The conquest of Egypt by Esar-haddon, though concealed from Herodotus,

and not known even to Diodorus, was no secret to the more learned

Greeks, who probably found an account of the expedition in the great

work of Berosus. All that we know of its circumstances is derived from

an imperfect transcript of the Nahr-el-Kelb tablet, and a short notice

in the annals of Esar-haddon’s son and successor, Asshur-bani-pal, who

finds it necessary to make an allusion to the former doings of his

father in Egypt, in order to render intelligible the state of affairs

when he himself invades the country. According to these notices, it

would appear that Esar-haddon, having entered Egypt with a large army,

probably in B.C. 670, gained a great battle over the forces of Tirhakah

in the lower country, and took Memphis, the city where the Ethiopian

held his court, after which he proceeded southwards, and conquered the

whole of the Nile valley as far as the southern boundary of the Theban

district. Thebes itself was taken and Tirhakah retreated into Ethiopia.

Esar-haddon thus became master of all Egypt, at least as far as Thebes

or Diospolis, the No or No-Amon of scripture. He then broke up the

country into twenty governments, appointing in each town a ruler who

bore the title of king, but placing all the others to a certain extent

under the authority of the prince who reigned at Memphis. This was Neco,

the father of Psammetichus (Psamatik I.)--a native Egyptian of whom we

have some mention both in Herodotus and in the fragments of Manetho. The

remaining rulers were likewise, for the most part, native Egyptians:

though in two or three instances the governments appear to have been

committed to Assyrian officers. Esar-haddon, having made these

arrangements, and having set up his tablet at the mouth of the

Nahr-el-Kelb side by side with that of Rameses II., returned to his own

country, and proceeded to introduce sphinxes into the ornamentation of

his palaces, while, at the same time, he attached to his former titles

an additional clause, in which he declared himself to be “king of the

kings of Egypt, and conqueror of Ethiopia.”

The revolt of Manasseh king of Judah may have happened shortly before or

shortly after the conquest of Egypt. It was not regarded as of

sufficient importance to call for the personal intervention of the

Assyrian monarch. The “captains of the host of the king of Assyria” were

entrusted with the task of Manasseh’s subjection; and, proceeding into

Judaea, they “took him, and bound him with chains, and carried him to

Babylon,” where Esar-haddon had built himself a palace, and often held

his court. The Great king at first treated his prisoner severely; and

the “affliction” which he thus suffered is said to have broken his pride

and caused him to humble himself before God, and to repent of all the

cruelties and idolatries which had brought this judgment upon him. Then

God “was entreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him

back again to Jerusalem into his kingdom.” The crime of defection was

overlooked by the Assyrian monarch, Manasseh was pardoned, and sent back

to Jerusalem: where he was allowed to resume the reins of government,

but on the condition, if we may judge by the usual practice of the

Assyrians in such cases, of paying an increased tribute.

It may have been in connection with this restoration of Manasseh to his

throne--an act of doubtful policy from an Assyrian point of view--that

Esar-haddon determined on a project by which the hold of Assyria upon

Palestine was considerably strengthened. Sargon, as has been already

observed when he removed the Israelites from Sumaria, supplied their

place by colonists from Babylon, Cutha, Sippara, Ava, Hamath, and

Arabia; this planting a foreign garrison in the region which would be

likely to preserve its fidelity. Esar-haddon resolved to strengthen this

element. He gathered men from Babylon, Orchoe, Susa, Elymais, Persia,

and other neighboring regions, and entrusting them to an officer of high

rank--“the great and noble Asnapper”--had them conveyed to Palestine and

settled over the whole country, which until this time must have been

somewhat thinly peopled. The restoration of Manasseh, and the

augmentation of this foreign element in Palestine, are thus portions,

but counterbalancing portions, of one scheme--a scheme, the sole object

of which was the pacification of the empire by whatever means, gentle or

severe, seemed best calculated to effect the purpose.

The last years of Esar-haddon were, to some extent, clouded with

disaster. He appears to have fallen ill in B.C. 669: and the knowledge

of this fact at once produced revolution in Egypt. Tirhakah issued from

his Ethiopian fastnesses, descended the valley of the Nile, expelled the

kings set up by Esar-haddon, and re-established his authority over the

whole country. Esar-haddon, unable to take the field, resolved to resign

the cares of the empire to his eldest son, Asshur-bani-pal, and to

retire into a secondary position. Relinquishing the crown of Assyria,

and retaining that of Babylon only, he had Asshur-bani-pal proclaimed

king of Assyria, and retired to the southern capital. There he appears

to have died in B.C. 668, or early in B.C. 667, leaving Asshur-bani-pal

sole sovereign of the entire empire.

Of the architecture of Esar-haddon, and of the state of the arts

generally in his time, it is difficult to speak positively. Though he

appears to have been one of the most indefatigable constructors of great

works that Assyria produced, having erected during the short period over

which his reign extended no fewer than four palaces and above thirty

temples, yet it happens unfortunately that we are not as yet in a

condition to pronounce a decisive judgment either on the plan of his

buildings or on the merits of their ornamentation of his three great

palaces, which were situated at Babylon, Calah, and Nineveh, one

only--that at Calah or Nimrud has been to any large extent explored.

Even in this case the exploration was far from complete, and the ground

plan of his palace is still very defective. But this is not the worst.

The palace itself had never been finished; its ornamentation had

scarcely been begun; and the little of this that was original had been

so damaged by a furious conflagration, that it perished almost at the

moment of discovery. We are thus reduced to judge of the sculptures of

Esar-haddon by the reports of those who saw them ere they fell to

pieces, and by one or two drawings, while we have to form our conception

of his buildings from a half-explored fragment of a half-finished

palace, which was moreover destroyed by fire before completion.

The palace of Esar-haddon at Calah was built at the south-western corner

of the Nimrud mound, abutting towards the west on the Tigris, and

towards the south on the valley formed by the Shor-Derreh torrent. It

faced northwards, and was entered on this side from the open space of

the platform, through a portal guarded by two winged bulls of the

ordinary character. The visitor on entering found himself in a large

court, 280 feet by 100, bounded on the north side by a mere wall, but on

the other three sides surrounded by buildings. The main building was

opposite to him, and was entered from the court by two portals, one

directly facing the great northern gate of the court, and the other a

little to the left hand, the former guarded by colossal bulls, the

latter merely reveted with slabs. These portals both led into the same

room--the room already described in an earlier page of this work--which

was designed on the most magnificent scale of all the Assyrian

apartments, but was so broken up through the inability of the architect

to roof in a wide space without abundant support, that, practically, it

formed rather a suite of four moderate-sized chambers than a single

grand hall. The plan of this apartment will be seen by referring to

[PLATE XLIII., Fig. 2.] Viewed as a single apartment, the room was 165

feet in length by 62 feet in width, and thus contained an area of 10,230

square feet, a space nearly half as large again as that covered by the

greatest of the halls of Sennacherib, which was 7200 feet. Viewed as a

suite of chambers, the rooms may be described as two long and narrow

halls running parallel to one another, and communicating by a grand

doorway in the middle, with two smaller chambers placed at the two ends,

running at right angles to the principal ones. The small chambers were

62 feet long, and respectively 19 feet and 23 feet wide; the larger ones

were 110 feet long, with a width respectively of 20 feet and 28 feet.

The inner of the two long parallel chambers communicated by a grand

doorway, guarded by sphinxes and colossal lions, either with a small

court or with a large chamber extending to the southern edge of the

mound; and the two end rooms communicated with smaller apartments in the

same direction. The buildings to the right and left of the great court

seem to have been entirely separate from those at its southern end: to

the left they were wholly unexamined; on the right some explorations

were conducted which gave the usual result of several long narrow

apartments, with perhaps one or two passages. The extent of the palace

westward, southward, and eastward is uncertain: eastward it was

unexplored; southward and westward the mound had been eaten into by the

Tigris and the Shor-Derreh torrent.

The walls of Esar-haddon’s palace were composed, in the usual way, of

sun-dried bricks, reveted with slabs of alabaster. Instead, however, of

quarrying fresh alabaster slabs for the purpose, the king preferred to

make use of those which were already on the summit of the mound,

covering the walls of the north-western and central palaces, which, no

doubt, had fallen into decay. His workmen tore down these sculptured

monuments from their original position, and transferring them to the

site of the new palace, arranged them so as to cover the freshly-raised

walls, generally placing the carved side against the crude brick, and

leaving the back exposed to receive fresh sculptures, but sometimes

exposing the old sculpture, which, however, in such cases, it was

probably intended to remove by the chisel. This process was still going

on, when either Esarhaddon died and the works were stopped, or the

palace was destroyed by fire. Scarcely any of the new sculptures had

been executed. The only exceptions were the bulls and lions at the

various portals, a few reliefs in close proximity to them, and some

complete figures of crouching sphinxes, which had been placed as

ornaments, and possibly also as the bases of supports, within the span

of the two widest doorways. There was nothing very remarkable about the

bulls; the lions were spirited, and more true to nature than usual; the

sphinxes were curious, being Egyptian in idea, but thoroughly

Assyrianized, having the horned cap common on bulls, the Assyrian

arrangement of hair, Assyrian earrings, and wings nearly like those of

the ordinary winged bull or lion. [PLATE CXLVI., Fig. 2.] The figures

near the lions were mythic, and exhibited somewhat more than usual

grotesqueness, as we learn from the representations of them given by Mr.

Layard.

