If Western Asia had ever, in the remote ages before the Assyrian monarchy was established, been subject to invasions of this character—which is not improbable—at any rate so long a period had elapsed since the latest of them, that in the reigns of Asshur-pani-pal and Cyaxares they were wholly forgotten and the South reposed in happy unconsciousness of a danger which might at any time have burst upon it, had the Providence which governs the world so willed. The Asiatic steppes had long teemed with a nomadic population, of a war-like temper, and but slightly attached to its homes, which ignorance of its own strength and of the weakness and wealth of its neighbors had alone prevented from troubling the great empires of the South. Geographic difficulties had at once prolonged the period of Ignorance, and acted as obstructions, if ever the idea arose of pushing exploring parties into the southern regions; the Caucasus, the Caspian, the sandy deserts of Khiva and Kharesm, and the great central Asiatic mountain-chains, forming barriers which naturally restrained the northern hordes from progressing in this direction. But a time had now arrived when these causes were no longer to operate; the line of demarcation which had so long separated North and South was to be crossed; the flood-gates were to be opened, and the stream of northern emigration was to pour itself in a resistless torrent over the fair and fertile regions from which it had hitherto been barred out. Perhaps population had increased beyond all former precedent; perhaps a spirit of enterprise had arisen; possibly some slight accident—the exploration of a hunter hard pressed for food, the chattering tongue of a merchant, the invitation of a traitor—may have dispelled the ignorance of earlier times, and brought to the knowledge of the hardy North the fact that beyond the mountains and the seas, which they had always regarded as the extreme limit of the world, there lay a rich prey inviting the coming of the spoiler.
The condition of the northern barbarians, less than two hundred years after this time, has been graphically portrayed by two of the most observant of the Greeks, who themselves visited the Steppe country to learn the character and customs of the people. Where civilization is unknown, changes are so slow and slight, that we may reasonably regard the descriptions of Herodotus and Hippocrates, though drawn in the fifth century before our era, as applying, in all their main points, to the same race two hundred years earlier. These writers describe the Scythians as a people coarse and gross in their habits, with large fleshy bodies, loose joints, soft swollen bellies, and scanty hair. They never washed themselves; their nearest approach to ablution was a vapor-bath, or the application of a paste to their bodies which left them glossy on its removal. They lived either in wagons, or in felt tents of a simple and rude construction; and subsisted on mare’s milk and cheese, to which the boiled flesh of horses and cattle was added, as a rare delicacy, occasionally. In war their customs were very barbarous. The Scythian who slew an enemy in battle immediately proceeded to drink his blood. He then cut off the head, which he exhibited to his king in order to obtain his share of the spoil; after which he stripped the scalp from the skull and hung it on his bridle-rein as a trophy. Sometimes he flayed his dead enemy’s right arm and hand, and used the skin as a covering for his quiver. The upper portion of the skull he commonly made into a drinking-cup. The greater part of each day he spent on horseback, in attendance on the huge herds of cattle which he pastured. His favorite weapon was the bow, which he used as he rode, shooting his arrows with great precision. He generally carried, besides his bow and arrows, a short spear or javelin, and sometimes bore also a short sword or a battleaxe. [PLATE CXLVI., Fig. 3.]
The nation of the Scythians comprised within it a number of distinct tribes. At the head of all was a royal tribe, corresponding to the “Golden Horde” of the Mongols, which was braver and more numerous than any other, and regarded all the remaining tribes in the light of slaves. To this belonged the families of the kings, who ruled by hereditary right, and seem to have exercised a very considerable authority. We often hear of several kings as bearing rule at the same time; but there is generally some indication of disparity, from which we gather that—in times of danger at any rate—the supreme power was really always lodged in the hands of a single man.
The religion of the Scythians was remarkable, and partook of the barbarity which characterized most of their customs. They worshipped the Sun and Moon, Fire, Air, Earth, Water, and a god whom Herodotus calls Hercules. But their principal religious observance was the worship of the naked sword. The country was parcelled out into districts, and in every district was a huge pile of brushwood, serving as a temple to the neighborhood, at the top of which was planted an antique sword or scimitar. On a stated day in each year solemn sacrifices, human and animal, were offered at these shrines; and the warm blood of the victims was carried up from below and poured upon the weapon. The human victims—prisoners taken in war—were hewn to pieces at the foot of the mound, and their limbs wildly tossed on high by the votaries, who then retired, leaving the bloody fragments where they chanced to fall. The Scythians seem to have had no priest caste; but they believed in divination; and the diviners formed a distinct class which possessed important powers. They were sent for whenever the king was ill, to declare the cause of his illness, which they usually attributed to the fact that an individual, whom they named, had sworn falsely by the Royal Hearth. Those accused in this way, if found guilty by several bodies of diviners, were beheaded for the offence, and their original accusers received their property. It must have been important to keep on good terms with persons who wielded such a power as this.
