on a throne and surrounded by seraphim, a sense of his own unworthiness
filled him with fear, but an angel purified his lips with a live coal,
and he heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who
will go for us? and he replied, Here am I; send me, whereupon Jahveh
gave him this message: Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye
indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make
their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes and
hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again
and be healed. Then the prophet asked, Lord, how long? And Jahveh
answered, Until cities be waste without inhabitant and houses without
man, and the land become utterly waste, and Jahveh have removed men far
away, and the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land. And if
there be yet a tenth in it, it shall be eaten up; as a terebinth, and as
an oak, whose stock remaineth when they are felled, so the holy seed is
the stock thereof. *
* An explanatory gloss, the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria
and of the son of Remaliah, which formed no part of the
original prophecy, is here inserted in the text.
Judah, though less powerful, was quite as corrupt as his brethren of
Israel, and the divine wrath threatened him no less than them; it rested
with himself, however, to appease it by repentance, and to enter again
into divine favour after suffering his punishment; the Eternal would
then gather together on Mount Sion those of His faithful people who had
survived the crisis, and would assure them a long period of prosperity
under His law. The prophet, convinced that men could in no wise alter
the decrees of the Highest, save by repentance alone, was astonished
that the heads of the state should strive to impede the progress of
events that were happening under their very eyes, by the elaborately
useless combinations of their worldly diplomacy. To his mind, the
invasion of Pekah and Eezin was a direct manifestation of the divine
anger, and it filled him with indignation that the king should hope to
escape from it by begging for an alliance against them with one of
the great powers: when Jahveh should decide that the punishment was
sufficient for the crime, He would know how to shatter His instruments
without any earthly help. Indeed, Isaiah had already told his master,
some days before the allied kings appeared, while the latter was busy
superintending the works intended to supply Jerusalem with water, to
Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither let thy heart be faint,
because of these two tails of smoking firebrands.... Because Syria hath
counselled evil against thee, Ephraim also, and the son of Bemaliah,
saying, Let us go up against Judah, hem it in, carry it by storm, and
set up the son of Tabeel as king: thus saith the Lord God, It shall not
stand, neither shall it come to pass. If, however, the course of the
divine justice was to be disturbed by the intervention of a purely human
agency, the city would doubtless be thereby saved, but the matter would
not be allowed to rest there, and the people would suffer even more
at the hands of their allies than they had formerly endured from their
enemies. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call
his name Immanuel--God with us.... For before the child shall know
to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou
abhorrest shall be forsaken, and yet Jahveh shall bring upon thee, and
upon thy people, and upon thy fathers house, days that have not come,
from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah. * And then, employing one
of those daring apologues, common enough in his time, the prophet took
a large tablet and wrote upon it in large letters two symbolical
names--_Spoil-speedeth, Prey-hasteth_--and set it up in a prominent
place, and with the knowledge of credible witnesses went in unto the
prophetess his wife. When the child was born in due course, Jahveh bade
him call it _Spoil-speedeth, Prey-hasteth_, for before he shall have
knowledge to cry, My father and, My mother, the riches of Damascus and
the spoil of Samaria shall be carried away before the King of Assyria.
But the Eternal added, Forasmuch as this people hath refused the waters
of Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in Rezin and Remaliahs son;
now therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the
river [the Euphrates], strong and many:* and he shall come up over all
his channels, and go over all his banks: and he shall sweep onward into
Judah; he shall overflow and pass through; he shall reach even to the
neck, and the stretching of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy
land, O Immanuel [God-with-us]!*** Finding that Egypt was in favour
of his adversaries, Ahaz, in spite of the prophets warnings, turned to
Assyria.****
* Isa. vii. 10-17.
** A marginal gloss has here been inserted in the text,
indicating that it was «the King of Assyria and all his
glory » that the prophet referred to
*** Isa. viii. 1-8.
**** The following portions of Isaiah are accepted as
belonging to the period of this Syrian war: in addition to
chap, vii., chaps, viii.-ix 6. xi 1-9. xxii. 1-11; i. 4-9,
18-32; to these Kuenen adds chap, xxiii. 1-8
[Illustration: 282.jpg MAP THE KINGDOM OF DAMASCUS]
At one time he had found himself so hard pressed that he invoked the
aid of the Syrian gods, and made his eldest son pass through the fire in
order to propitiate them:* he collected together all the silver and gold
he could find in his own treasury or in that of the temple and sent it
to Tiglath-pileser, with this message: I am thy servant and thy son:
come up and save me out of the hand of the King of Syria, and out of the
hand of the King of Israel, which rise up against me. **
* 2 Kings xvi. 3 (cf. 2 Chron. xxviii. 3). There is nothing
to indicate the date, but most historians place the event at
the beginning of the Syrian war, a little before or during
the siege.
** Kings xvi. 7, 8; cf. 2 Chron. xxviii. 16, 20, 21.
Tiglath-pileser came in haste, and Rezin and Pekah, at the mere tidings
of his approach, desisted from their attack on Jerusalem, separated, and
retired each to his own kingdom. The Assyrian king did not immediately
follow them up. He took the road leading along the coast, after leaving
the plains of the middle Orontes, and levied tribute from the Phoenician
cities as he passed; he then began by attacking the western frontier
of Israel, and sent a body of troops against the Philistines, who were
ceaselessly harassing Judah. Hannon, King of Gaza, did not await the
attack, but fled to Egypt for safety, and Ahaz breathed freely, perhaps
for the first time since his accession. This, however, was only a
beginning; the real struggle took place in the following year, and was
hotly contested. In spite of the sorry pass to which its former defeats
and present discords had brought it, Damascus still possessed immense
wealth, and its army, when reinforced by the Arabian and Israelite
contingents, was capable of holding its own for a long time against
the battalions of Assyria, even if it could not hope to conquer them.
Unfortunately for its chances, Eezin had failed to inherit the military
capacity of his great predecessors, Ben-hadad and Hazael; he allowed
Tiglath-pileser to crush the Hebrews without rendering them any
effective assistance. Pekah fought his best, but he lost, one after
another, the strongholds which guarded his northern frontier--Ijon,
Abel-beth-maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, and Hazor; he saw the whole of
Naphtali and Gilead laid waste, and their inhabitants carried off into
Assyria without his being able to prevent it; he himself being obliged
to evacuate Samaria and take refuge in the mountains almost unattended.
Judah followed, with mingled exultation and disquietude, the
vicissitudes of the tragic drama which was thus enacted before its
eyes, and Isaiah foretold the speedy ruin of the two peoples who had but
yesterday threatened to enslave it. He could already see the following
picture in his minds eye: Damascus is taken away from being a city,
and it shall be a ruinous heap. The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they
shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them
afraid. *
* Both of these Aroêrs lay beyond Jordan--one in Reuben,
afterwards Moab (Judg. xi. 26; Jer. xlviii. 19); the other
in Amnion, afterwards Gad (Josh. xiii. 25; 2 Sam. xxiv. 5);
here they stand for the countries beyond Jordan which
Tiglath-pileser had just laid waste. The tradition preserved
in 1 Citron, v. 26 stated that these inhabitants of Gad and
Reuben were led into captivity by Pul, i.e. Tiglath-pileser.
The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from
Damascus, and the remnant of Syria: they shall be as the glory of the
children of Israel, saith the Lord of hosts! And it shall come to pass
in that day, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness
of his flesh shall wax lean. And it shall be as when the harvestman
gathereth the standing corn, and his arm reapeth the ears; yea, it shall
be as when one gleaneth ears in the valley of Ephraim. Yet there shall
be left therein gleanings, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three
berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost
branches of a fruitful tree, saith Jahveh, the God of Israel!... In that
day shall his strong cities be as the forsaken places in the wood, and
on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the children of
Israel:* and it shall be as a desolation. For thou hast forgotten the
God of thy salvation. **
* This is probably an allusion to the warlike exploits
performed during Rezin and Pekahs invasion of Judaea, a
year or two previously.
** Isa. xvii. 1-6, 9, 10.
Samaria was doomed to helplessness for many a day to come, if not for
ever, but it had taken a whole year to lay it low (733); Tiglath-pileser
returned in 732, and devoted yet another year to the war against
Damascus. Eezin had not been dismayed by the evil fortune of his
friends, and had made good his losses by means of fresh alliances. He
had persuaded first Mutton II. of Tyre, then Mitinti of Askalon, and
with the latter a section of the Philistines, to throw in their lot with
him; he had even won over Shamshieh, queen of the Arabs, and with her
a number of the most warlike of the desert tribes; for himself, he had
taken up a position on the further side of Anti-Lebanon, and kept strict
watch from Mount Hermon on the roads leading from the valley of the
Jordan to the plains of the Abana, in order to prevent the enemy from
outflanking him and taking him in the rear. But all to no purpose;
Tiglath-pileser bore directly down upon him, overwhelmed him in a
pitched battle, obliged him to take refuge behind the walls of Damascus,
and there besieged him.
[Illustration: 288.jpg MOUNT HERMON]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph brought back by Lortet.
