, and only separated from one another by a few pages. They were probably not written by the same man, for the edition we are quoting is one published after the author’s death, and “edited and brought up to date” by another writer. George Smith was the author, A. H. Sayce the editor, and both alike have the highest rank as Assyriologists, and any quotation from either must be considered as having a high degree of authority. Which, then, is right? Had the Babylonians a “religion of the lowest and most degrading kind,” or was it a religion which has had a “remarkable influence upon all subsequent human progress” through having been adopted by the Hebrews, and through them becoming “the heritage of all mankind”? Or, again, are the two citations less contradictory than they seem, each being a correct statement of a particular point of view? Did the Babylonian religion, which the Hebrews are said to have borrowed, really have elements both of greatness and of degradation, and was it, therefore, capable of being interpreted in one way or the other, according to the particular element for the moment considered? Perhaps this is the fairer view. Possibly these two phases might be found to pertain to every religion whatsoever. In any event, we shall have occasion often to quote contradictory views in attempting to get at the truth about the religions of the various peoples who come before us. And of a certainty we shall sometimes be left in doubt as to the real character of the religion in question. So long as the sects of Christendom cannot agree among themselves as to the correct interpretation of the particular records which form their common basis, we can hardly hope to interpret with full justice the religious contemplations of people of another genius. The following account of Assyrian religion by Joachim Menant is based upon a study of documents from the library of Asshurbanapal, and, as will be seen, is an exposition of certain details of the subject, rather than an attempt at a comprehensive analysis. Nevertheless, its explicit depiction of these details will perhaps give the reader a clearer idea of the Assyrian religion than could be gained from a more general treatment. As already pointed out, any interpretation of the mysteries of an oriental religion must necessarily, in the present state of our knowledge, leave much to be desired.[a] It is rather difficult nowadays to distinguish the link which united science to astrology and astrology to religion. The Assyrio-Chaldean dogma is not formulated in a text by which we may grasp the whole, and thus we are obliged to seek traces of it in fragments of different sources and of different times, without being able to give them the unity they must have had in their complete form; in other words, we cannot reconstruct the Assyrian pantheon as a whole. The most superficial examination suffices to show that we are in the presence of a very complicated polytheism, but there is no text to explain the hierarchy which must have reigned in the celestial world. At the summit of this hierarchy one can perceive a divinity, one, and at the same time divisible. Dogma proclaims this divinity in certain passages, but when we wish to learn its exact individuality, it eludes us, so that we may only seize the abstraction. We are led to believe in a celestial hierarchy of beings inhabiting a superior world and subordinated to an all-powerful God, who governs gods, world, and men. He is enthroned in spaces inaccessible to us in our condition, and appears only in legends; his power intervenes only when the order of the universe is threatened, as we shall see in the legend of Ishtar, when the goddess of the dwellings of the dead wishes to keep the daughter of Sin in the dark dwelling, where she is so boldly detained. This all-powerful God does not seem to be accessible to human beings; secondary divinities revolve about him and seem, like him, to be pure spirits. In the practice of the religion one has a glimpse of an assembly of divinities, whose relations with humanity are more tangible. These gods assume more definite form, as a general thing the human one often joined with that of various animals, fish, oxen, or birds. The wings seem to have but a single symbolical signification, to denote beings of a superior order. These gods have a rather definite hierarchy, twelve of them being known as “great gods.” The one who appears to be the chief varies according to locality and time. The chances of political conquest seem to influence him, and he is changed according to the fortunes of war that give the upper hand to such and such locality where his cult is followed. At Nineveh, the god which seems to have been the highest in the celestial hierarchy, is Ilu; his character is no further defined and his symbol is often only the abstract representation of the divinity. Winged Bull discovered at Arban (Layard) In the historical texts of the Assyrian kings we find an enumeration of the great gods who were invoked by the sovereigns of the earth; their number and order is not always constant, but such as they are we can mention: Ilu (Ana), who is often confounded at Nineveh with Asshur; then Bel (Baal); and lastly Anu. These three divinities appear as the reflection of the gods of the superior world, which we have already mentioned, but to which we have been unable to ascribe names. Then follow the gods more particularly associated with the visible world: Sin, the god of the moon; Shamash, god of the sun; Bin (Ramman or Adad), god of the higher regions of the atmosphere, arbitrator of the heavens and earth, the god who presides over tempests. A series of divinities seems especially given over to the superintendence of the planets: Adar over Saturn, Marduk over Jupiter, Nergal over Mars, Ishtar over Venus, Nabu over Mercury. Ishtar seems always to have a peculiar and special individuality, notwithstanding that each of the great gods has a spouse who is often invoked with him, and who seems to complete him. The rôle of the great spouses of the great gods is not well understood; with Ishtar we can see Beltis figure, whose name is transformed and often becomes like that of Ishtar, a collective appellation of all female divinities; those whose names seem to have a more permanent character are Zarpanit, the goddess who particularly represents the fertile principle of the universe, and Tasmit, the goddess of wisdom. All female divinities seem to have direct relations with humanity, but they often disappear in the higher and inaccessible world, and then only reveal themselves through secondary influences. Secondary gods, whose number is infinite, are born of these divine couples; a tablet from the Nineveh library gives us the list of twelve sons of Anu with their attributes; of these sons other divinities are born, but their descent we cannot follow. It is so with other great gods. At Babylon the divinities are the same, but the hierarchy is different; Bel seems to have replaced Ilu (Ana), and Marduk takes the place of Asshur. It is easy to be seen that these theogonies come from a common source, which is every day becoming more accessible to us, but which we have not yet sufficiently explored to know its exact nature. The artistic development at which the Chaldeans had arrived from the remotest antiquity, allows us easily to suppose that we ought to discover in the pictured monuments that which the texts have not yet revealed to us. Unfortunately we cannot fix upon the meaning of the figures on the engraved stones until we shall have complete enlightenment from the texts. The significance of a symbol cannot be guessed at; also it is the most we can do if from all these representations we are able to recognise the figures of four or five divinities—Ilu, Nabu, Marduk, Ishtar, and Zarpanit. There is, moreover, a special reason why we should be most cautious in our comparisons; we know that when the Assyrians took possession of a hostile town, they carried away the images of strange divinities, and restored them to their possessors, after inscribing on these images the names of Assyrian gods. Therefore we should not trust too much to an Assyrian inscription to fix on the identification of the image of a divinity, as deeds of this nature might have been repeated in every campaign. It is thus, doubtless, that we may explain the fact that, while in the whole of Mesopotamia the abstract idea of the divinity was mentioned by the name Ilu, it appears on the monuments of the Achæmenidæ as Ormuzd. The Assyrio-Chaldean cult had a very solemn ritual; we already have a great number of hymns addressed to the principal divinities; and as every month and every day of the month was under the protection of a particular divinity, one may understand that the Assyrio-Chaldean ritual must have had a considerable development. There were hymns dedicated to Nabu, Sin, Shamash, Anuit, to Fire, and to the Elements. Here is a hymn which can give an idea of the lyric poetry of which the library of Nineveh included numerous fragments: “Lord Illuminator of darkness who penetrates obscurity. The Good God, who uplifts those who are in abjection, who sustains the feeble. The great gods turn their eyes towards thy light. The spirits of the abyss eagerly contemplate thy face. The language of praise is addressed to thee as a single word. The … of their heads seeks the light of the Southern sun. Like a betrothed thou restest full of joy and graciousness. In thy splendour thou attainest the limits of Heaven. Thou art the Standard of this wide World. O God, the men who live afar off contemplate thee and rejoice.” Religious ceremonies bore a relation to external worship; they all ended in invocation or sacrifice. The cylinder-engraved scenes give us an idea of these ceremonies; we usually see the priest in an attitude of adoration or prayer, sometimes alone, but often before an altar, on which reposes the object of adoration, or that which is going to be sacrificed. The most usual victim is a ram or a kid. The Assyrian kings never began an important expedition without having invoked the gods and held religious ceremonies; after a victory they offered a sacrifice on the borders of their newly conquered states. These sacrifices generally took place in the open air; nevertheless, temples were numerous in Assyria and Chaldea; their traditional form is that of a step-pyramid (ziggurat); every town had one or two temples of this kind under the patronage of one of the divinities of the Assyrian pantheon. A tablet from the library gives us a list of these different sanctuaries, where the gifts of the faithful multiplied and accumulated until the time when war came to disperse them. Cosmogony occupies a large place on the tablets of Asshurbanapal’s library. Amongst all these tablets, those which relate to the creation of the world, particularly to the history of the flood, have acquired notoriety. These ancient traditions form a whole which claims the closest attention. Whatever the philological explanations one may accept, there is one dominating matter which gives an incontestable importance to these remains, and this is their relation to the Mosaic statements. It is certain that the fall of Nineveh antedated the Babylonian captivity, and that the Bible in its present form postdates the return from captivity. It is not without interest, therefore, to compare the biblical accounts with a text, which could not have been altered from the day it was buried under the ruins of an Assyrian palace. This is not all; these ancient Assyrian legends are really the translation of a Sumerian text, which Asshurbanapal had copied and translated from the libraries of lower Chaldea, and we know positively that these texts antedate the reign of the ancient Sargon, and are therefore earlier by several centuries than the time when Abraham must have left Chaldea. It is doubtless not the place here to give way to a discussion on pure philology; we will simply say this: when we make a mistake in translating a hymn addressed to the god Sin, and apply it to quite another divinity of the Assyrian pantheon, it is a deplorable mistake; but such an error, were it the most gross, would have no influence on our present prejudices. It is otherwise if we refer to a text which can influence our intimate beliefs, be it to fortify them, combat them, or explain their origin. In England and other protestant countries the discoveries of George Smith acquired a tremendous notoriety, and his translations are accepted with an eagerness and confidence which a severe criticism has not justified. In France these discoveries aroused less curiosity from the first, and Assyriologists who study legendary texts have done so with a dispassionateness which is all the more conducive to scientific and correct historic results. Nevertheless, from these sources and authorities, translations have passed into elementary books, where it has been sought to use them in the support of preconceived ideas, often by altering their true meaning. We cannot set ourselves too strongly against such proceedings. It is surely not a new principle, that disinterested science must with perfect impartiality scrutinise all books, legends, and documents which claim the attention of the human mind. The history of the creation comprises a collection of several tablets, of which the text was published in 1875, in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology. This text includes six fragments forming part of a series of tablets designated in Assyria under the title of “Enuva” (i.e., Formerly).[b] Since George Smith first published the tablets various other fragments have been discovered, the most important new discovery, perhaps, being made by Mr. L. W. King[j] of a tablet containing a reference to the creation of man. He found that the tablets belonging to the series are seven in number, and has published all the hitherto known material in his Seven Tablets of Creation. The following extracts are taken from his translation: When in the height heaven was not named, And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name, And the primeval Apsu who begat them, And chaos, Tiamat, the mother of them both,— Their waters were mingled together, And no field was found, no marsh was to be seen; When of the gods none had been called into being, And none bore a name, and no destinies [were ordained] Then were created the gods in the midst of [heaven] Lakhmu and Lakhamu were called into being [............] Ages increased [........] Then Anshar and Kishar were created, and over them [.......] Long were the days, then there came forth [........] Anu, their son, Anshar and Anu [.........] And the god Anu [.........] Here follow three tablets telling of the revolt of Tiamat and her defeat, which will be spoken of later on. The fifth tablet begins: He (Marduk) made the stations for the great gods; The stars, their images, as the stars of the zodiac he fixed. He ordained the year and into sections he divided it; For the twelve months he fixed three stars. ........ The Moon-god he caused to shine forth, the night he intrusted to him. He appointed him, a being of the night, to determine the days. The rest of the tablet is rather badly mutilated. The sixth begins: When Marduk heard the words of the gods, His heart prompted him and he devised He opened his mouth and unto Ea [he spake], That which he had conceived in his heart he imparted [unto him], “My blood will I take and bone will I [fashion], I will make man, that man may........[.......] I will create man who shall inhabit [the earth] That the service of the gods may be established and that [their] shrines [may be built]. But I will alter the ways of the gods, and I will change [their paths]; Together shall they be oppressed, and unto evil shall [they......]” And Ea answered him and spake the word: The rest of the tablet is too fragmentary for translation. The seventh contains the fifty titles of Marduk. Besides these seven tablets there are some which contain other accounts of the creation. One of these refers to the creation of cattle and the beasts of the field.[a] When the gods in their assembly had made [the world] And had created the heavens and had formed [the earth] And had brought living creatures into being [......] And [had fashioned] the cattle of the field, and the beasts of the field, and the creatures [of the city],— After [they had........] unto the living creatures [.......][c] The rest is too mutilated for comprehension of anything besides single words. The fact that these tablets as well as so many others of Babylonian origin were found in an Assyrian library, shows that the Assyrians took their religion like the rest of their culture from the Babylonians. Indeed the Assyrian myths, religious doctrines, and observances are so similar to those of the mother-country that in speaking of Babylonian religion the Assyrian is usually to be understood as well. The Babylonian religion in turn was largely influenced by the Summerian which was an astral religion. The names of the gods are found written with the same ideograms although they were doubtless pronounced differently. Many of the texts are found written in Summerian with interlinear Assyrian translations. Babylonian religion as we first see it is in the form of local cults. Each city with its surrounding district had its own god, whose authority was supreme. Thus Anu was worshipped in Erech, Bel in Nippur, Ea in Eridu, Sin in Uru, Shamash in Larsa and Sippar. When these cities began to be welded together into political systems, the gods also were put together into an organised pantheon in which political situations influenced the relations the gods were made to bear to each other. Thus when Babylon became the capital of the empire its special god, Marduk, became leader among the gods. A second characteristic feature of the Babylonian religion is that it is based on natural phenomena. The myths are nature myths. The story of the original creation was in a way the prototype of what happened every year. The earth is covered with water from the winter rains (state of chaos). The spring sun (Marduk) fights with and overcomes the water (Tiamat); the earth appears, green things of all kinds and life are produced. The story of the flood may have referred to the annual inundation, with perhaps the added element of severe winds and a tidal wave from the south. Such inundations have occurred in historic times. Ishtar’s descent into the lower world marks the autumn when everything is dry and has been burned up by the fierce summer sun. Ishtar goes to seek the water of life, which in the Babylonian world was a most appropriate metaphor, because water actually was the life of the country. Without it the land was arid and desolate as to-day; with it, its luxuriant vegetation caused the region about Babylon to be called the garden of the gods (Karaduniash). The creation legend as we have it must have been written after the consolidation of the empire with Babylon as its capital, because in the story Marduk, although one of the younger gods, is made the champion and leader of the others. The tablets on which the legend is contained now usually go by the name of enuma elish, “when above,” from the opening words. The opening lines of the story relating the creation of the gods, and the latter part telling of the creation of animals and man, we have already seen. The version of creation given here is practically the one Berosus gives of the Babylonians, which is found in Eusebius and which he quotes from Polyhistor (see Appendix A). In the beginning was chaos, consisting of a watery mass. Only two beings existed—Apsu, the Deep, and Tiamat, the universal mother. These two represent the two formative elements from whose union the gods were created. First Lakhmu and Lakhamu were born, then Anshar and Kishar, and after a long interval the other great gods. Tiamat, after having brought forth the gods, conceived a hatred for them and created a large number of monsters to aid her in a battle against them and gave the command to her son Kingu. She bore: “giant snakes, sharp as to teeth, and merciless—with poison she filled their bodies as with blood.” Anshar sends his son Anu against Tiamat, but he is afraid to face her. After Ea also has been sent in vain, Marduk offers to take up the fight, but first demands to be recognised by the other gods as their champion. Anshar summons the great gods to a feast, informs them of all that has taken place, and calls on them to appoint Marduk as their defender. The gods do so and hail him with the following words (the translation of the Assyrian texts is based upon that of Jensen[h] in his Cosmologie der Babylonier): Thou art the most honoured among the great gods Thy fate has no equal, thy decree is Anu. Marduk, thou art most honoured among the great gods Thy fate has no equal, thy decree is Anu. From now on thy word shall not be altered, To put up and to lower, shall be in thy hand; What goes out of thy mouth shall be established Thy decree shall not be resisted. No one among the great gods shall overstep thy boundary ........ Marduk, thou our avenger, We give thee dominion over the whole world. To test his powers the gods place a garment before Marduk and tell him to bid it disappear and come back again at his word. When he has accomplished this prodigy the gods are pleased and exclaim “Marduk is king.” The avenger after equipping himself for the fray goes out to meet Tiamat and her host, taking with him his thunderbolt, spear, and net; he is followed by seven winds, which he has created. We take up the story again at the point where Marduk challenges Tiamat to battle: “Stand! I and thou let us fight together—” When Tiamat heard these words She became like one demented, and lost her senses. Then cried out Tiamat wild and loud Her limbs trembled to their very foundations, She said an incantation, and spoke a formula, And of the gods of battle, she asked their weapons. They drew near, Tiamat and Marduk, wise among the gods, They advanced to battle, came near to fight— Then the lord spread out his net and surrounded her. He let loose the evil wind that was behind him. When Tiamat opened her mouth to its full extent, He sent the evil wind into it, so that she could not close her lips. Filled her belly with terrible winds Her heart was … and she opened wide her mouth. He seized the spear and pierced through her belly Cut through her inward parts, and pierced her heart. He overcame her and destroyed her life, Threw down her body and stood upon it. When he had killed Tiamat, the leader, Her might was broken and her host scattered And the gods, her helpers, who went at her side Trembled, were afraid, and turned back. After Marduk had dealt with the minor rebels He returned to Tiamat, whom he had conquered He cut her in two parts like a fish He put up one half of her as a cover for the heavens, Placed before it a bolt and established a watchman— And commanded him not to let her waters come forth. The rest of the legend deals with the creation and has been mentioned elsewhere. Professor Gunkel[i] (in his Schöpfung und Chaos) in speaking of this myth says that Tiamat’s offspring, the monsters of the sea, are the stars in the constellations of the zodiac. The stars are the children of the night. Marduk is the spring sun, who fights with the waters, finally subdues them, and brings forth vegetation. This story of Marduk and his fight with the dragon is sometimes identified with the Christ story. The Babylonians also appear to have celebrated a festival at the new year, when the sun turned back from the equator and left the constellation of the water-man. This may be said to mark the birth of spring. Three months later when the god has grown sufficiently strong he fights with the waters (Tiamat Sin) and conquers. The Babylonians pictured the earth as a cone-shaped mountain surrounded by water. Over this was stretched the dome of heaven behind which was the heavenly ocean and the home of the gods. In the dome were two gates through which Shamash the sun-god passed out in the morning and entered at night. The moon and stars were within the dome, and did not pass through it as did the sun. Underneath the thick crust of the earth’s surface the space was all filled with water, and within the crust was Arallu, the home of the dead and land of “no return.” This was supposed to be surrounded by seven walls. Although the real home of the gods was beyond the dome of heaven, they usually lived on the earth and had their council-chamber on the mountain of sunrise, near the gate through which Shamash came out in the morning. The Babylonian gods are very human. They are born, live, love, fight, and even die, like the people on the earth. The conception is wholly materialistic. Alfred Jeremias k says of this religion: “A practical streak runs through the religion of the inhabitants of the Euphrates valley. Their gods are gods of the living; they are in active intercourse with them as helpers in every action, as rescuers from all evil. The whole religious interest centres on the necessities of this world. There is no room for the anxious reflection and philosophising as to the whence, and whither of the soul, which is so characteristic of the Egyptians. With death comes an end of strength and life, of hope and comfort. Hence their religion as such has little to do with conceptions of another world.” The names of the chief gods have been already mentioned. Besides the ilani rabuti, the great gods, there were a hosts of smaller ones, and a large number of good and evil spirits. Sickness and disease were supposed to be brought by demons, the children of the under-world who performed the bidding of Allatu and Nergal, the rulers over hades. Allatu’s chief messenger was Namtar, the demon of pestilence. The Annunaki likewise did her errands of destruction. The Babylonians lived in constant terror of offending some of these divinities, and a large part of their literature was devoted to magical formulas and prayers for aid and protection. Before undertaking any deed it was customary to find out whether or not the omens were favourable. Certain days were particularly unlucky and on them nothing could be done. The 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days of every month were among the unlucky ones. The later Jewish sabbath is thus seen to have been originally an unlucky day rather than a holy day. Hugo Winckler has suggested an ingenious theory for the fact that thirteen has always been considered an unlucky number. In order to make the Babylonian calendrical system of lunar months agree with the solar year, it was necessary to insert an extra month. This thirteenth month was regarded as being in the way and disturbing calculations. So thirteen came to be regarded as a superfluous, unlucky number. Another sign of the zodiac was appointed for this extra month, and this was the sign of the raven. A great many of the tablets which have been excavated contain omens. Omens were drawn from dreams, from the conjunction of stars and planets, from earthquakes, eclipses, and in short from all natural phenomena. Connected with this was the magical literature, the hymns, and penitential psalms. If all a man’s precautions had been in vain and disease had come upon him, there were magical formulas which might rescue him from his misery, certain prayers or hymns he might recite. Every Babylonian had his own protecting god and goddess, to whose care he was perhaps committed at birth, but the intervention of a priest was necessary to appease the god. The following prayer, from a tablet used as prayer-book for the use of priest and penitent, is taken from King’s[c] Babylonian Religion and Mythology: O my God, who art angry, accept my prayer, O my goddess, who art angry, receive my supplication. Receive my supplication and let thy spirit be at rest. O my goddess, look with pity on me and accept my supplication. Let my sins be forgiven, let my transgressions be blotted out. Let the ban be torn away, let the bonds be loosened. Let the seven winds carry away my sighs. I will send away my wickedness, let the bird bear it to the heavens. Let the fish carry off my misery, let the river sweep it away. Let the beast of the field take it from me. Let the flowing waters of the river wash me clean. To ascertain why the evil had come upon the man, questions like the following were asked, some of which show an advanced moral code: Has he estranged the father from his son or the son from his father? Has he estranged the mother from her daughter or the daughter from her mother? Has he estranged the brother from his brother or the friend from his friend? Has he refused to set a captive free? Has he shut out a prisoner from the light? has he committed a sin against a god or against a goddess? Has he done violence to one older than himself? Has he said yes for no or no for yes? Has he used false scales? Has he accepted a wrong account? Has he set up a false landmark? Has he broken into his neighbour’s house? Has he come near his neighbour’s wife? Has he shed his neighbour’s blood? On one old tablet which has a Summerian interlinear translation the stricken man turns to Marduk as an intercessor: An evil curse like a demon has come upon the man Sorrow and trouble have fallen upon him Evil sorrow has fallen upon him An evil curse, a spell, a sickness, The evil curse has slain that man like a lamb. His god has departed from his body, His guardian goddess has left his side, He is covered by sorrow and trouble as with a garment, and he is overwhelmed. Then Marduk saw him He entered into the house of his father Ea and said to him: “O my father, an evil curse like a demon has beset the man.” Twice he spoke unto him and said “I know not what that man has done nor whereby he may be cured.” Ea made answer to his son Marduk: “O my son, what thou dost not know, what can I tell thee? O, Marduk, what thou dost not know, what can I tell thee? What I know, thou knowest, Go my son Marduk, Take him to the house of purification Take away the spell from him, remove the spell from him.” A very pessimistic view of life is shown by the following complaint of a sick man quoted by Jeremias: “The day is sighing, the night a flood of tears; weeping is the month and misery the year.” We have already seen specimens of Babylonian hymnology. The following hymn to Sin, as translated from Shrader’s[m] work on cuneiform inscriptions, shows real religious fervour: Lord, ruler among the gods, who alone is great on heaven and earth, Father Nannar, Lord, God Amar, ruler among the gods ........ Merciful, gracious father, in whose hand the life of the whole land is held. O Lord, thy divinity is like the distant heaven, like the wide sea, full of majesty. He who has created the land, founded the temple, called it by name Father, generator of gods and men, who caused dwellings to be put up, established sacrifice Who calls to dominions, gives the sceptre, decides fate for distant days, Mighty leader, whose depths no god sees through Valiant one, whose knees never grow tired, who opens the way for the gods, his brothers, Who passes glorious from the depths of heaven to its heights, Who opens the gate of heaven, makes light for all men. Father, generator of all, who looks upon living beings … who thinks upon … Lord, who utters judgment for heaven and earth, whose decree no one alters Who holds fire and water, who directs living beings, What god is like to thee? ........ In heaven who is great? Thou alone art great. On earth, who is great? Thou alone art great. When thy word resounds in heaven, the Igigi throw themselves upon their faces; When thy word resounds on earth the Anunnaki kiss the ground. When thy word speeds above like the storm wind, it causes food and drink to flourish, When thy word settles upon the east, the green arises, Thy word makes stall and herd to be fat, expands living beings. Thy word causes right and justice to arise, so that men speak justice. Thy word is the distant heaven, the hidden under-world which no one sees through, Thy word, who can understand it, who is equal to it? O Lord, thou hast no rival in heaven in dominion nor on the earth in power, among the gods thy brothers. The close relation existing between mythology and religion hardly needs to be pointed out. The great epic of the Babylonians and Assyrians—that of Gilgamish—is of special interest to us since it contains the Babylonian story of the flood. The hero’s name was formerly read as Izdubar, as the following quotation from Jeremias[n] in his Izdubar-Nimrod shows.[a] The epic, which was preserved in the royal library of Nineveh in the seventh century as a precious national possession, gives us a glimpse into the Babylonian history of a remote past. The poem deals principally with “kings who ruled the land in by-gone times,” and with a city “which was old” at the time of the flood, and the epic itself reaches back into very ancient times. Its scene is laid among cities in the Euphrates district: Uruk (Erech), Nippur, the “city of ships,” Sherippak and Babylon. The geographical horizon extends beyond these cities to the mountain Nisir, east of the Tigris, and southwards, beyond the Mashu mountain land, clear into the Persian Gulf. The central point of interest is the city Uruk, called Uruk supuri, “the well guarded.” Among the aristocracy of this city Izdubar makes himself distinguished, being “perfect in power, like a mountain ox, excelling the heroes in might.” He overcomes the jealousy of his fellow citizens and establishes an indigenous kingdom, namely by conquering the tyrant Khumbaba, who is shown by his name to be of Elamite descent. The attempt has been made to identify this historical background with the national uprising of Babylonia, which, according to Berosus, brought about the downfall of an Elamite dynasty ruling 2450-2250 B.C. That the tradition really did reach back to this age is proved by Babylonian seal-cylinders of the oldest kings, which unquestionably reproduce scenes from the epic, perhaps also the connection of the epic with certain constellations of the zodiac. More important than the historical is the mythological background. Since Babylonian religion did not belong to the “aristocracy of book religions,” it is difficult to form a system from the abundance of religious literature, the views of which have been influenced by varying popular opinion. Hence the portrayal of the divine world as found in a finished epic is the more important. As in the inscription of King Nabunaid, written 2,000 years later, so here we find the two great divine triads, Anu, Bel, Ea, who represent three parts of the world according to Babylonian ideas (heaven, earth, ocean), and Shamash, Sin, Ishtar, who represent the chief heavenly bodies (Sun, Moon, Venus). The relations between gods and men is pictured in a naïve childlike fashion, as in Homer. Ishtar tries to win the love of the hero Izdubar. Shamash establishes friendship between the hero and Eabani, the three great gods Anu, Bel, Ea whisper secrets into his ear. As Ishtar at one time mounts from out the city to the heaven of her father Bel, so the gods out of fear of the rising flood “crouch down like dogs at the portals of heaven”; they flock like flies around the sacrifice and “smell the good smell.” One remarkable feature of the epic should be noticed here, namely, the importance attached to dreams. The whole action is set in motion by countless dreams, by means of which the gods show men the future and give them council. This view is characteristic of Babylonian and Assyrian religion. The ancient Babylonian king Gudea is shown the outline of the temple building in a dream. Asshurbanapal on his coming to the throne receives an address of encouragement from the priestly class, which is based on a dream of his grandfather Sennacherib, and in his campaigns inspiring dreams are sent to his soldiers from the goddess of war.[n] Nothing definite is known as to the time of the composition of this epic. We do not know if the copy in Asshurbanapal’s library was made from a Babylonian original or not. It is not probable that the whole was written at one time or by one author. The Gilgamish epic comprises twelve tablets. These are mutilated and broken in places leaving gaps in the story, but they are sufficiently well preserved to permit us to follow the main thread of the argument. When the scene opens the city of Erech is suffering under the severe misfortune of a protracted siege. The inhabitants are in distress and the gods do nothing to help them. This siege lasts for three years, during which time the gates of the city remain closed. Then Gilgamish appears, whether as conqueror or deliverer the mutilated condition of the tablet leaves in doubt. He was probably the former, since his rule is very severe and the people complain of his tyrannical acts. In their distress they appeal to the goddess Aruru, who is elsewhere associated with Marduk in the creation of mankind, to make a person who shall rival Gilgamish in strength and power. Aruru accordingly creates Ea-bani, a creature whose whole body is covered with long hair like a woman’s. The upper part of his body is like a man but his legs are those of a beast. This strange being lives among the beasts of the field, eating and drinking with them. Gilgamish fearing that Ea-bani will be sent by the gods against him sends out a man called the hunter to catch and bring him to Erech. The hunter lies in wait for him three days, but on account of his great strength is afraid to attack him and returns to the city. Gilgamish then sends a harlot from the temple with the hunter, to tempt Ea-bani. This plan is successful. Ea-bani forsakes his cattle out of love for Achat, the harlot, and is persuaded by her to return to Erech and meet Gilgamish. One thinks involuntarily here of the story of Adam and Eve. There also it is a woman who tempts man and leads him to civilisation. Ea-bani would like to match his strength with Gilgamish, but he is warned in a dream not to do so. Gilgamish is also told in a dream of Ea-bani’s coming, and the goddess to whom he appeals for interpretation of his dream advises him to make friends with the approaching hero. The intervention of Shamash, the sun-god, however, is necessary to persuade Ea-bani to become a companion and friend to Gilgamish. The two heroes then proceed against the Elamite tyrant, Khumbaba. The epic tells of the long, hard road they have to follow, of their terror, and of the wonderful cedar grove in which the fortress of Khumbaba is placed. Gilgamish has several encouraging dreams to cheer them on, and they eventually succeed in killing the tyrant. On their return Gilgamish has the misfortune to incur Ishtar’s displeasure. The goddess sues for his love and invites him to become her husband. He, however, refuses her favour, even reproaching her for her cruel treatment of her former lovers, Tammuz among them, all of whom she has forsaken and destroyed. Ishtar in her rage at being repulsed hastens to her father, Anu, who creates a divine bull to attack Gilgamish. The latter, however, with Ea-bani’s help succeeds in conquering the bull. He sacrifices his magnificent horns to Shamash and proudly boasts that he will conquer Ishtar as well as the bull. But here his success is at an end. Ea-bani dies, probably stricken by Ishtar, and Gilgamish himself is afflicted by her with a dreadful disease, which strikes terror to his heart at the thought that he must die like his friend. Izdubar wept for Ea-bani, his friend; In sorrow he laid himself down in the field. “I will not die like Ea-bani, Grief has entered my soul. I am afraid of death And lay me down in the field.” Gilgamish then determines to seek Sit-napishtim and beseech his help to rescue him from disease and death. After various experiences he comes to the mountain Mashu, the sunset mountain, whose gates are guarded by scorpion men. They let him enter and he journeys for twenty-four hours in intense darkness before he emerges into the sunlight and passes by a tree and grove with precious stones for fruit. He then comes to the sea coast, ruled over by a princess Sabitum. She advises him to seek out Arad-Ea, the former pilot of Sit-napishtim, who may possibly carry him across the waters. Arad-Ea consents, builds a boat with the aid of Gilgamish and they set out together. The most difficult part of the voyage is the journey across the “waters of death.” The two finally reach the island home of Sit-napishtim who, at Gilgamish’s request, tells the story of his escape from the flood (as translated from Jeremias[n]): Sit-napishtim said to him, to Gishduba (Gilgamish), “I will reveal to thee, Gishduba, something hidden. And a secret of the gods will I tell thee. Shurippak, a city which thou knowest—on the banks of the Euphrates it is situated— This city is old. The gods within it, Their heart led the great gods to bring up a deluge. Their father Anu was there, their counsellor, the mighty Bel, Their herald Ninib, their leader En-nu-gi. Ninigiazag (Ea) was with them and related their words to a hut of reeds, saying: “O reed hut, O reed hut! O wall, wall! Reed hut hear! wall understand! Thou man of Shurippak, son of Ubaratutu, Make a house, build a ship, leave thy possessions, seek thy life. Abandon thy goods, and save thy life. Bring up living seed of every kind into the ship, The ship, which thou shalt build. Its dimensions must be measured; Its breadth and its strength must suit each other. Thou shalt place it in the ocean.” I understood and said to Ea, my lord, “See, my lord, what thou hast commanded I shall heed and perform. But, how shall I answer to the city, to the people and to the elders?” Ea opened his mouth and spake, said to me, his slave, “This answer shalt thou say to them: Because Bel hateth me No longer will I live in your city, nor lay my head on Bel’s earth. To the deep will I go down and live with Ea, my lord. He will then cause it to rain upon ye abundantly. A large number of birds, a crowd of fishes, A quantity of animals, abundant harvest.… The lines here are too mutilated to make much meaning. According to some interpretations Sit-napishtim assures his fellow-citizens of coming prosperity so that they have no misgivings as to his leaving them; others, on the contrary, indicate that Sit-napishtim made no secret of the coming deluge. Sit-napishtim then relates how he built the ship, gives its dimensions, and tells what he put into it. He continues (Jeremias’[n] translation): “I brought up into the ship my whole family, and my dependants, Cattle of the field, beasts of the field, artisans all together I brought them up. Shamash had appointed a signal, ‘The lord of darkness will send a heavy rain in the evening. Then enter into the ship and close the door.’ The appointed time came; The lord of darkness sent a heavy rain in the evening. I feared the beginning of the day; I was afraid to look upon the day. I entered the ship and closed the door. To the pilot of the ship, to Puzur-Bel, the boatman, I intrusted the ship and what was in it. When the first dawn appeared A black cloud arose from the foundation of heaven Ramman thundered within it. Nabu and Marduk preceded it. They advanced as leaders over mountain and earth. Uragal pulled up the anchor; Ninib went forth and caused the storm to follow. The Annunaki raised their torches; They lighted the earth with their beams. The thunder of Ramman mounted to heaven; Everything light was turned to darkness.” Ramman floods the land, the tempest rages for a whole day, a strong wind blows the water like mountains upon the people. “Brother did not see his brother, men could not be distinguished; in heaven The gods were afraid of the deluge. They quailed, they mounted up to the heaven of Anu. The gods crouched down like dogs, at the borders of heaven. Ishtar screamed like a woman in travail. The lady of the gods cried with a loud voice ‘Former man has been turned again to clay Because I counselled an evil thing in the council of the gods.’” Ishtar complains that her offspring have become like fish spawn and the gods weep with her. After six days, however, the storm abates, the sea becomes quiet. Sit-napishtim looks out of the window and weeps at the sight that meets his gaze. Mankind is turned to clay, the world is all sea. After twelve days land appears, and the ship sticks fast on the top of Mount Nisit, where it remains for six days. “When the seventh day drew nigh, I sent out a dove and let her go. The dove flew hither and thither, But as there was no resting place for her, she returned. Then I sent out a swallow and let her go. The swallow flew hither and thither, But as there was no resting place for her, she returned. Then I sent out a raven and let her go. The raven flew off and saw the diminishing of the waters, She came near and croaked, but did not return. Then I brought out (all), offered a sacrifice to the four winds; I made a libation on the top of the mountain, I laid out the vessels seven by seven, Under them I put reed, cedar-wood and incense. The gods smelled the smell. The gods smelled the good smell. The gods gathered like flies about the lord of the sacrifice.” When Ishtar arrives she bitterly accuses Bel for having destroyed mankind and refuses to let him approach the sacrifice. Bel on his part is angry that any man whatever has escaped. Ea interposes, rebukes Bel for his deed, and tells him that in the future some other device shall be used to punish mankind. Bel accepts the censure and himself leads Sit-napishtim and his wife out of the ship and blesses them. They are then transported to an island at the “mouth of the streams” where they are to live forever. After listening to this story Gilgamish is cured of his disease by Sit-napishtim who also tells him of a plant which has the power to prolong life. Gilgamish sets out with Arad-Ea to find it, and their search is indeed successful; but later on in the journey a demon steals the plant, and Gilgamish returns sorrowfully home. Here he continues to mourn for his lost friend Ea-bani. In his desire to see him again he appeals in turn to Bel, Sin, and Ea to assist him, but they are powerless to help him. It is Nergal, god of the dead, who grants his request and “opened the earth, let the spirit of Ea-bani come out of the earth like a breath of wind.” When asked to describe the under-world Ea-bani at first answers, “I cannot tell you, my friend, I cannot tell you,” then he bids him sit down and weep while he gives him a gloomy account of the place, which closes with the following lines (Jeremias’ translation): “On a couch he lieth, drinking pure water. He who was killed in battle—thou hast seen it, I have seen it— His father and his mother hold his head And his wife kneels at his side. He whose corpse lies in the field—thou hast seen it, I have seen it— His soul has no rest in the world. He whose soul has no one to care for it—thou hast seen it, I have seen it. The dregs of the cup, the remnants of the feast—what is thrown on the street, that is his food.”[h] This is the end of the epic. It has been suggested that the whole forms a solar myth and is divided into twelve parts to correspond to the twelve months. According to this theory the sixth tablet, relating to Ishtar, and her treatment of Tammuz and her other lovers, corresponds to the sixth month. It is the month when everything seems dry and dead after the hot summer sun, and in this month the festival of Tammuz was celebrated, as a characteristic of which was the weeping for Tammuz related in Ezekiel viii. 14. The seventh tablet speaking of Gilgamish’s illness would thus correspond to the seventh month, the one following the summer solstice, when the power of nature seems to grow less, and this was attributed to a disease of the sun. This idea is brought out more fully in the legend of Ishtar’s descent into the under world. It is possible that the story used to be recited in connection with the festival of Tammuz just mentioned. Ishtar is pictured as descending into the lower realms, probably in search of her young husband. The picture it gives us of the conception the Babylonians had of life after death is very valuable. The poem begins: To the land of no return, to the land … Ishtar the daughter of Sin inclined her ear. To the house of darkness, the dwelling of Irkalla To the house from which none who enter ever return To the road whose course does not turn back. To the house in which he who enters is deprived of light, Where dust is their nurture and mud their food. They see not the light, they dwell in darkness. They are clothed like birds in a garment of feathers. On the doors and bolts is spread dust. When Ishtar reached the gate of the land of no return She spoke to the porter at the gate “Porter, open thy gate, Open thy gate, I will enter. If thou dost not open thy gate, and I do not enter, I will strike the door, I will break the bolt, I will strike the threshold and break down the door. I will raise up the dead to consume the living, The dead shall be more numerous than the living!” The porter opened his mouth and spoke, Spoke to the powerful Ishtar: “Stay, my lady, do not break it down, I will go and announce thy name to the queen Allatu.” The porter then informs Allatu that her sister Ishtar stands at the door. The goddess is displeased at the news but bids the porter open the door and treat her according to the “ancient laws.” These demanded that she should lose some part of her apparel at each of the seven gates of the under-world until she stood naked before the throne of its goddess. At the first gate the porter takes away her crown and she asks: “Why, O porter, dost thou take the great crown from my head!” He answers: “Enter, O lady, for these are the commands of the mistress of the world.” At each gate Ishtar remonstrates at having her ornaments taken from her, and each time the porter returns the same answer. When Ishtar comes before Allatu, the latter commands her messenger Namtar to smite the goddess with disease in all parts of her body. But while Ishtar is being detained in the lower world, all life has stopped on the earth’s surface. The gods demand her release. A being is specially created to bring her back. The rest of the story and the meaning of this and the flood myth is told by C. P. Tiele[o] as follows:[a] The story of Ishtar’s descent into hades is unmistakably a nature myth, which describes in picturesque fashion her descent into the under-world to seek the springs of living water, probably the central force of light and heat in the world. When she is imprisoned there by Allatu, the goddess of death and of the shadow world, and even visited with all sorts of diseases, all growth and generation stand still in the world, so that the gods take council and decide to demand her release. Ea accordingly creates a wonderful being a kind of priest, called “his light shineth,” who is to seek out the fountain of life, and whom Allatu cannot withstand, however much she may scold and curse. The goddess is set free, returns to the upper world and brings her dead lover Tammuz back to life by sprinkling him with the water of immortality. This myth is not cosmological nor ethical, but has already become a pure anthropomorphic narration, the physical basis for certain episodes and details of which is often not clear, and which has a tendency to strengthen belief in immortality. The account of the flood also, which we have in several versions and which was itself put together out of various parts, some of them heterogeneous, betrays the fact that it was put together by a polytheist and originated in a nature myth. But the nature myths as such lie already so far behind the author, there is such a naïve humour in the way the gods are represented, everything happens in such a human fashion—one needs only to think of Ishtar’s complaint that she has created men but no brood of fishes, of the sly excuse with which Ea excuses himself to Bel for having rescued his favourite from the destruction planned by the latter, one needs only to hear how Bel is preached at by the wise Ea for his unreasonable and blind passion, and how the great Ishtar declares him to have forfeited his share of the sacrifice, and then see how he silently acknowledges his wrong by himself accompanying the man over whose rescue he had become so excited, and raising him with his family to a place among the gods—one needs only to think of all this to see that the narrator made use of the mythological material only to describe the fall of sinful humanity and at the same time to remind his hearers that the gods always have means at their command, such as hunger, pestilence, and wild beasts, to punish the evil-doer.