CHAPTER I--SENNACHERIB (705-681 B.C.)

Produced by David Widger

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HISTORY OF EGYPT CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA

By G. MASPERO, Honorable Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of Queen’s

College, Oxford; Member of the Institute and Professor at the College of

France

Edited by A. H. SAYCE, Professor of Assyriology, Oxford

Translated by M. L. McCLURE, Member of the Committee of the Egypt

Exploration Fund

CONTAINING OVER TWELVE HUNDRED COLORED PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Volume VIII.

LONDON

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

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_SENNACHERIB (705-681 B.C.)_

_THE STRUGGLE OF SENNACHERIB WITH JUDÆA AND EGYPT--DESTRUCTION OF

BABYLON_

_The upheaval of the entire Eastern world on the accession of

Sennacherib--Revolt of Babylon: return of Merodach-baladan and his

efforts to form a coalition against Assyria; the battle of Kish (703

B.C.)--Belibni, King of Babylon (702-699 B.C.)--Sabaco, King of Egypt,

Amenertas and Pionkhi, Shàbî-toku--Tyre and its kings after Ethbaal II.:

Phoenician colonisation in Libya and the foundation of Carthage--The

Kingdom of Tyre in the time of Tiglath-pileser III. and Sargon:

Elulai--Judah and the reforms of Hezekiah; alliance of Judah and Tyre

with Egypt, the downfall of the Tyrian kingdom (702 B.C.)--The battle of

Altaku and the siege of Jerusalem: Sennacherib encamped before Lachish,

his Egyptian expedition, the disaster at Pelusium._

_Renewed revolt of Babylon and the Tabal (699 B.C.); flight of the

people of Bît-Yakîn into Elamite territory; Sennacherib’s fleet and

descent on Nagitu (697-696 B.C.)--Khalludush invades Karduniash

(695 B.C.); Nirgal-ushezib and Mushesîb-marduk at Babylon (693-689

B.C.)--Sennacherib invades Elam (693 B.C.): battle of Khalulê (692

B.C.), siege and destruction of Babylon (689 B.C.)--Buildings of

Sennacherib at Nineveh: his palace at Kouyunjik; its decoration with

battle, hunting, and building scenes._

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CHAPTER I--SENNACHERIB (705-681 B.C.)

_The struggle of Sennacherib with Judæa and Egypt--Destruction of

Babylon._

Sennacherib either failed to inherit his father’s good fortune, or

lacked his ability.* He was not deficient in military genius, nor in the

energy necessary to withstand the various enemies who rose against

him at widely removed points of his frontier, but he had neither the

adaptability of character nor the delicate tact required to manage

successfully the heterogeneous elements combined under his sway.

* The two principal documents for the reign of Sennacherib

are engraved on cylinders: the Taylor Cylinder and the

Bellino Cylinder, duplicates of which, more or less perfect,

exist in the collections of the British Museum. The Taylor

Cylinder, found at Kouyunjik or Usebi-Yunus, contains the

history or the first eight years of this reign; the Bellino

Cylinder treats of the two first years of the reign.

He lacked the wisdom to conciliate the vanquished, or opportunely to

check his own repressive measures; he destroyed towns, massacred entire

tribes, and laid whole tracts of country waste, and by failing to

repeople these with captive exiles from other nations, or to import

colonists in sufficient numbers, he found himself towards the end of

his reign ruling over a sparsely inhabited desert where his father had

bequeathed to him flourishing provinces and populous cities. His was

the system of the first Assyrian conquerors, Shalmaneser III. and

Assur-nazir-pal, substituted for that of Tiglath-pileser III. and

Sargon. The assimilation of the conquered peoples to their conquerors

was retarded, tribute was no longer paid regularly, and the loss of

revenue under this head was not compensated by the uncertain increase

in the spoils obtained by war; the recruiting of the army, rendered more

difficult by the depopulation of revolted districts, weighed heavier

still on those which remained faithful, and began, as in former times,

to exhaust the nation. The news of Sargon’s murder, published throughout

the Eastern world, had rekindled hope in the countries recently

subjugated by Assyria, as well as in those hostile to her. Phoenicia,

Egypt, Media, and Elam roused themselves from their lethargy and

anxiously awaited the turn which events should take at Nineveh and

Babylon. Sennacherib did not consider it to his interest to assume the

crown of Chaldæa, and to treat on a footing of absolute equality a

country which had been subdued by force of arms: he relegated it to the

rank of a vassal state, and while reserving the suzerainty for himself,

sent thither one of his brothers to rule as king.*

* The events which took place at Babylon at the beginning of

Sennacherib’s reign are known to us from the fragments of

Berosus, compared with the Canon of Ptolemy and Pinches’

Babylonian Canon. The first interregnum in the Canon of

Ptolemy (704-702 B.C.) is filled in Pinches’ Canon by three

kings who are said to have reigned as follows: Sennacherib,

two years; Marduk-zâkir-shumu, one month; Merodach-baladan,

nine months. Berosus substitutes for Sennacherib one of his

brothers, whose name apparently he did not know; and this is

the version I have adopted, in agreement with most modern

historians, as best tallying with the evident lack of

affection for Babylon displayed by Sennacherib throughout

his reign.

The Babylonians were indignant at this slight. Accustomed to see their

foreign ruler conform to their national customs, take the hands of Bel,

and assume or receive from them a new throne-name, they could not resign

themselves to descend to the level of mere tributaries: in less than

two years they rebelled, assassinated the king who had been imposed upon

them, and proclaimed in his stead Marduk-zâkir-shumu,* who was merely

the son of a female slave (704 B.C.).

* The servile origin of this personage is indicated in

Pinches’ Babylonian Canon; he might, however, be connected

through his father with a princely, or even a royal, family,

and thereby be in a position to win popular support. Among

modern Assyriologists, some suppose that the name Akises in

Berosus is a corruption of [Marduk-]zâkir[shumu]; others

consider Akises-Akishu as being the personal name of the

king, and Marduk-zâkir-shumu his throne-name.

This was the signal for a general insurrection in Chaldæa and the

eastern part of the empire. Merodach-baladan, who had remained in hiding

in the valleys on the Elamite frontier since his defeat in 709 B.C.,

suddenly issued forth with his adherents, and marched at once to

Babylon; the very news of his approach caused a sedition, in the midst

of which Marduk-zâkir-shumu perished, after having reigned for only one

month. Merodach-baladan re-entered his former capital, and as soon as

he was once more seated on the throne, he endeavoured to form alliances

with all the princes, both small and great, who might create a diversion

in his favour. His envoys obtained promises of help from Elam; other

emissaries hastened to Syria to solicit the alliance of Hezekiah, and

might have even proceeded to Egypt if their sovereign’s good fortune had

lasted long enough.* But Sennacherib did not waste his opportunities in

lengthy-preparations.

* 2 Kings xx. 12-19; Isa. xxxix. The embassy to Hezekiah has

been assigned to the first reign of Merodach-baladan, under

Sargon. In accordance with the information obtained from the

Assyrian monuments, it seems to me that it could only have

taken place during his second reign, in 703 B.C.

The magnificent army left by Sargon was at his disposal, and summoning

it at once into the field, he advanced on the town of Kîsh, where the

Kaldâ monarch was entrenched with his Aramæan forces and the Elamite

auxiliaries furnished by Shutruk-nakhunta. The battle issued in the

complete rout of the confederate forces. Merodach-baladan fled almost

unattended, first to Guzum-manu, and then to the marshes of the Tigris,

where he found a temporary refuge; the troops who were despatched in

pursuit followed him for five days, and then, having failed to secure

the fugitive, gave up the search.*

* The detail is furnished by the _Bellino Cylinder_. Berosus

affirmed that Merodach-baladan was put to death by Belibni.

His camp fell into the possession of the victor, with all its

contents--chariots, horses, mules, camels, and herds of cattle belonging

to the commissariat department of the army: Babylon threw open its gates

without resistance, hoping, no doubt, that Sennacherib would at length

resolve to imitate the precedent set by his father and retain the royal

dignity for himself. He did, indeed, consent to remit the punishment for

this first insurrection, and contented himself with pillaging the

royal treasury and palace, but he did not deign to assume the crown,

conferring it on Belibni, a Babylonian of noble birth, who had been

taken, when quite a child, to Nineveh and educated there under the eyes

of Sargon.*

* The name is transcribed Belibos in Greek, and it seems as

if the Assyrian variants justify the pronunciation Belibush.

While he was thus reorganising the government, his generals were

bringing the campaign to a close: they sacked, one after another,

eighty-nine strongholds and eight hundred and twenty villages of

the Kaldâ; they drove out the Arabian and Aramaean garrisons which

Merodach-baladan had placed in the cities of Karduniash, in Urak, Nipur,

Kuta, and Kharshag-kalamma, and they re-established Assyrian supremacy

over all the tribes on the east of the Tigris up to the frontiers of

Elam, the Tumuna, the Ubudu, the Gambulu, and the Khindaru, as also over

the Nabataeans and Hagarenes, who wandered over the deserts of Arabia to

the west of the mouths of the Euphrates. The booty was enormous: 208,000

prisoners, both male and female, 7200 horses, 11,073 asses, 5230 camels,

80,100 oxen, 800,500 sheep, made their way like a gigantic horde of

emigrants to Assyria under the escort of the victorious army. Meanwhile

the Khirimmu remained defiant, and showed not the slightest intention

to submit: their strongholds had to be attacked and the inhabitants

annihilated before order could in any way be restored in the country.

The second reign of Merodach-baladan had lasted barely nine months.

The blow which ruined Merodach-baladan broke up the coalition which he

had tried to form against Assyria. Babylon was the only rallying-point

where states so remote, and such entire strangers to each other as Judah

and Elam, could enter into friendly relations and arrange a plan of

combined action. Having lost Babylon as a centre, they were once more

hopelessly isolated, and had no means of concerting measures against the

common foe: they renounced all offensive action, and waited under

arms to see how the conqueror would deal with each severally. The

most threatening storm, however, was not that which was gathering over

Palestine, even were Egypt to be drawn into open war: for a revolt of

the western provinces, however serious, was never likely to lead to

disastrous complications, and the distance from Pelusium to the Tigris

was too great for a victory of the Pharaoh to compromise effectually

the safety of the empire. On the other hand, should intervention on the

part of Elam in the affairs of Babylon or Media be crowned with success,

the most disastrous consequences might ensue: it would mean the loss

of Karduniash, or of the frontier districts won with such difficulty by

Tiglath-pileser III. and Sargon; it would entail permanent hostilities

on the Tigris and the Zab, and perhaps the appearance of barbarian

troops under the walls of Calah or of Nineveh. Elam had assisted

Merodach-baladan, and its soldiers had fought on the plains of Kish.

Months had elapsed since that battle, yet Shutruk-nakhunta showed no

disposition to take the initiative: he accepted his defeat at all events

for the time, but though he put off the day of reckoning till a more

favourable opportunity, it argued neither weakness nor discouragement,

and he was ready to give a fierce reception to any Assyrian monarch

who should venture within his domain. Sennacherib, knowing both the

character and resources of the Elamite king, did not attempt to meet him

in the open field, but wreaked his resentment on the frontier tribes

who had rebelled at the instigation of the Elamites, on the Cossoans,

on Ellipi and its king Ishpabara. He pursued the inhabitants into the

narrow valleys and forests of the Khoatras, where his chariots were

unable to follow: proceeding with his troops, sometimes on horseback,

at other times on foot, he reduced Bît-kilamzak, Khardishpi, and

Bît-kubatti to ashes, and annexed the territories of the Cossoans and

the Yasubigallâ to the prefecture of Arrapkha. Thence he entered Ellipi,

where Ishpabara did not venture to come to close quarters with him in

the open field, but led him on from town to town. He destroyed the

two royal seats of Marubishti and Akkuddu, and thirty-four of their

dependent strongholds; he took possession of Zizirtu, Kummalu, the

district of Bitbarru, and the city of Elinzash, to which he gave the

name Kar-Sennacherib,--the fortress of Sennacherib,--and annexed them

to the government of Kharkhar. The distant Medes, disquieted at his

advance, sent him presents, and renewed the assurances of devotion they

had given to Sargon, but Sennacherib did not push forward into

their territory as his predecessors had done: he was content to have

maintained his authority as far as his outlying posts, and to have

strengthened the Assyrian empire by acquiring some well-situated

positions near the main routes which led from the Iranian table-land to

the plains of Mesopotamia. Having accomplished this, he at once turned

his attention towards the west, where the spirit of rebellion was still

active in the countries bordering on the African frontier. Sabaco, now

undisputed master of Egypt, was not content, like Piônkhi, to bring

Egypt proper into a position of dependence, and govern it at a distance,

by means of his generals. He took up his residence within it, at least

during part of every year, and played the rôle of Pharaoh so well that

his Egyptian subjects, both at Thebes and in the Delta, were obliged to

acknowledge his sovereignty and recognise him as the founder of a

new dynasty. He kept a close watch over the vassal princes, placing

garrisons in Memphis and the other principal citadels, and throughout

the country he took in hand public works which had been almost

completely interrupted for more than a century owing to the civil wars:

the highways were repaired, the canals cleaned out and enlarged, and

the foundations of the towns raised above the level of the inundation.

