Sargon as a warrior and as a builder.
Whether Sargon was even remotely connected with the royal line, is a question which for the present must remain unanswered. He mentions in one of his inscriptions the three hundred princes who had preceded him in the government of Assyria, and three lines further on he refers to the kings his ancestors, but he never mentions his own father by name, and this omission seems to prove that he was not a direct descendant of Shalmaneser V., nor of Tiglath-pileser III. nor indeed of any of their immediate predecessors. It is, however, probable, if not certain, that he could claim some sort of kinship with them, though more or less remote. It was customary for the sovereigns of Nineveh to give their daughters in marriage to important officials or lords of their court, and owing to the constant contraction of such alliances through several centuries, there was hardly a noble family but had some royal blood in its veins; and that of Sargon was probably no exception to the rule. His genealogy was traced by the chroniclers, through several hundred generations of princes, to the semi-mythical heroes who had founded the city of Assur; but as Assur-nazir-pal and his descendants had claimed Bel-kapkapi and Sulili as the founders of their race, the Sargonids chose a different tradition, and drew their descent from Belbâni, son of Adasi. The cause and incidents of the revolution which raised Sargon to the throne are unknown, but we may surmise that the policy adopted with regard to Karduniash was a factor in the case. Tiglath-pileser had hardly entered Babylon before the fascination of the city, the charm of its associations, and the sacred character of the legends which hallowed it, seized upon his imagination; he returned to it twice in the space of two years to “take the hands of Bel,” and Shalmaneser V. much preferred it to Calah or Nineveh as a place of residence. The Assyrians doubtless soon became jealous of the favour shown by their princes to their ancient enemy, and their discontent must have doubtless conduced to their decision to raise a new monarch to the throne. The Babylonians, on the other hand, seem to have realised that the change in the dynasty presaged a disadvantageous alteration of government; for as soon as the news reached them a movement was set on foot and search made for a rival claimant to set up in opposition to Sargon.*
* The succession of events, as indicated in Pinches’
Babylonian Chronicle, seems indeed to imply that the
Babylonians waited to ascertain the disposition of the new
king before they decided what line to adopt. In fact,
Shalmaneser died in the month Tebeth, and Sargon ascended
the throne at Assur in the same month, and it was only in
the month Nisân that Mero-dach-baladan was proclaimed king.
The three months intervening between the accession of Sargon
and that of Merodach-baladan evidently represent a period of
indecision., when it was not yet known if the king would
follow the policy of his predecessors with regard to
Babylon, or adopt a different attitude towards her.
Of all the nations who had in turn occupied the plains of the Lower Euphrates and the marshes bordering on Arabia, the Kaldâ alone had retained their full vitality. They were constantly recruited by immigrants from their kinsfolk of the desert, and the continual infiltration of these semi-barbarous elements kept the race from becoming enervated by contact with the indigenous population, and more than compensated for the losses in their ranks occasioned by war. The invasion of Tiglath-pileser and the consequent deportations of prisoners had decimated the tribes of Bît-Shilâni, Bît-Shaali, and Bît-Amuhkâni, the principalities of the Kaldâ which lay nearest to Babylonian territory, and which had borne the brunt of attack in the preceding period; but their weakness brought into notice a power better equipped for warfare, whose situation in their rear had as a rule hitherto preserved it from contact with the Assyrians, namely, Bît-Yakîn. The continual deposit of alluvial soil at the mouths of the rivers had greatly altered the coastline from the earliest historic times downwards. The ancient estuary was partly filled up, especially on the western side, where the Euphrates enters the Persian Gulf: a narrow barrier of sand and silt extended between the marshes of Arabia and Susiana, at the spot where the streams of fresh water met the tidal waters of the sea, and all that was left of the ancient gulf was a vast lagoon, or, as the dwellers on the banks called it, a kind of brackish river, Nâr marratum. Bît-Yakîn occupied the southern and western portions of this district, from the mouth of the Tigris to the edge of the desert. The aspect of the country was constantly changing, and presented no distinctive features; it was a region difficult to attack and easy to defend; it consisted first of a spongy plain, saturated with water, with scattered artificial mounds on which stood the clustered huts of the villages; between this plain and the shore stretched a labyrinth of fens and peat-bogs, irregularly divided by canals and channels freshly formed each year in flood-time, meres strewn with floating islets, immense reed-beds where the neighbouring peasants took refuge from attack, and into which no one would venture to penetrate without hiring some friendly native as a guide. In this fenland dwelt the Kaldâ in their low, small conical huts of reeds, somewhat resembling giant beehives, and in all respects similar to those which the Bedawin of Irak inhabit at the present day.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief reproduced in
Layard.
Dur-Yakîn, their capital, was probably situated on the borders of the gulf, near the Euphrates, in such a position as to command the mouths of the river. Merodach-baladan, who was King of Bît-Yakîn at the time of Sargon’s accession, had become subject to Assyria in 729 B.C., and had paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser, but he was nevertheless the most powerful chieftain who had borne rule over the Chaldæans since the death of Ukînzîr.*
* Dur-Yakîn was situated on the shores of the Persian gulf,
as is proved by a passage in the Bull Inscription, where
it is stated that Sargon threw into the sea the corpses of
the soldiers killed during the siege; the neighbourhood of
the Euphrates is implied in the text of the Inscription des
Fastes, and the Annals, where the measures taken by
Merodach-baladan to defend his capital are described. The
name of Bît-Yakîn, and probably also that of Dur-Yakin, have
been preserved to us in the name of Aginis or Aginnê, the
name of a city mentioned by Strabo, and by the historians of
Alexander. Its site is uncertain, but can be located near
the present town of Kornah.
It was this prince whom the Babylonians chose to succeed Shalmaneser V. He presented himself before the city, was received with acclamation, and prepared without delay to repulse any hostilities on the part of the Assyrians.