[1] See Prince, _Journ. Bibl. Lit._, xxii. 35.
[2] As essentially a _national_ god, he is almost identical in
character with the early Yahweh of Israel. See Sayce, Hibbert
Lectures, _Religion of Ancient Babylonia_, p. 129.
ASSUR-BANI-PAL ("Assur creates a son"), the _grand monarque_ of Assyria,
was the prototype of the Greek Sardanapalus, and appears probably in the
corrupted form of Asnapper in Ezra iv. 10. He had been publicly
nominated king of Assyria (on the 12th of Iyyar) by his father
Esar-haddon, some time before the latter's death, Babylonia being
assigned to his twin-brother Samas-sum-yukin, in the hope of gratifying
the national feeling of the Babylonians. After Esar-haddon's death in
668 B.C. the first task of Assur-bani-pal was to finish the Egyptian
campaign. Tirhakah, who had reoccupied Egypt, fled to Ethiopia, and the
Assyrian army spent forty days in ascending the Nile from Memphis to
Thebes. Shortly afterwards Necho, the satrap of Sais, and two others
were detected intriguing with Tirhakah; Necho and one of his companions
were sent in chains to Nineveh, but were there pardoned and restored to
their principalities. Tirhakah died 667 B.C., and his successor Tandaman
(Tanuat-Amon) entered Upper Egypt, where a general revolt against
Assyria took place, headed by Thebes. Memphis was taken by assault and
the Assyrian troops driven out of the country. Tyre seems to have
revolted at the same time. Assur-bani-pal, however, lost no time in
pouring fresh forces into the revolted province. Once more the Assyrian
army made its way up the Nile, Thebes was plundered, and its temples
destroyed, two obelisks being carried to Nineveh as trophies (see Nahum
iii. 8). Meanwhile the siege of insular Tyre was closely pressed; its
water-supply was cut off, and it was compelled to surrender.
Assur-bani-pal was now at the height of his power. The land of the Manna
(Minni), south-east of Ararat, had been wasted, its capital captured by
the Assyrians, and its king reduced to vassalage. A war with Teumman of
Elam had resulted in the overthrow of the Elamite army; the head of
Teumman was sent to Nineveh, and another king, Umman-igas, appointed by
the Assyrians. The kings of Cilicia and the Tabal offered their
daughters to the harem of Assur-bani-pal; embassies came from Ararat,
and even Gyges of Lydia despatched envoys to "the great king" in the
hope of obtaining help against the Cimmerians. Suddenly the mighty
empire began to totter. The Lydian king, finding that Nineveh was
helpless to assist him, turned instead to Egypt and furnished the
mercenaries with whose help Psammetichus drove the Assyrians out of the
country and suppressed his brother satraps. Egypt was thus lost to
Assyria for ever (660 B.C.). In Babylonia, moreover, discontent was
arising, and finally Samas-sum-yukin put himself at the head of the
national party and declared war upon his brother. Elamite aid was
readily forthcoming, especially when stimulated by bribes, and the Arab
tribes joined in the revolt. The resources of the Assyrian empire were
strained to their utmost. But thanks in some measure to the intestine
troubles in Elam, the Babylonian army and its allies were defeated and
driven into Babylon, Sippara, Borsippa and Cutha. One by one the cities
fell, Babylon being finally starved into surrender (648 B.C.) after
Samas-sum-yukin had burnt himself in his palace to avoid falling into
the conqueror's hands. It was now the turn of the Arabs, some of whom
had been in Babylon during the siege, while others had occupied
themselves in plundering Edom, Moab and the Hauran. Northern Arabia was
traversed by the Assyrian forces, the Nabataeans were almost
exterminated, and the desert tribes terrorized into order. Elam was
alone left to be dealt with, and the last resources of the empire were
therefore expended in preventing it from ever being again a thorn in the
Assyrian side.
But the effort had exhausted Assyria. Drained of men and resources it
was no longer able to make head against the Cimmerian and Scythian
hordes who now poured over western Asia. The Cimmerian Dugdamme
(Lygdamis in Strabo i. 3, 16), whom Assur-bani-pal calls "a limb of
Satan," after sacking Sardis, had been slain in Cilicia, but other
Scythian invaders came to take his place. When Assur-bani-pal died in
626 (?) B.C. his empire was already in decay, and within a few years the
end came. He was luxurious and indolent, entrusting the command of his
armies to others whose successes he appropriated, cruel and
superstitious, but a magnificent patron of art and literature. The great
library of Nineveh was to a considerable extent his creation, and
scribes were kept constantly employed in it copying the older tablets of
Babylonia, though unfortunately their patron's tastes inclined rather to
omens and astrology than to subjects of more modern interest. The
library was contained in the palace that he built on the northern side
of the mound of Kuyunjik and lined with sculptured slabs which display
Assyrian art at its best. Whether Kandalanu (Kinela-danos), who became
viceroy of Babylonia after the suppression of the revolt, was
Assur-bani-pal under another name, or a different personage, is still
doubtful (see SARDANAPALUS).
