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Title: Assyria, Its Princes, Priests and People
By-Paths of Bible Knowledge VII
Author: A. H. (Archibald Henry) Sayce
Release Date: February 6, 2013 [eBook #42033]
Language: English
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Monolith of Shalmaneser II.
(From the original in the British Museum.)
By-Paths of Bible Knowledge
VII
ASSYRIA
ITS PRINCES, PRIESTS, AND PEOPLE
BY
A. H. SAYCE, M.A.
DEPUTY PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY, OXFORD, HON. LL.D. DUBLIN, ETC.
AUTHOR OF 'FRESH LIGHT FROM THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS,' 'AN INTRODUCTION TO EZRA, NEHEMIAH, AND ESTHER,' ETC.
LONDON:
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY,
56, Paternoster Row, 65, St. Paul's Churchyard,
and 164, Piccadilly
1885
[Pg 4]
[Pg 5]
CONTENTS
PAGE List of Illustations 6 Preface 7 Chronological Table of the Kings of Assyria 17 Table of Biblical Dates according to Assyrian Monuments 19 I. The Country and People 21 II. Assyrian History 27 III. Assyrian Religion 55 IV. Art, Literature, and Science 86 V. Manners and Customs; Trade and Government 122 Appendix 146 Index 153 Index of Scripture References 166 Footnotes 167 Transcriber's Notes 168ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE Monolith of Shalmaneser II (from the original in the British Museum) Frontispiece Assur-bani-pal and his Queen (from the original in the British Museum) 51 Nergal (from the original in the British Museum) 65 Fragment now in the British Museum showing primitive Hieroglyphics and Cuneiform Characters side by side 93 An Assyrian Book (from the original in the British Museum)PREFACE
Among the many wonderful achievements of the present century there is none more wonderful than the recovery and decipherment of the monuments of ancient Nineveh. For generations the great oppressing city had slept buried beneath the fragments of its own ruins, its history lost, its very site forgotten. Its name had passed into the region of myth even in the age of the classical writers of Greece and Rome; Ninos or Nineveh had become a hero-king about whom strange legends were told, and whose conquests were fabled to have extended from the Mediterranean to India. Little was known of the history of the mighty Assyrian Empire beyond what might be learnt from the Old Testament, and that little was involved in doubt and obscurity. Scholars wrote long treatises to reconcile the statements of Greek historians with those of Scripture, but they only succeeded in evolving theories which were contradicted and overthrown by the next writer. There was none so bold as to suggest that the history and life of Assyria were still lying hidden beneath the ground, ready to rise up and disclose their secrets at the touch of a magician's rod. The rod was the spade and the patient sagacity which deciphered and interpreted what the spade had found. It might have been thought that the cuneiform or wedge-shaped inscriptions of Assyria could never be forced to reveal their mysteries. The language in which they were written was unknown, and all clue to the meaning of the multitudinous characters that composed them had long been lost. No bilingual text came to the aid of the decipherer like the Rosetta Stone, whose Greek inscription had furnished the key to the meaning of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Nevertheless the great feat was accomplished. Step by step the signification of the cuneiform characters and the words they concealed was made out, until it is now possible to translate an ordinary Assyrian text with as much ease and certainty as a page of the Old Testament.
And the revelation that awaited the decipherer was startling in the extreme. The ruins of Nineveh yielded not only sculptures and inscriptions carved in stone, but a whole library of books. True, the books are written upon clay, and not on paper, but they are none the less real books, dealing with all the subjects of knowledge known at the time they were compiled, and presenting us with a clear and truthful reflection of Assyrian thought and belief. We can not only trace the architectural plans of the Assyrian palaces, and study the bas-reliefs in which the Assyrians have pictured themselves and the life they led; we can also penetrate to their inmost thoughts and feelings, and read their history as they have told it themselves.
It is a strange thing to examine for the first time one of the clay tablets of the old Assyrian library. Usually it has been more or less broken by the catastrophe of that terrible day when Nineveh was captured by its enemies, and the palace and library burnt and destroyed together. But whether it is a fragment or a complete tablet, it is impossible not to handle it reverently when cleaning it from the dirt with which its long sojourn in the earth has encrusted it, and spelling out its words for the first time for more than 2,000 years. When last the characters upon it were read, it was in days when Assyria was still a name of terror, and the destruction that God's prophets had predicted was still to come. When its last reader laid it aside, Judah had not as yet undergone the chastisement of the Babylonish exile, the Old Testament was an uncompleted volume, the kingdom of the Messiah a promise of the distant future. We are brought face to face, as it were, with men who were the contemporaries of Isaiah, of Hezekiah, of Ahaz; nay, of men whose names have been familiar to us since we first read the Bible by our mother's side.
Tiglath-Pileser and Sennacherib can never again be to us mere names. We possess the records which they caused to be written, and in which they told the story of their campaigns in Palestine. The records are not copies of older texts, with all the errors that human fallibility causes copyists and scribes to make. They are the original documents which were recited to the kings who ordered them to be compiled, and who may have held them in their own hands. The gulf of centuries and forgetfulness that has divided us from Sennacherib is filled up when we read the account of his invasion of Judah, which seems to come from his own lips. Never again can the heroes of the Old Testament be to us as lay-figures, whose story is told by a voice that comes from a dark and unreal past. The voice is now become a living one, and we can realise that Isaiah and those of whom Isaiah wrote were men of flesh and blood like ourselves, with the same passions, the same needs, the same temptations.