The city was well fortified, amply supplied with provisions, and
strongly garrisoned; the siege was, therefore, a long one, and the
Assyrians filled up the time by laying waste the fertile country at
the foot of Anti-Lebanon. At last Rezin yielded, gave himself up
unconditionally, and was forthwith executed: eight thousand of his
followers were carried off to Kîr, on the confines of Elam,* his kingdom
was abolished, and a Ninevite governor was installed in his palace, by
whom the former domain of Damascus and the territory lately wrested from
Israel were henceforth to be administered.
* 2 Kings xvi. 9. Kîr is generally located in Armenia,
Media, or Babylonia; a passage in Isaiah (xxii. 6), however,
seems to point to its having been somewhere in the direction
of Elam, and associated with the Aramæans on the banks of
the Tigris. The Assyrian monuments have not, as yet, yielded
confirmation of the details given by the _Book of the Kings_
in regard to the captivity of the inhabitants of Damascus. A
fragmentary tablet, giving an account of the death of Rezin,
was discovered by H. Raw-linson, but it was left in Assyria,
and no one knows what has since become of it.
[Illustration: 289.jpg AN ARAB]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.
The coalition he had formed did not long survive its leader.* Mutton
hastily came to an understanding with the conqueror; Mitinti, like
Hannon, fled into Egypt, and his place was taken by Kukibtu, a partisan
of Assyria. Hoshea, son of Elah, rebelled against Pekah, assassinated
him, and purchased the right to reign over what was left of Israel for
ten talents of gold.** Shamshieh alone held out.
* The following is a list of the kings of Damascus from the
time of David, as far as is known up to the present time:--
[Illustration: LIST OF THE KINGS OF DAMASCUS]
** 2 Kings xv. 30. The inscription published by H.
Rawlinson, merely states that they overthrew Pekah, their
king, and I promoted Auzi [to the kingship] over them. I
received [from him] X talents of gold and... talents of
silver....
She imagined herself to be safe among the sands of the desert, and it
never occurred to her that the heavy masses of the Assyrian army would
dream of venturing into these solitudes. Detachments of light cavalry
were sent in pursuit of her, and at first met with some difficulties;
they were, however, eventually successful; the Armenian and Cappadocian
steeds of the Ninevite horsemen easily rode down the queens meharis.
[Illustration: 290.jpg ARAB MEHARIS RIDDEN DOWN BY THE ASSYRIAN CAVALRY]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the bas-relief reproduced by
Layard.
Their success made a great impression on the Arab tribes, and induced
the Mashaî, Timaî Sabasans, Khaiapæans, Badanæans, and Khattiæans to
bend the knee before Assyria. They all sent envoys bearing presents of
gold and silver, camels, both male and female, and spices:* even the
Muzri, whose territory lay to the south of the Dead Sea, followed their
example, and a certain Idibiel was appointed as their chief.**
* Delitzsch has identified the names of several of these
races with names mentioned in the Bible, such as the Temah,
Massah, Ephah, Sheba.
** The name Muzri, as Winckler has shown, here refers, not
to Egypt, but to a canton near Edom, the Nabatsea of the
Greco-Roman geographers.
While his lieutenants were settling outstanding issues in this fashion,
Tiglath-pileser held open courts at Damascus, where he received the
visits and homage of the Syrians. They came to assure themselves by the
evidence of their own eyes of the downfall of the power which had for
more than one hundred years checked the progress of Assyria. Those who,
like Uassarmi of Tabal, showed any sign of disaffection were removed,
the remainder were confirmed in their dignities, subject to payment of
the usual tribute, and Mutton of Tyre was obliged to give one hundred
talents of gold to ransom his city. Ahaz came to salute his preserver,
and to obtain a nearer view of the soldiers to whom he owed continued
possession of Jerusalem;* the kings of Ammon, Moab, Edom, and Askalon,
the Philistines and the nomads of the Arabian desert, carried away by
the general example, followed the lead of Judah, until there was not a
single prince or lord of a city from the Euphrates to the river of Egypt
who had not acknowledged himself the humble vassal of Nineveh.
* 2 Kings xvi. 10-12. The _Nimroud Inscrip_. merely mentions
his tribute among that of the Syrian kings.
With the downfall of rezin, Syrias last hope of recovery had vanished;
the few states which still enjoyed some show of independence were
obliged, if they wished to retain it, to make a parade of unalterable
devotion to their Ninevite master, or--if they found his suzerainty
intolerable--had to risk everything by appealing to Egypt for help.
Much as they may have wished from the very first to do so, it was too
early to make the attempt so soon after the conference at Damascus;
Tiglath-pileser had, therefore, no cause to fear a rebellion among them,
at any rate for some years to come, and it was just as well that
this was so, for at the moment of his triumph on the shores of the
Mediterranean his interests in Chaldæa were threatened by a serious
danger. Nabonazîr, King of Karduniash, had never swerved from the
fidelity which he had sworn to his mighty ally after the events of 745,
but the tranquillity of his reign had been more than once disturbed by
revolt. Borsippa itself had risen on one occasion, and endeavoured to
establish itself as an independent city side by side with Babylon.
When Nabonazîr died, in 734, he was succeeded by his son Nabunâdinzîri,
but at the end of a couple of years the latter was assassinated during
a popular outbreak, and Nabushumukîn, one of his sons, who had been
implicated in the rising, usurped the crown (732). He wore it for
two months and twelve days, and then abdicated in favour of a certain
Ukînzîr.*
* The following is as complete a list as can at present be
compiled of this Babylonian dynasty, the eighth of those
registered in Pinches Canons (cf. Rost, _Untersucli. zur
altorient. Gesch._, p. 27):--
[Illustration: 292.jpg TABLE OF THIS BABYLONIAN DYNASTY]
It included twenty-two kings, and lasted for about three hundred and
fifty years.
The latter was chief of the Bît-Amukkâni, one of the most important
among the Chaldæan communities;* the descendants of the Aramaean nomads
were thus once more placed upon the throne, and their accession put an
end to the relations which had existed for several centuries between
Assyria and Karduniash.
* The chronicle is silent with regard to the origin of
Ukînzîr, but Tiglath-pileser, who declines to give him the
title of King of Babylon, says that he was _mar Amuhlcâni_
= son of Amukkâni. Pinches _Canon_ indicates that Ukînzîr
belonged to a dynasty the name of which may be read either
Shashi or Shapi. The reading Shapi at once recalls the name
of Shapîa, one of the chief cities of the Bît Amukkâni; it
would thus confirm the evidence of the Nimroud Inscription.
These marauders, who had always shown themselves impatient of any
settled authority, and had never proffered more than a doubtful
submission to even the most triumphant invader, were not likely to
accept the subordinate position which members of the presiding dynasty
had been, for the most part, content to occupy. It was more probable
that they would, from the very first, endeavour to throw off the
suzerainty of Nineveh. Tiglath-pileser gave the new dynasty no time to
settle itself firmly on the throne: the year after his return from Syria
he got together an army and marched against it. He first cleared the
right bank of the Tigris, where the Pukudu (Pekod) offered but a feeble
resistance; he annexed their territory to the ancient province of
Arrapkha, then crossed the river and attacked the Kaldi scattered among
the plains and marshes of the Shatt el-Haî.
[Illustration: 294.jpg A KALDU]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a woodcut published by Tomkins.
The Bît-Shilâni were the first to succumb; their king Nabushabshi was
impaled before one of the gates of his capital, Sarrabânu, the town
itself was taken by storm, plundered and dismantled, and 55,000 of its
inhabitants were led captive into Assyria. After the Bît-Shilâni, came
the turn of the Bît-Shaali. Dur-Illataî, their capital, was razed to
the ground, and its population, numbering 50,400 men and women, was
deported. Their chief, Lakiru, who had shown great bravery in the
struggle, escaped impalement, but was sent into captivity with his
people, a Ninevite governor being appointed in his place. Ukînzîr, who
was, as we know, hereditary prince of the Bit-Amuk-kâni, came up in
haste to defend his appanage, and threw himself into his fortress at
Shapîa: Tiglath-pileser cut down the gardens and groves of palms which
lent it beauty, burnt the surrounding farms and villages, and tried,
without success, to make a breach in the walls; he still, however,
maintained the siege, but when winter came on and the place still held
out, he broke up his camp and retreated in good order, leaving the
districts which he had laid waste occupied by an Assyrian force. Before
his departure, he received homage and tribute from most of the Aramæan
chiefs, including those of Balasu and the Bît-Dakkuri, of Nadînu, and
even of the Bît-Yakîn and Merodach-baladan, whose ancestors had never
before kissed the foot of an Assyrian conqueror. In this campaign he
had acquired nearly three-fourths of the whole Babylonian kingdom; but
Babylon itself still refused to yield, and it was no easy task to
compel it to do so. Tiglath-pileser spent the whole of the year 730 in
preparing for another attack, and in 729 he again appeared in front of
Shapîa, this time with greater success: Ukînzîr fell into his hands,
Babylon opened its gates, and he caused himself to be proclaimed King of
Sumir and Akkad within its walls.* Many centuries had passed since the
two empires had been united under the rule of a single master, or an
Assyrian king had taken the hands of Bel. Tiglath-pileser accepted
the condition attached to this solemn investiture, which obliged him
to divide his time between Calah and Babylon, and to repeat at every
festival of the New Year the mystic ceremony by which the god of the
city confirmed him in his office.**
* Contemporary documents do not furnish us with any
information as to these events. The _Eponym Canon_ tells us
that _the king took the hands of Bel_. Pinches
_Chronicle_ adds that in the third year of Ukînzîr,
Tiglath-pileser marched against Akkad, laid waste the Bît-
Amukkâni, and took Ukînzîr prisoner; Ukînzîr had reigned
three years in Babylon. Tiglath-pileser followed him upon
the throne of Babylon.
