RISE OF THE HITTITES, MITANNIANS, KASSITES, HYKSOS, AND ASSYRIANS
The War God of Mountaineers--Antiquity of Hittite
Civilization--Prehistoric Movements of "Broad Heads"--Evidence of
Babylon and Egypt--Hittites and Mongolians--Biblical References to
Hittites in Canaan--Jacob's Mother and her Daughters-in-law--Great
Father and Great Mother Cults--History in Mythology--The Kingdom of
Mitanni--Its Aryan Aristocracy--The Hyksos Problem--The Horse in
Warfare--Hittites and Mitannians--Kassites and Mitannians--Hyksos
Empire in Asia--Kassites overthrow Sealand Dynasty--Egyptian
Campaigns in Syria--Assyria in the Making--Ethnics of
Genesis--Nimrod as Merodach--Early Conquerors of Assyria--Mitannian
Overlords--Tell-el-Amarna Letters--Fall of Mitanni--Rise of Hittite
and Assyrian Empires--Egypt in Eclipse--Assyrian and Babylonian
Rivalries.
When the Hammurabi Dynasty, like the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt, is
found to be suffering languid decline, the gaps in the dulled
historical records are filled with the echoes of the thunder god,
whose hammer beating resounds among the northern mountains. As this
deity comes each year in Western Asia when vegetation has withered and
after fruits have dropped from trees, bringing tempests and black
rainclouds to issue in a new season of growth and fresh activity, so
he descended from the hills in the second millennium before the
Christian era as the battle lord of invaders and the stormy herald of
a new age which was to dawn upon the ancient world.
He was the war god of the Hittites as well as of the northern
Amorites, the Mitannians, and the Kassites; and he led the Aryans from
the Iranian steppes towards the verdurous valley of the Punjab. His
worshippers engraved his image with grateful hands on the beetling
cliffs of Cappadocian chasms in Asia Minor, where his sway was
steadfast and pre-eminent for long centuries. In one locality he
appears mounted on a bull wearing a fringed and belted tunic with
short sleeves, a conical helmet, and upturned shoes, while he grasps
in one hand the lightning symbol, and in the other a triangular bow
resting on his right shoulder. In another locality he is the bringer
of grapes and barley sheaves. But his most familiar form is the
bearded and thick-set mountaineer, armed with a ponderous thunder
hammer, a flashing trident, and a long two-edged sword with a
hemispherical knob on the hilt, which dangles from his belt, while an
antelope or goat wearing a pointed tiara prances beside him. This
deity is identical with bluff, impetuous Thor of northern Europe,
Indra of the Himalayas, Tarku of Phrygia, and Teshup or Teshub of
Armenia and northern Mesopotamia, Sandan, the Hercules of Cilicia,
Adad or Hadad of Amurru and Assyria, and Ramman, who at an early
period penetrated Akkad and Sumer in various forms. His Hittite name
is uncertain, but in the time of Rameses II he was identified with
Sutekh (Set). He passed into southern Europe as Zeus, and became "the
lord" of the deities of the Aegean and Crete.
The Hittites who entered Babylon about 1800 B.C., and overthrew the
last king of the Hammurabi Dynasty, may have been plundering raiders,
like the European Gauls of a later age, or a well-organized force of a
strong, consolidated power, which endured for a period of uncertain
duration. They were probably the latter, for although they carried off
Merodach and Zerpanituᵐ, these idols were not thrust into the melting
pot, but retained apparently for political reasons.
These early Hittites are "a people of the mist". More than once in
ancient history casual reference is made to them; but on most of these
occasions they soon vanish suddenly behind their northern mountains.
The explanation appears to be that at various periods great leaders
arose who were able to weld together the various tribes, and make
their presence felt in Western Asia. But when once the organization
broke down, either on account of internal rivalries or the influence
of an outside power, they lapsed back again into a state of political
insignificance in the affairs of the ancient world. It is possible
that about 1800 B.C. the Hittite confederacy was controlled by an
ambitious king who had dreams of a great empire, and was accordingly
pursuing a career of conquest.
Judging from what we know of the northern worshippers of the hammer
god in later times, it would appear that when they were referred to as
the Hatti or Khatti, the tribe of that name was the dominating power
in Asia Minor and north Syria. The Hatti are usually identified with
the broad-headed mountaineers of Alpine or Armenoid type--the
ancestors of the modern Armenians. Their ancient capital was at
Boghaz-Köi, the site of Pteria, which was destroyed, according to the
Greeks, by Croesus, the last King of Lydia, in the sixth century B.C.
It was strongly situated in an excellent pastoral district on the
high, breezy plateau of Cappadocia, surrounded by high mountains, and
approached through narrow river gorges, which in winter were blocked
with snow.
Hittite civilization was of great antiquity. Excavations which have
been conducted at an undisturbed artificial mound at Sakje-Geuzi have
revealed evidences of a continuous culture which began to flourish
before 3000 B.C.[282] In one of the lower layers occurred that
particular type of Neolithic yellow-painted pottery, with black
geometric designs, which resembles other specimens of painted fabrics
found in Turkestan by the Pumpelly expedition; in Susa, the capital of
Elam, and its vicinity, by De Morgan; in the Balkan peninsula by
Schliemann; in a First Dynasty tomb at Abydos in Egypt by Petrie; and
in the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age (Minoan) strata of Crete by
Evans. It may be that these interesting relics were connected with the
prehistoric drift westward of the broad-headed pastoral peoples who
ultimately formed the Hittite military aristocracy.