[o] The Babylonian view of life after death was particularly gloomy. There was no hope of anything better. The highest state of happiness pictured was to lie on a couch and drink clear water; even for the pious it was a place of gloom. And there was no possibility of escaping from it. Sit-napishtim tells Gilgamish in this connection that death must come to all (we translate again from the version of Jeremias[n]): So long as houses are built, So long as contracts are made, So long as brothers quarrel, So long as enmity exists, So long as rivers bear their waves [to the sea] ........ The Anunnaki and the great gods determine fate And Mammetum, the creator of destiny, with them. They determine life and death, The days of death are not known.[h] We have seen the legend telling of a visit to the lower world; there are two which tell of visits to heaven. One is in connection with Etana. In Asshurbanapal’s library were a series of tablets containing the Etana legend. One portion of the story tells how Shamash helped Etana to find a plant which would help his wife in child-birth. Another narrates how Etana mounted to heaven on the back of an eagle. They pause at different stages to look at the earth beneath them. At the first stop: “The earth appears like a mountain, the sea has become a pool.” They go further and the eagle again calls to Etana to look at the earth. This time the sea looks like a belt around the earth. The next time he looks the sea has become a mere gardener’s ditch. After reaching the gate of Anu, Bel, and Ea, the eagle wants to go still further and persuades Etana to accompany him to Ishtar’s abode. They fly until the earth appears a mere “garden bed,” but here the rash attempt of the eagle to reach the highest regions appears to be punished. The two are hurled down from heaven upon the earth. Another part of the legend tells of a deceit practised upon the eagle by the serpent, aided by Shamash, in which the eagle dies a miserable death. The second story of a visit to heaven is found in the legend of Adapa. This legend was on one of the tablets found at Tel Amarna. Adapa is a son of the god Ea, and is represented as serving in his temple. One day as he is fishing in the sea the south wind overturns his boat. Adapa then fights with the south wind and succeeds in breaking its wings so that it does not blow for seven days. At the end of this time Anu, in heaven, becomes aware that the south wind has not been blowing and inquires the reason. When told, he becomes very angry that anyone should have had the audacity to interfere with any of his creatures. He accordingly sends for Adapa to appear before him. Ea gives his son advice as to his conduct, telling him how to secure the good favour of the two porters at the gate, one of whom is Tammuz. He tells him further: “When thou comest before Anu, they will offer thee food of death—do not eat. Water of death they will offer thee—do not drink. They will offer thee a garment—put it on. They will offer thee oil—anoint thyself.” Adapa then reaches heaven, and everything happens as Ea has told him. Only the food and water which are offered him are of life not of death, and thus Adapa loses his chances of eternal life. Anu looks at him in amazement and exclaims: “O Adapa, why didst thou not eat and drink? Now thou canst not live.” Here, as in the case of Adam in the biblical story, whose name by the way may possibly be identical with Adapa, we see that a deceit was practised on man. In each case he is told that the food and water of life will bring him death, although the Babylonian story differs from the biblical in that the former freely and gladly accords man knowledge, as represented by the clothing and oil for anointment, which may be regarded as symbols of civilisation. In the Euphrates valley religion was very closely associated with the actual life of the nation. The temples were storehouses and banking establishments; the priests were lawyers and scribes. Every historical inscription contains a reference to the gods. Victory was due to their intervention. Nothing was conceived without them. Their festivals were the great events of the year. The German excavating society has recently brought to light the old procession street between Babylon and Borsippa over which the image of the god Nabu used to be carried on his annual visit to Marduk at Babylon. This street was decorated with glazed, coloured tiles, representing a stately procession of lions and other beasts, which show a high grade of artistic talent. The Babylonian religion shows its development plainly. In its earliest phase we have the belief in a great many spirits and demons, who could be controlled by magic. Then comes the period of local cults followed by the organised pantheon, in which we see faint signs of a conception of one god manifested in many forms.[a] To sum up in the words of Tiele: From all that has been said it will be seen that the religion of the Babylonians had at an early date attained a comparatively high stage of development. It had not yet crossed the boundary of monotheism but remained a theocratic, monarchical polytheism; nevertheless it came very near that boundary. The gods of mythology were already treated with great freedom, and the disgust which some of their deeds called forth was not disguised. A comparatively pure and lofty conception of the highest divinity had already been developed, even if it was called upon by different names. However much superficiality and formality, however many superstitions and magical customs may have been connected with the divine worship, it was yet not lacking in deep religious feeling and moral earnestness, which is shown particularly in the penitential psalms.[o] Bas-relief of Workmen and Cart (After Layard) Of all the revelations regarding the Mesopotamian civilisation which the researches of Botta and Layard and their followers have brought to light, none perhaps are more interesting than those that showed the position which art had attained in those far-off and forgotten times. It had all along been remembered that powerful political empires had risen and fallen here, however vaguely the details of the history may have been preserved. It was recalled, too, that these peoples possessed religions with the same fundamental elements as the Jewish creeds; but that they had developed an artistic spirit and artistic craftsmanship far beyond that of any other people of their time, had been entirely forgotten. Yet, as we have seen, the most striking and conspicuous of the monuments restored by the explorations were works of art. We have obtained many glimpses of these in the preceding pages, and it will not be necessary here to treat them in very great detail; indeed, it would be quite impossible to do so within the necessary bounds of space. Our concern is with the historic relations of the Mesopotamian art development rather than with the details of the art itself. Nevertheless, something more than incidental references will be made to some features of the subject.[a] The origin of Babylonian-Assyrian civilisation is lost in the darkness of prehistoric times, like that of the Egyptians and Chinese. We shall see that even their oldest monuments display a high grade of artistic ability and presuppose a long development. The texts on the oldest monuments are already written in cuneiform; the picture writing in which this must have originated was already out of use, which shows a great progress in civilisation. As to the origin of this culture various suppositions have been made. According to the one which has made most headway, it was borrowed by the Babylonians from a non-Semitic race who inhabited the country before them, and then spread gradually from the Persian Gulf, where it originated or whither it was brought from without, towards the north. It is pure supposition to say that civilisation in Babylonia started out from the shores of the Persian Gulf and spread from there towards the north, but it is a supposition which has a high degree of probability. In this direction points the old legend of the Babylonians, as Berossus relates it, which describes the origin of civilisation—the legend of the divine fish-man Oannes, who came up in the morning from the Erythræan Sea, instructed the inhabitants of Chaldea, who were still living like animals, in the arts and sciences, and then in the evening disappeared again under the waves. This fish-god has long since been recognised as the god who is so frequently depicted on Babylonian and Assyrian monuments, and it can now hardly be longer doubted that he, the god of the waters, or rather the source of light and fire in the waters, is the god Ea. This god with his circle is without doubt indigenous to southern Chaldea. The oldest and most important centre of his cult is Eridu, situated close to the sea. His son Marduk, and the god connected with him whom the Semites call Nabu, is especially honoured on the islands and coast of the Persian Gulf. Thus if legend traces the culture of the Chaldeans from the instruction of this god, this is the origin of the tradition that his worshippers, who must have been mariners and dwellers on the sea coast, introduced this civilisation into Chaldea. In agreement with this is the fact that the decrees of Ea and the magic formulæ of Eridu, his chief city situated near the sea, are repeatedly designated as being very holy and powerful, and as very ancient; also that the oldest sayings and traditions which are known to us in the Gisdubas (Gilgamesh) epic, are located precisely in places on the sea coast or not far distant from it. These were also the centres of powerful states, as also of the kingdom of Ur, and the oldest monuments of Chaldean civilisation which have yet become known to us were found in southern Babylonia at Telloh. However, wherever its origin may have been, the great age of Babylonian culture, of which the Assyrian is only a later branch, stands beyond doubt. The cylinders of Sargon I as well as the statues found at Telloh show a high grade of development and presuppose an art which already has a long past behind it. That the Egyptian culture is younger and even derived from the Babylonian, and that the latter is thus the oldest in the world, and at the same time was the mother of all other civilisations of antiquity, as has been claimed (Hommel), can naturally not be proved and is still doubtful; but it is not impossible. And the most remarkable fact is, that at least the plastic art could never again reach the heights it had already attained in such a gray antiquity. This does not mean to imply that the Babylonians did not further develop the civilisation, the elements of which they had received from their predecessors. They assimilated it and developed it independently; it may even be assumed that they improved on it in more than one respect, and applied it to higher ends. They also introduced into it much that was peculiar to them. How far this was the case—what with them was borrowed and what original, cannot yet be determined in detail. At any rate we are not justified in attributing to their non-Semitic teachers, as often happens, everything barbaric, cruel, and repulsive that still characterises their customs, nor all the superstitions still connected with their religion. The original inhabitants excelled the Semites in artistic spirit and ability, perhaps also as traders and mariners, and the latter probably imitated the former, but seldom reached them and never surpassed them. The Semites, on the other hand, put more depth and earnestness into their religious life; energetically carried out the monarchic principle in this, as also in the life of the state; simplified the writing; enriched the literature, which was thus rendered more practical, by highly remarkable epic narrations, especially with epic poems, and even made an attempt to write history. Furthermore, by the organisation of a capable army, by the warlike talents of their kings and generals, as also by their unbending character and persevering will, they established states which endured the most violent upheavals and changes, and ruled all their neighbours for centuries. If they were behind their predecessors in some points, they far surpassed them in others. The conception that one people takes on the culture of another, quite as one puts on a borrowed dress, is just as foolish as the conception that a nation relinquishes its own individuality and originality as soon as it learns something from another. The Greeks of whom it has now been proved that they owed much to oriental peoples, the Persians of whom everyone knows that they borrowed most of their civilisation from Babylon, prove the contrary. The people who brought its culture to the southern coasts of Babylonia and probably also to the coasts of Elan and communicated it to the still uncultured races living there, seems to have belonged to that peaceful, commercial race which the Hebrews designated as the “sons of Kush,” which was not unlike the Phœnicians and was placed in the same category; a race which, while jealous of its independence, was not aggressive, although inclined to colonisation and to making distant journeys. These dwellers on the coasts, together with the inland tribes, were then conquered by the Semites, perhaps after long battles. If, however, they became in this way, as always, the teachers of their conquerors, the culture which grew under their influence was none the less a creation, and thus the inalienable property of the Babylonians. How high a state of civilisation the Babylonians had reached is shown by the fact that the invention of writing was a long-accomplished fact with them. The oldest inscriptions known to us, and which certainly date as far back as 4000 B.C., are already written in a species of character which from similarity to the second Egyptian style of writing has been called hieratic, and it has been proved that this hieratic style of writing has been evolved from older hieroglyphics, long since fallen into disuse. It is not known whether any other material than stone or clay was used to write upon, and whether in such case syllabic writing was used or not. It has been surmised that the Babylonians and Assyrians also used, and perhaps exclusively at first, papyrus, leather, and other soft materials to write upon, and engraved upon stone or clay only such matter as they wished to preserve. This is not improbable, even though we do not possess any such manuscripts. For as a matter of course the first named materials could not withstand the Babylonian climate as well as the Egyptian, and only the last named are proof against fire and water. It is a fact, however, that the bas-reliefs show the scribes recording the number of the slain on soft material, probably leather, as well as upon hard tablets. Whether they also wrote books or letters on papyrus or leather has not been definitely established. However much the writing of the Babylonians and Assyrians may have been an inheritance from very ancient times, and how much they may be indebted to the early Chaldeans for the single form and the structure of the whole system, the cuneiform writing in which they represented their language was their own invention in more than one respect, since they did not thoughtlessly use what was ready to hand, but modified and altered it with deliberation. Writing was also used by the Babylonians and Assyrians for purely literary purposes. The narratives, legends, or poems were inscribed on tablets of clay, and if in case of a work of greater size, the two sides covered with microscopic characters did not suffice, a series of such was used, which were clearly designated and numbered, so that they were in fact leaves of a book. Generally the title of the whole, as usual with the Hebrews, the first words and the first words of the following tablet were inscribed on every tablet. This literature even if limited to the productions of the imagination, is comparatively abundant. Although in this respect it may not equal the literature of some races still living, such as the Chinese, Arabian, Persian, and Indian, nor that of the ancient times of Greece and India, which in the last named country grows as luxuriantly as its vegetation, yet on the other hand, it excels in this respect that of the other Semitic races, the Hebrews not excepted. This is proved not only by the writings so far discovered but also by the catalogues of books in Babylonian libraries or of similar works elsewhere. However, enough has been brought to light, and in a fair state of preservation, to enable us to form an opinion of the literary talent of the Babylonians, and to prove to us what great varieties of it they cultivated. Baked Clay Cylinder of Sargon II, King of Assyria, B.C. 722-705, inscribed with a Chronicle of his Expedition The Assyrians stand, in a literary sense, in about the same relation to the Babylonians as the Romans to the Greeks, disciples who never equalled their masters, although as far as can be seen, even relatively considered, Roman literature stands higher in relation to Greek than Assyrian stands in relation to Babylonian. The tendency of the Assyrians was warlike, and directed to practical ideas: to found a mighty empire, and to maintain their supremacy was the end for which they strove. Therefore they were more interested in history than in creations of the imagination; purely literary work had little charm for them. Only much later, a desire is awakened in them to become acquainted with the productions of the Babylonians in this field, and to acquire as much as possible of it for themselves. And perhaps even here interest in the ancient religions and national traditions played a greater rôle than love for poetry. The Assyrians seem to have had more taste for what may be designated the science of the period, than for literature. Here also, they were following the lead of the Babylonians, and accomplished little beyond taking possession of the treasures of the Babylonian libraries. The prestige which attached to the Babylonians in antiquity as the earliest cultivators of science is well known, although some thought that they had borrowed it from the Egyptians. Without doubt they reached the greatest eminence in antiquity in the knowledge of astronomy. Kalisthenes sent Aristotle astronomical observations from Babylon, which, according to the most moderate statement, reach back to 1903 before Alexander, i.e., 2324 B.C.; and there is nothing improbable in this. The number of eclipses mentioned on the astronomical tablets would lead to a conclusion that there was an even longer period of recorded calculations. It may be that the Ziggurat of the temples, which originally had a religious significance, might, in Assyria at least, have been used as observatories. It has even been surmised that the Babylonians had some sort of a telescope, and this surmise rests upon the finding of a lens in the ruins, and upon the fact that they were acquainted with the planet Saturn, which is invisible to the naked eye; but this doss not seem probable. One thing is certain, they gave names to the constellations, especially to the signs of the Zodiac, which have in part remained in use. They were acquainted with five planets, and distinguished them very exactly from the other heavenly bodies. They observed, and with great accuracy, the eclipses of the sun and moon, perhaps also the sun spots, the comets, the orbit of Venus, and the position of the Polar star; but they had some very childish ideas about the causes of eclipses and the character of the other heavenly phenomena. Naturally the Milky Way did not escape their observation. They even calculated the regular recurrence of eclipses of the moon as well as its phases. A few of the mathematical tablets extant prove that they had made great progress in arithmetic and higher mathematics, so indispensable to the study of astronomy. The prevalent system was the sexagesimal, with the 60 as the unit, but the decimal system seems to have been known and used. However in spite of the recognition of the high value of these researches, they hardly deserve the name of science. These researches were certainly not undertaken from a love of science. The prime object, no doubt, was to discover the will of the gods in regard to the future. The science of mathematics itself was made subservient to the art of divination. Astronomy was a secondary object, astrology the principal one. Knowledge was sought of what must happen when there should be a recurrence of certain phases of stars and heavenly bodies. All observations of planets, comets, and other stars, of eclipses and other phenomena, were immediately connected with occurrences on earth, which at some former time had fallen in conjunction with them and consequently must be expected again. No more were other branches of science besides astronomy cultivated for their own sakes. Their science of medicine was based almost entirely upon magic, and appears to have stood on a lower plane than that of the Egyptians, at least in so far as the still existing inscriptions will permit us to judge. They indeed used as did the Vedic Indians external and internal remedies, but they probably regarded them as charms; whatever progress they may have made in the science of medicine, the records of it in the ancient inscriptions prove that it was somewhat less than what we know of the Vedic physicians and their cures. Thus it is rather an exaggeration to speak of physical, geographical, grammatical, and mythological writings of the Babylonians and Assyrians, unless the myths and legends belonging to literature already discussed are meant. There are various reasons for the supposition that each of the Babylonian libraries according to the studies of the several religious and scientific schools had a distinctive character. The Assyrian libraries, on the other hand, being all of later date, had more general and more varied contents. The idea that these libraries were for the use of the general public, is not well founded, and rather improbable. They were probably designed in the first place, for the learned men and scribes of the king, as well as for his own use, for the instruction of his sons, and future officials, as well as for archives of the state. They do not in the least prove that culture, learning, and erudition were the property of all classes in Assyria.[h] At the same time the large number of written private documents which have been unearthed—the letters and contract tablets—show that writing was not an unusual thing among the people as a whole. From one point of view these old letters are the most interesting form of Babylonian literature because they show better than anything else the real life of the nation. At first thought it may seem that a correspondence on clay must have been cumbersome, but most of these little letters were not so large as an ordinary envelope and some of them were only two or three inches long, and could easily be carried in the pocket. Some of them were enclosed in an outer envelope of clay which frequently contained a copy of the real document within. In connection with the code of Khammurabi, his correspondence with one of his officials, Sin-idinnam, is particularly interesting because in these letters we find references to the same subjects which are treated of in the laws. In them all, we see Khammurabi attending to the minutest affairs of his kingdom, taking a personal interest in everything. It seems to have been a comparatively easy matter to get the king’s ear. He received letters complaining of things we should perhaps consider beneath the notice of a powerful king, and he seems to have devoted careful thought to all. The letters of Khammurabi have been edited and translated by Mr. L. W. King, of the British Museum. They have been also translated by Dr. G. Nagel[i] for a doctor’s dissertation, at Berlin, and published in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vol. IV. Some of the latter’s translations are given below.[a] To Sin-idinnam say: Thus saith Khammurabi. Naram-Sin the keeper of flocks hath said: “To the leaders of the troops have our shepherd lads been given.” Thus did he say. The shepherd lads of Apil-Shamash and of Naram-Sin must not be given to the troopers. Now send to Etil-hi-Marduk and his fellows that they give back the shepherd lads of Apil-Shamash and of Naram-Sin which they have taken. To Sin-idinnam say: Thus saith Khammurabi. The whole canal was dug, but it was not dug clear into Erech, so that water does not come into the city. Also … on the bank of the Duru canal has fallen in. This labour is not too much for the people at thy command to do in three days. Directly upon receipt of this writing dig the canal with all the people at thy command, clear into the city of Erech, within three days. As soon as thou hast dug the canal, do the work which I have commanded thee. To Sin-idinnam say: Thus saith Khammurabi. Tummumu of Nippur has announced to me as follows: “In the place Unaburu (?) I deposited seventy tons of grain in a granary (?). Avel-ilu has opened the granary and taken the grain.” Thus did he tell me. See, I am sending Tummumu to thee with this. Let Avel-ilu be brought before thee. Examine their dispute. The grain belonging to Tummumu which Avel-ilu took, he shall give back to Tummumu. To Sin-idinnam say: Thus saith Khammurabi. See, I have ordered and sent Sin-aiaba-iddina, Guzalu and Shatammu to the war. They will reach thee on the 12th day of Marshewan. When they have reached thee, do thou proceed with them. The cows and flocks of thy province, put into safe keeping. Also Nabu-malik, Ilu-naditum, Shamash-mushalim, Sin-usili, Taribum, and Idin-Ninshah shall go with thee and take part in the war. To Sin-idinnam say: Thus saith Khammurabi. Immediately upon receipt of this letter, have all the keepers of thy temple and Ardi-Shamash, the son of Eriban, the shepherd of the Shamash temple come before thee, together with their complete account. Send them to Babylon to give their account. Let them ride day and night. Within two days they should be in Babylon.[i] We also have examples of the private correspondence of the same period, showing the style of letter one Babylonian wrote to another. The following remarks and translations of letters are taken from a dissertation giving letters from the time of Khammurabi.[a] The insignificant contents of some of these letters show that letter writing at that time was a general custom and the theory again and again thrusts itself forward that a comparatively regular postal service was already in existence. These letters also show how far Babylonian commerce extended in the second half of the third century before Christ. Every letter throws new light upon that far distant past and helps us to form an ever surer picture of the daily life of the old Babylonian people. Following are a few examples to give an idea of the epistolary style. To my father say: Thus speaks Elmeshu. May Shamash and Marduk keep my father alive forever. Mayest thou, my father, be in health, mayest thou live. May the protecting deity of my father lift up the head of my father in favour. To greet my father have I written. May the prosperity of my father before Shamash and Marduk endure forever. After Sin and Ramman had spoken thy name, my father,[33] thou, my father, didst speak as follows: “As soon as I come to Der-Ammizadaduga on the Sharku canal, I will send thee, within a short space, a lamb with five mina of silver.” This didst thou say, my father. My father made me expectant, but thou hast sent nothing. Now after thou, my father, hadst started out to Taribu, the queen, I sent a letter to my father. Thou, my father, hast never voluntarily sent anyone who brought (even) a silver shekel. In accordance with the … of Sin and Ramman who have blessed my father, may my father send me that for which I am eager, so will my heart not be grieved, and I will pray for my father to Shamash and Marduk. To my lord, say: Thus speaketh Belshunu, thy slave. Since I have been confined in prison thou, my lord, hast kept me alive. What is the reason that for five months my lord has neglected me? The house in which I am confined is a house of want. Now I have sent the Mar-abulli (gate-keeper[?]) to you with a letter. I am also ill. May my lord have pity on me, send me corn and vegetables so that I may not die. Send me also a dress to cover my nakedness. Either a half shekel of silver or two mina of wool let him (Mar-abulli) bring, for my service let him bring it. Let not Mar-abulli be sent empty away. If he cometh empty, the dogs will devour me. As thou, my lord, so also every inhabitant of Sippar and Babylon knows that I am confined without guilt; not because of a bilshu, I have been imprisoned. Thou, my lord, didst send me beyond the river to carry oil, but the Sutu people met me and took me captive. Speak a favourable word to the servant of the king’s grand vizir. Send, that I die not in the house of need. Send one ka of oil and five ka of salt. What thou didst send a short time ago was not delivered. Whatever thou sendest, send it well guarded. To my father say: Thus saith Zimri-erah. May Shamash and Marduk give my father everlasting life. Ibi-Ninshah the younger brother of Nur-ilishu has fallen upon Nabu-atpalam and beaten him; he has also spoken insults concerning me which are not to be endured. I shall beat the young man! Wherefore has he cursed me? I have as yet said nothing to the person. I thought to myself: “I will send to my father, let him send his decision about the matter, and then I will speak to the person.” Now I have sent a tablet to Nabu-atpalam, for information in this matter. Up! make a decision in this matter, send your judgment, give (?) a word. To the secretary of the merchants of Sippar, Iahruru speak: Thus saith Ammidatitana. The wool dealer has informed me as follows: “I have written to the secretary of the merchants of Sippar, Iahruru to send his spun wool to Babylon, but he has not sent his spun wool.” Thus has he informed me. Why hast thou not sent thy spun wool to Babylon? Since thou hast not feared to do this thing, so send—as soon as thou seest this tablet—thy spun wool to Babylon.[34] To Appa speak: Thus saith Gimil-Marduk. May Shamash keep thee alive. I have spoken in thy behalf to the person in question and he said; “Let him come so that he may speak.” And the tablets which thou didst take to examine, take them according to thy examination and come quickly. To Etil-Shamash-iddina speak: Thus saith Avel-Ruhati. May Shamash and Ishtar keep thee alive; I am well. Humtani has given for Amti-Shamash 8⅚ kat and 15 she of silver. To Musalimma, I will give the money wherever he commands. I am going into the service of the king’s daughter. I will quickly send thy desire. Send an answer to my tablet.[j] Among the large number of letters which have been preserved it has been possible to find more than one written by the same person, and, by putting these together, to get some idea of the life and character of the writer. The letters of a certain Bel-Ibni are prominent among these. They contain allusions to historical events mentioned on the monuments, thus contributing valuable details to these rather barren records of events. Bel-Ibni himself was a general in the army of Ashurbanapal. Below is a translation of one of these letters made by Dr. C. Johnston,[k] in the Epistolary literature of the Assyrians and Babylonians in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. XVIII.[a] To the lord of kings, my lord, thy servant Bel-Ibni! May Ashur, Shamash and Marduk decree length of days, health of mind and body for the lord of kings, my lord! Shuma, the son of Sham-iddina, son of Gakhal, son of Tammaritu’s sister, fleeing from Elam, reached the (country of the) Dakkha. I took him under my protection and transferred him from Dakkha (hither). He is ill. As soon as he completely recovers his health, I shall send him to the king, my lord. A messenger has come to him (with the news) that Nadan and the Pukudeans of Til … had a meeting with Nabu-bel-shumate at the city of Targibati, and they took a neutral oath to this effect: “According to agreement we shall send you whatever news we may hear.” To bind the bargain (?) they purchased from him fifty head of cattle, and also said to him: “Our sheep shall come and graze in the pasture (?) among the Ubanateans, in order that you may have confidence in us.” Now (I should advise that) a messenger of my lord, the king, come, and give Nadan plainly to understand as follows: “If thou sendest anything to Elam for sale, or if a single sheep gets over to the Elamite pasture (?) I will not let thee live.” The king, my lord, may thoroughly rely upon my report.[k] Professor Delitzsch in an article in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vol. I. entitled Beiträge zur Erklärung der babylonisch-assyrischen Brieflitteratur, has given a translation of a letter from the king to this same Bel-Ibni: The word of the king to Bel-Ibni: May my greeting make glad thy heart! Concerning thy communication about the Pukudeans on the river Charru—In the future, whoever loves the house of his lords, shall communicate whatever he sees and hears to his lords. See! whilst thou inform me concerning the cause of thy communication.[l] Baked Clay Tablets from the Library of Asshurbanapal at Nineveh Some of the letters throw light on religious ceremonies, others are communications from astrologers telling whether or not the signs of the heavens are propitious for certain undertakings. There are still others from physicians telling of patients under their care. The following is translated by Dr. Johnston:[a] To the king, my lord, thy servant, Arad-Nana! Greeting most heartily to my lord, the king! May Adar and Gula grant health of mind and body to my lord, the king. A hearty greeting to the son of the king.… With regard to the patient who has a bleeding from his nose, the Rab-mugi reports: “Yesterday, towards evening, there was much hemorrhage.” Those dressings are not scientifically applied. They are placed on the alæ of the nose, oppress the breathing, and come off when there is hemorrhage. Let them be placed within the nostrils, and then the air will be kept away and the hemorrhage restrained. If it is agreeable to my lord, the king, I will go to-morrow and give instructions; (meantime) let me hear how he does.[k] Several letters have been preserved of a certain Ishtar-duri, who appears to have lived during the reign of Sargon (722-705 B.C.), and was perhaps identical with the eponym of the same name in the year 714. Dr. Johnston has translated a communication of his to the king:[a] To the king, my lord, thy servant Ishtar-duri! Greeting to the king, my lord! I send forthwith to my lord, the king, in company with my messenger, the physicians Nabu-shum-iddina and Nabu-erba, of whom I spoke to the king, my lord. Let them be admitted to the presence of the king, my lord, and let the king, my lord, converse with them. I have not disclosed (to them) the true facts, but have told them nothing. As the king, my lord, commands, (so) has it been done. Shamash-bel-uçur sends word from Der: “We have no inscriptions to place upon the temple walls.” I send therefore to the king, my lord, (to ask) that one inscription be written out and sent immediately, (and that) the rest be speedily written, so that they may place them upon the temple walls. There has been a great deal of rain, (but) the harvest is gathered. May the heart of the king, my lord, be of good cheer![k] Art occupies too prominent a position in the life of the Babylonians and Assyrians, and they have produced too much that is original and peculiar to them, for this history to pass over the question in silence. Even a mere sketch of their culture would be incomplete without it. At the same time great precaution is necessary. In the determination of the chronological succession of undated monuments so much depends on subjective valuation and æsthetic judgment that, without a long and conscientious study of the history of art, one is liable to serious error. And the determination of dates largely influences one’s conception of the progress of Babylonian-Assyrian art; æsthetic judgment, one’s decision concerning the character, independence, and value of this artistic effort. Here again, as in the language, religion, and in the whole civilisation of this people the unity of the Babylonian-Assyrian race comes clearly to light. Whatever differences may exist between Babylonian and Assyrian art in the conception of detail, in certain peculiarities of technique, in the choice of subjects, at bottom they are one. It has ever been characterised as a national school in which one and the same character prevails, so that a work of art, be it from Telloh, Babylon, Nineveh, or Kalah, at once shows its connection with it. All the differences are merely shades, changes caused by time. This is especially noticeable when one considers what material for example was used for building. In Babylonia it is difficult to obtain stone; there are no rocks there. Consequently this material, which had to be brought from a distance, and was therefore expensive, was kept like precious and other metals for the decoration of the whole, for pillars, bas-reliefs, dedicatory inscriptions, etc., or for making a firm foundation, while dried and burnt bricks were used for the buildings themselves. Among the Assyrians this difficulty did not exist. Excellent stone, which was easily worked, was found in close proximity, and the Assyrians understood how to hew and shape it. In spite of this, they imitated the Babylonian custom and used mainly bricks for their buildings. They preferred continually to repair these temples and palaces, which soon fell into ruin, or else to replace them by others, rather than to depart from the traditional mode of building of their ancestors. The question has been raised as to whether Babylonian-Assyrian art may not perhaps have been a daughter of the Egyptian. Without doubt Assyrian art was at least influenced by it. All the ivory objects which have yet been found are plainly imitations of Egyptian motives, although they were certainly not made by Egyptians, and some of them date from the time of Asshurnazirpal. The lotus ornament also, which is so often used as a temple decoration, points to an Egyptian origin. Perhaps, however, the models were not borrowed directly from the Egyptians. Certain dishes and cups for drink-offering, which occur in Mesopotamia, as well as in western Asia and southern Europe, are plainly ornamented with Egyptian cartouches, hieroglyphics, and symbols, but in such a divergent form that no Egyptian could have made them; and these objects have the name of the artificer in Aramaic characters on the border or back. It is thus plainly to be seen that this Egyptian fashion wandered into Assyria through the influence of Aramäen artists. When it is acknowledged, however, that Egyptian patterns were imitated by the Assyrians at a comparatively late date, and that Egyptian motives were borrowed from her artists, it does not by any means follow that Babylonian-Assyrian art as a whole was of Egyptian origin. This could be proved only from the oldest monuments to be found in Babylonia. It was in fact believed, when the art works of Telloh first became known, that they showed a great similarity to the products of Egyptian art. They displayed the same simplicity and naïveness, the same clean-shorn heads and faces, and many other coincidences. The connoisseurs of art, however, believe differently. The similarity is great; nevertheless a careful examination shows the independence of Babylonian art in respect to Egyptian. Thus in the oldest monuments the same peculiarities, truth and strength, appear, which in the later development of art among the Assyrians were so greatly exaggerated, whereas they are wholly lacking in Egyptian figures. A further similarity is found between the oldest pyramids in the Nile valley and the Babylonian-Assyrian Ziggurat. In the first place, however, the pyramids had a wholly different object from the Ziggurat, and, in the second place, it must not be forgotten that the Babylonian temple architecture varies greatly from the Egyptian. If there is any dependence it is not on the side of the Chaldeans; they did not borrow their art from the Egyptians. At the same time the similarities are so remarkable, especially between the old Chaldaic statues and the oldest productions of Egyptian sculpture, such as the statues of Shafra, Chufu, and Ra-em-ke, that we are compelled here, as in the case of the writing, to suppose a common stock out of which both branches grew independently and in a way peculiar to each. The important discoveries made by the French consul, De Sarsac, at Telloh have first thrown some light on the old Chaldean art in which the whole Babylonian-Assyrian art has taken its origin. The question as to whether the works of art found there are Semitic or non-Semitic does not concern us here. It is more probably the latter. At any rate we are here confronted with a civilisation preceding the flourishing period of the known Semitic dominion in Babylonia.[35] A temple was found there 53 by 31 metres square which shows the same fundamental plan as the later Chaldean architecture, that is, a structure of burnt on a foundation of dried brick, the corners exactly facing the points of the compass (not the side as in Egypt), a Ziggurat in the centre, the whole, as is seen from stamps on the stones, dating from the time of the priest-prince Gudra, who is known from other sources, and who rebuilt or founded this temple. Besides, a large number of larger and smaller works of art were discovered, cylinders, reliefs, bronze objects, especially statues, which had been collected either by the ruler already mentioned or by other priestly princes or kings.[h] Before building a temple or palace, a religious ceremony took place corresponding to what we call to-day laying the corner-stone. Nabuna’id relates that in the ruins of the oldest Chaldean temples he looked for the foundation stone, the temen which the original kings had placed there, and that he had the good fortune to find this corner-stone, whereas several of his predecessors had excavated only in vain. In our days such cylindrical tubes have been found covered with close writing difficult to decipher, which had been placed in little niches at the corners of the foundation facing the four points of the compass. Thus at Nimrod, Rawlinson caused excavations to be carried on in one of the corners of the tower, feeling sure that he would find objects similar to those which had been met with elsewhere. He relates his discovery as follows: “At the end of half an hour a small cavity was found. ‘Bring me,’” said Rawlinson to the man in charge of the digging, “‘bring me the dedicatory cylinder.’ The workman put his hand into the hole and showed the cylinder; those present could not believe their eyes and looked at each other in amazement. The cylinder, covered with inscriptions, then came out of the hiding-place where it had been placed probably by the hands of Nebuchadrezzar himself, and where it had lain for twenty-nine centuries.” In the fruitful excavations which he undertook at Telloh, De Sarsac made similar discoveries. “I found,” said he, “at a depth of scarcely thirty centimeters under the original soil, four cubes of masonry of large bricks and bitumen, measuring eighty centimeters on each side. In the centre of these cubes was a cavity of twenty-seven centimeters by twelve and by thirty-five of depth. This cavity filled with yellow sand enclosed a statuette of bronze, representing now a man kneeling, again a woman standing, sometimes also a bull. At the foot of each statue, usually embedded in the bitumen which lined the cavity, were found two stone tablets, one white, the other black. It was the black one which usually bore an inscription in cuneiform characters, like or almost like the one carved on the figure of bronze.” Moreover De Sarsac in place of statuettes found cones of clay in the shape of large nails with hemispherical heads, and having an inscription around the stem.[m] It has been believed that three stages of development may be detected in this ancient art. To the first belong the reliefs, which represent scenes of war and burial which have not yet been satisfactorily explained, drawn very awkwardly and comparatively rough and primitive. This stage represents the infancy of art. To the second stage are counted the eight statues of Gudea and the one of Ur-ba-’u which are carved with great skill and fine artistic feeling out of hard stone, as it appears of diorite. The strength which characterises the sculptural efforts of the Babylonians and especially of the Assyrians, is already manifest, although without that exaggeration of the muscles and joints which is so pronounced with the latter. Hands and feet in particular are most carefully executed. The heads are totally different from the hairy and bearded Assyrian, or even early Babylonian heads. They are perfectly clean shaven, but sometimes seemingly decked with an artificial hair arrangement or something of that sort; all just as in Egypt. In addition, an attempt to suggest the folds of draperies is seen, which we do not find among the Babylonians and Assyrians nor the Egyptians, but only later among the Persians and Greeks. In the third so-called classic period are placed works of art of most finished execution, which show a decided advance, among which are pictures, in which beard and hair are worked out with the greatest care. It would be exaggerated scepticism to deny that these art productions exceed in antiquity, nearly everything found in Babylonia until now. The only exception could be the beautiful cylinder of the time of Sargon I, if we assume that this monarch reigned about 3800 B.C., and that this work of art is of his time. But this is by no means established as a fact. It can also not be denied that these creations of early Chaldaic art, although in some instances only feeble attempts, in others, however, are of such finished perfection, that in succeeding periods they were never excelled and seldom equalled. We have here a similar case to one in Egypt, where, for instance, under the kings of the fourth dynasty, sculpture reached an eminence, which nothing of later date ever approached, and where the oldest works of art have a value which none of the Egyptian sculptures of the following centuries can claim. In both these countries therefore there is an early, surprisingly rapid development, followed by a speedy decline; where even in succeeding brilliant epochs no successful attempts to equal the results of the first florescence were ever made. Such a phenomenon is all the more striking when it is considered that these later epochs, whether in Egypt, in Babel, or in Asshur, were by no means periods of degeneration, but show, although with continual fluctuations, marked progress in literature, science, government, and general culture. It seems probable that the cause lies in the difference of race. The artists who carved the statues of King Schafra, were no more Semites than, judging from all appearances and from the facial types of the monarchs, pictured, were the sculptors who immortalised King Gudea. Later on the Egyptian population became more and more affected by Semitic elements, and under the increasing influence of the Semites, art declined. Not until under the Saits, who certainly were not descended from a race intermixed with Semitic blood, did art rise again to a height which recalled the palmy days of the ancient realm. Thus early Chaldaic art was the mother of that of Babylonia and Assyria, and the Semites of Babylon and Asshur proved themselves diligent students, gifted imitators, who gave to their works also the stamp of their own genius; but they were never more than students and imitators, they never produced anything original which might stand in equality by the side of early Chaldaic art. The Semitic race occupies one of the foremost positions in the history of civilisation, and is highly talented. But in architecture and sculpture it has always worked in close connection with foreign masters, and never produced anything really great by itself.