On obtaining the crown whatever the circ_The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2: Assyria The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.

obtained it--Tiglath-Pileser immediately proceeded to attempt the

restoration of the Empire by engaging in a series of wars, now upon one,

now upon another frontier, seeking by his unwearied activity and energy

to recover the losses suffered through the weakness of his predecessors,

and to compensate for their laches by a vigorous discharge of all the

duties of the kingly office. The order of these wars, which formerly it

was impossible to determine, is now fixed by means of the Assyrian

Canon, and we may follow the course of the expeditions conducted by

Tiglath-Pileser II., with as much confidence and certainty as those of

Tiglath-Pileser I., Asshur-izir-pal, or the second Shalmaneser. It is

scarcely necessary, however, to detain the reader by going through the

entire series. The interest of Tiglath-Pileser’s military operations

attaches especially to his campaigns in Babylonia and in Syria, where he

is brought into contact with persons otherwise known to us. His other

wars are comparatively unimportant. Under these circumstances it is

proposed to consider in detail only the Babylonian and Syrian

expeditions, and to dismiss the others with a few general remarks on the

results which were accomplished by them.

Tiglath-Pileser’s expeditions against Babylon were in his first and in

his fifteenth years, B.C. 745 and 731. No sooner did he find himself

settled upon the throne, than he levied an army, and marched against

Southern Mesopotamia, which appears to have been in a divided and

unsettled condition. According to the Canon of Ptolemy, Nabonassar then

ruled in Babylon. Tiglath-Pileser’s annals confuse the accounts of his

two campaigns; but the general impression which we gather from them is

that, even in B.C. 745, the country was divided up into a number of

small principalities, the sea-coast being under the dominion of

Merodach-Baladan, who held his court in his father’s city of Bit-Yakin;

while in the upper region there were a number of petty princes,

apparently independent, among whom may be recognized names which seem to

occur later in Ptolemy’s list, among the kings of Babylon to whom he

assigns short reigns in the interval between Nabonassar and

Mardocempalus (Merodach-Baladan). Tiglath-Pileser attacked and defeated

several of these princes, taking the towns of Kur-Galzu (now Akkerkuf),

and Sippara or Sepharvaim, together with many other places of less

consequence in the lower portion of the country, after which he received

the submission of Merodach-Baladan, who acknowledged him for suzerain,

and consented to pay an annual tribute. Tiglath-Pileser upon this

assumed the title of “King of Babylon” (B.C. 729), and offered sacrifice

to the Babylonian gods in all the principal cities.

The first Syrian war of Tiglath-Pileser was undertaken in his third year

(B.C. 743), and lasted from that year to his eighth. In the course of it

he reduced to subjection Damascus, which had regained its independence,

and was under the government of Rezin; Samaria, where Menahem, the

adversary of Pul, was still reigning; Tyre, which was under a monarch

bearing the familiar name of Hiram; Hamath, Gebal, and the Arabs

bordering upon Egypt, who were ruled by a queen called Khabiba. He

likewise met and defeated a vast army under Azariah (or Uzziah), king of

Judah, but did not succeed in inducing him to make his submission. It

would appear by this that Tiglath-Pileser at this time penetrated deep

into Palestine, probably to a point which no Assyrian king but Vul-lush

III., had reached previously. But it would seem, at the same time, that

his conquests were very incomplete; they did not include Judaea or

Philistia, Idumaea, or the tribes of the Hauran; and they left untouched

the greater number of the Phoenician cities. It causes us, therefore, no

surprise to find that in a short time, B.C. 734, he renewed his efforts

in this quarter, commencing by an attack on Samaria, where Pekah was now

king, and taking Ijon, and Abel-beth-maachah, and Jamoah, and Kedesh,

and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, and all the land of Naphtali, and

carrying them captive to Assyria, thus “lightly afflicting, the land of

Zebulun and the land of Naphtali,” or the more northern portion of the

Holy Land, about Lake Merom, and from that to the Sea of Gennesareth.

This attack was-followed, shortly (B.C. 733) by the most important of

Tiglath-Pileser’s Syrian wars. It appears that the common danger, which

had formerly united the Hittites, Hamathites, and Damascenes in a close

alliance, now caused a league to be formed between Damascus and Samaria,

the sovereigns of which--Pekah and Rezin--made an attempt to add Judaea

to their confederation, by declaring war against Ahaz, attacking his

territory, and threatening to substitute in his place as king of

Jerusalem a creature of their own, “the son of Tabeal.” Hard pressed by

his enemies, Ahaz applied to Assyria, offering to become

Tiglath-Pileser’s “servant”--i.e, his vassal and tributary--if he would

send troops to his assistance, and save him from the impending danger.

Tiglath-Pileser was not slow to obey this call. Entering Syria at the

head of an army, he fell first upon Rezin, who was defeated, and fled to

Damascus, where Tiglath-Pileser besieged him for two years, at the end

of which time he was taken and slain. Next he attacked Pekah, entering

his country on the north-east, where it bordered upon the Damascene

territory, and overrunning the whole of the Trans-Jordanic provinces,

together (apparently) with some portion of the Cis-Jordanic region. The

tribes of Reuben and Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, who had

possessed the country between the Jordan and the desert from the time of

Moses, were seized and carried away captive by the conqueror, who placed

them in Upper Mesopotamia, on the affluents of the Bilikh and the

Khabour, from about Harran to Nisibis. Some cities situated on the right

bank of the Jordan, in the territory of Issachar, but belonging to

Manasseh, were at the same time seized and occupied. Among these,

Megiddo in the great plain of Esdraelon, and Dur or Dor upon the coast,

some way below Tyre, were the most important. Dur was even thought of

sufficient consequence to receive an Assyrian governor at the same time

with the other principal cities of Southern Syria.

After thus chastising Samaria, Tiglath-Pileser appears to have passed on

to the south, where he reduced the Philistines and the Arab tribes, who

inhabited the Sinaitic desert as far as the borders of Egypt. Over these

last he set, in lieu of their native queen, an Assyrian governor. He

then returned towards Damascus, where he held a court, and invited the

neighboring states and tribes to send in their submission. The states

and tribes responded to his invitation. Tiglath-Pileser, before quitting

Syria, received submission and tribute not only from Ahaz, king of

Judah, but also from Mit’enna, king of Tyre; Pekah, king of Samaria;

Khanun, king of Gaza; and Mitinti, king of Ascalon: from the Moabites,

the Ammonites, the people of Arvad or Aradus, and the Idumaeans. He thus

completely re-established the power of Assyria in this quarter, once

more recovering to the Empire the entire tract between the coast and the

desert from Mount Amanus on the north to the Red Sea and the confines of

Egypt.

One further expedition was led or sent by Tiglath-Pileser into Syria,

probably in his last year. Disturbances having occurred from the revolt

of Mit’enna of Tyre and the murder of Pekah of Israel by Hoshea, an

Assyrian army marched westward, in B.C. 725, to put them down. The

Tyrian monarch at once submitted; and Hoshea, having entered into

negotiations, agreed to receive investiture into his kingdom at the

hands of the Assyrians, and to hold it as an Assyrian territory. On

these terns peace was re-established, and the army of Tiglath-Pileser

retired and recrossed the Euphrates.

Besides conducting these various campaigns, Tiglath-Pileser employed

himself in the construction of some important works at Calah, which was

his usual and favorite residence. He repaired and adorned the palace of

Shalmaneser II., in the centre of the Nimrud mound; and he built a new

edifice at the south-eastern corner of the platform, which seems to have

been the most magnificent of his erections. Unfortunately, in neither

case were his works allowed to remain as he left them. The sculptures

with which he adorned Shalmaneser’s palace were violently torn from

their places by Esar-haddon, and, after barbarous ill-usage, were

applied to the embellishment of his own residence by that monarch. The

palace which he built at the south-eastern corner of the Nimrud mound

was first ruined by some invader, and then built upon by the last

Assyrian king. Thus the monuments of Tiglath-Pileser II., come to us in

a defaced and unsatisfactory condition, rendering it difficult for us to

do full justice either to his architectural conceptions or to his taste

in ornamentation. We can see, however, by the ground plan of the

building which Mr. Loftus uncovered beneath the ruins of Mr. Layard’s

south-east palaces that the great edifice of Tiglath-Pileser was on a

scale of grandeur little inferior to that of the ancient palaces, and on

a plan very nearly similar. The same arrangement of courts and halls and

chambers, the same absence of curved lines or angles other than right

angles, the same narrowness of rooms in comparison with their length,

which have been noted in the earlier buildings, prevailed also in those

of this king. With regard to the sculptures with which, after the

example of the former monarchs, he ornamented their walls, we can only

say they seem to have been characterized by simplicity of treatment--the

absence of all ornamentation, except fringes, from the dresses, the

total omission of backgrounds, and (with few exceptions) the limitation

of the markings to the mere outlines of forms. The drawing is rather

freer and more spirited than that of the sculptures of Asshur-izir-pal;

animal forms, as camels, oxen, sheep, and goats, are more largely

introduced, and there is somewhat less formality in the handling. But

the change is in no respect very decided, or such as to indicate an era

in the progress of art.

Tiglath-Pileser appears, by the Assyrian Canon, to have had a reign of

eighteen years. He ascended the throne in B.C. 747, and was succeeded in

B.C. 727 by Shalmaneser, the fourth monarch who had borne that

appellation.

It is uncertain whether Shalmaneser IV, was related to Tiglath-Pileser

or not. As, however, there is no trace of the succession having been

irregular or disputed, it is most probable that he was his son. He

ascended the throne in B.C. 727, and ceased to reign in B.C. 722, thus

holding the royal power for less than six years. It was probably very

soon after his accession, that, suspecting the fidelity of Samaria, he

“came up” against Hoshea, king of Israel, and, threatening him with

condign punishment, so terrified him that he made immediate submission.

The arrears of tribute were rendered, and the homage due from a vassal

to his lord was paid; and Shalmaneser either returned into his own

country or turned his attention to other enterprises. But shortly

afterwards he learnt that Hoshea, in spite of his submission and

engagements, was again contemplating defection; and, conscious of his

own weakness, was endeavoring to obtain a promise of support from an

enterprising monarch who ruled in the neighboring country of Egypt. The

Assyrian conquests in this quarter had long been tending to bring them

into collision with the great power of Eastern Africa, which had once

held, and always coveted, the dominion of Syria. Hitherto such relations

as they had had with the Egyptians appear to have been friendly. The

weak and unwarlike Pharaohs who about this time bore sway in Egypt had

sought the favor of the neighboring Asiatic power by demanding Assyrian

princesses in marriage and affecting Assyrian names for their offspring.

But recently an important change had occurred. A brave Ethiopian prince

had descended the valley of the Nile at the head of a swarthy host, had

defeated the Egyptian levies, had driven the reigning monarch into the

marshes of the Delta, or put him to a cruel death, and had established

his own dominion firmly, at any rate over the upper country. Shebek the

First bore sway in Memphis in lieu of the blind Bocchoris; and Hoshea,

seeing in this bold and enterprising king the natural foe of the

Assyrians, and therefore his own natural ally and friend, “sent

messengers” with proposals, which appear to have been accepted; for on

their return Hoshea revolted openly, withheld his tribute, and declared

himself independent. Shalmaneser, upon this, came up against Samaria for

the second time, determined now to punish his vassal’s perfidy with due

severity. Apparently, he was unresisted; at any rate, Hoshea fell into

his power, and was seized, bound, and shut up in prison. A year or two

later Shalmaneser made his third and last expedition into Syria. What

was the provocation given him, we are not told; but this time, he came

up _throughout all the land_ and being met with resistance, he laid

formal siege to the capital. The siege commenced in Shahnaneser’s fourth

year, B.C. 724, and was protracted to his sixth, either by the efforts

of the Egyptians, or by the stubborn resistance of the inhabitants. At

last, in B.C. 722, the town surrendered, or was taken by storm; but

before this consummation had been reached, Shalmaneser’s reign would

seem to have come to an end in consequence of a successful revolution.

