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  THE
  HISTORY OF ANTIQUITY.

  FROM THE GERMAN
  OF
  PROFESSOR MAX DUNCKER,


  BY
  EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A., LL.D.,
  _FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD._


  VOL. III.


  LONDON:
  RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
  Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
  1879.



  Bungay:
  CLAY AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.




CONTENTS.


BOOK IV.

_ASSYRIA._ _ISRAEL._ _EGYPT._ _BABYLON._ _LYDIA._

  CHAPTER I.                                                      PAGE
  THE CAMPAIGNS OF TIGLATH PILESAR II                                1

  CHAPTER II.
  THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL                                            15

  CHAPTER III.
  THE PHARAOHS OF TANIS, BUBASTIS, AND NAPATA                       50

  CHAPTER IV.
  THE FIRST COLLISION OF ASSYRIA AND EGYPT                          76

  CHAPTER V.
  ASSYRIA IN THE REIGNS OF SARGON AND SENNACHERIB                   95

  CHAPTER VI.
  SENNACHERIB IN SYRIA                                             121

  CHAPTER VII.
  ESARHADDON                                                       143

  CHAPTER VIII.
  ASSURBANIPAL'S WARS AND VICTORIES                                161

  CHAPTER IX.
  THE CONSTITUTION, ARMY, AND ART OF THE ASSYRIANS                 182

  CHAPTER X.
  JUDAH UNDER MANASSES AND JOSIAH                                  208

  CHAPTER XI.
  THE NATIONS OF THE NORTH                                         228

  CHAPTER XII.
  THE FALL OF ASSYRIA                                              247

  CHAPTER XIII.
  EGYPT UNDER PSAMMETICHUS AND NECHO                               295

  CHAPTER XIV.
  THE RESTORATION OF BABYLON                                       320

  CHAPTER XV.
  NEBUCHADNEZZAR AND HIS SUCCESSORS                                356

  CHAPTER XVI.
  EGYPT UNDER THE LAST PHARAOHS                                    398

  CHAPTER XVII.
  THE OVERTHROW OF THE HERACLEIDS IN LYDIA                         414

  CHAPTER XVIII.
  LYDIA UNDER THE MERMNADÆ                                         427




ASSYRIA.




CHAPTER I.

THE CAMPAIGNS OF TIGLATH PILESAR II.


In the course of the ninth century B.C. the power of Assyria had made
considerable progress. In addition to the ancient dependencies on the
upper Zab and the upper Tigris, in Armenia and Mesopotamia, the
principalities and cities on the middle Euphrates had been reduced, the
region of the Amanus had been won. Cilicia had been trodden by Assyrian
armies, Damascus was humbled, Syria had felt the weight of the arms of
Assyria in a number of campaigns; the kingdom of Israel and the cities
of the Phenicians had repeatedly brought their tribute to the warlike
princes of Nineveh; at length even the cities of the Philistines and the
Edomites could not escape a similar payment. Tiglath Pilesar I. had seen
the great sea of the West, the Mediterranean; three centuries later
Bin-nirar III. received the tribute of all the harbour cities of the
Syrian coast, the great centres of trade on this sea. Nor was it to the
West only that the power of the Assyrians advanced. Shalmanesar II. and
Bin-nirar III. gained the supremacy over Babylon, the ancient
mother-country of Assyria. Each offered sacrifices at Babylon, Borsippa,
and Kutha; while to the North-west the power of Assyria extended beyond
Media as far as the shores of the Caspian Sea.

The successors of Bin-nirar III. were not able to sustain their power at
this height. Shalmanesar III. (781-771 B.C.) had again to fight against
Damascus and Hadrach (in the neighbourhood of Damascus[1]); in his short
reign of ten years he marched six times against the land of Ararat
(Urarti). Assur-danil III. (771-753 B.C.), the successor of Shalmanesar
III., also fought against Hadrach and Arpad (now Tel Erfad, near
Hamath[2]). He had, moreover, to suppress disturbances which had broken
out on the upper Zab in Arrapachitis (Arapha), and in the land of Guzan
(Gauzanitis) on the Chaboras. In the reign of Assur-nirar II. (753-745
B.C.) there were risings in Assyria, even in Chalah, the metropolis.[3]
But the prince who succeeded Assur-nirar II. on the throne of Assyria,
Tiglath Pilesar II., was able not merely to raise the kingdom to the
position which it had occupied under Shalmanesar II. and Bin-nirar III.,
but to make it a predominant power over a still wider circuit.

The armies of Shalmanesar II. had invaded Media; among the tribute
brought to him by the land of Mushri we found camels with two humps,
buffaloes, (yaks) and elephants. After a successful campaign against
Babylon, which he undertook immediately after his accession, Tiglath
Pilesar led his army to the table-land of Iran, and forced his way to
the East.[4] A tablet discovered at Chalah, which gives a summary of
Tiglath Pilesar's achievements from the first to the seventeenth year of
his reign, mentions the districts subjugated in this direction. It is a
long list, beginning with the land of Namri.[5] The districts of Parsua,
Zikruti, Nisaa, and Arakuttu are mentioned,[6] and the enumeration
concludes with districts in the wilds of Media.[7] The king defeated the
numerous warriors of this region; "60,500 of their people, children,
horses, asses, mules, oxen, and sheep without number I carried away."[8]
Such are the words of the inscription, which proceeds: "I took
possession of the land of Namri anew, and the land of Parsua." With
these regions thirteen districts already mentioned are again enumerated.
"Zikruti in rugged Media I added to the land of Assyria; the cities I
built up anew; in them I placed warriors of Asshur, my lord, and people
whom my hand had taken captive. I received the tribute of Media, of
Ellip, and all the princes of the mountains to Bikni; horses, asses,
mules, oxen, sheep without number. My general, Assurdainani, I sent into
rugged Media towards the rising of the sun. He brought back 5000 horses,
oxen, sheep without number."[9]

According to this inscription Tiglath Pilesar, on his first campaign
against Iran, which we may place, on the authority of the list of
rulers, in the year 745 or 744 B.C.,[10] though he failed to reach
Bactria and the Indus, forced his way into the eastern regions of Iran
as far as the further shore of lake Hamun. The meaning of the names
Nisaa, Zikruti, and Arakuttu is hardly doubtful. Nisaa must denote the
region or district of Nisæa in the east of Media. Zikruti,[11] which is
mentioned together with Nisæa, may be the name of the Sagartians of
Herodotus, the Açagarta of the inscriptions of the Achæmenids, a race
mentioned by Herodotus among the tribes of the Persians; they were
settled or wandered to the east of the latter. Arakuttu gives us the
Semitic form of the name of the Harauvati of the Persian inscriptions,
the Haravaïti of the Avesta, the Arachoti of the Greeks. The Arachoti
were settled in the river-valley of the Arachotus (now Arghandab), which
falls into lake Hamun, to the east of the river. But Tiglath Pilesar did
not maintain his supremacy on the table-land of Iran to this extent. In
the enumeration of the conquered districts of the second campaign the
names Nisaa and Arakuttu are wanting, while Zikruti, Parsua, and Madai
(Media), and the tribute of Media, which must therefore have been
obtained by a new campaign of the general of Tiglath Pilesar, are
brought into prominence. The second campaign of the king was therefore
limited to the western regions of Iran. At a later time, in the ninth
year of his reign (737 _B.C._), he once more marched into the land of
Media.[12] A second inscription says, in summary, that Tiglath Pilesar
imposed tribute on the "land of Parsua" and the "city of Zikruti," which
was dependent on the land of the Medes, and on the princes of the land
of Media as far as the land of Bikni.[13]

When Tiglath Pilesar ascended the throne Nabonassar (747-734 B.C.) had
been king of Babylon for two years, according to the canon of Ptolemy.
Babylonia no longer possessed the extent of country once given to her by
Hammurabi, and which we may ascribe to her during the numerous wars
carried on with Assyria from the middle of the fifteenth century, and
even at the date of Shalmanesar II. and Bin-nirar III. Either through
the preponderance which Assyria had obtained over Babylon after the
middle of the ninth century, or from other causes, we find several
independent principalities on the lower course of the Euphrates after
the middle of the eighth century; the Assyrian inscriptions mention as
such, Bit Sahalla, Bit Silan, Bit Dakkur, Bit Amukan, and Bit Yakin at
the mouth of the Euphrates, on the shore of the Persian Gulf. So far as
we can discover from the monuments, Tiglath Pilesar was at war with
Babylonia in the very first year of his reign.[14] Dur Kurigalzu, the
old border fortress of Babylon against Assyria, Sippara, and other
cities of the land of Kardunias on the river or canal Ukni, are
mentioned, and the priests of Bit Saggatu or Bit Zida, _i.e._ of the
chief temples of Babylon and Borsippa, together with the priest of
Nergal, who bring gifts to Tiglath Pilesar; we hear of 10 talents of
gold, and 1000 talents of silver, received by Tiglath Pilesar in the
first year of his reign.[15] In the summary of his achievements (on the
tablet of Chalah) the king says that he has taken Dur Kurigalzu, that he
has offered sacrifice at Sippara, Nipur, Babylon, Borsippa, Kutha, and
Ur, that in the beginning of his reign he ruled from Dur Kurigalzu to
Nipur.[16] The king of Babylon, against whom he fought and whom he
compelled to open the gates of his fortresses and of Babylon, is not
mentioned by Tiglath Pilesar. We must assume, from the canon of Ptolemy,
that it was Nabonassar who bowed himself before the weight of the arms
of Assyria. Yet the obedience of Babylon was not secured. Fragments of
the detailed annals of Tiglath Pilesar inform us that his general again
fought against the Babylonians, that he himself again conquered a city
which the Babylonians had taken, that in the region of Tel Assur he
sacrificed to Merodach the god of Tel Assur.[17] An inscription of
Chalah narrates that Tiglath Pilesar laid waste Bit Amukan and Bit
Sahalla, and took their kings Nabu-sabzi and Zakiru prisoners; that he
besieged king Kinziru in Sapiya (Sape), his capital, and added to
Assyria Pillutu on the border of Assyria and Elam; that he received the
tributes of the kings of the Chaldæans, of Balasu, the son of Dakkuri,
of Nadin of Larrak, and Merodach Baladan, the son of Yakin, the king of
the sea coast.[18] The large tablet tells us more at length. "Pillutu on
the borders of Elam I added to Assyria; the Chaldæans I removed from
thence and placed in the midst of Assyria. The warriors of Nabu-sabzi,
the son of Silani, I defeated under the walls of his city of Sarrapani,
and I crucified him before the great gate of his city. Five thousand
five hundred of his people I took captive; his sons, his daughters, his
gods I carried away: his city and the cities round about it I destroyed
and burnt. Zakiru, the son of Sahalli, and his chieftains I captured; I
put them in irons and brought them to Assyria; 5400 of the people of Bit
Sahalla I captured; I laid waste all the districts of Bit Sahalla and
united them to Assyria. The numerous army of Kinziru, the son of Amukan,
I defeated before the great gate of his city, Sapiya; I besieged him and
overthrew all his cities. Bit Silan, Bit Amukan, Bit Sahalla, I have
laid waste throughout their whole extent; I received the tribute of
Balasu, the son of Dakkuri, and of Nadin of Larrak; Merodach Baladan,
the son of Yakin, the king of the sea-coast, was overcome by the fear of
Asshur, my lord: he came to Sapiya and kissed my feet, and I received
his tribute."[19]

The canon of Ptolemy represents Nadius as succeeding Nabonassar of
Babylon in the year 733 B.C. Is the Nabu-sabzi of Bit Silan whom Tiglath
Pilesar defeats near the city of Sarrapani the king Nadius of the canon;
and ought his name to be altered in the canon to Nabius? According to
the canon Nadius reigned only two years (733, 732 B.C.); the campaign of
Tiglath Pilesar, which ended in the conquest and execution of
Nabu-sabzi, must therefore have taken place in the year 732 B.C. After
the conquest of Nabu-sabzi, as the inscriptions told us, Tiglath Pilesar
subjugates Kinziru of Bit Amukan, when he had besieged Sapiya, his
capital; in this city he receives the homage of Merodach Baladan. The
list of rulers places the campaign against Sapiya in the year 731 B.C.
In the canon of Ptolemy, Nadius is succeeded by a joint rule: from the
year 731 to 727 B.C. Chinzirus and Porus reign over Babylon. Is the
Kinziru of Bit Amukan the Chinzirus of the canon?

After the subjugation of Merodach Baladan, king of the sea-coast, _i.e._
the coast of the Persian Gulf, Tiglath Pilesar's dominion extended over
the whole region of the Euphrates. He assures us that "he laid waste the
land of Chaldæa throughout its whole extent," and "received tribute from
all the Chaldæans;" that "he possessed the whole land of Kardunias
(Babylonia), and was lord over it;"[20] and with perfect truth, for an
inscription of king Sargon tells us, that Bit Amukan, Bit Dakkur, Bit
Silan, Bit Sahalla, Bit Yakin form the whole of the land of the
Chaldæans.[21] Tiglath Pilesar calls himself "king of Asshur, king of
Babylon, king of Sumir and Accad;" he claims the full title of the kings
of Babylon. The names of the principalities of Chaldæa are obviously
taken from their dynasties. Nabu-sabzi is called the son of Silan, and
his land Bit Silan; Merodach Baladan is the son of Yakin, and his land
is Bit Yakin. Shalmanesar II., as we saw (Vol. II. p. 239), spoke of
Israel as Bit Omri, _i.e._ the house of Omri. The Chinzirus of the canon
of Ptolemy enables us to assume that Tiglath Pilesar after the defeat of
Kinziru of Bit Amukan placed this Kinziru as a vassal-king or viceroy
over Babylon, a proceeding which recurs often enough in the proceedings
of the kings of Asshur towards conquered principalities and lands.

The canon of Ptolemy does not make Chinzirus the sole king of Babylon.
From 731 B.C. to 727 B.C. Chinzirus and Porus are said to have reigned
together--a joint sovereignty, of which this is the only instance in the
canon. Strikingly enough their two reigns end in the same year, and
this, 727 B.C. is the very year in which, according to the Assyrian
canon, Tiglath Pilesar's reign is brought to a close. In the excerpt
from Berosus' list of the kings of Babylon, given by Polyhistor, of
which Eusebius has preserved some very scanty fragments, the 45 kings
who reigned over Babylon for 526 years are followed by "a king of the
Chaldæans, whose name was Phul."[22] If the Babylonians named Tiglath
Pilesar Phul in their list of kings, and if Porus in the canon of
Ptolemy is a mistake for Polus (Pul), the Babylonians, in order to
conceal their dependence on Assyria, must have placed their countryman
before the stranger, the vassal king before the real king in their
series of rulers.

The Hebrew Scriptures tell us that Phul of Asshur marched against
Israel; Menahem of Israel paid Phul a tribute of 1000 talents of silver,
and the king of Assyria returned into his land. Then Ahaz of Judah sent
messengers to king Tiglath Pilesar of Asshur to save him out of the hand
of Rezin, king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of Israel. Pekah had put to
death Pekahiah, the son of Menahem, after a reign of two years, and
seated himself on the throne. Tiglath Pilesar listened to Ahaz and came
and carried away a part of the Israelites to Assyria, and Hoshea set on
foot a conspiracy and slew Pekah and became king in his place.[23] The
inscriptions of Tiglath Pilesar mention among the princes who brought
him tribute "Minihimmi (Menahem) of Samirina (Samaria),"[24] and also
"Jauhazi (Ahaz) of Judah;"[25] a fragment informs us that Tiglath
Pilesar reached the borders of Bit Omri, _i.e._ of Israel (Vol. II. p.
239). "Pakaha (Pekah) their king they had slain;" so Tiglath Pilesar
continues in this fragment, "I put Husi (Hoshea) to be king over
them."[26] The inscription also speaks, in this place, of sending or
carrying away to Assyria, but it is in such a mutilated condition that
more accurate knowledge is impossible. Still it is abundantly clear from
this fragment that the king of Assyria, who received tribute from
Menahem of Israel and then marched against Israel when Pekah had
ascended the throne, was one and the same prince, Tiglath Pilesar. We
might assume a double payment of tribute on the part of Menahem, a
payment to Phul and a second payment to Tiglath Pilesar, but this is met
by the fact that the monuments of Assyria know no king of the name of
Phul, and the continuity of the lists of Assyrian Eponyms does not allow
us to insert a king of the name of Phul between Tiglath Pilesar and his
predecessor Assur-nirar II. The error of the Book of Kings in ascribing
the first campaign against Menahem of Israel to Phul, and the second, in
support of Ahaz against Pekah of Israel, to Tiglath Pilesar, is most
easily explained, if we admit the hypothesis given above,[27] that the
Babylonians gave the name Phul to Tiglath Pilesar as their supreme king.

Tiglath Pilesar held the western regions of the table-land of Iran in
dependence. He ruled as king over Babylonia, over the whole region of
the Euphrates down to the borders of Elam and the shore of the Persian
Gulf; and in the North also he led the armies of Assyria to victorious
campaigns. His tablets tell us that he incorporated with Assyria the
land of Nairi, _i.e._ the region between the upper Zab and the upper
Tigris, that he defeated king Sarduarri of Ararat (Urarti), who had
rebelled against him, took his camp and besieged him in his city of
Turuspa; that he set up "an image of his majesty" there, and laid waste
the land of Ararat far and wide.[28] Afterwards Sarduarri and Sulumal
of Milid (Melitene) and Kustaspi of Kummukh (Gumathene), each trusting
to the power of the other, rebelled; these he defeated, and took
captives to the number of 72,950 men. In the middle of the battle
Sarduarri rode away: he (Tiglath Pilesar) took the seal from his neck,
his neck-band, his royal chariot, and his couch, and dedicated them to
Istar of Nineveh.[29] The inscriptions further inform us that Kustaspi
of Kummukh, Sulumal of Milid, and Vassurmi of Tubal gave tribute to
Tiglath Pilesar, and when Vassurmi was negligent in the service of
Assyria and did not appear before his face, Tiglath Pilesar sent his
chief captain against him and set up Chulli to be king of Tubal in
Vassurmi's place.[30] The list of rulers puts the first war of Tiglath
Pilesar in the year 743 B.C., the second campaign against Ararat and the
princes leagued with him in the year 735 B.C.

Of the successes of Tiglath Pilesar in Syria we shall hear below. When
he received the tribute of Hamath, Byblus, and Israel before the ninth
year of his reign, _i.e._ in the year 738 B.C., Zabibieh, the queen of
the Arabs, also paid tribute.[31] When he had overthrown Damascus,
Israel, and the Philistines (732 B.C.), he fought against Samsieh, the
queen of the Arabians, in the region of Saba,[32] as we are told in a
fragment of his annals, and took from her 30,000 camels, and 20,000
oxen. In the inscriptions which sum up the achievements of the king we
are told that he subjugated the Nabatu (who must be sought to the south
on the lower Euphrates), the Hagaranu (the Hagarites), the Pekudu
(Pekod);[33] that the distant tribes of Tema (the Temanites) and Saba
(the Sabæans), on the borders of the setting sun, heard of his power,
and submitted to him, brought gold, silver, and camels, and kissed his
feet.[34] A fragment of the annals repeats this statement; on the
borders of the land of the setting sun they heard of his power and his
victories and submitted to him.[35] Hence it was not only migratory
tribes in the neighbourhood of Syria and the lower Euphrates, like the
Pekod and Hagarites, whom Tiglath Pilesar forced to recognise his
supremacy and pay tribute: his armies must have advanced from Syria and
the lower Euphrates to the interior of Arabia, if the Temanites (I. 324)
and the tribes of the South, "on the borders of the setting sun," _i.e._
the tribes of the South-west, the Sabæans, in "fear of his power and his
victories," sent him tribute.

If the armies of Assyria reached no further than Deraeah in the interior
of Arabia, it was still a vast stretch of country which they traversed
in the eighteen years in which Tiglath Pilesar sat on the throne. Yet
they also reached Lake Hamun and the land of the Arachoti in the East on
the further side of the Persian Gulf. On the terrace of Chalah which
supported the royal citadels Tiglath Pilesar built himself a palace to
the south of the house of Shalmanesar II. It is the central palace of
the explorers. The great inscription on one of the marble slabs found in
the floor in the ruins tells us that he built his royal abode in the
midst of Chalah for his glory; that he placed it higher above the bed of
the Tigris than the palaces of his predecessors; that he adorned it
with costly decorations, and placed in it the tributes of the kings of
the Chatti, the princes of the Aramæans and Chaldæans, who had bowed
their might at his feet[36] The inscription begins with the words,
"Palace of Tiglath Pilesar the great king, the mighty king, the king of
the nations, the king of Assyria, the high priest of Babylon, the king
of Sumir and Accad, the king of the four quarters of the earth, the
mighty warrior, who in the service of Asshur his lord has marched
through the lands, swept over them like a storm, treated them as
captives; the king, who, under the protection of Asshur, Samas,
Merodach, the great gods, his lords, ruled from the sea of Bit Yakin as
far as Bikni, and from the sea of the setting sun (_i.e._ the
Mediterranean) as far as Muzur (Egypt)."[37] The second shorter
inscription says in a similar manner: "Palace of Tiglath Pilesar the
great king, the mighty king, the king of the nations, the king of
Assyria, the king of Babylon, the king of Sumir and Accad, the king of
the four quarters of the earth, the mighty warrior, who in the service
of Asshur, his lord, has trodden to pieces like clay all who hated him,
has washed them away like a flood and made them into shadows--the king
who marched out under the protection of Nebo and Merodach, the great
gods, and reigned from the sea of Bit Yakin to the land of Bikni, to the
rising sun, and from the sea of the setting sun to Muzur, who possessed
all lands from the setting to the rising and ruled over their
kingdoms."[38] Of this proud palace but scanty ruins remain. One of the
successors of Tiglath Pilesar, who ascended the throne of Assyria 46
years after him, caused the slabs on which Tiglath Pilesar had depicted
his campaigns and victories together with the explanatory inscriptions
above them, to be taken away, in order to have them smoothed, and placed
when filled with pictures of his own achievements in the house which he
built in the south-west corner of the terrace of Chalah. This successor
died during the building of his house. This is clear from the fact that
slabs and inscriptions of the palace of Tiglath Pilesar, intended for
the new structure, have been found partly in the remains of the old
building and partly in the new structure, with the defacement partially
carried out.[39]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The older Zachariah mentions the land of Hadrach beside Damascus and
Hamath, Zech. ix. 1, 2.

[2] Fifteen miles to the north-west of Aleppo the ruin-heaps at Tel
Erfad mark the site of the ancient Arpad; Kiepert, "Z.D.M.G." 25, 665.

[3] A document has been preserved from the reign of Assur-nirar,
belonging to the year 747 B.C., regarding the lease of a piece of land;
Oppert et Ménant, "Docum. Juridiq." p. 151.

[4] The list of rulers represents him as marching to the stream, _i.e._
to the Euphrates, immediately after his accession, and afterwards to the
land of Namri, _i.e._ to the Zagrus.

[5] G. Smith reads Zimri.

[6] Nissi in G. Smith, "Disc." p. 260, but in frag. 4 Nissa.

[7] So according to G. Smith [who reads Likruti].

[8] Ll. 29-33 in G. Smith, "Disc." p. 260; Ménant, "Annal." pp. 142,
143.

[9] Ll. 34-42, in G. Smith, "Disc." p. 261; Ménant, _loc. cit._ 143. The
words "I possessed anew" are wanting in G. Smith; cf. Lenormant, "Z.
Ægypt. Sprache," 1870, s. 48 ff. The statement about the subjugation of
Bit Hamban and the regions which follow, ll. 34-37, is repeated in the
inscription in Layard, pp. 17, 18, l. 17; in Ménant, _loc. cit._ 139.
The statement about the campaign of Assurdainani is repeated in frag. 4,
p. 271 in G. Smith, _loc. cit._

[10] This gives 745-744 _B.C._: Bildanil. To the land of Namri; cf.
frag. 3 in G. Smith, "Disc." p. 269.

[11] Ménant translates, "city of Zikruti;" G. Smith's rendering does not
give this description in this passage (p. 260), but on p. 271.

[12] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 279; Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 146.

[13] L. 17 in Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 139.

[14] Above, p. 2, _note 4._

[15] Frag. 1, 2 in G. Smith, "Disc." pp. 266, 267.

[16] Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 139.

[17] The list of rulers inserts a second campaign of Tiglath Pilesar to
the land of the stream in the year 737 B.C.; frag. 8, 11. 18, 19, 52-55
in G. Smith, _loc. cit._ pp. 277, 280, 281.

[18] Ll. 12-19 in G. Smith, "Disc." pp. 255, 256.

[19] Ll. 14-28 in G. Smith, "Disc." pp. 258-260.

[20] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ pp. 255, 258.

[21] Oppert, "Dur Sarkayan," p. 20; Ménant, "Annal." pp. 160, 181.

[22] Vol. II. p. 27; Euseb., "Chron." 1, p. 26, ed. Schöne.

[23] 2 Kings xv. 19, 29; xvi. 7-9; 1 Chron. v. 26.

[24] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 277.

[25] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 263.

[26] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 284.

[27] It is due to E. Schrader.

[28] Frag. 4, ll. 12-23 in G. Smith, "Disc." pp. 271, 272.

[29] Frag. 5 in G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 272, 273.

[30] The large inscription, lines 57-59, 64, 65 in G. Smith, _loc. cit._
p. 263.

[31] Frag. 8, l. 33 in G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 279.

[32] Frag. 13, l. 3; cf. frag. 10, l. 16; frag. 12, l. 19 in G. Smith,
pp. 283, 285, 286.

[33] Tablet of Chalah, l. 6 in G. Smith, p. 254; stone of Chalah, ll. 6,
8, 13, p. 254.

[34] Stone of Chalah, ll. 53-55 in G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 262.

[35] Frag. 13, _loc. cit._ p. 286.

[36] Ll. 67-86 in G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 264, 265.

[37] G. Smith, "Disc." ll. 1-4, p. 256, 257.

[38] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 254.

[39] The three private documents on the sale of a slave, the loan on the
mortgage of a field, and the interest and security for an advance, which
are placed in the time of Tiglath Pilesar III., are given in Oppert et
Ménant, "Docum. Juridiq." p. 153 _sqq._




CHAPTER II.

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL.


The overthrow of the house of Omri had not raised the power of the
kingdom of Israel. Jehu, it is true, sent tribute to Shalmanesar II.
king of Assyria (842 B.C.). But in spite of this subjection to the great
king on the Tigris, neither Jehu nor his son Jehoahaz was in a position
to repel the attacks of the princes of Damascus, Hazael and Benhadad
III.; the whole region to the East of the Jordan, the land of Gilead,
had to be conceded to Damascus after the most cruel devastation of that
district and of all Israel. It was the distress into which Bin-nirar
III. of Asshur brought Damascus which first afforded respite to Israel
in the last years of Jehoahaz, though tribute for this service also had
to be paid to Assyria (803 B.C.). His successor, king Joash (798-790
B.C.) was now able to wrest from Damascus at least those cities which
his father had lost, and the son of Joash, Jeroboam II. (790-749 B.C.),
the fourth sovereign of the house of Jehu, succeeded in gaining the
upper hand over Damascus, in completely reconquering the land of Gilead,
and inflicting heavy blows on Hamath. The land which he conquered from
Hamath he retained; the Books of Kings mention the brave deeds of
Jeroboam II., how "he set up again the borders of Israel, from the land
of Hamath to the sea of the plain." During his long and powerful
reign--he sat on the throne for 41 years[40]--agriculture was developed,
trade became again active, and, as it seems, very lucrative. In Samaria,
the metropolis, there were splendid houses, the inhabitants of which
lived in magnificence and luxury.[41]

In Judah the reign of Joash, whom the high-priest Jehoiada placed on the
throne in the year 837 B.C., again fully established the worship of
Jehovah in opposition to the favour which his grandmother Athaliah had
shown to the worship of Baal. Amaziah, the son of Joash, maintained his
throne against the murderers of his father; his arms were successful
against the Edomites, but failed against Israel. When he also was slain
by conspirators, the people, in the year 792 B.C., raised his son Uzziah
(Azariah) to the throne. Uzziah was only 16 years of age at the time of
his accession, but young as he was he learned well how to rule, and the
length of his reign allowed him to see the fruit of his labours. The
Chronicles say of him: "He loved husbandry; he had husbandmen and
vinedressers in the mountains, and dug many wells in the desert, for he
had many cattle in the low country and in the plain."[42] Uzziah was
also a brave warrior. Against the Philistines he obtained greater
successes than fell to the lot of any of his predecessors, including
even Saul and David, greater than those won by any of his successors. He
took Gath, the prince of which David had once served; he gained Jabneh
and conquered Ashdod, and destroyed the walls of this city. The loss of
Gath and Ashdod limited the league of the cities of the Philistines to
Ekron, Ascalon, and Gaza; Uzziah built Jewish cities in the conquered
districts,[43] he forced the Ammonites to pay tribute, he completed the
subjugation of the Edomites which his father Amaziah had begun, and his
fame reached even to Egypt.[44] He rebuilt the harbour-city of Elath on
the Red Sea, which the rebellion of the Edomites against Judah had
wrested from king Jehoram about the year 845 B.C. (II. 252), placed Jews
there, and apparently restored the Ophir trade of Solomon.[45] "He was
marvellously helped," say the Chronicles, "till he became strong." Amid
such successes Uzziah did not forget that changes would occur, that
other times would come. In the second half of his reign[46] he
strengthened the walls of Jerusalem with towers at the corner-gate,
_i.e._ at the north-west corner, of the city wall, at the valley gate,
and at the corner, _i.e._ where the wall of the upper city advances to
the west, and caused "engines invented by cunning men to be on the
towers and upon the bulwarks of the walls, to throw arrows and great
stones withal."[47] The levy of the people was put in order; the
fighting men were entered on a register; Uzziah "prepared for the whole
army shields and spears, coats of mail and helmets, bows and slinging
stones."[48] "And Uzziah did what was right in the eyes of Jehovah as
Amaziah his father had done, save that the people still sacrificed and
offered incense on the high places"--so we are told in the Books of
Kings. The Chronicles add that he sought God as long as the prophet
Zachariah lived.[49] Afterwards he had a quarrel with the priests of the
temple because he sacrificed with his own hands in the great space of
the temple, the holy place (before the Holy of Holies), on the altar in
that space intended for incense. David and Solomon had offered incense
there before him; the priesthood intended therefore to make good their
exclusive claim to every kind of sacrifice as against Uzziah.[50] Uzziah
succeeded in raising Judah to the highest point of power and importance,
which it reached after the defection of Israel.

Thus after severe tempests the reigns of Jeroboam II. and Uzziah brought
to Israel and Judah the restoration of order, power and prosperity. The
flourishing condition of agriculture and trade increased the well-being
of the people, and produced profits which led the wealthy classes into a
misuse of their wealth, into extravagance and luxury. This mode of life,
which seldom, in the East especially, fails to accompany gains easily
got, was attacked in both kingdoms by a merciless criticism. In Israel
and in Judah a careless enjoyment of life was connected not unfrequently
with a certain inclination towards the rites of the Syrians. From the
time that the house of Jehu ruled in Israel, and Joash ascended the
throne of Judah, the favourable feeling towards Syrian rites had
ceased, from the throne downwards. With the restoration of more active
relations towards the neighbouring nations their example operated with
renewed force on the wealthier classes of Israel, and among them, and
afterwards no doubt among the people, admission and recognition was thus
gained for the religious observances of the Syrians. As the sensual
elements in the forms of the gods and the cultus of the Syrians became
more marked--as the worship of the deities of procreation and birth
became more licentious and debauched, in connection with the increased
population, and consequent luxury and dissoluteness in the Phenician
cities (II. 276), as the prostitution became more general, the service
of androgynous deities more zealous--as the number of sacred servants,
of companions male and female, of eunuchs and men ready to make
themselves eunuchs, became larger--as this worship of lust and
mutilation grew more disgusting, and the flames on the altar of Moloch
rose more frequently--so much the more vigorous, in the circles of the
neighbouring nations, whose national and religious life was roused, must
have been the aversion and opposition to such licentious practices, to
rites of so different a nature, and so strongly at variance with their
own faith.

Three centuries before this time, Israel by the foundation of a monarchy
had gained rest and security against her nearest neighbours in the East
and West, against Moab and Ammon, and the Philistines. After the
division the powers of Israel and Judah had hardly sufficed at all times
to protect them against their neighbours; and even, at last, against the
Damascenes. Serious dangers threatened from a greater distance. Egypt,
the country from which in Syria there was naturally the most to fear,
had kept within her borders since the settlement of the Israelites in
Canaan, as if to secure space and freedom for the development of Israel.
Only once in the course of five centuries was this rest broken by the
campaign of the Pharaoh Shishak, and then in a very transitory manner.
But half a century after this campaign another opponent arose far to the
East on the banks of the Tigris, who now had secured a firm footing on
the Euphrates, whose armies first trod the north of Syria, and tried
their strength in repeated campaigns against Damascus. Ahab of Israel in
league with Damascus and other princes of the Syrians succeeded in
beating off the first attack; but after him Jehu and Jehoahaz of Israel
paid tribute to the kings of Asshur, and though the successors of
Bin-nirar III. had to fight in Arrapachitis and Gauzanitis, they
repeatedly led their armies against Northern Syria, against Arpad and
Hadrach.

However secure men might feel in Israel and Judah in the possession of
the position recently obtained under Jeroboam and Uzziah, it could not
escape a keener eye that a power had forced its way to the Euphrates,
and every moment threatened a renewed attack on Syria which Israel and
Judah were not in a position to resist, even in the favourable position
in which for a moment they were situated. Even if Israel and Judah
united their forces, which for the moment were excellently arranged, it
was scarcely conceivable that they could make any stand against the
supremacy of Assyria, if this were expressly directed against Syria.
Only in the event of a hearty combination of all the states and tribes
of Syria, the Philistines and the Phenicians, Hamath and Damascus,
Israel and Judah; only by the union of all Syria under one power, could
a sufficient counterpoise be provided to the Assyrian power. But the
feeling and tendencies of these states were different, as also was the
state of civilisation and religious life; and the thought of such an
union never arose among them. Even if it had it could hardly be realised
here, or elsewhere in the East, in any other way than by establishing
one despotic monarch. Such a form of union would at any rate have
required that Israel should give the best she had. Instead of a
political impulse which would have united Israel and Judah with Damascus
and Hamath, the Phenicians and Philistines, the internal circumstances
of Israel and Judah, the opposition to the renewed encroachments of the
Canaanitish worship, combined with the threatening position of Assyria,
gave a new, peculiar, and lofty flight to the religious development of
the Israelites.

In its struggles against the house of Omri the prophetic power was
inwardly ripened and strengthened. With the relaxation of persecution
the intensity and ecstacy of the prophets must have been relaxed. In the
place of the passionate strife came a more peaceful tone, greater
calmness, more earnest introspection. Yet the prophetic power was not
merely purified, it was also deepened. By degrees, elements which had
been developed in other spheres exercised an influence on the prophetic
work, on the reflection on the nature and will of Jehovah, and the
effort to be absorbed in him. The expression and outlet which religious
feeling had found in religious songs, in invocations, and hymns of
thanksgiving, praise and penitence, supplied to the prophetic feeling a
fuller, broader and more variable background. To the oldest account of
the fortunes of Israel, which arose in priestly circles, and of the
covenant which his God had once made with him, to the collection and
establishment of the law which formed the contents of this covenant,
was soon added the second text, which described in a more lively manner
the manifestations of the tribal God, his guidance of the patriarchs and
forefathers of the nation, and, like the older text, it was for a long
time in the hands of the prophets. Even before Joel, at the time when
the high-priest Jehoiada was regent for king Joash in Judah (II. 259),
urged the nation to repentance and introspection, the hand of a prophet
had united those two texts. Penetrated by their contents, he had, as
might be expected from his point of view, laid the main stress on the
promises and prophecies, on the relation of man to God, on the nature of
man, and his duty in life. In this form the books of the fortunes of the
patriarchs, of the covenant of Jehovah and Israel, of the promise of
protection and blessing in return for the observation of this covenant,
must have exercised an especial influence on the circle of the prophets;
they showed them the past in the closest relation to the present; they
strengthened their conviction that the external relation was
insufficient, that the essential point was the internal relation of man
to his God.

As a fact the people of Israel had experienced a peculiar fortune. Of
the same origin as a part of the Arabian and Syrian tribes and closely
allied to them, the Israelites had not followed the same path of
development. Branching off from those nearest, and then from their older
tribesmen, with whom they had previously pastured their flocks, they
grew up into a nation on the borders of Egypt and under Egyptian
supremacy; a nation in which nomadic simplicity met with certain
influences due to Egyptian culture. Forced back upon their feeling of
national independence by the oppression of the Egyptians, the children
of Jacob had emancipated themselves from Egyptian dominion, and had
embraced with renewed vigour the worship of their tribal God, and at
length had won by force of arms an abode among the kindred tribes, to
which they now stood opposed as enemies. The tribes of Syria were far
before them in culture of every kind, in wealth and adornment of life;
the tribes of the desert, the closely related neighbours on the east of
the Jordan, did not cease to attack and plunder the cantons of the
Israelites; their neighbours on the south coast sought with persistence
to subjugate them. Thus the national contrast remained in force, and the
fixity of it was favoured by the nature of the mountain country, the
seclusion of many valleys and heights possessed by the Israelites, while
these same natural conditions rendered impossible such a thorough
entrance into the life of the maritime cities, and the life of Damascus
and Hamath, as could lead to the dissolution of the nationality. The
fact that Israel, at the time of David and Solomon, obtained the
preponderance over their neighbours, tended, together with the national
pride, to strengthen the contrast instead of weakening it, and
maintained the consciousness of nationality as a great memory. Even from
this point of view, starting from the national feeling and
consciousness, the prophets could not but oppose the Syrian tribes and
their rites, and in this opposition they found the more ready acceptance
in Israel, the more thoroughly the consciousness was aroused that the
land had been won and maintained in conflict with the tribes to whom
this worship belonged. But the conception of the nature of the national
deity was far more powerful in the prophets than the sense of
nationality. In contrast to the lascivious worship of the powers of
nature, the God of Israel was originally conceived as a deity who was
alien and opposed to the creative powers of nature. In the sense of this
contrast Jehovah was regarded as an exalted and terrible deity, to look
on whom brought death; in this feeling the simple conception, which
cannot forego the sensuous element, saw Jehovah's manifestation in
flame, in the destroying but purifying glow of fire. The aversion to all
sensuous nature now rises to its fullest power in the mind of the
prophets in opposition to the Syrian rites; their supernatural point of
view, forced onward by the struggle and the contrast, disrobed the idea
of God of every material element which still adhered to it. How could
this supra-terrestrial power, before which all that is earthly is dust
and mire, dwell in a frail image made by human hands? The temple at
Jerusalem had no image, the greater part of the old places of sacrifice
were without any, and among the Hebrews it was well known that the
worship of Jehovah without images was the traditional mode of worship.
Neither the bull-images of Jehovah, which had been set up at the time of
the division of the kingdom in Israel, in contrast to the images of the
Syrian gods, though tolerated by the prophets at the time of Ahab and
Jehoram, nor any other image of the god, ought to be worshipped. If the
divine power is not only supernatural but also purely spiritual, beyond
nature and ruling over it; if it is without manifestation in the world
of sense; there can be no question of the worship or deification of
elementary powers, or the personification of physical processes; the
worship of these is nothing but deception and senseless rites. Moreover,
the power before which all nature quakes can be but one. Thus, to the
prophetic mind, Jehovah from being the tribal God of Israel, beside whom
other gods defended their nations, though not so mighty as he, becomes
the one and only God. And to them this God is no longer merely the power
which rules over nature, no longer merely the jealous and severe God of
his nation from whom the first-born must be purchased, who must be
worshipped with many sacrifices, and pleasant odours--to the inward
emotion, the inward certainty, and conscience of the prophets he is at
the same time the highest ethical power. Whatever they in their
enlightenment and in their hearts felt to be the just, the good, the
highest, is Jehovah's nature. In him were concentrated the moral
elements as conceived by the prophets, and nature is no more than the
footstool under his feet. He is now the one supernatural, spiritual and
moral power, which rules the world, before which earth and mankind
disappear. He is pure, holy and sublime; he hates injustice, violence,
exaction, avarice, deceit, and oppression of kindred, and looks not on
wickedness with favour. His will is just, he will requite every one
according to his actions, and will not forget the evil of the evil-doer.
What can the holy and just Lord in heaven care for offerings of food,
frankincense, and drink? The lips and the heart must be elevated to his
greatness, his commands must be kept, and men must make themselves holy
as he is holy. The only service of the holy God is a holy and righteous
life. Sacrifice is not required, but recognition of God, simplicity,
chastity, and moderation.

If from this point of view, to which their own conception had
laboriously risen--they had learned to know the ancient God of Israel in
his true nature--and following the lead of the sacred Scriptures, the
prophets cast a glance on the fortunes and achievements of their
nation,--had not Jehovah already announced himself to their forefathers?
Had he not by Moses commanded and established the true worship? Had he
not done great things for his people? Had he not led them out of Egypt
and given them this beautiful land for a possession? But had Israel been
grateful for this?--had he made any return?--had he kept the covenant
which Jehovah had made with him, and his law? At the best sacrifices
were offered at Jerusalem, prayer was made to bull-images at Dan and
Bethel. But how many were there who worshipped Baal, Astarte, and
Ashera! How regardless of their duties were the rich, and the judges,
how luxurious and dissolute in their lives! Was this the way to fulfil
the commands of the just and holy God?

From this arose a peculiar class of ideas. Jehovah had chosen Israel for
his people before other nations. He desires to protect him and grant him
his favour. But how can he, the pure and holy God, grant protection and
defence, if his people live an impure and unholy life? To protect
sinners would be against his own nature. Jehovah was a severe and
jealous God; was he not to punish the defection from his service, the
faithlessness and ingratitude of the nation, with grievous punishment?
Must he not visit these wrong-doers with a heavy penalty? The Assyrians
were on the Euphrates. From these suppositions, and the conclusion that
Jehovah, according to his pure and holy being as well as his severe
nature, must punish the error of the people; that he could not allow the
breach of the ancient covenant, the defection, the worship of idols, the
injustice, and the luxury to remain unvisited, grew up the idea of a
great sentence about to be executed on Israel and Judah. Among the
prophets this became a settled conviction. But according to their
conception, Jehovah is raised far above the weakness and the anger of
men. If his people return to him, amend their conversation, and serve
him with their lips and their heart, he will in his mercy pardon them,
or the punishment which he sends upon them will be merely a
purification; the stiff-necked obstinacy of the hard heart he will
break; many will fall, but he will spare those who are true to him; and
when he has corrected his people by a severe judgment, he will exalt
them anew, and take up his abode on Zion.

Filled with these conceptions the prophets came forward soon after the
beginning of the eighth century. They are no longer sooth-sayers and
seers; they do not predict any more; they do not announce definite
facts; they only know what will and must be the consequences of the
sinful life of the people: they proclaim a great judgment; they declare
what must be done in order to turn aside the wrath of Jehovah. Impelled
by inward certainty to ascertain and reveal the nature and will of
Jehovah, filled with religious inspiration, and in a tone of deepest
earnestness, the prophets give to their utterances an expression of
force and fire, which forms a proper sequel to the beautiful beginnings
of lyric poetry, as we have learned to know them in the songs of
victory, in the strains of thanksgiving and lamentation of the
Israelites, in the psalms--a sequel which corresponds to the power and
importance of the spiritual movement from which the exhortations of the
prophets arise. With unwearied zeal they exhort the people to return to
their ancient God and trust in him alone. Then, as Israel's power began
to decline after the death of Jeroboam and Uzziah, the view and
conception of the prophets becomes higher and higher; the more
threatening and dangerous the position of affairs, the greater their
influence; and at the time when the political existence of the
Israelites was broken down, their religious life is perfected and
purified, into a thorough recognition of ethical monotheism.

A man of the kingdom of Judah, Amos of Tekoa, a place not far from
Jerusalem, prophesied in Israel in the first decades of the reign of
Jeroboam, between 790 and 760 B.C. He calls himself "neither a prophet,
nor the son of a prophet;" he assures us that he was not a disciple of
the prophets, and did not wear the usual garb of a prophet, _i.e._ a
poor coarse clothing. He adds that he was a herdsman and a planter of
sycamores: "Jehovah took me from following the flock, and said to me; Go
and prophesy to my people in Israel."[51] From these prophecies, which
he afterwards wrote down, it is plain that the Holy Scriptures, in the
form in which the two texts had been united and revised by the hand of a
prophet, were familiar to him and present before him; that the
prophecies of Joel were known to him.[52] It was in Bethel, the chief
place of sacrifice in Israel, that he came forward. There, at the place
of the bull-image, he proclaimed the wickedness of this worship, and
branded in still stronger terms the moral corruption of the land. In
vain had Jehovah uttered warnings by his prophets; the law was not
regarded; justice was crooked; the weak were oppressed. No doubt Amos
exaggerated his reproaches, but we cannot doubt that the faults he
attacked were in existence. The careless he threatened with the
destruction which would soon burst upon them if they remained without
repentance or improvement. Then would the high places of Isaac be laid
waste, and the shrines of Israel destroyed, and Jehovah would rise up
with the sword against the house of Jeroboam. The priests of Israel
could not endure to hear such utterances. The high priest at Bethel,
Amaziah, said to Amos: "Seer, go flee thee away into the land of Judah,
and there eat bread and prophesy. Prophesy not again any more at Bethel:
for it is the king's chapel, and the king's court." Amos answered: "Thou
sayest, Prophesy not against Israel, and drop not thy word against the
house of Isaac. Therefore thus saith Jehovah: Thy wife shall be an
harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the
sword, and thy land shall be divided by a line; and thou shalt die in
polluted land: and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his
land." Then Amaziah the priest sent to king Jeroboam: "Amos hath
conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel; the land is
not able to bear all his words; for he saith, By the sword shall
Jeroboam die, and Israel shall be led captive out of his land."

The proclamations of Amos were not directed against Israel alone. He
threatens the Damascenes and the Ammonites with vengeance for the
devastations they had caused in Gilead (II. 258); the Philistines
because they had carried away captives from Judah and sold them (II.
303); the city of Tyre because she put the captives of Judah in the
hands of the Edomites; the Edomites because they pursued their brothers
(the Judæans) with the sword (II. 252). Nor does he even spare the
kingdom of Judah; even there the law of Jehovah is despised, and his
ordinances are not kept. But the judgment of Jehovah will descend only
on the guilty, and when the day of judgment is over Jehovah will again
purify Israel and set up Zion.

"Did I not bring you up from Egypt?" so Amos represents Jehovah as
saying; "Did I not lead you forty years in the wilderness, to possess
the land of the Amorites? Did I not destroy the Amorites before you, who
were tall as cedars, and strong as oaks? Did I not raise up prophets
from your sons, and Nazarites from your young men?[53] Hear this word,
ye who oppress the weak and trample underfoot the poor;[54] ye who
stretch yourselves beside the altar on garments taken in pledge, and
drink the wine of the condemned in the house of your gods; ye who
overpower the just, and make the poor bow down at the gate;[55] who
purchase the thirsty for silver, and the helpless for a pair of
shoes;[56] who, father and son together, go to one mistress, and say:
When is the new moon over that we may sell grain, and the day of rest
that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel
great, and falsifying the balance for deception. Do men hunt the horse
on the rocks, and plough the stone with oxen, that ye may turn justice
into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into hemlock?[57] Because ye
trample down the weak, and oppress them with burdens, ye have planted
pleasant vineyards, and built houses of hewn stone.[58] O ye that are at
ease in Zion, ye careless ones in the mount of Samaria, who imagine that
the day of destruction is far off, and draw near the seat of violence;
who lie on beds of ivory, and stretch yourselves on couches; who eat up
the lambs of the flock and the calves of the stall; who chant to the
sound of the harp, in order to invent instruments of music like
David;[59] who empty your wine cups, and anoint yourselves with the
chief oil, and trouble not yourselves for the affliction of Joseph; ye
shall not dwell in your houses, and drink the wine out of your pleasant
gardens: ye shall go forth into misery, with the first that go
captive.[60] Go to Bethel, and transgress; to Gilgal, and multiply
transgression. Bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes on
the third day; burn thank-offerings, and publish the free will
offerings.[61] Seek me not at Bethel, and go not to Gilgal and
Beersheba. I hate your festivals, and will not taste your offerings, or
look on the thank-offering of your stalled calves. Take from me the
noise of your songs, and let me not hear the sound of the harp.[62] Let
judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. Seek
good, and not evil, that ye may live: establish judgment in the gate; it
may be that Jehovah will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph. Hate the
evil, and love the good, so will Jehovah, the God of hosts, be with
you."[63]

"But they multiply injustice and robbery in their palaces. The end of my
people Israel draws near; I will not overlook it longer in him. I will
change your festivals into lamentation, and all your songs into
mourning, and will bring sackcloth about your loins. The enemy comes
round the land, and tears down the power of Israel, and his palaces are
plundered.[64] Go to Calneh, and see, and from thence pass to Hamath the
great (II. 317, _supr._ p. 15), and go down to Gath (p. 18); are ye
better than these kingdoms, or is your land greater? I raise against you
a nation which will force you from Hamath unto the river of the
plain.[65] At the time when I avenge the evil of Israel upon him, and
the altars of Bethel, the horns of the altar will fall to the ground. I
will smite the winter house and the summer house; the houses of ivory
shall fall to the ground.[66] The flight shall perish from the swift;
the bowman shall not stand, the horseman shall not deliver himself, and
the most courageous among the mighty shall flee away naked on that
day.[67] All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say:
The evil shall not overtake us.[68] But I will not utterly destroy the
house of Jacob. I will shake them as a man shaketh a sieve, and not a
grain shall fall to the ground. The days come when the ploughman shall
overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed, and
the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and I will bring again the
captivity of my people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities,
and inhabit them, and I will plant them fast in the land, which I have
given to them, that they be no more pulled out."

Amos had not deceived himself as to the want of inward cohesion in the
circumstances of Israel. The days of Jeroboam II. were coming to an end.
The power which he had gained for his kingdom, the order he had given to
it, were not so firmly fixed that they outlived the founders. His son
Zachariah, who ascended the throne in 749 B.C., remained on it for half
a year only. He was murdered "before the people" by a man of the name of
Shallum, the son of Jabesh, who placed himself at the head of a
conspiracy, and with him the house of Jehu came to an end in the fourth
generation. Shallum seized the throne, but maintained it only a month.
Menahem, the son of Gadi, rebelled against him in Tirzah, defeated and
slew him, and took his place on the throne (748 B.C.).[69] He met with
resistance in the land; internal strife distracted Israel, and loosed
all the bonds of order. "The idols have spoken vanity," so we find it in
the older Zachariah; "and the diviners have seen a lie, and have told
false dreams; they comfort in vain; therefore they went their way as a
flock; they were troubled, because they had no shepherd. Mine anger was
kindled against the shepherds, and I will punish the goats.[70] I will
no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith Jehovah; but lo! I will
deliver the men, every man into his neighbour's hand, and into the hand
of his king, and they shall smite the land, and out of their hand I will
not deliver them. Three shepherds also I cut off in one month;[71] and
my soul loathed them; and I said, I will not feed you: that which dieth,
let it die; and that which is to be cut off, let it be cut off, and let
the rest eat every one the flesh of another. For lo! I will raise up a
shepherd in the land which shall not visit those that be cut off, nor
seek the strayed one, nor heal that which is wounded; but he shall eat
the flesh of the fat. Woe to the worthless shepherd that leaveth the
flock! the sword shall be upon his right arm, and upon his right eye.
His arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye darkened.[72] Open
thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars! Howl,
cypress, for the cedar is fallen; for the heights are made desolate:
howl, O oaks of Bashan; for the steep forest sinketh! Listen to the
howling of the shepherds; for their glory is spoiled: listen to the
roaring of lions, for the pride of Jordan is desolate.[73] The burden
descends on Hadrach, and on Damascus; on Hamath that shall border
thereby; on Tyre and Sidon, though it be very wise. Tyre built herself a
stronghold, and heaped up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire
of the streets. Behold, the Lord will take her, and cast her walls into
the sea, and she shall be consumed by fire. Ascalon shall see it, and
fear; Gaza, and be very sorrowful, and Ekron, for her expectation shall
be ashamed; and the king shall perish from Gaza, and Ascalon is
uninhabited. A strange race shall dwell in Ashdod, and I will destroy
the pride of the Philistines.[74] And I will cut off the chariot from
Ephraim, and horses from Jerusalem. But Jehovah shall save them in that
day as the flock of his people; they are the stones of a crown lifted up
upon his land."[75]

Even earlier, in the last years of the reign of Jeroboam, or the
beginning of the reign of his son Zachariah, Hosea, the son of Beeri,
had received the word. "Yet a little time," such is the word of Jehovah
in his lips, "and I will avenge the bloodguiltiness of Jezreel on the
house of Jehu (the murder of Jehoram and Jezebel by Jehu, II. 254), and
put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel; and at the same time I
will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel."[76] When
Zachariah fell before Shallum, and Jehu's house was destroyed, we find
in Hosea, "They chose kings without me (Jehovah), captains of whom I
knew nothing." "I will give thee a king in my anger, and take him away
in wrath. All your kings shall fall, for none of them call upon me.
Israel is a heifer that cannot be tied."[77] The prophet demands with
the greatest vehemence that the worship of images shall be given up, and
the bull-images at Dan and Bethel (II. 237) removed: that robbery and
murder come to an end, that Israel turn to Jehovah; the judgment
threatens, and there is no helper but Jehovah.[78] "Hear this, ye
priests; receive it, house of Israel; and thou, house of the king, take
heed thereof," cries Hosea.[79] "When Israel was a child I loved him,
saith Jehovah; I called my son from Egypt. In the desert, in the land of
great drought, I did know thee.[80] I taught Ephraim to go, taking them
by the arm; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I took off
the yoke from their backs, and laid meat unto them.[81] Israel was an
empty vine, but the more that his fruit increased, the more altars did
he build; the better his land, the more beautiful pillars did he set
up.[82] They made images of their silver according to their knowledge,
idols, the work of craftsmen, and said: Let them that sacrifice kiss the
calves.[83] They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains, and burn
incense on the hills, under oaks, and poplars, and elms, because the
shadow thereof is good.[84] I will go after my lovers, saith Israel, the
faithless wife, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax,
my oil and my drink; and she knows not that Jehovah increased her corn
and sweet wine, and oil, and silver.[85] There is no faithfulness, no
love, no knowledge of God in the land. Ye have ploughed wickedness and
reaped iniquity, and have eaten the fruit of lies.[86] They practise
swearing and lying, and stealing, and adultery, and violence; the
priests commit murder on the way to Shechem; they practise all iniquity
in Gilgal, and bloodguiltiness is joined to bloodguiltiness.[87] They
slay flesh for sacrifice, and eat it.[88] I desire not sacrifice but
mercy; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.[89] Therefore
in my own time I will take back my corn; I will tear away my wool and my
flax from the harlot Israel; and make an end to her festivals, her new
moons, her sabbaths, and avenge on her the days of Baal, when she
offered incense to them which placed their nose-ring and ornaments upon
her, and went after her lovers, and loved the hire of the harlot at
every thrashing floor, but forgat me."[90]

"Israel hath forgotten his creator, and built palaces, and Judah hath
multiplied his fortified cities,"[91] says the prophet in regard to the
fortresses built by Uzziah (p. 19). "They trusted to the number of thy
warriors, but Israel's king passes away like a morning cloud. Ephraim is
as a silly dove; they call on Egypt; they go to Assyria to bring
whoredom. Ephraim goes after Asshur, and sends to the king for help.
Ephraim will hunt after the wind, and strain after the East wind, that
they may make a covenant with Assyria, and carry oil to Egypt.[92] The
Deliverer king will not heal you. The East will come; a wind of Jehovah
will rise out of the desert, which will plunder the treasure of costly
furniture, and Samaria will repent. The calf of Bethaven (= house of
Evil,--thus the prophet alters the name of Bethel = house of God, the
chief place of worship in the kingdom of Israel) will be carried to
Assyria, as a gift to the king, the Deliverer; Asshur shall be their
king, for they will not amend. The days of punishment, of vengeance will
come; as to the people, so shall it happen to the priests. Israel's
pride shall be bowed down, and Judah shall fall with him. They shall not
remain in the land of Jehovah; Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and eat
unclean things in Assyria. They are gone because of destruction; Egypt
shall gather them up, and Memphis shall bury them.[93] The high places
of Bethaven shall be destroyed; thorns and thistles shall come up on
their altars, and they shall say to the mountains, Cover us; and to the
hills, Fall on us."[94]

"What shall I do to thee, Ephraim? how shall I deal with thee? Shall I
destroy thee? saith Jehovah. But my heart is turned, my repentings are
kindled; I will not execute the fierceness of my wrath; I am God and not
man; as the Holy One I will not come into anger.[95] I will punish them
till they repent, and in their affliction they will seek me early.[96] I
will allure them into the wilderness; I will speak to their hearts, that
Israel may sing again as in the days of his youth, and on the day when
he came out of Egypt; and the name of Baal I will remove out of his
mouth.[97] Return, O Israel, to Jehovah thy God. Speak ye to him; Take
away iniquity, and receive us, that we offer the sacrifice of our lips.
Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride on horses; the work of our
hands shall be called our gods no more.[98] Then, saith Jehovah: I will
hear Ephraim, and look with favour upon him. I will heal their
backsliding, and come and love them freely; my anger is turned away, and
I will let them dwell in their houses. I will be as dew upon Israel;
Israel shall grow as a lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon: and I
will betroth thee unto me for ever; I will betroth thee in righteousness
and in judgment, in loving-kindness, gentleness, and mercies."[99]

The words of Hosea leave no doubt that Menahem, king of Israel, sought
aid from Assyria in order to maintain himself on the throne. With this
the Books of Kings agree. They tell us: Menahem gave to the king of
Assyria 1000 kikkar of silver (according to the Babylonian standard
about £300,000), "that the king might join him in establishing the
kingdom in his hand." The payment of the money was imposed by Menahem on
all the men of substance in Israel; fifty shekels of silver on every
man. According to this the king of Israel was himself without means, but
the land must have been in a position to pay such a considerable
tribute, so large a sum. There must, according to this statement, have
been at this time 60,000 families in Israel who were in a position to
pay a mina each (about £5). The monuments of Assyria inform us that in
the year 742 B.C. Tiglath Pilesar marched against northern Syria and
Arpad (Tel Erfad p. 2); that he conquered Arpad after a siege of three
years, or after three campaigns against the city.[100] In the city of
Arpad--so we are told in a fragment of his annals--he received the
tribute of Rezin of Damascus; 18 kikkar of gold, 3000 kikkar of silver,
200 kikkar of copper; and the tribute of Kustaspi of Kummukh, of Hiram
of Tyre, of Pisiris of Karchemish.[101] This must, therefore, have taken
place in the year 740 or 739 B.C. He received the tribute of Menahem
immediately before the ninth year of his reign (737 B.C.), _i.e._ in
the year 738 B.C. He tells us that at that time he received tribute from
Kustaspi of Kummukh, Rezin of Damascus, Menahem of Samaria, Hiram of
Tyre, Sibittibal of Gebal (Byblus), Urikki of Kui (Cilicia), Pisiris of
Karchemish, Eniel of Hamath, Tarchular of Gamguma, Sulumal of Milid,
Vassurmi of Tubal, and Zabibieh, the queen of the Arabs. Menahem,
therefore, sought to purchase the help of Tiglath Pilesar by offering
tribute soon after the fall of Arpad. Hence in these years the king of
Assyria held a position which included northern and central Syria, and
governed those countries immediately from the crossing of the Euphrates
at Karchemish, and from Arpad. Passing beyond Hamath and Damascus,
beyond Byblus and Tyre, he was now ruler over the kingdom of Samaria
also. From the South-east a princess of the Arabs, from the North-west
the prince of the Cilicians, sent tribute. Menahem of Israel must have
died soon after the payment of tribute; the subjection to Assyria
appears to have established his power so far that his son Pekahiah could
succeed him on the throne (738 B.C.). But in the second year of his
reign Pekahiah was murdered in the palace at Samaria by Pekah, the son
of Remaliah, who now ascended the throne of Israel (736 B.C.). Pekah
combined with Rezin, king of Damascus, for a united attack on the
kingdom of Judah.

Judah did not remain untouched by the establishment and extensive
advances of the Assyrian power in Syria. We saw in what successful
struggles Uzziah-Azariah had extended the territory of Judah in his long
reign; how agriculture and trade developed under him. The advance of
Tiglath Pilesar in the last years of the reign of Uzziah called these
successes in question once more. It did not find Uzziah wholly
unprepared. He had fortified Jerusalem more strongly; he had provided
for the arming of his forces, and arranged the levy of the men of
military age. A very mutilated fragment of the annals of Tiglath Pilesar
mentions twice the land of Judah, and three times the second half of the
name of Azariah, _i.e._ the name by which Uzziah is named in the Books
of Kings.[102] Another fragment, which deals with the events in Syria
which took place before the payment of tribute to Menahem, again
mentions Azariah (Uzziah); it informs us that Mount Lebanon, the land of
Baalzephon,[103] the land of Ammana (the region of the Amanus?) the city
of Hadrach had been subjugated; that the king "added to the land of
Assyria nineteen districts of Hamath, situated on the sea of the setting
sun, together with the cities in their land, which had revolted to
Azariah in faithless rebellion, and had placed his officers and viceroys
over them."[104] The districts of Hamath here mentioned must be sought
between the Orontes and the sea, immediately north of Aradus. The
occurrence no doubt took place in the time when Tiglath Pilesar fought
against or besieged Arpad, _i.e._ in the years from 742 B.C. to 740.
From this we must conclude that Azariah (Uzziah) of Judah (neither he
nor the kingdom of Judah is mentioned among the tributary states in
these fragments) assumed a hostile position towards Tiglath Pilesar;
that during the struggle for Arpad he attempted to unite some of the
states and tribes of Syria against the advance of Assyria. This
opposition of Judah may have formed another motive for Menahem to place
himself under the supremacy, and at the same time under the protection,
of Tiglath Pilesar. As vassals of Tiglath Pilesar, Rezin of Damascus
and Pekah of Israel may have felt themselves more justified in attacking
the southern neighbour-state, the kingdom of Judah, which would not
submit to the dominion of Assyria.

Uzziah was no more when Pekah obtained the throne of Israel. He had died
four years previously (740 B.C.), and was buried in the sepulchres of
the kings at Jerusalem. His son Jotham, who had already shared in the
rule during the last years of his father's reign, sat on the throne of
Judah. He withstood the attack of the combined Israelites and
Damascenes.[105] But his son Ahaz, who succeeded him in the year 734
B.C., was reduced by this war to the greatest distress. The Philistines
whom Uzziah had repelled and punished severely, the Edomites whom he had
subjugated, rebelled. Pekah's warriors laid Judah waste, and carried
rich booty and numerous prisoners to Samaria; Rezin pressed forward to
the south to aid the Edomites, expelled the Judæans from Elath, and
there established himself on the Red Sea. The hostile armies marched on
Jerusalem. Ahaz "made his son to go through the fire" to avert the
threatened ruin. At last he found no other means of rescue than to pay
homage to Assyria, and entreat the protection of Tiglath Pilesar.

In the last years of Uzziah, and in the reign of Jotham, Isaiah, the son
of Amoz, had received the word at Jerusalem. Like Amos and Hosea, Isaiah
contended against the luxury and dissoluteness of the rich, the
injustice of the elders, the corruption of the judges, the idolatry in
the land. He attacked the false security in which men reposed in the
possession of horses and chariots of war; he announced the coming
vengeance with even more vehement emphasis than his predecessors. If for
them the gods of the other nations have already disappeared beside the
One Jehovah, Isaiah represents the approaching destruction as breaking
out not only over Israel and Judah, but over all nations, because they
go after false gods. Their evil deeds will also be punished; no power on
the earth can stand before Jehovah. But behind this judgment, the horror
of which will turn all men to Jehovah, Isaiah also exhibits the
restoration of Israel and Judah, the restoration of the whole renewed
world, in the most glowing colours. That was Jehovah's purpose "since
the days of old."

"The land is full of horses," so Isaiah spake, "and there is no end of
its chariots." As we have seen, Uzziah had amassed munitions of war, and
arranged excellently the military power (p. 19),--"but the land is also
full of idols, and they worship the work of their own hands. Every man
oppresses his neighbour; the young man behaves proudly against the old,
and the base against the honourable. Thy chiefs, O Jerusalem, are
faithless men, the companions of thieves![106] Every one loves bribery,
and seeks after gain. They do no justice to the orphan, and regard not
the cause of the widow. Woe to them that decree unrighteous decrees, and
to the scribes who write iniquity, to turn aside the needy from
judgment, and to take away the right from the poor![107] Woe to them who
justify the wicked for reward, and take away the right of the just![108]
Woe to them that join house to house, and field to field, till they
alone are possessors of the land![109] What mean ye to beat my people in
pieces, saith Jehovah, and grind the faces of the poor?[110] Woe to them
that rise up early in the morning, and follow strong drink, who heated
with wine sit till the night; and the harp, and the viol, the tabret,
and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts![111] Woe to them that are
mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink! Woe to
them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light,
and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter;
that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Woe to
them who draw upon them punishment with cords of vanity, and reward of
sin with a cart-rope!"[112]

Isaiah carried the Jews from the service of sacrifice to the improvement
of the heart, to righteous conversation and good works. "To what purpose
is the multitude of your sacrifices to me?" so Isaiah represents Jehovah
as saying. "I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of
stalled calves; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, lambs, and
he-goats. Who hath required of you to tread my courts? Your new moons
and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are trouble to me, I am
weary to bear them. Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an
abomination to me: when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes
from you; and when ye pray, I will not hear you.[113] With your mouth ye
draw near to me, and with your lips ye honour me; but your heart ye keep
far from me, and your fear of me is taught by the precept of men.[114]
Relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead the cause of the
widow. Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from
before mine eyes; cease to do evil."[115]

"What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done to
it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought
it forth wild grapes? Ye have turned my vineyard into a pasture; the
spoil of the poor is in your houses. Now I will take away the hedge, and
pull down the walls, that it may be trodden down.[116] I will come to
judgment with your elders and chiefs, and I will deal marvellously with
this people; the wisdom of their wise men, and the understanding of the
prudent shall be hid."[117] After Isaiah had depicted the terrors of the
day of judgment, the quaking of the earth, the creeping away and the
death of sinners, in lively colours, he represents the people as crying
out: "Who of us shall dwell with the devouring fire, and the everlasting
flame?" and then answers: "He that walketh righteously, and speaketh
uprightly; who despiseth the gain of oppressions; that turneth his hands
from holding of bribes, and stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and
shutteth his eyes from seeing evil; who taketh justice for his measuring
line and righteousness for his balance: he shall dwell on high; his
place of defence shall be the munitions of the rock, and his waters
shall not be dried up. Though your sins be red like scarlet, they shall
be white as snow, if ye obey Jehovah."[118]

With the death of Jotham the distress increased. Isaiah warns his people
not to seek aid from Assyria. "Wickedness," he cries, "burneth as fire;
no man shall spare his fellow. He shall snatch on the right hand and be
hungry; and eat on the left hand and be unsatisfied. Manasseh shall eat
Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasseh, and both together shall fall upon
Judah."[119] "Fear not," he says to king Ahaz, "neither be
faint-hearted, for the two tails of these smoking firebrands; for the
fierce anger of Rezin and the son of Remaliah; they shall not break open
Jerusalem, and the land, before whose kings thou art afraid, shall soon
be made desolate.[120] But with the razor that is hired beyond the river
(Euphrates) the Lord will shear off thy head, and the hair of thy feet,
and thy beard."[121] And when Ahaz refused to be restrained, Isaiah
proclaimed: "Because Israel rejoices in Rezin and the son of Remaliah,
the Lord will bring upon them the waters of the river strong and many.
The stream shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his
banks; the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be taken
away before the king of Assyria. But the stream shall pass through
Judah; it shall overflow and go over till it reaches even to the
neck."[122]

"Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath Pilesar, king of Assyria," so the Books
of Kings tell us, "saying, I am thy servant and thy son; come up and
save me out of the hands of the king of Aram (of Damascus) and the king
of Israel. And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house
of Jehovah, and in the treasures of the king's house, and sent a present
to the king of Assyria. Then the king of Assyria gave ear to him. He
marched out against Damascus and took it, and carried away the
inhabitants to Kir, and slew Rezin. And in Israel Tiglath Pilesar took
Ijon and Abel-beth-Maachah, and Janoha, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and
Gilead, the whole land of Naphtali, and led them away to Assyria. And
Hoseas, the son of Elah, set on foot a conspiracy against Pekah, and
defeated him, and slew him, and was king in his place. But Ahaz went to
Damascus to meet king Tiglath Pilesar."[123]

The Assyrian list of rulers mentions for the year 734 B.C. a campaign of
Tiglath Pilesar against the land of the Philistines, and for the years
733 and 732 B.C. campaigns of the king against Damascus. A fragment of
the annals informs us that the army of Damascus was defeated; that their
king Rezin (Rasunnu) fled to the great gate of his city; that his
captive generals were crucified; that the city was besieged; that
Hadara, the house of the father of Rezin, was taken; that 591 places in
16 districts of the kingdom of Damascus (Imirisu) were laid waste.[124]
A further fragment informs us that Tiglath Pilesar made himself master
of the cities of Hadrach, Zemar, and Arka (the two ancient cities of the
Phenicians on the coast, already known to us); that he reached the
borders of the land of Omri (Israel); that Hanno, king of Gaza, fled to
Egypt before the face of the warrior Tiglath Pilesar. Afterwards the
fragment mentions the land of Omri, speaks of a sending or carrying away
to Assyria, and continues: "Pekah (Pakaha) their king they had slain.
Hoseas (Husi) I made king over them."[125] The inscription, which
comprises the deeds of Tiglath Pilesar down to the last year of his
reign, mentions towards the end the princes of Assyria, who brought him
tribute: Sibittibal of Byblus, Eniel of Hamath, Mattanbal of Arvad,
Sanib of Ammon (Bit Ammanai), Salman of Moab, Mitinti of Ascalon, Ahaz
of Judah (Jauhazi, Jahudai), Kosmalak of Edom, Hanno (Hanun) of
Gaza.[126]

The attempt of Rezin of Damascus and Pekah of Israel to break the rise
of the Philistines and Edomites, and the power of the kingdom of Judah,
fortified as it was and strengthened by Uzziah, led to important
consequences, to the subjugation of Syria to Assyria throughout its
whole extent. When Ahaz called for help, Tiglath Pilesar turned against
the enemies of Judah. The kingdom of Damascus, which for 120 years had
so powerfully withstood the Assyrians, succumbed after a struggle of two
years. Tyre and Byblus had long paid tribute to Tiglath Pilesar, and now
Aradus was compelled to recognise the supremacy of Assyria; Israel was
overrun: the inhabitants of the northern towns--Ijon, Abel-beth-maacha,
Hazor and Kedesh, and the dwellers in the land of Naphtali on the lakes
of Merom and Genezareth, and of the land of Gilead--were carried away to
Assyria. The eastern neighbours of Israel and of the land of Gilead, the
Ammonites and Moabites, were driven to submit like the Edomites; the
cities of the Philistines were conquered. With the subjugation of
Ascalon and Gaza the Assyrian kingdom became the neighbour of Egypt.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] 2 Kings xiv. 23; Amos vi. 2, 14.

[41] Amos iii. 11; vi. 4-8; Hosea xii. 9. That the commencement of Jehu
and Athaliah must be placed at the year 843 B.C., has been shown Vol.
II. p. 234. The Books of Kings give 165 years from the accession of
Athaliah to the fall of Samaria, and 143 years from the accession of
Jehu to the same time. Hence the synchronism which they observe for
corresponding reigns in Israel and Judah cannot be correct at any rate
for the last half-century of this time, and varying statements with
reference to these reigns show that this fact was known to those who
made these observations. Moreover, the canon of the Assyrians puts the
fall of Samaria in the year 722 B.C., from which it follows
(843-722=121), that 44 years in excess for Judah, and 22 for Israel,
have been added. Thus we are driven to hypotheses for the period from
843 to 722 B.C., as well as for the period 953-843. In the traditional
numbers at least in one reign there has been abbreviation, not
extension, as in the previous period. Samaria was taken in the ninth
year of Hoshea, the seventh of Hezekiah (2 Kings xvii. 6; xviii. 10).
Hoshea therefore ascended the throne in 730, Hezekiah in 728 B.C. But
the facts narrated in a fragment of the annals of Tiglath Pilesar, that
he reached the borders of Bit Omri, that he conquered Gaza and made
Hoshea king (frag. 11, in G. Smith, "Disc." p. 284), fall, according to
the list of rulers, in the year 734 B.C. Hoshea's accession must,
therefore, be placed in the year 734 B.C. Hoshea's predecessor, Pekah,
is said to have reigned 20 years. If Hoshea ascended the throne in 734
B.C., Pekah, according to this statement, must have ascended it in 754
B.C., and Pekahiah, the son of Menahem, who only reigned two years, in
756. But the fragment of the annals of Tiglath Pilesar, which mentions
the payment of tribute by Menahem, puts this payment immediately before
the ninth year of Tiglath Pilesar, _i.e._ before the year 737 B.C.,;
frag. 8, in G. Smith, _loc. cit._ In 738, therefore, Menahem was still
on the throne; and his death cannot have taken place before this year.
Thus the interval between Menahem's death and Hoshea's accession, which
the Books of Kings reckon at 22 years, is reduced to four years; Pekah
cannot have reigned 20, but only two or three years. Menahem's death in
738 B.C., fixes the beginning of his reign, which lasted 10 years, at
748 B.C. Before him, Zachariah, the son of Jeroboam, and Shallum,
reigned seven months. Jeroboam's reign must, therefore, have ended in
749 B.C. It lasted 41 years, and must, therefore, have begun in 790 B.C.
Thus of the 82 years and seven months, which the Books of Kings reckon
for Israel from the accession of Jeroboam to the capture of Samaria, 68
only remain. We must place Jeroboam from 790 to 749, Zachariah and
Shallum in 749, Menahem's accession in 748, his death in 738; Pekahiah
from 738 to 736, Pekah from 736 to 734, in which year he is succeeded by
Hoshea.

In the list of the kings of Judah, 90 years are enumerated from Uzziah's
(Azariah's) accession to the fall of Samaria. Before Hezekiah, whose
accession as already observed is to be put in 728 B.C., comes Ahaz with
16 years; before Ahaz, Jotham also with 16 years. Hence Jotham's
predecessor, Uzziah-Azariah, died in 760, and Ahaz began to reign in
744. But the eighth fragment of the annals of Tiglath Pilesar, already
mentioned, puts the defection of the 19 districts of the land of Hamath
to Azariah not long before the year 738 B.C.,; other fragments mention
contacts with Azariah, which, according to the list of rulers, belong to
the years 742 or 740 B.C. Hence Azariah was alive at any rate as late as
740 B.C.; the interval given by the Books of Kings between
Uzziah-Azariah and the accession of Hezekiah is reduced from 32 to 12
years. The reigns of Jotham and Ahaz must therefore be reduced from 16
years each to six years each; and the 90 years from Uzziah's accession
to the fall of Samaria to 70 years. The parallelism with the reigns in
Israel remains undisturbed. Jotham reigned from 740 to 734, Ahaz from
734 to 728. In the year 734 Ahaz is attacked by Pekah, who, as we have
seen, reigned from 736 to 734, and before the accession of Ahaz had
attacked his predecessor Jotham (2 Kings xv. 37). The campaign of
Tiglath Pilesar against Pekah took place, according to the list of the
rulers, in the year 734 B.C. The same list puts the war of Tiglath
Pilesar against Damascus in the years 733 and 732 B.C. The great
inscription of Tiglath Pilesar which narrates his deeds down to the
seventeenth year of his reign, _i.e._ down to 729 B.C., mentions shortly
before the close the tribute of Jauhazi of Judah (in G. Smith, _loc.
cit._ p. 263), and the Books of Kings (II. xvi. 10, 18), mention the
journey of Ahaz to Damascus to pay homage there to Tiglath Pilesar. This
must, therefore, have taken place in 732 B.C.. The synchronism of
Jeroboam and Uzziah, which is also always marked at the commencement of
the prophetic writings referring to them, is not altered by our
assumptions. Uzziah, who ascended the throne at 16 years of age, reigned
from 792 to 740; Jeroboam from 790 to 749. From Uzziah's accession up to
the accession of Athaliah, the Books of Kings give 75 years; the
interval between 843 and 792 gives us 51 years; so that there must have
been an abbreviation. This can be assumed most conveniently in the reign
of Amaziah, which lasted for 29 years, and includes the years from 797
to 792. In the reign of his father Joash we know that there was a long
minority, and the twenty-third year of this reign is mentioned. Of
Amaziah's acts, the subjugation of Edom, which he did not complete,
comes after the year 803 B.C. Edom's tribute is mentioned under
Bin-nirar of Assyria (II. 326). Just as little is the parallelism of
Amaziah with Joash of Israel altered by our assumption. As 61 years,
i.e. eight years too many, were given for Israel from the accession of
Jeroboam (790) up to Jehu's accession, eight years must be taken from
the reign of Joash, and for his reign, therefore, eight years are left
instead of 16, i.e. the eight years from 798 to 790. Violent as these
assumptions seem as compared with the traditional numbers of the Books
of Kings, they are merely given as a forced hypothesis, and at any rate
leave the traditional facts undisturbed, while the coincidence, which
may be obtained by assuming joint regencies, a first and second reign of
Jeroboam II., a first and second Menahem, a first and second reign of
Pekah, for the lists of Judah and Israel, alters the tradition without
bringing the agreement into harmony with the list of eponyms.

[42] 2 Chron. xxvi. 10.

[43] 2 Chron. xxvi. 6; Zech. ix. 6. As Amos mentions the capture of Gath
(vi. 2), and Judah is still to conquer the remnant of Edom (Amos ix.
12), the war against the Philistines must be regarded as one of Uzziah's
deeds in arms.

[44] 2 Chron. xxvi. 7; Isa. ii. 7.

[45] 2 Kings xiv. 22. The re-conquest of the Judæan settlement and
harbour city, which had been destroyed by the Edomites in their revolt
from Judah under Jehoram (II. 252), can have had no other object than to
restore the trade connections on the Red Sea. Besides, it is expressly
stated (2 Kings xvi. 6): "At the same time (734 B.C.), Rezin again
gained Elath for Syria, and drove the Jews out of Elath, and the Syrians
came to Elath, and dwelt there to this day."

[46] This follows from the fact that Amos speaks of the ruined
tabernacle of David, and the breaches in its wall (ix. 11).

[47] 2 Chron. xxvi. 15.

[48] 2 Chron. xxvi. 11-14.

[49] An older prophet of this name, distinct from the son of Jehoiadah,
and perhaps also distinct from the son of Berechiah (Isa. viii. 2), but
identical with this Zachariah, if the words of the Chronicles may be
explained to mean: "So long as he (Uzziah) listened to Zachariah."

[50] 2 Kings xv. 3; 2 Chron. xxvi 6-21; 1 Kings ix. 25.

[51] Amos i. 2; iv. 9.

[52] The date of Amos is fixed not only by the superscription, but by
the mention of the house of Jeroboam in his prophecies. Moreover, the
desolation caused by the Damascenes in Israel, the campaigns of the
Philistines against Judah (II. 252), appear to be in recent remembrance.
If the "fallen tabernacle of David, the breaches in its wall," are also
mentioned (ix. 11, 12), it is clear that Uzziah, who came to the throne
in the year 792 B.C. at an age of 16 years, had not completely restored
Judah, that he had not recovered Elath. On the other hand, it is clear
that Gath was already taken. Hence Amos cannot have come forward before
the tenth or twelfth year of Uzziah, _i.e._ before 782 or 780, according
to our computation (p. 18, _note_). The canon of the Assyrians agrees
with this in putting the campaign of Bin-nirar to the coast in the year
803 B.C.; and afterwards records the last campaign of the Assyrians to
Damascus before the time of Tiglath Pilesar II. in the year 773 B.C.;
after which time only contests against Hadrach (772-765) and against
Arpad are mentioned (p. 2), which Tiglath Pilesar then resumes in the
year 743 B.C. In Amos the Assyrians are still in the back-ground.

[53] Amos ii. 9-12.

[54] Amos viii. 4; v. 12.

[55] Amos ii. 6, 7.

[56] Amos viii. 6.

[57] Amos vi. 12.

[58] Amos v. 11.

[59] Amos vi. 1-7.

[60] Amos v. 11.

[61] Amos iv. 4, 5.

[62] Amos v. 21-23.

[63] Amos v. 14, 15, 24.

[64] Amos iii. 10, 11; vi. 2.

[65] Amos vi. 14.

[66] Amos iii. 14, 15.

[67] Amos ii. 14-16.

[68] Amos ix. 10.

[69] 2 Kings xv. 8-15.

[70] Zech. x. 2, 3.

[71] King Zachariah, and then Shallum: the third is the opponent of
Menahem who sought to maintain himself in Tipsach (Taanach?).

[72] Zech. xi. 6, 8, 9, 16, 17.

[73] Zech. xi. 1-3.

[74] Zech. ix. 1-6.

[75] Zech. ix. 10, 16.

[76] Hosea i. 4, 5.

[77] Hosea viii. 4; iv. 16; vii. 7; xiii. 11.

[78] Hosea xiii. 4.

[79] Hosea v. 1.

[80] Hosea xiii. 5.

[81] Hosea xi. 1-4.

[82] Hosea x. 1.

[83] Hosea xiii. 2.

[84] Hosea iv. 13.

[85] Hosea ii. 5-8.

[86] Hosea x. 13.

[87] Hosea iv. 2.

[88] Hosea viii. 13.

[89] Hosea vi. 6.

[90] Hosea ii. 9-13; ix. 1.

[91] Hosea viii. 14.

[92] Hosea xii. 2.

[93] Hosea ix. 1-6; v. 13; vii. 11; viii. 9; x. 6; xi. 5; xiii. 15; xiv.
1.

[94] Hosea x. 8.

[95] Hosea xi. 9.

[96] Hosea v. 15.

[97] Hosea ii. 14-17.

[98] Hosea xiv. 2-4.

[99] Hosea xiv. 5-9; ii. 19.

[100] Lists of rulers, 742-740, "during three years he conquered Arpad."

[101] Frag. 6, in G. Smith, p. 274.

[102] Eberhard Schrader, "Jahrb. protest. Theolog." 1876, s. 374.

[103] A different Baalzephon from that on the Red Sea; Exod. xiv. 2, 9.

[104] Schrader, _loc. cit._ s. 375; Rodwell, "Records of the Past," 5,
46; G. Smith, "Disc." p. 277.

[105] 2 Kings xv. 5, 7, 37.

[106] Isa. ii. 7. The moral precepts of Isaiah are collected in the text
without regard to the chronology.

[107] Isa. x. 1, 2.

[108] Isa. v. 23.

[109] Isa. v. 8.

[110] Isa. iii. 14, 15.

[111] Isa. v. 11, 12.

[112] Isa. v. 18-22.

[113] Isa. i. 10-15.

[114] Isa. xxix. 13.

[115] Isa. i. 16, 17.

[116] Isa. v. 4, 5, 3, 14.

[117] Isa. xxix. 14.

[118] Isa. xxxiii. 14-16; i. 18, 19.

[119] Isa. ix. 17-20.

[120] Isa. vii. 4, 6, 16.

[121] Isa. vii. 20.

[122] Isa. viii. 4-8.

[123] 2 Kings xv. 29, 30; xvi. 5-10.

[124] Frag. 10, in G. Smith, "Disc." p. 282; E. Schrader, "K. A. T." s.
151.

[125] Frag. 12, in G. Smith, p. 224, 225; Rodwell, "Records of the
Past," 5, 52; E. Schrader, "K. A. T." s. 145.

[126] Ll. 57-62, in G. Smith, "Disc." p. 262, 263; E. Schrader, _loc.
cit._ s. 147.




CHAPTER III.

THE PHARAOHS OF TANIS, BUBASTIS, AND NAPATA.


At the close of the fourteenth century B.C. Ramses III. had secured
Egypt against the attacks of the Libyans, Syrians, and Arabians. His
successors of the same name remained peacefully within the borders of
their land. Neither tradition nor monuments tell us of their campaigns.
Two or three sepulchres in the rocks of Biban el Moluk and some
inscriptions give us their names, and inform us that these Ramessids
built at the temple of Chon at Thebes, that they maintained the dominion
of Thebes up the Nile as far as Mt. Barkal down to the year 1100
B.C.[127] Of more importance is the fact that under the successors of
Ramses VI., the last rulers of the name of Ramses, who sat on the throne
from the year 1200 to 1074 B.C., the high-priests of Thebes obtained a
position which formed a strong counterpoise to the power of the kings,
and at length threw it into the back-ground, if it did not altogether
remove it. In inscriptions in the temple of Chon, Herhor, the
high-priest at the time of Ramses XIII., receives the title of prince
(_si suten_, king's son) of Cush, a title borne by the viceroys of
Napata since Ramses II. They call him "Commander-in-chief of the army in
Upper and Lower Egypt;" and finally, "Si-Amun" and "Si-Ra," and with
these titles, which were borne by the Pharaohs, Herhor receives also the
symbols of the king. It is also thought that the inscriptions speak of
tribute of the Retennu, _i.e._ the Syrians, which he received.[128] It
may be that Herhor rose to the throne after the death of Ramses XIII.,
or that he reigned during his lifetime, or that he absolutely deposed
him. Pianchi, the son of Herhor, is called in the monuments "High-priest
of Ammon, Prophet of Mut, Commander of the cavalry of the king of Upper
and Lower Egypt;" but the king, whose officer Pianchi was, is not
mentioned. On the other hand, Pinotem, the son of this Pianchi, like
Herhor, bears on the monuments the addition of a divine name "Miamun,"
after the manner of the Pharaohs, and royal symbols. A memorial stone of
Thebes tells us that Mencheper-Ra, general-in-chief of the army of Upper
and Lower Egypt, son of king Miamun Pinotem, marched out in the
twenty-fifth year, _i.e._ in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of
Pinotem, to Patores, _i.e._ Upper Egypt, in order to "restore peace in
the land and punish the enemy." The families of Thebes received him with
songs of joy; on the fourth intercalary day, on the feast of the birth
of Isis, the majesty of Ammon, the king of the gods, was brought forth
in procession; Mencheper-Ra implored the sanction of Ammon, that the
banished--there were myriads of them--might be brought back, and the god
gave his sanction. It seems then that the supremacy of the family of
Herhor met with a violent resistance, and that Pinotem nevertheless
found himself strong enough in the twenty-fifth year of his reign to
publish an act of amnesty. Whether Pinotem's son, Mencheper-Ra, came to
the throne, whether and how the race of the Ramessids became extinct, we
do not know.[129] But the period of the extinction of the Ramessids and
of the priests of Thebes who contended with them for power, or shared it
with them, we may place about the year 1074 B.C.