[36] The further it goes from the ancient centres, where the great tradition of the former so highly developed art still lived on, the more unskilful become its productions in this field. Assyria where the Semitic blood was purer than in Babylonia, and which was certainly surpassed in art by the latter, Phœnicia, Palestine, and Arabia, are proofs of this. Only when the Semites have handed down the old tradition which they have at least preserved, to the Aryans, the Persians, and Greeks, is there an independent higher development of plastic art. Be that as it may, considered as artists, the Babylonians and Assyrians stand foremost among the Semites, but they are indebted for this to the early Chaldeans. The character of the Babylonian-Assyrian building has remained in general about the same, from the earliest times, until the destruction of the nation. The architect, more than any other artist, is dependent upon the nature of the material at his disposal; and this in Babylonia was almost exclusively in the form of tiles of clay, either dried in the sun, or baked in the fire. The former, which were made most skilfully in Babylonia, were generally used for foundations, either by simply placing them in layers, or cementing them with wet clay or pitch, or, as in the substructures of the Assyrian palaces, by using them while still in a moist condition, in order that under the pressure of the superstructure they might be united in one solid mass. For the covering of the walls, baked tiles were used. Enamelled or glazed bricks were used in those parts of the building which were most exposed to moisture or the changes of the weather. In Assyria where stone was not expensive this was also used as the outer coating of walls. This, however, is the only important variation which the Assyrian architects allowed themselves. Although it would have been easier for them to erect more beautiful, more pleasing, and certainly more durable buildings of stone, they were not able to rise to the attempt, although they had only to carry out and use in larger measure what had already been found in Chaldea. A short step was indeed taken in this direction. The Babylonians already knew how to make wooden pillars or columns, probably covered with metal, and made use of them in lighter architecture, as for instance the Naos, or canopy over the figures of the gods. The Assyrians not only copied this, but built columns of stone, and a certain originality and gracefulness in the capitals and bases of their pillars is not to be denied. However, the column never played the same important rôle in their architecture as it does, for instance, in the Græco-Roman and even in the Egyptian. In their great buildings they clung almost servilely to the designs handed down during centuries. The question as to whether the buildings had more than one story, was formerly almost generally admitted as a fact, but it is generally denied now, and can really hardly be determined. The ruins give no positive support to either theory; but a few reliefs give representations of two-storied buildings. Tile construction presents necessarily a certain monotony which is here accentuated by the absence of windows. To relieve this monotony, glazing, colouring, or woodwork were resorted to, in case the use of columns was excluded; sometimes more artistic measures were used, such as projecting pilasters, which in Chaldea were somewhat crude, but richly ornamented in Assyria; also mosaics of conical form, or decorations of vases on the walls. The upper stones of the walls were decorated with battlements. The inner, as well as the outer walls, had a stone covering up to a certain height, and higher up a polychromatic layer of stucco. Ivory, and particularly bronze decorations, were much employed. In spite of all this, the impression given by Babylonian and Assyrian buildings is one of massiveness, almost clumsiness, and the decorations seem childish, paltry, and commonplace. Hence also the disproportion of length and breadth, in other words the elongated form of the rooms, whose roof not being supported by columns, had to rest on the side walls, and whose breadth depended on the length of the roof beams. On the other hand, the almost exclusive use of tiles had this advantageous result, that it was almost imperative to make prodigal use of arch and vault construction. That the Chaldaic architects were the inventors of these constructions, with which the Etruscans were formerly erroneously credited, cannot be positively affirmed, for they are also found in Egypt, although seldom made use of there. Without doubt, however, the Babylonians and Assyrians developed them greatly and knew how to make use of them with great skill. From the false arch, which is formed by allowing each succeeding layer of stone to project over the foregoing one, to the finished arch, all kinds are represented by them. Not only were all underground canals and sewers, vaults of masonry, but all gateways ended in arches, and even the ceilings of some apartments, particularly those in the part of the palaces which seems to have been the harem were wholly or partially vaulted. The Babylonians and Assyrians have built extensively many and great cities enclosed within mighty walls, extended palaces and peculiar temples. They cannot be enumerated here or even described in general terms. A few important points, however, may be touched upon. In the first place it must be noticed that, while in Egypt the monumental buildings were tombs and temples, in Babylon and Asshur they were mainly palaces. Although no pains nor expense were spared in the erection of the temples, they were smaller than the palaces, of which they were in some cases certainly annexes. The tombs were constructed with great care, in order to guard against the rapid decay of the corpses, yet the inhabitants of Mesopotamia never reached the same degree of perfection in the embalming of bodies as the Egyptians: they were also fitted out with everything that, according to their faith, was necessary for the dead, but they were piled upon each other, and thus excluded from view. Art was not expended upon them; on the other hand, however, all known means of art were used to decorate the residences of the kings and the earthly habitations of the gods in the most splendid and sumptuous manner. Their size increased continually. The early Chaldaic palace discovered at Telloh, had an area of only 53 meters long by 31 broad; the so-called Wasevas at Warka (Erech) was 200 meters long by 150 broad; the palace of Sargon II at Dur-Sharrukin covered an area of about 10 hectares, and contained 30 open courts and more than 200 apartments. Under the Sargonids the rooms also became larger. One in the palace of Sennacherib was almost as long as the entire palace at Telloh, i.e., 46 meters long by 12 wide. Another in the palace of Esarhaddon, which was intended to be 15 meters by 12 meters, remained unfinished, probably on account of the difficulty of construction. The palace of Asshurbanapal was of somewhat smaller, though still magnificent proportions. The great palace of Nebuchadrezzar II, consisting of the old palace of his father and a new one constructed by him and joined to the old, has not yet been sufficiently explored, but according to the descriptions, must have surpassed in splendour, if not in size, all those of his predecessors. All palaces were constructed on the same plan, and contained separate living apartments for the king and his court, for his wives, for the lower court officials, and, as it appears, also a temple with various sanctuaries and a tower. Too little is as yet known of the Babylonian-Assyrian temples to judge with any certainty of their style of architecture. Here and there, remains of temples have been found, but it has not yet been proved that the buildings designated as temples were really devoted to religious purposes. Most of the temples seem to have been small, at any rate not intended for large assemblages. The altar stood outside and consequently the religious services must usually have taken place there. Every large town had many temples but always only one Ziggurat. This constituted only one part of the principal temple, albeit the most prominent one. There were various kinds of such towers, of three or more, sometimes seven stories, which were attainable by a single inclined plane encircling the whole building, or a double one rising on two sides of it. The ground plan was a perfect square in some, in others a parallelogram; all rested, however, on a massive substructure, and seem to have been crowned with a small sanctuary. Although these principal temples, including the Ziggurat, were not of equal extent with the royal palaces, they were nevertheless imposing buildings, and the towers in particular were erected with much care and at great expense. It would be wrong to conclude from this ratio of temples and palaces that the Assyrians were less religious and more servile than the Egyptians, who, entirely dominated as they were by the dogma of immortality, lavished more care on the tombs of the dead kings than on the habitations of the living ones. The valuable decorations and sculptures which the Assyrians and Babylonians gave to their gods prove their pious tendency. In reality the whole palace was a sacred edifice in which the representative of the deity lived on earth with and beside his god. The aid which architecture received from other arts has already been briefly mentioned. There are still a few particulars to be noticed in regard to this point. The Assyrians as well as the Babylonians were skilful workers in bronze. Proofs of this are the bronze door-sill 1½ meters long, found at Borsippa, whose decorations of rosettes and squares are in very good taste, and particularly the bronze gates at Balawat, belonging to the 9th century B.C., which are masterpieces of their kind, and a great number of other remains. Painting was also employed to decorate the exterior as well as the interior of walls. Ornaments and figures were painted with great skill on stucco, al fresco in such a case, or on tiles which were afterwards glazed. These tiles were sometimes joined to make one picture. In what remains of such work it is shown that painting had attained quite an eminence in Babylon and Asshur. Drawing and grouping are often very successful, and the treatment has often a certain breadth. These paintings are also important because it is seen from them how much conventionality prevailed in Assyrian sculpture. In painting there is nothing of that exaggerated muscularity nor of the almost clumsy strength of the sculptured figures. Beard and hair are not as stiffly curled as in the sculptures, but hang more loosely and naturally.[h] A beautiful example of glazed tiling has recently been excavated by the Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft at Babylon. It is in the so-called Procession street leading from Babylon to Borsippa; on either side of the street were walls faced with coloured tiles representing a stately procession of lions and other animals, very artistically drawn.[a] Sculpture, more than painting, was employed in decorating buildings, the works of which covered the greater part of the palace walls, and ornamented the gateways, courts, terraces, and apartments. The material which the sculptor used in Chaldea was usually valuable stone difficult to procure, such as basalt, dolorite, diorite; in Assyria, generally a commoner, more easily worked species, such as alabaster and sandstone. The difference of material naturally influenced the work itself. Figures of cast bronze are also often found. The inscriptions of the Babylonian kings often speak of columns erected in honour of the gods, of which some were made of solid gold or silver, others only coated with precious metal, and the Assyrian kings also mention such dedications. Naturally the columns of precious metal have not survived, but a great number of stone pillars have been found. It may be chance, that the greater number of statues in the round are from Babylon, the greater number of bas-reliefs from Assyria. The objects of these surviving sculptures are mainly of a religious or historical character. But rarely does a representation of the domestic life of the monarch or other social circles appear. Only once is a banquet pictured, that of king Asshurbanapal and his queen. Otherwise no women, except captives, appear in the reliefs. On the whole little tendency is shown to represent female beauty and grace, as compared with the Egyptians and especially with the Greeks. The nude female figure is seldom pictured, and if so, in a repulsively realistic form, as in the small figures of the mother goddess. Cheerful or comic scenes, which are not wanting even in Egyptian reliefs and vignettes, are never found here. Hasty conclusions, however, should not be drawn from this, and it should not be forgotten, that most of the surviving reliefs are from the palaces, few from the temples, still fewer from the tombs, and none at all from private residences. This is doubtless one of the reasons why representations of domestic or private life are so scarce. In fact, in a few of the tombs reliefs have been found whose subjects recall favourite representations in those of Egypt. Most prevalent certainly, are those scenes relating to religious and public life. In the treatment of these objects, truth is often sacrificed to certain conventionalities. Thus for instance the Lamassi and Shedi, the man-headed lions and bulls have five legs, in order that they may always present four to the eye, whether viewed from the front or the side; the heads are usually represented in profile with the eyes in full face, but sometimes in full face, although the image presents a side view to the beholder, which was also customary in Egypt; so also, the stiff curling of the hair and beard is unnatural. Apparently no attempt had ever been made in Egypt to make portraits of historical personages, and the individual differences of rank and condition can only be recognised by objects of secondary importance. There is, however, still some doubt upon this point. There is indeed a great uniformity, but an attempt at least to differentiate facial traits cannot be overlooked. Ignoring all accessories, the features differ among kings and higher courtiers on the one hand, and lower men-at-arms on the other, among men and eunuchs, among adults and youths. Wherever the artists of Mesopotamia were not limited by conventionality,—notably in the representation of animals,—they have surpassed in accuracy, in truth and strength of representation all other nations of antiquity, the Greeks hardly excepted. This is particularly true of the representation of native animals, yet foreign ones were treated with great skill, although the delineation of these betrays less practice. Even in the picturing of therianthropic deities, they remain as true to nature as possible, and with much taste and tact allow the human attributes of the figure to predominate. Wherever it is possible to partially or wholly break away from tradition, their talent is displayed in a manner truly marvellous. Their only prominent fault is their exaggerated realism, which shows itself not only in the monstrous drawing of muscles and joints, but also in the disgusting details of the nude figures of Astarte. Too little of the sculpture of the new Babylonian realm has been preserved to allow judgment of the state of art during this period. The well known carving of Nebuchadrezzar II on a cameo would force us to have a very high opinion of it, if convincing reasons did not argue that, although genuine, it is the work of a foreign, probably a Cyprian, artist. There is no doubt that the art of music was cultivated among the Babylonians and Assyrians, since the reliefs show musicians very frequently, at religious festivals, at triumphal greetings of the victorious king and at festivities. They play singly or in concert, and also accompany singing. The musical instruments are of various kinds, and the musicians, who are sometimes very daintily attired, are not always eunuchs, and are of different ages. On the whole it must be conceded, that the Assyrio-Babylonian nation was artistically inclined and that it cultivated various branches of art with talent and success. If they, the Assyrians in particular, had been able to free themselves from tradition, they might have surpassed their predecessors and teachers. They practised art, however, not for itself alone, but as a means of glorifying the gods or the kings, and the historical reliefs at least, are for the greater part nothing more than illustrations to the inscriptions, a sort of war-report in pictures. They were not an artistic people like the Greeks. Still they have produced more and better results in this respect, than all other nations of their race put together. And although in some special instances they may have been excelled by the Egyptians, in others they are far in advance of them. The Assyrians, following the example of the Babylonians, showed their artistic talents also in the productions of their industries; art and industry were with them closely related. Among the productions to be considered here are primarily the hundreds of seals, which are still in preservation, and whose number will not seem so surprising when it is remembered that every Babylonian and Assyrian of quality had his private seal. In early times these were always, and in later times generally, cylinders, pierced through the centre, to be worn around the neck suspended from a cord. The impression was made by rolling them over moist clay. After the eighth century conical and half-spherical seals appear. These cylinders are made of many different materials, at first, of easily carved, later of harder, material, such as porphyry, basalt, ferruginous marble, serpentine, syenite and hematite. After that, semi-precious stones were used, jasper, agate, onyx, chalcedony, rock-crystal, garnet, etc. In the oldest stones the pictured objects were rather suggested by indentations and strokes, than actually executed and carved; but gradually a great skilfulness was attained, and there are beautiful cuttings in the hard stones also. The execution varied greatly of course, not only in proportion to the talent of the artist, but also according to the rank and wealth of the person who gave the commission. The subjects chosen are mostly of a religious nature, the adoration of a goddess, an offering of sacrifice, various emblems such as winged animals, sun, moon, and stars, and very frequently the tree of life, in whose shadow stand two persons, or which is guarded by two genii. Under the new Babylonian dominion and under the Achamenides, glyptics as an art declined rapidly. Ceramic art seems not to have occupied a very lofty position in Babylonia at first. Clay vases and utensils, during a long period made by hand, are crude and inartistic in earliest times. Gradually with the introduction of the potter’s wheel, however, they become more graceful in form, and towards the end of the Assyrian period are enamelled and decorated with patterns painted in colours. However, Babylonian ceramic art cannot compete with that of Greece, although it surpasses that of Egypt. Glass has not been found in large quantities, to be sure, but quite advanced progress had been made in its manufacture. The Assyrians and Babylonians showed particular skill in the working of metals. Bronze, a mixture of copper and tin, was known to them in the earliest times. They had a knowledge of iron earlier than the Egyptians, and certainly made much greater use of it. Gold objects are commoner than those of silver, and lead is seldom used. Ornaments, such as bracelets, ear-rings, and necklaces are usually cast of precious metal and often inlaid with pearls. It may be taken as a proof of highly advanced culture that they used not only spoons, but forks, a luxury introduced into Europe only at the close of the Middle Ages, and that toilet articles, such as combs, pins, etc., were ornamented with the greatest care and skill. Bas-relief of Wild Sow and Young among Reeds (Layard) The Assyrians were also more skilled in mechanics than the Egyptians and were not inferior to them in agriculture. Two reliefs, one Assyrian, the other Egyptian, give us an opportunity to compare how each nation overcame the difficulties attending the moving and putting in place of their enormous collossi of stone. It is shown that the Assyrians knew the use of the lever, which the Egyptians did not, and that they took much greater precautions against upsetting the collossi. How the Babylonians and Assyrians, like the Egyptians and Chinese, made use of irrigation is well known. On the same tablets with the records of their deeds of war, the rulers often spoke of the laying out of canals, the regulating and deepening of the river beds “enduring waters for the enduring use of town and country,” and associated their own names with them. On account of the higher altitude of their country than that of their southern brethren, the Assyrians had to surmount greater difficulties in achieving such works, but this did not deter them from rivalry with them. One canal leading from the Upper Zab and one of its tributaries, irrigated the region between this river and the Tigris, and also supplied the capital, Kalah, with drinking water. Sennacherib did something similar for Nineveh, which together with its environs was completely dependent upon rain. He had a network of canals constructed, which were fed, partly by the Khushur, and partly by the small mountain brooks of the Accad and Tash mountains. Here also two objects were attained, to furnish Nineveh with good drinking water, and to make the surrounding country fruitful; for the king had it all planted with many kinds of plants, among which was the vine. Floriculture was also much encouraged by the kings of Babylon and Asshur. They admired beautiful parks in which strange foreign animals were bred and nurtured. Marduk-bel-iddin, king of Bit-Yakin, apparently the same who at one time overcame Babylon, owned sixty-seven vegetable gardens and six parks of which a catalogue still exists, although he was constantly at war or guarding against the vengeance of the Assyrians.[h] But the world-historic relations of Mesopotamian art are best brought out by a study of the later and more perfectly preserved examples of Assyrian craftsmanship. It was the Assyrian who borrowed more directly from the Egyptian in developing his art, and who passed on artistic impulses to the Persians on the one hand, and to the Greeks on the other. The question to what extent the Assyrians were themselves influenced by the Mycenæan art of early Greece is one regarding which students of the subject are not agreed, and which we need not enter upon here.[a] It is impossible to examine the monuments of Assyria without being convinced that the people who raised them had acquired a skill in sculpture and painting, and a knowledge of design and even composition, indicating an advanced state of civilisation. It is very remarkable that the most ancient ruins show this knowledge in the greatest perfection attained by the Assyrians. The bas-relief representing the lion hunt, now in the British Museum, is a good illustration of the earliest school of Assyrian art yet known. It far exceeds the sculptures of Khorsabad, Kuyunjik, or the later palaces of Nimrud, in the vigour of the treatment, the elegance of the forms, and in what the French aptly term mouvement. At the same time it is eminently distinguished from them by the evident attempt at composition—by the artistical arrangement of the groups. The sculptors who worked at Khorsabad and Kuyunjik had perhaps acquired more skill in handling their tools. Their work is frequently superior to that of the earlier artists in delicacy of execution—in the details of the features, for instance—and in the boldness of the relief; but the slightest acquaintance with Assyrian monuments will show that they were greatly inferior to their ancestors in the higher branches of art—in the treatment of a subject and in beauty and variety of form. This decline of art, after suddenly attaining its greatest perfection in its earliest stage, is a fact presented by almost every people, ancient and modern, with which we are acquainted. In Egypt the most ancient monuments display the purest forms and the most elegant decorations. A rapid retrogression, after a certain period, is apparent, and the state of art serves to indicate approximately the epoch of most of her remains. In the history of Greek and Roman art this sudden rise and rapid fall are equally well known. Even changes in royal dynasties have had an influence upon art, as a glance at monuments of that part of the East of which we are specially treating will show. Thus the sculpture of Persia, as that of Assyria, was in its best state at the time of the earliest monarchs, and gradually declined until the fall of the empire. After the Greek invasion it revived under the first kings of the Arsacid branch, Greek taste still exercising an influence over the Iranian provinces. How rapidly art degenerated to the most barbarous forms, the medals and monuments of the later Arsacids abundantly prove. When the Sassanians restored the old Persian monarchy and introduced the ancient religion and sacred ceremonies of the empire, art again appears to have received a momentary impulse. The coins, gems, and rock sculptures of the first kings of this dynasty are distinguished by considerable elegance, and spirit of design, and beauty of form. But the decay was as rapid under them as it had been under their predecessors. Even before the Chosroes raised the glory and power of the empire to its highest pitch, art was fast degenerating. By the time of Yezdigird it had become even more rude and barbarous than in the last days of the Arsacids. This decline in art may be accounted for by supposing that, in the infancy of a people, or after the occurrence of any great event having a very decided influence upon their manners, their religion, or their political state, nature was the chief, if not the only, object of study. When a certain proficiency had been attained, and no violent changes took place to shake the established order of things, the artist, instead of endeavouring to imitate that which he saw in nature, received as correct delineations the works of his predecessors, and made them his types and his models. In some countries, as in Egypt, religion may have contributed to this result. Whilst the imagination, as well as the hand, was fettered by prejudices, and even by laws, or whilst indolence or ignorance led to the mere servile copying of what had been done before, it may easily be conceived how rapidly a deviation from correctness of form would take place. As each transmitted the errors of those who had preceded him, and added to them himself, it is not wonderful if, ere long, the whole became one great error. It is to be feared that this prescriptive love of imitation has exercised no less influence on modern art than it did upon the arts of the ancients. As the earliest specimens of Assyrian art which we possess are the best, it is natural to conclude that either there are other monuments still undiscovered which would tend to show a gradual progression, or that such monuments did once exist, but have long since perished; otherwise it must be inferred that those who raised the most ancient Assyrian edifice derived their knowledge directly from another people, or merely imitated what they had seen in a foreign land. Some are inclined to look upon the style and character of these early sculptures as purely Egyptian. But there is such a disparity in the mode of treatment and in the execution, that the Egyptian origin of Assyrian art appears to me to be a question open to considerable doubt. That which they have in common would mark the first efforts of any people of a certain intellectual order to imitate nature. The want of relative proportions in the figures and the ignorance of perspective—the full eye in the side face and the bodies of the dead scattered above or below the principal figures—are as characteristic of all early productions of art as they are of the rude attempts at delineation of children. It is only in the later monuments of Nineveh that we find evident and direct traces of Egyptian influence: as in the sitting sphinxes and ivories of Nimrud, and in the lotus-shaped ornaments of Khorsabad and Kuyunjik; perhaps also in the custom which then prevailed of inserting the name of the king, or of the castle, upon or immediately above their sculptured representations. Neither the ornaments of the earliest palace of Nimrud, nor the costumes, nor the elaborate nature of the embroideries upon the robes, with the groups of human figures and animals, nor the mythological symbols, are of an Egyptian character; they show a very different taste and style. Bas-relief of Scribes writing down the Number of Heads of the Slain (Layard) The principal distinction between Assyrian and Egyptian art appears to be that in the one conventional forms were much more strictly adhered to than in the other. The angular mode of treatment, so conspicuous in Egyptian monuments, even in the delineation of every object, is not perceivable in those of Assyria. Had the arts of the two countries been derived from the same source—or had one been imitated from the other—they would both surely have displayed the same striking peculiarity. The Assyrians, less fettered, sought to imitate nature more closely, however rude and unsuccessful their attempts may have been; and this is proved by the constant endeavour to show the muscles, veins, and anatomical proportions of the human figure. We must not lose sight of the assertion of Moses of Chorene—derived no doubt from ancient traditions, if not from direct historical evidence—that when Ninus founded the Assyrian Empire, a people far advanced in civilisation and in the knowledge of the arts and sciences, whose works the conquerors endeavoured to destroy, were already in possession of the country. Who that people may have been, we cannot now even conjecture. The same mystery hangs over the origin of the arts in Egypt and in Assyria. They may have been derived, before the introduction of any conventional forms, from a common source—from a people whose very name, and the proofs of whose former existence, may have perished even before tradition begins. The monuments of Assyria furnish us with very important data, as to the origin of many branches of art, subsequently brought to the highest perfection in Asia Minor and Greece. I conceive the Assyrian influence on Asia Minor to have been twofold. In the first place, direct, during the time of the greatest prosperity of the Assyrian monarchy or empire, when, as it has been shown, the power of its kings extended over that country; in the second, indirect, through Persia, after the destruction of Nineveh. Of the influence exercised upon the arts of western Asia, during the early occupation of the Assyrians, few traces have hitherto been discovered, unless the remarkable monuments on the site of ancient Pteria, or Pterium, belong to this period. The evident connection between the divinities and sacred emblems worshipped in various parts of Asia Minor, and those of Assyria will be hereafter particularly pointed out. The Assyrian origin of these monuments, and of these religious symbols, once admitted, we shall have no difficulty in recognising the influence of Assyria on the arts and customs of Asia Minor. The antiquities of that country, prior to a well-known period, the Persian occupation, have been but little investigated. Few remains of an earlier epoch have yet been discovered. That such remains do exist, perhaps buried under ground, I have little doubt. It is most probable that, as we have additional materials for inquiry, we shall be still more convinced of this Assyrian influence, pointed out by Herodotus, when he declares the founder of the kingdom of Lydia to have been a descendant of Ninus, and by other authors, who mention the Syrian, or Assyrian, descent of many nations of Asia Minor. But the second, or indirect, period of this influence is very fully and completely illustrated by the monuments of Asia Minor, of the time of the Persian domination. The known connection between these monuments and the archaic forms of Greek art renders this part of the inquiry both important and interesting. The Xanthian marbles, acquired for England by Sir Charles Fellows, and now in the British Museum, are remarkable illustrations of the threefold connection between Assyria and Persia, Persia and Asia Minor, and Asia Minor and Greece. Were those marbles properly arranged, and placed in chronological order, they would afford a most useful lesson, and would enable even a superficial observer to trace the gradual progress of art from its primitive rudeness to the most classic conceptions of the Greek sculptor. Not that he would find either style, the pure Assyrian or the Greek, in its greatest perfection; but he would be able to see how a closer imitation of nature, a gradual refinement of taste and additional study, had converted the hard and rigid lines of the Assyrians into the flowing draperies and classic forms of the highest order of art. I have termed this second period that of indirect influence, because the arts did not then penetrate directly into Asia Minor from Assyria, but were conveyed thither through the Persians. The Assyrian Empire had already existed for centuries, and had exercised the supreme power over Asia, before it was disputed by the kingdoms of Persia and Media, united under one monarch. The Persians were probably a rude people, possessing neither a literature nor arts of their own, but deriving what they had from their civilised neighbours. We have no earlier specimen of Persian writing than the inscription containing the name of Cyrus, on the ruins supposed to be those of his tomb, at Murghaub [Pasargarda]; nor any earlier remains of Persian art than the buildings and sculptures of Persepolis, and other monuments to be attributed beyond a question to the kings of the Achæmenian dynasty. It has already been shown that the writing of the Persians was imitated from the Assyrians, and it can as easily be proved that their sculptures were derived from the same source. The monuments of Persepolis establish this beyond a doubt. They exhibit precisely the same mode of treatment, the same forms, the same peculiarities in the arrangement of the bas-reliefs against the walls, the same entrances formed by gigantic winged animals with human heads, and, finally, the same religious emblems. Had this identity been displayed in one instance alone, we might have attributed it to chance, or to mere casual intercourse; but when it pervades the whole system, we can scarcely doubt that one was a close copy, an imitation, of the other. That the peculiar characteristics of the Persepolitan sculptures were derived from the monuments of the second Assyrian dynasty—that is, from those of the latest Assyrian period—can be proved by the similarity of shape in the ornaments and in the costume of many of the figures. Thus, the head-dress of the winged monsters forming the portals is lofty, squared, and richly ornamented at the top, resembling those of Khorsabad and Kuyunjik, and differing from the round, unornamented cap of the older figures at Nimrud. The processions of warriors, captives, and tribute-bearers at Persepolis are in every respect similar to those on the walls of Nimrud and Khorsabad; we have the same mode of treatment in the figures, the same way of portraying the eyes and hair. The Persian artist introduced folds into the draperies; but, with this exception, he certainly did not improve upon his Assyrian model. On the contrary, his work is greatly inferior to it in the general arrangement of the groups and in the elegance of the details. From whence the Persians obtained the column and other architectural ornaments used at Persepolis, it may be more difficult to determine. We have seen that the column was not unknown to the later Assyrians, although it does not appear to have been employed in the construction of their palaces. The Persians, therefore, may have partly derived their knowledge from them; and partly, perhaps principally, from the Egyptians, whom, before the foundation of Persepolis, they had already conquered. It will be observed that the capitals of their columns frequently assume the shape of Assyrian religious types, the bull for instance; whilst other portions of them nearly resemble in the form of their ornaments, though not in their proportions, those of Egypt. The Persians introduced into Asia Minor the arts and religion which they received from the Assyrians. Thus the Harpy Tomb and the monument usually attributed to Harpagus at Xanthus, and other still earlier remains, show all the peculiarities of the sculpture of Persepolis, and at the same time that gradual progress in the mode of treatment—the introduction of action and sentiment, and a knowledge of anatomy—which marks the distinction between Asiatic and Greek art. Whilst there was a manifest improvement in the disposition of the draperies and in the delineation of the human form, we still remark, even in the latest works of the Persian period in Asia Minor, the absence of all attempt to impart sentiment to the features, or even to give more than the side view of the human face. Many architectural ornaments, known to the Assyrians, passed from them, directly or indirectly, into Greece. The Ionic column is an instance. We have, moreover, in the earliest monuments of Nineveh that graceful ornament, commonly called the honeysuckle, which was so extensively used in Greece, and is to this day more generally employed than any other moulding. In Assyria, as I have pointed out, it was invested with sacred properties, and was either a symbol or an object of worship. That the similarity between the Assyrian and Greek ornament is not accidental, seems to be proved, beyond a question, by the alternation of the lotus or tulip, whichever this flower may be, with the honeysuckle, by the number of leaves or petals of the flower, and by their proceeding in both from a semicircle, supported by two tendrils or scrolls. The same ornament occurs, even in India, on a lath erected by Asoka at Allahabad (about B.C. 250); but whether introduced by the Greeks—which, from the date of the erection of the monument, shortly after the Macedonian invasion, is not improbable—or whether derived directly from another source, I cannot venture to decide. Assyrian Harness That the Assyrians possessed a highly refined taste can hardly be questioned when we find them inventing an ornament which the Greeks afterwards, with few additions and improvements, so generally adopted in their most classic monuments. Others, no less beautiful, continually occur in the most ancient bas-reliefs of Nimrud. The sacred bull, with expanded wings, and the wild goat are introduced, kneeling before the mystic flower which is the principal feature in the border just described. The same animals are occasionally represented supporting disks, or flowers, and rosettes. A bird, or human figure, frequently takes the place of the bull and goat; and the simple flower becomes a tree, bearing many flowers of the same shape. This tree, evidently a sacred symbol, is elaborately and tastefully formed; and is one of the most conspicuous ornaments of Assyrian sculpture. The flowers at the ends of the branches are frequently replaced in later Assyrian monuments and on cylinders by the fir or pine cone, and sometimes by a fruit or ornament resembling the pomegranate. The guilloche, or intertwining bands, continually found on Greek monuments, and still in common use, was also well known to the Assyrians, and was one of their most favourite ornaments. It was embroidered on their robes, embossed on their arms and chariots, and painted on their walls. This purity and elegance of taste was equally displayed in the garments, arms, furniture, and trappings of the Assyrians. The robes of the king were most elaborately embroidered. The part covering his breast was generally adorned, not only with flowers and scroll-work, but with groups of figures, animals, and even hunting and battle scenes. In other parts of his dress similar designs were introduced, and rows of tassels or fringes were carried round the borders. The ear-rings, necklaces, armlets, and bracelets were all of the most elegant forms. The clasps and ends of the bracelets were frequently in the shape of the heads of rams and bulls, resembling our modern jewellery. The ear-rings have generally on the later monuments, particularly in the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad, the form of a cross. In their arms the Assyrians rivalled even the Greeks in elegance of design. The hilt of the sword was frequently ornamented with four lions’ heads; two, with part of the neck and shoulders, made the cross-bar or defence, and two more with extended jaws were introduced into the handle. The end of the sheath was formed by two entire lions, clasped together, their heads turned outward and their mouths open. Sometimes the whole of the sheath was engraved or embossed, with groups of human figures, animals, and flowers. The handles of the daggers were no less highly ornamented, being sometimes in the form of the head of a horse, bull, or ram. The sheath frequently terminated in the head of a bird, to which a tassel was suspended. The part of the bow to which the string was attached was in the shape of an eagle’s head. The quiver was richly decorated with groups of figures and fanciful designs. Ornaments in the form of the heads of animals, chiefly the lion, bull, and ram, were very generally introduced even in parts of the chariot, the harness of the horses, and domestic furniture. In this respect the Assyrians resembled the Egyptians.[b] The study of a country’s art is interesting, primarily of course purely as a study in the expression of beauty or in the portraiture of national types and ideals. The study should not, however, stop here, but one should consider also the effect each school has had upon the evolution of the world-art. This phase of Assyrian art has been examined by the Editor in a paper called “The Influence of Modern Research on the Scope of World History,” a Prefatory Essay to Vol. III of the New Volumes of the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, from which a quotation may be permitted here.[a] Whoever would see the story of the evolution of Greek art illustrated, should go to the British Museum and pass from the Egyptian hall, with its grotesque colossi, to the Assyrian rooms, with their marvellous bas-reliefs, and then on to the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon. In particular, the art treasures of the Assyrian collection should demand the closest scrutiny. In the Nineveh gallery, for example, where one finds collections of strange Assyrian books, the walls are flanked everywhere with bas-reliefs that come from some buried palace that once stored the literary treasures. Battle in a Marsh in Southern Mesopotamia (Layard) It appears that the kings of that far-off time and land were connoisseurs of art as well as patrons of literature; and the art treasures of their palaces certainly form the most striking, if not the most important, part of the mementoes they have left to us. The more closely these figures in low relief are examined, the more wonderful they will seem. They take the place of the Egyptian carvings in the round; and if they are less striking to first view than the great sarcophagi, the grotesque gods, and colossal animal forms of that people, they will prove infinitely more expressive and incomparably more artistic on closer inspection. For these flat sculptures depict, not alone gods and sacerdotal scenes, but everyday affairs and the events of Assyrian history. The bas-relief was clearly the focal point of Assyrian art. Even the great bulls and lions that guarded the palace entrances were only partially detached from their background, and a frescoed statue of King Asshurnazirpal shows the same tendency. The full rounded statue was not indeed unknown to them, as several examples testify; but their real forte lay in mural decoration in low relief. And the particular walls on which the artists mainly expended their skill, if we may judge from what the ruins have revealed to us, were not the walls of temples, but the palaces of kings. It is quite clear that these great conquerors of antiquity were very human, very like their successors of after times. They loved to have their heroic deeds, real or alleged, heralded to the world, and recalled incessantly to their own memories. So one finds whole histories epitomised on these walls—wars, conquests, victories; the storming of cities, the slaughter of the enemy, the leading of captives, and bringing of tribute by subject people—everything, in short, but Assyrian reverses; the court artist, true to his colours then as now, never made the mistake of depicting those. As historical records these sculptures are of priceless value, both for what they tell of political history and for the light they throw on the powers and limitations of antique art. But before you venture to judge the Assyrian artist in the latter regard, you must pass on to the room of Asshurnazirpal, and from that to the adjacent room, where the mural decorations of the dining-hall of the last of the great Assyrian kings, Asshurbanapal, have been placed in situ, reproducing an effect which they first made in the palace of Nineveh in the seventh century B.C. Here you may see at once both another phase of royal life in Assyria and another stage of Assyrian art. Not war, but the chase is now the theme. King Asshurbanapal is seen in pursuit of the goat, the wild ass, the lion. The king, of course, towers above his attendants, though not in the grotesque disproportion of the Egyptian paintings. To the oriental mind such excessive stature seemed indissoluble from royal station. One recalls how the mother of Darius, made captive at Issus, mistook Hephæstion for the king, because he was taller than Alexander; and how Agesilaus, when he went to Egypt as an ally of the Egyptians, was held in contempt, despite his renown, because of his diminutive stature; and one cannot help wondering what would have been the real aspect of the Assyrian and Egyptian monarchs could they have been subjected to the camera. Be that as it may, there was apparently no doubt in the mind of the court artist as to what his chisel should reveal in this respect, and the king may always be distinguished by his stature, without regard to his royal robes. Still, it is notable, as a distinction between Egyptian and Assyrian art, that the realistic eye of the Assyrian sculptor never let him depict the king as a Brobdingnag among the pigmies, after the Egyptian fashion. At the most he is a head taller than those about him. The royal hunter pursues his quarry sometimes on foot, more usually standing in his chariot. His weapon is usually the bow, sometimes the spear; on one occasion he grapples with the lion, hand to jowl, and stabs the quarry to the heart with a short sword. The quiet dignity and royal calm with which the feat is achieved must have insured the artist a high and enduring place in the royal favour. The action, however, of the human figures in these sculptures is always sedate and reposeful, suggestive of reserved strength perhaps, or possibly of the artist’s limitations. Whichever it is, the real power of the artist is not shown in the human figures. These, to be sure, are in part strongly anatomised; in the main, they are fairly proportioned, and, unlike the Egyptian figures, they have the shoulders drawn in proper perspective. But the faces are fixed, impassive; the eyes are not in perspective, and, as a whole, they cannot claim high merit as works of art, viewed from an abstract modern standpoint. Considered in relation to their time, they are wonderful enough, so far ahead are they of anything that we could suppose to have been accomplished in the world of that day. But they fall far short of the standard which the same artist has himself given us in animal figures of his composition. It seems as if the human figures might have been done from memory, whereas the animal forms are clearly enough from the natural model. Indeed, when we turn to these animal figures we may criticise them, not with reservation as to their age, but from the standpoint of modern art, and as individual figures they will not be found wanting. The three fundamental canons—“proportion, action, aspect”—have been successfully met. The lions skulk sullenly from their cages, spring furiously into action, or roll in death agony at the will of the depicter. The lioness, with spine broken by an arrow, dragging her palsied hind-quarters, is a veritable masterpiece. The same is true of many of the figures of goats, of running and pacing wild asses, and of dogs. As a whole, these animal frescoes are nothing less than wonderful. It is worth a visit to London from the remotest land to see these sculptures from the palace of the old Assyrian king. Bas-relief of a wounded Lioness (Now in the British Museum) Still, though these bas-reliefs have intrinsic merits as works of art, their chief value is for what they teach regarding the evolution of art in the world. Previously to their discovery it had been supposed that the stiff formalism of Egyptian sculpture represented the fullest flight of pre-Grecian art, and that Greek art itself had stepped suddenly forth, rather a new creation than an evolution. But the pick and shovel of Layard at Nineveh dispelled that illusion. For these art treasures, that had lain there under the deposits of centuries, were found to represent an enormous advance upon Egyptian models, precisely in the direction of that realism for which Greek art is distinguished. If we would judge how direct and unequivocal was the impulse which the dying nation transferred to the adolescent one in point of art, we have but to take a few steps in the British Museum, from the Assyrian rooms to the wonderful hall that holds Lord Elgin’s trophies from the desecrated Parthenon. Look, then, upon the frieze of bas-relief that bears the magic name of Phidias. If anything can reconcile us to the act that deprived Greece of her priceless heirlooms, it is the fact that they have found lodgment here close beside their oriental prototypes, where half a million visitors each year may at least have an opportunity to learn the lesson that human progress is an accretion, a growth, a building upon foundations; and, specifically, that Greek art, no less than other forms of human culture, was an evolution, and not an isolated miracle. For what is the Parthenon frieze, as we now come to it fresh from the palaces of Nineveh, but an Assyrian fresco adapted to the needs and ideals of another race and developed by the genius of a newer civilisation? The profiled figures in low relief coursing together, are they different in conception from the profiled figures of the palaces we have just left? The horses of the Parthenon frieze might almost seem to have stepped bodily from the palaces of Asshurbanapal. They have gained something in suppleness of limb, have altered their attitude in a measure, to be sure, thanks to their new environment. But their type has not changed by so much as an actual breed of horses might be changed in as many generations. Note the head, the most typical and characteristic feature of this Grecian steed. Line for line it is the same head, trappings aside, that we have just seen at Nineveh. Even the defects of the Assyrian drawing are there—the too small and slender face, and receding lower jaw, the tiny ear, the far too full and “chuffy” neck. Possibly no horse in nature was ever like this, but the Assyrian artist so conceives it; the Greek copies that conception; and the distorted type will be transmitted down the generations to the Italian of the Renaissance, to the classical painters of Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany, and France; nay, even to the artist of the nineteenth century. The court artist of an oriental prince of the ninth or tenth century B.C. conceives a certain ideal; and, following him, a certain type of sculptured horse, such as the artist who carved it has never seen, steps before the chariot on Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe in nineteenth-century Paris.[c] Bas-relief of Horses If Mesopotamian art and literature had been forgotten in succeeding ages, Chaldean science had not shared the same fate. The fame of the Babylonian astrology and astronomy was still fresh in the mind of the Greeks of the day of Diodorus, as we shall see, and it is curious to reflect that even at this relatively late period after Greece had passed far beyond the culminating point of her own career the learned Greek looked upon Chaldean science as something beyond the pale of the science of his own nation. It would seem as if the cultivated Greek looked back upon the Babylonian civilisation with something of that reverence which “modern” European nations have reserved for Greece itself. It is significant, too, that the Babylonians themselves, even in the day of their decline, continued to regard the Greeks, along with the rest of the outside world, as “barbarians” in something more than the Greek sense of the word. The older civilisation always thus regards the younger, regardless of the actual relative merits of the two. It was an Egyptian priest who lectured the famous Greek in these words: “O Solon! Solon! You Hellenes are but children, and there is never an old man who is a Hellene. In my mind you are all young. There is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science hoary with age”; but the same words might well have been pronounced by a priest of Chaldea. We have learned through Diodorus that the Egyptians guarded the secrets of their science very jealously from the Greeks, who travelled and sojourned there for the express purpose of learning them; and there is reason to suppose that much the same reception was accorded the Greek traveller in Babylonia, since Herodotus seems to have learned so little there beyond what his own direct observations taught him. But how much ground the Babylonian had for this arrogance of intellectual attitude the modern world had little material for judging, beyond such general assertions as that of Diodorus, until the records of the libraries were revealed. Then it was made evident that as original scientific investigators the Babylonians were no whit inferior to their contemporaries of the Nile, if, indeed, they were not superior; that in short they fully merited the praise which classical tradition accorded them. A people that thus excelled in theoretical science, no less than in art and literature and in practical civilisation, has many claims to be considered the foremost nation of antiquity.