** The _Eponym Canon_ proves that in 728 B.C., the year of
his death, he once more took the hands of Bel.
His Babylonian subjects seem to have taken a liking to him, and perhaps
in order to hide from themselves their dependent condition, they
shortened his purely Assyrian name of Tukulti-abal-esharra into the
familiar sobriquet of Puru or Pulu, under which appellation the native
chroniclers later on inscribed him in the official list of kings: he did
not long survive his triumph, but died in the month of Tebeth, 728 B.C.,
after having reigned eighteen years over Assyria, and less than two
years over Babylon and Chaldæa.
The formulae employed by the scribes in recording historical events
vary so little from one reign to another, that it is, in most cases, a
difficult matter to make out, under the mask of uniformity by which they
are all concealed, the true character and disposition of each successive
sovereign. One thing, however, is certain--the monarch who now came
upon the scene after half a century of reverses, and in a brief space
restored to his armies the skill necessary to defeat such formidable
foes as the Armenians or the Syrians of Damascus, must have been an able
general and a born leader of men. Yet Nineveh had never suffered
long from a lack of capable generals, and there would be little to
distinguish Tiglath-pileser from any of his predecessors, if we could
place nothing more than a few successful campaigns to his credit.
His claim to a pre-eminent place among them rests on the fact that he
combined the talents of the soldier with the higher qualities of the
administrator, and organised his kingdom in a manner at once so simple
and so effective, that most of the Oriental powers down to the time of
the Grecian conquest were content to accept it as a model. As soon as
the ambition of the Assyrian kings began to extend beyond the region
confined between the Khabur and the Greater Zab, they found it necessary
to parcel out their territory into provinces under the authority of
prefects for the purpose of preserving order among the vanquished
peoples, and at the same time of protecting them from the attacks
of adjacent tribes; these representatives of the central power were
supported by garrisons, and were thus enabled to put down such minor
insurrections as broke out from time to time. Some of these
provinces were already in existence in the reigns of Shalmaneser or
Tiglath-pileser I.; after the reverses in the time of Assurirba, their
number decreased, but it grew rapidly again as Assur-nazir-pal and
Shalmaneser III. gradually extended the field of their operations and of
their victories. From this epoch onwards, the monuments mention over a
score of them, in spite of the fact that the list thus furnished is
not a complete one; the provinces of which we know most are those whose
rulers were successively appointed to act as _limmi_, each of them
giving their name to a year of a reign. Assyria proper contained at
least four, viz. Assur (called _the country_, as distinguished from all
others), Calah, Nineveh, and Arbela. The basin of the Lesser Zab was
divided into the provinces of Kakzi, Arrapkha, and Akhizukhîna;* that of
the Upper Tigris into those of Amidi, Tushkhân, and Gôzan. Kirruri was
bounded by Mazamua, and Mazamua by Arrapkha and Lake Urumiah. We hear
of the three spheres of Nazibina (Nisibis), Tela, and Kazappa in
Mesopotamia,** the two former on the southern watersheds of the Masios,
on the highways leading into Syria; the latter to the south of the
Euphrates, in the former kingdom of the Laqî.
* Akhizukhîna is probably identical with Arzukhîna = the
City of Zukhma, which is referred to as being situated in
the basin of the Lesser Zab.
** Razappa is the biblical Rezeph (2 Kings xix. 12; Isa.
xxxvii. 12) and the Resapha of Ptolemy, now Er-Rasafa, to
the south of the Euphrates, on one of the routes leading to
Palmyra.
Most of them included--in addition to the territory under the immediate
control of the governor--a number of vassal states, kingdoms, cities,
and tribes, which enjoyed a certain measure of independence, but were
liable to pay tribute and render military service.
[Illustration: 298.jpg MAP OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE UNDER TIGLATH-PILESER
III.]
Each new country was annexed, as soon as conquered, to the nearest
province, or, if necessary, was converted into a distinct province by
itself; thus we find that Assur-nazir-pal, after laying hands on the
upper valleys of the Radanu and the Turnat, rebuilt the ruined city of
Atlîla, re-named it Dur-Assur, placed a commandant, cavalry, and
eunuchs there, and established within it storehouses for the receipt
of contributions from the neighbouring barbarians. He followed the
same course on each occasion when the fortune of war brought him fresh
subjects;* and his successors, Shalmaneser III., Samsi-rammân IV.,
and Rammân-nirâri did the same thing in Media, in Asia Minor, and in
Northern Syria;** Tiglath-pileser III. had only to follow their example
and extend the application of their system to the countries which he
gradually forced to submit to his rule.***
* We read of the appointment of a governor in Bît-Khalupi,
at Tush-khân, in Naîri, and in the country of the Patina.
** The territory of the Bit-Adini was converted into a
province by Shalmaneser III.
*** We find the formation of an Aramæan province, with Kar-
Assur as its capital, mentioned in the _Annals of Tiglatli-
pileser III_. Provinces were also established in Media, in
Unki, in the basin of the Orontes, and in Lebanon, from
nineteen districts formerly belonging to Hamath, six
maritime provinces in Northern Phoenicia and in Coele-Syria,
in Galilee, at Gaza.
In his case, however, certain elements came into play which forced him
to modify several of their methods, and to have recourse to others
which they had seldom or never employed. The majority of the countries
hitherto incorporated had been near enough to the capital--whether it
were Assur, Calah, or Nineveh--to permit of strict watch being kept for
any sign of disaffection, and they could be promptly recalled to order
if they attempted to throw off the yoke. These provinces were, moreover,
of moderate area and sparsely populated: once drawn within the orbit of
Assyrias attraction, they were unable to escape from its influence by
their own unaided efforts; on the contrary, they gradually lost their
individuality, and ended by becoming merged in the body of the nation.
The Aramaean tribes of the Khabur and the Balikh, the Cossæans of the
Turnat, the marauding shepherds of the Gordyæan hills and the slopes
of the Masios, gradually became assimilated to their conquerors after
a more or less protracted resistance, till at length--in spite of
differences of origin, creed, and speech--they became the best of
Assyrians, every whit as devoted to the person of their king and as
jealous of his honour as the aboriginal Assyrians themselves. A similar
result could not be looked for in the case of the cities recently
subdued. It was not to be expected that Babylon and Damascus--to name
but two of the most important--would allow themselves to be influenced
and to become reconciled to their lot by artifices which had been
successful enough with the Medes and in the country of Tul-Abnî.
To take the case of Babylon first. It was no mere conglomeration of
tribes, nor a state of minor importance, but an actual empire, nearly as
large as that of Assyria itself, and almost as solidly welded together.
It extended from the Turnat and the mountains of Blam to the Arabian
desert and the Nâr-Marratûtn, and even though the Cossæans, Elamites,
Kaldâ, Sumerians, Akkadians, and other remnants of ancient peoples who
formed its somewhat motley population, had dwelt there for centuries in
a state of chronic discord, they all agreed--in theory, at any rate--in
recognising the common suzerainty of Babylon. Babylon was, moreover, by
general acknowledgment, the ancient metropolis to which Assyria owed its
whole civilisation; it was the holy city whose gods and whose laws had
served as a prototype for the gods and laws of Assyria; from its temples
and its archives the Assyrian scribes had drawn such knowledge as they
had of the history of the ancient world, their religious doctrines and
ceremonies, their methods of interpreting the omens and of forecasting
the future--in short, their whole literature, both sacred and profane.
