CHAPTER VIII—THE ASSYRIAN AND NEO-BABYLONIAN EMPIRES IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCH
The early history of Assyria has long been a subject on which historians were obliged to trust largely to conjecture, in their attempts to reconstruct the stages by which its early rulers obtained their independence and laid the foundations of the mighty empire over which their successors ruled. That the land was colonized from Babylonia and was at first ruled as a dependency of the southern kingdom have long been regarded as established facts, but until recently little was known of its early rulers and governors, and still less of the condition of the country and its capital during the early periods of their existence. Since the excavations carried out by the British Museum at Kala Sherghat, on the western bank of the Tigris, it has been known that the mounds at that spot mark the site of the city of Ashur, the first capital of the Assyrians, and the monuments and records recovered during those excavations have hitherto formed our principal source of information for the early history of the country.[[1]] Some of the oldest records found in the course of these excavations were short votive texts inscribed by rulers who bore the title of ishshakku, corresponding to the Sumerian and early Babylonian title of patesi, and with some such meaning as “viceroy.” It was rightly conjectured from the title which they bore that these early rulers owed allegiance to the kings of Babylon and were their nominees, or at any rate their tributaries. The names of a few of these early viceroys were recovered from their votive inscriptions and from notices in later historical texts, but it was obvious that our knowledge of early Assyrian history would remain very fragmentary until systematic excavations in Assyria were resumed. Three years ago (1902) the British Museum resumed excavations at Kuyunjik, the site of Nineveh. The work was begun and carried out under the direction of Mr. L. W. King, but since last summer has been continued by Mr. R. C. Thompson. Last year, too, excavations were reopened at Sherghat by the Deutsch-Orient Ge-sellschaft, at first under the direction of Dr. Koldewey, and afterwards under that of Dr. Andrae, by whom they are at present being carried on. This renewed activity on the sites of the ancient cities of Assyria is already producing results of considerable interest, and the veil which has so long concealed the earlier periods in the history of that country is being lifted.
[1] For the texts and translations of these documents, see Budge and King, Annals of the Kings of Assyria, pp. iff.
Shortly before these excavations in Assyria were set on foot an indication was obtained from an early Babylonian text that the history of Assyria as a dependent state or province of Babylon must be pushed back to a far more remote period than had hitherto been supposed. In one of Hammurabi’s letters to Sin-idinnam, governor of the city of Larsam, to which reference has already been made, directions are given for the despatch to the king of “two hundred and forty men of ‘the King’s Company’ under the command of Nannar-iddina... who have left the country of Ashur and the district of Shitullum.” From this most interesting reference it followed that the country to the north of Babylonia was known as Assyria at the time of the kings of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and the fact that Babylonian troops were stationed there by Hammurabi proved that the country formed an integral part of the Babylonian empire.
These conclusions were soon after strikingly confirmed by two passages in the introductory sections of Hammurabi’s code of laws which was discovered at Susa. Here Hammurabi records that he “restored his (i.e. the god Ashur’s) protecting image unto the city of Ashur,” and a few lines farther on he describes himself as the king “who hath made the names of Ishtar glorious in the city of Nineveh in the temple of E-mish-mish.” That Ashur should be referred to at this period is what we might expect, inasmuch as it was known to have been the earliest capital of Assyria; more striking is the reference to Nineveh, proving as it does that it was a flourishing city in Hammurabi’s time and that the temple of Ishtar there had already been long established. It is true that Gudea, the Sumerian patesi of Shirpurla, records that he rebuilt the temple of the goddess Ninni (Ishtar) at a place called Nina. Now Nina may very probably be identified with Nineveh, but many writers have taken it to be a place in Southern Babylonia and possibly a district of Shirpurla itself. No such uncertainty attaches to Hammurabi’s reference to Nineveh, which is undoubtedly the Assyrian city of that name. Although no account has yet been published of the recent excavations carried out at Nineveh by the British Museum, they fully corroborate the inference drawn with regard to the great age of the city. The series of trenches which were cut deep into the lower strata of Kuyunjik revealed numerous traces of very early habitations on the mound.