While the evidence of the actual monuments as to the character of

Esar-haddon’s buildings and their ornamentation is thus scanty, it

happens, curiously, that the Inscriptions furnish a particularly

elaborate and detailed account of them. It appears, from the principal

record of the time, that the temples which Esar-haddon built in Assyria

and Babylonia--thirty-six in number--were richly adorned with plates of

silver and gold, which made then (in the words of the Inscription) “as

splendid as the day.” His palace at Nineveh, a building situated on the

mound called Nebbi Yunus, was, we are told, erected upon the site of a

former palace of the kings of Assyria. Preparations for its construction

were made, as for the great buildings of Solomon by the collection of

materials, iii wood, stone, and metal, beforehand: these were furnished

by the Phoenician, Syrian, and Cyprian monarchs, who sent to Nineveh for

the purpose great beams of cedar, cypress, and ebony, stone statues, and

various works in metals of different kinds. The palace itself is said to

have exceeded in size all buildings of former kings. It was roofed with

carved beams of cedar-wood; it was in part supported by columns of

cypress wood, ornamented and strengthened with rings of silver and of

iron; the portals were guarded by stone bulls and lions; and the gates

were made of ebony and cypress ornamented with iron, silver, and ivory.

There was, of course, the usual adornment of the walls by means of

sculptured slabs and enamelled bricks. If the prejudices of the

Mahometans against the possible disturbance of their dead, and against

the violation by infidel hands of the supposed tomb of Jonah, should

hereafter be dispelled, and excavations be freely allowed in the Nebbi

Yunus mound, we may look to obtain very precious relics of Assyrian art

from the palace of Esar-haddon, now lying buried beneath the village or

the tombs which share between them this most important site.

Of Esar-haddon’s Babylonian palace nothing is at present known, beyond

the mere fact of its existence; but if the mounds at Hillah should ever

be thoroughly explored, we may expect to recover at least its

ground-plan, if not its sculptures and other ornaments. The Sherif Khan

palace has been examined pretty completely. It was very much inferior to

the ordinary palatial edifices of the Assyrians, being in fact only a

house which Esar-haddon built as a dwelling for his eldest son during

his own lifetime. Like the more imposing buildings of this king, it was

probably unfinished at his decease. At any rate its remains add nothing

to our knowledge of the state of art in Esar-haddon’s time, or to our

estimate of that monarch’s genius as a builder.

After a reign of thirteen years, Esar-haddon, “king of Assyria, Babylon,

Egypt, Meroe, and Ethiopia,” as he styles himself in his later

inscriptions, died, leaving his crown to his eldest son,

Asshur-bani-pal, whom he had already associated in the government.

Asshur-bani-pal ascended the throne in B.C. 668, or very early in B.C.

667; and his first act seems to have been to appoint as viceroy of

Babylon his younger brother Saul-Mugina, who appears as Sam-mughes in

Polyhistor, and as Saosduchinus in the Canon of Ptolemy.

The first war in which Asshur-bani-pal engaged was most probably with

Egypt. Late in the reign of Esar-haddon, Tirhakah (as already stated

619) had descended from the upper country, had recovered Thebes,

Memphis, and most of the other Egyptian cities, and expelled from them

the princes and governors appointed by Esar-haddon upon his conquest.

Asshur-bani-pal, shortly after his accession, collected his forces, and

marched through Syria into Egypt, where he defeated the army sent

against him by Tirhakah in a great battle near the city of Kar-banit.

Tirhakah, who was at Memphis, hearing of the disaster that had befallen

his army, abandoned Lower Egypt, and sailed up the Nile to Thebes,

whither the forces of Asshur-bani-pal followed him; but the nimble

Ethiopian retreated still further up the Nile valley, leaving all Egypt

from Thebes downwards to his adversary. Asshur-bani-pal, upon this,

reinstated in their former governments the various princes and rulers

whom his lather had originally appointed, and whom Tirhakah had

expelled; and then, having rested and refreshed his army by a short stay

in Thebes, returned victoriously by way of Syria to Nineveh.

Scarcely was he departed when intrigues began for the restoration of the

Ethiopian power. Neco and some of the other Egyptian governors, whom

Asshur-bani-pal had just reinstated in their posts, deserted the

Assyrian side and went over to the Ethiopians. Attempts were made to

suppress the incipient revolt by the governors who continued faithful;

Neco and one or two of his copartners in guilt were seized and sent in

chains to Assyria; and some of the cities chiefly implicated, as Sais,

Mendes, and Tanis (Zoan), were punished. But the efforts at suppression

failed. Tirliakah entered Upper Egypt, and having established himself at

Thebes, threatened to extend his authority once more over the whole of

the Nilotic valley. Thereupon Asshur-bani-pal, having forgiven Neco,

sent him, accompanied by a strong force, into Egypt; and Tirhakah was

again compelled to quit the lower country and retire to Upper Egypt,

where he soon after died. His crown fell to his step-son, Urdamane, who

is perhaps the Rud-Amun of the Hieroglyphics. This prince was at first

very successful. He descended the Nile valley in force, defeated the

Assyrians near Memphis, drove them to take refuge within its walls,

besieged and took the city, and recovered Lower Egypt. Upon this

Asshur-bani-pal, who was in the city of Asshur when he heard the news,

went in person against his new adversary, who retreated as he advanced,

flying from Memphis to Thebes, and from Thebes to a city called Kipkip,

far up the course of the Nile. Asshur-bani-pal and his army now entered

Thebes, and sacked it. The plunder which was taken, consisting of gold,

silver, precious stones, dyed garments, captives male and female, ivory,

ebony, tame animals (such as monkeys and elephants) brought up in the

palace, obelisks, etc., was carried off and conveyed to Nineveh.

Governors were once more set up in the several cities, Psammetichus

being probably among them; and, hostages having been taken to secure

their fidelity, the Assyrian monarch returned home with his booty.

Between his first and second expedition into Egypt, Asshur-bani-pal was

engaged in warlike operations on the Syrian coast, and in transactions

of a different character with Cilicia. Returning from Egypt, he made an

attack on Tyre, whose king, Baal, had offended him, and having compelled

him to submit, exacted from him a large tribute, which he sent away to

Nineveh. About the same time Asshur-bani-pal entered into communication

with the Cilician monarch, whose name is not given, and took to wife a

daughter of that princely house, which was already connected with the

royal race of the Sargonids.

Shortly after his second Egyptian expedition, Asshur-bani-pal seems to

have invaded Asia Minor. Crossing the Taurus range, he penetrated to a

region never before visited by any Assyrian monarch; and, having reduced

various towns in these parts and returned to Nineveh, he received an

embassy of a very unusual character. “Gyges, king of Lydia,” he tells

us, “a country on the sea-coast, a remote place, of which the kings his

ancestors had never even heard the name, had formerly learnt in a dream

the fame of his empire, and had sent officers to his presence to perform

homage on his behalf.” He now sent a second time to Asshur-bani-pal, and

told him that since his submission he had been able to defeat the

Cimmerians, who had formerly ravaged his land with impunity; and he

begged his acceptance of two Cimmerian chiefs, whom he had taken in

battle, together with other presents, which Asshur-bani-pal regarded as

a “tribute.” About the same time the Assyrian monarch repulsed the

attack of the “king of Kharbat,” on a district of Babylonia, and, having

taken Kharbat, transported its inhabitants to Egypt.

After thus displaying his power and extending his dominions towards the

south-west, the north-west, and the south-east, Asshur-bani-pal turned

his arms towards the north-east, and invaded Minni, or Persarmenia--the

mountain-country about Lakes Van and Urumiyeh. Akhsheri, the king,

having lost his capital, Izirtu, and several other cities, was murdered

by his subjects; and his son, Vahalli, found himself compelled to make

submission, and sent an embassy to Nineveh to do homage, with tribute,

presents, and hostages. Asshur-bani-pal received the envoys graciously,

pardoned Vahalli, and maintained him upon the throne, but forced him to

pay a heavy tribute. He also in this expedition conquered a tract called

Paddiri, which former kings of Assyria had severed from Minni and made

independent, but which Asshur-bani-pal now attached to his own empire,

and placed under an Assyrian governor.

A war of some duration followed with Elam, or Susiana, the flames of

which at one time extended over almost the whole empire. This war was

caused by a transfer of allegiance. Certain tribes, pressed by a famine,

had passed from Susiana into the territories of Asshur-bani-pal, and

were allowed to settle there; but when, the famine being over, they

wished to return to their former country, Asshur-bani-pal would not

consent to their withdrawal. Urtaki, the Susianian king, took umbrage at

this refusal, and, determining to revenge himself, commenced hostilities

by an invasion of Babylonia. Belubager, king of the important Aramaean

tribe of the Gambulu, assisted him and Saul-Mugina, in alarm, sent to

his brother for protection. An Assyrian army was dispatched to his aid,

before which Urtaki fled. He was, however, pursued, caught and defeated.

With some difficulty he escaped and returned to Susa, where within a

year he died, without having made any fresh effort to injure or annoy

his antagonist.

His death was a signal for a domestic revolution which proved very

advantageous to the Assyrians. Urtaki had driven his older brother,

Umman-aldas, from the throne, and, passing over the rights of his sons,

had assumed the supreme authority. At his death, his younger brother,

Temin-Umman, seized the crown, disregarding not only the rights of the

sons of Umman-aldas, but likewise those of the sons of Urtaki. As the

pretensions of those princes were dangerous, Temin-Umman endeavored to

seize their persons with the intention of putting them to death; but

they, having timely warning of their danger, fled; and, escaping to

Nineveh with their relations and adherents, put themselves under the

protection of Asshur-bani-pal. It thus happened that in the expedition

which now followed, Asshur-bani-pal had a party which favored him in

Elam itself. Temin-Umman, however, aware of this internal weakness, made

great efforts to compensate for it by the number of his foreign allies.

