CHAPTER I—INTRODUCTION

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Transcriber's Note:

Some names with different spellings have not been

corrected as these spellings are possibly alternate

spellings for the same person or location.

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MESOPOTAMIAN

ARCHÆOLOGY

[Illustration: Frontispiece]

MESOPOTAMIAN ARCHÆOLOGY

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ARCHÆOLOGY OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. BY PERCY S.

P. HANDCOCK, M.A. WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS, ALSO MAPS

[Illustration]

LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD., AND PHILIP LEE WARNER, ST. MARTIN’S

STREET. MDCCCCXII

DEDICATED TO

A. M. LORD

IN RECOGNITION

OF MANY ACTS OF FRIENDSHIP

PREFACE

In every department of science the theories of yesterday are perpetually

being displaced by the empirical facts of to-day, though the

ascertainment of these facts is frequently the indirect outcome of the

theories which the facts themselves dissipate. Hence it is that the

works of the greatest scholars and experts have no finality, they are

but stepping-stones towards the goal of perfect knowledge. Since the

publications of Layard, Rawlinson, Botta and Place much new material has

been made accessible for the reconstruction of the historic past of the

Babylonians and Assyrians, and we are consequently able to fill in many

gaps in the picture so admirably, and as far as it went, so faithfully

drawn by the pioneers in the field of excavation and research. This

work, which owes its origin to a suggestion made by Dr. Wallis Budge,

represents an endeavour on the part of the writer to give a brief

account of the civilization of ancient Babylonia and Assyria in the

light of this new material.

It is hoped that the infinitude of activities and pursuits which go to

make up the civilization of any country will justify the writer’s

treatment of so many subjects in a single volume. It will be observed

that space allotted to the consideration of the different arts and

crafts varies on the one hand according to the relative importance of

the part each played in the life of the people, and on the other hand

according to the amount of material available for the study of the

particular subject.

No effort has been spared to make the chapters on Architecture,

Sculpture and Metallurgy as comprehensive as the limitations of the

volume permit, while for the sake of those who desire to pursue the

study of any of the subjects dealt with in this book, and to work up the

sketch into a picture, a short bibliography is given at the end.

It has not been thought desirable to amass a vast number of references

in the footnotes, and the writer is thereby debarred from acknowledging

his indebtedness to the works of other writers on all occasions as he

would like to have done.

In addition to the chapters which deal expressly with the cultural

evolution of the dwellers in Mesopotamia, two chapters are devoted to

the consideration of the Cuneiform writing—its pictorial origin, the

history of its decipherment, and the literature of which it is the

vehicle, while another chapter is occupied with a historical review of

the excavations. The short chronological summary at the end obviously

makes not the slightest pretension to even being a comprehensive

summary; it merely purports to give the general chronological order of

some of the better known rulers and kings of Babylonia and Assyria to

whom allusion is made in this volume, together with a notice of some of

the more significant land-marks in the history of the two countries.

The writer’s thanks are due to the Trustees of the British Museum for

permission to photograph some of the objects in the Babylonian and

Assyrian Collections, and to Dr. Wallis Budge for facilities and

encouragement in carrying out the work; to the University of Chicago

Press for allowing him to reproduce illustrations from the _American

Journal of Semitic Languages_ and also diagrams from Harper’s Memorial

Volumes; to M. Ernest Leroux for permitting him to make use of some of

the plates contained in the monumental works of De Sarzec and Heuzey,

and to M. Ch. Eggimann of the “Libraire Centrale d’art et d’architecture

ancienne maison Morel,” for his very kind permission to reproduce two of

the plates contained in Dieulafoy, _L’Art Antique de la Perse_. He is

similarly indebted to the Deutsche-Orient Gesellschaft for allowing him

to make an autotype copy of one of the plates in Andrae’s _Der Anu-Adad

Tempel_. He further desires to acknowledge the generosity of Prof. H. V.

Hilprecht in allowing him to make use of many of the illustrations

contained in his numerous publications, and also of Dr. Fisher for

permitting him to reproduce some of the photographs contained in his

magnificently illustrated work on the excavations at Nippur. He is very

sensible of his indebtedness to these two gentlemen, as also to M.

Leroux and the Deutsche-Orient Gesellschaft, for the photographs of

excavations in progress are obviously of a unique character and admit of

no repetition; he further desires to express his obligations to Dr. W.

Hayes Ward for his most kind permission to copy a number of

seal-impressions and other illustrations contained in his recently

published work—_Cylinder-Seals of Western Asia_. Lastly, he welcomes the

opportunity of acknowledging the kindness of Mr. Mansell for allowing

him to publish many photographs of objects in the British Museum and the

Louvre contained in his incomparable collection, and for in other ways

facilitating the illustration of this volume. Most of the plans and

drawings used for this volume are the work of Miss E. K. Reader, who has

performed her task with her usual skill.

P. S. P. H.

_March, 1912._

ERRATA ET CORRIGENDA

p. 6, l. 3, _for_ 2500 B.C. _read_ 2400 B.C.

p. 6, l. 18, _for_ 2500 B.C. _read_ 2400 B.C.

p. 43, l. 7 from foot, _read_ both French and English explorers

p. 62, l. 2, _for_ considerable _read_ much

p. 89, l. 5, _for_ ± _read_ —

p. 110, l. 2, _for_ 2500 B.C. _read_ 2400 B.C.

p. 125, l. 7 from foot, _for_ or _read_ and

p. 130, l. 23, _for_ 2400 B.C. _read_ 2350 B.C.

p. 155, l. 31, _for_ having _read_ have

p. 235, l. 9 from foot, _for_ Sumu-la-ilu _read_ Sumu-ilu

p. 247, l. 1, _for_ 2500 B.C. _read_ 2400 B.C.