AUTHORITIES.--George Smith, _History of Assurbanipal_ (1871); S.A.
Smith, _Die Keilschrifttexte Asurbanipals_ (1887-1889); P. Jensen in
E. Schrader's _Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek_, ii. (1889); J.A.
Knudtzon, _Assyrische Gebete an den Sonnengott_ (1893); C. Lehmann,
_Schamashschumukin_ (1892). (A. H. S.)
ASSUS [mod. _Behram_], an ancient Greek city of the Troad, on the
Adramyttian Gulf. The situation is one of the most magnificent in all
the Greek lands. The natural cleavage of the trachyte into joint planes
had already scarped out shelves which it was comparatively easy for
human labour to shape; and so, high up this cone of trachyte, the Greek
town of Assus was built, tier above tier, the summit of the crag being
crowned with a Doric temple of Athena. The view from the summit is very
beautiful and of great historical interest. In front is Lesbos, one of
whose towns, Methymna, is said to have sent forth the founders of Assus,
as early, perhaps, as 1000 or 900 B.C. The whole south coast-line of the
Troad is seen, and in the south-east the ancient territory of Pergamum,
from whose masters the possession of Assus passed to Rome by the bequest
of Attalus III. (133 B.C.). The great heights of Ida rise in the east.
Northward the Tuzla is seen winding through a rich valley. This valley
was traversed by the road which St Paul must have followed when he came
overland from Alexandria Troas to Assus, leaving his fellow-travellers
to proceed by sea. The north-west gateway, to which this road led, is
still flanked by two massive towers, of Hellenic work. On the shore
below, the ancient mole can still be traced by large blocks under the
clear water. Assus affords the only harbour on the 50 m. of coast
between Cape Lectum and the east end of the Adramyttian Gulf; hence it
must always have been the chief shipping-place for the exports of the
southern Troad. The great natural strength of the site protected it
against petty assailants; but, like other towns in that region, it has
known many masters--Lydians, Persians, the kings of Pergamum, Romans and
Ottoman Turks. From the Persian wars to about 350 B.C. Assus enjoyed at
least partial independence. It was about 348-345 B.C. that Aristotle
spent three years at Assus with Hermeas, an ex-slave who had succeeded
his former master Eubulus as despot of Assus and Atarneus. Aristotle has
left some verses from an invocation to Arete (Virtue), commemorating the
worth of Hermeas, who had been seized by Persian treachery and put to
death.
Under its Turkish name of Behram, Assus is still the commercial port of
the southern Troad, being the place to which loads of valonia are
conveyed by camels from all parts of the country. Explorations were
conducted at Assus in 1881-1883 by Mr J.T. Clarke for the Archaeological
Institute of America. The main object was to clear the Doric temple of
Athena, built about 470 B.C. This temple is remarkable for a sculptured
architrave which took the place of the ordinary frieze. The scenes are
partly mythological (labours of Heracles), partly purely heraldic.
Eighteen panels were transported to the Louvre in 1838; other fragments
rewarded the Americans, and a scientific ground-plan was drawn. The
well-preserved Hellenistic walls were also studied.
See J.T. Clarke, _Assos_, 2 vols., 1882 and 1898 (Papers of Arch.
Inst. of America, i. ii.); and authorities under TROAD. (D. G. H.)
ASSYRIA. The two great empires, Assyria and Babylon, which grew up on
the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, can be separated as little
historically as geographically. From the beginning their history is
closely intertwined; and the power of the one is a measure of the
weakness of the other. This interdependence of Assyrian and Babylonian
history was recognized by ancient writers, and has been confirmed by
modern discovery. But whereas Assyria takes the first place in the
classical accounts to the exclusion of Babylonia, the decipherment of
the inscriptions has proved that the converse was really the case, and
that, with the exception of some seven or eight centuries, Assyria might
be described as a province or dependency of Babylon. Not only was
Babylonia the mother country, as the tenth chapter of Genesis explicitly
states, but the religion and culture, the literature and the characters
in which it was contained, the arts and the sciences of the Assyrians
were derived from their southern neighbours. They were similar in race
and language. (See BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.)
