The particular afternoon we approached it was a typical spring day. In the plain we had slight showers, but as we approached the mountains, we began to draw into the region about which the thunder-storms circled. Our first view of Erbil was remarkable. Heavy clouds were driving along by and over the mountains, from which the rain descending in grey curtains shrouded the landscape. Brilliant lightning flashes showed up crags of hills among the clouds, and a rainbow attempted to arch the scene. We were searching among the confusion of showers for a sight of the town, when a heavy cloud and its pendant shower passed, leaving a patch of travelling sunshine behind; and, as a curtain that sweeps by, with the muttering of thunder, this veil swept from before Erbil, and shining red and lurid in the sunshine we saw its mound—mysterious, and indistinct, backed and flanked by tortured black clouds and their downpouring rain. For an instant we saw it thus, and then from overhead occurred a cloudburst. The clouds descending in a funnel-shaped deluge hid the mound, and a din of thunder broke out about it, brilliant lightnings playing the while, making a tumult of the elements fitting in its grandeur to the memory of that great goddess of all, Ishtar of Arbela.

We were just in time to see the little town by daylight. There are no signs of antiquity about it now, except some Muhammadan ruins. All those of Assyria are safely conserved in the mighty mound upon which the modern Turkish ruler has built his castle. The height of the mound is very considerable, rising far above the roofs of the highest houses, a mound so great as to appear natural; one would never credit the fact that it covers the works of man, had we not seen the palaces of the Assyrians elsewhere. Here, where was the great temple that during a thousand years and more received the homage of all races and monarchs, there is every reason to believe that the accumulated embellishment and offering must have made there a shrine unequalled, perhaps, anywhere in Asia.

ERBIL

When we arrived it poured with rain, and in the dark we slopped through the alleys of a modern Eastern town, and over a mound to a ruinous caravanserai, where I found a damp, half-inundated room for my belongings. Since nothing, not even wood, was obtainable, I dined off tea and dry bread and a few dates that night, and slept in a pool. My companions had become separated in the dark, and had found asylum elsewhere. Here is the western border of southern Kurdistan; and Erbil is populated by Baban Kurds, a sedentary tribe, speaking a variation of the Mukri dialect.[26] Turkish is also understood, or rather Turkoman, for Altun Keupri and Kirkuk, Turkoman towns, are not far off.

In the tenth chapter of Genesis, 8–12, we read:—“And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city.”

Now the date of the building of Asshur’s city is at least 1800 B.C., and verses 11–12 allude to the small district of Assyria proper, with its three cities of Kalah, Nineveh, and Arbela. During the whole time of the Assyrian monarchies Arbela took the relation to the reigning king’s capital that Canterbury did to London in English history: it was always the religious capital, gaining an added importance, for that in Assyria the king was always the high priest of the religion of Asshur. That Ishtar, the goddess Baalath of the earlier Chaldeans, transferred her shrine northwards when Assyria began her separate existence, is probable; and Arbela (whose name Arba-Ilu means “Four Gods”) was chosen, perhaps as being the shrine of some then existing divinity. So that the Erbil of to-day is at least three thousand years old, and was the second seat of that goddess Ishtar to whom reference was made in Chapter II. The vitality that has kept it in existence since those early days has not deserted it any period, for it has been worthy of mention at least once during the supremacy of every one of the nations that successively ruled it—Assyrian, Mede, Persian, Greek, Parthian, Roman, Armenian, Roman again, Persian, and the Arabs. A few notes arranged chronologically will show this.

Asshurnazipal, 884 B.C., a king who showed the city great favour, calling it “his city,” took here a captive king who had rebelled against him, “flayed him alive, and spread out his skin upon the city wall.” Sennacherib, a greater king, perhaps the most famous of all kings of Assyria, performed a pilgrimage there in 692 B.C., to pray for success from Ishtar in his coming battle against the Babylonians. He was answered. His son Esarhaddon, but twenty-four years later, being in the northern mountains engaged upon an expedition to avenge the foul murder of his father, is described as having communicated with Ishtar the goddess, and received from her shrine at Arbela messages of encouragement and assurances of victory.[27]

A few years later, in 656 B.C., Asshurnazipal (Sardanapalus), preparing for war against Elam (modern Arabistan in south-western Persia), made a great pilgrimage there, to pray for a sign from the goddess, which was granted. The temple was then one of the most glorious of Assyria. The usurping king, Teumman, was duly defeated, and many captives were brought to Arbela, and, in the brutal manner of the times, flayed alive.

At the end of that century—in 608 B.C.—the battle of Nineveh finally overthrew the great empire, and the Medes took possession of it, Arbela falling into their hands. The city’s sacredness must have ensured a certain immunity from sack or destruction, for it was important eighty and odd years later, when Darius crucified there a petty king, him of Sagartia.

ADIABENE