* The date of 676 B.C. has been borrowed from Julius
Africanus by the Christian chronologists of the Byzantine
period; these latter made the fall of the Phrygian kingdom
coincide with the reign of Amon in Judæa, and this date is
accepted by most modern historians.
** One fact alone, probably taken from the Lydiaca of
Xanthus, is known to us concerning their operations in
Phrygia, namely, the taking of Syassos and the capture of
enormous stores of corn which were laid up in the silos in
that city.
Gyges resolutely held his own, and successfully repulsed them; but the struggle was too unequal between their vast hordes, recruited incessantly from their reserves in Thrace or the Caucasus, and his scanty battalions of Lydians, Carians, and Creeks. Unaided, he had no chance of reopening the great royal highway, which the fall of the Phrygian monarchy had laid at the mercy of the barbarians along the whole of its middle course, and yet he was aware that a cessation of the traffic which passed between the Euphrates and the Hermos was likely to lead in a short time to the decay of his kingdom. If the numerous merchants who were wont to follow this ancient traditional route were once allowed to desert it and turn aside to one of the coast-roads which might replace it—either that of the Pontus in the north or of the Mediterranean in the south—they might not be willing to return to it even when again opened to traffic, and Lydia would lose for ever one of her richest sources of revenue.*
* Radet deserves credit for being the first to point out the
economic reasons which necessarily led Gyges to make his
attempt at forming an alliance with Assur-bani-pal. He has
thus definitely dismissed the objections which some recent
critics had raised against the authenticity of this episode
in order to defend classic tradition and diminish the
authority of the Assyrian texts.
We may well conceive that Gyges, whose fortune and very existence was thus in jeopardy, would seek assistance against these barbarians from the sovereign whose interests appeared identical with his own. The renown of the Assyrian empire had penetrated far into the west; the Achæns of Cyprus who were its subjects, the Greek colonists of Cilicia, and the soldiers whom the exigencies of the coast-trade brought to Syrian ports, must all have testified to its splendour; and the fame of its conquests over the Tabal and the peoples on the Halys had spread abroad more than once during the previous century, and had reached as far as the western extremity of the peninsula of Asia Minor, by means of the merchants of Sardes or Ionia. The Cimmerians had harassed Assyria, and still continued to be a source of anxiety to her rulers; Gyges judged that participation in a common hatred or danger would predispose the king in his favour, and a dream furnished him with a pretext for notifying to the court of Nineveh his desire to enter into friendly relations with it. He dreamed that a god, undoubtedly Assur, had appeared to him in the night, and commanded him to prostrate himself at the feet of Assur-bani-pal: “In his name thou shalt overcome thine enemies.” The next morning he despatched horsemen to the great king, but when the leader of the embassy reached the frontier and met the Assyrians for the first time, they asked him, “Who, then, art thou, brother, thou from whose land no courier has as yet visited our country?” The language he spoke was unknown to them; they only gathered that he desired to be conducted into the presence of the king, and consequently sent him on to Nineveh under good escort. There the same obstacle presented itself, for none of the official interpreters at the court knew the Lydian tongue; however, an interpreter was at length discovered, who translated the story of the dream as best he could. Assur-bani-pal joyfully accepted the homage offered to him from such a far-off land, and from thenceforward some sort of alliance existed between Assyria and Lydia—an alliance of a very Platonic order, from which Gyges at least derived no sensible advantage. Some troops sent into the country of the White Syrians may have disquieted the Cimmerians, and, by causing a diversion in their rear, procured a respite for Lydia; but the caravan route across Asia Minor was only of secondary importance to the prosperity of Nineveh and the Syrian provinces, since the Phoenician navy provided sufficient outlets for their trade in the west. Assur-bani-pal lavished friendly speeches on the Lydians, but left them to bear the brunt of the attack alone, and devoutly thanked Assur for the security which their determined courage procured for the western frontier of his empire.
The Cimmerian peril being, for the present at least, averted, there no longer remained any foe to trouble the peace of the empire on the northern or eastern frontier, Urartu, the Mannai, and the Medes having now ceased to be formidable. Urartu, incessantly exposed to the ravages of the barbarians, had drawn closer and closer to Assyria; and though not actually descending to the point of owning its rival’s superiority in order to obtain succour against these terrible foes, it yet carefully avoided all pretexts for war, and persistently maintained friendly relations with its powerful neighbour. Its kings, Eusas II. and his successor Erimenas, no longer meditated feats of arms and successful raids, but devoted themselves to building their city walls, erecting palaces and temples, and planning pleasant retreats in the mountain fastnesses, where they lived surrounded by gardens planted at great cost, watered by streams brought thither from distant springs. The Mannai submitted without a murmur to their Assyrian governors, and the Medes, kept in check by the garrisons of Parsua and Kharkhar, seemed to have laid aside much of their fierce and turbulent disposition. Esarhaddon had endeavoured to conciliate the good will of Elam by a signal service. He had supplied its inhabitants with corn, wine, and provisions of all sorts during a famine which had afflicted the country about 670 B.C.; nor had his good will ended there. He refused to bring into servitude those Elamite subjects who had taken refuge with their families on Assyrian territory to escape the scourge, although the rights of nations authorised him so to do, but having nourished them as long as the dearth lasted, he then sent them back to their fellow-citizens. Urtaku of Elam had thenceforward maintained a kind of sullen neutrality, entering only into secret conspiracies against the Babylonian prefects on the Tigris. The Aramaeans in the valleys of the Ulaî, indeed, were restless, and several of their chiefs, Bel-ikîsha of the G-ambula, and Nabo-shumirîsh, plotted in secret with Marduk-shumibni, the Elamite general in command on the frontier. But no hint of this had yet transpired, and peace apparently reigned there as elsewhere. Never had the empire been so respected; never had it united so many diverse nations under one sceptre—Egyptians, Syrians, tribes of the Taurus, and the mountain districts round the Tigris and Euphrates, Mannai, Medes, Babylonians, and Arabs; never, moreover, had it possessed greater resources wherewith to compel obedience from the provinces or defend them against foreign attack.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from one of the bas-reliefs
from Kouyunjik in the
British Museum.