While he was conducting these operations against Samaria, either in

person or by means of his generals, Shalmaneser appears to have been

also engaged in hostilities with the Phoenician towns. Like Samaria,

they had revolted at the death of Tiglath-Pileser; and Shalmaneser,

consequently, marched into Phoenecia at the beginning of his reign,

probably in his first year, overran the entire country, and forced all

the cities to resume their position of dependence. The island Tyre,

however, shortly afterwards shook off the yoke. Hereupon Shalmaneser

“returned” into these parts, and collecting a fleet from Sidon,

Paleo-Tyrus, and Akko, the three most important of the Phoenician towns

after Tyre, proceeded to the attack of the revolted place. His vessels

were sixty in number, and were manned by eight hundred Phoenician

rowers, co-operating with probably, a smaller number of unskilled

Assyrians. Against this fleet the Tyrians, confiding in their maritime

skill, sent out a force of twelve vessels only, which proved, however,

quite equal to the occasion; for the assailants were dispersed and

driven off, with the loss of 500 prisoners.

Shalmaneser, upon this defeat, retired, and gave up all active

operations, contenting himself with leaving a body of troops on the

mainland, over against the city, to cut off the Tyrians from the

supplies of water which they were in the habit of drawing from the river

Litany, and from certain aqueducts which conducted the precious fluid

from springs in the mountains. The Tyrians, it is said, held out against

this pressure for five years, satisfying their thirst with rain water,

which they collected in reservoirs. Whether they then submitted, or

whether the attempt to subdue them was given up, is uncertain, since the

quotation from Menander, which is our sole authority for this passage of

history, here breaks off abruptly.

The short reign of Shalmaneser IV, was, it is evident, sufficiently

occupied by the two enterprises of which accounts have now been

given--the complete subjugation of Samaria, and the attempt to reduce

the island Tyre. Indeed, it is probable that neither enterprise had been

conducted when a dynastic revolution, caused by the ambition of a

subject, brought the unhappy monarch’s reign to an untimely end. The

conquest of Samaria is claimed by Sargon as an event of his first year;

and the resistance of the Tyrians, if it really continued during the

full space assigned to it by Menander, must have extended beyond the

terns of Shalmaneser’s reign, into the first or second year of his

successor. It was probably the prolonged absence of the Assyrian monarch

from his capital, caused by the obstinacy of the two cities which he was

attacking, that encouraged a rival to come forward and seize the throne;

just as in the Persian history we shall find the prolonged absence of

Canbyses in Egypt produce a revolution and change of dynasty at Susa. In

the East, where the monarch is not merely the chief but the sole power

in the state, the moving spring whose action must be continually exerted

to prevent the machinery of government from standing still, it is always

dangerous for the reigning prince to be long away from his metropolis.

The Orientals do not use the language of mere unmeaning compliment when

they compare their sovereigns with the sun, and speak of them as

imparting light and life to the country and people over which they rule.

In the king’s absence all languishes; the course of justice is

suspended; public works are stopped; the expenditure of the Court, on

which the prosperity of the capital mainly depends, being withdrawn,

trade stagnates, the highest branches suffering most; artists are left

without employment; work-men are discharged; wages fall; every industry

is more or less deranged, and those engaged in it suffer accordingly;

nor is there any hope of a return of prosperity until the king comes

home. Under these circumstances a general discontent prevails; and the

people, anxious for better times, are ready to welcome any pretender who

will come forward, and, on any pretext whatever, declare the throne

vacant, and claim to be its proper occupant. If Shalmaneser continued to

direct in person the siege of Samaria during the three years of its

continuance, we cannot be surprised that the patience of the Ninevites

was exhausted, and that in the third year they accepted the rule of the

usurper who boldly proclaimed himself king.

What right the new monarch put forward, what position he had previously

held, what special circumstances, beyond the mere absence of the

rightful king, facilitated his attempts, are matters on which the

monuments throw no light, and on which we must therefore be content to

be ignorant. All that we can see is, that either personal merit or

official rank and position must have enabled him to establish himself;

for he certainly did not derive any assistance from his birth, which

must have been mediocre, if not actually obscure. It is the custom of

the Babylonian and Assyrian kings to glory in their ancestry, and when

the father has occupied a decently high position, the son declares his

sire’s name and rank at the commencement of each inscription, but Sargon

never, in any record, names his father, nor makes the slightest allusion

to his birth and descent, unless it be in vague phrases, wherein he

calls the former kings of Assyria, and even those of Babylonia, his

ancestors. Such expressions seem to be mere words of course, having no

historical value: and it would be a mistake even to conclude from them

that the new king intended seriously to claim the connection of kindred

with the monarchs of former times.

It has been thought indeed, that Sargon, instead of cloaking his

usurpation under some decent plea of right, took a pride in boldly

avowing it. The name Sargon has been supposed to be one which he adopted

as his royal title at the time of his establishment upon the throne,

intending by the adoption to make it generally known that he had

acquired the crown, not by birth or just claim, but by his own will and

the consent of the people. Sargon, or Sar-gina, as the native name is

read, means “the firm” or “well-established king,” and (it has been

argued) “shows the usurper.” The name is certainly unlike the general

run of Assyria royal titles; but still, as it is one which is found to

have been previously borne by at least one private person in Assyria, it

is perhaps best to suppose that it was the monarch’s real original

appellation, and not assumed when he came to the throne; in which case

no argument can be founded upon it.

Military success is the best means of confirming a doubtful title to the

leadership of a warlike nation. No sooner, therefore, was Sargon

accepted by the Ninevites as king than he commenced a series of

expeditions, which at once furnished employment to unquiet spirits, and

gave the prestige of military glory to his own name. He warred

successively in Susiana, in Syria, on the borders of Egypt, in the tract

beyond Amanus, in Melitene and southern Armenia, in Kurdistan, in Media,

and in Babylonia. During the first fifteen years of his reign, the space

which his annals cover, he kept his subjects employed in a continual

series of important expeditions, never giving himself, nor allowing

them, a single year of repose. Immediately upon his accession he marched

into Susiana, where he defeated Hum-banigas, the Elamitie king, and

Merodach-Baladan, the old adversary of Tiglath-Pileser, who had revolted

and established himself as king over Babylonia. Neither monarch was,

however, reduced to subjection, though an important victory was gained,

and many captives taken, who were transported into the country of the

Hittites, In the same year, B.C. 722, he received the submission of

Samaria, which surrendered, probably, to his generals, after it had been

besieged two full years. He punished the city by depriving it of the

qualified independence which it had enjoyed hitherto, appointing instead

of a native king an Assyrian officer to be its governor, and further

carrying off as slaves 27,280 of the inhabitants. On the remainder,

however, he contented himself with re-imposing the rate of tribute to

which the town had been liable before its revolt.--The next year, B.C.

721, he was forced to march in person into Syria in order to meet and

quell a dangerous revolt. Yahu-bid (or Ilu-bid), king of Hamath--a

usurper like Sargon himself--had rebelled, and had persuaded the cities

of Arpad Zimira, Damascus, and Samaria to cast in their lot with his,

and to form a confederacy, by which it was imagined that effectual

resistance might be offered to the Assyrian arms. Not content merely to

stand on the defensive in their several towns, the allies took to the

field; and a battle was fought at Kar-kar or Garrrar (perhaps one of the

many Aroers), where the superiority of the Assyrian troops was once more

proved, and Sargon gained a complete victory over his enemies. Yahu-bid

himself was taken and beheaded; and the chiefs of the revolt in the

other towns were also put to death.

Having thus crushed the rebellion and re-established tranquillity

throughout Syria, Sargon turned his arms towards the extreme south, and

attacked Gaza, which was a dependency of Egypt. The exact condition of

Egypt at this time is open to some doubt. According to Manetho’s

numbers, the twenty-fifth or Ethiopian dynasty had not yet begun to

reign. Bocchoris the Saite occupied the throne, a humane but weak

prince, of a contemptible presence, and perhaps afflicted with

blindness. No doubt such a prince would tempt the attack of a powerful

neighbor; and, so for, probability might seem to be in favor of the

Manethonian dates. But, on the other hand, it must be remembered that

Egypt had lately taken an aggressive attitude, incompatible with a time

of weakness: she had intermeddled between the Assyrian crown and its

vassals, by entering into a league with Hoshea: and she had extended her

dominion over a portion of Philistia, thereby provoking a collision with

the Great Power of the East. Again, it is worthy of note that the name

of the Pharaoh who had dealings with Hoshea, if it does not seen at

first sight very closely to resemble the Egyptian Shebek, is, at any

rate, a possible representative of that word, while no etymological

skill can force it into agreement with any other name in this portion of

the Egyptian lists. Further, it is to be remarked that at this point of

the Assyrian annals, a Shebek appears in them, holding a position of

great authority in Egypt, though not dignified with the title of king.

These facts furnish strong grounds for believing that the Manethonian

chronology, which can be proved to be in many points incorrect, has

placed the accession of the Ethiopians somewhat too late, and that that

event occurred really as early as B.C. 725 or B.C. 730.

At the same time, it must be allowed that all difficulty is not removed

by this supposition. The Shebek _Sibahe_ (or _Sibaki_) of the Assyrian

record bears an inferior title, and not that of king. He is also,

apparently, contemporary with another authority in Egypt, who is

recognized by Sargon as the true “Pharaoh,” or native ruler. Further, it

is not till eight or nine years later that any mention is made of

Ethiopia as having an authority over Egypt or as in any way brought into

contact with Sargon. The proper conclusion from these facts seems to be

that the Ethiopians established themselves gradually; that in B.C. 720,

Shebek or Sabaco, though master of a portion of Egypt, had not assumed

the royal title, which was still borne by a native prince of little

power--Bocchoris, or Scthos--who held his court somewhere in the Delta;

and that it was not till about the year B.C. 712 that this shadowy

kingdom passed away, that the Ethiopian rule was extended over the whole

of Egypt, and that Sabaco assumed the full rank of an independent

monarch.

If this be the true solution of the difficulty which has here presented

itself, we must conclude that the first actual collision between the

powers of Egypt and Assyria took place at a time very unfavorable to the

former. Egypt was, in fact, divided against itself, the fertile tract of

the Delta being under one king, the long valley of the Nile under

another. If war was not actually going on, jealousy and suspicion, at

any rate, must have held the two sovereigns apart; and the Assyrian

monarch, coming at such a time of intestine feud, must have found it

comparatively easy to gain a triumph in this quarter.

The armies of the two great powers met at the city of Rapikh, which

seems to be the Raphia of the Greeks and Romans, and consequently the

modern _Refah_ a position upon the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, about

half-way between Gaza and the Wady-el-Arish, or “River of Egypt.” Here

the forces of the Philistines, under Khanun, king of Gaza, and those of

Shebek, the Tar-dan (or perhaps the Sultan) of Egypt, had effected a

junction, and awaited the approach of the invader. Sargon, having

arrived, immediately engaged the allied army, and succeeded in defeating

it completely, capturing Khanun, and forcing Shebek to seek safety in

flight. Khanun was deprived of his crown and carried off to Assyria by

the conqueror.