This realisation of Old Testament history is not the only result of the recovery of Assyria upon Biblical studies. It is a very important result, but there are others besides of equal importance. One of these is the unexpected confirmation of the correctness of Holy Writ which Assyrian discovery has afforded. The later history of the Old Testament no longer stands alone. Once it was itself the sole witness for the truth of the narratives it contains. Classical history or legend dealt with other lands and other ages; there were no documents besides those contained in the Old Testament to which we could appeal in support of its statements. All is changed now. The earth has yielded up its secrets; the ancient civilisation of Assyria has stepped forth again into the light of day, and has furnished us with records, the authenticity of which none can deny, which run side by side with those of the Books of Kings, confirming, explaining, and illustrating them. It has been said that just at the moment when sceptical criticism seemed to have achieved its worst, and to have resolved the narratives of the Old Testament into myths or fables, God's Providence was raising up from the grave of centuries a new and unimpeachable witness for their truth. Indeed, so strikingly was this the case, that one of the objections brought against the correctness of Assyrian decipherment in its early days was that Assyrian monarchs could never have concerned themselves with petty kingdoms like those of Samaria and Judah, as the decipherers made them do. Before the cuneiform monuments were interpreted, no one could have suspected that they would have poured such a flood of light upon Old Testament history.
This light is manifold. The very language of the inscriptions has helped to explain difficult passages in the Hebrew Bible. Assyrian turns out to be very closely related to Hebrew, as closely related, in fact, as two strongly marked English dialects are to one another.
But not only do we find parallels to Hebrew in the individual words of Assyrian, we also find parallel expressions which illustrate and explain those of the Hebrew text. We all remember the statement that the 'Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.' The same phrase occurs in an unpublished Accadian hymn addressed to a deity whose name is lost, but who was probably Rimmon the Air-god. The Accadian original describes him as 'raining fire and stones upon the enemy,' which the Assyrian translation changes into 'raining stones and fire upon the foe' in exact conformity with the Hebrew phrase. The familiar expression 'the Lord of Hosts,' similarly finds its analogue and illustration in the common Assyrian title of the supreme god Assur: 'lord of the legions of heaven and earth,' these legions being the multitudinous spirits and angels whose home was in 'the heaven above and the earth below.'
We can hardly speak here of the accounts of the Creation, the Deluge, and the Tower of Babel, to which Mr. George Smith gave the name of 'the Chaldean Genesis,' and which agree so closely with the corresponding accounts in the Hebrew Book of Genesis. Though found in the library of Nineveh, they are really copies of older Babylonian works, and therefore belong rather to Babylonian than to Assyrian history. It is only the account of the Creation in six days which may perhaps be of purely Assyrian origin. What a resemblance it offers to the first chapter of Genesis will be seen from the extracts from it in the chapter on Assyrian Religion.
It is in the domain of history that the light cast upon Old Testament Scripture by Assyrian research has been fullest and strongest. No one can read the sketch of Assyrian history as revealed by the monuments which is given in the following pages, without perceiving how important it is for the proper understanding of the ancient Scriptures. For the first time the prophecies in Isaiah which refer to a capture of Jerusalem receive their explanation, and the sceptical criticism is answered which found in them a prediction of events that never took place. The chapter in which Isaiah describes the onward march of the Assyrian host against Jerusalem (ch. x.) is no 'ideal' description of 'an ideal campaign,' the verses in which he tells us of the sufferings endured by the beleaguered inhabitants of the Jewish capital (ch. xxii.) are no 'exaggerated account of a possible catastrophe,' the prophecies in which he declares that the devoted city was about to fall into the hands of its enemies (x. 34, xxii. 14) were not unfulfilled threats. We learn from the inscriptions of Sargon that already, ten years before the campaign of his son Sennacherib, the Assyrian monarch had swept through 'the wide-spread land of Judah,' and had made it a tributary province. It was not the army of Sennacherib to which Isaiah was alluding on the day whereon he declared that the Assyrian host was at Nob, only a short half-hour to the north of Jerusalem, but the more terrible veterans of Sargon who marched against the holy city along the northern road. Similar light is thrown by the Assyrian monuments upon another prophecy of Isaiah, in which he pronounces the doom upon the land of Egypt (ch. xix.). The prophecy has sometimes been referred by critics to a later age than that of the great prophet; but the records of Esar-haddon prove that it is strictly applicable to his time, and to his time only. The unexpected revelation they have made to us of the Assyrian conquest of Egypt, and its division into twenty vassal satrapies shows us who was the 'cruel lord' and 'fierce king' into whose hands the Egyptians were given, and paints the picture of an epoch in which 'the Egyptians' fought 'every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom.' The Isaianic authorship of 'the burden of Egypt' can never again be denied.
Nahum, again, we can now read with a new interest and a new understanding. The very date of his prophecy, so long disputed, can be fixed approximately by the reference it contains to the sack of No-Amon or Thebes (iii. 8). The prophecy was delivered hard upon sixty years before the fall of Nineveh, when the Assyrian Empire was at the height of its prosperity, and mistress of the Eastern world. Human foresight could little have imagined that so great and terrible a power was so soon to disappear. And yet at the very moment when it seemed strongest and most secure, the Jewish prophet was uttering a prediction which the excavations of Botta and Layard have shown to have been carried out literally in fact. As we thread our way among the ruins of Nineveh, or trace the after history of the deserted and forgotten site, we see everywhere the fulfilment of Nahum's prophecy. Of the words that he pronounced against the doomed city, there is none which has not come to pass.