[a] “Here it will not be amiss to say something of the Chaldeans (as the Babylonians call them) and of their Antiquity, that nothing worth Remark may be omitted,” says Diodorus, as translated in 1700 by Booth. “They being the most ancient Babylonians, hold the same station and dignity in the Common-wealth as the Egyptian Priests do in Egypt: For being deputed to Divine Offices, they spend all their Time in the study of Philosophy, and are especially famous for the Art of Astrology. They are mightily given to Divination, and foretel future Events, and imploy themselves either by Purifications, Sacrifices, or other Inchantments to avert Evils, or procure good Fortune and Success. They are skilful likewise in the Art of Divination, by the flying of Birds, and interpreting of Dreams and Prodigies: And are reputed as true Oracles (in declaring what will come to pass) by their exact and diligent viewing the Intrals of the Sacrifices. But they attain not to this Knowledge in the same manner as the Grecians do; for the Chaldeans learn it by Tradition from their Ancestors, the Son from the Father, who are all in the mean time free from all other publick Offices and Attendances; and because their Parents are their Tutors, they both learn every thing without Envy, and rely with more confidence upon the truth of what is taught them; and being train’d up in this Learning from their very Childhood, they become most famous Philosophers, (that Age being most capable of Learning, wherein they spend much of their time). But the Grecians for the most part come raw to this study, unfitted and unprepar’d, and are long before they attain to the Knowledge of this Philosophy: And after they have spent some small time in this Study, they are many times call’d off and forc’d to leave it, in order to get a Livelihood and Subsistence. And although some few do industriously apply themselves to Philosophy, yet for the sake of Gain, these very Men are opinionative, and ever and anon starting new and high Points, and never fix in the steps of their Ancestors. But the Barbarians keeping constantly close to the same thing, attain to a perfect and distinct Knowledge in every particular. “But the Grecians cunningly catching at all Opportunities of Gain, make new Sects and Parties, and by their contrary Opinions wrangling and quarelling concerning the chiefest Points, lead their Scholars into a Maze; and being uncertain and doubtful what to pitch upon for certain truth, their Minds are fluctuating and in suspence all the days of their Lives, and unable to give a certain assent unto any thing. For if any Man will but examine the most eminent Sects of the Philosophers, he shall find them much differing among themselves, and even opposing one another in the most weighty parts of their Philosophy. But to return to the Chaldeans, they hold that the World is eternal, which had neither any certain Beginning, nor shall have any End; but all agree, that all things are order’d, and this beautiful Fabrick is supported by a Divine Providence, and that the Motions of the Heavens are not perform’d by chance and of their own accord, but by a certain and determinate Will and Appointment of the Gods. “Therefore from a long observation of the Stars, and an exact Knowledge of the motions and influences of every one of them, wherein they excel all others, they fortel many things that are to come to pass. “They say that the Five Stars which some call Planets, but they Interpreters, are most worthy of Consideration, both for their motions and their remarkable influences, especially that which the Grecians call Saturn. The brightest of them all, and which often portends many and great Events, they call Sol, the other Four they name Mars, Venus, Mercury, and Jupiter, with our own Country Astrologers. They give the Name of Interpreters to these Stars, because these only by a peculiar Motion do portend things to come, and instead of Jupiters, do declare to Men before-hand the good-will of the Gods; whereas the other Stars (not being of the number of the Planets) have a constant ordinary motion. Future Events (they say) are pointed at sometimes by their Rising, and sometimes by their Setting, and at other times by their Colour, as may be experienc’d by those that will diligently observe it; sometimes foreshewing Hurricanes, at other times Tempestuous Rains, and then again exceeding Droughts. By these, they say, are often portended the appearance of Comets, Eclipses of the Sun and Moon, Earthquakes and all other the various Changes and remarkable effects in the Air, boding good and bad, not only to Nations in general, but to Kings and Private Persons in particular. Under the Course of these Planets, they say are Thirty Stars, which they call Counselling Gods, half of whom observe what is done under the Earth, and the other half take notice of the actions of Men upon the Earth, and what is transacted in the Heavens. Once every Ten Days space (they say) one of the highest Order of these Stars descends to them that are of the lowest, like a Messenger sent from them above; and then again another ascends from those below to them above, and that this is their constant natural motion to continue for ever. The chief of these Gods, they say, are Twelve in number, to each of which they attribute a Month, and one Sign of the Twelve in the Zodiack. “Through these Twelve Signs the Sun, Moon, and the other Five Planets run their Course. The Sun in a Years time, and the Moon in the space of a Month. To every one of the Planets they assign their own proper Courses, which are perform’d variously in lesser or shorter time according as their several motions are quicker or slower. These Stars, they say, have a great influence both as to good and bad in Mens Nativities; and from the consideration of their several Natures, may be foreknown what will befal Men afterwards. As they foretold things to come to other Kings formerly, so they did to Alexander who conquer’d Darius, and to his Successors Antigonus and Seleucus Nicator; and accordingly things fell out as they declar’d; which we shall relate particularly hereafter in a more convenient time. They tell likewise private Men their Fortunes so certainly, that those who have found the thing true by Experience, have esteem’d it a Miracle, and above the reach of Man to perform. Out of the Circle of the Zodiack they describe Four and Twenty Stars, Twelve towards the North Pole, and as many to the South. “Those which we see, they assign to the living; and the other that do not appear, they conceive are Constellations for the Dead; and they term them Judges of all things. The Moon, they say, is in the lowest Orb; and being therefore next to the Earth (because she is so small,) she finishes her Course in a little time, not through the swiftness of her Motion, but the shortness of her Sphear. In that which they affirm (that she has but a borrow’d light, and that when she is eclips’d, it’s caus’d by the interposition of the shadow of the Earth) they agree with the Grecians. “Their Rules and Notions concerning the Eclipses of the Sun are but weak and mean, which they dare not positively foretel, nor fix a certain time for them. They have likewise Opinions concerning the Earth peculiar to themselves, affirming it to resemble a Boat, and to be hollow, to prove which, and other things relating to the frame of the World, they abound in Arguments; but to give a particular Account of ’em, we conceive would be a thing foreign to our History. But this any Man may justly and truly say, That the Chaldeans far exceed all other Men in the Knowledge of Astrology, and have study’d it most of any other Art or Science: But the number of Years during which the Chaldeans say, those of their Profession have given themselves to the study of this natural Philosophy, is incredible; for when Alexander was in Asia, they reckon’d up Four Hundred and Seventy Thousand Years since they first began to observe the Motions of the Stars. But lest we should make too long a digression from our intended Design, let this which we have said concerning the Chaldeans suffice.”[d] The Babylonian year, according to Eduard Meyer, consisted of simple lunar months (twenty-nine or thirty days), which, as with the Greeks and the Mohammedans, was determined by the course of the moon itself. To make this year coincide with the course of the sun, an extra month was intercalated; in olden times this seems to have been done after the first or the sixth month. This year, with the names of its months, was adopted by the Jews at the time of the Exile, and is still in use with them. The commencement of their year (Nisan) falls at the time of the spring equinox. The Babylonians had no continuous chronology; they dated according to the years of the kings, or, rather, they marked the year according to any important event which took place in it. Thus we see dates like “on the 30th Adar in the Sixth year after the conquest of Nisin by King Rim-Sin.” Later on in Babylon, and also in Assyria, they reckoned simply the years of the kings, from the day of their accession to the throne. The remainder of the year, in the course of which the predecessor had died, was therefore considered the first part of the first year of the new reign, and was very often called “the beginning of the reign” of the king in question. Chronological calculations were reckoned from the same starting-point as in Egypt. They reckon the calendar year in which a king comes to the throne as his first year, and hence his death takes place in the first year of his successor. This is the method of the Ptolemaic canon, one of the most important chronological monuments of antiquity. It is the list beginning with Nabonassar (about 747 B.C.) of the native and Persian kings of Babylonia, to which the Egyptian rulers up to Alexander are added. It is an addition to the astronomical work of Ptolemy, and was intended to throw light on the passages relating to the Babylonian, and later on to the Alexandrian chronological methods. It is authentic, and is confirmed by the monuments. Yet, in using the same, it must be recollected that all dates of the Egyptian “vague” year (and the Egyptian months) are reduced. Therefore the first year of the Nabonassar era begins on the 1st Tehuti, the 26th February, 747 B.C. In Assyria there is also a second and far more common form of specifying the years. Since a very early date (as far back as the fourteenth century) it was customary to name the year after some high official. The year, as such, is called limmu, “eponymic year.” Of course, they had continuous lists of these eponyms; and we have recovered several fragments. The lists for the years 893 to 666 are complete, and with fragments we can go still farther back. The kings frequently used this system, and private persons regularly used this eponym. Some copies of the lists contain accounts of the changes of reigns, and give short statements of important internal and external events of the particular years. Thus an eclipse of the sun June 15, 763 B.C., mentioned therein can be astronomically fixed, and the dates arrived at thereby concur exactly with the accounts of the Ptolemaic canon. The chronological history of this epoch is therefore perfectly determined.[e] This being the Babylonian method of reckoning dates, it is interesting to note on what plan they subdivided the day. Investigations were made in this line by that indefatigable Irishman, Edward Hincks, from whose article “On the Assyrio-Babylonian Measures of Time,” in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, we quote.[a] I begin with the day and its divisions. Our knowledge on this subject is mainly derived from a tablet in the British Museum, marked K. 15. A paper of mine was read before the Royal Irish Academy in 1854, and was published in the twenty-third volume of the Transactions in which this tablet was discussed. As that paper contained some slight philological errors, I will here repeat the substance of it, correcting those errors. I now translate the inscription on the Tablet as follows, omitting the customary benedictory formula. “On the sixth day of the month Nisan the day and the night are equal; six kazabs [kashbu] are the day; six kazabs [kashbu] are the night.” It is evident that this inscription records the observation of an equinox; and I will return to the consideration of it with that view. At present I will only remark that it points to a double division of the day, or Nycthemeron; viz., the first into the day properly so called, and the night; which were in this instance equal, though not generally so; the second into twelve equal kazabs [kashbu]. I proceed to the second division of the day into twelve kazabs [kashbu]. Each of these was equivalent, putting out of sight errors of observation, to two hours of mean solar time, such as we use in ordinary life. The word kazab [kashbu] is from a Hebrew root meaning “to fail,” which is applied to streams that run dry. This suggests the primary signification, “runnings out,” namely, of the water which had been poured into a vessel with a small hole in the bottom. The Babylonians measured time by clepsydræ, which, when they had been filled, would be emptied in two hours of mean time. Such clepsydræ would maintain a sufficiently accurate division of the day into twelve kazabs [kashbu] if the first were set to run at apparent noon, the second when the first had run out, and so on till the thirteenth, which would be set to run at the next apparent noon, whether the twelfth was just running out, or had already run out, or had still a little water in it. The kazab [kashbu] is mentioned as an ordinary measure of time in more than one passage. The distance from the mainland to an island in the Persian Gulf is said to be a voyage of thirty kazabs [kashbu] (Botta, 41. 48), just as that from Cyprus to Syria is said to be one of seven days (Botta, 38. 41). Also, in Rawlinson, 42. 13, Sennacherib speaks of slaughtering his enemies for the space of a journey or march of two kazabs [kashbu]. This use of the word seems to me a positive proof that the clepsydræ was in use among the Assyrians and Babylonians generally, and was not confined to the astronomers. There does not appear to me any reason to suppose that a division of the day from sunrise to sunset into twelve hours, varying in length according to the season of the year, and again of the night, from sunset to sunrise into twelve similar hours, was ever known to the Babylonians. Such a division was in use among the Egyptians, and was adopted from them by the Greeks, but the Babylonians and Assyrians knew nothing of it. I may here observe that some modern writers have committed a strange mistake in supposing the clepsydræ to have been invented so late as the third century before Christ and at Alexandria. These writers have confounded two totally different things; viz., the original invention of the clepsydræ marking mean solar time, which goes back to remote antiquity, and is almost certainly due to the Babylonians, and the adaptation of the clepsydræ to the seasonable (καιρικαὶ) hours of the Egyptians and Greeks, which was accomplished at the time and place which these writers mention. I have met with no subdivisions of the kazab [kashbu], and I much doubt whether the Babylonians had any means of marking such.[f] The exact sciences were cultivated in Assyria from the earliest times, nor had natural sciences been neglected. Zoology, botany, mineralogy are largely represented in the library of Nineveh, and as all these tablets contain a Sumerian as well as the equivalent Assyrian text, we are justified in believing that the Ninevites, in this respect, still followed the traditions of their predecessors. We find lists of animals arranged in a certain order which indicates an attempt at classification; thus the dog, lion, and wolf are in the same category, whilst the ox, sheep, and goat form another. In the enumeration of the different animals, there is a very evident design of establishing genera and families, and of distinguishing species. Thus we have a family comprising the great Carnivora: the dog, lion, and wolf; then we have different species in the dog family—such as the dog itself, the domestic dog, the coursing dog, the small dog, the dog of Elam, etc. The scientific side of this classification is revealed by an easily recognised circumstance; thus one finds after the common name a special nomenclature, which belongs to a scientific classification with which the Assyrians seem to have been familiar. Among the birds similar attempts at classification are evident. Birds of rapid flight, sea-birds, or marsh birds are differentiated. Insects form a very numerous class; we see an entire family whose species are differentiated according as they attack plants, animals, clothing, or wood. Vegetables seem to be classified according to their usefulness, or the service that industry can make of them. One tablet enumerates the uses to which wood can be put, according to its adaptability, for the timber-work of palaces, the construction of vessels, the making of carts, implements of husbandry, or even furniture. Minerals occupy a long series in these tablets. They are classed according to their qualities, gold and silver forming a division apart; precious stones form still another, but there is nothing to indicate on what basis a classification would be established. If we pass from the natural sciences to geography, we find the latter in a synthetic and fairly confused state. Nevertheless several lists give us a series of the names of towns, rivers, and mountains, arranged according to their geographical disposition, as we can easily prove. Sometimes the data are of a practical character, and names are followed by mention of natural or industrial products of localities, their revenue taxes, or tributes. But the science, par excellence, which was especially cultivated in Assyria, and which the learned men of Asshurbanapal connected with the greatest care with antique Chaldean traditions, was astronomy. This science was not indeed born at Nineveh; the Greeks teach us that astronomical observations were first made in lower Chaldea 1903 years before Alexander, and consequently 2226 years before Christ. Whatever the value of this date may be, the tradition of this origin is found in the works of the Assyrians, who constantly refer to the observations of their predecessors. Asshurbanapal had sent these learned men to the old schools of Mesopotamia, Ur, Sippar, Agade, Babylon; there to imbibe the elements of the science which was the glory of the southern empire. In the seventh century before our era, observations were carried on at Nineveh. At this date the fixed stars had long been distinguished from the planets; the sidereal revolutions, the divisions of the year, the course of the sun in the different constellations of the zodiac, periodic return of eclipses, and even the precession of the equinoxes, had been calculated. These achievements imply long and conscientious observation, a special intelligence to undertake them, and simple methods of rigorous calculation. We are ignorant as to the nature of the instruments with which the Assyrio-Chaldeans could observe the stars. The chances of error in observations by the naked eye are evidently very great, and errors can only be rectified by multiplied operations and the most minute calculations. It is known that the determining of the periodicity of the moon’s eclipses rests on a knowledge of the cycle of 223 lunations which bring back the same eclipses periodically. It is certain that the Assyrio-Chaldeans must have also known another cycle of 22,325 lunations equalling 1805 tropical years plus 8 days, or 1805 Julian years of 365¼ days; after which the eclipses return with still greater precision in the same order. How long did it take the human mind to observe and understand a sufficient number of lunations so as to combine the data they afforded and deduct the law that Meton formulated and to which he has given his name? In regard to eclipses of the sun, the cycle is so very much greater that the beginnings of the observations on which the calculations of their periodicity would rest, would take us back to a period which is quite beyond the limits of the historic age. Diogenes Laertius estimates it as 48,863 years. During that time 373 eclipses of the moon and 832 eclipses of the sun had been observed. When they turned their attention to the calculations resulting from these observations the Assyrio-Chaldeans were marvellously helped by their system of notation. Their numerical system lent itself with ease to the most complicated of calculations. We must content ourselves with stating the results. As we were saying a minute ago, the observations were carried on under Asshurbanapal; the king sent astronomers to different points to study celestial phenomena, and the results of their labours were sent him. Here are the terms in which these reports were expressed: “To the King, my Lord, his humble servant Ishtar-iddin-apal, chief astronomer of the town of Arbela writes this: Peace and happiness to the king my master and may he long prosper. “On the 29th day, I observed the node of the moon, the clouds obscured the field of observation, and we could not see the moon. “In the month of Sebat (January) the 1st day during the year Bel-haran-saduya (648 B.C.).” The result of this mission was not satisfactory. The eclipse had been predicted, but although the state of the atmosphere did not allow of observation, the attesting of this failure proves the care with which every circumstance that could serve to explain the phenomenon was noted. Here is an observation which was entirely successful: “To the director of observations my Lord, his humble servant Nabu-shum-iddin, Great Astronomer of Nineveh writes this: May Nabu and Marduk be propitious to the director of these observations, my Lord. “The 15th day we observed the node of the moon, and the moon was eclipsed.” Here is a more complicated observation: “To the king, my Lord, may the Gods Nabu and Marduk be propitious, may the great gods grant to the king, my master, long life, the benefits of the flesh and satisfaction of the heart. “The 27th day the moon disappeared; the 28th 29th and 30th day we continually observed the node of the obscuring sun. The eclipse did not take place. The 1st day (of the following month) we saw the moon during the first day of the month Tammuz (June) above the star Mercury of which I have previously sent an observation to the king my master. In its course during the day of Anu, around the shepherd star (the planet Venus), it was seen declining: on account of rain the horns were not very distinctly visible, and so it was in its whole course. The day Anu I sent the observation of its conjunction, to the king my master. It was prolonged and was visible above the star of the Chariot in its course during the day of Baal; it disappeared towards the star of the Chariot. “To the King, my Lord, peace and happiness.” The discovery of the precession of the equinoxes is generally attributed to Hipparchus. It was he, indeed, who taught this fact to the Greeks, and he estimated its yearly amount as from 36 to 39 seconds; but it is certain that he learned about it in Chaldea, and that he obtained the elements of his calculations from the astronomical observations made on the lower Euphrates. All the astronomical knowledge of the Ninevite savants had the same point of origin. Two thousand years before our era, from the time of a king of Agade called Sharrukin (Shargani-shar-ali), and who is usually known as Sargon I (the Ancient), the precession of the equinoxes was an observed and calculated fact, since it had already brought sufficient disturbance into the calendar to make a corrective element necessary. Sargon had given a brilliancy to his century which the learned men of Nineveh only echoed. In his time there was a library at Agade, the importance of which we can judge by the fragments which were preserved at Nineveh. We are certain that at these remote times the great divisions of the uranographic chart were already determined upon. Fixed stars were designated according to the different groups or constellations which were known by the names they have retained to this day. Outside these fixed stars the signs of the zodiac were perfectly determined in that portion of the celestial vault which the texts designate by the name of harranu (the way), that is to say, the way of the stars. These stars were the planets. The Chaldeans knew of seven, and they were thus known to them: Shamash, the sun; Sin, the moon; Alap-Shamash, Saturn; Rus, Jupiter; Ashbat, Venus; Sulpa-sadu, Mars; Nivit-Anu, Mercury. The Ninevite savants borrowed their astronomical knowledge from the Chaldeans; they made use of the calendar as it was transmitted to them, and as such it has been used by all nations from the remotest times up to the present day. The Assyrian year was composed of twelve lunar months. It began with the new moon preceding the vernal equinox. A well-known tablet thus fixes the day of the equinoxes: “At the sixth day of the month of Nisan (March) the days and nights are equal (and comprise), six kashbu for the day and six kashbu for the night. May Nabu and Marduk be propitious to the King, my Lord.” To correct the error resulting from the difference between the lunar and solar year, a supplementary month was intercalated, the length of which necessarily varied with circumstances. The Ninevite tablets offer us calendars arranged in conformity with the different exigencies of life. Some are purely scientific, and show us the divisions of the year into days, months, and seasons. Others are formed to meet the needs of religion, and tell us, by the day, the feasts consecrated to divinities invoked or honoured by special ceremonies. Others seem to take current superstitions into account; thus days are marked by a particular sign, according as they are considered propitious or disastrous. We see tables constructed to indicate the influence of the stars on each day of the year, with a mention of appropriate prayers, to propitiate favourable auguries and ward off those which are fatal. The importance of these last documents must not be exaggerated; they are related to superstitions common to all ages and lands; and, in the ancient East, as everywhere else, these beliefs merely represent one of the most curious, but the least interesting phases of the aberrations of the human mind.[g] [33] [This probably means that the father had been called to a high office.] [34] [This is a letter from King Ammidatitana, the king who was third from the end of the first Babylonian dynasty. It is an example of the usual style of a royal letter.] [35] For a description of these monuments and the history of their discovery, as well as for the conclusions which are to be drawn from them for the history of art in Mesopotamia, the reader is referred to De Sarsac’s album of reproductions [l’Art Chaldéen], also to L. Heerzey, Les fouilles de Chaldée in the Revue Archæologique, 1881, new series, vol. xlii, p. 56 ff. and 257. [36] Here of course only architecture and sculpture in general are intended, without denying that the Semites, also those of Babylonia and Assyria have accomplished original things in single cases, in execution, and in certain genres, as, for example, in the reproduction of animal forms. Babylonian King Lion Hunting Such is the fate of empire: Asshur rose Where elder thrones and prouder warriors stood; Before the Memphian priest his precepts chose, Men reasoned greatly of the highest good; Before Troy was, or Xanthus rolled in blood, Armies were ranged in battles’ dread array: They fought—their glory withered in its bud; They perished—with them ceased their tyrants’ sway; New wars, new heroes came—their story passed away.—James Gates Percival. It is a curious paradox that our knowledge of this oldest civilisation should be the very newest and most novel record with which present-day history has to deal. The Chaldeans, Assyrians, and Babylonians, of whose accomplishments we speak so confidently to-day, lived out their national life, and vanished from the earth, as nations, mostly before civilisation had its dawning in Europe; and for two thousand years they were but a reminiscence. It was reserved for nineteenth century investigators literally to dig from the earth their lost records, and to read the secrets of their forgotten history. Marvellous secrets they were, as we shall see; but before we turn to them, it will be of interest to recall the reminiscences that did service as the history of these wonderful peoples for so many centuries. In a few extracts we may set forth the substance of all that the world remembered of that marvellous civilisation from the days of Herodotus and Diodorus till the middle of the nineteenth century. A mixture of fact and fable, it still has absorbing interest, the more so that we may now compare it with the surer records brought to light in our own time. Aside from their intrinsic interest, the classical records have, in this regard, a unique importance. As to the precise classical authorities in question, we have already become acquainted with Diodorus and Ælianus in the earlier portion of this work. Another author we shall now have occasion to quote is Berosus. As to this author and the exact status of his work, we cannot do better than quote the following critical estimate from the Babylone et la Chaldée of Joachim Menant. “Berosus came of a priestly family and was born in Babylon, about 330 B.C. He himself is authority for the information that he was a contemporary of Alexander the Great. According to Tatian, he is the most learned of all Asiatic historians. He was deeply versed in the ancient traditions of his country and taught them to the Greeks, through whom they have come down to us. Vitruvius informs us that he left Babylon and went to live on the island of Cos, where he opened a school of astrology. He invented, or at least introduced among the Greeks, a particular kind of time-keeping. There still exist fragments of astrological works to which Berosus has attached his name, and owing to the special interests of the writers who have borrowed from his works, the fame of the astrologer perhaps outshines that of the historian. Pliny (VII. 37) declares that the Athenians erected a golden-tongued statue to him in the Gymnasium, on account of his wonderful predictions. “He wrote in Greek, about 280 B.C., a history of ancient Chaldea and dedicated it to Antiochus Soter. The work consisted of three volumes, of which we possess now but a few excerpts preserved in the chronicles of several historiographers who have lived at different periods and whom it may be well to mention. First of all there is Flavius Josephus, the great historian of the Jews, born at Jerusalem 33 A.D.; then there are St. Clement, the Alexandrian catechist (born early in the second century A.D., died 217), Eusebius, Bishop of Cæsarea (author of the Symbol of Nice, who lived from 267 to 338), and finally, George Syncellus (so called from the office he filled under the Bishop of Constantinople, and who died about the year 800). These writers took from Berosus only just what was needed for their purposes, and none in fact seems to have been personally acquainted with the work of the learned Chaldean. “For instance, Syncellus, whose writings show marks of haste and are by no means free from error, borrows his quotations from Eusebius, whom he often pretends to correct. Eusebius seems to be indebted to Julius Africanus, who wrote in the third century of our era, and the latter in turn mentions his obligation to Alexander Polyhistor, who flourished twenty-five years before Christ. Now Polyhistor takes his references from Apollodorus, who lived some years before. Josephus in all probability used Alexander Polyhistor as his source, although he does not say so. Clement of Alexandria had at his elbow the works of King Juba of Mauritania, who reigned about 30 B.C., and who seems to have taken his material, unfortunately too limited in amount, from the very works of Berosus, in whom he placed the utmost confidence. “One thing is certain, the original text of Berosus in passing through so many hands and suffering condensation and mutilation must have been considerably altered. “Berosus had free access to those famous clay-tablet libraries which Pliny describes and whose importance modern research has revealed. As at Nineveh, there were at Babylon, Borsippa, Orchoë [Erech], and in the large cities of Chaldea, archives which contained the national traditions to which the Chaldean priest was obliged to resort. “In the days of Berosus the writings in these archives were understood not only in Babylon, but throughout western Asia. The Assyrio-Chaldean language was still written in cuneiform characters till the time of the Seleucidæ and even during the first century B.C. Berosus was thus enabled to consult these precious sources, and we know that he went to them. Already in the priceless débris of these curious archives, fragments in corroboration of Berosus have been discovered, and these acquisitions only make us regret the more what is irrevocably lost.” We shall now take up some of the portions of Berosus’ history transcribed by later historiographers.[a] Berosus, in the first book of his history of Babylonia, informs us that he lived in the age of Alexander, the son of Philip. And he mentions that there were written accounts, preserved at Babylon with the greatest care, comprehending a period of about fifteen myriads of years; and that these writings contained histories of the heavens and of the sea; of the birth of mankind; and of the kings, and of the memorable actions which they had achieved. And in the first place he describes Babylonia as a country situated between the Tigris and the Euphrates; that it abounded with wheat and barley, and ocrus, and sesame; and that in the lakes were produced the roots called gongæ, which are fit for food, and in respect for nutriment similar to barley. That there were also palm trees and apples, and a variety of fruits; fish also and birds, both those which are merely of flight, and those which frequent the lakes. He adds, that those parts of the country which bordered upon Arabia were without water and barren; but that the parts which lay on the other side were both hilly and fertile. Assyrian Boat (From the Monuments) At Babylon there was (in these times) a great resort of people of various nations, who inhabited Chaldea, and lived in a lawless manner, like the beasts of the field. In the first year there appeared from that part of the Erythræan Sea [the Persian Gulf] which borders upon Babylonia, an animal destitute of reason, by name Oannes [perhaps the same as Anu], whose whole body (according to the account of Apollodorus) was that of a fish; that under the fish’s head he had another head, with feet also below, similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish’s tail. His voice, too, and language, was articulate and human; and a representation of him is preserved even to this day. This Being was accustomed to pass the day among men; but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences, and arts of every kind. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and showed them how to collect the fruits; in short he instructed them in everything which could tend to soften manners and humanise their lives. From that time nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions. And when the sun had set, this Being, Oannes, retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep; for he was amphibious. After this there appeared other animals like Oannes, of which Berosus proposes to give an account when he comes to the history of the kings. Moreover, Oannes wrote concerning the generation of mankind, and of their civil policy; and the following is the purport of what he said: “There was a time in which there existed nothing but darkness and an abyss of waters, wherein resided most hideous beings, which were produced of a twofold principle. There appeared men, some of whom were furnished with two wings, others with four, and with two faces. They had one body but two heads: the one that of a man, the other of a woman; likewise in their several organs, they were both male and female. Other human figures were to be seen with the legs and horns of goats; some had horses’ feet; while others united the hind quarters of a horse with the body of a man, resembling in shape the hippocentaurs. Bulls likewise were bred there with the heads of men; and dogs with fourfold bodies, terminated in their extremities with the tails of fishes. In short, there were creatures in which were combined the limbs of every species of animal. In addition to these, fishes, reptiles, serpents, with other monstrous animals, which assumed each other’s shape and countenance. Of all which were preserved delineations in the temple of Belus at Babylon. “The person who was believed to have presided over them, was a woman named Omoroca “This Belus, by whom they signify Jupiter, divided the darkness, and separated the Heavens from the Earth, and reduced the universe to order. But the animals, not being able to bear the prevalence of light, died. Belus, upon this, seeing a vast space unoccupied, though by nature fruitful, commanded one of the gods to take off his head, and to mix the blood with the earth; and from thence to form other men and animals, which should be capable of bearing the air. Belus formed also the stars, and the sun, and the moon, and the five planets.” (Such, according to Alexander Polyhistor, is the account which Berosus gives in his first book. In the second book was contained the history of the ten kings of the Chaldeans, and the periods of the continuance of each reign, which consisted collectively of 120 sars, or 432,000 years; reaching to the time of the Deluge. For Alexander, enumerating the kings from the writings of the Chaldeans, after Ardates the IXth, proceeds to the Xth, who is called by them Xisuthrus, in this manner:) After the death of Ardates, his son Xisuthrus reigned 18 sars. In his time happened a great Deluge; the history of which is thus described. The Deity, Cronus, appeared to him in a vision, and warned him that upon the fifteenth day of the month Dæsius [or Dæsia, i.e. May and June] there would be a flood, by which mankind would be destroyed. He therefore enjoined him to write a history of the beginning, procedure, and conclusion of all things; and bury it in the city of the Sun at Sippara; and to build a vessel, and to take with him into it his friends and relations; and to convey on board everything necessary to sustain life, together with all the different animals, both birds and quadrupeds, and trust himself fearlessly to the deep. Having asked the Deity, whither he was to sail, he was answered, “To the Gods”: upon which he offered up a prayer for the good of mankind. He then obeyed the divine admonition: and built a vessel five stadia in length and two in breadth. Into this he put everything which he had prepared; and last of all conveyed into it his wife, his children, and his friends. After the flood had been upon the earth, and was in time abated, Xisuthrus sent out birds from the vessel, which, not finding any food, nor any place whereupon they might rest their feet, returned to him again. After an interval of some days he sent them forth a second time; and they now returned with their feet tinged with mud. He made a trial a third time with these birds; but they returned to him no more: from whence he judged that the surface of the earth had appeared above the waters. He therefore made an opening in the vessel, and upon looking out found that it was stranded upon the side of some mountain; upon which he immediately quitted it with his wife, his daughter, and the pilot. Xisuthrus then paid his adoration to the earth: and having constructed an altar, offered sacrifices to the gods, and, with those who had come out of the vessel with him, disappeared. They who remained within, finding that their companions did not return, quitted the vessel with many lamentations, and called continually on the name of Xisuthrus. Him they saw no more; but they could distinguish his voice in the air, and could hear him admonish them to pay due regard to religion; and likewise informed them that it was on account of his piety that he was translated to live with the gods; that his wife and daughter, and the pilot, had obtained the same honour. To this he added, that they should return to Babylonia; and, as it was ordained, search for the writings at Sippara, which they were to make known to all mankind: moreover, that the place wherein they then were, was the land of Armenia [in the Hebrew, Ararat]. The rest having heard these words, offered sacrifices to the gods; and, taking a circuit, journeyed towards Babylonia. The vessel being thus stranded in Armenia, some part of it yet remains in the Corcyræan [or Gordyæan] Mountains of Armenia; and the people scrape off the bitumen, with which it had been outwardly coated, and make use of it by way of an alexipharmic and amulet. And when they returned to Babylon, and had found the writings at Sippara, they built cities, and erected temples: and Babylon was thus inhabited again. Of the Chaldean Kings This is the history which Berosus has transmitted to us. He tells us that the first king was Alorus [or Ur, the Babylonian deity] of Babylon, a Chaldean: he reigned ten sars: and afterwards Alaparus, and Amelon, who came from Pantibiblon [Greek form of Sippara]: then Ammenon the Chaldean, in whose time appeared the Musarus Oannes, the Annedotus from the Erythræan Sea. (But Alexander Polyhistor, anticipating the event, has said that he appeared in the first year; but Apollodorus says that it was after forty sars; Abydenus, however, makes the second Annedotus appear after twenty-six sars.) Then succeeded Megalarus from the city of Pantibiblon; and he reigned eighteen sars: and after him Daonus, the shepherd from Pantibiblon, reigned ten sars; in his time (he says) appeared again from the Erythræan Sea a fourth Annedotus, having the same form with those above, the shape of a fish blended with that of a man. Then reigned Euedorachus, from Pantibiblon, for the term of eighteen sars; in his days there appeared another personage from the Erythræan Sea like the former, having the same complicated form between a fish and a man, whose name was Odacon. (All these, says Apollodorus, related particularly and circumstantially whatever Oannes had informed them of: concerning these, Abydenus has made no mention.) Then reigned Amempsinus, a Chaldean from Laranchæ [or Larissa]; and he, being the eighth in order, reigned ten sars. Then reigned Otiartes, a Chaldean, from Laranchæ; and he reigned eight sars. And upon the death of Otiartes, his son Xisuthrus reigned eighteen sars: in his time happened the great Deluge. So that the sum of all the kings is ten; and the term which they collectively reigned was a hundred and twenty sars. [From Eusebius.] So much concerning the wisdom of the Chaldeans. It is said that the first king of the country was Alorus, and that he gave out a report that God had appointed him to be the Shepherd of the people: he reigned ten sars: now a sar is esteemed to be three thousand six hundred years; a ner six hundred; and a sos sixty. After him Alaparus reigned three sars: to him succeeded Amillarus from the city of Pantibiblon, who reigned thirteen sars: in his time came up from the sea a second Annedotus, a semi-demon very similar in his form to Oannes: after Amillarus reigned Ammenon twelve sars, who was of the city of Pantibiblon: then Megalarus of the same place reigned eighteen sars: then Daos, the shepherd, governed for the space of ten sars, he was of Pantibiblon [Sippara]; in his time four double-shaped personages came up out of the sea to land, whose names were Euedocus, Eneugamus, Eneuboulus, and Anementus: afterwards in the time of Euedoreschus appeared another Anodaphus. After these reigned other kings, and, last of all, Sisithrus [Xisuthrus]: so that in the whole the number amounted to ten kings, and the term of their reigns to an hundred and twenty sars. (And, among other things not irrelative to the subject, he continues thus concerning the Deluge): After Euedorechus some others reigned and then Sisithrus. To him the deity Cronus foretold that on the fifteenth day of the month Dæsius there would be a deluge of rain: and he commanded him to deposit all the writings whatever which were in his possession in the city of the Sun in Sippara. Sisithrus, when he had complied with these commands, sailed immediately to Armenia, and was presently inspired by God. Upon the third day after the cessation of the rain Sisithrus sent out birds, by way of experiment, that he might judge whether the flood had subsided. But the birds, passing over an unbounded sea, without finding any place of rest, returned again to Sisithrus. This he repeated with other birds. And when upon the third trial he succeeded, for the birds then returned with their feet stained with mud, the gods translated him from among men. With respect to the vessel, which yet remains in Armenia, it is a custom of the inhabitants to form bracelets and amulets of its wood. [From Eusebius.] They say that the first inhabitants of the earth, glorying in their own strength and size, and despising the gods, undertook to raise a tower whose top should reach the sky in the place in which Babylon now stands: but when it approached the heaven, the winds assisted the gods, and overthrew the work upon its contrivers: and its ruins are said to be at Babylon: and the gods introduced a diversity of tongues among men, who till that time had all spoken the same language: and a war arose between Cronus and Titan. The place in which they built the tower is now called Babylon, on account of the confusion of the tongues; for confusion is by the Hebrews called Babel.[37] [From Eusebius.] After the Deluge, in the tenth generation, was a certain man among the Chaldeans renowned for his justice and great exploits, and for his skill in the celestial sciences. [From Eusebius.] From the reign of Nabonassar only are the Chaldeans (from whom the Greek mathematicians copy) accurately acquainted with the heavenly motions: for Nabonassar collected all the mementos of the kings prior to himself, and destroyed them, that the enumeration of the Chaldean kings might commence with him. [From Syncellus.] He (Nabopolassar) sent his son Nebuchadrezzar with a great army against Egypt, and against Judea, upon his being informed that they had revolted from him; and by that means he subdued them all, and set fire to the temple that was at Jerusalem; and removed our people entirely out of their own country, and transferred them to Babylon, and our city remained in a state of desolation during the interval of seventy years, until the days of Cyrus, king of Persia. (He then says, that) this Babylonian king conquered Egypt, and Syria, and Phœnicia, and Arabia, and exceeded in his exploits all that had reigned before him in Babylon and Chaldea. [From Josephus.] When Nabopolassar, his (Nebuchadrezzar’s) father, heard that the governor, whom he had set over Egypt and the provinces of Cœle-Syria and Phœnicia, had revolted, he was determined to punish his delinquencies, and for that purpose entrusted part of his army to his son Nebuchadrezzar, who was then of mature age, and sent him forth against the rebel: and Nebuchadrezzar engaged and overcame him, and reduced the country again under his dominion. And it came to pass that his father, Nabopolassar, was seized with a disorder which proved fatal, and he died in the city of Babylon, after he had reigned nine and twenty years. Nebuchadrezzar, as soon as he had received intelligence of his father’s death, set in order the affairs of Egypt and the other countries, and committed to some of his faithful officers the captives he had taken from the Jews, and Phœnicians, and Syrians, and the nations belonging to Egypt, that they might conduct them with that part of the forces which had heavy armour, together with the rest of his baggage, to Babylonia: in the meantime with a few attendants he hastily crossed the desert to Babylon. When he arrived there he found that his affairs had been faithfully conducted by the Chaldeans, and that the principal person among them had preserved the kingdom for him: and he accordingly obtained possession of all his father’s dominions. And he distributed the captives in colonies in the most proper places in Babylonia: and adorned the temple of Belus, and the other temples, in a sumptuous and pious manner, out of the spoils which he had taken in this war. He also rebuilt the old city, and added another to it on the outside, and so far completed Babylon that none who might besiege it afterwards should have it in their power to divert the river so as to facilitate an entrance into it: and he effected this by building three walls about the inner city, and three about the outer. Some of these walls he built of burnt brick and bitumen, and some of brick only. When he had thus admirably fortified the city, and had magnificently adorned the gates, he added also a new palace to those in which his forefathers had dwelt, adjoining them, but exceeding them in height and splendour. Any attempt to describe it would be tedious: yet notwithstanding its prodigious size and magnificence, it was finished within fifteen days. In this palace he erected very high walks, supported by stone pillars; and by planting what was called a pensile paradise, and replenishing it with all sorts of trees, he rendered the prospect an exact resemblance of a mountainous country. This he did to gratify his queen [Amytis], because she had been brought up in Media, and was fond of a mountainous situation. [From Josephus.] Nebuchadrezzar, whilst he was engaged in building the above-mentioned wall, fell sick, and died after he had reigned forty-three years; whereupon his son Evil-merodachus succeeded him in his kingdom. His government, however, was conducted in an illegal and improper manner, and he fell a victim to a conspiracy which was formed against his life by Neriglissorus, his sister’s husband, after he had reigned about two years. Upon his death Neriglissorus, the chief of the conspirators, obtained possession of the kingdom, and reigned four years. He was succeeded by his son Labarosoarchodus [Labashi-Marduk], who was but a child, and reigned nine months; for his misconduct he was seized by conspirators, and put to death by torture. After his death, the conspirators assembled, and by common consent placed the crown upon the head of Nabonidus, a man of Babylon, and one of the leaders of the insurrection. It was in this reign that the walls of the city of Babylon which defend the banks of the river were curiously built with burnt brick and bitumen. In the seventeenth year of the reign of Nabonidus, Cyrus came out of Persia with a great army, and, having conquered all the rest of Asia, advanced hastily into the country of Babylonia. As soon as Nabonidus perceived he was advancing to attack him, he assembled his forces and opposed him, but was defeated, and fled with a few of his adherents, and was shut up in the city of Borsippus. Upon this Cyrus took Babylon, and gave orders that the outer walls should be demolished, because the city appeared of such strength as to render a siege almost impracticable. From thence he marched to Borsippus to besiege Nabonidus; but Nabonidus delivered himself into his hands without holding out the place: he was therefore kindly treated by Cyrus, who provided him with an establishment in Carmania, but sent him out of Babylonia. Nabonidus accordingly spent the remainder of his life in that country, where he died. [From Josephus.[38]] Berosus, in the first book of his Babylonian history, says: That in the eleventh month, called Loos [July], is celebrated in Babylon the feast of Sacea for five days, in which it is the custom that the masters should obey their domestics, one of whom is led round the house, clothed in a royal garment, and him they call Zoganes. [From Athenæus.] Abydenus, in his history of the Assyrians, has preserved the following fragment of Megasthenes, who says: That Nabucodrosorus [Nebuchadrezzar], having become more powerful than Hercules, invaded Libya and Iberia [Spain], and when he had rendered them tributary, he extended his conquests over the inhabitants of the shores upon the right of the sea. It is, moreover, related by the Chaldeans that as he went up into his palace he was possessed by some god; and he cried out and said: “Oh! Babylonians, I, Nabucodrosorus, foretell unto you a calamity which must shortly come to pass, which neither Belus, my ancestor, nor his queen Beltis, have power to persuade the Fates to turn away. A Persian mule shall come, and by the assistance of your gods shall impose upon you the yoke of slavery; the author of which shall be a Mede, the vainglory of Assyria. Before he should thus betray my subjects, O! that some sea or whirlpool might receive him, and his memory be blotted out forever; or that he might be cast out to wander through some desert where there are neither cities nor the trace of men, a solitary exile among rocks and caverns, where beasts and birds alone abide. But for me, before he shall have conceived these mischiefs in his mind a happier end will be provided.” When he had thus prophesied, he expired, and was succeeded by his son Evilmaruchus [Evil-merodach], who was slain by his kinsman Neriglisares; and Neriglisares left Labassoarascus his son; and when he also had suffered death by violence, they crowned Nabannidochus [Nabonidus], who had no connection with the royal family; and in his reign Cyrus took Babylon, and granted him a principality in Carmania. And concerning the rebuilding of Babylon by Nabuchodonosor, he [Megasthenes] writes thus: It is said that from the beginning all things were water, called the sea; that Belus caused this state of things to cease, and appointed to each its proper place; and he surrounded Babylon with a wall; but in process of time this wall disappeared; and Nabuchodonosor walled it in again, and it remained so with its brazen gates until the time of the Macedonian conquest. And after other things he [Megasthenes] says: Nabuchodonosor having succeeded to the kingdom, built the walls of Babylon in a triple circuit in fifteen days; and he turned the river Armacale, a branch of the Euphrates, and the Acracanus; and above the city of Sippara he dug a receptacle for the waters, whose perimeter was forty parasangs and whose depth was twenty cubits; and he placed gates at the entrance thereof, by opening which they irrigated the plains, and these they called echetognomones (sluices); and he constructed dikes against the eruptions of the Erythræan Sea, and built the city of Teredon to check the incursions of the Arabs; and he adorned the palaces with trees, calling them hanging gardens. [From Abydenus.][b] The reader, having already passed in review the chief events of Mesopotamian history, is aware that the modern historian knows nothing of a King Ninus, or of any warlike female ruler of Assyria. Nevertheless this story of Diodorus—the only long account of Assyrian affairs that has come down to us from antiquity—has true historical value, as showing the manner of tradition that may be woven about the half-remembered facts of history. The account has interest for yet another reason: it is a record that passed current as the authentic history of Assyria for some eighteen hundred years—from classical times till after the middle of the nineteenth century.