Such was the result of the first combat between the two great powers of

Asia and Africa. It was an omen of the future, though it was scarcely a

fair trial of strength. The battle of Raphia foreshadowed truly enough

the position which Egypt would hold among the nations from the time that

she ceased to be isolated, and was forced to enter into the struggle for

preeminence, and even for existence, with the great kingdoms of the

neighboring continent. With rare and brief exceptions, Egypt has from

the time of Sargon succumbed to the superior might of whatever power has

been dominant in Western Asia, owning it for lord, and submitting, with

a good or bad grace, to a position involving a greater or less degree of

dependence. Tributary to the later Assyrian princes, and again,

probably, to Nebuchadnezzar, she had scarcely recovered her independence

when she fell under the dominion of Persia. Never successful,

notwithstanding all her struggles, in thoroughly shaking off this hated

yoke, she did but exchange her Persian for Greek masters, when the

empire of Cyrus perished. Since then, Greeks, Romans, Saracens, and

Turks have, each in their turn, been masters of the Egyptian race, which

has paid the usual penalty of precocity in the early exhaustion of its

powers.

After the victories of Aroer and Raphia, the Assyrian monarch appears to

have been engaged for some years in wars of comparatively slight

interest towards the north and the north-east. It was not till B.C. 715,

five years after his first fight with the Egyptians, that he again made

an expedition towards the south-west, and so came once more into contact

with nations to whose fortunes we are not wholly indifferent. His chief

efforts on this occasion were directed against the peninsula of Arabia.

The wandering tribes of the desert, tempted by the weak condition to

which the Assyrian conquest had reduced Samaria, made raids, it appears,

into the territory at their pleasure, and carried off plunder. Sargon

determined to chastise these predatory bands, and made an expedition

into the interior, where “he subdued the uncultivated plains of the

remote Arabia, which had never before given tribute to Assyria,” and

brought under subjection the Thamudites, and several other Arab tribes,

carrying off a certain number and settling them in Samaria itself, which

thenceforth contained an Arab element in its population. Such an effect

was produced on the surrounding nations by the success of this inroad,

that their princes hastened to propitiate Sargon’s favor by sending

embassies, and excepting the position of Assyrian tributaries. The

reigning Pharaoh, whoever he may have been, It-hamar, king of the

Sabaeans, and Tsamsi, queen of the Arabs, thus humbled themselves,

sending presents, and probably entering into engagements which bound

them for the future.

Four years later (B.C. 711) Sargon led a third expedition into these

parts, regarding it as important to punish the misconduct of the people

of Ashdod. Ashdod had probably submitted after the battle of Raphia, and

had been allowed to retain its native prince, Azuri. This prince, after

awhile, revolted, withheld his tribute, and proceeded to foment

rebellion against Assyria among the neighboring monarchs; whereupon

Sargon deposed him, and made his brother Akhimit king in his place. The

people of Ashdod, however, rejected the authority of Akhimit, and chose

a certain Yaman, or Yavan, to rule over them, who strengthened himself

by alliances with the other Philistine cities, with Judaea, and with

Edom. Immediately upon learning this. Sargon assembled his army, and

proceeded to Ashdod to punish the rebels; but, before his arrival, Yaman

had fled away, and “escaped to the dependencies of Egypt, which” (it is

said) “were under the rule of Ethiopia.” Ashdod itself, trusting in the

strength from which it derived its name, resisted; but Sargon laid siege

to it and in a little time forced it to surrender. Yaman fled to Egypt,

but his wife and children were captured and, together with the bulk of

the inhabitants, were transported into Assyria, while their place was

supplied by a number of persons who had been made prisoners in Sargon’s

eastern wars. An Assyrian governor was set over the town.

The submission of Ethiopia followed. Ashdod, like Samaria, had probably

been encouraged to revolt by promises of foreign aid. Sargon’s old

antagonist, Shebek, had recently brought the whole of Egypt under his

authority, and perhaps thought the time had come when he might venture

once more to measure his strength against the Assyrians. But Sargon’s

rapid movements and easy capture of the strong Ashdod terrified him, and

produced a change of his intentions. Instead of marching into Philistia

and fighting a battle, he sent a suppliant embassy, surrendered Yaman,

and deprecated Sargon’s wrath. The Assyrian monarch boasts that the king

of Meroe, who dwelt in the desert, and had never sent ambassadors to any

of the kings his predecessors, was led by the fear of his majesty to

direct his steps towards Assyria and humbly bow down before him.

At the opposite extremity of his empire, Sargon soon after-wards gained

victories which were of equal or greater importance. Having completely

reduced Syria, humiliated Egypt, and struck terror into the tribes of

the north and east, he determined on a great expedition against Babylon.

Merodach-Baladan had now been twelve years in quiet possession of the

kingdom. He had established his court at Babylon, and, suspecting that

the ambition of Sargon would lead him to attempt the conquest of the

south he had made preparations for resistance by entering into close

alliance with the Susianians under Sutruk-Nakhunta on the one hand, and

with the Aramaean tribes above Babylonia on the other. Still, when

Sargon advanced against him, instead of giving him battle, or even

awaiting him behind the walls of the capital, he at once took to flight.

Leaving garrisons in the more important of the inland towns, and

committing their defence to his generals, he himself hastened down to

his own city of Beth-lakin, which was on the Euphrates, near its mouth,

and, summoning the Aramaeans to his assistance, prepared for a vigorous

resistance in the immediate vicinity of his native place. Posting

himself in the plain in front of the city, and protecting his front and

left flank with a deep ditch, which he filled with water from the

Euphrates, he awaited the advance of Sargon, who soon appeared at the

head of his troops, and lost no time in beginning the attack. We cannot

follow with any precision the exact operations of the battle, but it

appears that Sargon fell upon the Babylonian troops, defeated them, and

drove them into their own dyke, in which many of therm were drowned, at

the same time separating them from their allies, who, on seeing the

disaster, took to flight, and succeeded in making their escape.

Merodach-Baladan, abandoning his camp, threw himself with the poor

remains of his army into Beth-Yakin, which Saigon then besieged and

took. The Babylonian monarch fell into the hands of his rival, who

plundered his palace and burnt his city, but generously spared his life.

He was not, however, allowed to retain his kingdom, the government of

which was assumed by Sargon himself, who is the Arceanus of Ptolemy’s

Canon.

The submission of Babylonia was followed by the reduction of the

Aramaeans, and the conquest of at least a portion of Susiana. To the

Susianin territory Sargon transported the Comnumkha from the Upper

Tigris, placing the mixed population under a governor, whom he made

dependent on the viceroy of Babylon.

The Assyrian dominion was thus firmly established on the shores of the

Persian Gulf. The power of Babylon was broken. Henceforth the Assyrian

rule is maintained over the whole of Chaldaea and Babylonia, with few

and brief interruptions, to the close of the Empire. The reluctant

victim struggles in his captor’s grasp, and now and then for a short

space shakes it off; but only to be seized again with a fiercer gripe,

until at length his struggles cease, and he resigns himself to a fate

which he has come to regard as inevitable. During the last fifty years

of the Empire, from B.C. 650 to B.C. 625, the province of Babylon was

almost as tranquil as any other.

The pride of Sargon received at this time a gratification which he is

not able to conceal, in the homage which was paid to him by sovereigns

who had only heard of his fame, and who were safe from the attacks of

his armies. While he held his court at Babylon, in the year B.C. 708 or

707, he gave audience to two embassies from two opposite quarters, both

sent by islanders dwelling (as he expresses it) “in the middle of the

seas” that washed the outer skirts of his dominions. Upir, king of

Asmun, who ruled over an island in the Persian Gulf,--Khareg, perhaps,

or Bahrein,--sent messengers, who bore to the Great King the tribute of

the far East. Seven Cyprian monarchs, chiefs of a country which lay “at

the distance of seven days from the coast, in the sea of the setting

sun,” offered him by their envoys the treasures of the West. The very

act of bringing presents implied submission; and the Cypriots not only

thus admitted his suzerainty, but consented to receive at his hands and

to bear back to their country a more evident token of subjection. This

was an effigy of the Great King carved in the usual form, and

accompanied with an inscription recording his name and titles, which was

set up at Idalium, nearly in the centre of the island, and made known to

the Cypriots the form and appearance of the sovereign whom it was not

likely that they would ever see.

The expeditions of Sargon to the north and north-east had results less

splendid than those which he undertook to the south-west and the south;

but it may be doubted whether they did not more severely try his

military skill and the valor of his soldiers. The mountain tribes of

Zagros, Taurus, and Niphates,--Medes, Armaenians, Tibarini, Moschi,

etc.,--were probably far braver men and far better soldiers than the

levies of Egypt, Susiana, and Babylon. Experience, moreover, had by this

time taught the tribes the wisdom of uniting against the common foe, and

we find Ambris the Tibareni in in alliance with Mita the Moschian, and

Urza the Armenian, when he ventures to revolt against Sargon. The

submission of the northern tribes was with difficulty obtained by a long

and fierce struggle, which--so far as one belligerent was concerned

--terminated in a compromise. Ambris was deposed, and his country placed

under an Assyrian governor; Mita consented, after many years of

resistance, to pay a tribute; Urza was defeated, and committed suicide,

but the general pacification of the north was not effected until a

treaty was made with the king of Van, and his good-will purchased by the

cession to him of a considerable tract of country which the Assyrians

had previously taken from Urza.

On the side of Media the resistance offered to the arms of Sargon seems

to have been slighter, and he was consequently able to obtain a far more

complete success. Having rapidly overrun the country, he seized a number

of the towns and “annexed them to Assyria,” or, in other words, reduced

a great portion of Media into the form of a province. He also built in

one part of the country a number of fortified posts. He then imposed a

tribute on the natives, consisting entirely of horses, which were

perhaps required to be of the famous Nisaean breed.

After his fourteenth year, B.C. 708, Sargon ceased to lead out his

troops in person, employing instead the services of his generals. In the

year B.C. 707 a disputed succession gave him an opportunity of

interference in Illib, a small country bordering on Susiana. Nibi, one

of the two pretenders to the throne, had applied for aid to

Sutruk-Nakhunta, king of Elam, who held his court at Susa, and had

received the promise of his favor and protection. Upon this, the other

claimant, who was named Ispabara, made application to Sargon, and was

readily received into alliance, Sargon sent to his assistance “seven

captains with seven armies,” who engaged the troops of Sutruk-Naklnurta,

defeated them, and established Ispabara on the throne? In the following

year, however, Sutruk-Nakhunta recovered his laurels, invading Assyria

in his turn, and capturing cities which he added to the kingdom of

Susiana.

In all his wars Sargon largely employed the system of whole-sale

deportation. The Israelites were removed from Samaria, and planted

partly in Gozan or Mygdonia, and partly in the cities recently taken

from the Medes. Hamath and Damascus were peopled with captives from

Armenia and other regions of the north. A portion of the Tibareni were

carried captive to Assyria, and Assyrians were established in the

Tibarenian country. Vast numbers of the inhabitants of the Zagros range

were also transported to Assyria; Babylonians, Cuthaeans, Sepharvites,

Arabians, and others, were placed in Samaria; men from the extreme east

(perhaps Media) in Ashdod. The Commukha were removed from the extreme

north to Susiana; and Chaldaeans were brought from the extreme south to

supply their place. Everywhere Sargon changed the abodes of his

subjects, his aim being, as it would seem, to weaken the stronger races

by dispersion, and to destroy the spirit of the weaker ones by severing

at a blow all the links which attach a patriotic people to the country

it has long inhabited. The practice had not been unknown to previous

monarchs, but it had never been employed by any so generally or on so

grand a scale as it was by this king.

From this sketch of Sargon’s wars, we may now proceed to a brief

consideration of his great works. The magnificent palace which he

erected at Khorsabad was by far the most important of his constructions.

Compared with the later, and even with the earlier buildings of a

similar kind erected by other kings, it was not remarkable for its size.

But its ornamentation was unsurpassed by that of any Assyrian edifice,

with the single exception of the great palace of Asshur-bani-pal at

Koyunjik. Covered with sculptures, both internally and externally,

generally in two lines, one over the other, and, above this, adorned

with enamelled bricks, arranged in elegant and tasteful patterns;

approached by noble flights of steps and through splendid propylaea;

having the advantage, moreover, of standing by itself, and of not being

interfered with by any other edifice, it had peculiar beauties of its

own, and may be pronounced in many respects the most interesting of the

Assyrian building’s. United to this palace was a town enclosed by strong

walls, which formed a square two thousand yards each way. Allowing fifty

square yards to each individual, this space would have been capable of

accommodating 80,000 persons. The town, like the palace, seems to have

been entirely built by Sargon, who imposed on it his own name, an

appellation which it retained beyond the time of the Arab conquest.

It is not easy to understand the exact object of Sargon in building

himself this new residence. Dur-Sargina was not the Windsor or

Versailles of Assyria--a place to which the sovereign could retire for

country air and amusements from the bustle and heat of the metropolis.

It was: as we have said, a town, and a town of considerable size, being

very little lees than half as large as Nineveh itself. It is true that

it possessed the advantage of a nearer vicinity to the mountains than

Nineveh: and had Sargon been, like several of his predecessors, a mighty

hunter, we might have supposed that the greater facility of obtaining

sport in the woods and valleys of the Zagros chain formed the attraction

which led him to prefer the region where he built his town to the banks

of the Tigris. But all the evidence that we possess seems to show that

this monarch was destitute of any love for the chase; and seemingly we

must attribute his change of abode either to mere caprice, or to a

desire to be near the mountains for the sake of cooler water, purer air,

and more varied scenery. It is no doubt true, as M. Oppert observes,

that the royal palace at Nineveh was at this time in a ruinous state;

but it could not have been more difficult or more expensive to repair it

than to construct a new palace, a new mound, and a new town, on a fresh

site.

Previously to the construction of the Khorsabad palace, Sargon resided

at Caleb. He there repaired and renovated the great palace of

Asshur-izir-pal, which had been allowed to fall to decay. At Nineveh he

repaired the walls of the town, which were ruined in many places, and

built a temple to Nebo and Merodach; while in Babylonia he improved the

condition of the embankments, by which the distribution of the waters

was directed and controlled. He appears to have been to a certain extent

a patron of science, since a large number of the Assyrian scientific

tablets are proved by the dates upon then: to have been written in his

day.

The progress of mimetic art under Sargon is not striking but there are

indications of an advance in several branches of industry, and of an

improved taste in design and in ornamentation. Transparent glass seems

now to have been first brought into used and intaglios to have been

first cut upon hard stones. The furniture of the period is greatly

superior in design to any previously represented, and the modelling of

sword-hilts, maces, armlets, and other ornaments is peculiarly good. The

enamelling of bricks was carried under Sargon to its greatest

perfection: and the shape of vases, goblets, and boats shows a marked

improvement upon the works of former times. The advance in animal forms,

traceable in the sculptures of Tiglath-Pileser II., continues: and the

drawing of horses’ heads, in particular, leaves little to desire.

After reigning gloriously over Assyria for seventeen years, and for the

last five of them over Babylonia also, Sargon died, leaving his crown to

the most celebrated of all the Assyrian Monarchs, his son Sennacherib,

who began to reign B.C. 705. The long notices which we possess of this

monarch in the books of the Old Testament, his intimate connection with

the Jews, the fact that he was the object of a preternatural exhibition

of the Divine displeasure, and the remarkable circumstance that this

miraculous interposition appears under a thin disguise in the records of

the Greeks, have always attached an interest to his name which the kings

of this remote period and distant region very rarely awaken. It has also

happened, curiously enough, that the recent Mesopotamian researches have

tended to give to Sennacherib a special prominence over other Assyrian

monarchs, more particularly in this country, our great excavator having

devoted his chief efforts to the disinterment of a palace of this king’s

construction, which has supplied to our National Collection almost

one-half of its treasures. The result is, that while the other

sovereigns who bore sway in Assyria are generally either wholly unknown,

or float before the mind’s eye as dim and shadowy forms, Sennacherib

stands out to our apprehension as a living and breathing man, the

impersonation of all that pride and greatness which we assign to the

Ninevite kings, the living embodiment of Assyrian haughtiness, Assyrian

violence, and Assyrian power. The task of setting forth the life and

actions of this prince, which the course of the history now imposes on

its compiler, if increased in interest, is augmented also in difficulty,

by the grandeur of the ideal figure which has possession of men’s minds.

The reign of Sennacherib lasted twenty-four years, from B.C. 705 to B.C.

681. The materials which we possess for his history consist of a record

written in his fifteenth year, describing his military expeditions and

his buildings up to that time; of the Scriptural notices to which

reference has already been made; of some fragments of Polyhistor

preserved by Eusebius; and of the well-known passage of Herodotus which

contains a mention of his name. From these documents we shall be able to

make out in some detail the chief actions of the earlier portion of his

reign, but they fail to supply any account of his later years, unless we

may assign to that portion of his life some facts mentioned by

Polyhistor, to which there is no allusion in the native records.

It seems probable that troubles both abroad and at home greeted the new

reign. The Canon of Ptolemy shows a two years’ interregnum at Babylon

(from B.C. 704 to B.C. 702) exactly coinciding with the first two years

of Sennacherib. This would imply a revolt of Babylon from Assyria soon

after his accession, and either a period of anarchy or rapid succession

of pretenders, none of whom held the throne for so long a time as a

twelvemonth. Polyhistor gives us certain details,from which we gather

that there were at least three monarchs in the interval left blank by

the Canon--first, a brother of Sennacherib, whose name is not given;

secondly, a certain Hagisa, who wore the crown only a month; and,

thirdly, Merodach-Baladan, who had escaped from captivity, and, having

murdered Hagisa, resumed the throne of which Sargon had deprived him six

or seven years before. Sennacherib must apparently have been so much

engaged with his domestic affairs that he could not devote his attention

to these Babylonian matters till the second year after his accession. In

B.C. 703 he descended on the lower country and engaged the troops of

Merodach-Baladan, which consisted in part of native Babylonians, in part

of Susianians, sent to his assistance by the king of Elam. Over this

army Sennacherib gained a complete victory near the city of Ibis, after

which he took Babylon, and overran the whole of Chaldaea, plundering

(according to his own account) seventy-six large towns and 420 villages.

Merodach-Baladan once more made his escape, flying probably to Susiana,

where we afterwards find his sons living as refugees. Sennacherib,

before quitting Babylon, appointed as tributary king an Assyrian named

Belipni, who seems to be the Belibus of Ptolemy’s Canon, and the Elibus

of Polyhistor. On his return from Babylonia he invaded and ravaged the

territory of the Aramaean tribes on the middle Euphrates--the Tumuna,

Ruhua, Gambulu, Khindaru, and Pukudu (Pekod), the Nabatu or Nabathaeans,

the Hagaranu or Hagarenes, and others, carrying into captivity more than

200,000 of the inhabitants, besides great numbers of horses, camels,

asses, oxen, and sheep.

In the following year, B.C. 702, Sennacherib made war on the tribes in

Zagros, forcing Ispabara, whom Sargon had established in power, to fly

from his country, and conquering many cities and districts, which he

attached to Assyria, and placed under the government of Assyrian

officers.

The most important of all the expeditions contained in Sennacherib’s

records is that of his fourth year, B.C. 701, in which he attacked

Luliya king of Sidon, and made his first expedition against Hezekiah

king of Judah. Invading Syria with a great host, he made Phoenicia the

first object of his attack. There Luliya--who seems to be the Mullins of

Menander, though certainly not the Elulaeus of Ptolemy’s Canon, had

evidently raised the standard of revolt, probably during the early years

of Sennacherib, when domestic troubles seem to have occupied his

attention. Luliya had, apparently, established his dominion over the

greater part of Phoenicia, being lord not only of Sidon, or, as it is

expressed in the inscription, of Sidon the greater and Sidon the less,

but also of Tyre, Ecdippa, Akko, Sarepta, and other cities. However, he

did not venture to await Sennacherib’s attack, but, as soon as he found

the expedition was directed against himself, he took to flight, quitting

the continent and retiring to an island in the middle of the

sea--perhaps the island Tyre, or more probably Cyprus. Sennacherib did

not attempt any pursuit, but was content to receive the submission of

the various cities over which Luliya had ruled, and to establish in his

place, as tributary monarch, a prince named Tubal. He then received the

tributes of the other petty monarchs of these parts, among whom are

mentioned Abdilihat king of Avrad. Hurus-milki king of Byblus. Mitinti

king of Ashdod, Puduel king of Beth-Ammon, a king of Moab, a king of

Edom, and (according to some writers) a “Menahem king of Samaria.” After

this Sennacherib marched southwards to Ascalon, where the king, Sidka,

resisted him, but was captured, together with his city, his wife, his

children, his brothers, and the other members of his family. Here again

a fresh prince was established in power, while the rebel monarch was

kept prisoner and transported into Assyria. Four towns dependent upon

Ascalon, viz., Razor, Joppa, Beneberak, and Beth Dagon, were soon

afterwards taken and plundered.

Sennacherib now pressed on against Egypt. The Philistine city of Ekron

had not only revolted from Assyria, expelling its king, Path, who wwas

opposed to the rebellion, but had entered into negotiations with

Ethiopia and Egypt, and had obtained a promise of support from them. The

king of Ethiopia was probably the second Shebek (or Sabaco) who is called

Sevechus by Manetho, and is said to have reigned either twelve or

fourteen yeats. The condition of Egypt at the time was peculiar. The

Ethiopian monarch seems to have exercised the real sovereign power: but

native princes were established under him who were allowed the title of

king, and exercised a real though delegated authority over their several

cities and districts. On the call of Ekron both princes and sovereign

had hastened to its assistance, bringing with them an army consisting of

chariots, horsemen, and archers, so numerous that Sennacherib calls it

“a host that could not be numbered.” The second great battle between the

Assyrians and the Egyptians took place near a place called Altaku, which

is no doubt the Eltekeh of the Jews, a small town in the vicinity of

Ekron. Again the might of Africa yielded to that of Asia. The Egyptians

and Ethiopians were defeated with great slaughter. Many chariots, with

their drivers, both Egyptian and Ethiopian, fell into the hands of the

conqueror, who also took alive several “sons” of the principal Egyptian

monarch. The immediate fruit of the victory was the fall of Altaku,

which was followed by the capture of Tamna, a neighboring town.

Sennacherib then “went on” to Ekron, which made no resistance, but

opened its gates to the victor. The princes and chiefs who had been

concerned in the revolt he took alive and slew, exposing their bodies on

stakes round the whole circuit of the city walls. Great numbers of

inferior persons who were regarded as guilty of rebellion, were sold as

slaves. Padi, the expelled king, the friend to Assyria, was brought

back, reinstated in his sovereignty, and required to pay a small tribute

as a token of dependence.

The restoration of Padi involved a war with Hezekiah, king of Judah.