AST, GEORG ANTON FRIEDRICH (1778-1841), German philosopher and
philologist, was born at Gotha. Educated there and at the university of
Jena, he became privat-docent at Jena in 1802. In 1805 he became
professor of classical literature in the university of Landshut, where
he remained till 1826, when it was transferred to Munich. There he lived
till his death on the 31st of October 1841. In recognition of his work
he was made an aulic councillor and a member of the Bavarian Academy of
Sciences. He is known principally for his work during the last
twenty-five years of his life on the dialogues of Plato. His _Platon's
Leben und Schriften_ (1816) was the first of those critical inquiries
into the life and works of Plato which originated in the _Introductions_
of Schleiermacher and the historical scepticism of Niebuhr and Wolf.
Distrusting tradition, he took a few of the finest dialogues as his
standard, and from internal evidence denounced as spurious not only
those which are generally admitted to be so (_Epinomis, Minos, Theages,
Arastae, Clitophon, Hipparchus, Eryxias, Letters and Definitions_), but
also the _Meno, Euthydemus, Charmides, Lysis, Laches, First and Second
Alcibiades, Hippias Major and Minor, Ion, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito_,
and even (against Aristotle's explicit assertion) _The Laws_. The
genuine dialogues he divides into three series:--(1) the earliest,
marked chiefly by the poetical and dramatic element, i.e. _Protagoras,
Phaedrus, Gorgias, Phaedo_; (2) the second, marked by dialectic
subtlety, i.e. _Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, Parmenides, Cratylus_;
(3) the third group, combining both qualities harmoniously, i.e. the
_Philebus, Symposium, Republic, Timaeus, Critias_. The work was followed
by a complete edition of Plato's works (11 vols., 1819-1832) with a
Latin translation and commentary. His last work was the _Lexicon
Platonicum_ (3 vols., 1834-1839), which is both valuable and
comprehensive. In his works on aesthetics he combined the views of
Schelling with those of Winckelmann, Lessing, Kant, Herder, Schiller and
others. His histories of philosophy are marked more by critical
scholarship than by originality of thought, though they are interesting
as asserting the now familiar principle that the history of philosophy
is not the history of opinions, but of reason as a whole; he was among
the first to attempt to formulate a principle of the development of
thought. Beside his works on Plato, he wrote, on aesthetics, _System der
Kunstlehre_ (1805) and _Grundriss der Aesthetik_ (1807); on the history
of philosophy, _Grundlinien der Philosophie_ (1807, republished 1809,
but soon forgotten), _Grundriss einer Geschichte der Philosophie_ (1807
and 1825), and _Hauptmomente der Geschichte der Philosophie_ (1829); in
philology, _Grundlinien der Philologie_ (1808), and _Grundlinien der
Grammatik, Hermeneutik und Kritik_ (1808).
ASTARA, a port of Russian Transcaucasia, government of Baku, on the
Caspian, in 38 deg. 27' N. lat. and 48 deg. 53' E. long., on the river
of the same name, which forms the frontier between Persia and Russia.
Russian merchandize is landed there and forwarded to Azerbaijan and
Tabriz via Ardebil.
ASTARABAD, a province of Persia bounded N. by the Caspian Sea and
Russian Transcaspian, S. by the Elburz Mountains, W. by Mazandaran, and
E. by Khorasan. The country, mountainous in its southern portion,
possesses extensive forests, fertile valleys, producing rice, wheat and
other grains in abundance, and rich pasturages. The soil, even with
little culture, is exceedingly productive, owing to the abundance of
water which irrigates and fertilizes it. But while the province in many
parts presents a landscape of luxuriant beauty, it is a prey to the
ravages of disease, principally malarial fevers due to the extensive
swamps formed by waters stagnating in the forests, and to the frequent
incursions of the Goklan and Yomut Turkomans, who have their
camping-grounds in the northern part of the province, and until about
1890 plundered caravans sometimes at the very gates of Astarabad city,
and carried people off into slavery and bondage. The province has a
population of about 100,000 and pays a yearly revenue of about L30,000.
The inhabitants, notwithstanding the unhealthiness of their climate, are
a strong and athletic race, belying their yellow and sickly appearance.
The province has the following buluk (administrative divisions):--(1)
Astarabad town; (2) Astarabad rustak (villages); (3) Sadan rustak; (4).
Anazan; (5) Katul; (6) Findarisk, with Kuhsar and Nodeh; (7) Shahkuh
Savar.
