* The lists of Eusebius give the series Ammeres,
Stephinates, Nekhepsos, Necho I., but Lepsius displaced
Ammeres and identified him with the queen Amenertas; others
have thought to recognise in him Miamun Piônkhi, or
Tanuatamanu, the successor of Taharqa. He must, however, be
left in this place in the list, and we may perhaps consider
him as the founder of the XXVIth dynasty. If the number of
seven years for the reign of Stephinates is adopted, we must
suppose either that Manetho passed over the name of a prince
at the beginning of the XXVIth dynasty, or that Ammeris was
only enthroned at Memphis after the death of Sabaco; but the
lists of the Syncellus and of Sothis assign 27 years to the
reign of Stephinates.
** The astrological works of Nekhepsos are cited, among
others, by Pliny, and it is probably he whom a Greek papyrus
of the Salt Collection mentions under the name of Nekheus.
Necho had already occupied the throne for three or four years when the invasion of 670 B.C. delivered him from the Ethiopian supremacy. He is represented as being brave, energetic, and enterprising, ready to hazard everything in order to attain the object towards which the ambition of his ancestors had been tending for a century past, namely, to restore unity to the ancient kingdom under the rule of the house of Sais. The extent of his realm, and, above all, the possession of Memphis, gave him a real superiority, and Esarhaddon did not hesitate to esteem him above his competitors; the Ninevite scribes placed him in the first rank, and he heads the list of the Egyptian vassals. He soon had an opportunity of proving his devotion to his foreign suzerain. Taharqa did not quietly accept his defeat, and Egypt looked to him to be revenged on the Assyrian as soon as he should have reorganised his army. He once more, accordingly, took the field in the middle of 669 B.C.; the barons of the Said rallied to his standard without hesitation, and he soon re-entered the “White Wall,” but there his advance was arrested. Necho and the neighbouring chiefs of the Delta, held in check by the presence of Semitic garrisons, did not venture to proclaim themselves on his side, and awaited under arms the arrival of Assyrian reinforcements.* Esarhaddon, in spite of failing health, assumed command of the troops, and before leaving home carried out the project to which the conspiracy of the preceding year had given rise; he assigned the government of Babylon to Shamash-shumukin, and solemnly designated Assur-bani-pal as the heir to Assyria proper, and to the suzerainty over the whole empire.**
* The first Egyptian campaign of Assur-bani-pal is also the
last campaign of Esarhaddon, and Assur-bani-pal appropriated
all the earlier incidents of it, some of which belong to the
sole reign of his father, and some to the few weeks in which
he shared the throne with him.
** The association of Assur-bani-pal with his father on the
throne was pointed out by G. Smith, who thought he could fix
the date about 673 B.C., three or four years before the
death of Esarhaddon. Tielo showed that Assur-bani-pal was
then only made viceroy, and assigned his association in the
sovereignty to the year 671 or 670 B.C., about the time of
the second Egyptian campaign, while Hommel brought it down
to 669. Winckler has, with much reason, placed the date in
668 B.C. The Assyrian documents do not mention the
coronation of Shamash-shuniukîn, for Assur-bani-pal
afterwards affected to consider his brother a mere viceroy,
appointed by himself after the death of his father
Esarhaddon; but an examination of all the circumstances has
shown that the enthronement of Shamash-shumukîn at Babylon
was on a par with that of Assur-bani-pal at Nineveh, and
that both owed their elevation to their father.
On the 12th of Lyyar, 668 B.C., on the day of the feast of Gula, he presented their new lord to all the inhabitants of Assyria, both small and great, who had assembled to be present at the ceremony, which ended in the installation of the prince in the palace of Bîtriduti, reserved for the heirs-apparent. A few weeks later Esarhaddon set out for Egypt, but his malady became more serious on the journey, and he died on the 10th of Arakhsamna, in the twelfth year of his reign.*
* Arakhsamna corresponds to the Jewish Marcheswân, and to
our month of May.
When we endeavour to conjure up his image before us, we fancy we are right in surmising that he was not cast in the ordinary mould of Assyrian monarchs. The history of his campaigns shows that he was as active and resolute as Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmaneser III., but he did not add to these good qualities their inflexible harshness towards their subjects, nor their brutal treatment of conquered foes. Circumstances in which they would have shown themselves merciless, he seized upon as occasions for clemency, and if massacres and executions are recorded among the events of his reign, at least he does not class them among the most important: the records of his wars do not continually speak of rebels flayed alive, kings impaled before the gates of their cities, and whole populations decimated by fire and sword. Of all the Assyrian conquerors, he is almost the only one for whom the historian can feel any regard, or from the study of whose reign he passes on with regret to pursue that of others in due course.
Drawn by Boudier,
from a photograph
in Lehmann.
As soon as Esarhaddon had passed away, the separation of the two parts of the empire which he had planned was effected almost automatically: Assur-bani-pal proclaimed himself King of Assyria, and Shamash-shumukîn, in like manner, King of Babylon. One fact, which seems insignificant enough to us when we read it in the Annals, but was decisive in the eyes of their contemporaries, sanctioned the transformation thus accomplished: Bel and the gods of Accad quitted Assur in the month of Iyyâr and returned to their resting-place in Babylon. The restoration of the images to their own country became necessary as soon as it was decided to have a king in Karduniash, even though he were an Assyrian. To enable him to exercise legitimate authority, he must have celebrated the rites and “taken the hands of Bel,” but it was a question whether this obligation could be fulfilled if Bel remained a prisoner in the neighbouring capital. Assur-bani-pal believed for a moment that this difficulty could be obviated, and consulted Shamash on this delicate question: “Shamash-shumukîn, the son of Esarhaddon, the King of Assyria, can he in this year take the hands of Bel, the mighty lord Marduk, in this very city, and then go to Babylon with the favour of Bel! If that would be pleasing to thy great divinity and to the mighty lord Marduk, thy great divinity must know it.” The reply was not favourable, and Shamash gave it as his opinion that Bel could not act as a sovereign lord while still languishing in prison in a city which was not his own. Assur-bani-pal had to resign himself to the release of his captive, and he did it with a good grace. He proceeded in pomp to the temple of Assur, where Marduk was shut up, and humbly entreated the exiled deity to vouchsafe to return to his own country.