Those who would learn how marvellously the monuments of Assyria illustrate and corroborate the pages of sacred history, need only compare the records they contain with the narratives of the Books of Kings which relate to the same period. The one complements and supplies the missing chapters given by the other. The Bible informs us why Sennacherib left Hezekiah unpunished, and never despatched another army to Palestine; the cuneiform annals explain the causes of his murder, and the reason of the flight of his sons to Ararat or Armenia. The single passage in Scripture in which the name of Sargon is mentioned, no longer remains isolated and unintelligible; we have no longer any need to identify him with Tiglath-Pileser, or Shalmaneser, or any other Assyrian prince with whom the fancy of older commentators confounded him; we now know that he was one of the most powerful of Assyrian conquerors, and we have his own independent testimony to that siege and capture of Ashdod which is the occasion of the mention of his name in Scripture. Between the history of the monuments and the history of the Bible there is perpetual contact; and the voice of the monuments is found to be in strict harmony with that of the Old Testament.
Before concluding this Preface, I have to thank Mr. W. G. Hird for his kindness in undertaking the task of compiling an Index to the volume.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE KINGS OF ASSYRIA
B.C. Bel-kapkapi 1700 (?)TABLE OF BIBLICAL DATES ACCORDING TO THE ASSYRIAN MONUMENTS
B.C. Battle of Karkar; Ahab ally of Damascus against Shalmaneser of Assyria 853 Death of Ahab 851 Campaign of Shalmaneser against Hadadeze (Benhadad II) of Damascus 850 Second campaign against Hadadezer 845 Murder of Hadadezer by Hazael 843 Campaign of Shalmaneser against Hazael; tribute paid by Jehu of Samaria 841 Damascus captured by the Assyrians; tribute paid by Samaria 804 Campaign of the Assyrians against Damascus 773 Tiglath-Pileser II attacks Hamath submission of Uzziah; fall of Arpad 743-40 Tribute paid to Tiglath-Pileser by Menahem of Samaria and Rezon of Damascus 738 Damascus besieged by the Assyrians; the tribes beyond the Jordan carried away; Jehoahaz (Ahaz) of Judah becomes a vassal of Tiglath-Pileser 734 Damascus taken and Rezon slain; Ahaz at Damascus 732 Samaria besieged by Shalmaneser V 723 Accession of Sargon 722 Merodach-baladan conquers Babylonia 721 Capture of Samaria by Sargon 720 Hamath conquered by Sargon; Sabako (So) of Egypt defeated at Raphia 719 Embassy of Merodach-baladan to Hezekiah 712 Capture of Jerusalem and Ashdod by Sargon 711 Merodach-baladan driven from Babylonia 710 Merodach-baladan recovers Babylonia for six months 703 Sennacherib's campaign against Judah; battle of Eltekeh; overthrow of the Assyrian army at Jerusalem 701 Murder of Sennacherib by his two sons 681 Manasseh appears among the Assyrian tributaries; Egypt conquered by Esar-haddon 676 Destruction of Thebes (No-Amun) by the Assyrians 665ASSYRIA:
ITS PRINCES, PRIESTS, AND PEOPLE
CHAPTER I
The Country and People
Assyria was the name given to the district which had been called 'the land of Assur' by its own inhabitants. Assur, however, had originally been the name, not of a country, but of a city founded in remote times on the western bank of the Tigris, midway between the Greater and the Lesser Zab. It was the primitive capital of the district in which it stood, and to which, accordingly, it lent its name. It seems to have been built by a people who spoke an agglutinative language, like the languages of the modern Fins and Turks, and who were afterwards supplanted by the Semitic Assyrians. The name in their language probably signified 'water-boundary.' When the country was occupied by the Semitic Assyrians the name was slightly changed, so as to assume the form of a word which in Assyrian meant 'gracious.'
It so happened that Assyrian mythology knew of a deity who represented the firmament, and was addressed
Assur, whose ruins are now called Kalah Sherghat, did not always remain the capital of Assyria. Its place was taken by a group of cities some 60 miles to the north, above the Greater Zab, and on the eastern side of the Tigris, namely, Nineveh, Calah, and Dur-Sargon. The foundation of Nineveh, the modern Kouyunjik, probably goes back to as early an age as that of Assur, but it was not until a much later period that it became an important city, and supplanted the older capital of the kingdom. Calah, now called Nimrûd, though built some four centuries before, was not made the seat of royalty until the reigns of Assur-natsir-pal and Shalmaneser II, in the 9th century b.c., and Dur-Sargon (the modern Khorsabad), as its name implies, was the creation of Sargon. Instead of Dur-Sargon the Book of Genesis (x. 11) mentions Resen 'between Nineveh and Calah.' The site of Resen has not been identified, though its name has been met with in the Assyrian inscriptions under the form of Res-eni, 'the head of the spring.'
The passage of Genesis in which Resen is referred to unfortunately admits of a double translation. If we adopt the rendering of the margin, and translate 'out of that land he went forth into Assyria and builded Nineveh,' we might infer that Nineveh and its neighbouring towns had no existence before the days when Babylonian emigrants settled in the territory of the city of Assur, and superseded its older inhabitants. However this may be, we know from the cuneiform monuments that the rise of Assyria did not take place until the Babylonian monarchy was already growing old. The country afterwards known as Assyria had been comprised in Gutium or Kurdistan, a name which has been identified, with great probability, by Sir H. Rawlinson, with the Goyyim or 'nations' of Genesis xiv. over which Tidal was king. There seems to have been a time when the rulers of Assur were mere governors appointed by the Babylonian monarchs; at all events, the earliest of whom we know do not give themselves the title of king, but use a word which signifies 'viceroy' in the Chaldean inscriptions.
These viceroys, however, managed eventually to shake off the yoke of their Babylonian masters, and one of them, Bel-kapkapi by name, established an independent kingdom at Assur in the 17th or 16th century before our era. His kingdom extended on both sides of the Tigris, and doubtless included the country north of the Greater Zab, where Nineveh was situated. The exact frontiers of Assyria, however, were never accurately fixed. They varied with the military power and conquests of its monarchs. Sometimes portions of the plateau of Mesopotamia on the west were comprehended within it, as well as the country through which the Tigris flowed, as far south as the borders of Babylonia, and as far north as the Kurdish mountains. At other times Assyria was confined to the narrow space within which its great cities stood.