ASTARABAD, the capital of the province, is situated on the Astar, a
small tributary of the Kara Su (Black river), which flows into the
Caspian Sea 20 m. W. of the city, and about 18 m. S. of the Gurgan
river, in 36 deg. 51' N. lat. and 54 deg. 26' E. long. It is surrounded
by a mud wall about 30 ft. in height and about 3-1/2 m. in circuit, but
much of the enclosed space is occupied by gardens, mounds of refuse, and
ruins. At one time of greater size, it was reduced by Nadir Shah within
its present limits. Astarabad owes its origin to Yazid ibn Mohallab, who
occupied the province early in the 8th century for Suleiman, the seventh
of the Omayyad caliphs (715-717), and was destroyed by Timur (Tamerlane)
in 1384. Jonas Hanway, the philanthropist (d. 1786), visited the place
in 1744, and attempted to open a direct trade through it between Europe
and central Asia. Owing to the noxious exhalations of the surrounding
forests the town is so extremely unhealthy during the hot weather as to
have acquired the title of the "Abode of the Plague." It has post and
telegraph offices, and a population of about 10,000. Since 1890 the
Turkomans who impeded trade by their perpetual raids have been kept more
in check, and with the decrease of insecurity the commercial activity of
Astarabad has increased considerably.
ASTARTE, a Semitic goddess whose name appears in the Bible as
Ashtoreth.[1] She is everywhere the great female principle, answering to
the Baal of the Canaanites and Phoenicians[2] and to the Dagon of the
Philistines. She had temples at Sidon and at Tyre (whence her worship
was transplanted to Carthage), and the Philistines probably venerated
her at Ascalon (1 Sam. xxxi. 10). Solomon built a high-place for her at
Jerusalem which lasted until the days of King Josiah (1 Kings xi. 5; 2
Kings xxiii. 13), and the extent of her cult among the Israelites is
proved as much by the numerous biblical references as by the frequent
representations of the deity turned up on Palestinian soil.[3] The
Moabites formed a compound deity, Ashtar-Chemosh (see MOAB), and the
absence of the feminine termination occurs similarly in the Babylonian
and Assyrian prototype Ishtar. The old South Arabian phonetic equivalent
'Athtar is, however, a male deity. Another compound, properly of mixed
sex, appears in the Aramaean Atargatis ('At[t]ar-'athe), worn down to
Derketo, who is specifically associated with sacred pools and fish
(Ascalon, Hierapolis-Mabog). (See ATARGATIS.)
The derivation of the name Ishtar is uncertain, and the original
attributes of the goddess are consequently unknown. She assumes various
local forms in the old Semitic world, and this has led to consequent
fusion and identification with the deities of other nations. As the
great nature-goddess, the attributes of fertility and reproduction are
characteristically hers, as also the accompanying immorality which
originally, perhaps, was often nothing more than primitive magic. As
patroness of the hunt, later identification with Artemis was inevitable.
Hence the consequent fusion with Aphrodite, Artemis, Diana, Juno and
Venus, and the action and reaction of one upon the other in myth and
legend. Her star was the planet Venus, and classical writers give her
the epithet Caelestis and Urania. Whether Astarte was also a lunar
goddess has been questioned. As the female counterpart of the Phoenician
Baal (viewed as a sun-god), and on the testimony of late writers
(Lucian, Herodian) that she was represented with horns, the place-name
Ashteroth-Karnaim in Gilead ("Ashteroth of the horns") has been
considered ample proof in favour of the theory. But it is probable that
the horns were primarily ram's horns,[4] and that Astarte the
moon-goddess is due to the influence of the Egyptian Isis and Hathor.
Robertson Smith, too, argues that Astarte was originally a
sheep-goddess, and points to the interesting use of "Astartes of the
flocks" (Deut. vii. 13, see the comm.) to denote the offspring. To
nomads, Astarte may well have been a sheep-goddess, but this, if her
earliest, was not her only type, as is clear from the sacred fish of
Atargatis, the doves of Ascalon (and of the Phoenician sanctuary of
Eryx), and the gazelle or antelope of the goddess of love (associated
also with the Arabian Athtar).
The literature is vast; see G.A. Barton, _Amer. Journ. of Sem. Lang._
vols. ix. x., and his _Semitic Origins_; Driver, Hastings' _Dict.
Bible_, i. pp. 167-171; Zimmern, _Keilinschr. und das alte Test.^3_
pp. 420 sqq.; Lagrange, _Etudes d. Relig. Sem._ pp. 123-140; and the
articles ADONIS, APHRODITE, ARTEMIS, BAAL. (S. A. C.)