ASSYRIANS. — BABYLON.
The name of the Assyrians, who formed one wing of this early system
of intercourse and commerce, rests chiefly upon the great cities of
Nineveh and Babylon. To the Assyrians of Nineveh (as has been already
mentioned) is ascribed in early times a very extensive empire,
covering much of Upper Asia, as well as Mesopotamia or the country
between the Euphrates and the Tigris. Respecting this empire,—its
commencement, its extent, or even the mode in which it was put
down,—nothing certain can be affirmed; but it seems unquestionable
that many great and flourishing cities,—and a population inferior in
enterprise, but not in industry, to the Phenicians,—were to be found
on the Euphrates and Tigris, in times anterior to the first Olympiad.
Of these cities, Nineveh on the Tigris and Babylon on the Euphrates
were the chief;[551] the latter being in some sort of dependence,
probably, on the sovereigns of Nineveh, yet governed by kings or
chiefs of its own, and comprehending an hereditary order of priests
named Chaldæans, masters of all the science and literature as well as
of the religious ceremonies current among the people, and devoted,
from very early times, to that habit of astronomical observation
which their brilliant sky so much favored.
[551] Herodot. i, 178. Τῆς δὲ Ἀσσυρίης ἐστὶ μέν κου καὶ ἄλλα
πολίσματα μεγάλα πολλά· τὸ δὲ ὀνομαστότατον καὶ ἰσχυρότατον, καὶ
ἔνθα σφι, τῆς Νίνου ἀναστάτου γενομένης, τὰ βασιλήϊα κατεστήκεε,
ἦν Βαβυλών.
The existence of these and several other great cities is an
important item to be taken in, in our conception of the old
Assyria: Opis on the Tigris, and Sittakê on one of the canals
very near the Tigris, can be identified (Xenoph. Anab. ii, 4,
13-25): compare Diodor. ii, 11.
The people called Assyrians or Syrians—for among the Greek authors
no constant distinction is maintained between the two[552]— were
distributed over the wide territory bounded on the east by Mount
Zagros and its north-westerly continuation toward Mount Ararat, by
which they were separated from the Medes,—and extending from thence
westward and southward to the Euxine sea, the river Halys, the
Mediterranean sea, and the Persian gulf,—thus covering the whole
course of the Tigris and Euphrates south of Armenia, as well as Syria
and Syria-Palæstine, and the territory eastward of the Halys called
Kappadokia. But the Chaldæan order of priests appear to have been
peculiar to Babylon and other towns in its territory, especially
between that city and the Persian gulf. The vast, rich, and lofty
temple of Bêlus in that city, served them at once as a place of
worship and an astronomical observatory; and it was the paramount
ascendency of this order which seems to have caused the Babylonian
people generally to be spoken of as Chaldæans,—though some writers
have supposed, without any good proof, a conquest of Assyrian
Babylon by barbarians called Chaldæans from the mountains near the
Euxine.[553]
[552] Herodot. i, 72; iii, 90-91; vii, 63; Strabo, xvi, p. 736,
also ii, p. 84, in which he takes exception to the distribution
of the οἰκουμένη (inhabited portion of the globe) made by
Eratosthenês, because it did not include in the same compartment
(σφραγὶς) Syria proper and Mesopotamia: he calls Ninus and
Semiramis, Syrians. Herodotus considers the Armenians as
colonists from the Phrygians (vii, 73).
The Homeric names Ἀρίμοι, Ἐρεμβοὶ (the first in the Iliad,
ii, 783, the second in the Odyssey, iv, 84) coincide with the
Oriental name of this race _Aram_; it seems more ancient, in the
Greek habits of speech, than _Syrians_ (see Strabo, xvi, p. 785).
The Hesiodic Catalogue too, as well as Stêsichorus, recognized
_Arabus_ as the son of Hermês, by Throniê, daughter of Bêlus
(Hesiod, Fragm. 29, ed. Marktscheffel; Strabo, i, p. 42).
[553] Heeren, in his account of the Babylonians (Ideen über den
Verkehr der Alten Welt, part i, Abtheilung 2, p. 168), speaks of
this conquest of Babylon by Chaldæan barbarians from the northern
mountains as a certain fact, explaining the great development of
the Babylonian empire under Nabopolasar and Nebuchadnezzar from
630-580 B. C.; it was, he thinks, the new Chaldæan conquerors who
thus extended their dominion over Judæa and Phenicia.
I agree with Volney (Chronologie des Babyloniens, ch. x, p. 215)
in thinking this statement both unsupported and improbable.
Mannert seems to suppose the Chaldæans of Arabian origin (Geogr.
der Gr. und Röm., part v, s. 2, ch. xii, p. 419). The passages
of Strabo (xvi, p. 739) are more favorable to this opinion than
to that of Heeren; but we make out nothing distinct respecting
the Chaldæans except that they were the priestly order among
the Assyrians of Babylon, as they are expressly termed by
Herodotus—ὡς λέγουσι οἱ Χαλδαῖοι, ἐόντες ἱρέες τούτου τοῦ θεοῦ
(of Zeus Bêlus) (Herodot. i, 181).
The Chalybes and Chaldæi of the northern mountains seem to be
known only through Xenophon (Anab. iv, 3, 4; v, 5, 17; Cyrop.
iii, 2, 1); they are rude barbarians, and of their exploits or
history no particulars reach us.