Two descendants of Merodach-Baladan, who had principalities upon the

coast of the Persian Gulf, two mountain chiefs, one of them a

blood-connection of the Assyrian crown, two sons of Belu-bagar, sheikh

of the Gambulu, and several other inferior chieftains, are mentioned as

bringing their troops to his assistance, and fighting in his cause

against the Assyrians. All, however, was in vain. Asshur-bani-pal

defeated the allies in several engagements, and finally took Temin-Umman

prisoner, executed him, and exposed his head over one of the gates of

Nineveh. He then divided Elam between two of the sons of Urrtaki,

Umman-ibi and Tammarit, establishing the former in Susa, and the latter

at a town called Khidal in Eastern Susiana. Great severities were

exercised upon the various princes and nobles who had been captured. A

son of Temin-Umman was executed with his father. Several grand-sons of

Merodach-Baladin suffered mutilation, A Chaldaean prince and one of the

chieftains of the Clambulu had their tongues torn out by the roots.

Another of the Gambulu chiefs was decapitated. Two of the Temin-Umman’s

principal officers were chained and flayed. Palaya, a grandson of

Merodach-Baladan, was mutilated. Asshur-bani-pal evidently hoped to

strike terror into his enemies by these cruel, and now unusual,

punishments, which, being inflicted for the most part upon royal

personages, must have made a profound impression on the king-reverencing

Asiatics.

The impression made was, however, one of horror rather than of alarm.

Scarcely had the Assyrians returned to Nineveh, when fresh troubles

broke out. Saul-Mugina, discontented with his position, which was one of

complete dependence upon his brother, rebelled, and, declaring himself

king of Babylon in his own right, sought and obtained a number of

important allies among his neighbors. Umman-ibi, though he had received

his crown from Asshur-bani-pal, joined him, seduced by a gift of

treasure from the various Babylonian temples. Vaiteha, a powerful

Arabian prince, and Nebo-belsumi, a surviving grandson of

Merodach-Baladan, came into the confederacy; and Saul-Mugina had fair

grounds for expecting that he would be able to maintain his

independence. But civil discord--the curse of Elam at this period--once

more showed itself, and blighted all these fair prospects. Tammarit, the

brother of Ummman-ibi, finding that the latter had sent the flower of

his army into Babylonia, marched against him, defeated and slew him, and

became king of all Elam. Maintaining, however, the policy of his

brother, he entered into alliance with Saul-Mugina, and proceeded to put

himself at the head of the Elamitic contingent, which was serving in

Babylonia. Here a just Nemesis overtook him. Taking advantage of his

absence, a certain Inda-bibi (or Inda-bigas), a mountain-chief from the

fastnesses of Luristan, raised a revolt in Elam, and succeeded in

seating himself upon the throne. The army in Babylonia declining to

maintain the cause of Tammarit, he was forced to fly and conceal

himself, while the Elamitic troops returned home. Saul-Mugina then lost

the most important of his allies at the moment of his greatest danger

for his brother had at length marched against him at the head of an

immense army, and was overrunning his northern provinces. Without the

Elamites it was impossible for Babylon to contend with Assyria in the

Open field.

All that Saul-Mugina could do was to defend his towns, which

Asshur-bani-pal besieged and took, one after another. The rebel fell

into his brother’s hands, and suffered a punishment more terrible than

any that the relentless conqueror had as yet inflicted on his captured

enemies. Others had been mutilated, or beheaded; Saul-Mugina was burnt.

The tie of blood, which was held to have aggravated the guilt of his

rebellion, was not allowed to be pleaded in mitigation of his sentence.

A pause of some years’ duration now occurred. The relations between

Assyria and Susiana were unfriendly, but not actually hostile. Inda-bibi

had given refuge to Nebo-bel-sumi at the time of Saul Mugina’s

discomfiture, and Asshur-bani-pal repeatedly but vainly demanded the

surrender of the refugee. He did not, however, attempt to enforce his

demand by an appeal to arms; and Inda-bibi might have retained his

kingdom in peace, had not domestic troubles arisen to disturb him. He

was conspired against by the commander of his archers, a second

Umman-aldas, who killed him and occupied his throne. Many pretenders, at

the same time, arose in different parts of the country; and

Asshur-bani-pal, learning how Elam was distracted, determined on a fresh

effort to conquer it. He renewed his demand for the surrender of

Nebo-bel-sumi, who would have been given up had he not committed

suicide. Not content with this success, he (ab. B.C. 645) invaded Elam,

besieged and took Bit-Inibi, which had been strongly fortified, and

drove Umunan-aldas out of the plain country into the mountains. Susa and

Badaca, together with twenty-four other cities, fell into his power; and

Western Elam being thus at his disposal, he placed it under the

government of Tammarit, who, after his flight from Babylonia, had become

a refugee at the Assyrian court. Umman-aldas retained the sovereignty of

Eastern Elam.

But it was not long before fresh changes occurred. Tammarit, finding

himself little more than puppet-king in the hands of the Assyrians,

formed a plot to massacre all the foreign troops left to garrison this

country, and so to make himself an independent monarch. His intentions,

however, were discovered, and the plot failed. The Assyrians seized him,

put him in bonds, and sent him to Nineveh. Western Elam passed under

purely military rule, and suffered, it is probable, extreme severities.

Under these circumstances, Umman-aldas took heart, and made ready, in

the fastnesses to which he had fled, for another and a final effort.

Having levied a vast army, he, in the spring of the next year, made

himself once more master of Bit-Imbi, and, establishing himself there,

prepared to resist the Assyrians. Their forces shortly appeared; and,

unable to hold the place against their assaults, Umman-aldas evacuated

it with his troops, and fought a retreating fight all the way back to

Susa, holding the various strong towns and rivers in succession.

Gallant, however, as was his resistance it proved ineffectual. The lines

of defence which he chose were forced, one after another; and finally

both Susa and Badaca were taken, and the country once more lay at

Asshur-bani-pal’s mercy. All the towns made their submission.

Asshur-bani-pal, burning with anger at their revolt, plundered the

capital of its treasures, and gave the other cities up to be spoiled by

his soldiers for the space of a month and twenty-three days. He then

formally abolished Susianian independence, and attached the country as a

province to the Assyrian empire. Thus ended the Susianian war, after it

had lasted, with brief interruptions, for the space of (probably) twelve

years.

The full occupation given to the Assyrian arms by this long struggle

encouraged revolt in other quarters. It was probably about the time when

Asshur-bani-pal was engaged in the thick of the contest with Umman-ibi

and Saul-Mugina that Psammetichus declared himself independent in Egypt,

and commenced a war against the princes who remained faithful to their

Assyrian suzerain. Gyges, too, in the far north-west, took the

opportunity to break with the formidable power with which he had

recently thought it prudent to curry favor, and sent aid to the Egyptian

rebel, which rendered him effective service. Egypt freed herself from

the Assyrian yoke, and entered on the prosperous period which is known

as that of the twenty-sixth (Saite) dynasty. Gyges was less fortunate.

Assailed shortly by a terrible enemy, which swept with resistless force

over his whole land, he lost his life in the struggle. Assyria was well

and quickly avenged; and Ardys, the new monarch, hastened to resume the

deferential attitude toward Asshur-bani-pal which his father had

unwisely relinquished.

Asshur-bani-pal’s next important war was against the Arabs. Some of the

desert tribes had, as already mentioned, lent assistance to Saul-Mugina

during his revolt against his suzerain, and it was to punish this

audacity that Asshur-bani-pal undertook his expedition. His principal

enemy was a certain Vaiteha, who had for allies Natun, or Nathan, king

of the Nabathivans, and Ammu-ladin, king of Kedar. The fighting seems to

have extended along the whole country bordering the Euphrates valley

from the Persian Gulf to Syria, and thence southwards by Damascus to

Petra. Petra itself, Muhab (or Moab), Hudumimtukrab (Edom), Zaharri

(perhaps Zoar), and several other cities were taken by the Assyrians.

The final battle was fought at a place called Kutkhuruna, in he

mountains near Damascus, where the Arabians were defeated with great

slaughter, and the two chief, who had led the Arab contingent to the

assistance of Saul-Mugina were made prisoners by the Assyrians.

Asshur-bani-pal had them conducted to Nineveh, and there publicly

executed.

The annals of Asshur-bani-pal here terminate. They exhibit him to us as

a warrior more enterprising and more powerful than any of his

predecessors, and as one who enlarged in almost every direction the

previous limits of the empire. In Egypt he completed the work which his

father Esar-haddon had begun, and established the Assyrian dominion for

some years, not only at Sais and at Memphis, but at Thebes. In Asia

Minor he carried the Assyrian arms far beyond any former king,

conquering large tracts which had never before been invaded, and

extending the reputation of his greatness to the extreme western limits

of the continent. Against his northern neighbors he contended with

unusual success, and towards the close of his reign he reckoned, not

only the Minni, but the Urarda, or true Armenians, among his

tributaries. Towards the south, he added to the empire the great country

of Susiana, never subdued until his reign: and on the west, he signally

chastised if he did not actually conquer, the Arabs.

To his military ardor Asshur-bani-pal added a passionate addiction to

the pleasure of the chase. Lion-hunting was his especial delight.

Sometimes along the banks of reedy streams, sometimes borne mid-channel

in his pleasure galley, he sought the king of beasts in his native

haunts, roused him by means of hounds and beaters from his lair, and

despatched him with his unerring arrows. Sometimes he enjoyed the sport

in his own park of paradise. Large and fierce beasts, brought from a

distance, were placed in traps about the grounds, and on his approach

were set free from their confinement, while he drove among them in his

chariot, letting fly his shafts at each with a strong and steady hand,

which rarely failed to attain the mark it aimed at. Aided only by two or

three attendants armed with spears, he would encounter the terrific

spring of the bolder beasts, who rushed frantically at the royal

marksman and endeavored to tear him from the chariot-board. Sometimes he

would even voluntarily quit this vantage-ground, and, engaging with the

brutes on the same level, without the protection of armor, in his

everyday dress, with a mere fillet upon his head, he would dare a close

combat, and smite them with sword or spear through the heart.