The King of Nineveh might conquer Babylon, might even enter within its
gates in the hour of triumph, and, when once he had it at his
mercy, might throw down its walls, demolish its palaces, destroy its
_ziggurât_, burn its houses, exterminate or carry off its inhabitants,
and blot out its name from the list of nations; but so long as he
recoiled from the sacrilege involved in such irreparable destruction,
he was not merely powerless to reduce it to the level of an ordinary
leading provincial town, such as Tela or Tushkhân, but he could not
even deprive it in any way of its rank as a capital, or hope to make it
anything less than the second city of his empire. As long as it remained
in existence, it necessarily took precedence of all others, thanks to
its extensive area, the beauty and antiquity of its buildings, and the
number of its inhabitants. The pride of its nobles and priests, subdued
for a moment by defeat, would almost instantly have reasserted itself,
had the victor sought to lower the dignity of their city; Babylon
only consented to accept an alien master provided he bowed himself
respectfully before its superiority, and was willing to forget that he
was a stranger within its gates, and was ready to comply with its laws
and masquerade as a Babylonian. Tiglath-pileser III. never dreamt,
therefore, of treating the Babylonians as slaves, or of subordinating
them to their Assyrian descendants, but left their liberties and
territory alike unimpaired. He did not attempt to fuse into a single
empire the two kingdoms which his ability had won for him; he kept them
separate, and was content to be monarch of both on similar terms. He
divided himself, as it were, into two persons, one of whom reigned in
Calah, while the other reigned in Karduniash, and his Chaldæan subjects
took care to invest this dual _rôle_ --based on a fiction so soothing
to their pride--with every appearance of reality; he received from them,
together with all the titles of the Babylonian kings, that name of Pulu,
which later on found its way into their chronicles, and which was so
long a puzzle to historians, both ancient and modern. Experience amply
proved that this was the only means by which it was possible to yoke
temporarily together the two great powers of the Euphrates and the
Tigris. Among the successors of Tiglath-pileser, the only sovereigns
to rule over Babylon without considerable difficulty were those who
followed the precedent set by him and were satisfied to divide their
functions and reign as dual kings over a dual kingdom.*
* This was so in the case of Tiglath-pileser III.s
immediate successor, Shalmaneser V., of Esarhaddon, and of
Assur-bani-pal; Shalmaneser was known at Babylon by the name
of Ululai, Assur-bani-pal by that of Kanda-lanu.
This combination, while gratifying to the ambition of its rulers, was,
perhaps, more a source of loss than of gain to Assyria itself. It is
true that the power of Karduniash had decreased under the previous
dynasty, but it had still been strong enough to hold back the Aramæans
of the Persian Gulf on one side, and the Elamite hordes on the other. It
lay like a broad barrier between these barbarians and the cities of the
Middle Tigris; when an unusually vigorous attack compelled it to give
way at some point, it appealed to Nineveh for help, and an Assyrian
army, entering the country at the fords of the Zab, hastened to drive
back the aggressors to the place from which they had set out. When,
however, the kings of Assyria had become kings of Babylon as well, the
situation was altered. Several branches of the Kaldâ had hitherto held
possession of the city, and still possessed representatives and allies
among the other tribes, especially among the Bît-Yakîn, who believed
themselves entitled to reassert their supremacy within in. The Elamite
princes, on their part, accustomed to descend at will into the plains
that lay between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and to enrich themselves
by frequent raids, could not make up their minds to change the habits of
centuries, until they had at least crossed swords with the new despot,
and put his mettle to the test. The Ninevite King of Babylon was thus
in duty bound to protect his subjects against the same enemies that had
ceaselessly harassed his native-born predecessors, and as the unaided
resources of Karduniash no longer enabled him to do so effectively, he
was, naturally, obliged to fall back on the forces at his disposal as
King of Assyria. Henceforward it was no longer the Babylonian army
that protected Nineveh, but rather that of Nineveh which had to protect
Babylon, and to encounter, almost every year, foes whom in former days
it had met only at rare intervals, and then merely when it chose to
intervene in their affairs. Where the Assyrian sovereigns had gained a
kingdom for themselves and their posterity, Assyria itself found little
else but fresh battle-fields and formidable adversaries, in the effort
to overcome whom its energies were all but exhausted. In Syria and on
the shores of the Mediterranean, Tiglath-pileser had nations of less
stubborn vitality to deal with, nor was he bound by the traditions of a
common past to show equal respect to their prejudices. Arpad, Unki,
the Bekâa, Damascus, and Gilead were all consecutively swallowed up by
Assyria, but, the work of absorption once completed, difficulties were
encountered which now had to be met for the first time. The subordinate
to whom he entrusted the task of governing these districts* had one
or two Assyrian regiments assigned him as his body-guard,** and these
exercised the same ascendency over the natives as the Egyptian archers
had done in days gone by: it was felt that they had the whole might of
Assyria behind them, and the mere fact of their presence in the midst of
the conquered country was, as a rule, sufficient to guarantee the safety
of the Assyrian governor and ensure obedience to his commands.
* The governor was called _Shaknu_ = he whom the king has
established in his place, and _pekhu_ = the pilot, the
manager, whence _pikhatu_ = a district, and _bel-pikhati_
= the master of a district. It seems that the _shaknu_ was
of higher rank than the _bel-pikhati_, and often had the
latter under his command.
** Thus Assur-nazir-pal selected the horsemen and other
soldiers who were to form the body-guard of the governor of
Parzindu.
This body-guard was never a very numerous one, for the army would have
melted away in the course of a campaign or two, had it been necessary,
after each fresh conquest, to detach from it a sufficient force to
guard against rebellion. It was strengthened, it is true, by auxiliaries
enlisted on the spot, and the tributary chiefs included in the
provincial district were expected to furnish a reasonable quota of men
in case of need;* but the loyalty of all these people was, at the best,
somewhat doubtful, and in the event of their proving untrustworthy at
a critical moment, the little band of Assyrian horse and foot would be
left to deal with the revolt unaided until such time as the king could
come and relieve them.
* In a despatch from Belibni to Assur-bani-pal we find
Aramæans from the Persian Gulf submitting to the authority
of an Assyrian officer, and fighting in Elam side by side
with his troops. Again, under Assur-bani-pal, an army sent
to repress a revolt on the part of Kedar and the Nabatseans
included contingents from Ammon, Moab, and Edom, together
with the Assyrian garrisons of the Haurân and Zobah.
The distance between the banks of the Jordan or Abana and those of the
Tigris was a long one, and in nearly every instance it would have been
a question of months before help could arrive. Meanwhile, Egypt was at
hand, jealous of her rival, who was thus encroaching on territory which
had till lately been regarded as her exclusive sphere of influence, and
vaguely apprehensive of the fate which might be in store for her if some
Assyrian army, spurred by the lust of conquest, were to cross the desert
and bear down upon the eastern frontiers of the Delta. Distrustful of
her own powers, and unwilling to assume a directly offensive attitude,
she did all she could to foment continual disturbances among the Hebrews
and Phoenicians, as well as in Philistia and Aram; she carried on secret
intrigues with the independent princes, and held out tempting hopes
of speedy intervention before the eyes of their peoples; her influence
could readily be traced in every seditious movement. The handful of men
assigned to the governors of the earlier provinces close to the capital
would have been of little avail against perils of this kind. Though
Tiglath-pileser added colony to colony in the distant regions annexed by
him, he organised them on a different plan from that which had prevailed
before his time. His predecessors had usually sent Assyrians to these
colonies, and filled the villages vacated by them with families taken
from the conquered region: a transfer of inhabitants was made, for
instance, from Naîri or from Media into Assyria, and _vice versâ_. By
following this system, Tiglath-pileser would soon have scattered his
whole people over the dependencies of his empire, and have found his
hereditary states peopled by a motley and incoherent collection of
aliens; he therefore left his Assyrians for the most part at home, and
only effected exchanges between captives. In his earlier campaigns
he brought back with him, on one occasion, 65,000 prisoners from the
table-land of Iran, in order to distribute them over a province which
he was organising on the banks of the Turnat and the Zab: he levied
contributions of this kind without mercy from all the states that he
conquered from year to year, and dispersed the captives thus obtained
over the length and breadth of his empire; he transplanted the Aramæans
of the Mesopotamian deserts, and the Kaldâ to the slopes of Mount Amanus
or the banks of the Orontes, the Patinians and Hamathæans to Ulluba,
the inhabitants of Damascus to Kîr or to the borders of Elam,* and the
Israelites to some place in Assyria.**
* 2 Kings xvi. 9.
** 2 Kings xv. 29.
He allowed them to take with them their wives and their children, their
herds, their chattels, their gods, and even their money. Drafted into
the towns and country districts in batches sufficiently numerous to
be self-supporting, but yet not large enough to allow of their at once
re-establishing themselves as a distinct nation in their new home, they
seem to have formed, even in the midst of the most turbulent provinces,
settlements of colonists who lived unaffected by any native influence or
resentment. The aborigines hated them because of their religion, their
customs, their clothing, and their language; in their eyes they
were mere interlopers, who occupied the property of relations or
fellow-countrymen who had fallen in battle or had been spirited away to
the other end of the world. And even when, after many years, the native
owners of the soil had become familiarised with them, this mutual
antipathy had struck such deep root in their minds that any
understanding between the natives and the descendants of the immigrants
was quite out of the question: what had been formerly a vast kingdom,
occupied by a single homogeneous race, actuated by a common patriotic
spirit, became for many a year a region capriciously subdivided and torn
by the dissensions of a number of paltry antagonistic communities.