There were exaggerated statements respecting the antiquity of their
astronomical observations, which cannot be traced as of definite and
recorded date higher than the era of Nabonassar[554] (747 B. C.),
as well as respecting the extent of their acquired knowledge, so
largely blended with astrological fancies and occult influences of
the heavenly bodies on human affairs. But however incomplete their
knowledge may appear when judged by the standard of after-times,
there can be no doubt, that compared with any of their contemporaries
of the sixth century B. C.—either Egyptians, Greeks, or Asiatics—they
stood preëminent, and had much to teach, not only to Thalês and
Pythagoras, but even to later inquirers, such as Eudoxus and
Aristotle. The conception of the revolving celestial sphere, the
gnomon, and the division of the day into twelve parts, are affirmed
by Herodotus[555] to have been first taught to the Greeks by the
Babylonians; and the continuous observation of the heavens both by
the Egyptian and Chaldæan priests, had determined with considerable
exactness both the duration of the solar year and other longer
periods of astronomical recurrence; thus impressing upon intelligent
Greeks the imperfection of their own calendars, and furnishing them
with a basis not only for enlarged observations of their own, but
also for the discovery and application of those mathematical theories
whereby astronomy first became a science.
[554] The earliest Chaldæan astronomical observation, known to
the astronomer Ptolemy, both precise and of ascertained date to
a degree sufficient for scientific use, was a lunar eclipse of
the 19th March 721 B. C.—the 27th year of the era of Nabonassar
(Ideler, Ueber die Astronomischen Beobachtungen der Alten, p.
19, Berlin, 1806). Had Ptolemy known any older observations
conforming to these conditions, he would not have omitted to
notice them: his own words in the Almagest testify how much he
valued the knowledge and comparison of observations taken at
distant intervals (Almagest, b. 3, p. 62, ap. Ideler, _l. c._ p.
1), and at the same time imply that he had none more ancient than
the era of Nabonassar (Alm. iii, p. 77, ap. Idel. p. 169).
That the Chaldæans had been, long before this period, in the
habit of observing the heavens, there is no reason to doubt; and
the exactness of those observations cited by Ptolemy implies
(according to the judgment of Ideler _ib._ p. 167) long previous
practice. The period of two hundred and twenty-three lunations,
after which the moon reverts nearly to the same positions in
reference to the apsides and nodes, and after which eclipses
return nearly in the same order and magnitude, appears to have
been discovered by the Chaldæans (“Defectus ducentis viginti
tribus mensibus redire in suos orbes certum est,” Pliny, H. N.
ii, 13), and they deduced from hence the mean daily motions of
the moon with a degree of accuracy which differs only by four
seconds from modern lunar tables (Geminus, Isagoge in Arati
Phænomena, c. 15; Ideler, _l. c._ pp. 153, 154, and in his
Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, Absch. ii, p. 207).
There seem to have been Chaldæan observations, both made and
recorded, of much greater antiquity than the era of Nabonassar;
though we cannot lay much stress on the date of 1903 years
anterior to Alexander the Great, which is mentioned by Simplicius
(ad Aristot. de Cœlo, p. 123) as being the earliest period of
the Chaldæan observations sent from Babylon by Kallisthenês to
Aristotle. Ideler thinks that the Chaldæan observations anterior
to the era of Nabonassar were useless to astronomers from the
want of some fixed era, or definite cycle, to identify the date
of each of them. The common civil year of the Chaldæans had been
from the beginning (like that of the Greeks) a lunar year, kept
in a certain degree of harmony with the sun by cycles of lunar
years and intercalation. Down to the era of Nabonassar, the
calender was in confusion, and there was nothing to verify either
the time of accession of the kings, or that of astronomical
phenomena observed, except the days and months of this lunar
year. In the reign of Nabonassar, the astronomers at Babylon
introduced (not into civil use, but for their own purposes and
records) the Egyptian solar year,—of three hundred and sixty-five
days, or twelve months of thirty days each, with five added days,
beginning with the first of the month Thoth, the commencement of
the Egyptian year,—and they thus first obtained a continuous and
accurate mode of marking the date of events. It is not meant that
the Chaldæans then for the first time obtained from the Egyptians
the _knowledge_ of the solar year of three hundred and sixty-five
days, but that they then for the first time adopted it in their
notation of time for astronomical purposes, fixing the precise
moment at which they began. Nor is there the least reason to
suppose that the era of Nabonassar coincided with any political
revolution or change of dynasty. Ideler discusses this point
(pp. 146-173, and Handbuch der Chronol. pp. 215-220). Syncellus
might correctly say—Ἀπὸ Ναβονασάρου τοὺς χρόνους τῆς τῶν ἄστρων
παρατηρησέως Χαλδαῖοι ἠκρίβωσαν (Chronogr. p. 207).
We need not dwell upon the back reckonings of the Chaldæans for
periods of 720,000, 490,000, 470,000 years, mentioned by Cicero,
Diodorus, and Pliny (Cicero, De Divin. ii, 46; Diod. ii, 31;
Pliny, H. N. vii, 57), and seemingly presented by Berosus and
others as the preface of Babylonian history.
It is to be noted that Ptolemy always cited the Chaldæan
observations as made by “_the Chaldæans_,” never naming any
individual; though in all the other observations to which he
alludes, he is very scrupulous in particularizing the name of
the observer. Doubtless he found the Chaldæan observations
registered just in this manner; a point which illustrates what
is said in the text respecting the collective character of their
civilization, and the want of individual development or prominent
genius.
The superiority of the Chaldæan priests to the Egyptian, as
astronomical observers, is shown by the fact that Ptolemy, though
living at Alexandria, never mentions the latter as astronomers,
and cites no Egyptian observations while he cites thirteen
Chaldæan observations in the years B. C. 721, 720, 523, 502, 491,
383, 382, 245, 237, 229: the first ten being observations of
lunar eclipses; the last three, of conjunctions of planets and
fixed stars (Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, Ab. ii,
pp. 195-199).
[555] Herodot. ii, 109.
Nor was it only the astronomical acquisitions of the priestly caste
which distinguished the early Babylonians. The social condition, the
fertility of the country, the dense population, and the persevering
industry of the inhabitants, were not less remarkable. Respecting
Nineveh,[556] once the greatest of the Assyrian cities, we have
no good information, nor can we safely reason from the analogy of
Babylon, inasmuch as the peculiarities of the latter were altogether
determined by the Euphrates, while Nineveh was seated considerably
farther north, and on the east bank of the Tigris: but Herodotus
gives us valuable particulars respecting Babylon as an eye-witness,
and we may judge by his account respecting its condition after much
suffering from the Persian conquest, what it had been a century
earlier in the days of its full splendor.
[556] The ancient Ninus or Nineveh was situated on the eastern
bank of the Tigris, nearly opposite the modern town of Mousul or
Mosul. Herodotus (i, 193) and Strabo (xvi, p. 737) both speak of
it as being destroyed; but Tacitus (Ann. xii, 13) and Ammian.
Marcell. (xviii, 7) mention it as subsisting. Its ruins had been
long remarked (see Thevenot, Voyages, lib. i, ch. xi, p. 176, and
Niebuhr, Reisen, vol. ii, p. 360), but have never been examined
carefully until recently by Rich, Ainsworth, and others: see
Ritter, West-Asien, b. iii, Abtheil. iii, Abschn. i, s. 45, pp.
171-221.
Ktêsias, according to Diodorus (ii, 3), placed Ninus or
Nineveh on the Euphrates, which we must presume to be an
inadvertence,—probably of Diodorus himself, for Ktêsias would be
less likely than he to confound the Euphrates and the Tigris.
Compare Wesseling ad Diodor. ii, 3, and Bähr ad Ktesiæ Fragm. ii,
Assyr. p. 392.
Mannert (Geographie der Gr. und Röm. part v, c. 14, pp. 439-448)
disputes the identity of these ruins with the ancient city of
Ninus or Nineveh, because, if this had been the fact, Xenophon
and the Ten Thousand Greeks must have passed directly over them
in the retreat along the eastern bank of the Tigris upward:
and Xenophon, who particularly notices the deserted cities of
Larissa and Mespila, says nothing of the great ruin of this
once flourishing Assyrian capital. This argument once appeared
to me so forcible, that I came to the same negative conclusion
as Mannert, though his conjectures, as to the real site of the
city, never appeared to me satisfactory. But Ritter has removed
the difficulty, by showing that the ruins opposite Mosul exactly
correspond to the situation of that deserted city which Xenophon
calls Mespila: the difference of name in this case is not of
very great importance (Ritter, _ut sup._ p. 175). Consult also
Forbiger, Handbuch der alten Geographie, sect. 96, p. 612.
The situation of Nineveh here pointed out is exactly what we
should expect in reference to the conquests of the Median kings:
it lies in that part of Assyria bordering on Media, and in the
course of the conquests which the king Kyaxarês afterwards
extended farther on to the Halys. (See Appendix at the end of
this chapter.)
The neighboring territory receiving but little rain,[557] owed its
fertility altogether to the annual overflowing of the Euphrates, on
which the labor bestowed, for the purpose of limiting, regularizing,
and diffusing its supply of water, was stupendous. Embankments along
the river,—artificial reservoirs in connection with it, to receive
an excessive increase,—new curvilinear channels, dug for the water
in places where the stream was too straight and rapid,—broad and
deep canals crossing the whole space between the Euphrates and the
Tigris, and feeding numerous rivulets[558] or ditches which enabled
the whole breadth of land to be irrigated,—all these toilsome
applications were requisite to insure due moisture for the Babylonian
soil; but they were rewarded with an exuberance of produce, in the
various descriptions of grain, such as Herodotus hardly dares to
particularize. The country produced no trees except the date-palm,
which was turned to account in many different ways, and from the
fruit of which, both copious and of extraordinary size, wine as
well as bread were made.[559] Moreover, Babylonia was still more
barren of stone than of wood, so that buildings as well as walls
were constructed almost entirely of brick, for which the earth
was well adapted; while a flow of mineral bitumen, found near the
town and river of Is, higher up the Euphrates, served for cement.
Such persevering and systematic labor, applied for the purpose of
irrigation, excites our astonishment; yet the description of what was
done for defence is still more imposing. Babylon, traversed in the
middle by the Euphrates, was surrounded by walls three hundred feet
in height, seventy-five feet in thickness, and composing a square of
which each side was one hundred and twenty stadia (or nearly fifteen
English miles) in length: around the outside of the walls was a broad
and deep moat from whence the material for the bricks composing them
had been excavated; while one hundred brazen gates served for ingress
and egress. Besides, there was an interior wall less thick, but still
very strong; and as a still farther obstruction to invaders from the
north and north-east, another high and thick wall was built at some
miles from the city, across much of the space between the Euphrates
and the Tigris,—called the wall of Media, seemingly a little to the
north of that point where the two rivers most nearly approach to each
other, and joining the Tigris on its west bank. Of the houses many
were three or four stories high, and the broad and straight streets,
unknown in a Greek town until the distribution of the peiræeus
by Hippodamus, near the time of the Peloponnesian war, were well
calculated to heighten the astonishment raised by the whole spectacle
in a visitor like Herodotus. The royal palace, with its memorable
terraces or hanging gardens, formed the central and commanding
edifice in one half of the city,—the temple of Bêlus in the other
half.
[557] Herodot. i, 193. Ἡ γῆ τῶν Ἀσσυρίων ὕεται μὲν ὀλίγῳ—while
he speaks of rain falling at Thebes in Egypt as a prodigy,
which never happened except just at the moment when the country
was conquered by Cambysês,—οὐ γὰρ δὴ ὕεται τὰ ἄνω τῆς Αἰγύπτου
τὸ παράπαν (iii, 10). It is not unimportant to notice this
distinction between the _little_ rain of Babylonia, and the _no_
rain of Upper Egypt,—as a mark of measured assertion in the
historian from whom so much of our knowledge of Grecian history
is derived.
It chanced to rain hard during the four days which the traveller
Niebuhr spent in going from the ruins of Babylon to Bagdad, at
the end of November 1763 (Reisen, vol. ii, p. 292).