In Manetho's list the Ramessids are succeeded by a dynasty of seven
princes, who belonged to the canton of Tanis (Zoan). Together they are
said to have reigned over Egypt 114 years. The first prince of this
house, Smendes, must have ascended the throne about 20 years before the
time when the people of Israel raised up Saul to be king. The chronology
of the Hebrews allows us to establish the fact that the last prince of
this house must have come to an end at least ten years before the middle
of the tenth century.[130] From this point (960 B.C.), the period
already mentioned as the length of the dynasty of the Tanites, carries
us back to the year 1074 for the date of the accession of Smendes.

Since the expulsion of the Hyksos the central point of the kingdom had
remained for more than 500 years at Thebes. With the accession of the
Tanites it was removed to the Delta. Henceforth it was never restored to
Upper Egypt or to Thebes. After a reign of 26 years Smendes was
succeeded by Psusennes, who sat on the throne for 46 years (1048-1002
B.C.). If it was Psusennes, who took into his protection the young son
of the king of Edom, who was saved from David and Joab by the servants
of his father, and gave him the sister of his wife in marriage,[131] it
is the daughter of Amenophtis, the fourth prince of this house (998-989
B.C.), which Solomon took to wife, whom he honoured above his other
wives, and for whom he built a special house near his new palace (II.
185). Solomon remained on good terms with the successors of Amenophtis.
Only a few shields have been preserved from the monuments of this
dynasty in the ruins of Tanis; in these we can recognise the name of
Smendes in the form of Si-Mentu, of Psusennes I. in the form Psiuncha,
of Amenophtis in the form Amenemenkam, and lastly of Psusennes II. in
the form Hor Psiuncha.[132]

The last prince of this house, Psusennes II., was succeeded in the year
960 B.C. by Sesonchis, the Ssheshonk of the monuments, the Shishak of
the Hebrews. With him begins a new dynasty, which, according to
Manetho's list, belonged to the canton of Bubastis. In the Western Delta
a considerable part of the population, at any rate since the time of the
shepherd kings, was of a Semitic character. But families belonging to
the nation of the shepherds were not all that remained from those
periods; Semitic elements remained in the language and manners of the
Egyptians, and these certainly increased in importance owing to the
campaigns of the Tuthmosis and Amenophis in Syria, the long settlement
of the Hebrews in this district, the relations of Ramses II. to the
Hittites; lastly, to the trade of the Phenicians, the friendly relation
and lively intercourse which the Tanites maintained since Solomon's time
with the kingdom of Israel. The names of the forefathers and descendants
of Ssheshonk show that he belonged to a Semitic family living in the
canton of Bubastis. His forefathers had risen under the Pharaohs of
Tanis; his grandfather, whose name the grandson bore, had married a lady
of distinction. The offspring of this marriage, Nemrut (Nimrod), was
captain of the body-guard (Mashawasha), and bore the Semitic title,
_Ser a mat_, _i.e._ sovereign; at any rate he is so named by his son
Ssheshonk on a granite block at Abydus, which enumerates the funds
supplied by the son for the libations poured to his father who is buried
here--unless we have rather to recognise in this title as well as in the
addition to it, "prince of princes," titles of distinction subsequently
transferred from the son to the father.[133] In another inscription the
same Ssheshonk calls his predecessor Psusennes II. king of Upper
Egypt;[134] a memorial stone of Selsilis mentions a double accession of
Ssheshonk; the inscription on a statue of the Nile in the British Museum
states that king Hor Psiuncha married his daughter Rakamat to Osorkon,
the son of Ssheshonk.[135] Hence we may assume that Ssheshonk, the son
of Nemrut, became a rival for the throne; that Psusennes II. was perhaps
compelled to retire to Upper Egypt, whither Ssheshonk could not
penetrate; that a compromise took place with Psusennes, the possessor of
the throne, by means of this marriage, which secured the succession to
Ssheshonk and his family; and that Ssheshonk subsequently described his
rebellion as his first accession, and his accession after the death of
Psusennes II. as his second.[136]

However this may be, whether Ssheshonk in the first instance obtained
the power over Lower Egypt only, whether he afterwards lost it, or
whether he did not obtain the supremacy till after the death of Hor
Psiuncha,[137] he took up a different position towards the kingdom of
Judah from that occupied by the dynasty of Tanis since the accession of
Amenophtis. When flying from Solomon, Jeroboam found refuge and
protection with Ssheshonk. When after Solomon's death the ten tribes
made Jeroboam their king, as against Rehoboam, Ssheshonk in the year
B.C. 949 undertook the campaign against Judah which secured Jeroboam; he
confirmed the division, carried away spoil from Judah, and exhibited
Israel in dependence on Egypt. The results of this campaign Ssheshonk
caused to be set forth in the most splendid manner on the walls of the
temple of Karnak, westward of the building which Ramses III. had here
erected in the circuit-wall, (I. 177). The picture displays the
victorious Pharaoh, and the taxed places as bound figures in a long row
(II. 233). Over the row of vanquished places we read that "the good god
(the king) returned in peace, after defeating the nations of the North
and South; that he led home captive nations who had never seen Egypt,
that he spread the terror of his name as far as the four pillars of the
heavens." Ammon says to the king: "My heart is glad, that I have seen
thy victories. I have granted that the nations of the South shall be
defeated and come to thee, and the nations of the North shall be subject
to the greatness of thy name. Their kings throw themselves on the belly,
for they are stricken to the ground in their vallies. I have known the
splendour of thy thoughts; thou hast carried out the work of my temple
at Thebes, the brilliant place, which my heart loves; thou hast begun to
build in Hermonthis and Heliopolis."[138] We see what achievements the
inscriptions of the Pharaohs can make out of a plundering excursion into
the south of Syria: the nations of the North and of the South are
overcome; the terror of Ssheshonk is spread to the pillars of the sky.

Besides this picture of his victories on the outer wall, Ssheshonk
erected a kind of entrance porch to the southern court of the great
temple at Karnak. The inscriptions on the architrave of this porch tell
us that Ssheshonk had given command to enlarge the temple of Ammon; that
he had made the city of Thebes to live again.[139] On a memorial stone
in the quarries of Selsilis, the goddess Mut places the king, "the great
conqueror of all nations," accompanied by his son Aupoth,[140] before
Ammon of Thebes, Ra-Harmachu of Heliopolis, and Ptah of Memphis. The
inscription says: "That is the divine benefactor; Ra wears his shape; he
is the image of Harmachu. Ammon has placed him on the throne, in order
to complete what he had begun, in the occupation of Egypt for the second
time. This is king Ssheshonk; he caused a new quarry to be opened for
the beginning of a structure. Of such a nature is the kindness which he
has shown to his father, Ammon Ra." Then Ssheshonk himself says: "It is
a beautiful thing to work for Ammon. Grant me a long reign for that
which I have done. I have caused a new quarry to be opened for him for
the beginning of a work. The high priest of Ammon has carried it out,
Aupoth the highest captain of the most famous army, the first of all the
warriors of Patores, the son of Ssheshonk."[141] The architect also, who
had to erect the portico, Horemsaf, mentions this task in an inscription
at Selsilis. In the twenty-first year, _i.e._ in the twenty-first year
of the reign,[142] Ssheshonk had commanded him to obtain the best stones
of Selsilis, in order to erect buildings for the king of the gods, and
to surround them with a strong wall.[143]

Ssheshonk was succeeded by his son Osorkon, the husband of the daughter
of Psusennes II., the last king of the preceding dynasty. It is supposed
that in him we may discover the Cushite Serach, who, according to the
Books of Chronicles, invaded the kingdom of Judah in the fifteenth year
of king Asa, _i.e._ in 918 B.C., but was defeated by him at Maresa (II.
233). The monuments of Egypt only mention to us the names of the two
wives of Osorkon. Osorkon was followed by Takeloth, Osorkon II.,
Ssheshonk II., Takeloth II., Ssheshonk III., Pimai, and Ssheshonk IV. No
monuments of these kings have come down to us except memorial stones in
the tombs of the Apis on the plateau of Memphis. These memorials show
that the regulations of Ssheshonk I. to give to one of his sons the
office of high priest at Thebes, and with this office to combine the
command of divisions of the army, and to put other divisions of the army
in the hands of other members of the royal house--regulations obviously
intended to strengthen the power of the throne--were observed by his
successors. We find the sons of his successors as high priests of Thebes
and Memphis, as commanders of the troops of Thebes, Hermopolis, and
Heracleopolis, as "princes (_i.e._ leaders) of the Mashawasha."[144] We
remember the struggles which the earliest successors of Ramses II. had
to carry on against the Libyans, especially against the Mashawasha, or
Maxyians. From the time of Ramses III. the body-guard of the Pharaohs
seems to have consisted mainly of Libyans, especially of Mashawasha; the
warrior caste of Egypt appears to have been chiefly kept up and
supplemented by Libyans. The father of Ssheshonk was, as observed, the
captain of the Mashawasha. Ssheshonk, the son of Osorkon II. (afterwards
Ssheshonk II.), as high priest of Memphis buried in the twenty-third
year of the reign of his father an Apis, who had died in that year.
Takeloth, the son of this Ssheshonk II. (afterwards Takeloth II.), was
high priest of Ammon of Thebes. In the fifteenth year of the reign of
his father a rebellion broke out in the cantons of the South and North.
He fought without ceasing for many years at the side of his father, and
gained victories over the rebels.[145] According to the Apis-stones,
Ssheshonk III. reigned more than 50 years. In the twenty-eighth year of
his reign an Apis was born, which lived 26 years, and was buried in the
second year of king Pimai under the superintendence of Petise, the son
of the high priest of Memphis, Takeloth, and the royal princess
Thisbastir. The successor of this Apis, which was discovered in the same
year of king Pimai, died in the fourth year of Ssheshonk IV., a third
in the eleventh, and a fourth in the thirty-seventh year of the same
reign.[146]

According to Manetho's list, the nine princes of this dynasty of
Bubastis reigned altogether 120 years; but the sum of the reigns,
according to the items in the list, only reaches 116 years. The years of
the reigns given on special occasions, on the monuments mentioned, give
at least 150 years for six alone of these nine princes. If we maintain
the assertion of Manetho, the dynasty of the Bubastites reigned from the
year 960 B.C. to the year 840 B.C.; if we calculate the length of the
rule of this dynasty according to the generations of the princes, then,
even if the length of each generation is taken only at 20 years, they
must at least have reigned 180 years, _i.e._ from 960 to 780 B.C.[147]
That the rule of the Bubastites ended about the year 780 B.C., at any
rate in the minds of the chronographers who have preserved Manetho's
list in the excerpt, follows from the fact that our excerpts put the
celebration of the first Olympian festival in the reign of Petubastis,
the prince who immediately succeeds the Bubastites. We may therefore
assume that the Bubastites reigned over Egypt from the year 960 to about
the year 780 B.C.

The successors of Petubastis of Tanis, whose date thus falls about the
year 775 B.C., are, according to Manetho, Osorkon (the third of this
name), Psammus, and Zet. Diodorus tells us of a Tnephachtus, king of
Egypt, who carried on war with the Arabs. One day, when in the desert,
there was a lack of the means of subsistence, and Tnephachtus after a
day of fasting enjoyed so highly a scanty meal, that he abominated
luxury, and cursed the king who first introduced it. So earnest was he
with this curse that he had it engraved in sacred characters in the
temple of Zeus at Thebes.[148] Plutarch also tells us: On a campaign
against the Arabs the baggage was left behind, and Technactis
(Tnephachtus) gladly satisfied himself with the food which was at hand,
and when he subsequently fell into a deep sleep on the straw, he was so
pleased with this simple mode of life that he cursed Menes who first
seduced the Egyptians from a simple and parsimonious mode of life, and
caused this curse to be engraved on a memorial stone, with the sanction
of the priests.[149] The son of this Tnephachtus is called Bocchoris by
Diodorus and Plutarch; Manetho's list puts a king Bocchoris after Zet,
and describes him as belonging to the district of Sais. The date of
Bocchoris is fixed by the fact that the seventh celebration of the
Olympian games,_ i.e._ the year 752, occurred during his reign.[150] If
Petubastis reigned, as we saw, about the year 775 B.C., and Bocchoris
ascended the throne about 753 B.C., the date of his father Tnephachtus,
who is not mentioned in Manetho's list (he must be meant by the Zet of
the list), will fall in the period between 770 and 753 B.C. We can only
assume that Tnephachtus, in the time of Petubastis or Osorkon III. who
succeeded Petubastis, rebelled against the reigning Pharaoh, and
obtained the power, and that the list of Manetho has passed him over as
the opponent of the legitimate princes. As a fact we shall find that
other usurpers beside Tnephachtus rose up beside and against Petubastis
and Osorkon; that Osorkon was restricted to Bubastis, and as the
inscriptions of Thebes mention Psammus (Psimut) we may further suppose
that he retired from Tanis, where Manetho's list places him, to Upper
Egypt.

The extinction of the military vigour of Egypt under the later
Ramessids, the formation of the body-guard and army of Libyan
mercenaries, bore its natural fruit. The disruption of the state-power,
which thus begun as early as the later Bubastites, led under Petubastis
and Osorkon III. to the complete ruin of the kingdom. The commanders of
the army in the districts, and no doubt other men of great position and
ambition, threw off obedience, made themselves independent, and
supported by their soldiers gained an independent power. Nine hundred
years after the expulsion of the shepherds the ancient kingdom broke up
into a series of separate dominions. A memorial stone discovered in the
remains of Napata, near Mount Barkal, displays to us quite a different
picture of the condition of Egypt about the middle of the eighth century
from that which we should imagine when we read in Manetho an apparently
unbroken succession of Pharaohs. On that stone Osorkon is indeed
mentioned, but only as king of the city of Bubastis. Beside him we find
Petisi of Athribis (west of Bubastis), Anchor of Sesennu (Hermopolis
minor), Nimrod (Nemrut) of Sesennu (Hermopolis major, now Ashmunein),
Ssheshonk of Busiris, Pefabast of Chnensu (Heraclea major), Pithenef of
Pisabtu; fourteen or fifteen princes, and among them Tafnecht
(Tnephachtus) of Sais. It is clear from this that Petubastis and Osorkon
were not able to maintain the royal authority; that Osorkon was limited
to Bubastis; the chiefs of the rest of the land stood beside him with
equal right and equal power. The same memorial teaches us that
Tnephachtus of Sais gained Memphis; that he undertook to subjugate the
remaining princes to his supremacy. He succeeded in forcing king
Osorkon and the chiefs of Upper Egypt into obedience; they recognised in
him their superior; and he attempted to make even the princes of Upper
Egypt, _i.e._ the Begs of the Mamelukes in that region, his vassals.

The Amenemha and Sesurtesen had once carried the southern border of
Egypt to Semne and Kumne. After them the Tuthmosis and Amenophis forced
their way as far as Mount Barkal; Lower as well as Upper Nubia became a
province of Egypt. The Ramessids had maintained this province, and
governed it by viceroys. Amenophis III. and Ramses II. filled Nubia as
far as Mount Barkal with their temples; thus the worship observed in
Egypt became dominant in Nubia also, especially the worship of the god
Ammon, whom Upper Egypt and the Pharaohs of Thebes regarded as the
highest deity. With the religious worship, and the government of
Egyptian magistrates, the language, alphabet, and manners of Egypt
became current in Nubia, although the people retained their ancient
tongue. After a continuance of 500 years, when the Egyptian power began
to sink under the later Ramessids, and the high priests of Ammon at
Thebes rose against them,--before the year 1100 B.C. the supremacy of
Egypt over the South became extinguished. The high priest Herhor is the
last who bears the title of "King's son of Cush;" under the Tanites,
Smendes and his successors, the monuments no longer mention any viceroy
of Cush.[151] We may, therefore, assume that Nubia was an independent
state from the year 1100 B.C. onwards. Yet the long continuance of the
Egyptian rule had caused the style and civilisation of Egypt to strike
firm roots here. The city, which was adorned by Amenophis III. and
Ramses II. with splendid buildings; the Neb (Napata) of the
hieroglyphics, the Merua or Berua of the native language, was the seat
of the princes of the new state, in which, before as after, the style,
worship, and writing of Egypt was predominant; the language also, which
the new monarchy used in its documents, was the language of Egypt. The
name of the first independent ruler of Napata, the king of Ethiopia, as
the Greeks call him, whom we know, is mentioned in the memorial stone
already spoken of. The name and attribute are Egyptian: Pianchi
Miamun.[152] In the twenty-first year of his reign, in the month Thot,
so the memorial tells us, it was announced to king Pianchi that
Tnephachtus of Sais and Memphis had possessed himself of the whole of
the land of the West. "The princes and lords of the cities are like dogs
before his feet. All princes who recognise his power, these he allows to
remain, each in his own canton, as lords and princes of the cities." The
princes in Upper Egypt who were not yet subject to Tafnecht, sent to
Pianchi "messages continually, whether he also would wish to know
nothing of the land of the South," _i.e._ whether he also was inclined
to abandon Upper Egypt to Tafnecht.

The condition of Egypt was thus inviting enough to induce a power,
strongly established in the South, to extend its dominion to the North,
at least over Upper Egypt. Upper Egypt was naturally from an ancient
period in closer relation to Nubia and Napata than Lower Egypt. The
removal of the residence and centre of the kingdom to Lower Egypt at the
time of the Tanites and Bubastites must have contributed to awaken anew
the old opposition between the upper and lower land: and in its turn,
when Tafnecht had got the upper hand in Lower Egypt, and forced his way
to Upper Egypt, this opposition strengthened the wish to seek support
and protection on the upper Nile, before submitting to a Saite, a prince
of Lower Egypt.

King Pianchi sent his army to aid the princes of Upper Egypt. According
to the memorial stone Tafnecht, who with his vassals awaited the
Ethiopians at Chnensu (Heracleopolis major), was defeated. The
Ethiopians then turned upon Ashmunein, which was defended against them
by its prince, Nemrut. Here, however, as the stone admits, they suffered
a severe defeat. At the beginning of the next year, Pianchi himself set
forth, celebrated the festival of Ammon at Thebes, commenced the regular
siege of Ashmunein by throwing up a wall of circumvallation, and then
for three days bombarded the city. Then Nemrut besought Pianchi to
receive him among his servants and accept his tribute. Pianchi marched
into the city, sacrificed to the god and lord of the city, "to his
father Thot," bulls, calves, and birds; and the people of Ashmunein
sang: "Beautiful is the Horus, who dwells in his city, the son of Ra,
Pianchi; and Pianchi repaired to the house of king Nemrut, to his
treasury and the house of his possessions." When Nemrut had surrendered
to Pianchi, Pefabast of Chnensu also appeared with gifts, with gold,
silver, precious stones, and horses, threw himself on the ground before
Pianchi, and said: "Hail to thee, Horus, mighty Bull! I am sunken in
darkness; give clearness to my countenance; I will be a servant together
with my subjects, who will bring presents." When four other cities had
opened their gates, Pianchi appeared with his ships before Memphis, and
promised to spare the inhabitants of the city: "the children should not
weep" if they opened the gates to him; he would merely sacrifice to Ptah
and the gods of Memphis. Tafnecht threw 8000 of his warriors into the
city. Yet Pianchi succeeded in taking the city from the harbour in open
battle; "many were slain, many captured alive;" Pianchi caused the
temples to be protected; purified himself, and offered a great sacrifice
"to his father Ptah." Then Aupoth and all the princes of Lower Egypt
submitted, and Pianchi marched to On (Heliopolis); and on the height
near On, in the sight of Ra at his rising, he offered a great sacrifice,
and went into the temple to behold the god in the Benben chamber. "He
was alone; he undid the bars, and opened the doors, and beheld his
father Ra, and the morning barque of Ra, and the evening barque of Tum.
Then he closed the doors and sealed them." After this, Osorkon (of
Bubastis) and Petise (of Athribis) submitted. Tafnecht himself sent a
messenger to Pianchi; he could not stand before his fire; Pianchi may
receive his possessions for his treasury. Pianchi on his part sent the
"leader of the prayers" and his chief captain, and Tafnecht took the
oath: "he would not transgress Pianchi's commands, nor disregard his
words; he would do no harm to any prince against his will; he would do
according to the words of Pianchi." Then the ships were laden with
silver, gold, copper, and other good things of Lower Egypt, and Pianchi
went up the stream, and the dwellers on the bank sang: "O royal
conqueror, thou hast come, and hast smitten Lower Egypt; thou makest the
men to be women. Thy work will continue, thou king and friend of
Thebes."[153]

This campaign of Pianchi from Napata, the first attempt of a ruler of
Ethiopia to possess himself of Egypt, must be placed about the year 760
B.C.[154] We can hardly contest the successes which the memorial stone
ascribes to Pianchi. Pianchi as a fact took Chnensu and Memphis; he
reached Heliopolis; most of the vassals of Tnephachtus paid homage to
him. But Pianchi's own narrative does not maintain that he took Sais,
and that Tnephachtus appeared before him. He makes a treaty with
Tnephachtus; he is contented that Tnephachtus recognises his supremacy,
and at once turns back to Ethiopia with the presents or tribute of the
vassals of Tnephachtus. From this it follows that Tnephachtus maintained
the Lower Delta; that Pianchi either made no vigorous attempt to conquer
this district, or was unable to conquer it; that he did not believe that
he could maintain his position permanently in Egypt, and therefore was
content with a recognition of his supremacy. In any case, after
Pianchi's retirement, Tnephachtus re-established his power over the
princes of these districts; he must even have extended it further to the
south, than was the case before Pianchi's campaign, if, as Diodorus
states, he set up inscriptions in the temple of Zeus, _i.e._ of Ammon,
at Thebes, and could bequeath the sovereignty over Egypt to his son. The
position which Manetho's list and the accounts of Western nations give
to his son Bocchoris, is in favour of the assertion, that Tnephachtus
succeeded in subjugating all Egypt to his power. It is easily
conceivable that to such a vigorous and indomitable warrior the
ceremonial and the splendour of the Pharaohs' table and kitchen, the
royal bed-chambers and couches, were highly distasteful.

Of Bocchoris, the son of Tnephachtus, "the wise, the celebrated in
song," who succeeded his father in the year 753 B.C., Athenæus tells us
that he lived as simply as his father.[155] Diodorus narrates that he
was of a very weak body, but surpassed all his forefathers in acuteness
of mind: his decisions were so excellent that many were quoted even in
his day. The Egyptians reckoned the wise Bocchoris as their fourth
law-giver; he founded the laws of the monarchy, and from him proceeded
the rules about debt and contract.[156] Any one who borrowed money
without a written contract was to be free of the debt if he swore that
he owed nothing; any one who advanced money on a written document could
not receive back more than the capital and an equal value in interest.
Only the property, not the person, of the debtor could be claimed by the
creditor.[157] A decision of Bocchoris is preserved in Plutarch. An
Egyptian youth was seized with love for the courtezan Thonis, who
demanded a great sum of money. Then he dreamt that he had enjoyed her
love, and his desire ceased; but she claimed the hire agreed upon before
a court of law. When Bocchoris heard the plaint he ordered the defendant
to put the sum of money demanded into a jar, to take this in his hand,
and carry it backwards and forwards. The courtezan was to cling to the
shadow: fancy was the shadow of reality.[158] In another passage
Plutarch narrates that when Bocchoris was in an angry mood, Isis sent
him an adder, that he might wind it round his head, and when
overshadowed by it, give just judgment; an anecdote which obviously
contains the explanation given by the Greeks of the Uræus-diadem of the
Pharaohs; though the connection of the story with Bocchoris speaks for
his fame as a judge, a fame which he enjoyed among the Greeks, even at
the time of Alexander, on the ground of Egyptian tradition. All these
statements show that the "much sung" Bocchoris[159] was in the
recollection of the Egyptians a ruler who again restored the royal
power, fixed its conditions and preserved them by his judicial
decisions; who brought about order and justice in all the transactions
of life during a period of disturbance and confusion. This description
is not belied by the statement which is also made, that he was covetous
of money.[160] The crown was certainly not in a position to dispense
with means, when mercenaries had become of such prime importance in
Egypt.

We know nothing of any deeds of Bocchoris in war. We only find that he
looked inactively on the great change which took place in Syria in the
last decade of his reign. When Assyria planted her foot ever more firmly
in Syria (p. 38), the eyes of Israel were directed to Egypt. When Gaza,
the most southern fortress of Palestine, fell into the hands of the
Egyptians, and the prince sought protection in Egypt (p. 48), we hear
nothing of any arrangements of Bocchoris. No doubt he found himself
threatened by a neighbour nearer and more dangerous. There are no
monuments of Bocchoris in existence, with the exception of the
sarcophagus of an Apis, which stood in the same chamber in which was
placed the Apis which died in the thirty-seventh year of Ssheshonk IV.
The name of the king is here Bokenranef.[161] This burial of the sacred
bull of Memphis in the traditional manner contradicts the narratives of
the Western writers, that Bocchoris did not observe the prescripts of
religion, and caused the sacred white bull of Ra at Heliopolis to fight
against a wild bull, a proceeding which caused a rebellion among the
Egyptians.[162] Statements of this kind, like the stories of portents,
which happened in his time,--that a goat spoke, that a lamb was born
with eight feet, two tails, two heads, and two horns, and
spoke,[163]--are intended no doubt to supply a motive for and prepare
the blow which fell upon Egypt and Bocchoris, and which the king's
wisdom and justice could not prevent.

What Pianchi was unable to carry out was accomplished by his second
successor, Sabakon.[164] From the books of Manetho nothing has been
preserved beyond the observation, that Sabakon the Ethiopian took
Bocchoris prisoner in war, and caused him to be burnt alive; Herodotus
tells us that Sabakon, the king of the Ethiopians, marched through Egypt
with a mighty army of his people, and the king of Egypt (Herodotus calls
him Anysis) fled into the marshes. Sabakon was a mild ruler, and did not
punish any Egyptian with death. Those who had committed an offence, he
condemned to raise the dams which Sesostris had caused to be thrown up
round the cities, according to the measure of the offence, and thus the
cities of Egypt became far higher; "and highest of all, in my opinion,"
Herodotus adds, "was the city of Bubastis."[165] "Though by birth an
Ethiopian," says Diodorus of Sabakon, "he surpassed his predecessors in
piety and gentleness. Of this it is sufficient proof that he did away
with the severest penalty, the penalty of death, and caused those who
were condemned to death to perform task-work in chains in the cities,
since he was of opinion that the reduction of the punishment would not
only be an advantage to the condemned persons, but also bring great
advantage to the cities." By these task-labourers he caused many dams to
be raised, and many needful canals to be cut.[166] With the gentleness
of Sabakon, thus praised by Herodotus and Diodorus, the statement of
Manetho, that he burnt Bocchoris alive, and the statement of Herodotus,
that he put to death Necho of Sais, do not very well agree.

The last Bubastites, Petubastis and Osorkon, had not been able to
maintain the power of the crown against the lords of the districts, and
the brave and skilful attempt to restore the power of the Pharaohs made
by Tnephachtus and Bocchoris was wrecked. After Bocchoris succumbed to
the Ethiopians in the year 730 B.C.[167] Egypt obeyed a foreign ruler.
The king of Napata was also the Pharaoh of Egypt; Egypt and Meroe were
united. The chief importance of the change thus accomplished lay in the
fact that the valley of the Nile, from the mouths as far as Dongola,
was united into one state; that the warlike power of Egypt, which had
become extinct under the later Ramessids, and then was replaced by
Libyan mercenaries to the ruin of Egypt, was now replaced by the unspent
vigour of the Ethiopians; and the combination of the latter with the
rich means and resources of Egypt availed to strengthen the country
considerably, and restore her to her previous position. For the internal
condition of Egypt the new sovereignty brought hardly any other change
than this, that the rulers now found a strong point of support in their
own land. The dynasties which, so far as we can see, Tnephachtus and
Bocchoris overcame or removed, we find again at the head of their
districts under the Ethiopians. It is possible that oppressed or
expelled families among these invited or supported Sabakon's invasion of
Egypt, just as in the preceding generation the princes of Upper Egypt
summoned Pianchi to support them against the father of Bocchoris. That
sovereigns and hereditary lords were at the head of the districts of
Egypt under Sabaka and his successors of Meroe is beyond a doubt. Thus
the rule of Sabakon and his Ethiopian successors might appear as a
restoration of the old state of affairs in contrast to the innovations
of Tnephachtus and Bocchoris, and the more so, as these rulers jealously
adopted the national worship. We saw how earnest Pianchi was in visiting
the temples of Egypt; how he offered sacrifice to his father Thot, his
father Ptah, his father Ra, and saw the last in his shrine at
Heliopolis; the memorial stone even assures us that of the princes who
submitted to him he allowed those only to come into his presence at that
time who had eaten no fish, _i.e._ who strictly observed the rules of
purification. It was the reverence of the priests, the participation in
the worship, the correct behaviour, in which Sabakon and his Ethiopian
successors come forward as genuine followers of the Pharaohs, which
appear to have won for Sabakon--who is to the Greeks the representative
of the Ethiopian dynasty--that reputation for gentleness and justice
which Herodotus and Diodorus repeat from the tradition of the Egyptians.
At the temples at Memphis,[168] at Luxor, and Karnak, Sabakon undertook
works of restoration. His name and title here are Raneferka Shabaka. On
the pillars of the main gateway at Karnak the goddess Hathor embraces
him; the inscription on this gate describes him as "the good god, the
giver of life for ever, like the sun," and declares that he has received
the tribute of the negroes, and the tribute of the Chalu, _i.e._ the
inhabitants of Palestine. How the latter statement is to be explained
will become clear afterwards; we shall see that Sabakon had much better
reason to be silent about the events in Syria than to boast of them.

Sabakon died in the year 717 B.C.,[169] and left the empire over Napata
and Egypt to his own son Sebichus, as Manetho calls him; Shabataka as
the name is given on monuments at Memphis.[170] His successor was
Tirhaka, the Taharka of the monuments. The list of Manetho describes him
as not being the son of his predecessor. We do not know in what way he
came to the throne of Egypt; it appears that he got the crown by force;
we can only establish the fact that he obtained the sovereign power in
the year 703 B.C.[171] Considerable relics of his buildings remain in
his native land at Napata. Among them are especially prominent the ruins
of a great temple, just as all the buildings there are wholly in
Egyptian style.[172] In Egypt Tirhaka's name occurs frequently on the
walls of Karnak. On the portals of the temple of Medinet Habu, we see
him before the face of Ammon brandishing his war-club over ten bearded
forms. The inscription tells us that he overcame the black land (Kemi,
Egypt), and the red land; on a memorial stone of Dongola the names of
the regions and tribes are given, which he subjugated there in the
distant south; names quite unknown and inexplicable to us.[173] With
Megasthenes it is the Ethiopian Tearkon (Tirhaka), a mighty warrior, who
subjugated Libya, advanced as far as the Pillars of Hercules, and even
crossed into Europe.[174] We shall see that as soon as he ascended the
throne his attention was occupied in the East, and that he fought with
success in Syria at this time. What he may have afterwards accomplished
against the negroes, and perhaps against tribes of Libya, in almost
thirty years we cannot ascertain accurately. The severest struggles
awaited him in the last decade of his reign, in which a mighty opponent
rose up against him, with whom he wrestled stubbornly but without
success.

FOOTNOTES:

[127] Vol. i. 179.

[128] Lepsius, "Abh. Berl. Akad." 1856, s. 258; Brugsch, "Hist. of
Egypt," II. p. 193.

[129] It ends in Brugsch, _loc. cit._ II. 198, with Ramses XVI.

[130] II. 229, _note_.

[131] II. 155.

[132] Maspero reads Psiuncha; Brugsch, Pisebkhan.

[133] In the unpublished inscription of Abydus in Brugsch, "Hist. of
Egypt," II. p. 199.

[134] Brugsch, _loc. cit._ II. p. 204.

[135] According to Brugsch, Rakamat, or Karamat, was not the wife of
Osorkon, but of Ssheshonk, _loc. cit._, p. 204.

[136] To make Pithut, Ssheshonk, Nemrut, and Ssheshonk II., as well as
Panrechnes or Pallash-Nisu, kings of Assyria, and place a conquest of
Egypt by Assyria at the end of the twenty-first dynasty (Brugsch, "Hist.
of Egypt," II. p. 198), because Nemrut or Nemaroth is called on the
stone of Abydus "_Ser a mat_," and "prince of princes," appears to me
absolutely impossible. How could one of the kings of Asshur, who, in the
service of Asshur, Samas, and Bin, overthrew the nations, allow himself
to be buried near Osiris of Abydus?--how could his son perform Egyptian
funeral rites for him there? The Books of the Hebrews must have
preserved some knowledge of a conquest of Egypt in the time of David and
Solomon, in the first half of the tenth century--how could the armies of
Assyria have come to Egypt except through Syria? Tiglath Pilesar I.,
about 1100 B.C., touched northern Syria merely in passing; not till the
ninth century did Assurnasirpal again come as far as Mount Amanus and
the coast of the Phenicians, and Shalmanesar as far as Damascus. A
hundred years later Tiglath Pilesar II. first planted a firm foot in
Syria. The Semitic (?) character of the names of the princes of the
twenty-second dynasty, who are also distinguished as eager worshippers
of the gods of Egypt, as well as the Semitic nationality of the six or
eight servants, who, according to the stone of Abydus, were allotted to
the plots of ground for the funeral service of Nemaroth at Abydus, are
sufficiently explained by what we know of the mingling of the population
in the Western Delta, and of other Semitic influence in Egypt.

[137] It ought perhaps to be observed that Shishak (1 Kings xi. 40), is
not called Pharaoh, but Melek Mizraim.

[138] Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," p. 227.

[139] Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," p. 222.

[140] Others read Shuput.

[141] Brugsch, "Hist. of Egypt," II. 212.

[142] According to Manetho's list, Sesonchis reigned 21 years.

[143] Brugsch, _loc. cit._ II. p. 198.

[144] _Sera en mashush._

[145] Chabas, "Mélanges," Ser. 2, pp. 73-107.

[146] Lepsius, "Abh. Berl. Akad. Phil. Hist. Klasse," 1856, s. 264.
Mariette, "Bull. Archéolog. Athen. Franc." 1855, pp. 93, 98-100.

[147] Cp. Von Gutschmid, "Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients," s.
104, _seqq._

[148] Diod. 1, 45.

[149] Plut. "de Isid." c. 8; cf. Athenæus, p. 418.

[150] Joseph. "c. Apionem," 2, 2, 6.

[151] Mariette, "Revue Archéolog." 1865, 12, 178.

[152] Pianchi is also called the son of the high priest Herhor (p. 51).
But this coincidence does not compel us to explain the kings of Napata
as descendants of that Herhor who lived 400 years before Pianchi of
Napata.

[153] De Rougé, "Mémoire sur une inscript. de Piankhi;" Brugsch, "Hist.
of Egypt," I. 129; II. 243, 247.

[154] I have shown above that Petubastis came to the throne about the
year 775 B.C., and Bocchoris, the son of Tnephachtus, about 753 B.C.;
Tnephachtus, therefore, must be placed in the time between 770-753 B.C.
Thus the time of the campaign of Pianchi is fixed. To throw back the
campaign nearly 100 years is not possible, owing to the mention of
Osorkon, the names of Nemrut, Ssheshonk, Petise, which belong to the
house of the Bubastites, and the date of Tnephachtus. If the lists of
Assurbanipal mention a Ssheshonk of Busiris, a Tafnecht--not of Sais,
but of Buni or Bunubu; a Pefabast, not of Chnensu but of Zoan--the
reappearance of these names can be explained by the fact that these
dynastic families have also been preserved among the Ethiopians (p. 72).

[155] Athenæus, p. 418; Diod. 1, 74.

[156] Diod. 1, 94.

[157] Diod. 1, 79.

[158] Plut. "Demetr." c. 27.

[159] Ælian. "Hist. An." 12, 3.

[160] Diod. 1, 94.

[161] Mariette, "Bab. Athen. Franc." p. 58-62.

[162] Ælian. "Hist. An." 11, 11.

[163] Ælian. _loc. cit._ 12, 3.

[164] De Rougé, "Mélanges d'Archéol." 1, 37, concludes from the
monuments of Tirhaka and the statue of Ameniritis, that Kashta succeeded
Pianchi, that Sabakon and the others are children of Kashta (?)
According to Brugsch the -ka in Shabaka and Shabataka is the attached
article of the Barabra language. Hence it is explained how Saba(ka) can
become Seveh among the Hebrews, or Sabhi among the Assyrians. Cf.
Oppert. "Mémoire sur les rapports de l'Egypte et de l'Assyrie," p.
12-14.

[165] Herod. 2, 137-141.

[166] Diod. 1, 45, 65.

[167] I have already been able to fix the end of the Ramessids, the date
of the Tanites and Bubastites, by the date of the accession of Shishak
in the Hebrew reckoning; the length of the dynasty of the Tanites in
Manetho; and the length of the Bubastites as corrected by the monuments,
and the synchronism of the first Olympiad for Petubastis. For the period
from the end of the Bubastites to the accession of Sabakon, the
important points are the seventh Olympiad for Bocchoris, and the
sarcophagus of the Apis of Bokenranef. If Bocchoris came to the throne
in the year 753 B.C., Ssheshonk IV. died in the year 780 B.C.; if this
was the thirty-seventh or thirty-eighth of his reign, the successor of
the Apis buried in the thirty-seventh year of Ssheshonk might certainly
live to the year 748, the sixth year of Bocchoris according to my
reckoning. It is decisive for Sabakon's accession in Egypt that Hoshea
of Israel undoubtedly ascended the throne in 734 B.C. (p. 16, note; 48).
Shalmanesar IV. of Assyria marched against Israel in the year 726 B.C.,
when he had discovered the conspiracy of Hoshea with Seveh (Sabakon, p.
69). Hoshea must, therefore, have negotiated with Seveh in 727 B.C. at
the latest, and probably earlier. Sabakon must have been previously
established on the throne of Egypt. He cannot, therefore, have conquered
Egypt later than 730 B.C. Bocchoris therefore reigned 23 years (753-730
B.C.); the time which Manetho allots to Bocchoris, six years, is too
short for the completion of his legislation and the attainment of that
fame as a legislator which he left behind him, according to the account
of the Greeks. That Tirhaka reigned over Meroe and Egypt in the year 702
at the latest, is proved by the battle of Eltekeh, which was fought in
701 B.C. (p. 125). If Seveh, who negotiated with Hoshea, is supposed to
be Sabataka, the conquest of Egypt by Sabakon must be put in the year
739. The Apis discovered in the twenty-sixth year of Tirhaka and buried
in the twentieth year of Psammetichus, shows that according to the
chronology of that period, Psammetichus was regarded as the immediate
successor of Tirhaka. According to the reign of 54 years allotted to him
by Herodotus and Manetho, Psammetichus begins in 664 B.C., since his
death is fixed with certainty in 610 B.C. If Tirhaka's reign over Egypt
began in the year 703 B.C., the year 678 would be the twenty-sixth of
his reign; the Apis lived down to the twentieth year of the reign of
Psammetichus, _i.e._ down to the year 645 B.C.--consequently 30 years,
an age (the number on the inscription is illegible), which even a less
carefully tended bull might attain. Tirhaka reigned from 703 to 664
B.C., _i.e._ 39 years. If the lists of Manetho, according to our
excerpts, allow him only 18 years (Syncellus gives 20), this is
obviously due to the fact that the reigns of Stephinates, Nechepsus, and
Necho, who ought to stand side by side with Tirhaka, with seven, six,
and eight years, _i.e._ with 21 years in all, are deducted from the
reign of Tirhaka, in order to place these three princes after him. To
the predecessors of Tirhaka, Sabakon and Sebichus, Manetho allows eight
and fourteen years. The monuments of Egypt show that Sabakon reigned at
least 12 years; Sabakon must, therefore, according to these dates, have
begun to reign in Egypt not later than 729 B.C. (664 + 39 + 26). The
Assyrian monuments show that Sabakon fought with Sargon at Raphia in the
year 720 B.C., and his successor negotiated with him; that Tirhaka
fought with Sennacherib in Syria in 701 B.C., and that he was at war
with Assurbanipal about the year 666 B.C.

[168] Goodwin in Chabas, "Mélanges," 1, 249 ff.

[169] Among the Hebrews, the king with whom Hoshea of Israel (734-722
B.C.), negotiates is called Seveh (So). Sargon's inscriptions name the
opponent against whom he fought at Raphia in the year 720 B.C. "Sabhi,
Sar of the land of Muzur," and also "Sabhi Siltannu of Muzur." The
inscription of Karnak gives Sabakon's (Shabaka's) twelfth year; we must,
therefore, although Manetho's list allows him only eight years, assume
that Sabakon was the opponent of Sargon at Raphia, as stated in a
preceding note. If Sabakon died immediately after his twelfth year, he
died in 717 B.C. The ruler of Egypt who pays tribute to Sargon in the
year 716, is repeatedly called by the Assyrian inscriptions, "Pirhu
(Pharaoh), Sar of Muzur." So in the cylinder of G. Smith ("Disc." p.
295), the ruler of Egypt, who unites with Ashdod in the year 711 B.C.,
is called "Pirhu Sar of Muzur;" finally, the prince who delivers up
Yaman, when it has been mentioned that Yaman fled beyond Egypt into the
border land of Miluhhi, is called by Sargon "Sar Miluhhi." The Pharaoh,
Sar Muzur, whom we find on the throne of Egypt in 716 to 711 B.C., and
the Sar Miluhhi, who gives up Yaman, can only be Shabataka-Sebichus, the
successor of Sabakon.

[170] Mariette, "Monuments," pl. 29 e.

[171] Not much weight could be laid on the observation in the Palatine
codex of Hieronymus (Jerome); Tarachus (ab Æthiopia duxit exercitum),
Sebico interfecto Ægyptiis regnavit annis xx.; but in the inscription of
Medinet Habu Tirhaka calls himself conqueror of Kemi, _i.e._ of Egypt.

[172] Lepsius, "Briefe," s. 239, 275.

[173] Brugsch, "Geogr." 1, 163.

[174] Strabo, p. 61, 686, 687. Büdinger's view ("Ægypt. Forschung.
Herodots," 2, 32), that we must recognise Tirhaka in the Etearchus of
Herodotus might be adopted if the narrative did not too definitely point
out travelling Cyrenæans as the source; and the founding of Cyrene
cannot be carried back to the time of Tirhaka.




CHAPTER IV.

THE FIRST COLLISION OF ASSYRIA AND EGYPT.


When Tiglath Pilesar ascended the throne of Assyria, he first compelled
Babylonia to recognise his supremacy; after that he advanced into the
table land of Iran, as far as Arachosia, and there at the least
maintained his supremacy far and wide over the Medes. To the North he
fought against Nairi and Urarti, against Kummukh and Tubal (743 B.C.);
even the union into which the distressed princes of that region entered
against him did not protect them; after a second subjugation the Tubal,
_i.e._ the Tibarenes, received a prince from the hand of Tiglath Pilesar
(735 B.C.). Meanwhile he had already overthrown Arpad in the West, which
had resisted his predecessors so vigorously in a struggle which
continued for three years; received tribute from Karchemish, Damascus,
and Tyre; and placed the region of Amanus, Lebanon, Hadrach, and several
districts of Hamath under Assyrian viceroys (742-740 B.C.). Two years
afterwards the princes of Cilicia, of Hamath, of Byblus, Menahem king of
Israel, and Zabibieh, the queen of the Arabs, submitted (738 B.C.). The
appeal of Ahaz for help brought him again into Syria; after a struggle
of three years Damascus was overthrown, Israel deprived of a portion of
her population, and given to another prince, the cities of the
Philistines conquered, the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites
overthrown, and at length Samsieh, the queen of the Arabs, was defeated
(734-732 B.C.). This complete subjugation of Syria was followed by new
conflicts on the lower Euphrates. Nabu-sabzi and Kinziru were
overpowered; Kinziru became a vassal of Babylon, and when Merodach
Baladan paid homage at Sapiya, the dominion of Tiglath Pilesar extended
to the shore of the Persian Gulf (731 B.C.). He now called himself king
of Asshur and Babel, and in the last years of his reign received the
tribute of tribes from the south of Arabia. After an eventful reign of
18 years which gained for Assyria the supremacy over Media, Syria, and
Babylonia, Tiglath Pilesar died in the year 727 B.C.

His successor was Shalmanesar IV. No inscriptions have been preserved
from the short reign of this king. The astronomical canon represents a
change in the succession of Babylon at the death of Tiglath Pilesar; in
the place of the joint reign of Chinzirus and Polus, in which we
believed that we might recognise the supremacy of Tiglath Pilesar,
obscurely given in Babylonian tradition under the name Polus (Phul), and
the vassal-reign of Kinziru (p. 9), comes the reign of Elulæus in the
year 726 B.C. That Chinzirus and Polus died in the same year, that
Kinziru died in the same year as Tiglath Pilesar, would be remarkable,
but by no means impossible. It is more probable that Shalmanesar found
it advisable to make a change in the vassal king at Babylon, and that
after his accession he placed Elulæus (Illuhillu) there as a vassal.
Shalmanesar's attention was soon occupied in another direction.

Saved by the arms of Assyria from the overpowering advance of the
Damascenes and Israelites, the Philistines and Edomites, Ahaz, king of
Judah, had paid homage to Tiglath Pilesar at Damascus. "When Ahaz saw
the altar which was at Damascus," so we are told by the Books of Kings,
"he sent a pattern of it to Uriah the priest, and Uriah built the altar
after this pattern, and when Ahaz came from Damascus he sacrificed on
this altar, and offered burnt offerings and meat offerings, and poured
out his drink offering, and sprinkled the blood of his thank offering on
the altar. The iron altar, which stood before Jehovah, he removed, and
the iron sea he took from the oxen and placed it on the pavement (II.
184). And Ahaz bade Uriah offer the burnt offering in the morning, and
the meat offering in the evening, and the burnt and meat offering of the
king, and all the sacrifices of the whole people of the land, on the new
altar, and the king's entry he turned to the house of Jehovah for the
king of Assyria."[175] According to this Ahaz, in order to prove his
submission to his sovereign, altered the altar and arrangements of the
temple at Jerusalem after the pattern of an altar on which he had seen
Tiglath Pilesar sacrifice to his gods at Damascus, and the ritual there
observed.[176] The high priest Uriah submitted. He not only allowed the
king to sacrifice in person, against which the priesthood had contended
in the case of Uzziah, but he altered the service of the temple
according to the wishes of the king.

Judah was laid waste through her length and breadth. The Damascenes and
the Israelites, the Philistines and the Edomites, had got the whole land
into their power as far as the metropolis. Even from this heavy blow
Judah would learn nothing. Instead of turning thankfully to Jehovah for
rescue from such distress, the altars of the temples were altered after
an Assyrian pattern. Isaiah saw this movement with the deepest
indignation. "Your country is desolate; your cities are burned with
fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence. And the daughter
of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of
cucumbers. Had not Jehovah left to us a small remnant, we had been as
Sodom and Gomorrah. From the sole of the foot to the head there is no
soundness in us, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; they have
not been pressed out, nor bound up, nor mollified with ointment. Why
should ye be stricken any more, and revolt any more? They are
replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and
agree with the children of strangers. The ox knoweth his owner, and the
ass his master's crib, but Israel knows him not."[177]

Israel suffered still more than Judah by the carrying away of the
population of the northern and eastern districts, the land of Nephtali,
and the land of Gilead. Hoshea reigned over the remainder from the year
734 (p. 48). According to the Books of Kings he set on foot a
conspiracy, slew Pekah, and became king in his place; according to the
inscriptions of Tiglath Pilesar, Tiglath made him king over Israel.
These statements are not contradictory. Pekah had been in league with
Rezin of Damascus, the opponent of Assyria and Judah: why should not
Tiglath Pilesar recognise and establish as king of Israel the man who
had removed the opponent of Assyria?[178] Hoshea sent his tribute yearly
to the king of Assyria.[179] But when the dreaded warrior prince of
Asshur--when Tiglath Pilesar died, there awoke in the Philistines, the
Phenicians, and above all in Eulæus, king of Tyre, and Hoshea, king of
Israel, the hope of withdrawing themselves from the yoke of Assyria. If
Hoshea had risen as a partisan of Assyria, he determined now that he was
in possession of the throne to break loose from that empire. The hope of
liberation rested not only on the fact that Tiglath Pilesar was no more;
it received a still stronger point of support in the change which had
taken place in Egypt in the last years of Tiglath Pilesar. Menahem of
Israel had already thought of securing the assistance of Egypt before he
sent his tribute to Assyria (p. 38), and the same thought must have
occurred to Uzziah in his last years. Hanno of Gaza had taken refuge in
Egypt from Tiglath Pilesar (p. 48). The prudent Bocchoris had left, or
been compelled to leave, Syria untouched. But since his reign Sabakon
had united the forces of Dongola, Nubia, and Egypt into a strong power.
When Tiglath Pilesar had extended the dominion of Assyria as far as Gaza
and Elath, and a victorious aggressive power of great strength stood on
the borders of Egypt, the attack of Assyria might be expected there. A
far-seeing ruler of Egypt, secure of his military power, must endeavour
to anticipate this attack; he must prevent it by uniting the elements of
resistance existing in Syria. If the issue were favourable, the dominion
of Assyria over Syria would thus be removed; in any case Egypt would
have allies in Syria for the war against Assyria. "Hoshea sent
messengers to Seveh (Sabakon) king of Egypt," so the Hebrews tell us,
"and brought the king of Assyria no present more as formerly." It is
this attempt to gain assistance, and probably the presents which
accompanied it--perhaps also gifts from Hanno at Gaza, the princes of
Tyre, Zemar, and Hamath (see below)--which Sabakon, on the walls of
Karnak, describes as tribute received from the inhabitants of Palestine
(p. 73).

Isaiah foresaw very plainly what would be the issue of this undertaking
which to him appeared madness and intoxication. He announced destruction
and ruin to the Philistines, the kingdom of Israel, and the Phenicians.
The carrying away into captivity already sent by Jehovah upon Israel, in
punishment of her offences, and the war against Judah had brought about
no improvement, no reformation; the severe lesson teaching them to
remain at rest, which the sons of Israel had then received, is
disregarded; they are calling down upon themselves a still heavier
judgment. Isaiah spoke the more strongly as he was desirous to prevent
Judah also, where Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, ascended the throne in 728
B.C., from joining in this attempt. In reference to the death of Tiglath
Pilesar he cries to the cities of the Philistines: "Rejoice not, whole
Philistia, because the rod is broken which smote thee. For out of the
serpent's root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit is a flying
serpent. From the north cometh a smoke."[180] To the cities of Tyre and
Sidon, he cries: "Howl, ye ships of Tarshish, for Tyre is laid waste:
there is no house more, no entering in. Be still, ye inhabitants of the
coast, which the merchants of Sidon that pass over the sea replenished.
By distant waters the seed of the Nile, the harvest of the river, was
their revenue, and she was the mart of nations. Be thou ashamed, Sidon,
for the sea hath spoken; the strength of the sea thus: I travailed not,
and brought not forth; I brought up no young men and maidens. Pass ye
over to Tarshish; howl, ye inhabitants of the coast! Is this your joyous
city, whose antiquity is of ancient days? Her own feet shall carry her
afar off to sojourn. Who hath taken this counsel against Tyre, the
crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the
honourable of the earth? Jehovah the Lord of Hosts hath purposed it.
Jehovah gave command over Canaan to destroy her fortresses, and said:
Thou shalt no more rejoice, thou oppressed virgin, daughter of Sidon!
Pass over to Chittim (the Cyprians, II. 53). There also thou shalt have
no rest. When the report comes to Egypt, they shall be sorely pained at
the report of Tyre."[181]

Isaiah directs his most severe warning to those of his own race, the
kingdom of Israel. "Woe to the proud crown of the drunken Ephraim, the
faded flower on the head of the fat valley of those possessed by wine,"
he cries. "Priests and prophets have erred through strong drink, and are
overcome with wine. Jehovah will speak to this people with an alien
tongue, to whom he said: Give ye rest to the weary; this is the way of
salvation. But they would not listen. To whom shall he teach knowledge?
whom shall he make to understand doctrine?--them that are weaned from
the milk, and removed from the mother's breast? Behold, a stronger and
mightier shall come from the Lord, as a tempest of hail, and a
destroying storm; as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, he shall cast
them with violence to the earth. He will trample it under foot, the
proud crown of the drunken Ephraim; the faded flower on the head of the
fat valley will disappear like early fruit before the gathering."[182]

"Shalmanesar the king of Assyria," so the Books of Kings tell us,
"discovered a conspiracy in Hoshea, that he had sent messengers to Seveh
(So), the king of Egypt, and brought him no more a present as before.
He went up against Hoshea, seized him, and put him in chains in prison,
and marched over the whole land, and against Samaria, and besieged the
city three years." Josephus tells us: "It was told Shalmanesar that
Hoshea had secretly invited Egypt to a combined struggle. In his anger
he marched out against Samaria, besieged the city for three years, and
took Hoshea prisoner." "But the king of Assyria fought against the whole
of Syria and Phoenicia. He marched against Tyre while Elulæus reigned
there. Menander, who has drawn up the annals and translated the archives
of the Tyrians into the Greek language, vouches for this when he says:
Elulaeus reigned 36 years; when the Citians revolted, he sailed thither
and again reduced them to subjection. The king of Assyria sent an
expedition against these, overran all Phoenicia with war, made peace
with them all, and returned. Sidon, and Acco, and old Tyre, and many
other cities revolted from the Tyrians; but as the Tyrians themselves
did not submit, the king turned again upon them, and the Phenicians
manned 60 ships for him, and placed upon them 8000 rowers.[183] Against
these the Tyrians set sail with 12 ships; destroyed the vessels of the
enemy, and made about 500 prisoners. But the king of Assyria placed
guards on the river, and on the conduits, to prevent the Tyrians from
drawing water, and returned home. The Tyrians endured this for five
years, during which they drank water from wells that they had dug. This
is what is stated in the records of the Tyrians about Shalmanesar, the
king of the Assyrians."[184]

According to these indications and statements we may assume the course
of affairs to have been something of the following kind. The cities of
the Phenicians, and of the Philistines, and the kingdom of Israel hope
for the assistance of the king of Meroe and Egypt, of Sabakon, whom the
Hebrews call Seveh, and the inscriptions of the Assyrians, Sabhi.
Shalmanesar overruns Syria, before the assistance from Egypt has arrived
there (726 B.C.).[185] Hoshea is either taken by surprise and overcome,
or in his terror attempts to appease the king of Asshur by submission.
He is carried away to prison, and Shalmanesar turns towards the coast.
The cities of the Phenicians submit; only the island city of Tyre
resists (II. 265). The cities, which had submitted, were now compelled
to furnish ships to Shalmanesar for the conquest of Cyprus, and the
blockade of the island city, which was carried on from the mainland
also, since old Tyre was garrisoned there, and the inhabitants of the
island city were prevented from drawing water on the coast. It is
remarkable that the Tyrians are said to have met the 60 ships of the
blockade with 12 ships only. Yet this is no doubt no more than a mere
sally of the besieged. The ships of the inhabitants of the mainland may
not have taken a vigorous part in the fighting; and the blockade may not
have been carried on very strictly. Tyre may very well have been able to
endure a somewhat lax investment for five years. The resistance of the
Tyrians appears to have inspired courage in the Israelites and the
metropolis of Israel, so that they defied the arms of the Assyrians even
after the carrying away of Hoshea. In the year 724 B.C. Shalmanesar
turned from the coast, against Samaria. The Israelites defended their
city most stubbornly. Damascus had resisted Tiglath Pilesar two years;
Samaria, like Arpad, held out for three years. "The king of Assyria took
Samaria," so we are briefly told in the Books of Kings, "and carried
Israel to Assyria, and gave them dwellings in Chalah and Chabor, by the
river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes."

The monuments of Assyria inform us that Shalmanesar IV. did not live to
see the fall of Samaria. He died in the course of the last year of the
siege (722 B.C.). Sargon, his successor, boasts of this achievement of
his arms. "In the beginning of my reign," so we are told in the annals
of Sargon, "I besieged the city of Samaria (Samarina), and took it with
the help of the god Samas, who gives me victory over my enemies. I took
27,280 prisoners. I took 50 chariots as my royal portion. I brought them
to Assyria, and in their place I put people whom my hand had reduced. I
placed my officers and viceroys over them, and imposed tribute upon them
as on the Assyrians."[186] This statement is repeated in the inscription
which gives the more important acts of Sargon (the so called _fasti_),
with this difference at the close: "My officers I placed over them; I
imposed on them the tribute of the previous kings."[187] The inscription
of the bulls says quite briefly: "He (Sargon) overthrew Samaria, and all
the house of Omri."[188] The inscription on the cylinder says: "I have
subjugated the great land of Bit Omri."[189] The annals recapitulate: "I
have laid waste the region of Samaria, and the land of Bit Omri." After
informing us that the king of Israel was carried away to the East, the
Books of Kings tell us, like the annals of Sargon, that other
inhabitants were settled in Israel: "He caused people to come from Babel
and from Kutha, from Sepharvaim, Ava, and Hamath," and placed them in
the cities of Samaria in the room of the children of Israel.[190]
Sargon's own account confirms this statement; his inscriptions show us
further to what stock these settlers belonged. In the year 721 B.C.,
very soon after the capture of Samaria, he transplanted people from
Babylonia to the land of the Chatti, _i.e._ to Syria.[191] We are also
told that people were removed from the four districts of Armenia to
Syria, to the coast;[192] and finally, that people of Arabian descent,
"of Thammud, Marsiman, Chayapa, and the land of Bari," were settled in
the city of Samaria. The strengthening of the alien element in Samaria
was caused by the fact that the Israelites, in spite of the severe
punishment which they had undergone, had nevertheless attempted to rebel
once more against Assyria.[193]

The carrying away of the inhabitants of Naphtali and Gilead, which
Tiglath Pilesar had executed, the removal into a new environment, which
Sargon now carried out twelve years after the former deportation, were
blows from which the ten tribes could not again recover. Not that the
existence of the people was annihilated; many, no doubt, perished in the
conquest of the land and metropolis, yet it was by no means the whole
remnant that was carried away. It was only a part of the population on
whom that severe lot descended. Isaiah tells us Jehovah punished the
people by measure, and allowed a remnant to remain.[194] The number of
those who remained was sufficient to gain the preponderance in a
population so strongly mixed with foreign settlers.[195] Yet this
admixture sapped the national vigour at the core. In the inscriptions of
the Assyrians we hear no more of the land of Omri, but only of Samaria;
from them we see that kings remained at the head of the land; they
mention a second Menahem and an Abibaal as kings of Samaria. The
community over which the descendants of David ruled was, in the first
place, only anxious for the preservation of the national life and faith.
Judah remained obedient to Assyria. Hezekiah of Judah looked on at the
long siege of Samaria, the death-struggle of Israel, and the carrying
away of his kindred without moving. He must have paid his tribute
regularly. An inscription of Sargon, belonging to the first years of his
reign, enumerates the "distant Judah" among the subject lands.[196]

The subjugation of the Phenicians, the punishment of Israel for her
defection, did not break the hopes which the Syrians reposed in Egypt.
Two years after the fall of Samaria, Egypt may have been better prepared
for war, for a march into Syria, than at the time of Shalmanesar's
campaign against Hoshea and the Phenicians. Egypt's power appeared
nearer at hand; Sargon had to advance from the Tigris. Hamath rebelled
against Assyria. "Ilubid possessed himself of the crown of Hamath," so
we are told in the inscriptions of Sargon; "he took the city of Karkar,
and roused the cities of Arpad, Damascus, Zemar (Simyra), and Samaria
against me. I besieged him and his warriors in the city of Karkar."[197]
The city of Karkar, near which, 130 years before, Benhadad of Damascus
and Ahab of Israel had fought against Shalmanesar II., was taken; Ilubid
was captured, and Sargon caused him to be flayed--a relief in the palace
of Sargon exhibits the execution of this sentence.[198] The memorial
stone of Larnaka says: "Ilubid of Hamath rebelled; I fought against him,
and covered the land of Hamath with ruins." Sixty-three thousand people
were transplanted from Assyria into the land of Hamath.[199]

But Sargon succeeded in becoming master of a mightier opponent, in
maintaining Syria against Egypt. Sabakon had marched through the desert
with the forces of Ethiopia and Egypt; Hanno of Gaza, who once retired
to Egypt before Tiglath Pilesar, joined him with his warriors. Sargon
went to meet them. The armies met at Raphia (now Refah, between El Arish
and Gaza, where at a later period Ptolemy Philopator of Egypt overcame
Antiochus the Great). "Sabhi trusted in his forces," so the annals of
Sargon tell us, "and came to meet me to offer me battle. I called upon
the great god Asshur, my lord; I smote them. Sabhi fled with a shepherd,
who kept the sheep, and escaped. Hanno I took prisoner. All that he
possessed I carried away to Assyria. I laid waste and destroyed his
cities, and burned them with fire. I carried away 9033 men with their
possessions."[200] The introduction to the annals and the inscription on
the bulls say briefly: "The armies of the land of Muzur (Egypt) he
(Sargon) defeated near the city of Raphia (Rapih). Hanno, the king of
Gaza, he brought into slavery."[201] The inscription of the cylinder
says: "Near the city of Raphia I defeated the king of Muzur; the king of
the land of Gaza I took prisoner and carried to Assyria." The Fasti of
Sargon inform us: "Hanno, king of Gaza, marched with Sabhi, the sultan
of Egypt (_siltannu mussuri_), to meet me near the city of Raphia, to
offer me battle and conflict. I put them to flight. Sabhi was seized
with fear of the might of my arms; he fled, and not a trace of him was
seen. Hanno, the king of Gaza, I took captive with my own hand."[202]

Sargon's contests in Syria did not end with the battle at Raphia (720
B.C.). After the inscription on the bulls has narrated the victory over
the army of Egypt, it continues immediately: "I fought against the
tribes of the Thammud, Ibadid, Marsiman, and Chayapa, who had invaded
the land of Bit Omri, _i.e._ Israel."[203] On the other hand, the annals
tell us, under Sargon's seventh year (716 B.C.): "I marched against the
tribes of Tasid, Ibadid, Marsiman, and Chayapa; against the distant
dwellers in the land of Bari, which the scholars and the wise knew not.
None of the kings my forefathers had heard this name. I compelled them
to obey Asshur, and those who remained I drove out of their dwellings,
and placed them in the city of Samaria." On this campaign Sargon must
have advanced into the peninsula of Sinai, and far into Arabia, for the
annals continue: "Pharaoh (Pirhu), the king of Egypt (Muzur), Samsieh
the queen of the Arabs, Iathamir the Sabæan, are kings from the distant
coast of the sea and from the land (chasm). As their tribute I received
herbs of the East of various kinds, metals, horses, and camels."[204]
The Fasti, which compress events, have the following words after the
account of the battle of Raphia: "I received the tribute of Pharaoh the
king of Egypt, of Samsieh the queen of the Arabs, of Iathamir the
Sabæan; gold, herbs, horses, camels."[205] We remember that Samsieh,
like the Sabæans, had already paid tribute to Tiglath Pilesar.

The stubborn obstinacy of the Syrians was not broken even by the
desolation of Hamath and the battle at Raphia. Building on the
assistance of Shabataka of Meroe and Egypt, the son and successor of
Sabakon, Ashdod, the city of the Philistines, revolted in the eleventh
year of Sargon, _i.e._ in the year 711 B.C. The hope in Egypt was shared
by their neighbours in Judah, Edom, and Moab. But Ashdod was soon
invested by the Assyrians and taken, and the invasion of Egypt by the
Assyrians was expected in Judah. In Isaiah we are told: "In the year in
which Tartan, _i.e._ the Assyrian general-in-chief, came unto Ashdod,
when Sargon sent him, and besieged Ashdod and took it, at that time
spoke Jehovah: Go and loose the sackcloth from thy loins, and put off
the shoes from thy feet; and Isaiah did so, and walked naked and
barefoot. Then spake Jehovah: As my servant Isaiah has walked naked and
barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and Ethiopia
(Cush), so shall the king of Assyria lead the Egyptians prisoners, and
the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, with their
nakedness uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. Then shall they be ashamed
of Ethiopia their expectation, and of Egypt their glory. And the
inhabitants of these coasts said on the same day: Behold, such is our
expectation, whither we fled for help, to be delivered from the king of
Assyria: how shall we escape?"[206]

Sargon's annals tell us: "Azuri, the king of Ashdod, lifted up his
spirit to disobedience, so as to pay his tribute no longer. He sent
messages hostile to Assyria to his neighbours. I bethought me of
vengeance, and put another ruler over his land. I raised his brother
Achimit to the throne, but the people of the Chatti inclined to
rebellion, and were weary of the reign of Achimit, and raised to the
throne Yaman, who had no right to it. In the anger of my heart I marched
with my warriors against Ashdod. I besieged, I took Ashdod and
Gimt-Asdodim; with the gods which inhabit these cities I took the gold,
the silver, and all that was in his palace. Then I restored these
cities; I placed people whom I had subjugated in them. I put my viceroy
over them, treated them as Assyrians, and they were obedient."[207] The
much injured inscription of a cylinder informs us that "Sargon, in the
ninth year of his reign (713 B.C.), when he had come to the shore of the
great sea, and Philistæa, displaced Azuri of Ashdod, because he had
hardened his heart to pay tribute no longer, and had sent to the kings,
the enemies of Assyria. Before the face of Azuri I exalted his brother
Achimit, and laid taxes and tribute on him as on the kings round about
him. But the people would not pay taxes and tribute, rebelled against
him, and drove him out for the good that he had done them. Yaman, who
had no right to the throne, they made their lord, and armed and
fortified their cities for war." "The nations of Philistæa, Judah,
Edom, and Moab, though they brought their tribute and presents to the
god Asshur, spoke treachery like their evil kings; in order to fight
against me, they sent gifts to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, a prince who
could not save them, and besought his alliance." "I preserved the honour
of Asshur; I crossed the Tigris and Euphrates in the height of the
flood." "When Yaman heard of my campaign against the land of the Chatti,
the fear of Asshur, my lord, overcame him. He fled to the borders of
Egypt, to the border-land of Meroe (Miluhhi); to a distant place he
fled, and his hiding-place was not discovered."[208] The introduction to
the annals of Sargon tells us: "Yaman had misjudged my power; he fled to
the borders of the land of Meroe."[209] In the Fasti of Sargon we learn:
"Yaman heard of the approach of my army; he fled to a region of Egypt
which lies on the border of Meroe: not a trace of him was seen. I
besieged, I took Ashdod and Gimt-Asdodim: his gods, his consort, his
sons, his treasures, possessions, the costly things of his palace, and
all the inhabitants of his land I destined to captivity." The annals
tell us at the very beginning: "Yaman of Ashdod, who despised my power,
fled into the lands of the South, to the borders of Meroe. The king of
Meroe was overcome by the fear of Asshur; he bound his (Yaman's) hands
and feet with iron chains, and sent his messengers before my face to
Assyria."[210] The Fasti say: "The king of Meroe, in a desolate region,
whose fathers had not sent ambassadors to my royal forefathers to
entreat for peace--the power of Merodach, a mighty terror, overcame him;
fear seized him. He put him (Yaman) in iron chains; he guided his steps
to Assyria, and he appeared before me."[211] From these statements it
follows, that the army of Egypt, in which Yaman of Ashdod hoped, on
whose forces the rest of the cities of the Philistines, Judah, Edom, and
Moab reckoned in order to rebel against Assyria, as Isaiah and Sargon
told us, never came. It was no doubt again the unexpected celerity with
which the Assyrian army appeared before Ashdod in the year 711 B.C.
(Sargon has told us already that he crossed the Tigris and Euphrates at
the time of the flood), which destroyed all these plans. But the
invasion of Egypt and Napata by the Assyrians, which Isaiah expected and
announced, did not take place; according to Sargon's statement,
Shabataka preferred to avert the attack of the Assyrians by surrendering
Yaman.

At the commencement of his annals Sargon tells us, that he imposed
tribute on the kings of the land of Yatnan, who dwelt at a distance of
seven days' voyage in the sea of the setting sun.[212] The Fasti
narrate: "The seven kings of Yatnan, whose names none of the kings, my
fathers, nor any one in Assyria and Babylonia, had heard of, received
intelligence of my victories in the land of the Chaldæans and the
Chatti. My glory spread to the midst of the sea. They bowed their pride;
they humbled themselves; they appeared at Babylon before me, and brought
gold, silver, vessels, the products of their land." Yatnan is the island
of Cyprus; the seven days' journey is the distance from Tyre to Citium,
about 150 miles. The payment of the tribute of the seven kings of Cyprus
took place in 709 B.C. Hence we may assume that after the punishment of
Ashdod and the surrender of Yaman, Sargon's dominion was established in
Syria, and that Tyre submitted like the other cities of the Phenicians.
Hence the princes of Cyprus might consider it advisable to pay homage to
the king, unless perhaps they sought in him a point of support against
Tyre. As a symbol of his dominion over Cyprus, Sargon caused his image
to be engraved on a memorial stone in the usual manner, and set it up at
Citium in the midst of the island; it is now in the Berlin Museum. The
inscription gives the extent of the dominion of Sargon; relates the most
important events of his reign; mentions the temples he has built, the
offering of the tribute of the seven princes of the land of Yatnan at
Babylon--then the erection of the image--and threatens with curses and
annihilation those who alter the tablet and change Sargon's name or
anything else written on the tablet: if any one attempts such a thing,
Nebo and the gods who dwell in the middle of the wide sea will destroy
him and his race.[213]

FOOTNOTES:

[175] 2 Kings xvi. 10-18.

[176] No one can seriously maintain that Ahaz imitated the ritual of the
chief enemy of Assyria and Judah, the altar and worship of Rezin, who
was moreover now overthrown.

[177] Isa. i. 3, 5-9; ii. 6.

[178] The Books of Kings are only wrong in representing Hoshea as first
subject, and paying tribute, to Shalmanesar IV. (xvii. 3).

[179] 2 Kings xvii. 4.

[180] Isa. xiv. 29-31.

[181] Isa. xxiii. 1-12.

[182] Isa. xxviii. 1-6.

[183] So must we read for 800; 60 penteconters required 3000; 60
triremes at least 8000 rowers.

[184] "Antiq." 9, 14, 2.

[185] As Samaria was besieged 724-722 B.C., we may place the beginning
of the Assyrian war in 726.

[186] Oppert, "Dour Sarkayan," p. 8, 30; "Records of the Past," 7, 28;
E. Schrader, "K. A. T." s. 160; Ménant, "Annal." p. 161.

[187] E. Schrader, _loc. cit._ s. 158; Ménant, "Annal." p. 181.

[188] L. 26, in Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 192.

[189] L. 17, in Ménant, p. 200.

[190] 2 Kings xvii. 6, 24.

[191] "The Annals of Sargon," Oppert, "Records of the Past," 7, 29.

[192] Oppert, _loc. cit._ 7, 30.

[193] G. Smith, "Assyr. Canon," p. 125, 126.

[194] Isa. xi. 6-8; 2 Chron. xxx. 6, 10; xxxiv. 9.

[195] 2 Kings xvii. 26 ff.

[196] Inscription of Nimrud, in Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 205; in E.
Schrader, _loc. cit._ p. 90.

[197] "Annals of Sargon," Oppert, "Records of the Past," 7, 29; G.
Smith, _loc. cit._

[198] In the great hall No. 8, in Botta. Ménant, p. 182.

[199] Memorial-stone of Larnaka, in Ménant, p. 207; G. Smith, "Assyr.
Canon," p. 127.

[200] Oppert, "Records of the Past," 7, 29; E. Schrader, "K. A. T." 258;
Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 161.

[201] Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 159, 192.

[202] E. Schrader, _loc. cit._ s. 258.

[203] Oppert, "Records of the Past," 7, 34.

[204] Communication from E. Schrader.

[205] E. Schrader, "K. A. T." s. 258; Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 181.

[206] Isa. xx. 1 ff.

[207] Oppert, _loc. cit._ 7, 40; Ménant, p. 169; cf. l. 12 of the
inscription on the bulls in Ménant, p. 162.

[208] G. Smith's Cylinder, "Disc." p. 289 ff.

[209] Ménant, p. 159.

[210] Oppert, "Records of the Past," 7, 26.

[211] E. Schrader, "K. A. T." s. 257 ff.; cf. Ménant, _loc. cit._ p.
186.

[212] Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 159.

[213] Ménant, p. 189, 206-208. That the stone cannot have been set up in
Babylon before the payment of tribute in 709 B.C., is proved by the
mention of the tribute upon it. Cp. G. Smith, "Z. Ægypt. Sprache," 1869,
s. 109; 1870, s. 70, 71.




CHAPTER V.

ASSYRIA IN THE REIGNS OF SARGON AND SENNACHERIB.


In his inscriptions Sargon speaks of the kings who ruled over Asshur
before him, but he mentions neither his father nor his grandfather,
though these are regularly mentioned by all the other kings of Assyria
who ascended the throne in direct succession. It follows that he was
neither the son nor the grandson of Shalmanesar IV.; nevertheless he was
one of the mightiest, most victorious, and powerful of the rulers of
Assyria. Nor did the uninterrupted series of his campaigns prevent him
from undertaking and carrying out great buildings. To the two ancient
chief cities of Assyria--Asshur and Nineveh--Shalmanesar I. had added
Chalah, which was subsequently adorned by Assurnasirpal, Shalmanesar II.
and Tiglath Pilesar II. with temples and palaces. Sargon built a new
residence in the neighbourhood of Nineveh. On the course of the Khosr,
which flows through ancient Nineveh into the Tigris, ten miles up the
stream, he built a new royal abode, which he called after his name Dur
Sarrukin, _i.e._ fortress of Sargon. The new city (Khorsabad) formed, as
the remains of the outer walls show, a rectangle, each of the shorter
sides of which measures more than 5000, and each of the longer sides
5500 feet.[214] In the north-west front of the outer wall the palace,
surrounded by a separate wall, rose above the rectangle of the new city.
The outer walls of the city were 45 feet in thickness; they were built
up in brick, on a basis of stone; the outer wall of the palace, which
flanked as a fortress the north-western side of the city wall, was
entirely cased with stone.[215] The entrance to the main structure of
the royal fortress was guarded by two human-headed bulls. The halls were
adorned with reliefs, which exhibit the exploits of the king. Here was
to be seen the execution of Ilubid, king of Hamath (p. 88); the
besieging and storming of cities. Over the reliefs, beginning from the
entrance in the form of a broad frieze, an inscription runs toward the
left round the hall, which explains the pictures on the reliefs and ends
on the opposite side of the entrance. In some halls this frieze forms a
connected narrative, which relates the acts of the king in succession
according to the years of the reign (the so-called Annals). In the great
gallery and the chambers abutting on it the inscriptions are shorter:
here they are content with bringing into prominence the most important
acts of the king (the so-called Fasti). The two bulls at the entrance of
the palace are also covered with inscriptions. In the foundations of the
palace was found a stone chest, in which lay seven plates of gold,
silver, tin, copper, lead, alabaster, and marble, on which are
inscriptions as well as on the clay cylinders found in the ruins. On the
bricks of the palace we read: "Palace of Sarrukin the viceroy of Bel,
Patis of Asshur (II. 31), the mighty king, king of the nations, king of
Asshur." And on the gold plate: "Palace of Sarrukin, viceroy of Bel,
Patis of Asshur, the mighty king, king of the nations, king of Asshur,
who rules from the rising to the setting sun, over the four regions of
the world, and places viceroys over them. According to my pleasure I
have built a city in the neighbourhood of the mountains, and given to it
the name of Fortress of Sarrukin. For Salman, Sin, Samas, Bin, and Adar,
I have built dwellings for their great divinities in the midst of the
city. The glory of my name I have inscribed on tablets of gold, silver,
copper, lead, tin, alabaster, and marble, and placed them in the
foundations of the palace. Whoso injures the works of my hand, and robs
my treasure, may Asshur, the great lord, destroy his name and
seed."[216] The Annals mention this palace in the year 712 B.C.; at the
close they speak of the completion of it in the year 706 B.C. "With the
heads of the provinces, the viceroys, the wise men, I settled down in my
palace, and exercised justice."[217] In the inscriptions on the bulls,
as well as on a cylinder, the king says, that he has named the gates to
the East after Samas and Bin; those to the West after Anu and Istar; and
those to the South after Bel and Bilit; those to the North after Salman
and the lady of the gods.[218]

Sargon's predecessor, Shalmanesar IV., as we were able to assume, placed
Elulæus over Babylon as a vassal king. The astronomical canon observes
that the reign of Elulæus came to an end in 722 B.C., the same year in
which Shalmanesar IV. died, and Merodach Baladan (Mardokempados)
ascended the throne of Babylon in the year 721 B.C. We may suppose that
this Merodach Baladan was no other than the prince of Bit Yakin, _i.e._
of South Chaldæa, who had submitted ten years before to Tiglath Pilesar
at Sapiya (731 B.C.). He must have availed himself of the decease of
Shalmanesar, and the occupation of the Assyrian army in Syria, which was
detained before Samaria, to make himself master of Babylon from the
South, and unite the whole region of Babylonia under his rule. As soon
as Samaria fell, Sargon turned against him. In the Annals, the account
of the capture of Samaria is followed, in the very first year of Sargon
(722-721 B.C.), by a campaign against Humbanigas, the king of Elam, who,
as the Fasti say, was defeated "in the plains of Kalu."[219] The Annals
then continue: "Merodach Baladan, who had made himself lord of the
kingdom of Babylon against the will of the gods." The destruction of the
remainder of the narrative has left only a few words legible, from which
we may gather that Sargon fought against Merodach Baladan, that he
removed people from Babylonia to the land of the Chatti, _i.e._ to
Syria: according to the Books of Kings these were inhabitants of
Sepharvaim and Kutha (p. 86). Whatever losses Merodach Baladan suffered,
in this way he retained Babylon and the throne. The astronomical canon
represents him as reigning from 721 B.C. to 710 B.C. Clay tablets in the
shape of lentils, found in the ruins of Sargon's palace at Khorsabad
(they were brought there, no doubt, as booty from Babylonia), bear the
date of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh years of Marduk-habaliddin, king
of Babylon (_sar Babilu_[220]); even Sargon's Annals represent Merodach
Baladan as ruling over Sumir and Accad for twelve years (_i.e._ from 721
to 709 B.C.).

After the war against Humbanigas and Merodach Baladan, against Elam and
Babylonia, Sargon, as we saw, marched to Syria in order to subjugate
Hamath and Gaza, and to defeat at Raphia (720 B.C.) the army of the
Egyptians and Ethiopians led by Sabakon. In the next years Sargon fought
in the north against the people of Van, who had shaken off the dominion
of Iranzu, an adherent of Assyria, and against Urza of Ararat; the
inhabitants of the four cantons in Armenia he removed to the land of
Chatti, and the land of Acharri, _i.e._ to Syria and the Syrian
coast.[221] After this, in the year 717 B.C., Pisiris of Karchemish, who
had paid tribute to Tiglath Pilesar, was reduced. Karchemish was taken,
Pisiris put in chains, the rebels carried to Assyria, and Assyrians
placed in Karchemish. From the booty of Karchemish 11 talents of gold,
2100 talents and 24 minæ of silver were brought into the treasury at
Chalah.[222] Urza of Ararat and prince Bagadatti of Mount Mildis
(perhaps the region of Melitene, Malatia) excited the people of Van to
rebellion, as Sargon says; Aza, the prince of Van, was slain. Sargon
terrified the rebels into submission, caused Bagadatti to be flayed at
the same place where Aza was slain, and placed Ullusun, the brother of
Aza, on the throne of Van. But Ullusun united with Urza of Ararat and
the princes of Karalla and Allabur. When Sargon advanced, Ullusun
submitted; Sargon allowed him to remain on the throne on condition that
he paid heavier tribute; the prince of Karalla was driven out, the
people of Allabur carried to Hamath (715 B.C.[223]); in Ararat, Urza
maintained his position. Vassurmi, the king of the Tabal, the
Tibarenes, had been dethroned by Tiglath Pilesar, and Chulli put in his
place (p. 11). Sargon allowed Ambris to succeed his father in the
government of the Tabal, gave him his own daughter to wife, and
intrusted him with the government of the Cilicians in addition to the
Tabal. Ambris abused this confidence. He united with Mita, the king of
the Moschi, with Urzana of Mussasir (which must, no doubt, be sought on
Lake Van), and Urza of Ararat against Assyria. Ambris was defeated and
taken prisoner, and carried to Assyria with his chief adherents. Mita
submitted, like the Cilicians: Mussasir, the city of Urzana, was taken
by storm: Urza of Ararat, whose resistance had been the longest and most
stubborn, wandered about as a fugitive, and took his own life (714
B.C.).[224]

The armies of Shalmanesar II. were the first to make an advance on the
table-land of Iran. As already remarked, they trod the plains of Media
in 835 B.C. Ninety years later, Tiglath Pilesar II. subjugated the land
of Nisaa (the region of Nisæa in Media) and then the cities of Media, on
his first, second, and ninth campaigns; he imposed tribute on the
princes of the land of Media. Sargon tells us that in his sixth year
(716 B.C.) he fought against the land of Karkhar, which we must seek in
the Zagrus (perhaps it is a part of the valley of the Kerkha); that he
named a city there Kar Sargon. He received considerable tribute from 25
princes of the Medes, and set up his image in the midst of their
places.[225] In the next year, when Urza of Ararat conspired with
Ullusun of Van, and Ullusun with Dayaukka, the overseer of Van (?), "I
took 22 fortresses," so the Annals say, "and carried away Dayaukka and
his tribute with me, and restored peace to the land of Van" (715
B.C.).[226] The Fasti also mention the capture of the 22 places; after
this they give the capture of Bagadatti, and continue: "I caused him to
be flayed, and carried Dayaukka with his adherents away into the land of
Amat, and made them dwell there."[227] "In order to maintain myself in
Media, I built fortresses in the neighbourhood of Kar Sargon," so the
Annals relate in the same year,[228] "and received the tribute of 22
princes of the Medes." To the erection of fortresses in the
neighbourhood of Kar Sargon the Fasti add: "I conquered 34 cities in
Media, united them with Assyria, and imposed on them a tribute of
horses."[229] In the year 713 B.C., according to the statement in the
Annals, Sargon marched against Bit Dayauku, and against the nation of
Karalla, who had driven out Sargon's viceroy. "The lands of Bit Ili, the
district of Media, which belongs to Ellip--and the chief districts of
Media, which had thrown off Asshur's yoke, and put mountains and vallies
in terror--I pacified. I received the tribute of 45 princes of the
Medes; 4609 horses, sheep, and asses in great numbers."[230] The
much-injured inscription of an octagonal cylinder enumerates the princes
of Media who paid this tribute in this year: among them we find Pharnes,
Barzan, Aspabara, Satarparnu, Ariya, and finally Arbaku of Arnasia.[231]
Sargon's inscriptions repeatedly boast that he subjugated "the distant
land of Media; all places of the distant Media as far as the borders of
the land of Bikni;" that "his power extended as far as the city of
Simaspati, which belonged to the distant Media in the East."[232]

When Syria had been reduced, Egypt repelled, the North brought into
obedience, and Media made tributary, Sargon undertook to restore the
supremacy of Assyria over Babylonia. Merodach Baladan's rule must be
removed. The dominion of Assyria must be again restored as it was in the
time of Tiglath Pilesar. "For twelve years," so the Fasti of Sargon tell
us, "Merodach Baladan had roused up the land of Sumir and Accad. I
resolved to march against the inhabitants of the land of Kaldi
(Chaldæa). Merodach Baladan heard of the approach of my army; he left
Babylon, betook himself to Dur Yakin, strengthened the walls there, and
called upon the tribes of Gambul, Pekod, Tumun, Ruhua, and Chindar. My
warriors defeated the enemy. The migratory tribes fled after this
defeat. Merodach Baladan left his tent, the insignia of his royal
dignity, his chariot and adornments behind him, and fled away in the
night. I besieged and took the city of Dur Yakin. His wife, his sons,
his daughters, his palace, and all that was therein, I took. I burnt the
city, and threw down the old walls. I permitted the inhabitants of
Sippara, of Nipur, of Babylonia, and Borsippa to continue their
occupations. To the cities of Arak (Erech) and Larsam (Senkereh) I gave
back the gods which dwell there, and restored the temples."[233] The
Annals give a more detailed account, but in the narrative of these
events the text is interrupted by great lacunæ. In the introduction we
have: "Merodach Baladan showed the greatest violence against the will of
the gods of Babylon; my hand reached him; I took from him all his land."
Then follows the narrative of the occurrence under the twelfth year of
the king (710 B.C.): "Merodach Baladan refused to pay tribute. He had
concluded an alliance with Sutruk Nanchundi, the king of Elam, and
aroused all the tribes of Aram (Mesopotamia) against me. He strengthened
his fortresses and assembled his troops. I took captive 18,430 men."
After an enumeration of the cities which Sargon took, and the narrative
of the subjection of the Pekod, we are told: "The rest of the
inhabitants of the land of Aram had put their hopes in Merodach Baladan
and Sutruk Nanchundi, and gathered on the river Ukni. I put them to
flight." After this Sargon takes several cities of Elam; Sutruk
Nanchundi retires before him into the mountains. Merodach Baladan heard
this in his palace at Babylon; he left the city at night with his
warriors, directed his steps to the land of Elam, and sent a
considerable weight of silver to Sutruk Nanchundi, to induce him to send
aid. "I marched at once to Babylon, sacrificed to the gods, and set up
my power in the midst of the palace of Merodach Baladan." "In the
thirteenth year of my reign, Merodach Baladan compelled the cities of Ur
and Larsam to pay him tribute, collected his forces at Dur Yakin, and
there fortified himself. I went boldly against him, threw his warriors
and horses into confusion; I cut down the people of the Pekod and
Marsiman, and took the symbols of their kingdom. And Merodach Baladan
acknowledged his weakness; he abandoned the sceptre and throne, and
kissed the earth in the presence of my emissary. I summoned him, and
received him into favour. Dur Yakin I burnt; I laid regular tribute on
the upper and lower land of Bit Yakin. While I punished the Chaldæans
and Aramæans, and made my power felt by the Elamites, my viceroy, in the
land of Kui (Cilicia), in the regions of the setting sun, attacked Mita,
the Moschian, took two fortresses and 2400 men, freemen and slaves. To
complete his subjugation, Mita sent his envoy with his tribute as far
as the coast of the Eastern sea, and acknowledged the power of the god
Asshur. The seven kings of Yatnan (Cyprus) also brought their tribute
into my presence at Babylon; gold, silver, and the products of their
land, and kissed my feet."[234]

These accounts show that Sargon's war against Merodach Baladan occupied
two years (710 and 709 B.C.). In the first campaign the Babylonians were
defeated in the field; the Aramæans dispersed; the Elamites, among whom
the sovereignty had been meanwhile transferred from Humbanigas to Sutruk
Nanchundi, driven back, and the cities of Babylonia taken. Merodach
Baladan abandons Babylon, and retires to the lower Euphrates, to the
land of his nation. Sargon ascends the throne of Babylon, and takes the
title, "King of Babel, of Sumir and Accad," which Tiglath Pilesar had
borne before him. The second campaign ends with the capture and
destruction of Dur Yakin, with the subjugation of the whole region of
the Euphrates as far as the shore of the Persian Gulf, and the receiving
of Merodach Baladan into favour. According to the astronomical canon,
Arkeanus ascended the throne of Babylon in the year 709 B.C. Arkeanus
can only be Sargon (Sarrukin). One of the tablets, which contains
contracts about the sale of parcels of land, slaves, and loans, from the
time of Sargon, bears the date: "Month Sebat, year of Muttakkil-Assur,
viceroy of Gozan; fifteenth year of Sargon, king of Asshur, third year
of his reign in Babylon."[235] As Sargon certainly cannot have ascended
the throne of Babylon later than the year 709 B.C., the year 707-706
would be the third year of his reign over Babylonia; the canon of the
Assyrian rulers actually puts the year of Muttakkil-Assur at the year
706 B.C.