The colonists, exposed to the same hatreds as the original Assyrian
conquerors, soon forgot to look upon the latter as the oppressors of
all, and, allowing their present grudge to efface the memory of past
injuries, did not hesitate to make common cause with them. In time of
peace, the governor did his best to protect them against molestation on
the part of the natives, and in return for this they rallied round him
whenever the latter threatened to get out of hand, and helped him
to stifle the revolt or hold it in check until the arrival of
reinforcements. Thanks to their help, the empire was consolidated and
maintained without too many violent outbreaks in regions far removed
from the capital and beyond the immediate reach of the sovereign.* We
possess very few details with regard to the administration of these
prefects.**
* This was the history of the only one of those colonies
whose fate is known to us--that founded at Samaria by Sargon
and his successors.
** The texts contain a certain number of names of offices,
the precise nature of which it is not easy to ascertain,
e.g. the Khâzanu, the Labuttu, and others. One of them,
apparently, should be read _Shuparshak_, and identical with
one of the titles mentioned in Ezra (v. 6, vi. 6) as being
in existence during the Persian epoch.
The various functionaries, governors of towns, tax-collectors, heads of
stations, and officers whose duty it was to patrol the roads and look
after the safety of merchants, were, for the most part, selected from
among natives who had thrown in their lot with Assyria, and probably
few Assyrians were to be found outside the more turbulent cities and
important fortresses. The kings and chiefs whose territory was attached
to a given province, either took their instructions direct from Nineveh,
or were sometimes placed under the control of a resident, or _kipu_,
with some sort of escort at his back, who kept watch over their
movements and reported them to the suzerain, and saw that the tribute
was paid regularly, and that the military service provided for in the
treaties was duly rendered. Governors and residents alike kept up a
constant correspondence with the court, and such of their letters as
have chanced to come down to us show what a minute account of even
the most trifling occurrences was required of them by the central
authorities. They were not only obliged to report any fluctuation in
the temper or attitude of their subordinates, or any intrigues that
were being entered into across the frontier; they had also to record the
transfer of troops, the return of fugitives, the pursuit of deserters,
any chance scuffle between soldiers and natives, as well as the
punishment inflicted on the rebellious, the appearance of a portent
in the heavens, or omens noticed by the augurs. There were plenty
of envious or officious tongues among their followers to report to
headquarters the slightest failure of duty, and to draw attention to
their negligence. Moreover, it seems certain that the object of thus
compelling them to refer to the king at every turn, was not merely in
order to keep him informed of all that took place in his dependencies,
but also to lay bare the daily life of his prefects before his eyes.
The latter were entrusted with the command of seasoned troops; they had
considerable sums of money passing through their hands, and were often
obliged to take prompt decisions and enter into diplomatic or military
transactions on their own responsibility; in short, most of them, at
any rate, who were stationed at the furthest confines of the empire were
really kings in all but title, insignia, and birth. There was always the
danger lest some among them should be tempted to reassert, in their own
interest, the independence of the countries under their rule, and seek
to found a dynasty in their midst. The strict supervision maintained
over these governors generally nipped any ambition of this kind in the
bud; in some cases, however, it created the very danger it was intended
to prevent. If a governor who had been recalled to Nineveh or Calah in
order to explain his conduct failed to clear himself completely, he at
once fell into disgrace; and disgrace in Assyria, as in other countries
of the East, meant, nine times out of ten, confiscation of property,
mutilation and lifelong imprisonment, or death in its most hideous form.
He would, therefore, think twice before quitting his post, and if he
had any reason to suppose himself suspected, or viewed with disfavour in
high quarters, he would be in no hurry to obey a summons to the capital.
A revolt was almost certain to be crushed without fail, and offered
merely a very precarious chance of escape, but the governor was seldom
likely to hesitate between almost certain condemnation and the vague
possibility of a successful rising; in such a case, therefore, he staked
everything on a single throw.
[Illustration: 312.jpg TIGLATH-PILESER III. BESIEGING A REVELLIOUS
CITY.]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Mansell.
The system was a defective on, in that it exposed to strong temptation
the very functionaries whose loyalty was most essential to the proper
working of the administration, but its dangers were out weighed by
such important advantages that we cannot but regard it as a very real
improvement on the haphazard methods of the past. In the first place,
it opened up a larger recruiting-ground for the army, and, in a measure,
guaranteed it against that premature exhaustion which had already led
more than once to an eclipse of the Assyrian power. It may be that the
pick of these provincial troops were, preferably, told off for police
duties, or for the defence of the districts in which they were levied,
and that they seldom left it except to do battle in the adjacent
territory;* but, even with these limitations they were none the less
of inestimable value, since they relieved the main army of Assyria from
garrison duties in a hundred scattered localities, and allowed the king
to concentrate it almost in its entirety about his own person, and
to direct it _en masse_ upon those points where he wished to strike a
decisive blow.
* Thus, in the reign of Assur-bani-pal, we find the militia
of the governor of Uruk marching to battle against the
Gambulu.
On the other hand, the finances of the kingdom were put on a more
stable and systematic basis. For nearly the whole of the two previous
centuries, during which Assyria had resumed its victorious career, the
treasury had been filled to some extent by taxes in kind or in money,
and by various dues claimed from the hereditary kingdom and its few
immediate dependencies, but mainly by booty and by tribute levied after
each campaign from the peoples who had been conquered or had voluntarily
submitted to Assyrian rule. The result was a budget which fluctuated
greatly, since all forays were not equally lucrative, and the new
dependencies proved so refractory at the idea of perpetual tribute, that
frequent expeditions were necessary in order to persuade them to pay
their dues. We do not know how Tiglath-pileser III. organised the
finances of his provinces, but certain facts recorded here and there in
the texts show that he must have drawn very considerable amounts from
them. We notice that twenty or thirty years after his time, Carchemish
was assessed at a hundred talents, Arpad and Kuî at thirty each, Megiddo
and Manzuatu at fifteen, though the purposes to which these sums were
applied is not specified.
[Illustration: 314.jpg A HERD OF HORSES BROUGHT IN AS TRIBUTE]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bronze bas-reliefs
on the gates of Balawat. The breed here represented seems to
have been common in Urartu, as well as in Cappadocia and
Northern Syria.
On the other hand, we know the precise object to which the contributions
of several other cities were assigned; as, for instance, so much for the
maintenance of the throne in the palace, or for the divans of the ladies
of the harem; so much for linen garments, for dresses, and for veils;
twenty talents from Nineveh for the armaments of the fleet, and ten from
the same city for firewood. Certain provinces were expected to maintain
the stud-farms, and their contributions of horses were specially
valuable, now that cavalry played almost as important a part as infantry
in military operations. The most highly prized animals came, perhaps,
from Asia Minor; the nations of Mount Taurus, who had supplied chargers
to Israel and Egypt five centuries earlier, now furnished war-horses
to the squadrons of Nineveh. The breed was small, but robust, inured to
fatigue and hard usage, and in every way similar to that raised in these
countries at the present day. In war, horses formed a very considerable
proportion of the booty taken; in time of peace, they were used as part
of the payment of the yearly tribute, and a brisk trade in them was
carried on with Mesopotamia.
[Illustration: 315.jpg A TYPICAL CAPPADOCIAN HORSE]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. Alfred Boissier.
After the king had deducted from his receipts enough to provide amply
for the wants of his family and court, the salaries of the various
functionaries and officials, the pay and equipment of his army, the
maintenance and construction of palaces and fortresses, he had still
sufficient left over to form an enormous reserve fund on which he and
his successors might draw in the event of their ordinary sources of
income being depleted by a series of repeated reverses.
Tiglath-pileser thus impressed upon Assyria the character by which
it was known during the most splendid century of its history, and the
organisation which he devised for it was so admirably adapted to the
Oriental genius that it survived the fall of Nineveh, and served as a
model for every empire-maker down to the close of the Macedonian era and
even beyond it.
[Illustration: 316.jpg A SYRIAN BÎT-KHILÂNI]
Reproduced by Faucher-Gudin, from the restoration published
by Luschan.
The wealth of the country grew rapidly, owing to the influx of capital
and of foreign population; in the intervals between their campaigns
its rulers set to work to remove all traces of the ruins which had been
allowed to accumulate during the last forty years. The king had
built himself a splendid palace at Calah, close to the monuments
of Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmaneser III., and its terraces and walls
overhung the waters of the Tigris. The main entrance consisted of a
_Bît-khilâni_, one of those porticoes, flanked by towers and supported
by columns or pillars, often found in Syrian towns, the fashion for
which was now beginning to spread to Western Asia.*
* The precise nature of the edifices referred to in the
inscriptions under the name of Bît-khilâni is still a matter
of controversy. It has been identified with the pillared
hall, or audience-chamber, such as we find in Sargons
palace at Khorsabad, and with edifices or portions of
edifices which varied according to the period, but which
were ornamented with columns. It seems clear, however, that
it was used of the whole series of chambers and buildings
which formed the monumental gates of Assyrian palaces,
something analogous to the _Migdol_ of Ramses III. at
Medinet-Habu, and more especially to the gates at Zinjirli.
Those discovered at Zinjirli afford fine examples of the arrangements
adopted in buildings of this kind; the lower part of the walls was
covered with bas-reliefs, figures of gods and men, soldiers mounted or
on foot, victims and fantastic animal shapes; the columns, where there
were any, rested on the back of a sphinx or on a pair of griffins of a
type which shows a curious mixture of Egyptian and Semitic influences.
