ASSUR-BANI-PAL
_The Medes and Cimmerians: Lydia--The conquest of Egypt, of Arabia, and
of Elam._
As we have already seen, Sennacherib reigned for eight years after his
triumph; eight years of tranquillity at home, and of peace with all
his neighbours abroad. If we examine the contemporary monuments or the
documents of a later period, and attempt to glean from them some details
concerning the close of his career, we find that there is a complete
absence of any record of national movement on the part of either Elam,
Urartu, or Egypt.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Layard. The vignette, also by
Faucher-Gudin, represents Taharqa in a kneeling attitude,
and is taken from a bronze statuette in the Macgregor
collection.
The only event of which any definite mention is made is a raid across
the north of Arabia, in the course of which Hazael, King of Adumu, and
chief among the princes of Kedar, was despoiled of the images of his
gods. The older states of the Oriental world had, as we have pointed
out, grown weary of warfare which brought them nothing but loss of men
and treasure; but behind these states, on the distant horizon to the
east and north-west, were rising up new nations whose growth and
erratic movements assumed an importance that became daily more and more
alarming. On the east, the Medes, till lately undistinguishable from the
other tribes occupying the western corner of the Iranian table-land, had
recently broken away from the main body, and, rallying round a single
leader, already gave promise of establishing an empire formidable alike
by the energy of its people and the extent of its domain. A tradition
afterwards accepted by them attributed their earlier successes to a
certain Deïokes, son of Phraortes, a man wiser than his fellows, who
first set himself to deal out justice in his own household. The men of
his village, observing his merits, chose him to be the arbiter of all
their disputes, and, being secretly ambitious of sovereign power, he did
his best to settle their differences on lines of the strictest
equity and justice. By these means he gained such credit with his
fellow-citizens as to attract the attention of those who lived in the
neighbouring villages, who had suffered from unjust judgments, so that
when they heard of the singular uprightness of Deïokes and of the equity
of his decisions they joyfully had recourse to him until at last they
came to put confidence in no one else. The number of complaints brought
before him continually increasing as people learnt more and more the
justice of his judgments, Deïokes, finding himself now all-important,
announced that he did not intend any longer to hear causes, and
appeared no more in the seat in which he had been accustomed to sit and
administer justice. It was not to his advantage, he said, to spend
the whole day in regulating other mens affairs to the neglect of his
own. Hereupon robbery and lawlessness broke out afresh and prevailed
throughout the country even more than heretofore; wherefore the Medes
assembled from all quarters and held a consultation on the state of
affairs. The speakers, as I think, were chiefly friends of Deïokes. We
cannot possibly, they said, go on living in this country if things
continue as they now are; let us, therefore, set a king over us, so that
the land may be well governed, and we ourselves may be able to attend
to our own affairs, and not be forced to quit our country on account
of anarchy. After speaking thus, they persuaded themselves that they
desired a king, and forthwith debated whom they should choose. Deïokes
was proposed and warmly praised by all, so they agreed to elect him.
Whereupon Deïokes had a great palace built, and enrolled a bodyguard
to attend upon him. He next called upon his subjects to leave their
villages, and the Medes, obedient to his orders, built the city now
called Ecbatana, the walls of which are of great size and strength,
rising in circles one within the other. The walls are concentric, and
so arranged that they rise one above the other by the height of their
battlements. The nature of the ground, which is a gentle hill, favoured
this arrangement. The number of the circles is seven, the royal palace
and the treasuries standing within the last. The circuit of the outer
wall is very nearly the same as that of Athens. Of this wall the
battlements are white, of the next black, of the third scarlet, of the
fourth blue, of the fifth orange. The two last have their battlements
coated respectively with silver and gold. All these fortifications
Deïokes caused to be raised for himself and his own palace; the people
he required to dwell outside the citadel. When the town was finished,
he established a rule that no one should have direct access to the king,
but that all communications should pass through the hands of messengers.
It was declared to be unseemly for any one to see the king face to face,
or to laugh or spit in his presence. This ceremonial Deïokes established
for his own security, fearing lest his compeers who had been brought up
with him, and were of as good family and parts as he, should be vexed at
the sight of him and conspire against him: he thought that by rendering
himself invisible to his vassals they would in time come to regard him
as quite a different sort of being from themselves.
Two or three facts stand out from this legendary background. It is
probable that Deïokes was an actual person; that the empire of the Medes
first took shape under his auspices; that he formed an important kingdom
at the foot of Mount Elvend, and founded Ecbatana the Great, or, at at
any rate, helped to raise it to the rank of a capital.*
* The existence of Deïokes has been called in question by
Grote and by the Rawlinsons. Most recent historians,
however, accept the story of this personage as true in its
main facts; some believe him to have been merely the
ancestor of the royal house which later on founded the
united kingdom of the Medes.
Its site was happily chosen, in a rich and fertile valley, close to
where the roads emerge which cross the Zagros chain of mountains and
connect Iran with the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, almost on the
border of the salt desert which forms and renders sterile the central
regions of the plateau. Mount Elvend shelters it, and feeds with its
snows the streams that irrigate it, whose waters transform the whole
country round into one vast orchard. The modern town has, as it were,
swallowed up all traces of its predecessor; a stone lion, overthrown and
mutilated, marks the site of the royal palace.
[Illustration: 087.jpg STONE LION AT HAMADÂN]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Plandin and Coste.
The chronological reckoning of the native annalists, as handed down
to us by Herodotus, credits Deïokes with a reign of fifty-three years,
which occupied almost the whole of the first half of the seventh
century, i.e. from 709 to 656, or from 700 to 647 B.C.*
* Herodotus expressly attributes a reign of fifty-three
years to his Deïokes, and the total of a hundred and fifty
years which we obtain by adding together the number of years
assigned by him to the four Median kings (53 + 22 + 40 +
35) brings us back to 709-708, if we admit, as he does, that
the year of the proclamation by Cyrus as King of Persia
(559-558) was that in which Astyages was overthrown; we get
700-699 as the date of Deiokes accession, if we separate
the two facts, as the monuments compel us to do, and reckon
the hundred and fifty years of the Median empire from the
fall of Astyages in 550-549.
The records of Nineveh mention a certain Dayaukku who was governor of
the Mannai, and an ally of the Assyrians in the days of Sargon, and was
afterwards deported with his family to Hamath in 715; two years later
reference is made to an expedition across the territory of Bît-Dayaukku,
which is described as lying between Ellipi and Karalla, thus
corresponding to the modern province of Hamadân. It is quite within
the bounds of possibility that the Dayaukku who gave his name to this
district was identical with the Deiokes of later writers.*
* The form Deïokes, in place of Daïokes, is due to the Ionic
dialect employed by Herodotus. Justi regards the name as an
abbreviated form of the ancient Persian _Dahyaupati_--the
master of a province, with the suffix _-ha_.
[Illustration: 088.jpg VIEW OF HAMADÂN AND MOUNT ELVEND IN WINTER]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. de Morgan.
He was the official ancestor of a royal house, a fact proved by the way
in which his conqueror uses the name to distinguish the country over
which he had ruled; moreover, the epoch assigned to him by contemporary
chroniclers coincides closely enough with that indicated by tradition
in the case of Deïokes. He was never the august sovereign that posterity
afterwards made him out to be, and his territory included barely half of
what constituted the province of Media in classical times; he contrived,
however--and it was this that gained him universal renown in later
days--to create a central rallying-point for the Median tribes around
which they henceforth grouped themselves. The work of concentration
was merely in its initial stage during the lifetime of Sennacherib, and
little or nothing was felt of its effects outside its immediate area of
influence, but the pacific character ascribed to the worthy Deïokes by
popular legends, is to a certain extent confirmed by the testimony of
the monuments: they record only one expedition, in 702, against Ellipi
and the neighbouring tribes, in the course of which some portions of the
newly acquired territory were annexed to the province of Kharkhar, and
after mentioning this the annals have nothing further to relate during
the rest of the reign. Sennacherib was too much taken up with his
retaliatory measures against Babylon, or his disputes with Blam, to
think of venturing on expeditions such as those which had brought
Tiglath-pileser III. or Sargon within sight of Mount Bikni; while the
Medes, on their part, had suffered so many reverses under these two
monarchs that they probably thought twice before attacking any of the
outposts scattered along the Assyrian frontier: nothing occurred
to disturb their tranquillity during the early years of the seventh
century, and this peaceful interval probably enabled Deïokes to
consolidate, if not to extend, his growing authority. But if matters
were quiet, at all events on the surface, in this direction, the nations
on the north and north-west had for some time past begun to adopt a more
threatening attitude. That migration of races between Europe and Asia,
which had been in such active progress about the middle of the second
millennium before our era, had increased twofold in intensity after the
rise of the XXth Egyptian dynasty, and from thenceforward a wave of new
races had gradually spread over the whole of Asia Minor, and had either
driven the older peoples into the less fertile or more inaccessible
districts, or else had overrun and absorbed them.
