_The fall of Nineveh and the rise of the Chaldæan and Median
empires--The XXVIth Egyptian dynasty: Cyaxares, Alyattes, and
Nebuchadrezzar._
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the silver vase of
Tchertomlitsk, now in the museum of the Hermitage. The
vignette is also drawn by Faucher-Gudin, and represents an
Egyptian torso in the Turin museum; the cartouche which is
seen upon the arm is that of Psammetichus I.
The East was ever a land of kaleidoscopic changes and startling dramatic
incidents. An Oriental empire, even when built up by strong hands and
watched over with constant vigilance, scarcely ever falls to pieces in
the slow and gradual process of decay arising from the ties that bind
it together becoming relaxed or its constituent elements growing
antiquated. It perishes, as a rule, in a cataclysm; its ruin comes like
a bolt from the blue, and is consummated before the commencement of it
is realised. One day it stands proud and stately in the splendour of its
glory; there is no report abroad but that which tells of its riches,
its industry, its valour, the good government of its princes and the
irresistible might of its gods, and the world, filled with envy or with
fear, deeming its good fortune immutable, never once applies to it, even
in thought, the usual commonplaces on the instability of human things.
Suddenly an ill wind, blowing up from the distant horizon, bursts upon
it in destructive squalls, and it is overthrown in the twinkling of
an eye, amid the glare of lightning, the resounding crash of thunder,
whirlwinds of dust and rain: when the storm has passed away as quickly
as it came, its mutterings heralding the desolation which it bears to
other climes, the brightening sky no longer reveals the old contours
and familiar outlines, but the sun of history rises on a new empire,
emerging, as if by the touch of a magic wand, from the ruins which the
tempest has wrought. There is nothing apparently lacking of all that, in
the eyes of the many, invested its predecessor with glory; it seems in
no wise inferior in national vigour, in the number of its soldiers,
in the military renown of its chiefs, in the proud prosperity of its
people, or in the majesty of its gods; the present fabric is as spacious
and magnificent, it would seem, as that which has but just vanished into
the limbo of the past. No kingdom ever shone with brighter splendour, or
gave a greater impression of prosperity, than the kingdom of Assyria in
the days succeeding its triumphs over Blam and Arabia: precisely at this
point the monuments and other witnesses of its activity fail us, just
as if one of the acts of the piece in which it had played a chief part
having come to an end, the drop-curtain must be lowered, amid a flourish
of trumpets and the illuminations of an apotheosis, to allow the actors
a little breathing-space. Half a century rolls by, during which we have
a dim perception of the subdued crash of falling empires, and of the
trampling of armies in fierce fight; then the curtain rises on an
utterly different drama, of which the plot has been woven behind the
scenes, and the exciting _motif_ has just come into play. We no longer
hear of Assyria and its kings; their palaces are in ruins; their last
faithful warriors sleep in unhonoured graves beneath the ashes of
their cities, their prowess is credited to the account of half a dozen
fabulous heroes such as Ninus, Sardanapalus, and Semiramis--heroes whose
names call up in the memory of succeeding generations only vague but
terrible images, such as the phantasies of a dream, which, although but
dimly remembered in the morning, makes the hair to stand on end with
terror. The nations which erewhile disputed the supremacy with Assyria
have either suffered a like eclipse--such as the Khâti, Urartu, the
Cossæans, and Elam--or have fallen like Egypt and Southern Syria into
the rank of second-rate powers. It is Chaldaea which is now in the van
of the nations, in company with Lydia and with Media, whose advent to
imperial power no one would have ventured to predict forty or fifty
years before.
The principality founded by Deïokes about the beginning of the seventh
century B.C., seemed at first destined to play but a modest part; it
shared the fortune of the semi-barbarous states with which the Ninevite
conquerors came in contact on the western boundary of the Iranian
plateau, and from which the governors of Arrapkha or of Kharkhar had
extorted tribute to the utmost as often as occasion offered. According
to one tradition, it had only three kings in an entire century: Deïokes
up till 655 B.C., Phraortes from 655 to 633, and after the latter year
Cyaxares, the hero of his race.* Another tradition claimed an earlier
foundation for the monarchy, and doubled both the number of the kings
and the age of the kingdom.**
* This is the tradition gleaned by Herodotus, probably at
Sardes, from the mouths of Persians residing in that city.
** This is the tradition derived from the court of
Artaxerxes by Ctesias of Cnidus. Volney discovered the
principle upon which the chronology of his Median dynasty
was based by Ctesias. If we place his list side by side with
that of Herodotus--
[Illustration: 268.jpg and 269.jpg TABLE OF MEDIAN DYNASTY]
We see that, while rejecting the names given by Herodotus,
Ctesias repeats twice over the number of years assigned by
the latter to the reigns of his kings, at least for the four
last generations--
At the beginning Herodotus gives before Deïokes an
interregnum of uncertain duration. Ctesias substituted the
round number of fifty years for the fifty-three assigned to
Deïokes, and replaced the interregnum by a reign which he
estimated at the mean duration of a human generation, thirty
years; he then applied to this new pair of numbers the
process of doubling he had employed for the couple mentioned
above--
The number twenty-eight has been attributed to the reign of
Arbakes, instead of the number thirty, to give an air of
truthfulness to the whole catalogue.
This tradition ignored the monarchs who had rendered the second
Assyrian empire illustrious, and substituted for them a line of inactive
sovereigns, reputed to be the descendants of Ninus and Semiramis. The
last of them, Sardanapalus, had, according to this account, lived a life
of self-indulgence in his harem, surrounded by women, dressing himself
in their garb, and adopting feminine occupations and amusements. The
satrap of Media, Arbakes, saw him at his toilet, and his heart turned
against yielding obedience to such a painted doll: he rebelled in
concert with Belesys the Babylonian. The imminence of the danger thus
occasioned roused Sardanapalus from his torpor, and revived in him the
warlike qualities of his ancestors; he placed himself at the head of his
troops, overcame the rebels, and was about to exterminate them, when his
hand was stayed by the defection of some Bactrian auxiliaries. He shut
himself up in Nineveh, and for two whole years heroically repulsed
all assaults; in the third year, the Tigris, swollen by the rains,
overflowed its banks and broke down the city walls for a distance of
twenty stadia. The king thereupon called to mind an oracle which had
promised him victory until the day when the river should betray him.
Judging that the prediction was about to be accomplished, he resolved
not to yield himself alive to the besieger, and setting fire to his
palace, perished therein, together with his children and his treasures,
about 788 B.C. Arbakes, thus rendered an independent sovereign, handed
down the monarchy to his son Mandaukas, and he in his turn was followed
successively by Sosarmos, Artykas, Arbianes, Artaios, Artynes, and
Astibaras.* These names are not the work of pure invention; they are
met with in more than one Assyrian text: among the petty kings who
paid tribute to Sargon are enumerated some which bear such names as
Mashdaku,** Ashpanda,*** Arbaku, and Khartukka,*** and many others, of
whom traces ought to be found some day among the archives of princely
families of later times.
* Oppert thought that the names given by Herodotus
represented Aryanised forms of Turanian names, of which
Otesias has given the Persian translation.
** Mashdaku is identified by Post with the Mandaukas or
Maydaukas of Ctesias, which would then be a copyists error
for Masdaukas. The identification with Vashd[t]aku, Vashtak,
the name of a fabulous king of Armenia, is rejected by Rost;
Mashdaku would be the Iranian Mazdaka, preserved in the
Mazakes of Arrian.
*** Ashpanda is the Aspandas or Aspadas which Ctesias gives
instead of the Astyages of Herodotus.
**** The name of Artykas is also found in the secondary form
Kardikoas, which is nearer the Khartukka of the Assyrian
texts.
There were in these archives, at the disposal of scribes and strangers
inclined to reconstruct the history of Asia, a supply of materials of
varying value--authentic documents inscribed on brick tablets, legends
of fabulous exploits, epic poems and records of real victories and
conquests, exaggerated in accordance with the vanity or the interest of
the composer: from these elements it was easy to compile lists of Median
kings which had no real connection with each other as far as their
names, order of succession, or duration of reign were concerned. The
Assyrian chronicles have handed down to us, in place of these dynasties
which were alleged to have exercised authority over the whole territory,
a considerable number of noble houses scattered over the country, each
of them autonomous, and a rival of its neighbour, and only brought into
agreement with one another at rare intervals by their common hatred of
the invader. Some of them were representatives of ancient races akin
to the Susians, and perhaps to the first inhabitants of Chaldæa; others
belonged to tribes of a fresh stock, that of the Aryans, and more
particularly to the Iranian branch of the Aryan family. We catch
glimpses of them in the reign of Shalmaneser III., who calls them the
Amadaî; then, after this first brush with Assyria, intercourse and
conflict between the two nations became more and more frequent every
year, until the distant Medes soon began to figure among the regular
adversaries of the Ninevite armies, and even the haughtiest monarchs
refer with pride to victories gained over them. Rammân-nirâri waged
ceaseless war against them, Tiglath-pileser III. twice drove them
before him from the south-west to the north-east as far as the foot
of Demavend, while Sargon, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon, during their
respective reigns, kept anxious watch upon them, and endeavoured to
maintain some sort of authority over the tribes which lay nearest to
them. Both in the personal names and names of objects which have
come down to us in the records of these campaigns, we detect
Iranian characteristics, in spite of the Semitic garb with which the
inscriptions have invested them: among the names of countries we find
Partukka, Diristânu, Patusharra, Nishaîa, Urivzân, Abîruz, and Ariarma,
while the men bear such names as Ishpabarra, Eparna, Shîtirparna,
Uarzân, and Dayaukku. As we read through the lists, faint resemblances
in sound awaken dormant classical memories, and the ear detects familiar
echoes in the names of those Persians whose destinies were for a time
linked with those of Athens and Sparta in the days of Darius and of
Xerxes: it is like the first breath of Greek influence, faint and almost
imperceptible as yet, wafted to us across the denser atmosphere of the
East.
The Iranians had a vague remembrance of a bygone epoch, during which
they had wandered, in company with other nations of the same origin as
themselves, in that cradle of the Aryan peoples, Aryanem-Vaêjô. Modern
historians at first placed their mythical birthplace in the wilder
regions of Central Asia, near the Oxus and the Jaxartes, and not far
from the so-called table-land of Pamir, which they regarded as the
original point of departure of the Indo-European races. They believed
that a large body of these primitive Aryans must have descended
southwards into the basin of the Indus and its affluents, and that
other detachments had installed themselves in the oases of Margiana
and Khorasmia, while the Iranians would have made their way up to the
plateau which separates the Caspian Sea from the Persian Gulf, where
they sought to win for themselves a territory sufficient for their
wants. The compilers of the sacred books of the Iranians claimed to be
able to trace each stage of their peregrinations, and to describe the
various accidents which befell them during this heroic period of their
history. According to these records, it was no mere chance or love of
adventure which had led them to wander for years from clime to clime,
but rather a divine decree. While Ahurômazdaô, the beneficent deity
whom they worshipped, had provided them with agreeable resting-places,
a perverse spirit, named Angrômaînyus, had on every occasion rendered
their sojourn there impossible, by the plagues which he inflicted
on them. Bitter cold, for instance, had compelled them to forsake
Aryanem-Vaêjô and seek shelter in Sughdhâ and Mûru.* Locusts had driven
them from Sughdhâ; the incursions of the nomad tribes, coupled with
their immorality, had forced them to retire from Mûru to Bâkhdhî, the
country of lofty banners, ** and subsequently to Nisaya, which lies to
the south-east, between Mûru and Bâkhdhî. From thence they made their
way into the narrow valleys of the Harôyu, and overran Vaêkereta, the
land of noxious shadows.***
* Sughdhâ is Sogdiana; Mûru, in ancient Persian Margush, is
the modern Merv, the Margiana of classical geographers.
** Bâkhdhî is identical with Bactriana, but, as Spiegel
points out, this Avestic form is comparatively recent, and
readily suggests the modern Balkh, in which the consonants
have become weakened.
*** The Avesta places Nisaya between Mûru and Bâkhdhî to
distinguish it from other districts of the same name to be
found in this part of Asia: Eugène Burnouf is probably
correct in identifying it with the Nêssea of Strabo and of
Ptolemy, which lay to the south of Margiana, at the junction
of the roads leading to Hyrcania in one direction and
Bactriana in the other.
From this point forwards, the countries mentioned by their chroniclers
are divided into two groups, lying in opposite directions: Arahvaiti,
Haêtumant, and Haptahindu* on the east; and on the west, Urvâ,** Harôyu
or Haraêva is the Greek Aria, the modern province of Herat.
* Arahvaiti, the Harauvatish of the Achsemenian
inscriptions, is the Greek Arachosia, and Haêtumant the
basin of their Etymander, the modern Helmend; in other
words, the present province of Seîstan. Hapta-Hindu is the
western part of the Indian continent, i.e. the Punjaub.
** The Pehlevi commentators identify Urvâ with Mesônê,
mentioned by classical writers, at the confluence of the
Tigris and Euphrates, or perhaps the plain around Ispahan
which bore the name of Masân in the Sassanid period. Fr.
Lenormant had connected it with the name Urivzân, which is
applied in the Assyrian inscriptions to a district of Media
in the time of Tiglath-pileser III.
[Illustration: 274.jpg MAP OF THE LANDS CREATED BY AHURA-MAZDA]
The Pehlevi commentators identify Vaêkereta with Kabulistan, and also
volunteer the following interpretation of the title which accompanies
the name: The shadow of the trees there is injurious to the body, or
as some say, the shadow of the mountains, and it produces fever
there. Arguing from passages of similar construction, Lassen was led to
recognise in the epithet _duzhako-shayanem_ a place-name, inhabitant of
Duzhakô, which he identified with a ruined city in this neighbourhood
called Dushak; Haug believed he had found a confirmation of this
hypothesis in the fact that the Pairika Khnâthaiti created there by
Angrô-maînyus recalls in sound, at any rate, the name of the people
Parikani mentioned by classical writers, as inhabiting these regions.
Khnenta-Vehrkâna,* Bhagâ,** and Chakhra,*** as far as the districts of
Varena**** and the basin of the Upper Tigris.^ This legend was composed
long after the event, in order to explain in the first place the
relationship between the two great families into which the Oriental
Aryans were divided, viz. the Indian and Iranian, and in the second
to account for the peopling by the Iranians of a certain number of
provinces between the Indus and the Euphrates. As a matter of fact, it
is more likely that the Iranians came originally from Europe, and that
they migrated from the steppes of Southern Russia into the plains of the
Kur and the Araxes by way of Mount Caucasus.^^
* The name Khnenta seems to have been Hellenised into that
of Kharindas, borne by a river which formed the frontier
between Hyrcania and Media; according to the Pehlevi version
it was really a river of Hyrcania, the Djordjân. The epithet
Vehrkâna, which qualifies the name Khnenta, has been
identified by Burnouf with the Hyrcania of classical
geographers.
** Raghâ is identified with Azerbaijan in the Pehlevi
version of the Vendidâd, but is, more probably, the Rhago of
classical geographers, the capital of Eastern Media.
*** Chakhra seems to be identical with the country of Karkh,
at the northwestern extremity of Khorassan.
**** Varena is identified by the Pehlevi commentators with
Patishkhvargâr, i.e. probably the Patusharra of the Assyrian
inscriptions.
^ Haug proposed to identify this last station with the
regions situated on the shores of the Caspian, near the
south-western corner of that sea. But, as Garrez points out,
the Pehlevi commentators prove that it must be the countries
on the Upper Tigris.
^^ Spiegel has argued that Aryanem-Vaôjô is probably Arrân,
the modern Kazabadagh, the mountainous district between the
Kur and the Aras, and his opinion is now gaining acceptance.
The settlement of the Iranians in Russia, and their entrance
into Asia by way of the Caucasus, have been admitted by
Rost. Classical writers reversed this order of things, and
derived the Sauromato and other Scythian tribes from Media.
It is possible that some of their hordes may have endeavoured to wedge
themselves in between the Halys and the Euphrates as far as the centre
of Asia Minor. Their presence in this quarter would explain why we
encounter Iranian personal names in the Sargonide epoch on the two spurs
of Mount Taurus, such as that of the Kushtashpi, King of Kummukh, in
the time of Tiglath-pileser III., and of the Kundashpi mentioned in the
_Annals_ of Shalmaneser III. in the ninth century B.C.*
* The name Kushtashpi has been compared with that of
Vistâspa or Gushtâsp by Fr. Lenormant, the name Kundashpi
with that of Vindâspa by Gutschmid, and, later on, Ball has
added to these a long list of names in Egyptian and Assyrian
inscriptions which he looks upon as Iranian. Kundashpi
recalls at first sight Gundobunas, a name of the Sassanid
epoch, if this latter form be authentic. Tiele adopts the
identification of Kushtashpi with Vistâspa, and Justi has
nothing to say against it, nor against the identification of
Kundashpi with Vindâspa.
The main body, finding its expansion southwards checked by Urartu,
diverged in a south-easterly direction, and sweeping before it all the
non-Aryan or Turanian tribes who were too weak to stem its progress,
gradually occupied the western edge of the great plateau, where it soon
became mainly represented by the two compact groups, the Persians to
the south on the farthest confines of Elam, and the Medes between
the Greater Zab, the Turnât, and the Caspian. It is probable that the
kingdom founded by Deïokes originally included what was afterwards
termed _Media Magna_ by the Græco-Roman geographers. This sovereignty
was formed by the amalgamation under a single monarch of six important
tribes--the Buzo, Paraatakeni, Struchatas, Arizanti, Budii, and Magi.
It extended north-westwards as far as the Kiziluzôn, which formed the
frontier between the Persians and the Mannai on this side. Northwards,
it reached as far as Demavend; the salt desert that rendered Central
Iran a barren region, furnished a natural boundary on the east; on both
the south and west, the Assyrian border-lands of Ellipi, Kharkhar, and
Arrapkha prevented it from extending to the chief ranges of the Zagros
and Cordioan mountains. The soil, though less fertile than that of
Chaldæa or of Egypt, was by no means deficient in resources. The
mountains contained copper, iron, lead, some gold and silver,* several
kinds of white or coloured marble,** and precious stones, such as topaz,
garnets, emeralds, sapphires, cornelian, and lapis-lazuli, the latter
being a substance held in the highest esteem by Eastern jewellers from
time immemorial; Mount Bikni was specially celebrated for the fine
specimens of this stone which were obtained there.*** Its mountains were
in those days clothed with dense forests, in which the pine, the oak,
and the poplar grew side by side with the eastern plane tree, the cedar,
lime, elm, ash, hazel, and terebinth.****
* Rawlinson has collected traditions in reference to gold
and silver mining among the mountains in the neighbourhood
of Takht-i-Suleiman; one of these is still called _Zerreh-
Shardn_, the mount of the _gold-washers_.
** The best known was the so-called Tauris marble quarried
from the hills in the neighbourhood of Lake Urumiyah.
*** The list of precious stones which Pliny tells us were
found in Media, contains several kinds which we are unable
to identify, _e.g_. the Zathênê, the gassinades and
narcissitis. Pliny calls lapis-lazuli _sapphirus_, and
declares that the bright specks of pyrites it contained
rendered it unsuitable for engraving. In the Assyrian
inscriptions Mount Bikni, the modern Demavend, is described
as a mountain of Uknu, or lapis-lazuli.
**** A large part of the mountains and plains is now
treeless, but it is manifest, both from the evidence of the
inscriptions and from the observations of travellers, that
the whole of Media was formerly well wooded.
The intermediate valleys were veritable orchards, in which the
vegetation of the temperate zones mingled with tropical growths. The
ancients believed that the lemon tree came originally from Persia.*
To this day the peach, pear, apple, quince, cherry, apricot, almond,
filbert, chestnut, fig, pistachio-nut, and pomegranate still flourish
there: the olive is easily acclimatised, and the vine produces grapes
equally suitable for the table or the winepress.** The plateau presents
a poorer and less promising appearance--not that the soil is less
genial, but the rivers become lost further inland, and the barrenness
of the country increases as they come to an end one after another. Where
artificial irrigation has been introduced, the fertility of the country
is quite as great as in the neighbourhood of the mountains;*** outside
this irrigated region no trees are to be seen, except a few on the banks
of rivers or ponds, but wheat, barley, rye, oats, and an abundance of
excellent vegetables grow readily in places where water is present.
* The apple obtained from Media was known as the Modicum
malum, and was credited with the property of being a
powerful antidote to poison: it was supposed that it would
not grow anywhere outside Media.
** In some places, as, for instance, at Kirmânshahàn, the
vine stocks have to be buried during the winter to protect
them from the frost.
*** Irrigation was effected formerly, as now, by means of
subterranean canals with openings at intervals, known as
_kanât_.
