Perhaps you have heard a particularly sweet and pretty little baby called a cherub. Isn’t it strange that these hideous Assyrian monsters should be called cherubs also?
When the Assyrian kings were not fighting men they were fighting wild animals, for they were very fond of hunting with bow and arrow, and they had pictures and statues made of themselves on horseback or in chariots fighting lions. Often they would capture the animals they hunted alive and put them in cages so that the people could come and see them. This was something like a “zoo” such as we have nowadays.
An Assyrian cherub.
The rulers of Assyria had very strange names. Sennacherib was one of the most famous. Sennacherib lived about 700 B.C. Once upon a time Sennacherib was fighting Jerusalem. His whole army was camped one night when as they lay asleep something happened, for when the morning came, none woke up; all were dead, both men and horses. An English poet named Byron has written a poem called “The Destruction of Sennacherib” describing this event. Perhaps they were poisoned; what do you think?
Assur-bani-pal was another king who ruled later—about 650 B.C. He was a great fighter too, but he was also very fond of books and reading; so Assur-bani-pal started the first public library. The books in that first public library were, however, very peculiar. Of course they were not printed books, and they were not even made of paper. They were made of mud with the words pressed into the clay before it dried. This writing was cuneiform, which I have already told you about. The books were not arranged in bookcases, either, but were placed in piles on the floor. They were, however, kept in careful order and numbered so that a person who wanted to see a book in the library could call for it by its number.
Assyria reached the height of her power during the reign of Sennacherib and Assur-bani-pal, and everything in Nineveh was so lovely for the Ninevites that the time when Assur-bani-pal reigned was called the Golden Age.
But although everything in Nineveh was so lovely for the Ninevites, everywhere else the Assyrians were hated and feared, for their armies brought death and destruction wherever they went.
So it came to pass that not long after Assur-bani-pal died, two of the neighbors of Nineveh could stand it no longer. These two neighbors were the king of Babylon, who lived south, and a people called the Medes, who lived to the east and belonged to the Aryan family. So the king of Babylon and the Medes got together and attacked Nineveh, and together they wiped that city off the face of the earth. This was in 612 B.C.—Six-One-Two—and the power of Nineveh and Assyria was killed dead. This, therefore is called the Fall of Nineveh, the end of Nineveh. We might put up a tombstone:
