* The Bible alone tells us that Sharezer retired to Urartu
(2 Kings xix. 37). To explain the plan of this campaign, it
is usually supposed that at the time of his father’s death
Esarhaddon was either beyond Mount Taurus or else on the
Armenian frontier; the sequence of the dates in the
Babylonian Chronicle of Pinches, compels me to revert to
the opinion that Esarhaddon marched from Babylon against the
rebels, and pursued them as far as Mount Taurus, and beyond
it to Khanigalbat.
Although this was a considerable advantage to Esarhaddon’s cause, it could not be considered as decisive, since the provinces of the Euphrates still declared for Sharezer; the gods, therefore, once more intervened. Ishtar of Arbela had long been considered as the recognised patroness and oracle of the dynasty. Whether it were a question of a foreign expedition or a rebellion at home, of a threatened plague or invasion, of a marriage or an alliance with some powerful neighbour, the ruling sovereign would invariably have recourse to her, always with the same formula, to demand counsel of her for the conduct of affairs in hand, and the replies which she vouchsafed in various ways were taken into consideration; her will, as expressed by the mouth of her ministers, would hasten, suspend, or modify the decisions of the king. Esarhaddon did not neglect to consult the goddess, as well as Assur and Sin, Shamash, Bel, Nebo, and Nergal; and their words, transcribed upon a tablet of clay, induced him to act without further delay: “Go, do not hesitate, for we march with thee and we will cast down thine enemies!” Thus encouraged, he made straight for the scene of danger without passing through Nineveh, so as to prevent Sharezer and his party having time to recover. His biographers depict Esarhaddon hurrying forward, often a day or more in advance of his battalions, without once turning to see who followed him, and without waiting to allow the horses of his baggage-waggons to be unharnessed or permitting his servant^ to pitch his tent; he rested merely for a few moments on the bare ground, indifferent to the cold and nocturnal frosts of the month of Sebat. It would appear as if Sharezer had placed his hopes on the Cimmerians, and had expected their chiefs to come to the rescue. This hypothesis seems borne out by the fact that the decisive battle took place beyond the Euphrates and the Taurus, in the country of Khanigalbat. Esarhaddon attributed his success to Ishtar, the goddess of bravery and of combat; she alone had broken the weapons of the rebels, she alone had brought confusion into their lines, and had inclined the hearts of the survivors to submit. They cried aloud, “This is our king!” and Sharezer thereupon fled into Armenia. The war had been brought to a close with such rapidity that even the most unsettled of the Assyrian subjects and vassals had not had time to take advantage of it for their own purposes; the Kaldâ on the Persian Gulf, and the Sidonians on the Mediterranean, were the only two peoples who had openly revolted, and were preparing to enter on a struggle to preserve their independence thus once more regained. Yet the events of the preceding months had shaken the power of Nineveh more seriously than we should at first suppose. For the first time since the accession of Tiglath-pileser III. the almost inevitable troubles which accompany the change of a sovereign had led to an open war. The vast army of Sargon and Sennacherib had been split up, and the two factions into which it was divided, commanded as they were by able generals and composed of troops accustomed to conquer, must have suffered more keenly in an engagement with each other than in the course of an ordinary campaign against a common enemy. One part at least of the military staff had become disorganised; regiments had been decimated, and considerable contingents were required to fill the vacancies in the ranks. The male population of Assyria, suddenly called on to furnish the necessary effective force, could not supply the demand without drawing too great a proportion of men from the country; and one of those crises of exhaustion was imminent which come upon a nation after an undue strain, often causing its downfall in the midst of its success, and yielding it an easy prey to the wiles of its adversaries.*
* The information we possess concerning Esarhaddon is
gathered from: 1. The Insertion of Cylinders A, B, C, the
second of the three better known as the Broken Cylinder.