The fauna include, besides wild beasts of the more formidable kinds,
such as lions, tigers, leopards, and bears, many domestic animals,
or animals capable of being turned to domestic use, such as the ass,
buffalo, sheep, goat, dog, and dromedary, and the camel with two humps,
whose gait caused so much merriment among the Ninevite idlers when
they beheld it in the triumphal processions of their kings; there were,
moreover, several breeds of horses, amongst which the Nisasan steed was
greatly prized on account of its size, strength, and agility.* In
short, Media was large enough and rich enough to maintain a numerous
population, and offered a stable foundation to a monarch ambitious of
building up a new empire.**
* In the time of the Seleucides, Media supplied nearly the
whole of Asia with these animals, and the grazing-lands of
Bagistana, the modern Behistun, are said to have supported
160,000 of them. Under the Parthian kings Media paid a
yearly tribute of 3000 horses, and the Nisæan breed was
still celebrated at the beginning of the Byzantine era.
Horses are mentioned among the tribute paid by the Medic
chiefs to the kings of Assyria.
** The history of the Medes remains shrouded in greater
obscurity than that of any other Asiatic race. We possess no
original documents which owe their existence to this nation,
and the whole of our information concerning its history is
borrowed from Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions, and from
the various legends collected by the Greeks, especially by
Herodotus and Ctesias, from Persian magnates in Asia Minor
or at the court of the Achæmenian kings, or from fragments
of vanished works such as the writings of Borosus. And yet
modern archaeologists and philologists have, during the last
thirty years, allowed their critical faculties, and often
their imagination as well, to run riot when dealing with
this very period. After carefully examining, one after
another, most of the theories put forward, I have adopted
those hypotheses which, while most nearly approximating to
the classical legends, harmonise best with the chronological
framework--far too imperfect as yet--furnished by the
inscriptions dealing with the closing years of Nineveh; I do
not consider them all to be equally probable, but though
they may be mere stop-gap solutions, they have at least the
merit of reproducing in many cases the ideas current among
those races of antiquity who had been in direct
communication with the Medes and with the last of their
sovereigns.
[Illustration: 269.jpg NISÆAN HOUSES HARNESSED TO A ROYAL CHARIOT]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph of the bas-relief from
Persepolis now in the British Museum.
The first person to conceive the idea of establishing one was, perhaps,
a certain Fravartish, the Phraortes of the Greeks, whom Herodotus
declares to have been the son and successor of Deiokes.*
* The ancient form of the name, Fravartish or Frawarti, has
been handed down to us by a passage in the great inscription
of Behistun; it means the man who proclaims faith in Ahura-
mazda, the believer.
[Illustration: 280.jpg THE PERSIAN REALM]
He came to the throne about 655 B.C. at a time when the styar of
Assur-bani-pal was still in the ascendant, and at first does not seem
to have thought of trying to shake off the incubus of Assyrian rule. He
began very wisely by annexing such of the petty neighbouring states as
had hitherto remained independent, and then set himself to attack the
one other nation of Iranian blood which, by virtue of the number and
warlike qualities of its clans, was in a position to enter into rivalry
with his own people. The Persians, originally concentrated in the
interior, among the steep valleys which divide the plateau on the south,
had probably taken advantage of the misfortunes of Elam to extend their
own influence at its expense. Their kings were chosen from among the
descendants of a certain Akhâmanish, the Achæmenes of the Greeks, who at
the time of the Iranian invasion had been chief of the Pasargadæ, one
of the Persian clans. Achæmenes is a mythical hero rather than a real
person; he was, we are told, fed during infancy by an eagle--that mighty
eagle whose shadow, according to a Persian belief in mediaeval times,
assured the sovereignty to him on whom it chanced to fall. Achæmenes
would seem to have been followed by a certain Chaispi--or Teispes--a
less fabulous personage, described in the legends as his son. It was,
doubtless, during his reign that Assur-bani-pal, in hot pursuit of
Tiummân and Khumbân-khaldash, completed the downfall of Susa; Chaispi
claimed the eastern half of Elam as his share of the spoil, and on the
strength of his victory styled himself King of Anshân--a title on
which his descendants still prided themselves a hundred years after his
death.*
* The fact that Teispes was the immediate successor of
Achæmenes, indicated by Herodotus, is affirmed by Darius
himself in the Behistun inscription. According to Billet-
beck, the Anzân (Anshân) of the early Achæmenidæ was merely
a very small part of the ancient Anzân (Anshân), viz. the
district on the east and south-east of Kuh-i-Dena, which
includes the modern towns of Yezdeshast, Abadeh, Yoklîd, and
Kushkiserd.
Persia, as then constituted, extended from the mouths of the
Oroatis--the modern Tab--as far as the entrance to the Straits of
Ormuzd.* The coast-line, which has in several places been greatly
modified since ancient times by the formation of alluvial deposits,
consists of banks of clay and sand, which lie parallel with the shore,
and extend a considerable distance inland; in some places the country
is marshy, in others parched and rocky, and almost everywhere barren and
unhealthy. The central region is intersected throughout its whole length
by several chains of hills, which rise terrace-like, one behind the
other, from the sea to the plateau; some regions are sterile, more
especially in the north and east, but for the most part the country is
well wooded, and produces excellent crops of cereals. Only a few
rivers, such as the Oroatis, which forms the boundary between Persia and
Susiana,** the Araxes, and the Bagradas succeed in breaking through the
barriers that beset their course, and reach the Persian Gulf;*** most of
the others find no outlet, and their waters accumulate at the bottom of
the valleys, in lakes whose areas vary at the different seasons.
* Herodotus imagined Carmania and Persia Proper to be one
and the same province; from the Alexandrine period onwards
historians and geographers drew a distinction between the
two.
** The form of the name varies in different writers. Strabo
calls it the Oroatis, Nearchus the Arosis; in Pliny it
appears as Oratis and Zarotis, and in Ammianus Marcellinus
as Oroates.
*** The Araxes is the modern Bendamîr. The Kyros, which
flowed past Persepolis, is now the Pulwar, an affluent of
the Bendamîr. The Bagradas of Ptolemy, called the Hyperis by
Juba, is the modern Nabend.
[Illustration: 282.jpg SCENE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF PERSIA.]
Drawn by Boudier, from Costs and Flandin, _Voyage en Perse_,
vol. i. pl. xcvi.
[Illustration: 285.jpg HEAD OF A PERSIAN ARCHER]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph of the Naksh-i-Rustem
bas-relief taken by Dieulafoy.
The mountainous district is furrowed in all directions by deep ravines,
with almost vertical sides, at the bottom of which streams and torrents
follow a headlong course. The landscape wears a certain air of savage
grandeur; giant peaks rise in needle-like points perpendicularly to
the sky; mountain paths wind upward, cut into the sides of the steep
precipices; the chasms are spanned by single-arched bridges, so frail
and narrow that they seem likely to be swept away in the first gail that
blows. No country could present greater difficulties to the movements
of a regular army or lend itself more readily to a system of guerrilla
warfare. It was unequally divided between some ten or twelve tribes:*
chief among these were the Pasargadaa, from which the royal family took
its origin; after them came the Maraphii and Maspii.
* Herodotus only mentions ten Persian tribes; Xenophon
speaks of twelve.
The chiefs of these two tribes were elected from among the members
of seven families, who, at first taking equal rank with that of the
Pasargadaæ, had afterwards been reduced to subjection by the Achæmenidæ,
forming a privileged class at the court of the latter, the members
of which shared the royal prerogatives and took a part in the work
of government. Of the remaining tribes, the Panthialad, Derusiæi, and
Carmenians lived a sedentary life, while the Dai, Mardians, Dropici,
and Sagartians were nomadic in their habits. Each one of these tribes
occupied its own allotted territory, the limits of which were not always
accurately defined; we know that Sagartia, Parseta-kônê, and Mardia
lay towards the north, on the confines of Media and the salt desert,*
Taokênê extended along the seaboard, and Carmania lay to the east.
The tribes had constructed large villages, such as Armuza, Sisidôna,
Apostana, Gogana, and Taôkê, on the sea-coast (the last named possessing
a palace which was one of the three chief residences of the Achæmenian
kings),** and Carmana, Persepolis, Pasargadæ, and Gabæ in the
interior.***
* Parsetakênê, which has already been identified with the
Partukkanu (or Partakkanu) of the Assyrian inscriptions, is
placed by Ptolemy in Persia; Mardia corresponds to the
mountainous district of Bebahan and Kazrun.
** The position of most of these towns is still somewhat
doubtful. Armuza is probably Ormuz (or Hormuz) on the
mainland, the forerunner of the insular Hormuz of the
Portuguese, as the French scholar dAnville has pointed out;
Sisidôna has been identified with the modern village of
Mogu, near Ras-Jerd, Apostana with the town of Shewâr, the
name seeming to be perpetuated in that of the Jebel Asban
which rises not far from there. Gogana is probably Bender
Kongûn, and Taokô, at the mouth of the Granis, is either
Khor Gasseîr or Rohilla at the mouth of the Bishawer. The
palace, which was one of the three principal residences of
the Achæmenian kings, is probably mentioned by Strabo, and
possibly in Dionysius Periegetes.
*** Carmana is the modern Kermân; the exact position of
Gabæ, which also possesses a palace, is not known.
[Illustration: 287.jpg A PERSIAN]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph of one of the bas-
reliefs at Persepolis, in Dieulafoy.
The Persians were a keen-witted and observant race, inured to all kinds
of hardships in their occupation as mountain shepherds, and they were
born warriors. The type preserved on the monuments differs but little
from that which still exists at the present day in the more remote
districts. It was marked by a tall and slender figure, with sturdy
shoulders and loins, a small head, with a thick shock of hair and
curling beard, a straight nose, a determined mouth, and an eye steady
and alert. Yet, in spite of their valour, Phraortes overpowered them,
and was henceforward able to reckon the princes of Anshân among his
vassals; strengthened by the addition of their forces to his own,
he directed his efforts to the subjection of the other races of the
plateau. If we may believe the tradition of the Hellenic epoch, he
reduced them to submission, and, intoxicated by his success, ventured at
last to take up arms against the Assyrians, who for centuries past had
held rule over Upper Asia.
This was about 635 B.C., or less than ten years after the downfall of
Elam, and it does not seem likely that the vital forces of Assyria can
have suffered any serious diminution within so short a space of time.*
* The date is indicated by the figures given by Herodotus in
regard to the Medic kings, based on the calculations of
himself or his authorities. Phraortes died in 634 B.C.,
after a reign of twenty-two years, and as the last year of
his reign coincides with the war against Assyria, the
preparations for it cannot have been much earlier than 635
or 636 B.C., a year or two before the catastrophe.