Such were the most striking customs of the Scythian people, or at any rate of the Scythians of Herodotus, who were the dominant race over a large portion of the Steppe country. Coarse and repulsive in their appearance, fierce in their tempers, savage in their habits, not individually very brave, but powerful by their numbers, and by a mode of warfare which was difficult to meet, and in which long use had given them great expertness, they were an enemy who might well strike alarm even into a nation so strong and warlike as the Medes. Pouring through the passes of the Caucasus—whence coming or what intending none knew—horde after horde of Scythians blackened the rich plains of the South. On they came, as before observed, like a flight of locusts, countless, irresistible—swarming into Iberia and Upper Media—finding the land before them a garden, and leaving it behind them a howling wilderness. Neither age nor sex would be spared. The inhabitants of the open country and of the villages, if they did not make their escape to high mountain tops or other strongholds, would be ruthlessly massacred by the invaders, or at best, forced to become their slaves. The crops would be consumed, the herds swept off or destroyed, the villages and homesteads burnt, the whole country made a scene of desolation. Their ravages would resemble those of the Huns when they poured into Italy, or of the Bulgarians when they overran the fairest provinces of the Byzantine Empire. In most instances the strongly fortified towns would resist them, unless they had patience to sit down before their walls and by a prolonged blockade to starve them into submission. Sometimes, before things reached this point, they might consent to receive a tribute and to retire. At other times, convinced that by perseverance they would reap a rich reward, they may have remained till the besieged city fell, when there must have ensued an indescribable scene of havoc, rapine, and bloodshed. According to the broad expression of Herodotus, the Scythians were masters of the whole of Western Asia from the Caucasus to the borders of Egypt for the space of twenty-eight years. This statement is doubtless an exaggeration; but still it would seem to be certain that the great invasion of which he speaks was not confined to Media, but extended to the adjacent countries of Armenia and Assyria, whence it spread to Syria and Palestine. The hordes probably swarmed down from Media through the Zagros passes into the richest portion of Assyria, the flat country between the mountains and the Tigris. Many of the old cities, rich with the accumulated stores of ages, were besieged, and perhaps taken, and their palaces wantonly burnt, by the barbarous invaders. The tide then swept on. Wandering from district to district, plundering everywhere, settling nowhere, the clouds of horse passed over Mesopotamia, the force of the invasion becoming weaker as it spread itself, until in Syria it reached its term through the policy of the Egyptian king, Psammetichus. This monarch, who was engaged in the siege of Ashdod, no sooner heard of the approach of a great Scythian host, which threatened to overrun Egypt, and had advanced as far as Ascalon, than he sent ambassadors to their leader and prevailed on him by rich gifts to abstain from his enterprise. From this time the power of the invaders seems to have declined. Their strength could not but suffer by the long series of battles, sieges, and skirmishes in which they were engaged year after year against enemies in nowise contemptible; it would likewise deteriorate through their excesses; and it may even have received some injury from intestine quarrels. After awhile, the nations whom they had overrun, whose armies they had defeated, and whose cities they had given to the flames, began to recover themselves. Cyaxares, it is probable, commenced an aggressive war against such of the invaders as had remained within the limits of his dominions, and soon drove them beyond his borders. Other kings may have followed his example. In a little while long, probably, before the twenty-eight years of Herodotus had expired—the Scythian power was completely broken. Many bands may have returned across the Caucasus into the Steppe country. Others submitted, and took service under the native rulers of Asia. Great numbers were slain and except in a province of Armenia which henceforward became known as Sacasene, and perhaps in one Syrian town, which we find called Scythopolis, the invaders left no trace of their brief but terrible inroad.
If we have been right in supposing that the Scythian attack fell with as much severity on the Assyrians as on any other Asiatic people, we can scarcely be in error if we ascribe to this cause the rapid and sudden decline of the empire at this period. The country had been ravaged and depopulated, the provinces had been plundered, many of the great towns had been taken and sacked, the palaces of the old kings had been burnt, and all the gold and silver that was not hid away had been carried off. Assyria, when the Scythians quitted her, was but the shadow of her former self. Weak and exhausted, she seemed to invite a permanent conqueror. If her limits had not much shrunk, if the provinces still acknowledged her authority, it was from habit rather than from fear, or because they too had suffered greatly from the northern barbarians. We find Babylon subject to Assyria to the very last; and we seem to see that Judaea passed from the rule of the Assyrians under that of the Babylonians, without any interval of independence or any need of re-conquest. But if these two powers at the south-eastern and the south-western extremities of the empire continued faithful, the less distant nations could scarcely have thrown off the yoke.