The campaigns of the unwearied Sargon did not end with the subjugation
of the whole region of Babylonia. The Annals and Fasti narrate how he
overthrew Mutallu of Kummukh (Gumathene), who had united himself with
Argistis, king of Ararat, who must have taken the place of Urza (p. 99),
and that he planted there people from Bit Yakin (707 B.C.). The land of
Ellip, which he had previously subjugated, remained faithful to him as
long as king Dalta lived. After his death his sons Nibi and Ispabara
contended for the throne. The former sought help from Sutruk Nanchundi
of Elam; Ispabara vowed allegiance to him (Sargon). To support Ispabara,
Sargon sent troops to the land of Ellip, the position of which we can
only so far ascertain from the inscriptions, as to know that it bordered
on Media (p. 101) as well as Elam. Nibi's warriors and the Elamites were
defeated; Nibi was taken prisoner, his adherents were crucified, and
Ispabara became the prince of the whole land (706 B.C.).[236]

Sargon, who defeated the Egyptians and the Ethiopians, who subjugated
Syria and Babylonia, who had gone through so many battles, came to a
violent end, but not in war. He was murdered. The list of the rulers
announces the naked fact in the year 705 B.C., and adds the accession of
his son Sennacherib, on whom fell the heavy task of maintaining the wide
dominion which Sargon had won. If he did not succeed in doing this
without some loss, his buildings, which he began immediately after his
accession, were not inferior to those of his father. He must have
commenced them at the beginning of his reign. The inscription on a
cylinder (Bellino), bearing the date of the third year of Sennacherib,
gives the dimensions of a palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh, and
describes the architecture and adornment. The kings, his fathers, had
built this palace, but had not completed its splendour; the waves of the
Tigris had injured the foundations; he altered the course of the Tigris,
strengthened the dams, built the palace afresh, and caused lions and
bulls to be hewn out of great stones.[237] The remains of this structure
lie on the site of the ancient Nineveh, immediately to the north of the
Khosr, which flowed through the city, on the old bed of the Tigris, near
the modern village of Kuyundshik. The dimensions give this palace the
first place among the castles of the kings of Asshur. It rose on a
terrace of more than 80 feet in height, close by the Tigris. The great
porticoes were from 150 to 180 feet in length, and about 40 feet in
breadth; the great gallery was 218 feet in length, and 25 feet in
breadth. About 70 chambers have been discovered in this building.[238]
The main front lay to the north-west; two great winged bulls with human
heads guarded the entrance. At the entrance of the north-east front also
were two bulls of this kind. In the great portico behind this entrance,
and the gallery abutting upon it, the process of building is represented
on the reliefs on the walls. We see the clay pits, the workmen carrying
baskets filled with clay and bricks, the great blocks intended for the
images of the lions and bulls coming up the Tigris, and brought to the
elevation on shore by ropes drawn by hundreds of hands. This is done by
means of slips under which are placed wooden rollers. A lion, already
finished, standing upright and surrounded by a wooden case, and held up
by workmen with ropes and forked poles, is drawn along in this manner;
the hinder end of the slip is then raised by a lever placed on wedges in
order to facilitate the elevation. The overseer stands between the
fore-feet of the colossus, and directs by the movement of his hands the
efforts of the workmen. Sennacherib himself from his chariot watches the
advance of this statue. In the same way a finished human-headed bull is
drawn along by four long rows of workmen. In another chamber we see rows
of servants, who carry apples and grapes, pastry and other food in
baskets. The reliefs of the next porticoes and halls exhibit the warlike
acts of Sennacherib; the crossing of rivers, sieges, stormings of cities
in the mountain country, in the plain, in the marsh. Unfortunately the
inscriptions over these have almost entirely perished along with the
upper part of the walls; only a few words are legible. The inscription
of the third year of Sennacherib (703 B.C.) concludes the account of
this building with the words: "To him among my sons, whom Asshur in the
course of the days shall summon to be lord over land and people, I say
this: This palace will grow old and fall to pieces. May he set it up,
restore the inscriptions and the writing of my name, and clean the
images; may he offer sacrifice, and put everything in its place; so
shall Asshur hear his prayer."[239] The inscriptions on slabs between
the thighs of the two bulls before the north-west entrance give a
detailed account of the dimensions and manner of the building of this
palace.[240]

In the inscription on the cylinder, Sennacherib boasts that he made a
canal from the Khosr through the city; that he renovated Nineveh, "the
city of Istar," and made it brilliant as the sun; the prisoners,
Chaldæans, Aramæans, captives from Van and Cilicia, were employed on
these works.[241] The adornment of Nineveh, the strengthening of its
walls, are mentioned on inscriptions on slabs in the palace itself.[242]
Another cylinder (Smith) from the ninth year of the reign of Sennacherib
(697 B.C.),[243] also mentions the buildings which the king undertook
for the restoration of Nineveh: the prisoners of his campaigns worked at
them: Philistines and Tyrians are here added to Chaldæans, Aramæans,
Armenians, and Cilicians.[244] Later documents inform us that
Sennacherib built temples to Nebo and Merodach at Nineveh.[245] A third
cylinder (Taylor) has been preserved from the fifteenth year of the
reign of Sennacherib (691 B.C.), which tells us of a second great
building of his at Nineveh. By the kings, his fathers, a house had been
erected for the preservation of the treasure; for the horses and troops.
This building had become damaged; he caused the old house to be removed,
and built up again on a larger scale.[246] The remains of this building
lie to the south of the confluence of the Khosr and Tigris near the
modern Nebbi Yunus. According to the evidence of the ruins it was of
smaller dimensions than the palace at Kuyundshik. To the north-east of
Nineveh, near the modern Bavian, the image of Sennacherib is hewn in the
rocks. The inscription on this image informs us in detail what
Sennacherib had done for the irrigation of the land of Assyria: among
other things it is mentioned, that he had made 16 (18) canals from the
Khosr, or into it.[247] Bricks found at Sherif-Khan show by the stamp
that Sennacherib built a temple there to Nergal; the bricks of a heap of
ruins to the south-west of the ancient Arbela show that he erected there
the fortifications of a city called Kakzi.[248]

The most indispensable task which devolved on Sennacherib at his
accession was the keeping of Babylon in subjection. The news of the
death of Sargon, the mighty warrior, might arouse among all the nations
which had felt the weight of his arms so heavily the hope of again
shaking off the yoke. If the Babylonians succeeded in freeing themselves
from the dominion of his successor, there was the prospect that such a
success would be an event of wide importance; a sign and example to the
subject lands. According to the evidence of Josephus, Berosus related of
Sennacherib that he fought against all Asia and Egypt:[249] Abydenus
represented him as subjugating Babylonia.[250] Alexander Polyhistor,
according to a fragment which Eusebius has preserved, narrated as
follows: "After that the brother of Sennacherib reigned in Babylon, and
after him Akises, who was slain by Merodach Baladan after 30 days;
Merodach Baladan maintained himself by violence for six months, and was
then slain by a man of the name of Elibus. But in the third year of the
reign of Elibus, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, collected an army
against the Babylonians, conquered them in the battle, and carried away
Elibus with his followers to Assyria. Sennacherib placed his son
Asordanes (Esarhaddon) as ruler over Babylon; he himself returned to
Assyria."[251] After the reign of Arkeanus (Sargon) from 709 B.C. to
705 B.C., the astronomical canon gives an interregnum for the years 704
and 703 B.C.; after this comes the reign of Belibus, which lasted three
years, from 702 B.C. to 700 B.C. Belibus was succeeded by Aparanadius,
who reigned six years (699-694 B.C.). If we attempt to unite these
statements with the quotation from Polyhistor, Sennacherib, immediately
on his accession, made his brother king and viceroy of Babylon, but he
was unable to maintain his position; a rebel, Akises, seized the throne,
and was in his turn overthrown by Merodach Baladan, whose reign over
Babylon only lasted six months. The two years after Sargon's death,
which were occupied by this regency and these usurpations, are marked in
the astronomical canon as an interregnum. As the last half year of this
period was occupied with the usurpation of Merodach Baladan, and the
preceding month by Akises, Sennacherib's brother must have reigned over
Babylon 17 months after Sargon's death, or a little longer (the canon
gives the last year of each reign entirely to the king who died in it).
Towards the close of these two years the Elibus of Polyhistor, the
Belibus of the canon, overthrew Merodach Baladan, and reigned till 700
B.C., in which year Sennacherib marched against Babylonia, defeated
Elibus, took him prisoner, and placed his son Asordanes as king over
Babylon. The Aparanadius of the canon must be the Asordanes of
Polyhistor.

Sennacherib's inscriptions show that the events took place nearly but
not quite in this manner. His archives say nothing of the regency of a
brother in Babylon; they do not exclude such a regency, but they show
clearly that Merodach Baladan was in possession of the throne of Babylon
in 704 B.C. Is this Merodach Baladan the Merodach Baladan of Bit Yakin,
of South Chaldæa, who paid homage to Tiglath Pilesar II. at Sapiya in
the year 731 B.C., and who after the death of Shalmanesar IV., in the
year 721 B.C., possessed himself of the throne of Babylon--whom Sargon
fought against at that time, but did not overthrow--whom he deprived of
all his land in the years 710 and 709 B.C., and then received into
favour? The man who possessed himself of Babylon in the year 704 B.C.
belongs without a doubt to the princely house of Bit Yakin; we find him
retiring before Sennacherib from Babylon to Bit Yakin, as he had
previously retired before Sargon. The Merodach Baladan of Sennacherib
can therefore only be the Merodach Baladan of Tiglath Pilesar, and
Sargon, or a son of the same name.[252] As the inscriptions give the
name simply without any addition, we have in him no doubt the same
prince of Bit Yakin who submitted to Tiglath Pilesar and was defeated by
Sargon. That Merodach Baladan was in possession of Babylon at least six
months, as Polyhistor states, is proved by the combinations into which,
according to Sennacherib's inscriptions, he entered with the king of
Elam, the tribes of Mesopotamia, and tribes of the Arabians, before
Sennacherib attacked him; by the fact that Sennacherib found the troops
of Elam united with those of Babylon; and by the embassy of Merodach to
Hezekiah, king of Judah, urging him to make common cause with him
against Assyria, which is mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures. He
certainly had time to make extensive preparations against Sennacherib.

Merodach Baladan must therefore have obtained the throne of Babylon not
long after the accession of Sennacherib. Sennacherib's first campaign
was directed against him in order to restore the authority of Assyria
over Babylonia. The inscription of Nebbi Yunus tells us at the very
beginning: "In a great battle I conquered Merodach Baladan and the
nations of Chaldæa and Aram; the army of Elam which had come to their
assistance."[253] Four other narratives in greater detail have been
preserved relating to this campaign; one from the third year of
Sennacherib (703 B.C., the cylinder Bellino, already mentioned), the
second from the ninth year of Sennacherib (697 B.C., the cylinder Smith,
also already mentioned), the third dates from the fifteenth year of
Sennacherib (691 B.C., the cylinder Taylor), the fourth is given in the
inscription on a slab between the thighs of the bulls at the entrance to
the great palace of Sennacherib at Kuyundshik. This last account, which
is uninjured, does not go back beyond the fourth year of Sennacherib.
The oldest account tells us: "At the beginning of my reign I inflicted a
defeat on Merodach Baladan, the king of Kardunias (Babylon), together
with the army of Elam, before the city of Kis. In the middle of the
battle he escaped alone, and fled to the land of Guzuman, into the
marshes. The chariots, horses, mules, and camels, which he left on the
field of battle, fell into my hands. His palace in Babylon I entered
full of joy. I opened his treasury; I carried away gold, silver, golden
and silver vessels, precious stones; his wife, and the women of the
palace. I sent my soldiers to pursue him to Guzuman, to the marshes.
They pursued him five days, but no trace of him was seen. In the
strength of Asshur, my lord, I took 89 fortified cities and fortresses
in the land of Kaldi, and 820 smaller places. The Aramæans and
Chaldæans, who formed garrisons in Erech, Nipur, Kis, Chalanne, and
Kutha, I carried away with the rebellious inhabitants; Belibus, the son
of a man of wisdom, from the neighbourhood of Suanna, I made the ruler
of Sumir and Accad."[254] The two accounts immediately following the
first agree with it except that the number of the fortified places taken
in Chaldæa is given as 75 and 76, and the number of smaller places in
both is 420. Both also, like the summary account on the slabs of the
bulls, pass over the setting up of Belibus as regent,[255] no doubt
because this regency was no longer in existence when they were written.
In Polyhistor, as we have seen, it is Elibus who overthrows Merodach
Baladan; in the astronomical canon, Belibus ascends the throne of
Babylon in the year 702 B.C. According to the inscriptions, Merodach
Baladan's rule over Babylon was overthrown as early as 703 B.C.;
according to the canon, his overthrow, or at any rate the establishment
of Belibus, did not take place till 702 B.C.

After driving Merodach Baladan out of Babylonia Sennacherib subjugated
the tribes of Tumun, Richih, Rahua, Pekod, Hauran, Nabatu, and Hagaranu
(the Hagarites), who "had not been reduced to submission," _i.e._ who
had taken up arms against Assyria for Merodach Baladan; 208,000 men and
women, children and adults,[256] were captured and carried away to
Assyria, with 7200 horses and mules, 5330 camels, 70,000 oxen, and
800,600 head of small cattle.[257] The amount of cattle taken is omitted
in the second, third, and fourth accounts; the second and third give us
the number of the prisoners. These prisoners (Chaldæans and Aramæans),
Sennacherib, as we saw above, employed in building his new palace and
his buildings at Nineveh. After this Sennacherib turned against
Ispabara, king of Ellip, whom Sargon had assisted to the throne against
his brother (p. 105). Ispabara escaped, the land was laid waste, 34
places were taken, the chief city Ilinzas received a new name, Kar
Sennacherib. "At my return," so we find it stated with complete
agreement in all the four narratives, "I received the great tribute of
the distant land of Media, and subjugated that land to my
dominion."[258]

Merodach Baladan had been compelled to retire from Babylonia. He had
maintained himself in his native land in south Chaldæa. When in Syria,
Sidon and Ascalon, Ekron and Judah took up arms, and Sennacherib was
compelled to march thither, Merodach Baladan could attempt to regain
what he had lost. He was soon again in alliance with the king of Elam,
or rather he remained in alliance with him. The Elamites reconquered two
cities which Sargon had taken from them. In Babylonia a rebellion broke
out, at the head of which stood a man of the name of Suzub. Belibus
appears to have been unable to maintain himself against him, against
South Chaldæa under Merodach Baladan, and Elam. The astronomical canon
puts the end of his reign in 700 B.C. The later inscriptions of
Sennacherib, as already observed, make no mention of Belibus, but they
tell us of a campaign which Sennacherib on his return from the Syrian
war, in which at the close, as we shall soon see, he gained no success,
undertook against Suzub and South Chaldæa. "In my fourth campaign," so
Sennacherib relates on the cylinders Smith and Taylor, "I collected my
army: I bade it go against the land of Bit Yakin. In the course of this
enterprize I brought about the overthrow of Suzub the Chaldæan, who
dwelt in the marshes; he retired. Merodach Baladan, whom I had thrown to
the ground on my former campaign, whose war-like forces I had scattered,
retired from the approach of my mighty warriors, and the blow of my
violent attack; he put the gods, who rule in his land, on board ship,
and fled like a bird to Nagitirakki, which lies in the midst of the sea.
His brothers, the scions of the house of his father, whom he left behind
on the coast, and the remainder of his nation in the lakes and marshes I
brought out and took prisoners. I turned back and destroyed his cities.
I struck terror into his ally, the king of Elam. At my return I put
Assurnadin, my eldest son, on the throne of his dominion, and entrusted
him with the whole extent of the land of Sumir and Accad." The stone
slabs on the bulls of Kuyundshik also mention the establishment of
Assurnadin in Babylon.[259]

From this account we gather that Babylon, if it was not lost, wavered;
that the chief of the rebels in Babylonia retired before the approach of
Sennacherib into the marshes. The establishment of Assurnadin as regent
of Babylonia by Sennacherib did not take place till Merodach Baladan was
driven out of Bit Yakin. The inscriptions do not mention Sennacherib's
entrance into Babylon. Aparanadius, whose reign the astronomical canon
represents as beginning with the year 699 B.C., can only be Assurnadin,
the son of Sennacherib.[260]

The expulsion of Merodach Baladan out of South Chaldæa; the
establishment of the successor to the throne of Assyria as regent of
Babylon, had no more lasting results than the establishment of Belibus
three years before. Suzub, who had retired into the marshes before
Sennacherib, was again at the head of Babylonia. "The tribes of Bit
Yakin," so Sennacherib tells us on the cylinder Taylor, "despised my
rule; they settled in the city of Nagitti, in the land of Elam."
Sennacherib directed his sixth campaign against them (the fifth was
directed against the land of Nipur). "On my sixth campaign (696 B.C.), I
attacked Elam, and carried the people of Bit Yakin with the people of
Elam into captivity. At my return, Suzub, a child of Babylonia, whom the
rebellious people in the land of Sumir and Accad had raised up, came to
offer me battle. I conquered him; he fell into my hand; I gave him his
life, and caused him to be taken into Assyria. The king of Elam, who
came to his assistance, I put to flight."[261] The inscription of Nebbi
Yunus gives us a fuller account. It narrates the carrying away of the
people of Elam, like the cylinder, and then continues: "After this (?)
the leading inhabitants of Babylonia, who were round Merodach Baladan,
escaped and called on the king of Elam for help, who placed Suzub, the
son of Gated, on the throne. I sent my warriors against the king of
Elam; they slew many of his people; they made themselves masters of the
gods who dwell in Arak (Erech), of Samas, Bilit, Istar, Nergal, and
their endless treasures. Suzub, the king of Babylon, who was taken
prisoner after a great battle, they brought to Nineveh into my
presence."[262] We see that in spite of the regency of Assurnadin, which
would not be weak, in spite of the attack of Sennacherib on Elam, the
adherents of Suzub, when combined with the adherents of Merodach Baladan
and supported by Elam, were strong enough to remove Assurnadin not long
after his appointment, and to raise Suzub to the throne. His defeat and
imprisonment were heavy blows for the Babylonians, but they did not
break their resistance. The city of Babylon was not attacked by
Sennacherib.

The stubborn resistance of Babylonia against Sennacherib was supported,
as the inscriptions clearly show, by Elam, where a new king, Kudur
Nanchundi, had succeeded Sutruk Nanchundi (p. 103).[263] In order, no
doubt, to isolate the Babylonians and take from them this support of
their resistance, Sennacherib directed his seventh campaign against
Elam: "The king of Elam," we are told in the inscription of Nebbi Yunus,
"had been the ally of the people of Babel."[264] The two cities which
Sargon had taken from Sutruk Nanchundi,[265] which the Elamites had
subsequently reconquered, were taken by Sennacherib, who besides
enumerates 34 large cities of Elam, which he had besieged, conquered,
and burnt. Kudur Nanchundi abandoned his chief city, Madaktu, and
escaped into a distant region. Sennacherib intended to besiege Madaktu,
but snow and rain detained him in the mountains; he returned to
Nineveh.[266]

Sennacherib had not attained his object, the subjugation of Elam. What
Sennacherib announces as the result of his campaign must have appeared
to the Babylonians as very small, if not altogether a failure. In the
cylinder Taylor a new struggle against Babylon follows the return of
Sennacherib to Nineveh, a struggle more important and severe than any
preceding. Suzub, whom Sennacherib had taken captive in 696 B.C.,
escaped out of imprisonment, and again appeared as king at the head of
Babylonia. Merodach Baladan is no more, but his son unites with Suzub;
all Chaldæa rises; and by its side the Elamites, Aramæans, and several
tribes of Arabia. This great rebellion ends with the capture and
destruction of Babylon. The date of these events, which took place in
the eighth campaign of Sennacherib, can only be defined by the fact that
they belong to the period after the year 696 B.C., and before the year
692 B.C. The cylinder which narrates them bears the date of the
beginning of the year of Belsimiani, i.e. of the year 691 B.C. The
events of the eighth campaign are connected, and follow immediately on
each other; the close was the conquest of Babylon and second capture of
Suzub, as the introductory words to this campaign on the cylinder prove:
"In my eighth campaign the dominion of Suzub came to an end." After the
conquest of Babel, this inscription only mentions the erection of the
building at Nebbi Yunus (p. 108). We must, therefore, put the beginning
of the new struggle in the year 695 B.C., the destruction of Babylon in
the year 694 B.C.

The Babylonians--so our inscription continues after the return of
Sennacherib from Elam--had closed the great gates of their city; Suzub,
who had escaped out of captivity to Elam, and had returned from thence
to Babylon, was placed on the throne of Sumir and Accad. He opened the
treasure of Bit Saggatu, _i.e._ of the great temple of Merodach (I.
295), and sent the sacred gold and silver to the king of Elam. Kudur
Nanchundi died three months after the campaign of Sennacherib against
Elam; he was succeeded by his brother, Umman Minanu, who was ready to
give assistance. Nabu-labar-iskun, a son of Merodach Baladan, joined
Suzub; the Chaldæan regions of Bit Adin, Bit Amukan, Bit Sahalla, took
his side. The Parsua, the land of Ellip, finally the tribes of the
Pekod, Gambul, Rahua, and Chindar, rebelled and marched to Babel to
Suzub, "whom they called king of Babylon."[267] "The king of Elam, the
lands of Parsua and Ellip, the whole of Chaldæa, all the tribes of Aram,
were united with the king of Babylon."[268] On the banks of the Tigris,
near the city of Chaluli, they offered battle to Sennacherib, 150,000
strong. Sennacherib conquered; Nabu-labar-iskun was captured; Umman
Minanu and Suzub escaped. "I granted their lives to those who submitted,
and acknowledged my dominion." With these words the account of the
eighth campaign of Sennacherib closes on the cylinder Taylor. After the
description of the battle of Chaluli the inscription of Bavian
continues: "The whole land of Elam I struck with terror; the warriors
fled before me to the highest mountains. A second time I turned against
Babylon; I won the city; I spared not the men, the children, or the
slaves. Suzub, the king of Babylon, who fell into my hands, I carried
away and his kindred. The gods of the city of Hekali, Bin and Sala,
which Marduk-nadin-akh, king of Accad, had taken from Tiglath Pilesar
and carried to Babylon 418 years previously, I took away from Babylon; I
put them up again in their place in the city of Hekali. The cities and
their palaces I have destroyed from the foundation to the summit; the
walls, altar, temples, and towers, I have laid waste."[269]

The statements of the astronomical canon do not agree with these
inscriptions. With the canon, this period, distracted by contests in
which for the most part Suzub is at the head of Babylon and the city of
Babel is not in the power of Sennacherib, was the reign of Aparanadius,
or, as we supposed, of Assurnadin, which in the canon lasts from 699 to
694 B.C. The year 693 is given to Regebelus, who is succeeded by
Mesesimordakus from the year 692 to 688 B.C. After this the canon places
an interregnum of eight years (688-680 B.C.). If we are to attempt to
harmonise the two, Regebelus and Mesesimordakus may be regarded as
viceroys, to whom, after the capture of Babylonia, Sennacherib entrusted
the rule of the country in those years. The interregnum which follows
would then be explained by the fact that Sennacherib reigned over
Babylonia without a viceroy from the year 688 B.C. But in none of the
inscriptions preserved does Sennacherib name himself in his title, king
of Sumir and Accad, or king of Babel. The astronomical canon gave us the
name of Sargon at the time when he ruled directly over Babylon; why is
not Sennacherib's name mentioned in a similar position? It is not
impossible that new rebellions followed the capture of Babylon, in which
Regebelus and Mesesimordakus were leaders; but it is certain that
Babylonia, if not South Chaldæa, was under the dominion of Assyria at
the death of Sennacherib.

FOOTNOTES:

[214] Flandin gives the long and short sides of the rectangle doubled at
6784 metres; the inscription which reckons in the whole circuit the
building of the palace which juts out from the rest, at 16,280 cubits
(_ammat_). The Babylonian and Assyrian cubits are both = 525
millimetres; Lepsius, "Abh. Berl. Akad." 1853; "Monats-Berichte Ders."
1877. Vol. I. p. 305.

[215] Rawlinson, "Monarch," 1^2, 324 ff.

[216] Oppert, "Dour Sarkayan," p. 23, 24.

[217] Oppert, "Records of the Past," 7, 55, 56.

[218] Oppert, "Dour Sarkayan," p. 8.

[219] In Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 181.

[220] Oppert, "Dour Sarkayan," p. 27, 28; Oppert et Ménant, "Doc.
juridiques," p. 168.

[221] Ménant, "Annal." 162. In Oppert, "Records of the Past," 7, 30, the
fourth canton is called Pappa. Above, p. 86.

[222] Inscription of Nimrud in Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 206. He reads two
talents 30 minæ of gold; G. Smith reads 11 talents of gold.

[223] Oppert, "Records of the Past," 7, 32.

[224] Oppert, "Records of the Past," 7, 35, 36, 37. Vol I., p. 520.

[225] Annals in Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 164.

[226] Annals in Ménant, p. 164; Oppert, _loc. cit._ 7, 33.

[227] Ménant p. 183.

[228] Oppert, _loc cit._ 7, 34.

[229] Ménant, p. 184.

[230] Ménant p. 167; Oppert, _loc. cit._ 7, 37.

[231] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 289.

[232] Oppert, _loc. cit._ 7, 27; Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 192, 195, 200,
201, 205, 207.

[233] In Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 188.

[234] Above, p. 93; Oppert, "Records of the Past," 7, 46-51.

[235] Ménant, "Babylone," p. 157.

[236] The Annals in Oppert, _loc. cit._ 7, 51-53. The Fasti in Ménant,
"Annal." p. 186, 187.

[237] Cylinder Bellino in Ménant, "Annal." p. 229.

[238] G. Rawlinson, "Monarch," 2^2. 179, _n._ 5.

[239] Ménant, _loc. cit._ 229, 230.

[240] Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 212.

[241] Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 228, 229.

[242] Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 211.

[243] Year of Nabudurussur.

[244] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 308.

[245] G. Smith, "Assurbanipal," p. 318.

[246] Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 224.

[247] Rodwell, "Records of the Past," 9, 23; Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 235.

[248] In Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 237.

[249] Joseph. "Antiq." 10, 1, 4.

[250] In Euseb. "Chron." 1, p. 35, ed. Schöne.

[251] Euseb. "Chron." 1, p. 27, ed. Schöne.

[252] Cf. E. Schrader, "K. A. T." s. 213 ff.

[253] In Ménant, "Annal." p. 231.

[254] E. Schrader, "K. A. T." s. 219 ff.

[255] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 298; Cylinder Taylor in Ménant, "Annal." p.
215.

[256] G. Smith's Cylinder, "Disc." p. 298; Ménant reads 2800 prisoners
on the Cylinder Taylor.

[257] Cylinder Bellino.

[258] Cylinder Bellino, in Ménant, p. 228; Cylinder G. Smith, "Disc." p.
302; Cylinder Taylor in Ménant, p. 227; "Records of the Past," 7, 61.

[259] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 308; Ménant, "Annal." p. 219, "Records of the
Past," 7, 63.

[260] The fourth campaign of Sennacherib, the establishment of
Assurnadin cannot be later than the year 698 _B.C._, since the Cylinder
Smith, which dates from the year 697 B.C., concludes with these events,
and then speaks only of the buildings; G. Smith, "Disc." p. 308.

[261] In Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 220, 221.

[262] In Ménant, p. 232.

[263] An inscription of this king found at Susa is explained by Oppert,
"Records of the Past," 7, 82.

[264] In Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 232.

[265] Above, p. 114; Annals of Sargon, in Oppert, "Records of the Past,"
7, 45.

[266] Cylinder Taylor in Ménant, p. 222.

[267] Cylinder Taylor in Ménant, p. 232, 233; Talbot, "Records of the
Past," 1, 78.

[268] Inscription of Nebbi Yunus in Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 232. An
inscription of Exarhaddon repeats the events of this war: Suzub, "of
unknown race, a lower chieftain," came to Babylon, and was raised to be
king; Umman Minanu was gained by the treasures of Bit Saggatu; the
Parsua joined, etc.; G. Smith, "Disc." p. 315.

[269] Rodwell, "Records of the Past," 9, 27, 28; Ménant, "Babylone," p.
166. Vol. II. p. 40.




CHAPTER VI.

SENNACHERIB IN SYRIA.


When Babylonia rebelled against Sennacherib, immediately after the
murder of Sargon; when Merodach Baladan, whom Sargon had deprived of the
rule over Babylon, and had finally suffered to remain in South Chaldæa,
succeeded in again making himself master of Babylon; when the Aramæans,
the tribes of Arabia, Elam, and the land of Ellip had taken up arms
against Sennacherib--the regions of Syria also thought of shaking off
the yoke of Assyria. The cities of the Phenicians and of the
Philistines, the kingdom of Judah, over which king Hezekiah had ruled
since the death of Ahaz (728 B.C.), rebelled. The old opponent of
Assyria in the East, Merodach Baladan, sought support in the West; the
West put hope in the successes of the East: Babylonia and Syria entered
into combination.

The Hebrew Scriptures tell us: "Merodach Baladan, the son of Baladan,
king of Babel, sent a letter and present to king Hezekiah. And Hezekiah
listened to him, and shewed them all his treasure-house, the silver and
the gold, the spices, and the precious oil, and all the house of his
armour, and all that was found in his treasures: there was nothing that
he did not show them in his house, and in his dominion."[270] The
request of Merodach Baladan to make common cause with him, which reached
Hezekiah in the year 704 B.C.,[271] did not find Judah unprepared. Since
Ahaz had purchased the safety of his kingdom before the combined forces
of Damascus and Israel, by submission to the dominion of Assyria, Judah
had been at peace. In nearly thirty years of peace, which had elapsed
since that time, the kingdom had been able to recover her position. The
long siege of Samaria, the fall of the kingdom of Israel, were seen by
Hezekiah without any movement. But the thought of shaking off one day
the yoke of Assyria was not new to him. Sargon has already told us, that
at the time when Ashdod rebelled under Yaman (711 B.C.), the
Philistines, Edom, Moab and Judah, did indeed pay their tribute, but
they thought of treachery, and had sent presents to the king of Egypt
(at that time Shabataka, p. 91). Hezekiah had provided armour, weapons
and shields in abundance; he could now no doubt show a well-furnished
armour-house to the envoys of Merodach Baladan.[272] The neighbours of
Judah, the cities of the Philistines, and Sidon among the Phenicians,
were prepared to make common cause with Hezekiah. In the deepest secrecy
he formed connections with Tirhaka the successor of Shabataka in Egypt
and Meroe, and sent him valuable presents.[273] Beside Babylonia,
Hezekiah could reckon on Egypt; it was much to the interest of Egypt to
nourish the resistance of Syria against Assyria, and to support the
Syrians against Sennacherib as soon as they took up arms.

Isaiah most earnestly warned the king and the people of Judah against
such a rash enterprise--how could any one hope to withstand the crushing
power of the Assyrians? "Woe to the rebellious children," is the cry of
the prophet to the king and his counsellors, "that take counsel without
Jehovah, and make covenants, not in Jehovah's spirit, that they may add
sin to sin; who go down to Egypt and enquire not at the mouth of
Jehovah, to protect themselves with the protection of Pharaoh, and trust
in the shadow of Egypt! The protection of Pharaoh shall be your shame,
and the trust in Egypt your confusion. They will carry their riches on
the backs of asses, and their treasures upon the bunches of camels to a
people that shall not profit them. Egypt's help is vain and void. I call
Egypt a tempest, which sits still. Woe to them that go down to Egypt for
help, and stay on horses and on chariots because they are many, but look
not unto Jehovah! The Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses
are flesh, and not spirit. The protector stumbles, and the protected
falls to earth.[274] But ye are a rebellious people, lying children, and
will not hear the command of Jehovah. Ye say to the seers, See not; and
to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us true things, speak unto us smooth
things, prophesy deceit.[275] Beware that your bands be not made
stronger.[276] Say not, The overflowing scourge shall not come to us,
for we have made lies our refuge, and under deceit we have hid
ourselves.[277] The overflowing scourge shall tread you down. The Lord
Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel said, In repentance and rest ye shall be
saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength. But ye said,
No; for we will flee upon horses, we will ride upon the swift.[278]
Because ye trust in oppression and perverseness your iniquity shall be
as a watercourse breaking out against a high wall, whose breaking cometh
in an instant.[279] I have heard from Jehovah God of hosts, of a
consumption, even determined upon the whole earth."[280]

"Add ye year to year, let the feasts go round, for I will distress
Jerusalem, saith Jehovah, and encamp against thee round about, and will
lay siege against thee with a mount, and raise forts against thee.[281]
The enemy is come to Aiath, he is passed to Migron; at Michmash he hath
laid up his carriages. They are gone over the passage; they have taken
up their lodging at Geba; Ramah is afraid; Gibeah of Saul is fled. Lift
up thy voice, O daughter of Gallim; cause it to be heard unto Laish, O
poor Anathoth! Madmenah is removed, and Gebim's inhabitants flee. This
day they shall remain in Nob; then he shall shake his hand against the
mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem.[282] What aileth
thee now that thou art wholly gone up to the house-tops, thou that art
full of stirs, a tumultuous city, a joyous city? Elam bears the quiver,
with chariots of men and horsemen, and Kir uncovers the shield. Thy
choicest valleys are full of chariots, and the horsemen shall set
themselves in array against the gate. The walls are broken down, and
there is a sound of crying to the mountains."[283]

We saw how Sennacherib succeeded in forcing Merodach Baladan from
Babylon into South Chaldæa, in defeating the Aramæans, in driving back
the Elamites, and subjugating the land of Ellip (704 and 703 B.C.).
After the rebellion in the East was crushed, he turned, in the year 701
B.C., to Syria, to bring again into obedience the rebellious cities and
states.[284] In the inscription on the bulls, and on the cylinders Smith
and Taylor,[285] Sennacherib tells us: "In my third campaign I marched
against the land of the Chatti (the Syrians). Luli (Elulæus), the king
of Sidon, was seized with a mighty terror of my rule, and fled from the
West land (_acharri_) to Cyprus (Yatnan), in the sea. I reduced his land
to subjection. Great Sidon, and Little Sidon, Beth Zitti, Zarephath,
Machallib, Achzib, Akko, his fortified cities, the might of my warriors
and the terror of Asshur overpowered them. They submitted to me. Tubal
(Ithobal) I placed upon the royal throne over them, and the payment of
yearly tribute to my kingdom I imposed upon them as a continuous tax.
Menahem of Samaria (the second of this name, p. 87), Tubal of Sidon,
Abdilit of Aradus, Urumelek of Byblus, Mitinti of Ashdod, Kamosnadab of
Moab, Malikram of Edom--all the kings of the West land, brought their
costly presents and things of price to me, and kissed my feet. But Zidka
of Ascalon, who had not bowed to my yoke, the gods of the house of his
fathers, the treasures, his wife, his sons, his daughters I brought to
Assyria. Sarludari, the son of Rukibti, their former king, I placed over
the people of Ascalon. I imposed upon him the payment of tribute, as the
symbol of subjection to my rule, and he rendered obedience. In
continuing my campaign I marched against the cities of Zidka, Beth
Dagon, Yappa (Joppa), Bene Barak, Azor (Yasur), which had not submitted
to my service, I besieged them. I took them and led away their
prisoners. The chiefs and the nation of Ekron, who had put Padi their
king, who remained true and faithful to Assyria,[286] into iron bonds,
and had handed him over to Hezekiah (Chazakiyahu) of Judah, my enemy.
Their heart was afraid, for the evil deed which they had done. In the
neighbourhood of Eltekeh (Altaku), the battle was drawn out against me;
they encouraged their warriors to the contest. In the service of Asshur
I fought against them and overpowered them. The charioteers and sons of
the king of Egypt, together with the charioteers of the king of Meroe,
my hand took prisoners in the midst of the fight. Eltekeh and Timnath
(Taamna) I attacked, I took, I carried their prisoners away. I marched
against the city of Ekron. The priests,[287] the chiefs, who had caused
the rebellion, I put to death; I set their bodies on stakes on the outer
wall of the city (the inscription of the bulls says: 'I smote them with
the sword'). The inhabitants of the city who had exercised oppression
and violence, I set apart to be carried away; to the rest of the
inhabitants who had not been guilty of faithlessness and rebellion I
proclaimed forgiveness. I brought it about that Padi their king could
leave Jerusalem, installed him on his throne of dominion over them, and
laid upon him the tribute of my rule. Hezekiah of Judah who did not
submit--46 of his fortified cities, and innumerable fortresses and small
places in his kingdom I besieged and took. Two hundred thousand one
hundred and fifty captives, male and female, horses, mules, asses,
camels, oxen, and sheep without number, I took out from them, and
declared to be booty of war. Hezekiah himself I shut up like a bird in a
cage in Jerusalem (Ursalimma), his royal city. I threw up fortifications
and towers against the city; I broke through the exit of the great gate.
His cities which I laid waste I separated from his land, and gave them
to Mitinti the king of Ashdod, and Padi the king of Ekron, and Ismibil
the king of Gaza, and thus I diminished his land. He (Hezekiah) was
overcome with fear before my power, and the Urbi (?) and the brave
warriors whom he had brought up to Jerusalem for defence inclined to
submission. He agreed to pay tribute.[288] Thirty talents of gold, 800
talents of silver, precious stones, chairs of ivory, skins and horns of
Amsi, great treasures, his daughters, the servants of his palace, women
and men, he sent to Nineveh, my royal abode, and his envoy to pay the
tribute and promise submission."[289]

The account of Sennacherib shows that Sidon and Judah stood at the head
of the rising in Syria, that the population of the cities of the
Philistines was more eager than their princes for war with Assyria. The
men of Ascalon had either deposed their prince, who adhered to Assyria,
or raised up Zidka, after him, to oppose Assyria. When Padi, the prince
of Ekron, would not join the rebellion against Assyria, the chiefs, the
priests, and a part of the population of the city, took him prisoner,
and handed him over to Hezekiah. We have already seen from the
statements of the Hebrews, that Hezekiah had made better preparations
for the contest than Hoshea of Israel 25 years before. Not only were
weapons and armour ready for the people; the towers and walls of
Jerusalem had been improved and strengthened. The defensive work between
Zion and the city, Millo, had been secured by new fortifications, a
copious conduit brought into the city. When the danger came, the streams
and springs round the city were filled up, and an outer wall was carried
round the city as a first line of defence. In order to obtain the
materials for this, a number of houses were pulled down in the
city.[290]

The Books of Kings tell us that "Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up
against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. Then Hezekiah
sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, and said: I have sinned, depart
from me; what thou layest upon me I will bear. Then the king of Assyria
laid upon Hezekiah 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold. And
Hezekiah gave all the silver that was in the house of Jehovah, and in
the treasures of the king's house, and cut down the doors and posts of
the temple of Jehovah, which he had overlaid, and gave it to the king of
Asshur. But the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rabshakeh
from Lachish with a great army against Jerusalem, and when they were
come up, they halted by the conduit of the upper pool which lies by the
street of the fuller's field. And they cried to the king. Then there
went out to them Eliakim, the overseer of the king's house, and Shebnah
the scribe, and Joah the chancellor. And Rabshakeh said to them: Ye
trust in the staff of a broken reed, even Egypt, which passes into a
man's hand and pierces him who leans upon it. How will ye thrust back a
single captain, one of the least of the servants of my master? And
Eliakim, Shebnah, and Joah said: Speak to thy servants in Syriac; we
understand it; speak not in the Jews' language in the ears of the people
that are on the wall. Has my master sent me to thy master and to thee,
said Rabshakeh, and not to those who sit on the wall, who, with you,
shall eat their dung and drink their water? And Rabshakeh came up and
cried with a loud voice, in the Jews' language, towards the wall: Hear
the words of the great king, the king of Assyria: If ye will make peace
with me,--thus he saith to you,--and come forth, ye shall eat every one
of his own vineyard, and fig tree, and drink the water of his well. But
the people remained quiet: for the king had given commandment not to
answer the Assyrians. And Rabshakeh turned back, and found the king of
Assyria warring before Libnah. Here he heard of Tirhaka, king of
Ethiopia, that it was said: See, he has come up to contend with thee.
And he again sent messengers to Hezekiah, and said: Be not deceived by
thy God in whom thou trustest. Have the gods of the nations whom my
fathers overthrew saved them--Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the sons
of Eden and Telassar? (p. 6.) Where is the king of Hamath, and the king
of Arpad, and the kings of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Iva?"[291]

This account of the Hebrews is confirmed, and supplemented by the
inscriptions of Sennacherib, given above. They tell us that the king of
Assyria directed his arms first against Sidon. He takes the smaller
cities of the coast belonging to Sidon, Zarephath, Achsib, Akko. King
Elulæus retires to Cyprus. Sidon opens her gates, and receives a new
prince, Ithobal (Tubal), at the hands of Sennacherib. Aradus and Byblus
bring tribute. It must have been at the time of this campaign in Syria
that Sennacherib caused his image to be engraved on the rocks at the
mouth of the Nahr el Kelb, beside the reliefs which Ramses II. had
caused to be cut there more than 650 years before. The picture
represents him in the usual manner of Assyrian rulers, with the kidaris
on his head, the right hand raised, and inscriptions in cuneiform
letters beside the hieroglyphs of Ramses. The cuneiform inscription is
destroyed to such a degree that only the name of Sennacherib can be
read. From the coast of the Phenicians Sennacherib marches to the South,
along the sea, against the cities of the Philistines. First, the places
subject to Ascalon, Japho, Beth Dagon, Bene Barak, Yasur, are besieged
and taken. Matinti, the prince of Ashdod, pays tribute to Sennacherib.
Ascalon herself appears to have opened her gates while Zidka escaped,
for the inscription only mentions the carrying away of his wife, his
sons and daughters. Sarludari, the son of Rukibti, who had previously
reigned in Ascalon, and remained loyal to Assyria, was placed on the
throne. The prince of Samaria, Menahem II., the princes of Moab and
Edom, bring tribute. Sennacherib turns against Ekron: as already
remarked, the Ekronites had deposed their prince, Padi, and given him up
as a prisoner to Hezekiah. Beside Ekron only Judah remains in arms
against Assyria. The account of the Hebrews says that Sennacherib took
all the fortified cities in Judah. Sennacherib's account says that he
took 46 fortified places, small places without number, and carried away
200,150 men and women. Then, according to the account of the Hebrews,
Hezekiah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish to enter into
negotiations.

Hezekiah was terrified by the overthrow of the cities of the Phenicians
and Philistines, the subjugation of the remaining princes, and the
invasion of his land. As the army of Tirhaka was not yet in Syria, he
despaired under such circumstances of maintaining his position, and paid
the tribute which Sennacherib required--30 talents of gold, and 300
talents of silver, according to the Hebrew account. The statement of
Sennacherib gives 30 talents of gold, and 800 talents of silver. The
difference is explained if we may assume that the amount given by
Sennacherib is founded on the light Babylonian talent, that of the
Hebrews on the heavy Syrian talent; 300 heavy Syrian talents are
equivalent to 800 light Babylonian talents.[292] If Sennacherib states
further that he "brought Padi out of Jerusalem" (p. 126), he, no doubt,
required and obtained the surrender of Padi besides the tribute in this
negotiation with Hezekiah. But Sennacherib was not content with this
demand. It is clear that when the tribute had been paid, and Padi given
up, he made the further request to open the gates of Jerusalem. This
Hezekiah refused. The siege of Jerusalem, which Hezekiah had sought to
avert, commenced. "I shut him up," says Sennacherib, "in Jerusalem, like
a bird in a cage."

As the account of the Hebrews shows, Sennacherib did not appear himself
in person at Jerusalem. Hezekiah's envoys find him at Lachish, in the
south of Judah. A relief of the palace of Sennacherib at Kuyundshik (p.
106) shows us the king in the camp at Lachish. With two arrows in the
right, and the bow in the left hand, he sits in the tent, on a high and
richly-adorned chair; two eunuchs with fans are behind him, fanning him;
before him is a general, and behind the latter, curly-haired and bearded
prisoners, and women among them.[293] The upper inscription says: "Tent
of Sennacherib, king of the land of Asshur." The lower inscription says:
"Sennacherib, king of the nations, king of the land of Asshur, sits on
an exalted throne, to receive the booty from Lachish."[294] As we
gathered from his inscriptions, Sennacherib marched along the coast from
Sidon to the south; he had passed beyond Japho, when the resistance of
Ekron checked him. In order to bring Ashdod and Ascalon to obedience,
and to await the approach of Tirhaka, Sennacherib encamped at Lachish,
to cover the siege of Ekron, and beat back the Egyptians and Ethiopians
who, according to his account, marched to the aid of Ekron. In order to
avoid having any enemy in the rear at the time of Tirhaka's arrival, he
sends his commander-in-chief, Tartan, with a part of his army, to invade
Judah. He was so far successful that Hezekiah paid tribute and
surrendered Padi. The surrender of Jerusalem did not take place. He now
caused Jerusalem to be invested. Under these circumstances the approach
of the Assyrians did not take place, as Isaiah had announced, from the
north, through the pass of Michmash, but from the south. When arrived
before Jerusalem, the leaders of the Assyrians begin to negotiate; they
demand the surrender of the city, "the hope in Egypt is vain." As they
failed to produce an effect on the emissaries of Hezekiah, they attempt
to entice the soldiers on the wall to desert. In order to lend force to
the negotiations the siege is commenced. Meanwhile the Egyptians come
nearer; Sennacherib goes back to Libnah, and the renewed negotiations,
which according to the statements of the Hebrews he here commences with
Hezekiah, show how anxious he was to get Jerusalem into his hands. As
the negotiations failed, he was compelled to attempt to gain the city by
assault, by trenches, and besieging towers.

Isaiah had proclaimed the day of judgment with more earnestness than any
prophet before him. None of them had set himself with such force to take
away every support from the feeling of self-confidence. The Jews were to
look forward with fear and trembling to the day of judgment, that they
might learn to trust in Jehovah alone, and from this renovation of the
heart might spring into blossom the new and better time--the new
kingdom. When all splendour and wealth is destroyed; when the chiefs and
the warriors are overthrown; when "the sinners in Zion quake, and
trembling seizes the godless;" when "the Lord has thus washed away the
lewdness of the daughter of Zion,"[295] and "purged away the dross as
with lye," then "he will be very gracious to his people which dwelleth
in Zion, at the voice of her cry; when he shall hear it, he will answer
thee."[296] But Isaiah had not proclaimed the coming judgment for Judah
only; he had announced without ceasing, that no earthly power, however
great and proud it might be, could stand before Jehovah. In his lofty
conception the judgment over Israel became a judgment over the whole
world, from the cleansing punishment of which would arise the new and
true religion for all, a new life in the fear of God and in piety, in
righteousness and peace. "The day of the Lord of hosts," he says, "shall
be upon every thing that is proud and lofty, and upon every thing that
is lifted up; and it shall be brought low; and upon all the cedars of
Lebanon, and all the oaks of Bashan, upon all the high mountains, and
lofty towers, and upon every fenced wall, and upon all the ships of
Tarshish, and all costly pictures. The loftiness of man shall be bowed
down, and the haughtiness of men, and their idols of silver and gold
they shall cast down to the moles and the bats, and Jehovah alone shall
be exalted in that day."[297] Thus Egypt and Ethiopia also will be
smitten, and at length the line will reach even the scourge with which
Jehovah has punished the sins of the others, even the Assyrians. This
great day of judgment, "which avenges their misdeeds on the inhabitants
of the earth," is followed by the restoration, for Jehovah "smites and
heals."[298] As the exiles of Israel shall return from Asshur and the
lost from Egypt (the Israelites who had fled thither before Sargon), and
Israel's power shall be restored, so will Assyria and Egypt be restored,
and Jehovah will say: "Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria, the work
of my hands, and Israel my inheritance."[299] The standard of Jehovah
will be planted on the hill of Zion, and under this banner the people
shall assemble. "All nations shall come to the mount of Jehovah to learn
the way of Jehovah, and walk in his paths, for out of Zion shall go
forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem. Then will Jehovah
judge among the nations, and the work of righteousness is peace, and the
fruit of righteousness is rest, so that the nations will beat their
swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks. Nation
shall not raise up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any
more.[300] The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie
down with the kid. The cow and the lioness shall feed together; the lion
shall eat straw like the ox; the sucking child shall play on the hole of
the asp."[301] But in order that this happy time, "which shall be full
of the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea," may be brought
on, Jehovah's worship must be maintained by a remnant of the people
which he has chosen, to which he announced his will since the days of
the patriarchs. Isaiah was, therefore, firmly convinced that Zion and
the temple of Jehovah, "in which he had founded a precious
corner-stone," could not perish;--that "from Jerusalem a remnant would
go forth, and the ransomed from Mount Zion." As Jehovah had punished
Israel only in measure[302] by carrying the people away into captivity,
but had turned aside the complete annihilation of the people, so Isaiah
firmly believed that in the present instance also Judah would not be
entirely destroyed, that Jerusalem would not be taken, and the judgment
of Jehovah would be accomplished by the harrying and devastation of the
whole land by the Assyrians, and the capture of the remaining cities.
This hope was in him the more surely founded as Hezekiah worshipped
Jehovah with zeal and earnestness.

Though the cities of Judah were lost, and Sennacherib lay in the south
of Judah with a mighty army, though hundreds of thousands had been
carried away, and Jerusalem itself was now shut up, Isaiah was
nevertheless more zealous and earnest in urging the people and the king
to resistance than he had previously been in advising them to desist
from the undertaking. The line of destruction would soon reach the
Assyrians, they would not march into Jerusalem; Jehovah would rescue the
remnant of Judah. "Lo! the Assyrian," thus Isaiah represents Jehovah as
saying, "the rod of mine anger and the staff of mine indignation is in
his hand. Against the people of my wrath I will send him to take the
spoil, and to tread them down like the mire of the street.[303] But it
shall come to pass that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon
Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart
of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks. For he saith: I
have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures,
and I have put down the princes like a valiant man. My hand hath found
as a nest the riches of the people, and as one gathereth eggs that are
left, have I gathered all the earth; there was none that moved the wing,
or opened the mouth, or peeped. By the strength of my hand I have done
it, and by my wisdom, for I am prudent. Shall I not, as I have done to
Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols? Shall the axe
boast against him that heweth therewith; or shall the saw magnify
itself against him that shaketh it? As if the rod led him that bears it,
or the staff raised the man. Therefore the Lord of hosts will send a
blight upon his fatness, and a firebrand will destroy his splendour, and
diminish the glory of his forest and his fruitful field, and the remnant
of the trees will be so few, that a child may write them.[304] When thou
shalt cease to desolate, thou shalt be desolated: when thou shalt make
an end to plunder, they shall plunder thee.[305] Jehovah hath determined
it from the days of old, and from distant times he hath established it.
I have suffered it to take place that the Assyrian destroyed the cities
and made them heaps of ruins, and that their inhabitants were put to
shame, of small power, as grass of the field. But I know the insolence
of the mighty, and his going out and coming in, saith Jehovah. For the
sake of his insolence, and because his tumult has come up into my ears,
I will put my ring in his nose, and my bit in his mouth, and carry him
back on the way that he came. O my people that dwelleth in Zion, be not
afraid of the Assyrian. He smote thee with the rod, and lifted up his
staff against thee. Yet a little while and my indignation shall cease,
and mine anger shall turn to their destruction, and in that day his
burden shall be taken from thy shoulder, and his yoke from thy
back.[306] The king of Assyria shall not come into this city, nor shoot
an arrow there, nor come before it with a shield, nor cast a bank
against it. By the way that he came, by the same shall he return. And I
will defend this city to save it for my own sake, and for the sake of my
servant David.[307] As I have purposed so shall it come to pass. I will
break the Assyrian in my land, and tread him under foot.[308] Lo! a
noise of many nations, which make a noise like the sound of mighty
waters. But Jehovah shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and
shall be chased as the whirling dust before the wind. And behold at
evening trouble, and before the morning they are not. This is the
portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us."[309]

No doubt the Assyrians threw up trenches and besieging towers round the
city; no doubt they endeavoured to destroy the walls and gates. But
Jerusalem was saved. The army of Tirhaka, though it appeared very late
in Syria, did not fail to come. Sennacherib had time to bring the siege
of Ekron to an end, to execute the leaders of the rebellion, to carry
away a part of the population, and set up Padi again as the prince of
Ekron (p. 127), before the Egyptians and Ethiopians came. He retired
before their approach from Libnah to Timnath and Eltekeh, in order, no
doubt, to be nearer the part of his army which was besieging Jerusalem,
and to be able to withdraw troops from it for the decisive battle. Of
this battle, which took place near Eltekeh, he tells us that he was
victorious in it; that he took captive charioteers and sons of the
princes of Egypt, and charioteers of the king of Meroe in the conflict.
But while in other cases the hostile king is invariably mentioned by
name, Tirhaka's name is wanting; Sennacherib speaks quite vaguely of the
kings of Egypt (_sarrani mat Mussuri_) and the king of Meroe (_sar mat
Miluhhi_), who came to aid Ekron, of sons of the kings of Egypt, of
charioteers of the kings of Meroe, whom he captured; captive sons of
princes are also mentioned elsewhere in the inscriptions. Further,
Sennacherib does not tell us, as is usual elsewhere, how many of the
enemy were killed, how many prisoners he took, that the enemy fled, and
that he pursued them. If we add to this that the siege of Jerusalem ends
suddenly according to the account of the Hebrews, that Sennacherib's
army did not appear afterwards in Syria, although he sat for 20 years on
the throne of Assyria after this battle, we cannot fail to see that
Sennacherib, if not completely defeated at Eltekeh, must have suffered
the severest losses--losses of such weight that they compelled him to
retire immediately after the battle, and break off the siege of
Jerusalem on the spot.

This result Sennacherib's inscriptions conceal by speaking very vaguely
of the enemy, and bringing into prominence some captures, which may have
been effected even by the defeated side in the battle. This concealment
was aided by the fact that the rulers who rose again in the districts of
Egypt under Sabakon--the "hereditary lords," who maintained themselves
under Sabakon's successors--could be described as kings, while their
sovereign, Tirhaka, could be kept in the background, and made to appear
as the king of Meroe. Of more importance is the attempt in the annals to
give the appearance of a favourable issue to the campaign in Syria, by
altering the chronology of the events. They represent that, which took
place before the battle of Eltekeh, as taking place after it; the
invasion of Judah, the negotiations with Hezekiah, his payment of
tribute, which according to the account of the Hebrews took place before
the battle at Eltekeh, when Sennacherib was at Lachish, they put after
the battle, so that Sennacherib's campaign appears to close with the
submission of Hezekiah. The inscriptions do not give any false facts:
they even mention the attempt to seduce the soldiers of Hezekiah, saying
that "the good warriors, whom he had brought to Jerusalem for defence,
were inclined to submission;" they only alter the order, and represent
the capture of Ekron, the shutting up and siege of Jerusalem, the
division of the land in the south of Judah among Ashdod, Ekron, and
Gaza, and, finally, the payment of tribute by Hezekiah, as coming after
the battle of Eltekeh, whereas these events preceded it; and in their
usual manner they exaggerate the payments of Hezekiah, when they
represent him as sending "his daughters" to Nineveh. That the
inscription of Nebbi Yunus mentions the subjugation of the land of Judah
(Jehuda) and its king Hezekiah (Chazakiyahu), beside the dethronement of
Luli of Sidon,[310] has no basis beyond the tribute of 330 talents.

To the Hebrews the rescue from the most grievous distress, the sudden
departure of the Assyrians from the walls of Jerusalem, could appear
only as a decree of Jehovah, as the work of his mighty arm. When Isaiah
announced to Hezekiah the word of Jehovah: "I will protect this city,
and save it for my own and my servant David's sake"--the Books of the
Kings continue--"It came to pass in the selfsame night that the angel of
Jehovah went out, and slew in the camp of the Assyrians 185,000
men.[311] And when they arose in the morning, behold, they were all dead
corpses. Then Sennacherib departed, and went and returned, and dwelt in
Nineveh." In most complete contrast to his father Ahaz, who had
sacrificed his son to Moloch, and altered the arrangements of the temple
at Jerusalem after an Assyrian model (p. 78), Hezekiah was sincerely
devoted to the worship of Jehovah. He had "removed the high places,
broken the pillars, and destroyed the Astartes;" he had made thorough
regulations for the purification, arrangement, and elevation of the
worship, and taken measures for the better maintenance of the priests
and Levites.[312] The revision by the prophetic hand, in which we
possess the Books of Kings, naturally derives all the misery which fell
upon Israel and Judah from the idolatry of the kings, who for this
reason, no doubt, are made to sacrifice on the hills more frequently
than was really the case, to offer incense to strange gods, and pray to
all the host of heaven. The more easy was it, on the other hand, to
believe that the sudden, most unhoped-for rescue of the pious king was
brought about by the direct interposition of Jehovah, and the
announcement of the great prophet fulfilled on the spot.

The priests of Memphis, or the interpreter, gave the following account
of the meeting of Sennacherib and the Egyptians to Herodotus: Sethos, a
priest of Hephæstus (of Ptah of Memphis), ruled over Egypt, when
Sanacheribus, the king of the Arabs and Assyrians, led a great army
against Egypt. Of the warriors in Egypt none would go against him, for
Sethos had despised them, as though he had no need of them, treated them
badly, and taken away the plots of land which they had possessed under
former kings. In despair Sethos lamented in the temple before the image
of the god, and the god appeared to him in a dream, and bade him be of
good courage; he would suffer no harm if he marched out against the
enemies; the god would himself send him helpers. So Sethos marched out
with those who would follow of their own will--none of the warriors
followed--and pitched his camp near Pelusium. Then field-mice spread
over the camp of the enemies, and gnawed to pieces their quivers, their
bows, and shield-handles; and when on the next morning they fled away
without arms, many of them were slain. "And now this king," so Herodotus
concludes his narrative, "stands in stone in the temple of Hephæstus (of
Ptah), with a mouse in his hand, and says by his inscription--'Look on
me, and be pious.'"[313] Neither the list of Manetho nor the monuments
mention or know a priest Sethos of Memphis, who ruled over Egypt in the
days of Sennacherib. The opponent of Sennacherib from the Nile, whose
name is passed over in his inscriptions, was Tirhaka, the king of Napata
and Egypt, as the Hebrews tell us, and the statement has been already
confirmed by the monuments of Egypt.

FOOTNOTES:

[270] 2 Kings xx. 12.

[271] Merodach Baladan was, as has been shown (p. 113), driven out of
Babylon in the year 703 B.C.; it is certain that he was ruler there in
704 B.C. If the Books of the Kings do not mention his embassy to
Hezekiah till after the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians, they show
by the announcement of Isaiah to Hezekiah, which they put after the
embassy of Merodach Baladan thus: "He will be saved out of the hand of
the Assyrians" (2, xx. 6), that the embassy was at Jerusalem before the
campaign of Sennacherib; cf. Isa. xxxix.

[272] Isa. xxii. 2; 2 Chron. xxxii. 4, 5.

[273] Isa. xxx. 2, 3, 6.

[274] Isa. xxxi. 1-3.

[275] Isa. xxx. 9, 10.

[276] Isa. xxviii. 12.

[277] Isa. xxviii. 15. The deceit is no doubt to be explained by the
secrecy of the negotiations with Egypt.

[278] Isa. xxx. 15, 16.

[279] Isa. xxx. 12, 13.

[280] Isa. xxviii. 22.

[281] Isa. xxix. 1.

[282] Isa. x. 28-32.

[283] Isa. xxi. 1, 2, 5-7.

[284] It is the third warlike enterprise of Sennacherib, which for the
following reasons cannot be placed earlier than 702 B.C. The cylinder
Bellino dates from the seventh month of the third year of Sennacherib,
_i.e._ from the year 703 / 702; it concludes with the subjugation of
Ellip and the tribute of the Medes. Sennacherib, therefore, may have
first marched to Syria in the year 701 B.C. The inscription of the bulls
narrates this campaign, which extends to the establishment of Assurnadin
in Babylon; so the cylinder Smith, which dates from the year 697 B.C.
Hence, as the year of Hezekiah's accession is fixed for the year 728
B.C. (p. 16, _n._), the siege of Jerusalem does not fall in the
fourteenth year of Hezekiah, in which the Books of Kings place it, but
in the twenty-eighth year.

[285] I combine these three accounts, which differ but little from each
other.

[286] Cylinder Smith, "Disc." p. 304.

[287] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 304.

[288] Inscription of the bulls in E. Schrader, "K. A. T." l. 31, s. 187.

[289] E. Schrader, "K. A. T." 171 ff. G. Smith, "Disc." p. 303 ff.
Rodwell, "Records of the Past," 7, 61 ff.

[290] Isa. xxii. 9, 10, 11.

[291] 2 Kings xviii. 13 ff.; 2 Kings xix. 8-13; Isa. xxxvi., xxxvii.; 2
Chron. xxxii.

[292] Brandis, "Münzwesen," s. 98.

[293] Room 36, in Layard.

[294] E. Schrader, "K. A. T." s. 170.

[295] Isa. i. 25.

[296] Isa. xxx. 19.

[297] Isa. ii. 12-22.

[298] Isa. xix. 22.

[299] Isa. xix. 25.

[300] Isa. ii. 3, 4.

[301] Isa. xi. 6-8; cf. xxv. 6-12; xxxv. 5-10. The ideas of the happy
future are not quite consistent in Isaiah. If in one place he extends
the peace of the world down to the beasts of prey, in others he
represents the restored kingdom of David, the united Ephraim and Judah,
as "oppressing their oppressors." "Judah will be a terror for Egypt"
(xix. 17), and the Israelites will "flee to the sea on the shoulders of
the Philistines: together they will plunder the sons of the East, and
subjugate Edom, Moab, and Ammon" (xi. 14). In the same way the new king
of the race of David, who will then rule, appears to him at one time
gifted with the strength of David, and is again described as
participating in the Divine nature, and passes into a general picture of
the happy future.

[302] Isa. xxvii. 8.

[303] Isa. x. 5, 6.

[304] Isa. x. 7-18.

[305] Isa. xxxiii. 1.

[306] Isa. x. 24-27.

[307] 2 Kings xix. 25-33; Isa. xxxvi., xxxvii. 1-34.

[308] Isa. xiv. 24-27.

[309] Isa. xvii. 12-14.

[310] In Ménant, "Annal." p. 231.

[311] 2 Kings xix. 35, 36.

[312] 2 Kings xviii. 4.

[313] Herod. 2, 141.




CHAPTER VII.

ESARHADDON.


Sennacherib had been compelled to retire from Syria before the Egyptians
and Ethiopians, before the army of Tirhaka. If he did not seek to
compensate this failure by new campaigns to Syria, if he omitted to
attempt the subjugation of Syria a second time, the reason obviously lay
in the fact, that his arms were occupied nearer home by the rebellion of
Babylonia, the attitude of Merodach Baladan in South Chaldæa, and his
combination with Elam. We are acquainted with the series of rebellions
and struggles which Sennacherib had to meet here, till in the year 694
B.C. he finally succeeded in overcoming the confederates leagued against
him in a great battle, and capturing the city of Babylon (p. 118). Yet
even after these important successes, Sennacherib's armies, so far as we
see, never appeared again in Syria. The Books of the Hebrews tell us
nothing of any further attacks of Sennacherib on Judah: they merely say:
"Sennacherib afterwards remained in Nineveh." The accounts preserved in
the inscriptions of the campaigns of Sennacherib do not go beyond the
capture of Babylon: the account which reaches furthest down is dated 691
B.C. Of the next ten years, during which Sennacherib continued to sit on
the throne of Assyria, we have no connected information. Even the
inscriptions which collect the acts of Sennacherib, the inscription of
Nebbi Yunus, and the inscription of Bavian, end their account of his
military deeds with the battle of Chaluli and the capture of Babylon.
Indications lead to the conclusion that Sennacherib, even in this last
decade of his reign, was so actively engaged in contests on the lower
Euphrates and against Elam, that he was compelled to leave Syria to her
fate. The fragment of an inscription speaks of Sennacherib's wars
against a queen of the Arabs; in an inscription of his successor also we
hear of a conquest of Sennacherib in Arabia.[314] Tiglath Pilesar had
fought against Samsieh, the queen of the Arabs, Sargon had received
tribute from her, and Sargon and Tiglath Pilesar had also received the
tribute of the Sabæans.[315] Herodotus, as we saw (p. 141), calls
Sennacherib the king of "the Arabians and Assyrians," from which we may
conclude that in the tradition of Egypt, on which this account given by
Herodotus of Sennacherib was based, he was a ruler to whom a
considerable part of Arabia was subject. In the inscriptions of the
successor of Sennacherib, we find at his accession Nabuzir, a son of
Merodach Baladan, in possession of Bit Yakin, the land of the sea, the
old domain of his race.[316] He must, therefore, have won it back in
Sennacherib's time, and though he may have had to pay tribute he must
have maintained his conquest. Lastly, we hear that Halludus, the
successor of Uman Minanu of Elam, made a vigorous resistance to
Sennacherib, and that Sennacherib won from him Bit Imbi, a border
fortress.[317]

Sennacherib's inscriptions repeatedly inform us that he caused trees to
be felled on Mount Amanus, _i.e._ in the neighbourhood of Cilicia, for
his buildings.[318] Inscriptions from the third and ninth years of
Sennacherib also mention the fact that captive Cilicians were compelled
to work at these buildings (p. 107), and in the inscription of Nebbi
Yunus, the mention of the Syrian campaign of Sennacherib is followed by
the statement, that he reduced the Cilicians, who inhabited the forests,
and destroyed their cities.[319] Sennacherib, therefore, must have
maintained by repeated contests the dominion over the Cilicians, which
Sargon had already gained (p. 103). Polyhistor tells us that Sennacherib
in Assyria heard of the landing of a Grecian army in Cilicia; he
hastened thither and defeated the Greeks, after losing many of his own
people; in remembrance of this victory he caused his image to be set up
there, with an inscription in Chaldæan letters, as evidence of his
bravery and skill, and built the city of Tarsus after the model of
Babylon. In the somewhat different account of Abydenus, Sennacherib,
after subjugating Babylon, defeated a fleet of the Greeks in a naval
battle off the coast of Cilicia, founded the temple of Anchiale, set up
brazen pillars with an inscription of his achievements, and built the
city of Tarsus after the model of Babylon, so that the Cydnus flowed
through Tarsus in the same manner as the Euphrates through Babylon.
Hellanicus had already told the Greeks that Tarsus and Anchiale had been
built by a ruler of Babylon, and the companions of Alexander of Macedon
saw near the walls of Anchiale the picture of a king of Assyria, with
the right hand raised.[320]

After an eventful reign of 24 years, Sennacherib came to an end even
more miserable than the end of his father (681 B.C.[321]). "When
Sennacherib was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god," so we find
in the Books of Kings, "his sons Adramelech and Nergal Sarezer slew him
with the sword. They escaped into the land of Ararat, and Esarhaddon his
son reigned in his stead."[322] According to Polyhistor, Ardumuzanes,
the son of Sennacherib, was the treacherous assassin of his father; in
Abydenus Nergilus succeeds Sennacherib; Nergilus was slain by his son
Adrameles, who was killed by his brother Axerdis, and his army driven
back to the city of Bizana (in Armenia).[323] The canon of the Assyrians
merely mentions at the year 681 B.C., "Assur-akh-iddin (Esarhaddon)
ascends the throne."[324] Sennacherib's inscriptions told us that after
the campaign in which he had driven Merodach Baladan out of Bit Yakin,
he had placed his eldest son, Assurnadin, as regent over Babylon (p.
115). Of this Assurnadin we only know this fact: we hear nothing of his
later fortunes. On a tablet, Sennacherib states that he has set apart
golden chains, ivory, and precious stones, a mina and a half in weight,
for his son Esarhaddon.[325] Esarhaddon, therefore, a fourth son of
Sennacherib, wrested from his brothers, Adramelech and Nergal Sarezer,
the murderers of his father, the fruit of their evil deeds, and became
Sennacherib's successor.

The acts of Esarhaddon show that he was a prince of energy, and knew how
to guide the reins with a strong hand. His father's reign had not been
poor in results, but still he had not been able to maintain the dominion
of Sargon in its full extent: he had been compelled to give up Syria.
Esarhaddon was not only able to recover this loss, he raised Assyria to
a height which she had never attained before. Shalmanesar II. had
trodden Syria, received the tribute of Israel, and reduced the west of
Iran to submission; Tiglath Pilesar II. had seen Arachosia, received the
homage of Judah, and ruled over Babylonia; Sargon had held sway over
Syria and Babylonia, Cilicia and Media; Esarhaddon kept the west of Iran
in submission; he not only extended the dominion of Assyria further to
the north than any of his predecessors; he reduced Babylon to certain
obedience, his armies passed far beyond the borders of Syria, and of
Asia towards the south-west.

According to a cylinder found at Kuyundshik and much injured at the
beginning, Esarhaddon with his army hastened to Nineveh; Asshur, Samas,
Bel, Nebo, and Istar, had fortunately placed him on the throne of his
father. In Nineveh he heard that Nabu-zir, the son of Merodach Baladan,
the lord of Bit Yakin, had attacked the faithful overseer of Ur
(Mugheir), had smitten him with the sword, and refused homage.
Esarhaddon sends his troops against Nabu-zir, who flies before them to
Elam: Nahid Merodach, the brother of Nabu-zir, comes from Elam to pay
homage to Esarhaddon; he receives the land of the sea-coast, the
inheritance of his brother. "Without fail," we are further told, "he
came each year to Nineveh, with rich presents to kiss my feet."[326] The
inscription of a second cylinder, found at Nebbi Yunus, mentions the
same event. "Nabu-zir," we are told, "trusted in Elam, but he did not by
that means save his life. I requested his brother Nahid Merodach to do
homage to me. He hastened from Elam to Nineveh, and kissed my feet; the
whole of the sea-coast I gave to him."[327] "Samas-ibni, prince of Bit
Dakkur in Chaldæa, took land in possession which belonged to the sons of
Babylon and Borsippa. I gave it back to them, and put Nabu-Sallim, the
son of Balasu, on the throne, who became my servant."[328] On a third
cylinder (Aberdeen) Esarhaddon says: "At the beginning of my reign, on
my first warlike enterprise, I established myself firmly on the seat of
my dominion." He marches to Babylon, makes prisoners, assembles the
warriors, and all the tribes of the inhabitants of Kardunias, assumes
the crown, and bids the chiefs prostrate themselves before him.[329]
That Esarhaddon bore the crown of Babylon is told us in the current
title of his inscriptions: "King of Asshur, king of Babel, king of Sumir
and Accad (king of Kardunias)." According to the astronomical canon,
Asaridinus (Assur-akh-iddin) reigns over Babylon from the beginning of
the year 680 B.C. to the end of the year 668 B.C. Over Assyria
Esarhaddon reigned from 681 to 668 B.C.

Esarhaddon appears to have adopted a different method from his fathers
for securing his dominion over Babylonia. So far as we can see, he
attempted to pacify and win the Babylonians by mild regulations, by
setting up the temples destroyed by his father, and restoring the city.
A tablet of Esarhaddon narrates in detail the wars which Sennacherib
carried on against Babylonia, and then mentions the destruction of the
city in order to conclude with the enumeration of the buildings which
he, Esarhaddon, erected in Babylon.[330] According to the cylinder
Aberdeen, Esarhaddon, at his coronation in Babylon, liberated the
prisoners whom he had taken; according to the cylinder of Nebbi Yunus,
he restored, as already mentioned, to the sons of Babylon and Borsippa
the land which Samas-ibni of Bit Dakkur had taken from them. The
cylinder Aberdeen tells us that Esarhaddon fixed the year and the day
for the building, _i.e._ for the restoration of Bit Saggatu--it was the
chief temple of Babylon, the sanctuary of Bel Merodach, the protecting
deity of the city (I. 295)--that he had bricks made for this building,
that he restored the injured temples of the gods, and the walls of
Babylon, Imgur-Bel, and Nivit Bel.[331] Bricks of the ruin-heaps of
Amram Ibn Ali, on the site of the ancient Babylon, bear the stamp: "To
the god of Merodach, his lord, Esarhaddon, king of Asshur, king of
Babel, begun and built the altars of Bit Saggatu."[332] On the cylinder
of Nebbi Yunus, Esarhaddon says: "When Samas, Bel, Nebo, Istar of
Nineveh, and Istar of Arbela had given me the victory over my enemies,
out of the booty of foreign lands, which my hand reduced by the aid of
the great god, my lord, I built (36 great) temples in the cities of
Assyria and Babylonia, covered them with silver and gold, and made them
to shine as the day."[333]

Of Esarhaddon's relations to Elam, the inscriptions only tell us that he
strongly fortified a border-city against Elam.[334] The tribes of the
Arabs were reduced far and wide. The cylinder of Nebbi Yunus mentions
the city of Adumu, the fortress of the Arabs, which Sennacherib
took;[335] he, Esarhaddon, made Tabua, a woman brought up in his palace,
queen of the Arabs, and increased by 65 camels the tribute paid to his
father. When Hazael, the prince of another Arabian tribe, died,
Esarhaddon put his son Yahlu on the throne, and raised the tribute paid
by Hazael by 10 minæ of gold, 50 camels, and payments of other
kinds.[336] The distant land of Bazu had been trodden by none of his
forefathers; he advanced thither; six princes of this region, Kisu,
Akbaru, Mansaku, Habizu, Niaru, Habanamru, and two queens, Yapah and
Bailu, he slew; their gods, their possessions, and their people, he
carried off to Assyria; the king of the Gambul, who dwelt in the marshes
and waters (in the region at the mouth of the Euphrates), submitted, and
brought presents and tribute.[337]

In the East, Esarhaddon kept the tribes of the Medes in subjection. The
cylinder of Nebbi Yunus says: "The land of Patusarra, a region in the
neighbourhood of ----, in the midst of the distant land of Media, on the
border of the land of Bikni, of the copper-mountains--this land none of
the kings, my forefathers, had subjugated. Sitirparna and Iparna, the
princes of the strong places, had not bowed before me; I carried them to
Assyria, with their subjects, horses, chariots, oxen, sheep, asses, as
rich booty." "Arpis, Zanasana, Ramatiya, the princes of the cities of
Partakka, Partukka, and Uraka-Zabarna in the land of Media, the position
of which was distant, who in the days of the kings, my forefathers, had
not trodden the soil of Assyria,--the fear of Asshur my lord threw them
down; they brought for me to my chief city, Nineveh, their great beasts,
copper (?), the product of their mines, bowed themselves with folded
hands before me, and besought my favour. I placed my viceroys over them,
who united the inhabitants of those regions with my kingdom; I laid upon
them burdens, and a fixed tribute."[338]

Of Esarhaddon's acts in the North, we learn that he drove out the
inhabitants of the land of Van from their dwellings, that he trod down
the inhabitants of the land of Chilaki (Cilicia), and the Duha who dwelt
in the forests of the land of Tabal. Twenty-one fortresses, and the
small places round them, he took and burnt down; and carried away the
inhabitants. Tiuspa of the land of Gimirai (Cimmeria), which lay in the
far distance, submitted to him.[339]

The most important achievements of Esarhaddon were accomplished in the
West. On the cylinder of Kuyundshik, the expulsion of Nabu-zir, and the
establishment of Nahid Merodach his brother in Bit Yakin, to which the
cylinder of Nebbi Yunus adds the subjugation of Bit Dakkur, is followed
by a campaign of Esarhaddon to Syria, which must, therefore, fall in the
year 679 or 678 B.C. Sennacherib had dethroned Elulæus of Sidon in the
year 701 B.C., and put Ithobal in his place (p. 125.) Ithobal was no
longer at the head in Sidon. Esarhaddon tells us, that Abdimilkut of
Sidon, and Sanduarri, a king in the mountain-land (therefore, no doubt,
a prince of Lebanon), united against him. "Abdimilkut trusted in his
position by the great sea, and threw off my yoke."[340] "The great city
of Sidon," so we are told on a cylinder of Nebbi Yunus, "which lies on
the sea, I attacked; all their places, fortresses and dwellings, I
destroyed; I threw them into the sea. Abdimilkut, who had fled before
the face of my warriors into the middle of the sea, I seized like a
fish, and cut off his head. His possessions, gold, silver, and precious
stones, the treasures of his palace, his innumerable people, oxen,
sheep, and asses, I carried away to Assyria. The princes of the land of
Chatti (Syria) I collected. I caused a new city to be built, and called
it the city of Esarhaddon. The people which my bow had taken in the
lands and on the sea of the rising sun (_i.e._ the inhabitants carried
away from Bit Yakin), I settled there, and placed my viceroys over them.
I caught Sanduarri like a bird in the midst of the mountains, and caused
his head to be cut off. The heads of Sanduarri and Abdimilkut I hung up
beside the heads of their chiefs, and marched to Nineveh."[341]

The overthrow of Sidon, and the terrible example which Esarhaddon had
made by this execution of the conquered princes, appears to have
frightened all Syria into obedience. To this, at any rate, the
assembling of all the princes of Syria, of which the cylinder speaks,
points; and we learn further, without any mention of new contests in
Syria, that the princes of Cyprus paid homage to Esarhaddon. After the
cylinder has narrated the achievements of Esarhaddon against the Arabs,
the Medes, and the Cilicians, which he accomplished down to the close of
the year 674 B.C. (the cylinder bears the date of the year of Atarilu
_i.e._ of 673 B.C.), it proceeds to the description of the buildings of
Esarhaddon. In Nineveh he built at the smaller edifice of his father to
the south of the Khosr, and at the great palace of Sennacherib to the
north of it (p. 106). The description of the buildings begins with the
mention of an embassy of Esarhaddon to the princes of Syria and Cyprus,
and their assembling; they have to provide the material and adornment of
these palaces by taxes and contributions. Twelve kings of the Chatti
were called upon: Baal, king of Tyre; Manasses, king of Judah (_Minasi
sar ir Jahudi_); Kausgabri, king of Edom; Musuri, king of Moab;
Zilli-Bel, king of Gaza; Mitinti, king of Ascalon; Ituzu, king of Ekron;
Milkiasap, king of Byblus; Matanbaal, king of Arvad; Abibaal, king of
Samaria; Puduil, king of Ammon; Achmilku, king of Ashdod. No mention is
made of a prince of Sidon; as the inscriptions told us above, that city
was under a viceroy of the king. In addition to these twelve kings, a
summons was sent to "ten kings of Yatnan (Cyprus), in the midst of the
sea:" Ikistusu (Aegisthus) king of Idalium (Idial); Pisuaguru
(Pythagoras), king of Kitrusi (Chytrus?); ----, king of Salamis
(Sillumi); Ituandar (Eteandros), king of Paphus (Pappa); Iriil
(according to another reading Eresu), king of Soli (Sillu); Damasu
(Damasus), king of Kurion; Rumisu, king of Tamasus; Damusi, king of
Amtihatasti (Amathus?); Unasagusa, king of Limenia (Limini); Buhli, king
of Aphrodision (Upridissa). "In all, I called upon 22 kings of the land
of the Chatti on the sea coast and in the sea."[342]

But in spite of this obedience of the princes of Syria and Cyprus,
Esarhaddon had to undergo contests in Syria after this time, _i.e._
after the year 674 B.C., which brought him beyond the borders of Syria.
In the year 697 B.C. Manasses succeeded his father Hezekiah in Judah; he
was then a boy of 12 years of age.[343] But when he came of age he did
not follow in the steps of his pious father; therefore, we are told in
the Chronicles, Jehovah caused the captains of the army of the king of
Assyria to come upon him; they took Manasses prisoner with thorns, and
bound him in chains, and carried him to Babel. And when he was in
distress he besought Jehovah, and humbled himself before the God of his
fathers, and Jehovah heard his prayer, and caused him to return to
Jerusalem, to his kingdom.[344] The Books of the Hebrews further tell us
that Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, settled people from Persia, Erech and
Babel, from Susa and Elam, in Samaria.[345] The carrying away of
Manasses, and strengthening of the foreign population in Israel, can
only have been caused by attempts at rebellion in the kingdom of Judah
and land of Israel. These attempts must have taken place after 674 B.C.,
with which year the cylinders close, which narrate the deeds of
Esarhaddon down to this point, without any mention of such rebellions;
on the contrary, we saw that these cylinders at the close of this epoch
describe Manasses of Judah and Abibaal of Samaria as among the obedient
and tributary vassals of Esarhaddon. The fragment of an inscription of
Esarhaddon, which narrates the events of his tenth campaign, and which
we cannot place before the year 673 B.C., as there is no mention of the
campaign in the inscriptions dated from that year, informs us of a
rebellion of Baal, king of Tyre, who was mentioned at the close of the
inscriptions previously quoted at the head of the vassals of Esarhaddon
in Syria. We can assume the more certainly that Judah and Samaria joined
this rebellion, as the fragment adds: King Baal of Tyre "threw off the
yoke of Assyria, trusting in king Tarku (Tirhaka) of Cush."[346]

It must have been the interference of Egypt, the hope in Egypt and
Ethiopia, which urged a portion of the Syrians to renewed attempts at
rebellion. Tirhaka, as we have seen, fought against Esarhaddon's father
in the year 701 B.C., by no means without success, at Eltekeh; after the
battle Sennacherib abandoned Syria. The restoration of the supremacy of
Assyria, which took place after the overthrow of Abdimilkut of Sidon,
was calculated to drive the ruler of Egypt and Ethiopia to an attempt to
prevent the establishment of Assyria on his borders. In the hope of such
assistance, Tyre, which stood at the head of Phoenicia, after the
defeat of Sidon, may have taken up arms; Judah and Samaria may have
joined her. The fragment of another inscription of Esarhaddon tells us
that he sent out his forces "to fight against Tarku, the king of Cush,
against the men of Egypt, and the allies of Tarku" (_i.e._ no doubt,
against Tyre, Judah and Samaria). The Assyrian army won the victory.
Tarku fled.[347] The return of Tirhaka was followed by the subjugation
of Judah and Samaria, the carrying away of Manasses to Babel
(Esarhaddon built, as we saw, at Babel, and then, no doubt, resided
there), and the settlement of inhabitants from the East in Samaria, in
order to secure the obedience of this land. We may put these events in
the year 673 B.C. As Tyre on her island continued her resistance,
Esarhaddon marched to break this down, on his tenth campaign, in the
early spring, in the month of Nisan, crossed the swollen waters of the
Euphrates and Tigris, caused fortifications to be thrown up against
Tyre, cut them off, as he says, from water and food, and directed his
march against Muzur (Egypt) and Miluhhi (Napata). From Aphek in Samaria
he set out southwards against Raphia (Refah near Gaza), where his
grandfather Sargon had defeated Sabakon (Seveh) of Ethiopia and Egypt
nearly 50 years before (p. 88). On the march through the desert the army
suffered from want of water; but Merodach came to the aid of
Esarhaddon's warriors, and saved their lives,--as the inscription tells
us, which breaks off at the point where it is telling of the first
conflict with the enemy. After the indubitable successes of Esarhaddon
against Tirhaka, Tyre submitted: the king Baal was pardoned; we find him
again at the head of the city under Esarhaddon's successor. In the same
way, after the subjection of Tyre, or some time later, when no one in
Syria could any longer found hopes on Egypt, Manasses again became king
of Judah, as the Hebrews state. In the list of the subject princes of
Syria after the death of Esarhaddon, the king of Judah follows
immediately after Baal of Tyre; unfortunately the name (in any case
Manasses) is broken off.