The inhabitants of Assyria belonged to the Semitic stock, that is to say, they were allied in blood and language to the Hebrews, the Aramæans, and the Arabs. The older population had been either expelled or destroyed. The Assyrians thus differed from the Babylonians, who were a mixed race, partly Semitic and partly non-Semitic. The non-Semitic element is generally termed Accadian; it spoke agglutinative dialects, and was the original possessor of the plain of Chaldæa. The Accadians invented the cuneiform system of writing, founded the chief cities and civilisation of Babylonia, and erected the earliest Babylonian monuments with which we are acquainted. It was only gradually that they yielded to the advance of the Semites; in fact, the final triumph of the Semites in Babylonia was only effected by their amalgamation with the old population of the country, and their complete acceptance of Accadian culture. The Accadian language lingered long, and when it died out was preserved as a learned language, like Latin in our own day, which every educated Babylonian was expected to know.
It was natural, therefore, that the pure-blooded Semites of Assyria and the mixed population of Babylonia should differ from one another in many respects. The Babylonians were agriculturists, fond of literature and peaceful pursuits. The Assyrians, on the contrary, have been appropriately termed the Romans of the East: they were a military people, caring for little else save war and trade. Their literature, like their culture and art, was borrowed from Babylonia, and they never took kindly to it. Even under the magnificent patronage of Assur-bani-pal, Assyrian literature was an exotic. It was cultivated only by the few; whereas in Babylonia the greater part of the population seems to have been able to read and write. If the Assyrian was less luxurious than his Babylonian neighbour, he was also less humane. Indeed, the Assyrian annals glory in the record of a ferocity at which we stand aghast. On the other hand, the Assyrian was not so superstitious as the Babylonian, though he ascribed his successes to the favour of Assur, and impaled the inhabitants of conquered towns or burnt them alive because they did not believe in his national deity. He was, as Nahum declared, the lion which 'did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin.'
Assyria was so wholly a military power, that the destruction of Nineveh not only destroyed the Assyrian Empire but blotted out the Assyrian nation itself. When 'the gates of the rivers' of Nineveh—the Tigris and Khusur—were opened, and 'the palace dissolved,' Assyria ceased to exist. In the Sassanian period the mounds which covered the ruins of the old city were for a short time occupied by the houses of a village, but these, too, disappeared after a while, and the very site of Nineveh remained for centuries unknown. Rich, in 1818, conjectured that the mounds of Kouyunjik, opposite the modern town of Mosul, concealed its ruins beneath them, but it was not until the excavations of the Frenchman Botta, in 1842, and the Englishman Layard, in 1845, that the remains first of Dur-Sargon, and then of Nineveh itself, were revealed to the eyes of a wondering world. The capital of the Assyrian Empire was recovered, and with it the sculptured monuments of its kings, and the relics of its clay-inscribed library. The discovery came at an opportune moment. The cuneiform inscriptions of Persia had at last yielded up their secrets to the patient sagacity of European scholars, and had furnished the key to other inscriptions,—also in cuneiform characters, but of a wholly different kind, and expressing a wholly different language—which now proved to be the long-lost records of the Assyrian people. Little by little the records were deciphered; fresh expeditions to the buried cities of Assyria and Babylonia returned to Europe with fresh spoils, and it is now possible to describe the history and even the daily life and thoughts of a people who but half a century ago were but a mere name. The following pages are intended to give a picture of that history and life.
CHAPTER II
Assyrian History
Assyrian history, as we have seen,
With the death of Tiglath-Pileser I, Assyrian history becomes for awhile obscure. The sceptre fell into feeble hands, and the distant conquests of the empire were lost. It was during this period of abeyance that the kingdom of David and Solomon arose in the west. The Assyrian power did not revive until the reign of Assur-dân II, whose son, Rimmon-nirari II (b.c. 911-889), and great-grandson, Assur-natsir-pal ( b.c. 883-858), led their desolating armies through Western Asia, and made the name of Assyria once more terrible to the nations around them. Assur-natsir-pal was at once one of the most ferocious and most energetic of the Assyrian kings. His track was marked by impalements, by pyramids of human heads, and by other barbarities too horrible to be described. But his campaigns reached further than those of Tiglath-Pileser had done. Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Kurdistan, were overrun again and again; the Babylonians were forced to sue for peace; Sangara, the Hittite king of Carchemish, paid tribute, and the rich cities of Phœnicia poured their offerings into the treasury of Nineveh. The armies of Assyria penetrated even to Nizir, where the ark of the Chaldæan Noah was believed to have rested on the peak of Rowandiz. In Assyria itself the cities were embellished with the spoils of foreign conquest; splendid palaces were erected, and Calah, which had fallen into decay, was restored. A library was erected there, and it became the favourite residence of Assur-natsir-pal.
