After thus suppressing the rising of the Babylonians, Assurbanipal directed the whole of his forces to the subjugation of Elam. The domestic condition of Elam seemed to promise success to a vigorous attack. Indabigas experienced the fate which he had prepared for Tammaritu; he was driven from the throne by a man of the name of Ummanaldas, the son of Attamitu.[381] This rebel did not find universal recognition; Pache maintained a part of the land against him. Under such circumstances the victory could not be very difficult. Assurbanipal sent troops under Balibni against the land of Bit Yakin, which was governed by Nabubelzikri, a grandson of Merodach Baladan, as a tributary prince (perhaps the son of Nahid-Merodach, p. 147), who appears to have taken part in the rebellion of Samul-sum-ukin, and then to have escaped to Elam. Assurbanipal had already demanded his surrender from Indabigas, and he repeated the demand after the rise of Ummanaldas, who also refused it. The Assyrian army led by Assurbanipal to his seventh war crossed the borders of Elam. Ummanaldas abandoned his metropolis, Madaktu, and fled into the mountains. Assurbanipal placed Tammaritu on the throne at Susa, but soon returned, either from fear of his disobedience or because he had heard of it, to Elam, dethroned Tammaritu, and carried him prisoner to Assyria; marched through the whole land, devastating it, and took 30 cities, which are enumerated in the inscription. Nevertheless, after his departure, Ummanaldas again obtained power over Elam; Assurbanipal was compelled to march against the country once more. This was his eighth war. He obtained the most complete success; Madaktu and Susa fell into his hand. "I opened their treasure-houses," says Assurbanipal; "I took the treasures, which the earlier kings of Elam and those of these days had collected. No enemy beside myself had laid hands upon them. The silver and gold which the earlier and later kings of Sumir and Accad, and of Kardunias, had sent to Elam, which earlier kings and Samul-sum-ukin had paid for the help of Elam; robes, arms, chariots, I carried to Assyria. I broke down the tower of Susa; Susinak, the god of their oracle, whose image no man had seen, and the remaining gods (eighteen gods and goddesses are mentioned) with their treasures, priests, and servants, I carried to Assyria. Thirty-two images of the kings in silver, gold, brass, and stone, I carried away from Susa, Madaktu, and Huradi, and in addition an image of Humbanigas (p. 99), of Istar-Nandi, of Halludus (p. 144), and the younger Tammaritu. I broke the winged lions and bulls, which guarded the temples, the winged bulls before the temple gates of Elam, and sent their gods and goddesses into captivity: I destroyed the palaces of their kings, the earlier and the later, the opponents of my father; the rulers and inhabitants of their cities, the people great and small, I carried away with their flocks; their warriors I divided throughout the land of my kingdom (645 B.C.)[382]"

In spite of this savage destruction, Ummanaldas could return from the mountains, and again take possession of the ruins of Madaktu. He was now, as it appears, prepared to accede to Assurbanipal's renewed request to give up the grandson of Merodach Baladan. The latter anticipated his surrender, inasmuch as he and his armour-bearer mutually slew each other. Ummanaldas gave up the corpse, and Assurbanipal had the head cut off. Thus died the last scion of Merodach Baladan of whom we hear: so ended the race which for 80 years, with incredible endurance and stubbornness, had asserted the independence of South Chaldæa and Babylonia against Assyria. After this Ummanaldas had to give way to Pache, who received a part of Elam. But Pache could not stand before the Assyrian army, or did not venture to resist it. He was taken prisoner; Ummanaldas also was captured, "like a raven," in the mountains, into which he had fled for refuge. "Tammaritu, Pache, and Ummanaldas, who ruled over Elam in succession, I brought them beneath my yoke, with Uaiti, the king of the Arabs, whom I brought out of his land to Assyria. I had them bound to the yoke of my war-chariot; they drew it to the gate of the temple of Bilit, the famed wife of Asshur, the mother of the great gods."[383]

Ancient Elam, the oldest power in the region of the Euphrates and Tigris, and in all hither Asia, which once, before the times of Hammurabi of Babylon, before the year 2000 B.C., had held sway over the states of the lower Euphrates, whose armies in those days had seen Syria, was fallen, never to rise again. "In the midst of hell," says the prophet Ezekiel, "is Elam, and all her multitude about her grave; all of them slain, fallen by the sword, which are gone down uncircumcised into the nether parts of the earth. They who caused terror in the land of the living have borne their share with them that go down to the pit. They have set her a bed in the midst of the slain with all her multitude; they are placed among the slain."[384] It is true that, more than a century after the fall of Susa, we hear of stubborn attempts on the part of Elam to restore her state; but after that Elam ceased to exist, except as a name, and her history was then the more utterly forgotten, because after this rebellion the metropolis of Susa became the residence of the wide dominion of the kings of another people, the Achæmenids.

Babylonia was in subjection, and Elam had ceased to exist. Assurbanipal employed his arms in punishing the Arabian tribes who had supported the rebellion of his brother. Ammuladin, the king of the Kedarites, had attacked the princes of Syria who remained loyal to Assurbanipal. The attack failed. Ammuladin was defeated, and taken prisoner by Kamoshalta, the king of Moab; with him Adiya, a princess of the Arabians, was given up to Assurbanipal.[385] Two other princes of the Arabs, the brothers Abiyateh and Aimu, had led their warriors to Babylon, to Samul-sum-ukin. They had been there defeated together with him and shut up in Babylon. When the famine was sore there, they attempted in vain to break through the siege; Abiyateh gave himself up to Assurbanipal. With them the soldiers of a third Arabian prince, Uaiti, had marched to Babylon. Assurbanipal now attacked Uaiti, whose tribes dwelt on the borders of Ammon, Moab and Edom, in Hauran and near Zoba; their dwellings and tents were burnt. Uaiti was carried prisoner to Nineveh, and Abiyateh was set up in his place. Scarcely had he been set up, when he united with Nadnu, the prince of the Nebaiyoth, against Assyria. On his ninth campaign, Assurbanipal marched over the Tigris and Euphrates into the deserts of Syria. As he tells us, he defeated the servants of the deity of Atar-Samain and the Nebaiyoth, took both princes prisoners in the battle, and caused their flocks to be driven off far and wide. "I divided camels like sheep," he says; "they fetched half a shekel of silver at the gate. On my return I took Hosah, which lies on the shore of the sea, which was disobedient, and did not pay tribute, and carried the people to Assyria. The people of Akko, who did not obey, I destroyed; the remnant I carried to Assyria."[386]

Not only the Arabian tribes between the Euphrates and the Jordan, not only the princes of Syria, but the land of Ararat also, as Assurbanipal expressly declares,[387] and Cilicia and the East of Asia were subject. This follows, without a doubt, from the circumstance that Ardys, king of Lydia, who succeeded his father Gyges on the throne in the year 653B.C., soon after recognised anew the supremacy of Assurbanipal, in order to obtain his aid against the Cimmerians, who again heavily oppressed Lydia from the Halys. Assurbanipal had not only maintained the kingdom against the revolt of Samul-sum-ukin, he had strengthened it by the overthrow of Elam, established the supremacy of Assyria in Hither Asia, and extended it to the west of Asia Minor. We do not hear anything of an attempt to renew the vassalage of Egypt, though the war against the Nabatæans and Kedarites brought Assurbanipal to the borders of Egypt. We may suppose that the resistance of the regions of Akko and Hosah (to the south of Tyre[388]) possibly rested on the expectation of Egyptian assistance. But the inscriptions of Assurbanipal end with the war against the Arabians; beyond this we have no accounts of Assyrian origin. The struggles of Assurbanipal with the Nebaiyoth and the Kedarites on the borders of Ammon and Moab, the reduction of Akko, are the last acts of the Assyrians in Syria, of which we have any definite information. They must have taken place not long before the year 640 B.C. It will be seen further on that Assurbanipal after this time was engaged in the East.