Either on the campaign, of which the first incidents have been already
related in the fragment last mentioned, or on a campaign immediately
following, Tirhaka was not only defeated, but driven out of Egypt, back
to his own native land. Esarhaddon became lord of Egypt. A fragment of
Abydenus says: "Esarhaddon obtained the lower portions of Syria and
Egypt by conquering them."[348] On that rock of the Phenician coast at
the mouth of the Nahr el Kelb, between Byblus and Berytus, where
Sennacherib had caused his picture and inscription to be engraved beside
the sculptures of Ramses II., Esarhaddon also caused his image to be
engraved, after he had become master of Egypt. In its damaged condition
the inscription only allows us to ascertain that victories over Tirhaka,
the capture of Memphis, the conquest of Egypt, are mentioned in them. At
the close the inscription speaks of Tyre, and again mentions 22 kings,
_i.e._ it records the second complete submission of Syria.[349]
Esarhaddon's successor informs us: his father had marched to Egypt, and
forced his way to the midst of Egypt. "He defeated Tirhaka, the king of
Cush, and destroyed his power. He conquered Egypt (Muzur) and Cush, and
carried away innumerable prisoners. He subjugated the land throughout
its whole extent, and annexed it to Assyria. The earlier names of the
cities he altered, and gave them new names; his servants and viceroys he
entrusted with the dominion over them; the payment of tribute he imposed
upon them."[350] The list of the 20 viceroys or princes which Esarhaddon
placed over Egypt after the expulsion of Tirhaka, allows us to see that
the greater number of the reigning families in the districts of Egypt,
who had maintained themselves under the dominion of the Ethiopians,
must have recognised the dominion of Esarhaddon in the place of the
dominion of Tirhaka, and passed from vassalage to him into vassalage to
Assyria. But not all. Many of them may have shared Tirhaka's fortunes.
In the place of those who did not adapt themselves to the new rule, came
others who thought to rise as adherents of Assyria. The prince who
received from Esarhaddon the regions of Sais and Memphis, and
consequently the most important position, Niku (Necho), was certainly a
man who had vigorously supported the new government.[351] Sarludari is
said to have governed the canton of Zitinu; Pakruru, the land of
Pisaptu; Putubasti, the land of Tanis (Zanu, Zoan); Harsiesu
administered the land of Zabnuti (Sebennytus); Tapnachti (Tnephachtus),
the canton of Bunubu; Sushinqu, the land of Busiris (Pusiru); Ziha, the
land of Siut; Lamintu, the land of Chimuni; Ispimatu, the land of Taini
(Thinis); Muntimianche, the land of Thebes (Niha).[352] According to
this, Esarhaddon made those princes of the districts in Egypt who,
though they had hitherto obeyed Tirhaka, were willing to submit to him,
his vassals, so far as he did not replace them by Egyptians, whom he
considered more trustworthy, and here and there by Assyrians. To Necho
he handed over or continued the important districts of Memphis and Sais.
As Necho of Sais came to the throne, according to the statement of
Manetho, eight years before Psammetichus, and Psammetichus, according to
the date of the Egyptians, became king in 664 B.C., Necho's accession
falls in 672 B.C., and the conquest of Egypt by Esarhaddon may be placed
in this year. The conquest of Cush, _i.e._ of the land of the South, is
due to the exaggeration of Esarhaddon: we find Tirhaka soon after in
possession of Napata. The slabs of reliefs which Esarhaddon caused to be
made for the adornment of the new palace which he began to build at
Chalah after the conquest of Egypt, bear on the reverse the inscription:
"Palace of Esarhaddon, king of Asshur and Babel, king of Muzur (Lower
Egypt), king of Patrus (Patores, Upper Egypt), of the land of Miluhhi
(Meroe), and of the land of Cush."[353]

This new palace at Chalah was built by Esarhaddon in the south-west
corner of the terrace on which rise the royal fortresses of this city,
to the west of the building of Tiglath Pilesar II. In extent it comes
nearest to the palace of Assurnasirpal in the north-west corner (II.
311). But it was not completed, though Esarhaddon did not hesitate to
take the reliefs from the palace of Tiglath Pilesar and use them for his
new building (p. 14). A broad staircase leads to the south front, to a
double portico guarded by lions and sphinxes. The sphinxes are recumbent
lion-bodies, with wings; the human head bears the Assyrian tiara
surrounded by horns. These forms, not elsewhere found in Syria, prove a
certain imitation of Egyptian models, which the Assyrians must have
become first acquainted with on the Nile.[354]

FOOTNOTES:

[314] G. Smith, "Assyr. Canon," p. 139. The fragment must speak of
events subsequent to the year 691 B.C., since the cylinder Taylor, which
dates from this year, does not mention this war.

[315] Above, p. 11.

[316] E. Schrader, "K. A. T.," s. 227.

[317] G. Smith, "Assurbanipal," p. 207, 247. Ménant, "Annal." p. 291.

[318] _e.g._ Nebbi Yunus in Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 233.

[319] Nebbi Yunus in Ménant, p. 231.

[320] Alexander and Abydenus in Euseb. "Chron." I. p. 27, 35, ed.
Schöne. For templum Atheniensium, it is obvious that we must read
Anchialensium.

[321] Private documents from the reign of Sennacherib on the sale of
houses, vineyards, slaves, debts, are in existence from the years 699,
695, 694, 692, 687, 683, Oppert et Ménant, "Doc. juridiq." p. 169 ff.

[322] Kings xix. 37. The statement of Josephus ("Antiq." 10, i. 5) rests
only on this passage. In calling Adramelechus and Saraserus the elder
sons of Sennacherib, and representing them as fleeing before the
Assyrians to Armenia, he can scarcely have any other authority than this
passage, although immediately before he quotes a passage of Berosus.

[323] Bizana is a conjecture of Von Gutschmid for in Byzantinorum urbem.

[324] G. Smith, "Assyr. Canon," p. 39.

[325] Sayce, "Records of the Past," 7, 138.

[326] Talbot, "Records of the Past," 3, 104-106.

[327] Talbot, _loc. cit._ 3, 114.

[328] Talbot, _loc. cit._; Ménant, "Annal." p. 243.

[329] Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 248.

[330] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 314.

[331] Ménant, p. 248.

[332] Ménant, p. 247.

[333] Talbot, "Records of the Past," 3, 119; Ménant, p. 245.

[334] Talbot, _loc. cit._ p. 118.

[335] G. Smith, "Assyr. Canon," p. 137.

[336] Talbot, "Records," 3, 116.

[337] Talbot, _loc. cit._ p. 106, 116, 117.

[338] So E. Schrader translates.

[339] Vol. I. p. 547; Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 242.

[340] Talbot, "Records," 3, 106.

[341] G. Smith, "Assyrian Canon," p. 137, 138.

[342] E. Schrader, "K. A. T." s. 228; G. Smith, "Assyrian Canon," p.
139; Talbot, "Records," 3, 108; the name of Eteander of Paphus is also
read on golden armlets, found at Kurion. Cf. G. Smith, "Assurbanipal,"
p. 31.

[343] The year 697 is obtained for the accession of Manasses, by
calculating the reigns of the kings of Judah from the date of the taking
of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, _i.e._ from the year 586 B.C. As
Hezekiah must have ascended the throne in 728 B.C. (p. 17, _n._), he
reigned no doubt two years longer than the Books of Kings allow, which
allot to him a reign of 29 years.

[344] Chron. xxxiii. 11-13.

[345] Ezra iv. 2, 9.

[346] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 212.

[347] G. Smith, "Assyr. Canon." p. 141.

[348] In Eusebius, "Chron." I. p. 35, ed. Schöne.

[349] Oppert, "Mémoires de l' Acad. des Inscript.," 1869, 1, 578. G.
Smith, "Assyrian Canon," p. 169.

[350] E. Schrader, "K. A. T." s. 212.

[351] Psammetichus begins to reign in the year 664, according to the
Egyptian reckoning, as will be shown below. The list of Manetho allots
eight years to his father Necho. Necho, therefore, began to reign in 672
B.C., _i.e._ in the year in which Esarhaddon conquered Egypt. Nechepsus
and Stephinates, whom Manetho places six and seven years before Necho,
belong to the family of Psammetichus. Perhaps they were at the head of
Isis, under Tirhaka; then Necho, the son of Nechepsus, would have made
himself noticed by Esarhaddon by going over to him.

[352] G. Smith, "Assurbanipal," p. 20 ff. Haigh, "Zur aeg. Sprache,"
1871; s. 71 ff. The Muntimianche of Thebes may be the Month-em-ha of the
inscription of the temple of Mut at Thebes, the pious foundations of
which it enumerates; in a slab found in this temple he is called:
"Hereditary lord, prince of Patores, prophet of Ammon." Brugsch, "Hist,
of Egypt," II. 270.

[353] Ménant, "Annal." p. 249.

[354] Private documents on the sale of lands, slaves, on loans from the
time of Esarhaddon, are in existence, belonging to the years 680, 677,
676, 674, 671. Oppert et Ménant, "Docum. jurid." Cf. G. Smith, "Disc."
p. 415 ff.




CHAPTER VIII.

ASSURBANIPAL'S WARS AND VICTORIES.


In his last years Esarhaddon had raised his son Assurbanipal to be
co-regent with himself.[355] Shortly before his death, which overtook
him in the year 668 B.C. after a short but eventful reign of 13 years,
he appears to have given up the government entirely to him.[356]
Immediately after his accession the new prince received the intelligence
that Tirhaka, whom his father had driven out of Egypt into Napata, had
invaded Egypt, and taken Memphis, that the princes whom Esarhaddon had
entrusted with the government of Egypt had fled before Tirhaka into the
desert.[357] Assurbanipal collected his army in order to maintain Egypt.
In Syria he received the homage of the princes of that land and of
Cyprus, who had brought tribute and had been subject to his father.
These were the lords of the states mentioned in the inscriptions of
Esarhaddon,--the princes of Tyre, Judah, Edom, Moab, Gaza, Ascalon,
Ekron, Byblus, Arvad; with the exception of Baal of Tyre (p. 156), their
names are broken out of the inscription (Cylinder C); the three last
states of Syria, found in the list of Esarhaddon, Samaria, Ammon, and
Ashdod, are also wanting here. Then follow the kings of Cyprus, in which
the cities and the persons are those of the list of Esarhaddon; only the
three first are wanting. But as the whole number is again put at 22
princes of the land of the coast and the sea, we may conclude with
certainty that from the year 672 B.C.--since the rebellion and
re-installation of Baal of Tyre, and Manasses of Judah, there had been
no movements and changes in Syria.

Assurbanipal informs us that he went down from Syria to Egypt; at
Karbanit he met the army of Tirhaka, and drove it out of the field. When
Tirhaka heard of this at Memphis, he retired to Thebes. Assurbanipal
pursued him, took the city, and caused his army to encamp in it; he
restored the 20 princes to whom his father had given the districts of
Egypt, left behind a portion of his army, and returned to Nineveh with
rich booty (668 B.C.).[358] Tirhaka was again forced back to
Napata,[359] but the dominion of Assyria was not yet firmly established
in Egypt. Assurbanipal may have imposed heavier duties on the rulers of
the districts; the continued stay of Assyrian troops in Egypt may have
appeared too burdensome and oppressive. Whatever the motive, some of
these vassals entered into secret communication with Tirhaka; at their
head was Necho, the chief of the most important districts, Memphis and
Sais, and with him Sarludari of Zihinu, and Pakruru of Pisaptu. They
intended to return from the vassalage of Assyria to the vassalage of
Napata; they invited Tirhaka to return to Egypt and again seize the
sovereign power. The condition would without doubt be that Tirhaka
should continue them in their rule over the cities and districts which
Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal had given over to them. But the leaders of
the Assyrian troops captured their messenger, caused Necho, Sarludari,
and Pakruru to be arrested, put them in chains, and sent them to
Nineveh. The Assyrians took Memphis, Mendes (Ben-didi), and Tanis (Zanu,
Zoan), cut down the inhabitants who resisted, and broke the towers on
their walls. Tirhaka retired before the Assyrian troops to Napata.

It appears that Assurbanipal attempted to give other supports than mere
force of arms to his rule over the distant Egypt. He released Necho from
his bonds, restored to him the government of Sais, and gave to his son
Neboshezban the government of the canton of Athribis: "I continued to
extend to them," he tells us, "the kindness and favour which my father
had shown them." Even these means were soon found to be insufficient.
Tirhaka's days came to an end. He was succeeded on the throne of Napata
by Urdamane, whom Assurbanipal calls a son of Sabakon (Sabaku). He set
out to restore the dominion of Ethiopia over Egypt; he won Thebes,
defeated the Assyrian troops before Memphis, shut up the defeated army
in Memphis, and took them prisoners. "A messenger went in haste to
Nineveh" to bring to the king the intelligence of these grievous
disasters.[360]

Assurbanipal set out for Egypt in person, to make good the blow which
the arms of Assyria had received, to restore the prestige and dread of
his power. When he had crossed the borders of Egypt, Urdamane left
Memphis in order to return to Thebes. "The princes and viceroys whom I
had placed over Egypt, came before my face and kissed my feet," so
Assurbanipal tells us. "I pursued Urdamane and came to Thebes; he fled
at the approach of my mighty army. I took the city of Thebes; silver,
gold, precious stones, the treasures of the palace, men and women, two
great obelisks, which stood before the gates of the temple, engraved
with beautiful sculptures; a great and innumerable booty I carried away
from Thebes (Niha) to Assyria. I made my warriors march over Egypt and
Cush, and won glory."[361] "No-Ammon (Thebes) was situate among the
rivers,"--so the prophet Nahum describes the capture and desolation of
Thebes by Assurbanipal and the Assyrians,--"with waters round about her,
whose rampart was the stream, and her walls the stream. Ethiopia (Cush)
mighty in numbers, and Egyptians endless in multitude, Phut (Arabians)
and Libyans (Lubim) were her helpers. Yet she went forth into misery and
captivity; her children were dashed to pieces at the tops of all the
streets. They cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men
were bound in chains."[362]

The repeated attempts of Tirhaka and his successor to re-establish the
government over Egypt from Napata were wrecked. After the capture and
sack of Thebes, which we can place in the year 663 B.C.,[363]
Assurbanipal sought further to secure the obedience of Egypt by
settlers, whom he brought there from conquered lands.[364] From that
time, for at least ten years, Egypt remained in his possession without
any disturbance. But in spite of this establishment of the Assyrian
dominion in Egypt Assurbanipal had again, in the next few years, to
quell rebellions in Syria. Tyre and Aradus attempted to regain their
independence, an attempt at defection, which could now have even a less
chance of success than when Egypt stood unbroken under the Ethiopians.
Baal, king of Tyre, who had already rebelled against Esarhaddon, and was
afterwards pardoned and restored, who subsequently paid his tribute with
all obedience, now took up arms anew, ten years after his first
rebellion. Assurbanipal's third war was directed against Tyre and
Aradus. He tells us that the fortresses of king Baal were taken, that he
cut off all exit from Tyre, and compelled the inhabitants to drink the
water of the sea, that he brought about their submission by a close
investment. When Baal had given up his son, his daughters, and the
daughters of his brothers, with a considerable tribute, he was again
replaced in his dominion.[365] The king of Arvad, also Yakinlu, "who
dwelt in the sea" (the city of Arvad lay on an island off the coast, II.
277), was compelled to submit; he sent his daughter with many presents
to Nineveh for the harem of the king, and kissed Assurbanipal's feet;
after his death the government of Arvad was entrusted to Azibaal, a son
of Yakinlu.

Assurbanipal's power and supremacy reached far to the west beyond Syria.
He tells us that Mugallu, the king of the Tibarenes, and Sandasarmi of
Cilicia, who had not obeyed his predecessors, sent their daughters to
Nineveh, and kissed his feet. Gyges (Gugu) also, the king of Lydia, "a
land, the name of which my father had not heard," says Assurbanipal,
sent a message to Nineveh. Gyges had obtained the throne of Lydia by
violence; he was opposed by a strong party who adhered to the old royal
family which he had overthrown; and it was not in domestic matters only
that he found himself in difficulties. The Cimmerians who had invaded
Asia Minor and were settled there on the lower Halys, who, as Esarhaddon
told us, recognised his supremacy (p. 151), had forced their way from
thence to Phrygia and Lydia. Gyges obviously sought support in Assyria,
the strong neighbour of the Cimmerians, as soon as and as long as Tubal
and Cilicia obeyed the king of Asshur. The inscriptions of Assurbanipal
tell us that Gyges promised obedience to him and brought tribute.[366]
Thus the supremacy of Assyria reached the west of Asia Minor, the coasts
of the Ægean Sea (about 660 B.C.).

The next campaigns of the king were directed to the north. Achsheri,
king of Minni, had kept back his tribute. The Assyrians traversed and
desolated his land in two successive invasions; Achsheri's own subjects
rose against him, and slew him; his son Ualli submitted, sent his
daughter to Nineveh, and paid the tribute which had been kept back, and
which Assurbanipal increased by 30 horses.[367] Sarduri, king of the
neighbouring Ararat (Urarti), sent rich presents, and acknowledged the
supremacy of Assyria. The rebellion of Birizchadri, a chief of the
Medes, and of the two sons of Gagi, a chief of the Sacae (Sachi), Sariti
and Pariza was defeated; 75 fortified places were taken; the three
rebels were taken prisoners and carried to Nineveh.[368]

Assurbanipal bestowed especial attention on Babylonia, the government of
which he had entrusted to his younger brother Samul-sum-ukin (Samuges in
Abydenus, Saosduchinus in the canon of Ptolemy).[369] He tells us that
here also he had continued the building of the temples which his father
had begun, that he built at Bit Saggatu at Babel, and erected four
silver bulls at the gate of the temple of Bit Zida at Borsippa, that he
had adorned the abodes of Bel and Bilit. A brick found at Babylon bears
the inscription, "to the god Merodach, my lord, Assurbanipal, king of
Assyria, king of Babylon."[370] When Urtaki, king of Elam (he had
succeeded his brother Ummanaldas I. on the throne there), invaded
Babylonia, Samul-sum-ukin called on his brother for assistance; the
Elamites were already encamped before the walls of Babylon.[371] "To
protect Bel and Nebo, my gods, whom I served," says Assurbanipal, "I
gathered together my warriors." The Elamites were driven back to their
borders. Not long after this failure Urtaki, king of Elam, died, and the
third brother of Ummanaldas and Urtaki, Teumman, ascended the throne.
The sons of the two elder brothers, the sons of Ummanaldas, and the sons
of Urtaki (the latter were called Ummanigas and Tammaritu) were afraid
that Teumman would cause them to be removed out of his way, in order to
secure the succession for his own sons, and fled to Assyria.[372]
Teumman demanded that they should be given up. Assurbanipal refused; and
when in consequence Teumman declared war and invaded Assyria,
Assurbanipal sacrificed to the war-goddess Istar at her abode in Arbela,
"the city of the joy of her heart," and prayed: "O thou goddess of
goddesses, dreadful in battle, goddess of war, queen of the gods,
rejoice the heart of Asshur; strike down Teumman and destroy him. And
the goddess heard my prayer and said: Fear not; I will grant thee
favour." But in that night Istar appeared in a dream to the seer, with
her bow in her hand, and announced that the enemy would not remain; in
the midst of the battle she would protect the king of Asshur.[373]
Assurbanipal went against Elam in his fifth war, which he led in person.
Teumman retired before the Assyrians, and awaited the attack of their
army in a position at Eulæus (Ulai), in the neighbourhood of Susa. The
Assyrians, and with them the sons of Urtaki, Ummanigas and Tammaritu,
fought with success. Teumman, wounded in the battle, fled with his
eldest son; the chariot broke down in the forest; they were taken and
slain. Assurbanipal placed Ummanigas on the throne of Susa. A relief in
the palace of Assurbanipal depicts the enthronement of Ummanigas at
Madaktu and Susa by an Assyrian officer.[374] Chidalu, a part of Elam,
which hitherto had been ruled over by Istar-Nandi--the East of Elam
apparently--was handed over to Tammaritu. Teumman's head was seen at the
entrance of Assurbanipal into Nineveh: it was placed on the great gate
of that city (about 655 B.C.).[375]

Assurbanipal had carried off one success upon another; he was master of
Egypt, received tribute from Lydia, and placed kings over Elam at his
pleasure, when the rebellion of his brother Samul-sum-ukin in Babylon
threatened to overthrow the foundations of the kingdom. Eager to reign
independently, Samul-sum-ukin opened the treasures of the temples of Bel
at Babylon, of Nebo at Borsippa, of Nergal at Kutha, and sent rich
presents to Ummanigas, whom Assurbanipal had raised to the throne of
Elam not long before, in order to incite him to take up arms against
Assyria and to secure the aid of Elam. Ummanigas took his side.[376]
Samul-sum-ukin also called on the districts on the Euphrates and Tigris
to join him. In vain did the prefects of Erech, Amida, and Arapha
attempt to check the rebellion. The children of Babylon forgot the
favour shown to them, says Assurbanipal, the temples which he had
restored and adorned with silver and gold; the inhabitants of Sippara,
Babylon, Borsippa, Kutha disregarded their brotherhood, and took up arms
against him. The signal given by the king's own brother was followed by
the Arabians, Syrians, and Lydians. "That faithless brother,
Samul-sum-ukin, led astray the inhabitants of Accad, of Chaldæa, of
Aram, and of the sea coast, my tributary subjects, to rebel against me.
The princes (_sarri_) of the land of Guti, of the land of the West (_mat
acharri_), of Miluhhi, which my hands brought into submission, all these
he seduced to fall from me, they took his side:" such is the statement
of Assurbanipal.[377]

This rising was all the more dangerous, as some of the vassal-princes of
Egypt thought it a favourable moment for throwing off the yoke of
Assyria. The son of the Necho, whom in spite of his conspiracy with
Tirhaka Assurbanipal had a second time made prince of Sais, Neboshezban,
who was then ruler of the canton of Athribis, and after the death of his
father Necho, which occurred in the mean time (Necho died shortly
before, or in, the year 664 B.C.),[378] succeeded him as prince of Sais,
was at the head of this movement. Assurbanipal tells us that Gyges of
Lydia sent aid to Pisamilki, the prince (_Sar_) of Muzur, who had cast
off the yoke of his rule.[379] In this Pisamilki we may recognise the
Psammetichus of the Greeks, the Psamtik of the Egyptians, the son of
Necho of Sais, the same person whom Assurbanipal, when he mentions the
restoration of Necho and his son, calls by the Assyrian name of
Neboshezban. When the failure of that attempt had made Necho and his
son captives of Assyria, the important point was to give pledges to the
king of Assyria that the fidelity of his vassals would not again be
broken. The Egyptian tradition of the rise of Psammetichus, preserved
for us by Herodotus and Diodorus, ought not to have more weight than
that Assyrian name against the identity of Pisamilki and Psammetichus.
That tradition knows of nothing but contests of Psammetichus with his
fellow-princes, not with the Assyrians; like Manetho's list of kings, it
is absolutely silent about the Assyrians, because it wishes to conceal
the fact that the Assyrians ever had dominion over Egypt. The tradition
of Egypt imagines a voluntary retirement of the king of Ethiopia, or his
abdication of the government of Egypt, and then represents the Egyptians
as setting up 12 princes in the place of one: we have already seen that
20 were set up by Esarhaddon, and retained by Assurbanipal. Manetho's
list says nothing either of the Assyrian dominion, or of the twelve; in
it the rule of the last Ethiopian is followed by the dynasty of the
Saites, two forefathers of Necho, and then by Necho and Psammetichus.
The sepulchres of the Apis show, that as a fact, the dates were
differently fixed in the seventh century B.C. in Egypt. Even then the
kings of Assyria were disregarded; the reign of the Ethiopian Tirhaka is
followed immediately by the reign of Psammetichus. The struggles which
Psammetichus had to undergo with his fellow-princes, of which Herodotus,
Diodorus, and Strabo tell us, were, as a fact, contests with those among
the princes who adhered to Assyria, who would not follow the lead of
Psammetichus against Assyria, and submit to his rule over Egypt.

The rebellion of Samul-sum-ukin appeared to tear from its lines the
whole structure of the Assyrian supremacy. But Assurbanipal knew how to
cope with serious danger: deep-seated confusion in Elam made his task
easier. Thus he succeeded in this sixth war in driving his brother's
army out of the field. He besieged Sippara and Kutha. Against Ummanigas
of Elam, who, though placed there by Assurbanipal himself, was now an
ally of Samul-sum-ukin, his own son Tammaritu rose in rebellion. He slew
his father, but persisted in the war against Assyria, which his father
had begun. He marched out to aid Samul-sum-ukin; in the middle of the
war Indabigas, one of his servants, rebelled against him; Tammaritu
found it necessary to seek the protection of his enemy Assurbanipal.
Thus Samul-sum-ukin's hope in the help of Elam vanished. After Sippara,
Kutha, and Borsippa had fallen, Babylon was shut up. The famine in the
city was so great that "they ate the flesh of their sons and their
daughters," as Assurbanipal tells us. Of the death of his brother he
tells us: Asshur, Sin, Samas, Bin, Bel, Nebo, and Istar thrust him into
burning fire, and destroyed his life. Assurbanipal's punishments were
fearful. He had the tongues torn out of those who spoke against him;
even those of the offenders who escaped the famine and the burning fire,
did not get away free; they were slain or reduced to slavery. But he
spared the remainder of the sons of Babylon, Kutha, and Sippara. On the
people of Accad, on the portion of the Chaldæans and Aramæans, and those
of the sea coast who had taken the side of Samul-sum-ukin, he again
placed the yoke of Asshur. A relief of the palace of Assurbanipal
exhibits him on the chariot of war, with prisoners and booty before him.
The inscription says: the king commands the coronation robe of
Samulsum-ukin, his garments, his wives, his chariots, his captains, his
warriors, and his slaves to be brought before him.[380]

After thus suppressing the rising of the Babylonians, Assurbanipal
directed the whole of his forces to the subjugation of Elam. The
domestic condition of Elam seemed to promise success to a vigorous
attack. Indabigas experienced the fate which he had prepared for
Tammaritu; he was driven from the throne by a man of the name of
Ummanaldas, the son of Attamitu.[381] This rebel did not find universal
recognition; Pache maintained a part of the land against him. Under such
circumstances the victory could not be very difficult. Assurbanipal sent
troops under Balibni against the land of Bit Yakin, which was governed
by Nabubelzikri, a grandson of Merodach Baladan, as a tributary prince
(perhaps the son of Nahid-Merodach, p. 147), who appears to have taken
part in the rebellion of Samul-sum-ukin, and then to have escaped to
Elam. Assurbanipal had already demanded his surrender from Indabigas,
and he repeated the demand after the rise of Ummanaldas, who also
refused it. The Assyrian army led by Assurbanipal to his seventh war
crossed the borders of Elam. Ummanaldas abandoned his metropolis,
Madaktu, and fled into the mountains. Assurbanipal placed Tammaritu on
the throne at Susa, but soon returned, either from fear of his
disobedience or because he had heard of it, to Elam, dethroned
Tammaritu, and carried him prisoner to Assyria; marched through the
whole land, devastating it, and took 30 cities, which are enumerated in
the inscription. Nevertheless, after his departure, Ummanaldas again
obtained power over Elam; Assurbanipal was compelled to march against
the country once more. This was his eighth war. He obtained the most
complete success; Madaktu and Susa fell into his hand. "I opened their
treasure-houses," says Assurbanipal; "I took the treasures, which the
earlier kings of Elam and those of these days had collected. No enemy
beside myself had laid hands upon them. The silver and gold which the
earlier and later kings of Sumir and Accad, and of Kardunias, had sent
to Elam, which earlier kings and Samul-sum-ukin had paid for the help of
Elam; robes, arms, chariots, I carried to Assyria. I broke down the
tower of Susa; Susinak, the god of their oracle, whose image no man had
seen, and the remaining gods (eighteen gods and goddesses are mentioned)
with their treasures, priests, and servants, I carried to Assyria.
Thirty-two images of the kings in silver, gold, brass, and stone, I
carried away from Susa, Madaktu, and Huradi, and in addition an image of
Humbanigas (p. 99), of Istar-Nandi, of Halludus (p. 144), and the
younger Tammaritu. I broke the winged lions and bulls, which guarded the
temples, the winged bulls before the temple gates of Elam, and sent
their gods and goddesses into captivity: I destroyed the palaces of
their kings, the earlier and the later, the opponents of my father; the
rulers and inhabitants of their cities, the people great and small, I
carried away with their flocks; their warriors I divided throughout the
land of my kingdom (645 B.C.)[382]"

In spite of this savage destruction, Ummanaldas could return from the
mountains, and again take possession of the ruins of Madaktu. He was
now, as it appears, prepared to accede to Assurbanipal's renewed
request to give up the grandson of Merodach Baladan. The latter
anticipated his surrender, inasmuch as he and his armour-bearer mutually
slew each other. Ummanaldas gave up the corpse, and Assurbanipal had the
head cut off. Thus died the last scion of Merodach Baladan of whom we
hear: so ended the race which for 80 years, with incredible endurance
and stubbornness, had asserted the independence of South Chaldæa and
Babylonia against Assyria. After this Ummanaldas had to give way to
Pache, who received a part of Elam. But Pache could not stand before the
Assyrian army, or did not venture to resist it. He was taken prisoner;
Ummanaldas also was captured, "like a raven," in the mountains, into
which he had fled for refuge. "Tammaritu, Pache, and Ummanaldas, who
ruled over Elam in succession, I brought them beneath my yoke, with
Uaiti, the king of the Arabs, whom I brought out of his land to Assyria.
I had them bound to the yoke of my war-chariot; they drew it to the gate
of the temple of Bilit, the famed wife of Asshur, the mother of the
great gods."[383]

Ancient Elam, the oldest power in the region of the Euphrates and
Tigris, and in all hither Asia, which once, before the times of
Hammurabi of Babylon, before the year 2000 B.C., had held sway over the
states of the lower Euphrates, whose armies in those days had seen
Syria, was fallen, never to rise again. "In the midst of hell," says the
prophet Ezekiel, "is Elam, and all her multitude about her grave; all of
them slain, fallen by the sword, which are gone down uncircumcised into
the nether parts of the earth. They who caused terror in the land of
the living have borne their share with them that go down to the pit.
They have set her a bed in the midst of the slain with all her
multitude; they are placed among the slain."[384] It is true that, more
than a century after the fall of Susa, we hear of stubborn attempts on
the part of Elam to restore her state; but after that Elam ceased to
exist, except as a name, and her history was then the more utterly
forgotten, because after this rebellion the metropolis of Susa became
the residence of the wide dominion of the kings of another people, the
Achæmenids.

Babylonia was in subjection, and Elam had ceased to exist. Assurbanipal
employed his arms in punishing the Arabian tribes who had supported the
rebellion of his brother. Ammuladin, the king of the Kedarites, had
attacked the princes of Syria who remained loyal to Assurbanipal. The
attack failed. Ammuladin was defeated, and taken prisoner by Kamoshalta,
the king of Moab; with him Adiya, a princess of the Arabians, was given
up to Assurbanipal.[385] Two other princes of the Arabs, the brothers
Abiyateh and Aimu, had led their warriors to Babylon, to Samul-sum-ukin.
They had been there defeated together with him and shut up in Babylon.
When the famine was sore there, they attempted in vain to break through
the siege; Abiyateh gave himself up to Assurbanipal. With them the
soldiers of a third Arabian prince, Uaiti, had marched to Babylon.
Assurbanipal now attacked Uaiti, whose tribes dwelt on the borders of
Ammon, Moab and Edom, in Hauran and near Zoba; their dwellings and tents
were burnt. Uaiti was carried prisoner to Nineveh, and Abiyateh was set
up in his place. Scarcely had he been set up, when he united with Nadnu,
the prince of the Nebaiyoth, against Assyria. On his ninth campaign,
Assurbanipal marched over the Tigris and Euphrates into the deserts of
Syria. As he tells us, he defeated the servants of the deity of
Atar-Samain and the Nebaiyoth, took both princes prisoners in the
battle, and caused their flocks to be driven off far and wide. "I
divided camels like sheep," he says; "they fetched half a shekel of
silver at the gate. On my return I took Hosah, which lies on the shore
of the sea, which was disobedient, and did not pay tribute, and carried
the people to Assyria. The people of Akko, who did not obey, I
destroyed; the remnant I carried to Assyria."[386]

Not only the Arabian tribes between the Euphrates and the Jordan, not
only the princes of Syria, but the land of Ararat also, as Assurbanipal
expressly declares,[387] and Cilicia and the East of Asia were subject.
This follows, without a doubt, from the circumstance that Ardys, king of
Lydia, who succeeded his father Gyges on the throne in the year 653
B.C., soon after recognised anew the supremacy of Assurbanipal, in order
to obtain his aid against the Cimmerians, who again heavily oppressed
Lydia from the Halys. Assurbanipal had not only maintained the kingdom
against the revolt of Samul-sum-ukin, he had strengthened it by the
overthrow of Elam, established the supremacy of Assyria in Hither Asia,
and extended it to the west of Asia Minor. We do not hear anything of an
attempt to renew the vassalage of Egypt, though the war against the
Nabatæans and Kedarites brought Assurbanipal to the borders of Egypt. We
may suppose that the resistance of the regions of Akko and Hosah (to
the south of Tyre[388]) possibly rested on the expectation of Egyptian
assistance. But the inscriptions of Assurbanipal end with the war
against the Arabians; beyond this we have no accounts of Assyrian
origin. The struggles of Assurbanipal with the Nebaiyoth and the
Kedarites on the borders of Ammon and Moab, the reduction of Akko, are
the last acts of the Assyrians in Syria, of which we have any definite
information. They must have taken place not long before the year 640
B.C. It will be seen further on that Assurbanipal after this time was
engaged in the East.

The Hebrew Scriptures also know nothing of any interference of Assyria
in the fortunes of their race after the reign of Manasses of Judah,
which ended in the year 642 B.C. A statement of Herodotus, which is
indeed very obscure, makes it possible to conclude that there was a
later border war between Assyria and Egypt. He says: "Psammetichus
besieged Ashdod (Azotus), a large city of Syria, for 29 years, till he
took it." "This city," Herodotus adds, "endured the longest siege of any
that we know."[389] Psammetichus could not besiege the Philistine city
of Ashdod, until the southern fortresses of the Philistines, Raphia,
Gaza and Ascalon were in his hands. His object in the attack upon these
cities could only be to render the march of the Assyrian armies to his
land more difficult. These armies would have to collect in the south of
Philistia, and provide themselves with stores, especially water, before
they could begin the march through the desert. In the beginning of this
war, at any rate, it could not have been merely the forces of the
Philistines which Psammetichus had to contend with here; there must
have been Assyrian garrisons and Assyrian troops in the cities. Diodorus
also tells us of the mode in which Psammetichus drew out his forces in
the battles which he fought in Syria.[390] That the siege of a city
should last 29 years is in itself inconceivable; we can only accept the
statement of Herodotus as meaning that the war for the possession of the
cities of the Philistines on the coast lasted 29 years. If we calculate
this time from the irruption of the Scythians into Syria, which in any
case put an end to this war, _i.e._ from the year 625 B.C., Psammetichus
rebelled against Assyria in the year 654 or 653 B.C., and immediately
afterwards desired to establish himself on the borders of Syria beyond
the desert. If Assurbanipal was fighting against Arabian tribes, on the
borders of Edom, just before the year 640 B.C., and took Akko, the
narrative of this campaign ought also to speak of a collision with the
Egyptian army, if Psammetichus was carrying on war against Ashdod as
early as this date. We saw above that Psammetichus's rebellion against
Assyria in Egypt could not take place later than the year 653 B.C.

Assurbanipal begins the account of his buildings with a statement of
what he had done for the temples of Babylon;[391] he concludes it with a
description of his works at Nineveh. The walls with which Sennacherib
had surrounded that city had been injured by heavy falls of rain which
Bin sent down. Assurbanipal strengthened the substructure, and restored
them from the foundations to the pinnacles.[392] He restored, extended,
and adorned the palace of his grandfather Sennacherib, in which he had
grown up: the kings of the Arabians whom he had captured in battle had
been compelled to work at them. Whoever destroys the inscription of his
name, or the name of his father and grandfather, and does not set it up
along with the inscription of his own name, him will Asshur and the rest
of the gods, Sin, Samas, Bin, Bel, Nebo, Adar, and Nergal punish with
the condemnation which will correspond to the glory of his
(Assurbanipal's) name.[393] In the ruins of this palace, the ruins of
Kuyundshik, a number of slabs with reliefs have been preserved,
exhibiting the warlike achievements of Assurbanipal, with which he
caused the halls of this building to be adorned. On them we see the
envoys of the kings of Ararat paying homage to Assurbanipal. Urtaki,
Teumman, and Tammaritu are seen in battle against the Assyrians; we see
the head of Teumman of Elam brought to Assyria, and Ummanigas is
enthroned at Madaktu by an Assyrian officer, (p. 169). Further, a relief
shows us Assurbanipal sitting under some trees with some women; on one
of the trees hangs the head of the descendant of Merodach Baladan,
Nabubelzikri.[394] Finally, we find on these reliefs the cities of Elam,
the city of Susa, and their sieges. The inscriptions give the names, and
briefly explain the incidents depicted.

FOOTNOTES:

[355] G. Smith, "Assyr. Canon," p. 164.

[356] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 320. E. Schrader, "K. A. T." s. 208. The
astronomical canon makes Esarhaddon's reign in Babylon end with the year
668 B.C.

[357] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 324.

[358] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 322.

[359] Assurbanipal, it is true, says that he has conquered Muzur and
Cush (G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 324), which is certainly an exaggeration
unless Upper Egypt is meant by Cush.

[360] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 328.

[361] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ pp. 328, 329.

[362] Nahum iii. 8-10.

[363] The Apis-pillar from the twenty-first year of Psammetichus proves
that the Egyptians put him immediately after Tirhaka. As they make the
reign of Psammetichus commence with the year 664 B.C. the death of
Tirhaka must fall in this year, and the war of Urdamane in the next.

[364] Inhabitants of Karbit, in the land of Halahasta, were brought
here; compare Cyl. B. in Ménant, "Ann." p. 291. If the king of the
memorial stone of the ruins of the temple of Ammon at Napata, whose name
is read with much uncertainty as Nuat-Mi (amun), or Amun-merinut, or
Tonuat-amen, is not one and the same person with the Urdamane or
Undamane (Unt-amen?) of Assurbanipal, it is very difficult to explain
who he is. If the name of the person making dedications beside Tirhaka
at Karnak is the same which the monument gives (Mariette, "Monum.
divers." pl. 80, sqq.), this would be an important factor for the
identification with Urdamane, which is also supported by the fact that
Piker of Pasupti is prominent among the opponents of this Ethiopian:
Pakruru of Pisaptu has been previously mentioned by Assurbanipal. The
narrative of the memorial stone would then be the counterpart of the
Assyrian account; the only striking thing in the narrative of the
Ethiopian king is that the victory of Memphis is mentioned, but not the
capture of the Assyrians. He ought also, it is true, to have mentioned
the retreat forced upon him by the Assyrians. The narrative runs: In the
year when he came to the throne Nuat-amon saw two serpents in a dream,
and when he asked the interpretation of the dream, it was announced to
him: "he possessed the south, he should conquer the north." He set out,
and when he arrived at Thebes the prophet of the temple of Ammon-Ra met
him with the astrologers, and the inhabitants who were at first hostile
to him were filled with joy. But when Nuat-amon approached Memphis, the
sons of the rebellion marched against him, in order to do battle: he
inflicted on them a great defeat, and made himself master of the city of
Memphis. From Memphis he marched out, in order to do battle with the
chiefs of the land of the North, but they remained in their walls. When
their cities were besieged, they appeared before Nuat-amon lying on
their bellies, with their faces on the ground, and Piker the chief of
Pasupti said: "Thou slayest whom thou wilt, and thou givest life to whom
thou wilt, and all vow to be thy servants." The heart of Nuat-amon was
full of joy when he heard these words. They turned back into their
cities and sent all the good things of the North and the South to the
lord of Upper and Lower Egypt. Maspero, "Essai sur la stèle du songe."
Rev. Archéol. 1868, 17, 329 ff.

[365] G. Smith, "Assurbanipal," p. 62, 63.

[366] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 74, 75.

[367] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 95 ff.

[368] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 115, 96, 97.

[369] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 151.

[370] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 380.

[371] G. Smith, "Assurb." p. 103. Ménant, "Annal." p. 282.

[372] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 107, 117.

[373] Cylinder B., in G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 120 ff.

[374] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 140, 146. Ménant, "Annal." p. 286.

[375] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 133, 155, 142-145.

[376] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 171.

[377] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 154, 155, 169, 201. "Disc." p. 338.

[378] Above, p. 163. It is certain that Psammetichus's reign ends in the
year 610 B.C.; Boeckh, "Manetho," Zeitschr. "für Geschich.," s. 716 ff.,
Unger, "Manetho," s. 280. Herodotus and Manetho allot 54 years to the
reign of Psammetichus, and an Apis-pillar tells us that a new Apis was
installed in the month Athyr of the 54th year of the reign of
Psammetichus. Necho therefore died before, or in the year 664 B.C. (610
+ 54).

[379] G. Smith, "Assurb." p. 66; "Disc." p. 332. In the computation of
Herodotus, the accession of Gyges of Lydia takes place in 719 or 716,
according as the fall of Sardis is put in 549 or 546 B.C.; his death
takes place in 681 or 678 B.C. In the canon of Eusebius, on the same
data, he is computed to have ascended the throne in 699 or 696, and to
have reigned till 663 or 660. In the list of Lydian kings (Euseb.
"Chron." I, p. 69, ed. Schöne), he ascended, on the same data, in 689 or
686, and reigned to 653 or 650 B.C. The latter dates must be accepted if
Gyges sent help to Psammetichus. Samul-sum-ukin would not have found it
necessary to invite the prince or princes of Miluhhi to rebellion, if
Egypt had revolted from Assyria before his rebellion--Miluhhi must then
be used on the cylinder in a wider sense for Egypt and Meroe--and Gyges
could not send any help to Psammetichus, if he was not king himself. We
are not in a position to fix accurately the date of the rebellion of
Samul-sum-ukin, since the list of the Assyrian rulers breaks off with
the year 665 B.C. The fact that it is the sixth war of Assurbanipal in
which he marches against his brother--I enumerate the wars according to
Cylinder A--only proves that the war cannot have taken place before 660
B.C. In the astronomical canon the reign of Saosduchinus ends with the
year 648 B.C.; and we may therefore assume with certainty that the
overthrow of Samul-sum-ukin took place in this year. How long before
this Samul-sum-ukin took up arms, we do not know; he may very well have
done so in the year 652 B.C. For the rebellion was not brought to a
close till after a long siege of Babylon: or the rebellion may have
commenced even earlier, so that Gyges could undoubtedly have sent help
to Psammetichus in the last years of his reign. The cylinders, which
narrate the history of the wars of Assurbanipal, date from the year of
Samasdainani, who in Cylinder A is called viceroy of Accad, and on the
others viceroy of Babel. We are not in a position to fix definitely the
place of this year. A tablet of Erech bears the date of 20 Nisan of the
twentieth year of Assurbanipal in Babel (Ménant, "Annal." p. 29 ff.). As
Assurbanipal must have dated his rule in Babylon from the overthrow of
Samul-sum-ukin, and Assurbanipal himself died in the year 626 B.C.,
Samul-sum-ukin's death must have taken place at least before 646 B.C. On
the cylinders and on the reliefs in his palace at Nineveh, Assurbanipal
merely calls himself king of Asshur. If in the documents relating to his
buildings in Babylon as well as on the Babylonian brick already
mentioned he calls himself king of Babel, it follows that these
inscriptions belong to the period after the war with his brother. G.
Smith, "Disc." p. 378, 380.

[380] G. Smith, "Assurb." p. 199; Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 288.

[381] Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 293; G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 165-168, 181.

[382] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 349 ff. If Babylon fell in the sixth war, 648
B.C., the destruction of Susa at the end of the eighth war cannot have
taken place earlier than in the year 645 B.C.

[383] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 371; "Assurb." p. 237, 241, 243, 304, 306;
Ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 291.

[384] Ezekiel xxxii. 24.

[385] G. Smith, "Assurb." p. 299; "Assyr. Canon," p. 148.

[386] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 370.

[387] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 370.

[388] Joshua xix. 29.

[389] Herod. 2, 157.

[390] Diod. 1, 67.

[391] Beginning of Cylinder C. in G. Smith, "Disc." p. 377.

[392] Above, p. 108. G. Smith, "Assurb." p. 308.

[393] End of Cylinder A. in G. Smith, "Disc." p. 372 ff.

[394] Place, "Ninive." Pl. 57.




CHAPTER IX.

THE CONSTITUTION, ARMY, AND ART OF THE ASSYRIANS.


"Asshur was a cedar in Lebanon," so the prophet Ezekiel tells us; "a
shadowing thicket, and of a tall stature, with fair branches, and his
top was among the thick boughs. The waters made him great, the flood set
him up on high; with her stream she went round about his plants, and
sent her conduits unto all the trees of the field. Therefore his height
was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were great,
and his branches became strong because of the multitude of waters, and
spread themselves out. All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his
boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring
forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. Then
was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches. The cedars
in the garden of God could not hide him; the cypresses were not like his
boughs, and the planes were not like his branches. No tree in the garden
of God was like to him in beauty. I (Jehovah) have made him fair by the
multitude of his branches, and all the trees of Eden envied him."[395]

Babylon and Asshur are two stems springing out of the same root. The
younger could borrow from the elder her religion, her ritual, her
models in art and industry, and finally her writing; and along with this
those scientific acquisitions, by no means contemptible, which had been
made on the Euphrates. The peculiar characteristic of the younger branch
rests on its warlike power, which (nurtured in those long struggles in
the Zagrus and in the Armenian mountains) at last far exceeded the power
of the Babylonians.

There is no state in the ancient East, which, beginning from a reign so
small in proportion, and provided with such scanty material means, rose
so high as Assyria--which from such a basis attained to a wider
supremacy, or maintained it so long and so vigorously. By slow and
laborious steps this kingdom worked its way upward in frequent and
severe conflicts beside Babylonia. To reduce and keep in obedience the
region round the sources of the Euphrates and the Tigris, the land of
Van and Ararat, to subjugate the territory of the Moschi and Tibarenes,
required the most severe struggles. The attempt of Tiglath Pilesar I. to
reach the North of Syria and the Mediterranean was a success, yet it
remained without any lasting results. Not till the beginning of the
ninth century B.C. does the dominion of Assyria obtain more important
dimensions, not in the North only, but also in the West and East.
Assurnasirpal reached Mount Amanus, the Orontes, Mount Lebanon; he
received the tribute of the Phenician cities. Shalmanesar II. directed
his most vigorous efforts against Hamath and Damascus, while at the same
time he reduced the Cilicians, as well as the nations of the Western
table land of Iran, to pay tribute. At the division of the ninth and
eighth centuries B.C. Bin-nirar III. held sway from the shore of the
Red Sea over Edom, on the shore of the Mediterranean over the
Philistines and Israel, in the East over Mount Zagrus and the Medes.
Then after the middle of the eighth century Tiglath Pilesar II. forced
his way as far as Arachosia, and at the least maintained his dominion
over the tribes of the Medes; in the West he humbled Hamath, Damascus,
Samaria; Judah paid homage with the Philistines and all the princes of
Syria with the distant tribes of the Arabians, to the great king of
Asshur. He first completely subjugated Babylonia, and forced even
Southern Chaldæa to recognise his supremacy. Sargon, after him,
maintained Syria even against the arms of Egypt, and added the crown of
Babylon to the crown of Asshur: Cyprus as well as the islands of the
Persian Gulf pay homage to him. Sennacherib maintains the dominion over
Babylonia against the most stubborn rebellions, as well as against the
Elamites, and also the supremacy over Media; and if he was not able to
maintain Syria against Egypt, he still retained the upper hand in the
eastern half of Asia Minor. Esarhaddon ruled over Asshur and Babel; he
restored the dominion over Syria; he conquered Egypt. The armies of his
successor not only march victoriously into the gates of Memphis, Thebes,
and Babylon, but even into the gates of Susa. In repeated campaigns he
annihilates the ancient kingdom of Elam, and receives from the West the
homage of Lydia.

No other kingdom can display so long a series of warlike and active
princes, unwearied in conflict, as Assyria. They believed that they were
fighting not for dominion only, or glory, but also for their gods, for
Asshur, Sin and Samas, for Istar, Bin and Adar, against the nations who
did not worship these deities. It is this extraordinary activity of the
princes which alone explains the long continuance, and the constantly
increasing extent, of the Assyrian power. For great as is the activity
and unwearied perseverance of these princes, there is an equal lack of
capability to create any organisation of their dominion and sovereignty
which could secure even approximately the dependence of the subject
nations. They take the field, defeat the enemy, and rest content if he
pays homage and tribute, if the image of the victorious king of Asshur
is engraved on the rocks of the conquered land, or set up in the city of
the enemy. Ere long, if the tribute fails, war must be again commenced.
The enemy is removed from the government, another prince is set on the
throne of the subjugated land; the same game is commenced once more, as
soon as there is the least prospect of shaking off the yoke. Owing to
the stubbornness, more especially of the Semitic tribes and the
mountaineers in the North, the kings of Asshur are condemned to constant
campaigns. The defections are punished with savage devastation of the
land and destruction of the cities. The rebellious princes and their
leading adherents are often put to death with exquisite cruelty; they
are flayed, or beheaded, or impaled, and yet such terrorism produces no
visible effects. On the other hand, if they submit, they are often
pardoned; they are again recognised or set up as princes over their
lands, in some cases even after repeated defection. Occasionally, in
order to maintain independently the Assyrian supremacy, Assyrian
fortresses are planted in the conquered districts; as at the crossings
over the Euphrates, in the region of the Medes, on the borders of Elam,
and in Syria. For the most part it is only over the smaller districts
that Assyrian viceroys were placed. Native kings, chiefs, and princes
remain on the throne in the more extensive lands, and over the greater
nations, as in the cities and principalities of Syria. Sometimes an
attempt is made to secure the submission of princes by alliance with the
royal house of Assyria. Over Babylonia alone were sons and brothers of
the king repeatedly placed, and not always with a happy result. If
Esarhaddon, instead of transferring the government of Egypt, under his
supremacy, to one prince, divides it among 20, this organisation was not
an Assyrian invention; in all essentials it was a transference of the
lords of the districts from vassalage to the king of Napata to vassalage
to the king of Assyria. The chief means of the kings of Assyria for
securing the obedience of the vanquished for the future consisted at all
times in carrying away and transplanting parts of the conquered
population. The nationalities of Hither Asia, as far as the table-land
of Iran, underwent considerable intermixture in consequence of this
system, but this means could only work thoroughly in the smaller regions
and communities--for the kingdom of Israel, for Hamath, and the Arabian
tribes.

In such a defective organisation of the empire, while limited to such
elementary, and at the same time such unproductive, means, it would be
more interesting to find an answer to the question, how the kings of
Assyria were able to keep their own nation willing to undertake these
endless wars; how from their native land, of no great extent, they could
obtain the men and the means for such burdensome efforts--and in any
crisis this was the only power they could rely upon--how the authority
of the crown could be maintained in spite of such heavy requisitions on
their subjects;--did our knowledge allow us to give even an approximate
explanation. An hereditary succession, interrupted far less than is
usual elsewhere in the East, appears to have rendered these tasks easier
to the kings of Asshur, to have been favourable to the continuance of
the kingdom, and to have assisted the rulers in extending their
supremacy. Tiglath Pilesar I. mentions four of his ancestors in unbroken
succession on the throne (II. 36). The kings always describe themselves
as sons and grandsons of preceding rulers. Down to the time of Sargon we
hear nothing of the murder of kings, and only of one attempt at
rebellion on the part of a king's son. With Sargon a new dynasty seems
to have ascended the throne: he neither calls himself a son of his
predecessor (Shalmanesar IV.), nor does he mention any other of the
earlier rulers as his progenitor. But his race, in its turn, seems to
have held the throne till the fall of the kingdom, though he and his son
Sennacherib fell by assassination, though Esarhaddon only acquired the
throne after a conflict with the two brothers who had slain their
father, and Assurbanipal had to defend it against the rebellion of a
brother. That the power exercised by the kings of Assyria was unlimited
even in their own territory is beyond a doubt. The king is the supreme
judge, the general in chief, the high-priest. He ascertains the will of
the gods, who reveal themselves to him, who send him dreams, assure him
of their assistance. It is the gods, their lords, who overthrow the
enemy and the rebellious princes before them. The kings offer sacrifice
and pour libations in person, not the priests. In his palace at
Kuyundshik (p. 181) Sennacherib pours a drink-offering over four lions
which he has slain in hunting, and which lie before the altar. Other
monuments exhibit the king, with a bowl in his hand containing gifts for
the gods, or holding up a pine-apple. At the sacrifices the king wears
a peculiar priestly robe: small pictures of the sun and moon, with a
horned cap, a pitcher, and a two-pronged fork, hang from his neck: in
his hand he has a short staff. The priests serve at his side; behind the
form of the king on the monuments stand winged spirits, in expectation
or protection, at the sacrifices. Only the king wears the upright tiara
or _kidaris_; a tall conical cap, flattened at the top. He alone speaks
in the inscriptions. He frequently relates the deeds of his generals as
performed immediately by himself. Service about the person of the king
is entrusted to eunuchs, who are distinguished on the monuments by
corpulence, flat cheeks, beardless chins, and lank hair--while all
others wear long hair curling at the end, and long, carefully-trimmed
beards. Eunuchs carry the parasol and the fan of the king; they are his
butlers, and conduct into his presence those who come to pay homage or
tribute; they also perform the duties of the royal scribes. We find them
equally active as magistrates of the state; and finally we see them on
war chariots as commanders of divisions of the troops.

On the organisation of the government we have very scanty information.
The prophet Nahum speaks of the leaders and mighty men of the king of
Asshur, of the "crowned" of the Assyrians who are numerous as the
locusts, and the captains whom he compares to a swarm of
grasshoppers.[396] Ezekiel mentions the "captains and rulers of Assyria
gorgeously clothed in blue purple, horsemen riding upon horses, all of
them desirable young men."[397] From the chronicle of the Assyrian
kingdom preserved to us from the beginning of the ninth century, B.C. we
find that the years were regularly distinguished in a definite series
by the names of certain high officers. The beginning is made by the year
of Turtanu (Tartan), the chief-commander of the king; then follows the
year of the chief of the palace, the year of the Rabbitur, _i.e._
controller of the harem (or this precedes the other), the year of the
privy councillor of the king, the year of the overseer of the land, then
the years of the prefects of the cities or regions of Rezeph, Nisibis,
Arapha; and finally, the year of the prefect of the metropolis, Chalah.
The viceroys of other cities or districts,_ e.g._ of Gozan and Amida,
were sometimes prefixed to the year; in the second half of the reign of
Assurbanipal we also find the prefect of Babylon in the series of these
high officers.[398] The regular list of the officers, after whom the
year is named, and the record of the most important events which took
place in the year, placed against the name of the officer, indicate a
certain established order in the management of business. That in other
respects also records were accurately kept is shown by the inscriptions,
not only in the definite chronological statements for remote events, but
also in the continued announcements of the numbers of slain enemies, of
prisoners, of cattle taken as booty, of men and women removed and
transplanted, and tribute received in money and animals. We see on the
reliefs (at least on the monuments of the time of Sargon and after) the
scribes occupied with these enumerations; they put down their notes on
strips of leather. Short accounts of their successes by generals who
have been sent out, reviews of affairs in neighbouring states,
invariably directed to the king in person, are still in existence. The
informant as a rule refers to the detailed communications which the
messengers will make. There is also preserved a fragment of the
diplomatic correspondence between Assyria and Elam, a letter of
Ummanaldas II. of Elam concerning the descendant of Merodach Baladan,
who fled to him (p. 174), and a proclamation of Assurbanipal to the
subjects of this Nabubelzikri, that he had taken them under his
protection, and made Balibni a viceroy over them.[399]

As to the activity, the forethought, and the results of the regular
government, we only learn from the inscriptions of the kings about their
buildings, that storehouses were in existence and kept up for the booty
taken in war, and the tribute; that horses and beasts of burden were
kept for the army. If we may conclude from these lists of the years and
officers, these indications and hints, that the government of the native
land was duly arranged and discharged its functions regularly, the fact
that the army and siege apparatus were perpetually in readiness leads us
to assume an active and careful military government. The army no doubt
occupied the first place in the attention of the kings. Their warlike
activity, supported by a force always in readiness, was the only
foundation of their power beyond the borders of Asshur. Of the warriors
of Assyria Isaiah says: "They shall come with speed from the ends of the
earth; none shall be weary nor stumble among them; none shall slumber
nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the
latchet of their shoes be broken; whose arrows are sharp and all their
bows bent; their horses' hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their
chariots like a whirlwind. They shall roar like young lions, and lay
hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall deliver
it."[400] According to the description of Herodotus, the Assyrians wore
brazen helmets worked in a peculiar way; cuirasses of linen, lances, and
shields and swords like the Egyptians; and besides these, war-clubs with
iron heads.[401] From the evidence of the monuments the Assyrian
infantry were divided into troops, distinguished by their clothing and
armour. The heavy-armed had conical helmets or round caps with a high
ridge and cheek-pieces, armour-coats, provided with plates or rings of
steel on the breast, or cuirasses of scale armour in the place of these
plates and rings, greaves extending from the knee to the ancle, or
scale-armour hose. Beside this they cover themselves with round or oval
shields. Their weapons of attack are the lance, and a short sword,
straight or crooked, which was carried in the belt. In addition to this
heavy infantry there were the light troops; bowmen and slingers. The
first were occasionally accompanied by shield-bearers, who carried
shields of the height of a man, and planted them before the bowmen.

The kings fought from their chariots with bow and arrows. This was the
mode of fighting of the princes and captains throughout the Semitic
warlike states. The kings of Elam and Ur and those of Erech and Babel
were no doubt the first to take the field with war-chariots; after them
the kings of Damascus and Hamath, and the princes of the Philistines.
From the Syrians the Pharaohs borrowed their royal war-chariots and the
chariots for their army. So long as the Hebrews were husbandmen and
breeders of cattle, they fought simply on foot; when they established a
monarchy we saw that the first care of the new princes was to provide
themselves with chariots of war. From the Semites this mode of fighting
spread westward, not only to Egypt but also to Asia Minor and Hellas,
and eastwards to the Indians on the Ganges. The commanders of the
Assyrian army also fought from their chariots, which at the same time
carried the standards of their divisions. The mass of chariots formed a
special portion of the Assyrian army. Beside the two pole-horses, which
are yoked, they are, as a rule, provided with a third or subsidiary
horse; on the chariot, as a rule, are three men, a charioteer, and an
archer, besides a shield-bearer, provided with coats of mail which leave
only the arms free, and scale-armour for the legs. Occasionally the
charioteer, as well as the archer, has a shield-bearer behind him.
Cavalry was not wanting in the armies of Assyria any more than in the
armies of the Pharaohs. We see numerous troops of cavalry with
well-trained horses, partly armed with the lance and partly with the
bow; partly sitting without any saddle on the bare back of the horse,
and partly provided with pack saddles. Pictures of parade-duty are not
uncommon. In these the lance is held free in the right hand, the shield
is carried under the left arm. In the camp the rows of tents are
separated by a broad gangway, in which rises the great tent of the king.
We have already seen the king seated even in the camp on a high seat,
with his bow in one hand and his arrow in the other. In the spacious
tents, the warriors kindle fire between stones and place pots thereon,
while in others the wounded are being tended on beds. We see the
Assyrian army crossing a river; the king, the chariots and the baggage
are rowed over in boats; the horses and the men swim, the latter with
the aid of inflated bladders, as is still the custom in Mesopotamia.
Other pictures exhibit ships with two rows of oars. In the battle we
see the line of the heavy-armed infantry awaiting the attack of the
enemy; the first rank kneel down with outstretched lance; the second
rank, in a somewhat crouching position, also hold the lance in rest;
while the bowmen in the third rank stand upright and shoot over the two
first ranks. Then the king, on his splendidly adorned chariot, drawn by
richly caparisoned horses, sending forth arrow upon arrow, with the
picture of Asshur the supreme deity over him, dashes upon the ranks of
the enemy. In some reliefs, the infantry, or the cavalry of the enemy,
already turned back in flight, shoot their arrows as they fly, an
artifice well understood by the cavalry of the Medes and Persians. We
also see the riders on camels defending themselves in this way in their
flight.

The greater number of reliefs exhibit the enemies of the Assyrians in
strongly fortified cities, protected by lofty walls and towers, in part
with beautifully decorated pinnacles; sometimes two or three walls rise
one behind the other. The fortresses lie on heights surrounded by
vineyards, or forests of pines and fir-trees, or on rivers by
palm-groves, where the fruits occasionally indicate the season of the
siege; in other representations the position of the enemy's city on a
river or the sea-coast is indicated by creatures of the water or the
sea, like tortoises, large fish, etc. The Assyrians knew how to throw
walls of circumvallation round the hostile city,[402] to build
besieging-towers, to undermine the walls or force their way into the
city by means of shafts under the earth.[403] But the ordinary mode of
attack was to fill up the moat and then to make a breach in the walls by
battering-rams. The battering-rams stood on wheels, and were protected
by a case covered by the skins of animals, or they were placed in the
lower story of a moveable wooden tower, the upper part of which is
occupied by archers; and the whole is then moved up on wheels to the
wall. Machines for throwing stones are also to be seen on the monuments.
When a breach is made, the infantry advance towards it under the
protection of the "tortoise." If an attempt is made to scale the walls
by ladders, the bowmen, where possible, from a covered position, such as
a wood near the walls, keep up a lively fire upon the turrets of the
wall, in order to distress the defenders and drive them from the
breastwork, while the heavy-armed plant their ladders. The besieged then
attempt to meet the storm by a shower of arrows, by throwing down stones
and firebrands. When the walls are scaled we see the besieged pledging
submission by raising their hands, the women escaping on mules or
camels, or kneeling and praying for mercy. The victors collect the
booty: arms, tripods, vessels, beds, stools; guards are set over these,
while others bring to their commanders the heads of the slain, the
number of which is taken down by the scribes. The flocks and herds of
the vanquished, camels, sheep, and goats, are driven away; the prisoners
are put in fetters and led before the king, who has ascended the throne.
Here they appear, some with heavy irons on their hands and feet, some
with the hands tied, some led by ropes, which are drawn through holes in
their lips and noses, sometimes tied in pairs, sometimes in troops,
driven forward with blows by the soldiers in charge. The king plants his
foot on the neck of a captive prince; he puts out the eyes of another
with his lance; others are impaled. Then follows the victorious return;
soldiers and music go before the king's chariot, before which, as we
already know, the heads of the slain or executed princes of the enemy
were occasionally carried.

The strength of the chief cities formed in the last resort the support
of the kingdom. The walls of these the kings of Asshur cannot have
neglected to renew and strengthen. In the inscriptions only the
buildings of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal at the walls of Nineveh are
mentioned. According to the statements of Ctesias, preserved in
Diodorus, the city of Nineveh formed a long rectangle of 480 stades (60
miles) in the circuit. The walls which inclosed this space were 100 feet
high, and were overtopped by 1500 towers of double the height.[404] A
writing of the Hebrews, which, however, is not earlier than the fourth
century B.C., maintains that the circuit of Nineveh was three days'
journey; 120,000 inhabitants lived in the city, who could not
distinguish the right hand and the left, _i.e._ children in the earliest
years of life. More important is the evidence of Nahum, from the middle
of the seventh century B.C., that "Nineveh is full of men as a pool is
full of water; her merchants are more numerous than the stars in
heaven."[405] The position of Nineveh is marked by the ruins of
Kuyundshik and Nebbi Yunus, opposite Mosul; and the remains of the outer
wall allow us to fix, with tolerable accuracy, the circuit which it
really had. As a fact it formed a long rectangle, somewhat out of the
square. On the west the course of the Tigris covered the city; the wall
on this side of the city extended along the ancient bed of the river for
13,600 feet; the wall of the longer eastern side measures 16,000 feet;
the wall of the north side is exactly 7000 feet; that on the short south
side is only half this length;[406] so that the whole circuit of the
city does not reach ten miles, _i.e._ does not reach a sixth part of
the extent given to it by Ctesias. Even if we add to this the circuit of
the strong outer ramparts which run in a double and sometimes in a
quadruple line, on the east side, from the point where the Khosr flows
into the city, as far as the stream which, emptying into the Tigris,
covered the southern front of Nineveh--even if we reckon in the city of
Sargon (Khorsabad), which lay ten good miles to the north-east of
Nineveh, on the left bank of the Khosr (p. 95), the circuit of both
cities taken together does not amount to more than 15 miles. Xenophon,
who was on the spot, and saw the walls of Nineveh still standing, gives
them a circuit of six parasangs, _i.e._ of 20 miles. According to this,
either the fortresses of Khorsabad and Nineveh were connected, and this
circuit is actually given,--or Xenophon assumes that they once were in
connection. We are hardly justified in excluding the first hypothesis.
The lower part of the walls, so Xenophon tells us, was built of smoothed
shell-stone;[407] the thickness was about 50 feet, and the height also
50 feet. On this substructure is raised the wall of bricks, which also
is 50 feet thick, but 100 feet high. Hence these walls were standing 200
years after the fall of Nineveh; with the walls of Khorsabad, though
broken by wide breaches, they were still to be traced through a circuit
of 20 miles, and reached the astounding height of 150 feet, _i.e._
higher than Ctesias puts them. The remains of the walls of Khorsabad
possess to this day a thickness of 45 feet, which agrees with Xenophon's
measure; in the walls of Nineveh the substructure of well-hewn limestone
can be traced, but the remains of the walls do not rise more than 46
feet above the present surface of the ground. If we are to venture on a
supposition about the number of the inhabitants from the extent of the
walls of Nineveh and Khorsabad--the total of the two cities, in which
the royal palaces and temples occupied a considerable space, can hardly
be put down at more than 300,000.

Twenty good miles to the south of Nineveh lay the other residence of the
kings of Asshur, Chalah, the city founded by Shalmanesar I. Chalah was
naturally even stronger than Nineveh. On the west, as at Nineveh, the
Tigris formed the protection; about seven and a half miles to the south
the greater Zab emptied into the Tigris. The course of this from the
north-east to the south-west formed on the east also an outer line of
defence, which was made still more strong by the fact that a not
inconsiderable tributary of the Zab, the Bumodus (Ghasr), which flows
from north to south, empties into the Zab about ten miles to the east of
Chalah, just before the latter unites with the Tigris. Above the mouth
of the Zab, Assurnasirpal carried a canal from that river in a northern
direction to Chalah (II. 312). The city itself formed, as has been
already remarked, a regular square, the extent of which reached about
half the circuit of Nineveh; the south-west corner of the city was
occupied by the royal palace. Xenophon gives to the walls of this "large
but desolated" city, which he calls Larissa, a circuit of two parasangs
(seven miles, nearly). The walls also were of less dimensions here.
Xenophon found the substructure of stones 20 feet high; the walls of
burnt bricks on the substructure 100 feet high; the thickness of the
walls was 25 feet.[408] Northward of Chalah, on the brook Shordere,
which flows past on the south and east of Chalah, are heaps of ruins,
extending as far as Keremles, and from this point again through the
plain as far as the district of Khorsabad. It is possible that the line
of these forts formed an outer system of defence for Nineveh and Chalah,
and that it lies at the bottom of the story of the 60 miles of circuit
of Nineveh. The same circuit is given by Herodotus for the city of
Babylon (cf. Chap. xv.). Of the third chief city, Asshur, which stood in
ancient times, as we have seen, not only before Chalah, but also before
Nineveh, nothing is left but heaps of refuse, out of which rises a
conical hill. The ruins are of brick, among which here and there are
seen some stones. The line of the old walls can still be traced. This
city also formed a square, not less, but rather longer, in circuit than
Chalah.[409]

It seems that the kings of Assyria laid less weight on the fortification
of the city of Asshur, than on the strengthening of Chalah and Nineveh.
They saw danger in the west only, from the lower Euphrates. The city of
Asshur, on the western bank of the Tigris, was exposed to attacks from
the west; Chalah and Nineveh were covered in this direction by the
Tigris, which the enemy had to cross. To make the two cities so covered
impregnable from the eastern side also was the object of the kings of
Assyria, especially of Sargon, Sennacherib, and Assurbanipal. The
thickness given to the walls of Nineveh, Khorsabad, and Chalah (25 to 50
feet), was sufficient to defy the battering-ram--the turrets, raised to
the elevation of 120 to 150 feet, were so high that the stones of the
slingers and the arrows of the bowmen could not reach them with effect,
and no scaling-ladder or besieging-tower could be set up which would
carry men to these turrets.

What Babylon possessed or acquired in science and poetry, Assyria did
not fail to appropriate, just as she used her divisions of the heavens
and the year, her weights and measures, her standard of coinage, and her
writing from all antiquity. In the ruins of Kuyundshik a great number of
tablets have been dug up,[410] copies of old Babylonian originals, which
have preserved for us the story of the Babylonians about Chasisathra
(Xisuthrus) and the great flood, about the descent of Istar to the under
world, and other narratives of a mythical character. In addition to this
are prayers and poems, with fragments apparently on cosmogonical
subjects, very difficult of interpretation, and hardly to be referred
to any definite date. Of especial value for the deciphering of the
Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform writing are the clay tablets
discovered here, on which the cuneiform symbols are explained by
placing beside them the phonetic value of the words and inflections,
first of the Accadian, that language unknown to us, and then of
Babylonian-Assyrian.[411] The use of writing was not less extensive in
Babylonia and Assyria than in Egypt. The copious application of it for
the purposes of government and legal business has been already
mentioned. We are indebted to this for the remains of the list of years
and rulers, the synchronistic tablets of the kings of Asshur and Babel,
and a long series of private documents from the time of Bin-nirar III.
down to the overthrow of the empire. These documents, and the ambition
of the kings to retain their names in the buildings which they erected,
to set up their images wherever their armies or their dominion advanced,
to transfer to the walls of the buildings which they erected their
achievements written on cylinders or stone slabs, to adorn the walls of
their palaces with pictures of their hunts, their sieges, their
victories and triumphs, accompanied by written explanations, have
enabled us to restore, at least in its main lines, the lost history of
Assyria--a history of which the Greeks have left and could only leave to
us the fact that a kingdom of this name existed, and was the foremost
power in Hither Asia, along with echoes of Medo-Persian songs about
Ninus, Semiramis, and Sardanapalus--from which the Hebrews have retained
no more than the names and the acts of the rulers who made their
influence most deeply felt in the fortunes of Israel. Yet even the
inscriptions of the kings of Asshur do not give us the history of
Assyria undefiled. But whatever care they took to represent their
successes in the most brilliant light possible--here and there we are
driven to the attempt to bring back these accounts to the fact--they are
far removed from the extravagance and the voluble assertions of the
inscriptions of the Pharaohs. The far more realistic and historical
sense of the Assyrians is stamped in their monuments and inscriptions.
As they allow us to see, year by year, the activity, the untiring
perseverance, and warlike skill of the Assyrian nation and its princes,
even though they magnify their successes--so too the reverse side of
these qualities is brought into prominence; the fierce cruelty, the
bloody savagery which the conquered had to undergo. The kings constantly
boast of the punishments they have inflicted, and appear more than once
to exaggerate them.

The rivalry of the long series of the rulers of Assyria in building
temples and palaces, which begins with the oldest period of the realm,
after the pattern of Babylonia, has preserved for us no inconsiderable
remains of Assyrian arts, and ocular evidence of the industry and mode
of life, of the character and manners of the Assyrians--not indeed in
the breadth and unbroken succession of development in which the
monuments and the inexhaustible sepulchres on the Nile have retained the
picture of ancient Egypt. For monuments of plastic art, the ruins of
Erech, and Ur, and of Babylon, have been investigated almost in vain.
The ruins of Nineveh and Chalah have preserved a considerable series of
works of sculpture. If in the ruins of Babylon, with the exception of
outlines on seals or other cylinders, there is scarcely a single image
of a god preserved, there have been discovered at Nineveh some statues
of gods, and innumerable pictures in relief of gods and demons, on the
slabs of the palaces. The most frequent object on these is the image of
the god Asshur. On a bearded human head, of grave aspect, the god wears
a round cap or a helmet, round which are horns; the figure extends only
to the knees; it is surrounded by a winged disk to which, from the knees
of the god downwards, are attached the tail-feathers of a bird. In
battle-pictures the breast of the god is clothed with a cuirass of
steel-plates; his bow is in his hand; he shoots his arrows against the
enemies of his nation. On the pictures representing a victorious return,
and the seal-cylinders of the kings, the bow rests in the hands of the
god. Nebo, the god of the planet Mercury (I. 267), is exhibited in
standing images, with long beard and bared breast; the robe descends
from the breast. Of a statue of Istar, in her old temple at Nineveh, we
have at the least the head.[412] The god Bin also is to be seen on
cylinders; he holds the trident of his lightning in his hand, a pointed
cap is on his head; his robe falls, not from the shoulders, but only
from the hips down to his ancles. The moon god Sin is seen on Assyrian
cylinders in a long robe, with a long beard, standing on a half-moon; a
second half-moon rises above the tall covering of his head. In a figure
swimming in water, with a round horned cap on the head, and ending in
the body of a fish from the hips downwards, we may no doubt recognise
Dagon. The cylinders most frequently exhibit a sun's disk by the side of
the images of Asshur, the crescent and seven stars.[413] On the slabs of
stone which exhibit to us the forms of the kings, symbolical indications
of the chief deities are visible to the left of the kings; we see the
sun, the moon, a horned cap, and a winged disk, perhaps the symbol of
the god Asshur. In the reliefs winged demons are often to be seen. They
wear the high round cap, out of which rise four united bull's horns:
occasionally the head is uncovered, and then it is surrounded merely
with the narrow fillet of the priests; the arms and thighs are always
uncovered. These forms also are frequently found in pairs, guarding the
entrance to rooms; at times standing or kneeling in an attitude of
blessing or prayer, on both sides of a wonderfully-shaped and adorned
tree. In the same way two eagle-headed genii often stand opposite each
other. Human figures, clothed in royal attire, with the head and wings
of an eagle, are often found. Walking figures of lions with eagle heads
and wings, or the back of a man on the legs of a bird surmounted by a
lion's head, are found. The gates of the temples and palaces are guarded
by winged bulls and lions with human heads. These are always placed in
pairs. The height of these images ranges from 10 to 18 feet. At the
point where the long, richly-worked wings, which are thrown far back,
are joined to the shoulders, rises a grave and solemn countenance, with
a strong beard, sometimes wearing a cap, sometimes a tall tiara, round
which wind four bull's horns. These figures stand at times entirely
detached before the entrance; in others the fore part and fore legs
alone are free from the pilasters of the doors, and the figure is
continued in relief on the side of the pilaster.

Plastic art in Assyria is less forced and typical in the lines, forms,
and figures, than plastic art on the Nile: it is not fettered by the
unchangeable laws of Egyptian art; it is less solemn, and free from the
tiresome parallelism of the Egyptian forms. The sculpture of Assyria is
more significant and vigorous. Not tied down by the hieratic style, like
the Egyptian, it also works for the most part in the softer material of
limestone, while the Egyptians prefer granite, the hardest of all
materials. The Assyrians do not strive after the gigantic and colossal
forms of Egypt: the dimensions even of the colossal bulls and lions are
on a more moderate scale. Far more naïve, they conceive of life more
freshly, fully, and powerfully, and aim far more at a true
representation of life than the Egyptian. Egypt prefers the sunk,
Assyria the raised picture. On the Nile the outline is the chief object:
in Assyria the forms are always modelled full, strong, and round, with
energetic expression of the limbs, and muscular to an excess. The
movement is more vigorous and full of expression than in Egypt, without,
however, sacrificing repose and fixedness, and without destroying
dignity in the representation of ceremonies. The feet of the figures
exhibit the Egyptian position in profile, but the upper part of the body
is full, rounded, and closely compressed. The tall and thin forms of
Egypt are not to be found in the monuments of Assyria. The clothing is
heavy; the position and expression of the face is far more varied than
in Egypt. The animals are represented plump and full of life, often with
startling truth even in the most rapid motion; though not unfrequently
with great exaggeration in the muscles. The great guardians of the
portals exhibit a beautiful effect in the contrast of their mighty
animal energy, and the quiet dignity of their human faces. Great
practice in the treatment of the forms can hardly be mistaken anywhere;
in spite of the dimensions, often colossal, the proportions are
correctly preserved; and the larger pictures of camps, battles, and
marches, if not better than those of Egypt, are more various and free in
composition. Within the sphere of Assyrian art we are in a position to
establish a certain distinction, a progress of some importance. The
figures in the palaces of Assurnasirpal and Shalmanesar II., the two
great princes of the ninth century B.C., are stronger and thicker, more
coarse, violent, and exaggerated than the reliefs in the buildings of
Sargon. In the century which passed since that time the plastic art of
Assyria obviously made technical advances, and attained a more delicate
treatment and greater regularity in the exposition. Later still, at the
height of its development, Assyrian art is seen in the figures of the
great palace of Nineveh (Kuyundshik), which Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and
Assurbanipal built in succession (p. 181).

The architecture of Assyria was not essentially different from that of
Babylonia. The Assyrians had brought with them from the lower Euphrates
the habit of building in bricks, and continued to use this style, though
harder material lay at a less distance from them than from the cities
of the Babylonian plain. The temples and the palaces of Asshur, Nineveh,
and Chalah consisted for the most part of unburnt brick-slabs, dried in
the sun and mixed with straw. This material made it necessary here, as
in Babylonia, to make the walls stout, which was also advisable owing to
the summer heat. The thickness varies between five and fifteen feet. The
stone for the substructure and casing, mostly limestone and shell-stone,
was quarried in the adjacent mountains. The buildings were roofed by
beams extending from wall to wall: by this necessity the breadth of the
rooms was limited. As a rule these are narrow, and the want of breadth
is compensated by length. These are the dimensions of the porticoes and
galleries which we can trace in the remains of the royal palaces: the
great portico of the palace of king Assurnasirpal at Chalah (II. 313)
has only a breadth of 35 feet, with a length of 154 feet; the porticoes
in the palace of Kuyundshik are from 150 to 180 feet long, and 40 feet
in width; the great gallery is only 25 feet broad, but more than 200
feet in length. Yet in the palace of king Sargon at Khorsabad, remains
of the bases of pillars have been found. The application of the
brick-vaulted roof in the form of pointed and round arches is shown in
the narrow passage in the building of Shalmanesar II. at Chalah (II.
323), and in some remains of door-arches at Khorsabad. The pictures of
cities in relief also occasionally exhibit arched gateways. The
sculptures in the stone slabs of white, grey, and yellow limestone or
alabaster, which cover the walls and chambers to a height of 10 or 12
feet, were painted, as is shown by numerous traces of colour upon
them.[414] The walls of the chambers above the sculptures, where they
did not make way for window lights, were decked with burnt and glazed
tiles, sometimes coloured and enamelled; the beams of the roofs were
adorned with carved work of wood and ivory, with plates of gold and
silver, and precious stones.[415] The outer walls of the palaces must
also have been cased with slabs of stone.

The wealth of Nineveh is called endless by the prophet Nahum. He
mentions the abundance of carved and molten images, of costly vessels in
the "house of their god." The monuments exhibit not only the "carved"
images; beside many actual remains, they prove that costly furniture was
in extensive use in the temples, at the court, and among the great
officers of Assyria. The tables, stools, seats, drinking-vessels, vases,
harness and bridles of horses, shown in the reliefs of the palace, are
wrought with great delicacy and with good taste. The yokes of the
chariots, the bows and bow-covers, exhibit very delicate carved work. On
the robes of the kings we see groups of wild animals inwoven, partly
real in form, as lions, partly mythical, like scenes of hunting and war.
The ear-drops, which the kings and other persons of distinction wear,
the bands round the arms and wrists, are of artistic work, and generally
closed by the heads of lions, rams, and bulls; the weapons also, the
handles and sheaths of the swords and daggers, must have been finished
with great care and neatness, and in an excellent style. The not
inconsiderable number of vessels of copper and bronze, of pitchers,
stained glass, ivory articles, necklaces, armrings, and eardrops, which
have been preserved in the ruins, prove that the monuments represent the
possession of the Assyrians, without exaggeration of their beauty, that
Assyria, besides what was brought to her by trade, possessed a school
of artisans long trained in the art, and excellently taught, without
which such great and excellent works in architecture and sculpture would
have been impossible. Of the tombs of the Assyrians few have been opened
as yet. The coffins, like those in the Babylonian sepulchres, are narrow
and small, and only contain skeletons, with bands on the arms and neck,
and some simple clay vessels beside the coffins.[416]

FOOTNOTES:

[395] Ezek. xxi. 3-9.

[396] Nahum iii. 17, 18.

[397] Ezek. xxiii. 6, 12.

[398] E. Schrader, "Z. D. M. G." 25, 449 ff.; G. Smith, "Assyrian
Canon;" Vol. II. p. 328, and above, p. 171, _note_.

[399] G. Smith, "Assurb." p. 252.

[400] Isaiah v. 26-29.

[401] Herod. 7, 63.

[402] Isaiah xxxvii. 33; cf. 2 Kings xix. 32; above, p. 127.

[403] Layard, "Nineveh," p. 378.

[404] Vol. II. p. 4.

[405] Nahum ii. 9; iii. 16.

[406] G. Rawlinson, "Monarchies," 1^2, p. 254 ff.

[407] Lyell, 'Elements of Geology,' ed. 3. p. 368.

[408] Xenoph. "Anab." 3, 4, 7-9.

[409] Layard, "Nineveh and its Remains," 2, 44.

[410] The so-called Archive of Assurbanipal in chambers 40 and 41 on
Layard's plan.

[411] Lénormant, "Etudes Accadiennes," 1, 3, p. 67 ff.; E. Schrader,
"Jen. Lit. Z." 4th April, 1874.

[412] G. Smith, "Disc." p. 248.

[413] G. Rawlinson, "Monarchies," 2^2, 16, 17; Layard, "Mon." Pl. 69
_note_, 45, 47, 48.

[414] Ezekiel also supports this, xxiii. 14, 15.

[415] Layard, _loc. cit._ p. 327, 328.

[416] Layard, _loc. cit._ p. 304.




CHAPTER X.

JUDAH UNDER MANASSES AND JOSIAH.


Other cares and other efforts than the maintenance of a wide dominion,
the erection of splendid palaces, the restoration of impressive works of
art, the preparation of magnificent furniture, occupied a small region
which obeyed the lords of that military power, and those palaces,--the
kings of Asshur. The kingdom of Israel, though not annihilated by the
arms of Assyria, was thoroughly broken by them. Twenty years after,
Judah escaped the same disaster, but not without the severest wounds. It
was laid waste at that time throughout its whole extent; the cities were
taken or garrisoned; 200,000 of the inhabitants were carried away. Only
the metropolis was maintained and saved. Afterwards, in the last years
of Hezekiah, and under the reign of his son Manasses (he ascended the
throne in 697 B.C.), the land remained unmolested by the Assyrians for
more than 20 years, till Esarhaddon undertook to subjugate Syria again
to the dominion of Assyria, which his father had given up after raising
the siege of Jerusalem. Some years after this Manasses joined the
attempt of Tyre to resist the king of Asshur with the help of Tirhaka
(p. 154). We do not know what Judah had to suffer for this attempt of
the king: we only learn from the Hebrews that Manasses was carried away
captive, but at a later time restored to his kingdom. In any case Judah
beheld for the space of 20 years the armies of Assyria on their march to
and from the Nile (673-653 B.C.).[417]

In the first centuries after the settlement of the Hebrews in Canaan,
the rites of the Syrians had in isolated instances forced their way in
beside the worship of Jehovah. Under Saul, David, and Solomon the
worship of Jehovah was established and organised, and took firm root.
The earliest prophets, after the division of the kingdom, opposed the
introduction of the worship of Baal in Israel with the fiercest zeal. In
the time of Jeroboam II. and Uzziah, the renewed advances of these rites
had been successfully met by the great prophets with the deepened and
purified conception of the national deity. And now these hostile
tendencies once more met in the severest conflict. The Hebrew Scriptures
tell us that Manasses did not follow the example of his pious father;
that he turned back after the way of his grandfather Ahaz; that he
restored the worship of Baal, dedicated a place for fire-offerings in
the valley of Ben Hinnom, and burnt his son to Moloch. On the roof of
the royal palace and in the court of the temple altars were set up, and
priests established, "who burnt incense to the sun, the moon, the
zodiac, and all the host of heaven;" courtesans and women who wove tents
dwelt in the buildings of the temple, and the king even set up the
statue of Astarte (Istar) in the temple itself. In vain did the priests
set themselves in opposition to this movement; in vain did the prophets
announce: "The line and the plummet of destruction will be drawn over
Jerusalem as over Samaria." Manasses caused those who opposed his
arrangements and innovations to be put to death; he is said to have
filled Jerusalem from one end to the other with innocent blood. "Like a
destroying lion," says Jeremiah, "the sword devoured your
prophets."[418] The death of Manasses and the accession of his son Amon
brought no improvement. "He did that which was evil, and walked in the
way of his father, and served the idols which his father served."

The more energetically the prophets condemned the religion of the
Syrians, the more strongly they contended against all customs and
sacrifices, against sensuality, luxury, and debauchery, so much the more
closely did the elements thus attacked and almost overcome combine
together; the more stubbornly did the opposite party cling to the rites
of the neighbours, the more eagerly did they collect all the Syrian
deities in and round Jerusalem. The highest and the lowest religious
conceptions,--the worship of the one holy God in heaven, and the rites
of sensuality and mutilation--strove once more with each other with all
their force; in the one case with the deepest certainty and conviction,
in the other with the fierce impulse of the passions, and the support of
the crown. The last ten years of the long reign of Manasses seem to have
brought the severest persecution upon the priests and prophets of
Jehovah which they ever experienced. And when Amon, after two years, was
slain in the king's house by a conspiracy of his servants (640 B.C.),
and the people of the land slew all who had conspired against Amon, and
raised his son Josiah, a boy of eight years old, to the throne, it was
natural to the circle of the priests and prophets to guard against the
recurrence of such oppression of their faith and lives as had taken
place under Manasses and Amon. This was only possible if the religion
which they professed, and for which they suffered, finally obtained a
decisive victory, and became the exclusive religion of Judah. If the
persecution ceased in the minority of the king, the Syrian rites
continued to exist; and if the young king, when he came of age, should
join _that_ side, the times of Manasses would recur. Neither the
organisation of the priesthood of the temple, nor their religious
influence, was sufficient to retain the kings in the faith of Jehovah,
and prevent them from reformations and persecutions in the interest of
the Syrian rites. What the influence and authority of the priests failed
to accomplish, the mighty religious utterance of the prophets in the
fulness of their faith was also unable to avert.

The tendencies of the priests and prophets were already regarded as in a
process of assimilation. The views of the prophets were not without
influence on the habits and usages of the priests. The prophetic word
had already begun to penetrate the old narrow views of the tribal god of
Israel, holding a place beside other gods, the rigid rule of external
service, the traditions of the priesthood, with its powerful mysticism,
inwardness, and deeper idea of God; while, on the other hand, the
prophets could borrow from the priests clear and established forms, and
thereby felt themselves impelled to fix the relation of inspired
religion to the rites of worship. The persecutions of Manasses had
brought these two directions in which the religious life of Judah had
developed more closely together than at any previous time. In this union
men felt themselves stronger than before. If the crown could be attached
to the worship of Jehovah, if the lasting support of royal authority
could be secured for it, if the worship of Jehovah could be elevated to
the position of a legally established state-religion,--if by this means
it became possible to apply the penalties of the law and religious
influence with equal force in favour of the national religion, the hope
might be entertained that the religion could be strictly enforced, that
the utterances of priests and prophets, naturally supporting each other,
and expressed in a popular form, would secure a lasting victory--that
the worship of Jehovah could be greatly strengthened, the Syrian rites
for ever excluded, the position of the priesthood secured, and future
dangers turned aside from it.