These texts contain a summary of the king’s wars, in which
the subject-matter is arranged geographically, not
chronologically: they cease with the eponymy of Akhazilu,
i.e. the year 673. 2. Some mutilated fragments, of the
Annals. 3. The Blade Stone of Aberdeen, on which the
account of the rebuilding of Babylon is given. 4. The Stele
of Zindjirli. 5. The consultations of the god Shamash by
Esarhaddon in different circumstances of his reign. 6. A
considerable number of small inscriptions and some tablets.
The classification of the events of this reign presents
serious difficulties, which have been partly overcome by
passages in the Babylonian Chronicle of Pinches.
Esarhaddon was personally inclined for peace, and as soon as he was established on the throne he gave orders that the building works, which had been suspended during the late troubles, should be resumed and actively pushed forward; but the unfortunate disturbances of the times did not permit of his pursuing his favourite occupation without interruption, and, like those of his warlike predecessors, his life was passed almost entirely on the field of battle. Babylon, grateful for what he had done for her, tendered him an unbroken fidelity throughout the stormy episodes of his reign, and showed her devotion to him by an unwavering obedience. The Kaldâ received no support from that quarter, and were obliged to bear the whole burden of the war which they had provoked. Their chief, Nabu-zîru-kînish-lîshir, who had been placed over them by Sennacherib, now harassed the cities of Karduniash, and Ningal-shumiddin, the prefect of Uru, demanded immediate help from Assyria. Esarhaddon at once despatched such a considerable force that the Kaldu chief did not venture to meet it in the open field, and after a few unimportant skirmishes he gave up the struggle, and took refuge in Elam. Khumbân-khaldash, had died there in 680, a few months before the murder of Sennacherib, and his son, a second Khumbân-khaldash, had succeeded him; this prince appears either to have shared the peaceful tastes of his brother-king of Assyria, or more probably did not feel himself sufficiently secure of his throne to risk the chance of coming into collision with his neighbour. He caused Nabu-zîru-kînish-lîshir to be slain, and Nâîd-marduk, the other son of Merodach-baladan, who had shared his brother’s flight, was so terrified at his murder that he at once sought refuge in Nineveh; he was reinstated in his paternal domain on condition of paying a tribute, and, faithful to his oath of allegiance, he thenceforward came yearly in person to bring his dues and pay homage to his sovereign (679). The Kaldâ rising had, in short, been little more than a skirmish, and the chastisement of the Sidonians would have involved neither time nor trouble, had not the desultory movements of the barbarians obliged the Assyrians to concentrate their troops on several points which were threatened on their northern frontier. The Cimmerians and the Scythians had not suffered themselves to be disconcerted by the rapidity with which the fate of Sharezer had been decided, and after a moment’s hesitation they had again set out in various directions on their work of conquest, believing, no doubt, that they would meet with a less vigorous resistance after so serious an upheaval at Nineveh. The Cimmerians appear to have been the first to have provoked hostilities; their king Tiushpa, who ruled over their territory on the Black Sea, ejected the Assyrian garrisons placed on the Cappadocian frontier, and his presence in that quarter aroused all the insubordinate elements still remaining in the Cilician valleys. Esarhaddon brought him to a stand on the confines of the plain of Saros, defeated him in Khubushna,* and drove the remains of the horde back across the Halys.
* Several Assyriologists have thought that Khubushna might
be an error for Khubushkhia, and have sought the seat of war
on the eastern frontier of Assyria: in reality the context
shows that the place under discussion is a district in Asia
Minor, identified with Kamisene by Gelzcr, but left
unidentified by most authorities. Jensen has shown that the
name is mot with as early as the inscriptions of Tiglath-
pileser III., where we should read Khubishna, and he places
the country in Northern Syria, or perhaps further north in
the western part of Taurus. The determinative proves that
there was a town of this name as well as a district, and
this consideration encourages mo to recognise in Khubushna
or Khubishna the town of Kabissos-Kabessos, the Sis of the
kingdom of Lesser Armenia.