When the supply of lions fell short, or when he was satiated with this

kind of sport. Asshur-bani-pal would vary his occupation, and content

himself with game of an inferior description. Wild bulls were probably

no longer found in Assyria or the adjacent countries, so that he was

precluded from the sport which, next to the chase of the lion occupied

and delighted the earlier monarchs. He could indulge, however, freely in

the chase of the wild ass still to this day a habitant of the

Mesopotamian region; and he would hunt the stag, the hind, and the ibex

or wild goat. In these tamer kinds of sport he seems, however, to have

indulged only occasionally--as a light relaxation scarcely worthy of a

great king.

Asshur-bani-pal is the only one of the Assyrian monarchs to whom we can

ascribe a real taste for learning and literature. The other kings were

content to leave behind them some records of the events of their reigns,

inscribed on cylinders, slabs, bulls, or lions, and a few dedicatory

inscriptions, addresses to the gods whom they especially worshipped.

Asshur-bani-pal’s literary tastes were far more varied--indeed they were

all-embracing. It seems to have been under his direction that the vast

collection of clay tablets--a sort of Royal Library--was made at

Nineveh, from which the British Museum has derived perhaps the most

valuable of its treasures. Comparative vocabularies, lists of deities

and their epithets, chronological lists of kings and eponyms, records of

astronomical observations, grammars, histories, scientific works of

various kinds, seems to have been composed in the reign, and probably at

the bidding of this prince, who devoted to their preservation certain

chambers in the palace of his grandfather, where they were found by Mr.

Layard. The clay tablets on which they were inscribed lay here in such

multitudes in some instances entire, but more commonly broken into

fragments--that they filled the chambers _to the height of a foot or

more from the floor_. Mr. Layard observes with justice that “the

documents thus discovered at Nineveh probably exceed [in amount of

writing] all that has yet been afforded by the monuments of Egypt.” They

have yielded of late years some most interesting results, and will

probably long continue to be a mine of almost inexhaustible wealth to

the cuneiform scholar.

As a builder, Asshur-bani-pal aspired to rival, if not even to excel,

the greatest of the monarchs who had preceded him. His palace was built

on the mound of Koyunjik, within a few hundred yards of the magnificent

erection of his grandfather, with which he was evidently not afraid to

challenge comparison. It was built on a plan unlike any adopted by

former kings. The main building consisted of three arms branching from

at common centre, and thus in its general shape resembled a gigantic T.

The central point was reached by a long ascending gallery lined with

sculptures, which led from a gateway, with rooms attached, at a corner

of the great court, first a distance of 190 feet in a direction parallel

to the top bar of the T, and then a distance of 80 feet in a direction

at right angles to this, which brought it down exactly to the central

point whence the arms branched. The entire building was thus a sort of

cross, with one long arm projecting from the top towards the left or

west. The principal apartments were in the lower limb of the cross. Here

was a grand hall, running nearly the whole length of the limb, at least

145 feet long by 28 feet broad, opening towards the east on a great

court, paved chiefly with the exquisite patterned slabs of which a

specimen has already been given, and communicating towards the west with

a number of smaller rooms, and through them with a second court, which

looked towards the south-west and the south. The next largest apartment

was in the right or eastern arm of the cross. It was a hall 108 feet

long by 24 feet wide, divided by a broad doorway in which were two

pillar-bases, into a square antechamber of 24 feet each way, and an

inner apartment about 80 feet in length. Neither of the two arms of the

cross was completely explored; and it is uncertain whether they extended

to the extreme edge of the eastern and western courts, thus dividing

each of there into two; or whether they only reached into the courts a

certain distance. Assuming the latter view as the more probable, the two

courts would have measured respectively 310 and 330 feet from the

north-west to the south-east, while they must have been from 230 to 250

feet in the opposite direction. From the comparative privacy of the

buildings, and from the character of the sculptures, it appears probable

that the left or western arm of the cross formed the hareem of the

monarch.

The most remarkable feature in the great palace of Asshur-bani-pal was

the beauty and elaborate character of the ornamentation. The courts were

paved with large slabs elegantly patterned. The doorways had sometimes

arched tops beautifully adorned with rosettes, lotuses, etc. The

chambers and passages were throughout lined with alabaster slabs,

bearing reliefs designed with wonderful spirit, and executed with the

most extraordinary minuteness and delicacy. It was here that were found

all those exquisite hunting scenes which have furnished its most

interesting illustrations to the present history. Here, too, were the

representations of the private life of the monarch, of the trees and

flowers of the palace garden, of the royal galley with its two banks of

oars, of the libation over four dead lions, of the temple with pillars

supported on lions, and of various bands of musicians, some of which

have been already given. Combined with these peaceful scenes and others

of a similar character, as particularly a long train, with game, nets,

and dogs, returning from the chase, which formed the adornment of a

portion of the ascending passage, were a number of views of sieges and

battles, representing the wars of the monarch in Susiana and elsewhere.

Reliefs of a character very similar to these last were found by Mr.

Layard in certain chambers of the palace of Sennacherib, which had

received their ornamentation from Asshur-bani-pal. They were remarkable

for the unusual number and small size of the figures, for the variety

and spirit of the attitudes, and for the careful finish of all the

little details of the scenes represented upon them. Deficient in

grouping, and altogether destitute of any artistic unity, they yet give

probably the best representation that has come down to us of the

confused _melee_ of an Assyrian battle, showing us at one view, as they

do, all the various phases of the flight and pursuit, the capture and

treatment of the prisoners, the gathering of the spoil, and the cutting

off the heads of the slain. These reliefs form now a portion of our

National Collection. A good idea may be formed of them from Mr. Layard’s

Second Series of Monuments, where they form the subject of five

elaborate engravings.

Besides his own great palace at Koyun-jik, and his additions to the

palace of his grandfather at the same place, Asshur-bani-pal certainly

constructed some building, or buildings, at Nebbi Yunus, where slabs

inscribed with his name and an account of his wars have been found. If

we may regard him as the real monarch whom the Greeks generally intended

by their Sardanapalus, we may say that, according to some classical

authors, he was the builder of the city of Tarsus in Cilicia, and

likewise of the neighboring city of Anchialus; though writers of more

authority tells us that Tarsus, at any rate, was built by Sennacherib.

It seems further to have been very generally believed by the Greeks that

the tomb of Sardanapalus was in this neighborhood. They describe it as a

monument of some height, crowned by a statue of the monarch, who

appeared to be in the act of snapping his fingers. On the stone base was

an inscription in Assyrian characters, of which they believed the sense

to run as follows:--“Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, built Tarsus and

Anchialus in one day. Do thou, O stranger, eat, and drink, and amuse

thyself; for all the rest of human life is not worth so much as

_this_”--“this” meaning the sound which the king was supposed to be

making with his fingers. It appears probable that there was some figure

of this kind, with an Assyrian inscription below it, near Anchialus;

but, as we can scarcely suppose that the Greeks could read the cuneiform

writing, the presumed translation of the inscription would seem to be

valueless. Indeed, the very different versions of the legend which are

given by different writers sufficiently indicate that they had no real

knowledge of its purport. We may conjecture that the monument was in

reality a stele containing the king in an arched frame, with the right

hand raised above the left, which is the ordinary attitude, and an

inscription below commemorating the occasion of its erection. Whether it

was really set up by this king or by one of his predecessors, we cannot

say. The Greeks, who seem to have known more of Asshur-bani-pal than of

any other Assyrian monarch, in consequence of his war in Asia Minor and

his relations with Gyges and Ardys, are not unlikely to have given his

name to any Assyrian monument which they found in these parts, whether

in the local tradition it was regarded as his work or no.

Such, then, are the traditions of the Greeks with respect to this

monarch. The stories told by Ctesias of a king, to whom he gives the

same name, and repeated from him by later writers, are probably not

intended to have any reference to Asshur-bani-pal, the son of

Esar-haddon, but rather refer to his successor, the last king. Even

Ctesias could scarcely have ventured to depict to his countrymen the

great Asshur-bani-pal, the vanquisher of Tirhakah, the subduer of the

tribes beyond the Taurus, the powerful and warlike monarch whose

friendship was courted by the rich and prosperous Gyges, king of Lydia,

as a mere voluptuary, who never put his foot outside the palace gates,

but dwelt in the seraglio, doing woman’s work, and often dressed as a

woman. The character of Asshur-bani-pal stands really in the strongest

contrast to the description--be it a portrait, or be it a mere sketch

from fancy--which Ctesias gives of his Sardanapalus. Asshur-bani-pal,

was beyond a doubt one of Assyria’s greatest kings. He subdued Egypt and

Susiana; he held quiet possession of the kingdom of Babylon; he carried

his arms deep into Armenia; he led his troops across the Taurus, and

subdued the barbarous tribes of Asia Minor. When he was not engaged in

important wars, he chiefly occupied himself in the chase of the lion,

and in the construction and ornamentation of temples and palaces. His

glory was well known to the Greeks. He was no doubt one of the “two

kings called Sardanapalus,” celebrated by Hellanicus; he must have been

“the warlike Sardanapalus” of Cailisthenes; Herodotus spoke of his great

wealth; and Aristophanes used his name as a by-word for magnificence. In

his reign the Assyrian dominions reached their greatest extent, Assyrian

art culminated, and the empire seemed likely to extend itself over the

whole of the East. It was then, indeed, that Assyria most completely

answered the description of the Prophet--“The Assyrian was a cedar in

Lebanon, with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of high

stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. The waters made him

great; the deep set him up on high with her rivers running about his

plants, and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of the field.

Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and

his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long, because of the

multitude of waters, when he shot forth. All the fowls of the heaven

made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the

beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt

_all great nations_. Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of

his branches for his root was by great waters. The cedars in the garden

of God could not hide him; the fir-trees were not like his boughs; and

the chestnut-trees were not like his branches; _nor any tree in the

garden of God was like unto him in his beauty_.”

In one respect, however, Assyria, it is to be feared, had made but

little advance beyond the spirit of a comparatively barbarous time. The

“lion” still “tore in pieces for his whelps, and strangled for his

lionesses, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin.”