p. 249, l. 35, _after_ crudeness _read_ these heads

The reference numbers as printed on Plates VII to XI are inaccurate, and

should be altered as follows, in agreement with the List of

Illustrations and the references in the text:—

_Present number _Correct number

and position_ and position_

ZIGGURAT OF ASHUR-NAṢIR-PAL VII _Facing_ p. 64 VIII Facing p. 78

INSCRIPTIONS ON CLAY VIII ” 78 IX ” 106

RUINED MOUNDS AND COURT OF MEN IX ” 106 X ” 132

WATER CONDUIT, NIPPUR X ” 132 XI ” 138

EXCAVATIONS IN TEMPLE COURT XI ” 138 VII ” 64

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION—

(_a_) Land and People 1

(_b_) Sketch of Babylonian and Assyrian History 28

II. EXCAVATIONS 40

III. DECIPHERMENT OF THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS 85

IV. CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS 95

V. ARCHITECTURE 119

VI. SCULPTURE 181

VII. METALLURGY 242

VIII. PAINTING 270

IX. CYLINDER-SEALS 284

X. SHELL-ENGRAVING AND IVORY-WORK 309

XI. TERRA-COTTA FIGURES AND RELIEFS 317

XII. STONEWARE AND POTTERY 325

XIII. DRESS, MILITARY ACCOUTREMENTS, ETC. 337

XIV. LIFE, MANNERS, CUSTOMS, LAW, RELIGION 364

SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY 406

LIST OF THE MORE IMPORTANT KINGS AND

RULERS AND A BRIEF CHRONOLOGICAL

SUMMARY 408

INDEX 411

ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE IN COLOURS

PLATE

I. Coloured Lion at Khorsabad _Frontispiece_

PLATES IN HALF-TONE

FACING PAGE

II. Kouyunjik and Nebi Yûnus (two views) 42

Nimrûd (Calah) 42

Khorsabad 42

III. Excavations at Nimrûd (Calah) in Ashur-naṣir-pal’s

Palace 44

IV. “Fish-God,” and Entrance Passage, Kouyunjik 48

V. Doorway at Tellô, erected by Gudea 54

South-eastern façade of Ur-Ninâ’s building at

Tellô 54

VI. Remains of a Stele in a building under that of

Ur-Ninâ 58

The Well of Eannatum 58

XI. Excavations in the Temple Court, Nippur 64

VIII. The Ziggurat and Palace of Ashur-naṣir-pal,

Ashur 78

IX. Inscriptions on clay illustrating the sizes and

shapes of the Tablets, etc., used by the Babylonians

and Assyrians 106

X. The Ruined Mounds of Nippur 132

Court of the Men from the North-East, Nippur 132

XI. Water Conduit of Ur-Engur, Nippur 138

XII. Portion of the “Vulture Stele” of Eannatum,

Patesi of Lagash 186

XIII. Stele of Victory of Narâm-Sin 192

XIV. Stele engraved with Khammurabi’s Code of

Laws 198

The Sun-God Tablet 198

XV. Bas-relief of Ashur-naṣir-pal 202

XVI. Bas-reliefs of Ashur-naṣir-pal (four subjects) 204

XVII. Siege of a City by battering-ram and archers 206

XVIII. Ashur-bani-pal’s Hunting Scenes: Lion and

lioness in a garden 218

XIX. Ashur-bani-pal’s Hunting Scenes (two subjects) 218

XX. Ashur-bani-pal’s Hunting Scenes: Hunting

wild asses with dogs 220

Ashur-bani-pal pouring out a libation over

dead lions 220

XXI. Ashur-bani-pal reclining at meat 222

Musicians and Attendants 222

XXII. Limestone figure of an early Sumerian 224

Three archaic stone heads 224

XXIII. Head and two diorite statues of Gudea;

upper part of female statuette 228

XXIV. Statues of Nebo and Ashur-naṣir-pal; torso

of a woman 230

XXV. Winged man-headed genii 236

XXVI. Stone lion of Ashur-naṣir-pal 238

XXVII. The Kasr lion 240

XXVIII. Miscellaneous objects of bronze, from

Nimrûd 254

XXIX. Bronze bowl, from Nimrûd 256

XXX. Decorated arch at Khorsabad 278

XXXI. Glazed bricks 282

XXXII. Ivory panels, from Nimrûd 314

XXXIII. Pottery, from Nimrûd and Nineveh 334

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

FIGURE PAGE

1. Pictographs 97

2. Pictographs 99

3. Late Babylonian “squeeze” of an early inscription 117

4. Brick-stamp of Narâm-Sin 117

5. Clay covering of the “Sun-Tablet” 117

6. Restoration of the temple at Nippur 137

7. Restoration of the Anu-Adad temple at Ashur 144

8. Restoration of Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad 151

9. Domed roofs in Assyria 155

10, 11. Terra-cotta drains 159

12. Columnar piers at Tellô 161

13. Large column capital; small column capital 165

14. Columns (various) 166

15. Early arch at Nippur 170

16. Early arch at Tellô 170

17. Corbelled arch at Nippur 173

18. Round arch at Babylon 173

19-22. Arched drains at Khorsabad 174

23. Burial-vault at Ashur 176

24. Burial-vault at Ur (Muḳeyyer) 176

24_a_. Ziggurat on Assyrian bas-relief 180

24_b_. Ziggurat at Khorsabad 180

25. Six early bas-reliefs 182

26. Stele of Ur-Ninâ and mace-head of Mesilim 185

27. Two fragments of the “Vulture Stele”; little

sculptured block (Entemena’s reign) 189

28. Five bas-reliefs, including one of Narâm-Sin 194

29. Bas-relief of Sargon, king of Assyria 209

30. Bas-relief of Sennacherib; removal of stone bull 213

31. Sennacherib at Lachish 215

32. Statue of Esar, king of Adab 223

33. Early stone statue of a woman 224

34. Statue of Manishtusu; seated figure of a woman;

head of a woman 225

35. Seated figure of Shalmaneser II 231

36. Stone lion-head; figure of a dog; stone figure of

a human-headed bull inlaid with shell 234

37. Copper spear-head; hollow copper tube 243

38. Early copper figures 245

39. Copper figures of Basket-bearers; copper figure

of Gudea 247

40. Figures and heads of animals in copper and bronze 250

41. Two Assyrian swords; an Assyrian axe 254

42. Bronze dish 257

43, 44. Bronze gate-bands 259, 260

45. Silver vase of Entemena 265

46. Coloured clay relief lion from Babylon 274

47. Coloured bull at Babylon; coloured bull at Nimrûd

(Calah) 275

48. Three cylinder seals; clay tablet bearing a

seal-impression 285

49-77. Impressions from cylinder-seals 289-307

78-83. Engravings on shells 310-312

84. Carved ivory panel from Nimrûd 314

85. Early terra-cotta figures 318

86. Terra-cotta figures of later date 320

87. Terra-cotta figure of a dog 323

88. Terra-cotta plaque showing dog with attendant 323

89. Stone vase of Narâm-Sin 328

90. Decorated stone vase of Gudea 328

91. Three stone vessels, one of which bears an inscription

of Sennacherib, and another the name of Xerxes;

small glass vessel of Sargon 330

92, 93. Two early clay pots from Nippur 332

94. Boomerang-shaped weapons 342

95. Assyrian jewellery 348

96, 97. Combs 349

98, 99. Foot-spearman and Foot-archers of the first

Assyrian period 350

100-102. Archers in the reign of Sargon 351

103-105. Archers in the reign of Sennacherib 352

106, 107. Assyrian cavalry 354, 355

108. Assyrian chariotry 356

109. Assyrian helmets and head-gears 357

110. Assyrian weapons of offence 358

111. Battering-rams and shields 360

112. Naval equipment of the Assyrians 362

113-115. Babylonian emblems 396, 398

MAPS

(1) Mesopotamia, (2) Babylonia _Folder at end_

Mesopotamian Archæology

CHAPTER I—INTRODUCTION

(_a_) LAND AND PEOPLE

The Mesopotamian civilization shares with the Egyptian civilization the

honour of being one of the two earliest civilizations in the world, and

although M. J. de Morgan’s excavations at Susa the ruined capital of

ancient Elam, have brought to light the elements of an advanced

civilization which perhaps even antedates that of Mesopotamia, it must

be remembered that the Sumerians who, so far as our present knowledge

goes, were the first to introduce the arts of life and all that they

bring with them, into the low-lying valley of the Tigris and Euphrates,

probably themselves emigrated from the Elamite plateau on the east of

the Tigris; at all events the Sumerians expressed both “mountain” and

“country” by the same writing-sign, the two apparently being synonymous

from their point of view; in support of this theory of a mountain-home

for the Sumerians, we may perhaps further explain the temple-towers, the

characteristic feature of most of the religious edifices in Mesopotamia,

as a conscious or unconscious imitation in bricks and mortar of the

hills and ridges of their native-land, due to an innate aversion to the

dead-level monotony of the Babylonian plain, while it is also a

significant fact that in the earliest period Shamash the Sun-god is

represented with one foot resting on a mountain, or else standing

between two mountains. However this may be, the history of the Elamites

was intimately wrapped up with that of the dwellers on the other side of

the Tigris, from the earliest times down to the sack of Susa by

Ashur-bani-pal, king of Assyria, in the seventh century. Both peoples

adopted the cuneiform system of writing, so-called owing to the

wedge-shaped formation of the characters, the wedges being due to the

material used in later times for all writing purposes—the clay of their

native soil—: both spoke an agglutinative, as opposed to an inflexional

language like our own, and both inherited a similar culture.

A further, and in its way a more convincing argument in support of the

mountain-origin theory is afforded by the early art of the Sumerians. On

the most primitive seal cylinders[1] we find trees and animals whose

home is in the mountains, and which certainly were not native to the

low-lying plain of Babylonia. The cypress and the cedar-tree are only

found in mountainous districts, but a tree which must be identified with

one or the other of them is represented on the early seal cylinders; it

is of course true that ancient Sumerian rulers fetched cedar wood from

the mountains for their building operations, and therefore the presence

of such a tree on cylinder seals merely argues a certain acquaintance

with the tree, but _ceteris paribus_ it is more reasonable to suppose

that the material earthly objects depicted, were those with which the

people were entirely familiar and not those with which they were merely

casually acquainted. Again, on the early cylinders the mountain bull,

known as the _Bison bonasus_, assumes the rôle played in later times by

the lowland water-buffalo. This occurs with such persistent regularity

that the inference that the home of the Sumerians in those days was in

the mountains is almost inevitable. Again, as Ward points out, the

composite man-bull Ea-bani, the companion of Gilgamesh, has always the

body of a bison, never that of a buffalo. So too the frequent occurrence

of the ibex, the oryx, and the deer with branching horns, all argues in

the same direction, for the natural home of all these animals lay in the

mountains.

The Mesopotamian valley may, for the immediate purpose of this book, be

divided into two halves, a dividing-line being roughly drawn between the

two rivers just above Abû Habba (Sippar); the northern half embraces the

land occupied by the Assyrians, and the southern half that occupied by

the Babylonians. The precise date at which Assyria was colonized by

Babylonia is not known, but to the first known native[2] king of

Assyria, Irishum, we may assign an approximate date of 2000 B.C.

Babylonia proper is an alluvial plain the limits of which on the east

and west are the mountains of Persia and the table-land of Arabia

respectively. This valley has been gradually formed at the expense of

the sea’s domain, for in the remote past the Persian Gulf swept over the

whole plain at least as far northward as the city of Babylon where

sea-shells have been found, and probably a good deal further. It owes

its formation to the silt brought down by the two rivers and deposited

at the mouth of the Gulf: the amount of land thus yearly reclaimed from

the sea in early times is not known, but as Spasinus Chorax the modern

Mohammerah, which is now some forty-seven miles inland, was situated on

the sea-coast in the time of Alexander, we know that the conquest of the

land over the sea has been progressing since his time at the rate of 115

feet yearly.

Thus the physical characteristics of the country in which Babylonian

civilization was developed, if it was not actually the place of its

origin, form a close parallel to those of Lower Egypt; in Egypt however

such evidence as there is, would indicate the South, or Upper Egypt as

the earliest scene of civilization, the North being conquered by the

Mesniu (Metal-users) of the South, not only in the battle-field but also

in culture and civilization. Both countries have but a small sea-board

where their rivers find an outlet, the Nile into the Mediterranean, and

the Tigris and Euphrates into the Persian Gulf; both countries had

emerged and were yearly emerging out of the sea, for it is certain that

at one time the Mediterranean penetrated as far south as Esneh, while as

already mentioned, the Persian Gulf extended at least as far as Babylon;

we are accordingly not surprised to find in both the Babylonian and

Egyptian cosmologies a tradition which told of the creation of the world

out of a primæval mass of water, though this idea looms less

conspicuously in the Egyptian than in the Babylonian and Hebrew

cosmologies. Both countries also were visited by a yearly inundation

which, while it brought no small amount of devastation in its train, at

the same time deposited the mud so essential to the enrichment of the

soil, the desolation being checked or at least mitigated in either

country by an elaborate system of irrigation canals, which same canals

were in the summer-time the means of conveying the life-giving water to

the dry and thirsty land. Both Babylonia and Egypt enjoy a warm climate,

though Egypt is much more dry and therefore healthier, and the

corresponding dryness of its soil has preserved the tangible evidences

of its ancient history in a far more perfect condition than the

marsh-country of Lower Mesopotamia; and lastly the climate of Egypt is

not subject to the same violent changes of temperature incidental to

the seasons in the Valley of the Euphrates.