[558] Herodot. i, 193; Xenophon, Anab. i, 7, 15; ii, 4, 13-22.
[559] About the date-palms (φοίνικες) in the ancient Babylonia,
see Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. ii, 6, 2-6; Xenoph. Cyrop. vii, 5,
12; Anab. ii, 3, 15; Diodor. ii, 53: there were some which bore
no fruit, but which afforded good wood for house-purposes and
furniture.
Theophrastus gives the same general idea of the fertility and
produce of the soil in Babylonia as Herodotus, though the two
hundred-fold, and sometimes three hundred-fold, which was stated
to the latter as the produce of the land in grain, appears in
his statement cut down to fifty-fold, or one hundred-fold (Hist.
Plant. viii, 7, 4).
Respecting the numerous useful purposes for which the date-palm
was made to serve (a Persian song enumerated three hundred and
sixty), see Strabo, xiv, p. 742; Ammian. Marcell. xxiv, 3.
That celebrated temple, standing upon a basis of one square stadium,
and inclosed in a precinct of two square stadia in dimension, was
composed of eight solid towers, built one above the other, and is
alleged by Strabo to have been as much as a stadium or furlong
high (the height is not specified by Herodotus):[560] it was full
of costly decorations, and possessed an extensive landed property.
Along the banks of the river, in its passage through the city, were
built spacious quays, and a bridge on stone piles, for the placing of
which—as Herodotus was told—Semiramis had caused the river Euphrates
to be drained off into the large side reservoir and lake constructed
higher up its course.[561]
[560] Herodot. i, 178, Strabo, xiv, p. 738; Arrian, E. A.
vii, 17, 7. Strabo does not say that it was a stadium in
_perpendicular_ height: we may suppose that the stadium
represents the entire distance in upward march from the bottom to
the top. He as well as Arrian say that Xerxês destroyed both the
temple of Bêlus and all the other temples at Babylon (καθεῖλεν,
κατέσκαψεν, iii, 16, 6; vii, 17, 4); he talks of the intention
of Alexander to rebuild it, and of his directions given to level
new foundations, carrying away the loose earth and ruins. This
cannot be reconciled with the narrative of Herodotus, nor with
the statement of Pliny (vi, 30), nor do I believe it to be true.
Xerxês plundered the temple of much of its wealth and ornaments,
but that he knocked down the vast building and the other
Babylonian temples, is incredible. Babylon always continued one
of the chief cities of the Persian empire.
[561] What is stated in the text respecting Babylon, is taken
almost entirely from Herodotus: I have given briefly the most
prominent points in his interesting narrative (i, 178-193), which
well deserves to be read at length.
Herodotus is in fact our only original witness, speaking from his
own observation and going into details, respecting the marvels
of Babylon. Ktêsias, if his work had remained, would have been
another original witness; but we have only a few extracts from
him by Diodorus. Strabo seems not to have visited Babylon,
nor can it be affirmed that Kleitarchus did so. Arrian had
Aristobulus to copy, and is valuable as far as he goes; but he
does not enter into many particulars respecting the magnitude
of the city or its appurtenances. Berosus also, if we possessed
his book, would have been an eye-witness of the state of Babylon
more than a century and a half later than Herodotus, but the few
fragments remaining are hardly at all descriptive (see Berosi
Fragm. pp. 64-67, ed. Richter).
The magnitude of the works described by Herodotus naturally
provokes suspicions of exaggeration; but there are good grounds
for trusting him, in my judgment, on all points which fell under
his own vision and means of verification, as distinguished
from past facts, on which he could do no more than give what
he heard. He had bestowed much attention on Assyria and its
phenomena, as is evident from the fact that he had written (or
prepared to write, if the suspicion be admissible that the work
was never completed,—Fabricius, Biblioth. Græc. ii, 20, 5) a
special Assyrian history, which has not reached us (Ἀσσυρίοισι
λόγοισι, i, 106-184). He is very precise in the measures of which
he speaks; thus having described the dimensions of the walls in
“royal cubits,” he goes on immediately to tell us how much that
measure differs from an ordinary cubit. He designedly suppresses
a part of what he had heard respecting the produce of the
Babylonian soil, from the mere apprehension of not being believed.
To these reasons for placing faith in Herodotus we may add
another, not less deserving of attention. That which seems
incredible in the constructions which he describes, arises simply
from their enormous bulk, and the frightful quantity of human
labor which must have been employed to execute them. He does
not tell us, like Berosus (Fragm. p. 66), that these wonderful
fortifications were completed in fifteen days,—nor like Quintus
Curtius, that the length of one stadium was completed on each
successive day of the year (v, 1, 26). To bring to pass all that
Herodotus has described, is a mere question of time, patience,
number of laborers, and cost of maintaining them,—for the
materials were both close at hand and inexhaustible.
Now what would be the limit imposed upon the power and will of
the old kings of Babylonia on these points? We can hardly assign
that limit with so much confidence as to venture to pronounce a
statement of Herodotus incredible, when he tells us something
which he has seen, or verified from eye-witnesses. The Pyramids
and other works in Egypt are quite sufficient to make us
mistrustful of our own means of appreciation; and the great wall
of China (extending for twelve hundred English miles along what
was once the whole northern frontier of the Chinese empire,—from
twenty to twenty-five feet high,—wide enough for six horses to
run abreast, and furnished with a suitable number of gates and
bastions) _contains more material than all the buildings of the
British empire put together_, according to Barrow’s estimate
(Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. i, p. 7, _t.
v._; and Ideler, Ueber die Zeitrechnung der Chinesen, in the
Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy for 1837, ch. 3, p. 291).