Bubastis especially profited under his rule, and regained the ascendency

it had lost ever since the accession of the second Tanite dynasty; but

this partiality was not to the detriment of other cities. Several of the

temples at Memphis were restored, and the inscriptions effaced by time

were re-engraved. Thebes, happy under the government of Amenertas and

her husband Piônkhi, profited largely by the liberality of its Ethiopian

rulers. At Luxor Sabaco restored the decoration of the principal gateway

between the two pylons, and repaired several portions of the temple of

Amon at Karnak. History subsequently related that, in order to obtain

sufficient workmen, he substituted forced labour for the penalty of

death: a policy which, beside being profitable, would win for him a

reputation for clemency. Egypt, at length reduced to peace and order,

began once more to flourish, and to display that inherent vitality

of which she had so often given proof, and her reviving prosperity

attracted as of old the attention of foreign powers. At the beginning of

his reign, Sabaco had attempted to meddle in the intrigues of Syria, but

the ease with which Sargon had quelled the revolt of Ashdod had inspired

the Egyptian monarch with salutary distrust in his own power; he had

sent presents to the conqueror and received gifts in exchange, which

furnished him with a pretext for enrolling the Asiatic peoples among

the tributary nations whose names he inscribed on his triumphal lists.*

Since then he had had some diplomatic correspondence with his powerful

neighbour, and a document bearing his name was laid up in the archives

at Calah, where the clay seal once attached to it has been discovered.

Peace had lasted for a dozen years, when he died about 703 B.C., and his

son Shabîtoku ascended the throne.**

* It was probably with reference to this exchange of

presents that Sabaco caused the bas-relief at Karnak to be

engraved, in which he represents himself as victorious over

both Asiatics and Africans.

** One version of Manetho assigns twelve years to the reign

of Sabaco, and this duration is confirmed by an inscription

in Hammamât, dated in his twelfth year. Sabaco having

succeeded to the throne in 716-715 B.C., his reign brings us

down to 704 or 703 B.C., which obliges us to place the

accession of Shabî-toku in the year following the death of

Sargon.

[Illustration: 011.jpg clay seal with cartouche of sabaco]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Layard.

The temporary embarrassments in which the Babylonian revolution had

plunged Sennacherib must have offered a tempting opportunity for

interference to this inexperienced king. Tyre and Judah alone of all the

Syrian states retained a sufficiently independent spirit to cherish any

hope of deliverance from the foreign yoke. Tyre still maintained her

supremacy over Southern Phoenicia, and her rulers were also kings of

Sidon.* The long reign of Eth-baal and his alliance with the kings of

Israel had gradually repaired the losses occasioned by civil discord,

and had restored Tyre to the high degree of prosperity which it had

enjoyed under Hiram. Few actual facts are known which can enlighten us

as to the activity which prevailed under Eth-baal: we know, however,

that he rebuilt the small town of Botrys, which had been destroyed in

the course of some civil war, and that he founded the city of Auza in

Libyan territory, at the foot of the mountains of Aures, in one of the

richest mineral districts of modern Algeria.**

* Eth-baal II., who, according to the testimony of the

native historians, belonged to the royal family of Tyre, is

called King of the Sidonians in the Bible (1 Kings xvi. 31),

and the Assyrian texts similarly call Elulai King of the

Sidonians, while Menander mentions him as King of Tyre. It

is probable that the King of Sidon, mentioned in the Annals

of Shal-maneser III. side by side with the King of Tyre, was

a vassal of the Tyrian monarch.

** The two facts are preserved in a passage of Menander. I

admit the identity of the Auza mentioned in this fragment

with the Auzea of Tacitus, and with the _Colonia Septimia

Aur. Auziensium_ of the Roman inscriptions the present

Aumale.

In 876 B.C. Assur-nazir-pal had crossed the Lebanon and skirted the

shores of the Mediterranean: Eth-baal, naturally compliant, had loaded

him with gifts, and by this opportune submission had preserved his

cities and country from the horrors of invasion.*

* The King of Tyre who sent gifts to Assur-nazir-pal is not

named in the Assyrian documents: our knowledge of Tyrian

chronology permits us with all probability to identify him

with Eth-baal.

Twenty years later Shalmaneser III. had returned to Syria, and had come

into conflict with Damascus. The northern Phoenicians formed a league

with Ben-hadad (Adadidri) to withstand him, and drew upon themselves the

penalty of their rashness; the Tynans, faithful to their usual policy,

preferred to submit voluntarily and purchase peace. Their conduct

showed the greater wisdom in that, after the death of Eth-baal, internal

troubles again broke out with renewed fierceness and with even more

disastrous results. His immediate successor was Balezor (854-846 B.C.),

followed by Mutton I. (845-821 B.C.), who flung himself at the feet of

Shalmaneser III., in 842 B.c., in the camp at Baalirasi, and renewed

his homage three years later, in 839 B.C. The legends concerning the

foundation of Carthage blend with our slight knowledge of his history.

They attribute to Mutton I. a daughter named Elissa, who was married

to her uncle Sicharbal, high priest of Melkarth, and a young son named

Pygmalion (820-774 B.c.). Sicharbal had been nominated by Mutton as

regent during the minority of Pygmalion, but he was overthrown by

the people, and some years later murdered by his ward. From that time

forward Elissa’s one aim was to avenge the murder of her husband.

She formed a conspiracy which was joined by all the nobles, but being

betrayed and threatened with death, she seized a fleet which lay ready

to sail in the harbour, and embarking with all her adherents set sail

for Africa, landing in the district of Zeugitanê, where the Sidonians

had already built Kambê. There she purchased a tract of land from

larbas, chief of the Liby-phoenicians, and built on the ruins of the

ancient factory a new town, Qart-hadshat, which the Greeks called

Carchedo and the Romans Carthage. The genius of Virgil has rendered

the name of Dido illustrious: but history fails to recognise in the

narratives which form the basis of his tale anything beyond a legendary

account fabricated after the actual origin (814-813 B.C.) of the great

Punic city had been forgotten. Thus weakened, Tyre could less than ever

think of opposing the ambitious designs of Assyria: Pygmalion took no

part in the rebellions of the petty Syrian kings against Samsî-rammân,

and in 803 B.C. he received his suzerain Rammân-nirâri with the

accustomed gifts, when that king passed through Phoenicia before

attacking Damascus. Pygmalion died about 774 B.C., and the names of his

immediate successors are not known;* it may be supposed, however, that

when the power of Nineveh temporarily declined, the ties which held Tyre

to Assyria became naturally relaxed, and the city released herself from

the burden of a tribute which had in the past been very irregularly

paid.

* The fragment of Menander ‘which has preserved for us the

list of Tyrian kings from Abî-baal to Pygmalion, was only

quoted by Josephus, because, the seventh year of Pygmalion’s

reign corresponding to the date of the foundation of

Carthage,--814--813 B.C. according to the chronological

system of Timssus,--the Hebrew historian found in it a fixed

date which seemed to permit of his establishing the

chronology of the kings of Israel and Judah on a trustworthy

basis between the reign of Pygmalion and Hiram I., the

contemporary of David and Solomon.

The yoke was reassumed half a century later, at the mere echo of the

first victories of Tiglath-pileser III.; and Hiram II., who then reigned

in Tyre, hastened to carry to the camp at Arpad assurances of his

fidelity (742 B.C.). He gave pledges of his allegiance once more in 738

B.C.; then he disappears, and Mutton II. takes his place about 736 B.C.

This king cast off, unhappily for himself, his hereditary apathy, and as

soon as a pretext offered itself, abandoned the policy of neutrality to

which his ancestors had adhered so firmly. He entered into an alliance

in 734 B.C. with Damascus, Israel and Philistia, secretly supported

and probably instigated by Egypt; then, when Israel was conquered and

Damascus overthrown, he delayed repairing his error till an Assyrian

army appeared before Tyre: he had then to pay the price of his temerity

by 120 talents of gold and many loads of merchandise (728 B.C.). The

punishment was light and the loss inconsiderable in comparison with

the accumulated wealth of the city, which its maritime trade was daily

increasing:* Mutton thought the episode was closed,** but the peaceful

policy of his house, having been twice interrupted, could not be

resumed.

*[For a description of the trade carried on by Tyre, cf.

Ezelc. xxvi., xxvii., and xxviii.---Tr.]

** Pygmalion having died about 774 B.C., and Hiram II. not

appearing till 742 B.C., it is probable that we should

intercalate between these two Kings at least one sovereign

whose name is still unknown.

Southern Phoenicia, having once launched on the stream of Asiatic

politics, followed its fluctuations, and was compelled henceforth to

employ in her own defence the forces which had hitherto been utilised

in promoting her colonial enterprises. But it was not due to the foolish

caprice of ignorant or rash sovereigns that Tyre renounced her former

neutral policy: she was constrained to do so, almost perforce, by the

changes which had taken place in Europe. The progress of the Greeks, and

their triumph in the waters of the Ægean and Ionian Seas, and the rapid

expansion of the Etruscan navy after the end of the ninth century, had

gradually restricted the Phoenician merchantmen to the coasts of the

Western Mediterranean and the Atlantic: they industriously exploited

the mineral wealth of Africa and Spain, and traffic with the barbarous

tribes of Morocco and Lusitania, as well as the discovery and working of

the British tin mines, had largely compensated for the losses occasioned

by the closing of the Greek and Italian markets. Their ships, obliged

now to coast along the inhospitable cliffs of Northern Africa and to

face the open sea, were more strongly and scientifically built than any

vessels hitherto constructed. The Egyptian undecked galleys, with stem

and stern curving inwards, were discarded as a build ill adapted to

resist the attacks of wind or wave. The new Phoenician galley had a long,

low, narrow, well-balanced hull, the stern raised and curving inwards

above the steersman, as heretofore, but the bows pointed and furnished

with a sharp ram projecting from the keel, equally serviceable to cleave

the waves or to stave in the side of an enemy’s ship. Motive power was

supplied by two banks of oars, the upper ones resting in rowlocks on

the gunwale, the lower ones in rowlocks pierced in the timbers of the

vessel’s side. An upper deck, supported by stout posts, ran from stem to

stern, above the heads of the rowers, and was reserved for the soldiers

and the rest of the crew: on a light railing surrounding it were hung

the circular shields of the former, forming as it were a rampart on

either side.

[Illustration: 017.jpg A PHOENICIAN GALLEY WITH TWO BANKS OF OARS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard. Sennacherib affirms

that vessels of this type had been constructed by Syrian

shipwrights, and were manned by Tyrian, Sidonian, and Ionian

sailors.

The mast, passing through both decks, was firmly fixed in the keel, and

was supported by two stays made fast to stem and stern. The rectangular

sail was attached to a yard which could be hoisted or lowered at will.

The wealth which accrued to the Tyrians from their naval expeditions

had rendered the superiority of Tyre over the neighbouring cities so

manifest that they had nearly all become her vassals. Arvad and Northern

Phoenicia were still independent, as also the sacred city of Bylos, but

the entire coast from the Nahr-el-Kelb to the headland formed by

Mount Carmel was directly subject to Tyre,* comprising the two Sidons,

Bît-zîti, and Sarepta, the country from Mahalliba to the fords of the

Litâny, Ushu and its hinterland as far as Kana, Akzîb, Akko, and Dora;

and this compact territory, partly protected by the range of Lebanon,

and secured by the habitual prudence of its rulers from the invasions

which had desolated Syria, formed the most flourishing, and perhaps also

the most populous, kingdom which still existed between the Euphrates and

the Egyptian desert.**

* The kings of Arvad and Byblos are still found mentioned at

the beginning of Sennacherib’s reign.