[a] Asia was anciently govern’d, says Diodorus, by its own Native Kings, of whom there’s no History extant, either as to any memorable Actions they perform’d, or so much as to their Names. Ninus is the First King of Assyria that is recorded in History; he perform’d many great and noble Actions; of whom we have design’d to set forth something particularly. He was naturally of a Warlike Disposition, and very ambitious of Honour and Glory, and therefore caus’d the strongest of his Young Men to be train’d up in Martial Discipline, and by long and continual Exercise inur’d them readily to undergo all the Toyls and Hazards of War. Having therefore rais’d a gallant Army, he made a League with Arieus King of Arabia, that was at that time full of strong and valiant Men. For that Nation are constant Lovers of Liberty, never upon any Terms admitting of any Foreign Prince: And therefore neither the Persian, nor the Macedonian Kings after them, (though they were most powerful in Arms) were ever able to conquer them. For Arabia being partly Desert, and partly parcht up for want of Water (unless it be in some secret Wells and Pits known only to the Inhabitants) cannot be subdu’d by any Foreign Force. Ninus therefore, the Assyrian King, with the Prince of Arabia his Assistant, with a numerous Army, invaded the Babylonians, then next bordering upon him: For the Babylon that is now, was not built at that time; but the Province of Babylon had in it then many other considerable Cities, whose Inhabitants he easily subdu’d, (being rude and unexpert in Matters of War,) and impos’d upon them a Yearly Tribute; but carried away the King with all his Children Prisoners, and after put them to Death. Afterwards he entered Armenia with a great Army, and having overthrown some Cities, he struck Terror into the rest, and thereupon their King Barzanus seeing himself unable to deal with him, met him with many rich Presents, and submitted himself; whom Ninus out of his generous disposition, courteously receiv’d, and gave him the Kingdom of Armenia, upon condition he should be his Friend for the future, and supply him with Men and Provision for his Wars as he should have occasion. Being thus strengthen’d, he invaded Media, whose King Pharnus coming out against him with a mighty Army, was utterly routed, and lost most of his Men, and was taken Prisoner with his Wife and Seven Children, and afterwards Crucified. Ninus being thus successful and prosperous, his Ambition rose the higher, and his desire most ardent to conquer all in Asia, which lay between Tanais and Nile; (so far does Prosperity and Excess in getting much, inflame the Desire to gain and compass more). In order hereunto, he made one of his Friends Governor of the Province of Media, and he himself in the meantime marcht against the other Provinces of Asia, and subdu’d them all in Seventeen Years time, except the Indians and Bactrians. But no Writer has given any Account of the several Battels he fought, nor of the number of those Nations he conquer’d; and therefore following Ctesias the Cnidian, we shall only briefly run over the most famous and considerable Countries. He over-ran all the Countries bordering upon the Sea, together with the adjoining Continent, as Egypt and Phenicia, Celo-Syria, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Lycia, Caria, Phrygia, Mysia, and Lydia; the Province of Troas and Phrygia upon the Hellespont, together with Propontis, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and the Barbarous Nations adjoyning upon Pontus, as far as to Tanais; he gain’d likewise the Country of the Caddusians, Tarpyrians, Hyrcanians, Dacians, Derbians, Carmanians, Choroneans, Borchanians, and Parthians. He pierc’d likewise into Persia, the Provinces of Susiana, and that call’d Caspiana, through those narrow Straits, which from thence are call’d the Caspian Gates. He subdu’d likewise many other less considerable Nations, which would be too tedious here to recount. After much toyl and labour in vain, because of the difficulty of the Passes, and the multitude of those Warlike Inhabitants, he was forc’d to put off his War against the Bactrians to another opportunity. Having marcht back with his Army into Syria, he markt out a Place for the building of a stately City: For in as much as he had surpast all his Ancestors in the glory and success of his Arms, he was resolv’d to build one of that state and grandeur as should not only be the greatest then in the World, but such as none that ever should come after him should be able easily to exceed. The King of Arabia he sent back with his Army into his own Country, with many rich Spoils, and noble Gifts. And he himself having got a great number of his Forces together, and provided Mony and Treasure, and other things necessary for the purpose, built a City near the River Euphrates, very famous for its Walls and Fortifications; of a long Form; for on both sides it ran out in length above an Hundred and Fifty Furlongs; but the Two lesser Angles were only Ninety Furlongs apiece; so that the Circumference of the whole was Four Hundred and Fourscore Furlongs. And the Founder was not herein deceived, for none ever after built the like, either as to the largeness of its Circumference, or the stateliness of its Walls. For the Wall was an Hundred Foot in Height, and so broad as Three Chariots might be driven together upon it in breast: There were Fifteen Hundred Turrets upon the Walls, each of them Two Hundred Foot high. He appointed the City to be inhabited chiefly by the richest Assyrians, and gave liberty to People of any other Nation (to as many as would) to dwell there, and allow’d to the Citizens a large Territory next adjoining to them, and call’d the City after his own Name, Ninus. When he had finish’d his Work here, he marcht with an Army against the Bactrians, where he marry’d Semiramis; who being so famous above any of her Sex (as in History it is related) we cannot but say something of her here in this Place, being one advanc’d from so low a Fortune, to such a state and degree of Honour and Worldly Glory. There’s a City in Syria, call’d Ascalon, near which is a deep Lake abounding with Fish, where not far off stands a Temple dedicated to a famous Goddess call’d by the Syrians Derceto [Dagon], she represents a Woman in her Face, and a Fish in all other parts of her Body, upon the account following, as the most Judicious among the Inhabitants report; for they say, that Venus being angry at this Goddess, caus’d her to fall into a vehement pang of Love with a beautiful Young Man, who was among others sacrificing to her, and was got with Child by him, and brought to Bed of a Daughter; and being asham’d afterwards of what she had done, she kill’d the Young Man, and expos’d the Child among Rocks in the Desert, and through Sorrow and Shame cast her self into the Lake, and was afterwards transform’d into a Fish; whence it came to pass, that at this very Day the Syrians eat no Fish, but adore them as Gods. They say that the Infant that was expos’d, was both preserv’d and nourish’d by a most wonderful Providence, by the means of a great Flock of Pigeons that nestled near to the Place where the Child lay; for with their Wings they cherish’t it, and kept it warm; and observing where the Herdsmen and other Shepherds left their Milk in the Neighbouring Cottages, took it up in their Bills, and as so many Nurses thrust their Beaks between the Infants Lips, and so instil’d the Milk: And when the Child was a Year old, and stood in need of stronger Nourishment, the Pigeons fed it with pieces of Cheese which they pickt out from the rest: When the Shepherds return’d, and found their Cheeses pickt round, they wondred (at first) at the thing; but observing afterward how it came to pass, they not only found out the cause, but likewise a very beautiful Child, which they forthwith carry’d away to their Cottages, and made a Present of it to the King’s Superintendent of his Flocks and Herds (whose Name was Simma) who (having no Children of his own) carefully bred up the Young Lady as if she had been his own Daughter, and call’d her Semiramis, a denomination in the Syrian Language deriv’d from Pigeons, which the Syrians ever after ador’d for Goddesses. And these are the Stories told of Semiramis. Being now grown up, and exceeding all others of her Sex for the Charms of her Beauty, one of the King’s great Officers, call’d Menon, was sent to take an account of the King’s Herds and Flocks: This Man was Lord President of the King’s Council, and chief Governor of Syria, and lodging upon this occasion at Simma’s House, at the sight of Semiramis, fell in love with her, and with much intreaty obtain’d her from Simma, and carried her away with him to Nineve, where he Marry’d her, and had by her two Sons, Hypates and Hydaspes: And being a Woman of admirable Parts as well as Beauty, her Husband was altogether at her Devotion, and never would do any thing without her Advice, which was ever successful. About this time Ninus having finish’d his City (call’d after his own Name), prepar’d for his Expedition against the Bactrians; and having had experience of the greatness of their Forces, the valour of their Souldiers, and the difficulties of passing into their Country, he rais’d an Army of the choicest Men he could pick out from all Parts of his Dominions; for because he was baffl’d in his former Expedition, he was resolv’d to invade Bactria with a far stronger Army than he did before. Bringing therefore his whole Army together at a General Randezvouz, there were numbred (as Ctesias writes) Seventeen Hundred Thousand Foot, above Two Hundred and Ten Thousand Horse, and no fewer than Ten Thousand and Six Hundred Hooked Chariots. This number at the first view seems to be very incredible; but to such as seriously consider the largeness and populousness of Asia, it cannot be judg’d impossible. For if any (not to say any thing of the Eight Hundred Thousand Men that Darius had with him in his Expedition against the Scythians, and the innumerable Army Xerxes brought over with him into Greece) will but take notice of things done lately, even as of Yesterday, he’l more easily credit what we now say. For in Sicily Dionysius led only out of that one City of Syracuse, an Hundred and Twenty Thousand Foot, and Twelve Thousand Horse; and lancht out of one Port, a Navy of Four Hundred Sail, of which some were of Three Tyre of Oars, and others of Five: And the Romans a little before the Times of Hannibal, rais’d in Italy of their own Citizens and Confederates, an Army little less than a Million of Fighting Men; and yet all Italy is not to be compar’d with one Province of Asia for number of Men. But this may sufficiently convince them that compute the ancient Populousness of the Countries by the present depopulations of the Cities at this day. Ninus therefore marching with these Forces against the Bactrians, divided his Army into Two Bodies, because of the straitness and difficulty of the Passages. There are in Bactria many large and populous Cities, but one is more especially Famous, call’d Bactria, in which the King’s Palace, for greatness and magnificence, and the Citadel for strength, far excel all the rest. Oxyartes reign’d there at this time, who caus’d all that were able, to bear Arms, and muster’d an Army of Four Hundred Thousand Men. With these he met the Enemy at the Straights, entering into his Country, where he suffered Ninus to enter with part of his Army: When he saw a competent number enter’d, he fell upon them in the open Plain, and fought them with that resolution, that the Bactrians put the Assyrians to flight, and pursuing them to the next Mountains, kill’d a Hundred Thousand of their Enemies; but after the whole Army enter’d, the Bactrians were overpower’d by number, and were broken, and all fled to their several Cities, in order to defend every one his own Country. Ninus easily subdu’d all the rest of the Forts and Castles; but Bactria itself was so strong and well provided, that he could not force it; which occasion’d a long and tedious Siege, so that the Husband of Semiramis (who was there in the King’s Camp) being Love-sick, impatient of being any longer without his wife, sent for her, who being both discreet and couragious, and endowed with other noble Qualifications, readily imbrac’d the opportunity of shewing to the World her own natural Valour and Resolution; and that she might with more safety perform so long a Journey, she put on such a Garment as whereby she could not be discern’d whether she were a Man or a Woman; and so made, that by it she both preserv’d her Beauty from being scorcht by the heat in her Journey, and likewise was thereby more nimble and ready for any business she pleas’d to undertake, being of her self a youthful and sprightly Lady; and this sort of Garment was in so high esteem, that the Medes afterwards when they came to be Lords of Asia, wore Semiramis’s Gown, and the Persians likewise after them. As soon as she came to Bactria, and observ’d the manner of the Siege, how Assaults were made only in open and plain Places most likely to be enter’d, and that none dar’d to approach the Cittadel, because of its natural Strength and Fortification, and that they within took more care to defend the lower and weaker parts of the Walls, than the Castle where they neglected their Guards, she took some with her that were skilful in climbing up the Rocks, and with them with much Toyl, pass’d over a deep Trench, and possess’d her self of part of the Castle; whereupon she gave a Signal to them that were assaulting the Wall upon the Plain. Then they that were within the City being suddenly struck with a Panick Fear at the taking of the Castle, in desperation of making any further defence forsook the Walls. The City being taken in this manner, the King greatly admir’d the Valour of the Woman, and bountifully rewarded her, and was presently so passionately affected at the sight of her Beauty, that he us’d all the Arguments imaginable to persuade her Husband to bestow his Wife upon him, promising him as a Reward of his Kindness, to give him his daughter Sosana in Marriage: But he absolutely refus’d; upon which the King threaten’d him, that if he would not consent, he would pluck out his Eyes. Menon hereupon out of fear of the King’s Threats, and overpower’d with the Love of his Wife, fell into a distracted Rage and Madness, and forthwith hang’d himself. And this was the occasion of the advancement of Semiramis to the Regal state and dignity. Ninus having now possess’d himself of all the Treasures of Bactria (where was abundance of Gold and Silver) and settled his Affairs throughout the whole Province of Bactria, returned with his Army to his own Country. Afterwards he had a Son by Semiramis, call’d Ninyas, and dy’d leaving his Wife Queen Regent. She bury’d her Husband Ninus in the Royal Palace, and rais’d over him a Mount of Earth of a wonderful bigness, being Nine Furlongs in height, and ten in breadth, as Ctesias says: So that the City standing in a Plain near to the River Euphrates, the Mount (many Furlongs off) looks like a stately Cittadel. And it’s said, that it continues to this day, though Nineve was destroy’d by the Medes when they ruin’d the Assyrian Empire. Semiramis was naturally of an high aspiring Spirit, ambitious to excel all her Predecessors in glorious Actions, and therefore imploy’d all her Thoughts about the building of a City in the Province of Babylon; and to this end having provided Architects, Artists, and all other Necessaries for the Work, She got together Two Millions of Men out of all Parts of the Empire to be imploy’d in the building of the City. It was so built as that the River Euphrates ran through the middle of it, and she compass’d it round with a Wall of Three Hundred and Sixty Furlongs in Circuit, and adorn’d with many stately Turrets; and such was the state and grandeur of the Work, that the Walls were of that breadth, as that Six Chariots abreast might be driven together upon them. Their height was such as exceeded all Mens belief that heard of it (as Ctesias Cnidius relates). But Clitarchus, and those who afterwards went over with Alexander into Asia, have written that the Walls were in Circuit Three Hundred Sixty Five Furlongs; the Queen making them of that Compass, to the end that the Furlongs should be as many in number as the Days of the Year: They were of Brick cemented with Brimstone; in height as Ctesias says Fifty Orgyas; but as some of the later Writers report, but Fifty Cubits only, and that the Breadth was but a little more than what would allow two Chariots to be driven afront. There were Two Hundred and Fifty Turrets, in height and thickness proportionable to the largeness of the Wall. It is not to be wondered at, that there were so few Towers upon a Wall of so great a Circuit, being that in many Places round the City, there were deep Morasses; so that it was judg’d to no purpose to raise Turrets there where they were so naturally fortify’d: Between the Wall and the Houses, there was a Space left round the City of Two Hundred Foot. That the Work might be the more speedily dispatcht, to each of her Friends was allotted a Furlong, with an allowance of all Expences necessary for their several Parts, and commanded all should be finish’d in a Years time; which being diligently perfected with the Queen’s Approbation, she then made a Bridge over the narrowest part of the River, Five Furlongs in length, laying the Supports and Pillars of the arches with great Art and Skill in the Bottom of the Water Twelve Foot distance from each other. That the Stones might be the more firmly joyn’d, they were bound together with Hooks of Iron, and the Joints fill’d up with melted Lead. And before the Pillars, she made and placed Defences, with sharp pointed Angles, to receive the Water before it beat upon the flat sides of the Pillars, which caus’d the Course of the Water to run round by degrees gently and moderately as far as to the broad sides of the Pillars, so that the sharp Points of the Angles cut the Stream, and gave a check to its violence, and the roundness of them by little and little giving way, abated the force of the Current. This bridge was floor’d with great Joices and Planks of Cedar, Cypress and Palm Trees, and was Thirty Foot in breadth, and for Art and Curiosity, yielded to none of the works of Semiramis. On either side of the River she rais’d a Bank, as broad as the Wall, and with great cost drew it out in length an Hundred Furlongs. She built likewise Two Palaces at each end of the Bridge upon the Bank of the River, whence she might have a Prospect over the whole City, and make her Passage as by Keys to the most convenient Places in it, as she had occasion. And whereas Euphrates runs through the middle of Babylon, making its course to the South, the Palaces lye the one on the East and the other on the West Side of the River; both built at exceeding Costs and Expence. For that on the West had an high and stately Wall, made of well burnt Brick, Sixty Furlongs in compass; within this was drawn another of a round Circumference, upon which were portray’d in the Bricks, before they were burnt, all sorts of living Creatures, as if it were to the Life, laid with great Art in curious Colours. This Wall was in Circuit Forty Furlongs, Three Hundred Bricks thick, and in height (as Ctesias says) a Hundred Yards, upon which were Turrets an Hundred and Forty Yards high. The Third and most inward Wall immediately surrounded the Palace, Thirty Furlongs in Compass, and far surmounted the middle Wall, both in height and thickness; and on this Wall and the Towers were represented the Shapes of all sorts of Living Creatures, artificially exprest in most lively Colours. Especially was represented a General Hunting of all sorts of wild Beasts, each Four Cubits high and upwards; amongst these was to be seen Semiramis on Horseback, striking a Leopard through with a Dart, and next to her, her Husband Ninus in close Fight with a Lion, piercing him with his Lance. To this Palace she built likewise Three Gates, under which were Apartments of Brass for Entertainments, into which Passages were open’d by a certain Engin. This Palace far excell’d that on the other side of the River, both in greatness and adornments. For the outmost Wall of that (made of well burnt Brick) was but Thirty Furlongs in compass. Instead of the curious Portraiture of Beasts, there were the Brazen Statues of Ninus and Semiramis, the Great Officers, and of Jupiter, whom the Babylonians call Belus; and likewise Armies drawn up in Battalia, and divers sorts of Hunting were there represented, to the great diversion and pleasure of the Beholders. After all these in a low Ground in Babylon, she sunk a Place for a Pond Four-square, every Square being Three Hundred Furlongs in length, lin’d with Brick, and cemented with Brimstone, and the whole Five and Thirty Foot in depth: Into this having first turn’d the River, she then made a Passage in nature of a Vault, from one Palace to another, whose Arches were built of firm and strong Brick, and plaister’d all over on both sides with Bitumen Four Cubits thick. The Walls of this Vault were Twenty Bricks in thickness, and Twelve Foot High, beside and above the Arches; and the breadth was Fifteen Foot. This Piece of Work being finish’d in Two Hundred and Sixty Days, the River was turn’d into its ancient Channel again, so that the River flowing over the whole Work, Semiramis could go from one Palace to the other, without passing over the River. She made likewise Two Brazen Gates at either end of the Vault, which continu’d to the time of the Persian Empire. In the middle of the City, she built a Temple to Jupiter, whom the Babylonians call Belus (as we have before said) of which since Writers differ amongst themselves, and the Work is now wholly decay’d through length of Time, there’s nothing that can certainly be related concerning it: Yet it’s apparent it was of an exceeding great height, and that by the advantage of it, the Chaldean Astrologers exactly observ’d the setting and rising of the Stars. The whole was built of Brick, cemented with Brimstone, with great Art and Cost. Upon the top she plac’d Three Statues of beaten Gold of Jupiter, Juno and Rhea. That of Jupiter stood upright in the posture as if he were walking; he was Forty Foot in height, and weigh’d a Thousand Babylonish Talents. The Statue of Rhea was of the same weight sitting on a Golden Throne, having Two Lions standing on either side, one at her Knees, and near to them Two exceeding great Serpents of Silver, weighing Thirty Talents apiece. Here likewise the Image of Juno stood upright, and weighed Eight Hundred Talents, grasping a Serpent by the Head in her right Hand, and holding a Scepter adorn’d with precious Stones in her left. For all these Deities there was plac’d a Common Table made of beaten Gold, Forty Foot long, and Fifteen broad, weighing Five Hundred Talents: Upon which stood Two Cups weighing Thirty Talents, and near to them as many Censers weighing Three Hundred Talents: There were there likewise plac’d Three Drinking Bowls of Gold, one of which dedicated to Jupiter, weigh’d Twelve Hundred Babylonish Talents, but the other Two Six Hundred apiece; but all those the Persian Kings sacrilegiously carry’d away. And length of Time has either altogether consum’d, or much defac’d the Palaces and the other Structures; so that at this day but a small part of this Babylon is inhabited, and the greatest part which lay within the Walls is turn’d into Tillage and Pasture. There was likewise a Hanging Garden (as it’s call’d) near the Citadel, not built by Semiramis, but by a later Prince, call’d Cyrus, for the sake of a Curtesan, who being a Persian (as they say) by Birth, and coveting Meadows on Mountain Tops, desir’d the King by an Artificial Plantation to imitate the Land in Persia. This Garden was Four Hundred Foot Square, and the Ascent up to it was as to the Top of a Mountain, and had Buildings and Apartments out of one into another, like unto a Theater. Under the Steps to the Ascent, were built Arches one above another, rising gently by degrees, which supported the whole Plantation. The highest Arch upon which the Platform of the Garden was laid, was Fifty Cubits high, and the Garden itself was surrounded with Battlements and Bulwarks. The Walls were made very strong, built at no small Charge and Expence, being Two and Twenty Foot thick, and every Sally-port Ten Foot wide: Over the several Stories of this Fabrick, were laid Beams and Summers of huge Massy Stones each Sixteen Foot long, and Four broad. The Roof over all these was first cover’d with Reeds, daub’d with abundance of Brimstone; then upon them was laid double Tiles pargeted together with a hard and durable Mortar (such as we call Plaister of Paris), and over them after all, was a Covering with Sheets of Lead, that the Wet which drencht through the Earth, might not rot the Foundation. Upon all these was laid Earth of a convenient depth, sufficient for the growth of the greatest Trees. When the Soyl was laid even and smooth, it was planted with all sorts of Trees, which both for Greatness and Beauty, might delight the Spectators. The Arches (which stood one above another, and by that means darted light sufficient one into another) had in them many stately Rooms of all Kinds, and for all purposes. But there was one that had in it certain Engins, whereby it drew plenty of Water out of the River through certain Conduits and Conveyances from the Platform of the Garden, and no body without was the wiser, or knew what was done. This Garden (as we said before) was built in later Ages. But Semiramis built likewise other Cities upon the Banks of Euphrates and Tigris, where she establish’d Marts for the vending of Merchandize brought from Media and Paretacena, and other Neighbouring Countries. For next to Nile and Ganges, Euphrates and Tigris are the noblest Rivers of all Asia, and have their Spring-heads in the Mountains of Arabia, and are distant one from another Fifteen Hundred Furlongs. They run through Media and Paretacena into Mesopotamia, which from its lying in the middle between these Two Rivers, has gain’d from them that Name; thence passing through the Province of Babylon, they empty themselves into the Red Sea. These being very large Rivers, and passing through divers Countries, greatly inrich the Merchants that traffick in those Parts; so that the Neighbouring Places are full of Wealthy Mart Towns, and greatly advanc’d the glory and majesty of Babylon. Semiramis likewise caus’d a great Stone to be cut out of the Mountains of Armenia, an Hundred and Twenty Five Foot in length, and Five in breadth and thickness; this she convey’d to the River by the help of many Yokes of Oxen and Asses, and there put it Aboard a Ship, and brought it safe by Water to Babylon, and set it up in the most remarkable High-way as a wonderful Spectacle to all Beholders. From its shape it’s call’d an Obelisk (Obelos in Greek signifies a Spit) and is accounted one of the Seven Wonders of the World. There are indeed many remarkable and wonderful things to be seen in Babylon; but amongst these, the great quantity of Brimstone that there flows out of the Ground, is not to be the least admir’d, which is so much, that it not only supply’d all their occasions in building such great and mighty Works, but the common People profusely gather it, and when it’s dry, burn it instead of Fewel; and though it be drawn out by an innumerable Company of People, as from a great Fountain, yet it’s as plentiful as ever it was before. Near this Fountain there’s a Spring not big, but very fierce and violent, for it casts forth a Sulphureous and gross Vapour, which suddenly kills every living Creature that comes near to it; for the Breath being stopt a long time, and all power of Respiration taken away by the force of the Exhalation, the Body presently swells so, that the Parts about the Lungs are all in a Flame. Beyond the River there is a Morass, about which is a crusty Earth; if any unacquainted with the Place get into it, at first he floats upon the Top, when he comes into the Middle he’s violently hal’d away, and striving to help himself, seems to be held so fast by something or other, that all his Labour to get loose is in vain. And first his Feet, then his Legs and Thighs to his Loyns are benumm’d, at length his whole Body is stupify’d, and then down he sinks to the Bottom, and presently after is cast up dead to the Surface. And thus much for the Wonders of Babylon. When Semiramis had finish’d all her Works, she marcht with a great Army into Media, and encamp’d near to a Mountain call’d Bagistan; there she made a Garden twelve Furlongs in Compass: It was in a plain Champain Country, and had a great Fountain in it, which water’d the whole Garden. Mount Bagistan is dedicated to Jupiter, and towards one side of the Garden has steep Rocks seventeen Furlongs from the Top to the Bottom. She cut out a Piece of the lower Part of the Rock, and caus’d her own Image to be carv’d upon it, and a Hundred of her Guard that were Launceteers standing round about her. She wrote likewise in Syriac Letters upon the Rock, That Semiramis ascended from the Plain to the Top of the Mountain by laying the Packs and Fardles of the Beasts that follow’d her one upon another. Marching away from hence, she came to Chaone, a City of Media, where she incamp’d upon a rising Ground, from whence she took notice of an exceeding great and high Rock, where she made another very great Garden in the very Middle of the Rock, and built upon it stately Houses of Pleasure, whence she might both have a delightful Prospect into the Garden, and view the Army as they lay incamp’d below in the Plain; being much delighted with this Place she stay’d here a considerable Time, giving up her self to all kinds of Pleasures and Delights, for she forbore marrying lest she should then be depos’d from the Government, and in the mean time she made Choice of the handsomest Commanders to be her Gallants; but after they had layn with her she cut off their Heads. From hence she march’d towards Ecbatana, and arriv’d at the Mountain Zarcheum, which being many Furlongs in Extent, and full of steep Precipices and craggy Rocks, there was no passing but by long and tedious Windings and Turnings. To leave therefore behind her an Eternal Monument of her Name, and to make a short Cut for her Passage, she caus’d the Rocks to be hew’d down, and the Valleys to be fill’d up with Earth, and so in a short time at a vast Expence laid the Way open and plain, which to this day is call’d Semiramis’s Way. When she came to Ecbatana, which is situated in a low and even Plain, she built there a stately Palace, and bestow’d more of her Care and Pains here than she had done at any other Place. For the City wanting Water (there being no Spring near) she plentifully supply’d it with good and wholesom Water, brought thither with a great deal of Toyl and Expence, after this manner: There’s a Mountain call’d Orontes, twelve Furlongs distant from the City, exceeding high and steep for the Space of five and twenty Furlongs up to the Top; on the other side of this Mount there’s a great Mear which empties it self into the River. At the Foot of this Mountain she dug a Canal fifteen Foot in Breadth and Forty in Depth, through which she convey’d Water in great Abundance into the City. And these are the Things which she did in Media. Afterwards she made a Progress through Persia and all the rest of her Dominions in Asia, and all along as she went she plain’d all the Way before her, levelling both Rocks and Mountains. On the other hand in Champain Countries she would raise Eminences on which she would sometimes build Sepulchres for her Officers and Commanders, and at other times Towns and Cities. Throughout her whole Expeditions she always us’d to raise an Ascent, upon which she pitcht her own Pavilion, that from thence she might have a View of her whole Army. Many Things which she perform’d in Asia remain to this day, and are call’d Semiramis’s Works. Afterwards she pass’d through all Egypt, and having conquer’d the greatest Part of Lybia, she went to the Temple of Jupiter Hammon, and there inquir’d of the Oracle how long she should live; which return’d her this Answer, That she should leave this World and afterwards be for ever honour’d by some Nations in Asia, when Ninyas her Son should be plotting against her. When she had perform’d these things, she marcht into Ethiopia, and having subdu’d many Places in it, she had an Opportunity to see what was there very remarkable and wonderful. For they say there’s a foursquare Lake, a hundred and sixty Foot in Circuit, the Water of which is in Colour like unto Vermilion, and of an extraordinary sweet Flavour, much like unto old Wine; yet of such wonderful Operation, that whosoever drinks of it goes presently mad, and confesses all the faults that ever he had been before guilty of; but some will scarce believe this Relation. The Ethiopians have a peculiar way of burying their Dead; for after they have embalm’d the Body they pour round about it melted Glass, and then place it upon a Pillar, so that the Corps may be plainly seen through the Glass, as Herodotus has reported the thing. But Ctesias of Cnidus affirms that he tells a Winter-tale, and says that it’s true indeed that the Body is embalm’d, but that Glass is not pour’d upon the naked Body, for the Bodies thereby would be so scorch’d and defac’d that they could not possibly retain any likeness to the dead: And that therefore they make an hollow Statue of Gold, and put the Body within it and then pour the melted Glass round upon this Statue, which they set upon some high Place, and so the Statue which resembles the dead is seen through the Glass, and thus he says they used to bury those of the richer Sort; But those of meaner Fortunes they put into Statues of Silver; and for the poor they make Statues of Potter’s Clay, every one having Glass enough, for there’s Abundance to be got in Ethiopia, and ready at hand for all the Inhabitants. But we shall speak more fully of the Customs and Laws of the Ethiopians and the Product of the Land and other things worthy of Remark presently when we come to relate their Antiquities and old Fables and Stories. Semiramis having settl’d her affairs in Egypt and Ethiopia, return’d with her Army into Asia to Bactria: And now having a great Army, and enjoying a long Peace, she had a longing Desire to perform some notable Exploit by her Arms. Hearing therefore that the Indians were the greatest Nation in the whole World, and had the largest and richest Tract of Land of all others, she resolv’d to make War upon them. Stabrobates was at that time King, who had innumerable Forces, and many Elephants bravely accoutred and fitted to strike Terror into the Hearts of his Enemies. For India for the Pleasantness of the Country excell’d all others, being water’d in every Place with many Rivers, so that the Land yielded every year a double Crop; and by that Means was so rich and so abounded with Plenty of all things necessary for the Sustenance of Man’s Life, that it supply’d the Inhabitants continually with such things as made them excessively rich, insomuch as it was never known that there was ever any Famine amongst them, the Climate being so happy and favourable; and upon that account likewise there’s an incredible Number of Elephants, which for Courage and Strength of Body far excel those in Africa. Moreover this country abounds in Gold, Silver, Brass, Iron and pretious Stones of all sorts, both for Profit and Pleasure. All which being nois’d abroad, so stirr’d up the Spirit of Semiramis, that (tho’ she had no Provocation given her), yet she was resolv’d upon the War against the Indians. But knowing that she had need of great Forces, she sent Dispatches to all the Provinces, with Command to the Governors to list the choicest young Men they could find, ordering the Proportion of Souldiers every Province and Country should send forth according to the largeness of it; and commanded that all should furnish themselves with new Arms and Armour, and all appear in three years time at a general Randezvouz in Bactria bravely arm’d and accoutred in all Points. And having sent the Shipwrights out to Phœnicia, Syria, Cyprus, and other Places bordering upon the Sea-costs, she prepar’d Timber for them fit for the Purpose, and order’d them to build Vessels that might be taken asunder and convey’d from place to place wherever she pleas’d. For the River Indus bordering upon that Kingdom being the greatest in those parts, she stood in need of many River-boats to pass it in Order to repress the Indians. But being there was no Timber near that River she was necessitated to convey the Boats thither by Land from Bactria. She further consider’d that she was much inferior to the Indians for Elephants (which were absolutely necessary for her to make use of) she therefore contriv’d to have Beasts that should resemble them, hoping by this Means to strike a Terror into the Indians, who believ’d there were no Elephants in any place but India. To this End she provided three hundred thousand black Oxen, and distributed the Flesh amongst a Company of ordinary Mechanicks and such Fellows as she had to play the Coblers for her, and ordered them by stitching the Skins together and stuffing them with Straw to imitate the Shape of an Elephant, and in every one of them she put a Man to govern them, and a Camel to carry them, so that at a distance they appear’d to all that saw them as if they were really such Beasts. They that were imploy’d in this Work wrought at it night and day in a Place which was wall’d round for the Purpose, and Guards set at every Gate, that none might be admitted either to go in or out, to the end that none might see what they were doing, lest it should be nois’d abroad and come to the Ears of the Indians. Having therefore provided Shipping and Elephants in the space of two years, in the third she randezvouz’d all her Forces in Bactria. Her Army consisted (as Ctesias says) of three Millions of Foot, two hundred Thousand Horse, and a hundred Thousand Chariots, and a hundred Thousand Men mounted upon Camels with Swords four Cubits long. The Boats that might be taken asunder were two Thousand; which the Camels carry’d by Land as they did the Mock-Elephants, as we have before declar’d. The Souldiers made their Horses familiar with these feign’d Beasts by bringing them often to them, lest they should be terrify’d at the Sight of them; which Perseus imitated many Ages after when he was to fight with the Romans, who had Elephants in their Army out of Africa. However this contrivance prov’d to be of no Advantage either to him or her, as will appear in the Issue herein a little after related. When Stabrobates the Indian King heard of these great Armies and the mighty Preparations made against him, he did all he could to excel Semiramis in everything. And first he built of great Canes four Thousand River-boats: For abundance of these Canes grow in India about the Rivers and Fenns, so thick as a Man can scarce fathom: And Vessels made of these Reeds (they say) are exceeding useful, because they’l never rot or be worm-eaten. He was very diligent likewise in preparing of Arms and going from Place to Place throughout all India, and so rais’d a far greater Army than that of Semiramis. To his former Number of Elephants he added more, which he took by hunting, and furnish’d them all with everything that might make them look terrible in the Face of their Enemies, so that by their Multitude and the Compleatness of their Armour in all Points it seem’d above the Strength and Power of Man to bear up against the violent Shock of these Creatures. Having therefore made all these Preparations, he sent Embassadours to Semiramis (as she was on her March towards him) to complain and upbraid her for beginning a War without any Provocation or Injury offer’d her; and by his private Letters taxed her with her whorish Course of Life, and vow’d (calling the Gods to witness) that if he conquer’d her he would nail her to the Cross. When she read the Letters, she smil’d, and said, the Indian should presently have a Trial of her Valour by her Actions. When she came up with her Army to the River Indus she found the Enemies Fleet drawn up in a Line of Battle; whereupon she forthwith drew up her own, and having mann’d it with the stoutest Souldiers, joyn’d Battle, yet so ordering the Matter as to have her Land-forces ready upon the Shoar to be assisting as there should be Occasion. After a long and sharp Fight with Marks of Valour on both sides, Semiramis was at length victorious, and sunk a Thousand of the Enemies Vessels, and took a great number of Prisoners. Puffed up with this Success she took in all the Cities and Islands that lay in the River, and carry’d away a hundred Thousand Captives. After this the Indian King drew off his Army (as if he fled for Fear) but in Truth to decoy his Enemies to pass the River. Semiramis therefore (seeing things fall out according to her wish) laid a broad Bridge of Boats (at a vast Charge) over the River, and thereby passed over all her Forces, leaving only threescore Thousand to guard the Bridge, and with the rest of her Army pursu’d the Indians. She plac’d the Mock-Elephants in the Front that the Enemies Scouts might presently inform the King what Multitudes of Elephants she had in her Army: And she was not deceiv’d in her hopes; for when the Spies gave an Account to the Indians what a great Multitude of these Creatures were advancing towards them, they were all in amaze, inquiring among themselves, whence the Assyrians should be supply’d with such a vast number of Elephants: But the Cheat could not be long conceal’d, for some of Semiramis’s Souldiers being laid by the Heels for their Carelessness upon the Guard (through Fear of further Punishment) made their Escape and fled to the Enemy, and undeceiv’d them as to the Elephants; upon which the Indian King was mightily encourag’d, and caus’d Notice of the Delusion to be spread through the whole Army, and then forthwith march’d with all his Force against the Assyrians, Semiramis on the other hand doing the like. When they approach’d near one to another, Stabrobates the Indian King plac’d his Horse and Chariots in the Van-guard at a good distance before the main Body of his Army. The Queen having plac’d her Mock-Elephants at the like distance from her main Body, valiantly receiv’d her Enemies Charge; but the Indian Horse were most strangely terrify’d; for in Regard the Phantasms at a distance seem’d to be real Elephants, the Horses of the Indians (being inur’d to those Creatures) prest boldly and undauntedly forward; but when they came near and saw another sort of Beast than usual, and the smell and every thing else almost being strange and new to them, they broke in with great Terror and Confusion, one upon another, so that they cast some of their Riders headlong to the Ground, and ran away with others (as the Lot happen’d) into the midst of their Enemies. Whereupon Semiramis readily making use of her Advantage, with a Body of choice Men fell in upon them, and routed them, forcing them back to their main Body: And though Stabrobates was something astonish’d at this unexpected Defeat, yet he brought up his Foot against the Enemy with his Elephants in the Front: He himself was in the right Wing, mounted upon a stately Elephant, and made a fierce Charge upon the Queen her self, who happen’d then to be opposite to him in the left. And tho’ the Mock-Elephants in Semiramis’s Army did the like, yet they stood the violent shock of the other but a little while, for the Indian Beasts being both exceeding strong and stout, easily bore down and destroy’d all that oppos’d them, so that there was a great Slaughter; for some they trampl’d under foot, others they rent in pieces with their Teeth, and toss’d up others with their Trunks into the Air. The Ground therefore being cover’d with Heaps of dead Carcases and nothing but Death and Destruction to be seen on every hand, so that all were full of Horror and Amazement, none durst keep their Order or Ranks any longer. Upon which the whole Assyrian Army fled outright, and the Indian King encountered with Semiramis, and first wounded her with an Arrow in the Arm, and afterwards with a Dart (in wheeling about) in the Shoulder, whereupon the Queen (her Wounds not being mortal) fled, and by the Swiftness of her Horse (which far exceeded the other that pursu’d her) she got off. But all making one way to the Bridge of Boats, and such a vast Multitude of Men thronging together in one strait and narrow Passage, the Queen’s Souldiers miserably perish’d by treading down one another under foot, and (which was strange and unusual) Horse and Foot lay tumbling promiscuously one over another. When they came at length to the Bridge, and the Indians at their Heels, the consternation was so great that many on both sides the Bridge were tumbled over into the River. But when the greatest part of those that remain’d had got over, Semiramis caus’d the Cords and Tenons of the Bridge to be cut, which done, the Boats (which were before joyn’d together, and upon which was a great Number of Indians not in the Pursuit) being now divided into many Parts, and carry’d here and there by the force of the Current, Multitudes of the Indians were drown’d, and Semiramis was now safe and secure, having such a Barrier as the River betwixt her and her Enemies. Whereupon the Indian King being forewarn’d by Prodigies from Heaven and the Opinions of the Soothsayers, forbore all further pursuit. And Semiramis making Exchange of Prisoners in Bactria return’d with scarce a third part of her Army. A little time after, Semiramis being assaulted by an Eunuch through the treacherous Contrivance of her Son, remembred the former Answer given her by the Oracle at the Temple of Hammon, and therefore pass’d the Business over without punishing of him who was chiefly concern’d in the Plot: But surrendring the Crown to him, commanded all to obey him as their lawful King, and forthwith disappear’d as if she had been translated to the Gods, according to the Words of the Oracle. There are some which fabulously say she was metamorphos’d into a Pigeon; and that she flew away with a Flock of those Birds that lighted upon her Palace: And hence it is that the Assyrians adore a Dove, believing that Semiramis was enthron’d amongst the Gods. And this was the End of Semiramis Queen of all Asia, except India, after she had liv’d Sixty two years, and reign’d Forty two. And these are the Things which Ctesias the Cnidian reports of her in his History. Athenæus, and some other Writers, affirm that she was a most beautiful Strumpet, and upon that account the King of Assyria fell in Love with her, and at first was taken into his Favour, and at length becoming his lawful Wife she prevail’d with her Husband to grant her the sole and absolute Authority of the regal Government for the space of five days. Taking therefore upon her the Scepter and royal Mantle of the Kingdom, the first day she made a sumptuous Banquet and magnificent Entertainments, to which she invited the Generals of the Army and all the Nobility, in order to be observant to all her Commands. The next day having both great and small at her beck, she committed her Husband to the Gaol: And in Regard she was of a bold and daring Spirit, apt and ready to undertake any great Matters, she easily gain’d the Kingdom, which she held to the time of her old Age, and became famous for her many great and wonderful Acts: And these are the Things which Historians variously relate concerning her.[c] The second account of Semiramis which Diodorus summarises in the concluding paragraph above from “Athenæus and some other writers” would appear to have been widely accepted in classical times. The same story is told by Ælianus, and is worth quoting, if for nothing else, for the quaintness of diction of Fleming’s sixteenth century translation. “Of Semiramis some say this, and some set downe that, and amonge all other thinges this (as deserving a monument of sempeternall memorye) is recorded that shee was the moste bewtifull, the most amiable Lady and Queene throughout the universall worlde, albeit shee dyd litle regarde her fine proporcion, her excellent comlynesse, her angelicall grace: and had no respect to the trymming and decking of her body with gorgeous garments, and robes of royalty. It fortuned that this Semiramis, by reason of the rumor and fame of her surpassing beauty, was sent for into Assiria, that the king of that region might satisfie himselfe with the sight of her peerelesse majestie, before whose presence she came according to the tennor of the message. “The King of Assiria, had no sooner cast his wanton eye upon her, but was forthwith inflamed with the fire of affection towardes her. After certaine circumstances over passed, she required of the King a rich rewarde, namely, a robe of estate, the government of Asia for five dayes continuaunce, and the absolute authorytie in all thinges that were done in the kingdome. Which peticion of the Queene was granted unto by the King, no deniall made to the contrary. In conclusion when she was set and established in the throne of majesty, and had gotten all things (without exception) in the gripes of her aspiryng minde she commanded the King to be slayne, whereby he was dispossessed of his dominion, and she presently thereupon enjoyed the scepter and crowne imperiall over Assiria universall.”[d] To complete our view of the classical traditions regarding Assyria, we must hear what Diodorus has to tell us of the successors of Semiramis. Comparison of his account with the lists of Assyrian monarchs, as now known to us, will show how greatly the perspective of Assyrian history was foreshortened as viewed by the classical eye, and how vague appeared the outline of the historical picture. Not even the names of the greatest of oriental monarchs were remembered, though the reminiscences of their deeds had not quite been forgotten. We shall see in subsequent chapters how the names and the accurate records of the deeds were restored to history. It may be added, however, that no authentic account of the destruction of Nineveh has been as yet recovered. For aught that is known to the contrary, the picturesque story of Sardanapalus, as narrated by Diodorus, may be true in its essentials, though it is improbable that the name of the last ruler of Nineveh is correctly given. Still, the rather theatrical character of the Greek conception of oriental customs is not to be forgotten. It should be added that modern historians are not quite agreed as to the exact period of Assyrian history to which the Sardanapalus stories were applied. Lenormant was disposed to believe that the Greek tradition was based upon reminiscences of a relatively early destruction of Nineveh. It is known that the Assyrian Empire suffered a partial eclipse after its first period of greatness, and it is possible that some unknown king of about the tenth century B.C. was the original of the Sardanapalus fable. Most recent historians, however, are disposed to think that the Greek story really applies to the final destruction of Nineveh, and that Asshurbanapal was the historical monarch whose vaguely remembered deeds gave foundation to the chief features of the story. The fact that Asshurbanapal was so great a connoisseur of literature and art, lends a certain colour to this supposition. It is of course understood that Asshurbanapal was not the last ruler of Nineveh, and that the Greek myth, if based upon his life, erred in associating him with the final catastrophe.