Ktêsias gave the circuit of the walls of Babylon as three hundred
and sixty stadia; Kleitarchus, three hundred and sixty-five
stadia; Quintus Curtius, three hundred and sixty-eight stadia;
and Strabo, three hundred and eighty-five stadia; all different
from Herodotus, who gives four hundred and eighty stadia, a
square of one hundred and twenty stadia each side. Grosskurd (ad
Strabon. xvi, p. 738), Letronne, and Heeren, all presume that the
smaller number must be the truth, and that Herodotus must have
been misinformed; and Grosskurd further urges, that Herodotus
cannot have _seen_ the walls, inasmuch as he himself tells us
that Darius caused them to be razed after the second siege and
reconquest (Herodot. iii, 159). But upon this we may observe:
First, the expression (τὸ τεῖχος περιεῖλε) does not imply that
the wall was so thoroughly and entirely razed by Darius as to
leave no part standing,—still less, that the great and broad
moat was in all its circuit filled up and levelled. This would
have been a most laborious operation in reference to such high
and bulky masses, and withal not necessary for the purpose of
rendering the town defenceless; for which purpose the destruction
of certain portions of the wall is sufficient. Next, Herodotus
speaks distinctly of the walls and ditch as existing in his time,
when he saw the place, which does not exclude the possibility
that numerous breaches may have been designedly made in them,
or mere openings left in the walls without any actual gates,
for the purpose of obviating all idea of revolt. But, however
this latter fact may be, certain it is that the great walls were
either continuous, or discontinuous only to the extent of these
designed breaches, when Herodotus saw them. He describes the town
and its phenomena in the present tense: ~κέεται~ ἐν πεδίῳ μεγάλῳ,
μέγαθος ἐοῦσα μέτωπον ἕκαστον 120 σταδίων, ἐούσης τετραγώνου·
οὗτοι στάδιοι τῆς περιόδου τῆς πόλιος ~γίνονται~ συνάπαντες 480.
Τὸ μὲν νῦν μέγαθος τοσοῦτόν ~ἐστι~ τοῦ ἄστεος τοῦ Βαβυλωνίου.
Ἐκεκόσμητο δὲ ὡς οὐδὲν ἄλλο πόλισμα τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν· ταφρὸς μὲν
πρῶτά μιν βαθέα τε καὶ εὔρεα καὶ πλέη ὕδατος ~περιθέει~· μετὰ δὲ,
τεῖχος πεντήκοντα μὲν πηχέων βασιληΐων ~ἐὸν~ τὸ εὖρος, ὕψος δὲ,
διηκοσίων πηχέων. Ὁ δὲ βασιλήϊος πηχὺς τοῦ μετρίου ἐστὶ πήχεος
μέζων τρισὶ δακτυλίοισι (c. 178). Again (c. 181),—Τοῦτο μὲν δὴ τὸ
τεῖχος θώρηξ ~ἐστί~· ἕτερον δὲ ἔσωθεν τεῖχος ~περιθεῖ~, οὐ πολλῷ
τέῳ ἀσθενέστερον τοῦ ἑτέρου τείχους, στεινότερον δέ. Then he
describes the temple of Zeus Bêlus, with its vast dimensions,—καὶ
ἐς ἐμὲ τοῦτο ἔτι ἐὸν, δύο σταδίων πάντη, ἐὸν τετράγωνον,—in the
language of one who had himself gone up to the top of it. After
having mentioned the striking present phenomena of the temple,
he specifies a statue of solid gold, twelve cubits high, which
the Chaldæans told him had once been there, but which he did not
see, and he carefully marks the distinction in his language,—ἦν
δὲ ἐν τῷ τεμένεϊ τούτῳ ἔτι τὸν χρόνον ἐκεῖνον καὶ ἀνδριὰς δυώδεκα
πήχεων, χρύσεος στέρεος. Ἐγὼ μέν μιν οὐκ εἶδον· τὰ δὲ λέγεται ὑπὸ
Χαλδαίων, ταῦτα λέγω (c. 183).
The argument, therefore, by which Grosskurd justifies the
rejection of the statement of Herodotus is not to be reconciled
with the language of the historian: Herodotus certainly saw both
the walls and the ditch. Ktêsias saw them too, and his statement
of the circuit, as three hundred and sixty stadia, stands opposed
to that of four hundred and eighty stadia, which appears in
Herodotus. But the authority of Herodotus is, in my judgment,
so much superior to that of Ktêsias, that I accept the larger
figure as more worthy of credit than the smaller. Sixty English
miles of circuit is, doubtless, a wonder, but forty-five miles in
circuit is a wonder also: granting means and will to execute the
lesser of these two, the Babylonian kings can hardly be supposed
inadequate to the greater.
To me the height of these artificial mountains, called _walls_,
appears even more astonishing than their length or breadth.
Yet it is curious that on this point the two eye-witnesses,
Herodotus and Ktêsias, both agree, with only the difference
between royal cubits and common cubits. Herodotus states the
height at two hundred royal cubits: Ktêsias, at fifty fathoms,
which are equal to two hundred common cubits (Diod. ii, 7),—τὸ δὲ
ὕψος, ὡς μὲν Κτησίας φησὶ, πεντήκοντα ὀργυιῶν, ὡς δὲ ἔνιοι τῶν
νεωτώρων ἔγραψαν, πηχῶν πεντήκοντα. Olearius (ad Philostratum
Vit. Apollon. Tyan. i, 25) shows plausible reason for believing
that the more recent writers (νεώτεροι) cut down the dimensions
stated by Ktêsias simply because they thought such a vast height
incredible. The difference between the royal cubit and the common
cubit, as Herodotus on this occasion informs us, was three
digits in favor of the former; his two hundred royal cubits are
thus equal to three hundred and thirty-seven feet eight inches:
Ktêsias has not attended to the difference between royal cubits
and common cubits, and his estimate, therefore, is lower than
that of Herodotus by thirty-seven feet eight inches.