The chief aim was to fill the hearts of the king and the people with
more lively faith; to attach the king and nation more closely to the
worship of Jehovah, and, if possible, to pledge them definitely to
support it; to gain the power of the state and the force of the law for
the maintenance of this worship. The ancient writings of the priests
contained, as we saw, in addition to the account of the fortunes of the
people in ancient times, the ritual, the rubrics for the priests, the
rules of purification, the most ancient legal sentences and canons of
blood-vengeance and family law, together with all the usages of justice.
The contents of these writings formed a code for the priests rather than
the laity; this fact, and the connection in which these regulations
stood with the historical narrative, as well as the extent of the whole,
made these books ill-adapted for presenting to the king and the nation a
synopsis of the most essential duties, and for impressing these duties
upon them. The detailed rules for the priests must be removed; a
law-book for the laity was required. For this purpose the regulations
scattered through the old books were collected and arranged into a
compendium of the requirements which every Israelite had to fulfil. The
new conceptions of the prophets must be assimilated to the old
regulations, and these brought into harmony with the deeper views of the
prophets. Something was also deducted from any excessive and very ideal
demands, in order to give a more certain currency to more moderate
rules. Only of such a law could the hope be entertained that it would
find adoption and win hearts, and be recognised by ruler and people as
the fixed canon, the principal law of the land, and that it could be
strictly enforced.

Josiah was of age when his kingdom was visited by a heavy calamity.
Savage tribes from the north suddenly over-flowed Syria and Judah, laid
waste the land far and wide, rolled on to Egypt, and then flowed
backwards to their homes. If Jerusalem resisted, and perhaps the
stronger cities also, the land was nevertheless cruelly devastated (625
B.C.). Judah was again brought to the brink of destruction, as in the
days of Hezekiah, and again Jehovah had not made "a full end;" again he
had saved his people. The king caused improvements to be made in the
temple; for this purpose the doorkeepers collected money among the
sacrificers. When Josiah sent his scribe Zaphan to the high priest
Hilkiah to receive the collected money; the high priest said, that "he
had found the book of the law in the house of Jehovah," and gave the
scribe a roll. He brought the book to the king, and read it before him.
Josiah was deeply moved by the contents, and the threats denounced in it
against those who transgressed the law of Jehovah. He directed the high
priest, Zaphan, and some others to "enquire of Jehovah about the words
of the book that had been discovered." They went to Huldah, a
prophetess, the wife of Shallum, the chamberlain. The prophetess
declared the words of the volume to be Jehovah's words. Then the "king
(it was in the year 622 B.C.) assembled the elders of Judah and all the
people in the house of Jehovah, and read in their ears all the words of
the book, which was found in the house of Jehovah."[419]

According to this book--the second law--Moses, after the giving of the
law on Sinai, had once more, in the land of Moab, on the borders of
Canaan, shortly before his death, proclaimed the law of Jehovah, and
renewed the covenant of Jehovah with Israel. The introduction to the
book is a speech of Moses, which, after the manner of the prophets, is
directly addressed to the Israelites, and gathers together the
kindnesses which Jehovah had shown to his people in Egypt, and after the
exodus from that land. The lofty style of this description, compared
with the composition of the older law, is evidence of the effect
subsequently exercised by the prophetic mode of conception and
expression. But not the form only, the contents also of the new law are
determined in essential points by the idea of God developed in the
circles of the prophets (p. 26). Jehovah, who has created earth and
heaven,[420] whose is "the heaven and the heaven of all heavens," "the
God of gods and Lord of lords,"[421] who alone is true being, while all
besides is transitory appearance, who guides nature and men according to
his word and will, "who does justice to the widow and the orphan, and
regards the person of no man,"[422] remains in the new law, as in the
old, a jealous God, "who dips his arrows in the blood of his enemies;"
but in this law he is also, as the prophets taught, a merciful God who
has no pleasure in the punishment of evil-doers, but in their amendment;
who, it is true, "visits the sins of the fathers upon the children to
the third and fourth generation, but also has mercy on thousands who
love him."[423] This God may not be worshipped under an image; for, as
the book of the law expresses itself in an argument drawn from history:
"Ye saw no manner of similitude on the day when the Lord spoke to you
from Horeb, out of the midst of the fire."[424]

If the prophets raised their eyes beyond and above the relation of this
one Lord of heaven and earth to the people of Israel to the conception
of a divine government of the world; if Isaiah had spoken of the plan
according to which Jehovah had arranged the fortunes of the nations and
lands since the beginning of days; the law is naturally confined to the
relation of Jehovah to Israel. But this relation is conceived chiefly in
the feeling of the prophets. We saw how the prophets had been led by the
conception of the peculiar fortunes experienced by the Israelites to
reconstruct the relation of the tribal god in such a manner that the one
Almighty Lord of heaven was regarded as having chosen Israel as his
people: a relation which is brought forward by the prophets in the most
various applications. Owing to this peculiar relation Jehovah gave
Canaan to the Israelites; for this reason he chose Sion for his
mountain, Jerusalem for his dwelling-place, and the temple for his
house; for this reason Jehovah was, to the prophets, the real king of
Israel. Like the old, the new book of the law regards the relation of
Jehovah to the Israelites as a covenant, a treaty between two parties,
each of whom can stand on his rights; Jehovah on his worship; Israel on
the services rendered in return by Jehovah, on the land granted to him
for the service of Jehovah, on the enjoyment of his fields and
vineyards, on peace and security against enemies, on the increase of his
race and prosperity. Jehovah is the master, and Israel the servant; the
servant must serve, but the master cannot keep back the wages. Jehovah
has announced his commands to Israel; the Israelites have pledged
themselves to fulfil them, and so long as they perform their obligation,
Jehovah will not shorten the reward of their service. If on the ground
of such a covenant the prophets regard all the evil which overtakes
Israel as a consequence of the breach of it; if the "strife" between
Jehovah and Israel concerning the observation and non-observation of the
contract is a current idea with them, with which is connected the
announcement of a day of judgment, and of the severe punishment which
Jehovah will execute on those who transgress the covenant (p. 28); the
book of the law is here marked by something of the priestly character,
inasmuch as it concludes with the blessing which will attend the
maintenance of the covenant, and the curse which will follow upon the
breach of it: to which Moses adds; "he knows that the Israelites will do
evil after his death."[425] In the first case "the fruit of the womb
will be blessed in Israel," "the fruit of the fields, the increase of
the kine, and the lambs of the sheep, the basket, and the kneading
trough," and "Israel will lend to many nations and borrow of none;"[426]
in the second case Jehovah will visit them "with the scab, with boils of
Egypt on the knees and thighs, from the top of the head to the sole of
the foot; with fever, pestilence, consumption, inflammation; with
blindness, madness, and astonishment of heart;" "the heaven above them
will be of brass, and the earth under them of iron; they will be to all
the kingdoms of the earth for oppression, and their carcases will be the
food of the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field; they will
live scattered among all nations from one end of the earth to the other;
they will become an astonishment, a by-word, and a derision to the
nations."[427]

If the prophets announced the day of judgment and the destruction of the
unfaithful, they seldom forgot to describe, in the most glowing colours,
Israel's restoration; they remained in the firm conviction that
Jehovah's mercy would be as great as his anger: that Jehovah, through
the remnant of the faithful and the regenerate Israel, would turn all
nations to his service; that again in the future "a shoot would spring
from the stock of Jesse;" that the race of David would reign with a
renewed divine power (p. 28, 133). These great ideas of the restoration
of the renewed and purified Israel, these hopes of the Saviour and
restorer from the house of David, are wanting in the Book of the Law. It
is simply pointed out, in regard to the kingdom of Israel, "that if
Israel returns, Jehovah will lead back the captives, and gather Israel
again, and circumcise his heart."[428]

If it is a subordinate point of view that the Israelites ought to serve
Jehovah in order that it may be well with them, this conception
nevertheless follows necessarily from the position of the tribal god to
the tribe recommended to his protection--and to any unfettered mind the
assumption is natural that reward should attend good actions; that the
good must prosper and the evil suffer on the earth. The centre of this
class of conceptions among the Israelites is not so much to serve for
the sake of the hire, as that the worship of Jehovah would have this
reward as its immediate consequence. But if at the same time the
recompense for service was brought more strongly into prominence among
the Jews than among any other nation, if in no other people this legal
state of the relation between God and man is established so much in the
form of a compact, the prophets had already given an inward and moral
meaning to the simple relation of contract between Jehovah and Israel.
They looked on it as a marriage (p. 40), and consequently they did not
merely reprove the breach of the contract as an outrage on right, but
branded it as faithlessness. The Book of the Law also does not remain at
the point of the mere contract. The Book asks: "Whether such a mighty
thing was ever done or heard of on the earth, as that a God had
attempted to take a people to himself out of the midst of the nations by
signs, and wonders, and war, and a strong hand and an outstretched arm,
by great and wonderful deeds."[429] But we are further told, "Jehovah
has not inclined to you, and chosen you, because ye were more than all
nations--ye were the least of the nations--but because Jehovah loved
you."[430] "It is the grace of Jehovah that he has inclined to the
fathers of Israel, and to them only, to lead them."[431] If the relation
of the protecting lord to his people thus passes into a relation of free
choice and love, the Book of the Law, on the other hand, requires from
the Israelites something more than an external worship of Jehovah by
gifts and sacrifices. "The command which I give thee is not hidden from
thee, nor is it far off, that thou shouldst say, Who will go up to
heaven and bring it down, or who will go over the sea and announce it
to us? The word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy
heart."[432] "Circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer
stiff-necked."[433] "Ye will find Jehovah if ye seek him with all your
heart, and all your soul."[434] "What does Jehovah require of thee? That
thou shouldst love him with all thy strength, and walk in his
ways."[435] "Love Jehovah, thy God, with all thy heart, and all thy
soul, and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments, and his
commandments alway."[436]

If the new law seeks to give a value to inwardness, to lifting up the
heart, and love to God; if it recognises the moral nature of Jehovah in
the heart of man, and in this point is fully in harmony with the
requirements of the prophets; yet at the same time, in accordance with
the view of the priests, the whole sacrificial service was retained,
with the regulations for purification. Even if the priests had been able
to adopt the point of view of the prophets--the conception of purely
inward elevation, and service with the heart--how could this have been
brought into force, and established among the people, or with the kings,
who found it no easy task to keep up the ritual of the service of
Jehovah beside the sensual Syrian rites? The ritual for the priests, the
regulations for their rights and duties, were in existence; the new law
was not intended to instruct the priests, it was essentially a rule of
life for the laity. Hence in this respect the new law had only to work
its way as a supplement, to impress more definitely on the people unity
of the worship, and its concentration in the temple at Jerusalem. Thus
it was decisively commanded that the Passover also should be kept by all
Israelites in Jerusalem (II. 210). In order finally to put an end to
the ancient custom of worshipping Jehovah "in the high places," the rule
was enforced that all sacrifices should be offered in the temple at
Jerusalem: every other place of sacrifice was expressly forbidden, and
every sacrifice which was not presented by the priests of the temple. On
the other hand, in other departments, the new law exhibits greater
moderation. At the festival of the new bread it was enough if every one
offered freewill-offerings according to the measure in which "Jehovah
has blessed him;" but the Israelite was not to appear before Jehovah
with utterly empty hands.[437] The new. law moderated the demands for
giving the tithe to the Levites. The tithe of the harvest was still to
be offered according to ancient custom as a thank-offering for Jehovah
in the temple; but it was permitted to redeem the tithe in kind and
exchange it for money: finally, the law declared itself content if the
tithe were duly paid at least in each third year.[438] The tithe of
cattle was entirely dropped in the Book of the Law; only the claim of
the priests to the male first-born of animals was retained: "With such
oxen ye shall not plough: such sheep shall not be shorn; they shall be
eaten before Jehovah year by year."[439] The new law provided a
compensation for the diminution of the tithe, by allowing the Levites,
like the priests, to have a share in the sacrifices, if they did service
in the temple, and by the rule that the Israelites should invite the
Levites to the sacrificial feasts at the thank-offerings and
festivals.[440] Other requirements of the old law--that a part of the
spoils of war should be given to the priests--that in enumerations and
levies of the people every one should pay a poll-tax to the temple,
were not repeated in the new law.

The most essential point was to put an end to the Canaanitish rites in
Israel, and prevent their entrance for the future. The new law therefore
had to retain in all its sharpness the opposition to the Canaanites: in
the conquered cities at least all that was male was to be "cursed" with
the edge of the sword.[441] And not less must the strict regulations of
the ancient law be kept up about the exclusiveness of Israel towards all
other nations, the prohibition of marriages with them (a rule only
relaxed in the case of women captured in war),[442] and against
receiving strangers as citizens and partners of the community. Even the
closely-related tribes of the Ammonites and Moabites were not to be
received, though families of these tribes in the tenth generation were
living in Israel. The only exception allowed by the Book of the Law was
in favour of the Edomites, the most closely-related tribe (I. 415).
"From the Edomite thou shalt not turn away; he is thy brother?" Edomites
were to be received in the third generation. The new law goes further
than the old in threatening the worship of every other god than Jehovah
with the punishment of death, in demanding that every one who served
another god should be brought out to death. Least of all were the next
of kin to spare the apostate: they were rather to take the foremost
place in the persecution. He who served other gods was brought before
the gate, on the evidence of two or three witnesses, and stoned, the
witnesses throwing the first stone at him: but the Book of the Law says
expressly that the evidence of one witness was not enough.[443] In the
same way false prophets, who incited to the worship of other gods, even
if they did signs and wonders, were put to death.[444] "If thy brother,"
the Book continues, "or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy
bosom, or thy friend, which is as thy own soul, entice thee to serve
other gods, thou shalt not spare him; thy hand shall be the first upon
him to stone him to death."[445] If a city practises idolatry, the
inhabitants and every live thing in the city, even the cattle, are to be
"cursed" and put to the edge of the sword; all furniture and property is
to be brought into the market-place and burnt as a burnt-offering for
Jehovah. Then the houses are to be destroyed with fire and never
rebuilt.[446]

The Book of the Law sought to avoid the greatest danger of all, by the
provision that the people should not choose any stranger to be king. How
could a stranger be king in Israel when no strangers were to be admitted
into the people? The king of the people which Jehovah chose must belong
to the chosen race. But the new law also adds, that the people are "to
make him king whom Jehovah shall choose," a regulation which, in so far
as it recognises and sanctions the old right of election, must be
intended to guard against the influence of the priests on the possession
of the throne, and their decision. For the king himself the Book lays
down the rule: not to multiply horses and wives to himself, that his
heart turn not away, as had been the case with Solomon and Ahab, and not
to greatly multiply to himself silver and gold. He is also to make a
copy of the law when he sits upon the throne of his kingdom, that it may
be with him, and "he may read therein all the days of his life, that he
may learn to fear Jehovah, and observe all the words of the law, and
that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren."[447]

The old law gave the rules of blood-right, and family-right, and in
addition canons on the rights of the person, and the protection of
property. In the new law the main object was to secure the carrying out
and application of these rules of justice in the practice of the
tribunal. For this object a definite influence of the priests on the
tribunal was required. In principle the Book declares, that "every
sentence shall be given after the decision of the priests and
Levites,"[448] for practice it is contented to prescribe, that judges
and overseers were to be placed at all the gates; and then adds: "If
there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment between blood and
blood, and between plea and plea, and stroke and stroke in the gates,
then thou shalt arise and get thee to the place which Jehovah shall
choose (the temple), and come to the priests and Levites and the judge,
who shall be there, and do according to the sentence which they
pronounce for thee." The man who will not listen to the priest who
stands there to minister before Jehovah is to be put to death.[449]

In the judicial process the new law lays emphasis on the rule that only
the testimony of two or three witnesses is to be sufficient,[450] and
that the testimony is to be strictly proved. The judges are to inquire,
and "if the witness is a false witness, and has spoken falsely against
his brother, ye shall do to him as he thought to do to his
brother."[451] Like the old law, the new warns the judge to "have no
respect of persons," and adds that he is to take no gift, that he is
never to give crooked judgments; least of all, in the case of widows
and orphans. "Cursed is he that perverteth the judgment of the
fatherless and widow."[452]

In the canons of law, as in the regulations about the tithes, the new
code makes changes only with a view to the carrying out of the law in
practice. It goes decidedly beyond the old in the regulations,
instituted even in the old law, for the diminution of the severity of
the law of debt, and in regard for the oppressed and poor (II. 221). The
arrangements about the years of Sabbath and of Jubilee are dropped as
impracticable in the new law, and are reduced to the much simpler rule,
that in every seventh year, i.e. in the year of Sabbath, an "acquitment
is to be made," i.e. every unpaid loan, made before this year, is to be
cancelled, with the income upon it. Feeling the evil consequences which
might spring from this regulation, the Book of the Law at the same time
gives warning that no one is to be misled into refusing loans to the
poor from the fear that he could not count on repayment after the year
of acquitment.[453] The older law requires, as has been already
remarked, that in lending to the poor no interest should be taken;[454]
the new law went further: interest is not to be taken from any
Israelite, but only from strangers (_i.e._ Phenician merchants).[455]
But here also it is added, that no one for this reason "is to harden his
heart, and close his hand before his poor brother; thou shalt lend to
him on a pledge (_i.e._ on sufficient security), what is requisite for
his need, and Jehovah will bless thee in all the work of thy
hands."[456] Thus in Israel money was, in fact, only lent on pledge. The
old law forbids to take the cloak of the poor in pledge;[457] the new
law forbids the creditor, who demands his loan, to enter the house in
order to choose a pledge for himself, and lays down the rule that the
man who lends money is to wait outside till the debtor brings a pledge.
The mill and the mill-stone (as indispensable to every household), and
the garment of the widow, are not to be demanded.[458]

The new law repeatedly gives command that the debtor, who from inability
to pay has become the slave of his creditor (II. 221), is not to be
called upon to perform the duties of a slave, but is rather to be kept
in the house as a hired servant and a serf. It requires that all slaves
should participate, not only in the rest of the Sabbath, but in the
enjoyment of the festivals of harvest and vintage. It repeats the
command to liberate Hebrew slaves in the seventh year, and adds: "And
when thou sendest him away free, thou shalt not let him go empty; thou
shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and
out of thy winepress. Remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of
Egypt, and that Jehovah thy God redeemed thee." Runaway slaves, who had
escaped into another community, were not to be delivered up again to
their master, according to the new code.[459]

The old law gave command: "The hire of the day labourer shall not remain
with thee till the morning" (II. 225). The new law requires that it
shall be paid before sunset: "for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon
it."[460] The poor, the widow and the orphan in the land, are not to be
oppressed; they must be supported before the court, and the hand opened
towards them. At the harvest there is to be no gleaning. The scattered
ears are not to be gathered any more than the fallen berries in the
vineyard. "Hast thou forgotten a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not
return to take it; this sheaf shall be, like the gleanings, for the
stranger, the widow and the orphan."[461] Strictly as the new law
maintained the exclusiveness of Israel towards the neighbours (p. 221),
it is equally emphatic in taking the part of the individual unprotected
stranger who dwells in Israel. "Cursed is he who perverts the judgment
of the stranger."[462] The law forbids the mocking of afflicted persons
owing to infirmities of body; the dumb man is not to be reviled, nor a
stumblingblock to be placed in the way of the blind; the man is accursed
who causes a blind man to go out of his way.[463] A man shall not see
the ox or sheep of his brother go astray without leading it back, or
keeping it, if the owner is unknown to him; and the same shall be done
with all lost property.[464] Only the young ones are to be taken from
the nest of the bird, and not the mother with them.[465] Fruit trees are
to be spared even in the land of an enemy.[466] The mouth of the
thrashing-ox is not to be tied, and even animals must rest on the
Sabbath.[467]

When king Josiah had read this book before the assembly of the elders
and the people in the house of Jehovah (p. 213), he vowed that he "would
turn after Jehovah, and keep his ordinances and commands, and fulfil
with all his heart and soul the words of the covenant written in the
book." "And all the people entered into the covenant." The king went
vigorously to work to destroy the altars, statues, and symbols of
foreign rites which remained in Jerusalem, in the neighbourhood, and the
whole country, from the time of Manasses and a yet earlier date. The
image of Astarte (p. 209) was removed from the temple, and burnt on the
brook Kidron; the altars on the roof of the king's palace, which Ahaz
had made, as well as those which Manasses had set up in the court of the
temple, were torn down; the place for offering burnt-offerings to Moloch
in the valley of Ben Hinnom; the altars of Milcom and Camus, which since
Solomon's time had existed on the high places near Jerusalem (II. 195),
were purified, "that no one should any more make his son or his daughter
to pass through the fire." All the vessels of the worship of Baal and
the star-gods were removed, and the houses of the male worshippers
thrown down. When the king proceeded to put an end to the ancient
worship of Jehovah on the heights, he found greater resistance than in
the removal of these foreign rites and their priests. He commanded all
the priests of the cities of Judah to come to Jerusalem, and purified
the high places "from Geba to Beersheba," even the places at Bethel
which Jeroboam II. had set up, against which Amos and Hosea had
declaimed.[468] The priests who did not obey, and continued to sacrifice
at the old places of sacrifice, and on the high places, he caused to be
slain as sacrifices at the altars which they refused to desert. Then the
Passover was celebrated according to the regulations of the law, "as
never before under the kings of Israel and Judah," and tradition proudly
declares of Josiah "that before him there arose no king like unto him,
nor after him."[469]

FOOTNOTES:

[417] Above, p. 157, 162 ff.

[418] 2 Kings xxi. 3-16; xxiii. 4-14, 26; xxiv. 3. Jer. ii. 30; vii. 31;
viii. 2, 19; xv. 4; xix. 4, 5.

[419] 2 Kings xxii. 3-20; Deut. xxxi. 9-13. The less weight will be
given to the somewhat circumstantial account of the discovery given in
Chronicles as compared with the Books of Kings because the details are
only a development of what Hilkiah says to Zaphan.

[420] Deut. iv. 32.

[421] Deut. x. 14, 17.

[422] Deut. x. 18.

[423] Deut. v. 9.

[424] Deut. iv. 15.

[425] Deut. xxxi. 27.

[426] Deut. xxviii. 12.

[427] Deut. xxviii. 15; cf. iv. 27.

[428] Deut. xxx. 1-10.

[429] Deut. iv. 32-34.

[430] Deut. vii. 7, 8.

[431] Deut. x. 14, 15; iv. 37.

[432] Deut. xxx. 11-14.

[433] Deut. x. 16.

[434] Deut. iv. 29.

[435] Deut. xix. 9; x. 12.

[436] Deut. xiii. 3; xi. 1; cf. vi. 4-6.

[437] Deut. xii.; xvi. 16.

[438] Deut. xv. 19, 20; iv. 22-29; xxvi. 12-15.

[439] Deut. xii. 6, 11, 17; xiv. 27-29.

[440] Deut. xviii. 6-8.

[441] Deut. xx. 10-17.

[442] Deut. vii. 1-4.

[443] Deut. xvii. 2-7.

[444] Deut. xiii. 1-5.

[445] Deut. xiii. 6-11.

[446] Deut. xiii. 12-17. Cf. Exod. xxii. 18, 20.

[447] Deut. xvii. 14-20.

[448] Deut. xxi. 5.

[449] Deut. xvi. 8-12; xix. 17; xxv. 13.

[450] Deut. xvii. 4, 6; xix. 15.

[451] Deut. xix. 19.

[452] Deut. xvi. 19; xxvii. 19.

[453] Deut. xv.

[454] Vol. II. p. 220.

[455] Deut. xv. 6; xxiii. 20; xxviii. 12.

[456] Deut. xv. 7-11.

[457] Vol. II. p. 220.

[458] Deut. xxiv. 6, 10-13, 17.

[459] Deut. xii. 12; xvi. 11, 14; xv. 12-18.

[460] Deut. xxiv. 15.

[461] Deut. xxiv. 19-22.

[462] Deut. xxvii. 19.

[463] Deut. xxvii. 18. Cf. Levit. xix. 14.

[464] Deut. xxii. 1-4.

[465] Deut. xxi. 6.

[466] Deut. xx. 19, 20.

[467] Deut. xxv. 4.

[468] Above, p. 31.

[469] 2 Kings xxiii. 4-25. 2 Chron. xxxiv.; xxxv. 1-9. Jesus, Son of
Sirach, xlix. 1, 2.




CHAPTER XI.

THE NATIONS OF THE NORTH.


Far from the centres of power and civilisation in Hither Asia, beyond
the Caucasus and the Black Sea, dwelt wandering tribes who, in the
accounts of the Greeks, were generally denoted by the common name of
Scyths. It was known at an early time, among the Greeks, that these
tribes which dwelt to the north of the Thracians lived on their herds,
especially on the milk of their mares. Even the Homeric poems make
mention of the "'horse-milkers,' of the 'Thracians,' who live poorly on
milk, the most just of men." The name "Scythians" is first found in
Hesiod, who calls them "horse-milking eaters of milk, who live on
waggons." Æschylus says that the hordes of wandering Scythians live in
desolate plains, on the shore of Oceanus, at the farthest, pathless end
of the earth, on the lake Mæotis (sea of Azof), and to the east of it;
"they dwell in woven tents, which move on wheels, they eat the cheese of
mares, and are armed with far-shooting bows."[470]

The nations of the North come out more plainly in the history of
Herodotus, who was far better informed about the North than many later
authorities. "The Caspian Sea," he tells us, "is an isolated sea,
fifteen days' journey in length, and eight days' journey in breadth, if
the oars alone are used." Toward the east of this sea are large plains,
in which dwell the Sacæ, and beyond them, on the Jaxartes, the
Massagetæ; "beyond the Massagetæ are the Issedones." Beyond the
Issedones dwell the Arimaspi.[471] On the other side, to the west of the
Caspian Sea, is the Caucasus, the largest mountain range on the earth in
the height and multitude of its mountains. This range is inhabited by
many nations. Northwards of the Caucasus, and to the west as far as the
northern point of the Mæotis, and to the Tanais (Don), "a great river,"
which comes down from the north out of a large lake in the land of the
Thyssagetæ, and ends in a still larger lake--the lake of Mæotis--dwelt
the Sauromatæ (the Sarmatians). Their land was one great plain, in which
grew neither fruit trees nor forest trees, and it stretched upwards
along the Tanais for fifteen days' journey. To the north of the land of
the Sarmatians dwelt the Budini, the Thyssagetæ, and the Iyrcae. Among
the Sarmatians the women, like the men, lived on horseback; they wore
the same clothing as the men, and knew how to use the bow and javelin,
and went with or without the men to hunt or make war,[472] and no
Sarmatian maiden married till she had slain an enemy; for the Sarmatians
were descendants of the Amazons, who fled from the Thermodon over the
Pontus, and there took as husbands young men belonging to these
Scythians who called themselves Scoloti: with these they afterwards
marched to the east of the Tanais. Hence, according to Herodotus, we
must fix the abode of the Sarmatians in the steppes eastward of the
lower course of the Don, above the lower Volga, perhaps as far as the
Yaik.

The Scythians, who called themselves Scoloti, as Herodotus further tells
us, had previously dwelt in the east, and afterwards marched to the
west, under the pressure of the Massagetæ. But Aristeas related that the
Massagetæ had not driven out the Scythians, but the Arimaspians had
driven the Issedones out of their land, and then the Issedones had
expelled the Scythians. The Scoloti dwelt to the west of the land of the
Sarmatians, on the western bank of the Tanais. Their territory extended
along the shore of the Mæotis and Pontus, as far as the mouths of the
Ister (Danube). This, the largest of all rivers "which we know," was
said to flow down from the Celts, the nation in the extreme west,
through the whole of Europe, till it finally reached the land of the
Scythians, where it ran into the Pontus by five mouths.[473] The
peninsula on the west side of the Mæotis, _i.e._ the Crimea, also
belonged, so far as it was level, to the Scyths; but the Tauri dwelt on
the mountains in the south-west. The reach from the mouth of the Don as
far as the mouths of the Danube is the length of the land of the
Scythians; the breadth Herodotus puts at twenty days' journey, _i.e._
500 miles, if you go from the Pontus into the main-land to the north.

According to this the territory of the Scoloti extended from the sea
upwards in the east about as far as the bend of the Don to the south,
and on the Dnieper as far as the rapids in this river; _i.e._ it
comprised the land of the Cossacks on the west of the Don, and the
steppe, and further to the west the plains of Moldavia, as far as the
Carpathian range.[474] Like the land of the Sarmatians, the land of the
Scoloti was one vast plain, without trees, with the exception of a strip
of forest which extended from the sea on the left bank of the
Borysthenes (Dnieper) from three to four days' journey up the river, but
rich in grass, as it was watered by large rivers.[475] To the west of
the Tanais the first river was the Borysthenes, the largest of the
Scythian rivers, flowing down through the land; and the soil by the
river was so good, that when sown it produced the best corn, and where
it was not sown there stood tall grass. Further to the west the Hypanis
(Bug) flowed out of a lake, round which pastured white horses, through
Scythia to the Pontus; this river had a course of only nine days'
journey (225 miles), while the Borysthenes was navigable for fourteen
days' journey from the mouth.[476] Still further to the west was the
Tyras (Dniester), which also flowed out of a lake; by these lakes are
doubtless meant the marshes in the upper course of the Bug and Dniester.

To the north, beyond the Scoloti, twenty days' journey, according to
Herodotus, from the land of the Tauri, on the west bank of the Tanais,
dwelt the Melanchlæni--so called from the black garments which they
wore; they had Scythian manners, but were not a tribe of the Scythians.
To the west of these lived migratory tribes, without law or justice, of
far ruder manners than the Scoloti; they were the only tribes which ate
human flesh, and were in consequence called Androphagi. And further yet
to the west beside the Androphagi dwelt the Neuri, northwards of the
lake from which the Tyras (Dniester) springs, a nation of Scythian
manners. Like the Scoloti, the Neuri were the eastern neighbours of the
Agathyrsi, through whose land the Maris (the Theiss with the Marosh)
flowed down into the Danube.[477] But who dwelt beyond the Neuri, the
Androphagi, and the Melanchlæni, and further to the east beyond the
Argipæans, who dwelt to the north of the Iyrcae, at the foot of lofty
mountains (up to these the land was level), and wore Scythian clothing,
and lived on the fruits of trees, and of the Issedones, in the north--of
this, Herodotus assures us, no one knew anything more than "the accounts
given by the Issedones, the Argipæans, and the Scythians." The Issedones
related that beyond them dwelt the Arimaspi, one-eyed men, who took the
gold from the griffins which were again further to the north. Aristeas
of Proconnesus (550 B.C.), who professed to have been among the
Issedones, had celebrated the Arimaspi in verse. He said that "beyond
the nation of the Issedones, rejoicing in long hair, towards the north,
dwelt the Arimaspi, rich in horses, sheep, and oxen, the mightiest men
of all, but each in his full face had but one eye surrounded with thick
hair."[478] Æschylus calls the Arismaspi, "one-eyed riders of horses by
the gold-flowing stream;" beside them are the griffins, "the
sharp-mouthed, mute hounds of Zeus." "Oceanus," the god of the water
surrounding the earth, Æschylus represents as passing through the air of
the north, on a griffin, "the four-legged bird."[479]

According to Herodotus, the Sarmatians and the Scoloti spoke the same
language, but the Sarmatians spoke it badly. Beyond this remark and the
statements about the masculine life of the Sarmatian women, he gives us
no further information about this people. But he speaks at greater
length about the Scoloti. The nature of the steppes which they possessed
did not allow them to lead a more settled life than the Sarmatians. It
is true that in the spring the herbage grows luxuriantly on these
steppes, but it is soon parched by the glow of summer, and after a
scanty second growth in the autumn it succumbs to the snow storms of the
long winter. Thus the Scoloti were induced to lead a wandering pastoral
life. Yet they had passed beyond the stage of a purely nomadic life, at
least after the year 700 B.C. If, according to the legend of the
Scoloti, a golden plough fell down from heaven for their forefathers,
the story proves not only the knowledge of agriculture, but the high
value placed upon it. The account of Herodotus, as well as later
statements of the Greeks, show us that the Scoloti cultivated the land
in the depressions at the mouths of their rivers sheltered by strips of
forest from the north wind, on the lower course and at the mouths of the
Borysthenes (Dnieper), the Hypanis (Bug), and the Tyras (Dniester). Here
they sowed corn, millet, and hemp. At that time the plains of the Crimea
also were reckoned as part of the corn land of Scythia; they must
therefore have been protected by forests against the storms of the
north.[480] The property of the Scoloti, with the exception of the
tillers of the soil in these districts, consisted in herds of horses and
cattle, and flocks of sheep, from the wool of which they prepared felt
coverings; their food was cooked flesh.[481] Of wood there was such a
scarcity that they could only use brush-wood for cooking; and if this
was not to be had, they took the bones of animals for fuel. The men were
mostly on horseback; the women and children lived in waggons yoked with
oxen;[482] the waggon, provided with a cover of felt, was at the same
time tent and house.[483] The clothing of the Scoloti consisted of
skins; beside the upper garment of leather they had wide breeches of the
same material. These garments, so astonishing to the Greeks, they wore,
as Herodotus says, "on account of the cold," and in addition a girdle
round the body, which they drew tight when they had had nothing to eat
for a long time. The horse was the most important animal for the
Scoloti; they lived in part on horse-flesh; they were fond of mare's
milk, and the preparation of acidulated mare's milk (koumyss) was known
to them.[484]

The nation was made up of a number of tribes. According to Herodotus,
the land was divided into cantons, each of which had its own chief, and
a place where he pronounced justice; in each canton, besides the
residence of the chief, was a place sacred to the god of war, from which
it follows that at the time presupposed in the description of Herodotus
the tribes of the Scoloti no longer marched at will through the whole
district. This original state was not merely abandoned owing to the
settlements in the agricultural districts; even the habit of wandering
up and down, the search for pasture and for water, and hunting, were
limited among the migratory tribes to a particular district, within
which the tribe changed its encampment according to the change of the
seasons, and the productiveness of the hunting and pasturage. Moreover,
the nomadic habit was also so far abandoned that the head of the tribe
had a definite place of abode in the canton, and there was a sacred
place in each canton. The rulers of the cantons in Herodotus were
undoubtedly the princes of the tribes, the chiefs of the oldest family,
or of the family which once ruled the tribe. Even among the tribes
themselves there was an order of precedence, which the legend of the
Scoloti does not carry back to difference of age but to the favour of
heaven. The tribe which held the foremost place among the Scoloti was,
according to Herodotus, the tribe called the "Royal Scythians." This
tribe furnished the chief of the whole nation, or rather the chief of
this tribe was also the ruler of all the other tribes--the king of all
the princes of the tribes. Here also, in this subordination of the
chieftains and tribes under one liege lord--in this one ruler of the
whole nation--we see plainly that the Scoloti had left far behind the
stage of purely nomadic life. We can establish it as a fact that this
monarchy was in existence among the Scoloti in the first half of the
seventh century B.C., and apparently it existed far earlier. The "Royal
Scythians," _i.e._ the tribe to which the royal house belonged, dwelt,
according to the statement of Herodotus, on the Borysthenes, in the
district of Gerrhus, fourteen days' journey from the mouth of this
river. Hence the pastures of the royal horde must be sought on the
rapids of the Dnieper.

Before all gods, the Scoloti worshipped the sky-god, Papæus, and Hestia,
_i.e._ the genius of the hearth, whom they called Tabiti, "the queen of
the Scoloti," as Herodotus says; and beside these two, the god of light,
Oetosyrus, and the earth-goddess, the spouse of the sky-god, who was
called Apia.[485] The Scoloti had no images or altars. Only the war-god,
to whom they offered more sacrifices than to all the rest of the gods,
had a sanctuary at the place of assembly for each canton. This was a
great heap of bundles of brushwood, three stades in length and breadth,
and flat on the top (each year 150 waggon-loads of brushwood were
added), in which an iron sword--the symbol of the god--stood erect. To
these swords sacrifices were offered yearly, chiefly of horses, though
other animals were used. When the Scythians sacrificed their prisoners
to the war-god (p. 239), they poured wine on their heads, and slew them
at the base of the heap of brushwood, so that the blood ran into a skin,
and the blood was then poured upon the erect sword. After this the right
arm was hewn from the corpse of the victim and thrown into the air; it
was allowed to remain where it fell.[486]

The Scoloti derived the origin of their nation from the gods--from
Papæus, the god of the sky. This god begot Targitæus with the daughter
of the river Borysthenes. Targitæus had three sons, Lipoxais, Arpoxais,
and Colaxais. In their days a golden cup, a golden battle-axe, a golden
yoke, and a golden plough fell down from heaven. When Lipoxais attempted
to take the gold it burned; and in the same manner it escaped Arpoxais.
But the youngest brother was able to take it. So he became king, and
from him arose the royal tribe; from the two others sprang the other
tribes.[487] These gifts of heaven were carefully guarded by the kings,
and each year the Scoloti assembled to offer sacrifices to them. The
supreme power was hereditary in the family of Colaxais, who was nearest
to the sky-god. The son succeeded to the father; but the people, if
discontented with the king, chose another member of the same
family.[488] The kings led the army in war, divided the booty, and were
the supreme judges in peace.[489] If a king pronounced sentence of
death, not only was the guilty man put to death, but all his family with
him.[490] But if a Scolote was condemned to death on the accusation of
another Scolote, the king handed over the condemned person to the
complainant, who put him to death. The kings had several wives, and
chose whom they would out of the free Scoloti to be their servants. They
had cooks, butlers, overseers of their horses, messengers, and a
body-guard.[491] If the king was sick, the Scoloti believed that some
one among the people had sworn falsely by the spirit of the hearth of
the king, which was their most sacred oath, and that this was the cause
of the king's sickness.[492] The king then caused the three most famous
soothsayers to come to him, of whom there were many among the Scoloti.
They divined by separating bundles of withes, or by unrolling and
rolling up strips of linden bark. Then the three soothsayers named to
the king the man who had taken the false oath. If six other soothsayers
were of the same opinion, the Scolote mentioned by the first was
beheaded. If the six were of a different opinion, fresh soothsayers were
examined; and if, in the end, the majority declared against the opinion
of the three first, these were bound and placed on a waggon filled with
brushwood and yoked with oxen; the brushwood was set on fire, and the
oxen driven out into the open country.

If the king died, his body was embalmed, and carried round through all
the hordes. At all the places to which the body came, the Scoloti shaved
off their hair in sign of mourning, and cut out a piece from the ear.
They also wounded themselves in the brow and the nose, and pushed an
arrow through the left hand. Then, in the land of Gerrhus, the district
of the royal tribe on the Borysthenes, a great square sepulchre was
excavated, and the dead king placed in the bottom of it, on a bed of
brushwood. Lances were thrust into the ground close at hand, and
wicker-work placed upon them. One of the wives of the king, his master
of the horse, his butler, cook, body-servant, and herald were strangled,
and their corpses placed in the grave beside the corpse of the king. The
horses of the king also were killed, and thrown with other equipments
into the grave. Then the grave was filled up, and a tumulus raised above
it to as great a height as possible. But after a year's interval fifty
young servants were selected from the retinue of the dead, and fifty
horses of the king. These were killed in order to serve as guardians
round the tomb of the king. When the soft parts had been removed from
the bodies of the horses, and replaced by chaff, the carcases were set
upright by means of poles driven into the earth. In the same way the
dead youths were fixed upon the horses by poles thrust through the
spine.[493]

With the Scoloti war was the most honourable occupation; those who
pursued a handicraft were not held in such respect as the rest;[494] the
wealthier men had numerous slaves to look after their flocks, and do the
work in their tents. The Scoloti usually fought as bowmen on horseback.
Their bows were of peculiar form and curvature;[495] the copper points
of their arrows are said to have been poisoned;[496] beside the bow they
carried a battle-axe, sabre, dagger, and lance, with a whip.[497] Their
corslets and shields are said to have been made of elk's skin. "No man
escapes them," Herodotus says; "and no man can overtake them and bring
them to hand-conflict, if they do not wish to be overtaken, and their
rivers help them." When a Scolote slays an enemy for the first time, he
drinks of his blood;[498] he who has slain no enemy receives no wine at
the banquet which the chief of the canton gives once in each year, but
must sit neglected in a corner; he who has slain many enemies, drinks
out of two goblets at once.[499] The Scoloti take the scalps from their
slain enemies and hang them on the bridles of the horses, and he who has
most of these scalps passes for the bravest. Some take the skins from
the dead, and make of them covers for their quivers. Any one who would
have a share in the booty must bring to the king the heads of the
enemies he has slain.[500] They sacrifice every hundredth man among the
prisoners, and keep the rest as slaves. If a Scolote has a quarrel with
another, and receives him from the king to put to death, he preserves
his skull, even though he may be a near relation. The poorer people
cover these skulls with ox-hide; the wealthier have them gilded, and use
them as drinking-vessels: if a stranger comes among them, they exhibit
these skulls, and boast of them.[501]

According to this description the Scoloti were a people, who, by the
pursuit of agriculture at the mouths of their rivers, by some
handicraft, by dividing the land into cantons, by fixing sacred places
in the cantons, and by a monarchy governing all the tribes, had advanced
beyond the nomadic stage. Hardened by life in the steppes, accustomed to
bear hardships, and content with little, the Scoloti are excellent
riders, and soldiers of great endurance. The picture which Herodotus has
given of their manners displays a certain carelessness, kindliness, and
sociability, but these qualities are accompanied by traits of horrid
barbarism, cruelty, and blood-thirstiness. They can endure hunger and
thirst; they take pleasure in banquets and drinking. The head of the
tribe assembles his tribe each year for a feast, at which the brave men
drink out of two goblets at once. The nearest relatives place the body
of the dead on a waggon, and carry it round among their friends, each of
whom provides a banquet, at which food is placed for the dead as well as
for the living. When forty days have been spent in this manner, the dead
person is buried.[502] When the Hellenes introduced wine among the
Scyths--the introduction perhaps took place after the beginning of the
seventh century--men and women drank immoderately of it beside their
mare's milk, and became violently intoxicated.[503] They also lived in
great uncleanliness. The want of water in their steppes made cleanliness
difficult, but that was no reason for never washing themselves at all,
which Herodotus tells us was the habit of the Scoloti. Only the
wealthier sort among the Scoloti had more than one wife; the women were
without rights, and belonged to their husbands in just the same way as
any head of their cattle: this right of property in the wife even
descended to the sons, who had an hereditary claim and right to their
mothers. The execution of the family along with the guilty person; the
blinding of slaves, which certainly cannot have been so widely spread as
Herodotus maintains; the use of scalps for ornaments; and the custom of
drinking out of the skulls of slain enemies, are barbarous practices.
The self-mutilation at the death of a king, the strangling of the
servants of a dead ruler, and of one of his wives, that they may
accompany him into the grave, the setting up of horses and men slain for
the purpose as a body-guard round the graves of the kings, are indeed a
proof of veneration and honour towards the chief of the nation, but the
form which this veneration takes is savage and cruel.

According to the statement of Herodotus, it was after the middle of the
seventh century B.C. that the Scoloti first came from the East and
reached the northern shore of the Black Sea. This is contradicted by the
acquaintance which the Homeric poems show with the milkers of horses
beyond the Thracians; by the narrative of Herodotus himself, according
to which the Amazons, conquered in old days by Heracles on the
Thermodon, fled to the shore of the Mæotis, and found the Scoloti there,
and became the mothers of the Sarmatians by the young men of that
tribe;[504] and lastly, by the legend of the Scoloti themselves,
according to which they were derived from the daughter of the river
Borysthenes. According to this they regarded themselves in any case as a
tribe settled from all antiquity on the Borysthenes, and with this the
statement of Herodotus agrees when he tells us, that the Scoloti
maintained that 1000 years had elapsed since the time of their
progenitor, the son of the sky-god, and the daughter of the Borysthenes,
down to the time of King Darius.[505] Herodotus represents the Scoloti
as driven to the west by the Massagetæ, who dwelt in the east, a tribe
which we shall have to seek on the Jaxartes. In this way the Scoloti
come into the land of the Cimmerians, who inhabit the north shore of the
Black Sea, and the Cimmerians fly before them to Asia Minor. It was
shown above that the Cimmerians appeared at the mouths of the Halys
about the year 750 B.C., and that soon after the year 700 B.C. they
traversed Phrygia, and in the first decade of the seventh century came
into collision with the Assyrians and the Lydians (I. 546 ff.). If we
cannot contest the fact with Herodotus, that the Scoloti formerly came
from the east into the steppes above the Black Sea, his narrative of
their actual irruption into the land of the Cimmerians is
self-contradictory. When the Scoloti came from the east, the Cimmerians
debated on the Tyras, _i.e._ on the Dniester, whether they should resist
or give way; they determined to give way, and fled from this land--not
westward to the Danube, but eastward along the shore of the Black Sea to
Asia. If they wished, when assembled on the Dniester, to retire before
the enemy coming from the east, they must go to the west: Herodotus
represents them as going from the Dniester to the east directly in the
teeth of the advancing enemy in order to reach Asia Minor round the
north and east shores of the Black Sea. From this contradiction we may
gather that the Scoloti dwelt for a long time in the steppe to the north
of the land of the Cimmerians--_i.e._ to the north of the shore of the
Pontus; that they pressed toward the sea, from a desire to possess
themselves of the fruitful region to the south of the forest-tract at
the mouths of the Dniester, Bug and Dnieper; and finally overcame the
Cimmerians, the ancient population of the coast, and compelled them to
seek other dwelling-places. Only the mountainous district of the Crimea
was maintained by the Tauri (p. 230), a tribe of the Cimmerians,--and
hence the whole peninsula retains the name Crimea after this
nation--while the Scoloti acquired the better land on the coast, about
the middle of the eighth century, and became an agricultural people,
soon after this time, at the mouths of the rivers and on the plains of
the Crimea. The exiled Cimmerians won new abodes on the south shore of
the Black Sea, at the mouth of the Halys, and from this point, in
repeated predatory campaigns extending through a century, they laid
waste Asia Minor as far as the west coast--(what the legends of the
Greeks and Herodotus tell us of the manners of the Tauri represent to us
the Cimmerians as crafty barbarians)--until they finally succumbed to
the arms of the Lydians, and amalgamated with the native tribes of the
region into the nation of the Cappadocians (I. 549).

Of what origin, of what tribe were the Sarmatians, the Scoloti, and the
people living above them to the north, the Neuri, the Androphagi, and
Melanchlæni? According to Aristeas, it was the "one-eyed Arimaspians,"
who had given the impulse to the movement of the northern tribes to the
west. Herodotus maintains that the name Arimaspians means "the one-eyed"
in the language of the Scoloti.[506] The explanation is false. The word
certainly belongs to the western branch of the Aryan language, _i.e._ to
the family of language prevailing on the table-land of Iran and the
regions bordering on it; it means those who have obedient horses
(_airyamaçpa_). If this was the name by which the Arimaspi called
themselves, they were a nation of the Aryan race; if it was the name by
which the Sarmatians and Scoloti named the nation to the east of them,
the Sarmatians and Scoloti must have spoken an Aryan language. Herodotus
further maintains that the Scoloti called the Amazons Oiorpata, and that
this name meant "slayers of men."[507] This explanation also is false.
In Old Arian (Old Bactrian) Oiorpata would appear as _Vayapati_;
_Vayapati_ does not mean the slayers, but it does mean the lords, of
men.[508] It was the masculine employment of the Sarmatian women--their
riding, their participation in hunting and warfare, which gained for the
women of the Sarmatians the name of "lords of men" among their
neighbours, the Scoloti, with whom women were in a very subordinate
position. It was indeed this position and these habits of the Sarmatian
women which caused the Greeks to unite the Sarmatians and the Amazons,
and make the latter the mothers of the Sarmatian race. Thus, for the
Greeks, the Amazons who disappeared on the Thermodon could arise to a
new life on the steppes of the Don (I. 557 ff.).

The names of the progenitors of the Scoloti, of the three sons of
Targitæus; Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and Colaxais (p. 236), appear to contain
in the second part of the words the old Arian word _kshaya_, _i.e._
prince. The two older brothers strive in vain to win the shining gifts
which fell from heaven--the golden goblet, the golden battle-axe, the
golden yoke, and the golden plough: it is only the youngest who can take
them. In the Avesta the splendour of majesty recedes three times before
Yima; the first time Mithra seizes it, then Thrætaona, then Kereçaçpa:
the kings of the Avesta sacrifice in order that "the mighty royal
majesty may unite with them." The Turanian Frangharçian grasps three
times in vain "after the splendour of the majesty of the Arian
lands."[509] According to the statement of Herodotus the royal tribe of
the Scoloti, _i.e._ the tribe from which Colaxais is sprung, to which
the royal house belonged, was called "Paralatai." In old Aryan this name
might mean "the advanced" (_paradhata_) or "the leaders" (_pararata_).
Nor do the names of the gods of the Scoloti contradict the derivation
from an Aryan stock. Tabiti, the name of the goddess of the hearth,
means in Aryan "the burning," "the illuminating," just as the name of
the deity Oetosyrus (perhaps _vita-çura_, _i.e._ "strong with the
bow") reappears in the Persian name Artasyrus.[510] But if the language
of the Scoloti was Aryan, and they were therefore of an Aryan stock, the
Sarmatians must have been of the same stock, for the Sarmatians and the
Scoloti spoke, as Herodotus told us (p. 232), the same language. And if
Herodotus adds that the Sarmatians spoke the language of the Scoloti
badly, and their ancestresses, the Amazons, learnt it badly from their
husbands, this means no more than that they spoke a different dialect of
the same language. Diodorus calls the Sarmatians a branch of the Medes
planted on the Tanais; to Pliny the Sarmatians are descendants of the
Medes. These statements show a close relationship between the Sarmatians
and an Aryan nation.[511] The names and words also, exclusive of those
examined, which have been handed down to us as Scolotian and Sarmatian,
can mostly be traced back to Aryan roots. The names of the rivers Tanais
and Borysthenes (_vouruçtana_) would mean, in old Aryan, the
"outstretched," and "having a broad strand." The names Spargapeithes,
Ariapeithes, Ariarathes, in use among the Scoloti, recur in a similar
form in Persia. What Herodotus tells us of the rites of the Scoloti, the
worship of the hearth-fire as the "queen of the Scythians," corresponds
to the worship of the hearth among the Aryans in Iran, as well as on the
Indus. At the same time the different name, the female form of the
latter, the names of the other deities in Herodotus, the barbarous
worship of the war-god (p. 236), show that the Scoloti must have
separated themselves from the community of the Aryans before the eastern
branch were in possession of the Punjab, and the middle branch in
possession of Iran, and there arrived at the religious conceptions
expressed in the hymns of the Rigveda, and in the creed of Iran, as it
existed before Zarathrustra. As it was the Scoloti who gave names from
their language to the rivers which flowed through their steppes, they
must have pastured their flocks on them from an early period. Not less
than these names, and the legend of the Scoloti about the antiquity of
their nation and its origin from the Borysthenes, does the comparison of
the Iranian languages support the conclusion that the Sarmatians and the
Scoloti must have broken off from the tribes of Iran at a very early
period,[512] and the Scoloti, who are situated further to the west on
this side of the Don, earlier than the Sarmatians. If, therefore, we
must recognise in the Scolotians and Sarmatians people of Aryan stock
and character, their neighbours in the north, the Neuri, the Androphagi,
and the Melanchlæni, must count as the fathers of the Sclaves.[513]

FOOTNOTES:

[470] "Iliad," 13, 5, 6. Strabo, p. 300, 302. Æsch. "Prom." 11. 1, 2,
416.

[471] Herod. 1, 201; 4, 13, 27. On the confusion of the Araxes and
Jaxartes in Herodotus, see vol. v.

[472] Herod. 4, 21, 57, 123. Cf. Strabo, p. 496-498.

[473] Herod. 4, 47-50.

[474] Neumann, "Die Hellenen im Scythenlande," s. 202, 215.

[475] Herod. 4, 47. Neumann, _loc. cit._ s. 80.

[476] Herod. 4, 53.

[477] Herod. 4, 18, 100, 106, 107, 125.

[478] Tzetzes, "Chil." 7, 144, 163.

[479] "Prom." 285, 802. Yet Æschylus appears to place the Arimaspi in
the North-west, and not in the North-east.

[480] Strabo, p. 311.

[481] Herod. 4, 2, 61, 63.

[482] Herod. 4, 114, 122.

[483] Herod. 4, 75. Hippocr. "De Aere," p. 92, ed. Coray. Strabo, p.
307.

[484] Neumann, _loc. cit._ s. 278 ff.

[485] Herod. 4, 127. Herodotus represents Idanthyrsus as saying, "As my
lords I acknowledge only Zeus (the sky-god), my forefather, and Hestia,
the queen of the Scythians."

[486] Herod. 4, 59.

[487] Herod. 4, 5. The series of Scythian kings which can be collected
from Herodotus is: Protothyas, about 650 B.C.; Madyras, about 630 B.C.;
Saulius, about 550 B.C.; Idanthyrsus, about 500 B.C. Herod. I, 103; 4,
76. Beside this succession of kings we may place the pedigree of
Anacharsis, who came to Hellas about 580 B.C., and must, therefore, have
been born about 610 B.C. His father, Gnurus, was, therefore, born at the
latest in 630 B.C.; his grandfather, Lycus, in 650 B.C.; and his
great-grandfather, Spargapeithes, in 670 B.C.

[488] Herod. 4, 78, 80.

[489] Herod. 4, 69, 120.

[490] Herod. 4, 69.

[491] Herod. 4, 71, 78.

[492] Herod. 4, 68.

[493] Herod. 4, 71, 72.

[494] Herod. 2, 167.

[495] Cf. Curtius, 10, 1.

[496] Ælian. "Nat. Anim." 2, 16; 9, 15.

[497] Herod. 4, 3, 70.

[498] Herod. 4, 64.

[499] Herod. 4, 66.

[500] Herod. 4, 64.

[501] Herod. 4, 65.

[502] Herod. 4, 73.

[503] Herod. 6, 84; Hippocr., "De Morb.," 4, 13. "De Leg." p. 637.

[504] Herod. 4, 110. Diod. 2, 46.

[505] Herod. 4, 5.

[506] Herod. 4, 27.

[507] Herod. 4, 110.

[508] Müllenhoff, "Monatsber. B.A." 1866, s. 555 ff, 576.

[509] Zamyad Yascht, 56 ff.

[510] Müllenhoff, _loc. cit._ s. 588.

[511] Diod. 2, 43; Plin. "Hist. Nat." 6, 19.

[512] Müllenhoff, _loc. cit._ s. 562.

[513] Müllenhoff, _loc. cit._ s. 567.




CHAPTER XII.

THE FALL OF ASSYRIA.


From modest beginnings, with a land of moderate extent, Assyria, after
passing through a training of severe warfare against the immediate
neighbours, slowly raised herself by unwearied efforts, and extended
wider and wider the circle of her dominion. The end of the twelfth
century, the course and close of the ninth century, denote the epochs
and the halts in this advance, which are followed in turn by periods of
decline. With the middle of the eighth century, with the accession of
Tiglath Pilesar II., Assyria, by the subjugation of Babylonia and
complete overthrow of Syria, and by reducing Media to a regular payment
of tribute, passed beyond any height previously attained. Sargon,
Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal raised Assyria yet higher. She ruled over
the land of the Euphrates as far as the mouth of the river; the east of
Asia Minor and Cyprus bring tribute; Lydia seeks her support; the pride
of Babylon is at last broken; Egypt is conquered and maintained by
repeated conquests; Thebes has been pillaged, Susa destroyed, and Elam
annihilated.

Hardly fifty years after the full tide of these successes--forty years
after the overthrow of the strong opponent on the lower Tigris, the
ancient Elam--Nineveh had fallen. No slow decline, no gradual
extinction after a long period of ripening, during which she grew up to
the wide extent of her dominion, was the fortune of Assyria:--this iron
city of war and conquest, of cruel desolation and bloody punishments,
collapsed suddenly. It seems as if the ceaseless efforts of the last
century had overstrained and exhausted the power of the State; at any
rate, the most thorough establishment of this power in the first half of
the reign of Assurbanipal--perhaps the most energetic, and certainly the
most fierce and bloody, ruler of Assyria--was quickly followed by its
relaxation and fall.

The monuments of Assyria naturally give us no information on the fall of
the kingdom; and it is not easy to ascertain the true facts from the
Western writers who narrate the extinction of Assyria. The account which
Ctesias and Nicolaus of Damascus have preserved of the matter is as
follows: Sardanapalus was the thirty-sixth ruler of Assyria after Ninus.
He neither carried weapons like his forefathers, nor went to the chase,
but he surpassed all his predecessors in luxury and effeminacy. He was
never seen outside the palace. He passed his life with the women, shaved
his beard, smoothed his skin by rubbing it with pumice-stone, so that it
became whiter than milk, painted himself with white lead, coloured his
eyes and eyebrows, put on female apparel, and vied with his concubines
in adornment, in dressing his hair, and all the arts of courtezans, and
lived as effeminately as a woman. He sat among the women, with his legs
stretched out before him, wove purple wool with them, imitated the voice
of a woman, delighted himself continually with the food and drink most
adapted to excite sensual desire, and pursued without shame the
pleasures of either sex.

At the gate of the palace were the satraps of the nations, who led out
the forces prescribed for each year (II. 13); among these was Arbaces,
the satrap of Media, a man of prudent conduct, experienced in affairs, a
good hunter and warrior, who had already performed valiant acts, and
aimed at something higher still. When he heard of the life and manners
of the king, he was of opinion that Sardanapalus was only ruler over
Assyria for lack of a braver man. He was acquainted with Belesys, the
viceroy of Babylon, who waited with him at the door of the king. Belesys
was of the tribe of the Chaldæans, who were the priests, and enjoyed the
greatest respect; the Babylonians were also the most skilful
astronomers, and distinguished by experience in matters divine, in the
art of the seer, and the interpretation of dreams and wonders. To this
man Arbaces imparted his thoughts. Once they conversed in the
neighbourhood of the palace, near a manger out of which two horses ate,
and, as it was noon, they rested there. Then Belesys saw in a dream that
one of the two horses let chaff fall out of his mouth on Arbaces, who
also was asleep; and the other horse inquired why he had done this. The
first horse replied: "Because he will rule over all those over whom
Sardanapalus rules now." Then Belesys roused Arbaces, and invited him to
a walk on the bank of the Tigris. Here he said to him: "What would you
give me, Arbaces, for the good news, if I told you that Sardanapalus had
made you viceroy over Cilicia?" "Why do you mock me?" Arbaces replied;
"how is he likely to nominate me, and pass over many better men?"
"Still, if such a thing should happen--I know very well what I am
saying," replied the other. "Then," said Arbaces, "it would not be the
lesser part of this sovereignty that would fall to you." "But if,"
continued the other, "Sardanapalus made you satrap of all Babylonia,
what would you give me then?" "Cease to annoy me," answered Arbaces; "I
am a Mede, and not to be scorned by a Babylonian." "By the great Belus,"
answered Belesys, "I do not say this in mockery, but instructed by
signs." Then Arbaces replied: "If I were satrap of Babylonia, I would
make you under-governor of the whole satrapy." Belesys continued: "But
if you were made king of the whole empire which Sardanapalus now
possesses, what would you do?" "Wretch!" said Arbaces; "if Sardanapalus
were to hear this, you and I would perish miserably; how comes it into
your mind to talk such nonsense?" But Belesys seized his hand, and said:
"By this right hand, which is dear to me, and the great Belus, I am not
speaking in jest, but because I know accurately the things divine." Then
Arbaces replied: "I would give you Babylonia to rule over, as long as
you live, without tribute." And when Belesys required him to join hands
over the promise, he gladly gave him his right hand; whereupon Belesys
answered: "Be assured, you shall certainly be king." When they had
concluded this, they went back to the gate of the king to perform their
ordinary service. When subsequently Arbaces became acquainted with
Sparameizes, one of the most trusted eunuchs of the king, he besought
him to allow him to see the king--he desired eagerly to approach his
master to see how he lived. When the eunuch replied that this was
impossible, and never permitted, Arbaces at first desisted; but after a
few days he repeated his request more urgently, and added that he would
requite the favour with much gold and silver. The eunuch, who was of an
easy disposition, was overcome, and promised to think of the matter at
a convenient opportunity. Arbaces presented him with a golden goblet.
Sparameizes conversed with the king, and the latter permitted the
request. Then Arbaces saw Sardanapalus sitting among the women, spinning
purple wool with them, and putting white upon his eyes.[514] Arbaces now
knew accurately what the king was, and was more inclined than before to
realise the prospect which the Chaldæan had opened to him. He entered
into a league with the captains of the other nations, and by
entertainments and persuasions won the friendship of each. At length he
agreed with Belesys that he should himself excite the Medes and Persians
to rebellion, while Belesys prepared the Babylonians for a similar
attempt, and persuaded the chiefs of the Arabs, with whom he was on
friendly terms, to take part in the undertaking. When the year of
service was over, and the new troops came in, the troops which had
finished service returned as usual to their countries. On this occasion,
Arbaces succeeded in persuading the Medes to rebel against the king, and
in gaining the Persians for the same object, on condition that they
should remain free for the future. In the same way Belesys induced the
Babylonians to rise for their freedom, and by ambassadors prepared the
chiefs of the Arabians to join in the undertaking. When the year was
past they collected the multitude of their warriors together, and
marched with their whole force to Nineveh, in order, as they gave out,
to set themselves free, but in reality to destroy the empire of the
Assyrians. From the four nations mentioned, about 400,000 men were in
all collected, and when these were united, the leaders consulted what
was to be done. When Sardanapalus received the intelligence of their
defection, he led the forces of the remaining nations against them. A
battle took place in the plain: the rebels were defeated; they lost many
men, and were pursued as far as the mountains, which lie at a distance
of 70 stades from Nineveh; and when they came down a second time into
the plain to battle, Sardanapalus drew out his army against them, and
sent heralds to proclaim that he would give 200 talents of gold to the
man who slew Arbaces the Mede; the man who brought him alive should
receive double this sum, and in addition the satrapy of Media. The same
promise was made to any one who should slay Belesys, or bring him alive.
These messages remained without effect; Sardanapalus attacked, again
slew a number of the rebels, and pursued the remainder as far as the
camp on the mountains. The rebels, disheartened by two defeats,
assembled round Arbaces for consultation; the majority were of opinion
that every one should return to his own land, occupy fortified places,
and provide everything necessary for war: but Belesys said, that the
signs of the gods announced that they would attain their object by toil
and disaster, and thus persuaded them all to persist in the dangerous
undertaking. In this way it came to a third battle, in which
Sardanapalus was again victorious, took the camp of the enemy, and
pursued them to the borders of Babylonia. Arbaces fought with the utmost
bravery, and slew many of the Assyrians, but was wounded. After so many
losses and these repeated defeats, the rebels abandoned all hope, and
set themselves to withdraw to their several homes. Belesys, who had kept
watch in that night, and observed the stars, told the dejected host that
if they would only persist for five days, help would come to them
spontaneously, and a great change for the better take place. He was
assured, from his knowledge of the stars, that the gods announced this
to them. Let them only remain for so many days, and thus put to the
proof the favour of the gods, and his own skill. All were called back to
wait for the appointed time, when it was suddenly announced that a large
force, sent to Sardanapalus from Bactria, was marching up hastily, and
already close at hand. Then Arbaces was of opinion that they must go to
meet the Bactrians with the best and bravest warriors, and if they could
not be persuaded to join the rebellion, they must be compelled to do so
by force of arms. First, the leaders of the Bactrians listened to the
proposal for liberation, and then the soldiers also, so that the
Bactrians united with the rest. The king of the Assyrians knew nothing
of the defection of the Bactrians, and, misled by his good fortune, gave
himself over to indolence. He caused a feast to be prepared for his
soldiers, with many sacrificial victims, abundance of wine, and other
accompaniments. By means of deserters the rebels ascertained the
carelessness and intoxication of their enemies, and unexpectedly made an
attack in the night. Attacking in good order the disordered, well-armed
the unarmed, they gained the camp, slew many, and pursued the remainder
as far as the city. The king undertook the defence of the city in
person, and transferred the command of the army to Salæmenes, his wife's
brother. But the Assyrians were defeated in two battles in the plain
before the city; many took to flight, many were driven into the Tigris,
when their return to the city was cut off, so that the Assyrian army was
almost entirely destroyed. The number of the slain was so great that the
river was stained with blood for a great distance in its course. The
king was now shut up in the city, and many of the subject nations
revolted to the rebels in order to acquire their freedom. Sardanapalus
saw that the kingdom was in the greatest danger; he sent his three sons
and two daughters, with much treasure, to Cottas, the viceroy of
Paphlagonia, who was the most loyal of his viceroys, and gave with them
3000 talents of gold.[515] At the same time, by sending out messengers
with scribes, he gave orders to all his subjects to send forces to his
assistance, while he prepared all that was necessary for the siege. He
had received an oracle from his forefathers, that Nineveh would never be
taken till the river became an enemy to the city. Since this would never
happen, he hoped to be able to maintain the city, and waited for the
troops sent by his viceroys. The rebels carried on the siege with
vigour, but could not do any harm owing to the strength of the walls,
and, thanks to the care of the king, the inhabitants of the city had
everything that they required in abundance. Hence the only result
obtained by two years of siege was that no one left the city. But in the
third year it happened that the Tigris, swollen by constant rains,
overflowed a part of the city, and tore away the walls for a space of 20
stades. Then the king knew that the river was an enemy of the city, and
abandoned all hope of resistance and rescue.[516] In order not to fall
into the hands of his enemies, he caused an enormous pyre, about 400
feet high, to be built in the royal citadel. Upon this was erected a
chamber of beams 100 feet in length and breadth. Into this chamber were
brought 150 golden couches with cushions, and an equal number of golden
tables. Then 10 million talents of gold, and 100 million talents of
silver, and a quantity of robes of all kinds, of mantles and purple
stuffs, were placed on the pyre. Then Sardanapalus took his place in
the chamber on one of the couches with his wife, and on the rest were
his concubines. The chamber was roofed with long and massive beams, and
when wood had been placed in great quantities round it, so that no one
could pass out, the king gave command to light the pile of wood. It
burned for 15 days. The people in the city wondered at the smoke rising
from the royal citadel; but they believed that the king was sacrificing,
for only the eunuchs knew the circumstances. Thus Sardanapalus burnt
himself, with all who were in the royal citadel, and, after indulging in
pleasure beyond measure, brought his life to a noble end.[517] When the
rebels became acquainted with the death of the king, they took the city
by forcing their way through the breach in the wall, arrayed Arbaces in
the royal robe, saluted him as king, and gave him authority over all. To
the captains who had fought with him he gave gifts according to their
services, and made them viceroys over the nations. Belesys reminded the
king of his services, and the promise to make him ruler over Babylonia.
He had also made a vow to Belus in the perils of war, that after the
conquest of Sardanapalus and the burning of his royal citadel, he would
carry the ashes to Babylon, and make a heap of them near the temple of
Belus, on the shore of the Euphrates, which should be to all who
navigated the Euphrates an imperishable memorial of the man who had
overthrown the empire of the Assyrians. He had ascertained from a eunuch
of Sardanapalus how much gold and silver was in the ashes of the
citadel. Arbaces, who knew nothing of this, because all besides were
burnt with the king, allowed the ashes to be carried away, and gave
Belesys Babylonia free of tribute. But when the theft was known to the
king, he made the captains of the army with whom he had fought against
Sardanapalus, the judges. Belesys acknowledged his fault, and the court
condemned him to death. But the king, who was magnanimous, and wished to
distinguish the beginning of his reign, not only forgave Belesys the
penalty, but allowed him to keep the gold and silver, which had been
already conveyed to Babylon; he did not even take from him the
government of Babylon, saying that his former services were greater than
his recent fault. When this conduct became known, it brought not only
good-will, but glory, to Arbaces among the nations, for all judged him
to be worthy of the kingdom who treated those who had served in such a
manner. He was also gentle in his treatment of the inhabitants of
Nineveh. They were divided into villages, it is true, but each retained
his possessions: the city he levelled to the ground. But the gold and
silver of the pyre which still remained--and it amounted to many
talents--he caused to be carried to Ecbatana in Media.[518] After this
Arbaces reigned 28 years, and was succeeded in the kingdom over the
Medes by his son Mandaces, who was followed by Sosarmus, Artycas,
Arbienes, Artæus, Artynes, Astibaras, and Aspadas. Aspadas was conquered
by Cyrus the Persian, and the dominion passed to the Persians.[519]

The account given by Herodotus of the fall of the Assyrian kingdom is
different: "When the Assyrians had reigned over Upper Asia for 520 years
the Medes were the first to revolt from them, and, as they fought
bravely against the Assyrians, they obtained their freedom. After them
the other nations did what the Medes had done. And when all the nations
of Asia had become independent, they fell under the dominion of one man
in this manner. The Medes dwelt in villages, and as lawlessness
prevailed among them, they chose Deioces, the son of Phraortes, a man of
ability, whose decisions were most sought after for their justice and
equity, to be their king. He caused a palace to be built, and surrounded
himself with body-guards, and when this was done he compelled the Medes
to build a city in order to keep their attention from his further
designs, and a fortress, which is now called Ecbatana. In this way he
strengthened his power, and united the Median nation. When he had ruled
53 years, he was succeeded by his son Phraortes. This prince was not
content to rule over the Medes only; he marched against the Persians,
and was the first to make them subject to the Medes, and with these two
nations, both of which were strong, he subdued Asia, advancing from one
nation to another, till he finally attacked the Assyrians, who possessed
Nineveh, and had formerly ruled over all. Their previous confederates
had, it is true, now fallen from them, but they were still in an
excellent position. Against these Phraortes now took the field, but he
and the greater part of his army were lost in the attempt, after he had
reigned for 22 years. He was succeeded by his son Cyaxares. In order to
avenge his father Cyaxares collected the warriors from all the nations
governed by him, and marched against Nineveh to destroy the city. He had
conquered the Assyrians in the battle, and shut up Nineveh, when the
great army of the Scythians came down upon him, led by Madyas, the son
of Protothyas. These had driven the Cimmerians out of Europe, and
entered Asia in pursuit of them, and so came to Media. From the lake
Mæotis to the Phasis and the Colchians it is, for an active man, a
journey of thirty days: but from the Colchians to Media the journey is
an easy matter, for there is only one nation between the two--the
Saspires--when these are crossed you are in Media. But the Scythians did
not enter by this route; they took by mistake the upper route, which is
far longer, and has the Caucasus on the right hand. Then the Medes and
the Scythians encountered each other; and the Medes were defeated in the
battle, and lost their dominion; the Scythians traversed all Asia, and
then turned towards Egypt. When they had reached Palestine,
Psammetichus, the king of Egypt, came to meet them, and by presents and
entreaties induced them to come no further. They returned and came to
Ascalon. The greater part of the Scythians passed without doing any
harm, but the camp-followers plundered the shrine of Aphrodite Urania.
These the goddess punished with a loss of their manhood, and not them
only but their descendants after them. For 28 years the Scythians were
masters in Asia, and overturned everything in their arrogance and
contempt. Beside the tribute which they imposed on all, and what they
extorted in addition, they wandered to and fro stealing whatever any one
possessed. The greater number were massacred by Cyaxares and the Medes,
after they had entertained them and made them intoxicated. Thus the
Medes won back their dominion, and ruled again over those over whom they
had ruled previously, and conquered Nineveh--how they conquered the city
I shall relate in another account--and made the Assyrians their
subjects, as far as Babylonia."[520] "But the Scythians, who after 28
years returned to their land, were met by a disaster not less than that
caused by the Medes. In the long period during which their husbands had
been absent, the Scythian women had lived with their slaves, and from
this intercourse a young generation had grown up, who opposed those who
returned from Media. Where the Tauric Chersonese abuts on Lake Mæotis,
at the point where the lake is broadest, they raised a large dyke, to
mark off their territory. When the Scythians wished to enter the
territory they encamped opposite them and fought. The battles were many,
and the Scythians could not gain the upper hand, till one of them said:
'Our numbers become less in the struggle with our slaves if we fall, and
if we continue to slay them we shall have fewer persons to rule over.
Let us abandon the javelins and arrows, and take every man his whip, and
go against them. So long as they see us in arms they think that they are
our equals, and of equal birth; they will then know that they are our
slaves, and will not stand their ground.' When this was done the others
were terrified, abandoned the struggle, and fled. In this way the
Scythians, after they had governed Asia, and had then been again driven
out by the Medes, came back into their own land."[521] "Of the nomadic
Scythians," so we are further told in another passage of Herodotus, "one
tribe separated from the rest, and came into the Median territory, and
asked for protection, and Cyaxares received them well, and held them in
high estimation--putting boys in their care to whom they were to teach
their language, and the use of the bow. The Scythians went out to the
chase, and always brought something back. But it happened once that they
found nothing, and returned with empty hands. Then Cyaxares, who was
quick of temper, as the incident shows, received them harshly and with
contempt. Enraged at the unmerited treatment they received the
Scythians resolved to cut in pieces one of the boys given into their
charge for education, and, after preparing him as they were accustomed
to prepare venison, to set him before Cyaxares as the spoils of the
chase, and at once to fly to Sardis to Alyattes. This was done. Cyaxares
and those who were at table with him ate of this flesh. When Cyaxares
demanded their surrender, and Alyattes refused it, the result was a war
between the Lydians and Medes, which continued five years. In this war
the Medes were often victorious, and also the Lydians; one battle was
fought even by night. In the sixth year, when the armies met, and were
already engaged, it happened that the day suddenly changed into night.
When the night suddenly came upon them in the daytime, the Medes and
Lydians desisted from the battle. On both sides there was an inclination
to peace. But those who brought about a reconciliation were Syennesis
the Cilician, and Labynetus the Babylonian. Through their
instrumentality a peace was set on foot, and an intermarriage took
place: they arranged that Alyattes should give his daughter Aryanis to
wife to Astyages, the son of Cyaxares, for without some binding
necessity treaties were not wont to continue."[522] Cyaxares was
succeeded by Astyages on the throne of the Medes. When he had reigned 35
years he was defeated by Cyrus the Persian, and the dominion passed to
the Persians after the Medes had reigned over Asia 128 years, beside the
period during which the Scythians ruled.[523]

We need not point out how widely these accounts of Ctesias and Herodotus
differ from each other. In Ctesias the Assyrian kingdom is in the
fulness of vigour, with an unbroken organisation. It is an effeminate
ruler whose weakness rouses the viceroys of two provinces of the kingdom
to rebellion, in which this effeminate ruler confronts them with the
most masculine energy; and finally succumbs after the bravest resistance
and marvellous changes of fortune in the struggle. The empire, the
metropolis, the king of Assyria perish simultaneously. The viceroy of
Media takes the place of the king of Asshur as the lord of Asia. In the
narrative of Herodotus the empire of the Assyrians is first overthrown;
in the struggle against this the Medes win back their freedom; the
remaining nations, who were subject to the Assyrians, follow their
example, and also attain independence. Then out of the anarchy of the
Medes there springs up a monarchy, of which Phraortes is the inheritor.
He subdues one nation of Asia after the other. When this object has been
obtained, he advances to the attack upon the Assyrians, and in the
struggle against these he perishes. After this the Scythians conquer the
Medes, and overthrow the dominion of the Medes over the nations of Asia,
which Phraortes had won. For twenty-eight years they devastate Asia as
far as the borders of Egypt, till the Median Cyaxares becomes their
master by treachery, and again overthrows the Assyrians and conquers
Nineveh. According to this, Assyria did not receive the death-blow till
the Medes and the other nations were liberated from her dominion, and
the Medes had twice established their supremacy over the rest of the
nations.

In Ctesias it is Arbaces who overthrows the kingdom of the Assyrians; in
Herodotus it is Phraortes who founds the empire of the Medes, and
Cyaxares, the father of Astyages, who conquers Nineveh. The dates of the
overthrow, no less than the authors of it, differ widely in Herodotus
and Ctesias. In Herodotus, Cyaxares, the conqueror of Nineveh, reigns
40 years, his son Astyages 35 years. As the latter was defeated by Cyrus
in 558 B.C., the reign of Cyaxares, and the invasion and conquest of the
Scythians, the re-establishment of the Median kingdom, the war with the
Lydians, the marriage of Astyages with the daughter of the king of
Lydia, the conquest of Nineveh, must fall in the period between 633 and
593 B.C. On the other hand, according to the dates which Ctesias gives
for Aspadas and his predecessors, up to the rebellion of Arbaces,
Arbaces destroyed the kingdom and metropolis of Assyria in the year 878
B.C.[524]

Let us first examine each of the two accounts separately. In Ctesias the
motives of the actors, the interpretations of dreams and constellations,
all the incidents and occurrences, are known. He is acquainted with the
conversations which Arbaces and Belesys carry on at the gate of the
palace at Nineveh, and in their walks on the banks of the Tigris--and
knows how they intend to divide the lion's skin before it is won. The
effeminate life and nature of the king of Asshur are described in the
strongest traits and with the most minute detail. Yet this effeminate
man has a lawful wife, with whom he ends his existence, three sons and
two daughters, whom, in his care for their lives, he sends away before
Nineveh is shut up. After a life passed in the harem, an effeminate
ruler, such as this account describes the last king of Assyria to have
been, might, under the pressure of great danger, perhaps put himself to
death; but he could hardly have the resolution and the capacity to
struggle for three years, with heroic courage and obstinacy, for his
kingdom and throne. In the narrative of Ctesias this effeminate king
three times vanquishes his opponents in great battles. The latter are
already resolved to abandon their undertaking, when the unexpected
desertion of the Bactrians to the enemy again raises their courage. This
desertion, the successful surprise of the Assyrian camp, and the
overflow and floods of the Tigris, decide against Sardanapalus, who now,
as Ctesias himself says, ends his life in a noble manner. This end takes
place in a most remarkable way. In a country without wood, in a besieged
city, a wooden mountain 400 feet in height is erected, which must have
towered high above all the walls and towers, and have been seen from far
by friend and foe. Least of all could the inhabitants of Nineveh, who
saw the pyre building, be astonished at the rising smoke, as the
narrative relates (p. 255). The narrative allows the pyre to go on
burning for fifteen days undisturbed, and though the breach is opened
before the building and lighting of the pyre, the besiegers quietly wait
till it is burned down before forcing their way into the city.

All these contradictions and marvels, combined with the detailed and
lively delineation of the life of the king among his women, the full
account of the relation of Arbaces and Belesys, their characteristic
traits, and the dramatic description of the battle, where victory hangs
by a hair, and the preparations for self-incremation, show us that
Ctesias has followed a poetical authority in describing the end, no less
than the beginning of the Assyrian kingdom,--an authority of the same
kind as that which could give us such accurate information about the
origin, character, and fortunes of Semiramis, and the war with the
Indians. The question about the origin of this authority is easier to
answer here than in regard to the former descriptions. It is a Mede who
is brought to honour, whose force and vigour can overthrow a great
kingdom, whose courage and bravery are marked in comparison with the
ruler of Assyria, no less than his honesty and gentleness puts to shame
the treachery and avarice of his Babylonian accomplice. On him, the
skilful hunter, the brave warrior, when in his service at the gate he
hears of the king's effeminate life, the thought forces itself, that
there is need of a brave man. The dream of the horse, which lets chaff
fall on Arbaces, belongs decidedly to the conceptions of the Iranian
nations, the Medes and Persians. The interpreter skilled in the stars,
the Babylonian, knows at once what is the significance of the dream, and
hastens to secure his share of the spoil, the satrapy of Babylonia, by a
solemn promise taken from Arbaces. The sight of the king in female
adornment, painting himself, which Arbaces finally obtains by bribing
Sparameizes, decides his resolve. He gains the captains of the troops
stationed with him at Nineveh. The war commences. The rebels are
defeated even in the third battle, in spite of the heroic deeds of
Arbaces and the number of the Assyrians slain by him. He is wounded; the
army is compelled to retire as far as the borders of Babylonia. The
Babylonian, who, after the second battle, has kept up the courage of the
confederates by his astrology, adjures them to remain but five days. In
this space of time Arbaces, who goes boldly to meet the Bactrians,
succeeds in winning them, in surprising the Assyrian camp, in defeating
Salarmenes, and destroying the Assyrian army in the third battle before
the gates. The rebels have lost three battles, now they win three. The
old oracle is fulfilled: the river becomes hostile to the city. Arbaces
takes the place of Sardanapalus. The subtilty and cunning of the
Babylonian, which is brought strongly forward beside his knowledge of
the heavens, is contrasted with the uprightness of the Mede. Belesys has
deceived him. When condemned to death Arbaces not only gives him his
life; he despises the miserable gold, and leaves it to Belesys; he keeps
strictly the promise he had once made to him on the Tigris, and the
nations of Asia are in consequence compelled to acknowledge that Arbaces
is worthy to rule them.

It is a poetical conception which contrasts the simple character and
force of the Median servant with the effeminate splendour of the
sovereign of Assyria, and which places beside the former, to aid and
support him, the astrology and cunning of the Babylonians. But by this
contrast the Medo-Persian Epos obtained another advantage; the
completion of the whole poem. A masculine woman, Semiramis, had founded
the kingdom; an effeminate man brings it to ruin. Herodotus does not
know the name of Sardanapalus. But the name was known to the Greeks;
before Ctesias wrote it had passed into a by-word--"more luxurious than
Sardanapalus."[525] The effeminate traits are marked with extraordinary
depth in the narrative of Ctesias; he not only wears woman's clothes,
and does woman's work, but he imitates the voice of a woman, and pursues
the pleasures of the male and female. Hence we must conclude that as the
Median minstrels have used the myth and the form of Istar, a goddess of
the Semites, in their delineation of Semiramis; so in their delineation
of Sardanapalus, the opposite of Semiramis, they have used the myth of
the Semitic god, who exchanges his nature with the female goddess placed
beside him, who wears the woman's robe, and spins purple wool, just as
his worshippers on certain festivals wore women's garments (I. 372).
But if the god placed by the side of Istar assumed the nature of the
woman, as Istar assumed the nature of the man, the masculine nature was
not wholly lost to him. Thus the minstrels could represent Sardanapalus
as taking up arms at the approach of the danger, and fighting bravely.
It is no doubt due to this interchange of the masculine and feminine
nature that Hellanicus and Callisthenes maintained that there were two
princes of the name of Sardanapalus; the one was noble and active; the
other sought his happiness in debauchery.[526] Even in the description
of the death of Sardanapalus incidents in the worship of the Syrian
goddess seem to have given the type to the Median minstrels. At the
great festivals vast pyres were built to the sun-god of the Syrians; a
number of precious goods were heaped upon them, which were set on fire
together with an image of the god placed upon the pyre, who was supposed
to renew his youth in the conflagration.[527] Lucian's statement that a
statue of Sardanapalus stood beside that of Semiramis in the temple at
Hierapolis can only support the conclusion that traits of the god united
with Istar, and of his worship, were employed in the description of
Sardanapalus.

To the Greeks Sardanapalus became a prophet of the philosophy which
teaches us to exhaust life in enjoyment, because it is short, and
nothing remains to a man beyond what the body has enjoyed. Aristobulus,
the companion of Alexander, narrates: "Near Anchiale, where the camp was
pitched, is a monument of Sardanapalus, on which stands a bronze figure,
pressing together the fingers of the right hand, as though snapping
them; the inscription says, in Assyrian letters: 'Sardanapalus, the son
of Anakyndaraxes, built Anchiale and Tarsus in a single day. Eat, drink,
be merry, the rest is not worth so much,' _i.e._ a snap of the
fingers."[528] These words were worked out more fully among the Greeks,
embodied in verse, and given out as an epitaph composed by Sardanapalus
for his tomb, and to be found either at Anchiale or Nineveh.[529]

In the narrative of Herodotus also there is more than one difficulty. It
is intended, as it states, to show how the nations of Asia, after this
liberation from the Assyrians, again came under one master. The Medes,
as brave warriors, liberate themselves from the Assyrians, but after
this liberation they are found in a condition of utter lawlessness.
Without combination of their powers, without union under one strong
leader, could the Medes have succeeded in withdrawing themselves from a
power so great as the Assyrian power was, even in the description of
Herodotus? This lawlessness is brought to an end, not by a mighty
warrior, but by a clever, ambitious village-judge, who by his decisions
so gains the affections of the Medes, that they elect him to be king.
When chosen he knows how to lead them by cunning, or rather to infatuate
them into giving him a body-guard and building him a palace. Then he
compels them to live together in one city, and, in the course of a long
reign, establishes the despotic system of Asia to its full extent, with
all its appliances, among the Medes. From this establishment of monarchy
among the Medes, re-establishment of the despotic government spreads
over all Asia. Phraortes, the son of Deioces, subjugates the Persians,
and then all the nations which obeyed the Assyrians, in order finally to
turn upon the latter. Could the Assyrians, who, according to the
narrative of Herodotus, "were abandoned by their allies, but otherwise
in a good state," at the time when Herodotus attacked them, have looked
on at the successes of Phraortes, and quietly waited till they were
reached in the series? Would they not rather have attempted in good time
to meet the rise of the Medes, which occurred close upon their borders,
and threatened them first of all? Phraortes, with the greater part of
his army, is slain. To revenge his death, his son Cyaxares invests
Nineveh. But the Scoloti have missed their way; they come upon the Medes
instead of the Cimmerians, whom they are pursuing; none the less they
begin battle with them, overcome them, and obtain the dominion over
Asia--which they never desired--from Media to Egypt. After a part of
them had suffered punishment from the goddess of Ascalon, they allow
themselves to be made drunk by Cyaxares. They are massacred in part, and
when they have returned to their own land--of which we are not told
whether they ever possessed it before--they have to undergo a severe
contest with the sons whom their wives have in the mean time brought
forth to their slaves. These sons do not meet them on the Don, _i.e._ on
the border which Herodotus fixes for the land of the Scoloti, but on the
Crimea. The returning host bring this struggle, in which they could not
conquer by force of arms, to a happy end by raising their whips. After
the departure of the Scythians, Cyaxares again obtains the dominion over
the nations which his father previously subjugated, and conquers
Nineveh. Whether the war of Cyaxares with the Lydians took place before
or after the capture of Nineveh is not clear from the narrative of
Herodotus. It is at the least remarkable that Cyaxares, after he has
escaped from the yoke of the Scythians by treachery and violence, should
not only receive a troop of the same nation into his country, but show
them favour, make them his hunters and the educators of Median boys, and
then because the Lydian king prevents him from avenging a crime of the
fugitives, carry on war for five years with the Lydians, till a sign
from heaven puts an end to it. Were Lydia and Media neighbouring
countries after Nineveh fell, or before? Had Cyaxares, when at war with
Lydia, already recovered the dominion which Phraortes had established
for the Medes over all Asia? If this was the case, were there princes of
Cilicia and Babylonia in existence, or in such an independent position
that they could come forward to negotiate peace and affinity between the
contending states, Lydia and Media?