** The extent of the kingdom of Tyro is indicated by the

passage in which Sennacherib enumerated the cities which he

had taken from Elulai. To these must be added Dor, to the

south of Carmel, which was always regarded as belonging to

the Tyrians, and whose isolated position between the

headland, the sea, and the forest might cause the Assyrians

to leave it unmolested.

Besides these, some parts of Cyprus were dependent on Tyre, though

the Achaean colonies, continually reinforced by fresh immigrants, had

absorbed most of the native population and driven the rest into the

mountains.

[Illustration: 018.jpg MAP OF KINGDOM OF TYRE, THE CAMPAIGN OF

SENNACHERIB]

A hybrid civilisation had developed among these early Greek settlers,

amalgamating the customs, religions, and arts of the ancient eastern

world of Egypt, Syria, and Chaldoa in variable proportions: their script

was probably derived from one of the Asianic systems whose monuments

are still but partly known, and it consisted of a syllabary awkwardly

adapted to a language for which it had not been designed. A dozen petty

kings, of whom the majority were Greeks, disputed possession of the

northern and eastern parts of the island, at Idalion, Khytros, Paphos,

Soli, Kourion, Tamassos, and Ledron. The Phoenicians had given way at

first before the invaders, and had grouped themselves in the eastern

plain round Kition; they had, however, subsequently assumed the

offensive, and endeavoured to regain the territory they had lost.

Kition, which had been destroyed in one of their wars, had been rebuilt,

and thus obtained the name of Qart-hadshat, “the new city.” *

* The name of this city, at first read as Amtikhadashti, and

identified with Ammokhostos or with Amathous,--_Amti-

Khadash_ would in this case be equivalent to _New

Amathous_,--is really Karti-Khadashti, as is proved by the

variant reading discovered by Schrader, and this is

identical with the native name of Carthage in Africa. This

new city must have been of some antiquity by the time of

Elulai, for it is mentioned on a fragment of a bronze vase

found in Cyprus itself: this fragment belonged to a King

Hiram, who according to some authorities would be Hiram II.,

according to others, Hiram I.

Mutton’s successor, Elulai, continued, as we know, the work of defence

and conquest: perhaps it was with a view to checking his advance that

seven kings of Cyprus sent an embassy, in 709 B.C., to his suzerain,

Sargon, and placed themselves under the protection of Assyria. If this

was actually the case, and Elulai was compelled to suspend hostilities

against these hereditary foes, one can understand that this grievance,

added to the reasons for uneasiness inspired by the situation of his

continental dominions, may have given him the desire to rid himself of

the yoke of Assyria, and contributed to his resolution to ally himself

with the powers which were taking up arms against her. The constant

intercourse of his subjects with the Delta, and his natural anxiety to

avoid anything which might close one of the richest markets of the world

to the Tyrian trade, inclined him to receive favourably the overtures of

the Pharaoh: the emissaries of Shabîtoku found him as much disposed

as Hezekiah himself to begin the struggle. The latter monarch, who

had ascended the throne while still very young, had at first shown no

ambition beyond the carrying out of religious reforms. His father Ahaz

had been far from orthodox, in spite of the influence exerted over him

by Isaiah. During his visit to Tiglath-pileser at Damascus (729 B.C.) he

had noticed an altar whose design pleased him. He sent a description

of it to the high priest Urijah, with orders to have a similar one

constructed, and erected in the court of the temple at Jerusalem: this

altar he appropriated to his personal use, and caused the priests to

minister at it, instead of at the old altar, which he relegated to an

inferior position. He also effected changes in the temple furniture,

which doubtless appeared to him old-fashioned in comparison with the

splendours of the Assyrian worship which he had witnessed, and he made

some alterations in the approaches to the temple, wishing, as far as we

can judge, that the King of Judah should henceforth, like his brother of

Nineveh, have a private, means of access to his national god.

This was but the least of his offences: for had he not offered his own

son as a holocaust at the moment he felt himself most menaced by the

league of Israel and Damascus? Among the people themselves there were

many faint-hearted and faithless, who, doubting the power of the God of

their forefathers, turned aside to the gods of the neighbouring nations,

and besought from them the succour they despaired of receiving from any

other source; the worship of Jahveh was confounded with that of Moloch

in the valley of the children of Hinnom, where there was a sanctuary or

Tophet, at which the people celebrated the most horrible rites: a large

and fierce pyre was kept continually burning there, to consume the

children whose fathers brought them to offer in sacrifice.* Isaiah

complains bitterly of these unbelievers who profaned the land with their

idols, “worshipping the work of their own hands, that which their own

fingers had made.” ** The new king, obedient to the divine command,

renounced the errors of his father; he removed the fetishes with which

the superstition of his predecessors had cumbered the temple, and which

they had connected with the worship of Jahveh, and in his zeal even

destroyed the ancient brazen serpent, the Nehushtan, the origin of which

was attributed to Moses.***

* Isa. xxx. 33, where the prophet describes the Tophet

Jahveh’s anger is preparing for Assyria.

** Isa. ii. 8.

*** 2 Kings xviii. 4. I leave the account of this religious

reformation in the place assigned to it in the Bible; other

historians relegate it to a time subsequent to the invasion

of Sennacherib.

On the occasion of the revolt of Yamani, Isaiah counselled Hezekiah to

remain neutral, and this prudence enabled him to look on in security at

the ruin of the Philistines, the hereditary foes of his race. Under his

wise administration the kingdom of Judah, secured against annoyance from

envious neighbours by the protection which Assur freely afforded to its

obedient vassals, and revived by thirty years of peace, rose rapidly

from the rank of secondary importance which it had formerly been content

to occupy. “Their land was full of silver and gold, neither was there

any end of their treasures; their land also was full of horses, neither

was there any end of their chariots.” *

* Isa. ii. 7, where the description applies better to the

later years of Ahaz or the reign, of Hezekiah than to the

years preceding the war against Pekah and Rezin.

Now that the kingdom of Israel had been reduced to the condition of an

Assyrian province, it was on Judah and its capital that the hopes of the

whole Hebrew nation were centred.

Tyre and Jerusalem had hitherto formed the extreme outwork of the Syrian

states; they were the only remaining barrier which separated the empires

of Egypt and Assyria, and it was to the interest of the Pharaoh to

purchase their alliance and increase their strength by every means in

his power. Negotiations must have been going on for some time between

the three powers, but up to the time of the death of Sargon and

the return of Merodach-baladan to Babylon their results had been

unimportant, and it was possible that the disasters which had befallen

the Kaldâ would tend to cool the ardour of the allies. An unforeseen

circumstance opportunely rekindled their zeal, and determined them to

try their fortune.

[Illustration: 023.jpg MAP OF THE CAMPAIGN OF SENNACHERIB IN JUDEA]

The inhabitants of Ekron, dissatisfied with Padî, the chief whom the

Assyrians had set over them, seized his person and sent him in chains to

Hezekiah.*

* The name of the city, written Amgarruna, is really

Akkaron-Ekron.

To accept the present was equivalent to open rebellion, and a

declaration of war against the power of the suzerain. Isaiah, as usual,

wished Judah to rely on Jahveh alone, and preached against alliance

with the Babylonians, for he foresaw that success would merely result in

substituting the Kaldâ for the Ninevite monarch, and in aggravating the

condition of Judah. “All that is in thine house,” he said to Hezekiah,

“and that which thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day, shall

be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, saith the Lord. And of thy

sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take

away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the King of Babylon.”

Hezekiah did not pay much heed to the prediction, for, he reflected,

“peace and truth shall be in my days,” and the future troubled him

little.* When the overthrow of Merodach-baladan had taken place, the

prophet still more earnestly urged the people not to incur the vengeance

of Assyria without other help than that of Tyre or Ethiopia, and

Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, spoke in the same strain; but Shebna, the

prefect of the palace, declaimed against this advice, and the latter’s

counsel prevailed with his master.**

* 2 Kings xx. 16-19.

** This follows from the terms in which the prophet compares

the two men (Isa. xxii. 15-25).

Hezekiah agreed to accept the sovereignty over Ekron which its

inhabitants offered to him, but a remnant of prudence kept him from

putting Padî to death, and he contented himself with casting him into

prison. Isaiah, though temporarily out of favour with the king, ceased

not to proclaim aloud in all quarters the will of the Almighty. “Woe to

the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not

of Me; and that cover with a covering (form alliances), but not of My

spirit, that they may add sin to sin: that walk to go down into Egypt,

and have not asked at My mouth, to strengthen themselves in the strength

of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore shall the

strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt

your confusion. When your princes shall be at Tanis, and your messengers

shall come to Heracleopolis,* [Heb. Hanes.--Tr.] you shall all be

ashamed of a people that cannot profit you.... For Egypt helpeth in

vain, and to no purpose: therefore have I called her Rahab that sitteth

still.” * He returned, unwearied and with varying imagery, to his theme,

contrasting the uncertainty and frailty of the expedients of worldly

wisdom urged by the military party, with the steadfast will of Jahveh

and the irresistible authority with which He invests His faithful

servants. “The Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh,

and not spirit; and when the Lord shall stretch out His hand, both he

that helpeth shall stumble, and he that is holpen shall fall, and they

shall all fail together. For thus saith the Lord unto me, Like as when

the lion growleth, and the young lion over his prey, if a multitude of

shepherds be called forth against him, he will not be dismayed at their

voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them: so shall the Lord of

hosts come down to fight upon Mount Zion, and upon the hill thereof.

As birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts protect Jerusalem: He will

protect and deliver it. Turn ye unto Him from whom ye have deeply

revolted, O children of Israel.” **

* Isa. xxx. 1-5, 7. In verses 4, 5, the original text

employs the third person; I have restored the second person,

to avoid confusion.

** Isa. xxxi. 3-6.

No one, however, gave heed to his warnings, either king or people; but

the example of Phoenicia soon proved that he was right. When Sennacherib

bestirred himself, in the spring of 702 B.C., either the Ethiopians were

not ready, or they dared not advance to encounter him in Coele-Syria,

and they left Elulai to get out of his difficulties as best he might.

He had no army to risk in a pitched battle; but fondly imagined that his

cities, long since fortified, and protected on the east by the range of

Lebanon, would offer a resistance sufficiently stubborn to wear out

the patience of his assailant. The Assyrians, however, disconcerted his

plans. Instead of advancing against him by the pass of Nahr-el-Kebir,

according to their usual custom, they attacked him in flank, descending

into the very midst of his positions by the _col_ of Legnia or one of

the neighbouring passes.* They captured in succession the two Sidons,

Bît-zîti, Sarepta, Mahalliba, Ushu, Akzîb, and Acco: Elulai, reduced

to the possession of the island of Tyre alone, retreated to one of his

colonies in Cyprus, where he died some years later, without having set

foot again on the continent. All his former possessions on the mainland

were given to a certain Eth-baal, who chose Sidon for his seat of

government, and Tyre lost by this one skirmish the rank of metropolis

which she had enjoyed for centuries.** This summary punishment decided

all the Syrian princes who were not compromised beyond hope of pardon to

humble themselves before the suzerain. Menahem of Samsi-muruna,***

* This follows from the very order in which the cities were

taken in the course of this campaign.

** The Assyrian text gives for the name of the King of Sidon

a shortened form Tu-baal instead of Eth-baal, paralleled by

Lulia for Elulai.

*** Several of the early Assyriologists read Usi-muruna, and

identified the city bearing this name with Samaria. The

discovery of the reading Samsi-muruna on a fragment of the

time of Assur-bani-pal no longer permits of this

identification, and obliges us to look for the city in

Phoenicia.

Abdiliti of Arvad, Uru-malîk of Byblos, Puduîlu of Amnion, Chemosh-nadab

of Moab, Malîk-rammu of Edom, Mitinti of Ashdod, all brought their

tribute in person to the Assyrian camp before Ushu: Zedekiah of Ashkelon

and Hezekiah of Judah alone persisted in their hostility. Egypt had at

length been moved by the misfortunes of her allies, and the Ethiopian

troops had advanced to the seat of war, but they did not arrive in time

to save Zedekiah: Sennacherib razed to the ground all his strongholds

one after another, Beth-dagon, Joppa, Bene-berak, and Hazor,* took him

prisoner at Ascalon, and sent him with his family to Assyria, setting

up Sharludarî, son of Bukibti, in his stead. Sennacherib then turned

against Ekron, and was about to begin the siege of the city, when the

long-expected Egyptians at length made their appearance. Shabîtoku

did not command them in person, but he had sent his best troops--the

contingents furnished by the petty kings of the Delta, and the sheikhs

of the Sinaitic peninsula, who were vassals of Egypt. The encounter

took place near Altaku,** and on this occasion again, as at Raphia,

the scientific tactics of the Assyrians prevailed over the stereotyped

organisation of Pharaoh’s army: the Ethiopian generals left some of

their chariots in the hands of the conqueror, and retreated with the

remnants of their force beyond the Isthmus.