On the whole, I cannot think that we are justified, either by the
authority of such counter-testimony as can be produced, or by the
intrinsic wonder of the case, in rejecting the dimensions of the
walls of Babylon as given by Herodotus.
Quintus Curtius states that a large proportion of the inclosed
space was not occupied by dwellings, but sown and planted (v, 1,
26: compare Diodor. ii, 9).
Besides this great town of Babylon itself, there were throughout
the neighborhood, between the canals which united the Euphrates
and the Tigris, many rich and populous villages, while Borsippa and
other considerable towns were situated lower down on the Euphrates
itself. And the industry, agricultural as well as manufacturing, of
the collective population, was not less persevering than productive:
their linen, cotton, and woollen fabrics, and their richly ornamented
carpets, were celebrated throughout all the Eastern regions. Their
cotton was brought in part from islands in the Persian gulf, while
the flocks of sheep tended by the Arabian nomads supplied them
with wool finer even than that of Milêtus or Tarentum. Besides the
Chaldæan order of priests, there seem to have been among them certain
other tribes with peculiar hereditary customs: thus there were
three tribes, probably near the mouth of the river, who restricted
themselves to the eating of fish alone; but we have no evidences
of a military caste (like that in Egypt) nor any other hereditary
profession.
In order to present any conception of what Assyria was, in the early
days of Grecian history, and during the two centuries preceding
the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 536 B. C., we unfortunately
have no witness earlier than Herodotus, who did not see Babylon
until near a century after that event,—about seventy years after
its still more disastrous revolt and second subjugation by Darius,
Babylonia had become one of the twenty satrapies of the Persian
empire, and besides paying a larger regular tribute than any of the
other nineteen, supplied from its exuberant soil provision for the
Great King and his countless host of attendants during one-third
part of the year.[562] Yet it was then in a state of comparative
degradation, having had its immense walls breached by Darius, and
having afterwards undergone the ill usage of Xerxês, who, since he
stripped its temples, and especially the venerated temple of Bêlus,
of some of their richest ornaments, would probably be still more
reckless in his mode of dealing with the civil edifices.[563] If in
spite of such inflictions, and in spite of that manifest evidence
of poverty and suffering in the people which Herodotus expressly
notices, it continued to be what he describes, still counted as
almost the chief city of the Persian empire, both in the time of
the younger Cyrus and in that of Alexander,[564]—we may judge what
it must once have been, without either foreign satrap or foreign
tribute,[565] under its Assyrian kings and Chaldæan priests, during
the last of the two centuries which intervened between the era of
Nabonassar and the capture of the city by Cyrus the Great. Though
several of the kings, during the first of these two centuries, had
contributed much to the great works of Babylon, yet it was during the
second century of the two, after the capture of Nineveh by the Medes,
and under Nebuchadnezzar and Nitôkris, that the kings attained the
maximum of their power, and the city its greatest enlargement. It was
Nebuchadnezzar who constructed the seaport Terêdon, at the mouth of
the Euphrates, and who probably excavated the long ship canal of near
four hundred miles, which joined it,—which was perhaps formed partly
from a natural western branch of the Euphrates.[566] The brother of
the poet Alkæus,—Antimenidas, who served in the Babylonian army, and
distinguished himself by his personal valor (600-580 B. C.),—would
have seen it in its full glory:[567] he is the earliest Greek of
whom we hear individually in connection with the Babylonians. It
marks[568] strikingly the contrast between the Persian kings and the
Babylonian kings, on whose ruin they rose, that while the latter
incurred immense expense to facilitate the communication between
Babylon and the sea, the former artificially impeded the lower course
of the Tigris, in order that their residence at Susa might be out of
the reach of assailants.
[562] Herodot. i, 196.
[563] Arrian, Exp. Al. iii, 16, 6; vii, 17, 3; Quint. Curtius,
iii, 3, 16.
[564] Xenoph. Anab. i, 4, 11; Arrian. Exp. Al. iii. 16, 3. καὶ
ἅμα τοῦ πολέμου τὸ ἆθλον ἡ Βαβυλῶν καὶ τὰ Σοῦσα ἐφαίνετο.
[565] See the statement of the large receipts of the satrap
Tritantæchmes and his immense establishment of horses and Indian
dogs (Herodot. i 192).
[566] There is a valuable examination of the lower course of the
Euphrates, with the changes which it has undergone, in Ritter,
West-Asien, b. iii. Abtheil. iii, Abschnitt i, sect. 29, pp.
45-49, and the passage from Abydenus in the latter page.
For the distance between Terêdon or Diridôtis, at the mouth of
the Euphrates (which remained separate from that of the Tigris
until the first century of the Christian era), to Babylon, see
Strabo, ii, p. 80; xvi, p. 739.
It is important to keep in mind the warning given by Ritter, that
none of the maps of the course of the river Euphrates, prepared
previously to the publication of Colonel Chesney’s expedition in
1836, are to be trusted. That expedition gave the first complete
and accurate survey of the course of the river, and led to the
detection of many mistakes previously committed by Mannert,
Reichard, and other able geographers and chartographers. To the
immense mass of information contained in Ritter’s comprehensive
and laborious work, is to be added the farther merit, that he is
always careful in pointing out where the geographical data are
insufficient and fall short of certainty. See West-Asien, B. iii,
Abtheilung iii, Abschnitt i, sect. 41, p 959.
[567] Strabo, xiii, p. 617, with the mutilated fragment of
Alkæus, which O Müller has so ingeniously corrected (Rhenisch.
Museum, i, 4, p. 287).
[568] Strabo, xvi, p. 740.
That which strikes us most, and which must have struck the first
Grecian visitors much more, both in Assyria and Egypt, is the
unbounded command of naked human strength possessed by these early
kings, and the effect of mere mass and indefatigable perseverance,
unaided either by theory or by artifice, in the accomplishment of
gigantic results.[569] In Assyria, the results were in great part
exaggerations of enterprises in themselves useful to the people for
irrigation and defence: religious worship was ministered to in the
like manner, as well as the personal fancies and pomp of their kings:
while in Egypt the latter class predominates more over the former.