From this examination of the two accounts as to their separate contents,
let us now proceed to inquire whether the statements in them agree with
what has come down to us from other sources, and can be deduced from the
last monuments of Assyria. The narrative of Ctesias is based on the view
that the Assyrian kingdom was arranged in satrapies, like the kingdom of
the Achæmenids: the inscriptions of the kings of Asshur have made it
sufficiently clear that this was not the case. We have already seen that
neither the statement of Ctesias about the duration of the Assyrian
kingdom, nor that of Herodotus about the strength of their dominion, is
tenable (II. 27, 46); not more tenable is the date given by Ctesias for
the fall of Assyria. According to Ctesias, Arbaces overthrew the
Assyrian kingdom in the year 883 or 878 B.C. (p. 262), and set up the
dominion of himself and his descendants, the kings of Media, in the
place of the dominion of the Assyrians. But we found above that
Assurnasirpal, the son of Tiglath Adar, ascended the throne of Assyria
in 883 B.C.--that his campaigns reached the coasts of Syria, that at his
time Media was not yet subject to the Assyrian kingdom, that with him
the long series of royal princes begins who raised Assyria to the height
of her power, and that it was the army of his immediate successors which
first trod the land of Media.

Herodotus represents the kings of the Medes as reigning over Asia for
128 years, "deducting the time during which the Scythians ruled."[530]
His figures for the reigns of the Median kings, from Deioces to
Phraortes, give 150 years from the beginning of Deioces down to the
overthrow of Astyages.[531] The overthrow of Astyages took place in the
year 558 B.C., and, therefore, Deioces began to reign in 708 B.C. How
long before this the Medes liberated themselves from the dominion of
Assyria, how long they lived in their free but lawless condition before
electing Deioces king, Herodotus does not state. Enough that the Medes
must, according to his statement, have liberated themselves in the
second half of the eighth century B.C. But at this very time Tiglath
Pilesar II. and Sargon ruled over Assyria; at this time the first
advanced to Arachosia, repeatedly imposed tribute on the chiefs and
cities of the land of Media (p. 3), while Sargon receives tribute from
22, then from 28, and finally from 45, chiefs of the Medes (p. 101). He
boasts to be ruler over Media as far as the distant city of Simaspati,
in the East; and the Hebrew Scriptures told us that the Israelites
carried away after the capture of Samaria (722 B.C.) were settled in the
cities of the Medes (p. 85). But not only did the kings of Asshur
receive or compel acts of obedience from the tribes of the Medes at the
time when, according to Herodotus' statement, Deioces ascended the
throne of Media; Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) imposes tribute on the
distant regions of Media; Esarhaddon removes distant tribes of Media,
with their flocks, to Assyria, and subjugates cities which, as he
maintains, lie far away in the land of Media (p. 150); and even the
inscriptions of Assurbanipal, from the period before the year 650 B.C.,
speak of a captive chief of the Medes (p. 167). From all this it is
clear that the liberation of the Medes took place later than Herodotus
states. In his account, therefore, we can only retain the facts that
Cyaxares, who, according to his statement, ascended the throne in the
year 633 B.C., fought with success against the Assyrians--that the
invasion of the Scythians, and their expulsion, the fall of Assyria, the
great war with the Lydians, and, finally, the capture of Nineveh, took
place in his reign, _i.e._ in the period from 633 to 593 B.C. (p. 262).

Most remarkable is the sudden incursion of the Scythians into Media, the
ground for which is a pursuit wholly without any reason (p. 242), and
the missing of the proper route. Let us examine the separate statements
about this invasion, in order to come, if possible, nearer to the actual
facts. The incursion of northern nations into Hither Asia at the time
stated by Herodotus, _i.e._ in the second half of the seventh century,
is a fact. In the reign of Josiah, king of Judah (640-609 B.C.), the
prophet Zephaniah[532] announces a great judgment, which will come not
only on Judah, Gaza and Ascalon, Ashdod and Ekron, Moab and Ammon, Egypt
and Ethiopia, but also on Nineveh. Hence the prophet cannot have in his
eye a punishment coming on Syria and Egypt from Assyria. From the
earnest manner in which the prophet exhorts to repentance and
improvement, to the purification of the sanctuary, and removal of "the
remnant of Baal," the servants of Baal, it follows that this
announcement of a coming judgment belongs to the period in the reign of
Josiah, which lies before the reform of the worship and the publication
of the new law, _i.e._ to the period from 640 to 622 B.C. (p. 213).
Jeremiah speaks more definitely in the thirteenth year of Josiah[533] or
soon after, _i.e._ in or immediately after the year 628 B.C. "I will
bring evil from the north, and great destruction. The lion is come up
from the thicket, and the destroyer of the nations is on his way." "Evil
appeareth out of the north, and great destruction."[534] "Lo! a people
cometh from the north, and a great nation riseth from the uttermost end
of the earth. It is a mighty nation, whose language thou knowest not,
neither understandest what they say. They come on like clouds, like a
whirlwind are their chariots; their horses are swifter than eagles. They
shall lay hold on bow and spear; they are cruel, and have no mercy;
their voice roareth as the sea, and they ride on horses set in array as
men of war against thee. Their quiver is an open sepulchre, they are all
mighty men. Jehovah called the families of the kingdoms of the north; a
burning wind comes from the hills of the desert, besiegers come from a
distant land. Lions shall roar against Israel, and shall make his land a
desert, his cities shall be burned, empty of inhabitants. Declare ye in
Judah and publish in Jerusalem; blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and set up a
sign of fire in Bethhaccerem.[535] Suddenly will the destroyer come upon
us, suddenly are the tents spoiled, and the carpets in a moment. Every
place shall flee before the noise of the horseman and the archer; they
shall creep into thickets and climb up the rocks. Let us go into the
strong cities; go not forth into the field, nor walk by the way: for the
sword of the enemy and fear is on every side. Our hands are feeble, pain
and anguish have taken hold upon us. O my people, gird thee with
sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes. The besiegers come up from a far
country, and give out their voice against the cities of Judah. As
keepers of a field they are against Jerusalem round about. The shepherds
and their flocks shall come to Jerusalem, they shall feed every one in
his own place. They shall glean the remnant of Israel as a vine, saith
Jehovah of Hosts; the land shall be a desert. Nevertheless I will not
make a full end."

From this description, taken in combination with the proclamation of
Zephaniah against the Philistines, against Ascalon and Egypt, it is
clear that the whole of Syria, as Herodotus told us, as far as the
borders of Egypt--on which, in his account, the Scythians were induced
to turn back by the entreaties and presents of Psammetichus (p.
258)--was overrun and laid waste. It is also clear that Jerusalem and
the fortified cities of Syria withstood the invaders, and the storm soon
passed by. It is not known whether the name Scythopolis, given by the
Greeks to Bethshan, is in any way connected with this incursion of
Scythians.[536] The only other author who knows of this incursion of
Scythians into Asia is Pompeius Trogus. With him it is their third
invasion. In the first, which they made before the time of Ninus of
Assyria, the marshes prevented them from invading Egypt; on their return
from these they spent fifteen years in subjugating Asia and imposing a
moderate tribute upon the land, the payment of which was brought to an
end by Ninus. The second invasion was made in aid of the Amazons, when
hard pressed by Heracles and Theseus, at their entreaty. On the third
campaign against Asia they were absent eight years, and on their return
had to carry on war against their slaves; in this they finally got the
victory by their rods and whips, and all the slaves whom they could
capture were crucified.[537]

The chronology which can be deduced from the data found in the
announcements of the two prophets gives us the period from 640 to 625
B.C. for the invasion of Hither Asia by the Scythians, and this
completely agrees with the statements of Herodotus. In order to avenge
the death of his father Phraortes, who fell, with the greater part of
his army, before the Assyrians, Cyaxares, according to Herodotus,
immediately after his accession, _i.e._ in the year 633 B.C., set out
against Nineveh. During his siege of Nineveh, the incursion of the
Scythians into Media took place. According to this, Herodotus placed the
commencement of the invasion of Media by the Scythians in the year 633
B.C. or 632 B.C. The chronographers, Eusebius and Hieronymus, put the
invasion at the same time; they observe, the first at the year 632 B.C.,
the second at the year 634 B.C., that "the Scythians forced their way
as far as Palestine." Syncellus gives only the general statement, that
in the days of king Josiah, Palestine was overrun by the Scythians, and
the city of Bethshan taken by them, whence its name.[538]

The name Scythians, as has been already remarked, was applied by the
Greeks and Romans in a wider sense to all the nomadic and equestrian
tribes of the North; it was a comprehensive title for almost all the
whole complex of the northern nations. To which nation of the Scythians,
we may ask, did these hordes belong, which in the period just fixed,
_i.e._ between 632 and 625 B.C., invaded and laid waste Hither Asia,
from the Caucasus to Egypt? According to Herodotus, they were the
ancestors of the Scythians between the Danube and the Don, the Scoloti.
Herodotus represents them as invading Asia in their pursuit of the
Cimmerians. But what reason was there for the pursuit, when the
Cimmerians had voluntarily abandoned the land which the Scoloti desired?
Besides, for more than a century before the date at which Herodotus
represents them as flying to Asia before the Scythians, the Cimmerians
were settled on the Halys, and must have been well known to the nations
of Asia Minor; and ever since the emigration of the Cimmerians, _i.e._
for an equal period, the Scoloti had possessed the old abodes of the
Cimmerians on the Pontus. What could have induced the Scoloti to
undertake such a pursuit a good hundred years later? What made them miss
the way, and come into Media instead of Cappadocia? Herodotus tells us
that the Scoloti had taken a far longer route than that which led past
Colchis, to Asia, so that they came out in Media, with the Caucasus on
the right hand. By this "upper way," the pass of Derbend, on the
Caspian Sea, may be meant, which would have brought the hordes of the
North into Media through the land of the Cadusians, who were hostile to
the Medes; but if we measure from the banks of the Don, where, according
to Herodotus' narrative, we have to conceive the Scoloti as situated in
their advance upon the Cimmerians from the East, this route could hardly
be described as much longer than that by Colchis. By the upper route
Herodotus apparently means the route round the Caspian Sea. The supposed
error in the proper route may lead us into the right path, if we assume
that the hordes which then invaded Media and inundated Asia were not
mounted nomads from the steppes above the Black Sea, on the upper course
of the Don, but nomads dwelling beyond the Caspian, in the steppes on
the Oxus and Jaxartes. The legendary poetry of East Iran is filled with
long and mighty struggles of the ancient heroes with those nations; and
Ctesias tells us, again, without doubt, following the minstrelsy of West
Iran, of the severe and doubtful wars which the predecessor of Astyages
of Media, whom he calls Artæus, and Herodotus Cyaxares, carried on
against the Sacæ, the neighbours of the Parthians and Hyrcanians in the
steppes on the Oxus. It was these Sacæ who, four centuries after the
invasion of Media by Herodotus' Scythians, burst through Parthia and
Hyrcania, possessed themselves of the valleys of the Hilmend, the best
region in the east of Iran, and gave to this region the name of
Sikashtan, _i.e._ land of the Sacæ, now Sedshestan. On the earlier
occasion the Sacæ may have made the same attempt to break into Iran. If
nations on the steppes on the Oxus had overpowered Media, if they had
also established themselves in Hither Asia, youthful bands of Sarmatians
and Scoloti might have felt tempted to go out from the Pontus and take
part in the campaign of plunder. In ascribing the invasion of Asia to
the Scoloti, Herodotus no doubt followed the authority of his own
people, the Greek settlers on the northern coast of the Pontus. The
Cimmerians had once dwelt in these regions, and had retired from them
before the Scoloti. It happened that at the time of king Ardys of Lydia
(his reign, according to Herodotus, extended from 681 B.C. to 632 B.C.),
these Cimmerians made an incursion into the west of Asia Minor from the
abodes which they had obtained on the Halys, and forced their way at
that time as far as Lydia and the Greek cities on the coast. They took
Sardis, except the Acropolis. "It was not a subjugation of the cities,"
says Herodotus, "but only a passing raid."[539] The narrative of
Herodotus proves conclusively that he knew nothing of the earlier
incursions of the Cimmerians into the west of Asia Minor, and therefore
he assumed that this campaign against Sardis and the cities of the
Greeks, in the time of Ardys, was identical in date, and, in fact, the
same as the incursion of the Cimmerians into Asia Minor. And as
Herodotus also learnt that Cyaxares of Media was overthrown by Scythian
hordes who devastated all Asia, and that fugitives of these hordes had
also come into the west of Asia Minor to the grandson of Ardys, Alyattes
of Lydia, he represents the Cimmerians as being pursued towards Asia,
along the Pontus, by their ancient enemies, the Scoloti, who, he thinks,
missed their way. He was evidently confirmed in this opinion by the fact
that certain families of the Scoloti suffered from a loss of sexual
power (p. 258), a disease which the Greeks on the Pontus attributed to
the anger of Aphrodite Urania, the goddess of fertility, whose oldest
and most famous temple was at Ascalon, in Syria. Hippocrates says that
this disease showed itself among the wealthiest families of the Scoloti,
and not among the poor, because the former were always on
horseback;[540] according to Aristotle the disease was hereditary in the
royal family of the Scythians.[541] Lastly, a story of the slaves of the
Scythians, who, in the absence of their masters, had made themselves
masters, helped to attribute the invasion of Asia to this nation of the
Scythians. The basis of the story, which obviously belongs to the
Crimea, lies in the fact that after the Scoloti had forced the Tauri,
the ancient inhabitants of the Crimea, into the mountains of this
peninsula, and had subjugated and made slaves of those who remained
behind in the plains, both the one and the other must have seized a
favourable opportunity to make themselves again masters of the
peninsula, and close it against the Scoloti by means of a trench. The
supposed effect of the whips is due, no doubt, to the Hellenes in
Scythia, who thus marked the nature and the existence of slavery.

The liberation of the Medes from the dominion of the Assyrians must not
only have taken place later, but in a different manner from that
narrated by Herodotus. The inscriptions of the kings of Asshur showed us
that the tribes of the Medes whom Herodotus calls Arizantes, Busæ,
Struchatæ, Budæans, and Parætaceni, lived separately, under a number of
princes. Not long after the settlement of the Israelites in the cities
of the Medes, in the year 715 B.C., Sargon represents a prince Dayaukka
as carried away captive with his people; and in 713 B.C. he takes the
field against Bit Dayauku, and receives tribute from 45 princes of the
Medes (p. 101). Hence among the regions of the chieftains of Media,
there was a region which the Assyrians called the land or house of
Dayauku, just as with them Israel was Bit Omri. Deioces, the prince from
whom Bit Dayauku received its name, who, in Herodotus, is a son of
Phraortes, must in consequence have founded a sovereignty in Media, or
at any rate have been at the head of a sovereignty derived from his
father, about the year 720 B.C. at the lowest. We may without hesitation
look for this region in the land of Ecbatana, but at that time it cannot
have taken up a large part of Media. Neither the inscriptions of Sargon,
nor those of his successors, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal,
mention Deioces or his land either in the payment of tribute by the
Medes, or in the conquest of the separate tribes. Nothing is said of any
central monarchy among the Medes, or of a kingdom of the Medes. If Media
had been united and free at the time of Sennacherib and Esarhaddon,
Sennacherib would not have marched against Syria and Cilicia, nor
Esarhaddon against Egypt; they would not and could not have left in the
rear, in the most threatening proximity, the most dangerous enemy. If we
nevertheless assume that during the sway of Sennacherib and Esarhaddon
over Assyria the influence of Deioces steadily increased, we must
concede to Herodotus that this higher position was gained not by martial
deeds, but by craft and advice urging union. Then Phraortes, who,
according to Herodotus, succeeded his father Deioces in the year 655
B.C., must have been able formally to assemble the tribes of the Medes
round Bit Dayauku, and to organise them: it was he who united Media
under his dominion. But we cannot place this union earlier than the
period at which Assurbanipal destroyed Elam, and directed his arms
against Arabia (p. 177): _i.e._ it must come after the year 645 B.C.
Assurbanipal could not possibly employ his troops in repeated campaigns
for the maintenance of Egypt, the reconquest of Babylon, the destruction
of Elam, and the punishment of the Arabians, if a strong and compact
force stood behind the passes of the Zagrus; still less could he look
idly on while Phraortes subjugated the Persians, and then one nation
after another in Asia, as Herodotus supposes, with the view of throwing
himself on Assyria--if he could prevent it. The more probable course of
events is, that Phraortes, as soon as he accomplished the union of the
Median tribes, had to await and repel the attack of Assyria--that the
tribes of the Persians among whom, precisely about this time, Achæmenes
obtained the first place,[542] being threatened by the extension of the
dominion of Assyria over Elam on their borders, combined with Phraortes
for common defence, and consented to be led by the stronger nation. The
tradition of the Medes, and their poems, on which the statements of
Herodotus rest, would naturally antedate the liberation of their nation,
and would place it in the times before Deioces; they would even ascribe
conquests to Phraortes, and represent him as falling in an attack on
Nineveh. It agrees with the position of affairs and the relation of the
powers, that Phraortes should have fallen with the greater part of his
army, as Herodotus says, in repulsing Assyria and Assurbanipal in the
year 633 B.C. The first duty of his son Cyaxares must have been to avert
from Media the consequences of the heavy defeat which destroyed his
father. That Cyaxares, and not Phraortes, a century after the death of
the latter, passed in the nation of the Medes as the founder of the
Median supremacy, is clear from the fact that Phraortes, the head of
the rebellion of the Medians against Darius, lays aside his proper name
in order to call himself "Kshatrita, descendant of Cyaxares," and that
at this time the leader of the Sagartians also gives himself out as a
descendant of Cyaxares of Media.

Let us first cling to the fact that in the decade which followed the
conquest of Elam by Assurbanipal (644-634 B.C.) Media united her tribes
under a sovereign, and freed herself from the dominion of Assyria, and
in combination with the Persians on the East obtained the position of a
considerable power beside Assyria. In the West, before this date,
Assurbanipal had already lost the dominion over Egypt, and the advance
of Psammetichus towards Syria (p. 180) must have made the obedience of
the Syrian cities and princes doubtful. The rise of the Medes under
Phraortes, the successful resistance which they made to Assyria, must
have had a far-reaching influence. After such a long series of successes
the arms of Assyria could not prevail against this new power. In Judah,
where the prophets of the Hebrews from the second half of the eighth
century had looked on Assyria as the instrument of Jehovah for the
visitation of the nations and the punishment of the sins of Israel and
Judah, the position of that power, soon after the year 640 B.C., was
seriously shattered or threatened, since the prophet Nahum, when looking
back on the destruction of Thebes by the army of Assurbanipal, could
already announce that the line of destruction would reach even to
Assyria and Nineveh. The lively description of the defenders and the
devastation of Thebes, shows that the capture (which had taken place in
the year 663 B.C.)[543] was already fresh in the remembrance of the
Syrians. "The lion," so we find it in Nahum, "did tear in pieces enough
for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his holes
with prey, and his dens with ravin. I am against thee, saith Jehovah of
Hosts, and I will burn thy chariots in the smoke, and the sword shall
devour thy young lions; and I will cut off thy prey from the earth, and
the voice of thy messenger shall no more be heard. I will discover thy
skirts upon thy face, and I will show the nations thy nakedness, and the
kingdoms thy shame. I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make
thee vile. Woe to the well-favoured harlot, the mistress of witchcraft;
woe to the bloody city; it is full of lies and robbery; the prey
departeth not. The noise of the whip, and of the rattling of the wheels,
and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots; the horseman
cometh on, the bright sword and glittering spear." "Art thou better than
No-Ammon (Thebes) that was situate by the Nile?"[544] "The destroyer is
come up before thee, Nineveh; keep the munition, watch the way, gird thy
loins, fortify thyself mightily. Draw thee water for the siege, fortify
thy strongholds; go into clay, and tread the mortar, make strong the
brick-kiln. Thy mighty men hasten to the walls, but they stumble in
their walk. The covering shall be prepared for the besiegers. All thy
strongholds shall be fig-trees with the first ripe figs; if they be
shaken they shall fall even into the mouth of the eater. Fire shall
devour thee, and the sword shall cut thee off."[545] "With an
overrunning flood Jehovah will make an utter end of her habitations; the
gates of the river shall be opened, and the palace dissolved. Behold,
thy people are women for thy enemies; the gates of thy land shall be set
wide open; the fire shall devour thy bars. Nineveh was full of men
while she stood, but they flee. Halt! halt! Yet no one turneth; her
maids sigh like doves, and beat the breast. Take the spoil of silver,
take the spoil of gold; there is no end of the store; abundance of all
kinds of costly vessels. She is empty, and void, and waste, and the
heart melteth, and the knees smite together, and a multitude of slain,
and a great number of carcases; there is no end of their corpses. They
stumble on the corpses. Thy captains fly, O king of Assyria, thy mighty
men slumber, thy people is scattered on the mountains, and no man
gathereth them. Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the
feeding-place of the young lions, where the lion, and the lioness, and
the lion's whelp walked and none made them afraid? No more of thy name
shall be sown; there is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous.
All that look on thee shall flee from thee and say, Nineveh is laid
waste; all that hear of thee shall clap their hands over thee, for upon
whom has not thy wickedness passed continually?"[546]

How far the successes which Cyaxares obtained soon after his accession
(633 B.C.) in repelling and attacking Assyria and Assurbanipal carried
him--whether even then the army of the Medes advanced to the walls of
Nineveh, as Herodotus states, cannot be ascertained, and cannot be
denied. Whatever advantage Media may have obtained at that time it was
not only lost, but the Median empire collapsed, when Cyaxares had vainly
attempted to repulse the Sacæ (632 B.C.). These Sacæ, however, were not
content with the possession of Media; they descended from the table-land
of Iran into the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and spread over
Hither Asia. We saw how clearly the prophet Zephaniah announced in
those days (about 630 B.C.) the great judgments that would come upon
Nineveh and Judah, on Gaza and Ascalon, on Ashdod, and Ekron, and
Ethiopia. "Jehovah," he says, "will stretch out his hand against the
North, and destroy Assyria, and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry
like a wilderness. And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all
the beasts of the nations; the pelican and the bittern shall lodge in
the lintels of it; the birds shall sing in the windows of it; desolation
shall be on the thresholds. The cedar work is torn down. All who go by
shall hiss and wag the hand. This is the rejoicing city which dwelt
carelessly, that said in her heart, I am and there is none beside me!
How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in!"[547]

Assurbanipal, as we saw, ascended the throne of Assyria in the year 668
B.C., and he retained it till the year 626 B.C. Though we have no
evidence from Assyrian inscriptions to fix the end of his reign, the
canon of Ptolemy puts the end of the dominion of Saosduchin (by whom is
meant Samul-sum-ukin) in the year 648 B.C., _i.e._ in the year in which
Assurbanipal crushed his rebellion and took Babylon. We also possess an
Assyrian tablet which dates from the twentieth year of Assurbanipal in
Babylon, and consequently extends his reign in the city from 648 B.C. to
628 B.C. Further, the canon of Ptolemy represents a new reign as
commencing in Babylon in the year 625 B.C., and therefore we are certain
that Assurbanipal remained on the throne for 42 years, down to 626
B.C.[548] The first half of his reign was filled with the most brilliant
successes; his armies marched to Thebes, Babylon, and Susa; but the
second half was the reverse of the first. Egypt was lost. Serious
struggles without results were carried on against the Medes, though they
were once varied by a great victory. The Median power advanced nearer
and nearer to the native land and the chief cities. The Medes had indeed
been compelled to turn against the Sacæ; but these not only overthrew
Media, they covered Asia, destroyed the cohesion of the Assyrian
kingdom, and entirely disorganised it. Cleitarchus narrated:
"Sardanapalus (Assurbanipal) died in old age, after the dominion of the
Syrians had been broken down;"[549] and the Syrians, according to the
usage of Cleitarchus, are the Assyrians.

Ctesias told us above, that the dominion of the Assyrians succumbed to
the united efforts of the viceroys of Media and Babylon, the combined
efforts of the Medes and Babylonians. Herodotus, as we saw, represents a
prince of Babylon as negotiating peace between Lydia and Media. In an
excerpt of Abydenus which has been preserved we read: "After
Sardanapalus (Assurbanipal), Saracus reigned over Assyria: when he found
that multitudes of a collected horde came up from the sea like locusts,
he at once sent Busalossorus as commander of the army to Babylon. This
officer resolved on rebellion, and betrothed his son Nabukodrossorus to
the daughter of Astyages, king of Media, Amuhea by name."[550] According
to the excerpt of Syncellus, Alexander Polyhistor gave the following
account: Saracus sent Nabopolassar as general, but he married Amyite the
daughter of Astyages, the satrap of the Medes, to his son
Nabuchodonossor, and rebelled against Saracus and Nineveh.[551] Hence in
Abydenus and Polyhistor, the successor of Assurbanipal on the throne of
Assyria was Saracus. Against hosts who came from the sea, _i.e._ against
the hosts of the Sacæ coming up from the Caspian Sea, or marching, on
their return from Syria, _i.e._ from the Mediterranean, against Babylon,
he sends the general whom Abydenus calls Busalossorus, and Polyhistor
Nabopolassar. According to the canon of Ptolemy, the reign of
Nabopolassar in Babylon begins in the year 625 B.C. This prince, the
Nabopolassar of the canon and Polyhistor, is not distinct from the
Busalossorus of Abydenus. It is the same name: in the one writer he is
the father of Nabukodrossorus, in the other the father of
Nabuchodonossor. Nabukodrossorus is Nabukudurussur; Nabuchodonossor is
Nebuchadnezzar, the corrupted Hebrew form of the name Nabukudurussur.
The Belesys of Ctesias, the confederate of the Mede, is Nabopolassar. In
both fragments Nabopolassar, whom the king of the Assyrians sends as a
viceroy or general to Babylonia, and whose rule over Babylonia begins
with the year 625 B.C., resolves to rebel against the king of Assyria;
with this object he enters into a league with the king or satrap, _i.e._
the Assyrian viceroy of Media, who in Abydenus and Polyhistor is called
Astyages.[552] In both fragments Nabopolassar marries his son
Nebuchadnezzar to Amuhea or Amyite, the daughter of the Mede. Astyages
was the son of Cyaxares of Media, who began to reign in the year 593
B.C. Hence in both fragments the father must be put in the place of the
son, just as in Herodotus the Nabopolassar of Polyhistor must be put in
the place of Labynetus.

The invasion of the Sacæ certainly gave the most severe blow to the
Assyrian kingdom: it reached the native territory, and broke the
cohesion of the kingdom. The lands previously subjugated could not be
protected, and therefore could not be maintained. We found above, that
about the year 625 B.C., the Sacæ marched through Syria to the borders
of Egypt. It is also certain, from the canon of Ptolemy, that it was the
king of Assyria who succeeded Assurbanipal on the throne in 626 B.C.,
who named Nabopolassar his viceroy in Babylon, in order to protect
Babylonia against the Sacæ. Nabopolassar cannot have entered into a
league with Cyaxares of Media; Babylonia cannot have broken with
Assyria; the rebellion against Saracus cannot have taken place, till
Cyaxares was again master in his own land and the Sacæ were driven out
of Media, whether this expulsion took place as recorded in Herodotus or
in some other way. That Nabopolassar felt himself called upon to draw
the league with Media as close as possible is clear from the fact that
he at the same time married his son to the daughter of the king of
Media. And he not only brought about this marriage, he did away with the
war between Media and Lydia, and established an alliance between the
royal families of the two nations. This war must be placed before the
destruction of Assyria; had it not been necessary to set the forces of
Media free against Assyria, the prince of Babylon would have had no
interest in reconciling the differences between Lydia and Babylonia.
After the destruction of Assyria it would have been much more advisable
for Babylon that Media, whose power surpassed that of Babylonia, should
be engaged elsewhere. This conclusion is confirmed by the eclipse which
separated the armies of the Lydians and the Medes in the sixth year of
the war, in the middle of a battle (p. 260). This took place in the year
610 B.C.[553] The war between Cyaxares of Media and Alyattes of Lydia
must therefore have begun in the year 615 B.C.

But what caused Media to be at war with the distant land of Lydia? We
must assume that Cyaxares first succeeded in setting his land free from
the hordes of the Sacæ. He availed himself of this to give aid to the
lands bordering on the west of Media, the Armenians and Cappadocians,
against the same plundering tribes; to exhibit himself there as a
liberator from the Sacæ; and, at the same time, as a liberator from the
dominion of the Assyrians. In this way he quickly advanced the borders
of Media to the Halys. Here he came upon the Lydians, who on their part
had made use of the convulsion and confusion which had been caused by
the advance of the Cimmerians as far as the western shore of Asia Minor,
to extend their dominion over Phrygia as far as the Halys. As the war
between him and the Lydians commences in the year 615 B.C., Cyaxares
must have mastered the Sacæ in Media as early as the year 620 B.C. The
dominion of the Scythians in Asia, which Herodotus represents as lasting
28 years, is thus narrowed down to a short ten years--or indeed to eight
years, the number given by Justin. From this point--the liberation of
Media from the Sacæ, _i.e._ about 620 B.C.,--we have to fix not only the
advance of Cyaxares to the West, but his league with Nabopolassar of
Babylon, and the marriage of his daughter to Nabopolassar's son must be
put about the same time. When Nabopolassar had arranged the peace
between Media and Lydia, which fixed the Halys as the border of the two
kingdoms, Aryanis, the daughter of Alyattes, is married to the son of
Cyaxares (610 B.C.), Media and Babylonia, Cyaxares and Nabopolassar,
unite their forces against Assyria.

On the ruins of Chalah, in the south-east corner of the terrace, on
which stand the palaces of the kings of Asshur, to the south of the
ruins of the house of Samsi-Bin III. (II. 325), are the remains of a not
very extensive building; some bricks bear the inscription: "I
Assur-idil-ili, king of the nations, king of the land of Asshur, son of
Assurbanipal, king of the nations, king of the land of Asshur, son of
Esarhaddon, king of Asshur. I caused bricks and beams to be prepared for
the building of the house of salvation, situated at Chalah: for the life
of my soul I did this."[554] Another inscription of Assur-idil-ili
mentions his restoration of the temple of Nebo at Chalah.[555] Hence we
must assume that Assur-idil-ili, the son of Assurbanipal, ascended the
throne of Assyria after the death of his father, in the year 626 B.C.;
that it is he who is called Saracus in Polyhistor, who appointed
Nabopolassar viceroy of Babylonia, in order to maintain Babylon against
the Sacæ; and that about the year 620 B.C. the latter broke away from
Assur-idil-ili. Yet from a broken tablet of Assur-idil-ili, recently
discovered, we shall gather that he did not ascend the throne
immediately after his father's death, but later;[556] and the opinion is
held that the immediate successor of Assurbanipal was Bel-zakir-iskun,
whose name occurs in a cylinder found at Kuyundshik. The name of the
father of this king is broken off; and he is only placed immediately
after Assurbanipal because he styles himself, not only king of Assyria,
but also king of Sumir and Accad.[557] But are there not numerous
instances to prove that titles of dominion are retained after the lands
which they denote as subject have long been lost? Lastly, in two
fragmentary tablets the name of Cyaxares is supposed to be concealed in
the form Castarit. The first fragment mentions Esarhaddon and Castarit,
the lord of the city of Carcassi, beside Mamiti-arsu, the lord of the
city of the Medes. At the very earliest, Cyaxares of Media cannot have
been born when Esarhaddon died. The second fragment speaks of a hundred
days of prayer and thanksgiving, because Castarit with his warriors, and
the warriors of the Cimmerians, and the warriors of the Mannai, had
taken the towns of Khartam and Kissassu. But here also the inscription
seems to be speaking of another period, and indeed of conflicts from the
days of Esarhaddon, when the Cimmerians set foot on the southern shore
of the Black Sea; and I would not, on this account, allow myself to be
led astray, even if a third tablet, supposed to narrate the same
circumstances, should mention Castarit as a prince of the Medes.[558]

Of the incidents of the war, which Cyaxares and Nabopolassar commenced
in the year 609 B.C. against Assyria, we have no account. According to
the songs of the Medes, which lie at the base of the account of Ctesias,
it continued three years; many severe battles were fought, with varying
fortune, before Nineveh could be invested. The capture of the city was
finally achieved, because the Tigris carried away a portion of the city
walls. When Xenophon marched past Chalah, which he calls Larissa, 200
years after the fall of Nineveh, and found long strips of wall 120 feet
high still standing, he was informed that the king of the Persians, when
he took the dominion from the Medes, could not by any means capture the
lofty and strong walls of this city of the Medes (II. 16). A cloud hid
the sun, and made the city invisible till the inhabitants had left it;
and thus it was taken. At that time the queen of the Medes fled to
Mespila (the name given by Xenophon to Nineveh), where he saw the walls
still standing of the height of 150 feet. This city the king of the
Persians could not take, either by length of siege or by storm, till
Zeus had dazed the inhabitants by lightning: then the city was
taken.[559]

The memory of the Assyrian kingdom had at that time so entirely
disappeared, that Xenophon's guides could put the Medes in the place of
the Persians, the Persians in the place of the Medes, and the king of
the Persians in the place of Cyaxares. In Abydenus we are told, after
the excerpt of Eusebius: Nabopolassar (Bussalossorus), after marrying
his son to the daughter of the king of the Medes, marched against
Nineveh. "When Saracus heard of this, he burnt himself and the royal
citadel."[560] Polyhistor, following the excerpt of Syncellus, tells us:
Nabopolassar, sent out by Saracus as a leader of his army, turned
against his master, and marched against Nineveh. In fear of his
approach, Saracus burnt himself with his palace.[561] Strabo tells us:
"Nineveh was destroyed soon after the break up of the dominion of the
Medes."[562] At the year 607 B.C., Eusebius and Hieronymus observe:
"Cyaxares the Mede destroys Nineveh."

"Because Asshur was high of growth," such are the words of Jehovah in
the prophet Ezekiel, "and shot up his top, and his heart was lifted up
in its height, I have delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of
the nations that he may deal with him at his pleasure; I have driven him
out for his wickedness. And strangers, the terrible of the nations, have
cut him off and cast him away. Upon the mountains and in all vallies his
branches are fallen, and his boughs are broken by all the rivers in the
land. All the people from the earth are gone down from his shadow and
have left him. Upon his fallen trunk the fowls of the heaven remain, and
all the beasts of the field shall be upon his branches. I made the
nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down to hell
with those that descend into the pit. In that day I caused a mourning,
and restrained the floods round him; the great waters were stayed; I
caused Lebanon to mourn for him, and all the trees of the field lamented
him. Asshur's grave is made in the depth of the pit, round about are the
graves of his host; all of them slain, fallen by the sword, which caused
terror in the land of the living."[563]

Media stood triumphant over the kingdom which had so long ruled over
Hither Asia and the western edge of Iran; Babylon was victorious over
the branch which had grown up out of her own root, had far surpassed
the mother-stem, and had struck home the mother-country in many a tough
struggle. Babylon had suffered far more heavily than Media. At last
retribution had come. Chalah and Nineveh, which had received the tribute
of the nations for so many years, which had seen so many vanquished
princes, so many embassies of subjugated lands in their walls, were
annihilated. And not the ancient cities only, but the condition of the
Assyrian nation must have been severely smitten by this war of
annihilation. Often as Babylon had been overthrown by the
Assyrians--even though mastered by Cyrus--she still was able to rise
repeatedly in stubborn rebellion against the Achæmenids: Elam repeatedly
attempted to regain her old independence; but of the native land of
Assyria, which after the fall of Nineveh became a part of Media, and
passed with Media under the dominion of the Persians, we hear only once
that the Assyrians, with the Armenians, rebelled against king Darius.
But the picture of Behistun, which mentions the double rebellion of
Babylon, the three rebellions of Elam against Darius, and exhibits the
conquered leaders of these nations, is silent on the rebellion of the
Assyrians and Armenians: it was not of enough importance to be
mentioned.

The low ruin heaps of Nineveh (Kuyundshik, Nebbi Yunus, and Khorsabad),
of Chalah (Nimrud), and Asshur (Kileh Shergat), washed down as they are
by streams of rain, have yet preserved for us the remains of the
buildings and palaces of the kings of Asshur, from the days of Samsi-Bin
I., Tiglath Pilesar I., Shalmanesar I., down to Assur-idil-ili. Set on
fire at the time of destruction, the wooden roofs of the palaces were
reduced to cinders, and fell in upon the floor of the chambers, where
portions of them are still to be found. The upper parts of the
brick-walls were then washed down by wind and rain, and covered the
lower part of the rooms. Even where the fire did not spread, the beams
of the roofs at length broke down, the upper layers of the bricks on the
walls were gradually washed down, and raised the floors of the chambers,
as well as the ground immediately surrounding them. By this process the
palaces of Nineveh, Chalah, and Dur Sarrukin, were changed into heaps of
earth. But while the upper part of the buildings buried the lower in
their ruins, the lower part, with all the inscriptions and sculptures
contained in it, was saved from further destruction; and these unsightly
heaps have preserved to us the civilisation and the characteristics of
the Assyrians, as truly as the lofty monuments and rock tombs on the
Nile have preserved the picture of ancient Egypt, though they do not
present the same breadth, and extend in the same way to every side of
life.

FOOTNOTES:

[514] Nicol. Dam. Frag. 9, ed. Müller. Athenæus, p. 529. Diod. 2, 24.

[515] Athenæus, p. 528.

[516] Diod. 2, 24-27.

[517] Athenæus, p. 529.

[518] Diod. 2, 28.

[519] Diod. 2, 32-34.

[520] Herod. 1, 95, 96.

[521] Herod. 4, 1-4.

[522] Herod. 1, 73, 74.

[523] Herod. 1, 130.

[524] Or, as in Ctesias the victory of Cyrus over Astyages is placed in
564 B.C.--even in the year 883 B.C. Cf. Vol. II., p. 26.

[525] Aristoph. Aves, 102.

[526] Hellan. Frag. 158. Callisth. Frag. 32, ed. Müller.

[527] Movers, "Relig. der Phoeniker," s. 154. 394, 465, 496, 612. The
pyre which Alexander caused to be erected in Babylon to Hephæstion,
after the Semitic pattern, was four stades in circuit and 200 feet in
height. Diod. 17, 115.

[528] Aristob. Frag. 6, ed. Müller. Cf. above, p. 145, 146.

[529] _e.g._ Diod. 2, 24; Amyntas in Athenæus, p. 529.

[530] If we assume that the 28 years of the Scythian dominion have
already been deducted from the 128 years, and must therefore be added to
them, 714 B.C. (= 558 + 156) is the beginning of the Median dominion. In
the other case this must have commenced in the year 658 (558 + 100) B.C.
Since Herodotus represents Phraortes as first conquering Asia, and
represents him as ascending the throne in 655 B.C., the duration of the
Median empire is not even 100, but only 79 years. We shall soon see that
it was even shorter.

[531] Deioces reigned 53 years, Phraortes 22, Cyaxares 40, Astyages 35.
Each pair of rulers makes up a total of 75 years.

[532] Zeph. i. 1.

[533] Jerem. i. 1; xxv. 3.

[534] Jerem. iv. 6.

[535] Jerem. vi. 1.

[536] 2 Maccab. xii. 29. Strabo, p. 763; Joseph. "Antiq." 5, 1, 22, etc.
Pliny, "Hist. Nat." 5, 16; Steph. Byzant. [Greek: Skuthopolis].

[537] Justin, 1, 2-5.

[538] Syncell. "Chron." p. 405, ed. Bonn.

[539] Herod. 1, 6, 15, 16.

[540] Hippocr. "De aero," c. 22.

[541] "Ethic. Nicom." 7, 7 (8).

[542] Vol. V., chap. 3.

[543] Above, p. 164.

[544] Nahum iii. 8.

[545] Nahum ii. 13, 14; iii. 1-5, 12-15.

[546] Nahum i. 8, 14; iii. 7-12; iii. 7, 13.

[547] Zeph. ii. 13-15.

[548] In Polyhistor Sardanapalus reigns over the Chaldæans for 21 years
after Samuges.

[549] In Athenæus, p. 553.

[550] Euseb. "Chron." 1, p. 37, ed. Schöne. Kiepert, "Monatsb. B. A.,"
1873, s. 191.

[551] Syncell. "Chron." p. 210, ed. Bonn.

[552] Asdahag is the Armenian form in the Armenian Eusebius.

[553] As we have the choice between the two eclipses of 610 and 584 B.C.
the preference must be given to that of 610 B.C. Where the battle was
fought between the Medes and Lydians we do not know; but we do know that
in the year 584 B.C. Cyaxares and Nabopolassar were no longer alive. If
we replace these names by Astyages and Nebuchadnezzar--although the
children of the princes who conclude peace and alliance are expressly
named as the parties contracting in marriage--and Astyages had no son,
Nineveh had fallen long before 584 B.C., and Babylonia would not have
had the least interest in bringing about a peace between Lydia and
Media. On the contrary, Nebuchadnezzar, who had erected such enormous
fortifications against Media, in order to secure his own weaker kingdom
against any attacks of the Median power, would only have been too glad
to keep Media engaged in the West by the continuance of the Lydian war.
Yet that it was a question of the rescue of Lydia in the interest of
Babylonia cannot be supported in the face of the assertion of Herodotus,
that the fortune of arms was equal. As the dates given by Herodotus for
the reigns of the Lydian kings have to be replaced by those of Eusebius
(below, Chapter 17), the dating of the beginning of the war at the year
615 B.C. would allow the first three years to fall in the reign of
Sadyattes; but in this there is no difficulty.

[554] E. Schrader, "K. A. T.," s. 233.

[555] G. Smith, "Disc.," p. 344.

[556] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 382.

[557] G. Smith, _loc. cit._ p. 382.

[558] Sayce, "Babylon. Litterature," p. 79, _seqq._

[559] "Anab." 3, 4, 7-9.

[560] Euseb. "Chron." I., p. 37, ed. Schöne.

[561] Syncell, "Chron." p. 396, ed. Bonn.

[562] Strabo, p. 737.

[563] Ezek. xxxi. 11-16; xxxii. 22, 23.




CHAPTER XIII.

EGYPT UNDER PSAMMETICHUS AND NECHO.


According to the account of Herodotus, a blind man from the city of
Anysis, and bearing the same name as his city, ruled over Egypt at the
time when Sabakon marched through the country. He retired before the
Ethiopians into the marshes, and fled to an island called Elbo. The
island measured ten stades in every direction, and thither, in obedience
to his command, the Egyptians by turns secretly brought him nourishment.
When fifty years had expired from the time that he made himself master
of Egypt, Sabakon saw in a dream a man who bade him summon all the
priests of Egypt, and cause each to be cut into two pieces. Then Sabakon
said that the gods had announced to him by this vision that he would by
some evil deed bring upon himself severe punishment from the gods or
from men. Such a deed he would not commit: the time had passed which was
allotted to him for the rule of Egypt; an oracle in Ethiopia had
announced to him that he would rule over Egypt for fifty years. As this
period was now completed, Sabakon voluntarily retired from Egypt, the
blind man returned from the island of Elbo, and reigned as before. He
was followed by the priest Sethos, against whom Sennacherib, the king
of the Arabians and Assyrians, marched, but the god of Memphis saved him
by sending field mice into the camp (p. 141). After the death of Sethos
the Egyptians became free, but as they could not live without a king
they elected twelve kings, and divided Egypt into twelve parts. These
twelve kings contracted family alliances with each other, and agreed
that none of the twelve should seek greater possessions than another, or
attempt to crush the others, but that all should be on the best terms
with each other. They then determined to leave behind a common memorial,
and with this object built the labyrinth on Lake Moeris, and ruled
with justice. In the course of time it happened that the twelve kings
were sacrificing together in the temple--for they came in a body to all
sacrifices--and when at the close of the sacrifice they poured
libations, the high priest brought only eleven of the golden goblets
from which they were wont to pour libations, instead of twelve. The last
in the list at this sacrifice was Psammetichus of Sais, whose father
Necho had been killed by Sabakon. He had himself fled to Syria, to
escape Sabakon, but after the retirement of the Ethiopians he had been
brought back by the inhabitants of the canton of Sais. As no goblet was
left for him, he took the brazen helmet from his head and poured the
libation from that. Then the rest of the princes remembered a prophecy
given to them at the very beginning of their reign,--that whosoever
among them should pour a libation out of a brazen goblet should be king
over all Egypt. Mindful of this oracle the kings were not inclined to
punish Psammetichus with death, because they found on inquiry that he
had not used his helmet with premeditation; but they took from him the
greater part of his power, confined him to the marshes, and bade him
not to leave them or trouble himself about the rest of Egypt. Perceiving
that injustice was done to him, Psammetichus bethought him how to avenge
himself on those who had driven him out; and when he inquired of the
oracle of Buto he received the answer, "Vengeance would come from the
sea, when the brazen men appeared." Psammetichus did not believe the
oracle. But Ionians and Carians, who had taken ship for plunder, were
driven out of their course to Egypt. When they got on the shore in their
brazen armour, an Egyptian announced to Psammetichus that brazen men who
were come from the sea were laying waste the plains. Then Psammetichus
saw that the oracle was fulfilled. He received the Ionians and Carians
in a friendly manner, and induced them by great promises to stay with
him. And with these, and the Egyptians who were on his side to help him,
he conquered the rest of the kings, and became lord over all Egypt.[564]

Diodorus gives us a similar account. He celebrates the gentle and wise
rule of the Ethiopian Sabakon, and then continues. "His piety is shown
by his conduct in consequence of a dream, and his resignation of the
throne. The god of Thebes appeared to him in a dream, and said that he
could not govern Egypt prosperously and for long unless he collected all
the priests and cut each into two parts, and marched between the parts
with his body-guard. As this dream appeared frequently, he summoned the
priests, and said to them, that he should displease the god if he
remained longer in the land, or he would never have advised such an act
in a dream. He preferred to retire while pure from that guilt, and leave
his future to fortune rather than to rule over all Egypt by outraging
the god, and staining his own life by wicked murder. Then he resigned
the government of Egypt to the Egyptians, and retired to Ethiopia. But
as the people were unquiet, and domestic strife broke out, the most
distinguished princes, twelve in number, met at Memphis, and made a
league, and swore to remain friendly and faithful to each other, and
made themselves kings. In pursuance of this agreement they reigned for
fifteen years in harmony, and formed the resolution, that as in their
lives they shared equal honours, so after death their bodies should rest
in the same place, and that a sepulchre built in common should preserve
the common fame of the kings buried there. The size of this structure,
for which they selected a site on Lake Moeris, was to surpass the
works of all the kings before them. But one of them, Psammetichus of
Sais, who was lord of the coast, secured an extensive trade to all
merchants, especially to the Phenicians and Greeks. By the sale of the
products of his canton and his share in that which the foreigners
brought he not only obtained greater resources, but he won the
friendship of these nations and their princes. Roused by envy the rest
of the kings made war upon Psammetichus, who obtained necessaries from
the Ionians and Carians, and conquered in the battle near the city of
Momemphis. Of the kings, his opponents, some fell in the battle, others
fled to Libya, and were no longer in a position to contest the throne.
Thus after fifteen years the sovereignty in Egypt again came into the
hands of one man."[565]

We saw that the real course of affairs differed widely from the accounts
given by the Egyptians, from which come the narratives of Herodotus and
Diodorus. Manetho's list, at any rate, does not conceal the fact that
after king Bocchoris had succumbed to the incursion of the Ethiopians,
three kings of Ethiopia ruled over Egypt in succession. The Hebrew
Scriptures and the tablets of the Assyrians then informed us how Israel,
trusting in the help of Sabakon, refused payment of tribute to Nineveh,
and what misfortunes punished this rebellion in the year 722 B.C.--how
Sabakon was defeated two years afterwards at Raphia, in the
neighbourhood of Gaza, by Sargon. Afterwards Sargon could boast of
receiving tribute from the successor of Sabakon, Sevechus, in the year
716 B.C., and later still could demand and obtain the surrender of a
fugitive opponent (711 B.C.). But Tirhaka, the successor of Sevechus,
fought with success at Eltekeh in the year 701 against Sennacherib of
Assyria, and forced him to raise the siege of Jerusalem. Thirty years
afterwards the situation was entirely changed. In order to take from
Sidon, Tyre, Judah, and the Syrian States their hopes in Napata and
Egypt, which caused their resistance to be constantly bursting into
fresh flame, Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, invaded Egypt in the year 672
B.C., and drove Tirhaka back to his native land. Tirhaka's repeated
attempts to win Egypt from this position were wrecked like those of his
successor, Urdamane: they only brought about the sack and devastation of
Thebes and its sanctuaries (663 B.C.).

Hence it was not of their own free will that the Ethiopians retired to
their home; the dominion over Egypt which the Ethiopians of Napata, who
had long acquired the manners and civilisation of Egypt, had exercised
for sixty years, was replaced by another and far heavier foreign
dominion--the rule of the kings on the Tigris. The Egyptians did not set
up twelve kings after the Ethiopians, who pledged themselves to
equality and friendship, as Herodotus supposes, nor did the twelve
leading princes make themselves kings as Herodotus supposes. Still less
did they rule Egypt in common; least of all could they erect the
structure on Lake Moeris, the temple of Amenemha III., for it had
already been in existence fifteen centuries (I. 109). It is the twenty
vassal princes, whom Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal set up over
Egypt--among whom must have been represented some of the dynastic
families which rose under the Pharaohs of Bubastis and Tanis--out of
whom the Egyptians have constructed the twelve kings.

Among these princes, by means of the Assyrians, Necho and his son
Psammetichus rose into power. It was Esarhaddon who entrusted to Necho
the government of Memphis and Sais. If Herodotus states that Sabakon put
Necho, the father of Psammetichus, to death, the inscriptions of
Assurbanipal prove the contrary. It must, therefore, have been the
grandfather of Psammetichus, the Nechepsus of Manetho, who suffered this
fate, and he must have suffered at the hands of Tirhaka, and not at the
hands of Sabakon.[566] The flight of Psammetichus before Sabakon into
Syria, which Herodotus relates, cannot have taken place till Tirhaka's
time. In the account given by Herodotus only so much can be regarded as
certain as is also clear from Manetho's list--_i.e._ that Necho and
Psammetichus belonged to the district of Sais. Though raised by
Esarhaddon, Necho began, after the death of that prince and the first
campaign of Assurbanipal to Egypt, to join in a conspiracy with Tirhaka
in connection with two of his fellow-vassals. He was taken prisoner and
carried to Nineveh, but received pardon, and was, at any rate, again
placed over Sais. His son, who had assumed the Assyrian name of
Neboshezban, received the canton of Athribis. Necho died towards the
year 664 B.C.; his son succeeded him in the administration of the
district of Sais. Ten or twelve years afterwards (653 B.C.[567]),
apparently availing himself of the dissension which broke out in the
royal house of Assyria, the rebellion of Samul-sum-ukin against his
brother, he undertook to liberate Egypt from the dominion of the Medes,
and at the same time to make himself master of Egypt. As to the manner
in which this was done, and the means of doing it, we have no
information beyond very scanty facts, suppositions, and conclusions. We
saw above, from the inscriptions of Assurbanipal, that Psammetichus
acted in concert with Gyges of Lydia, that "Gyges sent his power to aid
him in breaking off the yoke of the Assyrians" (p. 170). The Ionians and
Carians in brazen armour, in Herodotus, who come up from the sea, were
thus the soldiers whom Gyges sent over the sea. He could only send his
auxiliaries or Ionian vessels; and that he was in close combination with
Carians will be made clear below. This fact does not make it at all
impossible that Psammetichus before he revolted did not on his part gain
the favour of the Ionians and Phenicians by opening the harbours of his
canton, and favouring their trade, as Diodorus states (p. 298). This
would give the harbour cities of the Greeks in Asia Minor sufficient
reason to support strongly the rising of Psammetichus. For the
independent support of Psammetichus by the Ionian cities of Asia Minor
we have evidence in a statement of Strabo, according to which thirty
ships from Miletus were active in the cause of Psammetichus, and also
the position afterwards assigned to the Ionians in Egypt under the reign
of Psammetichus. The ships of the Milesians are said to have conquered
Inarus, _i.e._ no doubt one of the princes who opposed the rising of
Psammetichus, in a naval engagement on the Nile.[568]

Beyond this we have no further information about the course of the
struggle, and its duration. Beside Inarus we have the name of one other
opponent of Psammetichus, Tementhes.[569] We do not know whether all the
vassals of Assyria ranged themselves against Psammetichus, or whether
some of these princes followed his leadership against Assyria and the
dependants of Assyria. We do not know whether he had merely to contend
against his own fellow-princes or against Assyrian garrisons also, and
Assyrian forces. According to Polyænus the decisive battle took place in
the neighbourhood of Memphis, five stadia from the city, near the temple
of Isis; Diodorus puts the battle-field at Momemphis in the western
Delta, between the Canopic arm of the Nile and the Mareotic Lake. It is
remarkable that the decisive battle should have been fought so far to
the west, near the border of Libya, but it is not impossible. But we
must not overlook the fact, that according to Herodotus, a later
decisive battle took place at Momemphis--and from the circumstances it
is clear that this battle must have been fought there--so that a
confusion between the two is not impossible.

We do not know what claim Psammetichus could make to the sovereignty of
Egypt besides the summons to the liberation from Assyria, and the
accomplishment of this liberation. His family belonged to the canton of
Sais, from which, in previous times, Tnephachtus and Bocchoris had
sprung. It would be possible that the house of Necho was in some
connection with these princes, that Necho and Psammetichus were
successors or descendants of Tnephactus. From this we may explain the
story that the blind king, who fled before Sabakon into the marshes,
recovered the throne after the retirement of the Ethiopians, and also
the persecution which Necho and Psammetichus had to undergo from the
Ethiopians. From such a connection we could also explain the fact that
Necho took the part of Assyria against Tirhaka in the campaign of
Esarhaddon, and received in reward from Esarhaddon the government of
Memphis and Sais. The subsequent conspiracy of Necho with Tirhaka, when
the latter had been driven back to Napata, would then show that Necho
had attempted first to drive out the Ethiopians by the Assyrians, and
then the Assyrians by the Ethiopians, and liberate Egypt by using one
against the other. However this may be, Psammetichus, when liberating
Egypt from Assyria, succeeded also in removing and destroying the
dynastic families, which had risen up since the times of the Pharaohs of
Bubastis and Tanis, and had maintained themselves under the Ethiopians
and Assyrians, though in diminished importance and with a change in the
position of their families. Thus Psammetichus accomplished the work
which Tnephachtus began and Bocchoris was unable to carry on and
maintain. According to the indications of an Egyptian inscription,
Psammetichus strengthened his royal position by taking to wife
Shabanatep, the heiress of a dynasty of Thebes. She was, apparently, the
daughter of a prince Pianchi, who must have governed the canton of
Thebes under Sabakon, and of Ameniritis, the sister of Sabakon, whom he
gave to Pianchi to wife.[570]

The independence of Egypt was won. After a foreign rule of nearly 80
years (on the lowest calculation the Ethiopians had ruled for 58 years,
and the Assyrians nearly 20), Egypt was again her own mistress, and
obeyed a king taken from her midst. But every one must have made up his
mind to see new armies marching from the Tigris to the Nile, as soon as
the rebellion of Samul-sum-ukin was crushed, and Assurbanipal's hands
were free. The question was, whether Egypt's power was equal to such a
struggle. Psammetichus was not put to this trial. After the capture of
Babylon, Assurbanipal turned the full weight of his arms to the
subjugation and destruction of Elam. The new conflict must have appeared
unavoidable when Assurbanipal, about the year 643 B.C., punished the
Arabian tribes on the borders of the Ammonites and Moabites. If he still
omitted the attack on Egypt he must have regarded his forces as
insufficient for the purpose, or they must have been seriously occupied
in another direction. We may assume with tolerable certainty that it was
the union of the Median tribes by Phraortes, the son of Deioces, and
their combination with the Persians, which drew Assurbanipal back to the
East, and kept him there. According to the statement of Herodotus,
already considered, Psammetichus on his side advanced to the offensive
beyond his own borders towards Syria. This war of Psammetichus in
Syria, and the supposed long conflict for Ashdod, can only mean that
Psammetichus attempted to bring the cities of the Philistines, and
especially those of the desert, into his hands, in order to make the
march through the desert, which must commence from this point,
impossible, or at any rate difficult, for the Assyrians. Here also we
are ignorant whether Psammetichus had to contend with the Philistines
alone or with the Assyrian forces also: this only is clear, that he
could not besiege Ashdod before Gaza and Ascalon were in his hands. If
Psammetichus was really moved to this war by the object we impute to
him, we must put the war in the period in which there was still danger
to be apprehended from the Tigris: _i.e._ in the decade from 640 to 630
B.C. According to this, the impossible 29 years which Herodotus allows
to the siege of Ashdod must be reduced to nine years, just as we had to
cut down the 28 years which he gives for the dominion of the Scythians
in Hither Asia to about ten years. But in the advance of these Scythians
towards Egypt (in the year 625 B.C.), described by Herodotus, he does
not tell us that Ashdod, Ascalon, or Gaza, were subject to Psammetichus;
he represents the Scythians as passing beyond the cities of the
Philistines to the borders of Egypt, where Psammetichus, by gifts and
entreaties, induces them to desist from any further advance, and turn
back to Syria. If the war of Psammetichus in Syria is placed after the
incursion of the Scythians, _i.e._ in the last fifteen years of his
reign, another event shortly to be mentioned will have also to be placed
at the end of his reign,--an event which must certainly have belonged to
a previous period. In no case did Psammetichus obtain success in Syria.
If his successor had to conquer Gaza, _i.e._ the city nearest Egypt, it
is obvious that Psammetichus maintained none of these border cities,
though one or other may have been brought for a time into his power.

Egypt had been liberated and restored, but not by her own power. We saw
that even from the times of the later Ramessids the military power of
Egypt had been replaced by foreign mercenaries, especially by Libyans;
that the house of the Pharaohs of Bubastis owed its rise to the command
of these troops. We saw how under these Pharaohs, and those of the
succeeding house of Tanis, the leaders of these troops became hereditary
lords of the districts--how these dynasties summoned the Ethiopians
against Tnephachtus and Bocchoris, and then others, including Necho and
Psammetichus, joined Assyria against the Ethiopians. Before the reign of
Sabakon it was chiefly Libyans on whom the power of the princes rested;
under Sabakon, Sevechus, and Tirhaka it was the Ethiopians who supported
the authority of the crown; and in the same way Psammetichus succeeded
in breaking loose from Assyria, and establishing his authority in Egypt,
and on the throne of the Pharaohs, mainly by strangers and mercenaries,
by Ionians and Carians. Psammetichus could not do without them. In his
internal administration they were required to keep down the overthrown
dynastic families, and he needed them to protect his kingdom from
without. His elevation, the foundation of his power, the restoration of
Egypt, rested on the attempt to establish Egypt and his own crown, as
against Ethiopia and Assyria, on a third external power, the mariners of
the north. Psammetichus therefore was compelled to give preference to
Ionians and Carians over the native soldiers, the warrior caste, who,
under the dominion of the kings of Napata, must obviously have received
a considerable addition of Ethiopians from the native land of the
kings. In the Syrian war also, as Diodorus tells us, the Ionians and
Carians received the place of honour on the right wing, in the order of
battle. The Ionians and Carians were entrusted with the protection of
the eastern border, the most important border of the kingdom. There they
were placed in a standing camp, on the Pelusic arm of the Nile; on one
bank was the camp of the Ionians, on the other the camp of the
Carians.[571] These Ionians and Carians--their numbers under the
successors of Psammetichus reached 30,000 men--received valuable
allotments of land, and were so handsomely treated that the prophet
Jeremiah compares them to "stall-fed oxen."[572] They had also to
educate Egyptians in their language, their customs, and their mode of
war: Psammetichus placed in their hands Egyptian boys for education and
training, and caused even his own sons to be instructed in Greek.[573]
The old warrior caste was limited to the protection of the southern and
western borders against Napata and the Libyans, the border service at
Elephantine and Marea.

The marked preference shown to the new troops as opposed to the old
could not be without an effect on the latter. Jealousy and hatred were
unavoidable. But they attempted no rebellion. Curiously enough, a
considerable portion of the old warrior caste contented themselves with
abandoning Egypt. Herodotus tells us: "The Egyptians who for years had
kept guard at Elephantine were not relieved. They consulted together,
and unanimously came to the conclusion to revolt from Psammetichus, and
retire to Egypt, being in number 240,000. Psammetichus pursued them,
and entreated them on many grounds not to desert their wives and
children, and the gods of the land. Then one of the soldiers exposed
himself, and said, that for men there would be no lack of wives and
children. When they arrived in Ethiopia they put themselves at the
service of the king, who bade them drive out the Ethiopians with whom he
was at variance, and take their land." This was done, and the emigrants
dwelt on the Nile, 112 days' journey to the south of Elephantine.[574]
Diodorus tells us: "Displeased at the preference shown to the
mercenaries, the Egyptians, more than 200,000 in number, revolted, and
marched to Ethiopia with the intention of obtaining there a land for
themselves. The king first sent some officers to prevent them: when
these availed nothing he hastened after them on ship with his most
trusted followers. The soldiers marched up the Nile, and had already
crossed the borders of Egypt, when Psammetichus entreated them to alter
their minds, and reminded them of their father-land, their wives and
children. Then they struck their lances on their shields, and said that
so long as they had these they would easily find a father-land, and
raising their coats they said that they should have no lack of wives and
children. Thus firmly despising what to most men seems of the greatest
importance, they took the best part of Ethiopia for their dwelling,
allotting large portions of land to each other." According to the
evidence of Eratosthenes the land of the emigrants lay above the
confluence of the Astaboras and the Nile, on an island south-east of the
later Meroe.[575]

The number of the emigrants in this narrative, which is obviously part
of the tradition of Egypt, is of course exaggerated. Manetho gives the
same number (240,000) for the Hyksos who emigrated from Egypt, and for
these emigrants. Even Diodorus found a difficulty in this number; he
diminished it, and says, "more than 200,000." Moreover, in any case, a
considerable number of the old military order must have remained in
Egypt. The successors of Psammetichus, who favoured the Greek
mercenaries as much as Psammetichus himself, certainly did not increase
the native military order, still less did the Persians after their
conquest of the land. Yet Herodotus tells us that about the middle of
the fifth century, _i.e._ more than a century and a half after the
emigration, the military order in Egypt numbered more than 400,000. If
the number of the emigrants really reached 240,000 men, it is
inexplicable why so strong a body did not prefer to make themselves
masters of Egypt, rather than go in laborious search of uncertain
conquests in distant lands. Herodotus' statement that it was the
garrison at Elephantine which emigrated no doubt leads us in the
direction of the actual occurrence. This garrison cannot have been
240,000 strong, as his narrative states; we cannot assume that it was
stronger than the ordinary border garrison against Syria, _i.e._ from
30,000 to 40,000 men. It may have been a part of the army, of about this
strength, encamped on the southern border, which deserted to the king of
Napata, and preferred service with the Ethiopians to service with
Psammetichus. To Psammetichus himself it could only appear a desirable
thing, if the discontented elements of the old army left the country.
But this desertion to the king of Napata added considerably to the
fighting strength of the latter, and might entice him even into an
attack on Egypt. The emigration could not be hindered by force; it was
the garrison in charge of the border who were emigrating. To pursue the
emigrants with a force was only to be too late, and kindle war with
Napata. It entirely suits this situation that Psammetichus should send
after the fugitives, and then go in person, in order to induce them to
return by gracious promises. According as the Syrian war of Psammetichus
is placed before or after the Scythian invasion, this emigration, which
in Diodorus is a consequence of that war, must be placed after the year
630 B.C. or after the year 615 B.C.

The Greeks were not favoured in the army only. It was part of the
political system of Psammetichus to open the mouths of the Nile to them
and the Phenicians, to give them access to all the harbours, and allow
them, the "unclean" in the view of the older Egyptians, to settle on
Egyptian soil. The Greeks soon came in considerable numbers. The
Milesians obtained permission to build a citadel on the Bolbitinic
mouth, and higher up, at the separation of the Bolbitinic and Canopic
arms, they built the city of Naucratis, the name of which was taken, no
doubt, from the conflict on the Nile (p. 302). The Phenicians obtained a
special quarter on the Nile, "the camp of the Tyrians," in which to
erect a temple to the Syrian goddess.

Psammetichus continued to sit on the throne of the Pharaohs for 40 years
after he had expelled the Assyrians, and obtained the absolute power
(from 650-610 B.C.). How far he succeeded, in this space of time, in
healing the grievous wounds inflicted on the country by the alternating
struggle of Ethiopians and Assyrians, and the war of liberation, the
civil war,--in restoring Memphis, Sais, Tanis, and Thebes, after their
destruction, we cannot ascertain. But the impulse given to trade and
intercourse by the opening of the harbours, the favour shown to the
Greeks and Phenicians, in any case increased the welfare of Egypt, and
the industrial and artistic activity which begins in the reign of
Psammetichus presupposes considerable prosperity in the land.
Psammetichus knew how to restore the ancient splendour of the double
crown. He built at Karnac and on the island of Philæ. At Sais, the home
of his family and his residence, he built a splendid residence. The
ancient shrine of Ptah at Memphis he surrounded with a wall, and added a
new gate to the temple towards the south. Opposite this gate he built a
new hall for the Apis, the walls of which were covered with sculptures,
and the porticoes had colossi 12 cubits in height.[576] In the
burying-ground at Memphis he caused the temple of Osiris-Apis, "his
father," the grave-temple on the eminence, to which the double row of
sphinxes led from the city (I. 67), to be restored; "that it might be as
it had been before." As the gallery which Ramses II. had caused to be
hewn in the rock for the reception of the Apis bulls was no longer
sufficient, Psammetichus added one still larger and more beautiful. The
two Apis bulls which died in his reign--in the twentieth and the
thirty-fifth year--were buried with due solemnity and pomp, the second
being placed in the new gallery.[577] From no reign is the number of
monuments in these tombs of the Apis, by which those who dedicated them
sought to recommend themselves to the favour of Osiris, greater than
from the reign of Psammetichus. With his buildings Egyptian art took a
new impulse, which was also the last. The forms are lighter, more
delicate, more mobile, and far more natural; the hieroglyphics are
carried to a marvellous degree of delicacy. For the statues the artists
of this period preferred the black and grey basalt to granite. In the
dimensions, sculpture as well as architecture remained far behind the
period of the ancient kingdom, behind the period of the Tuthmosis and
Amenophis, of Sethos and Ramses.

The son and successor of Psammetichus, who was called Necho after his
grandfather, followed in the path which his father had pointed out and
opened. He paid especial attention to the foreign trade, the arming of
Egypt on the sea. He hastened to create a navy for Egypt on the
Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Herodotus observes that he had himself
seen the docks for the ships on his journey to Egypt.[578] Egypt was
stronger by sea if the same fleet could be used on the Mediterranean and
the Red Sea. Thus Necho came back to the views of Ramses II., to the
great canal for uniting the Nile with the Red Sea. By this the trade of
Egypt with South Arabia, and the trade on the Arabian Gulf, was brought
into direct connection with the marine trade of the Mediterranean. Necho
took up the excavation of the canal commenced by Ramses II., which was
at that time carried as far as the region of the Bitter Lakes. The
excavation was first to be carried eastward as far as the Bitter Lakes,
and from this point the land was to be pierced in a southerly direction
as far as the apex of the Red Sea. At the same time the canal was to be
widened, and the new watercourse made so broad, that two triremes could
easily find a place side by side--an undertaking worthy to be placed by
the side of the buildings of the ancient kings. The old canal was soon
excavated more completely, the Bitter Lakes were reached,[579] but the
reach from this point to the Red Sea remained unaccomplished, though the
work was carried on so vigorously and even ruthlessly that, according to
Herodotus, 120,000 men perished there in the desert. According to
Herodotus too, a prophecy induced the king to desist from the completion
of the canal: it was announced to him that he was working for
barbarians, but Strabo, with greater probability, states that the death
of the king interrupted the work.

Necho did not wait for the completion of the canal in order to explore
the coasts of the Arabian Gulf and the Sea in the South. The Phenicians
who, from the times of Solomon in Israel, had desired to gain the trade
with South Arabia by sea, who under Solomon, Jehoshaphat, and Uzziah,
had commenced and carried on navigation thither from Elath and
Eziongeber, could now renew these voyages from Egypt. With a view of
furthering trade and navigation, Necho sent, as Herodotus tells us,
Phenicians down the Red Sea, with the injunction to return through the
pillars of Heracles. These Phenicians, we are told, passed into the
South Sea; "and when it was autumn they went ashore and sowed the land,
whereon they happened to be in Libya, and waited for the harvest, and
when they had gathered it in, they again went on board ship, so that
after they had been two years at sea, they rounded the pillars in the
third year, and came to Egypt. And they told a story, which to me is
incredible, though perhaps not equally so to another. They said that
when they sailed round Libya, they had the sun on the right hand." By
this to him incredible statement Herodotus proves the reality of this,
the most ancient circumnavigation of Africa. As soon as the equator was
passed, the expedition would see the sun on the north, _i.e._ on the
right hand, which to Herodotus, according to the Greek conception of the
sun and the earth, must have seemed incredible.

The kingdom of the Assyrians, which for more than a hundred years had
threatened Egypt, governed her, and threatened her again, was at the
last gasp when Necho, in the year 610 B.C., ascended the throne of his
father. The inundation of the Sacæ had shattered the cohesion of the
Assyrian power; Nabopolassar of Babylon, and Cyaxares of Media, had
already been united against Assyria for ten years past; even now, after
Nabopolassar had brought about a peace between Lydia and Media, they set
themselves to give the last blow to the fallen remnant of Assyria.
Psammetichus had attempted to establish himself in the south-west corner
of Syria; a more favourable moment could not come to Egypt for winning
Syria, for repeating the campaigns of the ancient Pharaohs to the
Euphrates, and showing in this direction also the new royal house to be
the restorer of the ancient glory. Apart from such considerations,
prudence bade them not to leave the spoil to the Babylonians alone. What
would Egypt win by the fall of Assyria, if Babylon took her place in
Syria and became the neighbour of Egypt? Necho marched against Syria. It
seems that in order to avoid the difficult route through the desert, he
transported his army on board his fleet to the Syrian coast. The
landing took place in the neighbourhood of Carmel--at any rate we find
that the first collision of the Egyptians and Syrians took place there.

Twelve years had elapsed since king Josiah of Judah had introduced the
new law, and rigorously enforced the worship of Jehovah. The dominion of
the kings of Nineveh over Syria was past: Josiah was not inclined to
exchange this for the yoke of Egypt. Had the Egyptians come by land,
Josiah must have met the army of Necho in the South of Judah. The armies
met under Carmel on the Kishon: the battle broke out in the valley of
Megiddo. The numbers of the Egyptian army ensured victory, they must
have been overpowering. The Jews were defeated; Josiah fell; his corpse
was carried from the battle-field by his servants (609 B.C.). In the
camp at Hadad Rimmon the remnant of the Jewish army lamented over the
pious king--who then found his resting-place in the sepulchres of his
fathers at Jerusalem--and sang songs of lamentation.[580] Passing by the
two elder sons of Josiah, the people raised to the throne the third son,
Jehoahaz.[581] If Necho afterwards dedicated the armour which he wore at
the victory of Megiddo to Apollo, in his ancient temple at Miletus,
where the Branchidæ were his ministers, the conclusion may be drawn that
the Ionian soldiers in his army had especially distinguished themselves
in winning the victory. He did not pursue the army of Judah, but rather
turned to the North, towards Damascus. Soon after his accession, the
successor of Josiah repaired to the camp of the Pharaoh, to pledge his
obedience. Necho was encamped at Riblah (now Ribleh), south of Emesa, in
a grassy plain on the Orontes, where the road which leads from the
Euphrates to the coast is cut by the road which follows the valley of
the Orontes. Necho caused Jehoahaz to be secured, and sent him as a
prisoner to Egypt. There he remained till his death: he had sat on the
throne only three months. The Judæans were not permitted to raise any
more kings to the throne: on the contrary, Necho made Jehoiakim, the
second son of Josiah, prince of Judah, and imposed on the land a
contribution of 100 kikkar of silver, and one kikkar of gold. Of the
subsequent achievements of Necho in Syria, we have precise information
only about the capture of Gaza. From the subsequent events we must
conclude that Necho succeeded in subjugating all the Syrian states to
his supremacy.[582]

Meanwhile Jehoiakim, set up by Necho to be king of Judah, undisturbed by
his dependence on Egypt, or by the contribution which the land had to
pay, occupied himself with building palaces in Jerusalem, and for that
object extorted money and service from his subjects. The prophet
Jeremiah, who had supported the introduction of the Book of the Law
under the reign of his father, opposed this action of the king without
regard to consequences: "Weep not for the dead king," Jeremiah said to
the Jews, "neither bemoan him; weep rather for him who is carried away
(Jehoahaz): he will die there, and see no more his native country. They
will not lament for Jehoiakim, saying, Ah! my brother. Woe unto him that
buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that
useth his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not for his
work. Woe to him that saith, I will build me a wide house and large
chambers, and cutteth him out windows, and it is ceiled with cedar, and
painted with vermilion. Shalt thou reign because thou contendest with
houses of cedar? Thy father did eat and drink, but he did judgment and
justice; he judged the cause of the poor and needy, and it was well with
him. But thine eyes and thy heart are for nought but thy covetousness,
and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression and violence. He
shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn forth and cast beyond
the gates of Jerusalem."[583] The prophet had to thank the protection of
Ahikam, a son of the scribe Zaphan (p. 213), that he escaped the anger
of the king. Another prophet who prophesied in the same strain, Urijah
by name, was brought by Jehoiakim out of Egypt, whither he had fled, and
put to death.[584]

While Necho, in Syria, subjugated one district after another, the
Babylonians and Medes were engaged in a severe struggle with the remnant
of Assyria. At length Nineveh fell. Soon after, in the year 605 B.C.,
Necho marched to the Euphrates, no doubt with the intention of extending
his dominion as far as Karchemish. The roads through the deserts,
traversed by the caravans, by which the armies of the Assyrians had so
often travelled, ran from Hamath and Damascus to Thipsach and
Karchemish, which lay opposite the modern Biredshik.

Nabopolassar of Babylon found himself at the goal of his wishes. Nineveh
was at his feet. When after his long and heavy labour he had entered
into the enjoyment of the independent sovereignty over Babylon, a new
enemy appeared unexpectedly, an army from the Nile, in order to encamp
on the Euphrates, and set foot on the borders of Babylon, and endanger
the state which Nabopolassar had just restored, if he did not actually
diminish the results obtained.[585] He felt himself no longer equal to
the toil of war, so Berosus tells us, and handed over a part of the army
to Nebuchadnezzar, who "was in his youthful strength."[586]
Nebuchadnezzar and the Egyptians met at Karchemish. Necho suffered a
severe defeat, which put a speedy end to all his schemes of conquest.
"Who is this," exclaims Jeremiah, "that cometh up as the Nile, whose
waters are moved as the rivers? The Egyptian cometh up like the Nile,
and saith, I will go up and will cover the earth, and will destroy the
city, and the inhabitants thereof. Order ye the buckler and shield, and
draw near to the battle. Harness the horses, and get up, ye horsemen.
Put on the helmets and the brigandines, and furbish the spears. Come up,
ye horses, and rage, ye chariots; let the Ethiopians come forth that
handle the shield, and the Libyans that bend the bow. But why have I
seen them dismayed and turned back, and their mighty ones are beaten
down, and are fled apace and look not back? Let not the swift flee away,
nor the mighty man escape; they shall stumble and fall toward the north
by the river Euphrates, and the sword shall devour, and it shall be made
satiate, and shall be drunk with the blood of the Egyptians. Go up into
Gilead, and take balm, O virgin daughter of Egypt. But there is no
medicine for thee. The people have heard thy shame, and thy cry has
filled the land."[587]

FOOTNOTES:

[564] Herod. 2, 137 ff; 147 ff.

[565] Diod. I, 65, 66.

[566] Manetho's list would put the death of Nechepsus in 672 B.C.

[567] Above, p. 171 _n._, where the grounds for this date are given.
According to the statement of Diodorus, the anarchy after the Ethiopians
lasted two years, the Dodecarchy 15 years. If Esarhaddon conquered Egypt
in 672 B.C., 17 years bring us to the year 655 B.C. as the beginning of
the defection from Assyria.

[568] Strabo, p. 801.

[569] Polyæn. "Strateg.," 7, 30.

[570] On the side of the alabaster statue of Ameniritis, which was dug
up in a chapel at Karnak, we find under the name: "The regent of the
South and the North, the royal sister of ---- the royal daughter
of ----" the names are chiselled out. But a Scarabæus of Gurnah informs
us: "Ameniritis, goddess, consort, daughter of Kashta;" and legends in
the place where the statues were found run thus: "The royal sister of
Raneserke (Sabakon), the royal daughter of Kashta, the just." Mariette,
"Revue Archæeolog." N.S. 1863, p. 418, 419.

[571] Herod. 2, 154.

[572] Diod. 1, 67. [Greek: Chôran pollên katelêrouchêse.] Jerem. xlvi.
21.

[573] Herod. 2, 112, 154; Diod. 1, 67.

[574] Herod. 2, 30.

[575] Diod. 1, 67; Strabo, p. 770, 786. Plin. "Hist. Nat.," 6, 35. Vol.
I. p. 14. The statement of Diodorus repeated in the text--that the
Greeks had the right wing--might seem to have been borrowed from Greek
customs, if Herodotus did not tell us that the emigrants were called
Asmach (2, 30), which means standing on the left side of the king. The
monuments show that the Egyptians denoted the order of precedence,
according to the right and left side of the king; we find bearers of the
fan on the right side and on the left of the king. According to Brugsch,
Asmach really means what is found on the left side. Klöder ("Das
Stromsystem des oberen Nil," s. 36 ff. 86) assumes that the settlement
of the emigrant warriors is to be sought at Axum.

[576] Herod. 2, 105, 163. Diod. 1, 68.

[577] Brugsch "Hist. of Egypt," 2, 286. That the Egyptians counted the
reign of Psammetichus from the end of Tirhaka's, _i.e._ from 664 B.C.,
is proved above, p. 71 _n._

[578] Herod. 2, 159.

[579] Lepsius, "Ægypt. Chronologie," s. 351.

[580] The Chronicles (2, xxxv. 20 ff) represent Josiah as dying in
Jerusalem, but they can hardly be correct. In order to explain the
unhappy death of the pious king, who had introduced the Book of the Law,
and destroyed the worship of idols, by a transgression, they represent
Josiah as not hearkening to the words of Necho "out of the mouth of
God," and making an attack on the Egyptians, who were not at war with
them. But though the Chronicles represent Necho as declaring that he was
hastening to the Euphrates, it is, on the other hand, clear that he did
not march to the Euphrates till four years after the battle of Megiddo.
The Magdolus of Herodotus is, no doubt, the Megiddo of the Hebrews.
Josephus ("Antiq." 10, 5, 1) names Mende as the place of the battle.
Whether the camp of the Jews was really pitched at Hadad Rimmon, to the
south-east of Megiddo, is not clear.

[581] On the sons of Josiah, Johanan, Jehoiakim, Shallum (by Zebudah),
Jehoahaz, and Zedekiah (by Hamutal), cf. 1 Chron. iii. 15, 16.

[582] Jerem. xlvii. 1. Cadytis in Herodotus 2, 159 is Gaza. The name is
formed after the Egyptian "Kazatu."

[583] Jerem. xxii. 10-19.

[584] Jerem. xxvi. 12-14; 20-23.

[585] The opinion that Necho marched to the Euphrates to the relief of
Nineveh seems to me quite untenable. Setting aside the fact that for
this object Necho must have been at the Euphrates earlier,--which he
could well have done,--what interest had Necho in Assyria, from whose
power his father had liberated Egypt? Nor can I adopt the opinion of M.
Niebuhr that Necho marched to Assyria merely to defend Syria. Josephus
("Antiq." 10, 5, 1) tells us, "that Necho marched to the Euphrates in
order to make war upon the Medes and Babylonians, who had destroyed the
Assyrian power." This idea of offensive warfare is confirmed by the
words in Jeremiah: "I will go up and destroy their cities." Syria was
easier of defence when he had the desert before him, than when it lay
behind him.

[586] Berosi Frag. 14 ed. Müller. That in Berosus the satrap of Syria
has taken the place of Necho, may be explained by the supposition that
Nabopolassar had laid claim to Syria as an appurtenance of the part of
the Assyrian kingdom which had fallen to him, and perhaps announced to
Necho that he was prepared to give him Syria as a dependency of
Babylon--an offer which Necho did not accept. But the "satrap" is also
sufficiently explained by the point of view of the historian of Babylon,
who sees the period of Nebuchadnezzar in the most brilliant light.

[587] Jerem. xlvi. 1-13, 15, 16, 17.




CHAPTER XIV.

THE RESTORATION OF BABYLON.


In the Median poems, from which Ctesias and Nicolaus have told us the
story of the overthrow of the Assyrian kingdom by the combined Medes and
Babylonians, the leader of the Medes naturally occupies the most
prominent place. From him the prudent and crafty leader of the
Babylonians obtains the satrapy of his home as the price of his
co-operation--co-operation which mainly consists in imparting advice on
the ground of his knowledge of astronomy. Afterwards he shows himself
faithless and thievish, and for this is condemned to death. But the
magnanimity of the Median prince not only grants his life, but even
assigns to him the satrapy of Babylonia, which, according to other songs
in those poems, remains in the hands of the descendants of the
dependant. The poems of the Medes could not leave altogether out of
sight the co-operation of the Babylonians in the overthrow of Assyria,
but they kept it in the back-ground, and gave their leader a
contemptible character. They could not deny that after the fall of
Nineveh Babylonia stood beside Media, but they could change this
independent kingdom into the principality of a vassal, a satrapy of
Media without payment of tribute. As a fact it must have been
Nabopolassar who gave the impulse to a decisive attack upon the remnant
of the Assyrian kingdom, and took the leading part in the decisive
struggle. This position of Nabopolassar breaks out even in the Median
poem, inasmuch as he is the first to rouse the Mede, and sustains the
courage of the confederates.[588]

Sprung from a priestly tribe in Babylonia, as the Median poems tell
us--and other evidence confirms the statement--and in the confidence of
the king of Assyria, Nabopolassar was nominated to be the viceroy of
Babylonia. For some years he holds this office, and then resolves on a
revolt; it is he who sets on foot and accomplishes the union of Media
and Babylonia, and establishes it by the alliance of his own house with
that of the Median king. It is he who relieves Media from the Lydian
war, and establishes peace and a marriage between Media and Lydia, so
that Media can turn with all her power against the remnant of Assyria.
The share which Nabopolassar receives in the prize of victory when the
goal has been won corresponds to his share in the decisive struggle. The
land of Assyria, so Herodotus tells us, fell to Media, "as far as the
Babylonian portion." From this it is clear that Cyaxares received the
Assyrian land as far as the Tigris. Had not this region been under the
supremacy of the Medes before the Persian dominion, the ruins of Nineveh
and Chalah could not have been pointed out to Xenophon as the ruins of
Median cities. The land to the west of the Tigris, Mesopotamia, as far
as the foot of the Armenian mountains, fell to the share of
Nabopolassar. We are definitely told by the Hebrews that the region of
the Chaboras belonged to the new kingdom of Babylon,[589] and, as we
saw, it was not the Median army which Necho met at Biredshik, but the
Babylonians, the army of Nabopolassar.

Whether it was Nabopolassar's intention to extend his power to the west
beyond the Euphrates, and enter upon the inheritance of Assyria as the
sovereign over Syria, or whether it was the advance of Necho into Syria,
and his march to the Euphrates, which first called forth this intention,
we cannot decide. In no case was he likely to suffer Egypt to establish
herself in Syria. Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Nabopolassar, after his
victory at Karchemish, followed the retreating army of Egypt. The Syrian
lands once more looked forward to becoming the scene and seat of the war
between Babylonia and Egypt, as in previous times they had witnessed the
war between Assyria and Egypt. If the dominion of Egypt had been
recently imposed upon them in the place of the dominion of Assyria, it
depended on the approaching struggle of arms, whether they were to
become the subjects of a new master, of the new crown of Babylon.

Thus the defeat of Necho and the retreat of the Egyptian army aroused no
feelings of delight in Jerusalem at the blow which had there fallen upon
the lord of the Nile. There was a fear of the approach of the
Babylonians. We saw with what vigour the prophet Jeremiah, the son of
Hilkiah of Anathoth, had opposed the careless frivolity of Jehoiakim,
the king whom Necho had placed over the Jews (p. 317). After the
disastrous day at Megiddo, the fall of Josiah, and carrying away of
Jehoahaz to Egypt, the eye of the prophet had been directed to the
dangerous position of the kingdom. Necho's army was then in Syria; one
city after another succumbed to his arms. To the melancholy mind of
Isaiah the fall of the kingdom seemed unavoidable. This conviction he
expressed; he foretold to Jehoiakim the most disgraceful fall. In energy
and power of thought Jeremiah cannot be compared with Isaiah, but in the
boldness and incisiveness of his opposition to the king and nation he
surpasses him. Isaiah had firmly held to the preservation and
maintenance of the city of Jerusalem and the temple, even in the
judgment of Jehovah on Israel and Judah. The conception that Jehovah's
temple, and his habitation in the holy of holies of the temple, was a
pledge for the security of the city, that Jehovah could not abandon and
destroy his temple and shrine, was a fixed idea among most of the
prophets and among the people; it was confirmed by the fortunate
preservation from the army of Sennacherib, and the hordes of the Sacæ;
and the Jews had confidence in the impregnable nature and lasting
security of their temple and city. In this confidence Jeremiah detected
a grave evil. The people trusted to the impregnable nature of the shrine
and city; the Jews believed that in spite of their errors and sins they
would be secure of Jerusalem owing to the temple. Therefore he set
himself energetically to combat this belief. He is filled with the
conception of the approaching judgment, which will be brought on by the
defection of past times, "when Israel like a swift young dromedary went
after every stranger;"[590] and by her unrighteous conversation in the
present time. His conception, which in depth of religious feeling is
raised above the views of the earlier prophets, is that all external
customs and symbols must fall to the ground, not sacrifices only and
fasts, but the temple and the ark of the covenant. Not till a radical
destruction has taken place will the restoration of the people follow,
by means of a small remnant of the righteous, and a shoot from the stock
of David. In Jeremiah's view the people cannot be saved without the
stroke of annihilation, "for the Ethiop cannot change his skin, nor the
leopard his spots."[591] But after this judgment Jehovah will "make a
new covenant" with his people, "which is not like that which he made
with their fathers, when he led them out of Egypt." "I will put my law
in your inward parts," saith Jehovah, "and write it in your
hearts."[592] "In those days they will no more speak of the ark of
Jehovah; it will not come into the mind of any: none will miss it; nor
will another be made." Then will Jehovah set up shepherds after his own
heart of the branch of David,[593] who will pasture Israel with wisdom
and prudence; and all nations will gather together to the name of
Jehovah, and will not walk after the hardness of their evil heart.