[Illustration: 090.jpg ASIA MINOR IN THE 7TH CENTURY]
Many of the nations that had fought against Ramses II. and Ramses III.,
such as the Uashasha, the Shagalasha, the Zakkali, the Danauna, and
the Tursha, had disappeared, but the Thracians, whose appearance on the
scene caused such consternation in days gone by, had taken root in the
very heart of the peninsula, and had, in the course of three or four
generations, succeeded in establishing a thriving state. The legend
which traced the descent of the royal line back to the fabulous hero
Ascanius proves that at the outset the haughty tribe of the Ascanians
must have taken precedence over their fellows;* it soon degenerated,
however, and before long the Phrygian tribe gained the upper hand and
gave its name to the whole nation.
* The name of this tribe was retained by a district
afterwards included in the province of Bithynia, viz.
Ascania, on the shores of the Ascanian lake: the
distribution of place and personal names over the face of
the country makes it seem extremely probable that Ascania
and the early Ascanians occupied the whole of the region
bounded on the north by the Propontis; in other words, the
very country in which, according to Xanthus of Lydia, the
Phry gians first established themselves after their arrival
in Asia.
Phrygia proper, the country first colonised by them, lay between Mount
Dindymus and the river Halys, in the valley of the Upper Sangarios and
its affluents: it was there that the towns and strongholds of their most
venerated leaders, such as Midaion, Dorylaion, Gordiaion, Tataion, and
many others stood close together, perpetuating the memory of Midas,
Dorylas, Gordios, and Tatas. Its climate was severe and liable to
great extremes of temperature, being bitterly cold in winter and almost
tropical during the summer months; forests of oak and pine, however, and
fields of corn flourished, while the mountain slopes favoured the growth
of the vine; it was, in short, an excellent and fertile country, well
fitted for the development of a nation of vinedressers and tillers of
the soil. The slaying of an ox or the destruction of an agricultural
implement was punishable by death, and legend relates that Gordios,
the first Phrygian king, was a peasant by birth. His sole patrimony
consisted of a single pair of oxen, and the waggon used by him in
bringing home his sheaves after the harvest was afterwards placed as an
offering in the temple of Cybele at Ancyra by his son Midas; there was
a local tradition according to which the welfare of all Asia depended on
the knot which bound the yoke to the pole being preserved intact.
Midas did not imitate his fathers simple habits, and the poets, after
crediting him with fabulous wealth, tried also to make out that he was a
conqueror. The kingdom expanded in all directions, and soon included the
upper valley of the Masander, with its primeval sanctuaries, Kydrara,
Colossæ, and Kylsenæ, founded wherever exhalations of steam and boiling
springs betrayed the presence of some supernatural power. The southern
shores of the Hellespont, which formed part of the Troad, and was
the former territory of the Ascania, belonged to it, as did also the
majority of the peoples scattered along the coast of the Euxine between
the mouth of the Sangarios and that of the Halys; those portions of the
central steppe which border on Lake Tatta were also for a time subject
to it, Lydia was under its influence, and it is no exaggeration to say
that in the tenth and eleventh centuries before our era there was a
regular Phrygian empire which held sway, almost without a rival, over
the western half of Asia Minor.
[Illustration: 095.jpg MONUMENT COMMEMORATIVE OF MIDAS]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a plate in Perrot and Chipiez.
It has left behind it so few relics of its existence, that we can only
guess at what it must have been in the days of its prosperity. Three or
four ruined fortresses, a few votive stelae, and a dozen bas-reliefs cut
on the faces of cliffs in a style which at first recalls the Hittite and
Asianic carvings of the preceding age, and afterwards, as we come down
to later times, betrays the influence of early Greek art. In the midst
of one of their cemeteries we come upon a monument resembling the façade
of a house or temple cut out of the virgin rock; it consists of a low
triangular pediment, surmounted by a double scroll, then a rectangle
of greater length than height, framed between two pilasters and a
horizontal string-course, the centre being decorated with a geometrical
design of crosses in a way which suggests the pattern of a carpet; a
recess is hollowed out on a level with the ground, and filled by a blind
door with rebated doorposts. Is it a tomb? The inscription carefully
engraved above one side of the pediment contains the name of Midas, and
seems to show that we have before us a commemorative monument, piously
dedicated by a certain Ates in honour of the Phrygian hero.
[Illustration: 096.jpg A PHRYGIAN GOD]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Ramsay.
Elsewhere we come upon the outlines of a draped female form, sometimes
alone, sometimes accompanied by two lions, or of a man clothed in a
short tunic, holding a sort of straight sceptre in his hand, and we
fancy that we have the image of a god before our eyes, though we cannot
say which of the deities handed down by tradition it may represent.
The religion of the Phrygians is shrouded in the same mystery as their
civilisation and their art, and presents a curious mixture of European
and Asianic elements. The old aboriginal races had worshipped from time
immemorial a certain mother-goddess, Ma, or Amma, the black earth,
which brings forth without ceasing, and nourishes all living things. Her
central place of worship seems, originally, to have been in the region
of the Anti-taurus, and it was there that her sacred cities--Tyana,
Venasa, and the Cappadocian Comana--were to be found as late as Roman
times; in these towns her priests were regarded as kings, and thousands
of her priestesses spent lives of prostitution in her service; but her
sanctuaries, with their special rites and regulations, were scattered
over the whole peninsula. She was sometimes worshipped under the form
of a meteoric stone, or betyle similar to those found in Canaan;* more
frequently she was represented in female shape, with attendant lions, or
placed erect on a lion in the attitude of walking.
* E.g. at Mount Dindymus and at Pessinus, which latter place
was supposed to possess the oldest sanctuary of Cybele. The
Pessinus stone, which was carried off to Rome in 204 B.C.,
was small, irregular in shape, and of a dark colour. Another
stone represented Ida.
[Illustration: 097.jpg THE MOTHER-GODDESS BETWEEN LIONS]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Ramsay.
A moon-god, Men, shared divine honours with her, and with a goddess
Nana whose son Atys had been the only love of Ma and the victim of her
passion. We are told that she compelled him to emasculate himself in
a fit of mad delirium, and then transformed him into a pine tree:
thenceforward her priests made the sacrifice of their virility with
their own hands at the moment of dedicating themselves to the service of
the goddess.*
* Nana was made out to be the daughter of the river
Sangarios. She is said to have conceived Atys by placing in
her bosom the fruit of an almond tree which sprang from the
hermaphrodite Agdistis. This was the form--extremely ancient
in its main features--in which the legend was preserved at
Pessinus.
[Illustration: 098.jpg THE MOTHER-GODDESS AND ATYS]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Chantre. One of
the bas-reliefs at Iasilikiaia, to which we shall have
occasion to refer later on in Chapter III. of the present
volume.
The gods introduced from Thrace by the Phrygians showed a close affinity
with those of the purely Asianic peoples. Precedence was universally
given to a celestial divinity named Bagaios, Lord of the Oak, perhaps
because he was worshipped under a gigantic sacred oak; he was king of
gods and men, then-father,* lord of the thunder and the lightning, the
warrior who charges in his chariot.
* In this capacity he bore the surname Papas.
He, doubtless, allowed a queen-regent of the earth to share his throne,*
but Sauazios, another, and, at first, less venerable deity had thrown
this august pair into the shade.
* The existence of such a goddess may be deduced from the
passage in which Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that
Manes, first king of the Phrygians, was the son of Zeus and
Demeter.
[Illustration: 099.jpg THE GOD MEN ASSOCIATED WITH THE SUN AND OTHER
DEITIES]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Perdrizet. The
last figure on the left is the god Men; the Sun overlooks
all the rest, and a god bearing an axe occupies the extreme
right of the picture. The shapes of these ancient aboriginal
deities have been modified by the influence of Græco-Roman
syncretism, and I merely give these figures, as I do many
others, for lack of better representations.
The Greeks, finding this Sauazios at the head of the Phrygian Pantheon,
identified him with their Zeus, or, less frequently, with the Sun; he
was really a variant of their Dionysos. He became torpid in the autumn,
and slept a death-like sleep all through the winter; but no sooner did
he feel the warmth of the first breath of spring, than he again awoke,
glowing with youth, and revelled during his summer in the heart of the
forest or on the mountain-side, leading a life of riot and intoxication,
guarded by a band of Sauades, spirits of the springs and streams, the
Sileni of Greek mythology. The resemblances detected by the new-comers
between the orgies of Thrace and those of Asia quickly led to confusion
between the different dogmas and divinities. The Phrygians adopted Ma,
and made her their queen, the Cybele who dwells in the hills, and takes
her title from the mountain-tops which she inhabits--Dindymêne on Mount
Dindymus, Sipylêne on Mount Sipylus. She is always the earth, but the
earth untilled, and is seated in the midst of lions, or borne through
her domain in a car drawn by lions, accompanied by a troop of Corybantes
with dishevelled locks. Sauazios, identified with the Asianic Atys,
became her lover and her priest, and Men, transformed by popular
etymology into Manes, the good and beautiful, was looked upon as the
giver of good luck, who protects men after death as well as in life.
This religion, evolved from so many diverse elements, possessed a
character of sombre poetry and sensual fanaticism which appealed
strongly to the Greek imagination: they quickly adopted even its most
barbarous mysteries, those celebrated in honour of the goddess and Atys,
or of Sauazios. They tell us but little of the inner significance of
the symbols and doctrines taught by its votaries, but have frequently
described its outward manifestations. These consisted of aimless
wanderings through the forests, in which the priest, incarnate
representative of his god, led after him the ministers of the temple,
who were identified with the Sauades and nymphs of the heavenly host.