Assur-bani-pal, weary of fighting, even though he no longer directed
operations in person, had apparently determined to remain entirely on
the defensive, and not to take the field, unless absolutely compelled
to do so by rebellion at home or an attack from outside. In view of the
growing need of rest for the Assyrian nation, he could not have arrived
at a wiser decision, provided always that circumstances allowed of its
being carried into effect, and that the tributary races and frontier
nations were willing to fall in with his intentions. They did so at
first, for the fate of Elam had filled even the most unruly among them
with consternation, and peace reigned supreme from the Persian Gulf to
the Mediterranean. Assur-bani-pal took advantage of this unexpected lull
to push forward the construction of public works in the valleys of the
Tigris and Euphrates. The palace of Sennacherib, though it had been
built scarcely fifty years before, was already beginning to totter on
its foundations; Assur-bani-pal entirely remodeled and restored it--a
proceeding which gave universal satisfaction. The common people had, as
usual, to make the bricks with their own hands and convey them to the
spot, but as the chariots employed for this purpose formed part of the
booty recently brought back from Elam, the privilege of using these
trophies did something to lighten the burden of the tasks imposed on
them. Moreover, they had the satisfaction of seeing at work among the
squads of labourers several real kings, the Arabian chiefs who had been
pursued and captured in the heart of the desert by Assur-bani-pals
generals; they plodded along under their heavy baskets, stimulated by
the crack of the whip, amid insults and jeers. This palace was one of
the largest and most ornate ever built by the rulers of Assyria. True,
the decoration does not reveal any novel process or theme; we find
therein merely the usual scenes of battle or of the chase, but they are
designed and executed with a skill to which the sculptor of Nineveh had
never before attained. The animals, in particular, are portrayed with a
light and delicate touch--the wild asses pursued by hounds, or checked
while galloping at full speed by a cast of the lasso; the herds of goats
and gazelles hurrying across the desert; the wounded lioness, which
raises herself with a last dying effort to roar at the beaters. We are
conscious of Egyptian influence underlying the Asiatic work, and the
skilful arrangement of the scenes from the Elamite campaigns also
reminds us of Egypt. The picture of the battle of Tullîz recalls, in
the variety of its episodes and the arrangement of the perspective, the
famous engagement at Qodshu, of which Ramses II. has left such
numerous presentments on the Theban pylons. The Assyrians, led by the
vicissitudes of invasion to Luxor and the Ramesseum, had, doubtless,
seen these masterpieces of Egyptian art in a less mutilated state than
that in which we now possess them, and profited by the remembrance when
called upon to depict the private life of their king and the victories
gained by his armies.
[Illustration: 290.jpg A HERD OF WILD GOATS--A BAS-RELIEF OF THE TIME OF
ASSUR-BANI-PAL]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by Place.
It was in this magnificent residence that Assur-bani-pal led an
existence of indolent splendour, such as the chroniclers of a later
age were wont to ascribe to all the Assyrian monarchs from the time of
Semiramis onwards.*
* Stories of the effeminacy of Sardanapalus had been
collected by Ctesias of Cnidus; they soon grew under the
hands of historians in the time of Alexander, and were
passed on by them to writers of the Roman and Byzantine
epochs.
[Illustration: 290b ILLUSTRATED MANUSCRIPT IN HEIROGLYPHICS]
We would gladly believe that he varied the monotony of his hunting
expeditions, his banquets, and entertainments in the gardens in company
with the women of the harem, by pleasures of a more refined nature, and
that he took an unusual interest in the history and literature of the
races who had become subject to his rule. As a matter of fact, there
have been discovered in several of the ruined chambers of his palaces
the remains of a regular library, which must originally have contained
thousands of clay tablets, all methodically arranged and catalogued for
his use. A portion of them furnish us at first-hand with the records
of his reign, and include letters exchanged with provincial governors,
augural predictions, consultation of oracles, observations made by the
royal astrologers, standing orders, accounts of income and expenditure,
even the reports of physicians in regard to the health of members of the
royal family or of the royal household: these documents reveal to us the
whole machinery of government in actual operation, and we almost seem
to witness the secret mechanism by which the kingdom was maintained in
activity. Other tablets contain authentic copies of works which were
looked upon as classics in the sanctuaries of the Euphrates. Probably,
when Babylon was sacked, Sennacherib had ordered the books which
lay piled up in E-Sagilla and the other buildings of the city to
be collected and carried away to Nineveh along with the statues and
property of the gods. They had been placed in the treasury, and there
they remained until Esarhaddon re-established the kingdom of Karduniash,
and Assur-bani-pal was forced to deliver up the statue of Marduk and
restore to the sanctuaries, now rebuilt, all the wealth of which his
grandfather had robbed them: but before sending back the tablets, he
ordered copies to be made of them, and his secretaries set to work to
transcribe for his use such of these works as they considered worthy of
reproduction. The majority of them were treatises compiled by the most
celebrated adepts in the sciences for which Chaldæa had been famous
from time immemorial; they included collections of omens, celestial and
terrestrial, in which the mystical meaning of each phenomenon and
its influence on the destinies of the world was explained by examples
borrowed from the Annals of world-renowned conquerors, such as Naramsin
and Sargon of Agade; then there were formulæ for exorcising evil spirits
from the bodies of the possessed, and against phantoms, vampires, and
ghosts, the recognised causes of all disease; prayers and psalms, which
had to be repeated before the gods in order to obtain pardon for sin;
and histories of divinities and kings from the time of the creation down
to the latest date. Among these latter were several versions of the epic
of Grilgames, the story of Etana, of Adapa, and many others; and we
may hope to possess all that the Assyrians knew of the old Chaldæan
literature in the seventh century B.C., as soon as the excavators have
unearthed from the mound at Kouyunjik all the tablets, complete or
fragmentary, which still lie hidden there. Even from the shreds of
information which they have already yielded to us, we are able to piece
together so varied a picture that we can readily imagine Assur-bani-pal
to have been a learned and studious monarch, a patron of literature and
antiquarian knowledge. Very possibly he either read himself, or had read
to him, many of the authors whose works found a place in his library:
the kings of Nineveh, like the Pharaohs, desired now and then to be
amused by tales of the marvellous, and they were doubtless keenly alive
to the delightful rhythm and beautiful language employed by the poets of
the past in singing the praises of their divine or heroic ancestors.
But the mere fact that his palace contained the most important literary
collection which the ancient East has so far bequeathed to us, in no
way proves that Assur-bani-pal displayed a more pronounced taste for
literature than his predecessors; it indicates merely the zeal and
activity of his librarians, their intelligence, and their respect and
admiration for the great works of the past. Once he had issued his edict
ordering new editions of the old masters to be prepared, Assur-bani-pal
may have dismissed the matter from his mind, and the work would go on
automatically without need for any further interference on his part.
The scribes enriched his library for him, in much the same way as the
generals won his battles, or the architects built his monuments: they
were nothing more than nameless agents, whose individuality was eclipsed
by that of their master, their skill and talent being all placed to his
credit. Babylonia shared equally with Assyria in the benefits of his
government. He associated himself with his brother Shamash-shumukin in
the task of completing the temple of Ê-Sagilla; afterwards, when sole
monarch, he continued the work of restoration, not only in Babylon, but
in the lesser cities as well, especially those which had suffered most
during the war, such as Uru, Uruk, Borsippa, and Cutha.*
He refers to the works at Borsippa and Kuta towards the end
of the account of his campaign against Shamash-shumukin, and
to those at Uruk in describing the war against Khumbân-
khaldash.
He remodelled the temple of Bel at Nippur, the walls built there by him
being even now distinguishable from the rest by the size of the bricks
and the careful dressing of the masonry. From the shores of the Persian
Gulf to the mountains of Armenia, Assyria and Karduniash were covered
with building-yards just as they had been in the most peaceful days of
the monarchy.
[Illustration: 294.jpg REMAINS OF ASSUR-BANI-PALs WALL AT NIPPUR]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the photograph published by
Peters.
It was at this unique juncture of apparent grandeur and prosperity
that Phraortes resolved to attack Assur-bani-pal. There is nothing to
indicate that his action took place simultaneously with some movement on
the part of other peoples, or with a serious insurrection in any of the
Assyrian provinces. For my part, I prefer to set it down to one of those
sudden impulses, those irresistible outbursts of self-confidence, which
from time to time actuated the princes tributary to Nineveh or the kings
on its frontier. The period of inactivity to which some previous defeat
inflicted on them or on their predecessors had condemned them, allowed
them to regain their strength, and one or two victories over less
powerful neighbours served to obliterate the memory of former
humiliation and disaster; they flew to arms full of hope in the result,
and once more drew down defeat upon their heads, being lucky indeed if
their abortive rising led to nothing worse than the slaughter of their
armies, the execution of their generals, and an increase in the amount
of their former tribute. This was the fate that overtook Phraortes;
the conqueror of the Persians, when confronted by the veteran troops of
Assyria, failed before their superior discipline, and was left dead upon
the field of battle with the greater part of his army. So far the
affair presented no unusual features; it was merely one more commonplace
repetition of a score of similar episodes which had already taken place
in the same region, under Tiglath-pileser III. or the early Sargonides;
but Huvakshatara, the son of Phraortes, known to the Greeks as
Cyaxares,* instead of pleading for mercy, continued to offer a stubborn
resistance. Cyaxares belongs to history, and there can be no doubt that
he exercised a decisive influence over the destinies of the Oriental
world, but precise details of his exploits are wanting, and his
personality is involved in such obscuring mists that we can scarcely
seize it; the little we have so far been able to glean concerning him
shows us, not so much the man himself, as a vague shadow of him seen
dimly through the haze.
* The original form of the name is furnished by passages in
the Behistun inscription, where Chitrantakhma of Sagartia
and Fravartish of Media, two of the claimants for the throne
who rose against Darius, are represented as tracing their
descent from Huvakshatara.
His achievements prove him to have been one of those perfect rulers of
men, such as Asia produces every now and then, who knew how to govern as
well as how to win battles--a born general and lawgiver, who could carry
his people with him, and shone no less in peace than in war.*
* G. Rawlinson takes a somewhat different view of Cyaxares
character; he admits that Cyaxares knew how to win
victories, but refuses to credit him with the capacity for
organisation required in order to reap the full benefits of
conquest, giving as his reason for this view the brief
duration of the Medic empire. The test applied by him does
not seem to me a conclusive one, for the existence of the
second Chaldæan empire was almost as short, and yet it would
be decidedly unfair to draw similar inferences touching the
character of Nabopolassar or Nebuchadrezzar from this fact.
[Illustration: 297.jpg MEDIC AND PERSIAN FOOT-SOLDIERS]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Coste and Flandin. The first
and third figures are Medes, the second and fourth Persians.
