Buried Cities and Bible Countries

by George St. Clair

In addition to these things Mr Layard brought home a large number of alabaster slabs sculptured with battle scenes, lion hunts, and the representation of sacred trees to which winged figures are making mysterious offerings. It was the custom of these Assyrian kings to have the halls and chambers of their palaces lined with plain alabaster slabs, and after each new victory to have the story engraved in a separate room, so that in one chamber we get an account of a battle in Babylonia, in another the story of the siege of Lachish near the Philistine country, and so on.

But the reader—who has no doubt visited the British Museum and looked at all these things—may perhaps ask why we repeat the familiar story. It is in order to give completeness to the picture, and also to induce young visitors to the Museum to look into things as well as look at them. Where did the antiquities come from? How have the inscriptions been deciphered? What do they say? Although many of them were brought to the Museum years ago, the writing was not immediately read; the process of decipherment is still going on, and hardly a year passes without startling discoveries being made in the Museum itself. In the year 1872 Mr George Smith there, taking up a clay tablet that had been neglected, deciphered the inscription, and found it to be the Chaldean story of the Flood. In 1873, going out to Assyria for the purpose, he actually discovered the missing portion of the tablet. Such facts are intensely interesting to the student of the Scriptures, and they attract us to give a portion of our attention to the legends and the literature of the Assyrians and the Chaldeans.

Nineveh, we read, was a city of three days’ journey. It actually extended 20 miles in length by 10 miles in breadth, and was surrounded by a great wall upon which three chariots could be driven abreast.[52] Within this circumference great mounds exist, as those referred to at Nimroud, Khorsabad, and Kouyunjik. Within these mounds have been discovered six palaces and three temples; although only one of these buildings—the palace of Sennacherib, at Kouyunjik—is in a decent state of preservation. The restoration of this structure by Mr J. Ferguson, the architect, prefixed as an illustration to Layard’s “Nineveh,” shows it to have been a very magnificent pile. A second palace found at Kouyunjik belonged to Assurbanipal, the grandson of Sennacherib.

SENNACHERIB BEFORE LACHISH.

Sennacherib himself we are familiar with through the Bible. He was that monarch who so terrified the good king Hezekiah, when he sent him a blasphemous message and threatened to come and destroy Jerusalem. What the Jews of Jerusalem had to fear if he should come they knew too well; and we know now, for Sennacherib had been besieging Lachish (2 Kings xviii.; Isaiah xxxvi.) in Palestine, and we have recovered the record of that siege. It is inscribed on one of the bulls discovered at the largest of the royal buildings, and shows the monarch seated on his throne, while the writing around him says, “I, Sennacherib, the great king, the king of Assyria, seated on the throne of judgment before Lachish, I give permission for the slaughter.” Before him are the miserable captives, having rings fixed into their noses or lips, with bridles attached, so that their heads may be held facing forward while the king puts out their eyes with a pointed instrument. Captives are there having their tongues torn out, others being stripped naked and flayed alive, while human heads are piled up into pyramids.

All these tortures the Jews themselves had to fear if Sennacherib should take Jerusalem. It was doubtless a day of terrible suspense in the Holy City, and a night in which few dared go to sleep. But the early morning brought the tidings that the army of Sennacherib was destroyed, that the angel of the Lord had gone forth and slain in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred four score and five thousand men. We knew the Scripture story of the deliverance, but we can realise it better now when we have the record of the siege of Lachish, and know what fate threatened the Jews of Jerusalem.

Moreover, we have recovered Sennacherib’s own account of this very campaign, in which he tells us that he had taken forty-six fenced cities in Judea, and that he shut up Hezekiah in Jerusalem “like a bird in a cage.” He forbears to tell us why he failed to capture the bird; he glosses over the disaster which befell his army; and he seems even to misrepresent the facts by declaring that, after this, Hezekiah sent him splendid presents to Babylon, for the presents of Hezekiah were sent before this, when Sennacherib was down by Lachish, and sent with the hope of buying him off, which there was no need to do after his retreat.

A great difficulty in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah is also satisfactorily cleared up by these inscriptions. Sennacherib, coming from the Philistine country to Jerusalem, would have to travel from the south-west, whereas, in an earlier chapter, Isaiah had told us that the Assyrian invader came down from the north, that he captured Carchemish in his way, and conquered Damascus, and took Samaria, and then, after crossing the gorge at Michmash, encamped at Nob, outside Jerusalem on the north. Moreover, the prophet intimates, he is likely to take the city; whereas, in the later chapter, he says, “He shall not take it, nor so much as shoot an arrow against it.” It was a great difficulty, and it appeared to be a contradiction; but it is now satisfactorily explained, for we find from the Assyrian inscriptions that there had been an earlier campaign, conducted by Sargon, the father of Sennacherib, ten years before, and that he it was who actually came by the northerly route, and did capture Carchemish, &c., on his way. There can be no doubt that if we read the 10th chapter of Isaiah with Sargon in our minds, and not Sennacherib, all difficulty disappears.

In the 20th chapter of Isaiah there is an incidental mention of this Sargon, “In the year that the Tartan (i.e., the commander-in-chief) came unto Ashdod, when Sargon, the king of Assyria, sent him,” &c.; and for twenty-five centuries this had been the only evidence that any such monarch had lived. Not unnaturally the evidence was thought insufficient—this isolated reference standing like a doubtful fossil in old-world rocks—and many historians and critics wished to identify Sargon with Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, or Esarhaddon. Some said that Isaiah had made a mistake. But Nineveh is disinterred, and it turns out that Sargon was a very great king, and not even the first of that name, for there had been two Sargons, heroes of antiquity, before him. M. Botta finds at Khorsabad the palace of Sargon; and it appears that he was the successor of Shalmaneser, he was the father of Sennacherib, and he reigned for seventeen years. Among the treasures which Mr George Smith recovered from the ruins of Nineveh is the royal seal of Sargon, with his name and date.