All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations.
Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his root was by great waters.—Ezekiel xxxi. 3-7.
The Assyrian Empire is in some respects unique in history. Despite the proverbial tendency of history to repeat itself, there has been no duplication of the tragic history of this wonderful body politic. It rose to be the most powerful of nations; it reached out and gained the widest empire that had hitherto been seen; its capital, Nineveh, was for a few centuries the metropolis of the world. But in the very fulness of its imperial flight it was struck down and utterly destroyed.
Other empires have been subjugated; Nineveh was annihilated. The very name “Assyrian” became only a memory and a tradition. Late in the seventh century B.C. Nineveh was the boasted mistress of the world; two centuries later the mounds that covered her ruins were noted by the Greek historian Xenophon, who marched past them with the ill-fated Ten Thousand, merely as the relics of some ancient city of unknown name. So brief may be the highest fame! Yet the sequel is stranger still. As we have seen, these forgotten mounds treasured secrets of history which they have since given up to the explorer, and our own generation has seen Assyria restored to its place in history. The details of its career are more fully known to us than those of almost any other nation of antiquity. Such a phœnix-like regeneration is a fitting sequel to the fantastic career with its tragic dénouement, which is about to claim our attention.
[ca. 3000-1120 B.C.]
It must not be supposed that the Assyrian Empire came suddenly to the height of power just suggested. On the contrary, its rise was slow, and accomplished by intermittent impulses. Naturally enough, the growing nation has left us no such exhaustive records of its history during earlier days as have come to us from its time of might. Indeed, for some centuries after Assyria began to assume importance, we have but fragmentary records of its history. Only here and there a great monarch puts the stamp of his achievements upon an epoch so indelibly that time itself cannot wipe it out. Such names as Sargon II, Shalmaneser, and Tiglathpileser were remembered by posterity as the names of great heroes whose deeds various successors strove to emulate, and whose names were taken up, sometimes by usurpers of the throne, sometimes by legitimate descendants of royalty, and thus doubly perpetuated.
It is not till we are well within the last thousand years of the pre-Christian era, however, that the monarchs of Assyria come to be so well known to us as to seem like true historic personages in the same sense in which these terms would be applied to the Alexanders and Cæsars of a later period. Such kings as Sargon II, Asshurnazirpal, Tiglathpileser III, Shalmaneser II and a little later, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Asshurbanapal, left records so voluminous and so perfectly authenticated as to bring their authors into the clearest light of history. Nowhere else outside of Egypt have such full records been preserved of the deeds of ancient monarchs as in the case of these Assyrian kings. Naturally enough, the record ceases before the destruction of Nineveh; there was no Assyrian scribe left to tell of that tragic event.
But now the scene shifts to Babylon; the kings of that principality take up the broken record, and for a few generations supply us with historical documents of the utmost importance. And where the Babylonian records end, the Persian chronicles begin. These are supplemented in due course by the reports of the Grecian historians, beginning with Herodotus, so that the historical sequence is practically unbroken.
We have seen that these Assyrian and Babylonian records were quite unknown throughout later classical times, and from then on until restored late in the nineteenth century. A peculiar interest, then, attaches to the comparison of these records with the traditions of Babylonian and Assyrian heroes which the classical writers have preserved. In general, it can hardly be said that the comparison is flattering to the classical mind. No Assyrian tablet tells us of any such person as Ninus, the alleged founder of Nineveh. Nor is there any royal cylinder that tells of the mighty conquests of Queen Semiramis. There is, indeed, a queen of that name mentioned, but she is the consort of a late king of Nineveh, and there is nothing recorded to suggest that her achievements were in any respect noteworthy. We are forced to conclude, then, that the Greek historians, in recording the alleged history of Assyria, depended upon verbal traditions. They appear to have been altogether ignorant of the contents of the authentic historical documents, many of which were still accessible in the libraries of Babylonia when Herodotus visited that city. It is interesting to note, however, that the Greeks had a vivid realisation of the sometime greatness of Assyria, even though they were unable to form a clear and correct image of the picture. Semiramis was really an idealised impersonation of the general conception of the Assyrian conqueror. Sargon, Tiglathpileser, and their successors were forgotten in name, but their deeds were vaguely remembered, and out of the reminiscences of their actual conquests arose the conception of a mythical ruler, whose name was destined for centuries to supplant the names of actual heroes. What happened here is but a repetition of what has happened elsewhere under similar conditions. There is no myth without its background of fact. Had there never been great conquerors ruling over Assyria, there would never have arisen the legend of Semiramis. That “there is no smoke without some fire” is a maxim which the historian should never overlook; it is a maxim to which the story of Assyrian history gives peculiar emphasis.
So much has been said about the sources of Assyrian history that only a word need be added here. We shall have occasion as we proceed, to call attention in greater detail to the specific records of various kings. In addition to these, however, there are certain historical documents of a more general character, which have been largely instrumental in enabling the modern investigator to reconstruct Babylonian and Assyrian history. The most important of these are certain Babylonian king-lists and a so-called Synchronistic History, in which the succession of rulers in Babylonia and in Assyria is synchronised. These chronological documents taken together do not enable us fully to reconstruct the history of the long periods in question, but the gaps are relatively insignificant, in particular after about the year 1000 B.C.; and for the later monarchs of Assyria the records are often so voluminous as to furnish accurate details regarding all the events of importance.