The armies at the disposal of his predecessors had been little more than
heterogeneous assemblies of feudal militia; each clan furnished its own
contingent of cavalry, archers, and pikemen, but instead of all these
being combined into a common whole, with kindred elements contributed
by the other tribes, each one acted separately, thus forming a number of
small independent armies within the larger one. Cyaxares saw that defeat
was certain so long as he had nothing but these ill-assorted masses to
match against the regular forces of Assyria: he therefore broke up the
tribal contingents and rearranged the units of which they were composed
according to their natural affinities, grouping horsemen with horsemen,
archers with archers, and pikemen with pikemen, taking the Assyrian
cavalry and infantry as his models.*
* Herodotus tells us that Cyaxares was the first to divide the Asiatics
into different regiments, separating the pikemen from the archers and
horsemen; before his time, these troops were all mixed up haphazard
together. I have interpreted his evidence in the sense which seems
most in harmony with what we know of Assyrian military tactics. It
seems incredible that the Medic armies can have fought pell-mell, as
Herodotus declares, seeing that for two hundred years past the Medes
had been frequently engaged against such well-drilled troops as those
of Assyria: if the statement be authentic, it merely means that Cyaxares
converted all the small feudal armies which had hitherto fought side
by side on behalf of the king into a single royal army in which the
different kinds of troops were kept separate.
The foot-soldiers wore a high felt cap known as a tiara; they had long
tunics with wide sleeves, tied in at the waist by a belt, and sometimes
reinforced by iron plates or scales, as well as gaiters, buskins of soft
leather, and large wickerwork shields covered with ox-hide, which they
bore in front of them like a movable bulwark; their weapons consisted of
a short sword, which depended from the belt and lay along the thigh,
one or two light javelins, a bow with a strongly pronounced curve, and
a quiver full of arrows made from reeds.* Their horsemen, like those of
other warlike nations II of the East, used neither saddle nor stirrups,
and though they could make skilful use of lance and sword, their
favourite weapon was the bow.**
* Herodotus describes the equipment of the Persians in much
the same terms as I have used above, and then adds in the
following chapter that the Medes had the same equipment,
for it is the equipment of the Medes and not that of the
Persians.
** Herodotus says that the Medic horsemen were armed in the
same manner as the infantry.
[Illustration: 298.jpg A MEDIC HORSEMAN]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a cast of the Medic intaglio in
the Cabinet des Médailles.
Accustomed from their earliest childhood to all kinds of equestrian
exercises, they seemed to sit their horses as though they actually
formed part of the animal. They seldom fought in line, but, from the
very beginning of an action, hung like a dense cloud on the front and
flanks of the enemy, and riddled them with missiles, without, however,
coming to close quarters. Like the Parthians of a later epoch, they
waited until they had bewildered and reduced the foe by their ceaseless
evolutions before giving the final charge which was to rout them
completely. No greater danger could threaten the Assyrians than the
establishment of a systematically organised military power within
the borders of Media. An invader starting from Egypt or Asia Minor,
even if he succeeded in overthrowing the forces sent out to meet him,
had still a long way to go before he could penetrate to the heart of
the empire. Even if Cilicia and Syria should be conquered, nothing was
easier than to oppose a further advance at the barrier of the Euphrates;
and should the Euphrates be crossed, the Khabur still remained, and
behind it the desert of Singar, which offered the last obstacle between
Nineveh and the invaders. The distances were less considerable in the
case of an army setting out from Urartu and proceeding along the basin
of the Tigris or its affluents; but here, too, the difficulties of
transit were so serious that the invader ran a great risk of gradually
losing the best part of his forces on the road. On the north-east and
east, however, the ancient heritage of Assur lay open to direct and
swift attack. An enemy who succeeded in destroying or driving back the
garrisons stationed as outposts on the rim of the plateau, from Kharkhar
to Parsua, if he ventured to pursue his advantage and descended into the
plain of the Tigris, had no less than three routes to choose from--the
Kirind road on the south, the Baneh road on the north, and the
Suleimanych road between the two. The last was the easiest of all, and
led almost straight to the fords of Altun-Keupri and the banks of the
Lesser Zab, on the confines of Assyria proper, close under the walls of
Arbela, the holy city of Ishtar.
[Illustration: 300.jpg THE ASSYRIAN TRIANGLE]
He needed but to win two victories, one upon leaving the mountains, the
other at the passage of the Zab, and two or three weeks steady marching
would bring him from Hamadân right up to the ramparts of Nineveh.
Cyaxares won a victory over Assur-bani-pals generals, and for the first
time in over a hundred years Assyria proper suffered the ignominy of
foreign invasion. The various works constructed by twenty generations of
kings had gradually transformed the triangle enclosed between the Upper
Zab, the Tigris, and the Jebel-Makhlub into a regular fortified camp.
The southern point of this triangle was defended by Calah from the
attacks of Chaldoa or from foes coming down from Media by Iïolwân and
Suleimanyeh, while Nineveh guarded it on the northeast, and several
lines of walled cities--among which Dur-Sharrukîn and Imgur-Bel can
still be identified--protected it on the north and east, extending from
the Tigris as far as the G-hazîr and Zab. It was necessary for an enemy
to break through this complex defensive zone, and even after this had
been successfully accomplished and the walls of the capital had been
reached, the sight which would meet the eye was well calculated to
dismay even the most resolute invader. Viewed as a whole, Nineveh
appeared as an irregular quadrilateral figure, no two sides of which
were parallel, lying on the left bank of the Tigris.
[Illustration: 301.jpg MAP OF NINEVEH]
The river came right up to the walls on the west, and the two mounds of
Kouyunjik and Nebi-Yunus, on which stood the palaces of the Sargonides,
were so skilfully fortified that a single wall connecting the two
sufficed to ward off all danger of attack on this side. The south
wall, which was the shortest of the four, being only about 870 yards
in length, was rendered inaccessible by a muddy stream, while the north
wall, some 2150 yards long, was protected by a wide moat which could be
filled from the waters of the Khuzur.
[Illustration: 302.jpg PART OF THE FOSSE AT NINEVEH]
Drawn by Boudier, from a sketch in Layard.
The eastern front had for a long time depended for its safety on
a single wall reinforced by a moat, but Sennacherib, deeming it
insufficiently protected against a sudden attack, had piled up obstacles
in front of it, so that it now presented a truly formidable appearance.
It was skirted throughout its whole length by a main rampart, 5400 yards
long, which described a gentle curve from north to south, and rose to a
height of about 50 feet, being protected by two small forts placed close
to the main gates. The fosse did not run along the foot of the wall, but
at a distance of about fifty yards in front of it, and was at least some
20 feet deep and over 150 feet in width. It was divided into two unequal
segments by the Khuzur: three large sluice-gates built on a level with
the wall and the two escarpments allowed the river to be dammed back, so
that its waters could be diverted into the fosse and thus keep it full
in case of siege. In front of each segment was a kind of demi-lune,
and--as though this was not precaution enough--two walls, each over
4300 yards long, were built in front of the demi-lunes, the ditch which
separated them being connected at one end with the Khuzur, and allowed
to empty itself into a stream on the south. The number of inhabitants
sheltered behind these defences was perhaps 300,000 souls;* each
separate quarter of the city was enclosed by ramparts, thus forming, as
it were, a small independent town, which had to be besieged and captured
after a passage had been cut through the outer lines of defence.
* Jones and G. Rawlinson credit Nineveh with a population of
not more than 175,000.
Cyaxares might well have lost heart in the face of so many difficulties,
but his cupidity, inflamed by reports of the almost fabulous wealth of
the city, impelled him to attack it with extraordinary determination:
the spoils of Susa, Babylon, and Thebes, in fact, of the whole of
Western Asia and Ethiopia, were, he felt, almost within his reach,
and would inevitably fall into his hands provided his courage and
perseverance did not fail him. After shutting up the remnant of the
Assyrian army inside Nineveh he laid patient siege to the city, and the
fame of his victories being noised abroad on all sides, it awoke among
the subject races that longing for revenge which at one time appeared to
have been sent to sleep for ever. It almost seemed as though the moment
was approaching when the city of blood should bleed in its turn, when
its kings should at length undergo the fate which they had so long
imposed on other monarchs. Nahum the Elkoshite,* a Hebrew born in the
Assyrian province of Samaria, but at that time an exile in Judah, lifted
up his voice, and the echo of his words still resounds in our ears,
telling us of the joy and hope felt by Judah, and with Judah, by the
whole of Asia, at the prospect. Speaking as the prophet of Jahveh,
it was to Jahveh that he attributed the impending downfall of the
oppressor: Jahveh is a jealous God and avengeth; Jahveh avengeth and
is full of wrath; Jahveh taketh vengeance on His adversaries, and He
reserveth wrath for His enemies. Jahveh is slow to anger and great in
power, and will by no means clear the guilty; Jahveh hath His way in the
whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet. He
rebuketh the sea and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: Bashan
languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth. * And,
Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.
Then he goes on to unfold before the eyes of his hearers a picture of
Nineveh, humiliated and in the last extremity.
* Elkosh is identified by Eusebius with Elkese, which St.
Jerome declares to have been in Galileo, the modern el-
Kauzeh, two and a half hours walk south of Tibnin. The
prophecy of Nahum has been taken by some as referring to the
campaign of Phraortes against Assyria, but more frequently
to the destruction of Nineveh by the Medes and Chaldæans. It
undoubtedly refers to the siege interrupted by the Scythian
invasion.
There she lies, behind her bastions of brick, anxiously listening for
the approach of the victorious Medes. The noise of the whip, and
the noise of the rattling of wheels; and prancing horses and jumping
chariots; the horsemen mounting, and the flashing sword, and the
glittering spear; and a multitude of slain and a great heap of carcases:
and there is no end of the corpses; they stumble upon their corpses:
because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favoured harlot,
the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms,
and families through her witchcrafts. Behold, I am against thee, saith
Jahveh of hosts, and I will discover thy skirts upon they face; and I
will show the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame. And I
will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set
thee as a gazing-stock. And it shall come to pass that all they that
look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste: who
will bemoan her? Whence shall I seek comforters for thee? Thebes, the
city of Amon, did not escape captivity; why then should Nineveh prove
more fortunate? All thy fortresses shall be like fig trees with the
firstripe figs: if they be shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater.
Behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women; the gates of thy land
are set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire hath devoured thy bars.
Draw thee water for the siege, strengthen thy fortresses: go into the
clay and tread the mortar, make strong the brick-kiln. There shall the
fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off,... make thyself many as
the cankerworm, make thyself many as the locusts. Thou hast multiplied
thy merchants as the stars of heaven: the cankerworm spoileth and flieth
away. Thy crowned are as the locusts and thy marshals as the swarms of
grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun
ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are.
Thy shepherds slumber, O King of Assyria: thy worthies are at rest: thy
people are scattered upon the mountains, and there is none to gather
them. There is no assuaging of thy hurt; thy wound is grievous: all that
hear the bruit of thee clap the hands over thee; for upon whom hath not
thy wickedness passed continually?