He was succeeded by his son Shalmaneser II, so named, perhaps, after the original founder of Calah. Shalmaneser's military successes exceeded even those of his father, and his long reign of thirty-five years marks the climax of the first Assyrian Empire. His annals are chiefly to be found engraved on three monuments now in the British Museum. One of these is a monolith from Kurkh, a place about twenty miles from Diarbekr. The full-length figure of Shalmaneser is sculptured upon it, and the surface of the stone is covered with the inscription. Another monument is a small 'obelisk' of polished black stone, the upper part of which is shaped like three ascending steps. Inscriptions run round its four sides, as well as small bas-reliefs representing the tribute offered to 'the great king' by foreign states. Among the tribute-bearers are the Israelitish subjects of 'Jehu, son of Omri.' The third monument is one which was discovered in 1878 at Balawât, about nine miles from Nimrûd or Calah. It consists of the bronze framework of two colossal doors, of rectangular shape, twenty-two feet high and twenty-six feet broad. The doors opened into a temple, and were made of wood, to which the bronze was fastened by means of nails. The bronze was cut into bands, which ran in a horizontal direction across the doors, and were each divided into two lines of embossed reliefs. These reliefs were hammered out, and not cast, and the rudeness of their execution proves that they were the work of native artists, and not of the Phœnician settlers in Nineveh, of whose skill in such work we have several specimens. Short texts are added to explain the reliefs, so that the various campaigns and cities represented in them can all be identified. Among the cities is the Hittite capital Carchemish, and the warriors of Armenia are depicted in a costume strikingly similar to that of the ancient Greeks.
Shalmaneser's first campaign was against the restless tribes of Kurdistan. He then turned northward, and fell upon the Armenian king of Van and the Mannâ or Minni (see Jer. li. 27), who inhabited the country between the mountains of Kotûr and Lake Urumiyeh. The Hittites of Carchemish, with their allies from Cilicia and other neighbouring districts, were next compelled to sue for peace, and the acquisition of Pethor, which had been lost after Tiglath-Pileser's death, again gave the Assyrians the command of the ford over the Euphrates. The result of this was, that in b.c. 854 Shalmaneser came into conflict with the kingdom of Hamath. The common danger had roused Hadadezer of Damascus, called Benhaded II in the Bible, to make common cause with Hamath, and a confederacy was formed to resist the Assyrian advance. Among the confederates 'Ahab of Israel' is mentioned as furnishing the allies with 2,000 chariots and 10,000 infantry. But the confederacy was shattered at Karkar or Aroer, although Shalmaneser had himself suffered too severely to be able to follow up his victory. For a time, therefore, Syria remained unmolested, and the Assyrian king turned his attention to Babylonia, which he reduced to a state of vassalage, under the pretext of assisting the Babylonian sovereign against his rebel brother.
Twelve years, however, after the battle of Karkar, Shalmaneser was once more in the west. Hadadezer had been succeeded by Hazael on the throne of Damascus, and it was against him that the full flood of Assyrian power was turned. For some time he managed to stem it, but in b.c. 841 he suffered a crushing defeat on the heights of Shenir (see Deut. iii. 9), and his camp, along with 1,121 chariots and 470 carriages, fell into the hands of the Assyrians, who proceeded to besiege him in his capital, Damascus. The siege, however, was soon raised, and Shalmaneser contented himself with ravaging the Hauran and marching to Beyrout, where his image was carved on the rocky promontory of Baal-rosh, at the mouth of the Nahr el-Kelb. It was while he was in this neighbourhood that the ambassadors of Jehu arrived with offers of tribute and submission. The tribute, we are told, consisted of 'silver, gold, a golden bowl, vessels of gold, goblets of gold, pitchers of gold, a sceptre for the king's hand and spear-handles,' and
After the defeat of Hazael Shalmaneser's expeditions were only to distant regions like Phœnicia, Kappadokia, and Armenia, for the sake of exacting tribute. No further attempt was made at permanent conquest, and after b.c. 834 the old king ceased to lead his armies in person, the tartan or commander-in-chief taking his place. Not long afterwards a revolt broke out headed by his eldest son, who seems to have thought that he would have little difficulty in wresting the sceptre from the hands of the enfeebled king. Twenty-seven cities, including Nineveh and Assur, joined the revolt, which was, however, finally put down by the energy and military capacity of Shalmaneser's second son Samas-Rimmon, who succeeded him soon afterwards (b.c. 823-810). On his death he was followed by his son Rimmon-nirari III (810-781), who compelled Mariha of Damascus to pay him tribute, as well as the Phœnicians, Israelites, Edomites, and Philistines. But the vigour of the dynasty was beginning to fail. A few short reigns followed that of Rimmon-nirari, during which the first Assyrian Empire melted away. A formidable power arose in Armenia, the Assyrian armies were driven to the frontiers of their own country, and disaffection began to prevail in Assyria itself. At length, on the 15th of June, b.c. 763, an eclipse of the sun took place, and the city of Assur rose in revolt. The revolt lasted three years, and before it could be crushed the outlying provinces were lost. When Assur-nirari, the last of his line, ascended the throne in b.c. 753, the empire was already gone, and the Assyrian cities themselves were surging with discontent. Ten years later the final blow was struck; the army declared itself against their monarch, and he and his dynasty fell together. On the 30th of Iyyar of the year b.c. 745, a military adventurer, Pul, seized the vacant crown, and assumed the venerable name of Tiglath-Pileser.
If we may believe Greek tradition, Tiglath-Pileser II began life as a gardener. Whatever might have been his origin, however, he proved to be a capable ruler, a good general, and a far-sighted administrator. He was the founder of the second Assyrian Empire, which differed essentially from the first. The first empire was at best a loosely-connected military organization; campaigns were made into distant countries for the sake of plunder and tribute, but little effort was made to retain the districts that had been conquered. Almost as soon as the Assyrian armies were out of sight, the conquered nations shook off the Assyrian yoke, and it was only in regions bordering on Assyria that garrisons were left by the Assyrian king. And whenever the Assyrian throne was occupied by a weak or unwarlike prince, even these were soon destroyed or forced to retreat homewards. Tiglath-Pileser II, however, consolidated and organised the conquests he made; turbulent populations were deported from their old homes, and the empire was divided into satrapies or provinces, each of which paid a fixed annual tribute to the imperial exchequer. For the first time in history the principle of centralisation was carried out on a large scale, and a bureaucracy began to take the place of the old feudal nobility of Assyria. But the second Assyrian Empire was not only an organised and bureaucratic one, it was also commercial. In carrying out his schemes of conquest Tiglath-Pileser II was influenced by considerations of trade. His chief object was to divert the commerce of Western Asia into Assyrian hands. For this purpose every effort was made to unite Babylonia with Assyria, to overthrow the Hittites of Carchemish, who held the trade of Asia Minor, as well as the high road to the west, and to render Syria and the Phœnician cities tributary. The policy inaugurated by Tiglath-Pileser was successfully followed up by his successors.