Having thus averted the Cimmerian danger, he was able, without much difficulty, to bring the rebels of the western provinces into subjection.* His troops thrust back the Cilicians and Duha into the rugged fastnesses of the Taurus, and razed to the ground one and twenty of their strongholds, besides burning numberless villages and carrying the inhabitants away captive.**
* These expeditions are not dated in any of the documents
that deal with them: the fact that they are mentioned along
with the war against Tiushpa and Sidon makes me inclined to
consider them as being a result of the Cimmerian invasion.
They were, strictly speaking, the quelling of revolts caused
by the presence of the Cimmerians in that part of the
empire.
** The Duua or Duha of this campaign, who are designated as
neighbours of the Tabal, lived in the Anti-taurus: the name
of the town, Tyana, Tuana, is possibly composed of their
name and of the suffix -na, which is met with in Asianio
languages.
The people of Parnaki, in the bend of the Euphrates between Tel-Assur and the sources of the Balîkh, had taken up arms on hearing of the brief successes of Tiushpa, but were pitilessly crushed by Esarhaddon. The sheikh of Arzani, in the extreme south of Syria, close to the brook of Egypt, had made depredations on the Assyrian frontier, but he was seized by the nearest governor and sent in chains to Nineveh. A cage was built for him at the gate of the city, and he was exposed in it to the jeers of the populace, in company with the bears, dogs, and boars which the Ninevites were in the habit of keeping confined there. It would appear that Esarhaddon set himself to come to a final reckoning with Sidon and Phoenicia, the revolt of which had irritated him all the more, in that it showed an inexcusable ingratitude towards his family. For it was Sennacherib who, in order to break the power of Blulai, had not only rescued Sidon from the dominion of Tyre, but had enriched it with the spoils taken from its former rulers, and had raised it to the first rank among the Phoenician cities. Ethbaal in his lifetime had never been wanting in gratitude, but his successor, Abdimilkôt, forgetful of recent services, had chafed at the burden of a foreign yoke, and had recklessly thrown it off as soon as an occasion presented itself. He had thought to strengthen himself by securing the help of a certain Sanduarri, who possessed the two fortresses of Kundu and Sîzu, in the Cilician mountains;* but neither this alliance nor the insular position of his capital was able to safeguard him, when once the necessity for stemming the tide of the Cimmerian influx was over, and the whole of the Assyrian force was free to be brought against him.
* Some Assyriologists have proposed to locate these two
towns in Cilicia; others place them in the Lebanon, Kundi
being identified with the modern village of Ain-Kundiya. The
name of Kundu so nearly recalls that of Kuinda, the ancient
fort mentioned by Strabo, to the north of Anchialê, between
Tarsus and Anazarbus, that I do not hesitate to identify
them, and to place Kundu in Cilicia.
Abdimilkôt attempted to escape by sea before the last attack, but he was certainly taken prisoner, though the circumstances are unrecorded, and Sanduarri fell into the enemy’s hands a short time after. The suppression of the rebellion was as vindictive as the ingratitude which prompted it was heinous. Sidon was given up to the soldiery and then burnt, while opposite to the ruins of the island city the Assyrians built a fortress on the mainland, which they called Kar-Esarhaddon. The other princes of Phoenicia and Syria were hastily convoked, and were witnesses of the vengeance wreaked on the city, as well as of the installation of the governor to whom the new province was entrusted. They could thus see what fate awaited them in the event of their showing any disposition to rebel, and the majority of them were not slow to profit by the lesson. The spoil was carried back in triumph to Nineveh, and comprised, besides the two kings and their families, the remains of their court and people, and the countless riches which the commerce of the world had brought into the great ports of the Mediterranean—ebony, ivory, gold and silver, purple, precious woods, household furniture, and objects of value from all parts in such quantities that it was long before the treasury at Nineveh needed any replenishing.* The reverses of the Cimmerians did not serve as a warning to the Scythians. Settled on the borders of Manna, partly, no doubt, on the territory formerly dependent on that state,** they secretly incited the inhabitants to revolt, and to join in the raids which they made on the valley of the Upper Zab, and they would even have urged their horses up to the very walls of Nineveh had the occasion presented itself.