Men heard them passing in the night, heralded by the piercing notes
of the flute provoking to frenzy, and by the clash of brazen cymbals,
accompanied by the din of uproarious ecstasy: these sounds were broken
at intervals by the bellowing of bulls and the roll of drums, like the
rambling of subterranean thunder.
[Illustration: 101.jpg MIDAS OF PHRYGIA]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a specimen in the _Cabinet des
Médailles_. It is a bronze coin from Prymnessos in Phrygia,
belonging to the imperial epoch.
A Midas followed a Gordios, and a Gordios a Midas, in alternate
succession, and under their rule the Phrygian empire enjoyed a period
of prosperous obscurity. Lydia led an uneventful existence beside them,
under dynasties which have received merely passing notice at the hands
of the Greek chroniclers. They credit it at the outset with the almost
fabulous royal line of the Atyadæ, in one of whose reigns the Tyrseni
are said to have migrated into Italy. Towards the twelfth century the
Atyadæ were supplanted by a family of Heraclido, who traced their
descent to a certain Agrôn, whose personality is only a degree less
mythical than his ancestry; he was descended from Heracles through
Alcseus, Belus, and Ninus. Whether these last two names point to
intercourse with one or other of the courts on the banks of the
Euphrates, it is difficult to say. Twenty-one Heraclido, each one the
son of his predecessor, are said to have followed Agrôn on the throne,
their combined reigns giving a total of five hundred years.* Most of
these princes, whether Atyadæ or Heraclidæ, have for us not even a
shadowy existence, and what we know of the remainder is of a purely
fabulous nature. For instance, Kambles is reported to have possessed
such a monstrous appetite, that he devoured his own wife one night,
while asleep.**
* The number is a purely conventional one, and Gutschmid has
shown how it originated. The computation at first comprised
the complete series of 22 Heraclidæ and 5 Mermnadæ,
estimated reasonably at 4 kings to a century, i.e. 27 X 25 =
675 years, from the taking of Sardes to the supposed
accession of Agrôn. As it was known from other sources that
the 5 Mermnadæ had reigned 170 years, these were subtracted
from the 675, to obtain the duration of the Heraclidæ alone,
and by this means were obtained the 505 years mentioned by
Herodotus.
** Another version, related by Nicolas of Damascus, refers
the story to the time of Lardanos, a contemporary of
Hercules; it shows that the Lydian chronographers considered
Kambles or Kamblitas as being one of the last of the Atyad
kings.
The concubine of Meles, again, is said to have brought forth a lion,
and the oracle of Telmessos predicted that the town of Sardes would be
rendered impregnable if the animal were led round the city walls; this
was done, except on the side of the citadel facing Mount Tmolus, which
was considered unapproachable, but it was by that very path that
the Persians subsequently entered the town. Alkimos, we are told,
accumulated immense treasures, and under his rule his subjects enjoyed
unequalled prosperity for fourteen years. It is possible that the story
of the expedition despatched into Palestine by a certain Akiamos, which
ended in the foundation of Ascalon, is merely a feeble echo of the raids
in Syrian and Egyptian waters made by the Tyrseni and Sardinians in the
thirteenth century B.C. The spread of the Phrygians, and the subsequent
progress of Greek colonisation, must have curtailed the possessions
of the Heraclidas from the eleventh to the ninth centuries, but the
material condition of the people does not appear to have suffered
by this diminution of territory. When they had once firmly planted
themselves in the ports along the Asianic littoral--at Kymê, at Phocæ,
at Smyrna, at Clazomenæ, at Colophon, at Ephesus, at Magnesia, at
Miletus--the Æolians and the Ionians lost no time in reaping the
advantages which this position, at the western extremities of the great
high-road through Asia Minor, secured to them. They overran all the
Lydian settlements in Phrygia--Sardes, Leontocephalos, Pessinus,
Gordioon, and Ancyra. The steep banks and the tortuous course of
the Halys failed to arrest them; and they pushed forward beyond the
mysterious regions peopled by the White Syrians, where the ancient
civilisation of Asia Minor still held its sway. The search for precious
metals mainly drew them on--the gold and silver, the copper, bronze, and
above all iron, which the Chalybæ found in their mountains, and which
were conveyed by caravans from the regions of the Caucasus to the sacred
towns of Teiria and Pteria.*
* The site of Pteria has been fixed at Boghaz-keui by
Texier, an identification which has been generally adopted;
Euyuk is very probably Teiria, a town of the Lcucosyrians,
mentioned by Hecatsous of Miletus in his work.
The friendly relations into which they entered with the natives on these
journeys resulted before long in barter and intermarriage, though their
influence made itself felt in different ways, according to the character
of the people on whom it was brought to bear.
[Illustration: 104.jpg THE STEEP BANKS OF THE HALYS FAILED TO ARREST
THEM]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by A. Boissier.
The road leading from Angora to Yuzgat crosses the river not
far from the site shown here, near the spot where the
ancient road crossed.
They gave as a legacy to Phrygia one of their alphabets, that of Kymê,
which soon banished the old Hittite syllabary from the monuments,
and they borrowed in exchange Phrygian customs, musical instruments,
traditions, and religious orgies. A Midas sought in marriage Hermodikê,
the daughter of Agamemnon the Kymsoan, while another Midas, who
had consulted the oracle of Delphi, presented to the god the
chryselephantine throne on which he was wont to sit when he dispensed
justice.
[Illustration: 105.jpg VIEW OVEK THE PLAIN OF SARDES]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.
This interchange of amenities and these alliances, however, had a merely
superficial effect, and in no way modified the temperament and life
of the people in inner Asia Minor. They remained a robust, hardworking
race, attached to their fields and woods, loutish and slow of
understanding, unskilled in war, and not apt in defending themselves in
spite of their natural bravery. The Lydians, on the contrary, submitted
readily to foreign influence, and the Greek leaven introduced among them
became the germ of a new civilisation, which occupied an intermediate
place between that of the Greek and that of the Oriental world. About
the first half of the eighth century B.C. the Lydians had become
organised into a confederation of several tribes, governed by hereditary
chiefs, who were again in their turn subject to the Heraclidæ occupying
Sardes.* This town rose in terraces on the lower slopes of a detached
spur of the Tmolus running in the direction of the Hermos, and was
crowned by the citadel, within which were included the royal palace,
the treasury, and the arsenals. It was surrounded by an immense plain,
bounded on the south by a curve of the Tmolus, and on the west by the
distant mountains of Phrygia Katake-kaumenê. The Mæonians still claimed
primacy over the entire race, and the family was chosen from among their
nobles. The king, who was supposed to be descended from the gods, bore,
as the insignia of his rank, a double-headed axe, the emblem of his
divine ancestors. The Greeks of later times said that the axe was that
of their Heracles, which was wrested by him from the Amazon Hippolyta,
and given to Omphalê.**
* Gelzer was the first, to my knowledge, to state that Lydia
was a feudal state, and he defined its constitution. Radet
refuses to recognise it as feudal in the true sense of the
term, and he prefers to see in it a confederation of states
under the authority of a single prince.
** Gelzer sees in the legend about the axe related by
Plutarch, a reminiscence of a primitive gynocracy. The axe
is the emblem of the god of war, and, as such, belongs to
the king: the coins of Mylasa exhibit it held by Zeus
Labraundos.
[Illustration: 106.jpg THE AXE BORNE BY ZEUS LABRAUNDOS]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the Cabinet des
Médailles.
The king was the supreme head of the priesthood, as also of the vassal
chiefs and of the army, but he had as a subordinate a companion who
could replace him when occasion demanded, and he was assisted in the
exercise of his functions by the counsel of Friends, and further still
in extraordinary circumstances by the citizens of the capital assembled
in the public square. This intervention of the voice of the populace
was a thing unknown in the East, and had probably been introduced in
imitation of customs observed among the Greeks of Æolia or Ionia; it was
an important political factor, and might possibly lead to an outbreak or
a revolution. Outside the pale of Sardes and the province of Mæonia, the
bulk of Lydian territory was distributed among a very numerous body of
landowners, who were particularly proud of their noble descent. Many of
these country magnates held extensive fiefs, and had in their pay small
armies, which rendered them almost independent, and the only way for
the sovereign to succeed in ruling them was to conciliate them at all
hazards, and to keep them in perpetual enmity with their fellows. Two of
these rival families vied with each other in their efforts to secure
the royal favour; that of the Tylonidæ and that of the Mermnadæ, the
principal domain of which latter lay at Teira, in the valley of the
Cayster, though they had also other possessions at Dascylion, in
Hellespontine Phrygia. The head sometimes of one and sometimes of the
other family would fill that post of companion which placed all the
resources of the kingdom at the disposal of the occupant.