Babylonia was the first to feel the results of the change of dynasty at Nineveh. The northern part of it was annexed to Assyria, and secured by a chain of fortresses. Tiglath-Pileser now attacked the Kurdish tribes, who were constantly harassing the eastern frontier of the kingdom, and chastised them severely, the Assyrian army forcing its way through the fastnesses of the Kurdish mountains into the very heart of Media. But Ararat, or Armenia, was still a dangerous neighbour, and accordingly Tiglath-Pileser's next campaign was against a confederacy of the nations of the north headed by Sarduris of Van. The confederacy was utterly defeated in Kommagênê, 72,950 prisoners falling into the hands of the Assyrians, and the way was opened into Syria. In b.c. 742 the siege of Arpad (now Tel Erfâd) began, and lasted two years. Its fall brought with it the submission of Northern Syria, and it was next the turn of Hamath to be attacked. Hamath was in alliance with Uzziah of Judah, and its king Eniel may have been of Jewish extraction. But the alliance availed nothing. Hamath was taken by storm, part of its population transported to Armenia, and their places taken by colonists from distant provinces of the empire, while nineteen of the districts belonging to it were annexed to Assyria. The kings of Syria now flocked to render homage and offer tribute to the Assyrian conqueror. Among them we read the names of Menahem of Samaria, Rezon of Syria, Hiram of Tyre, and Pisiris of Carchemish. This was the occasion when, as we learn from 2 Kings xv. 19, Menahem gave a thousand talents of silver to the Assyrian king Pul, the name under which Tiglath-Pileser continued to be known in Babylonia, and, as the Old Testament informs us, in Palestine also.
Three years later Ararat was again invaded. Van, the capital, was blockaded, and though it successfully resisted the Assyrians, the country was devastated far and near for a space of 450 miles. It was long before the Armenians recovered from the blow, and for the next century they ceased to be formidable to Assyria. Tiglath-Pileser's northern frontier was now secure, and he therefore gladly seized the opportunity of interfering in the affairs of the west which was offered him by Ahaz, the Jewish king. Ahaz, whom the Assyrian inscriptions call Jehoahaz, had been hard pressed by Rezon of Damascus and Pekah of Israel, who had combined to overthrow the Davidic dynasty and place a vassal prince, 'the son of Tabeal,' on the throne of Jerusalem. Ahaz in his extremity called in the aid of Tiglath-Pileser, offering him a heavy bribe and acknowledging his supremacy. Tiglath-Pileser accordingly marched into Syria; Rezon was utterly defeated in battle and then besieged in Damascus, to which he had escaped. Damascus was closely invested; the trees in its neighbourhood were cut down; the districts dependent on it were ravaged, and forces were despatched to punish the Israelites, Ammonites, Moabites, and Philistines, who had been the allies of Rezon, Gilead and Abel-beth-maachah being burnt, and the tribes beyond the Jordan carried into captivity. The Philistine cities were compelled to open their gates; the king of Ashkelon committed suicide in order not to fall into the hands of the enemy, and Khanun of Gaza fled to Egypt. At last in b.c. 732, after a siege of two years, Damascus was forced by famine to surrender. Rezon was slain, Damascus given over to plunder and ruin, and its inhabitants transported to Kir. Syria became an Assyrian province, and all its princes were summoned to do homage to the conqueror, while Tyre was fined 150 talents of gold, or about £400,000. Among the princes who attended the levée or 'durbar' was Ahaz, and it was while he was attending it that he saw the altar of
All that now remained for Tiglath-Pileser to do was to reduce Babylonia as he had reduced Syria. In b.c. 731, accordingly, he marched again into Chaldæa. Ukin-ziru, the Babylonian king, was slain, Babylon and other great cities were taken, and in b.c. 729, under his original name of Pul, Tiglath-Pileser assumed the title of 'king of Sumer (Shinar) and Accad.'
He lived only two years after this, and died in b.c. 727, when the crown was seized by Elulæos of Tinu, who took the name of Shalmaneser IV. Shalmaneser's short reign was signalised by an unsuccessful attempt to capture Tyre, and by the beginning of a war against the kingdom of Israel. But the siege of Samaria was hardly commenced when Shalmaneser died, or was murdered, in b.c. 722, and was succeeded by another usurper who assumed the name of Sargon, one of the most famous of the early Babylonian kings. Sargon in his inscriptions claims royal descent, but the claim was probably without foundation. He proved to be an able general, though his inscriptions show that he continued to the last to be a rough but energetic soldier who had perhaps risen from the ranks.
Two years after his accession (b.c. 720) Samaria was taken and placed under an Assyrian governor, 27,280 of its leading inhabitants being carried captive to Gozan and Media. But Sargon soon found that the task of cementing and completing the empire founded by Tiglath-Pileser was by no means an easy one. Babylonia had broken away from Assyria on the news of Shalmaneser's death, and had submitted itself to Merodach-Baladan the hereditary chieftain of Beth-Yagina in the marshes on the coast of the Persian Gulf. The southern portion of Sargon's dominions was threatened by the ancient and powerful kingdom of Elam; the Kurdish tribes on the east renewed their depredations; while the Hittite kingdom of Carchemish still remained unsubdued, and the Syrian conquests could with difficulty be retained. In fact, a new enemy appeared in this part of the empire in the shape of Egypt.