When the Ekronites determined to get rid of a king whose Assyrian

proclivities were distasteful to them, instead of putting him to death,

they arrested him, loaded him with chains, and sent him to Hezekiah for

safe keeping. By accepting this charge the Jewish monarch made himself a

partner in their revolt; and it was in part to punish this complicity,

in part to compel him to give up Padi, that Sennacherib, when he had

sufficiently chastised the Ekronite rebels, proceeded to invade Judaea,

Then it was--in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, according to the

present Hebrew text--that “Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against

all the fenced cities of Judah and took them. And Hezekiah, king of

Judah, sent to the king of Assyria to Lshish, saying, I have offended;

return from me; that which thou puttest on me will I bear. And the king

of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah, king of Judah, three hundred talents

of silver and thirty talents of gold. And Hezekiah gave him all the

silver that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of

the king’s house. At that time did Hezekiah cut off [the gold from] the

doors of the house of the Lord, and [from] the pillars which Hezekiah,

king of Judah, had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.”

Such is the brief account of this expedition and its consequences which

is given us by the author of the Second Book of Kings, who writes from a

religious point of view, and is chiefly concerned at the desecration of

holy things to which the imminent peril of his city and people forced

the Jewish monarch to submit. It is interesting to compare with this

account the narrative of Sennacherib himself, who records the features

of the expedition most important in his eyes, the number of the towns

taken and of the prisoners carried into captivity, the measures employed

to compel submission, and the nature and amount of the spoil which he

took with him to Nineveh.

“Because Hezekiah, king of Judah,” says the Assyrian monarch, “would not

submit to my yoke, I came up against him, and by force of arms and by

the might of my power I took forty-six of his strong fenced cities; and

of the smaller towns which were scattered about I took and plundered a

countless number. And from these places I captured and carried off as

spoil 200,150 people, old and young, male and female, together with

horses and mares, asses and camels, oxen and sheep, a countless

multitude. And Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem, his capital

city, like a bird in a cage, building towers round the city to hem him

in, and raising banks of earth against the gates, so as to prevent

escape.... Then upon this Hezekiah there fell the fear of the power of

my arms and he sent out to me the chiefs and the elders of Jerusalem

with thirty talents of gold and eight hundred talents of silver, and

divers treasures, a rich and immense booty.... All these things were

brought to me at Nineveh, the seat of my government, Hezekiah having

sent them by way of tribute, and as a token of his submission to my

power.”

It appears then that Sennacherib, after punishing the people of Ekron,

broke up from before that city, and entering Judaea proceeded towards

Jerusalem, spreading his army over a wide space, and capturing on his

way a vast number of small towns and villages, whose inhabitants he

enslaved and carried off to the number of 200,000. Having reached

Jerusalem, he commenced the siege in the usual way, erecting towers

around the city, from which stones and arrows were discharged against

the defenders of the fortifications, and “casting banks” against the

walls and gates. Jerusalem seems to have been at this time very

imperfectly fortified. The “breaches of the city of David” had recently

been “many;” and the inhabitants had hastily pulled down the houses in

the vicinity of the wall to fortify it. It was felt that the holy place

was in the greatest danger. We may learn from the conduct of the people,

as described by one of themselves, what were the feelings generally of

the cities threatened with destruction by the Assyrian armies. Jerusalem

was at first “full of stirs and tumult;” the people rushed to the

housetops to see if they were indeed invested, and beheld “the choicest

valleys full of chariots, and the horsemen set in array at the gates.”

Then came “a day of trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity”--a

day of “breaking down the walls and of crying to the mountains.” Amidst

this general alarm and mourning there were, however, found some whom a

wild despair made reckless, and drove to a ghastly and ill-timed

merriment. When God by His judgments gave an evident “call to weeping,

and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth--behold

joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and

drinking wine”--“Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die.”

Hezekiah after a time came to the conclusion that resistance would be

vain, and offered to surrender upon terms, an offer which Sennacherib,

seeing the great strength of the place, and perhaps distressed for

water, readily granted. It was agreed that Hezekiah should undertake the

payment of an annual tribute, to consist of thirty talents of gold and

three hundred talents of silver, and that he should further yield up the

chief treasures of the place as a “present” to the Great King. Hezekiah,

in order to obtain at once a sufficient supply of gold, was forced to

strip the walls and pillars of the Temple, which were overlaid in parts

with this precious metal. He yielded up all the silver from the royal

treasury and from the treasury of the Temple; and this amounted to five

hundred talents more than the fixed rate of tribute. In addition to

these sacrifices, the Jewish monarch was required to surrender Padi, his

Ekronite prisoner, and was mulcted in certain portions of his dominions,

which were attached by the conqueror to the territories of neighboring

kings.

Sennacherib, after this triumph, returned to Nineveh, but did not remain

long in repose. The course of events summoned him in the ensuing year

B.C. 700--to Babylonia, where Merodach-Baladan, assisted by a certain

Susub, a Chaldaean prince, was again in arms against his authority.

Sennacherib first defeated Susub, and then, directing his march upon

Beth-Yakin, forced Merodach-Baladan once more to quit the country and

betake himself to one of the islands of the Persian Gulf, abandoning to

Sennacherib’s mercy his brothers and his other partisans. It would

appear that the Babylonian viceroy Belibus, who three years previously

had been set over the country by Sennacherib, was either actively

implicated in this revolt, or was regarded as having contributed towards

it by a neglect of proper precautions. Sennacherib, on his return from

the sea-coast, superseded him, placing upon the throne his own eldest

son, Asshur-inadi-su, who appears to be the Asordanes of Polyhistor, and

the Aparanadius or Assaranadius of Ptolemy’s Canon.

The remaining events of Sennacherib’s reign may be arranged in

chronological order without much difficulty, but few of them can be

dated with exactness. We lose at this point the invaluable aid of

Ptolemy’s Canon, which contains no notice of any event recorded in

Sennacherib’s inscriptions of later date than the appointment of

Assaranadius.

It is probable in that in the year B.C. 699 Sennacherib conducted his

second expedition into Palestine. Hezekiah, after his enforced

submission two years earlier, had entered into negotiations with the

Egyptians, and looking to receive important succors from this quarter,

had again thrown off his allegiance. Sennacherib, understanding that the

real enemy whom he had to fear on his south-western frontier was not

Judaea, but Egypt, marched his army through Palestine--probably by the

coast route--and without stopping to chastise Jerusalem, pressed

southwards to Libnah and Lachish, which were at the extreme verge of the

Holy Land, and were probably at this tune subject to Egypt. He first

commenced the siege of Lachish with all his power; and while engaged in

this operation, finding that Hezekiah was not alarmed by his proximity,

and did not send in his submission, he detached a body of troops from

Ins main force, and sent it under a Tartan or general, supported by two

high officers of the court--the Rabshakeh or Chief Cupbearer, and the

Rob-saris or Chief Eunuch--to summon the rebellious city to surrender.

Hezekiah was willing to treat, and sent out to the Assyrian camp, which

was pitched just outside the walls, three high officials of his own to

open negotiations. But the Assyrian envoys had not cone to debate or

even to offer terms, but to require the unconditional submission of both

king and people. The Rabshakeh or cupbearer, who was familiar with the

Hebrew language, took the word and delivered his message in insulting

phrase, laughing at the simplicity which could trust in Egypt, and the

superstitious folly which could expect a divine deliverance, and defying

Hezekiah to produce so many as two thousand trained soldiers capable of

serving as cavalry. When requested to use a foreign rather than the

native dialect, lest the people who were upon the walls should hear, the

bold envoy, with an entire disregard of diplomatic forms, raised his

voice and made a direct appeal to the popular fears and hopes thinking

to produce a tumultuary surrender of the place, or at least an outbreak

of which his troops might have taken advantage. His expectations,

however, were disappointed; the people made no response to his appeal,

but listened in profound silence; and the ambassadors, finding that they

could obtain nothing from the fears of either king or people, and

regarding the force that they had brought with them as insufficient for

a siege, returned to their master with the intelligence of their

ill-success. The Assyrian monarch had either taken Lachish or raised its

siege, and was gone on to Libnah, where the envoys found him. On

receiving their report, he determined to make still another effort to

overcome Hezckiah’s obstinacy and accordingly he despatched fresh

messengers with a letter to the Jewish king, in which he was reminded of

the fate of various other kingdoms and peoples which had resisted the

Assyrians, and once more urged to submit himself. It was this letter

perhaps a royal autograph--which Hezekiah took into the temple and there

“spread it before the Lord,” praying God to “bow down his ear and hear;

to open his eyes and see, and hear the words of Sennacherib, which had

sent to reproach the living God.” Upon this Isaiah was commissioned to

declare to his afflicted sovereign that the kings of Assyria were mere

instruments in God’s hands to destroy such, nations as He pleased, and

that none of Sennacherib’s threats against Jerusalem should be

accomplished. God, Isaiah told him would “put his hook in Sennacherib’s

nose, and his bridle in his lips, and turn him back by the way by which

he came.” The Lord had said, concerning the king of Assyria, “He shall

not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it

with shield, nor cast a bank against it. By the way that he came, by the

same shall he return, and shall not come into this city. For I will

defend this city, to save it, for my own sake, and for my servant

David’s sake.”

Meanwhile it is probable that Sennacherib, having received the

submission of Libnah, had advanced upon Egypt. It was important to crush

an Egyptian army which had been collected against him by a certain

Sethos, one of the many native princes who at this time ruled in the

Lower country before the great Ethiopian monarch Tehrak or Tirhakah, who

was known to be on his march, should effect a junction with the troops

of this minor potentate. Sethos, with his army, was at Pelusium; and

Sennacherib, advancing to attack him, had arrived within sight of the

Egyptian host, and pitched his camp over against the camp of the enemy,

just at the time to when Hezekiah received his letter and made the

prayer to which Isaiah was instructed to respond. The two hosts lay down

at night in their respective stations, the Egyptians and their king full

of anxious alarm, Sennacherib and his Assyrians proudly confident,

intending on the morrow to advance to the combat and repeat the lesson

taught at Raphia and Altaku. But no morrow was to break on the great

mass of those who took their rest in the tents of the Assyrians. The

divine fiat had gone forth. In the night, as they slept, destruction

fell upon them. “The angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp

of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand; and when they

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

miracle, like the destruction of the first-born, had been wrought, but

this time on the enemies of the Egyptians, who naturally ascribed their

deliverance to the interposition of their own gods; and seeing the enemy

in confusion and retreat, pressed hastily after him, distressed his

flying columns, and cut off his stragglers. The Assyrian king returned

home to Nineveh, shorn of his glory, with the shattered remains of his

great host, and cast that proud capital into a state of despair and

grief, which the genius of an AEschylus might have rejoiced to depict,

but which no less powerful pen could adequately portray.

It is difficult to say how soon Assyria recovered from this terrible

blow. The annals of Sennacherib, as might have been expected, omit it

altogether, and represent the Assyrian monarch as engaged in a

continuous series of successful campaigns, which seem to extend

uninterruptedly from his third to his tenth year. It is possible that

while the Assyrian expedition was in progress, under the eye of

Sennacherib himself, a successful war was being conducted by one of his

generals in the mountains of Armenia, and that Sennacherib was thus

enabled, without absolutely falsifying history, to parade as his own

certain victories gained by this leader in the very year of his own

reverse. It is even conceivable that the power of Assyria was not so

injured by the loss of a single great army, as to make it necessary for

her to stop even for one year in the course of her aggressive warfare;

and thus the expeditions of Sennacherib may form an uninterrupted

series, the eight campaigns which are assigned to him occupying eight

consecutive years. But on the other hand it is quite as probable that

there are gaps in the history, some years having been omitted

altogether. The Taylor Cylinder records but eight campaigns, yet it was

certainly written as late as Sennacherib’s fifteenth year. It contains

no notice of any events in Sennacherib’s first or second year; and it

may consequently make other omissions covering equal or larger

intervals. Thus the destruction of the Assyrian army at Pelusium may

have been followed by a pause of some years’ duration in the usual

aggressive expeditions; and it may very probably have encouraged the

Babylonians in the attempt to shake off the Assyrian yoke, which they

certainly made towards the middle of Sennacherib’s reign.

