Besides this interesting monument, there are very few remains of art which can be ascribed to Shalmaneser’s time with any confidence. The sculptures found on the site of his palace belonged to a later monarch, who restored and embellished it. His own bas-reliefs were torn from their places by Esarhaddon, and by him defaced and used as materials in the construction of a new palace. We are thus left almost without materials for judging of the progress made by art during Shalmaneser’s reign. Architecture, it may be conjectured, was modified to a certain extent, precious woods being employed more frequently and more largely than before; a fact of which we seem to have an indication in the frequent expeditions made by Shalmaneser into Syria, for the single purpose of cutting timber in its forests. Sculpture, to judge from the obelisk, made no advance. The same formality, the same heaviness of outline, the same rigid adherence to the profile in all representations both of man and beast, characterize the reliefs of both reigns equally, so far as we have any means of judging.
Shalmaneser seems to have held his court ordinarily at Calah, where he built his palace and set up his obelisk; but sometimes he would reside for a time at Nineveh or at Asshur. He does not appear to have built any important edifice at either of these two cities, but at the latter he left a monument which possesses some interest. This is the stone statue, now in a mutilated condition, representing a king seated, which was found by Mr. Layard at Kileh-Sherghat, and of which some notice has already been taken. Its proportions are better than those of the small statue of the monarch’s father, standing in his sacrificial dress, which was found at Nimrud; and it is superior to that work of art, in being of the size of life; but either its execution was originally very rude, or it must have suffered grievously by exposure, for it is now wholly rough and unpolished.
The later years of Shahuaneser appear to have been troubled by a dangerous rebellion. The infirmities of age were probably creeping upon him. He had ceased to go out with his armies; and had handed over a portion of his authority to the favorite general who was entrusted with the command of his forces year after year. The favor thus shown may have provoked jealousy and even alarm. It may have been thought that the legitimate successor was imperilled by the exaltation of a subject whose position would enable him to in gratiate himself with the troops, and who might be expected, on the death of his patron, to make an effort to place the crown on his own head. Fears of this kind may very probably have so worked on the mind of the heir apparent as to determine him not to await his father’s demise, but rather to raise the standard of revolt during his lifetime, and to endeavor, by an unexpected coup-de-main, to anticipate and ruin his rival. Or, possibly, Asshur-danin-pal, the eldest son of Shalmaneser, like too many royal youths, may have been impatient of the long life of his father, and have conceived the guilty desire, with which our fourth Henry is said to have taxed his first-born, a “hunger for the empty chair” of which the aged monarch, still held possession. At any rate, whatever may have been the motive that urged him on, it is certain that Asshur-danin-pal rebelled against his sire’s authority, and, raising the standard of revolt, succeeded in carrying with him a great part of the kingdom. At Asshur, the old metropolis, which may have hoped to lure back the Court by its subservience, at Arbela in the Zab region, at Amidi on the Upper Tigris, at Tel-Apni near the site of Orfa, and at more than twenty other fortified places, Asshur-danin-pal was pro-claimed king, and accepted by the inhabitants for their sovereign. Shalmaneser must have felt himself in imminent peril of losing his crown. Under these circumstances he called to his assistance his second son Shamas-Vul, and placing him at the head of such of his troops as remained firm to their allegiance, invested him with full power to act as he thought best in the existing emergency. Shamas-Vul at once took the field, attacked and reduced the rebellious cities one after another, and in a little time completely crushed the revolt and reestablished peace throughout the empire. Asshur-danin-pal, the arch conspirator, was probably put to death; his life was justly forfeit; and neither Shamas-Vul nor his father is likely to have been withheld by any inconvenient tenderness from punishing treason in a near relative, as they would have punished it in any other person. The suppressor of the revolt became the heir of the kingdom; and when, shortly afterwards, Shalmaneser died, the piety or prudence if his faithful son was rewarded by the rich inheritance of the Assyrian Empire.
Shalmaneser reigned, in all, thirty-five years, from B.C. 858 to B.C. 823. His successor, Shamas-Vul, held the throne for thirteen years, from B.C. 823 to B.C. 810. Before entering upon the consideration of this latter monarch’s reign, it will be well to cast your eyes once more over the Assyrian Empire, such as it has now become, and over the nations with which its growth had brought it into contact. Considerable changes had occurred since the time of Tiglath-Pileser I., the Assyrian boundaries having been advanced in several directions, while either this progress, or the movements of races beyond the frontier, had brought into view many new and some very important nations.