The first of the Mermnadæ of whom we get a glimpse is Daskylos, son of
Gyges, who about the year 740 was companion during the declining years
of Ardys, over whom he exercised such influence that Adyattes, the
heir to the throne, took umbrage at it, and caused him to be secretly
assassinated, whereupon his widow, fearing for her own safety, hastily
fled into Phrygia, of which district she was a native. On hearing of the
crime, Ardys, trembling with anger, convoked the Assembly, and as his
advanced age rendered walking difficult, he caused himself to be carried
to the public square in a litter. Having reached the place, he laid the
assassins under a curse, and gave permission to any who could find them
to kill them; he then returned to his palace, where he died a few years
later, about 730 B.C. Adyattes took the name of Meles on ascending the
throne, and at first reigned happily, but his fathers curse weighed
upon him, and before long began to take effect. Lydia having been laid
waste by a famine, the oracle declared that, before appeasing the gods,
the king must expiate the murder of the Mermnad noble, by making every
atonement in his power, if need be by an exile of three years duration.
Meles submitted to the divine decree. He sought out the widow of his
victim, and learning that during her flight she had given birth to a
son, called, like his father, Daskylos, he sent to entreat the young
man to repair immediately to Sardes, that he might make amends for the
murder; the youth, however, alleged that he was as yet unborn at the
hour of his fathers death, and therefore not entitled to be a party
to an arrangement which did not personally affect him, and refused
to return to his own country. Having failed in this attempt, Meles
entrusted the regency of his kingdom to Sadyattes, son of Kadys, one of
the Tylonidas, who probably had already filled the post of companion
to the king for some time past, and set out for Babylon. When the three
years had elapsed, Sadyattes faithfully handed over to him the reins of
government and resumed the second place. Myrsos succeeded Meles about
716,* and his accession immediately became the cause of uneasiness
to the younger Daskylos, who felt that he was no longer safe from the
intrigues of the Heraclidaî; he therefore quitted Phrygia and settled
beyond the Italys among the White Syrians, one of whom he took in
marriage, and had by her a son, whom he called Gyges, after his
ancestor. The Lydian chronicles which have come down to us make no
mention of him, after the birth of this child, for nearly a quarter of a
century. We know, however, from other sources, that the country in which
he took refuge had for some time past been ravaged by enemies coming
from the Caucasus, known to us as the Cimmerians.**
* The lists of Eusebius give 36 years to Ardys, 14 years to
Meles or Adyattes, 12 years to Myrsos, and 17 years to
Candaules; that is to say, if we place the accession of
Gyges in 687, the dates of the reign of Candaules are 704-
687, of that of Mysros 716-704, of that of Meles 730-716, of
that of Ardys I. 766-730. Oelzer thinks that the double
names each represent a different Icing; Radet adheres to the
four generations of Eusebius.
** I would gladly have treated at length the subject of the
Cimmerians with its accompanying developments, but lack of
space prevents me from doing more than summing up here the
position I have taken. Most modern critics have rejected
that part of the tradition preserved by Herodotus which
refers to the itinerary of the Cimmerians, and have confused
the Cimmerian invasion with that of the Thracian tribes. I
think that there is reason to give weight to Herodotus
statement, and to distinguish carefully between two series
of events: (1) a movement of peoples coming from Europe into
Asia, by the routes that Herodotus indicates, about the
latter half of the eighth century B.C., who would be more
especially the Cimmerians; (2) a movement of peoples coming
from Europe into Asia by the Thracian Bosphorus, and among
whom there was perhaps, side by side with the Treres, a
remnant of Cimmerian tribes who had been ousted by the
Scythians. The two streams would have had their confluence
in the heart of Asia Minor, in the first half of the seventh
century.
[Illustration: 110.jpg A CONFLICT WITH TWO GRIFFINS.]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the reliefs on the crown
of the Great Blinitza.
Previous to this period these had been an almost mythical race in the
eyes of the civilised races of the Oriental world. They imagined them as
living in a perpetual mist on the confines of the universe: Never
does bright Helios look upon them with his rays, neither when he rises
towards the starry heaven, nor when he turns back from heaven towards
the earth, but a baleful night spreads itself over these miserable
mortals. *
* Odyssey, xi. 14-19. It is this passage which Ephorus
applies to the Cimmerians of his own time who were
established in the Crimea, and which accounts for his saying
that they were a race of miners, living perpetually
underground.
Fabulous animals, such as griffins with lions bodies, having the neck
and ears of a fox, and the wings and beak of an eagle, wandered over
their plains, and sometimes attacked them; the inhabitants were forced
to defend themselves with axes, and did not always emerge victorious
from these terrible conflicts.
[Illustration: 111.jpg SCYTHIANS ARMED FOR WAR]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the reliefs on the silver vase
of Kul-Oba.
The few merchants who had ventured to penetrate into their country had
returned from their travels with less fanciful notions concerning the
nature of the regions frequented by them, but little continued to be
known of them, until an unforeseen occurrence obliged them to quit their
remote steppes. The Scythians, driven from the plains of the Iaxartes by
an influx of the Massagetæ, were urged forwards in a westerly direction
beyond the Volga and the Don, and so great was the terror inspired by
the mere report of their approach, that the Cimmerians decided to quit
their own territory. A tradition current in Asia three centuries later,
told how their kings had counselled them to make a stand against the
invaders; the people, however, having refused to listen to their advice,
their rulers and those who were loyal to them fell by each others
hands, and their burial-place was still shown near the banks of the
Tyras. Some of their tribes took refuge in the Chersonesus Taurica, but
the greater number pushed forward beyond the Mæotio marshes; a body of
Scythians followed in their track, and the united horde pressed onwards
till they entered Asia Minor, keeping to the shores of the Black Sea.*
This heterogeneous mass of people came into conflict first with
Urartu; then turning obliquely in a south-easterly direction, their
advance-guard fell upon the Mannai. But they were repulsed by Sargons
generals; the check thus administered forced them to fall back speedily
upon other countries less vigorously defended. The Scythians, therefore,
settled themselves in the eastern basin of the Araxes, on the frontiers
of Urartu and the Mannai, where they formed themselves into a kind of
marauding community, perpetually quarrelling with their neighbours.**
The Cimmerians took their way westwards, and established themselves
upon the upper waters of the Araxes, the Euphrates, the Halys, and the
Thermodon,*** greatly to the vexation of the rulers of Urartu.
* The version of Aristaeas of Proconnesus, as given by
Herodotus and by Damastes of Sigsea, attributes a more
complex origin to this migration, i.e. that the Arimaspes
had driven the Issedonians before them, and that the latter
had in turn driven the Scythians back on the Cimmerians.
** The Scythians of the tradition preserved by Herodotus
must have been the Ashguzai or Ishkuzai of the cuneiform
documents. The original name must have been Skuza, Shkuza,
with a sound in the second syllable that the Greeks have
rendered by _th_, and the Assyrians by _z_: the initial
vowel has been added, according to a well-known rule, to
facilitate the pronunciation of the combination sk, sine. An
oracle of the time of Esarhaddon shows that they occupied
one of the districts really belonging to the Mannai: and it
is probably they who are mentioned in a passage of Jer. li.
27, where the traditional reading _Aschenaz_ should be
replaced by that of Ashkuz.
*** It is doubtless to these events that the tradition
preserved by Pompeius Trogus, which is known to us through
his abbreviator Justin, or through the compilers of a later
period, refers, concerning the two Scythian princes Ylinus
and Scolopitus: they seem to have settled along the coast,
on the banks of the Thermodon and in the district of
Themiscyra.
They subsequently felt their way along the valleys of the Anti-Taurus,
but finding them held by Assyrian troops, they turned their steps
towards the country of the White Syrians, seized Sinôpê, where the
Greeks had recently founded a colony, and bore down upon Phrygia. It
would appear that they were joined in these regions by other hordes from
Thrace which had crossed the Bosphorus a few years earlier, and among
whom the ancient historians particularly make mention of the Treres;*
the results of the Scythian invasion had probably been felt by all the
tribes on the banks of the Dnieper, and had been the means of forcing
them in the direction of the Danube and the Balkans, whence they drove
before them, as they went, the inhabitants of the Thracian peninsula
across into Asia Minor. It was about the year 750 B.C. that the
Cimmerians had been forced to quit their first home, and towards 720
that they came into contact with the empires of the East; the Treres had
crossed the Bosphorus about 710, and the meeting of the two streams of
immigration may be placed in the opening years of the seventh century.**
* Strabo says decisively that the Treres were both
Cimmerians and Thracians; elsewhere he makes the Treres
synonymous with the Cimmerians. The Treres were probably the
predominating tribe among the people which had come into
Asia on that side.
** Gelzer thinks that the invasion by the Bosphorus took
place about 705, and Radet about 708; and their reckoning
seems to me to be so likely to be correct, that I do not
hesitate to place the arrival of the Treres in Asia about
the time they have both indicated--roughly speaking, about
710 B.C.
The combined hordes did not at once attack Phrygia itself, but spread
themselves along the coast, from the mouths of the Ehyndakos to those of
Halys, constituting a sort of maritime confederation of which Heraclea
and Sinôpê were the chief towns. This confederation must not be regarded
as a regularly constituted state, but rather as a vast encampment in
which the warriors could leave their families and their spoil in safety;
they issued from it nearly every year to spread themselves over the
neighbouring provinces, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in
another. The ancient sanctuaries of Pteria and the treasures they
contained excited their cupidity, but they were not well enough equipped
to undertake the siege of a strongly fortified place, and for want
of anything better were content to hold it to ransom. The bulk of the
indigenous population lived even then in those subterranean dwellings so
difficult of access, which are still used as habitations by the tribes
on the banks of the Halys, and it is possible that they helped to
swell the marauding troops of the new-comers. In the declining years of
Sennacherib, it would appear that the Ninevite provinces possessed
an irresistible attraction for these various peoples. The fame of the
wealth accumulated in the regions beyond the Taurus and the Euphrates,
in Syria and Mesopotamia, provoked their cupidity beyond all bounds, and
the time was at hand when the fear alone of the Assyrian armies would no
longer avail to hold them in check.
