Beside these round boats, which correspond closely with the kufas in use upon the Tigris and Euphrates at the present day, the Assyrians employed for the passage of rivers, even in very early times, a vessel of a more scientific construction. The early bas-reliefs exhibit to us, together with the kufas, a second and much larger vessel, manned with a crew of seven men—a helmsman and six rowers, three upon either side and capable of conveying across a broad stream two chariots at a time, or a chariot and two or three passengers. This vessel appears to have been made of planks. It was long, and comparatively narrow. It had a flattish bottom, and was rounded off towards the stem and stern, much as boats are rounded off towards the bows at the present day. It did not possess either mast or sail, but was propelled wholly by oars, which were of the same shape as those used anciently by the rowers in the round boats. In the steersman’s hand is seen an oar of a different kind. It is much longer than the rowing oars, and terminates in an oval blade, which would have given it considerable power in the water. [PLATE CXXXIII., Fig. 4.] The helmsman steered with both hands; and it seems that his oar was lashed to an upright post near the stern of the vessel.
It is evident that before armies could look habitually to being transported across the Mesopotamian streams, wherever they might happen to strike them in their expeditions, by boats of these two kinds, either ferries must have been established at convenient intervals upon them, or traffic along their courses by means of boats must have been pretty regular. An Assyrian army did not carry its boats with it, as a modern army does its pontoons. Boats were commonly found in sufficient numbers on the streams themselves when an army needed them, and were impressed, or hired, to convey the troops across. And thus we see that the actual navigation of the streams had another object besides the military one of transport from bank to bank. Rivers are Nature’s roads; and we may be sure that the country had not been long settled before a water communication began to be established between towns upon the river-courses, and commodities began to be transported by means of them. The very position of the chief towns upon time banks of the streams was probably connected with this sort of transport, the rivers furnishing the means by which large quantities of building material could be conveniently concentrated at a given spot, and by which supplies could afterwards be regularly received from a distance. We see in the Assyrian sculptures the conveyance of stones, planks, etc. along the rivers, as well as the passage of chariots, horses, and persons across them. Rafts and round boats were most commonly used for this purpose. When a mass of unusual size, as a huge paving-stone, or a colossal bull or lion, had to be moved, a long, flat-bottomed boat was employed, which the mass sometimes more than covered. In this case, as there was no room for rower’s, trackers were engaged, who dragged the vessel along by means of ropes, which were fastened either to the boat itself or to its burden. [PLATE CXXXIII., Fig. 2.]
During the later period of the monarchy various improvements took place in Assyrian boat-building. The Phoenician and Cyprian expeditions of the later kings made the Assyrians well acquainted with the ships of first-rate nautical nations; and they seem to have immediately profited by this acquaintance, in order to improve the appearance and the quality of their own river boats. The clumsy and inelegant long-boat of the earlier times, as replaced, even for ordinary traffic, by a light and graceful fabric, which was evidently a copy from Phoenician models. Modifications, which would seem trifling if described, changed the whole character of the vessels, in which light and graceful curves took the place of straight lines and angles only just rounded off. The stem and stern were raised high above the body of the boat, and were shaped like fishes’ tails or carved into the heads of animals. [PLATE CXXXIII., Fig. 2.] Oars, shaped nearly like modern ones, came into vogue, and the rowers were placed so as all to look one way, and to pull instead of pushing with their oars. Finally, the principle of the bireme was adopted, and river-galleys were constructed of such a size that they had to be manned by thirty rowers, who sat in two tiers one above the other at the sides of the galley, while the centre part, which seems to have been decked, was occupied by eight or ten other persons.
In galleys of this kind the naval architecture of the Assyrians seems to have culminated. They never, so far as appears, adopted for their boats the inventions with which their intercourse with Phoenicia had rendered them perfectly familiar, of masts, and sails. This is probably to be explained from the extreme rapidity of the Mesopotamian rivers, on which sailing boats are still uncommon. The unfailing strength of rowers was needed in order to meet and stem the force of the currents; and this strength being provided in abundance, it was not thought necessary to husband it or eke it out by the addition of a second motive power. Again, the boats, being intended only for peaceful purposes, were unprovided with beaks, another invention well known to the Assyrians, and frequently introduced into their sculptures in the representations of Phoenician vessels. [PLATE CXXXIII., Fig. 5.]