According to Professor Elliot Smith, broad-headed aliens from Asia
Minor first reached Egypt at the dawn of history. There they blended
with the indigenous tribes of the Mediterranean or Brown Race. A
mesocephalic skull then became common. It is referred to as the Giza
type, and has been traced by Professor Elliot Smith from Egypt to the
Punjab, but not farther into India.[283]
During the early dynasties this skull with alien traits was confined
chiefly to the Delta region and the vicinity of Memphis, the city of
the pyramid builders. It is not improbable that the Memphite god Ptah
may have been introduced into Egypt by the invading broad heads. This
deity is a world artisan like Indra, and is similarly associated with
dwarfish artisans; he hammers out the copper sky, and therefore links
with the various thunder gods--Tarku, Teshup, Adad, Ramman, &c, of the
Asian mountaineers. Thunderstorms were of too rare occurrence in Egypt
to be connected with the food supply, which has always depended on the
river Nile. Ptah's purely Egyptian characteristics appear to have been
acquired after fusion with Osiris-Seb, the Nilotic gods of inundation,
earth, and vegetation. The ancient god Set (Sutekh), who became a
demon, and was ultimately re-exalted as a great deity during the
Nineteenth Dynasty, may also have had some connection with the
prehistoric Hatti.
Professor Elliot Smith, who has found alien traits in the mummies of
the Rameses kings, is convinced that the broad-headed folks who
entered Europe by way of Asia Minor, and Egypt through the Delta, at
the close of the Neolithic Age, represent "two streams of the same
Asiatic folk".[284] The opinion of such an authority cannot be lightly
set aside.
The earliest Egyptian reference to the Kheta, as the Hittites were
called, was made in the reign of the first Amenemhet of the Twelfth
Dynasty, who began to reign about 2000 B.C. Some authorities,
including Maspero,[285] are of opinion that the allusion to the Hatti
which is found in the Babylonian _Book of Omens_ belongs to the
earlier age of Sargon of Akkad and Naram-Sin, but Sayce favours the
age of Hammurabi. Others would connect the Gutium, or men of Kutu,
with the Kheta or Hatti. Sayce has expressed the opinion that the
Biblical Tidal, identified with Tudkhul or Tudhula, "king of nations",
the ally of Arioch, Amraphel, and Chedor-laomer, was a Hittite king,
the "nations" being the confederacy of Asia Minor tribes controlled by
the Hatti. "In the fragments of the Babylonian story of Chedor-laomer
published by Dr. Pinches", says Professor Sayce, "the name of
Tid^{c}al is written Tudkhul, and he is described as King of the
_Umman Manda_, or Nations of the North, of which the Hebrew _Goyyim_
is a literal translation. Now the name is Hittite. In the account of
the campaign of Rameses II against the Hittites it appears as
Tid^{c}al, and one of the Hittite kings of Boghaz-Köi bears the same
name, which is written as Dud-khaliya in cuneiform."[286]
One of the racial types among the Hittites wore pigtails. These head
adornments appear on figures in certain Cappadocian sculptures and on
Hittite warriors in the pictorial records of a north Syrian campaign
of Rameses II at Thebes. It is suggestive, therefore, to find that on
the stele of Naram-Sin of Akkad, the mountaineers who are conquered by
that battle lord wear pigtails also. Their split robes are unlike the
short fringed tunics of the Hittite gods, but resemble the long split
mantles worn over their tunics by high dignitaries like King
Tarku-dimme, who figures on a famous silver boss of an ancient Hittite
dagger. Naram-Sin inherited the Empire of Sargon of Akkad, which
extended to the Mediterranean Sea. If his enemies were not natives of
Cappadocia, they may have been the congeners of the Hittite pigtailed
type in another wooded and mountainous country.
It has been suggested that these wearers of pigtails were Mongolians.
But although high cheek bones and oblique eyes occurred in ancient
times, and still occur, in parts of Asia Minor, suggesting occasional
Mongolian admixture with Ural-Altaic broad heads, the Hittite
pigtailed warriors must not be confused with the true small-nosed
Mongols of north-eastern Asia. The Egyptian sculptors depicted them
with long and prominent noses, which emphasize their strong Armenoid
affinities.
Other tribes in the Hittite confederacy included the representatives
of the earliest settlers from North Africa of Mediterranean racial
stock. These have been identified with the Canaanites, and especially
the agriculturists among them, for the Palestinian Hittites are also
referred to as Canaanites in the Bible, and in one particular
connection under circumstances which afford an interesting glimpse of
domestic life in those far-off times. When Esau, Isaac's eldest son,
was forty years of age, "he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri
the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite"[287].