The last years of Sennacherib had been embittered by the intrigues which
usually gathered around a monarch enfeebled by age and incapable of
bearing the cares of government with his former vigour. A fierce rivalry
existed between those of his sons who aspired to the throne, each of
whom possessed his following of partisans, both at court and among the
people, who were ready to support him, if need be even with the sword.
[Illustration: 115.jpg INHABITED CAVES ON THE BANKS OF THE HALYS]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph sent by Alfred Boissier.
One of these princes, probably the eldest of the kings remaining
sons,* named Assur-akhê-iddin, called by us Esarhaddon, bad already been
nominated his successor, and had received the official investiture of
the Babylonian kingdom under the name of Assur-etilmukîn-pal.**
* The eldest was perhaps that Assur-nadin-shumu who reigned
in Babylon, and who was taken prisoner to Elam by King
Khalludush.
** The idea of an enthronisation at Babylon in the lifetime
of Sennacherib, put forward by the earlier Assyriologists,
based on an inscription on a lions head discovered at
Babylon, has been adopted and confirmed by Winckler. It was
doubtless on this occasion that Esarhaddon received as a
present from his father the objects mentioned in the
document which Sayce and Budge have called, without
sufficient reason, _The Will of Sennacherib_.
The catastrophe of 689 had not resulted in bringing about the ruin of
Babylon, as Sennacherib and his ministers had hoped. The temples, it
is true, had been desecrated and demolished, the palaces and public
buildings razed to the ground, and the ramparts thrown down, but, in
spite of the fact that the city had been set on fire by the conquerors,
the quarters inhabited by the lower classes still remained standing,
and those of the inhabitants who had escaped being carried away captive,
together with such as had taken refuge in the surrounding country or
had hidden themselves in neighbouring cities, had gradually returned
to their desolated homes. They cleared the streets, repaired the damage
inflicted during the siege, and before long the city, which was believed
to be hopelessly destroyed, rose once more with the vigour, if not with
the wealth, which it had enjoyed before its downfall. The mother of
Esarhaddon was a Babylonian, by name Nakïa; and as soon as her son came
into possession of his inheritance, an impulse of filial piety moved him
to restore to his mothers city its former rank of capital. Animated
by the strong religious feeling which formed the groundwork of his
character, Esarhaddon had begun his reign by restoring the sanctuaries
which had been the cradle of the Assyrian religion, and his intentions,
thus revealed at the very outset, had won for him the sympathy of the
Babylonians;* this, indeed, was excited sooner than he expected, and
perhaps helped to secure to him his throne. During his absence from
Nineveh, a widespread plot had been formed in that city, and on the 20th
day of Tebeth, 681, at the hour when Sennacherib was praying before the
image of his god, two of his sons, Sharezer and Adarmalik (Adrammelech),
assassinated their father at the foot of the altar.**
* A fragment seems to show clearly that the restoration of
the temples was begun even in the lifetime of Sennacherib.
** We possess three different accounts of the murder of
Sennacherib: 1. In the _Babylonian Chronicle of Pinches_. 2.
In the Bible (2 Kings xix. 36, 37; cf. Isa. xxxvii. 37, 38;
2 Chron. xxxii. 21). 3. In Berosus. The biblical account
alone mentions both murderers; the _Chronicle_ and Berosus
speak of only one, and their testimony seems to prevail with
several historians. I believe that the silence of the
_Chronicle_ and of Berosus is explained by the fact that
Sharezer was chief in the conspiracy, and the one among the
sons who aspired to the kingdom: the second murderer merely
acted for his brother, and consequently had no more right to
be mentioned by name than those accomplices not of the
blood-royal who shared in the murder. The name Sharezer is
usually considered as an abbreviation of the Assyrian name
Nergal-sharuzur, or Assur-sharuzur. Winckler thinks that he
sees in it a corruption of Sharitir, abbreviated from
Sharitir-assur, which he finds as a royal name on a fragment
in the British Museum; he proposes to recognise in this
Sharitir-assur, Sharezer enthroned after his fathers death.
One half of the army proclaimed Sharezer king; the northern provinces
espoused his cause; and Esarhaddon must for the moment have lost all
hope of the succession. His fathers tragic fate overwhelmed him with
fear and grief; he rent his clothes, groaned and lamented like a lion
roaring, and could be comforted only by the oracles pronounced by
the priests of Babylon. An assurance that the gods favoured his cause
reached him even from Assyria, and Nineveh, after a few weeks of
vacillation, acknowledged him as its sovereign, the rebellion being
mercilessly crushed on the 2nd of Adar.*
* The Bible alone tells us that Sharezer retired to Urartu
(2 Kings xix. 37). To explain the plan of this campaign, it
is usually supposed that at the time of his fathers death
Esarhaddon was either beyond Mount Taurus or else on the
Armenian frontier; the sequence of the dates in the
_Babylonian Chronicle of Pinches_, compels me to revert to
the opinion that Esarhaddon marched from Babylon against the
rebels, and pursued them as far as Mount Taurus, and beyond
it to Khanigalbat.
Although this was a considerable advantage to Esarhaddons cause,
it could not be considered as decisive, since the provinces of the
Euphrates still declared for Sharezer; the gods, therefore, once more
intervened. Ishtar of Arbela had long been considered as the recognised
patroness and oracle of the dynasty. Whether it were a question of a
foreign expedition or a rebellion at home, of a threatened plague or
invasion, of a marriage or an alliance with some powerful neighbour, the
ruling sovereign would invariably have recourse to her, always with the
same formula, to demand counsel of her for the conduct of affairs in
hand, and the replies which she vouchsafed in various ways were
taken into consideration; her will, as expressed by the mouth of her
ministers, would hasten, suspend, or modify the decisions of the king.
Esarhaddon did not neglect to consult the goddess, as well as Assur and
Sin, Shamash, Bel, Nebo, and Nergal; and their words, transcribed upon
a tablet of clay, induced him to act without further delay: Go, do not
hesitate, for we march with thee and we will cast down thine enemies!
Thus encouraged, he made straight for the scene of danger without
passing through Nineveh, so as to prevent Sharezer and his party having
time to recover. His biographers depict Esarhaddon hurrying forward,
often a day or more in advance of his battalions, without once turning
to see who followed him, and without waiting to allow the horses of his
baggage-waggons to be unharnessed or permitting his servant^ to pitch
his tent; he rested merely for a few moments on the bare ground,
indifferent to the cold and nocturnal frosts of the month of Sebat. It
would appear as if Sharezer had placed his hopes on the Cimmerians, and
had expected their chiefs to come to the rescue. This hypothesis seems
borne out by the fact that the decisive battle took place beyond the
Euphrates and the Taurus, in the country of Khanigalbat. Esarhaddon
attributed his success to Ishtar, the goddess of bravery and of combat;
she alone had broken the weapons of the rebels, she alone had brought
confusion into their lines, and had inclined the hearts of the survivors
to submit. They cried aloud, This is our king! and Sharezer thereupon
fled into Armenia. The war had been brought to a close with such
rapidity that even the most unsettled of the Assyrian subjects and
vassals had not had time to take advantage of it for their own purposes;
the Kaldâ on the Persian Gulf, and the Sidonians on the Mediterranean,
were the only two peoples who had openly revolted, and were preparing
to enter on a struggle to preserve their independence thus once more
regained. Yet the events of the preceding months had shaken the power
of Nineveh more seriously than we should at first suppose. For the first
time since the accession of Tiglath-pileser III. the almost inevitable
troubles which accompany the change of a sovereign had led to an open
war. The vast army of Sargon and Sennacherib had been split up, and the
two factions into which it was divided, commanded as they were by
able generals and composed of troops accustomed to conquer, must have
suffered more keenly in an engagement with each other than in the course
of an ordinary campaign against a common enemy. One part at least of the
military staff had become disorganised; regiments had been decimated,
and considerable contingents were required to fill the vacancies in the
ranks. The male population of Assyria, suddenly called on to furnish the
necessary effective force, could not supply the demand without drawing
too great a proportion of men from the country; and one of those crises
of exhaustion was imminent which come upon a nation after an undue
strain, often causing its downfall in the midst of its success, and
yielding it an easy prey to the wiles of its adversaries.*
* The information we possess concerning Esarhaddon is
gathered from: 1. _The Insertion of Cylinders A, B, C_, the
second of the three better known as the _Broken Cylinder_.
These texts contain a summary of the kings wars, in which
the subject-matter is arranged geographically, not
chronologically: they cease with the _eponymy_ of Akhazilu,
i.e. the year 673. 2. Some mutilated fragments, of the
_Annals_. 3. _The Blade Stone of Aberdeen_, on which the
account of the rebuilding of Babylon is given. 4. _The Stele
of Zindjirli_. 5. The consultations of the god Shamash by
Esarhaddon in different circumstances of his reign. 6. A
considerable number of small inscriptions and some tablets.