The evidence of any racial connection between the earliest known

inhabitants of the two countries is very precarious; as regards their

art, their customs and their language, the Sumerians on the one hand,

and the pre-dynastic and early dynastic Egyptians on the other, show a

complete independence of each other; both countries were probably

invaded at an early period of their histories by the Semites, who in the

case of Mesopotamia completely supplanted their predecessors of

different stock, but who were at the same time themselves absorbed by

the higher civilization of the Sumerians to which they were the destined

heirs, and to the further development of which they themselves were to

contribute so largely; but at what period or periods the Semites swept

over Egypt and the north coast of Africa, impressing their indelible and

unmistakable stamp upon the foundation-structure of the Egyptian and

Libyan languages is not known; whenever it was, we can safely assume

that their advent took place in prehistoric days, for the hieroglyphs

and probably also the language of the dynastic Egyptians were the

natural development of the language and crude picture-signs of their

predecessors, and the theory of a violent break in the continuity of

early Egyptian civilization at the commencement of the first dynasty is

daily becoming more untenable. We are similarly unable to assign any

definite date to the arrival of the Semites in the Mesopotamian Valley,

though the Neo-Babylonian King Nabonidus gives us a traditional date for

Shar-Gâni-sharri[3] (Sargon) and his son Narâm-Sin, kings of Agade, who,

so far as we know, established the first Semitic empire in the country.

There were indeed Semitic Kings of Kish before the time of

Shar-Gâni-sharri, but the extent of their sway was clearly very limited

compared with the far-reaching empire of the rulers of Agade. But there

are reasons for doubting the accuracy of the traditional date of 3750

B.C. which Nabonidus assigns to Narâm-Sin, the chief reason being the

extraordinary gap in the yieldings of Babylonian excavations between the

time of Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin, and that of Gudea, the

priest-king of Lagash in Southern Babylonia, who reigned about 2400

B.C.; that is to say, concerning a period of about 1300 years the

excavations have afforded us practically no information whatever, while

both at the beginning and at the close of that period, we have abundant

evidence of the civilization and history of the inhabitants of

Babylonia; secondly, the style of art characteristic of the time of

Gudea and the kings of Ur, as also the style of writing found in their

inscriptions, presuppose no such long interval between the time of

Sargon and their own day. But there are yet other considerations which

are even more potent, and which deserve greater attention than has been

up to the present accorded to them, depending as they do upon the

stratification of the ruined mounds themselves. Now it is a very

significant fact that the architectural remains of Ur-Engur (_circ._

2400 B.C.) at Nippur, are found immediately above those of Narâm-Sin,

for such an arrangement is hardly conceivable if a period of some

thirteen hundred years separated these two rulers. Again, the

excavations carried on by Dr. Banks for the University of Chicago at

Bismâya have been productive of similar evidence, for immediately below

the ruined ziggurat of Dungi, Ur-Engur’s successor on the throne of Ur,

large square bricks of the size and shape characteristic of the time of

Shar-Gâni-sharri were discovered, while among the bricks a strip of gold

inscribed with the name of Narâm-Sin was also brought to light. The

evidence afforded by the excavations on these two sites would thus

appear to be exceedingly strong against the traditional date recorded by

Nabonidus.[4]

It is therefore tempting to reason that that long silent period, the

silence of which cannot be adequately accounted for, had no existence at

all, that Nabonidus’ statement is therefore to be discredited, and that

Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin probably lived and reigned more than a

thousand years later, i.e. about 2650 B.C. On the other hand it is

important to remember that the Babylonians were astronomers and

mathematicians of no mean order, and that they exercised the greatest

possible care in calculating dates, that moreover Nabonidus was a king

of Babylonia, and therefore “a priori” likely to be in possession of

reliable traditions, if any existed, and further, that he lived 2500

years nearer to the time than we do. The inscription of Nabonidus in

question was found in the mound of Sippar near Agade. It says:—“The

foundation corner-stone of the temple E-ulba in the town of the eternal

fire (Agade) had not been seen since the times before Sargon King of

Babylonia and his son Narâm-Sin.... The cylinder of Narâm-Sin, son of

Sargon, whom for 3200 years, no king among his predecessors had seen,

Shamash the great lord of Sippara hath revealed to him.” Thus according

to Nabonidus, Narâm-Sin lived about 3750 B.C. The archæological evidence

is however so strong in this particular case, both negatively in regard

to the absence of any tangible evidence of the long interval in

question, and positively in regard to the stratification of the mounds

containing the relics of these two kings and also in regard to the

similarity between the earlier sculptures and inscriptions of

Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin and those belonging to the latter half of

the third millennium B.C., that we are no longer able to maintain the

implicit confidence in the historical accuracy of Nabonidus which early

scholars once had.

From the inscriptions of Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin that have been

brought to light, we gather that the authors of these inscriptions were

Semites, in other words we learn that the empire of Agade was a Semitic

Empire, and since they extended their empire over all Western Asia, the

Sumerian power located more in the south must have proportionately

dwindled. But their Sumerian predecessors had established their

influence and power in Mesopotamia for a long and indefinite time before

this date, for Sumerian inscriptions which are almost certainly to be

assigned to the pre-Sargonic period give us the names of a large number

of early kings and rulers of Babylonia; their early date is shown by the

writing of these inscriptions which bear a more archaic stamp than those

of Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin. For just as uninscribed sculptures

are relatively dateable by the style of art to which they conform, so

that it is possible to provisionally say that this sculpture or

cylinder-seal is older than that, because it presents a more archaic and

less finished style of art, so is it possible to approximately date

un-named and un-dated inscriptions by the style of writing adopted in

those inscriptions. We thus have two means at our disposal by which we

can assign uninscribed monuments of an early period to their relatively

correct places in the evolution of art and culture; on the one hand the

stratum of the ruined mound in which the object in question has been

found can often itself be relatively dated by actually inscribed

monuments found either in the stratum itself, or in the stratum

immediately above or below; or failing these, by the depth at which the

stratum lies below the top of the mound, though this latter alone is a

poor criterion owing to the fact that such accumulation will obviously

vary in different places. The value of all such evidence however depends

on whether or not the strata have been disturbed, as is often

unfortunately the case.

The reason why the ruins of Mesopotamian cities have assumed the form of

mounds lies in the fact that a conquering chief demolished the clay

walls and buildings of his vanquished foe, but instead of clearing the

débris away, he built on the top of it; for his new building operations

the new-comer often utilized part of the old material, hence the

uncertainty of a date assigned to an object, based on the mere

assumption that such object belongs to the stratum in which it has

ultimately found itself, without other corroborative evidence. On the

other hand we are in these days always able to apply the purely

archæological test, which depends upon a close examination of the style

of art or the mode of writing.

Some of these pre-Sargonic rulers already alluded to can be arranged in

strictly chronological order, i.e. the rulers of the city of Lagash, one

of the earliest centres of Sumerian civilization in Babylonia. Lagash

lies fifteen hours’ journey north of Ur and two hours’ east of Warka

(the ancient Erech), and it is Lagash which has provided us with more

material for our study of early Sumerian life and culture than any other

city in the Euphrates valley.

The order of the early pre-Sargonic rulers of Lagash is as follows:

Ur-Ninâ, apparently the founder of the dynasty, inasmuch as he bestows

no royal title on his father or grandfather, and his successors traced

themselves back to him; Akurgal, Eannatum, Enannatum I, Entemena,

Enannatum II, Enetarzi, Enlitarzi, Lugal-anda, and Urukagina. But though

their chronological order is certain, the length of their reigns is

unknown, and their dates can only be approximately ascertained, and

even these approximate and relative dates depend entirely on the date of

Shar-Gâni-sharri. Assuming the latter’s date to have been about 2650

B.C., Ur-Ninâ’s date would be roughly about 3000 B.C. Ur-Ninâ the first

member of the dynasty has left us a number of his sculptures and stelæ,

but there are other nameless works of art discovered either in the

neighbourhood or actually in Lagash itself which present a less

developed form of art, and where inscriptions are concerned, a more

archaic style of writing, while in certain cases the monuments in

question were actually discovered in the strata underneath the building

of Ur-Ninâ, and with these the history of Mesopotamian art and of the

civilization to which it bears such eloquent testimony commences.

RACE

The race to which the Sumerians belonged is not known, but the fact that

their language being agglutinative and not inflexional, was therefore

neither Aryan nor Semitic, but at least and in this respect akin to the

Mongolian languages, of which Turkish, Finnish, Chinese and Japanese are

the most illustrious examples to-day, has led certain scholars to seek a

connection between some of the Sumerian roots and certain Chinese words,

it must however be admitted that this supposed connection is rather

hypothetical at present. Further efforts have also been made by

Lacouperie and others to establish parallels between Chinese art and

culture and those of the Sumerians, but the evidence is not very

convincing.

SOIL

As the surface-soil of Babylonia did not originate there, but was

brought down by the rivers and deposited by them as their currents lost

impetus in approaching the sea, and were thus unable to carry their

burden further, it is well to trace this soil to its original source.