* These are the cities attributed to the tribes of Dan and

Judah in Josh. xv. 25, 41; xix. 45. Beth-dagon is now Bêt-

Dejân; Azuru is Yazûr, to the south-east of Joppa; Beni-

barak is Ibn-Abrak, to the north-east of the same town.

** Altaku is certainly Eltekeh of Dan (Josh. xix. 44), as

was seen from the outset; the site, however, of Eltekeh

cannot be fixed with any certainty. It has been located at

Bêt-Lukkieh, in the mountainous country north-west of

Jerusalem, but this position in no way corresponds to the

requirements of the Assyrian text, according to which the

battle took place on a plain large enough for the evolutions

of the Egyptian chariots, and situated between the group of

towns formed by Beth-dagon, Joppa, Beni-barak, and Hazor,

which Sennacherib had just captured, and the cities of

Ekrbn, Timnath, and Eltekeh, which he took directly after

his victory: a suitable locality must be looked for in the

vicinity of Ramleh or Zernuka.

Altaku capitulated, an example followed by the neighbouring fortress of

Timnath, and subsequently by Ekron itself, all three being made to feel

Sennacherib’s vengeance. “The nobles and chiefs who had offended, I

slew,” he remarks, “and set up their corpses on stakes in a circle

round the city; those of the inhabitants who had offended and committed

crimes, I took them prisoners, and for the rest who had neither offended

nor transgressed, I pardoned them.”

[Illustration: 028.jpg THE PASS OF LEGNIA, IN LEBANON]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph given in Lortet.

[Illustration: 028b.jpg Esneh--Principal Abyssinian Trading Village]

We may here pause to inquire how Hezekiah was occupied while his fate

was being decided on the field of Altaku. He was fortifying Jerusalem,

and storing within it munitions of War, and enrolling Jewish soldiers

and mercenary troops from the Arab tribes of the desert. He had suddenly

become aware that large portions of the wall of the city of David had

crumbled away, and he set about demolishing the neighbouring houses to

obtain materials for repairing these breaches: he hastily strengthened

the weak points in his fortifications, stopped up the springs which

flowed into the Gibon, and cut off the brook itself, constructing a

reservoir between the inner and outer city walls to store up the waters

of the ancient pool. These alterations* rendered the city, which from

its natural position was well defended, so impregnable that Sennacherib

decided not to attack it until the rest of the kingdom had been

subjugated: with this object in view he pitched his camp before Lachish,

whence he could keep a watch over the main routes from Egypt where they

crossed the frontier, and then scattered his forces over the land of

Judah, delivering it up to pillage in a systematic manner. He took

forty-six walled towns, and numberless strongholds and villages,

demolishing the walls and leading into captivity 200,150 persons of all

ages and conditions, together with their household goods, their horses,

asses, mules, camels, oxen, and sheep;** it was a war as disastrous in

its effects as that which terminated in the fall of Samaria, or which

led to the final captivity in Babylon.***

* Isa. xxii. 8-11.

* An allusion to the sojourn of Sennacherib near Lachish is

found in 2 Kings xviii. 14-17; xix. 8, and in Isa. xxxvi. 2;

xxxvii. 8

*** It seems that the Jewish historian Demetrios considered

the captivities under Nebuchadrezzar and Sennacherib to be

on the same footing.

The work of destruction accomplished, the Rabshakeh brought up all his

forces and threw up a complete circle of earthworks round Jerusalem:

Hezekiah found himself shut up in his capital “like a bird in a cage.”

The inhabitants soon became accustomed to this isolated life, but

Isaiah was indignant at seeing them indifferent to their calamities, and

inveighed against them with angry eloquence: “What aileth thee now,

that thou art wholly gone up to the housetops? O thou that art full of

shoutings, a tumultuous city, a joyous town; thy slain are not slain

with the sword, neither are they dead in battle. All thy rulers fled

away together, they are made prisoners without drawing the bow; they are

come hither from afar for safety, and all that meet together here shall

be taken together.” *

* [The R.V. gives this passage as follows: “They were bound

by the archers: all that were found of thee were bound

together, they fled afar off.”--TR.]

The danger was urgent; the Assyrians were massed in their entrenchments

with their auxiliaries ranged behind them to support them: “Elam bare

the quiver with chariots of men and horsemen, and Kir uncovered the

shield (for the assault). And it came to pass that thy choicest valleys

were full of chariots, and the horsemen set themselves in array at thy

gate, and he took away the covering of Judah.”

[Illustration: 029.jpg SENNACHERIB RECEIVING THE SUBMISSIONS OF THE

JEWS]

In those days, therefore, Jahveh, without pity for His people, called

them to “weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with

sackcloth: and behold, joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep,

eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we

shall die. And the Lord of hosts revealed Himself in mine ears, Surely

this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the

Lord, the Lord of Hosts.” * The prophet threw the blame on the courtiers

especially Shebna, who still hoped for succour from the Egyptians, and

kept up the king’s illusions on this point. He threatened him with the

divine anger; he depicted him as seized by Jahveh, rolled and kneaded

into a lump, “and tossed like a ball into a large country: there shalt

thou die, and there shall be the chariots of thy glory, thou shame of

thy lord’s house. And I will thrust thee from thy office, and from thy

station he shall pull thee down!”** Meanwhile, day after day elapsed,

and Pharaoh did not hasten to the rescue. Hezekiah’s eyes were opened;

he dismissed Shebna, and degraded him to the position of scribe, and set

Eliakim in his place in the Council of State.***

* Isa. xxii. 1-14.

** Isa. xxii. 15-19.

***In the duplicate narrative of these negotiations with the

Assyrian generals, Shebna is in fact considered as a mere

scribe, while Eliakim is the prefect of the king’s house (2

Kings xviii. 18, 37; xix. 2: Isa. xxxvi. 3, 22; xxxvii. 2).

Isaiah’s influence revived, and he persuaded the king to sue for peace

while yet there was time.

Sennacherib was encamped at Lachish; but the Tartan and his two

lieutenants received the overtures of peace, and proposed a parley near

the conduit of the upper pool, in the highway of the fuller’s field.

Hezekiah did not venture to go in person to the meeting-place; he sent

Eliakirn, the new prefect of the palace, Shebna, and the chancellor

Joah, the chief cupbearer, and tradition relates that the Assyrian

addressed them in severe terms in his master’s name: “Now on whom dost

thou trust, that thou rebellest against me? Behold, thou trustest upon

the staff of this bruised reed, even upon Egypt; whereon if a man lean,

it will go into his hand and pierce it: so is Pharaoh, King of Egypt,

to all that trust on him.” Then, as he continued to declaim in a loud

voice, so that the crowds gathered on the wall could hear him, the

delegates besought him to speak in Aramaic, which they understood, but

“speak not to us in the Jews’ language, in the ears of the people that

are on the wall!” Instead, however, of granting their request, the

Assyrian general advanced towards the spectators and addressed them in

Hebrew: “Hear ye the words of the great king, the King of Assyria.

Let not Hezekiah deceive you; for he shall not be able to deliver you:

neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, The Lord will

surely deliver us: this city shall not be given into the hand of the

King of Assyria. Hearken not to Hezekiah: for thus saith the King of

Assyria, Make your peace with me, and come out to me; and eat ye every

one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one

the waters of his own cistern; until I come and take you away to a

land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and

vineyards. Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The Lord will

deliver us!” The specified conditions were less hard than might have

been feared.*

* The Hebrew version of these events is recorded in 2 Kings

xviii. 13-37; xix., and in Isa. xxxvi., xxxvii., with only

one important divergence, namely, the absence from Isaiah of

verses 14-16 of 2 Kings xviii. This particular passage, in

which the name of the king has a peculiar form, is a

detached fragment of an older document, perhaps the official

annals of the kingdom, whose contents agreed with the facts

recorded in the Assyrian text. The rest is borrowed from the

cycle of prophetic narratives, and contains two different

versions of the same events. The first comprises 2 Kings

xviii. 13, 17-37; xix. l-9a, 36&-37, where Sennacherib is

represented as despatching a verbal message to Hezekiah by

the Tartan and his captains. The second consists merely of 2

Kings xix. 96-36a, and in this has been inserted a long

prophecy of Isaiah’s (xix. 21-31) which has but a vague

connection with the rest of the narrative. In this

Sennacherib defied Hezekiah in a letter, which the Jewish

king spread before the Lord, and shortly afterwards received

a reply through the prophet. The two versions were combined

towards the end of the seventh or beginning of the sixth

century, by the compiler of the _Book of Kings_, and passed

thence into the collection of the prophecies attributed to

Isaiah.

The Jewish king was to give up his wives and daughters as hostages,

to pledge himself to pay a regular tribute, and disburse immediately a

ransom of thirty talents of gold, and eight hundred talents of silver:

he could only make up this large sum by emptying the royal and sacred

treasuries, and taking down the plates of gold with which merely a short

while before he had adorned the doors and lintels of the temple. Padî

was released from his long captivity, reseated on his throne, and

received several Jewish towns as an indemnity: other portions of

territory were bestowed upon Mitinti of Ashdod and Zillibel of Graza as

a reward for their loyalty.*

* The sequence of events is not very well observed in the

Assyrian text, and the liberation of Padî is inserted in 11.

8-11, before the account of the war with Hezekiah. It seems

very unlikely that the King of Judah would have released his

prisoner before his treaty with Sennacherib; the Assyrian

scribe, wishing to bring together all the facts relating to

Ekron, anticipated this event. Hebrew tradition fixed the

ransom at the lowest figure, 300 talents of silver instead

of the 800 given in the Assyrian document (2 Kings xviii.

14), and authorities have tried to reconcile this divergence

by speculating on the different values represented by a

talent in different countries and epochs.

Hezekiah issued from the struggle with his territory curtailed and his

kingdom devastated; the last obstacle which stood in the way of the

Assyrians’ victorious advance fell with him, and Sennacherib could

now push forward with perfect safety towards the Nile. He had, indeed,

already planned an attack on Egypt, and had reached the isthmus, when a

mysterious accident arrested his further progress. The conflict on

the plains of Altaku had been severe; and the army, already seriously

diminished by its victory, had been still further weakened during the

campaign in Judæa, and possibly the excesses indulged in by the soldiery

had developed in them the germs of one of those terrible epidemics which

had devastated Western Asia several times in the course of the century:

whatever may have been the cause, half the army was destroyed by

pestilence before it reached the frontier of the Delta, and Sennacherib

led back the shattered remnants of his force to Nineveh.*

* The Assyrian texts are silent about this catastrophe, and

the sacred books of the Hebrews seem to refer it to the camp

at Libnah in Palestine (2 Kings xix. 8-35); the Egyptian

legend related by Herodotus seems to prove that it took

place near the Egyptian frontier. Josephus takes the king as

far as Pelusium, and describes the destruction of the

Assyrian army as taking place in the camp before this town.

He may have been misled by the meaning “mud,” which attaches

to the name of Libnah as well as to that of Pelusium. Oppert

upheld his opinion, and identified the Libnah of the

biblical narrative with the Pelusium of Herodotus. It is

probable that each of the two nations referred the scene of

the miracle to a different locality.