The classification of the events of this reign presents
serious difficulties, which have been partly overcome by
passages in the _Babylonian Chronicle of Pinches_.
Esarhaddon was personally inclined for peace, and as soon as he was
established on the throne he gave orders that the building works, which
had been suspended during the late troubles, should be resumed and
actively pushed forward; but the unfortunate disturbances of the
times did not permit of his pursuing his favourite occupation without
interruption, and, like those of his warlike predecessors, his life was
passed almost entirely on the field of battle. Babylon, grateful for
what he had done for her, tendered him an unbroken fidelity throughout
the stormy episodes of his reign, and showed her devotion to him by an
unwavering obedience. The Kaldâ received no support from that quarter,
and were obliged to bear the whole burden of the war which they had
provoked. Their chief, Nabu-zîru-kînish-lîshir, who had been placed
over them by Sennacherib, now harassed the cities of Karduniash, and
Ningal-shumiddin, the prefect of Uru, demanded immediate help from
Assyria. Esarhaddon at once despatched such a considerable force that
the Kaldu chief did not venture to meet it in the open field, and after
a few unimportant skirmishes he gave up the struggle, and took refuge in
Elam. Khumbân-khaldash, had died there in 680, a few months before
the murder of Sennacherib, and his son, a second Khumbân-khaldash, had
succeeded him; this prince appears either to have shared the peaceful
tastes of his brother-king of Assyria, or more probably did not feel
himself sufficiently secure of his throne to risk the chance of coming
into collision with his neighbour. He caused Nabu-zîru-kînish-lîshir to
be slain, and Nâîd-marduk, the other son of Merodach-baladan, who had
shared his brothers flight, was so terrified at his murder that he at
once sought refuge in Nineveh; he was reinstated in his paternal
domain on condition of paying a tribute, and, faithful to his oath of
allegiance, he thenceforward came yearly in person to bring his dues and
pay homage to his sovereign (679). The Kaldâ rising had, in short, been
little more than a skirmish, and the chastisement of the Sidonians would
have involved neither time nor trouble, had not the desultory movements
of the barbarians obliged the Assyrians to concentrate their troops on
several points which were threatened on their northern frontier.
The Cimmerians and the Scythians had not suffered themselves to be
disconcerted by the rapidity with which the fate of Sharezer had been
decided, and after a moments hesitation they had again set out in
various directions on their work of conquest, believing, no doubt, that
they would meet with a less vigorous resistance after so serious an
upheaval at Nineveh. The Cimmerians appear to have been the first to
have provoked hostilities; their king Tiushpa, who ruled over their
territory on the Black Sea, ejected the Assyrian garrisons placed on the
Cappadocian frontier, and his presence in that quarter aroused all
the insubordinate elements still remaining in the Cilician valleys.
Esarhaddon brought him to a stand on the confines of the plain of Saros,
defeated him in Khubushna,* and drove the remains of the horde back
across the Halys.
* Several Assyriologists have thought that Khubushna might
be an error for Khubushkhia, and have sought the seat of war
on the eastern frontier of Assyria: in reality the context
shows that the place under discussion is a district in Asia
Minor, identified with Kamisene by Gelzcr, but left
unidentified by most authorities. Jensen has shown that the
name is mot with as early as the inscriptions of Tiglath-
pileser III., where we should read Khubishna, and he places
the country in Northern Syria, or perhaps further north in
the western part of Taurus. The determinative proves that
there was a town of this name as well as a district, and
this consideration encourages mo to recognise in Khubushna
or Khubishna the town of Kabissos-Kabessos, the Sis of the
kingdom of Lesser Armenia.
Having thus averted the Cimmerian danger, he was able, without
much difficulty, to bring the rebels of the western provinces into
subjection.* His troops thrust back the Cilicians and Duha into the
rugged fastnesses of the Taurus, and razed to the ground one and twenty
of their strongholds, besides burning numberless villages and carrying
the inhabitants away captive.**
* These expeditions are not dated in any of the documents
that deal with them: the fact that they are mentioned along
with the war against Tiushpa and Sidon makes me inclined to
consider them as being a result of the Cimmerian invasion.
They were, strictly speaking, the quelling of revolts caused
by the presence of the Cimmerians in that part of the
empire.
** The Duua or Duha of this campaign, who are designated as
neighbours of the Tabal, lived in the Anti-taurus: the name
of the town, Tyana, _Tuana_, is possibly composed of their
name and of the suffix _-na_, which is met with in Asianio
languages.
The people of Parnaki, in the bend of the Euphrates between Tel-Assur
and the sources of the Balîkh, had taken up arms on hearing of the brief
successes of Tiushpa, but were pitilessly crushed by Esarhaddon. The
sheikh of Arzani, in the extreme south of Syria, close to the brook of
Egypt, had made depredations on the Assyrian frontier, but he was seized
by the nearest governor and sent in chains to Nineveh. A cage was built
for him at the gate of the city, and he was exposed in it to the jeers
of the populace, in company with the bears, dogs, and boars which the
Ninevites were in the habit of keeping confined there. It would appear
that Esarhaddon set himself to come to a final reckoning with Sidon and
Phoenicia, the revolt of which had irritated him all the more, in that
it showed an inexcusable ingratitude towards his family. For it was
Sennacherib who, in order to break the power of Blulai, had not only
rescued Sidon from the dominion of Tyre, but had enriched it with the
spoils taken from its former rulers, and had raised it to the first
rank among the Phoenician cities. Ethbaal in his lifetime had never been
wanting in gratitude, but his successor, Abdimilkôt, forgetful of recent
services, had chafed at the burden of a foreign yoke, and had recklessly
thrown it off as soon as an occasion presented itself. He had thought
to strengthen himself by securing the help of a certain Sanduarri,
who possessed the two fortresses of Kundu and Sîzu, in the Cilician
mountains;* but neither this alliance nor the insular position of his
capital was able to safeguard him, when once the necessity for stemming
the tide of the Cimmerian influx was over, and the whole of the Assyrian
force was free to be brought against him.
* Some Assyriologists have proposed to locate these two
towns in Cilicia; others place them in the Lebanon, Kundi
being identified with the modern village of Ain-Kundiya. The
name of Kundu so nearly recalls that of Kuinda, the ancient
fort mentioned by Strabo, to the north of Anchialê, between
Tarsus and Anazarbus, that I do not hesitate to identify
them, and to place Kundu in Cilicia.
Abdimilkôt attempted to escape by sea before the last attack, but he was
certainly taken prisoner, though the circumstances are unrecorded,
and Sanduarri fell into the enemys hands a short time after. The
suppression of the rebellion was as vindictive as the ingratitude which
prompted it was heinous. Sidon was given up to the soldiery and then
burnt, while opposite to the ruins of the island city the Assyrians
built a fortress on the mainland, which they called Kar-Esarhaddon. The
other princes of Phoenicia and Syria were hastily convoked, and were
witnesses of the vengeance wreaked on the city, as well as of the
installation of the governor to whom the new province was entrusted.
They could thus see what fate awaited them in the event of their showing
any disposition to rebel, and the majority of them were not slow to
profit by the lesson. The spoil was carried back in triumph to Nineveh,
and comprised, besides the two kings and their families, the remains of
their court and people, and the countless riches which the commerce of
the world had brought into the great ports of the Mediterranean--ebony,
ivory, gold and silver, purple, precious woods, household furniture,
and objects of value from all parts in such quantities that it was long
before the treasury at Nineveh needed any replenishing.* The reverses of
the Cimmerians did not serve as a warning to the Scythians. Settled
on the borders of Manna, partly, no doubt, on the territory formerly
dependent on that state,** they secretly incited the inhabitants to
revolt, and to join in the raids which they made on the valley of the
Upper Zab, and they would even have urged their horses up to the very
walls of Nineveh had the occasion presented itself.
* The importance of the event and the amount of the spoil
captured are apparent, if we notice that Esarhaddon does not
usually record the booty taken after each campaign; he does
so only when the number of objects and of prisoners taken
from the enemy is extraordinary. The _Babylonian Chronicle
of Pinches_ places the capture of Sidon in the second, and
the death of Abdimilkôt in the fifth year of his reign.
Hence Winckler has concluded that Abdimilkôt held out for
fully two years after the loss of Sidon. The general tenor
of the account, as given by the inscriptions, seems to me to
be that the capture of the king followed closely on the fall
of the town: Abdimilkôt and Sanduarri probably spent the
years between 679 and 676 in prison.
** One of the oracles of Shamash speaks of the captives as
dwelling in a canton of the Mannai.
Esarhaddon, warned of their intrigues by the spies which he sent among
them, could not bring himself either to anticipate their attack or to
assume the offensive, but anxiously consulted the gods with regard to
them: O Shamash, he wrote to the Sun-god, great lord, thou whom I
question, answer me in sincerity! From this day forth, the 22nd day of
this month of Simanu, until the 21st day of the month of Duzu of this
year, during these thirty days and thirty nights, a time has been
foreordained favourable to the work of prophecy. In this time thus
foreordained, the hordes of the Scythians who inhabit a district of the
Mannai, and who have crossed the Mannian frontier,--will they succeed in
their undertaking? Will they emerge from the passes of Khubushkia at
the towns of Kharrânia and Anîsuskia; will they ravage the borders
of Assyria and steal great booty, immense spoil? that doth thy high
divinity know. Is it a decree, and in the mouth of thy high divinity, O
Shamash, great lord, ordained and promulgated? He who sees, shall he see
it; he who hears, shall he hear it? *
* The town of Anîsuskia is not mentioned elsewhere, but
Kharrânia is met with in the account of the thirty-first
campaign of Shalmaneser III. with Kharrâna as its variant.