On this occasion Nineveh escaped the fate with which the prophet had
threatened it, but its safety was dearly bought. According to the
tradition accepted in Asia Minor two hundred years later, a horde of
Scythians under King Madyes, son of Protothyes, setting out from the
Bussian steppes in pursuit of the Cimmerians, made their appearance on
the scene in the nick of time. We are told that they flung themselves
through the Caspian Gates into the basin of the Kur, and came into
contact with the Medes at the foot of Mount Caucasus. The defeat of the
Medes here would necessarily compel them to raise the siege of Nineveh.
This crisis in the history of Asia was certainly not determined by
chance. For eighty years Assyria had been in contact with the Scythians,
and the Assyrian kings had never ceased to keep an eye upon their
movements, or lose sight of the advantage to which their bellicose
temper might be turned in circumstances like the present. They had
pitted them against the Cimmerians, then against the Medes, and probably
against the kings of Urartu as well, and the intimacy between the two
peoples came to be so close that the Scythian king Bartatua did not
hesitate to demand one of the daughters of Bsarhaddon in marriage. From
the very beginning of his reign Assur-bani-pal had shown them the
utmost consideration, and when King Madyes, son of his ally Bartatua,
intervened thus opportunely in the struggle, he did so, not by mere
chance, as tradition would have us believe, but at the urgent request of
Assyria. He attacked Media in the rear, and Cyaxares, compelled to raise
the siege of Nineveh, hastened to join battle with him. The engagement
probably took place on the banks of the Lower Araxes or to the north of
Lake Urumiah, in the region formerly inhabited by the Mannai; but after
defeating his foe and dictating to him the terms of submission, Madyes,
carried away by the lust of conquest, did not hesitate to turn his arms
against his ally. Exhausted by her recent struggle, Assyria lay at his
mercy, her fortresses alone being able to offer any serious resistance:
he overran the country from end to end, and though the walled cities
withstood the fury of his attack, the rural districts were plundered
right and left, and laid desolate for many a year to come. The Scythians
of this epoch probably resembled those whom we find represented on the
monuments of Greek art two centuries later. Tall fierce-looking men,
with unkempt beards, their long and straggling locks surmounted by the
_kyrbasis_, or pointed national cap of felt; they wore breeches and a
blouse of embroidered leather, and were armed with lances, bows, and
battle-axes. They rode bareback on untrained horses, herds of which
followed their tribes about on their wanderings; each man caught the
animal he required with the help of a lasso, put bit and bridle on him,
and vaulting on to his back at a single bound, reduced him to a state
of semi-obedience. No troops could stand their ground before the
frantic charge of these wild horsemen; like the Huns of Roman times,
the Scythians made a clean sweep of everything they found in their path.
They ruined the crops, carried off or slaughtered the herds, and set
fire to the villages from sheer love of destruction, or in order to
inspire terror; every one who failed to fly to the mountains or take
refuge in some fortress, was either massacred on the spot or led away
into slavery.
[Illustration: 308.jpg SCYTHIANS TENDING THEIR WOUNDED]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the reliefs on a silver vase
from Kul-Oba.
Too ignorant of the arts of war to undertake a siege in the regular
way, they usually contented themselves with levying ransoms on fortified
towns; occasionally, however, when the wealth accumulated behind the
walls held out a prospect of ample booty, they blockaded the place until
famine compelled it to surrender. More than one ancient city which,
thanks to the good government of its rulers and the industry of its
citizens, had amassed treasure of inestimable value, was put to fire and
sword, and more than one fertile and populous region left unfilled and
deserted.* Most of the states which for the last three centuries had
fought so stubbornly against the Assyrians for independence, went down
before the storm, including the kingdoms of Urartu, of the Mushku, and
of the Tabal,** the miserable end furnishing the Hebrew prophets full
fifty years later with a theme of sombre rejoicing. There is Meshech,
Tubal, and all her multitude; her graves are round about her: all of
them uncircumcised, slain by the sword; for they caused their terror in
the land of the living. And they shall not lie with the mighty that
are fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to hell with their
weapons of war, and have laid their swords under their heads,*** and
their iniquities are upon their bones; for they were the terror of the
mighty in the land of the living. ****
* This may be deduced from the passage in Herodotus, where
he says that the Scythians were masters of Asia for
twenty-eight years, and overturned everything by their
brutality and stupidity: for, in addition to tribute, they
exacted from every one whatever they chose, and, moreover,
they prowled here and there, plundering as they thought
good.
** Strabo refers in general terms to the presence of
Scythians (or, as he calls them, Sacae) in Armenia,
Cappadocia, and on the shores of the Black Sea.
*** This, doubtless, means that the Mushku and Tabal had
been so utterly defeated that they could not procure
honourable burial for their dead, i.e. with their swords
beneath their heads and their weapons on their bodies.
**** 1 Ezek. xxxii. 26, 27.
The Cimmerians, who, since their reverses in Lydia and on Mount Taurus,
had concentrated practically the whole of their tribes in Cappadocia
and in the regions watered by the Halys and Thermodon, shared the good
fortune of their former adversaries. At that time they lived under the
rule of a certain Kôbos, who seems to have left a terrible reputation
behind him; tradition gives him a place beside Sesostris among the
conquerors of the heroic age, and no doubt, like his predecessor
Dugdamis, he owed this distinction to some expedition or other against
the peoples who dwelt on the shores of the Ægean Sea, but our knowledge
of his career is confined to the final catastrophe which overtook him.
After some partial successes, such as that near Zela, for instance, he
was defeated and made prisoner by Madyes. His subjects, as vassals of
the Scythians, joined them in their acts of brigandage,* and together
they marched from province to province, plundering as they went; they
overran the western regions of the Assyrian kingdom from Melitene
and Mesopotamia to Northern Syria, from Northern Syria to Phoenicia,
Damascus, and Palestine,** and at length made their appearance on the
Judaean frontier.
* It seems probable that this was so, when we consider the
confusion between the Scythians or Sakse, and the Cimmerians
in the Babylonian and Persian inscriptions of the
Achsemenian epoch.
** Their migration from Media into Syria and Palestine is
expressly mentioned by Herodotus.
Since the day when Sennacherib had been compelled to return to Assyria
without having succeeded in destroying Jerusalem, or even carrying it by
storm, Judah had taken little or no part in external politics. Divided
at first by a conflict between the party of prudence, who advised
submission to Nineveh, and the more warlike spirits who advocated an
alliance with Egypt, it had ended by accepting its secondary position,
and had on the whole remained fairly loyal to the dynasty of Sargon.
[Illustration: 311.jpg IRANIAN SOLDIER FIGHTING AGAINST THE SCYTHIANS]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the cast of a cylinder given by
Cunningham. The cylinder is usually described as Persian,
but the dress is that of the Medes as well as of the
Persians.
On the death of Hezekiah, his successor, Manasseh, had, as we know,
been tempted to intervene in the revolutions of the hour, but the prompt
punishment which followed his first attempt put an end for ever to his
desire for independence. His successor, Amon, during his brief reign of
two years,* had no time to desert the ways of his father, and Josiah,**
who came to the throne in 638 B.C., at the age of eight, had so far
manifested no hostility towards Assyria.
* 2 Kings xxi. 18-26; cf. 2 Chron. xxxiii. 20-25. The reign
of fifty-five years attributed to Manasseh by the Jewish
annalists cannot be fitted into the chronology of the
period; we must either take off ten years, thus reducing the
duration of the reign to forty-five years, or else we must
assume the first ten of Manasseh to be synchronous with the
last ten of Hezekiah.
** 2 Kings xxii. 1; cf. 2 Chron. xxxiv. 1.
Thus, for more than fifty years, Judah enjoyed almost unbroken peace,
and led as happy and prosperous an existence as the barrenness of its
soil and the unruly spirit of its inhabitants would permit.
But though its political activity had been almost nothing during this
interval, its spiritual life had seldom been developed with a greater
intensity. The reverse sustained by Sennacherib had undoubtedly been
a triumph for Isaiah, and for the religious party of which we are
accustomed to regard him as the sole representative. It had served to
demonstrate the power of Jahveh, and His aversion for all idolatrous
worship and for all foreign alliances. In vain did the partisans of
Egypt talk loudly of Pharaoh and of all those principalities of this
world which were drawn round in Pharaohs orbit; Egypt had shown herself
incapable of safeguarding her friends, and things had gone steadily from
bad to worse so long as these latter held the reins of government;
their removal from office had been, as it were, the signal for a welcome
change in the fortunes of the Jews. Jahveh had delivered His city
the moment when, ceasing to rely upon itself, it had surrendered its
guidance into His hands, and the means of avoiding disaster in the
future was clearly pointed out to it. Judah must be content to follow
the counsels which Isaiah had urged upon it in the name of the Most
High, and submissively obey the voice of its prophets. Thine eyes shall
see thy teachers: and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying,
This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when
ye turn to the left. And ye shall defile the over-laying of thy graven
images of silver, and the plating of thy molten images of gold: thou
shalt cast them away as an unclean thing; thou shalt say unto it, Get
thee hence. Isaiah seems to disappear after his triumph, and none of
his later prophecies have come down to us: yet the influence of his
teaching lasted throughout the reign of Hezekiah, and the court,
supported by the more religious section of the people, not only abjured
the worship of false gods, but forsook the high places and discontinued
the practices which he had so strenuously denounced. The great bulk of
the nation, however, soon returned to their idolatrous practices, if,
indeed, they had ever given them up, and many of the royal advisers grew
weary of the rigid observances which it was sought to impose upon them;
rites abhorrent to Jahveh found favour even among members of the kings
own family, and on Hezekiahs death, about 686 B.C., a reaction promptly
set in against both his religious views and the material reforms he had
introduced.*
* 2 Kings xxi. 2-7 (cf. 2 Chron. xxxiii. 2-7), where, in
spite of manifest recensions of the text, the facts
themselves seem to have been correctly set forth.
Manasseh was only thirteen years old when he came to the throne, and his
youth naturally inclined him towards the less austere forms of divine
worship: from the very first he tolerated much that his father had
forbidden, and the spirit of eclecticism which prevailed among his
associates rendered him, later on, an object of special detestation to
the orthodox historians of Jerusalem. Worshippers again began openly
to frequent the high places; they set up again the prostrate idols,
replanted the sacred groves, and even built altars for all the host
of heaven in the two courts of the house of Jahveh. The chariots
and horses of the sun reappeared within the precincts of the temple,
together with the sacred courtesans. Baal and the Phoenician Astarte
were worshipped on Mount Sion. The valley of Hinnom, where Ahaz had
already burnt one of his children during a desperate crisis in the
Syrian wars, was again lighted up by the flames of the sacred pyre.
