Sarchedon: A Legend of the Great Queen

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

One man alone stood looking on unmoved. He was dressed as if for a journey, with a long staff in his hand. His attendants, much interested in the proceedings, held a few asses, large powerful animals of their kind, at a short distance off. It was the Israelite out of the land of Egypt, whom Assarac had released from his bonds, at liberty, and about to depart. He looked very sad and thoughtful; there was less of scorn and pity in his eye, though once, roused, as it appeared, by some unusually intemperate outbreak, a cloud of resentment passed over his face, and he muttered—

"Infinite mercy! Infinite patience! How long, Lord, how long?"

Then he withdrew from the crowd to place himself in the centre of his little band, where, formally and solemnly, he shook the dust from off his feet ere he mounted an ass; and so, followed by his handful of countrymen, proceeded gravely through the Southern Gate, outward to the desert.

Within the wide area that encircled the temple of Baal, his priests, though so numerous, were drawn out in orderly array that must have gratified the military eye of the Great King. Terrace by terrace the long lines of white stretched in endless perspective, every votary, from bearded patriarch to boy-faced eunuch, with a lotus-flower in his hand. To the image of each deity in turn, as it was borne before the monarch, they prostrated themselves with devout obeisance; while at every prostration clouds of smoke ascended from the altars, golden cups were emptied in drink-offerings, and blood spouted from the throats of fresh victims as sheep and oxen fell prostrate at the propitious moment under one well-directed blow.

Shamash passed on—the god of light, with his burnished disk representing the sun's dazzling surface, and identifying that statue of solid gold, under the weight of which its bearers, tall stalwart priests, seemed to fail and labour; Ishtar too, with her pale reflected beauty, like the moon she typified, gentle sister to the Lord of Day; and Bar and Nebo, versatile, pliant, representations of progress, improvement, human intelligence and skill; Merodach, king of battles, bold, defiant, standing on the lion's back bending his bow; and Ashtaroth, spirit of beauty, love, and light, peerless, radiant, alluring, with the bright star on her forehead and the serpent in her hand. Other images followed, of different minor influences: winged monsters threatening man, or coerced in turn by some superior spirit—the beetle, the scorpion, lions with human faces, wild bulls fighting head to head, or flying from each other heel to heel; Dagon, with more than human beauty to the girdle, foul, hideous in fins and scales below; Ashur too, monarch of the godlike circle; and Baal himself; Nisroch with the eagle's head, the burnished pinions, supreme, all-powerful, immutable, the Destiny from whose award there was no appeal, from whose vengeance no escape. Lastly, the symbolical and mystic representation of some power that must yet be superior even to Fate, some abstract essence, some intelligence infinite, inconceivable, expressed, vaguely enough, by a circle of gold encompassing a wheel of wings.

Only on such solemn occasions as the present was this emblem carried in the place of honour, immediately preceding the monarch, when he officiated in the sacred capacity of priest as well as king. It seemed to be regarded with an awe-struck reverence by all; and even Ninus, impatient as he was of such ceremonies, believing in little but his queen and his sword, could not forbear a gesture of respect while he passed beneath it, at the lowest of the steps he was about to ascend into the secluded precincts of the Talar.

Here Assarac, with another prostration, laid at the royal feet a square casket of gold, and a representation of the fir-cone, worked in the same metal, emblematic, as it were, of the two elements, fire and water; the inflammable properties of the fir-cone, with its reproductive vitality, representing the generative powers of heat; while the golden vessel seemed suggestive of that fluid which, pervading all nature and embracing the whole earth, tempering and allaying the ardour of its opposite, may be considered as the feminine influence in creation.

Thus flung down before him, these offerings signified that the Great King in his present capacity assumed vicariously the attributes of Ashur, or even Baal himself. Assarac, with considerable ceremony, now presented a cup of wine, for his sovereign to pour out in drink-offering to the host of heaven so soon as he should have reached the summit of the temple. While Ninus took it from the high-priest's hand another look of immeasureable scorn passed over the old lion face—a look that seemed lost on the eunuch, whose final prostration expressed the deepest homage, the utmost devotion, that could be rendered by a subject to his king.

The Southern night had fallen; the stars came out by countless thousands in the calm fathomless sky. Once more, high above trumpet-peal and clash of cymbal, lute and viol, harp and tabor, rose a deafening heart-stirring shout—irrepressible tribute of honour and admiration for the greatest warrior of a great warlike line. It was the farewell of his Assyrian people to their Assyrian king.

While it rang in his dull old ears, and brought the light back to his dim old eyes, the heavy folds of a curtain hanging at the foot of that sacred staircase he alone was privileged to ascend, parted, to close again for ever on the grand old form, noble even in its last decline, and majestic in the very ruin of its decay.