The god comforted his faithful servant, but there was a brief delay
before his answer threw light on the future, and the kings questions
were constantly renewed as fresh couriers brought in further
information. In 678 B.C. the Scythians determined to try their fortune,
and their king, Ishpakai,* took the field, followed by the Mannai. He
was defeated and driven back to the north of Lake Urumiah, the Mannai
were reduced to subjection, and Assyria once more breathed freely.
The victory, however, was not a final one, and affairs soon assumed as
threatening an aspect as before. The Scythian tribes came on the scene,
one after another, and allied themselves to the various peoples subject
either directly or indirectly to Nineveh.** On one occasion it was
Kashtariti, the regent of Karkashshi,*** who wrote to Mamitiarshu, one
of the Median princes, to induce him to make common cause with himself
in attacking the fortress of Kishshashshu on the eastern border of the
empire. At another time we find the same chief plotting with the Mannai
and the Saparda to raid the town of Kilmân, and Esarhaddon implores the
god to show him how the place may be saved from their machinations.****
* This kings name seems to be of Iranian origin. Justi has
connected it with the name Aspakos, which is read in a Greek
inscription of the Cimmerian Bosphorus; both forms have been
connected with the Sanskrit Açvalca.
** This subdivision of the horde into several bodies seems
to be indicated by the number of different royal names among
the Scythians which are mentioned in the Assyrian documents.
*** The site of Karkashshi is unknown, but the list of
Median princes subdued by Sargon shows that it was situated
in Media. Kishshashshu is very probably the same as Kishisim
or Kishisu, the town which Sargon subdued, and which he
called Kar-nergal or Kar-ninib, and which is mentioned in
the neighbourhood of Parsuash, Karalla, Kharkhar, Media, and
Ellipi. I think that it would be in the basin of the Gave--
Rud; Billerbeck places it at the ruins of Siama, in the
upper valley of the Lesser Zab.
**** The people of Saparda, called by the Persians Sparda,
have been with good reason identified with the Sepharad of
the prophet Obadiah (ver. 20): the Assyrian texts show that
this country should be placed in the neighbourhood of the
Mannai of the Medes.
He opens negotiations in order to gain time, but the barbarity of his
adversary is such that he fears for his envoys safety, and speculates
whether he may not have been put to death. The situation would indeed
have become critical if Kashtariti had succeeded in bringing against
Assyria a combined force of Medes, Scythians, Mannai, and Cimmerians,
together with Urartu and its king, Eusas III.; but, fortunately, petty
hatreds made the combination of these various elements an impossibility,
and they were unable to arrive at even a temporary understanding.
The Scythians themselves were not united as to the best course to be
pursued, and while some endeavoured to show their hostility by every
imaginable outrage and annoyance, others, on the contrary, desired to
enter into friendly relations with Assyria. Esarhaddon received on
one occasion an embassy from Bartatua,* one of their kings, who humbly
begged the hand of a lady of the blood-royal, swearing to make a lasting
friendship with him if Esarhaddon would consent to the marriage. It was
hard for a child brought up in the harem, amid the luxury and comfort
of a civilised court, to be handed over to a semi-barbarous spouse; but
state policy even in those days was exacting, and more than one princess
of the line of Sargon had thus sacrificed herself by an alliance which
was to the interest of her own people.**
* Bartatua is, according to Wincklers ingenious
observation, the Proto-thyes of Herodotus, the father of
Madyes. [The name should more probably be read Masta-tua--
Ed.]
** Sargon had in like manner given one of his daughters in
marriage to Ambaris, King of Tabal, in order to attach him
to the Assyrian cause, but without permanent success.
What troubled Esarhaddon was not the thought of sacrificing a sister
or a daughter, but a misgiving that the sacrifice would not produce
the desired result, and in his difficulty he once more had recourse to
Shamash. If Esarhaddon, King of Assyria, grants a daughter of the blood
(royal) to Bartatua, the King of the Iskuza, who has sent an embassy
to him to ask a wife, will Bartatua, King of the Iskuza, act loyally
towards Esarhaddon, King of Assyria? will he honestly and faithfully
enter into friendly engagements with Esarhaddon, King of Assyria? will
he observe the conditions (made by) Esarhaddon, King of Assyria? will he
fulfil them punctually? that thy high divinity knoweth. His promises, in
a decree and in the mouth of thy high divinity, O Shamash, great lord,
are they decreed, promulgated? It is not recorded what came of these
negotiations, nor whether the god granted the hand of the princess to
her barbarian suitor. All we know is, that the incursions and intrigues
of the Scythians continued to be a perpetual source of trouble to the
Medes, and roused them either to rebel against Assyria or to claim the
protection of its sovereign. Esarhaddon, in the course of his reign,
was more than once compelled to interfere in order to ensure peace and
quietness to the provinces on the table-land of Iran, which Sargon had
conquered and which Sennacherib had retained.*
* Several recent historians allege that Sennacherib did not
keep the territories that Sargon had conquered, and that the
Assyrian frontier became contracted on that side; whereas
the general testimony of the known texts seems to me to
prove the contrary, namely, that he preserved nearly all the
territory annexed by his father, and that Esarhaddon was far
from diminishing this inheritance. If these two kings
mention only insignificant deeds of arms in the western
region, it is because the population, exhausted by the wars
of the two preceding reigns, easily recognised the Ninevite
supremacy, and paid tribute to the Assyrian governors with
sufficient regularity to prevent any important military
expedition against them.
He had first to carry his arms to the extreme edge of the desert, into
the rugged country of Patusharra, lying at the foot of Demavend, rich
in lapis-lazuli, and as yet untrodden by any king of Assyria.* Having
reached his destination, he captured two petty kings, Eparna and
Shîtirparna, and exiled them to Assyria, together with their people,
their thoroughbred horses, and their two-humped camels,--in fine, all
the possessions of their subjects. Shortly after this, three other
Median chiefs, hitherto intractable--Uppis of Par-takka, Zanasana of
Partukka,** Ramatea of Urakazabarna--came to Nineveh to present the king
with horses and lapis-lazuli, the best of everything they possessed, and
piteously entreated him to forgive their misdeeds.
* The country of Patusharra has been identified with that of
the Patischorians mentioned by Strabo in Persia proper, who
would have lived further north, not far from Demavend;
Sachau calls attention to the existence of a mountain chain
Patashwar-gar or Padishwar-gir, in front of Choarcnê, and he
places the country of Patusharra between Demavend and the
desert.
** Partakka and Partukka seem to be two different
adaptations of the name Paraituka, the Parsetakênô of the
Greek geographers; Tiele thinks of Parthyênô. I think that
these two names designate the northern districts of
Partetakênô, the present Ashnakhor or the country near to
it.
They represented that the whole of Media was torn asunder by countless
strifes, prince against prince, city against city, and an iron will was
needed to bring the more turbulent elements to order. Esarhaddon lent
a favourable ear to their prayers; he undertook to protect them on
condition of their paying an annual tribute, and he put them under
the protection of the Assyrian governors who were nearest to their
territory. Kharkhar, securely entrenched behind its triple ramparts,
assumed the position of capital to these Iranian marches.
It is difficult to determine the precise dates of these various events;
we learn merely that they took place before 673, and we surmise that
they must have occurred between the second and sixteenth year of the
kings reign.*
* The facts relating to the submission of Patusharra and of
Partukka are contained in Cylinder A, dated from the
eponymous year of Akhazilu, in 673. Moreover, the version
which this document contains seems to have been made up of
two pieces placed one at the end of the other: the first an
account of events which occurred during an earlier period of
the reign, and in which the exploits are classified in
geographical order, from Sidon in the west the Arabs
bordering on Chaldæa in the east; and the second consisting
of additional campaigns carried out after the completion of
the former--which is proved by the place which these
exploits occupy, out of their normal position in the
geographical series--and making mention of Partusharra and
Partuhka, as well as of Belikisha. The editor of the _Broken
Cylinder_ has tried to combine these latter elements with
the former in the order adopted by the original narrator. As
far as can be seen in what is left of the columns, he has
placed, after the Chaldsean events, the facts concerning
Partukka, then those concerning Patusharra, and finally the
campaign against Bazu, the extreme limit of Esarhaddons
activity in the south. Knowing that the campaign in the
desert and the death of Abdimilkôt took place in 676, and
that we find them already alluded to in the first part of
the narrative, as well as the events of 675 relating to the
revolt of Dakkuri, we may conclude that the submission of
Patusharra and that of Partukka occurred in 674, or at
latest in the beginning of 673.
[Illustration: 131.jpg THE TOWN OF KHARKHAR WITH ITS TRIPLE RAMPART]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Flandin, in Botta.