[Illustration: 317.jpg THE FOUNDATINS OF A Bît-khilâni]
Drawn by Boudier, from a sketch published by Luschan.
[Illustration: 318.jpg BASE OF A COLUMN AT ZINJIRELI]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph published by
Luschan.
The wood-work of the Ninevite Bît-khilâni was of cedar from Mount
Amanus, the door-frames and fittings were of various rare woods, inlaid
with ivory and metal. The entrance was guarded by the usual colossal
figures, and the walls of the state reception-rooms were covered with
slabs of alabaster; on these, in accordance with the usual custom,* were
carved scenes from the royal wars, with explanatory inscriptions.
The palace was subsequently dismantled, its pictures defaced and its
inscriptions obliterated,** to mark the hatred felt by later generations
towards the hero whom they were pleased to regard as a usurper; we can
only partially succeed in deciphering his annals by the help of the
fragmentary sentences which have escaped the fury of the destroyer.
* The building of Tiglath-pilesers palace is described in
the Nimroud Inscription. It stood near the centre of the
platform of Nimroud.
** The materials were utilised by Esarhaddon, but it does
not necessarily follow that the palace was dismantled by
that monarch; this was probably done by Sargon or by
Sennacherib.
The cities and fortresses which he raised throughout the length and
breadth of Assyria proper and its more recently acquired provinces have
similarly disappeared; we can only conjecture that the nobles of his
court, fired by his example, must have built and richly endowed more
than one city on their hereditary estates, or in the territories under
their rule. Bel-harrân-beluzur, the marshal of the palace, who twice
gave his name to years of the kings reign, viz. in 741 and 727 B.C.,
possessed, it would seem, an important fief a little to the north
of Assur, near the banks of the Tharthar, on the site of the present
Tel-Abta. The district was badly cultivated, and little better than a
wilderness; by express order of the celestial deities--Marduk, Nabu,
Shamash, Sin, and the two Ishtars--he dug the foundations of a city
which he called Dur-Bel-harrân-beluzur. The description he gives of it
affords conclusive evidence of the power of the great nobles, and shows
how nearly they approached, by their wealth and hereditary privileges,
to the kingly rank. He erected, we are told, a _ziggurât_ on a raised
terrace, in which he placed his gods in true royal fashion; he assigned
slaves, landed property, and a yearly income to their priests, in order
that worship might be paid to them in perpetuity; he granted sanctuary
to all freemen who settled within the walls or in the environs,
exemption from forced labour, and the right to tap a water-course and
construct a canal. A decree of foundation was set up in the temple in
memory of Bel-harrân-beluzur, precisely as if he were a crowned king.
It is a stele of common grey stone with a circular top. The dedicator
stands erect against the background of the carving, bare-foot and
bare-headed, his face cleanshaven, dressed in a long robe embroidered in
a chessboard pattern, and with a tunic pleated in horizontal rows; his
right elbow is supported by the left hand, while the right is raised
to a level with his eyes, his fist is clenched, and the thumb inserted
between the first and second fingers in the customary gesture of
adoration.
[Illustration: 320.jpg stele or bel-Harran-beluzur.]
Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph published by Father
Scheil.
What the provost of the palace had done on his land, the other barons in
all probability did on theirs; most of the departments which had fallen
away and languished during the disturbances at the close of the previous
dynasty, took a new lease of life under their protection. Private
documents--which increase in number as the century draws to an
end--contracts, official reports, and letters of scribes, all give us
the impression of a wealthy and industrious country, stirred by the most
intense activity, and in the enjoyment of unexampled prosperity. The
excellent administration of Tiglath-pileser and his nobles had paved the
way for this sudden improvement, and had helped to develop it, and
when Shalmaneser V. succeeded his father on the throne it continued
unchecked.* The new-comer made no changes in the system of government
which had been so ably inaugurated. He still kept Assyria separate from
Karduniash; his Babylonian subjects, faithful to ancient custom,
soon devised a nickname for him, that of Ululai, as though seeking to
persuade themselves that they had a king who belonged to them alone; and
it is under this name that their annalists have inscribed him next to
Pulu in the list of their dynasties.**
His reign was, on the whole, a calm and peaceful one; the Kaldâ, the
Medes, Urartu, and the races of Mount Taurus remained quiet, or, at any
rate, such disorders as may have arisen among them were of too trifling
a nature to be deemed worthy of notice in the records of the time.
Syria alone was disturbed, and several of its independent states
took advantage of the change of rulers to endeavour to shake off the
authority of Assyria.
* It was, for a long time, an open question with the earlier
Assyriologists whether or not Shalmaneser and Sargon were
different names for one and the same monarch. As for
monuments, we possess only one attributed to Shalmaneser, a
weight in the form of a lion, discovered by Layard at Nimroud,
in the north-west palace. The length of his reign, and
the scanty details we possess concerning it, have been
learnt from the _Eponym Canon_ and _Pinches Babylonian
Chronicle_, and also from the Hebrew texts (2 Kings xvii. 3-
6; xviii. 9-12).
** The identity of Ululai and Shalmaneser V., though still
questioned by Oppert, has been proved by the comparison of
Babylonian records, in some of which the names Pulu and
Ululai occur in positions exactly corresponding with those
occupied, in others, by Tiglath-pileser and Shalmaneser. The
name Ululai was given to the king because he was born in the
month of Ulul; in Pinches list we find a gloss, Dynasty
of Tinu, which probably indicates the Assyrian town in
which Tiglath-pileser III. and his son were born.
Egypt continued to give them secret encouragement in these tactics,
though its own internal dissensions prevented it from offering any
effective aid. The Tanite dynasty was in its death-throes. Psamuti, the
last of its kings, exercised a dubious sovereignty over but a few of the
nomes on the Arabian frontier.*
* He is the Psammous mentioned by Manetho. The cartouches
attributed to him by Lepsius really belong to the Psammuthis
of the XXIXth dynasty. It is possible that one of the marks
found at Karnak indicating the level of the Nile belong to
the reign of this monarch.
His neighbours the Saites were gradually gaining the upper hand in the
Delta and in the fiefs of middle Egypt, at first under Tafnakhti, and
then, after his death, under his son Bukunirînif, Bocchoris of the
Greek historians. They held supremacy over several personages who, like
themselves, claimed the title and rank of Pharaoh; amongst others, over
a certain Rudamanu Mîamun, son of Osorkon: their power did not, however,
extend beyond Siut, near the former frontier of the Theban kingdom.
The withdrawal of Piônkhi-Mîamun, and his subsequent death, had not
disturbed the Ethiopian rule in the southern half of Egypt, though it
somewhat altered its character. While an unknown Ethiopian king filled
the place of the conquerer at Napata, another Ethiopian, named Kashta,
made his way to the throne in Thebes.
[Illustration: 322.jpg MANUSCRIPT ON PAPYRUS IN HIEROGLYPHICS]
It is possible that he was a son of Piônkhi, and may have been placed in
supreme power by his father when the latter reinstated the city in
its place as capital. With all their partiality for real or supposed
descendants of the Ramesside dynasty, the Thebans were, before all
things, proud of their former greatness, and eagerly hoped to regain it
without delay. When, therefore, they accepted this Kushite king who, to
their eyes, represented the only family possessed of a legitimate claim
to the throne, it was mainly because they counted on him to restore them
to their former place among the cities of Egypt. They must have been
cruelly disappointed when he left them for the Sacred Mountain. His
invasion, far from reviving their prosperity, merely served to ratify
the suppression of that pontificate of Amon-Râ which was the last
remaining evidence of their past splendour.
[Illustration: 323.jpg CONE BEARING THE NAME of kashta and of his
DAUGHTER AMENERTAS]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Prisse dAvennes.
All hope of re-establishing it had now to be abandoned, since the
sovereign who had come to them from Napata was himself by birth and
hereditary privelege and hereditary sole priest of Anion: in his
absence the actual head of the Theban religion could lay claim only to
an inferior office, and indeed, even then, the only reason for accepting
a second prophet was that he might direct the worship of the temple
at Karnak. The force of circumstances compelled the Ethiopians to
countenance in the Thebaid what their Tanite or Bubastite predecessors
had been obliged to tolerate at Hermopolis, Heracleopolis, Sais, and in
many another lesser city; they turned it into a feudatory kingdom, and
gave it a ruler who, like Auîti, half a century earlier, had the right
to use the cartouches. Once installed, Kashta employed the usual methods
to secure his seat on the throne, one of the first being a marriage
alliance. The disappearance of the high priests had naturally increased
the importance of the princesses consecrated to the service of Amon.