We are told that Manasseh himself set the example by passing his son
through the flames; he also had recourse to astrologers, soothsayers,
fortune-tellers, and sorcerers of the lowest type. The example of
Assyria in matters of this kind exercised a preponderant influence on
Jewish customs, and certainly it would have been a miracle if Jerusalem
had succeeded in escaping it; did not Nineveh owe the lofty place it
occupied to these occult sciences and to the mysterious powers of its
gods? In thus imitating its conqueror, Judah was merely borrowing the
weapons which had helped him to subdue the world. The partisans of the
ancient religions who were responsible for these innovations must have
regarded them as perfectly legitimate reforms, and their action was
received with favour in the provinces: before long the latter contained
as many sanctuaries as there were towns,* and by thus multiplying the
centres of worship, they hoped that, in accordance with ancient belief,
the ties which existed between Jahveh and His chosen people would also
be increased.
* Jer. ii. 26-30. For the quotation see also Jer. xi. 13:
For according to the number of thy cities are thy gods, O
Judah; and according to the number of the streets of
Jerusalem have ye set up altars to the shameful thing, even
altars to burn incense unto Baal.
The fact that the provinces had been ravaged from end to end in the days
of Sennacherib, while Jerusalem had been spared, was attributed to the
circumstance that Hezekiah had destroyed the provincial sanctuaries,
leaving the temple on Mount Sion alone standing. Wherever Jahveh
possessed altars, He kept guard over His people, but His protection was
not extended to those places where sacrifices were no longer offered to
Him. The reaction was not allowed to take place without opposition on
the part of the prophets and their followers. We are told that Manasseh
shed innocent blood very much till he had filled Jerusalem from one
end to another; there is even a Kabbinic tradition to the effect that,
weary of the admonitions of the aged Isaiah, he put him to death by
shutting him up in the hollow trunk of a tree, and causing him to be
sawn in two.*
* 2 Kings xxi. 16. The tradition in regard to the fate of
Isaiah took its foundation in this text, and it is perhaps
indirectly referred to in Heb. xi. 37.
For a long time after this no instance can be found of a prophet
administering public affairs or directing the actions of the king
himself; the priests and reformers, finding no outlet for their
energy in this direction, fell back on private preaching and literary
propaganda. And, above all, they applied themselves to the task of
rewriting the history of Israel, which, as told by the chroniclers of
the previous century, presented the national Deity in too material a
light, and one which failed to harmonise with the ideals then obtaining.
So long as there were two separate Hebrew kingdoms, the existence of the
two parallel versions of the Elohist and Jahvist gave rise to but little
difficulty: each version had its own supporters and readers, whose
consciences were readily satisfied by the interpolation of a few new
facts into the text as occasion arose. But now that Samaria had fallen,
and the whole political and religious life of the Hebrew race
was centred in Judah alone, the necessity for a double and often
contradictory narrative had ceased to exist, and the idea occurred of
combining the two in a single work. This task, which was begun in
the reign of Hezekiah and continued under Manasseh, resulted in the
production of a literature of which fragments have been incorporated
into the historical books of our Bible.*
The reign of Amon witnessed no alteration in the policy initiated by his
predecessor Manasseh; but when, after less than two years rule, he was
suddenly struck down by the knife of an assassin, the party of reform
carried the day, and the views of Hezekiah and Isaiah regained their
ascendency. Josiah had been king, in name at any rate, for twelve
years,** and was learning to act on his own responsibility, when the
Scythian danger appeared on the horizon.
* The scheme of the present work prevents me from doing more
than allude in passing to these preliminary stages in the
composition of the Priestly Code. I shall have occasion to
return briefly to the subject at the close of Volume IX.
** The date is supplied by the opening passage of the
prophecy of Jeremiah, to whom the word of Jehovah came in
the days of Josiah, the son of Amon, King of Judah, in the
thirteenth year of his reign (i. 2). Volney recognised
that chaps, i., iv., v., and vi. of Jeremiah refer to the
Scythian invasion, and since his time it has been admitted
that, with the exception of certain interpolations in chaps,
i. and iii., the whole of the first six chapters date from
this period, but that they underwent slight modifications in
the recension which was made in the fourth year of
Jehoiachin in order to make them applicable to the
threatened Chaldæan invasion. The date is important, since
by using it as a basis we can approximately restore the
chronology of the whole period. If we assume the thirteenth
year of Josiah to have been 627-626 B.C., we are compelled
to place all the early Medic wars in the reign of Assur-
bani-pal, as I have done.
This barbarian invasion, which burst upon the peace of Assyria like
a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky, restored to the faithful that
confidence in the omnipotence of their God which had seemed about
to fail them; when they beheld the downfall of states, the sack of
provinces innumerable, whole provinces in flames and whole peoples
irresistibly swept away to death or slavery, they began to ask
themselves whether these were not signs of the divine wrath, indicating
that the day of Jahveh was at hand. Prophets arose to announce
the approaching judgment, among the rest a certain Zephaniah, a
great-grandson of Hezekiah:* I will utterly consume all things from off
the face of the ground, saith Jahveh. I will consume man and beast; I
will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the
stumbling-blocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from the face
of the earth, saith Jahveh. And I will stretch out My hand upon Judah,
and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the
remnant of Baal from this place, and the name of the Chemarim with the
priests; and them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops;
and them that worship, which swear to Jahveh and swear by Malcham; and
them that are turned back from following Jahveh; and those that have not
sought Jahveh nor inquired after Him. Hold thy peace at the presence
of the Lord Jahveh; for the day of Jahveh is at hand; for Jahveh hath
prepared a sacrifice, He hath sanctified His guests.
* Zephaniah gives his own genealogy at the beginning of his
prophecy (i. 1), though, it is true, he does not add the
title King of Judah after the name of his ancestor
Hezekiah.
That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of
wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of
clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm, against
the fenced cities, and against the high battlements. And I will bring
distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they
have sinned against Jahveh: and their blood shall be poured out as dust,
and their flesh as dung. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be
able to deliver them in the day of Jahvehs wrath; but the whole land
shall be devoured by the fire of His jealousy; for He shall make an end,
yea, a terrible end, of all them that dwell in the land. During this
same period of stress and terror, there came forward another prophet,
one of the greatest among the prophets of Israel--Jeremiah, son of
Hilkiah. He was born in the village of Anathoth, near Jerusalem, being
descended from one of those priestly families in which the faith had
been handed down from generation to generation in all its original
purity.*
* The descent and birthplace of Jeremiah are given at the
beginning of his prophecies (i. 1). He must have been quite
young in the thirteenth year of Josiah, as is evident from
the statement in i. 6. We are told in chap, xxxvi. that in
the fourth year of Jehoiakim he dictated a summary of all
the prophecies delivered by him from the thirteenth year of
Josiah up to the date indicated to his servant Baruch, and
that later on he added a number of others of the same kind.
When Jahveh called him, he cried out in amazement, Ah, Lord God!
behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. But Jahveh reassured him, and
touching his lips, said unto him, Behold, I have put My words in thy
mouth: see, I have this day set thee over the nations and over
the kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, and to destroy and to
overthrow, to build and to plant. Then the prophet perceived a seething
cauldron, the face of which appeared from the north, for the Eternal
declared to him that Out of the north evil shall break out upon all the
inhabitants of the land. Already the enemy is hastening: Behold, he
shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as the whirlwind:
his horses are swifter than eagles. Woe unto us! for we are spoiled. O
Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved.
How long shall thine evil thoughts lodge within thee? For a voice
declareth from Dan, and publisheth evil from the hills of Ephraim:
make ye mention to the nations; behold, publish against Jerusalem! The
Scythians had hardly been mentioned before they were already beneath the
walls, and the prophet almost swoons with horror at the sound of their
approach. My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart: my heart
is disquieted in me; I cannot hold my peace; because thou hast heard,
O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Destruction upon
destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled, and my curtains in
a moment. How long shall I see the standard and hear the sound of the
trumpet? It would seem that the torrent of invasion turned aside
from the mountains of Judah; it flowed over Galilee, Samaria, and the
Philistine Shephelah, its last eddies dying away on the frontiers of
Egypt. Psammetiehus is said to have bribed the barbarians to retire. As
they fell back they plundered the temple of Derketô, near Ashkelon: we
are told that in order to punish them for this act of sacrilege, the
goddess visited them with a disease which caused serious ravages amongst
them, and which the survivors carried back with them to their own
country.*
* Herodotus calls the goddess Aphrodite Urania, by which we
must understand Derketô or Atargatis, who is mentioned by
several other classical authors, e.g. Xanthus of Lydia,
Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pliny. According to Justin, the
Scythians were stopped only by the marshes of the Delta. The
disease by which the Scythians were attacked is described by
Hippocrates; but in spite of what he tells us about it, its
precise nature has not yet been determined.
There was, however, no need to introduce a supernatural agency in order
to account for their rapid disappearance. The main body of invaders had
never quitted Media or the northern part of the Assyrian empire, and
only the southern regions of Syria were in all probability exposed to
the attacks of isolated bands. These stragglers, who year after year
embarked in one desperate adventure after another, must have found great
difficulty in filling up the gaps which even victories made in their
ranks; enervated by the relaxing nature of the climate, they could offer
little resistance to disease, and excess completed what the climate had
begun, the result being that most of them died on the way, and only
a few survived to rejoin the main body with their booty. For several
months the tide of invasion continued to rise, then it ebbed as quickly
as it had risen, till soon nothing was left to mark where it had passed
save a pathway of ruins, not easily made good, and a feeling of terror
which it took many a year to efface. It was long before Judah forgot
the mighty nation, the ancient nation, the nation whose language thou
knowest not, neither understandest thou what they say. * Men could
still picture in imagination their squadrons marauding over the plains,
robbing the fellah of his crops, his bread, his daughters, his sheep and
oxen, his vines and fig trees, for they lay hold on bow and spear; they
are cruel and have no mercy; their voice roareth like the sea, and
they ride upon horses; every one set in array as a man to the battle,**
against thee, O daughter of Sion. We have heard the fame thereof; our
hands wax feeble; anguish hath taken hold of us, and pangs as of a woman
in travail. *** The supremacy of the Scythians was of short duration. It
was said in after-times that they had kept the whole of Asia in a state
of terror for twenty-eight years, dating from their defeat of Cyaxares;
but the length of this period is exaggerated.****
* Jer. v. 15; it seems curious that the Hebrew prophet
should use the epithet ancient, when we remember that the
Scythians claimed to be the oldest nation in the world,
older than even the Egyptians themselves.
** An obvious allusion to the regular formation adopted by
the Scythian squadrons.