Neither in Hammurabi’s letters, nor upon the stele inscribed with his code of laws, is any reference made to the contemporary governor or ruler of Assyria, but on a contract tablet preserved in the Pennsylvania Museum a name has been recovered which will probably be identified with that of the ruler of Assyria in Hammurabi’s reign. In legal and commercial documents of the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon the contracting parties frequently swore by the names of two gods (usually Shamash and Marduk) and also that of the reigning king. Now it has been found by Dr. Banke that on this document in the Pennsylvania Museum the contracting parties swear by the name of Hammurabi and also by that of Shamshi-Adad. As only gods and kings are mentioned in the oath formulas of this period, it follows that Shamshi-Adad was a king, or at any rate a patesi or ishshakku. Now from its form the name Shamshi-Adad must be that of an Assyrian, not that of a Babylonian, and, since he is associated in the oath formula with Hammurabi, it is legitimate to conclude that he governed Assyria in the time of Hammurabi as a dependency of Babylon. An early Assyrian ishshakku of this name, who was the son of Ishme-Dagan, is mentioned by Tiglath-Pileser I, but he cannot be identified with the ruler of the time of Hammurabi, since, according to Tiglath-Pileser, he ruled too late, about 1800 B.C. A brick-inscription of another Shamshi-Adad, however, the son of Igur-kapkapu, is preserved in the British Museum, and it is probable that we may identify him with Hammurabi’s Assyrian viceroy. Erishum and his son Ikunum, whose inscriptions are also preserved in the British Museum, should certainly be assigned to an early period of Assyrian history.
The recent excavations at Sherghat are already yielding the names of other early Assyrian viceroys, and, although the texts of the inscriptions in which their names occur have not yet been published, we may briefly enumerate the more important of the discoveries that have been made. Last year a small cone or cylinder was found which, though it bears only a few lines of inscription, restores the names of no less than seven early Assyrian viceroys whose existence was not previously known. The cone was inscribed by Ashir-rîm-nishêshu, who gives his own genealogy and records the restoration of the wall of the city of Ashur, which he states had been rebuilt by certain of his predecessors on the throne. The principal portion of the inscription reads as follows: “Ashir-rîm-nishêshu, the viceroy of the god Ashir, the son of Ashir-nirari, the viceroy of the god Ashir, the son of Ashir-rabi, the viceroy. The city wall which Kikia, Ikunum, Shar-kenkate-Ashir, and Ashir-nirari, the son of Ishme-Dagan, my forefathers, had built, was fallen, and for the preservation of my life... I rebuilt it.” Perhaps no inscription has yet been recovered in either Assyria or Babylonia which contained so much new information packed into so small a space. Of the names of the early viceroys mentioned in it only one was previously known, i.e. the name of Ikunum, the son of Erishum, is found in a late copy of a votive text preserved in the British Museum. Thus from these few lines the names of three rulers in direct succession have been recovered, viz., Ashir-rabi, Ashir-nirari, and Ashur-rîm-nishêshu, and also those of four earlier rulers, viz., Kikia, Shar-kenkate-Ashir, Ishme-Dagan, and his son Ashir-nirari. Another interesting point about the inscription is the spelling of the name of the national god of the Assyrians. In the later periods it is always written Ashur, but at this early time we see that the second vowel is changed and that at first the name was written Ashir, a form that was already known from the Cappadocian cuneiform inscriptions. The form Ashir is a good participial construction and signifies “the Beneficent,” “the Merciful One.”
Another interesting find, which was also made last year, consists of four stone tablets, each engraved with the same building-inscription of Shalmaneser I, a king who reigned over Assyria about 1300 B.C. In recording his rebuilding of E-kharsag-kurkura, the temple of the god Ashur in the city of Ashur, he gives a brief summary of the temple’s history with details as to the length of time which elapsed between the different periods during which it had been previously restored. The temple was burned in Shalmaneser’s time, and, when recording this fact and the putting out of the fire, he summarizes the temple’s history in a long parenthesis, as will be seen from the following translation of the extract: “When E-kharsag-kurkura, the temple of Ashur, my lord, which Ushpia (variant Aushpia), the priest of Ashur, my forefather, had built aforetime,—and it fell into decay and Erishu, my forefather, the priest of Ashur, rebuilt it; 159 years passed by after the reign of Erishu, and that temple fell into decay, and Shamshi-Adad, the priest of Ashur, rebuilt it; (during) 580 years that temple which Shamshi-Adad, the priest of Ashur, had built, grew hoary and old—(when) fire broke out in the midst thereof..., at that time I drenched that temple (with water) in (all) its circuit.”