From henceforward they were the sole visible intermediaries between the
god and his people, the privileged guardians of his body and his double,
and competent to perpetuate the line of the solar kings. The Theban
appanage constituted their dowry, and even if their sex prevented
them from discharging all those civil, military, and religious duties
required by their position, no one else had the right to do so on their
behalf, unless he was expressly chosen by them for the purpose. When
once married they deputed their husbands to act for them; so long as
they remained either single or widows, some exalted personage, the
prophet of Amon or Montu, the ruler of Thebes, or the administrator
of the Said, managed their houses and fiefs for them with such show of
authority that strangers were at times deceived, and took him for the
reigning monarch of the country.*
* Thus Harua, in the time of Amenertas, was prince and chief
over the servants of the Divine Worshipper. Mantumihâit,
in the time of Taharqa and of Tanuatamanu, was ruler of
Thebes, and fourth prophet of Amon, and it is he who is
described in the Assyrian monuments as King of Thebes.
The Pharaohs had, therefore, a stronger incentive than ever to secure
exclusive possession of these women, and if they could not get all of
them safely housed in their harems, they endeavoured, at any rate, to
reserve for themselves the chief among them, who by purity of descent or
seniority in age had attained the grade of _Divine Worshipper_. Kashta
married a certain Shapenuapît, daughter of Osorkon III. and a Theban
pallacide;* it is uncertain whether he eventually became king over
Ethiopia and the Sudan or not. So far, we have no proof that he did,
but it seems quite possible when we remember that one of his children,
Shabaku (Sabaco), subsequently occupied the throne of Napata in addition
to that of Thebes. Kashta does not appear to have possessed sufficient
energy to prevent the Delta and its nomes from repudiating the Ethiopian
supremacy. The Saites, under Tafnakhti or Bocchoris, soon got the upper
hand, and it was to them that the Syrian vassals of Nineveh looked
for aid, when death removed the conqueror who had trampled them so
ruthlessly underfoot. Ever since the fall of Arpad, Hadrach, and
Damascus, Shabaraîn, a town situated somewhere in the valley of the
Orontes or of the Upper Litany,** and hitherto but little known, had
served as a rallying-point for the disaffected Aramaean tribes: on
the accession of Shalmaneser V. it ventured to rebel, probably in 727
B.C., but was overthrown and destroyed, its inhabitants being led away
captive.
* It may be that, in accordance with a custom which obtained
during the generations that followed, and which possibly
originated about this period, this daughter of Osorkon III.
was only the adoptive mother of Amenertas.
** Shabaraîn was originally confounded with Samaria by the
early commentators on the Babylonian Chronicle. Halévy, very
happily, referred it to the biblical Sepharvaîm, a place
always mentioned in connection with Hamath and Arpad (2
Kings xvii. 24, 31; xviii. 34; xix. 13: cf. Isa. xxxvi. 19;
xxxvii. 13), and to the Sibraim of Ezekiel (xlvii. 16),
called in the _Septuagint_ Samarêim. Its identification with
Samaria has, since then, been generally rejected, and its
connection with Sibraim admitted. Sibraim (or Sepharvaîm, or
Samarêîm) has been located at Shomerîyeh, to the east of the
Bahr-Kades, and south of Hamath.
This achievement proved, beyond the possibility of doubt, that in spite
of their change of rulers the vengeance of the Assyrians was as keen
and sharp as ever. Not one of the Syrian towns dared to stir, and the
Phonician seaports, though their loyalty had seemed, for a moment,
doubtful, took care to avoid any action which might expose them to the
terrors of a like severity.* The Israelites and Philistines, alone of
the western peoples, could not resign themselves to a prudent policy;
after a short period of hesitation they drew the sword from its
scabbard, and in 725 war broke out.**
* The siege of Tyre, which the historian Menander, in a
passage quoted by Josephus, places in the reign of
Shalmaneser, ought really to be referred to the reign of
Sennacherib, or the fragment of Menander must be divided
into three parts dealing with three different Assyrian
campaigns against Tyre, under Tiglath-pileser, Sennacherib,
and Esarhaddon respectively.
** The war cannot have begun earlier, for the _Eponym
Canon_, in dealing with 726, has the words in the country,
thus proving that no expedition took place in that year; in
the case of the year 725, on the other hand, it refers to a
campaign against some country whose name has disappeared.
The passages in the _Book of Kings_ (2 Kings xvii. 1-6, and
xviii. 9-12) which deal with the close of the kingdom of
Israel, have been interpreted in such a way as to give us
two campaigns by Shalmaneser against Hoshea: (1) Hoshea
having failed to pay the tribute imposed upon him by
Tiglath-pileser, Shalmaneser made war upon him and compelled
him to resume its payment (2 Kings xvii. 1-3); (2) Hoshea
having intrigued with Egypt, and declined to pay tribute,
Shalmaneser again took the field against him, made him
prisoner, and besieged Samaria for three years (2 Kings
xvii. 4-6; xviii. 9-12). The first expedition must, in this
case, have taken place in 727, while the second must have
lasted from 725-722. Most modern historians believe that the
Hebrew writer has ascribed to Shalmaneser the subjection of
Hoshea which was really the act of Tiglath-pileser, as well
as the final war against Israel. According to Winckler, the
two portions of the narrative must have been borrowed from
two different versions of the final war, which the final
editor inserted one after the other, heedless of the
contradictions contained in them.
Hoshea, who had ascended the throne with the consent of Tiglath-pileser,
was unable to keep them quiet. The whole of Galilee and Gilead was now
an Assyrian province, subject to the governor of Damascus; Jerusalem,
Moab, Ammon, and the Bedâwin had transferred their allegiance to
Nineveh; and Israel, with merely the central tribes of Ephraim,
Manasseh, and Benjamin left, was now barely equal in area and population
to Judah. Their tribute weighed heavily on the Israelites; passing
armies had laid waste their fields, and townsmen, merchants, and nobles
alike, deprived of their customary resources, fretted with impatience
under the burdens and humiliations imposed on them by their defeat;
convinced of their helplessness, they again looked beyond their own
borders for some nation or individual who should restore to them their
lost prosperity. Amid the tottering fortunes of their neighbours, Egypt
alone stood erect, and it was, therefore, to Egypt that they turned
their eyes. Negotiations were opened, not with Pharaoh himself, but
with Shabi, one of the petty kings on the eastern frontier of the Delta,
whose position made him better qualified than any other to deal with
Syrian affairs.*
* This individual is called Sua, Seveh, and So in the Hebrew
text (2 Kings xvii. 4), and the Septuagint gives the
transliteration Sebek side by side with Sêgôs. He is found
again under the forms Shibahi, Shabi, Shabé, in Sargons
inscriptions.
Hannon of Gaza had by this time returned from exile, and it was,
doubtless, owing to Shabis support that he had been able to drive out
the Assyrian generals and recover his crown.* The Israelite aristocracy
was led away by his example, but Shalmaneser hastened to the spot before
the Egyptian bowmen had time to cross the isthmus. Hoshea begged
for mercy, and was deported into Assyria and condemned to lifelong
imprisonment.** Though deserted by her king, Samaria did not despair;
she refused to open her gates, and, being strongly fortified, compelled
the Assyrians to lay regular siege to the city. It would seem that at
one moment, at the beginning of operations, when it was rumoured on all
sides that Pharaoh would speedily intervene, Ahaz began to fear for his
own personal safety, and seriously considered whether it would not be
wiser to join forces with Israel or with Egypt.***
* This seems to be the inference from Sargons inscription,
in which he is referred to as relying on the army of Shabi,
the _tartan_ of Egypt.
** 2 Kings xvii. 4.
*** The _Second Book of Kings_ (xviii. 9,10; cf. xvii. 6)
places the beginning of the siege of Samaria in the seventh
year of Hoshea ( = fourth year of Hezekiah), and the capture
of the town in the ninth year of Hoshea ( = sixth year of
Hezekiah); further on it adds that Sennacheribs campaign
against Hezekiah took place in the fourteenth year of the
latters reign (2 Kings xviii. 13; cf. Isa. xxxvi. 1). Now,
Sennacheribs campaign against Hezekiah took place (as will
be shown later on, in vol. viii. Chapter I.) in 702 B.C.,
and Samaria was captured in 722. The synchronisms in the
Hebrew narrative are therefore fictitious, and rest on no
real historical basis--at any rate, in so far as the king
who occupied the throne of Judah at the time of the fall of
Samaria is concerned; Ahaz was still alive at that date, and
continued to reign till 716 or 715, or perhaps only till
720.
[Illustration: 328.jpg The Sword Dance]
After Painting by Gerome
The rapid sequence of events, however, backed by the counsel of Isaiah,
speedily recalled him to a more reasonable view of the situation. The
prophet showed him Samaria spread out before him like one of those
wreaths of flowers which the guests at a banquet bind round their brows,
and which gradually fade as their wearers drink deeper and deeper. Woe
to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading
flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley
of them that are overcome with wine. Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and
strong one; as a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, as a tempest
of mighty waters overflowing, shall be cast down to the earth with
violence. The crown of the pride of the drunkards of Ephraim shall be
trodden underfoot, and the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which
is on the head of the fat valley, shall be as the first ripe fig before
the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in
his hand he eateth it up. While the cruel fate of the perverse city was
being thus accomplished, Jahveh Sabaoth was to be a crown of glory to
those of His children who remained faithful to Him; but Judah, far from
submitting itself to His laws, betrayed Him even as Israel had done.