We scarcely trace in either of them the higher sentiment of art,
which owes its first marked development to Grecian susceptibility and
genius. But the human mind is in every stage of its progress, and
most of all in its rude and unreflecting period, strongly impressed
by visible and tangible magnitude, and awe-struck by the evidences
of great power. To this feeling, for what exceeded the demands of
practical convenience and security, the wonders both in Egypt and
Assyria chiefly appealed; while the execution of such colossal works
demonstrates habits of regular industry, a concentrated population
under one government, and above all, an implicit submission to
the regal and priestly sway,—contrasting forcibly with the small
autonomous communities of Greece and western Europe, wherein the
will of the individual citizen was so much more energetic and
uncontrolled. The acquisition of habits of regular industry, so
foreign to the natural temper of man, was brought about in Egypt and
Assyria, in China and Hindostan, before it had acquired any footing
in Europe; but it was purchased either by prostrate obedience to a
despotic rule, or by imprisonment within the chain of a consecrated
institution of caste. Even during the Homeric period of Greece, these
countries had attained a certain civilization in mass, without the
acquisition of any high mental qualities or the development of any
individual genius: the religious and political sanction, sometimes
combined and sometimes separate, determined for every one his mode
of life, his creed, his duties, and his place in society, without
leaving any scope for the will or reason of the agent himself. Now
the Phenicians and Carthaginians manifest a degree of individual
impulse and energy which puts them greatly above this type of
civilization, though in their tastes, social feelings, and religion,
they are still Asiatic. And even the Babylonian community, though
their Chaldæan priests are the parallel of the Egyptian priests,
with a less measure of ascendency, combine with their industrial
aptitude and constancy of purpose something of that strenuous
ferocity of character which marks so many people of the Semitic
race,—Jews, Phenicians, and Carthaginians. These Semitic people stand
distinguished as well from the Egyptian life,—enslaved by childish
caprices and antipathies, and by endless frivolities of ceremonial
detail,—as from the flexible, many-sided, and self-organizing Greek;
not only capable of opening both for himself and for the human race
the highest walks of intellect, and the full creative agency of art,
but also gentler by far in his private sympathies and dealings than
his contemporaries on the Euphrates, the Jordan, or the Nile,—for
we are not of course to compare him with the exigencies of western
Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
[569] Diodor. (i. 31) states this point justly with regard to
the ancient kings of Egypt—ἔργα μεγάλα καὶ θαυμαστὰ διὰ ~τὰς
πολυχειρίας~ κατασκευάσαντας, ἀθάνατα τῆς ἑαυτῶν δόξες καταλιπεῖν
ὑπομνήματα.
Both in Babylonia and in Egypt, the vast monuments, embankments, and
canals, executed by collective industry, appeared the more remarkable
to an ancient traveller by contrast with the desert regions and
predatory tribes immediately surrounding them. West of the Euphrates,
the sands of Arabia extended northward, with little interruption,
to the latitude of the gulf of Issus; they even covered the greater
part of Mesopotamia,[570] or the country between the Euphrates and
the Tigris, beginning a few days’ journey northward of the wall
called the wall of Media above mentioned, which—extending westward
from the Tigris to one of the canals joining the Euphrates—had been
erected to protect Babylon, against the incursion of the Medes.[571]
Eastward of the Tigris again, along the range of Mount Zagros, but
at no great distance from the river, were found the Elymæi, Kossæi,
Uxii, Parætakêni, etc.,—tribes which, to use the expression of
Strabo,[572] “as inhabiting a poor country, were under the necessity
of living by the plunder of their neighbors.” Such rude bands of
depredators on the one side, and such wide tracts of sand on the two
others, without vegetation or water, contrasted powerfully with the
industry and productiveness of Babylonia. Babylon itself is to be
considered, not as one continuous city, but as a city together with
its surrounding district inclosed within immense walls, the height
and thickness of which were in themselves a sufficient defence, so
that the place was assailable only at its gates. In case of need, it
would serve as shelter for the persons and property of the village
inhabitants in Babylonia; and we shall see hereafter how useful under
trying circumstances such a resource was, when we come to review
the invasions of Attica by the Peloponnesians, and the mischiefs
occasioned by a temporary crowd pouring in from the country, so as
to overcharge the intra-mural accommodations of Athens. Spacious as
Babylon was, however, it is affirmed by Strabo that Ninus or Nineveh
was considerably larger.
[570] See the description of this desert in Xenoph. Anab. i, 5,
1-8.
[571] The Ten Thousand Greeks passed from the outside to the
inside of the wall of Media: it was one hundred feet high, twenty
feet wide, and was reported to them as extending twenty parasangs
or six hundred stadia (= seventy miles) in length (Xenoph. Anab.
ii, 4, 12). Eratosthenês called it τὸ Σεμιράμιδος διατείχισμα
(Strabo, ii, p. 80): it was seemingly about twenty-five miles
north of Bagdad.
There is some confusion about the wall of Media: Mannert (Geogr.
der G. und R. v. 2, p. 280) and Forbiger also (Alte Geogr. sect.
97, p. 616, note 94) appear to have confounded the ditch dug by
special order of Artaxerxês to oppose the march of the younger
Cyrus, with the Nahar-Malcha or Royal canal between the Tigris
and the Euphrates: see Xenoph. Anab. i, 7, 15.
It is singular that Herodotus makes no mention of the wall of
Media, though his subject (i, 185) naturally conducts him to
it: he seems to have sailed down the Euphrates to Babylon, and
must, therefore, have seen it, if it had really extended to the
Euphrates, as some authors have imagined. Probably, however, it
was not kept up with any care, even in his time, seeing that its
original usefulness was at an end, after the whole of Asia, from
the Euxine to the Persian gulf, became subject to the Persians.