In the Assyrian biremes the oars of the lower tier were worked through holes in the vessel’s sides. This arrangement would of course at once supply a fulcrum and keep the oars in their places. But it is not so easy to see how the oar of a common row-boat, or the uppermost tier of a bireme, obtained their purchase on the vessel, and were prevented from slipping along its side. Assyrian vessels had no rowlocks, and in general the oars are represented as simply rested without any support on the upper edge of the bulwark. But this can scarcely have been the real practice; and one or two representations, where a support is provided, may be fairly regarded as showing what the practice actually was. In the figure of a kufa, or round boat, already given, it will be seen that one oar is worked by means of a thong, like the [—] or [—] of the Greeks, which is attached to a ring in the bulwark. In another bas-relief, several of the oars of similar boats are represented as kept in place by means of two pegs fixed into the top of the bulwark and inclined at an angle to one another. [PLATE CXXXIII., Fig. 6.] Probably one or other of these two methods of steadying the oar was in reality adopted in every instance.
With regard to Assyrian commerce, it must at the outset be remarked that direct notices in ancient writers of any real authority are scanty in the extreme. The prophet Nahum says indeed, in a broad and general way, of Nineveh, “Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven;” and Ezekiel tells us, more particularly, that Assyrian merchants, along with others, traded with Tyre “in blue clothes, and broidered work, and in chests of rich apparel.” But, except these two, there seem to be no notices of Assyrian trade in any contemporary or quasi-contemporary author. Herodotus, writing nearly two hundred years after the empire had come to an end, mentions casually that “Assyrian wares” had in very ancient times been conveyed by the Phoenicians to Greece, and there sold to the inhabitants. He speaks also of a river traffic in his own day between Armenia and Babylon along the course of the Euphrates, a fact which indirectly throws light upon the habits of earlier ages. Diodorus, following Ctesias, declares that a number of cities were established from very ancient times on the banks of both the Tigris and the Euphrates, to serve as marts of trade to the merchants who imported into Assyria the commodities of Media and Paraetacene. Among the most important of these marts, as we learn from Strabo, were Tiphsach or Thapsacus on the Euphrates, and Opis upon the Tigris.
It is from notices thus scanty, partial, and incidental, eked out by probability, and further helped by a certain number of important facts with respect to the commodities actually used in the country, whereof evidence has been furnished to us by the recent discoveries, that we have to form our estimate of the ancient commerce of the Assyrians. The Inscriptions throw little or no light upon the subject. They record the march of armies against foreign enemies, and their triumphant return laden with plunder and tribute, sometimes showing incidentally what products of a country were most in request among the Assyrians; but they contain no accounts of the journeys of merchants, or of the commodities which entered or quitted the country in the common course of trade.
The favorable situation of Assyria for trade has often attracted remark. Lying on the middle courses of two great navigable streams, it was readily approached by water both from the north-west and from the south-east. The communication between the Mediterranean and the Southern or Indian Ocean naturally—almost necessarily—followed this route. If Europe wanted the wares and products of India, or if India required the commodities of Europe, by far the shortest and easiest course was the line from the eastern Mediterranean across Northern Syria, and thence by one or other of the two great streams to the innermost recess of the Persian Gulf. The route by the Nile, the canal of Neco, and the Red Sea, was decidedly inferior, more especially on account of the dangerous navigation of that sea, but also because it was circuitous, and involved a voyage in the open ocean of at least twice the length of the other.
Again, Assyria lay almost necessarily on the line of land communication between the north-east and the south-west. The lofty Armenian mountain-chains—Niphates and the other parallel ranges—towards the north, and the great Arabian Desert towards the south, offered difficulties to companies of land-traders which they were unwilling to face, and naturally led them to select routes intermediate between these two obstacles, which could not fail to pass through some part or other of the Mesopotamian region.
The established lines of land trade between Assyria and her neighbors were probably very numerous, but the most important must have been some five or six. One almost certainly led from the Urumiyeh basin over the Keli-shin pass (lat. 37°, long. (45° nearly)), descending on Rowandiz, and thence following the course of the Greater Zab to Herir, whence it crossed the plain to Nineveh. At the summit of the Kell-shin pass is a pillar of dark blue stone, six feet in height, two in breadth, and one in depth, let into a basement block of the same material, and covered with a cuneiform inscription in the Scythic character. At a short distance to the westward on the same route is another similar pillar. The date of the inscriptions falls within the most flourishing time of the Assyrian empire, and their erection is a strong argument in favor of the use of this route (which is one of the very few possible modes of crossing the Zagros range) in the time when that empire was in full vigor.