Drawn by Boudier, from the cut in Layard.
In a country thus unequally favoured by nature, the towns are necessarily distributed in a seemingly arbitrary fashion. Most of them are situated on the left bank of the Tigris, where the fertile nature of the soil enables it to support a dense population. They were all flourishing centres of population, and were in close proximity to each other, at all events during the centuries of Assyrian hegemony.*
* We find, for example, in the inscription of Bavian, a long
enumeration of towns and villages situated almost within the
suburbs of Nineveh, on the banks of the Khôser.
Three of them soon eclipsed their rivals in political and religious importance; these were Kalakh and Nina on the Tigris, and Arbaîlu, lying beyond the Upper Zab, in the broken plain which is a continuation eastwards of the first spurs of the Zagros.* On the right bank, however, we find merely some dozen cities and towns, scattered about in places where there was a supply of water sufficient to enable the inhabitants to cultivate the soil; as, for example, Assur on the banks of the Tigris itself, Singara near the sources of the Thartar, and Nazibina near those of the Kharmis, at the foot of the Masios. These cities were not all under the rule of one sovereign when Thûtmosis III. appeared in Syria, for the Egyptian monuments mention, besides the kingdom of Assyria, that of Singara** and Araphka in the upper basin of the Zab.***
* The name of Arbeles is written in a form which appears to
signify “the town of the four gods.”
** This kingdom of Singara is mentioned in the Egyptian
lists of Thûtmosis III. Schrader was doubtful as to its
existence, but one of its kings is mentioned in a letter
from the King of Alasia to Amenôthes IV.; according to
Niebuhr, the state of which Singara was the capital must
have been identical, at all events at one period, with the
Mitanni of the Egyptian texts.
*** The Arapakha of the Egyptian monuments has been
identified with the Arrapakhitis of the Greeks.
Assyria, however, had already asserted her supremacy over this corner of Asia, and the remaining princes, even if they were not mere vicegerents depending on her king, were not strong enough in wealth and extent of territory to hold their own against her, since she was undisputed mistress of Assur, Arbeles, Kalakh, and Nineveh, the most important cities of the plain. Assur covered a considerable area, and the rectangular outline formed by the remains of its walls is still discernible on the surface of the soil. Within the circuit of the city rose a mound, which the ancient builders had transformed, by the addition of masses of brickwork, into a nearly square platform, surmounted by the usual palace, temple, and ziggurat; it was enclosed within a wall of squared stone, the battlements of which remain to the present day.* The whole pile was known as the “Ekharsagkurkurra,” or the “House of the terrestrial mountain,” the sanctuary in whose decoration all the ancient sovereigns had vied with one another, including Samsirammân I. and Irishum, who were merely vicegerents dependent upon Babylon. It was dedicated to Anshar, that duplicate of Anu who had led the armies of heaven in the struggle with Tiâmat; the name Anshar, softened into Aushar, and subsequently into Ashshur, was first applied to the town and then to the whole country.**
* Ainsworth states the circumference of the principal mound
of Kalah-Shergât to be 4685 yards, which would make it one
of the most extensive ruins in the whole country.
** Another name of the town in later times was Palbêki, “the
town of the old empire,” “the ancient capital,” or Shauru.
Many Assyriologists believe that the name Ashur, anciently
written Aushâr, signified “the plain at the edge of the
water”; and that it must have been applied to the town
before being applied to the country and the god. Others, on
the contrary, think, with more reason, that it was the god
who gave his name to the town and the country; they make a
point of the very ancient play of words, which in Assyria
itself attributed the meaning “good god” to the word Ashur.
Jensen was the first to state that Ashur was the god Anshâr
of the account of the creation.
The god himself was a deity of light, usually represented under the form of an armed man, wearing the tiara and having the lower half of his body concealed by a feathered disk. He was supposed to hover continually over the world, hurling fiery darts at the enemies of his people, and protecting his kingly worshippers under the shadow of his wings. Their wars were his wars, and he was with them in the thick of the attack, placing himself in the front rank with the soldiery,* so that when he gained the victory, the bulk of the spoil—precious metals, gleanings of the battle-field, slaves and productive lands—fell to his share. The gods of the vanquished enemy, moreover, were, like their princes, forced to render him homage. In the person of the king he took their statues prisoners, and shut them up in his sanctuary; sometimes he would engrave his name upon their figures and send them back to their respective temples, where the sight of them would remind their worshippers of his own omnipotence.** The goddess associated with him as his wife had given her name, Nina, to Nineveh,*** and was, as the companion of the Chaldæan Bel, styled the divine lady Belit; she was, in fact, a chaste and warlike Ishtar, who led the armies into battle with a boldness characteristic of her father.****
* In one of the pictures, for instance, representing the
assault of a town, we see a small figure of the god, hurling
darts against the enemy. The inscriptions also state that
the peoples “are alarmed and quit their cities before the
arms of Assur, the powerful one.”
** As, for instance, the statues of the gods taken from the
Arabs in the time of Esarhaddon. Tiglath-pileser I. had
carried away twenty-five statues of gods taken from the
peoples of Kurkhi and Kummukh, and had placed them in the
temples of Beltis, Ishtar, Anu, and Rammân; he mentions
other foreign divinities who had been similarly treated.
*** The ideogram of the name of the goddess Nina serves to
write the name of the town Nineveh. The name itself has been
interpreted by Schrader as “station, habitation,” in the
Semitic languages, and by Fr. Delitzsch “repose of the god,”
an interpretation which Delitzsch himself repudiated later
on. It is probable that the town, which, like Assur, was a
Chaldæan colony, derived its name from the goddess to whom
it was dedicated, and whose temple existed there as early as
the time of the vicegerent Samsirammân.
**** Belit is called by Tiglath-pileser I. “the great spouse
beloved of Assur,” but Belit, “the lady,” is here merely an
epithet used for Ishtar: the Assyrian Ishtar, Ishtar of
Assur, Ishtar of Nineveh, or rather—especially from the
time of the Sargonids—Ishtar of Arbeles, is almost always a
fierce and warlike Ishtar, the “lady of combat, who directs
battles,” “whose heart incites her to the combat and the
struggle.” Sayce thinks that the union of Ishtar and Assur
is of a more recent date.