Its prophets and priests were likewise distraught with drunkenness; they
staggered under the effects of their potations, and turned to scorn the
true prophet sent to proclaim to them the will of Jehovah. Whom, they
stammered between their hiccups--whom will He teach knowledge? and whom
will He make to understand the message? them that are weaned from the
milk and drawn from the breasts? For it is precept upon precept, precept
upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a
little! And sure enough it was by the mouth of a stammering people, by
the lips of the Assyrians, that Jahveh was to speak to them. In vain did
the prophet implore them: This is the rest, give ye rest to him that is
weary; they did not listen to him, and now Jahveh turns their own gibes
against them: Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon
line, line upon line, here a little and there a little,--that they may
go and fall backward, and be broken and snared and taken. There was to
be no hope of safety for Jerusalem unless it gave up all dependence on
human counsels, and trusted solely to God for protection.*
* Isa. xxviii. Giesebrecht has given it as his opinion that
only verses 1-6, 23-29 of the prophecy were delivered at
this epoch: the remainder he believes to have been written
during Sennacheribs campaign against Judah, and suggests
that the prophet added on his previous oracle to them, thus
diverting it from its original application. Others, such as
Stade and Wellhausen, regard the opening verses as embodying
a mere rhetorical figure. Jerusalem, they say, appeared to
the prophet as though changed into Samaria, and it is this
transformed city which he calls the crown of pride of the
drunkards of Ephraim.
Samaria was doomed; this was the general belief, and men went about
repeating it after Isaiah, each in his own words; every one feared lest
the disaster should spread to Judah also, and that Jahveh, having once
determined to have done with the northern kingdom, would turn His wrath
against that of the south as well. Micah the Morashtite, a prophet
born among the ranks of the middle class, went up and down the land
proclaiming misery to be the common lot of the two sister nations sprung
from the loins of Jacob, as a punishment for their common errors and
weaknesses. The Lord cometh forth out of His place, and will come and
tread upon the high places of the earth. And the mountains shall be
molten under Him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before
the fire, as waters that are poured down a steep place. For the
transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of
Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and
what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem? The doom
pronounced against Samaria was already being carried out, and soon the
hapless city was to be no more than an heap of the field, and as the
plantings of a vineyard; and I will pour down the stones thereof into
the valley, saith the Lord, and I will discover the foundations
thereof. And all her graven images shall be beaten to pieces, and
all her hires shall be burned with fire, and all her idols will I lay
desolate; for of the hire of an harlot hath she gathered them, and into
the hire of an harlot shall they return. Yet, even while mourning over
Samaria, the prophet cannot refrain from thinking of his own people, for
the terrible blow which had fallen on Israel is come even unto Judah;
it reacheth unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem. Doubtless
the Assyrian generals kept a watchful eye upon Ahaz during the whole
time of the siege, from 724 to 722, and when once the first heat of
enthusiasm had cooled, the presence of so formidable an army within
striking distance must have greatly helped the king to restrain the
ill-advised tendencies of some of his subjects. Samaria still held out
when Shalmaneser died at Babylon in the month of Tebeth, 722. Whether he
had no son of fit age to succeed him, or whether a revolution, similar
to that which had helped to place Tiglath-pileser on the throne, broke
out as soon as he had drawn his last breath, is not quite clear. At any
rate, Sargon, an officer who had served under him, was proclaimed king
on the 22nd day of Tebeth, and his election was approved by the whole
of Assyria. After some days of hesitation, Babylon declined to recognise
him, and took the oath of allegiance to a Kaldu named Marduk-abalidinna,
or Merodach-baladan. While these events were taking place in the heart
of the empire, Samaria succumbed; perhaps to famine, but more probably
to force. It was sacked and dismantled, and the bulk of its population,
amounting to 27,280 souls, were carried away into Mesopotamia and
distributed along the Balîkh, the Khabur, the banks of the river of
Gozân, and among the towns of the Median frontier.*
* Sargon does not mention where he deported the Israelites
to, but we learn this from the _Second Book of Kings_ (xvii.
6; xviii. 11). There has been much controversy as to whether
Samaria was taken by Shalmanoser, as the Hebrew chronicler
seems to believe (2 Kings xvii. 3-6; xviii. 9, 10), or by
Sargon, as the Assyrian scribes assure us. At first, several
scholars suggested a solution of the difficulty by arguing
that Shalmaneser and Sargon were one and the same person;
afterwards the theory took shape that Samaria was really
captured in the reign of Shalmaneser, but by Sargon, who was
in command of the besieging army at the time, and who
transferred this achievement, of which he was naturally
proud, to the beginning of his own reign. The simplest
course seems to be to accept for the present the testimony
of contemporary documents, and place the fall of Samaria at
the beginning of the reign of Sargon, being the time
indicated by Sargon in his inscriptions.
Sargon made the whole territory into a province; an Assyrian governor
was installed in the palace of the kings of Israel, and soon the altars
of the strange gods smoked triumphantly by the side of the altars of
Jahveh (722 B.C.).*
* Kings xvii. 24-41, a passage to which I shall have
occasion to refer farther on in the present volume. The
following is a list of the kings of Israel, after the
division of the tribes:--
[Illustration: 333.jpg TABLE OF KINGS OF ISRAEL]
[In this table father and son are shown by a perpendicular
line. The kings name in italics signifies that he died a
violent death.--Tr.]
Thus fell Samaria, and with Samaria the kingdom of Israel, and with
Israel the last of the states which had aspired, with some prospect of
success, to rule over Syria. They had risen one after another during
the four centuries in which the absence of the stranger had left them
masters of their own fate--the Hittites in the North, the Hebrews and
the Philistines in the South, and the Aramæans and Damascus in the
centre; each one of these races had enjoyed its years of glory and
ambition in the course of which it had seemed to prevail over its
rivals. Then those whose territory lay at the extremities began to
feel the disadvantages of their isolated position, and after one or two
victories gave up all hope of ever establishing a supremacy over
the whole country. The Hittite sphere of influence never at any time
extended much further southwards than the sources of the Orontes, while
that of the Hebrews in their palmiest days cannot have gone beyond the
vicinity of Hamath. And even progress thus far had cost both Hebrews and
Hittites a struggle so exhausting that they could not long maintain
it. No sooner did they relax their efforts, than those portions of
Coele-Syria which they had annexed to their original territory, being
too remote from the seat of power to feel its full attraction, gradually
detached themselves and resumed their independence, their temporary
suzerains being too much exhausted by the intensity of their own
exertions to retain hold over them. Damascus, which lay almost in
the centre, at an equal distance from the Euphrates and the river of
Egypt, could have desired no better position for grouping the rest of
Syria round her.
[Illustration: 334.jpg SARGON OF ASSYRIA AND HIS VIZIER]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Flandin.
If any city had a chance of establishing a single kingdom, it was
Damascus, and Damascus alone. But lulled to blissful slumbers in her
shady gardens, she did not awake to political life and to the desire of
conquest until after all the rest, and at the very moment when Nineveh
was beginning to recover from her early reverses. Both Ben-hadads had
had a free hand given them during the half-century which followed, and
they had taken advantage of this respite to reduce Coele-Syria,
the Lebanon, Arvadian Phoenicia, Hamath, and the Hebrews--in fact,
two-thirds of the whole country--to subjection, and to organise that
league of the twelve kings which reckoned Ahab of Israel among its
leaders. This rudimentary kingdom had scarcely come into existence, and
its members had not yet properly combined, when Shalmaneser III. arose
and launched his bands of veterans against them; it however successfully
withstood the shock, and its stubborn resistance at the beginning of the
struggle shows us what it might have done, had its founders been allowed
time in which to weld together the various elements at their disposal.
As it was, it was doomed to succumb--not so much to the superiority of
the enemy as to the insubordination of its vassals and its own internal
discords. The league of the twelve kings did not survive Ben-hadad II.;
Hazael and his successors wore themselves out in repelling the
attacks of the Assyrians and in repressing the revolts of Israel; when
Tiglath-pileser III. arrived on the scene, both princes and people,
alike at Damascus and Samaria, were so spent that even their final
alliance could not save them from defeat. Its lack of geographical unity
and political combination had once more doomed Syria to the servitude
of alien rule; the Assyrians, with methodical procedure, first conquered
and then made vassals of all those states against which they might
have hurled their battalions in vain, had not fortune kept them divided
instead of uniting them in a compact mass under the sway of a single
ruler. From Carchemish to Arpad, from Hamath to Damascus and Samaria,
their irresistible advance had led the Assyrians on towards Egypt, the
only other power which still rivalled their prestige in the eyes of the
world; and now, at Gaza, on the frontier between Africa and Asia, as
in days gone by on the banks of the Euphrates or the Balîkh, these two
powers waited face to face, hand on hilt, each ready to stake the empire
of the Asiatic world on a single throw of the dice.
[Illustration: 336.jpg TAILPIECE]