Apparently the Hittite ladies considered themselves to be of higher
caste than the indigenous peoples and the settlers from other
countries, for when Ezekiel declared that the mother of Jerusalem was
a Hittite he said: "Thou art thy mother's daughter, that lotheth her
husband and her children."[288] Esau's marriage was "a grief of mind
unto Isaac and to Rebekah".[287] The Hebrew mother seems to
have entertained fears that her favourite son Jacob would
fall a victim to the allurements of other representatives of
the same stock as her superior and troublesome daughters-in-law,
for she said to Isaac: "I am weary of my life
because of the daughters of Heth; if Jacob take a wife
of the daughters of Heth, such as these which are of the
daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me?"[289]
Isaac sent for Jacob, "and charged him, and said unto
him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of
Canaan. Arise, go to Padan-aram, to the house of
Bethuel, thy mother's father; and take thee a wife from
thence of the daughters of Laban, thy mother's brother."[290]
From these quotations two obvious deductions may be
drawn: the Hebrews regarded the Hittites "of the land"
as one with the Canaanites, the stocks having probably
been so well fused, and the worried Rebekah had the
choosing of Jacob's wife or wives from among her own
relations in Mesopotamia who were of Sumerian stock
and kindred of Abraham.[291] It is not surprising to find
traces of Sumerian pride among the descendants of the
evicted citizens of ancient Ur, especially when brought
into association with the pretentious Hittites.
Evidence of racial blending in Asia Minor is also afforded by Hittite
mythology. In the fertile agricultural valleys and round the shores of
that great Eur-Asian "land bridge" the indigenous stock was also of
the Mediterranean race, as Sergi and other ethnologists have
demonstrated. The Great Mother goddess was worshipped from the
earliest times, and she bore various local names. At Comana in Pontus
she was known to the Greeks as Ma, a name which may have been as old
as that of the Sumerian Mama (the creatrix), or Mamituᵐ (goddess of
destiny); in Armenia she was Anaitis; in Cilicia she was Ate ('Atheh
of Tarsus); while in Phrygia she was best known as Cybele, mother of
Attis, who links with Ishtar as mother and wife of Tammuz, Aphrodite
as mother and wife of Adonis, and Isis as mother and wife of Osiris.
The Great Mother was in Phoenicia called Astarte; she was a form of
Ishtar, and identical with the Biblical Ashtoreth. In the Syrian city
of Hierapolis she bore the name of Atargatis, which Meyer, with whom
Frazer agrees, considers to be the Greek rendering of the Aramaic
'Athar-'Atheh--the god 'Athar and the goddess 'Atheh. Like the
"bearded Aphrodite", Atargatis may have been regarded as a bisexual
deity. Some of the specialized mother goddesses, whose outstanding
attributes reflected the history and politics of the states they
represented, were imported into Egypt--the land of ancient mother
deities--during the Empire period, by the half-foreign Rameses kings;
these included the voluptuous Kadesh and the warlike Anthat. In every
district colonized by the early representatives of the Mediterranean
race, the goddess cult came into prominence, and the gods and the
people were reputed to be descendants of the great Creatrix. This rule
obtained as far distant as Ireland, where the Danann folk and the
Danann gods were the children of the goddess Danu.
Among the Hatti proper--that is, the broad-headed military
aristocracy--the chief deity of the pantheon was the Great Father, the
creator, "the lord of Heaven", the Baal. As Sutekh, Tarku, Adad, or
Ramman, he was the god of thunder, rain, fertility, and war, and he
ultimately acquired solar attributes. A famous rock sculpture at
Boghaz-Köi depicts a mythological scene which is believed to represent
the Spring marriage of the Great Father and the Great Mother,
suggesting a local fusion of beliefs which resulted from the union of
tribes of the god cult with tribes of the goddess cult. So long as the
Hatti tribe remained the predominant partner in the Hittite
confederacy, the supremacy was assured of the Great Father who
symbolized their sway. But when, in the process of time, the power of
the Hatti declined, their chief god "fell... from his predominant
place in the religion of the interior", writes Dr. Garstang. "But the
Great Mother lived on, being the goddess of the land."[292]
In addition to the Hittite confederacy of Asia Minor and North Syria,
another great power arose in northern Mesopotamia. This was the
Mitanni Kingdom. Little is known regarding it, except what is derived
from indirect sources. Winckler believes that it was first established
by early "waves" of Hatti people who migrated from the east.
The Hittite connection is based chiefly on the following evidence. One
of the gods of the Mitanni rulers was Teshup, who is identical with
Tarku, the Thor of Asia Minor. The raiders who in 1800 B.C. entered
Babylon, set fire to E-sagila, and carried off Merodach and his
consort Zerpanituᵐ, were called the Hatti. The images of these deities
were afterwards obtained from Khani (Mitanni).
At a later period, when we come to know more about Mitanni from the
letters of one of its kings to two Egyptian Pharaohs, and the Winckler
tablets from Bog-haz-Köi, it is found that its military aristocracy
spoke an Indo-European language, as is shown by the names of their
kings--Saushatar, Artatama, Sutarna, Artashshumara, Tushratta, and
Mattiuza. They worshipped the following deities:
Mi-it-ra, Uru-w-na, In-da-ra, and Na-sa-at-ti-ia--
Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and Nasatyau (the "Twin Aswins" = Castor and
Pollux)--whose names have been deciphered by Winckler. These gods were
also imported into India by the Vedic Aryans. The Mitanni tribe (the
military aristocracy probably) was called "Kharri", and some
philologists are of opinion that it is identical with "Arya", which
was "the normal designation in Vedic literature from the Rigveda
onwards of an Aryan of the three upper classes".[293] Mitanni
signifies "the river lands", and the descendants of its inhabitants,
who lived in Cappadocia, were called by the Greeks "Mattienoi". "They
are possibly", says Dr. Haddon, "the ancestors of the modern
Kurds",[294] a conspicuously long-headed people, proverbial, like the
ancient Aryo-Indians and the Gauls, for their hospitality and their
raiding propensities.