*** Jer. v. 17; vi. 23, 24.
**** The authenticity of the number of years given in
Herodotus has been energetically defended by some modern
historians, and not less forcibly denied by others, who
reduce it, for example, in accordance with a doubtful
passage of Justin, to eight years. By assigning all the
events relating to the Scythian invaders to the mean period
of twenty years, we should obtain the length of time which
best corresponds to what is actually known of the general
history of this epoch.
The Medes soon recovered from their disaster, but before engaging their
foes in open conflict, they desired to rid themselves of the prince
who had conquered them, and on whom the fortunes of the whole Scythian
nation depended. Cyaxares, therefore, invited Madyes and his officers
to a banquet, and after plying them to excess with meat and drink, he
caused them all to be slain.*
* This episode is regarded as legendary by many modern
historians. Winckler even goes so far as to deny the defeat
of the Scythians: according to his view, they held
possession of Media till their chief, Astyages, was
overthrown by Cyrus; Rost has gone even further, deeming
even Cyaxares himself to have been a Scythian. For my part,
I see no reason to reject the tradition of the fatal
banquet. Without referring to more ancient illustrations,
Noldeke recalls the fact that in a period of only ten years,
from 1030 to 1040 a.d., the princes reigning over the
Iranian lands rid themselves by similar methods of the
Turcoman bands which harassed them. Such a proceeding has
never been repugnant to Oriental morality, and it is of a
kind to fix itself in the popular mind: far from wishing to
suppress it, I should be inclined to see in it the nucleus
of the whole tradition.
The barbarians made a brave resistance, in spite of the treason which
had deprived them of their leaders: they yielded only after a long and
bloody campaign, the details of which are unknown to us. Iranian
legends wove into the theme of their expulsion all kinds of fantastic or
romantic incidents. They related, for instance, how, in combination
with the Parthians, the Scythians, under the leadership of their queen
Zarinsea, several times defeated the Medes: she consented at last to
conclude a treaty on equal terms, and peace having been signed, she
retired to her capital of Boxanakê, there to end her days. One body
of the survivors re-entered Europe through the Caspian Gates, another
wandered for some time between the Araxes and the Halys, seeking a
country adapted to their native instincts and customs.* Cyaxares,
relieved from the pressure put upon him by the Scythians, immediately
resumed his efforts against Assyria, and was henceforward able to carry
his plans to completion without encountering any serious obstacle. It
would be incorrect to say that the Scythian invasion had overthrown the
empire of the Sargonids: it had swept over it like a whirlwind, but
had not torn from it one province, nor, indeed, even a single city. The
nations, already exhausted by their struggles for independence, were
incapable of displaying any energy when the barbarians had withdrawn,
and continued to bow beneath the Ninevite yoke as much from familiarity
with habitual servitude as from inability to shake themselves free.
Assur-bani-pal had died about the year 625 B.C., after a reign of
forty-two years, and his son Assur-etililâni had assumed the double
crown of Assyria and Babylon without opposition.**
* Herodotus speaks of these Scythians as having lived at
first on good terms with Cyaxares.
** The date of Assur-bani-pals death is not furnished by
any Assyrian monument, but is inferred from the Canon of
Ptolemy, where Saosduchîn or Shamash-shumukin and Chinaladan
or Assur-bani-pal each reigns forty-two years, from 668 or
667 to 626 or 625 B.C. The order of succession of the last
Assyrian kings was for a long time doubtful, and Sin-shar-
ishkun was placed before Assur-etililâni; the inverse order
seems to be now conclusively proved. The documents which
seemed at one time to prove the existence of a last king of
Assyria named Esarhaddon, identical with the Saracos of
classical writers, really belong to Esarhaddon, the father
of Assur-bani-pal. [Another king, Sin-sum-lisir, is
mentioned in a contract dated at Nippur in his accession
year. He may have been the immediate predecessor of
Sarakos.--? Ed.]
Nineveh had been saved from pillage by the strength of her ramparts,
but the other fortresses, Assur, Calah, and Dur-Sharrukîn, had been
destroyed during the late troubles; the enemy, whether Medes or
Scythians, had taken them by storm or reduced them by famine, and they
were now mere heaps of ruin, deserted save for a few wretched remnants
of their population. Assur-etililâni made some feeble attempts to
restore to them a semblance of their ancient splendour. He erected at
Calah, on the site of the palaces which had been destroyed by fire, a
kind of castle rudely built, and still more rudely decorated, the rooms
of which were small and low, and the walls of sun-dried brick were
panelled only to the height of about a yard with slabs of limestone
roughly squared, and without sculpture or inscription: the upper part of
the walls was covered with a coating of uneven plaster. We do not know
how long the inglorious reign of Assur-etililâni lasted, nor whether he
was assassinated or died a natural death. His brother, Sin-shar-ishkun,*
who succeeded him about 620 B.C., at first exercised authority, as he
had done, over Babylon as well as Nineveh,** and laboured, like his
predecessor, to repair the edifices which had suffered by the invasion,
making war on his neighbours, perhaps even on the Medes, without
incurring serious losses.
* The name of this king was discovered by G. Smith on the
fragments of a cylinder brought from Kouyunjik, where he
read it as Bel-zakir-iskun. The real reading is Sin-shar-
ishkun, and the similarity of this name with that of
Saracos, the last king of Assyria according to Greek
tradition, strikes one immediately. The relationship of this
king to Assur-etililâni was pointed out by Father Scheil
from the fragment of a tablet on which Sin-shar-ishkun is
declared to be the son of Assur-bani-pal, king of Assyria.
** This may be deduced from a passage of Abydenus, where
Saracos or Sin-shar-ishkun sends Bussalossoros (that is,
Nabopolassar) to defend Chaldæ against the invasion of the
peoples of the sea; so according to Abydenus, or rather
Berosus, from whom Abydenus indirectly obtained his
information, Saracos was King of Babylon as well as of
Nineveh at the beginning of his reign.
The Chaldæans, however, merely yielded him obedience from force of
habit, and the moment was not far distant when they would endeavour to
throw off his yoke. Babylon was at that time under the rule of a certain
Nabu-bal-uzur, known to us as Nabopolassar, a Kaldu of ancient lineage,
raised possibly by Assur-bani-pal to the dignity of governor, but
who, in any case, had assumed the title of king on the accession of
Assur-etililâni.*
* The Canon of Ptolemy makes Nabopolassar the direct
successor of Chinaladan, and his testimony is justified by
the series of Babylonian contracts which exist in fairly
regular succession from the second to the twenty-first years
of Nabopolassar. The account given by Berosus makes him a
general of Saracos, but the contradiction which this offers
to the testimony of the Canon can be explained if he is
considered as a vassal-king; the kings of Egypt and of Media
were likewise only satraps, according to Babylonian
tradition.
His was but a local sovereignty, restricted probably to the city and its
environs; and for twelve or thirteen years he had rested content with
this secondary position, when an unforeseen incident presented him with
the opportunity of rising to the first rank. Tradition asserted that
an immense army suddenly landed at the mouths of the Euphrates and the
Tigris; probably under this story is concealed the memory of one of
those revolts of the Bît-Yakîn and the tribes dwelling on the shores of
the Nar-Marratum, such as had often produced consternation in the minds
of the Sargonid kings.* Sin-shar-ishkun, distracted doubtless by other
anxieties, acted as his ancestors had done in similar circumstances, and
enjoined on his vassal to march against the aggressors and drive them
into the sea; but Nabopolassar, instead of obeying his suzerain, joined
forces with the rebels, and declared his independence. Assur-etililâni
and his younger brother had possibly neglected to take the hands of Bel,
and were therefore looked upon as illegitimate sovereigns. The annalists
of later times erased their names from the Royal Canon, and placed
Nabopolassar immediately after Assur-bani-pal, whom they called
Kandalanu. But however feeble Assyria had become, the cities on the
Lower Euphrates feared her still, and refused to ally themselves with
the pretender. Nabopolassar might perhaps have succumbed, as so many
before him had done, had he been forced to rely entirely on his own
resources, and he might have shared the sad fate of Merodach-baladan or
of Shamash-shumukîn; but Marduk, who never failed to show favour to his
faithful devotees, raised up help for him and secured him an ally.
The eyes of all who were oppressed by the cruel yoke of Nineveh were now
turned on Cyaxares, and from the time that he had dispersed the Scythian
hordes it was to him that they looked for salvation. Nabopolassar
besought his assistance, which the Median king graciously promised;** it
is even affirmed that a marriage concluded between one of his daughters,
Amyfcis, and Nebuchadrezzar, the heir to the throne of Babylon, cemented
the alliance.***
* Formerly these barbarians were identified with the remains
of the Scythian hordes, and this hypothesis has been
recently revived by Prashek. G. Rawlinson long ago
recognised that the reference must be to the Chaldæans, who
were perhaps joined by the Susians.
** The _Cylinder of Nabonichs_, the only original document
in which allusion is made to the destruction of Nineveh,
speaks of the Ummân-Manda and their king, whom it does not
name, and it has been agreed to recognise Cyaxares in this
sovereign. On the other hand, the name of Ummân-Manda
certainly designates in the Assyrian texts the wandering
Iranian tribes to whom the Greeks gave the name of Sakse or
Scythians; the result, in the opinions of several
Assyriologists of the present day, is that neither Astyages
nor Cyaxares were Medes in the sense in which we have
hitherto accepted them as such on the evidence of Herodotus,
but that they were Scythians, the Scythians of the great
invasion. This conclusion does not seem to me at present
justified. The Babylonians, who up till then had not had any
direct intercourse either with the Madai or the Ummân-Manda,
did as the Egyptians had done whether in Saite or Ptolemaic
times, continuing to designate as Kharî, Kafîti, Lotanu, and
Khâti the nations subject to the Persians or Macedonians;
they applied a traditional name of olden days to present
circumstances, and I see, at present, no decisive reason to
change, on the mere authority of this one word, all that the
classical writers have handed down concerning the history of
the epoch according to the tradition current in their days.
*** The name of the princess is written Amuhia, Amyitis. The
classical sources, the only ones which mention her, make her
the daughter of Astyages, and this has given rise to various
hypotheses. According to some, the notice of this princess
has no historical value. According to others, the Astyages
mentioned as her father is not Cyaxares the Mede, but a
Scythian prince who came to the succour of Nabopolassar,
perhaps a predecessor of Cyaxares on the Median throne, and
in this case Phraortes himself under another name. The most
prudent course is still to admit that Abydenus, or one of
the compilers of extracts to whom we owe the information,
has substituted the name of the last king of Media for that
of his predecessor, either by mistake, or by reason of some
chronological combinations. Amyitis, transported into the
harem of the Chaldæan monarch, served, like all princesses
married out of their own countries, as a pledge for the
faithful observance by her relatives of the treaty which had
been concluded.