Advancing civilization, more abundant literature, improved art, had not

softened the tempers of the Assyrians, nor rendered them more tender and

compassionate in their treatment of captured enemies. Sennacherib and

Esar-haddon show, indeed, in this respect, some superiority to former

kings. They frequently spared their prisoners, even when rebels, and

seem seldom to have had recourse to extreme punishments. But

Asshur-bani-pal reverted to the antique system of executions,

mutilations, and tortures. We see on his bas-reliefs the unresisting

enemy thrust through with the spear, the tongue torn from the mouth of

the captive accused of blasphemy, the rebel king beheaded on the field

of battle, and the prisoner brought to execution with the head of a

friend or brother hung round his neck. We see the scourgcrs preceding

the king as his regular attendants, with their whips passed through

their girdles; we behold the operation of flaying performed either upon

living or dead men; we observe those who are about to be executed first

struck on the face by the executioner’s fist. Altogether we seem to have

evidence, not of mere severity, which may sometimes be a necessary or

even a merciful policy, but of a barbarous cruelty, such as could not

fail to harden and brutalize alike those who witnessed and those who

inflicted it. Nineveh, it is plain, still deserved the epithet of “a

bloody city,” or “a city of bloods.” Asshur-bani-pal was harsh,

vindictive, unsparing, careless of human suffering--nay, glorying in his

shame, he not merely practised cruelties, but handed the record of them

down to posterity by representing them in all their horrors upon his

palace walls.

It has been generally supposed that Asshur-bani-pal died about B.C. 648

or 647, in which case he would have continued to the end of his life a

prosperous and mighty king. But recent discoveries render it probable

that his reign was extended to a much greater length--that, in fact, he

is to be identified with the Cinneladanus of Ptolemy’s Canon, who held

the throne of Babylon from B.C. 647 to 626. If this be so, we must place

in the later years of the reign of Asshur-bani-pal the commencement of

Assyria’s decline--the change whereby she passed from the assailer to

the assailed, from the undisputed primacy of Western Asia to a doubtful

and precarious position.

This change was owing, in the first instance, to the rise upon her

borders of an important military power in the centralized monarchy,

established, about B.C. 640, in the neighboring territory of Media.

The Medes had, it is probable, been for some time growing in strength,

owing to the recent arrival in their country of fresh immigrants from

the far East. Discarding the old system of separate government and

village autonomy, they had joined together and placed themselves under a

single monarch; and about the year B.C. 634, when Asshur-bani-pal had

been king for thirty-four years, they felt themselves sufficiently

strong to undertake an expedition against Nineveh. Their first attack,

however, failed utterly. Phraortes, or whoever may have been the real

leader of the invading army, was completely defeated by the Assyrians;

his forces were cut to pieces, and he himself was among the slain.

Still, the very fact that the Medes could now take the offensive and

attack Assyria was novel and alarming; it showed a new condition of

things in these parts, and foreboded no good to the power which was

evidently on the decline and in danger of losing its preponderance. An

enterprising warrior would doubtless have followed up the defeat of the

invader by attacking him in his own country before he could recover from

the severe blow dealt him; but the aged Assyrian monarch appears to have

been content with repelling his foe, and made no effort to retaliate.

Cgaxares, the successor of the slain Median king, effected at his

leisure such arrangements as he thought necessary before repeating his

predecessor’s attempt. When they were completed--perhaps in B.C. 632--he

led his troops into Assyria, defeated the Assyrian forces in the field,

and, following up his advantage, appeared before Nineveh and closely

invested the town. Nineveh would perhaps have fallen in this year; but

suddenly and unexpectedly a strange event recalled the Median monarch to

his own country, where a danger threatened him previously unknown in

Western Asia.

When at the present day we take a general survey of the world’s past

history, we see that, by a species of fatality--by a law, that is, whose

workings we cannot trace--there issue from time to time out of the

frozen bosons of the North vast hordes of uncouth savages--brave,

hungry, countless--who swarm into the fairer southern regions

determinedly, irresistibly; like locusts winging their flight into a

green land. How such multitudes come to be propagated in countries where

life is with difficulty sustained, we do not know; why the impulse

suddenly seizes them to quit their old haunts and move steadily in a

given direction, we cannot say: but we see that the phenomenon is one of

constant recurrence, and we therefore now scarcely regard it as being

curious or strange at all. In Asia. Cimmerians, Scythians, Parthians,

Mongols, Turks; in Europe, Gauls, Goths, Huns, Avars, Vandals,

Burgundians, Lombards, Bulgarians, have successively illustrated the

law, and made us familiar with its operation. But there was a time in

history before the law had come into force; and its very existence must

have been then unsuspected. Even since it began to operate, it has so

often undergone prolonged suspension, that the wisest may be excused if,

under such circumstances, they cease to bear it in mind, and are as much

startled when a fresh illustration of it occurs, as if the like had

never happened before. Probably there is seldom an occasion of its

coming into play which does not take men more or less by surprise, and

rivet their attention by its seeming strangeness and real

unexpectedness.

If Western Asia had ever, in the remote ages before the Assyrian

monarchy was established, been subject to invasions of this

character--which is not improbable--at any rate so long a period had

elapsed since the latest of them, that in the reigns of Asshur-pani-pal

and Cyaxares they were wholly forgotten and the South reposed in happy

unconsciousness of a danger which might at any time have burst upon it,

had the Providence which governs the world so willed. The Asiatic

steppes had long teemed with a nomadic population, of a war-like temper,

and but slightly attached to its homes, which ignorance of its own

strength and of the weakness and wealth of its neighbors had alone

prevented from troubling the great empires of the South. Geographic

difficulties had at once prolonged the period of Ignorance, and acted as

obstructions, if ever the idea arose of pushing exploring parties into

the southern regions; the Caucasus, the Caspian, the sandy deserts of

Khiva and Kharesm, and the great central Asiatic mountain-chains,

forming barriers which naturally restrained the northern hordes from

progressing in this direction. But a time had now arrived when these

causes were no longer to operate; the line of demarcation which had so

long separated North and South was to be crossed; the flood-gates were

to be opened, and the stream of northern emigration was to pour itself

in a resistless torrent over the fair and fertile regions from which it

had hitherto been barred out. Perhaps population had increased beyond

all former precedent; perhaps a spirit of enterprise had arisen;

possibly some slight accident--the exploration of a hunter hard pressed

for food, the chattering tongue of a merchant, the invitation of a

traitor--may have dispelled the ignorance of earlier times, and brought

to the knowledge of the hardy North the fact that beyond the mountains

and the seas, which they had always regarded as the extreme limit of the

world, there lay a rich prey inviting the coming of the spoiler.

The condition of the northern barbarians, less than two hundred years

after this time, has been graphically portrayed by two of the most

observant of the Greeks, who themselves visited the Steppe country to

learn the character and customs of the people. Where civilization is

unknown, changes are so slow and slight, that we may reasonably regard

the descriptions of Herodotus and Hippocrates, though drawn in the fifth

century before our era, as applying, in all their main points, to the

same race two hundred years earlier. These writers describe the

Scythians as a people coarse and gross in their habits, with large

fleshy bodies, loose joints, soft swollen bellies, and scanty hair. They

never washed themselves; their nearest approach to ablution was a

vapor-bath, or the application of a paste to their bodies which left

them glossy on its removal. They lived either in wagons, or in felt

tents of a simple and rude construction; and subsisted on mare’s milk

and cheese, to which the boiled flesh of horses and cattle was added, as

a rare delicacy, occasionally. In war their customs were very barbarous.

The Scythian who slew an enemy in battle immediately proceeded to drink

his blood. He then cut off the head, which he exhibited to his king in

order to obtain his share of the spoil; after which he stripped the

scalp from the skull and hung it on his bridle-rein as a trophy.

Sometimes he flayed his dead enemy’s right arm and hand, and used the

skin as a covering for his quiver. The upper portion of the skull he

commonly made into a drinking-cup. The greater part of each day he spent

on horseback, in attendance on the huge herds of cattle which he

pastured. His favorite weapon was the bow, which he used as he rode,

shooting his arrows with great precision. He generally carried, besides

his bow and arrows, a short spear or javelin, and sometimes bore also a

short sword or a battleaxe. [PLATE CXLVI., Fig. 3.]

The nation of the Scythians comprised within it a number of distinct

tribes. At the head of all was a royal tribe, corresponding to the

“Golden Horde” of the Mongols, which was braver and more numerous than

any other, and regarded all the remaining tribes in the light of slaves.

To this belonged the families of the kings, who ruled by hereditary

right, and seem to have exercised a very considerable authority. We

often hear of several kings as bearing rule at the same time; but there

is generally some indication of disparity, from which we gather that--in

times of danger at any rate--the supreme power was really always lodged

in the hands of a single man.

The religion of the Scythians was remarkable, and partook of the

barbarity which characterized most of their customs. They worshipped the

Sun and Moon, Fire, Air, Earth, Water, and a god whom Herodotus calls

Hercules. But their principal religious observance was the worship of

the naked sword. The country was parcelled out into districts, and in

every district was a huge pile of brushwood, serving as a temple to the

neighborhood, at the top of which was planted an antique sword or

scimitar. On a stated day in each year solemn sacrifices, human and

animal, were offered at these shrines; and the warm blood of the victims

was carried up from below and poured upon the weapon. The human

victims--prisoners taken in war--were hewn to pieces at the foot of the

mound, and their limbs wildly tossed on high by the votaries, who then

retired, leaving the bloody fragments where they chanced to fall. The

Scythians seem to have had no priest caste; but they believed in

divination; and the diviners formed a distinct class which possessed

important powers. They were sent for whenever the king was ill, to

declare the cause of his illness, which they usually attributed to the

fact that an individual, whom they named, had sworn falsely by the Royal

Hearth. Those accused in this way, if found guilty by several bodies of

diviners, were beheaded for the offence, and their original accusers

received their property. It must have been important to keep on good

terms with persons who wielded such a power as this.