[a] Here is the story as Diodorus tells it: Ninyas the Son of Ninus and Semiramis, succeeded, and reign’d peaceably, nothing at all like his Mother for Valour and martial Affairs. For he spent all his Time shut up in his Palace, insomuch as he was never seen of any but of his Concubines and Eunuchs; for being given up wholly to his Pleasures, he shook off all Cares and everything that might be irksome and troublesome, placing all the Happiness of a King in a Sordid Indulgence of all sorts of Voluptuousness. But that he might reign the more securely, and be fear’d of all his Subjects, every year he rais’d out of every Province a certain number of Souldiers, under their several Generals, and having brought them in the City, over every Country appointed such a Governor as he could most confide in, and were most at his Devotion. At the end of the year he rais’d as many more out of the Provinces, and sent the former home, taking first of them an Oath of Fidelity. And this he did, that his Subjects observing how he always had a great Army ready in the Field, those of them who were inclin’d to be refractory or rebel (out of fear of Punishment) might continue firm in their due Obedience. And the further Ground likewise of this Yearly Change was, that the Officers and Souldiers might from time to time be disbanded before they could have time to be well acquainted one with another. For length of Time in martial Imployments so improves the Skill and advances the Courage and Resolution of the Commanders, that many times they conspire against their Princes, and wholly fall off from their Allegiance. His living thus close and unseen, was a covert to the Voluptuous Course of his Life, and in the meantime (as if he had been a God) none durst in the least mutter anything against him. And in this manner (creating Commanders of his Army, constituting of Governors in Provinces, appointing the Chamberlains and Officers of his Houshold, placing of Judges in their several Countries, and the ordering and disposing of all other Matters as he thought fit most for his own Advantage) he spent his Days in Nineve. After the same manner almost liv’d all the rest of the Kings for the space of Thirty Generations, in a continu’d Line of Succession from Father to Son, to the very Reign of Sardanapalus; in whose time the Empire of the Assyrians devolv’d upon the Medes, after it had continu’d above Thirteen Hundred and Sixty Years, as Ctesias the Cnidian says in his Second Book. But it’s needless to recite their Names, or how long each of them reign’d, in regard none of them did any thing worth remembring, save only that it may deserve an Account how the Assyrians assisted the Trojans, by sending them some Forces under the Command of Memnon the Son of Tithon. For when Teutamus reign’d in Asia, who was the Twentieth from Ninyas the Son of Semiramis, it’s said the Grecians under their General Agamemnon, made War upon the Trojans, at which time the Assyrians had been Lords of Asia above a Thousand Years. For Priam the King of Troy (being a Prince under the Assyrian Empire, when War was made upon him) sent Ambassadors to crave aid of Teutamus, who sent him Ten Thousand Ethiopians, and as many out of the Province of Susiana, with Two Hundred Chariots under the Conduct of Memnon the Son of Tithon. For this Tithon at that time was Governor of Persia, and in special Favour with the King above all the rest of the Princes: And Memnon was in the Flower of his Age, strong and couragious, and had built a Pallace in the Cittadel of Susa, which retain’d the Name of Memnonia to the time of the Persian Empire. He pav’d also there a Common High-way, which is call’d Memnon’s Way to this day. But the Ethiopians of Egypt question this, and say that Memnon was their Countryman, and shew several antient Palaces which (they say) retain his Name at this day, being call’d Memnon’s Palaces. Notwithstanding, however it be as to this matter, yet it has been generally and constantly held for a certain Truth, that Memnon led to Troy Twenty Thousand Foot, and Two Hundred Chariots, and signaliz’d his Valour with great Honour and Reputation, with the Death and Destruction of many of the Greeks, till at length he was slain by an Ambuscade laid for him by the Thessalians. But the Ethiopians recover’d his Body, and burnt it, and brought back his Bones to Tithon. And these things the Barbarians say are recorded of Memnon in the Histories of their Kings. Sardanapalus, the Thirtieth from Ninus, and the last King of the Assyrians, exceeded all his Predecessors in Sloth and Luxury; for besides that, he was seen of none out of his Family, he led a most effeminate Life: For wallowing in pleasure and wanton Dalliances, he cloathed himself in Womens Attire, and spun fine Wool and Purple amongst the throngs of his Concubines. He painted likewise his Face, and deckt his whole Body with other Allurements and proceeded to such a degree of Voluptuousness and sordid Uncleanness, that he compos’d Verses for his Epitaph, with a Command to his Successors to have them inscrib’d upon his Tomb after his Death, which were thus Translated by a Grecian out of the Barbarian Language (An Epitaph fitter for an Ox than a Man, says Aristotle), What once I gorg’d I now enjoy, And wanton Lusts me still imploy. All other things by Mortals priz’d, Are left as Dirt by me despis’d. Being thus corrupt in his Morals, he not only came to a miserable end himself, but utterly overturn’d the Assyrian Monarchy, which had continu’d longer than any we read of. For Arbaces a Mede, a Valiant and Prudent Man, and General of the Forces which were sent every Year out of Media to Nineve, was stir’d up by the Governor of Babylon (his Fellow Soldier, and with whom he had contracted an intimate familiarity) to overthrow the Assyrian Empire. This Captain’s Name was Belesis, a most Famous Babylonian Priest, one of those call’d Caldeans, expert in Astrology and Divinations; of great Reputation upon the account of foretelling future Events, which happen’d accordingly. Amongst others, he told his Friend, the Median General, that he should depose Sardanapalus, and be Lord of all his Dominions. Arbaces hereupon hearkning to what he said, promis’d him, that if he succeeded in his Attempt, Belesis should be chief Governor of the Province of Babylon: Being therefore fully persuaded of the truth of what was foretold, as if he had receiv’d it from an Oracle, he enter’d into an Association with the Governors of the rest of the Provinces, and by feasting and caressing of them, gain’d all their Hearts and Affections. He made it likewise his great business to get a sight of the King, that he might observe the Course and manner of his Life; to this end he bestow’d a Cup of Gold upon an Eunuch, by whom being introduc’d into the King’s Presence, he perfectly came to understand his Lasciviousness, and Effeminate course of Life. Upon sight of him, he contemn’d and despis’d him as a Vile and Worthless Wretch, and thereupon was much more earnest to accomplish what the Chaldean had before declar’d to him. At length he conspir’d with Belesis so far, as that he himself persuaded the Medes and Persians to a defection, and the other brought the Babylonians into the Confederacy. He imparted likewise his Design to the King of Arabia, who was at this time his special Friend. And now the Years attendance of the Army being at an end, new Troops succeeded, and came into their Place, and the former were sent every one here and there, into their several Countries. Hereupon Arbaces prevail’d with the Medes to invade the Assyrian Empire, and drew in the Persians in hopes of Liberty, to join in the Confederacy. Belesis in like manner persuaded the Babylonians to stand up for their Liberties. He sent Messengers also into Arabia, and gain’d that Prince (who was both his Friend, and had been his Guest) for a Confederate. When therefore the Yearly Course was run out, all these with a great number of forces flockt together to Nineve, in shew to serve their Turn according to custom, but in truth to overturn the Assyrian Empire. The whole number of Soldiers now got together out of those Four Provinces, amounted to Four Hundred Thousand Men. All these (being now in one Camp) call’d a Council of War in order to consult what was to be done. Sardanapalus being inform’d of the Revolt, led forth the Forces of the rest of the Provinces against them; whereupon a Battel being fought, the Rebels were totally routed, and with a great Slaughter were forc’d to the Mountains Seventy Furlongs from Nineve. Being drawn up a Second time in Battalia to try their Fortune in the Field, and now fac’d by the Enemy, Sardanapalus caus’d a Proclamation to be made by the Heralds, that whosoever kill’d Arbaces the Mede, should receive as a Reward, Two Hundred Talents of Gold, and double the Sum to him (together with the Government of Media,) who should take him alive. The like Sum he promis’d to such as should kill Belesis, or take him alive. But not being wrought upon by these Promises, he fought them again, and destroy’d many of the Rebels, and forc’d the rest to fly to their Camp upon the Hills. Arbaces being disheartn’d with these Misfortunes, call’d a Council of War to consider what was fit further to be done: The greater part were for returning into their own Countries, and possess themselves of the strongest Places, in order to fit and furnish themselves with all things further necessary for the War. But when Belesis the Babylonian assur’d them that the Gods promis’d, that after many Toyls and Labours they should have good success, and all should end well, and had us’d several other Arguments (such as he thought best) he prevail’d with them to resolve to run through all the hazards of the War. Another Battle therefore was fought, wherein the King gain’d a third Victory, and pursu’d the Revolters as far as to the Mountains of Babylon. In this Fight Arbaces himself was wounded, though he fought stoutly, and slew many of the Assyrians with his own Hand. After so many Defeats and Misfortunes one upon the neck of another, the Conspirators altogether despair’d of Victory, and therefore the Commanders resolv’d every one to return to their own Country. But Belesis, who lay all that Night Star-gazing in the open Field, prognosticated to them the next day, that if they would but continue together Five Days, unexpected Help would come, and they would see a mighty change, and that Affairs would have a contrary aspect to what they then had; for he affirm’d, that through his Knowledge in Astrology, he understood that the Gods portended so much by the Stars; therefore he intreated them to stay so many days, and make trial of his Art, and wait so long to have an Experiment of the Goodness of the Gods. All being thus brought back, and waiting till the time appointed, News on a sudden was brought that mighty Forces were at hand, sent to the King out of Bactria. Hereupon Arbaces resolv’d with the stoutest and swiftest Soldiers of the Army, forthwith to make out against the Captains that were advancing, and either by fair words to perswade them to a defection, or by Blows to force them to join with them in their Design. But Liberty being sweet to every one of them, first the Captains and Commanders were easily wrought upon, and presently after the whole Army join’d, and made up one intire Camp together. It happen’d at that time, that the King of Assiria not knowing any thing of the Revolt of the Bactrians, and puft up by his former Successes, was indulging his Sloath and Idleness, and preparing Beasts for Sacrifice, plenty of Wine, and other things necessary in order to feast and entertain his Soldiers. While his whole Army was now feasting and revelling, Arbaces (receiving intelligence by some Deserters of the Security and Intemperance of the Enemy) fell in upon them on the sudden in the Night; and being in due order and discipline, and setting upon such as were in confusion, he being before prepar’d, and the other altogether unprovided, they easily broke into their Camp, and made a great Slaughter of some, forcing the rest into the City. Hereupon Sardanapalus committed the charge of the whole Army to Salemenus his Wife’s Brother, and took upon himself the defence of the City. But the Rebels twice defeated the King’s Forces, once in the open Field, and the Second time before the Walls of the City; in which last ingagement Salemenus was kill’d, and almost all his Army lost, some being cut off in the pursuit, and the rest (save a very few) being intercepted, and prevented from entring into the City, were driven headlong into the River Euphrates; and the number of the Slain was so great, that the River was dy’d over with Blood, and retain’d that Colour for a great distance, and a long course together. The King being afterwards besieg’d, many of the Nations (through desire of Liberty) revolted to the Confederates; so that Sardanapalus now perceiving that the Kingdom was like to be lost, sent away his Three Sons and Two Daughters, with a great deal of Treasure into Paphlagonia, to Cotta, the Governor there, his most intire friend; and sent posts into all the Provinces of the Kingdom, in order to raise Souldiers, and make all other Preparations necessary to indure a siege. And he was the more incouraged to this, for that he was acquainted with an ancient Prophesy, That Nineve could never be taken by force, till the River became the City’s Enemy; which the more incourag’d him to hold out, because he conceiv’d that was never like to be; therefore he resolv’d to indure the Siege till the Aids which he expected out of the Provinces came up to him. The Enemy on the other hand grown more couragious by their Successes, eagerly urg’d on the Siege, but made little impression on the Besieg’d by reason of the strength of the Walls; for Ballistes to cast Stones, Testudos to cast up Mounts, and Battering Rams were not known in those Ages. And besides (to say truth) the King had been very careful (as to what concern’d the defence of the place) plentifully to furnish the Inhabitants with every thing necessary. The Siege continu’d Two Years, during which time nothing was done to any purpose, save that the Walls were sometimes assaulted, and the Besieg’d pen’d up in the City. The Third Year it happened that Euphrates overflowing with continual Rains, came up into a part of the City, and tore down the Wall Twenty Furlongs in length. The King hereupon conceiving that the Oracle was accomplish’d, in that the River was an apparent Enemy to the City, utterly despair’d, and therefore that he might not fall into the Hands of his Enemies, he caus’d a huge Pile of Wood to be made in his Palace Court, and heapt together upon it all his Gold, Silver, and Royal Apparel, and enclosing his Eunuchs and Concubines in an Apartment within the Pile, caus’d it to be set on Fire, and burnt himself and them together, which when the Revolters came to understand, they enter’d through the Breach of the Walls, and took the City; and cloath’d Arbaces with a Royal Robe, and committed to him the sole Authority, proclaiming him King. When he had rewarded his followers, every one according to their demerit, and appointed Governors over the several Provinces, Belesis the Babylonian, who had foretold his advancement to the Throne, put him in mind of his Services, and demanded the Government of Babylon, which he had before promis’d him. He told him likewise of a Vow that he himself had made to Belus, in the heat of the War, that when Sardanapalus was conquer’d, and the Palace consum’d, he would carry the Ashes to Babylon, and there raise a Mount near to his Temple, which should be an eternal Monument to all that sailed through Euphrates, in memory of him that overturn’d the Assyrian Empire. But that which in truth induc’d him to make this Request was, that he had been inform’d of the Gold and Silver by an Eunuch (that was a Deserter) whom he had hid and conceal’d: Arbaces therefore being ignorant of the Contrivance (because all the rest beside this Eunuch, were consum’d with the King) granted to him liberty both to carry away the Ashes, and likewise the absolute Government of Babylon without paying any Tribute. Whereupon Belesis forthwith prepar’d Shipping, and together with the Ashes carry’d away most of the Gold and Silver to Babylon. But when the King came plainly to understand the Cheat, he committed the Examination and Decision of this Theft to the other Captains who were his Assistants in the deposing of Sardanapalus. Belesis upon his Trial confess’d the Fact, and thereupon they condemn’d him to lose his Head. But the King being a Man of a noble and generous Spirit, and willing to adorn the beginning of his Reign with the Marks of his Grace and Mercy, not only pardon’d him, but freely gave him all the Gold and Silver which had been carry’d away; neither did he deprive him of the Government of Babylon, which at the first he conferr’d upon him, saying, That his former good Services did overballance the Injuries afterwards. This gracious Disposition of the King being nois’d abroad, he thereby not only gain’d the Hearts of his People, but was highly honour’d, and his Name famous among all the Provinces, and all judg’d him worthy of the Kingdom, who was so compassionate and gracious to offenders. The like Clemency he shew’d to the Inhabitants of Nineve; for though he dispers’d them into several Country Villages, yet he restor’d to every one of them their Estates, but raz’d the City to the ground. The rest of the Silver and Gold that could be found in the Pile (of which there were many Talents) he convey’d to Echatana the Seat Royal of Media. And thus was the Assyrian Empire overturn’d by the Medes after it had continu’d Thirty Generations: from Ninus above Fourteen Hundred Years.[c] [37] [Babylon is actually the Greek form of the Assyrian Bab-ilu, “Gate of God.” The somewhat similar Hebrew word meaning “confusion” is Bilbool (from balbel). Hence the legend.] [38] [It is interesting to note that the name of the last native king of Babylonia is given correctly by Josephus, who seems here to follow the Greek writers in preference to the canonical records of his own race. The latter, it will be recalled, substitute the name of Belshazzar, a name not borne by any historical Babylonian king.] The consecrated metals found And ivory tablets, underground, Winged seraphim, and creatures crown’d When air and daylight filled the mound, Fell into dust immediately. And even as these, the images Of awe and worship—even as these— So, smitten with the sun’s increase, Her glory mouldered and did cease From immemorial Nineveh.—Rossetti. A wish expressed by Herder early in the nineteenth century, that explorations might be made in the region of the buried cities of Babylonia and Assyria, was destined to meet with early realisation. The exact sites of various of these cities, long utterly forgotten, were discovered; excavations were made, and a harvest of buried records brought to light, surpassing in interest and importance the wildest dreams of anticipation. Not merely the ruins of city walls and of fallen palaces were exhumed, but with them wonderfully preserved sculptures and ornaments of surprising artistic excellence; and, more important still, voluminous written records, historical and literary, imprinted on slabs and cylinders of brick—the books of the period—in strange wedge-shaped characters of unknown import, which modern scholarship soon sufficed to decipher. How these marvellous feats were accomplished had best be explained before we turn to the historical records which they brought to light. It is a thrilling record, which has no exact counterpart elsewhere in history.[a] The story of how the work was begun is told by that pioneer in the field of Assyriology, Sir A. H. Layard: Were the traveller to cross the Euphrates to seek for such ruins in Mesopotamia and Chaldea as he had left behind him in Asia Minor or Syria, his search would be vain. The graceful column rising above the thick foliage of the myrtle, ilex, and oleander; the gradines of the amphitheatre covering a gentle slope, and overlooking the dark blue waters of a lake-like bay; the richly carved cornice or capital half hidden by the luxuriant herbage, are replaced by the stern, shapeless mound rising like a hill from the scorched plain, the fragments of pottery, and the stupendous mass of brickwork occasionally laid bare by the winter rains. He has left the land where nature is still lovely, where, in his mind’s eye, he can rebuild the temple or the theatre, half doubting whether they would have made a more grateful impression upon the senses than the ruin before him. He is now at a loss to give any form to the rude heaps upon which he is gazing. Those of whose works they are the remains, unlike the Roman and the Greek, have left no visible traces of their civilisation, or of their arts: their influence has long since passed away. The more he conjectures, the more vague the results appear. The scene around is worthy of the ruin he is contemplating; desolation meets desolation: a feeling of awe succeeds to wonder; for there is nothing to relieve the mind, to lead to hope, or to tell of what has gone by. These huge mounds of Assyria made a deeper impression upon me, gave rise to more serious thoughts and more earnest reflection, than the temples of Baalbec and the theatres of Ionia. In the middle of April I left Mosul for Baghdad. As I descended the Tigris on a raft, I again saw the ruins of Nimrud, and had a better opportunity of examining them. It was evening as we approached the spot. The spring rains had clothed the mound with the richest verdure, and the fertile meadows, which stretched around it, were covered with flowers of every hue. Amidst this luxuriant vegetation were partly concealed a few fragments of bricks, pottery, and alabaster, upon which might be traced the well-defined wedges of the cuneiform character. Did not these remains mark the nature of the ruin, it might have been confounded with a natural eminence. A long line of consecutive narrow mounds, still retaining the appearance of walls or ramparts, stretched from its base, and formed a vast quadrangle. The river flowed at some distance from them: its waters, swollen by the melting of the snows on the Armenian hills, were broken into a thousand foaming whirlpools by an artificial barrier, built across the stream. On the eastern bank the soil had been washed away by the current; but a solid mass of masonry still withstood its impetuosity. The Arab, who guided my small raft, gave himself up to religious ejaculations as we approached this formidable cataract, over which we were carried with some violence. Once safely through the danger, he explained to me that this unusual change in the quiet face of the river was caused by a great dam which had been built by Nimrod, and that in the autumn, before the winter rains, the huge stones of which it was constructed, squared, and united by cramps of iron, were frequently visible above the surface of the stream.[39] It was, in fact, one of those monuments of a great people, to be found in all the rivers of Mesopotamia, which were undertaken to ensure a constant supply of water to the innumerable canals, spreading like network over the surrounding country, and which, even in the days of Alexander, were looked upon as the works of an ancient nation. No wonder that the traditions of the present inhabitants of the land should assign them to one of the founders of the human race! The Arab explained the connection between the dam and the city built by Athur, the lieutenant of Nimrod, the vast ruins of which were then before us, and of its purpose as a causeway for the mighty hunter to cross to the opposite palace, now represented by the mound of Hammum Ali. He was telling me of the histories and fate of the kings of a primitive race, still the favourite theme of the inhabitants of the plains of Shinar, when the last glow of twilight faded away, and I fell asleep as we glided onward to Baghdad. My curiosity had been greatly excited, and from that time I formed the design of thoroughly examining, whenever it might be in my power, these singular ruins. It was not until the summer of 1842 that I again passed through Mosul on my way to Constantinople. I was then anxious to reach the Turkish capital, and, travelling Tatar, had no time to explore ruins. I had not, however, forgotten Nimrud. I had frequently spoken to others on the subject of excavations in this and another mound, to which a peculiar interest also attached; and at one time had reason to hope that some persons in England might have been induced to aid in the undertaking. I had even proposed an examination of the ruins to M. Coste, an architect who had been sent by the French government, with its embassy to Persia, to draw and describe the monuments of that country. On my arrival at Mosul, I found that M. Botta had, since my first visit, been named French consul there; and had already commenced excavations on the opposite side of the river, in the large mound called Kuyunjik. These excavations were on a very small scale, and, at the time of my passage, only fragments of brick and alabaster, upon which were engraved a few letters in the cuneiform character, had been discovered. Excavations at Kuyunjik (Layard) Whilst detained by unexpected circumstances at Constantinople, I entered into correspondence with a gentleman in England on the subject of excavations; but, with this exception, no one seemed inclined to assist or take any interest in such an undertaking. I also wrote to M. Botta, encouraging him to proceed, notwithstanding the apparent paucity of results, and particularly calling his attention to the mound of Nimrud, which, however, he declined to explore on account of its distance from Mosul and its inconvenient position. I was soon called away from the Turkish capital to the provinces; and for some months numerous occupations prevented me turning my attention to the ruins and antiquities of Assyria. In the meanwhile M. Botta, not discouraged by the want of success which had attended his first essay, continued his excavations in the mound of Kuyunjik: and to him is due the honour of having found the first Assyrian monument. This remarkable discovery owed its origin to the following circumstances. The small party employed by M. Botta were at work on Kuyunjik, when a peasant from a distant village chanced to visit the spot. Seeing that every fragment of brick and alabaster uncovered by the workmen was carefully preserved, he asked the reason of this, to him, strange proceeding. On being informed that they were in search of sculptured stones, he advised them to try the mound on which his village was built, and in which, he declared, many such things as they wanted had been exposed on digging for the foundations of new houses. M. Botta, having been frequently deceived by similar stories, was not at first inclined to follow the peasant’s advice, but subsequently sent an agent and one or two workmen to the place. After a little opposition from the inhabitants, they were permitted to sink a well in the mound; and at a small distance from the surface they came to the top of a wall which, on digging deeper, they found to be built of sculptured slabs of gypsum. M. Botta, on receiving information of this discovery, went at once to the village, which was called Khorsabad. He directed a wider trench to be formed, and to be carried in the direction of the wall. He soon found that he had opened a chamber, which was connected with others, and constructed of slabs of gypsum covered with sculptured representations of battles, sieges, and similar events. His wonder may be easily imagined. A new history had been suddenly opened to him—the records of an unknown people were before him. He was equally at a loss to account for the age and the nature of the monument. The art shown in the sculptures, the dresses of the figures, the mythic forms on the walls, were all new to him, and afforded no clew to the epoch of the erection of the edifice, and to the people who were its founders. Numerous inscriptions, accompanying the bas-reliefs, evidently contained the explanation of the events thus recorded in sculpture. They were in the cuneiform, or arrow-headed, character. The nature of these inscriptions was at least evidence that the building belonged to a period preceding the conquest of Alexander; for it was generally admitted that after the subjugation of the west of Asia by the Macedonians, the cuneiform writing ceased to be employed. But too little was then known of this character to enable M. Botta to draw any inference from the peculiar arrangement of the wedges, which distinguishes the varieties used in different countries. However, it was evident that the monument appertained to a very ancient and very civilised people; and it was natural from its position to refer it to the inhabitants of Nineveh—a city, which, although it could not have occupied a site so distant from the Tigris, must have been in the vicinity of the place. M. Botta had discovered an Assyrian edifice, the first, probably, which had been exposed to the view of man since the fall of the Assyrian Empire. M. Botta was not long in perceiving that the building which had been thus partly excavated, unfortunately owed its destruction to fire; and that the gypsum slabs, reduced to lime, were rapidly falling to pieces on exposure to the air. No precaution could arrest this rapid decay; and it was to be feared that this wonderful monument had only been uncovered to complete its ruin. The records of victories and triumphs, which had long attested the power and swelled the pride of the Assyrian kings, and had resisted the ravages of ages, were now passing away forever. They could scarcely be held together until an inexperienced pencil could secure an imperfect evidence of their former existence. Almost all that was first discovered thus speedily disappeared; and the same fate has befallen nearly everything subsequently found at Khorsabad. A regret is almost felt that so precious a memorial of a great nation should have been thus exposed to destruction, when no precaution could keep entire or secure the greater part of it; but as far as the object of the monument is concerned, the intention of its founders will be amply fulfilled, and the records of their might will be more widely spread, and more effectually preserved, by modern art, than the most exalted ambition could have contemplated. M. Botta lost no time in communicating his remarkable discovery to the principal scientific body in France. Knowing the interest I felt in his labours, he allowed me to see his letters and drawings as they passed through Constantinople; and I was amongst the first who were made acquainted with his success. And here I gladly avail myself of the opportunity of mentioning, with the acknowledgment and praise which they deserve, his disinterestedness and liberality, so honourable to one engaged in the pursuit of knowledge. During the entire period of his excavations, M. Botta regularly sent me not only his descriptions, but copies of the inscriptions, without exacting any promise as to the use I might make of them. That there are few who would have acted thus liberally, those who have been engaged in a search after antiquities in the East will not be inclined to deny. M. Botta’s communications were laid before the “Académie,” by M. Mohl; and that body, perceiving at once the importance of the discovery, lost no time in applying to the Minister of Public Instruction for means to carry on the researches. The recommendation was attended to with that readiness and munificence which almost invariably distinguished the French government in undertakings of this nature. Ample funds to meet the cost of extensive excavations were at once assigned to M. Botta, and an artist of acknowledged skill was placed under his orders to draw such parts of the monument discovered as could not be preserved or removed. Bas-relief of Fish, Hills, and Trees With the exception of a few interruptions on the part of the local authorities, who were suspicious of the objects of the excavations, the work was carried on with activity and success, and by the beginning of 1845 the monument had been completely uncovered. The researches of M. Botta were not extended beyond Khorsabad; and having secured many fine specimens of Assyrian sculpture for his country, he returned to Europe with a rich collection of inscriptions, the most important result of his discovery.[b] It is indeed a matter for regret there is not the space to continue Layard’s own account of his discoveries. Professor Hommel has summarised this, however, in an exceedingly satisfactory manner, and his account is here given. Brilliant as Botta’s achievements had been, they were quite cast into the shade by what the English statesman, Sir (then Mr.) A. H. Layard, the sole discoverer of Nineveh, had accomplished for all branches of investigation and knowledge of Assyrian antiquity, by means of the excavations, principally in Kuyunjik and Nimrud, but also in Neby Yunus, Kalah Shergat, and other mounds of ruins in the neighbourhood of Nineveh; these excavations were made with the assistance of Hormuzd Rassam, who subsequently continued them. We remember how, from as far back as the year 1840, it was Layard’s ardent desire to be able to undertake some excavations. He had hailed Botta’s lucky find without envy, and was indeed the first who, in some letters in the Malta Times which afterwards went the rounds of many European newspapers, directed public attention to the newly discovered Assyrian royal palace, which Botta at first assigned to the Sassanian period. Then, in the autumn of 1845, the eagerly-looked-for funds were at last obtained by the munificence of the English ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Stratford Canning (afterwards Lord Stratford de Redcliffe), to whom the British Museum already owed the acquisition of the costly marbles of Halicarnassus. Thus, towards the end of the year 1845, Layard was able to begin the excavations. He set to work on the Nimrud pile of ruins, which lies a distance of five hours to the south of Mosul, and had previously attracted his attention when Botta was still in Mosul. He laboured under the greatest difficulties, far greater than those which Botta had to overcome—to see how far this statement is from exaggeration, Layard’s own account should be perused—the work having at first to be carried on in profound secrecy so as to excite as little suspicion as possible in the Turkish authorities and in the population. It was not to be long before Layard’s efforts were crowned with success. By the end of November several bas-reliefs were laid bare, whose execution appeared to surpass even those of the sculptures of Khorsabad, and which were accompanied by cuneiform inscriptions. In spite of many interruptions the work proceeded rigorously, and manifold were the discoveries thus brought to light. One deserving of special interest was that of the gigantic head of one of the colossal winged lions, with men’s heads, which the Assyrians placed at the entrance of their palaces for the sake of spreading terror amongst the inhabitants of surrounding districts. For it was everywhere whispered and believed that none other than Nimrod in person had risen from the earth. All this had occurred in the spring of the year 1846. The funds for the excavations lasted till the middle of June 1847; and when Layard returned to Europe he had laid bare in Nimrud no less than three great Assyrian royal palaces, namely: the grand northwestern palace, which Asshurnazirpal had built (884-861 B.C.) on the ruins of an ancient structure (dating from Shalmaneser I, the founder of Calah, circa 1300 B.C.?); the central palace, probably built by Asshurnazirpal’s successor, Shalmaneser II (a predecessor of the biblical Shalmaneser), where was found the famous black obelisk; and lastly, Esarhaddon’s once magnificent southwestern palace (681-669 B.C.). The northwestern palace yielded the richest spoil: it was also far better preserved than the contents of Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad, where Botta had made his excavations. As Sir Stratford Canning had presented the British Museum with everything moveable which Layard had discovered and brought to light, even at the end of this first expedition of Layard’s, a collection of Assyrian antiquities (principally bas-reliefs and inscriptions), such as existed nowhere else, was despatched to London. The unwearied energy of the discoverer of Nineveh succeeded in taking it unhurt, first to Bassorah, from whence the valuable freight was forwarded to the ship—truly not the smallest part of the task he had begun so gloriously, and now still more gloriously accomplished. The period which followed was employed by Layard in summarising the results obtained in a vigorous narrative, furnished with many illustrations, the work called Nineveh and its Remains, which was published just as Layard was on the point of going to Assyria for the second time—on this occasion at the expense of the British Museum. The sensation which the book created in England was enormous, and its most important result was that henceforth the government turned its attention to the excavations. So in 1849 Layard was given leave of absence from his diplomatic post at Constantinople for the purpose of making new discoveries on Assyrian soil, and Hormuzd Rassam, who had already been his assistant and happened just then to be in London, was sent after him (also officially). Bas-relief representing a Fortified City, a River with a Boat and Raft, and a Canal (Found at Kuyunjik.—Layard) If on the first expedition Layard had done little more than explore Nimrud (the ancient Calah), the labours of the second (1849-1851), were on the contrary practically limited to the mounds of ruins of Kuyunjik with Neby Yunus, the site of Nineveh itself. Here Botta had first begun his excavations, but entirely without success, for he had merely caused diggings to be made to the depth of a few feet, and without any method, instead of making his chief object the remains of the platform, on which the buildings he was seeking had been erected. And it was here that Layard, at the end of his first expedition, and after having been obliged to dig twenty feet down, had discovered Sennacherib’s southwestern palace (705-682 B.C.). But the real fruits of this discovery were now the object of the second undertaking. For if in this Layard was still occupied with Nimrud, the work there was only a species of gleaning, the excavations and discoveries in Arban, on the Khabur and in Bavian were, in comparison with the rest, only a short trial-trip, and the main thing still remained the minute investigation and laying bare of the great southwestern palace in Kuyunjik. It was not till this was finished that he employed the rest of his time and money in a visit to Babylonia (at the end of 1850), of which, however, Layard himself says “that they (i.e. the discoveries amongst the ruins of ancient Babylon) were far fewer and of far less importance than he had expected”; he also gave the first exact description of the mounds of Niffer, the ancient Nippur, southeast of Babylon. All his experiences and all the results of this second expedition were set down by Layard in the Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, a work, seven hundred pages in length and with many illustrations, besides plans and maps, which appeared in London as early as the beginning of the year 1853. This popular book had, like the former one, a prodigious success, and was shortly after translated into German; as a supplement to it Layard’s great publications were announced, namely, that magnificent work, the Monuments of Nineveh, and a volume of inscriptions which was the forerunner to the great work on inscriptions published by the British Museum in five volumes (1861-1884). But to return to Layard’s excavations which he resumed in the middle of October, 1849, at the place where he had interrupted them two years before. It is simply impossible within a short space to give a clear idea of what Layard and his workmen, assisted by Hormuzd Rassam, brought to light before the middle of the year 1850 in that southwestern palace of Sennacherib which Asshurbanapal restored. Any one who would form a clear idea of it must peruse Layard’s magnificent descriptions of it for himself. Assyrian antiquity rose from the earth and grew more and more distinct, and so intelligible was the language of the hundreds of bas-reliefs, that, even without understanding the inscriptions, every one was in a position to construct for himself a tolerably clear picture of the manners and customs, the life and occupations, in short, the whole civilisation of the ancient Assyrians, and this merely from the illustrations in Layard’s two popular books. But the most important discovery made in this palace, indeed the most important in its results of all the Assyrian excavations, was the remains of a regular library of thousands of clay tablets, which were heaped up in two chambers, covering the floor a foot thick. These the restorer of the palace, the accomplished king Asshurbanapal (668 B.C., the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, and Asnapper of the Bible) had had collected, and had deposited them, partly here, partly (probably in duplicate) in other palaces, as in particular in the northern palace, which was also in Kuyunjik, and was discovered by Rassam. The tablets of gray and yellow clay found in the so-called Lion Room of Asshurbanapal’s northern palace, were in most cases broken into smaller or larger fragments, probably because in the general ruin they had fallen down from the upper story into the space in which they covered the ground; many, however, were still whole. Of course only later investigation could succeed in bringing the broken fragments together again, and then only partially; one of these tablets, restored by piecing together sixteen fragments, gives the Babylonian story of the Flood, which George Smith successfully recognised from amongst the thousands of scattered fragments; the reader will appreciate the condition in which most of these clay book-pages (to use a paradoxical expression) have come down to us. The size of the tablets seldom exceeds nine by six and a half inches; but many, especially tablets containing contracts, were considerably smaller. The greater number bore the inscription, “Series of tablets …, tablet number …; Palace of Asshurbanapal, king of the universe, king of Assyria …,” after which came a series of phrases, mostly stereotyped, which indicates the tablet in question as belonging to the library of Asshurbanapal, the great collector of ancient Babylonian literature in Assyrian character. In the restored tablet of the Flood, the place of the signature is clearly recognisable on the first of the columns; it is the last of the columns, for they are always to be counted from right to left (instead of from left to right). But especially clear to the eye of a layman is the addition to the signature, which represents a kind of library mark, unlike that of the specially prized Ishtar hymn in two languages (S. M. 954, British Museum); the latter differs somewhat from the ordinary tenor of these signatures, inasmuch as a whole genealogy is put, instead of the sentence usual elsewhere; translated literally it runs: “(series:) ir shimma dimmir Ninna.”—Complaint to the goddess Ishtar. (The usual number of the tablet is not placed here.) He has written and engraved it like its original. “Palace of Asshurbanapal, king of Assyria, Son of Esarhaddon, king of the universe, king of Assyria, ruler of Babylon, King of Sumer and Accad, king of the kings of Ethiopia and Egypt, King of the four regions, son of Sennacherib, King of the universe, king of Assyria, who puts his trust in the god Asshur and the goddess Ninlil, in Nabu and Tashmit. May the god Nabu be thy guide!” In general, however, these signatures ran as follows: (The first word of the tablet following.) “Xth tablet (of the series beginning thus:).… “Palace of Asshurbanapal, the king of the universe, the king of Assyria, to whom Nabu and Tashmit had given ear, who took clear eyes for the preparation (?) of the writing of tablets, whilst under the kings my predecessors nothing of the kind (nin shipru shu’ atu) was attempted—the wisdom of Nabu, (tikip santakki), a fullness of beauty, did I write, arrange, and engrave on tablets; to see and read it I placed it in my palace.” After which, in some examples, there follows: “May the light of Asshur, the king of the gods, be thy guide! Whosoever shall write his name by my name, May Asshur and Ninlil (Beltis) destroy him and root his name and his seed out of the land!” The contents of the tablets in which Asshurbanapal caused the wisdom of the god Nabu (identified by the ancients with Mercury) to be written of in this fashion, were varied to an extent scarcely conceivable. They contained the primitive spells and formulas for oaths of the people of Sumer, as well as the somewhat later hymns to the gods, and penitential psalms of the Accadian population of northern Babylonia, almost all of them with interlinear translations into the Semitic language of ancient Babylon; also legends of Semitic character and epic poems almost as old as the Accadian hymns; astronomical and astrological texts; historical inscriptions (as, for instance, those of Agum-kakrime and the ancient Sargon); chronological lists, calendars, and a great deal besides; all of which was collected by Asshurbanapal and by him handed down to posterity. It is hard to say in what direction the literary pieces thus preserved fail to cast a light on the ancient Babylonians into whose cultivation the Assyrians were, indeed, once initiated, and to whom they were in all essentials indebted for their own; it is certain that we should now be acquainted with no single one of those primitive magic verses, had not Asshurbanapal had them written out afresh. And what should we know of the Sumerians and Accadians without these songs? But this is not enough. A great part of the Asshurbanapal library consists of philosophical aids to the knowledge and acquisition of the Sumerio-Accadian language, as well as of the Semitic Assyrio-Babylonian, and to the writing (the so-called syllabary) as well as to the spoken language; these aids include vocabularies, grammatical paradigms, and even collections of phrases in two languages. Whilst Layard was exploring the southwestern palace at Kuyunjik, adding undreamt-of treasures to those acquired in his first expedition to the country, and finding quantities of new cuneiform texts of the so-called third species of the Assyrian genus, so that he seemed to have been the first to gather the materials for the deciphering of this kind of cuneiform writing, it had been already completed, at least in the main, by the labours of Saulcy (1849) and, above all, by those of Henry Rawlinson (1847-1851). Layard’s book, Nineveh and its Remains, which appeared in 1849, had already introduced us into the midst of Assyrian antiquity, although the inscriptions which accompanied the sculptures could not yet give us any further information elucidating them. But in the Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, which appeared in the beginning of 1853, we already find the correct interpretation of several Assyrian names of kings, countries, towns, and gods, and even the correct rendering of the substance of connected historical inscriptions, which Layard owed to the information communicated in the interval by Henry Rawlinson and the Irishman, E. Hincks, who had also brought great acuteness to bear on this department of study. The numerous fresh historical documents which Layard brought with him could not have appeared at a more favourable time; above all, the first of the chests containing Asshurbanapal’s library could not have entered London at a better moment. For, once a basis was established for the reading of the cuneiform writing of the Babylonian and Assyrian languages, all that was needed to advance along the path so successfully entered upon was new texts, and these now began to flow in, in abundance.[c] Bas-relief representing Tiglathpileser III (Found at Nimrud.—Layard) The work of exploration rested entirely between the years 1855 and 1872. Great progress was made, however, in the decipherment of inscriptions and the popularisation of the results, and the mind of the public was prepared to appreciate the greatness of the work that was to follow. The importance of George Smith’s decipherment in 1872 of the Babylonian story of the Deluge was at once recognised, and led to his being sent to Nineveh in January, 1873, under the auspices of the Daily Telegraph. As soon as he had discovered some further fragments of the deluge story, however, the newspaper was satisfied, and he was recalled. On a second expedition, sent out in the same year by the British Museum, Smith made no startling discoveries. Smith’s work, while small in amount when compared with that of the early explorers, brought to light much valuable material, and aroused great enthusiasm in England. The British Museum sent him on a third expedition in 1876; but he was prevented from making any excavations, and died of fever on his way back. The next expedition, that of Hormuzd Rassam in 1877, resulted, among other things, in the identification of the site of Sippar, and the discovery of numerous interesting inscriptions and of some beautifully ornamented inscribed bronze plates that had adorned the gates of the palace of Shalmaneser II. In this same year, 1877, M. Ernest de Sarzec, then just appointed French consul at Bassorah on the Persian Gulf, began that series of brilliant explorations which he has carried on more or less continuously ever since. His enthusiasm for archæological research was backed by an extensive knowledge of the conditions of the country, and his efforts were rewarded with an unusual degree of success from the very start. The first four years were devoted to an extensive and systematic excavation of Telloh, a great mound about five miles from the Shatt-el-khai, in southern Babylonia, and now identified with the ancient Shirpurla. The first season was marked by the discovery of two large terra-cotta cylinders, twenty-four inches long and twelve in diameter. The inscriptions on these cylinders, which contained fully two thousand lines each, were the longest then known from an early period. By the end of the four seasons of work a great temple had been uncovered, one hundred and seventy-five by one hundred feet in dimensions, and built on a mound from sixteen to twenty feet high. The bricks of the outer wall, which was five feet thick, were one foot square and bore the name Gudea. The objects found in the interior of the temple have proved very important to early Babylonian history. One room contained eight statues of an early period, all headless, however, having been mutilated by barbarians of a later time. Scarcely less important was De Sarzec’s discovery in 1894 of a chamber in which were found thirty thousand tablets. While a considerable proportion of them were religious documents, most of these tablets were commercial, agricultural, and industrial archives. The Louvre has profited greatly by the work of De Sarzec, for a large part of his discoveries has found its way thither. The American expeditions have been among the most successful ones in this field. The Wolfe expedition of 1884-1885—so called from Miss Catherine Lorillard Wolfe, who defrayed its expenses—confined its work to a thorough exploration of the whole field, not only visiting the sites of previous excavations, but examining many new mounds as well. The succeeding expeditions have been sent out under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. The first one, in 1888-1889, under the direction of Dr. John P. Peters, with Professors H. V. Hilprecht and R. F. Harper as Assyriologists, began excavations at Niffer, the site of ancient Nippur. They had many difficulties with native tribes and Turkish officials, but succeeded in making a trigonometrical survey of all the mounds and obtaining a great number of antiquities of all sorts. Dr. Peters, however, modestly characterises the expedition as “more or less of a failure.” In 1890 work was begun again. Thousands of tablets and various kinds of objects were obtained, and were all sent to the Imperial Museum at Constantinople. Professor Hilprecht was sent to Constantinople to catalogue the finds. He did the work with great skill and tact, and the Sultan repaid the University of Pennsylvania for his services by the gift of a large part of the collection. Assyrian Stele The third expedition was sent out in 1893 under the direction of Mr. J. H. Haynes, who had been the business manager of the first two. With a single brief interruption of two months in 1894 he carried on the work steadily until 1896, accomplishing what no European had ever ventured to attempt before. This expedition and the fourth one, which set out under Haynes in 1899 and was joined by Hilprecht in 1900, procured many thousands of tablets and antiquities of other kinds. These finds have enriched the store of Babylonian literature with vast quantities of texts, religious, commercial, and historical. The first German expedition, in 1897, like the first American, simply explored Babylonia and Assyria. Then in 1899 Dr. Robert Koldewey, who had been a member of the first expedition, accompanied by Dr. Bruno Meissner, went out under the auspices of the German Orient Society. They went to work at the mound of El-Kasr, Babylon, which covers the remains of the palace of Nebuchadrezzar. Their first success was in the finding of a new Hittite inscription and many tablets of the Neo-Babylonian period. Great results may be expected from their future work. The Turks, themselves, have naturally the best opportunity for carrying on the work of exploration, for they can count upon the support instead of the opposition of the officials, and can keep the natives under control. Thus far one expedition has been sent out. It was under the direction of Father Scheil, a distinguished Assyriologist, a French Dominican. Its complete success shows that if the Turkish government can once be aroused to the importance of the work, greater discoveries may be expected. One of the most important discoveries of cuneiform inscriptions was made at Tel-el-Amarna in Egypt in 1888. From these tablets, which are letters and despatches of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV and of many monarchs of western Asia, much valuable chronological material has been obtained, as well as much light upon social relations. The great discoveries of the past thirty years are but an inspiration to further exploration. The work is bound to be carried on until the buried cities have been completely brought to light again.