It would appear that the Mitannian invasion of northern Mesopotamia
and the Aryan invasion of India represented two streams of diverging
migrations from a common cultural centre, and that the separate groups
of wanderers mingled with other stocks with whom they came into
contact. Tribes of Aryan speech were associated with the Kassite
invaders of Babylon, who took possession of northern Babylonia soon
after the disastrous Hittite raid. It is believed that they came from
the east through the highlands of Elam.
For a period, the dating of which is uncertain, the Mitannians were
overlords of part of Assyria, including Nineveh and even Asshur, as
well as the district called "Musri" by the Assyrians, and part of
Cappadocia. They also occupied the cities of Harran and Kadesh.
Probably they owed their great military successes to their cavalry.
The horse became common in Babylon during the Kassite Dynasty, which
followed the Hammurabi, and was there called "the ass of the east", a
name which suggests whence the Kassites and Mitannians came.
The westward movement of the Mitannians in the second millennium B.C.
may have been in progress prior to the Kassite conquest of Babylon and
the Hyksos invasion of Egypt. Their relations in Mesopotamia and Syria
with the Hittites and the Amorites are obscure. Perhaps they were for
a time the overlords of the Hittites. At any rate it is of interest to
note that when Thothmes III struck at the last Hyksos stronghold
during his long Syrian campaign of about twenty years' duration, his
operations were directly against Kadesh on the Orontes, which was then
held by his fierce enemies the Mitannians of Naharina.[295]
During the Hyksos Age the horse was introduced into Egypt. Indeed the
Hyksos conquest was probably due to the use of the horse, which was
domesticated, as the Pumpelly expedition has ascertained, at a remote
period in Turkestan, whence it may have been obtained by the
horse-sacrificing Aryo-Indians and the horse-sacrificing ancestors of
the Siberian Buriats.
If the Mitanni rulers were not overlords of the Hittites about 1800
B.C., the two peoples may have been military allies of the Kassites.
Some writers suggest, indeed, that the Kassites came from Mitanni.
Another view is that the Mitannians were the Aryan allies of the
Kassites who entered Babylon from the Elamite highlands, and that they
afterwards conquered Mesopotamia and part of Cappadocia prior to the
Hyksos conquest of Egypt. A third solution of the problem is that the
Aryan rulers of the Mitannian Hittites were the overlords of northern
Babylonia, which they included in their Mesopotamian empire for a
century before the Kassites achieved political supremacy in the
Tigro-Euphrates valley, and that they were also the leaders of the
Hyksos invasion of Egypt, which they accomplished with the assistance
of their Hittite and Amoritic allies.
The first Kassite king of Babylonia of whom we have knowledge was
Gandash. He adopted the old Akkadian title, "king of the four
quarters", as well as the title "king of Sumer and Akkad", first used
by the rulers of the Dynasty of Ur. Nippur appears to have been
selected by Gandash as his capital, which suggests that his war and
storm god, Shuqamuna, was identified with Bel Enlil, who as a "world
giant" has much in common with the northern hammer gods. After
reigning for sixteen years, Gandash was succeeded by his son, Agum the
Great, who sat on the throne for twenty-two years. The great-grandson
of Agum the Great was Agum II, and not until his reign were the
statues of Merodach and his consort Zerpanituᵐ brought back to the
city of Babylon. This monarch recorded that, in response to the oracle
of Shamash, the sun god, he sent to the distant land of Khani
(Mitanni) for the great deity and his consort. Babylon would therefore
appear to have been deprived of Merodach for about two centuries. The
Hittite-Mitanni raid is dated about 1800 B.C., and the rise of
Gandash, the Kassite, about 1700 B.C. At least a century elapsed
between the reigns of Gandash and Agum II. These calculations do not
coincide, it will be noted, with the statement in a Babylonian hymn,
that Merodach remained in the land of the Hatti for twenty-four years,
which, however, may be either a priestly fiction or a reference to a
later conquest. The period which followed the fall of the Hammurabi
Dynasty of Babylonia is as obscure as the Hyksos Age of Egypt.
Agum II, the Kassite king, does not state whether or not he waged war
against Mitanni to recover Babylon's god Merodach. If, however, he was
an ally of the Mitanni ruler, the transference of the deity may have
been an ordinary diplomatic transaction. The possibility may also be
suggested that the Hittites of Mitanni were not displaced by the Aryan
military aristocracy until after the Kassites were firmly established
in northern Babylonia between 1700 B.C. and 1600 B.C. This may account
for the statements that Merodach was carried off by the Hatti and
returned from the land of Khani.