Such were the most striking customs of the Scythian people, or at any

rate of the Scythians of Herodotus, who were the dominant race over a

large portion of the Steppe country. Coarse and repulsive in their

appearance, fierce in their tempers, savage in their habits, not

individually very brave, but powerful by their numbers, and by a mode of

warfare which was difficult to meet, and in which long use had given

them great expertness, they were an enemy who might well strike alarm

even into a nation so strong and warlike as the Medes. Pouring through

the passes of the Caucasus--whence coming or what intending none

knew--horde after horde of Scythians blackened the rich plains of the

South. On they came, as before observed, like a flight of locusts,

countless, irresistible--swarming into Iberia and Upper Media--finding

the land before them a garden, and leaving it behind them a howling

wilderness. Neither age nor sex would be spared. The inhabitants of the

open country and of the villages, if they did not make their escape to

high mountain tops or other strongholds, would be ruthlessly massacred

by the invaders, or at best, forced to become their slaves. The crops

would be consumed, the herds swept off or destroyed, the villages and

homesteads burnt, the whole country made a scene of desolation. Their

ravages would resemble those of the Huns when they poured into Italy, or

of the Bulgarians when they overran the fairest provinces of the

Byzantine Empire. In most instances the strongly fortified towns would

resist them, unless they had patience to sit down before their walls and

by a prolonged blockade to starve them into submission. Sometimes,

before things reached this point, they might consent to receive a

tribute and to retire. At other times, convinced that by perseverance

they would reap a rich reward, they may have remained till the besieged

city fell, when there must have ensued an indescribable scene of havoc,

rapine, and bloodshed. According to the broad expression of Herodotus,

the Scythians were masters of the whole of Western Asia from the

Caucasus to the borders of Egypt for the space of twenty-eight years.

This statement is doubtless an exaggeration; but still it would seem to

be certain that the great invasion of which he speaks was not confined

to Media, but extended to the adjacent countries of Armenia and Assyria,

whence it spread to Syria and Palestine. The hordes probably swarmed

down from Media through the Zagros passes into the richest portion of

Assyria, the flat country between the mountains and the Tigris. Many of

the old cities, rich with the accumulated stores of ages, were besieged,

and perhaps taken, and their palaces wantonly burnt, by the barbarous

invaders. The tide then swept on. Wandering from district to district,

plundering everywhere, settling nowhere, the clouds of horse passed over

Mesopotamia, the force of the invasion becoming weaker as it spread

itself, until in Syria it reached its term through the policy of the

Egyptian king, Psammetichus. This monarch, who was engaged in the siege

of Ashdod, no sooner heard of the approach of a great Scythian host,

which threatened to overrun Egypt, and had advanced as far as Ascalon,

than he sent ambassadors to their leader and prevailed on him by rich

gifts to abstain from his enterprise. From this time the power of the

invaders seems to have declined. Their strength could not but suffer by

the long series of battles, sieges, and skirmishes in which they were

engaged year after year against enemies in nowise contemptible; it would

likewise deteriorate through their excesses; and it may even have

received some injury from intestine quarrels. After awhile, the nations

whom they had overrun, whose armies they had defeated, and whose cities

they had given to the flames, began to recover themselves. Cyaxares, it

is probable, commenced an aggressive war against such of the invaders as

had remained within the limits of his dominions, and soon drove them

beyond his borders. Other kings may have followed his example. In a

little while long, probably, before the twenty-eight years of Herodotus

had expired--the Scythian power was completely broken. Many bands may

have returned across the Caucasus into the Steppe country. Others

submitted, and took service under the native rulers of Asia. Great

numbers were slain and except in a province of Armenia which

henceforward became known as Sacasene, and perhaps in one Syrian town,

which we find called Scythopolis, the invaders left no trace of their

brief but terrible inroad.

If we have been right in supposing that the Scythian attack fell with as

much severity on the Assyrians as on any other Asiatic people, we can

scarcely be in error if we ascribe to this cause the rapid and sudden

decline of the empire at this period. The country had been ravaged and

depopulated, the provinces had been plundered, many of the great towns

had been taken and sacked, the palaces of the old kings had been burnt,

and all the gold and silver that was not hid away had been carried off.

Assyria, when the Scythians quitted her, was but the shadow of her

former self. Weak and exhausted, she seemed to invite a permanent

conqueror. If her limits had not much shrunk, if the provinces still

acknowledged her authority, it was from habit rather than from fear, or

because they too had suffered greatly from the northern barbarians. We

find Babylon subject to Assyria to the very last; and we seem to see

that Judaea passed from the rule of the Assyrians under that of the

Babylonians, without any interval of independence or any need of

re-conquest. But if these two powers at the south-eastern and the

south-western extremities of the empire continued faithful, the less

distant nations could scarcely have thrown off the yoke.

Asshur-bani-pal, then, on the withdrawal of the barbarians, had still an

empire to rule, and he may be supposed to have commenced some attempts

at re-organizing and re-invigorating the governmental system to which

the domination of the Scythe must have given a rude shock. But he had

not time to effect much. In B.C. 626 he died, after a reign of forty-two

years, and was succeeded by his son, Asshur-emid-ilin, whom the Greeks

called Saracus. Of this prince we possess but few native records; and,

unless it should be thought that the picture which Ctesias gave of the

character and conduct of his last Assyrian king deserves to be regarded

as authentic history, and to be attached to this monarch, we must

confess to an almost equal dearth of classical notices of his life and

actions. Scarcely anything has come down to us from his time but a few

legends on bricks, from which it appears that he was the builder of the

south-east edifice at Nimrud, a construction presenting some remarkable

but no very interesting features. The classical notices, apart from the

tales which Ctesias originated, are limited to a few sentences in

Abydenus, and a word or two in Polyhistor. Thus nearly the same

obscurity which enfolds the earlier portion of the history gathers about

the monarch in whose person the empire terminated; and instead of the

ample details which have crowded upon us now for many consecutive

reigns, we shall be reduced to a meagre outline, partly resting upon

conjecture, in our portraiture of this last king.

Saracus, as the monarch may be termed after Abydenus, ascended the

throne at a most difficult and dangerous crisis in his country’s

history. Assyria was exhausted; and perhaps half depopulated by the

Scythic ravages. The bands which united the provinces to the sovereign

state, though not broken, had been weakened, and rebellion threatened to

break out in various quarters. Ruin had overtaken many of the provincial

towns; and it would require a vast outlay to restore their public

buildings. But the treasury was wellnigh empty, and did not allow the

new monarch to adopt in his buildings the grand and magnificent style of

former kings. Still Saracus attempted something. At Calah he began the

construction of a building which apparently was intended for a palace,

but which contrasts most painfully with the palatial erections of former

kings. The waning glory of the monarchy was made patent both to the

nation and to strangers by an edifice where coarse slabs of common

limestone, unsculptured and uninscribed, replaced the alabaster

bas-reliefs of former times; and where a simple plaster above the slabs

was the substitute for the richly-patterned enamelled bricks of Sargon,

Sennacherib, and Asshur-bani-pal. A set of small chambers, of which no

one exceeded forty-five feet in length and twenty-five feet in its

greatest breadth, sufficed for the last Assyrian king, whose shrunken

Court could no longer have filled the vast halls of his ancestors. The

Nimrud palace of Saracus seems to have covered less than one-half of the

space occupied by any former palace upon the mound; it had no grand

facade, no magnificent gateway; the rooms, curiously misshapen, as if

taste had declined with power and wealth, were mostly small and

inconvenient, running in suites which opened into one another without

any approaches from courts or passages, roughly paved with limestone

flags, and composed of sun-dried bricks faced with limestone and

plaster. That Saracus should have been reduced even to contemplate

residing in this poor and mean dwelling is the strongest possible proof

of Assyria’s decline and decay at a period preceding the great war which

led to her destruction.

It is possible that this edifice may not have been completed at the time

of Saracus’s death, and in that case we may suppose that its extreme

rudeness would have received certain embellishments had he lived to

finish the structure. While it was being erected, he must have resided

elsewhere. Apparently, he held his court at Nineveh during this period;

and was certainly there that he made his last arrangements for defence,

and his final stand against the enemy, who took advantage of his weak

condition to press forward the conquest of the empire.

The Medes, in their strong upland country, abounding in rocky hills, and

running up in places into mountain-chains, had probably suffered much

less from the ravages of the Scyths than the Assyrians in their

comparatively defenceless plains. Of all the nations exposed to the

scourge of the invasion they were evidently the first to recover

themselves, partly from the local causes here noticed, partly perhaps

from their inherent vigor and strength. If Herodotus’s date for the

original inroad of the Scythians is correct, not many years can have

elapsed before the tide of war turned, and the Medes began to make head

against their assailants, recovering possession of most parts of their

country, and expelling or overpowering the hordes at whose insolent

domination they had chafed from the first hour of the invasion. It was

probably as early as B.C. 627, five years after the Scyths crossed the

Caucasus, according to Herodotus, that Cyaxares, having sufficiently

re-established his power in Media, began once more to aspire after

foreign conquests. Casting his eyes around upon the neighboring

countries, he became aware of the exhaustion of Assyria, and perceived

that she was not likely to offer an effectual resistance to a sudden and

vigorous attack. He therefore collected a large army and invaded Assyria

from the east, while it would seem that the Susianians, with whom he had

perhaps made an alliance, attacked her from the south.