[ad] We have followed the story of the excavations in Babylonia and Assyria with some detail because of the unique character of the record. It remains now to examine the results of these excavations in their bearings upon the story of history. For, of course, it is the material supplied by the workers in this field rather than the work itself which has pertinence in the present connection. Hunting Scene from a Bas-relief in the Palace of Asshurnazirpal Great numbers of historical documents have been restored to us, sufficing, as has already been suggested, to rebuild the history of the all but forgotten nations. Such historical documents as are not to be found in connection with Greece or Rome, or even of the civilisation of the Middle Ages down to about the tenth century A.D., are supplied us from the ruins of the Babylonian and Assyrian cities. These documents, as already pointed out, are in the form of inscriptions on fragments of brick. These inscriptions, in an altogether unknown character, were at first enigmatic, but oriental scholarship soon availed to decipher them. The story of this decipherment must be outlined here for comparison with the account of the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, which has already been presented. In no other cases except these two has the historian been called upon to deal with a great mass of documents written in an absolutely dead language. It must be remembered that the so-called dead languages of the classical world were never really forgotten. All through the Middle Ages there were numberless scholars who had an expert knowledge of Greek and Latin. Indeed, these languages were the current medium of scholarly intercourse throughout the dark ages. But the Babylonian and Assyrian languages, like the Egyptian, were dead in the fullest significance of the term; that is to say, they were utterly unknown to any human being for a period of more than two thousand years. Their restoration was one of the marvels of nineteenth-century scholarship; and while the details of this feat of scholarship do not properly come within the province of the historian in the narrower sense, they have such universal interest that we shall do well to present at least their outline here. Before turning to the story of decipherment, however, it will be well to gain an idea as to the number and the variety and character of the historical documents in question. And perhaps the best way to do this will be to take a glance at the contents of the Assyrian collections in the British Museum, giving particular attention to the marvellous library of King Asshurbanapal, one of the last of the great rulers of Assyria—a remarkable collection of books, the discovery of which has been already referred to in the previous section. Nothing could give one a more vivid realisation of the character of this ancient oriental civilisation than the most casual glance at the sample books from this old library. Having inspected, however casually, this marvellous set of documents, one is prepared to take up the chronological history of the Babylonians and the Assyrians with a fresh interest based upon the comprehension that this people, so long regarded as scarcely more than mythical, possessed a civilisation strangely comparable in many essential features to the civilisation of our own time.[a] The most casual wanderer in the British Museum can hardly fail to notice two pairs of massive sculptures, in the one case winged bulls, in the other, winged lions, both human-headed, which guard the entrance to the Egyptian hall, close to the Rosetta stone. Each pair of these weird creatures once guarded an entrance to the palace of a king in the famous city of Nineveh. As one stands before them his mind is carried back over some twenty-seven intervening centuries, to the days when the “Cedar of Lebanon” was “fair in his greatness” and the scourge of Israel. A wave of emotion sweeps over one when he first sees them, and Byron’s stirring lines, reminiscent of school-day oratory, ring in the memory: The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold, And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. The Assyrian! The ruler of Nineveh! For two thousand five hundred years he was only a name and a memory; yet here stand great monuments to testify to the reality of his sometime greatness. These huge lions are pertinent in the present connection because of the inscriptions that are graven across their pedestals. A glance reveals the strange characters in which these records are written, graven neatly in straight lines across the stone, and looking, to casual inspection, like nothing else so much as random flights of arrow-heads. The resemblance is so striking that this is sometimes called the arrow-headed character, though it is more generally known as the wedge or cuneiform character. A strange writing this. It seems almost incredible that it can really be susceptible of interpretation and translation into a modern language. And, indeed, the feat of interpreting it was one of the greatest achievements of nineteenth-century scholarship; but of this we shall have more to say in a moment. But importance aside, what an interest must now attach to objects with such a history as belongs to these! The very sculptures before us, for example, were perhaps seen by Jonah when he made that famous voyage to Nineveh some seven or eight hundred years B.C. A little later the Babylonian and the Mede revolted from Assyrian tyranny, and descended upon the fair city of Nineveh, and almost literally levelled it to the ground. But these great sculptures, among other things, escaped destruction, and at once hidden and preserved by the accumulating débris of the centuries, they stood there age after age, their very existence quite forgotten. When Xenophon marched past their site with the ill-starred Expedition of the Ten Thousand, in the year 400 B.C., he saw only a mound which seemed to mark the site of some ancient ruin; but so ephemeral is fame that the Greek did not suspect that he looked upon the site of that city which only two centuries before had been the mistress of the world. So ephemeral is fame! And yet the moral scarcely holds in the sequel; for we of to-day, in this new, undreamed-of Western world, behold these mementoes of Assyrian greatness, fresh from their twenty-five hundred years of entombment, and with them records which restore to us the history of that long-forgotten people in such detail as it was not known to any previous generation since the fall of Nineveh. For two thousand five hundred years no one saw these treasures or knew that they existed. One hundred generations of men came and went without once pronouncing the names of Kings Asshurnazirpal or Asshurbanapal. And to-day, after centuries of oblivion, these names are restored to history, and, thanks to the character of their monuments, are assured a permanency of fame that can almost defy time itself. It would be nothing strange, but rather in keeping with their previous mutations of fortune, if the names of Asshurnazirpal and Asshurbanapal should be familiar household words to future generations that have forgotten the existence of an Alexander, a Cæsar, and a Napoleon. For when Macaulay’s prospective New Zealander explores the ruins of the British Museum, the records of the ancient Assyrians will presumably be there unscathed, to tell their story as they have told it to our generation, although every manuscript and printed book may have gone the way of fragile textures. But the past of the Assyrian sculptures is quite necromantic enough without conjuring for them a necromantic future. The story of their restoration is like a brilliant romance of history. Prior to the middle of the nineteenth century the inquiring student could learn in an hour or so all that was known in fact and in fable of the renowned city of Nineveh. He had but to read a few chapters of the Bible and a few pages of Diodorus to exhaust the important literature of the subject. If he turned also to the pages of Herodotus and Xenophon, of Justin and Ælianus, these served chiefly to confirm the suspicion that the Greeks themselves knew almost nothing more of the history of their famed oriental forerunners. The current fables told of a first king Ninus and his wonderful queen, Semiramis; of Sennacherib, the conqueror; of the effeminate Sardanapalus, who neglected the warlike ways of his ancestors, but perished gloriously at the last, with Nineveh itself, in a self-imposed holocaust. And that was all. How much of this was history, how much myth, no man could say; and for all any one suspected to the contrary, no man could ever know. And to-day the contemporary records of the city are before us in such profusion as no other nation of antiquity, save Egypt alone, can at all rival. Whole libraries of Babylonian documents are at hand that were written twenty or even thirty centuries before our era. These, be it understood, are the original books themselves, not copies. The author of that remote time speaks to us directly, hand to eye, without intermediary transcriber. And there is not a line of any Hebrew or Greek inscriptions of a like age that has been preserved to us; there is little enough that can match these ancient books by a thousand years. When one reads of Moses or Isaiah, Homer, Hesiod, or Herodotus, he is but following the transcription—often unquestionably faulty, and probably never in all parts perfect—of successive copyists of later generations. The oldest known copy of the Bible, for example, dates from the fourth century A.D.—1000 years after the last Assyrian records were made, and read, and buried, and forgotten. Bas-relief from an Assyrian Palace, showing Assyrian Soldiers, Prisoners being flayed alive, Cuneiform Inscriptions, etc. As to the earlier Mesopotamian records, they date back some 5000—perhaps 7000—years B.C.: at least 1000 years before the period assigned by Archbishop Usher’s long-accepted Chronology for the creation of the world itself. Solomon, who lived about 1000 B.C., is accredited with the declaration that “of the making of many books there is no end.” Modern exegesists tell us that it was not Solomon, but a later Alexandrian interloper, who actually coined the phrase; but nevertheless it appears that the saying would have been perfectly intelligible, in Mesopotamia, not merely to Solomon’s contemporaries, but to generations that lived long before the Jewish nation, as such, came into existence. At all events, there was at least one king of Assyria—namely, Asshurbanapal—who lived only a few generations after Solomon, and whose palace boasted a library of some 10,000 volumes—a library, if you please, in which the books were numbered and shelved systematically, and classified, and cared for by an official librarian. From this library, records have come to us during the past half-century that have reconstructed the history of Asiatic antiquity. If you would care to see some of these strange documents, you have but a little way to go from the site of the winged lion here in the British Museum. Meantime, there are other sculptures here which you can hardly pass unnoticed. As we pass the human-headed lions and enter the hall of Asshurnazirpal, we shall see other evidences of Assyrian greatness that might easily lead our thoughts astray from the writing. Here, forming the wall, are bas-reliefs on which the famous scene of the lion hunt is shown; a little farther on are all manner of war scenes; and there some domestic incidents, the making of bread or a like comestible, and its baking in an oven; and there again is the interior of a stable with a man gravely grooming a horse much as it might be done in any stable to-day. All these must not be allowed to distract our attention, for these graphic illustrations have nothing directly to do with writing. Here, however, at the end of the hall, are some other bas-reliefs more pertinent to our present inquiry. That winged god, for example, carrying a fawn, has a fine flight of arrows across the background and figures alike, differing in the latter regard from the lion we have just left. In the hall just beyond are some illustrations of a different combination of picture and text. Here is the famous obelisk of Shalmaneser, which, like all the things thus far noted in the Assyrian collection, was found by Sir Henry Layard at Nineveh. It is virtually an illustrated book, telling in word and text of the conquest of many countries by King Shalmaneser II. The figures of the upper row report the payment of tribute by “Sua of Gilzani, who brought silver, gold, lead, vessels of copper, horses, and dromedaries.” It will be observed, of course, that only one side of the obelisk is here shown. The other three sides in each case depict other phases of the payment of the tribute by the same conquered enemy. The second tier of figures is of peculiar interest, because it shows the payment of tribute by “Yaua, the son of Khumri.” This is, as the Bible student interprets it, “Jehu, the son of Omri.” The conquered Israelite brings “silver and gold, lead and bowls, dishes, cups, and other vessels of gold,” and the forms of these vessels, as well as the costumes of the Hebrews themselves, are well shown in the illustrations. The third row of figures represents the “payment of the tribute of the land of Musri, consisting of dromedaries, buffaloes, elephants, apes, and other animals.” The grotesque figures of the alleged apes, with their altogether human heads, are suggestive as showing how these strange foreign animals appealed to the imagination of the Assyrian artist, causing him to depart from that fine realism which he brought to bear upon the delineation of more familiar animals. The fourth set of pictures shows the payment of tribute of the land of Sukhi, and the fifth a not dissimilar tribute from the country of Patin. The inscriptions at the top and base of the obelisk give details of the conquests, recording among other things how Shalmaneser captured 1121 chariots and 470 battle horses and the whole camp of Hazael, king of Damascus. Perhaps the most curious example of economy of material in a makeshift book that the Assyrian collection at the British Museum has to show, is illustrated in the figure of the god Nabu, which forms part of the Nineveh collection, and which stands in the hall just beyond the obelisk of Shalmaneser. Here, as a glance at the illustration will show, the skirt of the robe of the human figure is used as a ground for an elaborate inscription. The effect is rather decorative and distinctly unique. This figure has the further interest of affording an illustration of what the Assyrian artist could do when he adopted the expedient, for him unusual, of working in the round. The great masterpieces of Assyrian art were modelled in bas-relief. Occasionally, however, the artist attempted the full figure, as in the present case; but it can hardly be claimed that the success of this is at all comparable with that attained by the other method. There are low reliefs in the hunting scenes contained in the dining-hall of Asshurbanapal, as represented here in the British Museum, that are real works of art. The wounded lioness dragging her haunches, the hunted goats, the pacing wild asses, are veritable masterpieces. No such claim can be made for the god Nabu or for any other full statue that the excavations of Nineveh have revealed. But on the other hand the texture of the skirt of this god gives it an abiding interest of a unique character. A further interest attaches to this statue, as to many others of the Assyrian monuments, because of its bearing upon the religion of that famous people. Until the discovery of these long-buried monuments, practically all that was known of the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians was contained in the pages of Herodotus. Strange tales he tells of what he saw in the temples of Babylon, where, as he alleges, all the women of the city, of whatever class or rank, were obliged at least once in a lifetime to prostitute themselves for hire. The inscriptions on the monuments tell us nothing of such practical phases of worship as this, but they do show that the Assyrians were an intensely religious people, closely comparable in that regard to their cousins the Hebrews. Their religion, too, it would appear, was of that firmly grasped self-sufficient kind which puts aside all doubt; which assumes as a primordial fact that one’s own view is right; that one’s gods are the only true gods, and that all the outside world must be regarded as one’s proper prey. A further illustration of this phase of the subject will claim our attention when we come to examine the religious writings of the Assyrians a little more in detail. Obelisk of Shalmaneser II (Now in the British Museum) Another illustration of a curiously Assyrian combination of art and letters is shown in the sculptured lion that guards the entrance to the next hall. This lion is a memento of the same reign as that human-headed one at the other doorway, but it is very different in workmanship, and clearly the product of another artist. For one thing it is a veritable lion, not a mythical compound beast, except, indeed, that it shares with the other the peculiarity of a fifth leg. Assyrian tastes seem to have required that four legs should be visible from whatever point of view the statue of an animal was regarded; hence the anomaly. For the rest, this gigantic beast shows many points of realistic delineation, and it is artistically full of interest. The head in particular expresses feeling in a most unequivocal way. But the most curious characteristic of this sculpture is the way in which the writing is carried from the slab right across the body of the animal itself, and also across its front legs. Perhaps this was done at the command of the king, merely as a convenient expedient that all the desired records of the conquest might be given a place, but the effect at a little distance is curiously as if the artist had striven to get the feeling of hair in a stiff and formal manner, in keeping with the conventional rendering of the mane. Again it has been suggested that the writing has been carried across the body of the lion to safeguard it. There was a not unusual custom among ancient monarchs of scraping out the inscription of a predecessor and supplanting it with one’s own. So great a monarch as Ramses II, in Egypt, did not scruple to do this, and a remarkable case is shown on an Arabian temple where the conscienceless monarch actually substitutes his own name for the correct one of the builder, in a tablet claiming authorship of the temple of which the tablet is a part. That the kings of Assyria had occasion to fear such jugglery is shown by the inscriptions on the book tablets in the royal library at Nineveh, where Asshurbanapal, after telling that the books are of his library, calls a curse upon any one who shall ever put another name beside his own. Perhaps, then, King Asshurnazirpal thought to transmit a record of his deeds more securely to posterity by inscribing them across the back of this lion, for doubtless the sculpture was considered a masterpiece, and the king felt, we may suppose, that artistic taste might prevent a sacrilege which mere conscience would not interdict. We come now to the place in the British Museum in which some of these treasures of the old Assyrian king are guarded. They occupy part of the series of cases placed down the centre of the room known as the Nineveh Gallery. Perhaps it is not too much to speak of these collections as forming the most extraordinary set of documents of all the rare treasures of the British Museum, for it includes not books alone, but public and private letters, business announcements, marriage contracts—in a word, all the species of written records that enter into the everyday life of an intelligent and cultured community. Detail from the Obelisk of Shalmaneser II But by what miracle have such documents been preserved through all these centuries? A glance makes the secret evident. It is simply a case of time-defying materials. Each one of these Assyrian documents appears to be, and in reality is, nothing more or less than an inscribed fragment of brick, having much the colour and texture of a weathered terra-cotta tile of modern manufacture. These slabs are usually oval or oblong in length, and an inch or so in thickness. Each of them was originally a portion of brick clay, on which the scribe indented the flights of arrow-heads with some sharp-cornered instrument, after which the document was made permanent by baking. They are somewhat fragile, of course, as all bricks are, and many of them have been more or less crumbled in the destruction of the palace at Nineveh; but to the ravages of mere time they are as nearly invulnerable as almost anything in nature. Hence it is that these records of a remote civilisation have been preserved to us, while the similar records of such later civilisations as the Grecian have utterly perished; much as the flint implements of the cave-dweller come to us unchanged, while the iron implements of a far more recent age have crumbled away. Consider even in the most casual way the mere samples that are exhibited here in the museum. This first case, the label tells us, contains tablets—sample leaves, if you will—from the famous “Creation” and “Deluge” series. That is to say, from the book which has been called the Chaldean Genesis, and which excited such a furor of attention when George Smith of the British Museum first deciphered part of its contents, because it seemed to give so striking a clew to the origin of the sacred book of the Hebrews. The Hebrew legends are very differently received to-day from what they were even fifty years ago, thanks to the advance of science; but these Chaldean stories of the creation and destruction of mankind still have absorbing interest as historical documents in the story of the mental evolution of our race, both for what they teach of the ideas of remote generations of men, and for what they taught the generation of our immediate predecessors about the true status of comparative mythology. It will be recalled that the Assyrians were Semites closely related to the Hebrews. Indeed, tradition held that Father Abraham, in common with the ancestors of the Assyrians, came from the land of the Chaldeans. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that these sacred books of the Assyrians are replete with the same traditions and give expression to much the same cast of thought as the sacred books of the Hebrews. Thus, here we have a closely comparable account of the creation of the world out of primeval chaos and of the destruction of all but a favoured few in a universal deluge. Even the story of the sending out from the ark of first one bird and then another, until finally the raven found a place to alight, when the ark itself had stranded on a mountain top, is reproduced with such closeness of detail as practically to demonstrate a common origin of the two traditions. Here, again, is a story of how Sargon, an early king of Agade, was cast away, Moses-like, in a basket, to be rescued from the waters of the Euphrates by a compassionate discoverer of his plight. There is even a tablet which gives intimations of the story of the building of the Tower of Babel. And with it all there is imbued the same black, dreadful view of life that actuated the authors of the Old Testament. Always we are made to feel the threat of the angry deity; always this religion is a religion of fear. Generosity, brotherly love, compassion, morality—in a broad sense these words play but little part in the terminology of the Semite. The Semitic conqueror was notorious for his cruelty. He loved to persecute his victim, to crucify him, to flay him alive. The writers of the Hebrew and of the Assyrian books alike record these deeds without a shudder. They show to the psychologist a race lacking in imagination, which is the mother of sympathy, but imbued through and through with egotism. The legends of the sacred books give further evidence of these same traits. Here before us, among the other tablets just noted, are the famous stories of the descent of Ishtar, the Goddess of Love, into the nether regions, and of the trials and perils which she encountered there, and those that fell upon the outside world because of her absence. It is recorded that when finally a messenger was sent from a superior power demanding her release, the powers of the nether world gave her up unwillingly, but retained the innocent messenger to torture in her stead; and it probably never occurred to the mind of the Assyrian soothsayer that it might have been within the power of the superior gods to release the innocent messenger as well. Another famous set of tablets records the adventures of Gilgamish, whose heroic trials and mighty deeds suggest the Hercules of the Greeks. All in all, these religious and mythological texts give us the closest insight into the moral nature of the Assyrian, not merely during the period of Asshurbanapal, but for many generations before, since these sacred books are in the main but copies of old Babylonian ones, dating from the most remote periods of antiquity. The tablets of the next case illustrate a different phase of Assyrian mental activity. They are virtually books of reference, and schoolbooks—that is, “Grammatical Tablets, Lists of Cuneiform Signs, Explanatory Lists of Words, etc.—drawn up for use in the Royal Library at Nineveh.” They include a tablet of “words and phrases used in legal documents, to serve as grammatical examples; one column being in the Sumero-Accadian language, the other an Assyrian translation; also lists of a verbal formation, and an explanatory list of words”—a dictionary, if you please! Even more remarkable is a tablet giving a list of picture characters with the archaic forms of cuneiform signs to which they were thought to correspond; this list being supplemented by another in which the archaic forms themselves are interpreted with the “modern” equivalent. This tablet shows that, in the belief of the ancient Assyrian, the cuneiform character had been developed, at a remote epoch, from a purely historical writing (as was doubtless the case), but that the exact line of this development had faded from the memories of men in the latter-day epoch of the seventh century B.C. In the case beyond are tablets with lists of “Names of Birds, Plants, Bronze Objects, Articles of Clothing, etc., for reference as an aid to writing literary compositions.” Then lists of officials, and other documents relating to the history of Babylonia-Assyria, including historical inscriptions of Sennacherib. Beyond, a set of letters, public and private, mostly inscribed on oval bits of clay, three or four inches long, and sometimes provided with envelopes of the same material. Of this numerous collection of letters, the one that attracts most popular attention is that in which King Sennacherib refers to certain objects given by him to his son Esarhaddon. This is commonly known as the “will of Sennacherib.” Near this is another letter that is interesting because it is provided with a baked-clay envelope, into which the letter slipped as a kernel of a nut into its shell. The envelope bears the inscription, “To the King, my Lord, from Asshur Ritsua,” and it is authenticated by two impressions of the writer’s seal. This use of seals, by-the-bye, is quite general, particularly in the case of official documents. Sometimes, as in the case of a contract tablet shown here, the witness, in lieu of seal, gives the stamp of his finger nail, this being equivalent, I suppose, to “John Doe, his mark.” It is hardly to be supposed that the average Assyrian could write any more than the average Greek or Roman could, or, for that matter, the average European of a century ago. The professional scribe did the writing, of course, whence the necessity for seals to assure authenticity of even ordinary letters. Doubtless the art of gem engraving, which the old Chaldeans carried to amazing perfection, followed by the Greeks and Romans, has been allowed to decline in recent generations largely because the increasing spread of education—not to mention gummed envelopes—made seals less and less a necessity. Perhaps the art may be revived in the age of the typewriter. But if one stops to speak of seals, he could hardly be restrained from rushing off to the wonderful collection in the gem department of the British Museum, where the Græco-Roman intaglios would drive all thought of other collections from his head,—though even there the Cyprian finds would lead him back irrevocably to the Babylonian model,—whereas, for the moment, our true concern is not with seals of any sort, but with the documents they are purposed to authenticate. These documents are of the strangest assortment; and yet not strange, so precisely similar are they to the official records of modern communal existence. Thus here is one tablet, of about the year 650 B.C., recording the sale of a house. There another tells of the leasing of certain property, for a term of six years, for twelve shekels of silver. And, capping the climax, here are tablets recording the loan of money, veritable notes, with even the rate of interest—twenty per cent—carefully prescribed. One learns that the money broker did a thriving business in old Nineveh. How near to us those days are, after all! And nearer yet they seem when we pass to the cases of the tablets of omens and forecasts based upon the position of the stars and planets, the actions of animals and reptiles, the flight of birds, and the appearance of newly born offspring. For when superstition is in question all races are kin, and all times are contemporary. The European of to-day who shudders when he sees the moon over his left shoulder, is brother in spirit to the Assyrian astrologer who used this “astrolabe” to forecast the events of his own immediate future. And these incantations, religious and magical rites, prayers, hymns, litanies—do they not make it clear that the Assyrian was indeed our elder brother? Does this lifted veil then show us a vista of three millennia, or only of as many generations? At least it serves to bring home to us—and I doubt if any other exhibit could do it as forcibly—how slow, how snail-like is the rate of human progress. Yet, after all, how vain this moralising; for who does not know that the day when Nineveh saw its prime was only the yesterday of human civilisation? If one doubted it before, he can doubt no longer, since he has wandered down the rooms in which the relics from the library of Asshurbanapal are exhibited, glancing thus casually at the accommodating English labels. Naturally, the stock of material bearing upon this topic has been constantly increased by new explorations, notably by those of Oppert at Nineveh, and of De Sarzec at Telloh, by which the French Government has supplemented the early collections of the pioneer of the work, Botta; by various German exploring companies; and, more recently, by the American exploring expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, under Dr. John P. Peters, which secured such important results at Nippur. But the greatest repository of all still remains that which Layard and his assistant and successor in the work, Rassam, followed by George Smith, secured for the British Museum. The other collections afford important sidelights; but the main story of Assyrian life and history, as at present known to us, is told only by the books from the wonderful library of the palace of Asshurbanapal at Nineveh; and these can be studied only in the British Museum, or in the publications which the workers of that institution have from time to time given to the world. After glancing at these documents for the first time, none but a heedless person can fail to have brought home to him a more vivid picture of the life of antiquity, and a truer historical perspective than he can previously have possessed. For more than two thousand years Greek culture has dominated the world, and it has been the custom to speak of the Greek as if he were the veritable inventor of art and of culture; but these documents have led to a truer view. Here one looks back, as it were, over the heads of the Greeks, and catches glimpses of a people that possessed a high civilisation when the Greeks were still an upstart nation, only working their way out of barbarism. Now it appears to be nothing less than a law of nature that every nation should look with contempt upon every other nation which it regards as contemporary. With a highly artistic people, whose chief pride is their artistic taste, this feeling reaches its climax. The Greek attitude in this regard is proverbial. But it is just as fixed a law of nature that every nation should look with reverence upon some elder civilisation. The Romans adopted the Greek word “barbarian,” and applied it to all other nations—except the Greeks. The Greeks did not return the compliment. For them the Romans were parvenus—parvenus to be looked on with hatred and contempt. I doubt not the Athenian child gave the deadliest possible insult to his playfellow when he called him a Roman; just as the Parisian child of to-day reserves the appellation “anglais” as the bitterest anathema of his vocabulary. But when the Greek turned his eyes in the other direction, and looked out upon Egyptian and Babylonian civilisation, he was gazing into the past, and his contempt changed to reverence, precisely as with the Frenchman of to-day, who looks back with reverence upon the civilisation of ancient Greece and Rome, while utterly contemning all phases of the nineteenth-century civilisation save his own. It was gladly admitted by the Greeks that these oriental civilisations had flowered while Greek culture was yet in the bud. Solon, the law-giver, was reported to have travelled in Egypt, and to have been mildly patronised by the Egyptian priests as the representative of an infant race. Herodotus, though ostensibly writing of the Persian war, devotes whole sections of his history to Egypt, and accepts, as did his countrymen, the Egyptian claims to immense antiquity without a scruple. Plato even resided for some years in Egypt, as Diodorus tells us, in the hope of gaining an insight into the mysteries of oriental philosophy. Regarding the Assyrio-Babylonians, apparently hardly any story was too fanciful to gain a measure of credence with the classical world. Herodotus, to be sure, only credits the Assyrians with ruling for five hundred and twenty years before the overthrow of Nineveh; and Diodorus, following Ctesias, raises the figure only to about one thousand four hundred years. But these figures were probably based on a vague comprehension that Assyria proper had a relatively late period of flowering, as was, indeed, the fact; and the rumours regarding the age of Babylonian civilisation as a whole may be best illustrated by recalling that Cicero thought it necessary to express his scepticism regarding a claim, seemingly prevalent in his time, that Babylonian monuments preserve astronomical observations dating back over a period of two hundred and seventy thousand years. Pliny, on the other hand, quoting “Epigenes, a writer of first-rate authority,” claims for the astronomical records only a period of seven hundred and twenty years, noting also that Berosus and Critodemus still further limit the period to four hundred and eighty years. But the very range of numbers shows how utterly vague were the notions involved; and Pliny himself draws the inference of “the eternal use of letters” among the Babylonians, indicating that even the minimum period took the matter beyond the range of western history. But for that matter nothing could be more explicit than the testimony of Diodorus, who, writing some three centuries after what we now speak of as the “golden age” of Greece, plainly indicates that not Greece but Mesopotamia was looked to in his day as the classic land of culture. And we of to-day are enabled—the first of any generation in our era—to catch glimpses of the data on which that estimate was based, and to understand, by the witness of our own eyes, that the fabled glory of ancient Assyria was no myth, but a very tangible reality. Assyrian Letter of Baked Clay and Fragment of its Broken Envelope (Now in the British Museum) But all along we have followed the story of these strange books, taking for granted their meaning as interpreted on the labels, and ignoring for the moment the great marvel about them, which is not that we have the material documents themselves, but that we have a knowledge of their actual contents. The flights of arrow-heads on wall, on slab, or tiny brick have surely a meaning; but how has any one guessed that meaning? These must be words—but what words? The hieroglyphics of the Egyptians were mysterious in all conscience; yet, after all, their symbols have a certain suggestiveness, whereas there is nothing that seems to promise a mental leverage in the unbroken succession of these cuneiform dashes. Yet the Assyrian scholar of to-day can interpret these strange records almost as readily and as surely as the classical scholar interprets a Greek manuscript. And this evidences one of the greatest triumphs of nineteenth-century scholarship; for, since almost two thousand years, no man has lived, previous to our century, to whom these strange inscriptions would not have been as meaningless as they are to the most casual stroller who looks on them with vague wonderment here in the museum to-day. For the Assyrian language, like the Egyptian, was veritably a dead language; not, like Greek and Latin, merely passed from practical everyday use to the closet of the scholar, but utterly and absolutely forgotten by all the world. Such being the case, it is nothing less than marvellous that it should have been restored. It is but fair to add that this restoration probably never would have been effected with Assyrian or with Egyptian had the language, in dying, left no cognate successor; for the powers of modern linguistry, though great, are not actually miraculous. But, fortunately, a language once developed is not blotted out in toto; it merely outlives its usefulness and is gradually supplanted, its successor retaining many traces of its origin. So, just as Latin, for example, has its living representatives in Italian and the other Romance tongues, the language of Assyria is represented by cognate Semitic languages. As it chances, however, these have been of aid rather in the later stages of Assyrian study than at the very outset; for the first clew to the message of the cuneiform writing came through a slightly different channel. Curiously enough, it was a trilingual inscription that gave the clew, as in the case of the Rosetta stone; though with a very striking difference withal. The trilingual inscription now in question, instead of being a small portable monument, covers the surface of a massive bluff at Behistun, in western Persia. Moreover, all three of its inscriptions are in cuneiform character, and all three are in languages that, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were absolutely unknown. This inscription itself, as a striking monument of unknown import, had been seen by successive generations. Tradition ascribed it, as we learn from Ctesias, through Diodorus, to the fabled Assyrian queen, Semiramis. Tradition is quite at fault in this; but it is only recently that knowledge has availed to set it right. The inscription, as is now known, was really written about the year 515 B.C., at the instance of Darius I, king of Persia, some of whose deeds it recounts in the three chief languages of his widely scattered subjects. The man who, at the actual risk of life and limb, copied this wonderful inscription, and, through interpreting it, became the veritable “Father of Assyriology,” was the English general, Sir Henry Rawlinson. His feat was another British triumph over the same rivals who had competed for the Rosetta stone; for some French explorers had been sent by their government, some years earlier, expressly to copy this inscription, and had reported that to reach the inscription was impossible. But British courage did not find it so, and in 1835 Rawlinson scaled the dangerous height and made a paper cast of about half the inscription. Diplomatic duties called him away from the task for some years, but in 1848 he returned to it, and completed the copy of all parts of the inscription that have escaped the ravages of time. And now the material was in hand for a new science, which General Rawlinson, assisted by a host of others, soon began to elaborate. The key to the value of the Behistun inscription lies in the fact that its third language is ancient Persian. It appears that the ancient Persians had adopted the cuneiform character from their western neighbours, the Assyrians, but in so doing had made one of those essential modifications and improvements which are scarcely possible to accomplish except in the transition from one race to another. Instead of building with the arrow-heads a multitude of syllabic characters, including many homophones, as had been, and continued to be, the custom of the Assyrians, the Persians selected a few of these characters, and ascribed to them phonetic values that were almost purely alphabetical. In a word, while retaining the wedge as the basal stroke of their script, they developed an alphabet; making that last wonderful analysis of phonetic sounds which even to this day has escaped the Chinese, which the Egyptians had only partially effected and which the Phœnicians were accredited by the Greeks with having introduced into the western world. In addition to this all-essential step, the Persians had introduced the minor, but highly convenient, custom of separating the words of a sentence from one another by a particular mark, differing in this regard not only from the Assyrians and the Egyptians, but from the early Greek scribes as well. Thanks to these simplifications, the old Persian language has been practically restored about the beginning of the nineteenth century, through the efforts of the German, Grotefend; and further advances in it were made just at this time by Burnouf in France, and Lassen in Germany, as well as by Rawlinson himself, who largely solved the problem of the Persian alphabet independently. So the Persian portion of the Behistun inscription could at last be partially deciphered. This, in itself, however, would have been no very great aid towards the restoration of the languages of the other portions, had it not chanced fortunately that the inscription is sprinkled with proper names. Now, proper names, generally speaking, are not translated from one language to another, but transliterated as nearly as the genius of the language will permit. It was the fact that the Greek word “Ptolemaios” was transliterated on the Rosetta stone, that gave the first clew to the sounds of the Egyptian characters. Had the upper part of the Rosetta stone been preserved, on which, originally, there were several other names, Young would not have halted where he did in his decipherment. But fortune, which had been at once so kind, and so tantalising in the case of the Rosetta stone, had dealt more gently with the Behistun inscription; for no fewer than ninety proper names were preserved in the Persian portion, and duplicated, in another character, in the Assyrian inscription. A study of these gave a clew to the sounds of the Assyrian characters. The decipherment of this character, however, even with this aid, proved enormously difficult, for it was soon evident that here it was no longer a question of a nearly perfect alphabet of a few characters, but of a syllabary of several hundred characters, including many homophones, or different forms for representing the same sound. But with the Persian translation for a guide on the one hand, and the Semitic languages, to which family the Assyrian belonged, on the other, the appalling task was gradually accomplished, the leading investigators being General Rawlinson, Professor Hincks, and Mr. Fox Talbot, in England; Professor Jules Oppert in Paris; and Professor Eberhard Schrader in Germany; though a host of other scholars soon entered the field. This great linguistic feat was accomplished about the middle of the century. But so great a feat was it, that many scholars of the highest standing, including Ernest Renan in France, and Sir George Cornwall Lewis in England, declined at first to accept the results, contending that the Assyriologists had merely deceived themselves by creating an arbitrary language. The matter was put to the test in 1855, at the suggestion of Mr. Fox Talbot, when four scholars, one being Mr. Talbot himself, and the others General Rawlinson, Professor Hincks, and Professor Oppert, laid before the Royal Asiatic Society their independent translations of an hitherto untranslated Assyrian text. A committee of the society, including England’s greatest historian of the century, George Grote, broke the seals of the four translations, and reported that they found them unequivocally in accord as regards their main purport, and even surprisingly uniform as regards the phraseology of certain passages; in short, as closely similar as translations from the obscure texts of any difficult language ever are. This decision gave the work of Assyriologists an official status, so to say, and the reliability of their method has never since been in question. Thus it has come about that these inscribed bricks from the palace of Asshurbanapal, which, when the first of them was discovered, were as meaningless as so many blank slabs, have been made to deliver up their message. And a marvellous message it is, as we have already seen. Merely to have satisfied a vague curiosity as to the past traditions, however, would be but a small measure of the intellectual work which the oriental antiquities have had a large share in accomplishing. Their message has been one of truly world-historic import. Thanks to these monuments from Egypt and Mesopotamia, the student of human civilisation has to-day a sweep of view that hitherto has been utterly withheld from him. Until the crypts by the Nile and the earth mounds by the Tigris and Euphrates gave up their secrets, absolutely nothing was known to scholarship of the main sweep of civilisation more anciently than about the sixth century B.C. Beyond that all was myth, fable, unauthenticated tradition. And now the indubitable monuments of civilisation carry us back over a period at least three times as great. Archbishop Usher’s famed Chronology, which so long dominated the ideas of men, is swept away, and we learn from evidence graven in stone and baked indelibly in bricks that in the year 4004 B.C., which our Bible margins still point out as the year of Creation, vast communities of people, in widely separated portions of the earth, had attained a high degree of civilisation. In the year when the proverbial first man wandered naked in Eden, the actual man lived with thousands of his fellow-men in vast cities, where he built houses and temples, erected wonderful monuments, practised such arts as glass-making, sculpture, and painting, and recorded his thoughts in written words. And from that day to this stretches the thread of civilisation, unbroken by any universal flood or other cataclysm. Now, to be sure, we are told that Archbishop Usher and his kith and kin were but gullible and misguided enthusiasts, to have thought they detected chronological sequence where none such existed; but it was rank heresy to have propounded such a view until the new monuments gave us the rudiments of a true chronology. Other evidence had, indeed, proven the antiquity of the earth and of man himself, but the antiquity of civilisation still depends upon these oriental monuments alone for its demonstration. The chronology of ancient history has no other authenticated source; and chronology, as Professor Petrie has said, is “the backbone of history.” To be sure, the exact chronology of remote antiquity is not by any means as fixed and secure as might be desired. The antiquarian in dealing with the remoter epochs must count by centuries rather than by years. But the broad outlines of the question are placed beyond cavil. So long as the danger mark of the flood year stared the investigator in the face, every foot of earlier chronology was controversial ground, and each remoter century must battle for recognition. But now, thanks to the accumulation of evidence, all that is past, and the most ardent partisans of Hebrew records vie with one another in tracing back the evidences of civilisation in Egypt and Mesopotamia, by centuries and by millennia. It is thought by Professor Hilprecht, that the more recent excavations by the Americans at the site of Nippur have carried the evidence back to 6000 or perhaps even 7000 years B.C., and no one’s equanimity is disturbed by the suggestion, except, possibly, that of the Egyptologist, whose records as yet pause something like a thousand years earlier, and who feels a certain jealousy lest his Egyptian of seven thousand years ago should be proven an uninteresting parvenu. But note how these new figures disturb the balance of history. If our forerunners of eight or nine thousand years ago were in a noonday glare of civilisation, where shall we look for the much-talked-of “dawnings of history”? By this new standard the Romans seem our contemporaries in latter-day civilisation; the “golden age” of Greece is but of yesterday; the Pyramid builders are only relatively remote. The men who built the temple of Bel, at Nippur, in the year, let us say, 5000 B.C., must have felt themselves at a pinnacle of civilisation and culture. As Professor Mahaffy has suggested, the time of the Pyramids may have been the veritable autumn of civilisation. Where, then, must we look for its spring-time? The answer to that question must come, if it comes at all, from what we now speak of as prehistoric archæology; the monuments from Memphis and Nippur and Nineveh, covering a mere 10,000 years or so, are records of later history.