The evidence afforded by Egypt is suggestive in this connection. There
was a second Hyksos Dynasty in that country. The later rulers became
"Egyptianized" as the Kassites became "Babylonianized", but they were
all referred to by the exclusive and sullen-Egyptians as "barbarians"
and "Asiatics". They recognized the sun god of Heliopolis, but were
also concerned in promoting the worship of Sutekh, a deity of sky and
thunder, with solar attributes, whom Rameses II identified with the
"Baal" of the Hittites. The Mitannians, as has been stated, recognized
a Baal called Teshup, who was identical with Tarku of the Western
Hittites and with their own tribal Indra also. One of the Hyksos
kings, named Ian or Khian, the Ianias of Manetho, was either an
overlord or the ally of an overlord, who swayed a great empire in
Asia. His name has been deciphered on relics found as far apart as
Knossos in Crete and Baghdad on the Tigris, which at the time was
situated within the area of Kassite control. Apparently peaceful
conditions prevailed during his reign over a wide extent of Asia and
trade was brisk between far-distant centres of civilization. The very
term Hyksos is suggestive in this connection. According to Breasted it
signifies "rulers of countries", which compares with the Biblical
"Tidal king of nations", whom Sayce, as has been indicated, regards as
a Hittite monarch. When the Hittite hieroglyphics have been read and
Mesopotamia thoroughly explored, light may be thrown on the relations
of the Mitannians, the Hittites, the Hyksos, and the Kassites between
1800 B.C. and 1500 B.C. It is evident that a fascinating volume of
ancient history has yet to be written.
The Kassites formed the military aristocracy of Babylonia, which was
called Karduniash, for nearly six centuries. Agum II was the first of
their kings who became thoroughly Babylonianized, and although he
still gave recognition to Shuqamuna, the Kassite god of battle, he
re-exalted Merodach, whose statue he had taken back from "Khani", and
decorated E-sagila with gifts of gold, jewels, rare woods, frescoes,
and pictorial tiles; he also re-endowed the priesthood. During the
reign of his successor, Burnaburiash I, the Dynasty of Sealand came to
an end.
Little is known regarding the relations between Elam and Babylonia
during the Kassite period. If the Kassite invaders crossed the Tigris
soon after the raid of the Mitannian Hittites they must have
previously overrun a great part of Elam, but strongly situated Susa
may have for a time withstood their attacks. At first the Kassites
held northern Babylonia only, while the ancient Sumerian area was
dominated by the Sealand power, which had gradually regained strength
during the closing years of the Hammurabi Dynasty. No doubt many
northern Babylonian refugees reinforced its army.
The Elamites, or perhaps the Kassites of Elam, appear to have made
frequent attacks on southern Babylonia. At length Ea-gamil, king of
Sealand, invaded Elam with purpose, no doubt, to shatter the power of
his restless enemies. He was either met there, however, by an army
from Babylon, or his country was invaded during his absence. Prince
Ulamburiash, son of Burnaburiash I, defeated Ea-gamil and brought to
an end the Sealand Dynasty which had been founded by Ilu-ma-ilu, the
contemporary and enemy of Samsu-la-ilu, son of Hammurabi. Ulamburiash
is referred to on a mace-head which was discovered at Babylon as "king
of Sealand", and he probably succeeded his father at the capital. The
whole of Babylonia thus came under Kassite sway.
Agum III, a grandson of Ulamburiash, found it necessary, however, to
invade Sealand, which must therefore have revolted. It was probably a
centre of discontent during the whole period of Kassite ascendancy.
After a long obscure interval we reach the period when the Hyksos
power was broken in Egypt, that is, after 1580 B.C. The great Western
Asiatic kingdoms at the time were the Hittite, the Mitannian, the
Assyrian, and the Babylonian (Kassite). Between 1557 B.C. and 1501
B.C. Thothmes I of Egypt was asserting his sway over part of Syria.
Many years elapsed, however, before Thothmes III, who died in 1447
B.C., established firmly, after waging a long war of conquest, the
supremacy of Egypt between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean coast
as far north as the borders of Asia Minor.
"At this period", as Professor Flinders Petrie emphasizes, "the
civilization of Syria was equal or superior to that of Egypt." Not
only was there in the cities "luxury beyond that of the Egyptians",
but also "technical work which could teach them". The Syrian soldiers
had suits of scale armour, which afterwards were manufactured in
Egypt, and they had chariots adorned with gold and silver and highly
decorated, which were greatly prized by the Egyptians when they
captured them, and reserved for royalty. "In the rich wealth of gold
and silver vases", obtained from captured cities by the Nilotic
warriors, "we see also", adds Petrie, "the sign of a people who were
their (the Egyptians') equals, if not their superiors in taste and
skill."[296] It is not to be wondered at, therefore, when the Pharaohs
received tribute from Syria that they preferred it to be carried into
Egypt by skilled workmen. "The keenness with which the Egyptians
record all the beautiful and luxurious products of the Syrians shows
that the workmen would probably be more in demand than other kinds or
slave tribute."[297]
One of the monarchs with whom Thothmes III corresponded was the king
of Assyria. The enemies of Egypt in northern Mesopotamia were the
Hittites and Mitannians, and their allies, and these were also the
enemies of Assyria. But to enable us to deal with the new situation
which was created by Egypt in Mesopotamia, it is necessary in the
first place to trace the rise of Assyria, which was destined to become
for a period the dominating power in Western Asia, and ultimately in
the Nile valley also.
