The general aspect of the ruins of Nimroud is not unlike that of Nineveh. The ruins constitute a platform in the form of a parallelogram about five hundred feet in width and a thousand in length. At the northwest corner of this elevation is a conical tower whose height, according to recent measurements, is one hundred and ten feet above the surrounding plain. This is all that now remains of the imposing zikurat, or stage tower, that once dominated the great capital of Salmanassar.
In order to get a good view of the ruins, as well as of the surrounding country, we lost no time in reaching the summit of the tower. From its crest we had a view as interesting as it was replete with historic reminiscences. Our vision ranged over a region in which were enacted some of the most memorable events of Mesopotamia and Persia. Down the Tigris passed the famous fleets of Trajan and Sennacherib, and along its bank marched the vast armies of Esarhaddon, Cyaxares, and Nabopolassar. Within gunshot were the emerald waters of the Great Zab rushing to join the tawny current of the Tigris. On its banks the Persian satrap, Tissaphernes, in violation of a solemn compact, treacherously seized Clearchus and several of his generals and sent them to Artaxerxes, who ordered them to be beheaded. It was here that Xenophon assumed command of the memorable expedition of the Ten Thousand—an expedition that the distinguished English geographer, Rennell, has declared was “the most splendid of all the military events that have been recorded in ancient history.” Eastward was the famous battlefield of Arbela, where “the greatest battle in the record of the ancient world had been fought; where the issue of centuries had struck their balance in a day; where the channel of history for a thousand years had been opened with a flying wedge”;[382] where Alexander the Great had completed the work which was begun by his countrymen under Xenophon when they made the discovery of the innate weakness of the Persian colossus and thus prepared the public opinion of Greece for the great campaign against the ancient Persian Empire which once menaced all the nations of the earth with subjection but which “was irrevocably crushed when Alexander had won his crowning victory of Arbela.”[383]
After exploring the ruins of Nimroud, we returned to our kelek which, with much creaking and quivering, was soon wrestling with the boiling waters of the Zikr ul Aawaze. This is a dam or dyke built across the river and during low water rises a foot or more above the surface. It produces quite a cataract but our kelekgi conducted our frail craft over its seething waters without any difficulty. Like other remarkable works in this neighborhood this dam—some say it was a bridge—is attributed by the inhabitants to Nimrod. The noted French traveler, Tavernier, tells us that when he passed down the Tigris, the Zikr ul Aawaze formed a waterfall twenty-six feet high. He assures us, however, that his kelek went over this waterfall without mishap.[384] One may be permitted to suspect that in this statement he was striving, in recounting travelers’ tales, to emulate his mythical predecessor, Sir John Mandeville.
About fifty miles to the south of Nimroud, on the right bank of the Tigris, is the great mound of Kalah Sherghat over which, until a few years ago, hung as deep a mystery as that which so long enveloped the imposing tells of Nimroud and Khorsabad. To the Turks, in their ignorance, it was but a fort made of clay—Toprak Kale. Even so late as 1900 a distinguished German traveler was unaware that the wonderful tell of Kalah Sherghat, which so excited his admiration, covered the remains of one of the most noted cities of Assyria.[385]
It was indeed only after Dr. Robert Koldewey and Dr. Walter Andræ, the eminent explorers of the German Orient Society, had, in 1903, begun their exhaustive excavations at Kalah Sherghat that it was demonstrated that its imposing ruins were none other than those of Assur, the first capital of ancient Assyria. It was here that Asur, the national god of Assyria, had his favorite sanctuary—a god that was not only supreme over all the gods of the Babylonian pantheon but was also their lord and master, “the King above all gods.”[386] King Sennacherib addresses him as
King of the totality of the gods, his own creation, father of the gods.
Whose power is unfolded in the deep, king of heaven and earth, lord of all gods.[387]
As the national deity of the greatest military power of the ancient world, Asur was preëminently a martial god. For, as is evinced by cuneiform inscriptions, it is “by the might of Asur” that the nation’s enemies are vanquished, that towns and cities are razed, that other lands are brought under the dominion of the invincible Kings of Assyria.
Although I had read with exceeding interest, shortly after their publication, Andræ’s superbly illustrated reports of his careful and methodical excavations at Kalah Sherghat, I was not fully prepared for the wonderful ruins which greeted my vision when I first surveyed them from one of the imposing zigurats of the great temple of Anu and Adad, which was rebuilt by Salmanassar III, nearly nine centuries before our era.[388] As reconstructed by Andræ this temple was, in its day, one of the architectural wonders of western Asia. But the city of Assur was more than a thousand years old when Salmanassar placed in the great temple enclosure a record of his work on it and an account of its completion. For fully twenty centuries, B. C., Assyria, from Assur as a center, had begun to extend her dominions northwards and to lay the foundations of that mighty empire which was for so many generations the admiration and the dread of the ancient world.
Besides uncovering the temples and palaces of Assur, Dr. Andræ and his colleagues unearthed a part of its residential quarter. In so doing they made discoveries of the greatest interest regarding the domestic life of its inhabitants and their care for the sanitary condition of their homes. Every house, however small, had suitable sewer connections, while all the larger homes had rooms for domestics and dependents.