[j] [39] Diodorus Siculus, it will be remembered, states that the stones of the bridge built by Semiramis across the Euphrates were united by similar iron cramps, whilst the interstices were filled up with molten lead. [The letter a is reserved for Editorial Matter] [b] G. Weber, Allgemeine Weltgeschichte. [c] Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums. [d] F. Hommel, Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens. [e] R. W. Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria. [f] J. P. Peters, Nippur. [b] Hugo Radau, Early Babylonian History down to the IVth Dynasty of Ur. [c] A. H. Sayce, from the article “Babylonia and Assyria,” in the New Volumes of the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. d E. A. T. W. Budge, Babylonian Life and History. [b] H. Winckler, Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens. [c] Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums. [d] E. Babelon, Histoire de l’Orient. [e] C. P. Tiele, Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte. [b] C. P. Tiele, Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte. [c] Herodotus, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe). [g] E. A. T. W. Budge, Annals of Shalmaneser II, Sennacherib, and Asshurbanipal. [b] R. W. Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria. [c] C. P. Tiele, Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte. [b] F. Hommel, Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens. [b] A. H. Layard, Nineveh and its Remains. c Herodotus, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe). d Strabo, The Geography of Strabo (translated from the Greek by J. Falconer and H. C. Hamilton). e A. H. L. Heeren, Historical Researches into the Politics, Intercourse, and Trade of the Principal Nations of Antiquity (Asiatic Nations). [f] Joachim Menant, La Bibliothèque du Palais de Ninive. [b] Joachim Menant, La Bibliothèque du Palais de Ninive. [c] L. W. King, Babylonian Religion and Mythology. [h] P. Jensen, Cosmologie der Babylonier. [i] H. Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit. [j] L. W. King, Seven Tablets of Creation. [m] Eberhard Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und Das Alte Testament, 3rd edition. [n] A. Jeremias, Izdubar Nimrod. [o] C. P. Tiele, Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte. [b] A. H. Layard, Nineveh and its Remains. [c] Henry Smith Williams, “The Influence of Modern Research on the Scope of World History,” Prefatory Essay in Volume III of the New Volumes of the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. [d] Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library (translated from the Greek by G. Booth). [e] Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums. [f] Edward Hincks, from an article “On the Assyrio-Babylonian Measures of Time,” in Volume XXIV of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 1874. [g] Joachim Menant, La Bibliothèque du Palais de Ninive. [h] C. P. Tiele, Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte. [i] G. Nagel, in Beiträge zur Assyriologie, Vol. IV. [j] M. Montgomery, Briefe aus der Zeit Hammurabis. [k] C. Johnston, in the “Epistolary Literature of the Assyrians and Babylonians” in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. XVIII. [l] Friedrich Delitzsch, article “Beiträge zur Erklärung der babylonisch-assyrischen Brieflitteratur” in Beiträge zur Assyriologie, Vol. I. [m] F. Lenormant, Histoire ancienne de l’Orient. [b] Isaac Preston Cory, Ancient Fragments. [c] Diodorus Siculus. The Historical Library, (translated from the Greek by G. Booth). [d] Claudius Ælianus, The Variable History of Ælianus (translated from the Greek by A. Fleming). [b] A. H. Layard, Nineveh and its Remains. [c] F. Hommel, Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens. d R. W. Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria. [j] Henry Smith Williams, The History of the Art of Writing. Ælianus, Claudius, The Variable History of Ælianus. Translated by A. Fleming. London, 1576.—Ainsworth, W., Researches in Assyria, Babylonia, and Chaldea. London, 1842; Chaldeans of Central Kurdestan.—Amiaud, A., in de Sarzec’s Découvertes en Chaldée. Paris, 1814, 2 vols.; (in collab. with F. Scheil) Les inscriptions de Salmanasar. Paris, 1890.—Aures, A., Traité de métrologie assyrienne. Paris, 1891. Babelon, E., Manuel d’archéol. orientale. Paris, 1888.—Bertin, G., Babylonian Chronology and History. London, 1892; The Pre-Akkadian Semites. London, 1886.—Bewsher, Lieut., Mesopotamia: Sheriat-el-Beyta to Tell Ibrahim.—Bezold, C., The Tell-el-Amarna Tablets in the British Museum. London, 1892; Catalogue of the Cuneiform Tablets in the Kuyunjik collection in the British Museum. London, 1889; Überblick über die babylonisch-assyrische Literatur. Leipsic, 1886.—Billerbeck, A., Susa. Leipsic, 1893.—Birch, S., Records of the Past. London, 1873, 12 vols.—Bonavia, E., Flora of the Assyrian Monuments. London, 1894.—Boscawen, W. St. C., Lectures on the History of Assyria. London, 1886; Assyria and Babylonia. London, 1836.—Botta, P. E., and Flandrin, E., Monuments de Ninive. Paris, 1849-1850, 5 vols. Paul Émil Botta was born at Turin December 6, 1802, and died at Achères, near Poissy, France, March 29th, 1870. He was French consul at Alexandria, and in 1842 was transferred to the office of vice-consul at Mosul, of which he was the first titulary consul. In December, 1842, he studied the tumulus which covered the right bank of the Tigris opposite Mosul; superficially explored Kuyunjik; and then at Khorsabad discovered (from March to October, 1843) the remains of the town and palace of Doursaryonkin, founded by Sargon II, king of Assyria. The objects found during these discoveries were transported to France in 1846, and form the main contents of the Musée Assyrien of the Louvre. Brandis, J., Über den historischen Gewinn aus der Entzifferung der Assyr. Inschriften. Berlin, 1856.—Brown, F. T., Assyriology. New York, 1885.—Bruce, P., Three Inscriptions of Nabopolassar, King of Babylonia, B.C. 625-604; In Amer. Jour. of Sem. Lang., vol. 16, p. 178. Chicago, 1900.—Brünnow, R. E., Classified List of All Simple and Compound Cuneiform Ideographs. Leyden, 1887-1889.—Bruston, C. A., Les inscriptions assyriennes et l’Ancien Testament. Paris, 1875.—Budge, E. A. W., Babylonian Life and History. London, 1884; The History of Esar-Haddon. London, 1880; Annals of Shalmanasser II, Sennacherib and Assurbani-Pal. London, 1880; A Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Antiq. of the British Museum. London, 1900. Cara, P. C. de, Gli Hethei-Pelasgi. Rome, 1895.—Cartwright, J., Travels through Syria, Mesopotamia, etc. London, 1911.—Cassas, L. F., Voyage Pittoresque en Syrie. Paris, 1799.—Cavaniol, H., Les monuments en Chaldée, en Assyrie et à Babylone. Paris, 1870.—Clercq, L. de, Antiquités assyriennes. Paris, 1888.—Cloquet, L., L’art monumental des égyptiens et des assyriens. Paris, 1896. Delattre, A. J., Esquisse de géographie assyrienne. Paris, 1883; Les inscriptions historiques de Ninive, etc. Paris, 1879; L’Asie occid. dans les inscriptions assyriennes. Brussels, 1885; L’assyriologie depuis onze ans. Paris, 1891; L’exactitude en histoire d’après un Assyriologiste. Louvain, 1888.—Delitzsch, Friedrich, Die Entstehung des ältestens Schriftsystems. Leipsic, 1897; Handel, Recht und Sitte im alten Babylonien (in Velhagen and Klasing’s Monatshefte, Jahr. 13, Vol. II, p. 47. Berlin, 1899); Assyrische Studien. Leipsic, 1874. Friedrich Delitzsch, the son of Franz Delitzsch, was born at Erlangen, September 3, 1850. Professor of Assyriology in the University of Berlin, he devoted himself to the study of Assyriology, and attained a wide reputation as an Assyriologist. He was appointed Professor of Assyriology at the University of Leipsic. His writings have been mostly upon the subject of Assyria and ancient Assyrian life, and he has made some translations from the works of other historians, notably George Smith’s Chaldean Account of Genesis. He made a deep sensation in Germany in 1902 by his lecture on “Babel and the Bible,” in which he pointed out the similarity of the story of Moses in the bulrushes to the ancient legend of the birth of Sargon I, king of Babylon; noted the Babylonian custom of resting every seventh day, the word being shabattu (whence Sabbath), and many other points in which the Babylonian influence is shown in the Bible. Dieulafoy, J., La Perse et la Chaldée. Paris, 1887.—Diodorus, S., The Historical Library, London, 1700.—Duncker, M., Geschichte des Alterthums. Leipsic, 1878, 6 vols. English translation: The History of Antiquity. London, 1880, 6 vols. Edwards, C., The Witness of Assyria. London, 1893.—Epping, C., Astronomisches aus Babylon. Freiburg, 1889.—Evans, G., An Essay on Assyriology. London, 1883.—Evetts, B. T. A., Cylinders of Sennacherib. London, 1889; Inscription of the Reign of Evil-Merodach, Neriglissar and Laborosoarchod. Leipsic, 1892. Feer, H. L., Les Ruines de Ninive. Paris, 1864.—Ferguson, J., The Palaces of Niniveh and Persepolis Restored. London, 1857.—Fontane, M., Histoire Universelle. Paris, 1881-1889, 6 vols. Marius Fontane was born at Marseilles, September 4, 1838. He was destined to follow a commercial career, and was sent by a French house in Marseilles to represent it in the Orient. While there he was brought into relations with M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, and became his private secretary. Through the efforts of M. de Lesseps, Fontane was successively associated as secretary-general to the Suez and Panama Canal Companies. M. Fontane was early drawn into literary work, and in spite of his official duties found time to devote much attention to political economy, religion, learning, and history in all its branches. In his Universal History he devotes much space to questions of race and primitive religions in the historical evolution of humanity. Marius Fontane has come into prominence largely through his writings on the subject of history, but also through his explorations in the countries lying about the Isthmus of Suez. Fradenburg, J. N., Fire from Strange Altars. Cincinnati, 1891.—Fraser, J. B., Mesopotamia and Assyria, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time. New York, 1892. Gatschet, A. S., Historic Documents from the XIVth Century B.C. (In Amer. Anthropologist, vol. 10, p. 121. Washington, 1897.)—Ginzel, F. K., Die astronomischen Kentnisse der Babylonier und ihre culturhistorische Bedeutung. Leipsic, 1901.—Goss, W. H., Hebrew Captives of the Kings of Assyria. London, 1890.—Guyard, S., Mélanges d’Assyriologie. Paris, 1883.—Goodspeed, George S., A History of Babylonia and Assyria. New York, 1903. Halévy, J., Documents religieux de l’Assyrie. Paris, 1882; La nouvelle évolution de l’accadisme. Paris, 1878; Aperçu grammatical sur l’allographie assyro-babylonienne. Paris, 1885; Essai sur les inscriptions du Safa. Paris, 1882; Recherches critiques sur l’origine de la civilisation babylonienne. Paris, 1876. Joseph Halévy, of Jewish origin, was born at Adrianople, December 15, 1827. He came to study at Paris, and became a naturalised Frenchman. In 1868 he visited northern Abyssinia to study the Jewish religion of the Falashas. (The Falashas are a Hamitic tribe which professes the Jewish religion, and claims descent from Hebrew immigrants who followed the queen of Sheba.) In 1869 he was sent to Yemen on a mission of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres. He remained there two years, and brought back six hundred and eighty-three Sabaic inscriptions. In 1872 he received a gold medal from the Société de Géographie and the Volney prize from the Institut. He afterwards became Professor of Ethiopian at the École pratique des hautes études. He was one of the most active collaborators in the Journal Asiatique, and wrote frequently on the most disputed questions concerning the philology and the archæology of the East to the Académie des Inscriptions. His theories as to the origins of the Mesopotamian peoples and languages made a profound impression on all the scholarly world, and while they have met with bitter opposition they are entitled to all the consideration that is due to such deep and tireless research. Harkness, M. E., Assyrian Life and History. London, 1883.—Harper, R. F., Assyrian and Babylonian Letters. London, 1892-1902, 8 vols.—Havet, E., Mémoire sur la date des écrits. Paris.—Heeren, A. H. L., Historical Researches, etc. Oxford, 1839, 2nd ed., 5 vols.—Hegel, G. W. F., Lectures on the Philosophy of History. London, 1857.—Helm, O. (in collab. with Hilprecht, H. V.), Chemische Untersuchung von altbabylonischen Kupferund Bronze-Gegenständen und deren Alters-Bestimmung (in Berl. Gesellsch. f. Anthrop. Verh.). Berlin, 1901.—Herder, J. G. von, Outlines of the Philosophy of History of Man. London, 1803, 2 vols. Johann Gottfried von Herder was born at Mohrungen, East Prussia, August 25, 1744. His education was mostly private. His first writings appeared when he was about twenty years of age. His first considerable work, Fragmente über die neure deutsche Literatur, appeared in 1767. This work attracted the favourable attention of Lessing, and made him widely known. In 1776 he obtained the post of upper court preacher and upper member of the Consistory at Weimar. At this post he passed the rest of his life. “He possessed a power of intuition which must be considered in many cases as prophetic, and which made him a pathfinder whose traces are followed up to the present day.” His Study of the Philosophy of History will naturally be compared with the work on the same subject by his contemporary Hegel. It created almost a furor of excitement in its day, and may still be read with interest and profit by every earnest student of history. Its essential attitude of mind appears peculiarly archaic in our day, evidencing the utterly changed point of view from which history is regarded in our generation. Herder, like most other philosophical historians of his time, saw everywhere the hand of God in history, and was firmly imbued with the idea that all human events were but the working out of a divine plan, the broad outlines of which had been fully revealed to man. The modern historian tries to be a scientist rather than a philosopher, and he finds scant proof of this basis on which Herder worked, but views or attempts to view the course of world-history as a candid or impartial investigator of facts and of rational human motives, feeling by no means sure that he grasps the full import of any metaphysical theological bearings of these facts and motives, if such there be. Yet for this very reason the writings of Herder have a peculiar value, as they not alone evidence the mental grasp of the age in which they were written, but serve at the same time to point out a significant difference between that time and our own. Herodotus, The History of Herodotus. London, 1806, 2nd ed., 4 vols.—Heuzey, L., Un palais chaldéen. Paris, 1888. La construction du roi Our-Nina d’après les levés et les notes de M. de Sarzec (in Rev. d’Assyr. et d’Archéol., vol. 4, p. 87. Paris, 1898).—Hilprecht, H. V., The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (Old Babylonian Inscriptions), Am. Phil. Soc. Philadelphia, 1896; Recent Researches in the Bible Lands. Philadelphia, 1896; The Recent Excavations of the University at Nippur (in Univ. of Pennsylvania Bul., vol. 2, p. 87, and vol. 3, p. 373, Philadelphia, 1899). Hermann Hilprecht was born at Hohenerxleben, Germany, June 28, 1859. He is at present professor in the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Hilprecht was interested from the outset in the expedition of the University of Pennsylvania to Babylonia, to which we have more than once referred. At a later stage he was curator and scientific director of the expedition, in which Mr. Haynes had charge of the field-work, 1893-95 and 1897-1900, after Dr. Peters’ retirement. Though he spent but a month in actual field-work, he spent several years in working up at Constantinople or Philadelphia the ample supply of materials which the various expeditions procured, and his results, as published from time to time, have been noted everywhere as distinct and important additions to our technical knowledge of Assyriology. The greatest popular interest in these discoveries perhaps grows out of the light that they throw on the extreme antiquity of Babylonian history. Dr. Peters and Professor Hilprecht both assure us that the secure records gained by the excavations of Nippur carry the history of Babylonia back to a period at least a thousand years earlier than the date ascribed by Archbishop Usher’s long-famed chronology for the creation of the world, and Professor Hilprecht’s latest investigations justify the belief that the earliest records from Nippur are not newer than the year 7000 B.C. Hincks, E., On the Assyrio-Babylonian Measures of Time. Dublin, 1874.—Hird, W. G., Monumental Records. London, 1889.—Hoefer, J. C. F., Mémoires sur les ruines de Ninive. Paris, 1850.—Hommel, F., Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens. Berlin, 1885; Semitische Völker und Sprachen. Leipsic, 1881; Abriss der babylonisch-assyrischen und israel. Gesch. Leipsic, 1880; Der babylonische Ursprung der aegypt. Kultur. München, 1892. Fritz Hommel was born at Ansbach, July 31, 1854. Professor of Semitic Languages in the University of Munich. Professor Hommel is a distinguished member of that band of German students who have made orientalism their life-work. His particular studies have had to do chiefly with the Semitic race. His history of Babylonia and Assyria is one of the most recent and certainly among the most comprehensive and authoritative works on the subject that have yet been written. As Professor Hommel is yet a comparatively young man, he very naturally belongs to the advanced school of Assyriologists, and his work may be looked to with confidence for an expression of the furthest present advance of research. In particular, Professor Hommel is distinguished as an ardent champion of the Babylonian or Chaldean origin of the Phœnician alphabet in opposition to the theory of de Rougé, which ascribed to it an Egyptian origin. Most of Hommel’s publications are to be had only in the original German. Howorth, H. H., The Early History of Babylonia (in Engl. Hist. Rev., vol. 13, pp. 1, 209, vol. 14, p. 625, vol. 16, p. 1); On the Earliest Inscriptions from Chaldea (in Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archeol., vol. 21, p. 289, London, 1899). Jastrow, M., The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. Boston, 1898; Nabopolassar and the Temple to the Sun-god at Sippar (in Amer. Jour, of Sem. Lang.; Chicago, 1899, vol. 15, p. 65).—Jensen, P., Kish (in Ztschr. für Assyriologie; Berlin, 1901, vol. 15): Assyrisch-babylon, Mythen und Epen (in Keilschrftl. Bibl.; Berlin, 1900, vol. 6): Die Cosmologie der Babylonier. Strassburg, 1890.—Johnson, C., The Fall of the Assyrian Empire (in studies in honour of B. L. Gildersleeve; Baltimore, 1902, p. 113): The Fall of Nineveh (in Amer. Orient. Soc. Journ.; New Haven, 1901, vol. 22, pt. 1, p. 20).—Justinius, Justin’s History of the World. London, 1875.—Jeremias, A., Hölle und Paradies bei den Babyloniern. Leipsic, 1900. Kaulen, F., Assyrien und Babylonien, nach den neuesten Entdeckungen. Freiburg, 1891, 4th ed.—Kennedy, J., Early Commerce of Babylonia with India, etc. London, 1898.—King, L. W., Babylonian Religion and Mythology, London, 1899; Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi, etc. London, 1898-1900, 3 vols. Leonard William King was born in London, December 8, 1869, and educated at Rugby and King’s College, Cambridge. As assistant in the department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquity of the British Museum, he has made very extensive studies in the literature of Babylonia and Assyria. He has collected and arranged many series of cuneiform inscriptions, besides adding much to the literature on both Babylonia and Assyria. His writings are for the most part rather technical. Kinns, S., Graven in the Rock. London, 1891.—Knudtzon, J. A., Assyr. Gebete an den Sonnengott. Leipsic, 1893, 2 vols.—Kohler, J., and Peisser, F. E., Aus dem babylonischen Rechtleben. Leipsic, 1890.—Koldewey, R., in Zeitschrift für Assyriologie. Dec., 1887.—Krall, J., Grundriss der altorientalischen Geschichte. Wien, 1899.—Krüger, J., Geschichte der Assyrier und Iranier, vom XIII, bis zum V. Jahrh. v. C. Frankfurt, 1856. Langlois, V., Le Dunuk-Dasch, tombeau de Sardanapale à Tarsovo (in Rev. Archéol.; Paris, 1853, vol. 10).—Laurent, A., La Magie et la Divination de l’Orient. Paris, 1894.—Layard, A. H., Nineveh and its Remains. London, 1849, 2 vols.; Nineveh and Babylon. London, 1853; Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia. London, 1887; Monuments of Nineveh. London, 1849-1854. Sir Austin Henry Layard was born in Paris, of English parentage, March 5, 1817. He spent the years of his early youth in Florence. On returning to England he began the study of law. In 1839 he took an extended tour, chiefly within the Turkish Empire. Here he learned Persian and Arabic. In 1842 he spent some months in exploring the antiquities of southwestern Persia. It was during this expedition that he became interested in the excavations being made at the supposed site of Nineveh by M. Botta. In 1845 he returned to Mosul and began his series of researches. The material that he gathered in this expedition greatly enriched the oriental department of the British Museum; and by means of the cuneiform inscriptions found the ancient oriental history was completely reconstructed. In 1852 he made a second series of excavations in Assyria, adding largely to his former discoveries. The same year he was elected to Parliament. In 1854 he visited Crimea, witnessing some battles there. He was chosen lord rector of Aberdeen University in 1855, and in 1866 became a trustee of the British Museum. Shortly after this he was elected foreign member of the Institute of France. In 1869, Ambassador to Spain; in 1878, to Constantinople. He died July 5, 1894. The name of this famous Englishman will always be indelibly associated with the origin of the science of Assyriology. To Layard it was chiefly due that the once famous but long almost forgotten city of Nineveh was exhumed and its buried treasures given to the world. The story of these exhumations is a part of the history of Assyria-Babylonia, and has already been told. Lehmann, C., Altbabylon, Maass und Gewicht. Berlin, 1889; Beiträge zur alten Geschichte. Leipsic, 1901; Shamasshumukin, König von Babylonia, 668-669 v. C. Leipsic, 1892; Zwei Hauptprobleme der altorientalischen Chronologie und ihre Lösung. Leipsic, 1898.—Lenormant, F., Les dieux de Babylone et de l’Assyrie. Paris, 1877; Lettres assyriologiques, 2nd series; Études accadiennes. Paris, 1879-1880; Chaldean Magic: Origin and Development. London, 1877; Premières civilisations. Paris; in collab. with Chevalier, E., A Manual of the Ancient History of the East. London, 1869-1870, 2 vols.; in collab. with Babelon, E., Histoire ancienne de l’Orient. Paris, 1881-1886. François Lenormant was born in Paris 17th January, 1837; died there 10th December, 1883. His education was private. Early in life he showed a special aptitude and liking for the study of the oriental languages. He travelled extensively in Egypt, Turkey, and Greece, and became prominent for his researches in the Accadian languages. In 1874 he was appointed Professor of Archæology at the Bibliothèque, Paris. The son of an archæologist of distinguished merit, Lenormant grew up in an atmosphere of scholarship, and early evinced a keen taste for all that pertained to archæology. He entered the field of Assyriology in its infancy, and soon became known as a leader among the masters in that field, and his early death was regarded everywhere as one of the severest blows which oriental archæology could have received. Lenormant was regarded by his fellow-workers as having a peculiar genius for his task, and his taste for literary work was no less keen than his scholarship. The fact that his great work on Oriental History was at once translated into English vouches for its popular interest. Unfortunately he did not live to complete his still more important work on the same subject, to which the last years of his life were devoted. Lincke, A. A., Bericht über die Fortschritte der Assyriologie, 1886-1893. Leipsic, 1894.—Lindl, E., Die Datenliste der ersten Dynastie von Babylon; in Beiträge zur Assyriologie. Leipsic, 1901.—Loftus, W. K., Chaldea and Susiana. London, 1857.—Lotz, W., Die Imschriften Tiglathpileser I. Leipsic, 1880.—Lyon, G., Keilschrifttexte Sargon’s, Königs von Assyrien, 722-705 v. C. Leipsic, 1883. Maccalester, S. H., Babylon and Nineveh. Boston, 1892.—Macphail, S. E., Monumental witness to Old Testament History. London, 1879.—Martin, G., La campaigne de Sennakerib en Palestine, etc. Montauban, 1892.—Martin, F., Textes religieux assyriens et babyloniens. Paris, 1900.—Maspero, G. C. C., Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient. Paris, 1886; The Struggle of the Nations. London, 1896; The Dawn of Civilisation. London, 1897; Life in Ancient Assyria. London, 1892.—Meissner, B., Beiträge zum altbabylonischen Privatrecht. Leipsic, 1893.—Menant, J., Babylone et la Chaldée. Paris, 1875; Découvertes assyriennes. La Bibliothèque du palais de Ninive. Paris, 1880; Empreintes de cachets assyrio-chaldéens relevés au Musée britannique sur des contrats d’intériet privé. Paris, 1883; Les pierres gravées de la Haute-Asie. Recherches sur la glyptique orientale. Paris, 1883, 1886; Les noms propres assyriens; recherches sur la formation des expressions idéographiques. Paris, 1861; Hammourabi (King of Babylon) Inscriptions. Paris, 1873; Les langues perdues de la Perse et de l’Assyrie. Paris, 1890; Annales des rois d’Assyrie. Paris, 1874; Ninive et Babylone. Paris, 1888; Les fausses antiquités de l’Assyrie. Paris, 1888. Joachim Menant was born at Cherbourg, France, 16th April, 1820. The life of this famous orientalist furnishes yet another illustration of the practical man of affairs who finds also time for the most abstruse scholarship. Throughout a long life until 1890, when at the ripe age of three score years and ten, he was retired with the title of Honorary Councillor. Menant lived the practical everyday life of a magistrate, and practised this profession with such assiduity and judgment as to attain the highest distinction. Yet, at the same time, he found leisure hours enough to make himself everywhere recognised as one of the most accomplished of Assyriologists. A comparatively young man, when the discoveries of Botta and Layard and their successors first brought the Assyrian treasures to the attention of the world, Menant seemed from the very first to have been seized with a desire to investigate the strange inscriptions from Nineveh. He was among the first who undertook the investigation of the strange cuneiform writing and from then till now he has kept well in the van of the constantly growing company of Assyriologists. The list of his works is little more than a succession of papers on one or another of the subjects most intimately connected with this field. Most of them are of a technical character, and, therefore, have necessarily appeared only to a limited audience. In one or two instances, however, and notably in the case of the little book on the library of Asshurbanapal, he has descended to the popular level, and has shown himself capable of handling the most abstruse topics in a way to make them delightfully interesting to the least scholarly of readers. Strange to say, this beautiful little book has never been hitherto translated into English, and a like neglect has attended nearly all the other publications of the author. It is difficult to find an explanation of this neglect unless it be the author’s well-known attitude towards the status of the ancient Hebrew records. On more than one occasion he has expressed the opinion that to single out the Jews among the peoples of antiquity as the one important race of their time is wofully to distort the perspective of history. Needless to say such an opinion as this throws one counter to the prejudices of a large proportion of people, including the mass of Assyriologists among the rest. Ménard, L., Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient. Paris, 1883.—Meyer, E., Geschichte des Alterthums. Stuttgart, 1884, etc., 5 vols., in progress.—Monaco, A., Orientalia. Rome, 1891.—Muecke, Ch., Von Euphrat zum Tiber. Untersuchungen zur alten Geschichte. Leipsic, 1899.—Mueller-Simonis, P., Relations des missions scientifiques. Washington, 1892.—Mürdter, F., Gesch. Babyloniens und Assyriens. Stuttgart, 1891. Niebuhr, B. G., Lectures on Ancient History. London, 1852, 2 vols.—Niebuhr, M., Geschichte Assurs und Babels. Berlin, 1854.—Niebuhr, C., Die erste Dynastie von Babel (in Vorderasiat. Ges. Mitt., vol. 3, p. 43). Berlin, 1897; Studien zur Geschichte des alten Orientes. Leipsic, 1894; Die Chronologie der Geschichte Israels, Aegyptens, Babyloniens und Assyriens von 2000-700 v. Chr. Leipsic, 1895.—Nikel, J., Herodot und die Keilschriftforschung. Paderborn, 1896. Oppert, J., Babylone et Chaldée. Paris, 1874; L’immortalité de l’âme chez les Chaldéens. Paris, 1875; The Real Chronology of the Babylonian Dynasties. London, 1888 (in collab. with J. Menant); Documents juridiques de l’Assyrie et de la Chaldée. Paris, 1877; Histoire des empires de Chaldée et d’Assyrie. Versailles, 1865 (in collab. with J. Menant); Fastes de Sargon. Paris, 1863; Expédition scientifique en Mésopotamie. Paris, 1859-1863, 2 vols.; Fragments mythologiques. Paris, 1882; Fragments de cosmogonie chaldéenne. Paris, 1879; La fixation de la Chronologie des derniers rois de Babylone. Paris, 1893; La condition des esclaves à Babylone. Paris, 1888; Les inscriptions assyriennes des Sargonides et les fastes de Ninive. Paris, 1863. Jules Oppert was born at Hamburg, 9th July, 1825. Professor Oppert is a German by birth but a Parisian by adoption. His whole oriental studies have been not alone made in Paris, but many of them under the direct auspices of the French Government, so that Frenchmen are perhaps justified in claiming him almost as a fellow-countryman. Professor Oppert has that comprehensive scholarship which is characteristic rather of the German than the Frenchman. He is a philologist and linguist of the broadest type. Unfortunately for the general public the German cast of his mind shows itself still further in his apparent contempt for the literary graces. He is a scholar who works for scholars, and it is but seldom that he has written anything which comes well within the grasp of the general public. His is, therefore, a name which one meets everywhere in pursuing the literature of Assyriology, but the results of whose investigations must usually come to the general reader, as it were, through an interpreter. Peiser, F. E., Keilinschriftliche Aktenstücke. Berlin, 1890; Studien zur Oriental. Alterthumskunde. Berlin, 1897. (In Vorderasiat, Ges. Mitt. 1897, 4 vols.); Babylon, Verträge. Berlin, 1890; A Sketch of Babylonian Society (in Smithsonian Institute. Annual Report, 1898. Washington, 1899).—Perrot, G., A History of Art in Assyria. London, 1884.—Peters, J. P., Nippur, or Explorations and Adventures, etc. New York and London, 1897, 2 vols.; Some Recent Results of the University of Pennsylvania, Excavations at Nippur (in Amer. Jour. of Archeol., vol. 10, pp. 13, 352, 439, Princeton, 1895); The Seat of the Earliest Civilisation in Babylon and the Date of its Beginnings (in Amer. Orient. Soc. Jour., New Haven, 1896). Dr. John Punnett Peters was formerly professor of Hebrew in the University of Pennsylvania; at present rector of St. Michael’s Protestant Episcopal Church, New York City. For more than a generation after the discoveries of Botta and Layard and their successors in Mesopotamia had been furthered by companies of English and French and German explorers, America had taken no part in the work, but in 1880, the University of Pennsylvania determined to make amends for this neglect by sending out a fully equipped exploring party. The leader of this movement, and the man who personally conducted the explorations of the first two years in the field, was Professor J. P. Peters. Through his energetic efforts the numberless difficulties that such an enterprise involves were overcome, and some most important discoveries were made. The chief of these was the location of the Babylonian city of Nippur, the site of that ancient temple of Bel, which was, as Dr. Peters points out, to many generations of old Babylonians and Assyrians what the temple of Jerusalem has been to the peoples of Christendom. His discoveries at Nippur have added greatly to the work that has been carried on at Babylon and Nineveh, and “helped to carry our knowledge of civilised man two thousand years farther back than was known less than half a century ago.” At Nippur he discovered what is probably the oldest known temple in the world. Both his expeditions met with very bitter and determined opposition from government officials and wandering inhabitants in the vicinity of Nippur, and it is mainly due to his fearless determination that successful excavations were finally made. Pinches, T. G., Religious Ideas of the Babylonians. London, 1893; Notes. London, 1892; Sumerian or Cryptography (in Royal Asiatic Soc. Jour.; 1900, p. 75, 1900); The Babylonian and Assyrian Cylinder-Seals of the British Museum (in Jour. Brit. Archeol. Assoc.; vol. 41, p. 396, London, 1885). The Bronze Gates of Balawat in Assyria (in Jour. Brit. Archeol. Assoc.; vol. 35, p. 233, London, 1879); The Temples of Ancient Babylonia (in Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archeol., vol. 22, p. 358, London, 1900).—Place, V., Ninive et l’Assyrie. Paris, 1867-1890.—Pognon, H., Inscription de Meron-Nerar, roi d’Assyrie. Paris, 1884. Les inscriptions babyloniennes du Wadi Brissa. Paris, 1887.—Prévost-Paradol, L. A., Essai sur l’histoire universelle. Paris, 1890, 2 vols. Radau, H., Early Babylonian History. New York, 1900.—Ragozin, Z. A., The Story of Chaldea (Stories of the Nations). London, 1888; Media, Babylon and Persia. London, 1889; Assyria. London, 1888.—Ranwolf, L., Journey into Syria, Armenia, Mesopotamia.—Rassam, H., Excavations and Discoveries in Assyria. London; Asshur and the Land of Nimrod. Cincinnati, 1897; Babylonian Cities. London, 1883. Hormuzd Rassam was born of Chaldean Christian parents at Mosul, Turkey, in 1826. In 1845 he became acquainted with Austin H. Layard, who was then exploring Assyrian ruins, and becoming much interested in the work of Layard, he accompanied him to England in 1847, continuing his studies in that country. In 1864 he was sent by the British Government on a mission to Abyssinia to secure the release of several Europeans who were held prisoners by King Theodore, but he was himself imprisoned for two years by that king. Shortly after securing his release he visited the Babylonian-Assyrian region for the British Museum, and while on this expedition and others following, he made many important discoveries. Notable among these discoveries are the bronze gates of Balawat, from the time of Shalmaneser II (858-824 B.C.), and the Abu-Habba tablet, recording the restoration of the temple by Nabu-apal-iddin, a contemporary of Shalmaneser II. The name of Rassam is associated with that of Layard, and with the early history of Assyriology. Rassam was primarily an explorer; he assisted Layard in his earlier work at Nineveh, and himself carried on the investigations for the British Government after Layard had been called to other fields. Rassam has never become an Assyriologist in the technical acceptance of the term, contenting himself generally with securing the material on which the investigations of numerous scholars have been based. The greatest single feat which he accomplished was the discovery of the now famous library of Asshurbanapal. He has himself told the story of his discoveries in books that are not so widely known as they deserve to be. Rawlinson, G., The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World. 2nd ed. London, 1871; A Manual of Ancient History. Oxford, 1869; Herodotus. London, 1858-75, 4 vols.; Papers in Jour. Royal Asiatic Soc.; vols. X, XI, XII. London, 1885; The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. London, 1861-1891. George Rawlinson (brother of Sir Henry Rawlinson) was born at Chadlington, Oxfordshire, England, in 1815. He was educated at Swansea and at Ealing School. He graduated from Trinity College, Oxford, with classical honours, in 1838. He was elected Fellow of Exeter College in 1840. In 1859, as Bampton Lecturer, he delivered his famous lecture on Historical Evidences of the Truth of the Scriptural Records. He was chosen Camden Professor of Ancient History in 1861, and in 1872 was made Canon of Canterbury. His historical writings cover nearly the entire history of the Ancient Orient. Some one has said of Canon Rawlinson that his scholarship is of a peculiarly German type, and the criticism would seem to be essentially just. Few other Englishmen of our generation have covered so wide a field of history, and covered it so thoroughly as has Professor Rawlinson. The whole field of southwestern Asia in antiquity he has made peculiarly his own, and in a series of widely circulated books he has imparted his knowledge to the world, some of them, as that on the Parthian Monarchy, dealing with nations that other historians had very much neglected. All of this work, as has been said, is based upon scholarly investigations that might justly be said to be profound. If in his estimate of certain portions of this history, in particular as regards the newer ideas of the chronology of the remoter periods, Professor Rawlinson has hardly kept pace with the leaders of the newest generation, this is certainly not more than one should expect in one whose memories carry him back to the very beginnings of the “time” controversy. The Canon died in 1902. Rawlinson, H. C., Outline of the History of Assyria. London, 1852.—Records of the Past (Birch, S.). London, 1873, 12 vols.—Revue d’Assyriologie. Paris, 1886, etc.—Rich, C. I., Babylonia and Persepolis: Memoirs on the Ruins of Babylon. London, 1818.—Robertson, H. S., Voices of the Past from Assyria and Babylonia. London, 1900.—Rogers, R. W., History of Babylonia and Assyria. London, 1901, 2 vols. Sachau, E., Reise in Syrien und Mesopotamien. Leipsic, 1885; Am Euphrat und Tigris. Leipsic, 1900.—Sarzec, G. C. E., de, Découvertes en Chaldée. Paris, 1884-1893, 2 vols. Gustave Charles Ernest Chocquin de Sarzec was born 11th August, 1836. After the discoveries of Botta and Layard had shown the scientific world what neglected treasure-houses were to be found in Mesopotamia, it was natural that explorers should seek out the other fields of ancient activity, in particular those to the south in Old Babylonia, and yet older Chaldea. Among those who went into the latter field most successfully was M. de Sarzec. His explorations at Tello, one of the oldest seats of Mesopotamian civilisation revealed a vast quantity of most interesting antiquities of a type in many ways different from those of the comparatively recent Assyrian period. In particular the statues in the round, which seem to have been a common form of artistic expression with the ancient Chaldeans, have interest because of their difference from the bas-reliefs that were the favourite sculptures of the artists of Nineveh. In the interpretation of the large store of material which De Sarzec secured he had had the assistance of M. Layon Heuzey and M. Amiaud. Sayce, A. H., Lectures on the Religions of Ancient Assyria and Babylonia. London, 1888; Ancient Empires of the East. London, 1884; Assyria: its Princes, Priests, and People. London, 1882; Babylonians and Assyrians: Life and Customs. New York, 1899; Social Life among the Assyrians. London, 1893; Primer of Assyriology. London, 1894; The Races of the Old Testament. London, 1891; Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments. London, 1884. Archibald Henry Sayce, born at Shirehampton, near Bristol, 25th September, 1846. Deputy Professor of comparative Philology at Oxford from 1876 to 1890; at present Professor of Assyriology at Oxford. The well-known Oxford Professor has been one of the most versatile and active of orientalists. He seems equally at home whether the field be Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Assyria, and he is a writer of such indefatigable industry that scholarly works on one subject or another are constantly coming from his pen. Professor Sayce is by no means a closet student only but is a traveller of wide experience, and latterly it has become his custom to spend his winters and springs house-boating in Egypt. He has a rare merit of combining the utmost scholarship with a capacity for clear presentation of his subject, and his works are therefore almost as well known to the general reader as they are to the specialist. In each generation there are but a few men who combining these traits act as interpreters between the land of scholarship and the abiding place of ordinary mortals and among these in our generation Professor Sayce takes a foremost rank. Saulcy, L. F. J. C., de, Recherches sur la chronologie des empires de Ninive, de Babylone et d’Ekbatane. Paris, 1854.—Schäfer, B., Die Entdeckungen in Assyrien und Aegypten in ihrer Beziehung zur heiligen Schrift. Wien, 1896.—Schmidt, V., Assyriens of Aegyptens gamle Historie. Copenhagen, 1872-1877.—Schrader, E., Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament. London, 1873, 2 vols.; Die Höllenfahrt der Istar ein altbabylon. Epos; Giessen, 1874; Eine Sammlung von Übersetzungen der wichtigsten Texte (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek). Berlin, 1889-1901, vols. 1-6; Keilinschriften und Geschichtsforschung. Giessen, 1878. Eberhard Schrader was born at Brunswick, Germany, 5th January, 1836. He studied at the gymnasium in Brunswick and in the University at Göttingen. Shortly after finishing his studies in Göttingen he was appointed Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages at Zürich, and later he filled corresponding chairs at Giessen and Jena. In 1875 he was given a professorship and made a member of the Royal Academy at Berlin. He also edited Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek. Only a few of his works have been translated into English, most notable among these being The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament. Smith, G., Assyrian Discoveries. London, 1875; Assyria, from the Earliest Times. London, 1875; The Chaldean Genesis. London, 1881; The History of Babylon. London, 1877; History of Sennacherib (from inscriptions). London, 1878; History of Asshurbanipal (from inscriptions). London, 1871; Assyria from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Nineveh. New York, 1876. George Smith was born in London, England, 26th March, 1840. He is said to have first become interested in Assyriology from having to engrave some cuneiform plates for publication. He at once took up the study, and a little later was appointed to a position in the Assyrian department of the British Museum. He very soon became one of the great promoters of Assyriology. With Sir Henry Rawlinson he edited vols. III-IV of The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. In 1872 he discovered among the clay books of the British Museum fragments of a story of the Deluge, similar to the biblical version. Soon after this he visited Nineveh to make further search for clay books in Asshurbanapal’s palace, and his expedition was very successful. The Deluge story proved to be part of a great poem written on twelve tablets. He made two other expeditions for the Museum, but on the last one was stricken with fever and died at Aleppo, 19th August, 1876. George Smith was known among orientalists as a man who had a peculiar instinct for the translation of obscure texts. He devoted his entire life to oriental studies, and came to be recognised as one of the foremost of orientalists. Spiegel, F., Die altpersischen Keilinschriften 2nd ed. Leipsic, 1881.—Strabo, The Geography of Strabo. London, 1854, 3 vols.—Strassmaier, J. N., Babylonische Texte. Leipsic, 1889; Inschriften von Nabuchodonosor, König von Babylon (609-561). Leipsic, 1889.—Streck, M., Die alte Landschaft Babylonien nach den arabischen Geographen. Leyden, 1900, 2 vols. Talbot, W. H. Fox (in Records of the Past). London, 1856, 18 vols.; Inscription of Tiglath Pileser I, King of Assyria, B.C. 1150 (in Jour. Royal Asiatic Soc.). London, 1857. William Henry Fox Talbot was born 11th February, 1800, at Laycock Abbey, near Chippenham, England. He was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining the Porson prize there in 1820. Contributed papers to the Royal Society in 1822, and in the same year began a series of optical researches and experiments which afterward played an important part in photography. In connection with his scientific studies he devoted much of his time to the study of archeology, and in later life gave his entire time to it. He shares the honour with Sir Henry Rawlinson and Dr. Hincks of being one of the first to decipher the cuneiform inscriptions of Nineveh. He died at Laycock Abbey, 17th September, 1877. Talbot was a master in the field of Assyriology. He was, indeed, one of the first to gain distinction in this line, and in a peculiar sense one of the founders of the science. Taylor, W. C., Students’ Manual of Ancient History. London, 1882.—Tiele, C. P., History of Assyria. London, 1886; Eastern Asia according to the most recent Discoveries. London, 1894; Comparative History of Egyptian and Mesopotamian Religion; Babyl.-assyr. Geschichte. Gotha, 1886-1888, 2 vols. (in Records of the Past). London, 1873, 18 vols. Cornelis Petrus Tiele was born at Leyden, Holland, 16th December, 1830. He was educated in the university of that city, giving especial attention to the study of philosophy and history. In 1877 he was appointed to the chair of History and Religion in the University of Leyden. His numerous publications on history and philosophy have been widely translated. Professor Tiele enjoys the distinction somewhat rare among his countrymen of a quite cosmopolitan reputation. As an authority on ancient religions he has no superior, and his writings are almost as well known in Germany, France, England, and America as in his native Holland. Valbuena, R. F., Egipto y Asiria resucitados la parte. Madrid, 1895.—Van den Berg, E., Petite histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient. Paris, 1883.—Vaux, W. G. W., Nineveh and Persepolis. London, 1880.—Vigoroux, F., La Bible et les découvertes en Assyrie. Paris, 1887. Wachsmuth, C., Einleitung in das Studium d. alten Geschichte. Leipsic, 1895.—Wahrmund, A., Babylonierthum und Christenthum. Leipsic, 1882.—Ward, W. H., Notes on Original Antiquities. Baltimore, 1887; Report on the Wolfe Expedition to Babylonia. Boston, 1886; The Babylonian Caduceno (in Amer. Orient. Soc. Jour., vol. 14). New Haven, 1890; The Story of the Serpent and the Tree (in Amer. Antiq. and Orient. Jour., vol. 20, p. 211). Chicago, 1898.—Weber, G., Allgemeine Weltgeschichte. Leipsic, 1857-1880, 15 vols.—Weiss, J. B. von, Geschichte des Orients. 1886.—Weissbach, F. H., Zur Lösung der sumerischen Frage. Leipsic, 1897; Über einige neuere Arbeiten zur babyl. pers. Chronologie (in Deutsche Morgenland. Ges. Zeitch., vol. 55, p. 195. Leipsic, 1901).—Wernicke, C., Geschichte des Alterthums. 1890.—Wilberforce, R. F., The Five Empires. London, 1899.—Winckler, H., Sammlung von Keilschrifttexten. Leipsic, 1893-1894; Untersuchungen zur altorientalischen Geschichte. Leipsic, 1889; Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens. Leipsic, 1892; Altorientalische Forschungen, Leipsic, 1893-1897; Völker und Staaten des alten Orients. Leipsic, 1900.—Woltmann, A. K., History of Painting. London, 1880, 2 vols.—Wood, R., The Ruins of Palmyra. Zimmern, H., The Babylonian and the Hebrew Genesis. London, 1901. BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. BORMAY & CO.THE FOLLOWERS OF NEBUCHADREZZAR
THE REIGN OF NABONIDUS (556-538 B.C.)
FOOTNOTES
CHAPTER VII. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF BABYLONIA-ASSYRIA
WAR METHODS
OUR SOURCES
ASSYRIAN WAR COSTUMES AND WAR METHODS
THE ARTS OF PEACE IN BABYLONIA-ASSYRIA
BABYLON AND ITS CUSTOMS DESCRIBED BY AN EYE-WITNESS
A LATER CLASSICAL ACCOUNT OF BABYLON
THE COMMERCE OF THE BABYLONIANS
SHIPS AMONG THE ASSYRIANS
LAWS OF THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS
Sale of a Slave
Sale of a Slave
Sale of a House
THE CODE OF KHAMMURABI
The Discovery of the Code
Miscellaneous Regulations
Regulations concerning Slaves
Provisions concerning Robbery
Concerning Leases and Tillage
Concerning Canals
Commerce, Debt
Domestic Legislation, Divorce, Inheritance
Laws concerning Adoption
Laws of Recompense
Regulations concerning Physicians and Veterinary Surgeons
Illegal Branding of Slaves
Regulations concerning Builders
Regulations concerning Shipping
Regulations concerning the Hiring of Animals, Farming, Wages, etc.
Regulations concerning the Buying of Slaves
FOOTNOTES
CHAPTER VIII. THE RELIGION OF THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS
THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION
THE BABYLONIAN RELIGION
THE EPIC OF GILGAMISH
ISHTAR’S DESCENT INTO HADES
CHAPTER IX. BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN CULTURE
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
Epistolary Literature
ART
ASSYRIAN ART
ASSYRIAN SCULPTURE AND THE EVOLUTION OF ART
A CLASSICAL ESTIMATE OF CHALDEAN PHILOSOPHY AND ASTROLOGY
THE BABYLONIAN YEAR
THE BABYLONIAN DAY AND ITS DIVISION INTO HOURS
ASSYRIAN SCIENCE
FOOTNOTES
APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS
THE CREATION AND THE FLOOD, DESCRIBED BY POLYHISTOR
OTHER CLASSICAL FRAGMENTS
Of the Chaldean Kings and the Deluge
Of the Tower of Babel
Of Abraham [?]
Of Nabonassar
Of the Destruction of the Jewish Temple
Of Nebuchadrezzar
Of the Chaldean Kings after Nebuchadrezzar
Of the Feast of Sacea
A Fragment of Megasthenes Concerning Nebuchadrezzar
NINUS AND SEMIRAMIS
SEMIRAMIS BUILDS A GREAT CITY
SEMIRAMIS BEGINS A CAREER OF CONQUEST
SEMIRAMIS INVADES INDIA
ANOTHER VIEW OF SEMIRAMIS
REIGN OF NINYAS TO SARDANAPALUS
THE DESTRUCTION OF NINEVEH
FOOTNOTES
APPENDIX B. EXCAVATIONS IN MESOPOTAMIA, AND THEIR RESULTS
THE RUINS OF NINEVEH AND M. BOTTA’S FIRST DISCOVERY
LAYARD’S DISCOVERIES AT NINEVEH
LATER DISCOVERIES IN BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
THE RESULTS OF THE EXCAVATIONS
TREASURES FROM NINEVEH
THE LIBRARY OF A KING OF NINEVEH
HOW THE ASSYRIAN BOOKS WERE READ
FOOTNOTES
BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS
Chapter I. Land and People
Chapter II. Old Babylonian History
Chapter III. The Rise of Assyria
Chapter IV. Four Generations of Assyrian Greatness
Chapter V. The Decline and Fall of Assyria
Chapter VI. Renascence and Fall of Babylon
Chapter VII. Manners and Customs of Babylonia-Assyria
Chapter VIII. The Religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians
Chapter IX. Babylonian and Assyrian Culture
Appendix A. Classical Traditions
Appendix B. Excavations in Mesopotamia and Their Results
A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY
BASED ON THE WORKS QUOTED, CITED, OR EDITORIALLY CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT HISTORY, WITH CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