But while it appears to be probable that consequences of some importance

followed on the Pelusiac calamity, it is tolerably certain that no such

tremendous results flowed from it as some writers have imagined. The

murder of the disgraced Sennacherib “within fifty-five days” of his

return to Nineveh, seems to be an invention of the Alexandrian Jew who

wrote the Book of Tobit. The total destruction of the empire in

consequence of the blow, is an exaggeration of Josephus, rashly credited

by some moderns. Sennacherib did not die till B.C. 681, seventeen years

after his misfortune; and the Empire suffered so little that we find

Esar-haddon, a few years later, in full possession of all the territory

that any king before him had over held, ruling from Babylonia to Egypt,

or (as he himself expresses it) “from the rising up of the sun to the

going down of the same.” Even Sennacherib himself was not prevented by

his calamity from undertaking important wars during the latter part of

his reign. We shall see shortly that he recovered Babylon, chastised

Susiana, and invaded Cilicia, in the course of the seventeen years which

intervened between his flight from Pelusium and his decease. Moreover,

there is evidence that he employed himself during this part of his reign

in the consolidation of the Western provinces, which first appear about

his twelfth year as integral portions of the Empire, furnishing eponyms

in their turn, and thus taking equal rank with the ancient provinces of

Assyria Proper, Adiabene, and Mesopotamia.

The fifth campaign of Sennacherib, according to his own annals, was

partly in a mountainous country which he calls Nipur or Nibur--probably

the most northern portion of the Zagros range where it abuts on Ararat.

He there took a number of small towns, after which he proceeded westward

and contended with a certain Maniya king of Dayan, which was a part of

Taurus bordering on Cilicia. He boasts that he penetrated further into

this region than any king before him; and the boast is confirmed by the

fact that the geographical names which appear are almost entirely new to

us. The expedition was a plundering raid, not an attempt at conquest.

Sennacherib ravaged the country, burnt the towns, and carried away with

him all the valuables, the flocks and herds, and the inhabitants.

After this it appears that for at least three years he was engaged in a

fierce struggle with the combined Babylonians and Susianians. The

troubles recommenced by an attempt of the Chaldaeans of Beth-Yakin to

withdraw themselves from the Assyrian territory, and to transfer their

allegiance to the Elymaean king. Carrying with them their gods and their

treasures, they embarked in their ships, and crossing “the Great Sea of

the Rising Sun”--i.e., the Persian Gulf--landed on the Elamitic coast,

where they were kindly received and allowed to take up their abode. Such

voluntary removals are not uncommon in the East; and they constantly

give rise to complaints and reclamations, which not unfrequently

terminate in an appeal to the arbitrament of the sword. Sennacherib does

not inform us whether he made any attempt to recover his lost subjects

by diplomatic representations at the court of Susa. If he did, they were

unsuccessful; and in order to obtain redress, he was compelled to resort

to force, and to undertake an expedition into the Elamitie territory. It

is remarkable that he determined to make his invasion by sea. Their

frequent wars on the Syrian coasts had by this time familiarized the

Assyrians with the idea, if not with the practice, of navigation; and as

their suzerainty over Phoenicia placed at their disposal a large body of

skilled shipwrights, and a number of the best sailors in the world, it

was natural that they should resolve to employ naval as well as military

force to advance their dominion. We have seen that, as early as the time

of Shalmaneser, the Assyrians ventured themselves in ships, and, in

conjunction with the Phoenicians of the mainland, engaged the vessels of

the Island Tyre. It is probable that the precedent thus set was followed

by later kings, and that both Sargon and Sennacherib had had the

permanent, or occasional services of a fleet on the Mediterranean. But

there was a wide difference between such an employment of the navies

belonging to their subjects on the sea, to which they were accustomed,

and the transfer to the opposite extremity of the empire of the naval

strength hitherto confined to the Mediterranean. This thought--certainly

not an obvious one--seems to have first occurred to Sennacherib. He

conceived the idea of having a navy on both the seas that washed his

dominions; and, possessing on his western coast only an adequate supply

of skilled shipwrights and sailors he resolved on transporting from his

western to his eastern shores such a body of Phoenicians as would enable

him to accomplish his purpose. The shipwrights of Tyre and Sidon were

carried across Mesopotamia to the Tigris, where they constructed for the

Assyrian monarch a fleet of ships like their own galleys, which

descended the river to its mouth, and astonished the populations

bordering on the Persian Gulf with spectacle never before seen in those

waters. Though the Chaldaeans had for centuries navigated this inland

sea, and may have occasionally ventured beyond its limits, yet neither

as sailors nor as ship-builders was their skill to compare with that of

the Phoenicians. The masts and sails, the double tiers of oars, the

sharp beaks of the Phoenician ships, were (it is probable) novelties to

the nations of these parts, who saw now, for the first time, a fleet

debouche from the Tigris, with which their own vessels were quite

incapable of contending.

When his fleet was ready Sennacherib put to sea, and crossed in his

Phoenician ships from the mouth of the Tigris to the tract occupied by

the emigrant Chaldaeans, where he landed and destroyed the newly-built

city, captured the inhabitants, ravaged the neighborhood, and burnt a

number of Susianian towns, finally reembarking with his captives.

Chaldaean and Susianian whom he transported across the gulf to the

Chaldaean coast, and then took with him into Assyria. This whole

expedition seems to have taken the Susianians by surprise. They had

probably expected an invasion by land, and had collected their forces

towards the north-western frontier, so that when the troops of

Sennacherib landed far in their rear, there were no forces in the

neighborhood to resist them. However, the departure of the Assyrians on

an expedition regarded as extremely perilous, was the signal for a

general revolt of the Babylonians, who once more set up a native king in

the person of Susub, and collected an army with which they made ready to

give the Assyrians battle on their return. Perhaps they cherished the

hope that the fleet which had tempted the dangers of an unknown sea

would be seen no more, or expected that, at the best, it would bring

back the shattered remnants of a defeated army. If so, they were

disappointed. The Assyrian troops landed on their coast flushed with

success, and finding the Babylonians in revolt, proceeded to chastise

them; defeated their forces in a great battle; captured their king,

Susub; and when the Susianians came, somewhat tardily, to their succor,

attacked and routed their army. A vast number of prisoners, and among

them Susub himself, were carried off by the victors and conveyed to

Nineveh.

Shortly after this successful campaign, possibly in the very next year,

Sennacherib resolved to break the power of Susiana by a great expedition

directed solely against that country. The Susianians had, as already

related, been strong enough in the reign of Sargon to deprive Assyria of

a portion of her territory; and Kudur-Nakhunta, the Elymaean king, still

held two cities, Beth-Kahiri and Raza, which were regarded by

Sennacherib as a part of his paternal inheritance. The first object of

the war was the recovery of these two towns, which were taken without

any difficulty and reattached to the Assyrian Empire. Sennacherib then

pressed on into the heart of Susiana, taking and destroying thirty-four

large cities, whose names he mentions, together with a still greater

number of villages, all of which he gave to the flames. Wasting and

destroying in this way he drew near to Vadakat or Badaca, the second

city of the kingdom, where Kudur-Nakhunta had for the time fixed his

residence. The Elamitic king, hearing of his rapid approach, took

fright, and, hastily quitting Badaca, fled away to a city called

Khidala, at the foot of the mountains, where alone he could feel himself

in safety. Sennacherib then advanced to Badaca, besieged it, and took it

by assault; after which affairs seem to have required his presence at

Nineveh, and, leaving his conquest incomplete, he returned home with a

large booty.

A third campaign in these parts, the most important of all, followed.

Susub, the Chaldaean prince whom Sennacherib had carried off to Assyria,

in the year of his naval expedition escaped from his confinement, and,

returning to Babylon, was once more hailed as king by the inhabitants.

Aware of his inability to maintain himself on the throne against the

will of the Assyrians, unless he were assisted by the arms of a powerful

ally, he resolved to obtain, if possible, the immediate aid of the

neighboring Elamitic monarch. Kolar-Nakhunta, the late antagonist of

Sennacherib, was dead, having survived his disgraceful flight from

Badaca only three months; and Ummanminan, his younger brother, held the

throne. Susub, bent on contracting an alliance with this prince, did not

scruple at an act of sacrilege to obtain his end. He broke open the

treasury of the great temple of Bel at Babylon, and seizing the gold and

silver belonging to the god, sent it as a present to Ummanminan, with an

urgent entreaty that he would instantly collect his troops and march to

his aid. The Elamitic monarch, yielding to a request thus powerfully

backed, and perhaps sufficiently wise to see that the interests of

Susiana required an independent Babylon, set his troops in motion

without any delay, and advanced to the banks of the Tigris. At the same

time a number of the Aramaean tribes on the middle Euphrates, which

Sennacherib had reduced in his third year, revolted, and sent their

forces to swell the army of Susub. A great battle was fought at Khaluli,

a town on the lower Tigris, between the troops of Sennacherib and this

allied host; the combat was long and bloody, but at last the Assyrians

conquered. Susub and his Elamitic ally took to flight and made their

escape. Nebosumiskun, a son of Merodach-Baladan, and many other chiefs

of high rank, were captured. The army was completely routed and broken

up. Babylon submitted, and was severely punished; the fortifications

were destroyed, the temples plundered and burnt, and the images of the

gods broken to pieces. Perhaps the rebel city now received for viceroy

Regibelus or Mesesimordachus, whom the Canon of Ptolemy, which is silent

about Susub, makes contemporary with the middle portion of Sennacherib’s

reign.

The only other expedition which can be assigned, on important evidence,

to the reign of Sennacherib, is one against Cilicia, in which he is said

to have been opposed by Greeks. According to Abydenus, a Greek fleet

guarded the Cilician shore, which the vessels of Sennacherib engaged and

defeated. Polyhistor seems to say that the Greeks also suffered a defeat

by land in Cilicia itself, after which Sennacherib took possession of

the country, and built Tarsus there on the model of Babylon. The

prominence here given to Greeks by Greek writers is undoubtedly

remarkable, and it throws a certain amount of suspicion over the whole

story. Still, as the Greek element in Cyprus was certainly important at

this time, and as the occupation of Cilicis, by the Assyrians may have

appeared to the Cyprian Greeks to endanger their independence, it is

conceivable that they lent some assistance to the natives of the

country, who were a hardy race, fond of freedom, and never very easily

brought into subjection. The admission af a double defeat makes it

evident that the tale is not the invention of Greek national vanity.

Abydenus and Polyhistor probably derive it from Berosus, who must also

have made the statement that Tarsus was now founded by Sennacherib, and

constructed, after the pattern of Babylon. The occupation of newly

conquered countries, by the establishnient in them of large cities in

which foreign colonists were placed by the conquerors, was practice

commenced by Sargon, which his son is not unlikely to have followed.

Tarsus was always regarded by the Greeks as an Assyrian town; and

although they gave different accounts of the time of its foundation,

their disagreement in this respect does not invalidate their evidence as

to the main fact itself, which is intrinsically probable. The evidence

of Polyhistor and Abydenus as to the date of the foundation,

representing, as it must, the testimony of Berosus upon the point, is to

be preferred; and we may accept it as a fact, beyond all reasonable

doubt, that the native city of St. Paul derived, if not its origin, yet,

at any rate, its later splendor and magnificence, from the antagonist of

Hezekiah.