The Hebrews did not hesitate to ascribe the event to the vengeance of

Jahveh, and to make it a subject of thankfulness. They related that

before their brutal conqueror quitted the country he had sent a parting

message to Hezekiah: “Let not thy God in whom thou trustest deceive

thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the King of

Assyria. Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to

all lands, by destroying them utterly; and shalt thou be delivered? Have

the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed,

Gozan and Haran and Rezepk, and the children of Eden which were in

Telassar? Where is the King of Hamath, and the King of Arpad, and the

King of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena, and Ivvah?” Hezekiah, having

received this letter of defiance, laid it in the temple before Jahveh,

and prostrated himself in prayer: the response came to him through the

mouth of Isaiah. “Thus saith the Lord concerning the King of Assyria, He

shall not come unto this city, nor shoot an arrow there, neither shall

he come before it with a shield, nor cast a mount against it. By the way

that he came, by the same shall he return, and he shall not come unto

this city, saith the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it, for

Mine own sake and for My servant David’s sake. And it came to pass that

night, that the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp

of the Assyrians an hundred four-score and five thousand: and when men

arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.” *

* 2 Kings xix. 8-35; Isa. xxxvii. 8-36; this is the second

tradition of which mention has been made, but already

amalgamated with the first to form the narrative as it now

stands.

The Egyptians considered the event no less miraculous than did the

Hebrews, and one of their popular tales ascribed the prodigy to Phtah,

the god of Memphis. Sethon, the high priest of Phtah, lived in a time of

national distress, and the warrior class, whom he had deprived of some

of its privileges, refused to take up arms in his behalf. He repaired,

therefore, to the temple to implore divine assistance, and, falling

asleep, was visited by a dream. The god appeared to him, and promised

to send him some auxiliaries who should ensure him success. He enlisted

such of the Egyptians as were willing to follow him, shopkeepers,

fullers, and sutlers, and led them to Pelusium to resist the threatened

invasion. In the night a legion of field-mice came forth, whence no one

knew, and, noiselessly spreading throughout the camp of the Assyrians,

gnawed the quivers, the bowstrings, and the straps of the bucklers in

such a way that, on the morrow, the enemy, finding themselves disarmed,

fled after a mere pretence at resistance, and suffered severe losses. A

statue was long shown in the temple at Memphis portraying this Sethon:

he was represented holding a mouse in his hand, and the inscription bade

men reverence the god who had wrought this miracle.*

* The statue with which this legend has been connected, must

have represented a king offering the image of a mouse

crouching on a basket, like the cynocephalus on the

hieroglyphic sign which denotes centuries, or the frog of

the goddess Hiqît. Historians have desired to recognise in

Sethon a King Zêt of the XXIIIth dynasty, or even Shabîtoku

of the XXVth dynasty; Krall identified him with Satni in the

demotic story of Satni-Umois.

The disaster was a terrible one: Sennacherib’s triumphant advance was

suddenly checked, and he was forced to return to Asia when the goal of

his ambition was almost reached. The loss of a single army, however much

to be deplored, was not irreparable, since Assyria could furnish her

sovereign with a second force as numerous as that which lay buried in

the desert on the road to Egypt, but it was uncertain what effect the

news of the calamity and the sight of the survivors might have on the

minds of his subjects and rivals. The latter took no immediate action,

and the secret joy which they must have experienced did not blind them

to the real facts of the case; for though the power of Assyria was

shaken, she was still stronger than any one of them severally, or even

than all of them together, and to attack her or rebel against her now,

was to court defeat with as much certainty as in past days. The Pharaoh

kept himself behind his rivers; the military science and skill which had

baffled his generals on the field of Altaku did not inspire him with any

desire to reappear on the plains of Palestine. Hezekiah, King of Judah,

had emptied his treasury to furnish his ransom, his strongholds had

capitulated one by one, and his territory, diminished by the loss of

some of the towns of the Shephelah, was little botter than a waste of

smoking ruins. He thought himself fortunate to have preserved his power

under the suzerainty of Assyria, and his sole aim for many years was

to refill his treasury, reconstitute his army, and re-establish his

kingdom. The Philistine and Nabatasan princes, and the chiefs of Moab,

Ammon, and Idumsea, had nothing to gain by war, being too feeble to have

any chance of success without the help of Judah, Tyre, and Egypt. The

Syrians maintained a peaceful attitude, which was certainly their wisest

policy; and during the following quarter of a century they loyally

obeyed their governors, and gave Sennacherib no cause to revisit them.

It was fortunate for him that they did so, for the peoples of the North

and East, the Kaldâ, and, above all, the Elamites, were the cause of

much trouble, and exclusively occupied his attention during several

years. The inhabitants of Bît-Yakîn, urged on either by their natural

restlessness or by the news of the misfortune which had befallen their

enemy, determined once more to try the fortunes of war. Incited by

Marduk-ushezlb,* one of their princes, and by Merodach-baladan, these

people of the marshes intrigued with the courts of Babylon and Susa,

and were emboldened to turn against the Assyrian garrisons stationed

in their midst to preserve order. Sennacherib’s vengeance fell first on

Marduk-ushezîb, who fled from his stronghold of Bîttutu after sustaining

a short siege. Merodach-baladan, deserted by his accomplice, put the

statues of his gods and his royal treasures on board his fleet, and

embarking with his followers, crossed the lagoon, and effected a landing

in the district of Nagîtu, in Susian territory, beyond the mouth of

the Ulaî.** Sennacherib entered Bît-Yakîn without striking a blow, and

completed the destruction of the half-deserted town; he next proceeded

to demolish the other cities one after the other, carrying off into

captivity all the men and cattle who fell in his way.

* Three kings of Babylon at this period bore very similar

names--Marduk-ushezîb, Nergal-ushezîb, and Mushezîb-marduk.

Nergal-ushezîb is the elder of the two whom the texts call

Shuzub, and whom Assyriologists at first confused one with

another.

** Nagîtu was bounded by the Nar-Marratum and the Ulaî,

which allows us to identify it with the territory south of

Edrisieh.

The Elamites, disconcerted by the rapidity of his action, allowed him to

crush their allies unopposed; and as they had not openly intervened, the

conqueror refrained from calling them to account for their intrigues.

Babylon paid the penalty for all: its sovereign, Belibni, who had failed

to make the sacred authority of the suzerain respected in the city, and

who, perhaps, had taken some part in the conspiracy, was with his

family deported to Nineveh, and his vacant throne was given to

Assur-nadin-shumu, a younger son of Sargon (699 B.C.).*

* Berosus, misled by the deposition of Belibni, thought that

the expedition was directed against Babylon itself; he has

likewise confounded Assur-nâdin-shumu with Esar-haddon, and

he has given this latter, whom he calls Asordancs, as the

immediate successor of Belibni. The date 699 B.C. for these

events is indicated in _Pinches’ Babylonian Chronicle_,

which places them in the third year of Belibni.

Order was once more restored in Karduniash, but Sennacherib felt that

its submission would be neither sincere nor permanent, so long as

Merodach-baladan was hovering on its frontier possessed of an army, a

fleet, and a supply of treasure, and prepared to enter the lists as soon

as circumstances seemed favourable to his cause. Sennacherib resolved,

therefore, to cross the head of the Persian Gulf and deal him such a

blow as would once for all end the contest; but troubles which broke out

on the Urartian frontier as soon as he returned forced, him to put off

his project. The tribes of Tumurru, who had placed their strongholds

like eyries among the peaks of Nipur, had been making frequent descents

on the plains of the Tigris, which they had ravaged unchecked by any

fear of Assyrian power. Sennacherib formed an entrenched camp at the

foot of their mountain retreat, and there left the greater part of his

army, while he set out on an adventurous expedition with a picked

body of infantry and cavalry. Over ravines and torrents, up rough and

difficult slopes, they made their way, the king himself being conveyed

in a litter, as there were no roads practicable for his royal chariot;

he even deigned to walk when the hillsides were too steep for his

bearers to carry him; he climbed like a goat, slept on the bare rocks,

drank putrid water from a leathern bottle, and after many hardships at

length came up with the enemy. He burnt their villages, and carried

off herds of cattle and troops of captives; but this exploit was more

a satisfaction of his vanity than a distinct advantage gained, for the

pillaging of the plains of the Tigris probably recommenced as soon as

the king had quitted the country. The same year he pushed as far as

Dayaîni, here similar tactics were employed. Constructing a camp in the

neighbourhood of Mount Anara and Mount Uppa, he forced his way to the

capital, Ukki, traversing a complicated network of gorges and forests

which had hitherto been considered impenetrable. The king, Manîya,

fled; Ukki was taken by assault and pillaged, the spoil obtained from it

slightly exceeding that from Tumurru (699 B.C.). Shortly afterwards the

province of Tulgarimmê revolted in concert with the Tabal: Sennacherib

overcame the allied forces, and led his victorious regiments through the

defiles of the Taurus.*

* The dates of and connection between these two wars are not

determined with any certainty. Some authorities assign them

both to the same year, somewhere between 699 and 696 B.C.,

while others assign them to two different years, the first

to 699 or 696 B.C., the second to 698 or 695 B.C.

[Illustration: 042.jpg A RAID AMONG THE WOODS AND MOUNTAINS.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layahd, Monuments of Nineveh,

vol. i. pi. 70.

Greek pirates or colonists having ventured from time to time to ravage

the seaboard, he destroyed one of their fleets near the mouth of the

Saros, and took advantage of his sojourn in this region to fortify

the two cities of Tarsus and Ankhialê, to defend his Cilician frontier

against the peoples of Asia Minor.*

* The encounter of the Assyrians with the Greeks is only

known to us from a fragment of Berosus. The foundation of

Tarsus is definitely attributed to Sennacherib in the same

passage; that of Ankhialc is referred to the fabulous

Sardanapalus, but most historians with much probability

attribute the foundation to Sennacherib.

This was a necessary precaution, for the whole of Asia Minor was just

then stirred by the inrush of new nations which were devastating the

country, and the effect of these convulsions was beginning to be felt

in the country to the south of the central plain, at the foot of the

Taurus, and on the frontiers of the Assyrian empire. Barbarian hordes,

attracted by the fame of the ancient Hittite sanctuaries in the upper

basin of the Euphrates and the Araxes, had descended now and again to

measure their strength against the advanced posts of Assyria or Urartu,

but had subsequently withdrawn and disappeared beyond the Halys. Their

movements may at this time have been so aggressive as to arouse

serious anxiety in the minds of the Ninevite rulers; it is certain

that Sennacherib, though apparently hindered by no revolt, delayed the

execution of the projects he had formed against Merodach-baladan for

three years; and it is possible his inaction may be attributed to the

fear of some complication arising on his north-western frontier. He did

not carry out his scheme till 695 B.C., when all danger in that quarter

had passed away. The enterprise was a difficult one, for Nagîtu and

the neighbouring districts were dependencies of Susa, and could not be

reached by land without a violation of Blamite neutrality, which would

almost inevitably lead to a conflict. Shutruk-nakhunta was no longer

alive. In the very year in which his rival had set up Assur-nâdin-shumu

as King of Karduniash, a revolution had broken out in Elam, which was in

all probability connected with the events then taking place in Babylon.

His subjects were angry with him for having failed to send timely

succour to his allies the Kaldâ, and for having allowed Bît-Yakîn to be

destroyed: his own brother Khalludush sided with the malcontents, threw

Shutruk-nakhunta into prison, and proclaimed himself king. This time the

Ninevites, thinking that Elam was certain to intervene, sought how they

might finally overpower Merodach-baladan before this interference

could prove effectual. The feudal constitution of the Blamite monarchy

rendered, as we know, the mobilisation of the army at the opening of

a war a long and difficult task: weeks might easily elapse before the

first and second grades of feudatory nobility could join the royal

troops and form a combined army capable of striking an important

blow. This was a cause of dangerous inferiority in a conflict with the

Assyrians, the chief part of whose forces, bivouacking close to the

capital during the winter months, could leave their quarters and set

out on a campaign at little more than a day’s notice; the kings of Elam

minimised the danger by keeping sufficient troops under arms on their

northern and western frontiers to meet any emergency, but an attack by

sea seemed to them so unlikely that they had not, for a long time past,

thought of protecting their coast-line. The ancient Chaldæan cities,

Uru, Bagash, Uruk, and Bridu had possessed fleets on the Persian Gulf;

but the times were long past when they used to send to procure stone and

wood from the countries of Magan and Melukhkha, and the seas which they

had ruled were now traversed only by merchant vessels or fishing-boats.

