Strong as it seemed in the 7th century, the Assyrian Empire was,
however, rotten at the core. In ridding itself of some weaknesses it had
created others. The later Great Kings of Nineveh, raised to power and
maintained by the spears of paid praetorians, found less support even
than the old dynasty of Calah had found, in popular religious sentiment,
which (as usual in the East) was the ultimate basis of Assyrian
nationality; nor, under the circumstances, could they derive much
strength from tribal feeling, which sometimes survives the religious
basis. Throughout the history of the New Kingdom we can detect the
influence of a strong opposition centred at Asshur. There the last
monarch of the Middle Kingdom had fixed his dwelling under the wing of
the priests; there the new dynasty had dethroned him as the consummation
of an anti-sacerdotal rising of nobles and of peasant soldiery. Sargon
seems to have owed his elevation two generations later to revenge taken
for this victory by the city folk; but Sargon's son, Sennacherib, in his
turn, found priestly domination intolerable, and, in an effort to crush
it for ever, wrecked Babylon and terrorized the central home of Semitic
cult, the great sacerdotal establishment of Bel-Marduk. After his
father's murder, Esarhaddon veered back to the priests, and did so much
to court religious support, that the military party incited Ashurbanipal
to rebellion and compelled his father to associate the son in the royal
power before leaving Assyria for the last time to die (or be killed) on
the way to Egypt. Thus the whole record of dynastic succession in the
New Kingdom has been typically Oriental, anticipating, at every change
of monarch, the history of Islamic Empires. There is no trace of
unanimous national sentiment for the Great King. One occupant of the
throne after another gains power by grace of a party and holds it by
mercenary swords.
Another imperial weakness was even more fatal. So far as can be learned
from Assyria's own records and those of others, she lived on her
territorial empire without recognizing the least obligation to render
anything to her provinces for what they gave--not even to render what
Rome gave at her worst, namely, peace. She regarded them as existing
simply to endow her with money and men. When she desired to garrison or
to reduce to impotence any conquered district, the population of some
other conquered district would be deported thither, while the new
subjects took the vacant place. What happened when Sargon captured
Samaria happened often elsewhere (Ashurbanipal, for example, made Thebes
and Elam exchange inhabitants), for this was the only method of
assimilating alien populations ever conceived by Assyria. When she
attempted to use natives to govern natives the result was such disaster
as followed Ashurbanipal's appointment of Psammetichus, son of Necho, to
govern Memphis and the Western Delta.
Rotten within, hated and coveted by vigorous and warlike races on the
east, the north and the south, Assyria was moving steadily towards her
catastrophe amid all the glory of "Sardanapal." The pace quickened when
he was gone. A danger, which had lain long below the eastern horizon,
was now come up into the Assyrian field of vision. Since Sargon's
triumphant raids, the Great King's writ had run gradually less and less
far into Media; and by his retaliatory invasions of Elam, which
Sennacherib had provoked, Ashurbanipal not only exhausted his military
resources, but weakened a power which had served to check more dangerous
foes.
We have seen that the "Mede" was probably a blend of Scythian and
Iranian, the latter element supplying the ruling and priestly classes.
The Scythian element, it seems, had been receiving considerable
reinforcement. Some obscure cause, disturbing the northern steppes,
forced its warlike shepherds to move southward in the mass. A large
body, under the name Gimirrai or Cimmerians, descended on Asia Minor in
the seventh century and swept it to the western edge of the plateau and
beyond; others pressed into central and eastern Armenia, and, by
weakening the Vannic king, enabled Ashurbanipal to announce the
humiliation of Urartu; others again ranged behind Zagros and began to
break through to the Assyrian valleys. Even while Ashurbanipal was still
on the throne some of these last had ventured very far into his realm;
for in the year of his death a band of Scythians appeared in Syria and
raided southwards even to the frontier of Egypt. It was this raid which
virtually ended the Assyrian control of Syria and enabled Josiah of
Jerusalem and others to reassert independence.
The death of Ashurbanipal coincided also with the end of direct Assyrian
rule over Babylon. After the death of a rebellious brother and viceroy
in 648, the Great King himself assumed the Babylonian crown and ruled
the sacred city under a Babylonian name. But there had long been
Chaldaean principalities in existence, very imperfectly incorporated in
the Assyrian Empire, and these, inspiring revolts from time to time, had
already succeeded in placing more than one dynast on the throne of
Babylon. As soon as "Sardanapal" was no more and the Scythians began to
overrun Assyria, one of these principalities (it is not known which)
came to the front and secured the southern crown for its prince
Nabu-aplu-utsur, or, as the Greeks wrote the name, Nabopolassar. This
Chaldaean hastened to strengthen himself by marrying his son,
Nebuchadnezzar, to a Median princess, and threw off the last pretence of
submission to Assyrian suzerainty. He had made himself master of
southern Mesopotamia and the Euphrates Valley trade-route by the year
609.
At the opening of the last decade of the century, therefore, we have
this state of things. Scythians and Medes are holding most of eastern
and central Assyria; Chaldaeans hold south Mesopotamia; while Syria,
isolated from the old centre of empire, is anyone's to take and keep. A
claimant appears immediately in the person of the Egyptian Necho, sprung
from the loins of that Psammetichus who had won the Nile country back
from Assyria. Pharaoh entered Syria probably in 609, broke easily
through the barrier which Josiah of Jerusalem, greatly daring in this
day of Assyrian weakness, threw across his path at Megiddo, went on to
the north and proceeded to deal as he willed with the west of the
Assyrian empire for four or five years. The destiny of Nineveh was all
but fulfilled. With almost everything lost outside her walls, she held
out against the Scythian assaults till 606, and then fell to the Mede
Uvakhshatra, known to the Greeks as Kyaxares. The fallen capital of West
Asia was devastated by the conquerors to such effect that it never
recovered, and its life passed away for ever across the Tigris, to the
site on which Mosul stands at the present day.