To meet this double danger. Saracus, the Assyrian king, determined on

dividing his forces: and, while he entrusted a portion of them to a

general, Nabopolassar, who had orders to proceed to Babylon and engage

the enemy advancing from the sea, he himself with the remainder made

ready to receive the Medes. In idea this was probably a judicious

disposition of the troops at his disposal; it was politic to prevent a

junction of the two assailing powers, and, as the greater danger was

that which threatened from the Medes, it was well for the king to

reserve himself with the bulk of his forces to meet this enemy. But the

most prudent arrangements may be disconcerted by the treachery of those

who are entrusted with their execution; and so it was in the present

instance. The faithless Nabopolassar saw in his sovereign’s difficulty

his own opportunity and, instead of marching against Assyria’s enemies,

as his duty required him, he secretly negotiated an arrangement with

Cyaxares, agreed to become his ally against the Assyrians, and obtained

the Median king’s daughter as a bride for Nebuchadnezzar, his eldest

son. Cyaxares and Nabopolassar then joined their efforts against

Nineveh; and Saracus, unable to resist them, took counsel of his

despair, and, after all means of resistance were exhausted, burned

himself in his palace. It is uncertain whether we possess any further

historical details of the siege. The narrative of Ctesias may embody a

certain number of the facts, as it certainly represented with truth the

strange yet not incredible termination. But on the other hand, we cannot

feel sure, with regard to any statement made solely by that writer, that

it has any other source than his imagination. Hence the description of

the last siege of Nineveh, as given by Diodorus on the authority of

Ctesias, seems undeserving of a place in history, though the attention

of the curious may properly be directed to it.

The empire of the Assyrians thus fell, not so much from any inherent

weakness, or from the effect of gradual decay, as by an unfortunate

combination of circumstances--the occurrence of a terrible inroad of

northern barbarians just at the time when a warlike nation, long settled

on the borders of Assyria, and within a short distance of her capital,

was increasing, partly by natural and regular causes, partly by

accidental and abnormal ones, in greatness and strength. It will be

proper, in treating of the history of Media, to trace out, as far as our

materials allow, these various causes, and to examine the mode and

extent of their operation. But such an inquiry is not suited for this

place, since, if fully made, it would lead us too far away from our

present subject, which is the history of Assyria; while, if made

partially, it would be unsatisfactory. It is therefore deferred to

another place. The sketch here attempted of Assyrian history will now be

brought to a close by a few observations on the general nature of the

monarchy, or its extent in the most flourishing period, and on the

character of its civilization.

The independent kingdom of Assyria covered a space of at least a

thousand years; but the empire can, at the utmost, be considered to have

lasted a period short of seven centuries, from B.C. 1300 to B.C. 625 or

624--the date of the conquest of Cyaxares. In reality, the period of

extensive domination seems to have commenced with Asshur-ris-ilim, about

B.C. 1150, so that the duration of the true empire did not much exceed

five centuries. The limits of the dominion varied considerably within

this period, the empire expanding or contracting according to the

circumstances of the time and the personal character of the prince by

whom the throne was occupied. The extreme extent appears not to have

been reached until almost immediately before the last rapid decline set

in, the widest dominion belonging to the time of Asshur-bani-pal, the

conqueror of Egypt, of Susiana, and of the Armenians. In the middle part

of this prince’s reign Assyria was paramount over the portion of Western

Asia included between the Mediterranean and the Halys on the one hand,

the Caspian Sea and the great Persian desert on the other. Southwards

the boundary was formed by Arabia and the Persian Gulf; northwards it

seems at no time to have advanced to the Euxine or to the Caucasus, but

to have been formed by a fluctuating line, which did not in the most

flourishing period extend so far as the northern frontier of Armenia.

Besides her Asiatic dominions, Assyria possessed also at this time a

portion of Africa, her authority being acknowledged by Egypt as far as

the latitude of Thebes. The countries included within the limits thus

indicated, and subject during the period in question to Assyrian

influence, were chiefly the following: Susiana, Chaldaea, Babylonia,

Media, Matiene or the Zagros range, Mesopotamia; parts of Armenia,

Cappadocia, and Cilicia; Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine. Idummaea, a

portion of Arabia, and almost the whole of Egypt. The island of Cyprus

was also, it is probable, a dependency. On the other hand, Persia

Proper, Bactria, and Sogdiana, even Hyrcania, were beyond the eastern

limit of the Assyrian sway, which towards the north did not on this side

reach further than about the neighborhood of Kasvin, and towards the

south was confined within the barrier of Zagros. Similarly on the west,

Phrygia, Lydia, Lycia, even Pamphylia, were independent, the Assyrian

arms having never, so far as appears, penetrated westward beyond Cilicia

or crossed the river Halys.

The nature of the dominion established by the great Mesopotamian

monarchy over the countries included within the limits above indicated,

will perhaps be best understood if we compare it with the empire of

Solomon. Solomon reigned over _all the kingdoms_ from the river

(Euphrates) unto the land of the Philistines and unto the border of

Egypt: they _brought presents_ and served Solomon all the days of his

life. The first and most striking feature of the earliest empires is

that they are a mere congeries of kingdoms: the countries over which the

dominant state acquires an influence, not only retain their distinct

individuality, as is the case in some modern empires, but remain in all

respects such as they were before, with the simple addition of certain

obligations contracted towards the paramount authority. They keep their

old laws, their old religion, their line of kings, their law of

succession, their whole internal organization and machinery; they only

acknowledge an external suzerainty which binds them to the performance

of certain duties towards the Head of the Empire. These duties, as

understood in the earliest times, may be summed up in the two words

“homage” and “tribute;” the subject kings “serve” and “bring presents.”

They are bound to acts of submission; must attend the court of their

suzerain when summoned, unless they have a reasonable excuse; must there

salute him as a superior, and otherwise acknowledge his rank; above all,

they must pay him regularly the fixed tribute which has been imposed

upon them at the time of their submission or subjection, the

unauthorized withholding of which is open and avowed rebellion. Finally,

they must allow his troops free passage through their dominions, and

must oppose any attempt at invasion by way of their country on the part

of his enemies. Such are the earliest and most essential obligations on

the part of the subject states in an empire of the primitive type like

that of Assyria; and these obligations, with the corresponding one on

the part of the dominant power of the protection of its dependants

against foreign foes, appear to have constituted the sole links which

joined together in one the heterogeneous materials of which that empire

consisted.

It is evident that a government of the character here described contains

within it elements of constant disunion and disorder. Under favorable

circumstances, with an active and energetic prince upon the throne,

there is an appearance of strength, and a realization of much

magnificence and grandeur. The subject monarchs pay annually their due

share of “the regulated tribute of the empire;” and the better to secure

the favor of their common sovereign, add to it presents, consisting of

the choicest productions of their respective kingdoms. The material

resources of the different countries are placed at the disposal of the

dominant power; and skilled workmen are readily lent for the service of

the court, who adorn or build the temples and the royal residences, and

transplant the luxuries and refinements of their several states to the

imperial capital. But no sooner does any untoward event occur, as a

disastrous expedition, a foreign attack, a domestic conspiracy, or even

an untimely and unexpected death of the reigning prince, than the

inherent weakness of this sort of government at once displays

itself--the whole fabric of the empire falls asunder--each kingdom

re-asserts its independence--tribute ceases to be paid--and the mistress

of a hundred states suddenly finds herself thrust back into her

primitive condition, stripped of the dominion which has been her

strength, and thrown entirely upon her own resources. Then the whole

task of reconstruction has to be commenced anew--one by one the rebel

countries are overrun, and the rebel monarchs chastised--tribute is

re-imposed, submission enforced, and in fifteen or twenty years the

empire has perhaps recovered itself. Progress is of course slow and

uncertain, where the empire has continually to be built up again from

its foundations, and where at any time a day may undo the work which it

has taken centuries to accomplish.

To discourage and check the chronic disease of rebellion, re-course is

had to severe remedies, which diminish the danger to the central power,

at the cost of extreme misery and often almost entire ruin to the

subject kingdoms. Not only are the lands wasted, the flocks and herds

carried off, the towns pillaged and burnt, or in some cases razed to the

ground, the rebel king deposed and his crown transferred to another, the

people punished by the execution of hundreds or thousands as well as by

an augmentation of the tribute money; but sometimes wholesale

deportation of the inhabitants is practised, tens or hundreds of

thousands being carried away captive by the conquerors, and either

employed in servile labor at the capital or settled as colonists in a

distant province. With this practice the history of the Jews, in which

it forms so prominent a feature, has made us familiar. It seems to have

been known to the Assyrians from very early times, and to have become by

degrees a sort of settled principle in their government. In the most

flourishing period of their dominion--the reigns of Sargon, Sennacherib,

and Esar-haddon--it prevailed most widely, and was carried to the

greatest extent. Chaldaeans were transported into Armenia, Jews and

Israelites into Assyria and Media, Arabians, Babylonians, Susianians,

and Persians into Palestine--the most distant portions of the empire

changed inhabitants, and no sooner did a people become troublesome from

its patriotism and love of independence, than it was weakened by

dispersion, and its spirit subdued by a severance of all its local

associations. Thus rebellion was in some measure kept down, and the

position of the central or sovereign state was rendered so far more

secure; but this comparative security was gained by a great sacrifice of

strength, and when foreign invasion came, the subject kingdoms, weakened

at once and alienated by the treatment which they had received, were

found to have neither the will nor the power to give any effectual aid

to their enslaver.

Such, in its broad and general outlines, was the empire of the

Assyrians. It embodied the earliest, simplest, and most crude conception

which the human mind forms of a widely extended dominion. It was a

“kingdom-empire,” like the empires of Solomon, of Nebuchadnezzar, of

Chedor-laomer, and probably of Cyaxares, and it the best specimen of its

class, being the largest, the longest in duration, and the best known of

all such governments that has existed. It exhibits in a marked way both

the strength and weakness of this class of monarchies--their strength in

the extraordinary magnificence, grandeur, wealth, and refinement of the

capital; their weakness in the impoverishment, the exhaustion, and the

consequent disaffection of the subject states. Ever falling to pieces,

it was perpetually reconstructed by the genius and prowess of a long

succession of warrior princes, seconded by the skill and bravery of the

people. Fortunate in possessing for a longtime no very powerful

neighbor, it found little difficulty in extending itself throughout

regions divided and subdivided among hundreds of petty chiefs incapable

of union, and singly quite unable to contend with the forces of a large

and populous country. Frequently endangered by revolts, yet always

triumphing over them, it maintained itself for five centuries gradually

advancing its influence, and was only overthrown after a fierce struggle

by a new kingdom formed upon its borders, which, taking advantage of a

time of exhaustion, and leagued with the most powerful of the subject

states, was enabled to accomplish the destruction of the long-dominant

people.