The chief advance which the “Terminus” of the Assyrians had made was towards the west and the north-west. Instead of their dominion in this quarter being bounded by the Euphrates, they had established their authority over the whole of Upper Syria, over Phoenicia, Hamath, and Samaria, or the kingdom of the Israelites. These countries were not indeed reduced to the form of provinces; on the contrary, they still retained their own laws, administration, and native princes; but they were henceforth really subject to Assyria, acknowledging her suzerainty, paying her an annual tribute, and giving a free passage to her armies through their territories. The limit of the Assyrian Empire towards the west was consequently at this time the Mediterranean, from the Gulf of Iskanderun to Cape Carmel, or perhaps we should say to Joppa. Their north-western boundary was the range of Taurus next beyond Amanus, the tract between the two belonging to the Tibareni (Tubal), who had submitted to become tributaries. Northwards, little if any progress had been made. The chain of Niphates—“the high grounds over the effluents of the Tigris and Euphrates”—where Shalmaneser set up “an image of his majesty,” seems still to be the furthest limit. In other words, Armenia is unconquered, the strength of the region and the valor of its inhabitants still protecting it from the Assyrian arms. Towards the east some territory seems to have been gained, more especially in the central Zagros region, the district between the Lower Zab and Holwan, which at this period bore the name of Hupuska; but the tribes north and south of this tract were still for the most part unsubdued. The southern frontier may be regarded as wholly unchanged: for although Shalmaneser warred in Babylonia, and even took tribute on one occasion from the petty kings of the Chaldaean towns, he seems to have made no permanent impression in this quarter. The Tsukhi or Shuhites are still the most southern of his subjects.
The principal changes which time and conquest had made among the neighbors of Assyria were the following. Towards the west she was brought into contact with the kingdom of Damascus, and, through her tributary Samaria with Judea. On the north-west she had new enemies in the Quins (Coans?) who dwelt on the further side of Amanus, near the Tibareni, in a part of the country afterwards called Cilicia, and the Cilicians themselves, who are now first mentioned. The Moschi seem to have withdrawn a little from this neighborhood, since they no longer appear either among Assyria’s enemies or her tributaries. On the north all minor powers had disappeared; and the Armenians (Urarda) were now Assyria’s sole neighbors. Towards the east she had come into contact with the Mannai, or Minni, about Lake Urumiyeh, with the Harkhar in the Van region and in north-western Kurdistan, with the Bartsu or Persians and the Mada or Medes in the country east of Zagros, the modern province of Ardelan, and with the Tsimri, or Zimri, in Upper Luristan. Among all her fresh enemies, she had not, however, as yet found one calculated to inspire any serious fear. No new organized monarchy presented itself. The tribes and nations upon her borders were still either weak in numbers or powerless from their intestine divisions; and there was thus every reason to expect a long continuance of the success which had naturally attended a large centralized state in her contests with small kingdoms or loosely-united confederacies. Names celebrated in the after history of the world, as those of the Medes and Persians, are now indeed for the first time emerging into light from the complete obscurity which has shrouded there hitherto; and tinged as they are with the radiance of their later glories, they show brightly among the many insignificant tribes and nations with which Assyria has been warring for centuries; but it would be a mistake to suppose that these names have any present importance in the narrative or represent powers capable as yet of contending on equal terms with the Assyrian Empire, or even of seriously checking the progress of her successes. The Medes and Persians are at this period no more powerful than the Zimri, the Minni, the Urarda, or than half a dozen others of the border nations, whose appellations sound strange in the ears even of the advanced student. Neither of the two great Arian peoples had as yet a capital city, neither was united under a king: separated into numerous tribes, each under its chief, dispersed in scattered towns and villages, poorly fortified or not fortified at, all, they were in the same condition as the Nairi, the Qummukh, the Patena, the Hittites, and the other border races whose relative weakness Assyria had abundantly proved in a long course of wars wherein she had uniformly been the victor.