Both the Euphrates and the Tigris rise in the mountains of Armenia,[5]

the geological formation of which is chiefly granite, gneiss and other

feldspathic rocks. These rocks were gradually decomposed by the rains,

their detritus being hurried rapidly down-stream; the rivers in the

course of their career travel through a variety of geological formations

including limestone, sandstone and quartz, all of which contribute

something to the silt which is destined to form part of the delta’s

soil; the latter being composed mainly of chalk, sand, and clay, is

extremely fertile, which won for it a reputation testified to even by

the classical writers: thus Herodotus who flourished in the seventh

century B.C. tells us (I, 293) that “of all the countries that we know,

there is none which is so fruitful in grain. It makes no pretension

indeed, of growing the olive, the vine, or any other trees of the kind;

but in grain it is so fruitful as to yield commonly two hundredfold, and

when the production is greatest even three hundredfold. The blade of the

wheat-plant and barley is often four fingers in breadth. As for millet

and the sesame, I shall not say to what height they grow, though within

my own knowledge, for I am not ignorant that what I have already written

concerning the fruitfulness of Babylonia, must seem incredible to those

who have never visited the country.... Palm trees grow in great numbers

over the whole of the flat country, mostly of the kind that bears fruit,

and this fruit supplies them with bread, wine and honey.” However

exaggerated this account may be, all ancient writers agree in ascribing

to Babylonian soil a fertility and productivity surpassing that of any

other country with which they were acquainted.

But the present state of the country is very different from what it was,

neglect of cultivation having reduced it once more to a desert waste,

or, in the immediate neighbourhood of the rivers, to a pestiferous

marsh. The rivers have furthermore varied their courses time and again,

though this remark applies more to the sluggish stream of the Euphrates

with its low banks, than to the more swiftly flowing Tigris whose

current is confined by higher banks, and whose course has consequently

undergone less change. At the present time, great efforts are being made

to make amends for the neglect to which the once fertile plain of

Babylonia has so long been subject, and in the early part of last year

(1911) the firm of Sir John Jackson (Limited), contractors and

engineers, secured the contract for the building of a great dam at the

head of the Hindiyah Canal: this latter is a channel for which the

Euphrates has forsaken its own bed, and consequently the Euphrates’ bed

upon whose banks the city of Babylon lies, is in summer-time perfectly

dry, all the water flowing down the Hindiyah Canal except at the time of

the inundation. Thus it is that the population have practically ceased

to attempt the cultivation of the Euphrates’ banks, and have for the

most part migrated across country to this canal. The latter however,

being quite inadequate for the burden thus thrust upon it by the

undivided waters of the Euphrates, has become badly water-logged, and

much good land has become swamp. The Turks have been endeavouring for a

long time to erect a dam which would drive back part of the water into

the bed of the river, and thus at the same time make the regulation of

the flow in the canal a possibility, but they have not attained their

object. The engineers of Sir William Willcocks were successful in

filling up the space between the two arms of the barrage, but the dam

was almost immediately breached at another point. When however the

scheme now in hand is duly realized, the banks of the Euphrates will

once again be dotted with the fertility of bygone days, while the

district dependent for its prosperity upon the conditions of the

Hindiyah Canal will be similarly improved.

By the side of these rivers flourished the acacia, the pomegranate and

the poplar, but the tree which stood the Babylonians in best stead, was

the date-palm, from the sap of which they made sugar and also a

fermented liquor, while its fibrous barks served for ropes, and its

wood, being at the same time light and strong, was extensively used as a

building material. So many and so divers were the uses which the

date-palm served, that the Babylonians had a popular song[6] in which

they celebrated the three hundred and sixty benefits of this invaluable

tree. The important part which it played in the life of the early

Sumerian population is indicated by the epithet applied by Entemena to

the goddess Ninâ, whom he addresses as the lady “who makes the dates

grow,” while various amphora-shaped vats, and also a kind of oval basin

evidently used in the manufacture or preservation of date-wine were

discovered by De Sarzec at Tellô.

The date-tree finds a place on the Assyrian bas-reliefs, but it must be

confessed that the artistic products of the Babylonians and Assyrians do

not afford us so much information as might be expected regarding the

flora and fauna of the country. Vines and palms are of frequent

occurrence on the later bas-reliefs, while oaks and terebinths were also

known, for Esarhaddon uses them as material in his building operations

at Babylon, and cedar trees were regularly procured for the same

purpose.

Of the various trees represented on early seals, hardly any can be

identified with any degree of certainty, the date-palm perhaps being

excepted: the reed of the marshes appears fairly soon, but the fig-tree

on the other hand occurs only in later times, which accords with

Herodotus’ intimation that they were not grown in Mesopotamia in his

day; this notwithstanding, they must have been known and presumably

cultivated sufficiently early, for amongst the offerings made by Gudea

(2450 B.C.) to the goddess Bau, figs are enumerated, while the

olive-tree must also have been known at an early date, for objects in

clay in the form of an olive belonging to the time of Urukagina are

still extant.

The Lotus is sometimes engraved on a seal, always in the hand of a god,

and with other Egyptian elements it is frequently found on the ivories

and bronze dishes from Nimrûd.

Millet and other cereals have been the subject of artistic delineation;

flowers of a nondescript character appear in later times, though the

conventional designs of the rosettes, so familiar in Assyrian art, an

example of which is to be found in Pl. XXX, without doubt owed its

origin to an actual attempt to reproduce a living flower, while ivy only

occurs on a late Græco-Egyptian cylinder, and on a Syro-Hittite cylinder

we find a representation of the thistle.

Reeds are found more often than any other tree or plant, alike on

cylinder-seals and bas-reliefs. They were in great demand for the

construction of huts and light boats, but the clay of their native soil

furnished an all-availing and all-abundant material for the building

operations of their palaces, temples and houses; its possibilities were

recognized at a very early date, and were made use of accordingly. Stone

is practically unknown in the low-lying plain of Babylonia,and when

required, it had to be quarried far away in the mountains and

transported at great cost and labour, hence it was comparatively seldom

used for artistic or decorative effects pure and simple, but was rather

employed where the desire for durability rendered it necessary; for this

reason the stone used in Babylonia is generally basalt, diorite,

dolerite or some other hard stone of volcanic origin. In Assyria on the

other hand, both alabaster and various kinds of limestone were easily

procurable, and were used largely for building purposes, while they

both, also, adapted themselves readily to the chisel of the sculptor

whose duty it was to record the chief events of the king’s reign in

pictorial form upon the walls of his palace.

Of the cereals, wheat, barley, vetches and millet were the most

important, and they all grew in large quantities, while as regards

domestic animals—horses, oxen, sheep, pigs, goats, asses and dogs were

the most familiar; upon the bas-reliefs from Kouyunjik, one of the

mounds representing the ancient Nineveh (the other being Nebi Yûnus

(“Prophet Jonah”), so-called by the natives, owing to their belief that

the prophet Jonah was buried there), camels are to be found, while they

also form part of the tribute brought by tributary princes to

Shalmaneser II King of Assyria 860-825 B.C., and are represented

accordingly on the bronze gates from Balâwât and on the so-called Black

Obelisk, principally famous for its representation of Jehu and his

tribute-bearers. The camels represented here belong to the double-humped

Bactrian breed, which have less staying-power than the single-humped

dromedaries of Arabia and Africa. In Babylonia at the present day, these

last-named are a most important means of locomotion, but in the hilly

country of Assyria, they are of less use, owing to their tendency to

slip on any but the flattest of grounds. There is apparently only one

isolated occurrence of a camel on a cylinder-seal, and that belongs to

the Persian period. The Assyrian word used for “camel” is probably of

Arabic origin, and Arabia was doubtless the home of the camel. As for

horses, oxen, sheep, goats and dogs, they are constantly represented in

Assyrian art. The horse being native to Asia, was in all probability

domesticated in Mesopotamia earlier than in Egypt; very early evidence

of its existence in Mesopotamia was thought to be afforded by an archaic

seal-cylinder, now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, in which a

god is represented driving a four-wheeled chariot, in contrast to the

Assyrian war-chariots which were two-wheeled; the chariot is drawn by an

animal of uncertain character, which Ward originally regarded as a

horse, but in view of a representation of a bull drawing a chariot,

found on an early Assyrian seal which he dates about 2000 B.C., it is

clear that the bull was used to draw chariots in early times, and Ward

accordingly regards the ambiguous animal alluded to, as also a bull. The

Sumerian name for the horse was “the ass of the mountains,” an

indication that the animal was first known to them in its wild state: we

find it figured on one of Nebuchadnezzar I’s boundary stone (_circ._

1120 B.C.), but it was certainly known in the valley much earlier. The

Hyksos, or shepherd-kings from Asia introduced the horse into Egypt

about 1700 B.C., while mention is made of horses in a letter from

Burraburiash the king of Babylon to Amenḥetep, king of Egypt about 1400

B.C.

An extremely early fragment from Nippur (cf. Fig. 25, E) published by

Hilprecht and quoted and reproduced by Ward,[7] shows us a horned animal

dragging a plough, which Ward thinks may be a gazelle or an antelope; if

the latter be the case, we may perhaps infer that an animal of that

species was used for draft purposes before the bull, and certainly

before the horse. However that may be, in later days the horse seems to

have been reserved for the battle-field and the chase. The Assyrian

soldiers both rode them and harnessed them to their war-chariots, and it

is worth noticing how much more successful the Assyrian sculptors were

in their representations of the horse than the Egyptians. The horses on

the bas-reliefs apparently belong to a smaller, shorter and more

thick-set breed than Arabs, and the breed is still supposed to be extant

in Kurdistan. The Assyrians do not seem to have been in the habit of

endowing the horse with wings or with a human head, as they sometimes

did the bull and the lion, though some of the Pehlevi[8] seals and rings

of later days (A.D. 226-632) show figures of winged horses.

The _Ox_ with “long upright and bent horns” seems to have been

domesticated from the very earliest period, and it is represented on

cylinder-seals which by their inscriptions show that they belong to the

early period when the line-writing had not as yet been supplanted by its

later off-shoot cuneiform, while on one of these early seals (cf. Fig.

63) the god himself is depicted riding on one of these bulls; it is

however to be observed that the bull plays a less conspicuous part in

the artistic representations of Mesopotamia than in those of Egypt,

where the tombs so often exhibit the daily scenes of agricultural life.