In the curt and dry records of the Assyrian monarchs, while the broad

outlines of the government are well marked, it is difficult to

distinguish those nicer shades of system and treatment which no doubt

existed, and in which the empire of the Assyrians differed probably from

others of the same type. One or two such points, however, may perhaps be

made out. In the first place, though religious uniformity is certainly

not the law of the empire, yet a religious character appears in many of

the wars, and attempts at any rate seem to be made to diffuse everywhere

a knowledge and recognition of the gods of Assyria. Nothing is more

universal than the practice of setting up in the subject countries the

laws of Asshur or “altars to the Great Gods.” In some instances not only

altars but temples are erected, and priests are left to superintend the

worship and secure its being properly conducted. The history of Judaea

is, however, enough to show that the continuance of the national worship

was at least tolerated, though some formal acknowledgment of the

presiding deities of Assyria on the part of the subject nations may not

improbably have been required in most cases.

Secondly, there is an indication that in certain countries immediately

bordering on Assyria endeavors were made from time to time to centralize

and consolidate the empire, by substituting, on fit occasions, for the

native chiefs, Assyrian officers as governors. The persons appointed are

of two classes--“collectors” and “treasurers.” Their special business

is, of course, as their names imply, to gather in the tribute due to the

Great King, and secure its safe transmission to the capital; but they

seem to have been, at least in some instances, entrusted with the civil

government of their respective districts. It does not appear that this

system was ever extended very far, Lebanon on the west, and Mount Zagros

on the east, may be regarded as the extreme limits of the centralized

Assyria. Armenia, Media, Babylonia, Susiana, most of Phoenicia,

Palestine, Philistia, retained to the last their native monarchs; and

thus Assyria, despite the feature here noticed, kept upon the whole her

character of a “kingdom-empire.”

The civilization of the Assyrians is a large subject, on which former

chapters of this work have, it is hoped, thrown some light, and upon

which only a very few remarks will be here offered by way of

recapitulation. Deriving originally letters and the elements of learning

from Babylonia, the Assyrians appear to have been content with the

knowledge thus obtained, and neither in literature nor in science to

have progressed much beyond their instructors. The heavy incubus of a

dead language lay upon all those who desired to devote themselves to

scientific pursuits; and, owing to this, knowledge tended to become the

exclusive possession of a learned or perhaps a priest class, which did

not aim at progress, but was satisfied to hand on the traditions of

former ages. To understand the genius of the Assyrian people we must

look to their art and their manufactures. These are in the main probably

of native growth; and from them we may best gather an impression of the

national character. They show us a patient, laborious, pains-taking

people, with more appreciation of the useful than the ornamental, and of

the actual than the ideal. Architecture, the only one of the fine arts

which is essentially useful, forms their chief glory; sculpture, and

still more painting, are subsidiary to it. Again, it is the most useful

edifice--the palace or house--whereon attention is concentrated--the

temple and the tomb, the interest attaching to which is ideal and

spiritual, are secondary, and appear (so far as they appear at all)

simply as appendages of the palace. In the sculpture it is the actual

the historically true--which the artist strives to represent. Unless in

the case of a few mythic figures connected with the religion of the

country, there is nothing in the Assyrian bas-reliefs which is not

imitated from nature. The imitation is always laborious, and often most

accurate and exact. The laws of representation, as we understand them,

are sometimes departed from, but it is always to impress the spectator

with ideas in accordance with truth. Thus the colossal bulls and lions

have five legs, but in order that they may be seen from every point of

view with four; the ladders are placed edgewise against the walls of

besieged towns, but it is to show that they are ladders, and not mere

poles; walls of cities are made disproportionately small, but it is

done, like Raphael’s boat, to bring them within the picture, which would

otherwise be a less complete representation of the actual fact. The

careful finish, the minute detail, the elaboration of every hair in a

beard, and every stitch in the embroidery of a dress, reminds us of the

Dutch school of painting, and illustrates strongly the spirit of

faithfulness and honesty which pervades the sculptures, and gives them

so great a portion of their value. In conception, in grace, in freedom

and correctness of outline, they fall undoubtedly far behind the

inimitable productions of the Greeks; but they have a grandeur and a

dignity, a boldness, a strength, and an appearance of life, which render

them even intrinsically valuable as works of art, and, considering the

time at which they were produced, must excite our surprise and

admiration. Art, so far as we know, had existed previously only in the

stiff and lifeless conventionalism of the Egyptians. It belonged to

Assyria to confine the conventional to religion, and to apply art to the

vivid representation of the highest scenes of human life. War in all its

forms--the-march, the battle, the pursuit, the siege of towns, the

passage of rivers and marshes, the submission and treatment of captives,

and the “mimic war” of hunting the chase of the lion, the stag, the

antelope, the wild bull, and the wild ass, are the chief subjects

treated by the Assyrian sculptors; and in these the conventional is

discarded; fresh scenes, new groupings, bold and strange attitudes

perpetually appear, and in the animal representations especially there

is a continual advance, the latest being the most spirited, the most

varied, and the most true to nature, though perhaps lacking somewhat of

the majesty and grandeur of the earlier. With no attempt to idealize or

go beyond nature, there is a growing power of depicting things as they

are--an increased grace and delicacy of execution, showing that Assyrian

art was progressive, not stationary, and giving a promise of still

higher excellence, had circumstances permitted its development.

The art of Assyria has every appearance of thorough and entire

nationality; but it is impossible to feel sure that her manufactures

were in the same sense absolutely her own. The practice of borrowing

skilled workmen from the conquered states would introduce into Nineveh

and the other royal cities the fabrics of every region which

acknowledged the Assyrian sway; and plunder, tribute, and commerce would

unite to enrich them with the choicest products of all civilized

countries. Still, judging by the analogy of modern times, it seems most

reasonable to suppose that the bulk of the manufactured goods consumed

in the country would be of home growth. Hence we may fairly assume that

the vases, jars, bronzes, glass bottles, carved ornaments in ivory and

mother-of-pearl, engraved gems, bells, dishes, earrings, arms, working

implements, etc., which have been found at Nimrud, Khorsabad, and

Koyunjik, are mainly the handiwork of the Assyrians. It has been

conjectured that the rich garments represented as worn by the kings and

others were the product of Babylon, always famous for its tissues; but

even this is uncertain; and they are perhaps as likely to have been of

home manufacture. At any rate the bulk of the ornaments, utensils,

etc’., may be regarded as native products. They are almost invariably of

elegant form, and indicate a considerable knowledge of metallurgy and

other arts as well as a refined taste. Among them are some which

anticipate inventions believed till lately to have been modern.

Transparent glass (which, however, was known also in ancient Egypt) is

one of these; but the most remarkable of all is the lens discovered at

Nimrud, of the use of which as a magnifying agent there is abundant

proof. If it be borne in mind, in addition to all this, that the

buildings of the Assyrians show them to have been well acquainted with

the principle of the arch, that they constructed tunnels, aqueducts, and

drains, that they knew the use of the pulley, the lever, and the roller,

that they understood the arts of inlaying, enamelling, and overlaying

with metals, and that they cut gems with the greatest skill and finish,

it will be apparent that their civilization equalled that of almost any

ancient country, and that it did not fall immeasurably behind the

boasted achievements of the moderns. With much that was barbaric still

attaching to them, with a rude and inartificial government, savage

passions, a debasing religion, and a general tendency to materialism,

they were, towards the close of their empire, in all the ordinary arts

and appliances of life, very nearly on a par with ourselves; and thus

their history furnishes a warning--which the records of nations

constantly repeat--that the greatest material prosperity may co-exist

with the decline--and herald the downfall--of a kingdom.

APPENDIX.

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LIST OF AUTHORS AND EDITIONS QUOTED IN THE NOTES.

ABULPHARAGIUS, Chronicon Syriacum, ed. J. Bruno, Lipsim, 1789.

Agathangelus, Historia Regni Tiridatis, in C. Muller’s Fragm. Hist.

Gr. vol. v.,Parisiis, 1870.

Agathias, in the Corpus Script. Hist. Byz. of B. G. Niebuhr, Bonnm, 1828.

Ammianus Marcellinus, ed. Gronovius, Lugd. Bat., 1693.

Analecta Grmca, ed. Benedict., Lutetite Parisioruin, 1688.

Annales de l’Institut Archeologique, Paris, 1828, &c.

Anonymus (continuator of Dio Cassius),in the Fragm. Hist. Gr.,

vol. iv., Parisiis, 1851.

Antonini Itinerarium, ed. Parthey et Pinder, Berolini, 1848.

Appianus, Historia Romana, ed. H. Stephanus, Parisiis. 1592.

Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, ed.Tauchnitz, Lipsim, 1831.

Arrianus, Exped. Alex., ed. Tauchnitz, Lipsim, 1829. Fragments of,

in the Fragm. Hist.Greec. of C. MUller, vol. iii., Parisiis, 1849.

Historia Indica. in C. Muller’s Geographi Minores, Parisiis, 1855-1861.

Asseman, Bibliotheca Orientalis, Romae, 1719-1728.

Athanasius, Opera, ed. Benedict., Parisiis, 1698.

Athenaeus, Deipnosophistw,ed. Schweighmuser, Argentorat., 1801-1807.

Atkinson, Firdausi, in the Publications of the Oriental Translation

Committee, London, 1832.

Augnstinus, Opera, ed. Benedict., Antwerpim, 1700.

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