[572] Strabo, xvi, p. 744.
APPENDIX.
Since the first edition of these volumes, the interesting work of Mr.
Layard,—“Nineveh and its Remains,” together with his illustrative
Drawings,—“The Monuments of Nineveh,”—have been published. And
through his unremitting valuable exertions in surmounting all the
difficulties connected with excavations on the spot, the British
Museum has been enriched with a valuable collection of real Assyrian
sculptures and other monuments. A number of similar relics of
Assyrian antiquity, obtained by M. Botta and others, have also been
deposited in the museum of the Louvre at Paris.
In respect to Assyrian art, indeed to the history of art in general,
a new world has thus been opened, which promises to be fruitful
of instruction especially when we consider that the ground out of
which the recent acquisitions have been obtained, has been yet most
imperfectly examined, and may be expected to yield a much ampler
harvest hereafter, assuming circumstances tolerably favorable to
investigation. The sculptures to which we are now introduced,
with all their remarkable peculiarities of style and idea, must
undoubtedly date from the eighth or seventh century B. C., at the
latest,—and may be much earlier. The style which they display
forms a parallel and subject of comparison, though in many points
extremely different, to that of early Egypt,—at a time when the ideal
combinations of the Greeks were, as far as we know, embodied only in
epic and lyric poetry.
But in respect to early Assyrian history, we have yet to find out
whether much new information can be safely deduced from these
interesting monuments. The cuneiform inscriptions now brought to
light are indeed very numerous: and if they can be deciphered, on
rational and trustworthy principles, we can hardly fail to acquire
more or less of positive knowledge respecting a period now plunged
in total darkness. But from the monuments of art alone, it would
be unsafe to draw historical inferences. For example, when we
find sculptures representing a king taking a city by assault, or
receiving captives brought to him, etc., we are not to conclude that
this commemorates any real and positive conquest recently made by
the Assyrians. Our knowledge of the subjects of Greek sculpture on
temples is quite sufficient to make us disallow any such inference,
unless there be some corroborative proof. Some means must first be
discovered, of discriminating historical from mythical subjects: a
distinction which I here notice, the rather, because Mr. Layard shows
occasional tendency to overlook it in his interesting remarks and
explanations: see, especially, vol. ii, ch. vi, p. 409.
From the rich and abundant discoveries made at Nimroud, combined
with those at Kouyunjik and Khorsabad, Mr. Layard is inclined to
comprehend all these three within the circuit of ancient Nineveh;
admitting for that circuit the prodigious space alleged by Diodorus
out of Ktêsias, four hundred and eighty stadia or near sixty
English miles. (See Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii, ch. ii, pp.
242-253.) Mr. Layard considers that the north-west portion of Nimroud
exhibits monuments more ancient, and at the same time better in
style and execution, than the south-west portion,—or than Kouyunjik
and Khorsabad (vol. ii, ch. i, p. 204; ch. iii, p. 305). If this
hypothesis, as to the ground covered by Nineveh, be correct, probably
future excavations will confirm it—or, if incorrect, refute it.
But I do not at all reject the supposition on the simple ground of
excessive magnitude: on the contrary, I should at once believe the
statement, if it were reported by Herodotus after a visit to the
spot, like the magnitude of Babylon. The testimony of Ktêsias is,
indeed, very inferior in value to that of Herodotus: yet it ought
hardly to be outweighed by the supposed improbability of so great
a walled space, when we consider how little we know where to set
bounds to the power of the Assyrian kings in respect to command
of human labor for any process merely simple and toilsome, with
materials both near and inexhaustible. Not to mention the great wall
of China, we have only to look at the Picts Wall, and other walls
built by the Romans in Britain, to satisfy ourselves that a great
length of fortification, under circumstances much less favorable than
the position of the ancient Assyrian kings, is noway incredible in
itself. Though the walls of Nineveh and Babylon were much _larger_
than those of Paris as it now stands, yet when we compare the two
not merely in size, but in respect of costliness, elaboration, and
contrivance, the latter will be found to represent an infinitely
greater _amount of work_.
Larissa and Mespila, those deserted towns and walls which Xenophon
saw in the retreat of the Ten Thousand (Anabas. iii, 4, 6-10),
coincide in point of distance and situation with Nimroud and
Kouyunjik, according to Mr. Layard’s remark. Nor is his supposition
improbable, that both of them were formed by the Medes out of the
ruins of the conquered city of Nineveh. Neither of them singly seems
at all adequate to the reputation of that ancient city, or rather
walled circuit. According to the account of Herodotus, Phraortes
the second Median king had attacked Nineveh, but had been himself
slain in the attempt, and lost nearly all his army. It was partly
to revenge this disgrace that Kyaxarês, son of Phraortes assailed
Nineveh (Herod. i, 102-103): we may thus see a special reason, in
addition to his own violence of temper (i, 73), why he destroyed the
city after having taken it (Νίνου ἀναστάτου γενομένης, i, 178). It
is easy to conceive that this vast walled space may have been broken
up and converted into two Median towns, both on the Tigris. In the
subsequent change from Median to Persian dominion, these towns also
became depopulated, as far as the strange tales which Xenophon heard
in his retreat can be trusted. The interposition of these two Median
towns doubtless contributed, for the time, to put out of sight the
traditions respecting the old Ninus which had before stood upon their
site. But these traditions were never extinct, and a new town bearing
the old name of Ninus must have subsequently arisen on the spot. This
second Ninus is recognized by Tacitus, Ptolemy, and Ammianus, not
only as existing, but as pretending to uninterrupted continuity of
succession from the ancient “caput Assyriæ.”
Mr. Layard remarks on the facility with which edifices, such as those
in Assyria, built of sunburnt bricks, perish when neglected, and
crumble away into earth, leaving little or no trace.