Besides this, the condition of the estuary seemed to prohibit all attack

from that side. The space between Bît-Yakîn and the long line of dunes

or mud-banks which blocked the entrance to it was not so much a gulf as

a lagoon of uncertain and shifting extent; the water flowed only in

the middle, being stagnant near the shores; the whole expanse was

irregularly dotted over with mud-banks, and its service was constantly

altered by the alluvial soil brought down by the Tigris, the Euphrates,

the Ulaî, and the Uknu. The navigation of this lagoon was dangerous,

for the relative positions of the channels and shallows were constantly

shifting, and vessels of deep draught often ran aground in passing from

one end of it to the other.*

* The condition I describe here is very similar to what

Alexander’s admirals found 350 years later. Arrian has

preserved for us the account of Nearchus’ navigation in

these waters, and his description shows such a well-defined

condition of the estuary that its main outline must have

remained unchanged for a considerable time; the only

subsequent alterations which had taken place must have been

in the internal configuration, where the deposit of alluvium

must have necessarily reduced the area of the lake since the

time of Sennacherib. The little map on the next page has no

pretension to scientific exactitude; its only object is to

show roughly what the estuary of the Euphrates was like, and

to illustrate approximately the course of the Assyrian

expedition.

[Illustration: 048.jpg MAP THE NAR-MARRATUM IN THE TIME OF SENNACHERIB]

Sennacherib decided to march his force to the mouth of the Euphrates,

and, embarking it there, to bring it to bear suddenly on the portion

of Elamite territory nearest to Nagîtu: if all went well, he would thus

have time to crush the rising power of Merodach-baladan and regain his

own port of departure before Khalludush could muster a sufficient army

to render efficient succour to his vassal.

More than a year was consumed in preparations. The united cities of

Chaldæa being unable to furnish the transports required to convey such

a large host across the Nar-Marratum, it was necessary to construct

a fleet, and to do so in such a way that the enemy should have no

suspicion of danger. Sennacherib accordingly set up his dockyards at

Tul-barsîp on the Euphrates and at Nineveh on the Tigris, and Syrian

shipwrights built him a fleet of vessels after two distinct types.

Some were galleys identical in build and equipment with those which the

Mediterranean natives used for their traffic with distant lands. The

others followed the old Babylonian model, with stem and stern both

raised, the bows being sometimes distinguished by the carving of a

horse’s head, which justified the name of _sea-horse_ given to a vessel

of this kind. They had no masts, but propelling power was provided

by two banks of oars one above the other, as in the galleys. The two

divisions of the fleet were ready at the beginning of 694 B.C., and

it was arranged that they should meet at Bît-Dakkuri, to the south of

Babylon.

[Illustration: 049.jpg THE FLEET OF SENNACHERIB ON THE NAR-MARRATUM]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

The fleet from Tul-barsîp had merely to descend the Euphrates to reach

the meeting-place,* but that from Nineveh had to make a more complicated

journey.

* The story of the preparations, as it has been transmitted

to us in Sennacherib’s inscriptions, is curiously similar to

the accounts given by the Greek historians of the vessels

Alexander had built at Babylon and Thap-sacus by Phoenician

workmen, which descended the Euphrates to join the fleet in

the Persian Gulf. This fleet consisted of quinquiremos,

according to Aristobulus, who was present at their

construction: Quintus-Curtius makes them all vessels with

seven banks of oars, but he evidently confuses the galleys

built at Thapsacus with those which came in sections from

Phoenicia and which Alexander had put together at Babylon.

By following the course of the Tigris to its mouth it would have had

to skirt the coast of Elam for a considerable distance, and would

inevitably have aroused the suspicions of Khalludush; the passage of

such a strong squadron must have revealed to him the importance of the

enterprise, and put him on his guard. The vessels therefore stayed their

course at Upi, where they were drawn ashore and transported on rollers

across the narrow isthmus which separates the Tigris from the Arakhtu

canal, on which they were then relaunched. Either the canal had not been

well kept, or else it never had the necessary depth at certain places;

but the crews managed to overcome all obstacles and rejoined their

comrades in due time. Sennacherib was ready waiting for them with all

his troops--foot-soldiers, charioteers, and horsemen--and with supplies

of food for the men, and of barley and oats for the horses; as soon as

the last contingent had arrived, he gave the signal for departure, and

all advanced together, the army marching along the southern bank, the

fleet descending the current, to the little port of Bab-Salimeti, some

twelve miles below the mouth of the river.*

* The mouth of the Euphrates being at that time not far from

the site of Kornah, Bab-Salimeti, which was about twelve

miles distant, must have been somewhere near the present

village of Abu-Hatira, on the south bank of the river.

There they halted in order to proceed to the final embarcation, but at

the last moment their inexperience of the sea nearly compromised the

success of the expedition. Even if they were not absolutely ignorant of

the ebb and flow of the tide, they certainly did not know how dangerous

the spring tide could prove at the equinox under the influence of a

south wind. The rising tide then comes into conflict with the volume

of water brought down by the stream, and in the encounter the banks are

broken down, and sometimes large districts are inundated: this is what

happened that year, to the terror of the Assyrians. Their camp was

invaded and completely flooded by the waves; the king and his soldiers

took refuge in haste on the galleys, where they were kept prisoners

for five days “as in a huge cage.” As soon as the waters abated, they

completed their preparations and started on their voyage. At the point

where the Euphrates enters the lagoon, Sennacherib pushed forward to the

front of the line, and, standing in the bows of his flag-ship, offered a

sacrifice to Eâ, the god of the Ocean. Having made a solemn libation, he

threw into the water a gold model of a ship, a golden fish, and an

image of the god himself, likewise in gold; this ceremony performed, he

returned to the port of Bab-Salimeti with his guard, while the bulk

of his forces continued their voyage eastward. The passage took place

without mishap, but they could not disembark on the shore of the

gulf itself, which was unapproachable by reason of the deposits of

semi-liquid mud which girdled it; they therefore put into the mouth

of the Ulaî, and ascended the river till they reached a spot where the

slimy reed-beds gave place to firm ground, which permitted them to draw

their ships to land.*

* Billerbeck recognises in the narrative of Sennacherib the

indication of two attempts at debarcation, of which the

second only can have been successful; I can distinguish only

one crossing.

The inhabitants assembled hastily at sight of the enemy, and the news,

spreading through the neighbouring tribes, brought together for their

defence a confused crowd of archers, chariots, and horsemen. The

Assyrians, leaping into the stream and climbing up the bank, easily

overpowered these undisciplined troops.

[Illustration: 052.jpg A SKIRMISH IN THE MARSHES]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

They captured at the first onset Nagîtu, Nagîtu-Dibîna, Khilmu, Pillatu,

and Khupapânu; and raiding the Kaldâ, forced them on board the

fleet with their gods, their families, their flocks, and household

possessions, and beat a hurried retreat with their booty.

Merodach-baladan himself and his children once more escaped their

clutches, but the State he had tried to create was annihilated, and

his power utterly crushed. Sennacherib received his generals with great

demonstrations of joy at Bab-Salimeti, and carried the spoil in triumph

to Nineveh. Khalludush, exasperated by the affront put upon him,

instantly retaliated by invading Karduniash, where he pushed forward

as far as Sippara, pillaging and destroying the inhabitants without

opposition. The Babylonians who had accompanied Merodach-baladan into

exile, returned in the train of the Elamites, and, secretly stealing

back to their homes, stirred up a general revolt: Assur-nâdin-shumu,

taken prisoner by his own subjects, was put in chains and despatched to

Susa, his throne being bestowed on a Babylonian named Nergal-ushezîb,*

who at once took the field (694 B.C.).

* This is the prince whom the Assyrian documents name

Shuzub, and whom we might call Shuzub the Babylonian, in

contradistinction to Mushezib-marduk, who is Shuzub the

Kaldu.

His preliminary efforts were successful: he ravaged the frontier along

the Turnât with the help of the Elamites, and took by assault the city

of Nipur, which refused to desert the cause of Sennacherib (693 B.C.).

Meanwhile the Assyrian generals had captured Uruk (Erech) on the 1st of

Tisri, after the retreat of Khalludush; and having sacked the city, were

retreating northwards with their spoil when they were defeated on the

7th near Nipur by Nergal-ushezîb. He had already rescued the statues of

the gods and the treasure, when his horse fell in the midst of the fray,

and he could not disengage himself. His vanquished foes led him captive

to Nineveh, where Sennacherib exposed him in chains at the principal

gateway of his palace: the Babylonians, who owed to him their latest

success, summoned a Kaldu prince, Mushezîb-marduk, son of Gahut, to

take command. He hastened to comply, and with the assistance of Blamite

troops offered such a determined resistance to all attack, that he was

finally left in undisturbed possession of his kingdom (692 B.C.): the

actual result to Assyria, therefore, of the ephemeral victory gained by

the fleet had been the loss of Babylon.

[Illustration: 054.jpg THE HORSE OF NERGAL-USHEZÎB FALLING IN THE

BATTLE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

A revolution in Elam speedily afforded Assyria an opportunity for

revenge. When Nergal-ushezîb was taken prisoner, the people of Susa,

dissatisfied with the want of activity displayed by Khalludush,

conspired to depose him: on hearing, therefore, the news of the

revolutions in Chaldæa, they rose in revolt on the 26th of Tisri, and,

besieging him in his palace, put him to death, and elected a certain

Kutur-nakhunta as his successor. Sennacherib, without a moment’s

hesitation, crossed the frontier at Durîlu, before order was

re-established at Susa, and recovered, after very slight resistance,

Baza and Bît-khaîri which Shutruk-nakhunta had taken from Sargon. This

preliminary success laid the lower plain of Susiana at his mercy, and he

ravaged it pitilessly from Baza to Bît-bunaki. “Thirty-four strongholds

and the townships depending on them, whose number is unequalled, I

besieged and took by assault, their inhabitants I led into captivity, I

demolished them and reduced them to ashes: I caused the smoke of their

burning to rise into the wide heaven, like the smoke of one great

sacrifice.” Kutur-nakhunta, still insecurely seated on the throne of

Susa, retreated with his army towards Khaîdalu, in the almost unexplored

regions which bordered the Banian plateau,* and entrenched himself

strongly in the heart of the mountains.

* Khaîdalu is very probably the present Dis Malkân.

The season was already well advanced when the Assyrians set out on this

expedition, and November set in while they were ravaging the plain:

but the weather was still so fine that Sennacherib determined to take

advantage of it to march upon Madaktu. Hardly had he scaled the heights

when winter fell upon him with its accompaniment of cold and squally

weather. “Violent storms broke out, it rained and snowed incessantly,

the torrents and streams overflowed their banks,” so that hostilities

had to be suspended and the troops ordered back to Nineveh. The effect

produced, however, by these bold measures was in no way diminished:

though Kutur-nakhunta had not had the necessary time to prepare for the

contest, he was nevertheless discredited among his subjects for failing

to bring them out of it with glory, and three months after the retreat

of the Assyrians he was assassinated in a riot on the 20th of Ab, 692

B.C.*

* The Assyrian documents merely mention the death of Kutur-

nakhunta less than three months after the return of

Sennacherib to Nineveh. Pinches’ _Babylonian Chronicle_ only

mentions the revolution in which he perished, and informs us

that he had reigned ten months. It contracts Ummân-minânu,

the name of the Elamite king, to Minânu.

His younger brother, Ummân-minânu, assumed the crown, and though his

enemies disdainfully refused to credit him with either prudence or

judgment, he soon restored his kingdom to such a formidable degree of

power that Mushezîb-marduk thought the opportunity a favourable one for

striking a blow at Assyria, from which she could never recover. Elam had

plenty of troops, but was deficient in the resources necessary to pay

the men and their chiefs, and to induce the tribes of the table-land

to furnish their contingents. Mushezîb-marduk, therefore, emptied the

sacred treasury of E-sagilla, and sent the gold and silver of Bel and

Zarpanit to Ummân-minânu with a message which ran thus: “Assemble thine

army, and prepare thy camp, come to Babylon and strengthen our hands,

for thou art our help.” The Elamite asked nothing better than to avenge

the provinces so cruelly harassed, and the cities consumed in the course

of the last campaign: he summoned all his nobles, from the least to the

greatest, and enlisted the help of the troops of Parsuas, Ellipi, and

Anzân, the Aramaean Puqudu and Gambulu of the Tigris, as well as

the Aramæans of the Euphrates, and the peoples of Bît-Adini and

Bît-Amukkâni, who had rallied round Sam una, son of Merodach-baladan,

and joined forces with the soldiers of Mushezîb-marduk in Babylon.