Sargon's first act, therefore, was to drive the Elamites back to their own country with considerable loss. He was then recalled to the west by the revolt of Hamath, where Yahu-bihdi, or Ilu-bihdi, whose name perhaps indicates his Jewish parentage, had proclaimed himself king, and persuaded Arpad, Damascus, Samaria, and other cities to follow his standard. But the revolt was of short duration. Hamath was burnt, 4,300 Assyrians being sent to occupy its ruins, and Yahu-bihdi was flayed alive. Sargon next marched along the sea-coast to the cities of the Philistines. There the Egyptian army was routed at Raphia, and its ally, Khanun of Gaza, taken captive.
In b.c. 717 all was ready for dealing the final blow at the Hittite power in Northern Syria. The rich trading city of Carchemish was stormed, its last king, Pisiris, fell into the hands of the Assyrians, and his Moschian allies were forced to retreat to the north. The plunder of Carchemish brought eleven talents and thirty manehs of gold and 2,100 talents of silver into the treasury of Calah. It was henceforth placed under an Assyrian satrap, who thus held in his hands the key of the high road and the caravan trade between Eastern and Western Asia.
But Sargon was not allowed to retain possession of Carchemish without a struggle. Its Hittite inhabitants found avengers in the allied populations of the north, in Meshech and Tubal, in Ararat and Minni. The struggle lasted for six years, but in the end Sargon prevailed. Van submitted, its king Ursa, the leader of the coalition against Assyria, committed suicide, Cilicia and the Tibareni or Tubal were placed under an Assyrian governor, and the city of Malatiyeh was razed to the ground. In b.c. 711, Sargon was at length free to turn his attention to the west. Here affairs wore a threatening aspect. Merodach-Baladan, foreseeing that his own turn would come as soon as Sargon had firmly established his power in Northern Syria, had despatched ambassadors to the Mediterranean states, urging them to combine with him against the common foe. We read in the Bible of the arrival of the Babylonian embassy in Jerusalem, and of the rebuke received by Hezekiah for his vainglory in displaying to the strangers the resources of his kingdom. In spite of Isaiah's warning, Hezekiah listened to the persuasions of the Babylonian envoys, and encouraged by the promise of Egyptian support along with Phœnicia, Moab, Edom, and the Philistines, determined to defy the Assyrian king.
But before the confederates were ready to act in concert Sargon descended upon Palestine. Phœnicia and Judah were overrun, Jerusalem was captured, and Ashdod burnt, while the Egyptians made no attempt to help their friends. This siege of Ashdod is the only occasion on which the name of Sargon occurs in the Bible (Isaiah xx. 1). As soon as all source of danger was removed in the west Sargon hurled his forces against Babylonia. Merodach-Baladan had made every preparation to meet the coming attack, and the Elamite king had engaged to help him. But the Elamites were again compelled to fly before the warriors of Assyria, and Sargon entered Babylon in triumph (b.c. 710). The following year he pursued Merodach-Baladan to his ancestral stronghold in the marshes; Beth-Yagina was taken by storm, and its unfortunate defenders were sent in chains to Nineveh. Sargon was now at the height of his power. His empire was a compact and consolidated whole, reaching from the Mediterranean on the west to the mountains of Elam on the east, and his solemn coronation at Babylon gave a title to his claim to be the legitimate successor of the ancient Sargon of Accad. The old kingdoms of Elam and Egypt alone remained to threaten the newly-founded empire, which received the voluntary homage of the smaller states that lay immediately beyond it. Thus the sacred island of Dilvun in the Persian Gulf submitted itself to the terrible conqueror, and the Phœnicians of Kition or Chittim in Cyprus erected a monumental record of his supremacy.
Sargon's end was consonant with his whole career. He was murdered by his soldiers in his new city of Dur-Sargon or Khorsabad, on the 12th of Ab or July, b.c. 705, and was succeeded by his son Sennacherib. If we may judge from Sennacherib's name, which means 'the Moon-god has increased the brothers,' he would not have been Sargon's eldest son. In any case he had been brought up in the purple, and displayed none of the rugged virtues of his father. He was weak, boastful, and cruel, and preserved his empire only by the help of the veterans and generals whom Sargon had trained.
Merodach-Baladan had escaped from captivity, and two years after the death of Sargon had once more possessed himself of Babylon. But a battle at Kis drove him from the country nine months subsequently, and Sennacherib was able to turn his attention to affairs in the west. In b.c. 701, he marched into Phœnicia and Palestine, where Hezekiah of Judah and some of the neighbouring kings had refused their tribute. Tirhakah, the Ethiopian king of Egypt, had promised support to the rebellious states, and Padi, the king of Ekron, who remained faithful to the Assyrians, was carried in chains to Jerusalem. The Assyrian army fell first upon Phœnicia. Great and Little Sidon, Sarepta, Acre, and other towns, surrendered, Elulæos, the Sidonian monarch, fled to Cyprus, and the kings of Arvad and Gebal offered homage. Metinti of Ashdod, Pedael of Ammon, Chemosh-nadab
In this account of his campaign Sennacherib discreetly says nothing about the disaster which befell his army in front of Jerusalem, and which obliged him to return ignominiously to Assyria without attempting to capture Jerusalem, and to deal with Hezekiah as it was his custom to deal with other rebellious kings. The tribute offered by Hezekiah at Lachish, when he vainly tried to buy off the threatened Assyrian attack, is represented as having been the final result of a successful campaign. There is, however, no exaggeration in the amount of silver Sennacherib claims to have received, since 800 talents of silver are equivalent to the 500 talents stated by the Bible to have been given, when reckoned according to the standard of value in use at the time in Nineveh.