Only very rarely is the bull represented on cylinder-seals or sculptures

as a sacrificial victim, the best example being afforded by a fragment

of the Vulture Stele of Eannatum; the same king informs us elsewhere

that he sacrificed bulls to the sun-god in Larsa, and a bull-calf to

En-lil, the lord of Nippur, who is better known under the Semitic name

of Bêl, a name which however he never bore;[9] if however the bull were

used but seldom in sacrificial worship, there is no doubt that he was

regarded throughout Mesopotamian history as the embodiment of, and

therefore the natural symbol for strength and fertility, while the

winged bulls of Sargon (cf. Pl. XXV) are the most familiar and perhaps

the most characteristic monuments of Assyrian art.

The _Mule_ was used as a beast of burden; carts were drawn by mules, and

women and children were borne by them, while they were used for carrying

merchandise, and for menial work of every kind; they are occasionally

seen on Assyrian bas-reliefs and form one of the subjects of

Ashur-bani-pal’s famous Hunting Scenes, where they are in charge of the

king’s servants.

The _Sheep_ was domesticated from the earliest times, but

representations of the goat are more common; in Fig. 62 we have an

extremely archaic seal on which a man is seen driving a goat followed by

two sheep. A further example of the goat and sheep is found on the early

stone relief seen in Fig. 25, F.

The _Goat_ is of frequent occurrence both on seals and also in

bas-reliefs. The goat was, as far as we can tell, the most commonly used

sacrificial victim, the worshipper often being represented as bringing a

goat in his arms. (For an early example of a goat in Babylonian art, cf.

the copper goat’s head from Fâra, 40, B.) Fig. The beard is sometimes

clearly delineated,[10] thereby showing it to be a goat and not an

antelope, while both the sheep and goat are well represented on the

bronze gate-sheaths from Balâwât. Though the sheep however does not

appear to have assumed so important a part as the goat in sacrificial

worship, it played a far more conspicuous rôle in augury, and

innumerable omens were deduced from an inspection of the various parts

of its liver.

The _Ass_ was known from the earliest period, both the wild ass, which

Ashur-bani-pal seems to have been so fond of hunting (cf. Pl. XX), and

also the domesticated ass. Ward has only found one example of its early

representation on cylinder-seals, but the god Nin-girsu’s chariot on the

famous Vulture Stele is drawn by an ass, and the fact that Urukagina,

one of the kings of the First Dynasty of Lagash, enacted that if a good

ass was foaled in the stable of one of the king’s subjects, the king

could only purchase it by offering a fair price, and that even then he

could not compel the owner to part with it, shows that the ass was in

common use in his day.

The _Dog_ finds a place on some of the earliest seals from Babylonia,

and is especially common on those representing the legend of Etana and

the Eagle (cf. Fig. 62): he also appears on the later Babylonian seals,

and is of very frequent occurrence in the Assyrian bas-reliefs.

Here they are seen employed in the chase (cf. Pl. XX). The Assyrian

hounds apparently resembled mastiffs, and according to Layard the breed

is still extant in Tibet though not in Mesopotamia. We have another good

reproduction of a dog on a terra-cotta plaque found by Sir H. Rawlinson

at Birs-Nimrûd (cf. Fig. 88), while Ashur-bani-pal has left us a number

of clay models of his dogs, made in one piece like the colossal bulls,

but rather crude in workmanship. Though we thus know little about the

breeds of dogs with which the Assyrians and Babylonians were familiar,

we at all events know, that they were acquainted with dogs of various

colours, for they derived omens from piebald dogs, yellow dogs, black

dogs, white dogs and the rest.

The _Gazelle_ was known in Mesopotamia from an early day, and he

sometimes appears to take the place of the goat as a victim for

sacrifice.

The _Antelope_ is often found represented on early cylinder-seals, and

apparently it was occasionally yoked to the plough, as may be seen from

an early stone relief from Nippur,[11] but it is not always easy to

distinguish between the antelope and the goat in Babylonian art.

The _Ibex_ is similarly liable to be confused with the mountain sheep,

owing to the shape of their horns, but where correctly depicted, it has

a beard. A good and very early example of the Ibex is to be found

engraved on a fragment of shell belonging to the earliest Sumerian

period (cf. Louvre Cat. No. 222).

The _Boar_ was not often figured, but was without doubt sufficiently

common as it is to-day; it is found on an extremely archaic seal (cf.

Fig. 54), and numbers of little swine are repeated in four registers on

a later cylinder-seal, while on other seals, the huntsman is seen

spearing a boar, and lastly a sow with her young are represented on one

of the wall-reliefs from Sennacherib’s palace at Kouyunjik. It is

interesting to note that as early as the time of Khammurabi[12] pork was

a highly valued food, so much so that it frequently formed part of the

temple offerings, and Ungnad calls attention to one case where a certain

maleficent person stole one of the temple-pigs and paid a heavy penalty

for so doing, while in the official lists of the provisions for the

temple, various parts of the pig are specifically enumerated, while

from the inspection of pigs favourable and unfavourable omens were

derived.

The _Rabbit_ or _Hare_ is rarely found in early sculptures or

engravings, but it occurs on the later so-called Syro-Hittite cylinders,

and is occasionally portrayed on the Assyrian bas-reliefs.[13]

The _Oryx_, the _Mountain-Sheep_, the _Stag_, the _Tortoise_, the

_Porcupine_, the _Monkey_, all occur occasionally on the cylinders,

while as regards the monkey, he forms part of the tribute brought by

subject peoples to Shalmaneser II on the Black Obelisk, and is also

similarly depicted on the bas-reliefs which adorned the walls of

Ashur-naṣir-pal’s palace at Nimrûd, in both of which latter, the monkeys

represented appear to belong to an Indian species, and were clearly

novelties in the eyes of the Assyrians, who no doubt valued them

accordingly.

There are solitary instances of the _Fox_, the _Frog_ and the _Bear_,

but none of the foregoing play what may be called an important part in

the history of the country’s art. The _Lion_ and the _Serpent_ occupy a

prominent position in artistic representations, and were undoubtedly

familiar and formidable entities in real life, while the majesty of the

former and the subtlety of the latter were alone sufficient to obtain

for them a place in the mythological and heraldic symbolism of the

dwellers of Mesopotamia. The lion was known everywhere, in highlands and

lowlands alike, while he still haunts the low marsh country of

Babylonia. On the cylinder-seals he generally appears engaged in deadly

combat with Gilgamesh, the hero of Babylonian folk-lore, or his friend

Ea-bani who of course on all occasions worsts him; he is figured in clay

and stone from the earliest (cf. Fig. 26, B) to the latest times, he is

embroidered on garments, and decorates scabbards, while he plays an

all-important part in the heraldic device of the ancient city of

Lagash, which is composed of an eagle with outspread wings, clutching

two lions facing in opposite directions (cf. Fig. 27), doubtless

emblematic of the dominion exercised by the king of Lagash over the

peoples of the East and West respectively. He enjoys the doubtful honour

of being the peculiar object of the Assyrian King’s attention in later

days, and afforded him the sport which he loved above all others (cf.

Pl. XIX); individual kings slew great numbers, and Tukulti-Ninib I (1275

B.C.), to take a single example, places it on record that he slew some

920 lions, just as Amenḥetep III king of Egypt similarly boasts that he

killed 102 lions in the first ten years of his reign. Originally no

doubt lions were sufficiently plentiful, but as their numbers were

thinned, it became necessary to capture and preserve them in cages till

they were required for the royal hunt (cf. Pl. XXVII). The lion is

sometimes reproduced in colossal size, and endowed with wings and the

head of a man, in which capacity, stationed at the portals of the King’s

palace, his vocation is to ward off the advances of malevolent and

maleficent demons, while at other times, he is less fully equipped, and

is provided only with a head, bust and hands of a man. Always a creature

of weight in more ways than one, his body is not unfittingly adapted to

the requirements of the scales; a considerable number of bronze

lion-weights have come down to us, the workmanship of which was probably

Phœnician (as was also the ivory work of the Assyrian empire), while the

weight represented by each lion was inscribed in Phœnician characters.

Sometimes again the hollow bronze head of a lion formed the ornate

fitting of the end of a chariot-pole. As a general rule, the lion

emblematized the King’s enemies, hence it is that, whenever he is seen

engaged in conflict, he is always overpowered either by sheer bodily

strength as in the case of Gilgamesh, or transfixed by an arrow,

speared, or stabbed as we see him so frequently on the bas-reliefs of

Assyrian palaces. But lions were probably domesticated now and again as

they are to-day. On Sir Henry Layard’s first visit to Hillah, he was

presented with two lions by Osman Pasha; one of these, he tells us, was

a well-known frequenter of the bazaars, the butcher-shops of which he

was in the habit of regularly looting, but apart from this amiable

little vagary, he appears to have been fairly well-behaved. In his

description of the animal, Layard says that he was “taller and larger

than a St. Bernard dog, and like the lion generally found on the banks

of the rivers of Mesopotamia was without the dark and shaggy mane of the

African species.” He further informs us that he had however, seen lions

with a long black mane on the river Karûn, which river flows into the

Gulf not far from Moḥammerah in the extreme south of Babylonia; but

lions of either class are very rarely seen in Mesopotamia to-day, and

these as a rule, only at a distance.

The serpent played a smaller part in Mesopotamian art than the lion, but

at least from some points of view, a not less significant one. Two

serpents entwined round a pole form the centre of the device engraved on

the famous cup (cf. Fig. 90) dedicated by Gudea, patesi or priest-king

of Lagash about 2450 B.C., to his god Nin-gish-zi-da, who was apparently

emblematized by serpents, and on either side of the entwined reptiles,

are two winged and serpent-headed monsters, while in a few

cylinder-seals of the older period, we find a bearded god whose body

consists of a serpent’s coil. In this connection we may compare the

device on a cylinder-seal of the same Gudea (cf. Fig. 64), where the

intermediary god who is introducing the patesi to a seated deity, whom

Ward believes with some reason to be Ea, is characterized by serpents

rising from his shoulders.