“Like an invasion of countless locusts swooping down upon the land, they

assembled, resolved to give me battle, and the dust of their feet rose

before me, like a thick cloud which darkens the copper-coloured dome of

the sky.” The conflict took place near the township of Khalulê, on the

banks of the Tigris, not far from the confluence of this river with the

Turnât.*

* Haupt attributes to the name the signification _holes,

bogs_, and this interpretation agrees well enough with the

state of the country round the mouths of the Dîyala, in the

low-lying district which separates that river from the

Tigris; he compares it with the name Haulâyeh, quoted by

Arab geographers in this neighbourhood, and with that of the

canton of Hâleh, mentioned in Syrian texts as belonging to

the district of Râdhân, between the Adhem and the Dîyala.

At this point the Turnât, flowing through the plain, divides into

several branches, which ramify again and again, and form a kind of delta

extending from the ruins of Nayân to those of Reshadeh. During the whole

of the day the engagement between the two hosts raged on this unstable

soil, and their leaders themselves sold their lives dearly in the

struggle. Sennacherib invoked the help of Assur, Sin, Shamash, Nebo,

Bel, Nergal, Ishtar of Nineveh, and Ishtar of Arbela, and the gods heard

his prayers. “Like a lion I raged, I donned my harness, I covered my

head with my casque, the badge of war; my powerful battle-chariot, which

mows down the rebels, I ascended it in haste in the rage of my heart;

the strong bow which Assur entrusted to me, I seized it, and the

javelin, destroyer of life, I grasped it: the whole host of obdurate

rebels I charged, shining like silver or like the day, and I roared as

Kammân roareth.” Khumba-undash, the Elamite general, was killed in one

of the first encounters, and many of his officers perished around him,

“of those who wore golden daggers at their belts, and bracelets of

gold on their wrists.” They fell one after the other, “like fat bulls

chained” for the sacrifice, or like sheep, and their blood flowed on the

broad plain as the water after a violent storm: the horses plunged in it

up to their knees, and the body of the royal chariot was reddened with

it. A son of Merodach-baladan, Nabu-shumishkun, was taken prisoner, but

Ummân-minânu and Mushezîb-marduk escaped unhurt from the fatal field. It

seems as if fortune had at last decided in favour of the Assyrians, and

they proclaimed the fact loudly, but their success was not so evident as

to preclude their adversaries also claiming the victory with some show

of truth. In any case, the losses on both sides were so considerable as

to force the two belligerents to suspend operations; they returned each

to his capital, and matters remained much as they had been before the

battle took place.*

* _Pinches’ Babylonian Chronicle_ attributes the victory to

the Elamites, and says that the year in which the battle was

fought was unknown. The testimony of this chronicle is so

often marred by partiality, that to prefer it always to that

of the Ninevite inscriptions shows deficiency of critical

ability: the course of events seems to me to prove that the

advantage remained with the Assyrians, though the victory

was not decisive. The date, which necessarily falls between

692 and 689 B.C., has been decided by general considerations

as 691 B.C., the very year in which the _Taylor Cylinder_

was written.

Years might have elapsed before Sennacherib could have ventured to

recommence hostilities: he was not deluded by the exaggerated estimate

of his victory in the accounts given by his court historians, and he

recognised the fact that the issue of the struggle must be uncertain

as long as the alliance subsisted between Elam and Chaldæa. But fortune

came to his aid sooner than he had expected. Ummân-minânu was not

absolute in his dominions any more than his predecessors had been,

and the losses he had sustained at Khalulê, without obtaining any

compensating advantages in the form of prisoners or spoil, had lowered

him in the estimation of his vassals; Mushezîb-marduk, on the other

hand, had emptied his treasuries, and though Karduniash was wealthy,

it was hardly able, after such a short interval, to provide further

subsidies to purchase the assistance of the mountain tribes.

Sennacherib’s emissaries kept him well informed of all that occurred

in the enemy’s court, and he accordingly took the field again at the

beginning of 689 B.C., and on this occasion circumstances seemed likely

to combine to give him an easy victory.*

* The Assyrian documents insert the account of the capture

of Babylon directly after the battle of Khalulê, and modern

historians therefore concluded that the two events took

place within a few months of each other. The information

afforded by _Pinches’ Babylonian Chronicle_ has enabled us

to correct this mistake, and to bring down the date of the

taking of Babylon to 689 B.C.

Mushezîb-marduk shut himself up in Babylon, not doubting that the

Elamites would hasten to his succour as soon as they should hear of his

distress; but his expectation was not fulfilled. Ummân-minânu was struck

down by apoplexy, on the 15th of Nisân, and though his illness did not

at once terminate fatally, he was left paralysed with distorted mouth,

and loss of speech, incapable of action, and almost unfit to govern.

His seizure put a stop to his warlike preparations: and his ministers,

preoccupied with the urgent question of the succession to the throne,

had no desire to provoke a conflict with Assyria, the issue of which

could not be foretold: they therefore left their ally to defend his own

interests as best he might. Babylon, reduced to rely entirely on its

own resources, does not seem to have held out long, and perhaps the

remembrance of the treatment it had received on former occasions may

account for the very slight resistance it now offered. The Assyrian

kings who had from time to time conquered Babylon, had always treated

it with great consideration. They had looked upon it as a sacred city,

whose caprices and outbreaks must always be pardoned; it was only with

infinite precautions that they had imposed their commands upon it, and

even when they had felt that severity was desirable, they had restrained

themselves in using it, and humoured the idiosyncrasies of the

inhabitants. Tiglath-pileser III, Shalmaneser V., and Sargon had all

preferred to be legally crowned as sovereigns of Babylon instead

of remaining merely its masters by right of conquest, and though

Sennacherib had refused compliance with the traditions by which his

predecessors had submitted to be bound, he had behaved with unwonted

lenity after quelling the two previous revolts. He now recognised that

his clemency had been shown in vain, and his small stock of patience was

completely exhausted just when fate threw the rebellious city into his

power. If the inhabitants had expected to be once more let off easily,

their illusions were speedily dissipated: they were slain by the sword

as if they had been ordinary foes, such as Jews, Tibarenians, or Kaldâ

of Bît-Yakîn, and they were spared none of the horrors which custom then

permitted the stronger to inflict upon the weaker. For several days the

pitiless massacre lasted. Young and old, all who fell into the hands of

the soldiery, perished by the sword; piles of corpses filled the streets

and the approaches to the temples, especially the avenue of winged bulls

which led to E-sagilla, and, even after the first fury of carnage had

been appeased, it was only to be succeeded by more organised pillage.

Mushezîb-marduk was sent into exile with his family, and immense convoys

of prisoners and spoil followed him. The treasures carried off from

the royal palace, the temples, and the houses of the rich nobles were

divided among the conquerors: they comprised gold, silver, precious

stones, costly stuffs, and provisions of all sorts. The sacred edifices

were sacked, the images hacked to pieces or carried off to Nineveh:

Bel-Marduk, introduced into the sanctuary of Assur, became subordinate

to the rival deity amid a crowd of strange gods. In the inmost recess

of a chapel were discovered some ancient statues of Kammân and Shala

of E-kallati, which Marduk-nâdin-akhê had carried off in the time of

Tiglath-pileser I., and these were brought back in triumph to their own

land, after an absence of four hundred and eighteen years. The buildings

themselves suffered a like fate to that of their owners and their gods.

“The city and its houses, from foundation to roof, I destroyed them,

I demolished them, I burnt them with fire; walls, gateways, sacred

chapels, and the towers of earth and tiles, I laid them all low and cast

them into the Arakhtu.” The incessant revolts of the people justified

this wholesale destruction. Babylon, as we have said before, was too

powerful to be reduced for long to the second rank in a Mesopotamian

empire: as soon as fate established the seat of empire in the districts

bordering on the Euphrates and the middle course of the Tigris,

its well-chosen situation, its size, its riches, the extent of its

population, the number of its temples, and the beauty of its palaces,

all conspired to make it the capital of the country. In vain Assur,

Calah, or Nineveh thrust themselves into the foremost rank, and by a

strenuous effort made their princes rulers of Babylon; in a short time

Babylon replenished her treasury, found allies, soldiers, and leaders,

and in spite of reverses of fortune soon regained the upper hand. The

only treatment which could effectually destroy her ascendency was that

of leaving in her not one brick upon another, thus preventing her from

being re-peopled for several generations, since a new city could not

at once spring up from the ashes of the old; until she had been utterly

destroyed her conquerors had still reason to fear her. This fact

Sennacherib, or his councillors, knew well. If he merits any reproach,

it is not for having seized the opportunity of destroying the city which

Babylon offered him, but rather for not having persevered in his design

to the end, and reduced her to a mere name.

In the midst of these costly and absorbing wars, we may well wonder how

Sennacherib found time and means to build villas or temples; yet he is

nevertheless, among the kings of Assyria, the monarch who has left us

the largest number of monuments. He restored a shrine of Nergal in the

small town of Tarbizi; he fortified the village of Alshi; and in 704

B.C. he founded a royal residence in the fortress of Kakzi, which

defended the approach to Calah from the south-east. He did not reside

much at Dur-Sharrukîn, neither did he complete the decoration of his

father’s palace there: his pride as a victorious warrior suffered

when his surroundings reminded him of a more successful conqueror than

himself, and Calah itself was too full of memories of Tiglath-pileser

III. and the sovereigns of the eighth century for him to desire to

establish his court there. He preferred to reside at Nineveh, which

had been much neglected by his predecessors, and where the crumbling

edifices merely recalled the memory of long-vanished splendours.

[Illustration: 063.jpg THE MOUNDS OF NINEVEH SEEN FROM THE TERRACE OF A

HOUSE IN MOSUL]

Drawn by Boudier, from a lithograph in Layard.

He selected this city as his residence at the very beginning of his

reign, perhaps while he was still only crown prince, and began by

repairing its ancient fortifications; later on, when the success of

his earlier campaigns had furnished him with a sufficient supply of

prisoners, he undertook the restoration of the whole city, with its

avenues, streets, canals, quays, gardens, and aqueducts: the labour of

all the captives brought together from different quarters of his empire

was pressed into the execution of his plans--the Kaldâ, the Aramæans,

the Mannai, the people of Kuî, the Cilicians, the Philistines, and

the ïyrians; the provinces vied with each other in furnishing him with

materials without stint,--precious woods were procured from Syria,

marbles from Kapri-dargîla, alabaster from Balad, while Bît-Yakîn

provided the rushes to be laid between the courses of brickwork. The

river Tebilti, after causing the downfall of the royal mausolea and

“displaying to the light of day the coffins which they concealed,” had

sapped the foundations of the palace of Assur-nazir-pal, and caused it

to fall in: a muddy pool now occupied the north-western quarter,

between the court of Ishtar and the lofty ziggurât of Assur. This pool

Sennacherib filled up, and regulated the course of the stream, providing

against the recurrence of such-accidents in future by building a

substructure of masonry, 454 cubits long by 289 wide, formed of large

blocks of stone cemented together by bitumen. On this he erected a

magnificent palace, a Bît-Khilâni in the Syrian style, with woodwork of

fragrant cedar and cypress overlaid with gold and silver, panellings

of sculptured marble and alabaster, and friezes and cornices in glazed

tiles of brilliant colouring: inspired by the goddess Nin-kurra, he

caused winged bulls of white alabaster and limestone statues of the gods

to be hewn in the quarries of Balad near Nineveh. He presided in person

at all these operations--at the raising of the soil, the making of the

substructures of the terrace, the transport of the colossal statues or

blocks and their subsequent erection; indeed, he was to be seen at every

turn, standing in Ids ebony and ivory chariot, drawn by a team of men.

When the building was finished, he was so delighted with its beauty that

he named it “the incomparable palace,” and his admiration was shared

by his contemporaries; they were never wearied of extolling in glowing

terms the twelve bronze lions, the twelve winged bulls, and the

twenty-four statues of goddesses which kept watch over the entrance,

and for the construction of which a new method of rapid casting had been

invented.

[Illustration: 065.jpg KING SENNACHERIB WATCHING THE TRANSPORT OF A

COLOSSAL STATUE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

Formerly the erection of such edifices cost much in suffering to

the artificers employed on them, but Sennacherib brought his great

enterprise to a prompt completion without extravagant outlay or

unnecessary hardship inflicted on his workmen. He proceeded to annex

the neighbouring quarters of the city, relegating the inhabitants to the

suburbs while he laid out a great park on the land thus cleared; this

park was well planted with trees, like the heights of Amanus, and in

it flourished side by side all the forest growths indigenousnto the

Cilician mountains and the plains of Chaldæa. A lake, fed by a canal

leading from the Khuzur, supplied it with water, which was conducted in

streams and rills through the thickets, keeping them always fresh and

green. Vines trained on trellises afforded a grateful shade during the

sultry hours of the day; birds sang in the branches, herds of wild boar

and deer roamed through the coverts, in order that the prince might

enjoy the pleasures of the chase without quitting his own private

grounds.