The Assyrian group of cities grew up on the banks of the Tigris to the
north of Babylonia, the mother country. The following Biblical
references regarding the origins of the two states are of special
interest:--
Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and
Japheth.... The sons of Ham: Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and
Canaan.... And Cush begat Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one in
the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; wherefore it is
said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the
beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and
Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur
and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen
between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city. The children
of Shem: Elam and Asshur ... (_Genesis_, x, 1-22). The land of
Assyria ... and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof
(_Micah_, v, 6).
It will be observed that the Sumero-Babylonians are Cushites or
Hamites, and therefore regarded as racially akin to the
proto-Egyptians of the Mediterranean race--an interesting confirmation
of recent ethnological conclusions.
Nimrod, the king of Babel (Babylon), in Shinar (Sumer), was, it would
appear, a deified monarch who became ultimately identified with the
national god of Babylonia. Professor Pinches has shown[298] that his
name is a rendering of that of Merodach. In Sumerian Merodach was
called Amaruduk or Amarudu, and in the Assyro-Babylonian language
Marduk. By a process familiar to philologists the suffix "uk" was
dropped and the rendering became Marad. The Hebrews added "ni" =
"ni-marad", assimilating the name "to a certain extent to the 'niphal
forms' of the Hebrew verbs and making a change", says Pinches, "in
conformity with the genius of the Hebrew language".
Asshur, who went out of Nimrod's country to build Nineveh, was a son
of Shem--a Semite, and so far as is known it was after the Semites
achieved political supremacy in Akkad that the Assyrian colonies were
formed. Asshur may have been a subject ruler who was deified and
became the god of the city of Asshur, which probably gave its name to
Assyria.
According to Herodotus, Nineveh was founded by King Ninus and Queen
Semiramis. This lady was reputed to be the daughter of Derceto, the
fish goddess, whom Pliny identified with Atargatis. Semiramis was
actually an Assyrian queen of revered memory. She was deified and took
the place of a goddess, apparently Nina, the prototype of Derceto.
This Nina, perhaps a form of Damkina, wife of Ea, was the great mother
of the Sumerian city of Nina, and there, and also at Lagash, received
offerings of fish. She was one of the many goddesses of maternity
absorbed by Ishtar. The Greek Ninus is regarded as a male form of her
name; like Atargatis, she may have become a bisexual deity, if she was
not always accompanied by a shadowy male form. Nineveh (Ninua) was
probably founded or conquered by colonists from Nina or Lagash, and
called after the fish goddess.
All the deities of Assyria were imported from Babylonia except, as
some hold, Ashur, the national god.[299] The theory that Ashur was
identical with the Aryo-Indian Asura and the Persian Ahura is not
generally accepted. One theory is that he was an eponymous hero who
became the city god of Asshur, although the early form of his name,
Ashir, presents a difficulty in this connection. Asshur was the first
capital of Assyria. Its city god may have become the national god on
that account.
At an early period, perhaps a thousand years before Thothmes III
battled with the Mitannians in northern Syria, an early wave of one of
the peoples of Aryan speech may have occupied the Assyrian cities. Mr.
Johns points out in this connection that the names of Ushpia, Kikia,
and Adasi, who, according to Assyrian records, were early rulers in
Asshur, "are neither Semitic nor Sumerian". An ancient name of the
goddess of Nineveh was Shaushka, which compares with Shaushkash, the
consort of Teshup, the Hittite-Mitanni hammer god. As many of the
Mitannian names "are", according to Mr. Johns, "really Elamitic", he
suggests an ethnic connection between the early conquerors of Assyria
and the people of Elam.[300] Were the pre-Semitic Elamites originally
speakers of an agglutinative language, like the Sumerians and
present-day Basques, who were conquered in prehistoric times by a
people of Aryan speech?
The possibility is urged by Mr. Johns's suggestion that Assyria may
have been dominated in pre-Semitic times by the congeners of the Aryan
military aristocracy of Mitanni. As has been shown, it was Semitized
by the Amoritic migration which, about 2000 B.C., brought into
prominence the Hammurabi Dynasty of Babylon.
A long list of kings with Semitic names held sway in the Assyrian
cities during and after the Hammurabi Age. But not until well on in
the Kassite period did any of them attain prominence in Western Asia.
Then Ashur-bel-nish-eshu, King of Asshur, was strong enough to deal on
equal terms with the Kassite ruler Kara-indash I, with whom he
arranged a boundary treaty. He was a contemporary of Thothmes III of
Egypt.
After Thothmes III had secured the predominance of Egypt in Syria and
Palestine he recognized Assyria as an independent power, and supplied
its king with Egyptian gold to assist him, no doubt, in strengthening
his territory against their common enemy. Gifts were also sent from
Assyria to Egypt to fan the flame of cordial relations.
The situation was full of peril for Saushatar, king of Mitanni.
Deprived by Egypt of tribute-paying cities in Syria, his exchequer
must have been sadly depleted. A standing army had to be maintained,
for although Egypt made no attempt to encroach further on his
territory, the Hittites were ever hovering on his north-western
frontier, ready when opportunity offered to win back Cappadocia.