Doubtless the population of Assyria proper, and the ancient districts whose contingents formed the nucleus of the army, were still suffering from the results of the civil war which had broken out more than fifteen years before, after the assassination of Sennacherib; but under the easy rule of Esarhaddon the natural increase of population, unchecked by any extraordinary call for recruits, must have almost repaired their losses. The Egyptian campaigns, partially carried out by Syrian auxiliaries, had not sensibly retarded this progress, and, provided that peace were maintained for some years longer, the time seemed at hand when the king, having repaired his losses, could call upon the nation to make fresh efforts in offensive or defensive warfare, without the risk of seeing his people melt and disappear before his eyes. It seems, indeed, as if Assur-bani-pal, either by policy or natural disposition, was inclined for peace. But this did not preclude, when occasion demanded, his directing his forces and fighting in person like any other Assyrian monarch; he, however, preferred repose, and when circumstances forced war upon him, he willingly delegated the conduct of the army to his generals. He would probably have renounced possession of Egypt if he could have done so with safety and such a course would not have been without wisdom, the retention of this newly acquired province being difficult and costly. Not to speak of differences in language, religion, and manners, which would prevent it from ever becoming assimilated to Assyria as Damascus, Hamath, and Samaria, and most of the Asiatic states had been, it was merely connected with the rest of the empire by the thin chain of rocks, desert, and marshes stretching between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. A revolt of the cities of the Philistines, or of one of the Idumsean sheikhs, would have sufficed to isolate it, and, communications once interrupted, the safety of the numerous Assyrian officers and garrisons would be seriously jeopardised, all of whom must be maintained there if the country was to be permanently retained. The inclination to meddle in the affairs of Syria always displayed by the Pharaohs, and their obsolete claims to rule the whole country as far as the Euphrates, did not allow of their autonomy being restored to them at the risk of the immediate renewal of their intrigues with Tyre or Judah, and the fomenting of serious rebellions among the vassal princes of Palestine. On the other hand, Egypt was by its natural position so detached from the rest of the empire that it was certain to escape from the influence of Nineveh as soon as the pressure of circumstances obliged the suzerain to relax his efforts to keep it in subjection. Besides this, Ethiopia lay behind Egypt, almost inaccessible in the fabled realms of the south, always ready to provoke conspiracies or renew hostilities when the occasion offered. Montumihâît had already returned to Thebes on the retreat of the Assyrian battalions, and though Taharqa, rendered inactive, as it was said, by a dream which bade him remain at Napata,* had not reappeared north of the cataract, he had sent Tanuatamanu, the son of his wife by Sabaco, to administer the province in his name.** Taharqa died shortly after (666 B.C.), and his stepson was preparing to leave Thebes in order to be solemnly crowned at Gebel Barkal, when he saw one night in a dream two serpents, one on his right hand, the other on his left. The soothsayers whom he consulted on the matter prognosticated for him a successful career: “Thou holdest the south countries; seize thou those of the north, and let the crowns of the two regions gleam upon thy brow!” He proceeded at once to present himself before his divine father Amon of Napata, and, encountering no opposition from the Ethiopian priests or nobles, he was able to fulfil the prediction almost immediately after his coronation.***
* The legend quoted by Herodotus relates that Sabaco, having
slain Necho I., the father of Psammetichus, evacuated Egypt
which he had conquered, and retired to Ethiopia in obedience
to a dream. The name of Sabaco was very probably substituted
for that of Taharqa in the tradition preserved in Sais and
Memphis, echoes of which reached the Greek historian in the
middle of the fifth century B.C.
** It appears, from the Stele of the Dream, that
Tanuatamanu was in the Thebaid at the time of his accession
to the throne.
*** Steindorff thinks that Tanuatamanu had been officially
associated with himself on the throne by Taharqa, and
Schsefer supposes that the dream dates from the first year
of their joint reign. The presence of Tanuatamanu beside
Taharqa, in the small Theban temple, the bas-reliefs of
which were published by Mariette, does not necessarily prove
that the two kings reigned conjointly: it may equally well
indicate that the one accomplished the work commenced by the
other.