But the most familiar example of the serpent in Babylonian mythological

representation is that of the seal on which two beings, perhaps divine,

perhaps human, are seated on either side of a tree, and behind one of

the two an erect serpent is figured; this seal owes its fame to the

opinion held by earlier scholars that this scene represents the

pictorial counterpart in Babylonia of the Hebrew tradition of the Fall.

Judging from the representations of snakes found on vases,

boundary-stones, cylinder-seals and elsewhere, the snakes prevalent in

Mesopotamia at the time when these monuments were prepared, must have

been of considerable size, while we know from the literature that some

of these snakes were poisonous. The Assyrian kings further make mention

of the prevalence of snakes in some of the countries whither they

conducted expeditions, or which were subject to them, thus Esarhaddon

for example tells us that the land of Bazu swarmed with snakes and

scorpions like grasshoppers.

Among other beasts familiar to the inhabitants of Mesopotamia may be

mentioned, the _Bison_ (“rimu”) an animal of the mountains and forests,

which plays a conspicuous part in the story of Gilgamesh; the old

pictograph for the bison consists of the head of an ox in which were

inclosed the three diagonal wedges which together signify “mountain,”

and thus indicate the place of its origin. Various species of the bovine

race have been identified on the cylinder-seals of Babylonia, showing

that at the time of the making of the seals, the memory of their

existence and probably the actuality of their presence were still felt

and known. The _buffalo_ which haunts the swamps of Southern Babylonia

often occurs on cylinder-seals belonging to the time of Shar-Gâni-sharri

and his successors, and is found engraved on fragments of shell

belonging to the earliest Sumerian period. Layard tells us that these

ugly animals which thrive in the marshes to-day supply the Arabs with

large quantities of milk and butter; they are normally managed with

ease, but they have a peculiar antipathy to the smell of soap, and in

consequence the odour of freshly-washed clothes is apt to irritate them

in no small degree. The wild-bull was assiduously hunted by the Sargonid

Assyrian kings, among whom we may especially mention Ashur-naṣir-pal in

this connection. (For a graphic illustration of that king’s exploits in

the chase cf. Pl. XVI). After the Sargonids, the bull-hunt appears no

longer as one of the principal royal sports, possibly owing to the

relentlessness with which these animals had been hunted down by the

kings of that dynasty. In the jungles, at all events in Layard’s day,

lions, leopards, lynxes, wild-cats, jackals, hyenas, wolves, deer,

porcupines and boars still abounded, while hyenas are sufficiently

common to-day.

The _Leopard_ is occasionally figured on the more archaic seals, but

seldom on those of later date, it is distinguished specifically by its

spots; a good example of the leopard is afforded by an archaic seal much

earlier than the time of Shar-Gâni-sharri.[14] It will thus be seen that

the artistic and literary bequests of Mesopotamia have aided us in no

small degree in our endeavour to get a general idea as to the

animal-world of that country in bygone days. Such however has been the

case, only to a very limited extent in regard to birds, where colour is

a more determining factor in their infinite variations than form and

shape: here it was that the Egyptian shone forth in all his native

genius, and succeeded in vividly depicting so many different kinds of

birds upon the walls of his tombs by the aid of his brush and colours.

In Assyria and Babylonia, on the other hand, where the artistic genius

of the people can never really be said to have used colours alone as the

mode of its expression, the only birds frequently found, are the eagle

and the vulture,—the eagle as the emblem of sovereign royalty, the

vulture as the ever-ready devourer of the remains of slaughtered

foes—though without doubt a great variety of birds haunted the plains

and marshes as they do to-day.

The _Eagle_, the royal bird _par excellence_, is the embodiment of

kingly rule in the heraldic arms of Lagash as early as the time of her

first dynasty, and by the time of Gudea (2450 B.C.) the double-headed

eagle, generally characteristic of Hittite art, has made its appearance.

It is upon the eagle’s pinions that Etana seeks unsuccessfully to ascend

to Heaven, which legend is pictorially represented (cf. Fig. 62) on

various archaic seals. In course of time the eagle becomes the aerial

support of Ashur, the god from whom Assyria derived its name, and lends

its form to the winged disc, which, as M. Heuzey well says, is a “yet

more mysterious emblem of divinity”; the Assyrians further deemed it

worthy to receive the honour of being united with the body of a man, the

composite creature thus produced being accredited with powers more than

those enjoyed by mere men, and apparently partaking of a semi-divine

character, while on other occasions we see its wings applied to the

human-headed body of a bull (cf. Pl. XXV) or a lion, the combined effect

of which must have been such as to stagger the boldest of subterranean

demons.

The long and bare-necked _Vulture_ is not of frequent occurrence in

Mesopotamian art, while on cylinder-seals, it only occurs on those known

as Syro-Hittite. The birds of prey from which the “Vulture-stele”

derives its name, no doubt are intended to represent vultures; as also

are the birds depicted on the bas-reliefs which adorned the walls of

Ashur-bani-pal’s palace at Nineveh,[15] for in either case they are

busily engaged in carrying off the sharply severed limbs and heads of

fallen foes.

The _Ostrich_ only appears in Mesopotamian art at a late period, though

in Elam rows of ostriches are found depicted on early pottery, closely

and inexplicably resembling the familiar ostriches on the pre-dynastic

pottery of ancient Egypt. It sometimes however assumes a conspicuous

position in the embroidery of an Assyrian king’s robe and is found also

on a chalcedony seal in Paris.[16]

The _Stork_, which in winter time feeds in the Babylonian marshes,

occurs on the cylinder-seals, but in some cases it is difficult to

determine the bird figured; the _Crane_ and the _Bustard_ both appear to

be represented, while we have an undoubted instance of the _Swan_ in a

soft serpentine seal which Ward regards as early Assyrian.[17] The

_Cock_ is confined or practically confined to cylinder-seals of the

Persian period.

_Ducks_ are known to have existed by the discovery of stone and marble

weights in the form of ducks, one of which is inscribed with the name of

Nabû-shum, and another with that of Erba-Marduk.

_Doves_ were used and appreciated from the earliest times, for Eannatum

informs us that he offered four doves in sacrifice to the god Enzu,

while _Swallows_ and _Ravens_ abounded, for in the Deluge-story, both

the swallow and raven as well as the dove are sent forth by

Ṣit-napishtim to ascertain how far the waters were abated.[18]

Locusts are found on one or two seals, and also appear as articles of

diet on the Assyrian bas-reliefs (cf. Layard, Series II, Pl. 9), where

they are seen strung up on a stick, while the scorpion is of frequent

occurrence on the cylinder-seals, and is found on some of the earliest.

Fishes figure alike on seals and on palace walls, but their presence

generally seems due to the artist’s desire to remove all doubt from the

spectator’s mind with regard to the water, of the success of his

reproduction of which he is by no means too sanguine. We have one

humorous episode in fish-life depicted on the walls of Sennacherib’s

palace at Kouyunjik, where a crab is seen effectually pressing its

nippers into the body of a luckless fish, while it also occurs once on a

cylinder-seal.

Fish were undoubtedly used for food from the earliest times; thus

Eannatum records that he presented certain fish as offering to his gods,

while one of the reforms introduced by Urukagina, a king of the First

Dynasty of Lagash, was the deprivation from office of the extortionate

fishery inspectors. The marshes still abound in fish, some of which

attain to a considerable size; they are for the most part barbel or

carp, their flesh although coarse affording a regular supply of food to

the Arabs.

It was not unnatural or unfitting that in a country which had been

created and was yearly being created out of and at the expense of the

sea, and in which the principal means of transit were the rivers and the

canals, the fish as the lord of the waters should fulfil an important

place in the mythological and religious conceptions entertained by the

inhabitants of that country: thus it was that the god Ea of Eridu, one

of the most famous and most important of the Babylonian gods, and the

Oannes of the Greeks, who according to one account was the creator of

the world, was represented in the form of a fish.

But it is necessary to avoid falling into the danger of assuming that

all the animals, birds, fish and trees, either figured on monuments or

mentioned in the literature of antiquity, belonged to the fauna or flora

of Mesopotamia at the time when these engravings and sculptures were

executed; the only absolutely certain and equally obvious inference is

that the existence of such fauna or flora was known, while the degree of

familiarity of the artist with the specimen in question may, with a good

deal of reservation and allowance for the crudeness of early art, be

inferred from the comparative accuracy with which he has reproduced it,

and also the frequency of its occurrence on contemporaneous works of

art. With regard to the evidence of the literature, unfortunately in

many cases there is some uncertainty as to the identification of the

animals and plants alluded to, and furthermore, many of the animals

represented pictorially on the monuments or alluded to in the literature

form part of the tribute brought by subject states, the precise locality

of which, to complicate matters yet further, is often uncertain.

Sometimes, as in the case of the horse (cf. p. 15), the early

ideographic form of writing teaches us something about the origin of the

object mentioned, while the appearance of an animal or tree in early

Mesopotamian art, and the existence of the same tree or animal in

Mesopotamia to-day is good argument for including it among the ancient

fauna and flora of the country. Again with exceptions it may be assumed

that animals offered and accepted as tribute by the kings of Babylonia

and Assyria were utilized in some way other than merely being afforded

accommodation in a zoological gardens, in which connection we may

perhaps fairly infer that kings of Assyria who accepted camels from

vassal chiefs found use for them as a means of transit, though in the

rough country of Assyria itself the camel would not be of great use any

more than to-day, owing to the tendency of camels to slip on rough

ground, and the consequently practical necessity of confining their use

to flat sandy ground, such as is found in Babylonia, where they are seen

by the thousand to-day.