That this Cilician war occurred late in the reign of Sennacherib,

appears to follow from the absence of any account of it from his general

annals. These, it is probable, extend no further than his sixteenth

year, B.C. 689, thus leaving blank his last eight years, from B.C. 689

to 681. The defeat of the Greeks, the occupation of Cilicia, and the

founding of Tarsus, may well have fallen into this interval. To the same

time may have belonged Sennacherib’s conquest of Edom.

There is reason to suspect that these successes of Sennacherib on the

western limits of his empire were more than counterbalanced by a

contemporaneous loss at the extreme south-east. The Canon of Ptolemy

marks the year B.C. 688 as the first of an interregnum at Babylon which

continues from that date till the accession of Esar-haddon in B.C. 680.

Interregna in this document--[--Greek--] as they are termed--indicate

periods of extreme disturbance, when pretender succeeded to pretender,

or when the country was split up into a number of petty kingdoms. The

Assyrian yoke, in either case, must have been rejected; and Babylonia

must have succeeded at this time in maintaining, for the space of eight

years, a separate and independent existence, albeit troubled and

precarious. The fact that she continued free so long, while she again

succumbed at the very commencement of the reign of Esar-haddon, may lead

us to suspect that she owed this spell of liberty to the increasing

years of the Assyrian monarch, who, as the infirmities of age crept upon

him, felt a disinclination towards distant expeditions.

The military glory of Sennacherib was thus in some degree tarnished;

first, by the terrible disaster which befell his host on the borders of

Egypt; and, secondly, by his failure to maintain the authority which, in

the earlier part of his reign, he had estaldished over Babylon. Still,

notwithstanding these misfortunes, he must be pronounced one of the most

successful of Assyria’s warrior kings, and altogether one of the

greatest princes that ever sat on the Assyrian throne. His victories of

Eltekeh and Khaluli seem to leave been among the most important battles

that Assyria ever gained. By the one Egypt and Ethiopia, by the other

Susiana and Babylon, were taught that, even united, they were no match

for the Assyrian hosts. Sennacherib thus wholesomely impressed his most

formidable enemies with the dread of his arms, while at the same time he

enlarged, in various directions, the limits of his dominions. He warred

in regions to which no earlier Assyrian monarch had ever penetrated; and

he adopted modes of warfare on which none of them had previously

ventured. His defeat of a Greek fleet in the Eastern Mediterranean, and

his employment of Phoenicians in the Persian Gulf, show an enterprise

and versatility which we observe in few Orientals. His selection of

Tarsus for the site of a great city indicates a keen appreciation of the

merits of a locality, if he was proud, haughty, and self-confident,

beyond all former Assyrian kings, it would seem to have been because he

felt that he had resources within himself--that he possessed a firm

will, a bold heart, and a fertile invention. Most men would have laid

aside the sword and given themselves wholly to peaceful pursuits, after

such a disaster as that of Pelusium. Sennacherib accepted the judgment

as a warning to attempt no further conquests in those parts, but did not

allow the calamity to reduce him to inaction. He wisely turned his sword

against other enemies, and was rewarded by important successes upon all

his other frontiers.

But if, as a warrior, Sennacherib deserves to be placed in the foremost

rank of the Assyrian kings, as a builder and a patron of art he is still

more eminent. The great palace which he raised at Nineveh surpassed in

size and splendor all earlier edifices, and was never excelled in any

respect except by one later building. The palace of Asshur-bani-pal,

built on the same platform by the grandson of Sennacherib, was, it must

be allowed, more exquisite in its ornamentation; but even this edifice

did not equal the great work of Sennacherib in the number of its

apartments, or the grandeur of its dimensions. Sennacherib’s palace

covered an area of above eight acres. It consisted of a number of grand

halls and smaller chambers, arranged round at least three courts or

quadrangles. These courts were respectively 154 feet by 125, 124 feet by

90, and probably a square of about 90 feet. Round the smallest of the

courts were grouped apartments of no great size, which, it may be

suspected, belonged to the seraglio of the king. The seraglio seems to

have been reached through a single narrow passage, leading out of a long

gallery--218 feet by 25--which was approached only through two other

passages, one leading from each of the two main courts. The principal

halls were immediately within the two chief entrances one on the

north-east, the other on the opposite or south-west front of the palace.

Neither of these two rooms has been completely explored: but the one

appears to have been more than 150 and the other was probably 180 feet

in length, while the width of each was a little more than 40 feet.

Besides these two great halls and the grand gallery already described,

the palace contained about twenty rooms of a considerable size, and at

least forty or fifty smaller chambers, mostly square, or nearly so,

opening out of some hall or large apartment. The actual number of the

rooms explored is about sixty; but as in many parts the examination of

the building is still incomplete, we may fairly conjecture that the

entire number was not less than seventy or eighty.

The palace of Sennacherib preserved all the main features of Assyrian

architecture. It was elevated on a platform, eighty or ninety feet above

the plain, artificially constructed, and covered with a pavement of

bricks. It had probably three grand facades--one on the north-east,

where it was ordinarily approached from the town, and the two others on

the south-east and the south-west, where it was carried nearly to the

edge of the platform, and overhung the two streams of the Khosr-su and

the Tigris. Its principal apartment was that which was first entered by

the visitor. All the walls ran in straight lines, and all the angles of

the rooms and passages were right angles. There were more passages in

the building than usual but still the apartments very frequently opened

into one another; and almost one-half of the rooms were passage-rooms.

The doorways were mostly placed without any regard to regularity, seldom

opposite one another, and generally towards the corners of the

apartments. There was the curious feature, common in Assyrian edifices,

of a room being entered from a court, or from another room, by two or

three doorways, which is best explained by supposing that the rank of

the person determined the door by which he might enter. Squared recesses

in the sides of the rooms were common. The thickness of the walls was

great. The apartments, though wider than in other palaces, were still

narrow for their length, never much exceeding forty feet; while the

courts were much better proportioned.

It was in the size and the number of his rooms, in his use of passages,

and in certain features of his ornamentation, that Sennacherib chiefly

differed from former builders. He increased the width of the principal

state apartments by one-third, which seems to imply the employment of

some new mode or material for roofing. In their length he made less

alteration, only advancing from 150 to 180 feet, evidently because he

aimed, not merely at increasing the size of his rooms, but at improving

their proportions. In one instance alone--that of a gallery or

passage-room, leading (apparently) from the more public part of the

palace to the hareem or private apartments--did he exceed this length,

uniting the two portions of the palace by a noble corridor, 218 feet

long by 25 feet wide. Into this corridor he brought passages from the

two public courts, which he also united together by a third passage,

thus greatly facilitating communication between the various blocks of

buildings which composed his vast palatial edifice.

The most striking characteristic of Sennacherib’s ornamentation is its

strong and marked realism. It was under Sennacherib that the practice

first obtained of completing each scene by a background, such as

actually existed as the time and place of its occurrence. Mountains,

rocks, trees, roads, rivers, lakes, were regularly portrayed, an attempt

being made to represent the locality, whatever it might be, as

truthfully as the artist’s skill and the character of his material

rendered possible. Nor was this endeavor limited to the broad and

general features of the scene only. The wish evidently was to include

all the little accessories which the observant eye of an artist might

have noted if he had made his drawing with the scene before him. The

species of trees is distinguished, in Sennacherib’s bas-reliefs;

gardens, fields, ponds, reeds, are carefully represented; wild animals

are introduced, as stags, boars, and antelopes; birds fly from tree to

tree, or stand over their nests feeding the young who stretch up to

them; fish disport themselves in the waters; fishermen ply their craft;

boatmen and agricultural laborers pursue their avocations; the scene is,

as it were, photographed, with all its features--the least and the most

important--equally marked, and without any attempt at selection, or any

effort after artistic unity.

In the same spirit of realism Sennacherib chooses for artistic

representation scenes of a commonplace and everyday character. The

trains of attendants who daily enter his palace with game and locusts

for his dinner, and cakes and fruit for his dessert, appear on the walls

of his passages, exactly as they walked through his courts, bearing the

delicacies in which he delighted. Elsewhere he puts before us the entire

process of carving and transporting a colossal bull, from the first

removal of the huge stone in its rough state from the quarry, to its

final elevation on a palace mound as part of the great gateway of a

royal residence. We see the trackers dragging the rough block, supported

on a low flat-bottomed boat, along the course of a river, disposed in

gangs, and working under taskmasters who use their rods upon the

slightest provocation. The whole scene must be represented, and so the

trackers are all there, to the number of three hundred, costumed

according to their nations, and each delineated with as much care as it

he were not the exact image of ninety-nine others. We then observe the

block transferred to land, and carved into the rough semblance of a

bull, in which form it is placed on a rude sledge and conveyed along

level ground by gangs of laborers, arranged nearly as before, to the

foot of the mound at whose top it has to be placed. The construction of

the mound is most elaborately represented. Brickmakers are seen moulding

the bricks at its base, while workmen, with baskets at their backs, full

of earth, bricks, stones, or rubbish, toil up the ascent--for the mound

is already half raised--and empty their burdens out upon the summit. The

bull, still lying on its sledge, is then drawn up an inclined plane to

the top by four gangs of laborers, in the presence of the monarch and

his attendants. After this the carving is completed, and the colossus,

having been raised into an upright position, is conveyed along the

surface of the platform to the exact site which it is to occupy. This

portion of the operation has been represented in one of the

illustrations in an earlier part of this volume. From the representation

there given the reader may form a notion of the minuteness and

elaboration of this entire series of bas-reliefs.

Besides constructing this new palace at Nineveh, Sennacherib seems also

to have restored the ancient residence of the kings at the sane place, a

building which will probably be found whenever the mound of Nebbi-Yunus

is submitted to careful examination. He confined the Tigris to its

channel by an embankment of bricks. He constructed a number of canals or

aqueducts for the purpose of bringing good water to the capital. He

improved the defences of Nineveh, erecting towers of a vast size at some

of the gates. And, finally, he built a temple to the god Nergal at

Tarbisi (now Sherif khan), about three miles from Nineveh up the Tigris.

In the construction of these great works he made use chiefly, of the

forced labor with which his triumphant expeditions into foreign

countries had so abundantly supplied him. Chaldaeans, Aramaeans,

Armenians, Cilicianns and probably also Egyptians, Ethiopians,

Elamites, and Jews, were employed by thousands in the formation of the

vast mounds, in the transport and elevation of the colossal bulls, in

the moulding of the bricks, and the erection of the walls of the various

edifices, in the excavation of the canals, and the construction of the

embankments. They wrought in gangs, each gang having a costume peculiar

to it, which probably marked its nation. Over each was placed a number

of taskmasters, armed with staves, who urged on the work with blows, and

severely punished any neglect or remissness. Assyrian foremen had the

general direction of the works, and were entrusted with all such

portions as required skill or judgment. The forced laborers often worked

in fetters, which were sometimes supported by a bar fastened to the

waist, while sometimes they consisted merely of shackles round the

ankles. The king himself often witnessed the labors, standing in his

chariot, which on these occasions was drawn by some of his attendants.

The Assyrian monuments throw but little light on the circumstances which

led to the assassination of Sennacherib; and we are reduced to

conjecture the causes of so strange an event. Our various sources of

information make it clear that he had a large family of sons. The eldest

of them, Asshurinadi-su, had been entrusted by Sennacherib with the

government of Babylon and might reasonably have expected to succeed him

on the throne of Assyria; but it is probable that he died before his

father, either by a natural death, or by violence, during one of the

many Babylonian revolts. It may be suspected that Sennacherib had a

second son, of whose name Nergal was the first element; and it is

certain that he had three others, Adrammelech (or Ardumuzanes),

Sharezer, and Esar-haddon. Perhaps, upon the death of Asshur-inadi-su,

disputes arose about the succession. Adrammelech and Sharezer, anxious

to obtain the throne for themselves, plotted against the life of their

father, and having slain him in a temple as he was worshipping,

proceeded further to remove their brother Nergilus, who claimed the

crown and wore it for a brief space after Sennacherib’s death. Having

murdered him, they expected to obtain the throne without further

difficulty; but Esar-haddon, who at the time commanded the army which

watched the Armenian frontier, now came forward, assumed the title of

King, and prepared to march upon Nineveh. It was winter, and the

inclemency of the weather precluded immediate movement. For some months

probably the two assassins were recognized as monarchs at the capital,

while the northern army regarded Esar-haddon as the rightful successor

of his father. Thus died the great Sennacherib, a victim to the ambition

of his sons.