The short reign of Shamas-Vul II., presents but little that calls for remark. Like Shalmaneser II., he resided chiefly at Calah, where, following the example of his father and grandfather, he set up an obelisk (or rather a stele) in commemoration of his various exploits. This monument, which is covered on three sides with an inscription in the hieratic or cursive character, contains an opening invocation to Nin or Hercules, conceived in the ordinary terms, the genealogy and titles of the king, an account of the rebellion of Asshur-bani-pal, together with its suppression, and Shamas-Vul’s own annals for the first four years of his reign. From these we learn that he displayed the same active spirit as his two predecessors, carrying his arms against the Nairi on the north, against Media and Arazias on the east, and against Babylonia on the south. The people of Hupuska, the Minni, and the Persians (Bartsu) paid him tribute. His principal success was that of his fourth campaign, which was against Babylon. He entered the country by a route often used, which skirted the Zagros mountain range for some distance, and then crossed the flat, probably along the course of the Diyaleh, to the southern capital. The Babylonians, alarmed at his advance, occupied a strongly fortified place on his line of route, which he besieged and took after a vigorous resistance, wherein the blood of the garrison was shed like water. Eighteen thousand were slain; three thousand were made prisoners; the city itself was plundered and burnt, and Shamas-Vul pressed forward against the flying enemy. Hereupon the Babylonian monarch, Merodach-belatzu-ikbi, collecting his own troops and those of his allies, the Chaldaeans, the Aramaeans or Syrians, and the Zimri—a vast host—met the invader on the river Daban—perhaps a branch of the Euphrates—and fought a great battle in defence of his city. He was, however, defeated by the Assyrians, with the loss of 5000 killed, 2000 prisoners, 100 chariots, 200 tents, and the royal standard and pavilion. What further military or political results the victory may have had is uncertain. Shamas-Vul’s annals terminate abruptly at this point, and we are left to conjecture the consequences of the campaign and battle. It is possible that they were in the highest degree important; for we find, in the next reign, that Babylonia, which has so long been a separate and independent kingdom, is reduced to the condition of a tributary, while we have no account of its reduction by the succeeding monarch, whose relations with the Babylonians, so far as we know, were of a purely peaceful character.
The stele of Shamas-Vul contains one allusion to a hunting exploit, by which we learn that this monarch inherited his grandfather’s partiality for the chase. He found wild bulls at the foot of Zagros when he was marching to invade Babylonia, and delaying his advance to hunt them, was so fortunate as to kill several.
We know nothing of Shamas-Vul as a builder, and but little of him as a patron of art. He seems to have been content with the palaces of his father and grandfather, and to have been devoid of any wish to outshine them by raising edifices which should throw theirs into the shade. In his stele he shows no originality; for it is the mere reproduction of a monument well known to his predecessors, and of which we have several specimens from the time of Asshur-izir-pal downwards. It consists of a single figure in relief—a figure representing the king dressed in his priestly robes, and wearing the sacred emblems round his neck, standing with the right arm upraised, and enclosed in the customary arched frame. This figure, which is somewhat larger than life, is cut on a single solid block of stone, and then placed on another broader block, which serves as a pedestal. It closely resembles the figure of Asshur-izir-pal, whereof a representation has been already given.
The successor of Shamas-Vul was his son Vul-lush, the third monarch of that name, who ascended the throne B.C. 810, and held it for twenty-nine years, from B.C. 810 to B.C. 781. The memorials which we possess of this king’s reign are but scanty. They consist of one or two slabs found at Nimrod, of a short dedicatory inscription on duplicate statues of the god Nebo brought from the same place, of some brick inscriptions from the mound of Nebbi Vunus, and of the briefest possible notices of the quarters in which he carried on war, contained in one copy of the Canon. As none of these records are in the shape of annals except the last, and as only these and the slab notices are historical, it is impossible to give any detailed account of this long and apparently important reign. We can only say that Vul-lush III., was as warlike a monarch as any of his predecessors, and that his efforts seem to have extended the Assyrian dominion in almost every quarter. He made seven expeditions across the Zagros range into Media, two into the Van country, and three into Syria. He tells us that in one of these expeditions he succeeded in making himself master of the great city of Damascus, whose kings had defied (as we have seen) the repeated attacks of Shalmaneser. He reckons as his tributaries in these parts, besides Damascus, the cities of Tyre and Sidon, and the countries of Khumri or Samaria, of Palestine or Philistia, and of Hudum (Idumaea or Edom). On the north and east he received tokens of submission from the Nairi, the Minni, the Medes, and the Partsu, or Persians. On the south, he exercised a power, which seems like that of a sovereign, in Babylonia; where homage was paid him by the Chaldaeans, and where, in the great cities of Babylon, Borsippa, and Cutha (or Tiggaba), he was allowed’to offer sacrifice to the gods Bel, Nebo, and Nergal. There is, further, some reason to suspect that, before quitting Babylonia, he established one of his sons as viceroy over the country; since he seems to style himself in one place “the king to whose son Asshur, the chief of the gods, has granted the kingdom of Babylon.”