Eastward, Assyria was threatening to become a dangerous rival. He had
himself to pay tribute to Egypt, and Egypt was subsidizing his enemy.
It was imperative on his part, therefore, to take action without
delay. The power of Assyria had to be crippled; its revenues were
required for the Mitannian exchequer. So Saushatar raided Assyria
during the closing years of the reign of Thothmes III, or soon after
his successor, Amenhotep II, ascended the Egyptian throne.
Nothing is known from contemporary records regarding this campaign;
but it can be gathered from the references of a later period that the
city of Asshur was captured and plundered; its king, Ashur-nadin-akhe,
ceased corresponding and exchanging gifts with Egypt. That Nineveh
also fell is made clear by the fact that a descendant of Saushatar
(Tushratta) was able to send to a descendant of Thothmes III at Thebes
(Amenhotep III) the image of Ishtar (Shaushka) of Nineveh. Apparently
five successive Mitannian kings were overlords of Assyria during a
period which cannot be estimated at much less than a hundred years.
Our knowledge regarding these events is derived chiefly from the
Tell-el-Amarna letters, and the tablets found by Professor Hugo
Winckler at Boghaz-Köi in Cappadocia, Asia Minor.
The Tell-el-Amarna letters were discovered among the ruins of the
palace of the famous Egyptian Pharaoh, Akhenaton, of the Eighteenth
Dynasty, who died about 1358 B.C. During the winter of 1887-8 an
Egyptian woman was excavating soil for her garden, when she happened
upon the cellar of Akhenaton's foreign office in which the official
correspondence had been stored. The "letters" were baked clay tablets
inscribed with cuneiform alphabetical signs in the Babylonian-Assyrian
language, which, like French in modern times, was the language of
international diplomacy for many centuries in Western Asia after the
Hyksos period.
The Egyptian natives, ever so eager to sell antiquities so as to make
a fortune and retire for life, offered some specimens of the tablets
for sale. One or two were sent to Paris, where they were promptly
declared to be forgeries, with the result that for a time the
inscribed bricks were not a marketable commodity. Ere their value was
discovered, the natives had packed them into sacks, with the result
that many were damaged and some completely destroyed. At length,
however, the majority of them reached the British Museum and the
Berlin Museum, while others drifted into the museums at Cairo, St.
Petersburg, and Paris. When they were deciphered, Mitanni was
discovered, and a flood of light thrown on the internal affairs of
Egypt and its relations with various kingdoms in Asia, while glimpses
were also afforded of the life and manners of the times.
The letters covered the reigns of Amenhotep III, the great-grandson of
Thothmes III, and of his son Akhenaton, "the dreamer king", and
included communications from the kings of Babylonia, Assyria, Mitanni,
Cyprus, the Hittites, and the princes of Phoenicia and Canaan. The
copies of two letters from Amenhotep III to Kallima-Sin, King of
Babylonia, had also been preserved. One deals with statements made by
Babylonian ambassadors, whom the Pharaoh stigmatizes as liars.
Kallima-Sin had sent his daughter to the royal harem of Egypt, and
desired to know if she was alive and well. He also asked for "much
gold" to enable him to carry on the work of extending his temple. When
twenty minas of gold was sent to him, he complained in due course that
the quantity received was not only short but that the gold was not
pure; it had been melted in the furnace, and less than five minas came
out. In return he sent to Akhenaton two minas of enamel, and some
jewels for his daughter, who was in the Egyptian royal harem.
Ashur-uballit, king of Ashur, once wrote intimating to Akhenaton that
he was gifting him horses and chariots and a jewel seal. He asked for
gold to assist in building his palace. "In your country", he added,
"gold is as plentiful as dust." He also made an illuminating statement
to the effect that no ambassador had gone from Assyria to Egypt since
the days of his ancestor Ashur-nadin-akhe. It would therefore appear
that Ashur-uballit had freed part of Assyria from the yoke of Mitanni.
The contemporary king of Mitanni was Tushratta. He corresponded both
with his cousin Amenhotep III and his son-in-law Akhenaton. In his
correspondence with Amenhotep III Tushratta tells that his kingdom had
been invaded by the Hittites, but his god Teshup had delivered them
into his hand, and he destroyed them; "not one of them", he declared,
"returned to his own country". Out of the booty captured he sent
Amenhotep several chariots and horses, and a boy and a girl. To his
sister Gilu-khipa, who was one of the Egyptian Pharaoh's wives, he
gifted golden ornaments and a jar of oil. In another letter Tushratta
asked for a large quantity of gold "without measure". He complained
that he did not receive enough on previous occasions, and hinted that
some of the Egyptian gold looked as if it were alloyed with copper.
Like the Assyrian king, he hinted that gold was as plentiful as dust
in Egypt. His own presents to the Pharaoh included precious stones,
gold ornaments, chariots and horses, and women (probably slaves). This
may have been tribute. It was during the third Amenhotep's illness
that Tushratta forwarded the Nineveh image of Ishtar to Egypt, and he
made reference to its having been previously sent thither by his
father, Sutarna.