Asshur-bani-pal, then, on the withdrawal of the barbarians, had still an empire to rule, and he may be supposed to have commenced some attempts at re-organizing and re-invigorating the governmental system to which the domination of the Scythe must have given a rude shock. But he had not time to effect much. In B.C. 626 he died, after a reign of forty-two years, and was succeeded by his son, Asshur-emid-ilin, whom the Greeks called Saracus. Of this prince we possess but few native records; and, unless it should be thought that the picture which Ctesias gave of the character and conduct of his last Assyrian king deserves to be regarded as authentic history, and to be attached to this monarch, we must confess to an almost equal dearth of classical notices of his life and actions. Scarcely anything has come down to us from his time but a few legends on bricks, from which it appears that he was the builder of the south-east edifice at Nimrud, a construction presenting some remarkable but no very interesting features. The classical notices, apart from the tales which Ctesias originated, are limited to a few sentences in Abydenus, and a word or two in Polyhistor. Thus nearly the same obscurity which enfolds the earlier portion of the history gathers about the monarch in whose person the empire terminated; and instead of the ample details which have crowded upon us now for many consecutive reigns, we shall be reduced to a meagre outline, partly resting upon conjecture, in our portraiture of this last king.
Saracus, as the monarch may be termed after Abydenus, ascended the throne at a most difficult and dangerous crisis in his country’s history. Assyria was exhausted; and perhaps half depopulated by the Scythic ravages. The bands which united the provinces to the sovereign state, though not broken, had been weakened, and rebellion threatened to break out in various quarters. Ruin had overtaken many of the provincial towns; and it would require a vast outlay to restore their public buildings. But the treasury was wellnigh empty, and did not allow the new monarch to adopt in his buildings the grand and magnificent style of former kings. Still Saracus attempted something. At Calah he began the construction of a building which apparently was intended for a palace, but which contrasts most painfully with the palatial erections of former kings. The waning glory of the monarchy was made patent both to the nation and to strangers by an edifice where coarse slabs of common limestone, unsculptured and uninscribed, replaced the alabaster bas-reliefs of former times; and where a simple plaster above the slabs was the substitute for the richly-patterned enamelled bricks of Sargon, Sennacherib, and Asshur-bani-pal. A set of small chambers, of which no one exceeded forty-five feet in length and twenty-five feet in its greatest breadth, sufficed for the last Assyrian king, whose shrunken Court could no longer have filled the vast halls of his ancestors. The Nimrud palace of Saracus seems to have covered less than one-half of the space occupied by any former palace upon the mound; it had no grand facade, no magnificent gateway; the rooms, curiously misshapen, as if taste had declined with power and wealth, were mostly small and inconvenient, running in suites which opened into one another without any approaches from courts or passages, roughly paved with limestone flags, and composed of sun-dried bricks faced with limestone and plaster. That Saracus should have been reduced even to contemplate residing in this poor and mean dwelling is the strongest possible proof of Assyria’s decline and decay at a period preceding the great war which led to her destruction.
It is possible that this edifice may not have been completed at the time of Saracus’s death, and in that case we may suppose that its extreme rudeness would have received certain embellishments had he lived to finish the structure. While it was being erected, he must have resided elsewhere. Apparently, he held his court at Nineveh during this period; and was certainly there that he made his last arrangements for defence, and his final stand against the enemy, who took advantage of his weak condition to press forward the conquest of the empire.
The Medes, in their strong upland country, abounding in rocky hills, and running up in places into mountain-chains, had probably suffered much less from the ravages of the Scyths than the Assyrians in their comparatively defenceless plains. Of all the nations exposed to the scourge of the invasion they were evidently the first to recover themselves, partly from the local causes here noticed, partly perhaps from their inherent vigor and strength. If Herodotus’s date for the original inroad of the Scythians is correct, not many years can have elapsed before the tide of war turned, and the Medes began to make head against their assailants, recovering possession of most parts of their country, and expelling or overpowering the hordes at whose insolent domination they had chafed from the first hour of the invasion. It was probably as early as B.C. 627, five years after the Scyths crossed the Caucasus, according to Herodotus, that Cyaxares, having sufficiently re-established his power in Media, began once more to aspire after foreign conquests. Casting his eyes around upon the neighboring countries, he became aware of the exhaustion of Assyria, and perceived that she was not likely to offer an effectual resistance to a sudden and vigorous attack. He therefore collected a large army and invaded Assyria from the east, while it would seem that the Susianians, with whom he had perhaps made an alliance, attacked her from the south.