It was a sad end to a reign which, on the whole, had been so glorious;

and it was a sign that the empire was now verging on that decline which

sooner or later overtakes all kingdoms, and indeed all things sublunary.

Against plots without, arising from the ambition of subjects who see, or

think they see, at any particular juncture an opportunity of seizing the

great prize of supreme dominion, it is impossible, even in the most

vigorous empire, to provide any complete security. But during the period

of vigor, harmony within the palace, and confidence in each other

inspires and unites all the members of the royal house. When discord has

once entered inside the gates, when the family no longer holds together,

when suspicion and jealousy have replaced the trust and affection of a

happier time, the empire has passed into the declining stage, and has

already begun the descent which conducts, by quick or slow degrees, to

destruction. The murder of Sennacherib, if it was, as perhaps it was, a

judgment on the individual, was, at least equally, a judgment on the

nation. When, in an absolute monarchy, the palace becomes the scene of

the worst crimes, the doom of the kingdom is sealed--it totters to its

fall--and requires but a touch from without to collapse into a heap of

ruins.

Esar-haddon, the son and successor of Sennacherib, is proved by the

Assyrian Canon, to have ascended the throne of Assyria in B.C. 681--the

year immediately previous to that which the Canon of Ptolemy makes his

first year in Babylon, viz., B.C. 680. He was succeeded by his son

Asshur-bani-pal, or Sardanapalus, in B.C. 668, and thus held the crown

no more than thirteen years. Esar-haddon’s inscriptions show that he was

engaged for some time after his accession in a war with his

half-brothers, who, at the head of a large body of troops, disputed his

right to the crown. Esar-haddon marched from the Armenian frontier,

where (as already observed) he was stationed at the time of his father’s

death, against this army, defeated it in the country of Khanirabbat

(north-west of Nineveh), and proceeding to the capital, was universally

acknowledged king. According to Abydenus, Adrammelech fell in the

battle; but better authorities state that both he and his brother,

Sharezer, escaped into Armenia, where they were kindly treated by the

reigning monarch, who gave them lands, which long continued in the

possession of their posterity.

The chief record which we possess of Esar-haddon is a cylinder

inscription, existing in duplicate, which describes about nine

campaigns, and may probably have been composed in or about his tenth

year. A memorial which he set up at the mouth of the Nahr-el-Kolb, and a

cylinder of his son’s, add some important information with respect to

the latter part of his reign. One or two notices in the Old Testament

connect him with the history of the Jews. And Abydenus, besides the

passage already quoted, has an allusion to some of his foreign

conquests. Such are the chief materials from which the modern inquirer

has to reconstruct the history of this great king.

It appears that the first expedition of Esar-haddon was into Phoenicia.

Abdi-Milkut king of Sidon, and Sandu-arra king of the adjoining part of

Lebanon, had formed an alliance and revolted from the Assyrians,

probably during the troubles which ensued on Sennacherib’s death.

Esar-haddon attacked Sidon first, and soon took the city; but

Aladi-Milkut made his escape to an island--Aradus or Cyprus--where,

perhaps, he thought himself secure. Esar-haddon, however, determined on

pursuit. He traversed the sea “like a fish,” and made Abdi-Milkut

prisoner; after which he turned his arms against Sandu-arra, attacked

him in the fastnesses of his mountains, defeated his troops, and

possessed himself of his person. The rebellion of the two captive kings

was punished by their execution; the walls of Sidon were destroyed; its

inhabitants, and those of the whole tract of coast in the neighborhood,

were carried off into Assyria, and thence scattered among the provinces;

a new town was built, which was named after Esarhaddon, and was intended

to take the place of Sidon as the chief city of these parts; and

colonists were brought from Chaldaea and Susiana to occupy the new

capital and the adjoining region. An Assyrian governor was appointed to

administer the conquered province.

Esar-haddon’s next campaign seems to have been in Armenia. He took a

city called Arza**, which, he says, was in the neighborhood of Muzr, and

carried off the inhabitants, together with a number of mountain animals,

placing the former in a position “beyond the eastern gate of Nineveh.”

At the same time he received the submission of Tiuspa the Cimmerian.

His third campaign was in Cilicia and the adjoining regions. The

Cilicians, whom Sennacherib had so recently subdued, reasserted their

independence at his death, and allied themselves with the Tibareni, or

people of Tubal, who possess at the high mountain tract about the

junction of Amaans and Taurus. Esar-haddon inflicted a defeat on the

Cilicians, and then invaded the mountain region, where he took

twenty-one towns and a larger number of villages, all of which he

plundered and burnt. The inhabitants he carried away captive, as usual

but he made no attempt to hold the ravaged districts by means of new

cities or fresh colonists.

This expedition was followed by one or two petty wars in the north-west

and the north-east after which Esar-haddon, probably about his sixth

year B.C. 675, made an expedition into Chaldaea. It appears that a son

of Merodach-Baladan, Nebo-zirzi-sidi by name, had re-established himself

on the Chaldaean coast, by the help of the Susianians; while his

brother, Nahid-Marduk, had thought it more prudent to court the favor of

the great Assyrian monarch, and had quitted his refuge in Susiana to

present himself before Esar-haddon’s foot-stool at Nineveh. This

judicious step had all the success that he could have expected or

desired. Esar-haddon, having conquered the ill-judging Nebo-zirzi-sidi,

made over to the more clear-sighted Nahid-Marduk the whole of the

maritime region that had been ruled by his brother. At the same time the

Assyrian monarch deposed a Chaldaean prince who had established his

authority over a small town in the neighborhood of Babylon, and set up

another in his place, thus pursuing the same system of division in

Babylonia which we shall hereafter find that he pursued in Egypt.

Esar-haddon after this was engaged in a war with Edom. He there took a

city which bore the same name as the country--a city previously, he

tells us, taken by his father--and transported the inhabitants into

Assyria, at the same time carrying off certain images of the Edomite

gods. Hereupon the king, who was named Hazael, sent an embassy to

Nineveh, to make submission and offer presents, while at the same time

he supplicated Isar-haddon to restore his gods and allow them to be

conveyed back to their own proper country. Esarhaddon granted the

request, and restored the images to the envoy; but as a compensation for

this boon, he demanded an increase of the annual tribute, which was

augmented in consequence by sixty-five camels. He also nominated to the

Edomite throne, either in succession or in joint sovereignty, a female

named Tabua, who had been born and brought up in his own palace.

The expedition next mentioned on Esar-haddon’s principal cylinder is one

presenting some difficulty. The scene of it is a country called Bazu,

which is said to be “remote, on the extreme confines of the earth, on

the other side of the desert.” It was reached by traversing it hundred

and forty _farsakhs_ (490 miles) of sandy desert, then twenty _farsakhs_

(70 miles) of fertile land, and beyond that a stony region. None of the

kings of Assyria, down to the time of Esar-haddon, had ever penetrated

so far. Bazu lay beyond Khazu, which was the name of the stony tract,

and Bazu had for its chief town a city called Yedih, which was under the

rule of a king named Laile. It is thought, from the combinaqon of these

names, and from the general description of the region--of its remoteness

and of the way in which it was reached--that it was probably the

district of Arabia beyond Nedjif which lies along the Jebel Shammer, and

corresponds closely with the modern Arab kingdom of Hira. Esar-haddon

boasts that he marched into the middle of the territory, that he slew

eight of its sovereigns, and carried into Assyria their gods, their

treasures, and their subjects; and that, though Laile escaped him, he

too lost his gods, which were seized and conveyed to Nineveh. Then

Laile, like the Idumaean monarch above mentioned, felt it necessary to

humble himself. He went in person to the Assyrian capital, prostrated

himself before the royal footstool, and entreated for the restoration of

his gods; which Esar-haddon consented to give back, but solely on the

condition that Laile became thenceforth one of his tributaries.

If this expedition was really carried into the quarter here supposed,

Esar-haddon performed a feat never paralleled in history, excepting by

Augustus and Nushirvan. He led an army across the deserts which

everywhere guard Arabia on the land side, and penetrated to the more

fertile tracts beyond them, a region of settled inhabitants and of

cities. He there took and spoiled several towns; and he returned to his

own country without suffering disaster. Considering the physical perils

of the desert itself, and the warlike character of its inhabitants, whom

no conqueror has ever really subdued, this was a most remarkable

success. The dangers of the simoom may have been exaggerated, and the

total aridity of the northern region may have been overstated by many

writers; but the difficulty of carrying water and provisions for a large

army, and the peril of a plunge into the wilderness with a small one,

can scarcely be stated in too strong terms, and have proved sufficient

to deter most Eastern conquerors from even the thoughts of an Arabian

expedition. Alexander would, perhaps, had he lived, have attempted an

invasion from the side of the Persian Gulf; and Trajan actually

succeeded in bringing under the Roman yoke an outlying portion of the

country--the district between Damascus and the Red Sea; but Arabia has

been deeply penetrated thrice only in the history of the world; and

Esar-haddon is the sole monarch who ever ventured to conduct in person

such an attack.

From the arid regions of the great peninsula Esar-haddon proceeded,

probably in another year, to the invasion of the marsh-country on the

Euphrates, where the Aramaean tribe of the Gambulu had their

habitations, dwelling (he tells us) “like fish, in the midst of the

waters”--doubtless much after the fashion of the modern Khuzeyl and

Affej Arabs, the latter of whom inhabit nearly the same tract. The

sheikh of this tribe had revolted; but on the approach of the Assyrians

he submitted himself, bringing in person the arrears of his tribute and

a present of buffaloes, whereby he sought to propitiate the wrath of his

suzerain. Esar-haddon states that he forgave him; that he strengthened

his capital with fresh works, placed a garrison in it, and made it a

stronghold to protect the territory against the attacks of the

Susianians.

The last expedition mentioned on the cylinder, which seems not to have

been conducted by the king in person, was against the country of Bikni,

or Bikan, one of the more remote regions of Media--perhaps Azerbijan. No

Assyrian monarch before Esar-haddon had ever invaded this region. It was

under the government of a number of chiefs--the Arian character of whose

names is unmistakable--each of whom ruled over his own town and the

adjacent district. Esar-haddon seized two of the chiefs and carried them

off to Assyria, whereupon several others made their submission,

consenting to pay a tribute and to divide their authority with Assyrian

officers.

It is probable that these various expeditions occupied Esarhaddon from

B.C. 681, the year of his accession, to B.C. 671, when it is likely that

they were recorded on the existing cylinder. The expeditions are ten in

number, directed against countries remote from one another; and each may

well have occupied an entire year. There would thus remain only three

more years of the king’s reign, after the termination of the chief

native record, during which his history has to be learnt from other

sources. Into this space falls, almost certainly, the greatest of

Esar-haddon’s exploits the conquest of Egypt; and, probably, one of the

most interesting episodes of his reign--the punishment and pardon of

Manasseh. With the consideration of these two events the military

history of his reign will terminate.

The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2: Assyria The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations. · 第 13 / 14 章

On obtaining the crown whatever the circumstances under which he