When Akhenaton came to the throne Tushratta wrote to him, desiring to
continue the friendship which had existed for two or three generations
between the kings of Mitanni and Egypt, and made complimentary
references to "the distinguished Queen Tiy", Akhenaton's mother, who
evidently exercised considerable influence in shaping Egypt's foreign
policy. In the course of his long correspondence with the Pharaohs,
Tushratta made those statements regarding his ancestors which have
provided so much important data for modern historians of his kingdom.
During the early part of the Tell-el-Amarna period, Mitanni was the
most powerful kingdom in Western Asia. It was chiefly on that account
that the daughters of its rulers were selected to be the wives and
mothers of great Egyptian Pharaohs. But its numerous enemies were ever
plotting to accomplish its downfall. Among these the foremost and most
dangerous were the Hittites and the Assyrians.
The ascendancy of the Hittites was achieved in northern Syria with
dramatic suddenness. There arose in Asia Minor a great conqueror,
named Subbi-luliuma, the successor of Hattusil I, who established a
strong Hittite empire which endured for about two centuries. His
capital was at Boghaz-Köi. Sweeping through Cappadocia, at the head of
a finely organized army, remarkable for its mobility, he attacked the
buffer states which owed allegiance to Mitanni and Egypt. City after
city fell before him, until at length he invaded Mitanni; but it is
uncertain whether or not Tushratta met him in battle. Large numbers of
the Mitannians were, however, evicted and transferred to the land of
the Hittites, where the Greeks subsequently found them, and where they
are believed to be represented by the modern Kurds, the hereditary
enemies of the Armenians.
In the confusion which ensued, Tushratta was murdered by Sutarna II,
who was recognized by Subbi-luliuma. The crown prince, Mattiuza, fled
to Babylon, where he found protection, but was unable to receive any
assistance. Ultimately, when the Hittite emperor had secured his sway
over northern Syria, he deposed Sutarna II and set Mattiuza as his
vassal on the throne of the shrunken Mitanni kingdom.
Meanwhile the Egyptian empire in Asia had gone to pieces. When
Akhenaton, the dreamer king, died in his palace at Tell-el-Amarna, the
Khabiri were conquering the Canaanite cities which had paid him
tribute, and the Hittite ruler was the acknowledged overlord of the
Amorites.
The star of Assyria was also in the ascendant. Its king,
Ashur-uballit, who had corresponded with Akhenaton, was, like the
Hittite king, Subbi-luliuma, a distinguished statesman and general,
and similarly laid the foundations of a great empire. Before or after
Subbi-luliuma invaded Tushratta's domains, he drove the Mitannians out
of Nineveh, and afterwards overcame the Shubari tribes of Mitanni on
the north-west, with the result that he added a wide extent of
territory to his growing empire.
He had previously thrust southward the Assyro-Babylonian frontier. In
fact, he had become so formidable an opponent of Babylonia that his
daughter had been accepted as the wife of Karakhardash, the Kassite
king of that country. In time his grandson, Kadashman-Kharbe, ascended
the Babylonian throne. This young monarch co-operated with his
grandfather in suppressing the Suti, who infested the trade routes
towards the west, and plundered the caravans of merchants and the
messengers of great monarchs with persistent impunity.
A reference to these bandits appears in one of the Tell-el-Amarna
letters. Writing to Akhenaton, Ashur-uballit said: "The lands (of
Assyria and Egypt) are remote, therefore let our messengers come and
go. That your messengers were late in reaching you, (the reason is
that) if the Suti had waylaid them, they would have been dead men. For
if I had sent them, the Suti would have sent bands to waylay them;
therefore I have retained them. My messengers (however), may they not
(for this reason) be delayed."[301]
Ashur-uballit's grandson extended his Babylonian frontier into Amurru,
where he dug wells and erected forts to protect traders. The Kassite
aristocracy, however, appear to have entertained towards him a strong
dislike, perhaps because he was so closely associated with their
hereditary enemies the Assyrians. He had not reigned for long when the
embers of rebellion burst into flame and he was murdered in his
palace. The Kassites then selected as their king a man of humble
origin, named Nazibugash, who was afterwards referred to as "the son
of nobody". Ashur-uballit deemed the occasion a fitting one to
interfere in the affairs of Babylonia. He suddenly appeared at the
capital with a strong army, overawed the Kassites, and seized and slew
Nazibugash. Then he set on the throne his great grandson the infant
Kurigalzu II, who lived to reign for fifty-five years.
Ashur-uballit appears to have died soon after this event. He was
succeeded by his son Bel-nirari, who carried on the policy of
strengthening and extending the Assyrian empire. For many years he
maintained excellent relations with his kinsman Kurigalzu II, but
ultimately they came into conflict apparently over disputed territory.
A sanguinary battle was fought, in which the Babylonians suffered
heavily and were put to rout. A treaty of peace was afterwards
arranged, which secured for the Assyrians a further extension of their
frontier "from the borders of Mitanni as far as Babylonia". The
struggle of the future was to be for the possession of Mesopotamia, so
as to secure control over the trade routes.
Thus Assyria rose from a petty state in a comparatively brief period
to become the rival of Babylonia, at a time when Egypt at the
beginning of its Nineteenth Dynasty was endeavouring to win back its
lost empire in Syria, and the Hittite empire was being consolidated in
the north.