Sennacherib never recovered from the blow he had suffered in Judah. He made no more expeditions against Palestine, and during the rest of his reign Judah remained unmolested. Babylonia, moreover, gave him constant trouble. In the year after his campaign in the west (b.c. 700) a Chaldean, named Nergal-yusezib, stirred up a revolt which Sennacherib had some difficulty in suppressing. Two years later he appointed his eldest son, Assur-nadin-sumi, viceroy of Babylon. In b.c. 694, he determined to attack the followers of Merodach-Baladan in their last retreat at the mouth of the Eulæus, where land had been given to them by the Elamite king after their expulsion from Babylonia. Ships were built and manned by Phœnicians in the Persian Gulf, by means of which the settlements of the Chaldean refugees were burnt and destroyed. Meanwhile, however, Babylonia itself was invaded by the Elamites; the Assyrian viceroy was carried into captivity, and Nergal-yusezib placed on the throne of the country. He defeated the Assyrian forces in a battle near Nipur, but died soon afterwards, and was followed by Musezib-Merodach, who like his predecessor is called Suzub in Sennacherib's inscriptions. He defied the Assyrian power for nearly four years. But in b.c. 690 the combined Babylonian and Elamite army was overthrown in the decisive battle of Khalule, and before another year was past Sennacherib had captured Babylon, and given it up to fire and sword. Its inhabitants were sold into slavery, and the waters of the Araxes canal allowed to flow over its ruins. Sennacherib now assumed the title of king of Babylonia, but with the exception of a campaign into the Cilician mountains he seems to have undertaken no more military expeditions. The latter years of his life were passed in constructing canals and aqueducts, in embanking the Tigris, and in rebuilding the palace of Nineveh on a new and sumptuous scale. On the 20th of Tebet, or December, b.c. 681, he was murdered by his two elder sons, Adrammelech and Nergal-sharezer, who were jealous of the favour shown to their younger brother, Esar-haddon.
Esar-haddon was at the time conducting a campaign against Erimenas, king of Armenia, to whom his insurgent brothers naturally fled. Between seven and eight weeks after the murder of the old king, a battle was fought near Malatiyeh, in Kappadokia, between the veterans of Esar-haddon and the forces under his brothers and Erimenas, which ended in the complete defeat of the latter. Esar-haddon was proclaimed king, and the event proved that a wiser choice could not have been made.
His military genius was of the first order, but it was equalled by his political tact. He was the only king of Assyria who endeavoured to conciliate the nations he had conquered. Under him the fabric of the Second Empire was completed by the conquest of Egypt. In the first year of his reign he rebuilt Babylon, giving it back its captured deities, its plunder, and its people. Henceforth Babylon became the second capital of the empire, the court residing alternately there and at Nineveh. It was while Esar-haddon was holding his winter court at Babylon that Manasseh, of Judah, was brought to him as prisoner.
The trade of Phœnicia was diverted into Assyrian hands by the destruction of Sidon. The caravan-road from east to west was at the same time rendered secure by an expedition into the heart of Northern Arabia. Here Esar-haddon penetrated as far as the lands of Huz and Buz, 280 miles of the march being through a waterless desert. The feat has never been excelled, and the terror it inspired among the Bedouin tribes was not forgotten for many years. The northern frontiers of the kingdom were also made safe by the defeat of Teispes, the Kimmerian, who was driven westward with his hordes into Asia Minor. In the east the Assyrian monarch was bold enough to occupy and work the copper-mines on the distant borders of Media, the very name of which had scarcely been heard of before. Westward, the kings of Cyprus paid homage to the great conqueror, and among the princes who sent materials for his palace at Nineveh were Cyprian rulers with Greek names.
But the principal achievement of Esar-haddon's reign was his conquest of the ancient monarchy of Egypt. In b.c. 675 the Assyrian army started for the banks of the Nile. Four years later Memphis was taken on the 22nd of Tammuz, or June, and Tirhakah, the Egyptian king, compelled to fly first to Thebes, and then into Ethiopia. Egypt was divided into twenty satrapies, governed partly by Assyrians, partly by native princes, whose conduct was watched by Assyrian garrisons. On his return to Assyria Esar-haddon associated Assur-bani-pal, the eldest of his four sons, in the government on the 12th of Iyyar, or April, b.c. 669, and died two years afterwards (on the 12th of Marchesvan, or October), when again on his way to Egypt. Assur-bani-pal, the Sardanapalos of the Greeks, succeeded to the empire, his brother, Samas-sum-yukin, being entrusted with the government of Babylonia.
Assur-bani-pal is probably the 'great and noble' Asnapper of Ezra iv. 10. He was luxurious, ambitious, and cruel, but a munificent patron of literature. The libraries of Babylonia were ransacked for ancient texts, and scribes were kept busily employed at Nineveh in inscribing new editions of older works. But unlike his fathers, Assur-bani-pal refused to face the hardships of [Pg 49] [Pg 50] [Pg 51] a campaign. His armies were led by generals, who were required to send despatches from time to time to the king. It was evident that a purely military empire, like that of Assyria, could not last long, when its ruler had himself ceased to take an active part in military affairs. At first the veterans of his father preserved and even extended the empire of Assur-bani-pal; but before his death it was shattered irretrievably. It is characteristic of Assur-bani-pal that his lion-hunts were mere battues, in which tame animals were released from cages and lashed to make them run; in curious contrast to the lion-hunts in the open field in which his warlike predecessors had delighted.