Filled with these conceptions, Jeremiah cried aloud to the people
assembled in the court of the temple: "Amend your hearts, and listen to
the voice of Jehovah, your God. If ye will not walk in his law, which he
has set before you, and hearken to the words of the prophets, Jehovah
will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.[594] Trust
not in lying words: this is the temple of Jehovah. Ye steal, murder, and
commit adultery; ye offer incense to Baal, and knead dough to make cakes
for the queen of heaven,[595] and come into this house, which is called
by the name of Jehovah, and say: We are delivered to do all these
abominations. Go ye now unto my dwelling-place which was in Shiloh,
where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the
wickedness of my people Israel. So will I do to this house in which ye
trust, as I did to Shiloh, and will cast you out of my sight, as I cast
out your brethren, the seed of Ephraim."[596] At these words the priests
seized Jeremiah, and the people rose in anger to put him to death,
because he had announced the fall of the temple. Then certain of the
elders came forward, and reminded the people that in Hezekiah's time the
prophet Micah had announced: "Zion shall be ploughed as a field, and
Jerusalem shall become a heap of stones,"[597] and neither the king nor
the people had put him to death. Jeremiah himself said to the enraged
multitude: "Behold, I am in your hands; do with me as seemeth good and
meet unto you; but know ye for certain that ye will bring innocent blood
upon this city; for of a truth Jehovah hath sent me unto you to speak
all these words in your ears." The people retired from him.

After this occurrence in the temple, Jeremiah no longer ventured to come
forth in public; he contented himself for the present with dictating his
warnings and announcements to his scribe Baruch. After the battle of
Karchemish it was clear to him at once that the king of Babel would be
the instrument of Jehovah to accomplish the approaching judgment: the
mission which Isaiah had assigned to the Assyrians 100 years
previously--to destroy all nations--Jeremiah now saw given to the
Chaldæans. But as Isaiah then prophesied the fall of Assyria, when she
had accomplished the judgments of Jehovah, so, according to the views
of Jeremiah, the Chaldæans are to be destroyed when they have done their
work. After a rule of 70 years, _i.e._ after a period of ten
Sabbath-years (II. 219), this fortune will overtake the
Babylonians--such is the view of Jeremiah. "For 23 years," so Jeremiah
commanded his scribe Baruch to write,[598] "the word of Jehovah hath
come to me, and I have spoken to you, rising early and speaking, but ye
have not hearkened; ye have hearkened to other prophets, not to the
servants of Jehovah. Therefore I will bring Nebuchadnezzar my servant
against this land and its inhabitants, saith Jehovah, and against all
the nations round about, and I will destroy out of them the voice of
mirth, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound
of the mill, and the light of the lamp. The whole land shall be a
desolation, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy
years. Take the wine-cup of this fury at my hand, so spake Jehovah to
me, and cause all the nations to drink it, that they may drink, and be
moved, and be mad, because of the sword that I will send among them.
Cause Jerusalem to drink it, and the cities of Judah, the Pharaoh of
Egypt, and all the kings of the land of the Philistines, the kings of
Tyre and Sidon, and the kings of the islands beyond the sea, the
Edomites, and the Moabites, and the kings of Arabia who dwell in the
deserts, and the kings of Media. Jehovah shall roar from on high, he
shall roar upon his habitation (Jerusalem); he shall give a shout, as
they that tread the grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth.
Jehovah will reckon with the nations; he will plead with all flesh, and
give them that are wicked to the sword. Evil shall go forth from nation
to nation, and the slain of Jehovah will be in that day from one end of
the earth to the other; they shall not be lamented, nor buried, they
shall be dung upon the ground."[599]

At Karchemish Necho had lost all the fruits of his struggles in Syria.
He did not venture to engage in a second battle for the possession of
Syria, but retired to the borders of Egypt. In Jerusalem a day of
fasting was kept at the approach of the Babylonian army. More than three
years and eight months had passed since Necho made Jehoiakim king of
Judah.[600] These and other announcements Jeremiah commanded Baruch to
read before the assembled multitude in the upper court of the temple on
the day of fasting. "It may be they will present their supplication
before Jehovah," he said, "for great is the anger that Jehovah hath
pronounced upon this people." Baruch carried out the command of
Jeremiah. The letter made a deep impression. Baruch had to read it again
before the captains of Jehoiakim, at their request. These told the king,
who was at that time in his winter house, of the prophecies of Jeremiah.
Jehoiakim caused three or four leaves to be read, then seized the roll,
cut it with a knife, threw the pieces into the pan of coals which stood
before him, and gave orders that Jeremiah and his scribe Baruch should
be brought before him, but both had hidden themselves, and the captains
were not inclined to discover them by any strict search.[601]

The Babylonian army did not appear before Jerusalem. Nabopolassar lay
sick at Babylon; the account of his death summoned Nebuchadnezzar back
to the metropolis. He hastened with a few companions through the deserts
to Babylon, in order to take the crown of the new kingdom. The army,
with the prisoners and the booty, were to follow (605 B.C.). Meanwhile
the priests at Babylon had made provision, and set up a regent from
among themselves who governed the kingdom till the return of
Nebuchadnezzar.[602]

As soon as the first succession to the throne of the new kingdom was
happily completed, and Nebuchadnezzar saw his position established, he
applied his forces to extending and securing his empire. If the new
dynasty was to take root, it was incumbent on it to renew the splendour
and power of the ancient kingdom of Babylon. The successes which
Nabopolassar had achieved against the Assyrians, the splendid victory
which Nebuchadnezzar had gained against the Egyptians, must have
confirmed the confidence of the new ruler in his own power, and the
strength of his army. Yet the first consideration was not merely
splendour and glory. Egypt could not indeed maintain her place in Syria,
but she was still in possession of Gaza; if the Syrian States were not
annexed, they would always incline to Egypt, and would soon join her
again. To abandon Syria was equivalent to handing over the country to
the Egyptians. A further consideration was, that the Median power in
league with which Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar had risen was far
superior to the Babylonians. At present, it was true, they were in the
closest and best relations with the Median and Lydian courts--but could
they count on the continuance of these relations? Was it not advisable
to create for the new kingdom of Babylon an empire which should form an
adequate counterpoise to the power of the Medes? The north and east
belonged to the Medes, the natural direction for the extension of
Babylon therefore lay to the south, on the coast of the Persian Gulf,
and to the west. The victorious campaigns of the Assyrian rulers pointed
in this direction; here, on the shore of the Mediterranean, lay the
cities of the Phenicians, who collected within their walls the trade of
the world, whose industry and wealth could bring to the new kingdom the
greatest sources of help.

Nebuchadnezzar's first object was to extend his power over the Arabians
on the lower Euphrates, in North Arabia, and in the Syrian desert. The
tribes of the Temanites, Dedanites, and Kedarites were subjugated. The
princes of the Arabians of Dedan, Tema, Kedar, and Hazor, became vassals
of Babylon.[603] Then Arpad, Hamath, and Damascus, which had resisted
Assyria so long and stubbornly, succumbed. Jerusalem trembled at the
fall of the neighbouring nations. "The Chaldæans are roused," says the
prophet Habakkuk; "that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march
through the breadth of the earth, and shall possess the dwelling-places
which are not theirs. Their horses are swifter than leopards, and more
fierce than evening wolves; proudly their horses spring from far: they
shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat. And they shall scoff at the
kings, and the princes shall be a scorn to them; they shall deride every
stronghold, for they shall heap up earth against it, and take it, and
carry off prisoners like sand. Then will they go on like a storm-wind,
and their might is their god.[604] My knees quaked that I might look
with rest upon the day of trouble, upon the people which oppresses
us.[605] Shall they slay the nations continually without punishment? can
he not rest who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and
cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth
unto him all people? Will not the people suddenly rise up and demand
usury from thee? will not the nations plunder thee, whom thou hast
plundered?"[606] Of Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah says: "Like a lion he will
come up against the well-stocked pasture.[607] Flee, flee with all your
might, ye inhabitants of Hazor, for Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon,
hath taken counsel against you, and hath conceived a purpose against
you. Get you up to the nation which hath neither gates nor bars, and
dwelleth alone; go up to Kedar and spoil the men of the East. Your tents
and your flocks will they take; your curtains and your camels they will
carry away; the multitude of your flocks shall be a spoil to them. I
will scatter to all the winds of the earth those who cut the corners of
their hair (the Arabians), saith Jehovah, and will bring destruction on
them from every side, and Hazor shall be a dwelling for the jackal, a
desolation for ever.[608] Cry, ye daughters of Rabbath (Rabbath Ammon,
II. 155), gird yourselves with sack-cloth, for Milcom shall go away
into misery, his priests and princes together.[609] Woe to thee, Moab;
the people of Camos (Chemosh, I. 372) perisheth. He shall fly like an
eagle, and spread his wings over Moab; the strong places are taken.[610]
Hamath is confounded, and Arpad. Damascus is waxed feeble, and turneth
herself to flee.[611] Thou wert confident, O Edom, because thou dwellest
on the high rocks and the tops of the mountains. Though thou buildest
thy nest like the eagle thou shalt be thrown down."[612]

Five years had elapsed since the battle of Karchemish when
Nebuchadnezzar crossed the borders of Judah (600 B.C.).[613] Jehoiakim
submitted and thus escaped destruction. After the subjugation of Ammon,
Moab, and Judah, Nebuchadnezzar could turn his arms against the southern
coast of Syria. This advance of Nebuchadnezzar and the necessity of
preventing Babylonia from establishing herself on the borders of Egypt,
could not but bring Egypt again into arms. Necho had had time to recover
from the defeat of Karchemish. The hope of aid from Egypt induced
Jehoiakim to renounce his obedience three years after he had submitted
to Nebuchadnezzar, and to turn his arms against Babylonia. At
Nebuchadnezzar's command the troops of the neighbouring states who had
remained loyal, the Northern Syrians, the Ammonites, and Moabites, first
invaded the land of Judah. When the Egyptians had been driven back into
their borders, and the king of Babylon had "taken everything that
belonged to the king of Egypt from the river Euphrates to the brook of
Egypt," Nebuchadnezzar turned his arms back against Jerusalem to punish
the rebels.[614] Jehoiakim had recently died, and the people had raised
to the throne his son Jechoniah, a youth of eighteen years old.
Jerusalem was invested by the Babylonian army: Nebuchadnezzar came in
person to conduct the siege.[615] "By my life,"--such are the words
Jeremiah puts in the mouth of Jehovah,--"if Jechoniah were a signet on
my right hand, I would pluck him off, and give him into the hands of
those who seek after his life, into the hands of the Chaldæans. I cast
thee away and thy mother into another land, and they shall not bring
thee back unto the land whither thy heart yearns to return."[616]
Jechoniah had only sat three months on the throne when he saw himself
compelled by the advance of the siege to open the gates of Jerusalem to
the enemy. With his mother Nehustha, who appears to have been regent
for him, with the officers of his household and the eunuchs, he went
into the camp of the Chaldæans to give himself up to the king of Babylon
(597 B.C.).[617]

Nebuchadnezzar wished to be secure of the obedience of the Jews; he did
not intend that the hope of Egypt should again bring them under arms. He
caused not only the young king and his mother, the courtiers, the
treasures, and the best furniture of the temple to be carried to
Babylon, but also the influential people in the city, the captains of
the army, and all the men of war in Jerusalem to the number of 7000. In
order to disarm the city more completely, the workers in iron, the
smiths and lock-smiths, were carried away. In all, 10,023 souls were
transplanted by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylonia, only people of no
importance are said to have been left in Jerusalem. In Jechoniah's place
Nebuchadnezzar set up his uncle Zedekiah, the fourth son of Josiah, as
viceroy, and pledged him to obedience and fidelity by joining hands and
taking an oath.[618] The Jews carried away were settled, after the
example of the Assyrian princes, in Babylonia, in part on the Chaboras.

These rules for securing the obedience of the small territory did not
break the tough spirit of the Jews, their stubborn resistance, or their
eager desire for freedom and independence. Zedekiah and those around him
felt the disgrace of the yoke which was laid upon them, and shared with
the mass of the people the desire to shake it off on the first
opportunity. Many prophets favoured this tendency and promised victory
and success to a new rebellion in arms. Not long after Zedekiah had been
placed on the throne, the prophet Hananiah of Gibeon announced before
all the people in the temple: "In two years Jehovah will bring back to
this place all the furniture of the temple which Nebuchadnezzar has
carried to Babylon; and I will bring back, saith Jehovah, Jechoniah the
king of Judah and all the captives, for I will break the yoke of the
king of Babylon."[619] Jeremiah came forward in opposition and said:
"Wooden yokes thou wilt break, and lay on iron yokes. Behold, I will
remove thee from the earth, saith Jehovah; in this year thou shalt die,
for thou hast counselled rebellion." And Hananiah died, as tradition
adds, in the same year, in the seventh month.[620]

Jeremiah was never weary of opposing to the uttermost any view of this
kind. To him the Chaldæans were the instrument of Jehovah for the
punishment of the nations: to endure their rule was, in his view, the
will of Jehovah; any one who resisted the Chaldæans only brought on
himself a heavier yoke, and called down destruction more completely on
his head. If Isaiah had at least cherished the belief in the continuance
of Jerusalem and the temple, Jeremiah, as we have seen, did not share in
this hope. And therefore he preached without ceasing submission to the
yoke, and patient obedience; he was unwearied in taking from the people
every prospect of rescue; he sent letters to the Jews transplanted to
Babylonia, and urged them not to enter into conspiracies; he went so far
as to commend the lot of these captives, and requested them to build
houses in Babylon, and pray to Jehovah for the welfare of that
country.[621] But though the national feelings and impulses of his
nation were unknown to a prophet whose eyes were directed upwards,
though for him the feeling of nationality was lost in religious
conceptions,--the efforts of the people to win back its independent
existence, the stubborn tenacity with which the Jews were ready to fight
for their fatherland, and break the yoke of the foreigner, even when
they rested on deceptive calculations, were not less justified than the
intelligent calculation of the impossibility of such an attempt; and
even from the lofty religious position of Jeremiah, who regarded nothing
but the inward salvation, the purity, and elevation of the heart, could
claim appreciation, since even the common children of earth must have
their rights. Who could blame those who, even in the most hopeless,
desperate condition, estimated more highly the duty of dying for their
country, than the advice to submit quietly to the conqueror? That
persons who held these views should consider this step on the part of
Jeremiah as a corrupt movement, should demand that the prophet take the
side of his own nation against the foreigner, and brand his predictions
as treason to the state, is easily intelligible.

In such a sharp opposition of views, and in the strained position of
affairs in which Judah found herself between Babylon and Egypt, it was
impossible but that heavy accusations should be brought against
Jeremiah, and a hot persecution set on foot against him. He complains
bitterly how he was daily mocked and derided;[622] he is in despair and
laments his destiny; he tells us how he had determined to speak no more
in the name of Jehovah, but the inward voice compelled him; the fire was
kindled in his heart: "I could not stay."[623] "Cursed be the day," he
exclaims, "on which I was born! cursed be the man who brought glad
tidings to my father, and said unto him, 'A son is born unto thee!' Why,
Jehovah, didst thou not slay me in the womb, that I should see labour
and sorrow, and consume my days with shame?"[624] These moods alternate
with a fierce desire for vengeance on his opponents. He is guiltless.
Jehovah has driven him forth to speak, and put his word in his mouth; he
has often besought Jehovah to turn away from Judah the day of
destruction: Jehovah, for whom he suffers, must avenge him on his
enemies. He is so embittered and angry that he even calls down bloody
destruction upon his enemies. "Look on me, Jehovah," he says, "and
avenge me of my persecutors, and know that for thy sake I have suffered
rebuke.[625] I have not desired the woful day, thou knowest: that which
came out from my lips was before thee.[626] If thy words came to me, I
took them eagerly, and they are the joy and rejoicing of my heart; I sat
not in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced. I sat alone, for thou
hast filled me with indignation. I was like a lamb led to the slaughter,
and knew not that they had devised devices against me.[627] Why is my
pain perpetual, and my wound incurable?[628] Wherefore doth the way of
the wicked prosper? Wherefore are they happy that deal very
treacherously?[629] Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and
prepare them for the day of destruction.[630] Consider how I stand
before thee, to turn away thy wrath from them. Therefore give up their
children to the famine, and deliver them to the sword. Let their men be
the sacrifice of death, and their women bereaved and widows. Thou
knowest all their counsel against me to slay me; forgive them not their
iniquity, neither blot out their sin from thy sight."[631] Jeremiah then
received the answer of Jehovah, who said to him: "Gird thy loins; speak
to them all that I bid thee; be not afraid of them. I will make thee a
fenced city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls against the whole
land; against the king, the priests, the elders, and the people. They
shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee; I
will save thee from the hand of the wicked, and deliver thee from the
grasp of the furious."[632]

So Jeremiah prophesied again: "No doubt, their prophets say to them: Ye
shall not see the sword nor shall ye have famine, but the Lord will give
you happy days in this land. But Jehovah saith: I have not commanded
them nor spoken to them; they prophesy a false vision, and the deceit of
their heart, and divination. By the sword and famine shall they perish.
The people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of
Jerusalem.[633] They will say: We acknowledge, O Jehovah, our iniquity,
and the sin of our fathers, but do not abhor us, for thy name's sake; do
not disgrace the throne of thy glory; break not thy covenant with us.
But Jehovah saith to me: Pray not for this people; though Moses and
Samuel stood before me, my mind could not be towards them.[634] Sorrow
not with them. I have taken from them my salvation, my grace, and mercy.
The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and graven with the
point of a diamond upon the table of their hearts, and upon the horns of
their altars."[635]

In such a contest of opposite views, in such an alternation of moods,
four years had passed for the Jews after Zedekiah was placed by
Nebuchadnezzar upon the throne, when the kings of Sidon and Tyre sent to
Jerusalem to call on the Jews to revolt against Nebuchadnezzar, by whose
attack they were threatened. Messengers also came from the Ammonites and
the Moabites, who had been in subjection longer than the Jews, and from
the Edomites (593 B.C.). If their forces were united there seemed to be
a prospect of success in resistance and rebellion, and the reduction of
the Phenician cities might be prevented. But Jeremiah spoke to the
envoys in the name of Jehovah: "I have made the earth, the man and the
beast, and I gave them to whom it seemed meet to me; and now I give all
these lands into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon,
my servant, and I have given him the beasts of the field also to
serve him. And the nation and the kingdom which will not serve
Nebuchadnezzar,--that nation I will punish with the sword, and with the
famine, and with the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand.
If ye put your necks in the yoke of Babylon, ye shall live."[636] This
time the view of the prophet prevailed; Zedekiah repaired in person to
Babylon obviously to assure Nebuchadnezzar of his fidelity.[637]
The Phenicians were left to their fate, and subjugated by
Nebuchadnezzar.[638] Only Sidon seems to have made a vigorous
resistance.[639] The island city of Tyre retained her independence.

In the year 589 B.C., Hophrah, the grandson of Necho, ascended the
throne of Egypt. Zedekiah soon directed his eyes to the new ruler of the
valley of the Nile. He showed himself ready to venture on the struggle
with Nebuchadnezzar. Jeremiah dissuaded them: "Egypt is a very fair
heifer," he exclaims, "but destruction cometh from the North. O thou
daughter, dwelling in Egypt, furnish thyself to go into captivity; for
Noph (Memphis) shall be waste, and burnt, and desolate without an
inhabitant. The hired men in the midst of her are like fatted bullocks,
for they also are turned back and are fled away together; they did not
stand because the day of their calamity was come upon them, the time of
their visitation. The daughter of Egypt shall be confounded. Thus saith
Jehovah of Hosts: Behold, I will punish Ammon of No (Thebes), and
Pharaoh and Egypt, with their gods and their kings, even Pharaoh and all
them that trust in him. And I will deliver them into the hand of those
that seek their lives, and into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of
Babylon, and into the hand of his servants."[640]

But the prince and people of Judah were not to be restrained. Building
on the help of Egypt, Zedekiah, in the year 588 B.C., took up arms
against Babylonia.[641] But before Hophrah had finished his preparations
Nebuchadnezzar was in Judah with a powerful army.[642] The strong places
were invested: one city after another surrendered, only Lachish and
Aseka resisted for any length of time.[643] "At the meeting of the
ways," says the prophet Ezekiel, "the king of Babylon halts to make
divination; he shakes his arrows, consults with the teraphim, looks in
the liver of the victim. In his right hand is the divination for
Jerusalem, to throw up a wall against Jerusalem, to build towers, to
appoint battering-rams against the gates, to lift up the voice with
shouting. The head-band will be taken, and the crown removed from the
prince of Israel."[644]

The siege of Jerusalem commenced. If in former times, when the Assyrians
were encamped before Jerusalem, Isaiah had urged the nation and king to
a courageous endurance though arms had been taken up against his advice,
the absoluteness of his deep conviction, the certainty which he had
received from above, did not permit Jeremiah to take up the attitude of
his great predecessor; on the contrary, he did not cease even now to
condemn the resistance in the strongest terms. In his eyes it was a
rebellion against the counsels of God, against the divine order of the
world. When Zedekiah sent to him, to bid him inquire of Jehovah about
the issue of the siege, Jeremiah answered: "I will turn back the weapons
of war that are in your hands, wherewith ye fight against the king of
Babylon, and I will bring the Chaldæans into the city. I will fight
against you with an outstretched arm, and will deliver the city into the
hands of the king of Babylon, that he may burn it, and I will visit your
inhabitants with famine, sword, and pestilence, and those that are left
I will give into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, that he may smite them
with the edge of the sword. I set before you the way of life and the way
of death; he that abideth in the city shall fall by the sword; but he
that goeth out and falleth to the Chaldæans he shall live."[645] Though
these announcements were adapted to undermine the courage and strength
of the resistance, and heavy as was the weight given to them by the
position which Jeremiah held among the prophets, they did not discourage
the king and the population of the metropolis. The debtors and all
slaves of Hebrew birth were set at liberty in order to strengthen the
numbers for the defence.

Success seemed to come to the aid of their endurance and courage. The
Egyptian army advanced and compelled the Chaldæans to raise the siege of
Jerusalem (587 B.C.).[646] There was time to recover breath. Had not
Jehovah again delivered Jerusalem as in the day when Sennacherib
oppressed the city? Jeremiah's dreary proclamations seemed contradicted.
But he persisted in his position and announced: "Pharaoh's army which is
come forth to help you shall return into Egypt, and the Chaldæans shall
come again before the city, and shall take it. And though ye had smitten
the whole army of the Chaldæans and there remained but wounded men in
their tents, they would rise up and burn Jerusalem with fire."[647] It
was natural that Jeremiah, in consequence of these speeches and
predictions, should appear a traitor in the eyes of the nation, who were
struggling for freedom and existence. When, availing himself of the
raising of the siege, he wished to go to his plot of ground at Anathoth,
he was seized in the gate as a deserter to the Chaldæans and thrown into
prison. Yet the king allowed him to be kept in less severe custody, and
soon set him at liberty.[648]

The prophecy of Jeremiah was fulfilled. The Egyptians were defeated.
Invested once more, Jerusalem was pressed more severely than ever.[649]
The lines of the Chaldæans ran even to the walls of the city,[650] but
the defenders were unwearied. The houses and even the buildings of the
palaces were in part pulled down in order to strengthen the shattered
walls, or build new portions.[651] That Jeremiah under such
circumstances continued to preach the abandonment of the siege, and
subjection to the Chaldæans, roused at length the captains. They
demanded his death from the king: "He weakeneth the hands of the men of
war that remain, and the hands of the people: he seeketh not the welfare
of the Jews, but the hurt."[652] As Zedekiah allowed them to do with
Jeremiah according to their pleasure, they seized him, brought him for
custody to the hill of Zion, and there caused him to be thrown into the
well of the prison. But there was only mud in the well, and when an
Ethiopian eunuch of the king interceded with him for the prophet,
Zedekiah gave command that Jeremiah should be taken out of the well, and
confined in the court of the prison.[653]

Meantime "the famine prevailed in the city;" the distress rose to the
highest pitch. "The priests and the elders," so we are told in the
Lamentations, "sought food in vain: the sword destroys without, the
famine within. The people sought food with sighs, and whatsoever a man
had of price he gave for food. The children and the sucklings swooned;
they cried to their mothers, where is corn and wine, when they swooned
as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured
out into their mothers' bosoms. Better was it for those who were slain
with the sword than for those who were slain with hunger; the hands of
pitiful women have sodden their children for food."[654] At length the
Chaldæans, whose attack was directed to the most accessible part, the
north side of the city, succeeded in taking the suburb surrounded by the
outer wall.[655] Having gained possession of this, they directed their
efforts against the middle gate, which guarded the entrance into the
city beside the fortress of Millo (p. 128). Led by Nergal Sarezer, and
Sarsechim, the captain of the eunuchs, the Babylonians took the middle
gate in the night by storm, and firmly established themselves there.
Zedekiah despaired of being able to maintain the city any longer, with
the motley crowd of soldiers weakened by hunger, and the inhabitants who
doubtless suffered still more in numbers and strength. He attempted to
break through with his army. He succeeded in passing the lines and
gaining the open country, but the Chaldæans in pursuit came up with the
troop which had so boldly broken out in the plain of Jericho. The troop
was dispersed; a part, including Zedekiah, was captured, the rest
escaped. The inhabitants, even after the king and army had left the
city, stubbornly defended themselves in the various parts--in the
citadel and the temple--so that some weeks elapsed before the city was
completely in the hands of the Babylonians (July, 586 B.C.). The siege
had lasted one year five months and seven days.[656]

The first rebellion of the Jews had been punished by Nebuchadnezzar by
the dethronement and abduction of the king, by carrying away the
influential people and the army of Jerusalem, and by disarming the city.
These arrangements had not been sufficient to secure the obedience of
the little country. For the future Egypt was no longer to find
confederates in Southern Syria, and support in Jerusalem. The stubborn
resistance of the Jews was to be broken; an end must be put for ever to
their intrigues with Egypt. Zedekiah, who was placed on the throne by
Nebuchadnezzar himself, and swore obedience to him, was not to escape
the punishment of this breach of faith. Nebuchadnezzar was not with the
besieging army; he was at Riblah, on the Orontes, the grassy plain where
Necho had pitched his camp after the battle of Megiddo. Thither Zedekiah
was brought. In his presence were first executed the captive leaders of
the Jews, and among them his own sons. Then his eyes were put out; he
was laden with chains, and carried away to Babylon. There he died in
prison.[657] The punishment of Jerusalem was carried out by Nebusaradan,
the chief of the body-guard of Nebuchadnezzar. The high priest, Seraiah,
together with the second priest, Zephaniah, the overseers of the temple,
a number of public officers, and sixty of the most distinguished men in
the city, were also taken to Riblah, and put to death, seventy-two in
number.[658] The brazen pillars at the entrance to the temple, and the
brazen sea (II. 182, 184), all the vessels and furniture of the temple
which still remained, and everything that was to be found of value in
the palace, was carried off to Babylon.[659] The Chaldæan army levelled
the walls; city, palace, and temple were burned to the ground. The
inhabitants who survived were carried away, "except the poor people who
had nothing;" even from the country the richer men were carried away
with their wives and children, and only the common people left
behind.[660] Over the remnant of the population a Jew, Gedaliah, the son
of Ahikam (p. 317), who must previously have given proof of his Chaldæan
sentiments, was placed as viceroy. He took up his abode in Mizpeh, where
a Babylonian garrison remained.[661]

"O daughter of Zion, let thy tears flow like rivers day and night"--so
the Jews lamented--"give thyself no rest. The kings of the earth, and
all the inhabitants of the world would not have believed that the
besieging army could have entered into the gates of Jerusalem. Jehovah
hath cast off his altar, and abhorred his sanctuary. The stones of the
sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street. The Lord hath
thrown down from heaven to earth the beauty of Jerusalem, and remembered
not his footstool in the day of his anger. He hath poured out his fury
like fire upon the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion.[662] The elders
of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground and keep silence; they cast
dust upon their heads; they are girded with sackcloth. The virgins of
Jerusalem hang down their heads to the earth. They that go by strike the
hands together, and shake the head over the daughter of Jerusalem. Is
this the city which was called the garland of beauty, the joy of the
whole earth? Thy enemies shoot out their lips at thee; hiss and say: We
have swallowed her up: this is the day that we looked for; we have done
it. The gates are desolate; the ways to Zion mourn; no one cometh to the
festival. Behold and see, all ye that pass by, if there is any sorrow
like unto my sorrow.[663] Our possession is fallen to strangers, our
houses to aliens; we are orphans without a father; our mothers are like
widows. Servants rule over us; they weaken our wives and virgins: they
hang up the captains: they honour not the faces of the elders; we have
drunken our water for money; our wood is sold to us. The young men grind
the mill-stones, and the children fall under the wood.[664] The
punishment of my people is greater than the punishment of Sodom.[665]
All mine enemies rejoice at my trouble, and laugh at my overthrow, but
thou, Jehovah, will bring the day when they will be as I am; do to them
as thou hast done to me.[666] Our fathers have sinned and are not; we
have borne their iniquities. Take us again to thee, Jehovah; is it right
that thou shouldest utterly throw us away and be so wroth with us?"[667]

Jeremiah was still a prisoner in the court of the citadel when the
Chaldæans forced their way into it. With the rest of the inhabitants of
Jerusalem he had been taken to Ramah, in order to be carried away into
Babylonia from thence, when Nebusaradan, at the command of
Nebuchadnezzar, to whom in the interim Jeremiah's conduct must have been
known, caused his fetters to be taken off, and gave him the choice
whether he would remain or go to Babylonia. It was in his power to go
where he would: if he went to Babylonia he would not be neglected there.
Jeremiah answered that he wished to remain in the land. Nebusaradan then
gave him maintenance and a present, and put him in the hands of the
viceroy, Gedaliah, to convey him to his house at Anathoth.

Gedaliah exercised his new authority in a spirit of conciliation; he
attempted to establish order and peace. If Nebusaradan, before his
departure from the conquered city, had given the unoccupied fields and
vineyards before the gates to the people "who had nothing," Gedaliah
summoned his countrymen who had fled to the Ammonites, Moabites, and
Edomites, back to Mizpeh, "and they gathered summer fruits and wine in
great abundance." He also entered into negotiations with the chieftains
and their soldiers, who with Zedekiah had broken through the lines and
escaped the defeat at Jericho, in order to put an end to their
plundering in the land; he offered to give up to them the places of
which they had taken possession; if they would dwell there and serve the
king of Babylon it would be well with them.[668] The greater number
accepted these proposals, and put themselves under the rule of Gedaliah,
whose wise arrangements had their effect, and seemed to promise further
success. Jeremiah himself remained at Mizpeh with Gedaliah, to whose
action his advice, counsel, and influence could give considerable
support.[669] Two months had not passed since the capture of Jerusalem,
and already a number of men out of Samaria, Shechem, and Shilo, ventured
to go to the ruins of Jerusalem with frankincense and meat-offerings, in
order to sacrifice at the holy place, the seat of the temple.

In the hearts of the great majority fierce resentment must have been
raging against the destroyers of Jerusalem and the temple, against the
conquerors of Judah. If Nebuchadnezzar could not be reached, his viceroy
was in the land. A distinguished man of the Jewish stock had submitted
to be the servant of the deadly enemy. This traitor and servant could be
found. Ishmael, a man of the royal blood, and of the family of
David,[670] one of the fugitives, came with ten men to Mizpeh. He put on
the appearance of submission. Gedaliah invited him to the banquet, at
which with his associates he cut down Gedaliah, the Chaldæans, and the
Jews who were present. The king's daughter and others who had been
placed in Gedaliah's care, the Jews who were assembled at Mizpeh,
followed Ishmael. He acted in union with Baalis, the king of Ammon, with
whom he had intended to take refuge. But the other chieftains, who had
made their peace with Gedaliah, pursued after him, overtook him at the
pool of Gibeon, and took away the prisoners from him; Ishmael himself
escaped to the king of Ammon.

The chiefs of the Jews, who were assembled at Mizpeh, were afraid that
Nebuchadnezzar would still avenge on them the murder of Gedaliah. They
resolved to fly to Egypt. Jeremiah was to entreat Jehovah, and declare
his will to them. After ten days the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah,
and he spake: "Be not afraid of the king of Babylon, for I am with you,
saith Jehovah, unto whom ye sent me to present your supplication. I am
with you to help you, and deliver you from the hand of the king of
Babylon. If ye will not obey the voice of Jehovah, your God, saying: We
will go into the land of Egypt, where we shall see no war nor hear the
sound of the trumpet, nor have hunger of bread; the sword which ye
feared shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine
whereof ye were afraid shall follow close upon you, and there shall ye
die. Jehovah hath spoken to you, ye remnant of Judah. Go ye not into
Egypt; know certainly that I have admonished you this day." The warning
voice was in vain. With the captains at their head, the fugitives who
had assembled at Mizpeh, and the king's daughters, men and women, and
all whom Nebusaradan had left behind with Gedaliah, set out to Egypt.
Jeremiah and Baruch also followed, apparently under compulsion.

The fate which the Assyrians had prepared for the state of the ten
tribes 136 years previously had now fallen on the kingdom of Judah. The
temple was destroyed with the metropolis, and with the temple the last
hope of the nation was gone; the remainder of the community, founded
under Joshua's guidance 700 years previously, was annihilated; the
sanctuaries were in the hands of the conqueror. Like the Israelites, the
nation of Judah was now shattered and torn asunder. By the canals in
Egypt, and by the waters of Babylon, on the Chaboras in Mesopotamia, and
on the mouths of the Nile, lingered the fugitives and exiles.[671]
Nothing remained to them but the remembrance of David's glory, and
sorrow for the fall of Israel. But the longer duration which was allowed
to the kingdom of Judah had borne good fruits. It had given the Jews
time to strengthen and deepen their religious and national feeling. It
was not merely that the throne of Judah remained in the possession of
the descendants of David, or that the kingdom of Judah possessed a
highly revered centre in the temple, and thus had maintained a strong
organisation of the priesthood; in the sufferings and struggles of the
last seventy years these priests, in connection with the prophets, and
filled with their views, had learned to regard the faith in Jehovah in a
more inward manner, and plant it more deeply in the hearts of the
people. They had given a legal basis to the worship of Jehovah, and
exalted it to be the recognised religion of the state. If by this means
the state gained nothing in regard to external power and security, an
inestimable treasure was gained in regard to the confirmation and
development of religious feeling. There was hardly any fear that the
captive and fugitive Jews would lose themselves in the foreign nations
among whom they dwelt, like the Israelites, who had been transplanted to
Assyria and Media, or that they would give up their national faith.
Behind the punishment induced by the sins of the people, the prophets
had proclaimed the restoration of the purified Israel. The punishment
had burst upon them, they did not doubt that the restoration would come.
If Asshur had fallen, the hour of Babylon might strike; Jeremiah had
already fixed the time for it. Thus the destruction of their state and
their shrines did not make the Jews despair of the help of their God, or
cause them to fall from their faith. Those who remained behind, no less
than those who were driven out, cherished the hope of Jehovah's help as
deeply as they felt the pain of the fall of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem fell nineteen years after the battle of Karchemish. Step by
step Nebuchadnezzar had overcome Syria. First Arpad, Hamath and Damascus
had succumbed, then the Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites. After Judah
had recognised his supremacy in the year 600 B.C., the rebellion on
which Jehoiakim ventured three years afterwards had brought upon that
country a severe punishment, and a condition of greater dependence. Four
years afterwards, 593 B.C., the cities of the Phenicians were reduced
except Tyre. The second rebellion of Judah was followed by the
annihilation of the country. The prophets of the Jews looked forward to
the war of Nebuchadnezzar against Egypt--to the punishment for the
campaign which Hophrah had undertaken against Syria, and which had
compelled Nebuchadnezzar to raise the siege of Jerusalem. Ezekiel, who
was among the Jews carried away with Jechoniah in 597 B.C., and with
part of them had received a habitation on the Chaboras beyond the
Euphrates, proclaimed the destruction and fall of Egypt. "Egypt," he
says, "has been a staff of reed to the house of Israel. When they took
hold of thee by the hand then thou didst break, and rend all their
shoulder; and when they leaned upon thee, thou didst break and madest
their loins to totter. Thou wast as a dragon in the seas, and camest
forth in thy rivers. The sword of the king of Babylon shall come upon
thee. By the swords of the mighty will I cause thy multitudes to fall:
and I will water with thy blood the land wherein thou swimmest, even to
the mountain; I will destroy all the beasts thereof from beside the
great waters; neither shall the foot of man, nor the hoof of beasts,
trouble them any more. Go down to them that are sunk in the pit, and be
thou laid with the uncircumcised."[672] The same fortune was announced
to the Pharaoh Hophrah and his land by Jeremiah among the emigrants at
Tachpanhes[673] on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile: "Behold, I will give
Pharaoh Hophrah, king of Egypt, into the hand of his enemies, and into
the hand of them that seek his life, as I gave Zedekiah, king of Judah,
into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, his enemy, that sought
his life. Behold, I will send and fetch Nebuchadnezzar, the king of
Babylon, my servant. At the entrance of Pharaoh's house, in Tachpanhes,
he will spread out his royal pavilion, and he will come and smite the
land of Egypt, and deliver to death such as are for death, and to
captivity such as are for captivity, and to the sword such as are for
the sword. And I will kindle a fire in the houses of the gods of Egypt,
and he shall burn them and carry them away captive, and he shall break
the pillars of Bethshemesh (the obelisks of Heliopolis), and the houses
of the gods of Egypt shall he burn with fire."[674]

Nebuchadnezzar did not fulfil these expectations. He was not a conqueror
who sought to press on beyond all bounds, and extend his power further
and further. On the contrary, he sought to keep his empire within the
natural boundaries, and not go beyond the desert which separated him
from Egypt. The subjugation of Syria was not complete so long as Tyre
did not obey his authority. He directed his arms not against Hophrah but
against Tyre. It was difficult to reach the island city without a fleet.
Nevertheless Ezekiel looked forward to the speedy success of the
Babylonians, and the immediate fall of the great trading city. Tyre will
fall because she rejoiced over the fall of Jerusalem, because she cried:
"I shall be full, since thou art desolate."[675] He describes in a
lively manner how Nebuchadnezzar will set up his battering-rams against
the walls of Tyre; how he will throw down their towers with his engines
of war; will cast up a trench against them, and raise the shield upon
them.[676] He sees the island already changed into a naked rock for
spreading out nets.[677] These prophecies also were not fulfilled in
their whole extent. The siege, after the capture of the old city, was no
more than a blockade from the mainland, a cutting off of all intercourse
of the city towards the coast, such as had once before been carried on
in the time of Shalmanesar IV. and Assurbanipal of Assyria (pp. 83,
166), and now as then it was only feebly sustained from the sea by the
ships which the subject neighbour-harbours had to furnish.
Nebuchadnezzar's troops are said to have remained thirteen years before
Tyre. The blockade was brought to an end, as it seems, in the year 573
B.C., by an arrangement in which the Tyrians recognised the supremacy
of the king of Babylon. "A heavy service," says the prophet Ezekiel,
"has Nebuchadnezzar compelled his army to perform against Tyre. Every
head is bald, and every shoulder peeled, and there is no wages in his
army for Tyre." The Tyrians, as it seems, allowed Nebuchadnezzar to
elect their king. Ethbaal, king of Tyre, resigned the throne, and
Nebuchadnezzar set up Baal in his place.[678]

After repeated struggles Nebuchadnezzar had driven the Egyptians out of
Syria, had repulsed their attempts to support the rebellions of the
Syrians. In addition to the tribes of the Arabs between Libanus and
Antilibanus he had brought the states and cities of the Syrians to
obedience; he had united under his supremacy the Semitic tribes from the
Tigris to the Syrian coast, from the Persian to the Arabian Gulf. Never
had the ancient kingdom of Babylon won such power, and taken up such a
position. Yet this wide extent of dominion scarcely bore comparison with
the empire of the Medes, in concert with which Babylonia had overthrown
the Assyrians. But the territory of Babylon between the Mediterranean
and the Persian Gulf, as compared with the long stretch of the Median
Empire, which reached from the Halys to the middle, and to the southern
edge of the table-land of Iran, was better rounded off, and the
population of Babylonia was more homogeneous. It belonged to one tribe
only. These advantages, combined with the profuse fertility and the
highly-developed industrial activity of the native land, with the trade
and maritime resources of the Phenician cities, could compensate to
Babylonia in intensive power the advantage which Media had in extent.
For the present the courts of Babylon, Media, and Lydia, were peacefully
connected by the ties of relationship.

FOOTNOTES:

[588] Above, p. 250. Joseph. "c. Apion.," 1, 19. "Antiq." 10, 11, 2.

[589] Ezek. i. 1, 3; iii. 15, 23; x. 15; xx. 22; xliii. 3.

[590] Jerem. ii. 23.

[591] Jerem. xiii. 23.

[592] Jerem. xxiii. 5.

[593] Jerem. xxxi. 31-35.

[594] Jerem. xxvi. 1-5, 13.

[595] Jerem. vii. 18.

[596] Jerem. vii. 1-15; viii. 8; xxvi. 6.

[597] Micah iii. 12.

[598] Jerem. xxv. 1-3. By this date the identity of these warnings with
the writing which, according to xxxvi. 1, 2, was read on the fast day,
is established, an identity which is also proved by internal reasons.

[599] Jerem. ch. xxv.

[600] Jerem. xxxvi. 1, 22.

[601] Jerem. xxxvi. 9-26.

[602] Beros. ap. Joseph. "Antiq." 10, 11, 2. "c. Apion," 1, 19. In these
passages the acts of Nebuchadnezzar in Syria are put together in such a
general way, that from them we cannot draw the conclusion that
Nebuchadnezzar in his first campaign into Syria passed the borders of
Judah, and that even then he had not only set foot in Syria but had
incorporated it. The uncertainty of the succession in the new kingdom
must have called him back as quickly as possible to his home, and the
retirement of the whole army is expressly mentioned. Besides, from
Jeremiah xxxvi. 1, 9, 22, and xxv. 1, 3, it follows that Nebuchadnezzar,
in the years 605-604 B.C., and 604-603 B.C., _i.e._ in the fourth and
fifth of the reign of Jehoiakim, had not yet marched with his army
through Judah. Joseph., "Antiq." 10, 6, 1, represents Nebuchadnezzar as
conquering Syria, except Judah, after the victory of Karchemish. The
statement in the Book of Daniel (i. 1 ff) that Nebuchadnezzar took
Jerusalem in the third year of Jehoiakim, _i.e._ in the year 606-605
B.C., is not a cogent proof.

[603] Jerem. xxv. 20-23; xlix. 28-33.

[604] Habakkuk i. 6-11.

[605] Habakkuk iii. 16.

[606] Habakkuk i. 17; ii. 5-8.

[607] Jerem. xlix. 19.

[608] Jerem. xlix. 28-33.

[609] Jerem. xlix. 3.

[610] Jerem. xlviii. 40, 46.

[611] Jerem. xlix. 23, 24.

[612] Jerem. xlix. 16.

[613] 2 Kings xxiv. If it is stated here that Jehoiakim served
Nebuchadnezzar for three years, and then revolted from him; if the
punishment for this revolt falls not on him but on his successor
Jechoniah, it is clear that these three years must be reckoned from the
end of the reign of Jehoiakim, so that in this way the first subjugation
falls in the year 600 B.C. So Josephus ("Antiq." 10, 6, 1,) states that
the subjugation of Jehoiakim took place in the eighth year of his reign,
_i.e._ in 601-600 B.C.

[614] 2 Kings xxiv. 1-10. That Jehoiakim could not have attempted a
rebellion without reliance on the help of Egypt, is clear without
further proof. Josephus ("Antiq." 10, 6, 2) says: Jehoiakim had revolted
because he heard that the Egyptians were taking the field against
Nebuchadnezzar; but the Egyptians had not had the courage really to take
the field. An attack of Nebuchadnezzar on Egypt, as well as Egyptian
prisoners who are led from Syria to Babylonia, are mentioned in the
statements of Berosus, quoted by Josephus above, p. 328, _n._ But these
statements are so general that they may also be referred to the war
which Nebuchadnezzar carried on with the Egyptians in 587 B.C., p. 341.
Nevertheless, the observation in the Second Book of Kings, which follows
after Jehoiakim's death, "that Nebuchadnezzar had taken all the land, as
far as the brook of Egypt (2 xxiv. 7), which belonged to the king of
Egypt," may have reference to a struggle then going on with Egypt.
Beyond their own borders the Egyptians could only have maintained Gaza,
and a few other cities of the Phenicians. The statement of the
Chronicles that Jehoiakim was carried to Babylon in chains cannot be
maintained against the accounts of the Books of Kings.

[615] 2 Kings xxiv. 10, 11.

[616] Jerem. xxii. 24-27.

[617] This date is fixed by the remark that it occurred in the eighth
year of Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings xxiv. 12).

[618] Ezekiel xvii. 13. 2 Kings xxiv. 13-17. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 13. In
Jerem. xxxix. 1-3, and lii. 28, the number of the captives is given at
3023; the passages quoted from the Books of Kings put the number of the
soldiers at 7000, of the captives generally at 10,000.

[619] Jerem. xxviii. 1-4.

[620] Jerem. xxviii. 12-17.

[621] Jerem. xxix.; cf. xxiv. 5 ff.

[622] Jerem. xx. 7, 8.

[623] Jerem. xx. 9.

[624] Jerem. xx. 14-18.

[625] Jerem. xv. 15.

[626] Jerem. xvii. 6.

[627] Jerem. xi. 19.

[628] Jerem. xv. 16-18.

[629] Jerem. xii. 1.

[630] Jerem. xii. 3.

[631] Jerem. xviii. 21-23.

[632] Jerem. i. 17-19; xv. 20, 21.

[633] Jerem. xiv. 11-16.

[634] Jerem. xiv. 20-22; xv. 1.

[635] Jerem. xvii. 1.

[636] Jerem. xxvii. 1-12.

[637] Jerem. li. 59.

[638] This conclusion is rendered certain by the fact that afterwards
the island city of Tyre is the only one spoken of as not subjugated. Cf.
p. 352.

[639] Ezek. xxxii. 29 mentions Sidon among the nations which had
succumbed to the sword of the king before the twentieth year of
Nebuchadnezzar. Cf. xxviii. 21-26. Jerem. xlvii. 4.

[640] Jerem. xlvi. 19, 26. The position of affairs shows that this
announcement belongs to this date. According to Ezek. viii. 1, Zedekiah
appears to have had dealings with Egypt as early as 591 B.C. Cf. Joseph.
"Antiq." 10, 7, 5.

[641] 2 Kings xxv. 1-3, 8. Jerem. xxxiv. 1-7. Ezek. xxiv. 1.

[642] 2 Kings xxv. 1.

[643] Jerem. xxxiv. 7.

[644] Ezek. xxi. 21, 22, 25, 26.

[645] Jerem. xxi. 1, 10.

[646] Jerem. xxxvii. 5. Ezekiel prophesies the ruin of the Egyptians in
the tenth month of the tenth year of his captivity, _i.e._ in the year
587 B.C.; in this year, no doubt, the march of the Egyptians took place.

[647] Jerem. xxxvii. 6-10.

[648] Jerem. xxxvii. 11-21.

[649] Joseph. "Antiq." 10, 7, 1. Ezek. xvii. 17. At the beginning of the
eleventh year of Zedekiah (586 B.C.), Ezekiel says: "I have broken the
arm of Pharaoh," xxx. 21; cf. xxxi. 1.

[650] 2 Kings xxv. 1-3. Jerem. lii. 4, 5. Cf. Ezek. iv. 2; xvii. 17;
xxi. 21.

[651] Jerem. xxxiii. 4.

[652] Jerem. xxxviii. 4.

[653] Jerem. xxxvii. 21; xxxviii. 28.

[654] Jerem. xix. 9. Ezek. iv. 16, 17; v. 11, 12. Lamentations i. 19,
20; ii. 20; iv. 9, 10; ii. 11, 12.

[655] Vol. II., p. 186. Jerem. xxxix. 3; lii. 6, 7. 2 Kings xxv. 3, 4.
It was this outer wall of which the western front had to be pulled down
for 400 cubits under Amaziah. Vol. II., p. 261.

[656] The capture took place in the fourth month of the eleventh year of
the reign of Zedekiah, in the nineteenth of Nebuchadnezzar. Cf. Ideler,
"Handbuch der Chronologie," 1, 529. Ezekiel, chap. xii.

[657] Jerem. xxxix. 6, 7; lii. 11. 2 Kings xxv. 7.

[658] Jerem. xxxix. 6, where the statement is quite general, "all the
nobles of Judah also the king of Babylon slew;" and lii. 16, "all the
princes of Judah also he slew at Riblah."

[659] 2 Kings xxv. 13-17. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 18. Jerem. lii. 12-28. The ark
of the covenant was not mentioned separately; it may have been already
taken away in 597 B.C.

[660] 2 Kings xxv. 8-11, 18-21. Jerem. xxxix. 9, 10.

[661] Jerem. xl. 5-10.

[662] Lamentations iv. 12; ii. 7; iv. 1.

[663] Lamentations ii. 14-18; i. 12.

[664] Lamentations v. 1-14.

[665] Lamentations iv. 6.

[666] Lamentations i. 7, 21, 22.

[667] Lamentations v. 7, 21, 22.

[668] Jerem. xl. 9.

[669] Jerem. xl. 6.

[670] Jerem. xl. 8.

[671] Jerem. xxiv. 1, 8; chaps. xl.-xliv. Ezek. i. 1-3, &c.

[672] The announcements of Ezekiel, chaps, xxix.-xxxii., belong to the
period from the tenth to the twelfth year of the captivity, _i.e._ to
the years 587 to 585 B.C.

[673] Daphne in Herod. 2, 30, 107.

[674] Jerem. xliii. 8-13; xliv. 30.

[675] Ezekiel, chaps, xxvi.-xxviii. The prophecy begins in the eleventh
year after the captivity of Jechoniah, on the first day of the month,
and therefore four months before the capture of Jerusalem; from xxvi. 7
it is clear that the siege of Tyre had not yet begun: because Tyre
rejoiced in the fall of Jerusalem, she also was to be destroyed.
Afterwards, in the year 570 B.C., Ezekiel declares that the Chaldæans
have received no reward for their heavy service against Tyre (xxix. 17).
Hence the siege of Tyre, which, according to Josephus, lasted for 13
years, falls between 586-570 B.C. This result is confirmed by the
quotations of Josephus from Phenician annals ("c. Apion." 1, 21;
"Antiq." 10, 11, 1). According to these, Cyrus ascended the throne in
the fourteenth year of Hiram, king of Tyre. Before Hiram Merbaal reigned
for four years; before him the judges Mutton and Gerastrat, and king
Balator, for six years, the arch-priest Abbar for three months, the
judges Eknibal and Chelbes for 12 months, king Baal for 10 years, and
before him Ithobal, under whom Tyre was besieged for 13 years. The reign
of Cyrus is obviously calculated from the date at which he conquered
Babylon and the Persians took the place of the Chaldæans, _i.e._ from
the year 538 B.C. If we calculate the dates given by Josephus to this
point, the siege of Tyre came to an end in the year 573 B.C., and began
immediately after the conquest of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. The addition of
Josephus that the siege of Tyre began in the seventh year of
Nebuchadnezzar (599 B.C.) is a direct contradiction to the other more
detailed statements. No doubt we ought to read the seventeenth year of
Nebuchadnezzar for the seventh year with M. Niebuhr ("Assur und Babel,"
s. 107).

[676] Ezek. xxvi. 8, 9, 10.

[677] Ezek. xxvi. 14.

[678] That Tyre, though not captured, was subjugated by the Babylonians,
must be concluded from the statement of Berosus, general though that
is--that all Phoenicia was subjugated by Nebuchadnezzar (supr. p. 328,
_n._), and further from the fact that Josephus ("c. Apion." 1, 21) tells
us that Merbaal and Hiram were fetched by the Tyrians from Babylon; and,
finally, from the circumstance that the reign of Ithobal ceases with the
end of the siege, and that of Baal commences. Hence it follows that
Ithobal was deposed, and his race carried away to Babylon. That the
deportation of kings and elevation of others in their place was usual
among the Babylonians, as among the Assyrians, is clear from the example
of Jechoniah, and from 2 Kings xxv. 28.




CHAPTER XV.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR AND HIS SUCCESSORS.


Assyria had become known to the Greeks about the time when Tiglath
Pilesar II. had reduced Syria to submission, and the cities of the
Phenicians were subject to the kings of Asshur--_i.e._ about the middle
of the eighth century B.C. Hence for them the name Assyrians denoted the
whole population of Asia from the Syrian coast to the Tigris, and the
range of the Zagrus: "Syrians" is merely an abbreviated form of the name
"Assyrians." In this sense Herodotus says: "After the fall of Nineveh
Babylon was the chief city of the Assyrians."[679] As a fact
Nebuchadnezzar had united under his dominion the whole of the Semitic
tribes on both sides of the Syrian desert. The stubborn resistance of
the Phenicians and Hebrews had been broken by repeated campaigns; at
least, after the subjugation of Tyre, we hear no more of rebellion by a
Syrian tribe against Babylonia.

Nebuchadnezzar was able to complete the work which his father
Nabopolassar had commenced by liberating Babylon from Assyria after two
centuries of supremacy and one century of dominion, and had secured by
it the annihilation of Assyria. The second king of this name on the
throne of Babylon--Nebuchadnezzar I. had fought against Assyria with
some success in the first half of the 12th century B.C. (II. 37)--he was
the true founder of the new kingdom. Berosus is fully justified in
saying of him, that he surpassed the achievements of all the earlier
kings of the Chaldæans, though the addition that he ruled over Egypt, as
well Phoenicia, Syria, and Arabia, is to be ascribed to the vainglory
of the Babylonian.[680] Nebuchadnezzar was indeed a prince of
extraordinary gifts. He proved himself a brave warrior in the great
victory which he gained over the Egyptians at Karchemish, and in the
subsequent campaigns against the Arabians, Syrians, and Egyptians. The
fame of his battles reached the Greeks: we find Hellenic nobles, as
Antimenidas of Lesbos, the brother of the poet Alcæus, in his army.[681]
At Karchemish and in the south of Judah these had an opportunity of
measuring themselves against their countrymen in the service of Necho
and Hophrah. But Nebuchadnezzar did not allow the successes of his arms
to tempt him beyond the limits which he had fixed for himself. He was
not a conqueror in the Oriental sense, pressing onward to unlimited
dominion. With a clear sense of his power, he placed bounds on his
campaigns: as we saw, he refrained from attacking Egypt. His chief care
was the secure foundation and continuance of his kingdom, and he clearly
recognised the conditions which would promote this aim. The object,
which he thus set before himself, he sought to realise with wisdom, with
unwearied effort, and the greatest perseverance. He did much to promote
the welfare of his kingdom; to encourage agriculture and trade; to
improve the communications of Babylon by land and sea. He secured the
strongest protection for his land and metropolis by a magnificent and
well-considered system of fortifications. He must be numbered among the
foremost princes of the ancient East. An engraved stone in the Berlin
Museum presents us with a head; the cuneiform letters round it tell us:
"To Merodach Nabukudurussur, king of Babylon: in his life he prepared
it."[682] It is a portrait in profile, quite different from the only
other relief of a Babylonian king which has come down to us (I. 302);
quite different also from the delineations of the Assyrian kings.
Instead of the tall _kidaris_, and the long curled hair and beard, this
head wears a closing helmet with a low ridge. The hair can be seen
beneath it, but it does not fall on the neck: the face is smooth and
beardless. The lines are round and full, the neck strong. Under the
helmet protrudes the forehead, which slightly recedes; the brows are
closely knit; there is a look of authority in the eye. The nose is
straight and well-formed: the chin is short and round, and slightly
elevated. It is the picture of a strong and even imperious will, a firm
self-conscious power.

Babylon must have suffered severely in the repeated campaigns of Tiglath
Pilesar II., Sargon, Sennacherib, and Assurbanipal, in the struggle for
the possession of the Chaldæan districts, for Bit Yakin and Babylon.
Babylon was besieged and taken by Sennacherib, and severely punished.
The restorations of Esarhaddon were no doubt again destroyed at the
second capture of the city by Assurbanipal. How far Nabopolassar
succeeded in securing not Babylon only and the larger cities, but the
country also from devastation and plunder by the Sacæ, we do not know.
In any case there must everywhere have been deep and severe wounds in
need of healing.

We saw that the produce of the agriculture of Babylon, the fruit of the
field, depended on the irrigation, the system of canals, and the
regulation of the overflow of the Euphrates. Nebuchadnezzar must have
commenced his work by putting in order the dams of the Euphrates, which
it was no easy task to keep up, by providing with water-courses or
cleaning out the canals which had become dry or blocked up.[683] The
great canals of the old kings were still in existence, the canal of
Hammurabi, the Narsares, the Pallakopas, and the connecting canals
between the Euphrates and Tigris above Babylon.[684] Nebuchadnezzar must
have taken measures for their restoration. He increased the number of
the connections between the Euphrates and the Tigris, and made them more
useful by cutting a new canal from the Euphrates to the Tigris, of
sufficient dimensions to carry the largest vessels. This was the Nahr
Malka, _i.e._ the king's trench. Herodotus calls it the largest of the
Babylonian canals. According to Xenophon's statement there were four
canals connecting the Euphrates and the Tigris, one hundred feet in
breadth, and deep enough to carry even corn ships. They were bridged
over, and about four miles from each other. From these were derived the
canals of irrigation, first the large, then the small, and lastly
runnels like those in Greece for watering the fields of millet. The
larger canals of irrigation were so deep that the Greeks with Clearchus
could not cross them without bridges; and for the construction of these
the palms which shadowed the banks of the canals were felled. Clearchus
and Xenophon crossed the two northernmost of the connecting canals in
order to come from the Median wall to Sittace on the Tigris. The first
they crossed by the permanent bridge, the second by a bridge of boats
supported by seven merchantmen. The lining of these canals was
constructed of bricks, united with asphalt-mortar. There still exist
four canals connecting the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Saklawiye is
followed by the Nahr Sersar; further to the south is the Nahr Malka,
which leaves the eastern bank of the Euphrates below Feludsha, in order
to reach the Tigris at the point marked by the ruins of Seleucia--this
is the great canal constructed by Nebuchadnezzar: lastly, immediately
above Babylon, is the Nahr Kutha, named after the city of Kutha. Thus
Nebuchadnezzar completed the old canal system of Babylon; he facilitated
the communication between the two rivers in the upper part of the land,
and increased the irrigation. He also gave attention to the lower land:
between the Narsares and the Pallakopas, which carry away the overflow
of the water of the Euphrates, below Babylon, he made trenches in order
to drain the marsh, and he caused dams to be erected on the sea-coast in
order to keep out the inundations of the sea.[685]

In order to avoid destructive floods at the time of the yearly
inundation, in order to bring about a graduated and regular rise of the
Euphrates, in order to receive the overflow in the years when the
inundation was higher, and apply the water thus stored in the years of
drought,--in a word, in order to have the water of the Euphrates
completely under control, Nebuchadnezzar took in hand, and completed,
one of the most magnificent of hydraulic works. Above Babylon, and the
four canals which connect the Euphrates with the Tigris on the northern
border of Babylonia proper, lay the ancient city of Sippara (I. 257).
Near this, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, was excavated a vast
basin, not inferior to the artificial lake of Amenemha. The circuit of
this basin is said to have been 420 stades (_i.e._ 50 miles); the depth
reached 35 feet. The trenches and dams, which formed this basin, were
cased, on the inclines, with masonry, and the excavated earth was used
for the embankment of the Euphrates. According to the excerpt in
Abydenus, Berosus allowed a circuit of 40 parasangs, _i.e._ 150 miles,
for this basin, with a depth of 20 fathoms, and added that the sluices,
which opened and shut of themselves, according to the level of the water
in the basin of the Euphrates, irrigated the level land. If the circuit
of the basin was really 50 miles, we must suppose that here, as in the
lake of Amenemha, a low-lying strip of land was changed by embankment
into a basin or wide reservoir.[686] With this great undertaking were
connected other hydraulic works erected at Ardericca. At this place
Nebuchadnezzar caused a new bed to be excavated for the Euphrates, with
sharp curves, either to lessen the force of the current, and make
navigation up the current possible, or, which is more probable, because
it was necessary to moderate the flow of the river in order to conduct
the inundation into the basin at Sippara.[687] By means of this basin at
Sippara Nebuchadnezzar really brought the Euphrates into his power. Even
though the excess of the water of the stream might be too much for its
large dimensions in any single year, the canals leading to the Tigris
provided the means of carrying off the excess into that river, and at
the same time it was possible owing to the connections to counteract by
means of the Euphrates the inequality of the water in the lower Tigris.

The regulation of the inundation, of the bed and level of the Euphrates,
and of the level of the Tigris, was not only an assistance to
agriculture, but to trade also, inasmuch as it facilitated the
navigation in both streams. In this way trade received considerable
support, and Nebuchadnezzar also paid attention to it beyond the borders
of the Babylonian land. To his time apparently belongs the foundation of
the Babylonian colony of Gerrha on the Arabian coast of the Persian
Gulf. For the trade of Babylonia with South Arabia and the products of
India which came to South Arabia (I. 305), it was important to avoid the
transport by land and the middle trade of the Arabians, and to obtain
those wares by direct marine trade with Babylonia. The building of the
harbour city of Teredon at the mouth of the Euphrates, 400 miles below
Babylon, which became the chief centre of the trade in Arabian spices,
is, as we are definitely informed, the work of Nebuchadnezzar, and the
Dedanites in whose land lay the colony of Gerrha (the modern Chatif)
opposite the Bahrain islands, at a distance of 300 miles from Teredon,
had been subjugated by Nebuchadnezzar (p. 329). The Gerrhæans brought
the products and the incense of Arabia on board ship to Babylon; from
hence it was sent up the river to Thapsacus, and from thence carried by
land in every direction.[688] In this way the lucrative trade with South
Arabia by the sea-route of the Persian Gulf must have been gained for
Babylon. Hence it appears that Nebuchadnezzar built Teredon and founded
Gerrha with the same object with which the Phenicians--in order to avoid
the middle trade of the Arabians, and the difficulties of the caravan
trade--arranged their navigation from Elath to South Arabia, in the time
of Solomon, Jehoshaphat, and Uzziah of Judah. The Babylonians were
already or subsequently became acquainted with the navigation on the
Persian Gulf. Their voyages extended to the bold headland of the
mountains of Maketa (Cape Mussendom), where it was possible to enter
into direct communication with the Indians.[689] At a later time we hear
only of the Gerrhæans as middle-men in the trade with the Sabæans, while
in the Hebrew Scriptures the Rhegmæans and Dedanites carry on trade with
Sabæa. The Gerrhæans carried the products of Arabia to Babylon by sea;
then they passed not merely up the Euphrates, but also across the desert
in a slanting direction to Syria. It must have been one of the most
beneficial results of the hydraulic works of Nebuchadnezzar that the
Euphrates could be navigated up the stream; and triremes could advance
as far as Thipsach. Trade was greatly facilitated by the fact that the
wares of India and Arabia could not only be brought by water to Babylon,
but could also be conveyed along with the products of Babylonian
industry to that city where the most crowded caravan routes from
Cilicia, Syria, and Phoenicia, touched the Euphrates,[690] while, on
the other hand, the wares brought along these routes from Syria could be
carried in return to Babylon. By the Nahr Malka the ships of heaviest
burden could then pass from the Euphrates into the Tigris. If the cities
of the Phenicians lost their sea trade on the Persian Gulf by their
dependence on Babylon--in case the Egyptians closed that gulf to the
subjects of Nebuchadnezzar--they were compensated by the fact that they
could obtain the products of South Arabia, not only by the caravan route
by Elath, but also in Babylon itself. Moreover, the Arabian tribes on
the Euphrates and in the Syrian desert, the Kedarites and their
neighbours, were subject to Nebuchadnezzar, and the construction of the
roads which led from Babylon through the desert to the West, to Sela and
Elath, which provided a far shorter means of connection with Syria than
the old caravan routes by Damascus and Tadmor to Thipsach, and by Riblah
and Hamath to Karchemish, must certainly be ascribed to
Nebuchadnezzar.[691]

Under the protection of the common head the caravans of the Phenicians
travelled in peace along secure roads from the Syrian Sea to the
Euphrates, the Tigris, the Persian Gulf, and the east coast of the Red
Sea. The impulse which the trade thereby acquired might cause the
supremacy of Nebuchadnezzar to appear to the Phenician cities not only
tolerable, but advantageous. The easier and more secure connection with
Babylon might, at any rate, teach them to forget in part the loss which
their market had suffered by the fall of Nineveh. The increased
productiveness of agriculture, the livelier trade, and consequent growth
of industry, could not but raise the power and resources of the
Babylonian kingdom. The more lively the intercourse between the two
great halves of the kingdom separated by the desert, the more passable
the desert became, the easier was it for troops to march from Babylon to
Gaza, from Harran to Hamath. And if the canals of the Babylonian plain
carried the ships of the Euphrates to the Tigris, and left no field
without irrigation, they at the same time largely increased the means of
defence in the native land.

The numerous invasions which Babylonia had suffered from the Assyrians
must have been held in lively recollection, and the founder of the new
kingdom could not omit to bestow his earnest attention on the mode of
preventing such dangers for the future. They were only possible on the
side of Media. So far as the difference of force in comparison with
Media was not removed by the better frontier, the more homogeneous
population, and the greater productive power in Babylonia, it was
necessary to attempt to remove it by the erection of fortresses in the
land. As the attacks of the Assyrians had taken place from the North,
the attacks of the Medes were also to be expected from that quarter.
Mesopotamia might, in case of necessity, be abandoned, if the native
land were made secure. Babylonia had excellent bulwarks on the East and
West in the Euphrates and the Tigris; in the North the line of canals,
especially the new and broad canal, Nahr Malka, formed a similar
protection. The basin of Sippara was not merely constructed with a view
to the cultivation of the soil and the navigation; it was at the same
time calculated that the supply of water contained in it was sufficient
to change the most northern of these canals into deep watercourses. The
sluices were guarded by the fortress of Sippara.[692] How destructive
this basin would one day be to his metropolis, how it would render vain
the fruit of all his labours, Nebuchadnezzar never dreamed. If every
hostile power in the East and West had to cross a wide river in the face
of the Babylonian army, the two rivers from Sippara downwards could now
be filled by opening the great reservoir and by closing the sluices of
the Pallakopas in such a manner that it became more difficult than ever
to cross them. The same was the case with the canals. But the
difficulties here were not so great, and they did not satisfy
Nebuchadnezzar. In order to strengthen the defence of the northern
border, in order to protect the basin of Sippara, on which depended the
filling of the upper canals and the feeding of the lower course of both
streams, to make more secure the fertile part of Babylonia,
Nebuchadnezzar built a strong wall, extending from the Euphrates to the
Tigris, above the four canals and the fortified Sippara. This
fortification the Greeks call "the Median wall." It was, in fact,
intended to meet the attacks of the Medes. Had Nebuchadnezzar chosen for
the line of the wall the point at which the two rivers most nearly
approach each other, the length of it would have been little more than
25 miles; but as Sippara and all the land of the canals had to be
protected, the wall must have been placed farther to the north. It
appears to have left the Euphrates at Ssifeira below the modern
Feludsha, and, extending in a north-easterly direction, it reached the
Tigris at some distance above the modern Bagdad. The length was thus
from 60 to 75 miles. The wall was constructed of burnt bricks joined
together by mortar of asphalt; according to Xenophon,[693] who saw
parts of it still standing, the breadth was 20 feet and the height 100
feet. The native land, the centre of the kingdom, was thus protected;
and even when it was lost, in spite of the protection of the two
streams, the canals, and the long wall, the metropolis was intended to
present impregnable fortresses to the enemy.

Babylon had no doubt suffered the most severe wounds in all the land of
Chaldæa through the capture by Assurbanipal. Berosus says:
"Nebuchadnezzar restored the old city, and also built a new one, and
that the besieger might not enter the city by averting the stream, he
surrounded the inner city as well as the outer with three walls, one of
burnt bricks, the other two of unburnt bricks and bitumen, and thus he
fortified it in a very striking manner, and adorned the gates with great
splendour."[694] Herodotus, who saw the city more than one hundred years
after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, when it had been four times captured
by Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, describes it thus: "The city is situated
in a wide plain, and forms a square of 120 stades on each side, so that
the whole circuit reaches 480 stades. It is divided into two parts, and
the river Euphrates flows through the middle. It is surrounded by a
broad and deep trench, which is always filled with water. The soil taken
from this trench was made into bricks, and burnt; and these bricks were
applied, first to lining the trench and then to building the wall. The
wall is 50 Babylonian cubits in thickness and 200 cubits in height. The
bricks are held together by bitumen-mortar, and at every thirtieth
course they are separated by a layer of reeds. On the wall are houses of
a single chamber, built on either side opposite each other, and yet
sufficient space is left between them for a chariot and four to pass. In
the wall are one hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and
side-posts. The wall has wings which run along the river on either side,
and the banks are cased with masonry of burnt bricks. The city itself is
filled with houses of three and four stories, through which are straight
streets--both those which lead to the river and the rest. Those which
run down to the river have each a brazen gate in the masonry on the
river, through which you pass on steps of burnt brick into the
water.[695] And within this wall, which is as it were the corslet of the
city, is another wall, not much inferior in strength to the other, but
less in extent. Of the two parts of the city the centre of the one is
occupied by the royal citadel, the centre of the other by the temple of
Belus with the gates of brass."[696] In another passage Herodotus gives
the names of some of the gates of Babylon; he mentions the gate of
Belus, the gate of Semiramis, the gate of Ninus, the gate of the
Chaldæans, and the gate of the Cissians.

That gates in Babylon could not be named after Ninus and Semiramis,
_i.e._ after fictitious rulers, and hardly after the Chaldæans, needs no
proof in detail. But the narrative of Herodotus, in which these names
are found, goes back in other respects to Medo-Persian poems, which, as
we already found, could tell of Ninus and Semiramis. The Babylonians
were better acquainted with the history of Assyria. It is more striking
that in the description of the city Herodotus speaks of the walls and
gates of Babylon as if they were uninjured; and yet, some twenty years
after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus took Babylon by storm; and
scarcely twenty years afterwards Darius overcame the city, after a siege
which lasted nearly two years. A new rebellion quickly followed, to be
crushed by a third capture of the city; and even after this a new rising
of the Babylonians was again repressed by Xerxes. After this series of
struggles the walls and gates could not have remained uninjured, and
Herodotus himself tells us that Darius destroyed the gates after the
long siege.[697] Were Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes likely to allow the
Babylonians, after each capture of the city, to restore the walls in
which the city trusted?--were they not rather likely to take care that
after each capture long portions of the wall should be destroyed, and so
remain?

Next to Herodotus in point of time, Xenophon and Ctesias are our
informants about Babylon. Xenophon did not see the city; he only came
within 45 miles of it. He contents himself with remarking that Babylon,
the wealthiest city in Asia, was surrounded by strong and lofty walls;
that the Euphrates flowed through it; that it contained a palace and
citadels, that the doors of the houses were made of palm-wood.[698]
Ctesias, who had been in Babylon, gives to the wall of the city,
"through which the Euphrates flows," a circuit of 360 stades (45 miles).
The wall, built of burnt brick and bitumen, broken by numerous large
towers, was 50 fathoms in height; and on either bank of the river ran a
protecting wall, equal in strength to the city wall. The length of
these walls was about 160 stades. His description of the two royal
citadels, "both of which lay on the river," one on the west side, the
other on the east--the former was surrounded by a triple wall, and had a
circuit of 60 stades, while the other on the east side was only half the
size--his description of the golden statues of gods in the temple of
Belus, and the golden altar and furniture, is already known to us (I.
293). About half a century after Ctesias, Cleitarchus and the companions
of Alexander of Macedon inform us that the wall of Babylon had a circuit
of 365 stades; the height they give at 50 cubits; the width allowed
ample room for two wagons to pass each other. Two hundred and fifty
towers rose above the wall, of a corresponding height and thickness.
Between the wall and the houses was left a clear space of two
plethra.[699] That the number of towers was so small in comparison with
the circuit of the wall is no reason for wonder--so Diodorus or his
authority adds--for the city was surrounded by a wide belt of marshes,
and it did not appear to be necessary to build towers where the marshes
afforded sufficient protection.[700]

The accounts which have been preserved of the stay of Alexander of
Macedon in Babylon also prove the existence of two royal citadels, one
on each bank of the Euphrates. In the last days of his life Alexander
lived in the king's palace, from which the house of Bagoas, with whom on
one occasion he banqueted, was distant ten stades.[701] From the
banquet-hall in this palace, where he had given his commands to his
generals, and rested till the dusk of the evening, he was carried in a
litter to the river, and conducted on board ship to the park on the
other side of the river, where he bathed and rested. After spending
three days there in his chamber--on the first day he played at dice with
Medius; on the second he listened to the account of Nearchus about the
voyage from the Indus through the great sea; on the third he bade his
generals enter to receive instructions for setting out in three days--he
caused himself to be brought into the house near "the large bath;" he
gave orders for the generals to keep watch in the portico, and the
Chiliarchs and the Pentacosiarchs before the doors. When more seriously
ill he was conveyed from the garden into the more distant royal palace,
where the generals entered, and the soldiers forced their way into his
presence.[702]

Leaving out of sight what may have remained, and did remain uninjured,
of the outer walls and towers of the city, when Herodotus and Ctesias
were in Babylon, and when the Macedonians of Alexander saw the city, it
is clear that in the fifth and fourth century B.C. so much remained
standing that the line of the trenches and the wall could be clearly
traced. If the circuit of 365 stades, given by Cleitarchus, is clearly a
fiction derived from the number of days in the Babylonian year, we shall
still be able to give the preference to the 360 stades of Ctesias over
the 480 stades of Herodotus, though Aristotle remarks, "Babylon reached
the extent of a nation, not of a city."[703] Since, as Ctesias also
tells us, the two walls on the Euphrates were nearly 160 stades in
length, the wall on each bank would be nearly 80 stades in length,
_i.e._ about 10 miles. Supposing that the Euphrates passed
diametrically through the city, which was not the case, the city wall,
if we also suppose that the city, as Herodotus says, was an exact
square, would at the utmost have a circuit of 320 stades, _i.e._ of
about 40 miles. We cannot therefore avoid the conclusion that in the 480
stades of Herodotus the 160 stades of the two walls on the river were
included; if he inquired about the total length of the city walls the
answer may very well have included the walls by the river.

Berosus told us above that Nebuchadnezzar surrounded the old city as
well as the new, the inner city as well as the outer, with a triple
wall. By the outer city we must understand the new city, which,
according to Berosus, Nebuchadnezzar built. The old city lay, like the
old citadel (I. 298), on the west bank of the Euphrates. Of this old
citadel the remains of a square keep on the river, now called Abu
Ghozeilat, are still in existence. Herodotus, and the Greek authorities
after him, know nothing of an old and a new city, they only knew a city
divided into two parts by the Euphrates. Herodotus does not speak of
three walls but only of two, an outer and an inner wall, "hardly
inferior in strength to the other, but of less extent," (p. 369). If to
these two walls of Herodotus we reckon the walls which enclosed the
fortresses on each side of the Euphrates, Herodotus would be in
agreement with Berosus. But Ctesias and the companions of Alexander know
of one wall only, enclosing Babylon. It would be very remarkable that
within half a century or even a century after the time of Herodotus, no
trace was left of the two inner walls mentioned by him. Herodotus allows
for the outer wall a height of 200 cubits, _i.e._ of 300 feet, and a
breadth of 75 feet: Ctesias mentions the same height, (50 fathoms).
Moreover, Ctesias allows a similar height for the second wall of the old
citadel, and a height of 70 fathoms for the towers; the third wall was
higher still (I. 298). The companions of Alexander allow a height of
only 50 cubits for the walls of Babylon. The walls of the island city of
Tyre, on the side turned towards the mainland, were 150 feet in height.
Xenophon saw strips of wall 150 feet in height still standing on the
site of ancient Nineveh. We saw above that the Median wall of
Nebuchadnezzar, the first line of defence for the land, was 100 feet in
height, and 20 feet in breadth; hence we may conclude that the walls of
Babylon must certainly have been stronger and higher. A Hebrew
contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar speaks emphatically of the "broad walls,"
"the lofty gates" of Babylon; he tells us that "Babylon reached to the
heavens, and the height of the fortress none could climb."[704] As
neither Cyrus nor Darius with all their siege material could make any
impression on the walls of Babylon; as Nebuchadnezzar would certainly
make the walls of Babylon stronger than the walls of Chalah and Nineveh,
so that neither battering-rams nor besieging-towers could injure them,
neither arrows nor scaling-ladders could over-top them, we have good
ground for assuming that Nebuchadnezzar strengthened the wall already in
existence, and raised it to a height of 200 feet, (Pliny gives it a
height of more than 200 feet);[705] that the towers rose to 300 feet. It
was the standing walls of towers of this height which caused Herodotus
and Ctesias to believe that the wall was once of the same height
throughout. A height of 200 feet presupposes a corresponding breadth of
about 40 feet, which leaves for the gangway behind the towers breadth
sufficient for a chariot and four horses, or for two wagons of burden.

We may maintain the assertion of Berosus, that it was Nebuchadnezzar who
added a new city on the eastern bank of the Euphrates to the old city on
the western bank, so that the Euphrates henceforth flowed through the
city. We have already seen that the great temple of Bel Merodach, Bit
Saggatu, the tower of Babel, was on the eastern bank of the Euphrates,
opposite to the old city and the citadel of the ancient kings, who ruled
over Babylon before the times of the Assyrian dominion; we recognised
the remains of it in the most northern heap of the ruins of Babylon on
that bank of the river, the heap of broken bricks now called Babil. In
the ruins we can recognise the traces of a square structure, the sides
of which are directed to the four quarters of the sky. Its extent
reaches 1500 or 1600 feet; the ruins now rise 140 feet above the level
of the Euphrates. Herodotus allows a stadium (600 feet) for each side of
the tower; the outer wall with the gates of brass was two stades on each
side.[706] Berosus tells us: "Nebuchadnezzar built a second palace
beside the palace of his father, which abutted upon it. To describe its
height and splendour would be superfluous: it was large and quite
extraordinary."[707] Since the bricks of a ruin-heap to the south of the
remains of the tower of Belus, on the east bank of the Euphrates, now
called El Kasr--bricks which are twelve inches long and as many broad,
and three inches in thickness--bear on the under side the stamp of
Nebuchadnezzar, we are certain that the restorers of the kingdom,
Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar, built their residences on this side of
the Euphrates, opposite to the palace of the ancient kings. It is these
which Ctesias has described to us as the smaller royal citadel, lying
on the eastern bank, and enclosed by a wall of 30 stades in length. He
dwells on the statues of brass to be found here, and the descriptions of
battles and hunting-scenes (I. 298). So far as the fragments allow us to
see, the palaces of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar formed a square
structure, which, 1600 feet in length, ran from north to south, close
along the bank of the river: from the bank towards the east the breadth
of the ruins is 1200 feet. The remains still rise about 70 feet above
the river. Slabs of stone discovered in these ruins bear the
inscription: "Great palace of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babel, son of
Nabopolassar, king of Babel, the worshipper of Nebo and Merodach his
lords."[708] Among tiles and bricks, yellow and white, we find here a
number of glazed tiles, with brightly-coloured remains of pictures in
relief, of horses' hoofs, and lions' paws, of parts of the human body,
curled beards, and long hair, which prove that the walls of the palace
or the sides of the rooms were adorned with reliefs, in mosaic, of
hunting-scenes and battles. Like Assyrian plastic work, these remains
are heavy, and mostly exaggerated in the modelling. The lion of granite,
already mentioned, (I. 302) was discovered in the ruin-heap of Kasr.

In this citadel, so Berosus informs us, "Nebuchadnezzar erected
platforms on stone pillars, which he caused to have the appearance of
mountains, inasmuch as he so arranged them that they were planted with
trees of every kind. This hanging garden (_paradisus_), as it was
called, he built to please his wife, who had been brought up in the
Median district, and wished to have a scene like her own home."[709]
Nebuchadnezzar might gladly pay honour to Amyite, the daughter of
Cyaxares, whose hand had been the seal of the league between Media and
Babylonia against Assyria. Abydenus narrates, after Berosus, that
"Nebuchadnezzar adorned the royal citadel with trees, and called the
work the hanging gardens."[710] Diodorus also describes what he too
calls the _paradisus_, by the name in use for such things in Iran: "To
please a Persian lady these gardens were intended to imitate the
mountain meadows and the tree-gardens of her land." "The _paradisus_" so
we are told in Diodorus, "was 400 feet on every side; it had an ascent
like a mountain, and stories, one over the other, so that it looked like
a theatre. Under the ascent were vaults, which bore the weight of the
garden, in moderate height one over the other. The highest vault, which
supported the highest layer of the garden, was 50 cubits in height, so
that it was of an equal height with the towers of the outer wall (of the
citadel). The walls of the pleasure-garden were artificially
strengthened; they were 22 feet in width; the passages were 10 feet in
width: the caps of the vaults were covered with stone slabs of 16 feet
in length and 4 feet in breadth. On these were layers of reeds, with a
large amount of bitumen, and upon this a double layer of burnt tiles
united with gypsum; on this followed a third layer of plates of lead,
that the moisture of the earth might not penetrate into the masonry. On
the lead plates was then placed as much earth as was sufficient for the
roots of the largest trees. This earth was then smoothed and planted
with trees of every kind, which could give pleasure by their size and
grace. In the vaults were various objects of the royal household
economy; one of the uppermost contained the machines by which the water
was raised through pipes from the river in such a manner that no one
could observe it from the outside."[711] Strabo gives the following
description: "The garden lies on the river. It is a square plantation,
400 feet on every side. The garden is supported by vaults which rest on
arches, one of which is supported on another by means of cube-shaped
pillars. The pillars are hollow and filled with earth, so that they can
receive the roots of the largest trees. The vaults and arches are built
of burnt tiles and bitumen. The uppermost story has an ascent like a
stair-case, and abutting on this are pumping-works by which the persons
appointed for the office continually raise water from the Euphrates into
the garden."[712] This hanging garden is the _paradisus_ into which
Alexander was brought from the old citadel on the other side of the
river. We saw above that one side of the garden adjoined the great bath
and the other the palace, _i.e._ the palace of Nabopolassar and
Nebuchadnezzar. In the third and most southern heap of ruins in Babylon,
on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, now called Amran ibn Ali, modern
explorers believe that they have discovered the site of the hanging
gardens which rose from the Euphrates. The bricks of the ruins bear the
name of Nebuchadnezzar, but one has been found among them bearing the
name of Esarhaddon of Asshur. We saw that Esarhaddon built much in
Babylon, but hardly on this site; the inscription of the brick speaks of
buildings at Bit Saggatu, but the brick itself has no doubt been brought
to this site from some other place owing to the changes which Babylon
underwent after the reign of Esarhaddon. According to the position of
these ruins the buildings of which they are the remains formed an
irregular square; the side on the river measures more than 1800 feet in
length: the eastern side is about 1100 feet, the depth about 1300 feet.
If this is really the site of the terrace gardens, the other ruins may
be the remnants of the great bathing-house, of which we heard above (p.
372). The corpses found in the vaults of these ruins, of which the
coffins are formed by bricks placed together, belong to the period of
the rule of the Parthians over Babylon.[713]

Round the new citadel of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar on the eastern
bank, round the old, most sacred temple of the city, the temple of
Merodach, rising on a broad basis in seven receding stories (I. 296),
which Nebuchadnezzar was the first to complete, as we shall soon see,
_i.e._ to raise it to its full height of about 600 feet--round these
great buildings, on the same side of the river, the new city must have
arisen, which, according to the statement of Berosus, Nebuchadnezzar
added to the ancient Babylon. As this new city and its fortification
date from the time of Nebuchadnezzar, the permanent bridge over the
Euphrates must also be the work of that king. This bridge Herodotus
ascribes to Nitocris, queen of Babylon--by whom is meant Amyite, the
consort of Nebuchadnezzar--while Ctesias represents it as being built by
Semiramis, on the ground of the Medo-Persian songs which were inclined
to ascribe everything to the founders of the extinct Assyria, but very
little to the still existing Babylon.[714] Before there was a palace and
city and city wall on the eastern bank, a permanent bridge was not
merely not required and useless; it would have been a dangerous piece of
folly for the city, which would simply have facilitated the approach to
an enemy coming from the east. According to the description of the
bridge which Diodorus has borrowed from Ctesias it crossed the
Euphrates between the two citadels, "which lay on the river in order to
overlook the whole city, and formed as it were the keys of the most
important parts of it." It was of the length of five stades, and was
supported by stone pillars, which stood at a distance of twelve feet
from each other, and rested on an artificial foundation in the bed of
the river. The stones of the pillars, in order to hold them together,
were secured with clamps of iron, and the joints were filled up with
lead. On the side which faced the stream the pillars formed sharp but
rounded angles, which gradually extended to the width of the pillar, in
order that the violence of the stream might be broken, and the rounded
edge might moderate its force. The bed on the pillars was 30 feet in
breadth and consisted of huge palm trunks and beams of cedar and
cypress.[715] Herodotus says: "Any one who wished to cross from one side
to the other had to go by ship. But as this was found to be troublesome,
in my opinion, a remedy was discovered. The Euphrates was dried up by
diverting all the water into the excavated basin; and nearly in the
middle of the city a bridge was built of stones, which were clamped
together with iron and lead, and at the same time the banks of the river
so far as it flows through the city were cased with burnt bricks, and
the descents from the small gates to the river were built up with
similar bricks. In the day-time the beams of the bridge were let down so
that the Babylonians could cross over; at night they were drawn
up."[716]

Owing to the breadth and size of the stream, and the violence of the
current at the time of the inundation, the building of a permanent
bridge was no easy task. Strabo puts the breadth of the Euphrates at
Babylon at 600 feet, Xenophon who saw the river some miles above Babylon
puts it at twice that breadth.[717] Diodorus has already told us that
the bridge was five stades, _i.e._ 3000 feet, long. This statement may
be exaggerated, yet owing to the heavy flood at the time of the
inundation, however this might be moderated by the basin at Sippara, the
bridge must have been raised so high, the buttresses and shore walls
must have been thrown so far back, that a considerably increased body of
water could pass down without undermining the casings and the shore
walls. That the new basin at Sippara was used in order to facilitate the
building of the bridge, and erection of the shore walls, in order to
reduce as much as possible the amount of water in the stream while the
building was going on, as Herodotus tells us, is a statement we have no
reason to contest. In his time the bridge was still standing: the
companions of Alexander make no mention of it.

