Drawn by Boudier, from a sketch in Layard.
The eastern front had for a long time depended for its safety on a single wall reinforced by a moat, but Sennacherib, deeming it insufficiently protected against a sudden attack, had piled up obstacles in front of it, so that it now presented a truly formidable appearance. It was skirted throughout its whole length by a main rampart, 5400 yards long, which described a gentle curve from north to south, and rose to a height of about 50 feet, being protected by two small forts placed close to the main gates. The fosse did not run along the foot of the wall, but at a distance of about fifty yards in front of it, and was at least some 20 feet deep and over 150 feet in width. It was divided into two unequal segments by the Khuzur: three large sluice-gates built on a level with the wall and the two escarpments allowed the river to be dammed back, so that its waters could be diverted into the fosse and thus keep it full in case of siege. In front of each segment was a kind of demi-lune, and—as though this was not precaution enough—two walls, each over 4300 yards long, were built in front of the demi-lunes, the ditch which separated them being connected at one end with the Khuzur, and allowed to empty itself into a stream on the south. The number of inhabitants sheltered behind these defences was perhaps 300,000 souls;* each separate quarter of the city was enclosed by ramparts, thus forming, as it were, a small independent town, which had to be besieged and captured after a passage had been cut through the outer lines of defence.
* Jones and G. Rawlinson credit Nineveh with a population of
not more than 175,000.
Cyaxares might well have lost heart in the face of so many difficulties, but his cupidity, inflamed by reports of the almost fabulous wealth of the city, impelled him to attack it with extraordinary determination: the spoils of Susa, Babylon, and Thebes, in fact, of the whole of Western Asia and Ethiopia, were, he felt, almost within his reach, and would inevitably fall into his hands provided his courage and perseverance did not fail him. After shutting up the remnant of the Assyrian army inside Nineveh he laid patient siege to the city, and the fame of his victories being noised abroad on all sides, it awoke among the subject races that longing for revenge which at one time appeared to have been sent to sleep for ever. It almost seemed as though the moment was approaching when the city of blood should bleed in its turn, when its kings should at length undergo the fate which they had so long imposed on other monarchs. Nahum the Elkoshite,* a Hebrew born in the Assyrian province of Samaria, but at that time an exile in Judah, lifted up his voice, and the echo of his words still resounds in our ears, telling us of the joy and hope felt by Judah, and with Judah, by the whole of Asia, at the prospect. Speaking as the prophet of Jahveh, it was to Jahveh that he attributed the impending downfall of the oppressor: “Jahveh is a jealous God and avengeth; Jahveh avengeth and is full of wrath; Jahveh taketh vengeance on His adversaries, and He reserveth wrath for His enemies. Jahveh is slow to anger and great in power, and will by no means clear the guilty; Jahveh hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet. He rebuketh the sea and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth.” * And, “Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.” Then he goes on to unfold before the eyes of his hearers a picture of Nineveh, humiliated and in the last extremity.
* Elkosh is identified by Eusebius with Elkese, which St.
Jerome declares to have been in Galileo, the modern el-
Kauzeh, two and a half hours’ walk south of Tibnin. The
prophecy of Nahum has been taken by some as referring to the
campaign of Phraortes against Assyria, but more frequently
to the destruction of Nineveh by the Medes and Chaldæans. It
undoubtedly refers to the siege interrupted by the Scythian
invasion.
There she lies, behind her bastions of brick, anxiously listening for the approach of the victorious Medes. “The noise of the whip, and the noise of the rattling of wheels; and prancing horses and jumping chariots; the horsemen mounting, and the flashing sword, and the glittering spear; and a multitude of slain and a great heap of carcases: and there is no end of the corpses; they stumble upon their corpses: because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts. Behold, I am against thee, saith Jahveh of hosts, and I will discover thy skirts upon they face; and I will show the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame. And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a gazing-stock. And it shall come to pass that all they that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste: who will bemoan her? Whence shall I seek comforters for thee?” Thebes, the city of Amon, did not escape captivity; why then should Nineveh prove more fortunate? “All thy fortresses shall be like fig trees with the firstripe figs: if they be shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater. Behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women; the gates of thy land are set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire hath devoured thy bars. Draw thee water for the siege, strengthen thy fortresses: go into the clay and tread the mortar, make strong the brick-kiln. There shall the fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off,... make thyself many as the cankerworm, make thyself many as the locusts. Thou hast multiplied thy merchants as the stars of heaven: the cankerworm spoileth and flieth away. Thy crowned are as the locusts and thy marshals as the swarms of grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are. Thy shepherds slumber, O King of Assyria: thy worthies are at rest: thy people are scattered upon the mountains, and there is none to gather them. There is no assuaging of thy hurt; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the bruit of thee clap the hands over thee; for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?”
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the
reliefs on a silver vase from Kul-Oba.