(_b_) SKETCH OF BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN HISTORY

In the early days of Babylonian history, the country was divided up into

a number of small principalities or city-states, and the practical

realization of the approved truism that “unity is strength” was only

attained at a later date. In this respect also, the early history of

Babylonian civilization presents a parallel to that of ancient Egypt,

where we find the country similarly apportioned out into a series of

districts or nomes, which in course of time tended to amalgamate and in

fact crystallized into a northern and a southern kingdom. But in Egypt

the process of unification was carried a step further, and at about the

time of the First Dynasty, the inhabitants of Egypt owed allegiance to

one lord and one lord only—the king of the north and the south, his dual

sovereignty being emblematized by his assumption of the crown of the

north, and the crown of the south.

It is of course impossible to fix the date of the first appearance of

the Sumerians in Babylonia, but the sites of their earliest known

settlements were all situated in Sumer or Southern Babylonia, their

principal cities being Ur, Erech, Nippur, Larsa, Eridu, Lagash and Umma.

It is equally impossible to give anything in the nature of a definite

date for the occupation of Northern Babylonia or Akkad by the Semites,

suffice it to say that at the earliest period of which historical

records have been brought to light, there appears to be evidence of the

presence of Semites or Akkadians in Akkad alongside of the Sumerians in

Sumer. The principal centres of Semitic occupation were the city of

Akkad or Agade, Babylon, Borsippa (Birs-Nimrûd), Cutha, Opis, Sippar and

Kish.

The city of Kish became an influential factor in Babylonian politics

from the most ancient times.

Thus a certain Mesilim, king of Kish, whose inscribed mace-head was

discovered at Tellô (Lagash),[19] informs us that he had dedicated the

same to the god Nin-girsu, during the patesiate of Lugal-shar-engur at

Lagash, and that he had further restored the temple of this same god.

Nothing further is known regarding this patesi of Lagash, but Mesilim

reigned at Kish at a very early date, for Entemena of Lagash commences

his historical sketch of the relationship which had existed between his

own city and that of Umma with the period of Mesilim.

Now the racial origin of Mesilim is a matter of doubt, but there is no

doubt as to the Semitic origin of Sharru-Gi, Manishtusu and Urumush,

later kings of Kish, whose reigns must be assigned to the pre-Sargonic

period, and it is perhaps therefore reasonable to suppose that the

earlier Mesilim was also a Semite. If that be the case, the mace-head of

this ruler contains evidence that the early Sumerian city of Lagash was

at one time under the domination of Semites, and conclusively proves

that—so far as documentary evidence is concerned—Sumerians and Semites

existed side by side in Babylonia from the earliest period of

Mesopotamian civilization.

Some time after, Lagash succeeded in asserting her independence, and

many of her subsequent rulers style themselves “kings.” The First

Dynasty of Lagash which was seemingly founded by Ur-Ninâ established

themselves securely for some considerable time, but the reign of

Urukagina saw the end of the dynasty, and the capture and sack of the

city by Lugal-zaggisi, a ruler of the neighbouring city of Umma.

The limits of Lugal-zaggisi’s empire included Ur, Erech, Larsa and

Nippur, and he was undoubtedly one of the most powerful rulers of his

day. Other pre-Sargonic kings whose power was specifically associated

with Erech and Ur, were Lugal-kigub-nidudu and Lugal-kisalsi, but the

extent of their sway cannot be estimated with any degree of certainty.

In the time immediately preceding the establishment of the empire of

Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin, the rallying point of the Semitic forces

of Akkad seems to have been the city of Kish, the conquests of whose

three kings Sharru-Gi Manishtusu and Urumush prepared the way for their

successors at Agade. Thus both Manishtusu and Urumush seem to have

extended their power southward into the land of Sumer, while both these

kings warred successfully against Elam.

The empire of Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin was however destined to

entirely eclipse that of their forerunners, for it not only embraced

Mesopotamia north and south, but also Syria and Palestine, and was in

fact the first Babylonian empire worthy of the name.

Meanwhile the power of the Sumerians in the south had received a

temporary check, and the patesis of Lagash, and other Sumerian centres

at the time, clearly ruled on sufferance and not on the strength of

rights which they were prepared to assert successfully in the

battle-field.

But on the accession of Gudea about 2450 B.C., the momentarily smoking

flame of Sumerian influence in Babylonia was kindled anew, and a strong

anti-Semitic wave set in. This wave does not seem to have been

characterized by a series of wars or battles, for the records of Gudea,

the most powerful ruler among the later patesis of Lagash, seldom refer

to anything in the nature of military achievements, but the

extensiveness of his building operations testifies to the abundance of

resources at his command, while the names of the countries which he laid

under contribution for building-materials conclusively prove that the

influence exercised by Lagash during the reign of Gudea was

considerable. The list of the places from which he derived wood and

stone includes the mountains in Arabia and on the Syrian coast, while he

obtained copper from the mines in the Elamite territory east of the

Tigris.

But the importance of Lagash was soon to pass away, and Ur became the

dominating power in Babylonia. The dynasty of Ur (_circ._ 2400 B.C.),

which lasted close on 120 years, was founded by Ur-Engur. He included

the whole of Southern Babylonia within his sphere of influence, while in

the north, he has left evidence of his architectural undertakings at

Nippur; hence he styled himself the “King of Sumer and Akkad,” but the

fact that his son and successor Dungi found it necessary to reduce

Babylon indicates that his authority in Akkad was not unquestioned.

Dungi reigned 58 years, during which he reduced the whole of Babylonia

beneath his sway, and apparently annexed the greater part of Elam. So

firmly had he established his control over Elam, that we find the

capital of that country (Susa) still retained by his successors, though

frequent expeditions had to be undertaken to maintain the “status quo.”

The dynasty of Ur would appear to have been brought to an end by an

invasion of Elamites; at all events Ibi-Sin, the last king of Ur, was

carried away by the Elamites, and the rule in Babylonia then passed to

the city of Isin. The dynasty of Isin lasted some 225 years, during

which Babylonia enjoyed great prosperity.

In the latter part of the first half of this period the power in

Babylonia seems to have passed temporarily into the hands of Gungunu,

king of Ur and Larsa, who laid claim to rule over the whole of Sumer and

Akkad, but his supremacy was of short duration, and Isin soon recovered

her position as the paramount power in Babylonia.

Meanwhile the Semitic element in the north was gradually regaining its

ascendency, and finally asserted itself as a concrete fact in the

establishment of a dynasty by Sumu-abu, at the city of Babylon itself,

about 2000 B.C.

At about this time the Elamites established themselves in Southern

Babylonia at Ur and Larsa under Kudur-Mabuk and his sons Arad-Sin and

Rîm-Sin, and during the earlier part of the dynasty exercised a

suzerainty over the whole of that region. Subsequently Rîm-Sin met with

a severe defeat at the hands of Khammurabi, the most illustrious king of

the dynasty and the Amraphel of the Book of Genesis, while he met with

his death at the hands of Samsu-iluna, Khammurabi’s successor. With the

death of Rîm-Sin Elamite power in Babylonia came to an end.

Khammurabi consolidated the power of Babylon, and extended his influence

on all sides, but his chief title to fame depends upon his codification

of Babylonian law. But Babylon’s supremacy in the south was soon to be

successfully challenged by Iluma-ilu who founded a kingdom on the shores

of the Persian Gulf, and inaugurated the so-called “Second Dynasty” of

the lists of the kings.

Iluma-ilu was a contemporary of Samsu-iluna, whose attacks he twice

repelled. Abêshu’, the successor of Samsu-iluna on the throne of

Babylon, similarly tried to reduce the rebellious “Country of the Sea”

beneath his sway, but without success, and from this time on, Southern

Babylonia was ruled over by the kings of the “Country of the Sea.”

But Samsu-iluna had another foe to contend with, besides the southern

rebels, a foe moreover ultimately destined to subjugate the whole of

Babylonia, under whose rule she was governed for several centuries.

The Kassites were a warlike people whose home lay on the east of the

Tigris, and to the north of Elam, and they apparently commenced raiding

Babylonian territory in the reign of Samsu-iluna, though they do not

seem to have materially affected the Babylonian power. About a century

later however, the dynasty of Babylon was brought to an end by an

invasion of the Hittites of Cappadocia who sacked the city, destroyed

the temple of the great city-god, Marduk, and carried off his statue as

a trophy. The Hittite conquest must have paved the way for the invasion

of the Kassites who established themselves securely on the throne of

Babylon for a very long period. At first their sphere of influence would

appear to have been confined to the northern half of the plain, but

later on they extended their power to the Country of the Sea.

Meanwhile, Assyria in Northern Mesopotamia had emerged as a separate and

independent kingdom, and already the signs of her future greatness were

visible on the horizon.

The date of the colonization of Assyria is not known, but in any case it

must have been before the time of Khammurabi, for the country bore the

name of “Assyria” in his time, and was embraced within the limits of his

empire. The struggle for supremacy finally ended in a victory for the

northerners who under their king Tukulti-Ninib (_circ._ 1275 B.C.)

effected the conquest of Babylonia. In addition to his title “King of

Assyria,” Tukulti-Ninib styled himself “King of Karduniash (i.e.

Babylon), King of Sumer and Akkad.” From that date down to the

destruction of Nineveh (_circ._ 606 B.C.), and the foundation of the

short-lived Neo-Babylonian empire by Nabopolassar, Babylonia takes a

subsidiary place in the political history of Western Asia.