[Illustration: 066.jpg ASSYRIAN BAS-RELIEFS AT BAVIAN]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch in Layard.

The main part of these constructions was finished about 700 B.C., but

many details were left incomplete, and the work was still proceeding

after the court had long been in residence on the spot. Meanwhile a

smaller palace, as well as barracks and a depot for arms and provisions,

sprang up elsewhere. Eighteen aqueducts, carried across the country,

brought the water from the Muzri to the Khuzur, and secured an adequate

supply to the city; the Ninevites, who had hitherto relied upon

rain-water for the replenishing of their cisterns, awoke one day to

find themselves released from all anxiety on this score. An ancient and

semi-subterranean canal, which Assur-nazir-pal had constructed nearly

two centuries before, but which, owing to the neglect of his successors,

had become choked up, was cleaned out, enlarged and repaired, and made

capable of bringing water to their doors from the springs of Mount Tas,

in the same year as that in which the battle of Khalulê took place.* At

a later date, magnificent bas-reliefs, carved on the rock by order of

Esar-haddon, representing winged bulls, figures of the gods and of the

king, with explanatory inscriptions, marked the site of the springs,

and formed a kind of monumental façade to the ravine in which they took

their rise.**

* Mount Tas is the group of hills enclosing the ravine of

Bavian. These works were described in the Bavian

inscription, of which they occupy the whole of the first

part.

** The Bavian text speaks of six inscriptions and statues

which the king had engraved on the Mount of Tas, at the

source of the stream.

It would be hard to account for the rapidity with which these great

works were completed, did one not remember that Sargon had previously

carried out extensive architectural schemes, in which he must have

employed all the available artists in his empire. The revolutions which

had shattered the realm under the last descendants of Assur-nazir-pal,

and the consequent impoverishment of the kingdom, had not been without a

disastrous effect on the schools of Assyrian sculpture.

[ Illustration: 068.jpg UNKNOWN SUBJECTS FROM THE FIFTH TOMB]

[Illustration: 069.jpg GREAT ASSYRIAN STELE AT BAVIAÎT.]

Drawn by Boudior, from Layard.

Since the royal treasury alone was able to bear the expense of those

vast compositions in which the artistic skill of the period could have

free play, the closing of the royal workshops, owing to the misfortunes

of the time, had the immediate effect of emptying the sculptors’

studios. Even though the period of depression lasted for the space of

two or three generations only, it became difficult to obtain artistic

workmen; and those who were not discouraged from the pursuit of art by

the uncertainty of employment, no longer possessed the high degree of

skill attained by their predecessors, owing to lack of opportunity to

cultivate it. Sculpture was at a very low ebb when Tiglath-pileser

III. desired to emulate the royal builders of days gone by, and the

awkwardness of composition noticeable in some of his bas-reliefs, and

the almost barbaric style of the stelae erected by persons of even so

high a rank as Belharrân-beluzur, prove the lamentable deficiency of

good artists at that epoch, and show that the king had no choice but to

employ all the surviving members of the ancient guilds, whether good,

bad, or indifferent workmen. The increased demand, however, soon

produced an adequate supply of workers, and when Sargon ascended the

throne, the royal guild of sculptors had been thoroughly reconstituted;

the inefficient workmen on whom Tiglath-pileser and Shalmaneser had been

obliged to rely had been eliminated in course of time, and many of the

sculptures which adorned the palace at Khorsabad display a purity of

design and boldness of execution comparable to that of the best Egyptian

art. The composition still shows traces of Chaldæan stiffness, and

the exaggerated drawing of the muscles produces an occasionally

unpleasing-heaviness of outline, but none the less the work as a whole

constitutes one of the richest and most ingenious schemes of decoration

ever devised, which, while its colouring was still perfect, must have

equalled in splendour the great triumphal battle-scenes at Ibsambul or

Medinet-Habu. Sennacherib found ready to his hand a body of well-trained

artists, whose number had considerably increased during the reign of

Sargon, and he profited by the experience which they had acquired and

the talent that many of them had developed. What immediately strikes the

spectator in the series of pictures produced under his auspices, is the

great skill with which his artists covered the whole surface at their

disposal without overcrowding it. They no longer treated their subject,

whether it were a warlike expedition, a hunting excursion, a sacrificial

scene, or an episode of domestic life, as a simple juxtaposition of

groups of almost equal importance ranged at the same elevation along

the walls, the subject of each bas-relief being complete in itself and

without any necessary connection with its neighbour. They now selected

two or three principal incidents from the subjects proposed to them for

representation, and round these they grouped such of the less important

episodes as lent themselves best to picturesque treatment, and scattered

sparingly over the rest of the field the minor accessories which seemed

suitable to indicate more precisely the scene of the action. Under the

auspices of this later school, Assyrian foot-soldiers are no longer

depicted attacking the barbarians of Media or Elam on backgrounds of

smooth stone, where no line marks the various levels, and where the

remoter figures appear to be walking in the air without anything to

support them. If the battle represented took place on a wooded slope

crowned by a stronghold on the summit of the hill, the artist, in order

to give an impression of the surroundings, covered his background with

guilloche patterns by which to represent the rugged surface of the

mountains; he placed here and there groups of various kinds of trees,

especially the straight cypresses and firs which grew upon the slopes of

the Iranian table-land: or he represented a body of lancers galloping in

single file along the narrow woodland paths, and hastening to surprise

a distant enemy, or again foot-soldiers chasing their foes through the

forest or engaging them in single combat; while in the corners of the

picture the wounded are being stabbed or otherwise despatched, fugitives

are trying to escape through the undergrowth, and shepherds are pleading

with the victors for their lives. It is the actual scene the sculptor

sets himself to depict, and one is sometimes inclined to ask, while

noting the precision with which the details of the battle are rendered,

whether the picture was not drawn on the spot, and whether the conqueror

did not carry artists in his train to make sketches for the decorators

of the main features of the country traversed and of the victories won.

The masses of infantry seem actually in motion, a troop of horsemen rush

blindly over uneven ground, and the episodes of their raid are unfolded

in all their confusion with unfailing animation.

[Illustration: 073.jpg AN ASSYRIAN CAVALRY RAID THROUGH THE WOODS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

For the first time a spectator can realise Assyrian warfare with its

striking contrasts of bravery and unbridled cruelty; he is no longer

reduced to spell out laboriously a monotonous narrative of a battle, for

the battle takes place actually before his eyes. And after the return

from the scene of action, when it is desired to show how the victor

employed his prisoners for the greater honour of his gods and his own

glory, the picture is no less detailed and realistic.

[Illustration: 074.jpg (and 75) TRANSPORT OF A WINGED BULL ON A SLEDGE.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

There we see them, the noble and the great of all the conquered nations,

Chaldæans and Elamites, inhabitants of Cilicia, Phoenicia, and Judaea,

harnessed to ropes and goaded by the whips of the overseers, dragging

the colossal bull which is destined to mount guard at the gates of the

palace: with bodies bent, pendant arms, and faces contorted with pain,

they, who had been the chief men in their cities, now take the place of

beasts of burden, while Sennacherib, erect on his state chariot, with

steady glance and lips compressed, watches them as they pass slowly

before him in their ignominy and misery.

After the destruction of Babylon there is a pause in the history of

the conqueror, and with him in that of Assyria itself. It seems as

if Nineveh had been exhausted by the greatness of her effort, and

was stopping to take breath before setting out on a fresh career of

conquest: the other nations also, as if overwhelmed by the magnitude

of the catastrophe, appear to have henceforth despaired of their own

security, and sought only how to avoid whatever might rouse against them

the enmity of the master of the hour. His empire formed a compact and

solid block in their midst, on which no human force seemed capable of

making any impression. They had attacked it each in turn, or all at

once, Elam in the east, Urartu in the north, Egypt in the south-west,

and their efforts had not only miserably failed, but had for the most

part drawn down upon them disastrous reprisals. The people of Urartu

remained in gloomy inaction amidst their mountains, the Elamites had

lost their supremacy over half the Aramæan tribes, and if Egypt was as

yet inaccessible beyond the intervening deserts, she owed it less to the

strength of her armies than to the mysterious fatality at Libnah. In one

half-century the Assyrians had effectually and permanently disabled

the first of these kingdoms, and inflicted on the others such serious

injuries that they were slow in recovering from them. The fate of these

proud nations had intimidated the inferior states--Arabs, Medes, tribes

of Asia Minor, barbarous Cimmerians or Scythians,--all alike were

careful to repress their natural inclinations to rapine and plunder. If

occasionally their love of booty overpowered their prudence, and they

hazarded a raid on some defenceless village in the neighbouring border

territory, troops were hastily despatched from the nearest Assyrian

garrison, who speedily drove them back across the frontier, and pursuing

them into their own country, inflicted on them so severe a punishment

that they remained for some considerable time paralysed by awe and

terror. Assyria was the foremost kingdom of the East, and indeed of the

whole world, and the hegemony which she exercised over all the countries

within her reach cannot be accounted for solely by her military

superiority. Not only did she excel in the art of conquest, as many

before her had done--Babylonians, Elamites, Hittites, and Egyptians--but

she did what none of them had been able to accomplish; she exacted

lasting obedience from the conquered nations, ruling them with a firm

hand, and accustoming them to live on good terms with one another in

spite of diversity of race, and this with a light rein, with unfailing

tact, and apparently with but little effort. The system of deportation

so resolutely carried out by Tiglath-pileser III. and Sargon began to

produce effect, and up to this time the most happy results only were

discernible. The colonies which had been planted throughout the empire

from Palestine to Media, some of them two generations previously, others

within recent years, were becoming more and more acclimatised to their

new surroundings, on which they were producing the effect desired by

their conquerors; they were meant to hold in check the populations in

whose midst they had been set down, to act as a curb upon them, and also

to break up their national unity and thus gradually prepare them for

absorption into a wider fatherland, in which they would cease to be

exclusively Damascenes, Samaritans, Hittites, or Aramæans, since they

would become Assyrians and fellow-citizens of a mighty empire. The

provinces, brought at length under a regular system of government,

protected against external dangers and internal discord, by a

well-disciplined soldiery, and enjoying a peace and security they

had rarely known in the days of their independence, gradually became

accustomed to live in concord under the rule of a common sovereign, and

to feel themselves portions of a single empire. The speech of Assyria

was their official language, the gods of Assyria were associated with

their national gods in the prayers they offered up for the welfare of

the sovereign, and foreign nations with whom they were brought into

communication no longer distinguished between them and their conquerors,

calling their country Assyria, and regarding its inhabitants as

Assyrians. As is invariably the case, domestic peace and good

administration had caused a sudden development of wealth and commercial

activity. Although Nineveh and Calah never became such centres of trade

and industry as Babylon had been, yet the presence of the court and the

sovereign attracted thither merchants from all parts of the world.

[Illustration: 079.jpg SENNACHERIB]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

The Medes, reaching the capital by way of the passes of Kowândîz and

Suleimaniyeh, brought in the lapis-lazuli, precious stones, metals,

and woollen stuffs of Central Asia and the farthest East, while

the Phoenicians and even Greeks, who were already following in their

foot steps, came thither to sell in the à bazaars of Assyria the most

precious of the wares brought back by their merchant vessels from the

shores of the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the farthest West. The

great cities of the triangle of Assyria were gradually supplanting all

the capitals of the ancient world, not excepting Memphis, and becoming

the centres of universal trade; unexcelled for centuries in the arts of

war, Assyria was in a fair way to become mistress also in the arts of

peace. A Jewish prophet thus described the empire at a later date: “The

Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing

shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick clouds.

The waters nourished him, the deep made him grow: therefore his stature

was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were

multiplied, and his branches became long by reason of many waters, when

he shot them forth. All the fowls of the heaven made their nests in his

boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring

forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. Thus

was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his

root was by many waters. The cedars in the garden of God could not hide

him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the plane trees were

not as his branches; nor was any tree like unto him in beauty: so that

all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him.”

(Ezek. xxxi. 3-9).