The outcome of them was a distinct gain to Assyria, in the acquisition
of several new vassals. The recently founded kingdom of Ecbatana lacked
as yet the prestige which would have enabled it to hold its own against
Nineveh; besides which, Deïokes, the contemporary ruler assigned to
it by tradition, was of too complaisant a nature to seek occasions of
quarrel. The Scythians, after having declared their warlike intentions,
seem to have come to a more peaceable frame of mind, and to have curried
favour with Nineveh; but the rulers of the capital kept a strict watch
upon them, since their numbers, their intrepid character, and instinct
for rapine made them formidable enemies--the most dangerous, indeed,
that the empire had encountered on its north-eastern frontier for nearly
a century.
This policy of armed _surveillance_, which proved so successful in
these regions, was also carefully maintained by Esarhaddon on his
south-eastern border against Assyrias traditional enemy, the King
of Susa. Babylon, far from exhibiting any restlessness at her present
position, showed her gratitude for the favours which her suzerain had
showered upon her by resigning herself to become the ally of Assyria.
She regarded her late disaster as the punishment inflicted by Marduk for
her revolts against Sargon and Sennacherib. The god had let loose the
powers of evil against her, and the Arakhtu, overflowing among the
ruins, had swept them utterly away; indeed, for the space of ten years,
destruction and desolation seemed to have taken the place of her former
wealth of temples and palaces. In the eleventh year, the divine wrath
was suddenly appeased. No sooner had Esarhaddon mounted the throne, than
he entreated Shamash, Rammân, and even Marduk himself, to reveal to him
their will with regard to the city; whereupon the omens, interpreted
by the seers, commanded him to rebuild Babylon and to raise again
the temple of Ê-sagilla. For this purpose he brought together all the
captives taken in war that he had at his disposal, and employed them in
digging out clay and in brick-making; he then prepared the foundations,
upon which he poured libations of oil, honey, palm-wine, and other wines
of various kinds; he himself took the masons hod, and with tools of
ebony, cypress wood, and oak, moulded a brick for the new sanctuary.
The work was, indeed, a gigantic undertaking, and demanded years of
uninterrupted labour, but Esarhaddon pushed it forward, sparing neither
gold, silver, costly stone, rare woods, or plates of enamel in its
embellishment. He began to rebuild at the same time all the other
temples and the two city walls--Imgurbel and Nimittibel; to clear and
make good the canals which supplied the place with water, and to replant
the sacred groves and the gardens of the palace. The inhabitants were
encouraged to come back to their homes, and those who had been dispersed
among distant provinces were supplied with clothes and food for their
return journey, besides having their patrimony restored to them. This
rebuilding of the ancient city certainly displeased and no doubt alarmed
her two former rivals, the Kaldâ and Elam, who had hoped one day to
wrest her heritage from Assyria. Elam concealed its ill-feeling, but
the Kaldâ of Bît-Dakkuri had invaded the almost deserted territory,
and appropriated the lands which had belonged to the noble families of
Babylon, Borsippa, and Sippara. When the latter, therefore, returned
from exile, and, having been reinstituted in their rights, attempted to
resume possession of their property, the usurpers peremptorily refused
to relinquish it. Esarhaddon was obliged to interfere to ensure its
restoration, and as their king, Shamash-ibni, was not inclined to comply
with the order, Esarhaddon removed him from the throne, and substituted
in his place a certain Nabushallim, son of Belesys, who showed more
deference to the suzerains wishes. It is possible that about this
time the Kaldâ may have received some support from the Aramaeans of the
desert and the Arab tribes encamped between the banks of the Euphrates
and Syria, or, on the other hand, the latter may have roused the wrath
of Assyria by inroads of a more than usually audacious character.
However this may be, in 676 Esarhaddon resolved to invade their
desert territory, and to inflict such reprisals as would force them
thenceforward to respect the neighbouring border provinces.
His first relations with them had been of a courteous and friendly
nature. Hazael of Adumu, one of the sheikhs of Kedar, defeated by
Sennacherib towards the end of his reign, had taken the opportunity of
the annual tribute to come to Nineveh with considerable presents, and
to implore the restoration of the statues of his gods. Esarhaddon had
caused these battered idols to be cleaned and repaired, had engraved
upon them an inscription in praise of Assur, and had further married
the suppliant sheikh to a woman of the royal harem, named Tabua. In
consideration of this, he had imposed upon the Arab a supplementary
tribute of sixty-five camels, and had restored to him his idols. All
this took place, no doubt, soon after the kings accession. A few years
later, on the death of Hazael, his son Yauta solicited investiture, but
a competitor for the chieftaincy, a man of unknown origin, named Uahab,
treacherously incited the Arabs to rebel, and threatened to overthrow
him. Esarhaddon caused Uahab to be seized, and exposed him in chains at
the gate of Nineveh; but, in consideration of this service to the Arabs,
he augmented the tribute which already weighed upon the people by a
further demand for ten gold _minas_, one thousand precious stones, fifty
camels, and a thousand measures of spicery. The repression of these
Arabs of Kedar thus confirmed Esarhaddons supremacy over the extreme
northern region of Arabia, between Damascus and Sippara or Babylon; but
in a more southerly direction, in the wadys which unite Lower Chaldæa
to the districts of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, there still remained
several rich and warlike states--among others, Bazu,* whose rulers had
never done homage to the sovereigns of either Assyria or Karduniash.
* The Bazu of this text is certainly the Buz which the
Hebrew books name among the children of Nahor (Gen. xxii.
21; Jer. xxv. 23). The early Assyriologists identified Khazu
with Uz, the son of Nahor; Delitzsch compares the name with
that of Hazo (Huz), the fifth son of Nahor (Gen. xxii. 22),
and his opinion is admitted by most scholars. For the site
of these countries I have followed the ideas of Delattro,
who identifies them with the oases of Jauf and Meskakeh, in
the centre of Northern Arabia. The Assyrians must have set
out by the Wady Haurân or by one of the wadys near to
Babylon, and have returned by a more southern wady.
To carry hostilities into the heart of their country was a bold and even
hazardous undertaking; it could be reached only by traversing miles
of arid and rocky plains, exposed to the rays of a burning sun, vast
extents of swamps and boggy pasture land, desolate wastes infested with
serpents and scorpions, and a mountain range of blackish lava known as
Khâzu. It would have been folly to risk a march with the heavy Assyrian
infantry in the face of such obstacles. Esarhaddon probably selected for
the purpose a force composed of cavalry, chariots, and lightly equipped
foot-soldiers, and despatched them with orders to reach the Jauf by
forced marches through the Wady Haurân. The Arabs, who were totally
unprepared for such a movement, had not time to collect their forces;
eight of their chiefs were taken by surprise and killed one after
another--among them Kisu of Khaldili, Agbaru of Ilpiati, Mansaku of
Magalani,--and also some reigning queens. La, the King of Yadi, at first
took refuge in the mountains, but afterwards gave himself up to
the enemy, and journeyed as far as Nineveh to prostrate himself at
Esarhaddons feet, who restored to him his gods and his crown, on the
usual condition of paying tribute. A vassal occupying a country so
remote and so difficult of access could not be supposed to preserve an
unbroken fidelity towards his suzerain, but he no longer ventured to
plunder the caravans which passed through his territory, and that in
reality was all that was expected of him.
Esarhaddon thus pursued a prudent and unadventurous policy in the
northern and eastern portions of his empire, maintaining a watchful
attitude towards the Cimmerians and Scythians in the north, carrying on
short defensive campaigns among the Medes in the east, preserving peace
with Elam, and making occasional flying raids in the south, rather from
the necessity for repressing troublesome border tribes than with any
idea of permanent conquest.
[Illustration: 137.jpg SHABITOKU, KING OF EGYPT]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Lepsius.
This policy must have been due to a presentiment of danger from the
side of Egypt, or to the inception of a great scheme for attacking the
reigning Pharaoh. After the defeat of his generals at Altaku, Shabîtoku
had made no further attempt to take the offensive; his authority over
the feudal nobility of Egypt was so widely acknowledged that it causes
us no surprise to meet with his cartouches on more than one ruin between
Thebes and Memphis,* but his closing years were marred by misfortune.
There was then living at Napata a certain Taharqa, one of those scions
of the solar race who enjoyed the title of Royal brothers, and
from among whom Anion of the Holy Mountain was wont to choose his
representative to reign over the land of Ethiopia whenever the throne
became vacant. It does not appear that the father of Taharqa ever held
the highest rank; it was from his mother, Âkaluka, that he inherited his
pretensions to the crown, and through her probably that he traced his
descent from the family of the high priests. Tradition asserts that he
did not gain the regal power without a struggle; having been proclaimed
king in Ethiopia at the age of twenty, as the result of some revolution,
he is said to have marched against Shabîtoku, and, coming up with him
in the Delta, to have defeated him, taken him prisoner, and put him to
death.** These events took place about 693 B.C.,*** and Taharqa employed
the opening years of his reign in consolidating his authority over the
double kingdom.
* His name or monuments of his erection have been discovered
at Karnak.
** Eusebius, who cites the fact, had his information from a
trustworthy Greek source, perhaps from Manetho himself. The
inscription of Tanis seems to say that Taharqa was twenty
years old at the time of his revolt.
*** Most of the lists of kings taken from Manetho assign
twelve years to the reign of Sébikhos; one alone, that of
Africanus, assigns him fourteen years.