The immediate successors of Tukulti-Ninib I appear to have been

perpetually engaged in war with the Babylonians, who at no period of

their history readily submitted to the Assyrian yoke. Tiglath-Pileser

I’s accession to the throne about 1100 B.C. inaugurated a new period in

the history of Assyrian expansion. Some of the mountain-tribes who had

owed allegiance to former Assyrian monarchs had revolted, and

Tiglath-Pileser made it his business to crush them. The northern

Moschians who sixty years previously had been the vassals of Assyria,

had under the leadership of five kings invaded the territory of

Commagene, but they were effectively reduced by Tiglath-Pileser, and the

land of Commagene was conquered “throughout its whole extent.”

Various other tribes in the north, of whom the Nairi would appear to

have been the most important, were similarly brought beneath the

Assyrian sway.

In a campaign against Babylonia he was also successful for the moment,

and effected the reduction of Babylon, Sippar, Opis and other cities in

Lower Mesopotamia. But his triumph here was short-lived, and the

Assyrians were expelled by Marduk-nadin-akhê, the king of Babylon, who

further invaded Assyria, and carried off the statues of some of the

Assyrian gods.

Ashur-bêl-kala, the son and successor of Tiglath-Pileser I, retrieved

the fortunes of the Assyrian arms in the south, and forced

Marduk-shapik-zêrim the successor of Marduk-nadin-akhê to sue for peace.

But after the reigns of Tiglath-Pileser I’s two sons, Assyria suffered a

severe disaster at the hands of the Hittites, and lost the territory

gained by Tiglath-Pileser. Northern Syria which had been compelled to

acknowledge the suzerainty of Tiglath-Pileser, now asserted her

independence, and for some time remained the mistress of her own

destinies.

Thus Assyria for the time being lost her position as a world-power, and

it was only in the reign of Tukulti-Ninib II (890-885 B.C.) that her

fortunes began to revive. The Nairi were again reduced by this king, and

apparently the whole of the valley of the Upper Tigris was once more

subjugated. Ashur-naṣir-pal (885-860 B.C.) carried on the work of

expansion and re-conquest. With the further extension of Assyrian power

northwards, the need of a capital occupying a more central position than

ancient Ashur was at once realized, and accordingly Ashur-naṣir-pal

transferred the seat of his government to Calah (Nimrûd) some forty

miles north of Ashur.

Nearly 500 years before, Shalmaneser I had laid the foundations of a

town at Calah, but the unsettled circumstances of the time had retarded

its growth. Ashur-naṣir-pal demolished what remained of the old town,

and founded a new town on the same site, and for at least a century

Calah remained the capital of the empire.

Ashur-naṣir-pal also extended his sphere of influence in a westerly

direction and made a triumphal march through Northern Syria, but he

appears to have cautiously refrained from coming into collision with the

powerful king of Damascus.

Ashur-naṣir-pal’s son and successor, Shalmaneser II (860-825)

consolidated the work of his father and grandfather and at the same time

made fresh conquests himself. His campaigns in the west brought him into

contact with the Israelites, and we find Ahab, king of Israel, mentioned

as one of the Syrian allies who rebelled against him. Some years later,

Shalmaneser became the suzerain of Israel, and received tribute from

Jehu, the usurper.

After the reigns of Shalmaneser’s immediate successors, the power of

Assyria began temporarily to decline, and the subject nations asserted

their independence, but in 745 B.C. Tiglath-Pileser III, or Pul as he is

called in 2 Kings xv. 19 and elsewhere, ascended the throne, and

restored the influence and authority of Assyria in Western Asia. His

wars in Syria meant disaster to Israel and the loss of independence to

Judah. Ahaz, king of Judah, had sought the help of Tiglath-Pileser

against the allied forces of Rezin, king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of

Israel. Tiglath-Pileser at once seized this golden opportunity of

interfering with the internal affairs of Palestine, defeated Israel and

Damascus, and carried the Israelite tribes of Reuben, Gad and the

half-tribe of Manasseh into captivity (734 B.C.). Hoshea, assassinator

and usurper, purchased the right to the throne of Israel for ten talents

of gold and a certain amount of silver, but in the reign of

Tiglath-Pileser’s successor, Shalmaneser IV (727-722 B.C.) he became

involved in an intrigue with Egypt, which led to his deportation to

Assyria where he spent the rest of his days as a prisoner. Meanwhile

Samaria, the capital of his kingdom, was beleaguered, and after a two

years’ siege was captured by Sargon, who deported the larger half of the

population into Assyria. Sargon, “the son of a nobody,” i.e. a usurper,

was one of the greatest of the Assyrian kings (722-705 B.C.) and was the

first to come into actual conflict with the Egyptians. Palestine as a

whole showed no alacrity to take up arms against her powerful overlord,

but the Philistine town of Gaza, in reliance on the support of Egypt,

refused to submit. Hannon the Philistine commander, on failing to

repulse the Assyrian army retreated on Raphia, a town bordering on the

Egyptian frontier, where he was joined by Shabê the Egyptian general. At

Raphia the opposing armies joined battle, and after a fierce encounter,

the allies had to retire before the better equipped and more

disciplined army of Sargon. On his return, Sargon found it necessary to

again subdue Babylonia, and he also carried on war with Elam. He was

succeeded by his son Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.). After having suppressed

the revolts which always seem to have signalized the accession of a new

king, Sennacherib invaded Syria, established his authority over northern

Palestine, reduced the rebellious Philistine city of Askelon, and then

proceeded to attack the city of Ekron, to whose assistance an Egyptian

army had rallied. Their combined forces were routed by Sennacherib at

Altaku, and Ekron fell. Judah next occupied his attention; having

captured numerous small towns and enslaved some 200,000 of the

inhabitants, he proceeded to lay siege to Jerusalem. Hezekiah the king

of Judah, withstood the siege for some time, but pressed by famine, he

was compelled to yield and purchased the safety of his city by stripping

the Temple of its treasures. Sennacherib thereupon returned to Assyria,

but two years after, Hezekiah’s repudiation of his suzerainty occasioned

another expedition to Palestine. The Assyrian troops first stationed

themselves at Lachish, whence Sennacherib dispatched a messenger to

Hezekiah to demand his instant surrender. Meanwhile Sennacherib marched

westward with a view to engaging the Egyptian army lying at Pelusium,

one of the frontier towns of Egypt. But a sudden catastrophe—possibly an

outbreak of plague—overtook the Assyrian host, and Sennacherib returned

to Nineveh. On his arrival home, he found it necessary to once more

suppress rebellious Babylon, and to render his work more lasting, he

completely destroyed the city (689 B.C.). Towards the end of his reign

he conducted a campaign in Cilicia where he defeated the Greeks and is

said to have laid the foundations of the city of Tarsus. In 681 B.C. he

was murdered by his sons, and the crown eventually settled on the head

of Esarhaddon (681-668 B.C.). The most striking event of his reign was

the conquest of Lower Egypt (672 B.C.), but towards the end of his reign

Tirhakah, the Ethiopian king of Egypt, recaptured Memphis and threatened

to put an end to the Assyrian domination; his subjugation was one of the

first acts of Ashur-bani-pal, the successor of Esarhaddon. Judah also

became disaffected, but she was speedily reduced to submission and her

king Manasseh was removed into captivity.

Ashur-bani-pal succeeded Esarhaddon in 668 B.C. The work of

re-establishing the Assyrian power in Egypt occupied some time and was

finally accomplished by the capture of Thebes (666 B.C.). Under

Ashur-bani-pal Assyria attained the height of her power both at home and

abroad, and the limits of her empire were extended further than ever

before. After a lengthy war, Elam was subdued, but she subsequently

joined Shamash-shum-ukîn, the brother of Ashur-bani-pal, and viceroy of

Babylonia, in an organized revolt against Assyria, which resulted in the

defeat of Shamash-shum-ukîn, and the ultimate capture and sack of Susa

the Elamite capital (_circ._ 640 B.C.).

While Ashur-bani-pal was thus preoccupied with Babylonia and Elam, Lydia

on the one hand, and Egypt on the other seized the opportunity to throw

off the yoke of their suzerain. Lydia was reduced, but Egypt succeeded

in maintaining her independence. Towards the close of Ashur-bani-pal’s

reign, the wheel of fortune had already begun to turn, and clouds were

already gathering on the eastern horizon. The Medes had made an inroad

into Assyrian territory before his death in 626 B.C., and a few years

after that event, Cyaxares king of the Medes inflicted a defeat on the

Assyrian army and laid siege to Nineveh. But the end was temporarily

stayed by the advance of the Scythian hordes.

Shortly afterwards Nineveh was again attacked by Cyaxares and

Nabopolassar, an Assyrian general in command of Babylonia, and after a

two years’ siege the city was taken and destroyed (_circ._ 606 B.C.).

Assyria now passed under the power of the Medes, and Babylonia fell to

Nabopolassar who founded the New or Neo-Babylonian empire. This late

Babylonian empire only lasted about seventy years in all. Nabopolassar

was succeeded by Nebuchadnezzar, who at the time of his father’s death

was engaged in a campaign against Necho king of Egypt, upon whom he

inflicted a severe defeat at Carchemish. His Palestinian expeditions led

to the capture of Jerusalem, and the removal of a large part of the

population of Judah into captivity. Both Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah, kings

of Judah, strove to throw off the Babylonian yoke but without avail.

Nebuchadnezzar’s successors did little deserving of narration, and in

the reign of Nabonidus, Babylon, which was under the command of

Belshazzar, was captured by Cyrus, 539 B.C., and Babylonia passed under

the rule of the Persians. She remained under Persian rule until the time

of Alexander the Great’s ascendency when she became a Greek province.