The Hebrew Scriptures also know nothing of any interference of Assyria in the fortunes of their race after the reign of Manasses of Judah, which ended in the year 642 B.C. A statement of Herodotus, which is indeed very obscure, makes it possible to conclude that there was a later border war between Assyria and Egypt. He says: "Psammetichus besieged Ashdod (Azotus), a large city of Syria, for 29 years, till he took it." "This city," Herodotus adds, "endured the longest siege of any that we know."[389] Psammetichus could not besiege the Philistine city of Ashdod, until the southern fortresses of the Philistines, Raphia, Gaza and Ascalon were in his hands. His object in the attack upon these cities could only be to render the march of the Assyrian armies to his land more difficult. These armies would have to collect in the south of Philistia, and provide themselves with stores, especially water, before they could begin the march through the desert. In the beginning of this war, at any rate, it could not have been merely the forces of the Philistines which Psammetichus had to contend with here; there must have been Assyrian garrisons and Assyrian troops in the cities. Diodorus also tells us of the mode in which Psammetichus drew out his forces in the battles which he fought in Syria.[390] That the siege of a city should last 29 years is in itself inconceivable; we can only accept the statement of Herodotus as meaning that the war for the possession of the cities of the Philistines on the coast lasted 29 years. If we calculate this time from the irruption of the Scythians into Syria, which in any case put an end to this war, i. e. from the year 625 B.C., Psammetichus rebelled against Assyria in the year 654 or 653 B.C., and immediately afterwards desired to establish himself on the borders of Syria beyond the desert. If Assurbanipal was fighting against Arabian tribes, on the borders of Edom, just before the year 640 B.C., and took Akko, the narrative of this campaign ought also to speak of a collision with the Egyptian army, if Psammetichus was carrying on war against Ashdod as early as this date. We saw above that Psammetichus's rebellion against Assyria in Egypt could not take place later than the year 653 B.C.

Assurbanipal begins the account of his buildings with a statement of what he had done for the temples of Babylon;[391] he concludes it with a description of his works at Nineveh. The walls with which Sennacherib had surrounded that city had been injured by heavy falls of rain which Bin sent down. Assurbanipal strengthened the substructure, and restored them from the foundations to the pinnacles.[392] He restored, extended, and adorned the palace of his grandfather Sennacherib, in which he had grown up: the kings of the Arabians whom he had captured in battle had been compelled to work at them. Whoever destroys the inscription of his name, or the name of his father and grandfather, and does not set it up along with the inscription of his own name, him will Asshur and the rest of the gods, Sin, Samas, Bin, Bel, Nebo, Adar, and Nergal punish with the condemnation which will correspond to the glory of his (Assurbanipal's) name.[393] In the ruins of this palace, the ruins of Kuyundshik, a number of slabs with reliefs have been preserved, exhibiting the warlike achievements of Assurbanipal, with which he caused the halls of this building to be adorned. On them we see the envoys of the kings of Ararat paying homage to Assurbanipal. Urtaki, Teumman, and Tammaritu are seen in battle against the Assyrians; we see the head of Teumman of Elam brought to Assyria, and Ummanigas is enthroned at Madaktu by an Assyrian officer, (p. 169). Further, a relief shows us Assurbanipal sitting under some trees with some women; on one of the trees hangs the head of the descendant of Merodach Baladan, Nabubelzikri.[394] Finally, we find on these reliefs the cities of Elam, the city of Susa, and their sieges. The inscriptions give the names, and briefly explain the incidents depicted.

FOOTNOTES:

[355] G. Smith, "Assyr. Canon," p. 164.

[356] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 320. E. Schrader, "K. A. T." s. 208. The astronomical canon makes Esarhaddon's reign in Babylon end with the year 668 B.C.