Nebuchadnezzar's buildings at Babylon were intended in the first
instance for the protection of the city. Sennacherib and Assurbanipal
had taken Babylon; such a misfortune was never to befall the city again.
Nineveh and Chalah had been situated on one side only of the Tigris:
Babylon must be situated on both sides of the Euphrates. The city became
stronger by being situated on both sides of the river. The investment
would be a matter of difficulty, for the investing army had to be
divided, and these halves were separated by the Euphrates, so that they
could with difficulty keep up communications, still less could they
render mutual assistance. The investment would become more difficult
still if as wide a circuit as possible were given to the city wall. It
was not the multitude of inhabitants that required a wall of nearly 40
miles in length--there is here no ground for attributing to the city of
Babylon a much larger population than that of Nineveh, or assuming it to
be more than 500,000--the object was to make a blockade difficult or
impossible for an enemy. An outer wall of 40 miles is scarcely greater
in extent than the outer wall of Paris, which was built in the fourth
century of our era, and what the states of the most ancient civilisation
on the Nile, the Euphrates, and Tigris could do in the way of vast
buildings, is shown to us in numerous examples, and remains on an
astonishing scale. By thus extending the city walls of Babylon strips of
arable and pasture land were obtained, which supplemented the stores of
the city, and could support the cattle required in a time of siege; an
open space was gained for the population of the land, who would fly into
the walls of Babylon at the approach of an enemy. Besides, the walls of
Babylon must be in a position to receive the Babylonian army in the
event of a defeat. If the line of the Euphrates or the Tigris could not
be held in a war, if the Median wall and the four lines of the canals
behind it between the Tigris and Euphrates were abandoned, if the army
were forced behind all these or defeated in open field, it must be sure
of finding certain protection behind the walls of the main city. When
rested in this great open space, and again thoroughly armed, it could
not only hold the walls with ease, for they, as we have seen, were so
high and strong, that they almost defended themselves; it could sally
forth for new encounters in the open field. If the enemy divided his
forces in order to invest the city, the army of Babylon could attack
either of these halves with the whole force, and thus had the best
prospect of a successful battle. It certainly was not the furtherance
of intercourse which primarily induced Nebuchadnezzar to build the
permanent bridge; a bridge such as the enemy could not destroy by
putting beams or heavily laden vessels into the river above the city
secured for the army when it had retired into the city the speediest
means of passing from bank to bank, and put it in a position to make a
sudden onset on the right or left bank. Even if the worst happened, and
the enemy succeeded in gaining possession of the city on the western or
eastern bank, the bed of the bridge was easily thrown off, and the
defence of the part of the city which was still uncaptured was scarcely
rendered at all more difficult by the pillars. The fixing of the
foundations of the shore walls which secured the new eastern as well as
the old western part of the city against attempts of the enemy on
vessels, and from the river, and which was intended to render possible
the defence of each part of the city after the loss of the other, would
be very difficult: the fixing of the foundations of the pillars of the
bridge would be more difficult still, and the bridge could not be
rendered secure against the force of the high flood without the basin of
Sippara. We see how the buildings of Nebuchadnezzar hang together; they
all spring from one conception, from one connected system.

To this extent do the accounts of Western authors allow us to survey and
criticise the buildings of Nebuchadnezzar. From his own inscriptions we
gain some further explanations. The cylinder Rich informs us that
Nebuchadnezzar restored a watercourse to the east of Babylon, of which
the dams had fallen down, and the outlet was stopped up; that he dug a
canal in honour of Merodach in the neighbourhood of Babylon.[718] On a
brick in his buildings at Babylon Nebuchadnezzar says: "I am
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, restorer of Bit Saggatu, and Bit Zida
(_i.e._ of the temple of Merodach at Babylon, and of Nebo at Borsippa),
son of Nabopolassar I. I have built a palace for the abode of my kingdom
in this city of Babel, which is situated in the land of Babel. I have
laid its foundations deep below the waters of the Euphrates, and written
the memorial thereof on cylinders. With thy help, O Merodach, god of
gods, I have built this palace in the midst of Babylon. Come hither to
dwell, increase the number of the births, and through me let the people
of Babylon be victorious down to the latest days."[719] On another brick
we are told: "Nabopolassar, the father who begot me, built the great
walls of Babylon; he caused the trenches to be cut, and the sides
thereof to be firmly covered with bricks and bitumen."[720] On the other
hand, a cylinder discovered at Babylon tells us: "I am Nebuchadnezzar,
king of Babylon, the glorious prince. I have built Imgur Bel and Nivit
Bel, the great walls which surround Babylon, upon their lines. I have
busily constructed the trenches, cased with bricks and bitumen. I have
made straight the streets of Babylon. I have set up brazen gates in the
great porticoes, and I have widened the streets of Babylon. I have taken
forethought to protect Babylon and Bit Saggatu. Merodach, mighty prince,
strengthen the work of my hands for glory, increase for the highest
honour the course of my days, and my posterity, O lord of lords."[721]
More detailed, and, at the same time, more definite, is the information
given on the cylinder Philipps; the king has completed the wall round
the old city, and built the wall round the new city on the east, and
then the remaining works of Nebuchadnezzar are enumerated. "I am
Nebuchadnezzar, king of justice, shepherd of the nations, leader of men,
director of the worship of the gods Bel, Dagon, Samas, and Merodach. I
am he who carries out their counsels. Merodach the great lord has raised
me to the dominion over the nations. I demeaned myself with humility
before the god who created me. Babylon is the shrine of the god
Merodach. I have completed Imgur Bel, the great wall. I have erected
great gates and covered their portals with brass. I have cut great
trenches and cased their sides with bricks and bitumen. On the height of
the walls I have erected small towers. In order to protect Bit Saggatu
effectually, and defend it against the enemy, and against attacks which
might be directed against imperishable Babylon, I have built a second
wall, at the extreme end of Babylon, the wall of the rising sun, which
no king had built before me. This wall I caused to be erected to protect
the products of the plain of Babylon, and to provide a refuge for the
land of Sumir and Accad. I have founded, I have completed Bit Zida, the
eternal house at Borsippa. The posts of the shrine of the god Nebo I
have covered with gold. There are enthroned Nebo and Nana. At Sippara I
have founded and built the temple of the day, in honour of the gods
Samas and Bin, my lords. At Larsam (Senkereh), I have founded and built
the temple of the day, in honour of the gods Samas and Bin. In honour of
the god Sin, who exalts my kingdom, I have built a temple at Ur
(Mugheir, I. 258). At Nipur I have founded and built a temple in honour
of Anu (?), my lord. The glorious treasures of Istar of Arak (Erech),
the supreme lady of Arak, I have again brought into their place in the
city of Arak. I have behaved myself as a pious man towards Bit Saggatu
and Bit Zida. I have exalted the splendour of Merodach and Nebo, my
lords: I have brought to them the booty which I owed to them. I have
established the seat of power in Babylon; I have founded and built it in
Babylon. I have brought great cedars from the summits of Lebanon, to
make beams for it. I have caused an enclosure to be built up, and in the
midst I have adorned the abode of my kingdom."[722]

This cylinder proves that Nebuchadnezzar's buildings were not confined
to Babylon. He claims to have founded Bit Zida, _i.e._ the temple of
Nebo at Borsippa, one of the three chief temples of Babylonia (I. 272);
but this temple had been in existence many centuries before his time.
Hence founding and building can here mean no more than restoring and
completing: just as elsewhere Nebuchadnezzar constantly calls himself
the restorer of Bit Zida and Bit Saggatu. We found already that beside
the temple of Nebo at Borsippa, Nebuchadnezzar had restored and
completed another temple in that city. This was the tower of Borsippa,
the temple of the seven lamps, _i.e._ of the seven planets, of the seven
stories of which four can still be traced in the great ruins of Birs
Nimrud, some miles to the south-west of the ruin-heaps of Babylon (I.
291). In the same way it is renovations and restorations of the temples
of the ancient princes of Ur, Erech, and Nipur, which are meant when
Nebuchadnezzar claims to have founded and built temples at Sippara and
Senkereh to Samas and Bin, at Ur to Sin, and at Nipur to Anu.

In the very comprehensive inscription, preserved on a stone of black
basalt found at Babylon--a stone more than three feet in height and
breadth--Nebuchadnezzar begins with stating that Merodach and Nebo, the
gods which he, like his father and his descendants and successors,
worshipped most zealously, had given him the dominion. He points out the
extent of his kingdom, speaks of his victories and his buildings, and
then passes on to the temples which he has built. After this come the
fortresses, the buildings at Bit Saggatu and at Bit Zida: the building
of the palace completes the list. The chief passages, so far as they are
understood with any certainty, are as follows: "I am Nebuchadnezzar,
king of Babylon, great, mighty, submissive to Merodach, supreme Patis
(II. 31), suppliant of Nebo, day and night taking thought for the
restoration of Bit Saggatu and Bit Zida, who increase the glory of
Babylon and Borsippa, the eldest son of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon:
I. The god Bel created me, and the god Merodach placed the germ of my
life in my mother. I have restored the shrines of the supreme deity,
extended the worship of the god, and spread abroad the worship of the
high divinity of Nebo. Merodach, the great god, has raised my head to
the dignity of king; he has given me the dominion over the hosts of men.
Nebo, who sits on the throne in heaven and upon the earth, has put into
my hands the sceptre of justice. The lands from the upper to the lower
sea (_i.e._, no doubt, from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean) I
have kept in obedience; the impassable roads I have made passable. The
evil I have punished. I have discovered the plans of the enemies of the
land, and made many prisoners: rich booty of silver, gold, and precious
metals, costly things in abundance, I have collected in Babylon. Bit
Saggatu, the great temple of the might of Merodach, I restored and
covered with gold, so that it shone like the day: I have dedicated an
altar to the god Ilu (El). The largest trees from the tops of Lebanon I
brought down for the portico of Merodach. I have been able to complete
Bit Saggatu; to obtain this end I invoked the king of the gods, the lord
of lords. Bit Zida I have set up, and covered the shrine of Nebo with
gold. I have restored the temple of the seven lamps at Borsippa (I.
291). In the midst of Babylon I have erected a great temple in honour of
Bilit, the supreme lady, the mother, who created me; I have built a
temple in Babylon to Nebo, who has given me the sceptre of justice, to
rule the nations." Nebuchadnezzar then enumerates the rest of the gods
to whom he has built temples at Babylon; the moon-god Sin; Bin, who
gives fruitfulness to his land; the great goddess Nana; and, finally,
the lady of Bit Ana. At Borsippa he also built temples to the great
goddess Nana, and to Bin; he erected a shrine in Bit Zida to Sin. "Imgur
Bel and Nivit Bel, the two great walls of Babylon, Nabopolassar, king of
Babylon, the father who begot me, had commenced, but he had not
completed their beauty. The outer trenches he excavated, and enclosed
them with bricks and bitumen, and the banks of the river Euphrates he
cased with bricks: but he did not complete this and other works. I, his
eldest son, the chosen of his heart, have completed Imgur Bel and Nivit
Bel, the great walls of Babylon." Nebuchadnezzar further informs us that
he set up two mighty casing walls, and united them with the trenches of
his father; that he enclosed the water of Bursabu with walls for the
inhabitants of Babylon, and carried the line of these walls to Imgur Bel
and Nivit Bel. Then he mentions the building of great gates in the wall
Imgur Bel and their adornment; then observes that he measured a circuit
of 4000 _Ammat gagar_ (land-cubits), and mentions the building of the
mighty wall of the rising sun, _i.e._ the outer wall of the new city on
the eastern bank: this wall he surrounded with water: thus had he
strengthened the city and protected the land of Babylon. Next follows an
account of two trenches and fortifications, which he erected, in order
to render more difficult the attack of the enemy on the wall of Imgur
Bel 490 _Ammat_ in length.[723] Finally, Nebuchadnezzar tells us that he
founded the Tabisubur-su, _i.e._ the outer wall of Borsippa, and
excavated the trenches. "Bit Saggatu and Bit Zida, I made to shine as
the sun, the temples of the great gods I made to shine as the day.
Merodach, who raised me to dominion, and Nebo, who entrusted me with
dominion,--their dwellings have I exalted at Babylon and Borsippa.
Nabopolassar, the father who begot me, had begun to build a palace of
bricks. I laid the foundations, and made use of great beams of
cedar-wood, and collected treasures here. In Babylon alone, and in no
other city, I exalted the abode of my dominion." "For the admiration of
mankind I set up this house; the fear of the power and the presence of
my kingdom surround its walls. With thy help, Merodach, sublime god, I
have erected this dwelling. May I receive in it the rich tribute of the
kings of all lands of the world, from the West to the East. May the
enemy never triumph, and may men (?) of Babylon reign here for my sake
down to the most distant days."[724]

In a reign of forty-three years, of which the first three decades,
though not each year of them, were occupied by the Egyptian, Arabian,
and Syrian wars, Nebuchadnezzar succeeded in restoring almost entirely
the buildings of the old kings of Babylon, the ancient temples of the
land. In Babylon he completed the great temple of Merodach, and built
temples there to Bilit, Nebo, Sin, Bin, and Nana. Four cylinders concur
in mentioning that he also built a temple there to the goddess
Zarpanit.[725] He adorned the temples of Babylon, as Berosus tells us,
and the inscriptions confirm his account, in a costly manner with the
booty of his victories.[726] It is certainly no exaggeration if the
Hebrews speak of Babylon as "the beauty of the kingdoms, the pride and
glory of the Chaldæans."[727] From the temple tower of Merodach now
completed, the lofty signal of the city, the eye must have ranged far
over the surrounding walls to the palm groves,[728] the canals and
corn-fields. From the towers of the new citadel, the terrace of the
hanging gardens, it must have been possible to survey the city with all
its temples, the broad mirror of the Euphrates, the busy life in the
streets and on the bridge. Here, without doubt, Nebuchadnezzar might
have uttered the saying which a Hebrew puts in his mouth: "This is
Babylon the great, which I have built for myself as a royal habitation,
as a sign of my glory."

It was not the metropolis only which was restored and exalted to greater
splendour than before; the rest of the cities were not forgotten. At
Borsippa Nebuchadnezzar completed the great temple of Nebo, restored and
completed the temple of the seven planets (of Birs Nimrud), and also
built temples to Nana and Bin. At Sippara he built a temple to the gods
Samas and Bin; the same gods, as he assures us, received a temple at
Senkereh; and this is confirmed by a cylinder discovered there: he
restored the temple of the moon-god at Ur, as he tells us, and the
bricks of Ur confirm his statement;[729] Istar of Erech received back
her treasures, and the god Anu received a temple at Nipur. More
extensive than the temples are the works of fortification which he
erected on a magnificent and well-considered system, the Median wall,
and the walls of Babylon itself. We saw how closely these fortifications
were connected with his great hydraulic works for the regulation of the
inundation, for the connection of the Euphrates and the Tigris, for the
drainage of the land at the mouth of the Euphrates. The same care which
he showed in these connections by water, and in planting those harbours
on the Persian Gulf, for the advancement of trade and intercourse, he
also showed in making roads by land. He laid almost indestructible
foundations for the agriculture of Babylonia, the welfare of the native
land. After a triple subjection of Babylonia the Achæmenid kings could
still collect 1000 talents (more than £300,000) in land-tax from the
country; and impose on it for four months in the year the maintenance of
the king's table in addition to the support of the satrap, his court,
his officers, and the garrisons. The value of the products required each
day for this table was rated at from 30 to 40 talents. The Babylonians
preserved the most grateful memory of Nebuchadnezzar. Even after the
fall of the kingdom the recurrence of his name was enough to bring them
twice into arms against the Persian dominion.

The buildings begun by Nebuchadnezzar were not all finished when he
died, in the year 561 B.C. None of his successors came near him in
military skill, in circumspection and enterprise. The active acquisition
and fortification of the empire were followed by supine enjoyment. This
was quickly succeeded by neglect of government and obedience,
conspiracies of relations and court officers. Evilmerodach, the son of
Nebuchadnezzar, reigned, according to Berosus, with caprice and want of
intelligence.[730] Towards Jechoniah of Judah, the son of Josiah, whom
Nebuchadnezzar had carried captive thirty-six years previously to
Babylon--he had only sat on the throne three months--Evilmerodach showed
kindness. He released him from his long imprisonment, invited him to his
table, and treated him like the other conquered princes, for whom
Babylon was a compulsory place of residence.[731] After a reign of two
years the son of the great king came to an end by assassination. It was
the husband of his sister, his brother-in-law, Neriglissar, who removed
him out of his way (559 B.C.). In the buttresses on the Euphrates at
Babylon we find bricks which show that walls on the river commenced by
Nabopolassar, and continued but not completed by Nebuchadnezzar, were
carried on by Neriglissar. The stamp of the bricks runs thus:
"Neriglissar, king of Babylon, maintainer of Bit Saggatu and Bit
Zida."[732] On a cylinder found at Babylon, Neriglissar calls himself
son of Bel-labar-iskun, and speaks of his buildings at Bit Saggatu, of a
water-basin "of the rising sun," of the erection of moats round the
royal citadel.[733] Neriglissar died after sitting on the throne for
four years: the son whom he left behind, Labaessoarach by name, was
still a boy. But the great kingdom of the Medes had already succumbed to
the Persians, and Babylonia was in need of a man. The chiefs of the
court conspired together; Labaessoarach was murdered after bearing the
title of king for nine months; and the throne was conferred by the
common resolution of the conspirators on one of themselves, by name
Nabonetus (555 B.C.).[734]

Berosus tells us that Nabonetus (Nabunahid) built the walls of Babylon
on the river of burnt bricks and bitumen. A number of these bricks,
found in the remains of the bulwarks, confirm the statement: Nabonetus
as a fact completed the walls of the river. Red or gray, and entirely
covered with bitumen, they display the stamp: "Nabunahid, king of
Babylon, maintainer of Bit Saggatu, and Bit Zida, worshipper of Nebo,
son of Nabubalatirib."[735] Nabonetus did not only build at Babylon;
bricks at Senkereh and Ur prove that there also he continued the
buildings of Nebuchadnezzar.[736] On an injured cylinder, discovered at
Ur (Mugheir) he tells us that Nebuchadnezzar had begun to erect there
the temple of Samas and Sin, his lords; that he, Nabonetus, completed
the work.[737] We are acquainted with the heaps of this temple in the
north-west of the ruins (I. 289). The tiles of the lower story bear the
stamp of Urukh, those of the upper the stamp of his son Dungi; others
show the stamp of Ismidagon, king of Ur, and Kurigalzu of Babylon, who
restored this temple at the end of the fifteenth century.[738] On four
clay cylinders found in these ruins, which repeat the same inscription,
Nabonetus tells us that the building of the ancient kings, Urukh and
Dungi, in honour of the great goddess (of Ur), lay in ruins. This temple
he restored on the old foundations, as it had been before, in bricks and
bitumen. He had completed this structure in honour of the god Sin; might
the god grant continuance to his work. At the same time he entreats Sin
to implant reverence for his great divinity in the heart of his
first-born son, Bel-sar-ussur (Belshazzar).[739] Beyond this we only
know of Nabonetus that in the year 551 B.C. he made Hiram, of the race
of Ethbaal, whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried to Babylonia after the
blockade of Tyre, king of that city, and sent him there.[740] The most
difficult of all tasks was already awaiting Nabonetus: he had to meet
the storm which convulsed Asia. Nebuchadnezzar had been ever intent on
making the power of his kingdom equal to the power of the Medes. Media
and Lydia too were now subject to Cyrus. A mightier power than
Nebuchadnezzar had ever looked forward to had set foot in Babylonia, in
the East, the North, and the West.

"By the waters of Babylon sat" the Jews whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried
from their homes. They were men of distinction, the first in rank and
culture, and the priests: it was the intellectual nucleus of the people
that had been transplanted to Babylonia. The danger that this nucleus,
in despair of the protection of their own god, should turn to the gods
of the conquerors as being more mighty, was not great. Jehovah was no
longer merely the tribal God of Israel, who had been unable to protect
his tribe against all other nations: the prophets had announced him as
the Almighty God of the world, who ruled over the kingdoms of the earth,
who would raise up and throw down at his pleasure, who exercises
justice. Moreover, the captives possessed in the Book of the Law
(Deuteronomy) a plain rule of life, which had been wanting to the
Israelites when transplanted by the Assyrian kings. Among them were
earnest spirits and mighty hearts, who preserved their courage and hope
unbroken. Opportunities for these qualities were not wanting in their
dealings with their countrymen, for the exiles in their differences with
each other repaired much more readily to their own countrymen who were
skilled in the law, than to the magistrates of the Babylonians. Among
those who were first carried away in the year 597 B.C. (p. 332), was the
priest Ezekiel, who had his dwelling on the Chaboras, in Mesopotamia.
The rulers often came to consult Ezekiel, and the elders gathered in his
house, "that he might ask Jehovah for them."[741] His announcements are
strongly coloured by the priestly point of view on which he takes his
stand. He maintains strictly the rubrics and customs of worship, the
correct offering of sacrifice. It is a comfort to him in his sorrow to
imagine, in minute detail, how the temple is to be restored with all its
buildings, the land divided among the tribes, what was to be allotted to
the priests, and what duties would devolve upon them, if Jehovah should
restore Israel again out of the captivity.[742] Hence with the firmer
conviction could Ezekiel say to his people, that they were a people of
"an impudent face and hardened heart,"[743] but that Jehovah had no
pleasure in the death of the evil-doer, but only in his conversion and
improvement;[744] that Jehovah would assemble them out of the lands into
which they were scattered. "I will bring you," so Jehovah speaks in
Ezekiel, "into the wilderness of the nations; and there will I plead
with you face to face, as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness
of the land of Egypt. I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will
bring you into the bond of the covenant. And I will purge out from among
you the rebels and them that transgress against me. They shall not
return to Israel. I will sprinkle pure water over you that ye may be
clean. I will put a new heart and a new spirit within you, and will take
the stony heart out of your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh out of
my spirit, that ye may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances. Then
shall ye loathe yourselves for the evils which ye have committed in all
your abominations; and the ruins of the cities shall be built up and
inhabited, and the wilderness shall be as the garden of Eden. Israel and
Judah shall no more be two nations; they shall both be my people, and I
will be their God, and my servant David shall be king over them, their
only shepherd. I will conclude with them an eternal covenant of peace,
and establish them in the land wherein their fathers dwelt, and multiply
them, and let my sanctuary and my dwelling be for ever among them."

Prophecies uttered with such conviction and certainty, supported and
strengthened the hope of the people in the coming restoration of the
kingdom. It was possible by the help of Jehovah. It might be expected
all the sooner, the more zealously and heartily the exiles worshipped
Jehovah. The more melancholy the present state of affairs, the greater
was the yearning with which the eye was directed upwards. Under their
foreign rulers the Jews became accustomed more and more to think of
Jehovah as the one and only king of Judah who would rescue his faithful
people out of their slavery in Babylon, even as he had once led them
forth with a strong hand and an outstretched arm out of Egypt. In the
strange land and among strangers, where the Jews were kept together by
nothing more than their common religion, where besides their religion
nothing was left to them, adherence to the old faith struck deeper
roots, and the increasing strength of religious conviction saved the
nationality.

FOOTNOTES:

[679] Herod. 2, 178.

[680] Joseph. "c. Apion." 1, 19.

[681] Alcæi fragm. 35, ed. Bergk.

[682] Tassie, "Catalogue Raisonné," p. 64; Raspe, "Planches," 11, 653.

[683] Cp. Strabo, p. 739.

[684] Vol. I. p. 300. Herod. 1, 185. Arrian, "Anab." 7, 21. Polybius, 9,
43. Strabo, p. 754. Ammian. Marcell. 23, 6. Ptolem. 5, 20.

[685] Vol. I. p. 301. Abyden. fragm. 8, 9, ed. Müller. The position of
the [Greek: Basileios potamos] is fixed by Ptolemy, 5, 17. That
Nebuchadnezzar caused the Nahr Malka to be excavated follows from the
words of Abydenus in Eusebius ("Chron." I. p. 37, ed. Schöne): Armacalen
fluvium ex Arazane (Euphrate) derivavit: cp. "Præp. Evang." 9, 41.
Armacale must obviously be the same name as Nahr Malka. Cp. Plin. "Hist.
Nat." 6, 26 (30). On the position of the Nahr Malka, Xen. "Anab." 2-4.
Ammian. Marcell. 26, 6; and that it was navigable, Herod. 1, 193.

[686] Abydenus in Eusebius, _loc. cit._ "Præp. Evang." 9, 41. Diod. (2,
9) ascribes this basin, as he does all the buildings of Babylon, with
the exception of the hanging gardens, to Semiramis. Herodotus describes
the basin, and considers the maker of it to be, not Semiramis, but
Nitocris, who lived five generations later. To the same queen he
ascribes the works in the bed of the Euphrates, the embankment of the
river, and the bridge over the Euphrates, 1, 184-188. He fixes the date
of Nitocris more precisely when he states that Cyrus marched against her
son, who like his father was called Labynetus, and took Babylon. We know
for certain that no woman reigned over Babylon from Nabopolassar to the
overthrow of the kingdom. Herodotus' knowledge about the kingdom of
Babylon is extremely scanty; he obtained his information, it would seem,
chiefly through the Persians; and it is restricted chiefly to these two
names, Nitocris and Labynetus, for he denotes by the same name the
Babylonian, who arranged the peace between the Medes and the Lydians
(supr. p. 260). In the one case Nabopolassar is meant by Labynetus, in
the other Nabonetus; and so Nitocris can only be Amyite, the daughter of
Cyaxares, the consort of Nebuchadnezzar (p. 285). The statement of
Berosus in Abydenus, putting the extent of the basin at 40 parasangs (it
is also found in Diodorus, 2, 9, viz. 1200 stades), is so exaggerated
that in this particular the statement of Herodotus, who allows an extent
of 420 stades to the lake, deserves the preference. Diodorus, _loc.
cit._, gives the depth as stated in the text; according to the Armenian
Eusebius it was 20 cubits; according to the "Præp. Evang.," which also
quote Abydenus, it was 20 fathoms, _i.e._ 120 feet.

[687] Herod. 1, 185. It is clear from the account of Herodotus that the
artificial bends in the river-bed lay above Sippara. The object which
Herodotus ascribes to these works in the river--that the long and
winding navigation and the large lake were intended to hinder the Medes
from coming to Babylon and seeing what took place there--is naïve
enough. The Ardericca of Herodotus is, no doubt, identical with the
Idikara of Ptolemy, which he places more than three-fourths of a degree
higher up the Euphrates than Sippara. Ptolem. 5, 17, 19.

[688] Aristobulus in Strabo, p. 766. Eusebius, "Chron." 1, p. 40, ed.
Schöne; "Præp. Evang." 9, 41. Dionys. "Perieg." v. 982. Ptolem. 5, 19.
Movers' somewhat different view on Gerrha is given, "Phoenizier," 2,
3, 308.

[689] Isaiah xliii. 14. Æsch. "Pers." v. 52-55. Arrian, "Ind." 32.
Strabo, p. 766.

[690] Strabo, _loc. cit._ Diodorus, 14, 21, 81. Vol. II. p. 297.

[691] Movers, "Phoenizier," 2, 3, 306. This road certainly cannot be
carried back to the Phenicians; the nearest way, from Nineveh to Syria,
often traversed by the Assyrian kings on their campaigns, passed by
Karchemish on the lower Orontes.

[692] Plin. "Hist. Nat." 6, 26 (30).

[693] Eratosthenes in Strabo puts the length of the wall at 200 stades
(25 miles) only, Xenophon at 20 parasangs (75 miles), "as it is said:"
in his time a part of the wall was still standing, "Anab." 2, 4; cp.
Joseph, "c. Apion." 1, 20. But it is at the same time clear from the
whole narrative of Xenophon that the Median wall was not situated at the
narrowest point, but far higher up, where the distance between the
rivers is far wider, _i.e._ above Sittace. We have no definite evidence
that this wall was built by Nebuchadnezzar. If Strabo ascribes it to
Semiramis, that means no more than the fact that the modern inhabitants
give the name Sidd Nimrud to the remains. A wall against attacks from
the North, against attacks of the Medes, would have no meaning before
the rise of the power of the Medes; its origin and importance are
entirely due to anxiety in regard to the Medes, and that such anxiety
did exist, was due to the experience which Babylonia had had of Assyria,
and the relative power of the two kingdoms; and it is also shown in the
statements of Herodotus about the object of the windings in the river
and the lake. The successors of Nebuchadnezzar were hardly in a position
to undertake such works. This could be done at most by Nabonetus; but as
Josephus ("c. Apion." 1, 20) quotes from Berosus a comparatively
unimportant building of this king, the Median wall would not have been
forgotten if it had arisen from him. On the direction of the wall, cp.
Grote, "Hist. of Greece," 9, 89.

[694] Beros. fragm. 14, ed. Müller.

[695] Herod. 1, 186.

[696] Herod. 1, 178, 179.

[697] Herod. 3, 159.

[698] Xenoph. "Anab." 2, 2, 6. "Inst. Cyr." 7, 5, 7, 21.

[699] Diod. 2, 7. Cp. Arrian, "Anab." 7, 17, 6. Pseudo-Callisthenes
ascribes to Babylon a diameter of no more than 12 stades and 220 or 206
feet: he ascribes to the city of Alexandria in Egypt a diameter of
16-1/2 stades; 1, 31.

[700] Diod. 2, 7.

[701] Eumenes in Æl. "Var. Hist." 3, 23.

[702] So the Ephemerides in Arrian, "Anab." 7, 25, and in Plut. "Alex."
c. 75.

[703] "Pol." 3, 1, 12.

[704] Jerem. li. 53, 58.

[705] "Hist. Nat." 6, 26.

[706] Vol. I. p. 295.

[707] Joseph. "c. Apion." 1, 19.

[708] Oppert, "Exped." 1, 140 ff.

[709] Joseph. "c. Apion." 1, 19.

[710] Euseb. "Præp. Evang." 9, 41, 8.

[711] Diod. 2, 10.

[712] Strabo, p. 738.

[713] Oppert, "Exped." 1, 156 ff.

[714] It is the less doubtful that the bridge is the work of
Nebuchadnezzar, since the basin of Sepharvaim is vouched for as his work
by Berosus.

[715] Diod. 2, 8.

[716] Herod. 1, 186.

[717] "Inst. Cyri," 7, 6.

[718] Ménant, "Babylone," p. 213.

[719] W. A. Inscript. 1, 52. No. 6 in Ménant, "Babylone," p. 215.

[720] Ménant, _loc. cit._, p. 214

[721] Ménant, _loc. cit._, p. 213.

[722] Ménant, _loc. cit._, p. 208.

[723] Colum. 6, 22; 8, 42.

[724] Ménant, "Babylone," p. 200 ff. Rodwell, "Records of the Past," 5,
113 ff. Two private documents of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar are in
existence, one from the first part of his reign, 604 B.C.; the second
from the twentieth, 584 B.C. Oppert et Ménant, "Doc. Juridiq." p. 257
ff.

[725] Ménant, _loc. cit._, p. 215.

[726] Joseph. "c. Apion." 1, 19.

[727] Isaiah xiii. 19 ff.

[728] Arrian, "Anab." 7, 19, 4.

[729] Ménant, _loc. cit._, p. 218.

[730] Berosi fragm. 14, ed. Müller.

[731] 2 Kings xxv. 27-30.

[732] Oppert, "Exped." 2, 324, cf. 1, 181.

[733] Ménant, _loc. cit._, p. 249.

[734] Berosi fragm. 14, ed. Müller. That Evilmerodach ascended the
throne in 561 B.C. is established, not only by the astronomical canon,
but also by the statement of the Hebrews that Evilmerodach liberated
Jechoniah in the thirty-seventh year of his imprisonment, 2 Kings xxv.
27. Jerem. lii. 31. Between Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonetus the
astronomical canon only mentions Evilmerodach and Neriglissar, with six
years between them. Josephus supplements this by the dates of the years
in Berosus ("c. Apion." 1, 20), which in the result agree with the
canon. Cf. Euseb. "Chron." 1, p. 50, ed. Schöne. "Præp. Evang." 9, 40.
The accession of Nabonetus in the year 555 B.C. is also fixed by the
document in Oppert et Ménant "Doc. Jurid." p. 262. The statements of
Josephus ("Antiq." 10, 11, 2) are entirely false and untenable. The name
of the last king Nabonetus is established against the Labynetus of
Herodotus (1, 77) by the inscriptions.

[735] Oppert, _loc. cit._, 1, 325, 326.

[736] Oppert, _loc. cit._, 1, 262, 269.

[737] Oppert, _loc. cit._, 1, 272 ff.

[738] Vol. I. 289; II. 33. Ménant, _loc. cit._, pp. 253, 255.

[739] Oppert, _loc. cit._, 1, 262, 263. Schrader, "Keilinschr. und A.
T." s. 280.

[740] Joseph. "c. Apion." 1, 20, 21. Above, p. 354, _n._ In the
fourteenth year of the reign of this Hiram Cyrus conquered Babylon; he
must, therefore, have been placed on the throne in 551 B.C.

[741] _E. g._ Ezek. xx. 1.

[742] Ezek. xx. 40; chaps. xl.-xlviii.

[743] Ezek. ii. 4.

[744] Ezek. xviii. 21-23.




CHAPTER XVI.

EGYPT UNDER THE LAST PHARAOHS.


Necho's views for subjugating Syria to his dominion, and renewing the
campaigns of the ancient Pharaohs to the Euphrates, were wrecked after
some successes. The day of Karchemish, which he lost to the Babylonians,
carried with it the loss of the conquests in Syria, with perhaps the
exception of Gaza and one or two other places of the Philistines. Necho
might count himself fortunate that Nebuchadnezzar remained within Syria.
His attempt to support the rebellion of Judah against Babylon, which
king Jehoiakim ventured upon in the year 597 B.C., miscarried, as we saw
above (p. 331). Nebuchadnezzar now took all as far as the brook of
Egypt. Necho's son, Psammetichus II., who succeeded his father in the
year 595 B.C., took no steps to hinder the fall of the Phenician cities,
which were subjugated by Nebuchadnezzar in the year 593 B.C. Of
Psammetichus' short reign--it lasted only six years--Herodotus merely
tells us that he undertook a campaign against the Ethiopians, and died
immediately after it. From this statement we must conclude that since
the time of Psammetichus I. and the emigration of a part of the warrior
caste, Egypt had been in strained relations with the kingdom of Napata,
and the successors of Urdamane. From the words of Herodotus it would
seem that Psammetichus made an unprovoked attack on Ethiopia; but of the
success of the undertaking we know nothing. From some words which Greek
mercenaries of Pharaoh have left behind them, and the place where they
were written, it would seem to have been the intention of Psammetichus
to win back for Egypt lower Nubia, which, as we have seen, had for
centuries been a province of Egypt.

We know the colossi which Ramses II. caused to be hewn out of the rocks
before the entrance of the temple which he excavated at Abu Simbel.[745]
On the left thigh of the second colossus from the south some Greeks,
Ionians, and Dorians, have cut the following words in Ionic letters:
"When Psammetichus came to Elephantine, those who came by vessel with
Psammetichus, the son of Theocles, wrote this inscription. They came up
above Kerkis, as far as the river permitted. The foreigner
Dechepotasimto, the Egyptian Amasis. But Archon, the son of
Amoebichus, and Pelecus, the son of Udames, wrote me." Others of the
mercenaries, who were acquainted with the art of writing, have also
inscribed their names there; we find a Helesibius of Teos, a Telephus of
Ialysus, a brother of Archon, Python the son of Amoebichus, and three
others. The Phenician mercenaries were not either now or later behind
the Greeks: Phenician inscriptions are inscribed beside the Greek.[746]
Those of the Greeks prove that Psammetichus had encamped with his army
at Elephantine, that he had sent a part of it up the Nile with a Greek,
the son of Theocles, who had already got an Egyptian name,
Psammetichus--(which he must, therefore, have obtained under the reign
of Psammetichus I.). His object was certainly not to obtain information
about the land and the river, which was well enough known to the
Egyptians as far as Napata and above it. But it might very well be
necessary to ascertain the views and powers of the opponent in Napata.
Among the names in the inscription first mentioned the name of the
"foreigner Dechepotasimto"--a name which no doubt belonged to an
Ethiopian--and the name of the Egyptian Amasis prove that Egyptians and
Ethiopians acquainted with the land and the river were in the division
of the son of Theocles. How far to the south this division penetrated,
we cannot determine, for the place Kerkis, beyond which it passed, is
not mentioned elsewhere. On the return the detachment encamped to the
north of the falls of Wadi Halfa at Abu Simbel, and those among the
Greeks who knew how to write and wished to do so made use of their stay
to perpetuate in this manner their journey and their presence in this
distant region. Nothing is said of their collision with the Ethiopians;
it appears that the ruler of Napata had then abandoned lower Nubia to
the Egyptians. If this reconnoitering of the enemy by the detachment of
Theocles took place on the campaign of Psammetichus against Ethiopia, of
which Herodotus speaks, we must place it in the year 590 B.C., for
Psammetichus II. died "immediately after," in the next year.[747]
Nothing is left of the monuments of Psammetichus II.; we merely find
his name-shield on the rocks of the islands of Elephantine and Konosso;
they may arise from the time when the king was staying there, and had
his head-quarters at Elephantine, as the Greeks showed us. We are also
told by the sarcophagus of an Apis, buried under the successor of
Psammetichus, that this bull was brought into the temple of Ptah in the
first year of the reign of Psammetichus II.[748]

In spite of the double subjugation (600 and 597 B.C.), Judah remained in
ferment and bitterness against the dominion of Babylon. The accession of
Hophrah, the son of Psammetichus II. (Apries of the Greeks, Uahabra of
the inscriptions), aroused in Jerusalem, as we saw, the hope of shaking
off the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar with the aid of Egypt. According to the
statements in the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel, which are confirmed by
the course of events in Syria, Hophrah must have promised assistance to
Zedekiah, king of Judah. The Jews rebelled; but before the Egyptians
were ready, Nebuchadnezzar had already invested the fortified cities of
Judah, together with the metropolis (588 B.C.). In the next year
Hophrah's army marched to the relief of Jerusalem, which held out
stubbornly. Nebuchadnezzar raised the siege, in order to meet the
Egyptians with the united force of his army. He compelled the Egyptians
to retire. After a renewed investment and furious attack, Jerusalem fell
(p. 343).

After the fall of Jerusalem, as remarked above, the prophets of the Jews
expected that Egypt would be attacked by Nebuchadnezzar and subjugated.
From the Chaboras Ezekiel announced to the dwellers on the Nile the
bloody vengeance and punishment awaiting them because they had been a
staff of reed for Israel; and Jeremiah, who had been carried to Egypt a
few months after the fall of Jerusalem by the Jews who took to flight in
consequence of the assassination of the viceroy of Nebuchadnezzar, and
had there found a welcome and protection together with the rest,
announced at Daphne, on Egyptian soil, to Hophrah and the Egyptians,
their destruction by the sword of Nebuchadnezzar; he saw the king of
Babylon already enthroned on his carpet at Daphne. But Nebuchadnezzar
contented himself with maintaining and fortifying still further his
dominion over Syria. He followed up the capture of Jerusalem with the
long investment and siege of Tyre. When Tyre finally submitted (573
B.C.), Ezekiel again saw Nebuchadnezzar's army invading Egypt. In
reference to the long siege of Tyre, and the fact that it ended not in
the storming and plundering of the city, but in coming to terms, Ezekiel
says: "Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, caused his army to serve a great
service against Tyre: every head was made bald, and every shoulder was
peeled; yet he had no wages, nor his army, from Tyre. Now will I give to
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, the land of Egypt, and he shall
take her multitude and take her spoil and take her prey, and it shall be
the wages for his army. I will give him the land of Egypt for his
reward, saith Jehovah. The king and his people, and with him the
mightiest of the nations, shall be led forth for the desolation of
Egypt. They shall draw their sword against Egypt and fill the land with
slain. The pride of Egypt shall come down; from Migdol to Syene they
shall fall by the sword; and in the same day messengers shall go forth
in ships to make the careless Ethiopia afraid. I will make the canals
dry. I will destroy the idols, and cause the images to cease out of Noph
(Memphis). I will make Patrus (upper Egypt) desolate, and will set fire
to Zoan (Tanis), and will execute judgments in No (Thebes). I will pour
my fury upon Sin (Pelusium), the strength of Egypt, and will cut off the
multitude of No. I will set fire in Egypt; Sin shall have great pain,
and No shall be rent asunder. The young men of On (Heliopolis) and
Bubastis shall fall by the sword, and at Tachpanhes (Daphne) the day
shall be darkened."[749] But even after the subjugation of Tyre,
Nebuchadnezzar did not pass beyond Syria.

Herodotus tells us that Hophrah marched out against Sidon, and fought a
battle by sea with the king of Tyre. Of the results of this battle
Herodotus says nothing: he only remarks that after his great-grandfather
Psammetichus, Hophrah was the most successful of this family. Diodorus
narrates: Hophrah attacked Cyprus and Phoenicia with a well-appointed
army by land and sea; took the city of Sidon by storm, and the rest of
Phenician cities by the terror of his name; conquered the Phenicians and
Cyprians in a great battle by sea, and then returned to Egypt with great
spoil.[750] These accounts are very extraordinary. In the year 593 B.C.,
Tyre and Sidon had striven with the Ammonites and Moabites against
Nebuchadnezzar; they were defeated. Then, as has been already shown,
Nebuchadnezzar blockaded Tyre from 586 B.C. to 573 B.C. We saw that
Hophrah opposed Nebuchadnezzar in the years of the Jewish war, _i.e._
from his accession till the fall of Jerusalem (589-586 B.C.). If during
this period, or subsequently, when Nebuchadnezzar was blockading Tyre,
he had made war upon Sidon and Tyre, and the other cities of the
Phenicians, he would have worked for Nebuchadnezzar; whereas, on the
contrary, he must have regarded it as of the first importance that the
last independent city of Syria, Tyre, should not be reduced. He must do
for Tyre what he had done for Jerusalem, and for that city also he must
venture on war with Nebuchadnezzar. Hence Hophrah can only have carried
on war against the Phenician cities in the three last years of his reign
(between 573 and 570 B.C.), and this again is only conceivable under the
hypothesis that Hophrah set out with the Egyptian fleet against Cyprus,
which Diodorus regards as the object of the campaign, in order to
prevent this island as well as Tyre from becoming subject to
Nebuchadnezzar--in order to obtain in this island a counterpoise to the
incorporation of Syria and the Phenician cities in the Babylonian
kingdom. The war with Tyre and Sidon would then have broken out because
Sidon wished to prevent the island from passing under the dominion of
Egypt. But if Hophrah, as Diodorus states, had taken the cities of the
Phenicians, he must have taken them from Nebuchadnezzar, which seems
highly improbable. If Hophrah wished to take them from Nebuchadnezzar,
he could not be guilty of greater folly than to wait thirteen years,
till the submission of Tyre, in order to attack the city when it had
fallen, and Nebuchadnezzar had established a firm foot on the coasts of
Syria. If he wished to liberate the cities from Babylon, they would
have been eager, so far as lay in their power, to receive the Egyptian
garrisons; we must then suppose that in their anxiety not to lose their
trade with the lands of the Euphrates, they had now vigorously repelled
the Egyptians. But if this be so, how are we to explain their earlier
resistance, and the thirteen years' struggle of Tyre against Babylon? As
already remarked, Herodotus tells us nothing of any successes which
Hophrah gained against Tyre and Sidon; in Diodorus the campaign of
Hophrah is primarily directed against Cyprus, then against Sidon and the
other cities. Hophrah returns home laden with booty; but of permanent
successes even Diodorus says nothing. Herodotus, on the contrary,
remarks that the successor of Hophrah was the first conqueror of Cyprus;
and in Diodorus it is the successor of Hophrah who conquers Cyprus.
Besides, after Hophrah's time we find Babylonia still in possession of
the supremacy over Tyre (p. 394). It is obviously statements of the
Egyptians about the achievements of Hophrah on the coast of Syria, which
Herodotus and Diodorus hand down to us: we know the style of the
Egyptian accounts of victory; but even according to these, as repeated
in Diodorus, there was nothing more than a plundering raid.[751]

The power of Babylon over Syria could not now be shaken. Egypt must be
content to be free from attacks. But in the West, in Libya, there was a
better prospect of success than against Babylon. Some 60 years
previously Greek settlers had built the city of Cyrene, to the east of
the great Syrtis, and the flourishing condition of this city was hardly
contemplated with satisfaction in Egypt. Its importance was increased by
a great number of new settlers, whom Battus III. had summoned to Cyrene;
and to maintain these a considerable portion of land had been taken from
the neighbouring Libyans. Adikran, the prince of these tribes, summoned
Hophrah to his assistance against the Cyrenæans; for this protection he
was prepared to recognise the supremacy of Egypt. Hophrah sent a strong
army against Cyrene. But the Cyrenæans succeeded in defeating it at the
fountain of Theste, and in inflicting a severe blow on the Egyptians
(571 B.C.). This disaster caused a new outbreak of ill-feeling on the
part of the Egyptian military caste against the Ionian mercenaries. As
these, on whom devolved the protection of the eastern border against the
Babylonians, had been left behind, the Egyptian warriors thought that
the Pharaoh had purposely sent them to their destruction. On their
return the remnant of the army rebelled against the Pharaoh; Hophrah
sent Amasis to bring back the troops to obedience.[752]

Amasis of Siuph in the canton of Sais was of humble origin, a man of
loose morals, who loved wine, and the pleasures of the table, merriment
and riotous living, but still possessed intelligence and ambition.
Instead of bringing back the rebellious troops to obedience, he allowed
himself when he arrived in the camp to be saluted by them as king.
Hearing of this, Pharaoh Hophrah put himself at the head of the Ionians
and Carians--they were 30,000 in number--and went to meet the rebels,
who had already reached the borders of Egypt. In spite of the bravest
efforts the Ionians and Carians were defeated by the Egyptians at
Momemphis, as Herodotus states, or as Diodorus tells us, at Marea, on
the south-western shore of Lake Mareotis. Hophrah himself was taken
prisoner. Amasis intended to spare him. He brought him to Sais, and
there put him in prison in the citadel which his forefather Psammetichus
had built. But afterwards Amasis yielded to the request of the people,
and gave up Hophrah to the mob who put him to death (570 B.C.).[753]

Thus ended the race of Psammetichus in Egypt; in the same region where
his great-grandfather is said to have obtained the liberation of Egypt
and the throne, Hophrah had lost it. Since the times of the Ramessids,
the Pharaohs of Tanis and Bubastis had no longer sought their sepulchres
at Thebes: the family of Psammetichus had prepared a sepulchre at Sais
where his citadel stood. It was situated at the temple of Neith the
goddess of Sais, at the tomb of Osiris, where the Saites kept the
funeral festival of the god: here also was Hophrah's body buried.[754]

Amasis (Ahmes) was raised to the throne by the Egyptians against the
Greeks, to break down the influence and favoured position of the
foreigners. His victory over the Ionians had brought him to the throne.
As soon as he had gained it, he returned back to the system which
Psammetichus and his successors had followed, and established it yet
more firmly. He made ancient Egypt an Egypto-Grecian state. His first
care was to conclude peace and alliance with the Cyrenæans. To king
Battus III. of Cyrene he sent a gilded image of the goddess of Sais and
his own portrait. He took to wife a woman of the house of Battus, by
name Laodice. The Ionians and Carians conquered by him he removed from
the eastern border, from the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, into the interior
to Memphis. They were no longer to protect the border of Egypt which was
most threatened, but the person of the king. He made them his
bodyguard.[755] The Greek merchants he allowed to live at Naucratis
under their own overseers and their own system of justice. The settlers
came in greater numbers than ever. Greek Hetæræe followed trade into the
distant land and accumulated treasures in Egypt.[756] The Greeks were
even allowed to erect altars and temples in the country; the king
himself provided the necessary sites; a proceeding which must have
filled with horror and dismay the priests of the land, and all Egyptians
of the old way of thinking. Hence the four Ionian cities, Chios, Teos,
Clazomenæ, Phocæa; and the four Dorian, Cnidus, Rhodes, Halicarnassus,
Phaselis, and the Æolian Mytilene, built a common shrine for their
deities at Naucratis. Miletus erected a special temple to her deity
Apollo. Samos and Ægina also built special temples. Amasis went still
further: he honoured the Greek gods by dedicatory gifts. Two statues of
stone, portraits of himself, and a wonderful corslet, as Herodotus
assures us, he dedicated at Cnidus in the temple of Athene; and when the
Delphians made a collection among the settlers in Egypt in aid of their
temple which had been burnt down, Amasis also sent them a
contribution.[757]

If Amasis allowed such advantages to the Greeks, he also knew how to
reckon with the old Egyptian feeling. Besides two Greek women, Laodice
and Sebaste, he took to wife two Egyptians, of whom one was the daughter
of Psammetichus II. The monuments of Egypt give us their names,
Tentchet and Anchnas. The latter we see represented at Selsilis, beside
Amasis, pouring libations to Ammon, Mut, and Chons; her sarcophagus is
in existence: Tentchet is mentioned by the successor of Amasis on a
monument as his mother; she must therefore have been the sister of
Hophrah, the daughter of Psammetichus II.[758] By this union Amasis
sought to legitimize his dominion and to connect himself with the race
of Psammetichus: and with this view he also gave to the son whom
Tentchet bore him the name of his grandfather, Psammetichus. Thus his
rule seemed to be only the continuation of the dominion of the
descendants of the liberator of the house of Sais.

He exhibited a proper reverence for the worship of Egypt. In the twelfth
year of the reign of Hophrah an Apis had died, and had been buried in
the customary manner at the expense of the king. In the fifth year of
the reign of Amasis (566 B.C.) an Apis was again born, to which Amasis
appears to have paid especial honour. To this bull while yet alive, he
presented a large coffin of red granite. The inscription on the cover
runs thus: "The king Amasis. He has caused this to be made for his
memorial of the living Apis, this huge sarcophagus of red granite, for
his majesty approved the custom that all the kings in all ages had had
such made of costly stones. This did he, the bestower of life for
ever."[759] When this Apis died in the year 548 B.C., he was buried with
extraordinary pomp, and a memorial stone from the new sepulchres of the
Apis (p. 312) informs us what part Psammetichus, the son of Amasis and
heir to the throne, took in this burial, and in all the ceremonials
observed during the days of lamentation.[760]

In the effort in which the rulers of Egypt resembled each other almost
without exception--in the desire to erect great buildings--Amasis
emulated his predecessors. His buildings began with his accession and
ended with his life. Sais was adorned by him with the largest and most
magnificent works, for which the stones were mostly brought from the
quarries at Memphis, and the largest from the quarries at Elephantine.
To the temple of Neith at Sais he added marvellous propylæa, which, as
Herodotus says, surpassed all others by their height and size, as well
as by the size and beauty of the stones of which they were constructed.
Here Amasis also set up great colossi and sphinxes, and caused to be
brought from Elephantine a chapel hewn out of a single stone 21 cubits
in length, 14 cubits in breadth, and 8 cubits in height, which was set
up at Sais before the temple of Neith. Two thousand seamen were occupied
for three years in bringing this chapel from Elephantine to Sais. A
similar memorial of Amasis lies on the site of the ancient Thmuis in the
Delta. At Memphis Amasis built a temple to Isis; "a work large and
worthy to be seen beyond all others," says Herodotus, and before the
temple of Ptah he placed a colossus of 75 feet in height, and on either
side of it two statues of Ethiopian stone of 20 feet in height. When
Herodotus visited Egypt this mighty colossus lay at Memphis thrown down
on its back, and one of equal dimensions (no doubt they were portraits
of Amasis) lay in a similar position at Sais. The other temples were not
forgotten; Amasis caused restorations to be undertaken at Thebes,
especially at the great temple of Karnak: other temples were also
restored and adorned with new buildings and statues. His sepulchre
Amasis built at Sais beside the tombs of the race of Psammetichus, whose
dynasty he wished to continue, just as he continued and completed their
system of government. It lies, says Herodotus, somewhat farther from the
temple than the tomb of Hophrah and his forefathers, at the side of the
colonnade before the temple. It was a separate colonnade, of which the
portico was supported by pillars with capitals carved like
palm-branches. In this portico lay the sepulchral chamber, a room of
stone closed by double doors.[761] Of the eagerness with which Amasis
built we have still evidence in the inscriptions found with his name in
all the quarries of Egypt; in the limestone quarries of Memphis, in the
granite quarries at Hamamat, and in the sandstone quarries at Selsilis,
and in the quarries of red granite in the south of Egypt. The quarries
of Hamamat also give us the name of the chief architect of Amasis, "the
chief of all the buildings in Upper and Lower Egypt," and his
forefathers to the twenty-fourth generation.[762]

Amid the cares of the throne Amasis did not forget the easy and cheerful
enjoyment of life, which he loved. When he had finished his business in
the morning he sat down to table with his friends, drank deeply, and
made merry with them without any regard for the ancient ceremonial of
the Egyptian court, or the remonstrances of his friends, who would
recall him to more dignified behaviour. Nevertheless, in spite of the
favour shown to the Greeks, he knew how to win the good-will of the
Egyptians, by a just, moderate, and mild government, and by regard for
the well-being of the land. The tradition of the Egyptians counts him
among the lawgivers of the land. He is said to have regulated the
economical relations and the duties of the nomarchs as well as their
power.[763] With the Greeks too he passed as a ruler of extraordinary
wisdom. In any case, under his long reign--he sat on the throne for 44
years--Egypt attained a high degree of prosperity. The freedom of trade
brought in products: agriculture, manufactures, and trade were active.
"Under Amasis," says Herodotus, "Egypt is said to have been most
prosperous, both in regard to that which the river did for the land, and
the soil gave to the inhabitants, and at that time there are said to
have been 20,000 inhabited places in the land."[764]

But these were the last days of Egyptian splendour. If Babylon had
hitherto been a dangerous neighbour, the position of affairs in the East
changed in the reign of Amasis for the most decided disadvantage to
Egypt. When Cyrus had brought the kingdom of the Medes into his power,
he reduced the nations on the east and west of Persia. At length Babylon
herself succumbed to the arms of Cyrus in the thirty-second year of the
reign of Amasis. With the fall of Babylon Syria became subject to him,
so that the youthful and mighty kingdom of the Persians already bordered
on Egypt. Amasis avoided giving any support to the resistance offered by
Babylon and Lydia to this new power. If he succeeded, after the fall of
Babylon, in possessing himself of the island of Cyprus, and so obtaining
a position opposite the Syrian coast, which might paralyse the
possession of the Phenician cities, this success, as opposed to the
supremacy of Persia, was only of importance in so far as it rendered the
use of the Phenician fleet difficult for the Persians. The close
connection also into which Amasis entered with Polycrates, who in the
year 536 B.C. made himself master of the island of Samos, and got
together a splendid fleet of 80 heavy and 100 light ships of war--for
Polycrates was threatened more heavily by the neighbourhood of Persia
than Egypt was--could only be of use to Egypt in defending her against
an attack from the sea; it was useless against the attack of a far
superior power by land. If in his last years Amasis could take breath
for a moment owing to the death of the great conqueror, the anxiety for
the future soon returned with double weight. When Amasis died (526 B.C.)
Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, was already preparing a great armament
against Egypt. To his son Psammetichus III. (Psammenitus) he bequeathed
the difficult task of meeting the attack of the Persians.

FOOTNOTES:

[745] Vol I. 175.

[746] They are contemporaneous; if the reading Hamsabatichi
(Psammetichus) is correct. The names of the mercenaries are said to be
Pethah ben Jethar and Sillon ben Pethiach. Blau. "Z. D. M. G." 19, 522
ff.

[747] If A. Kirchhoff's supplement of inscription No. 9 is correct
("Studien z. G. d. Griechischen Alphabets," s. 35^3), "[Greek: hoka
basileus hêlase ton straton to praton]" the date of the expedition of
the son of Theocles must be put earlier. Cp. Ross, "N. Jahrbücher f.
Philolog." 1854, s. 528 ff. The name of the father of Theocles
determines me in accepting Bergk's opinion that these inscriptions of
the Ethiopian expedition of Psammetichus II. do not belong to the
pursuit of the emigrant soldiers of Psammetichus I. (above, p. 307).

[748] Brugsch, "History of Egypt," II. p. 287.

[749] Ezekiel xxix. 17-21; chap xxx., from the twenty-seventh year of
the carrying away captive of Ezekiel, _i.e._ from the year 571 B.C.
Josephus ("Antiq." 10, 9, 7) tells us, it is true, that Nebuchadnezzar
invaded Egypt in the fifth year after the capture of Jerusalem, in the
twenty-third year of his reign, slew king Hophrah, put another king in
his place, and carried away as prisoners to Babylon the Jews who had
fled for refuge to Egypt. The death of Hophrah in battle against or by
the hand of Nebuchadnezzar contradicts all credible tradition. In the
year denoted by Josephus there may have been a sharp contest on the
borders, which Josephus has exaggerated in order to favour the
statements of the prophets, if, indeed, the year also is not derived
from Jeremiah, chap. lii. The carrying away of the Jews who had fled to
Egypt has obviously arisen out of Jeremiah's prophecy.

[750] Herod. 2, 160; Diod. 1, 68.

[751] To conclude from the three fragments from Aradus of Egyptian, and
especially Saitic style, on one of which Psammetichus I. is read, and
the bas-relief of Byblus (Renan, "Mission," p. 25), with the picture of
a Pharaoh and Hathor (de Rougé, "Rev. Archéol." N.S. 1863, p. 194 ff),
that Hophrah ruled in Aradus and Byblus, is more than rash. From all
antiquity there was a lively connection between Egypt and Phoenicia.
If the Phenicians built temples in Egypt, the Egyptians might also build
temples at Byblus.

[752] Herod. 2, 161, 162; 4, 159.

[753] Herod. 2, 169. Diod. 1, 68.

[754] Herod. 2, 170. Strabo, pp. 802, 803.

[755] Herod. 2, 154.

[756] Herod. 2, 135.

[757] Herod. 2, 178.

[758] De Rougé ("Notice") regards Anchnas as the daughter of
Psammetichus II.

[759] Brugsch, "Hist. of Egypt," II. 288.

[760] Brugsch, "Hist. of Egypt," pp. 263, 294.

[761] Herod. 2, 175, 176, 169; 3, 116.

[762] Brugsch, "Hist. of Egypt," II. 299.

[763] Diod. 1, 95.

[764] Herod. 2, 177. According to Diod. 1, 31, Egypt in the ancient time
had 18,000 communities, and under the Ptolemies 30,600. According to
Theocritus ("Idyll." 17, 83), Egypt possessed 33,600 communities.




CHAPTER XVII.

THE OVERTHROW OF THE HERACLEIDS IN LYDIA.


On the western coast of Asia Minor the nation of the Lydians, which
possessed the vallies of the Hermus and Mæander, had early arrived at a
monarchy and a point of civilization far in advance of the stages of
primitive life. The ancient royal house of the Lydians claimed to be
sprung from the gods, from Attys, the son of the god Manes. The city of
Sardis is said to have been built under the dominion of this dynasty, to
have been dedicated to the sun-god and fortified.[765] This house of the
Attyadæ was said to have been followed about the year 1200 B.C. by a
second dynasty which carried back its genealogy to Sandon, the sun-god
himself, a deity whom the Greeks, according to the various aspects of
the nature ascribed to him by the Lydians, sometimes identified with
their Apollo, and at other times with their Heracles. As the founder of
the new dynasty the Greeks call him Heracles. Agron, the fourth
descendant of this Sandon-Heracles, is said to have ascended the throne
of Lydia in the year 1194 B.C. After him twenty-two kings, the
descendants of Agron, bore the crown of Lydia for a space of 505 years,
down to the year 689 B.C.[766]

The power possessed by Lydia under this family of rulers cannot have
been very considerable. When the Greeks forced the Phenicians from the
islands of the Ægean Sea, and then, about the end of the eleventh and
beginning of the tenth century B.C., landed on the western coast of Asia
Minor, the Lydians were not able any more than the Teucrians and Mysians
in the North, or the Carians in the South, to prevent the establishment
of the Greeks on their coasts, the loss of the ancient native
sanctuaries at Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus, and the founding of Greek
cities in their land on the mouths of the Lydian rivers, the Hermus and
the Cayster, though the Greek emigrants came in isolated expeditions
over the sea. It was on the Lydian coasts that the most important Greek
cities rose; Cyme, Phocæa, Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus. Priene, Myus, and
Miletus were on the land of the Carians. The Homeric poems would hardly
have omitted to place a strong body of auxiliaries from Mæonia, which is
their name for Lydia, by the side of the oppressed Ilium, if the fame of
a powerful Lydian kingdom had then existed among the Greeks of the
coast. The land of the Lydians is well-known to the Homeric poems; they
give a distinct prominence to the trade, wealth, and horse-breeding of
the Mæonians; but they make no mention of any prominent race of
rulers;[767] and yet the Sandonids were on the throne at Sardis when
the poems were sung, and when they came to an end. The loss of her
coasts and the mouths of her rivers must have been heavily felt by
Lydia. The trade with the sea and beyond it was henceforth only possible
by the intervention of the Greek cities which had grown up there.

Of the exploits and fortunes of the kings of the race of Sandon we have
almost no information. It is only of the five or six last rulers that we
have the names and a few traces; and to these we may add two or three
very doubtful stories of the fall of the last king of the house.
According to Eusebius, Ardys, Sadyattes, Meles, and Candaules, brought
the series of this dynasty to an end: Ardys reigned from 768 to 732
B.C.; Sadyattes down to 718; Meles down to the year 706 B.C., and he was
then succeeded by Candaules.[768] The fragments of Nicolaus of Damascus,
which must have been derived from the lost history of the Lydian
Xanthus, give us the following account: Alyattes, the predecessor of
Ardys, had left his kingdom jointly to his sons Cadys and Ardys. Cadys
soon died, and Ardys was driven from the throne by Spermus, a relation
of Cadys, who during the life of Cadys had had an intrigue with his
wife. Ardys with his wife and daughter fled to Cyme, and there he lived
in such poverty that he worked as a wheelwright. Two years after the
flight of Ardys the usurper was struck down by an assassin whom he had
hired against Ardys, and the Lydians sent messengers to Cyme to invite
Ardys to ascend again the throne of his fathers. When restored to the
throne, Ardys exercised a mild and just rule, and the Lydians had never
known such prosperity since the days of the ancient king Alkimus (I.
561), as they enjoyed under Ardys. The army of the Lydians also was
strong under the rule of this king: it numbered 30,000 horsemen.[769] A
fragment of Heracleides Ponticus also gives us information about the
fortunes of Ardys at Cyme. "Severely oppressed by their ruler the
Lydians sent to Cyme, when they found that one of their countrymen was
there, to summon him to the throne. The man was the slave of a
wheelwright. The Lydians paid his price and took him with them. But a
Cymæan who had ordered a wagon kept him back, and told those who
remonstrated with him, to put no hindrances in his way, for he
considered it a great thing to possess a wagon which the king of the
Lydians had made."[770]

Herodotus tells us that Candaules, whom the Greeks call Myrsilus, placed
the greatest confidence in Gyges the son of Dascylus, one of his
lance-bearers. He went so far in this that he determined to convince
Gyges by the evidence of his own eyes that the queen, his consort, was
the most beautiful of all women. For this purpose he brought Gyges one
evening into his bed-chamber, and bade him place himself behind the open
door, so that when the queen undressed herself he might see her naked.
This was done. But the queen saw Gyges when he passed out. Enraged at
the insult offered to her by Candaules she sent for Gyges on the
following morning, and gave him the choice whether he would die on the
spot, or slay Candaules on the following night. He chose the latter. She
gave him a dagger and concealed him behind the door, and Gyges stabbed
Candaules as soon as he was asleep. But the Lydians rose in arms to
avenge the death of their king. The adherents of Gyges and the rest of
the Lydians came to a compromise, that, if the oracle of the god should
declare for Gyges as the king of the Lydians, he should rule, but if
not, Gyges was to restore the kingdom to the race of Sandon.

According to the fragments of Nicolaus it was the good king Ardys who
laid the foundation for the overthrow of the house of the Sandonids. In
his old age, so we are told, Ardys took great delight in a man of the
race of the Mermnadæ. This was Dascylus, the son of Gyges. At length
Ardys handed over to him the entire government. Sadyattes, the son and
heir of Ardys, became apprehensive that, at the death of Ardys, Dascylus
would misuse the great power entrusted to him, in order to establish
himself on the throne. He caused Dascylus to be secretly put out of the
way. Filled with grief, the old king caused the Lydians to be assembled,
had himself carried into the assembly in a litter, bade the Lydians
discover the murderers, on whose heads he imprecated bitter curses, and
ended by saying that any one who discovered them might slay them. But
the murderers were not discovered. After the death of Ardys, Sadyattes
ascended the throne, and he was succeeded by Meles. In this reign Lydia
was visited by a severe famine, and an oracle demanded that the death of
Dascylus should be expiated. The wife of Dascylus had fled to Phrygia,
her home, and had there brought forth a son, with whom she was pregnant
at the time of his father's death. She had given him the name of his
father. Dascylus, who had now grown up, was requested by Meles to return
to Sardis, in order to receive there the atonement for the murder of his
father. But Dascylus feared to return, and retired to the Syrians who
dwell in Sinope, on the Pontus, where he married a Syrian woman, who
bore him Gyges. After the reigns of Meles and Myrsus, Candaules ascended
the throne of Lydia. Then the aged brother of the murdered Dascylus, who
had remained in Sardis and was childless, besought the king that his
nephew Dascylus might be allowed to return to Sardis, that he might
adopt him as his son before his death. This prayer the king granted, but
Dascylus refused to leave his abode; he sent his son Gyges, then
eighteen years old, to his great-uncle at Sardis. Gyges was a handsome
youth. In riding and in all martial exercises he surpassed his comrades;
and he had also proved his bravery in war. Owing to his stature and his
beauty the king took him into his body-guard, made him his favourite,
honoured him before all others, and gave him large presents of land.
When Candaules would marry Tudo, the daughter of Arnossus, the king of
the Mysians, he sent Gyges to bring home the bride. While Gyges was
bringing the princess to Sardis in his chariot, he fell violently in
love with her, and, no longer master of himself, attempted to embrace
her, in spite of her struggles and threats. On her arrival in Sardis she
did not conceal what Gyges had done, and the king swore that the
offender should be put to death on the next day. A maid who was devoted
to Gyges overheard the words of the king and repeated them to Gyges on
the same night. Determined to slay the king rather than allow himself to
be slain, Gyges collected his nearest friends, besought their
assistance, and reminded them of the curse which Ardys had laid on the
murderers of his grandfather. In arms they hastened into the royal
citadel. The maid opened the door of the bed-chamber for Gyges, who
stabbed the sleeping king with his sword. In the morning a message went
forth from the citadel to the chief men in the kingdom; they were to
appear before the face of the king. They obeyed without any suspicion,
in the belief that they had been summoned by Candaules. Gyges caused
those to be slain who, as he thought, would be his enemies, and gave
handsome presents to those whom he hoped to win. He armed all whom he
gained to his side: the body-guard also took his part, so that the
Lydians, when they discovered what had taken place, though they rose
against the murderer of the king, did not venture to attack him. But
they sent to Delphi to inquire whether they should take Gyges to be
their king; and the god bade them do so, and Gyges took Tudo to
wife.[771]

In the narrative of Nicolaus it is the curse which Ardys uttered upon
the murderers of the first Dascylus, and the late vengeance for this
murder which comes upon the descendants of Sadyattes, and causes the
overthrow of the kingdom. But the guilt of Sadyattes is not the only
cause: Ardys himself sinned by the excessive confidence which he reposed
in Dascylus; and Candaules goes further still in his blind confidence in
the grandson of Dascylus; he gives him land; he sets him above all
others; he commissions the youth of twenty years to bring home the royal
bride to her marriage. The same fault of excessive and misplaced
confidence, though in another direction, is in Herodotus the cause of
the overthrow of Candaules and his house. In a third version, given by
Plutarch, we still find the same motive. When Heracles had slain
Hippolyte (the queen of the Amazons), he gave her battle-axe to Omphale.
The kings who ruled over Lydia after Omphale, had carried this
battle-axe, each handing it to his successor, down to Candaules, who
disregarded it and gave it to his favourite to carry; but this favourite
in Plutarch is not Gyges.[772]

The relation into which Herodotus represents the wife of Candaules as
entering, after her dishonour, with Gyges, the guard of her husband,
appears to be founded on a similar story, which a legend ascribes to an
ancestor of Gyges. Gyges, the forefather of Lydus, so we are told in
Plato, was one of the shepherds of the king of the Lydians. After a
severe storm of rain and an earthquake, the earth opened where he was
keeping his cattle. Out of curiosity he descended into the gulf, and saw
marvellous things: among others a brazen horse with windows, through
which he saw a dead man of superhuman size, who had nothing on beyond a
golden ring on his finger. This ring Gyges took, and climbed out. When
he sat among the rest of the shepherds in order to give the king the
monthly account of the condition of the flocks, with this ring on his
finger, he happened to turn the stone on it towards himself. Then he
perceived that the others did not see him, and spoke of him as though
absent. When he turned the stone away from himself, he was again seen by
them. Having assured himself of this fact, he procured that he should be
chosen among the messengers sent to the king. There he won the favour
of the queen, united with her for the overthrow of the king, slew him,
and seized the throne.[773]

We saw that the Lydians derived the tribes of their nation from Attys
and Cotys; the sons of the god Manes, and from the sons of Lydus,
Torrhebus and Asius. If the first Gyges could be called an ancestor of
Lydus, he must have held a high position in the legend of the Lydians.
This conclusion is confirmed by the Homeric poems in which the lake of
Gyges is the centre of the Lydian land and the Lydian life. On this lake
of Gyges the descendants of the youngest Gyges, his successors on the
throne, which he had won for them, had their tombs; but the graves of
the kings before them were also to be sought on the same lake. The race
of the Mermnadæ, which carried back its origin to the first Gyges, must,
therefore, have been ancient and important among the Lydians. Conscious
of such a descent, it may have considered itself little inferior to the
house of the kings, whose ancestor was the sun-god himself. We might,
perhaps, assume that the Mermnadæ, in the later days of Ardys or after
him, attained to prominent importance; that anxiety on account of this
prominence brought on them persecution and expulsion on the part of the
successors of Ardys. The wife of the murdered Dascylus flies to the
Phrygians; her son of the same name takes refuge with the Syrians on the
Pontus, at Sinope. Hence the exiles sought not only protection but also
support among their neighbours against the kings of the Lydians.
Pausanias mentions to us a place belonging to Dascylus on the White
Plain in Caria, on the borders of Lydia;[774] and Plutarch tells us:
"Arselis, the Carian of Mylasa, came to the aid of Gyges, the son of
Dascylus the younger, when he fought against Candaules, and helped Gyges
to victory. Arselis slew both Candaules and the youth to whom Candaules
had given the sacred symbol of the royal office of Lydia, and placed the
battle-axe as an ornament in the hand of the statue of Zeus at Mylasa."
Hence Gyges was in communication with the Carians when he rebelled
against Candaules.

We may go a step further. At the time when Candaules reigned over Lydia
(706-689 B.C.), the Cimmerians invaded Phrygia from Pontus, the very
region to which the younger Dascylus, the father of Gyges, is said to
have fled; king Midas took his own life in consequence of this disaster
(696 B.C.). The Magnesians, who inhabited the most inland city of the
Greeks on the lower Mæander, suffered at the hands of the Cimmerians a
defeat much lamented by the Greeks; and the poet Callinus of Ephesus
cried to his countrymen, "the army of the Cimmerians, who have done
mighty deeds, is approaching," and urged them to brave resistance.[775]
Lydia was not spared. Sardis was taken by the Cimmerians (I. 542). The
storm passed over, but it had beyond a doubt deeply shaken the Lydian
kingdom and the position of king Candaules. Of this king we only know
that he paid the Greek painter, Bularchus, for a picture which
represented the battle and defeat of the Magnesians with an equal weight
of gold, though the picture was of moderate size only. This was a
passion for art little in accordance with the position of his kingdom,
and it seems to confirm the account of Plutarch that Candaules reigned
with little care, and left the government to a favourite. After the blow
which Lydia suffered by the invasion of the Cimmerians, the Mermnadæ
must have considered that their time was come. Whether they were really
allowed to return, whether Gyges had a place in the body-guard or not,
cannot be decided. What is certain is that he did not attain to the
throne without an open struggle, whether it was against Candaules
himself, or his party, the party of the ancient royal family; it is
certain, too, that Carian troops supported him, though the Arselis in
Plutarch is not a Carian, but the Carian war-god, or the axe of this
war-god of Mylasa.[776] Moreover, it is certain that Gyges was not able
to overcome by force of arms the resistance of the Lydians, who adhered
to the ancient royal family. In Herodotus, as in Nicolaus, the Lydians
take up arms against Gyges; in both the decision which follows is due to
the oracle of the god. The arrangement in Herodotus--if the oracle of
the god declared for Gyges he was to reign, and if against him, the
kingdom was to go back to the race of Heracles, _i.e._ of the
sun-god--may be regarded as historical, and that the decision should be
sought from the deity, from whom the house hitherto on the throne
sprang, shows that the Lydians adhered firmly to their ancient royal
family.

The decision of the civil war in Lydia was sought in Delphi. The fame of
the temple at Delphi, which belonged to the light-god of the Hellenes,
had long reached the Lydians and Phrygians through the Greeks of the
coast. Before this time Midas of Phrygia had dedicated a pedestal and
other presents at Delphi (I. 527). As the Greeks recognised their Apollo
and their Heracles in the sun-god of the Lydians (I. 564), so did the
Lydians regard the god of light, the archer-god of Delphi, as their own
sun-god. The impartial sun-god of the stranger was to decide whether
the descendants of the native sun-god were to lose or keep the throne.
The oracle of the god of Delphi decided for Gyges. In gratitude he sent
rich presents, a great mass of silver and gold, to Delphi. Herodotus
mentions especially six golden milk-vessels, thirty talents in
weight.[777]

FOOTNOTES:

[765] Vol. I. p. 563 ff.

[766] Herodotus allows 170 years for the Mermnadæ, the successors of the
Heracleidæ of Lydia. If the fall of Croesus is to be placed, as I
shall prove in Book VIII. chap. 6, in the year 549 B.C., his ancestor
Gyges must have ascended the throne in 719 B.C. (549 + 170 = 719). In
the canon of Eusebius the series of the Lydian kings begins with the
Sandonid Ardys, whose accession Eusebius places immediately before
Olymp. I., and it continues 230 years. In the same canon the date of the
Mermnadæ begins 150 years before the fall of Croesus, and consequently
in the year 699 B.C. (549 + 150 = 699). Hence Eusebius allows 20 years
less then Herodotus to the Mermnadæ. The fact that Herodotus allows 106
years to two rulers of the five Mermnadæ, is no reason for departing
from his dates. But we have seen above that the first invasion of the
west of Asia Minor by the Cimmerians must be placed about the year 700
B.C. The time is fixed more exactly by the fact that Midas of Phrygia,
whose wife was the daughter of Agamemnon king of Cyme (I. 527), who
dedicated a throne at Delphi, before Gyges sent presents there, reigned,
in Eusebius, from 738 B.C. to 696 B.C., in which year he killed himself
by bull's blood, because the Cimmerians invaded his land: Strabo, p. 61.
It was in this invasion of the Cimmerians that Magnesia succumbed; the
fall of which Archilochus mentioned in the line, "I weep for the
disaster of the Thasians, not of the Magnesians," fragm. 19, ed. Bergk.
When this happened Gyges was not yet king of Lydia. Candaules, the last
Sandonid, was still on the throne. "Is it not admitted," says Pliny,
"that the picture of Bularchus, which represented the battle of the
Magnesians, was purchased for its weight in gold by Candaules, the last
king of the race of the Heracleidæ, who is also called Myrsilus?" "Hist.
Nat." 35, 34 (35, 8 in Detlefsen). And also "King Candaules paid for the
picture of Bularchus representing the defeat of the Magnesians--a work
of moderate size--with its weight in gold:" _loc. cit._ 7, 39 (7, 38 in
Detlefsen). According to this Midas was on the throne before Gyges, and
Magnesia fell before the Cimmerians when the last Heracleid held sway in
Lydia; and as the Cimmerians could only reach Magnesia through Phrygia,
Candaules must have sat on the throne in the year 696 B.C. and later.
Hence both the numbers of Herodotus which give 719 B.C., and those of
Eusebius which give 699 B.C. for the accession of Gyges, are too high.
But the latter allow an abbreviation of ten years. In Herodotus twelve
years are allowed to Sadyattes, the third Mermnad: in the canon of
Eusebius he has fifteen years; but in the list of Lydian kings in the
first book, which in the rest agrees with the canon (it is unimportant
that Gyges has in the former 35, in the latter 36 years, Ardys 37 in the
one and 36 in the other), we find only five years instead of fifteen
given to Sadyattes. If we accept this abbreviation Candaules was still
on the throne in the year 696 B.C. Gyges ascended the throne after Midas
and Candaules in the year 689 B.C. There are other grounds, beside these
quoted, which make this necessary. Assurbanipal of Asshur told us of his
dealings with Gyges, of the league between Gyges and Psammetichus, to
whom Gyges sent help: Assurbanipal began to reign in 668 B.C.
Psammetichus was first placed over Sais as a vassal in Assyria in 664,
and could not have rebelled against Assyria before 654 B.C. (p. 300).
But according to the dates of Herodotus Gyges came to an end in 684
B.C.; and if we follow the date given for the beginning of his reign in
Eusebius he died in 663. Hence the only possible solution is to assume
the numbers of the first book of Eusebius, with the reduction for
Sadyattes. Hence the dates for the reigns are as follows: Gyges,
689-653; Ardys, 653-617; Sadyattes 617-612; Alyattes, 612-563;
Croesus, 563-549 B.C.

[767] The catalogue of the ships ("Il." 2. 864) mentions only Mesthles
and Antiphos as the leaders of the Mæonians, sons of Pylæmenes, and the
nymph of the lake Gygæa.

[768] According to the reduction established above for the third Mermnad
in the canon, Ardys begins 778 B.C.

[769] Nicol. Damasc. fragm. 49, ed. Müller.

[770] Heracl. Pont. fragm. 11, 1, 2, ed. Müller.

[771] Though the last Sandonid is also called Sadyattes in Nicolaus, I
have put Candaules in the text because he, like the Candaules of
Herodotus, is the son of Myrsus. The reign of Myrsus is not found in the
canon or in the other three lists of Lydian kings in Eusebius. The four
Mermnads, Gyges, Dascylus, Dascylus, Gyges, must be met by four
Heracleids, Ardys, Sadyattes, Meles, and Candaules. Myrsus might have
arisen out of the name Myrsilus, which the Greeks gave to Candaules, or
Candaules was the son of a Myrsus who did not reign. That the last
Sandonid reigned only three years as Nicolaus supposes is impossible.
According to this Gyges gained the throne at 21 years of age. And what
we know from other sources of Candaules does not agree with so short a
reign. We must therefore keep to the statement of Eusebius.

[772] Vol. I. p. 573. Plutarch, "Quæst. Græc." 45.

[773] Plato, "De Rep." p. 359, 360.

[774] Pausan. 4, 35, 11.

[775] Fragm. 2, 3, ed. Bergk.

[776] Vol. I. p. 573.

[777] Herod. 1, 14.




CHAPTER XVIII.

LYDIA UNDER THE MERMNADÆ.


The Delphian priesthood did no service to their countrymen on the
western shore of Asia Minor when in the year 689 B.C. they helped Gyges
to the throne in spite of the resistance of the Lydians. The cities of
the Greeks on these coasts, whose founders had in days past been
expelled by war and distress from their cantons, had come to power and
prosperity in the course of the three centuries which had since elapsed.
Forced to a vigorous exercise of their powers, amid an environment of
many new impulses, they surpassed the motherland in poetry and art, in
navigation and trade. From their harbours they exported the products of
Phrygia and the manufactures of Lydia to the Cyclades, to Chalcis and
Eretria, to Corinth and the mainland of Hellas. Thus they gradually grew
up into a naval power which drove even the trading ships of the
Phenicians from the Ægean Sea, opened the Black Sea, and already began
to rival the Phenicians in the south and west of the Mediterranean.
Springing up on the soil of Lydia these cities barred the mouths of the
Lydian rivers, the highways to the sea, and excluded the Lydian people
from intercourse with the sea. Miletus, Myus, and Priene commanded the
mouth of the Mæander; Ephesus and Colophon the mouth of the Cayster;
Phocæa and Cyme the mouth of the Hermus. An active prince on the throne
of Lydia could not endure that the Greeks should remain in possession of
the coast, which they had taken from the Lydians, and keep the Lydians
for ever cut off from the sea. The new dynasty must attempt to recover
the losses which their predecessors had been unable to prevent.

When confronted by the power of the Lydians collected in the hands of a
single warrior, the Greek cities could not, for long, avoid falling into
a position similar to that in which the Phenicians at that time found
themselves as opposed to the Assyrians. Lydia was not indeed so strong
as Assyria, but it lay nearer at hand; and the resources of Phocæa,
Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus, and Miletus, could not bear comparison with
those of Tyre, Sidon, and Aradus. In spite of their common origin and
kindred blood, the Greek cities, like those of the Phenicians, were
without any political combination. It is true that the Ionian cities
offered each year a common sacrifice to Poseidon, on the sea-shore under
the spur of Mount Mycale, but for the rest, not only was each community
isolated from the others, but the communities were often at feud among
themselves. Even in the bosom of the separate cities the opposition of
parties was not wanting: it was not long since the nobles had overthrown
the monarchy, and taken the government into their own hands. If the
citizens ventured to give battle in the open field, and the Lydians by
means of their superior forces drove them back into their walls, and
laid waste their crops, the cities which did not lie immediately on the
sea were exposed to continued devastation, and with the greater
certainty because these devastations could be made more severe by
sieges. Even the cities on the sea could hardly support for any length
of time the desolation and loss of their land. Ephesus had extended her
possessions on land from the mouth of the Cayster as far northward as
Tmolus; Colophon too had a considerable acreage of land.

Mysia and the Troad were the districts, which, as it seems, Gyges first
subjugated to his dominion.[778] The founding of Dascyleum beyond the
Rhyndacus, not far from the shore of the Propontis, which bears the name
of his father, may be ascribed to him. Next he turned against the Greek
cities, and there he found a vigorous resistance. Established at first
in conflict with the nations of the coast, these cities had grown up
amid feuds and by navigation, and contained in their walls a brave race
of men. From the time that Gyges opened the attack upon them, one
hundred and twenty years passed before they lost their independence in
spite of their isolation, though the course of the struggle inflicted
various losses upon them. Even during the continuance of this struggle
they made very considerable progress on the sea, in art and science, and
when they fell it was hardly less through the struggles which shattered
them from within, than through the arms of the Lydians. Gyges first
attacked Magnesia on Sipylus, the Greek city which lay nearest to
Sardis. After repeated devastation of the land he finally succeeded in
making himself master of the city.[779] The next attack fell on Smyrna.
It was a severe struggle. The Smyrnæans thought themselves sufficiently
strong to meet the Lydians in the open field. They withstood their
attacks in the plain, and their venturous courage was not without
success. On one occasion it happened that they were defeated by Gyges
and the Lydians, and driven into the city. The Lydians forced their way
into the gates along with the fugitives. But the courage and bravery of
the Smyrnæans were successful in hurling back the enemies.[780] Nor did
any better success attend the attack of Gyges on Miletus; but against
Colophon he obtained some advantage.[781]

Such are the accounts given by the Greeks of the deeds of Gyges. From
these it appears that Gyges justified his usurpation of the throne by
attacks, more or less successful, against the ancient opponents who
checked the rise of Lydia. It is also clear from other sources of
information, that he had himself to beat off the attacks of a mighty
enemy, and that he was by no means fortunate in withstanding them. Among
the Greeks we have only a brief and accidental statement, from which we
could conclude that Gyges had to deal with other enemies beside the
Greek cities. This statement merely tells us that the Cimmerians had
settled in Antandrus on the coast of the Troad for a century. The
Cimmerians are said to have been first driven out by Alyattes king of
Lydia, who reigned down to 563 B.C.; those Cimmerians therefore who
inhabited Antandrus, must have come there at the time of Gyges, who
reigned from 689 to 653 B.C. That Gyges had really to undergo severe
struggles with the Cimmerians we learn from the distant east, from
Nineveh. The inscriptions of Esarhaddon of Asshur (681-668 B.C.) told us
that Tiuspa, the chief of the distant land of the Cimmerians, had
submitted to him (p. 151). As the Assyrians held the Moschi, the
Tibarenes, and the Cilicians in dependence, the Cimmerians when settled
on the lower Halys, which event took place before the year 700 B.C.,
became neighbours of the Assyrian kingdom. Assurbanipal of Assyria tells
us that Gyges of Lydia submitted to him, that afterwards he was
successful against the Cimmerians, and sent in chains to Nineveh chiefs
of the Cimmerians whom he had taken in the battle. Assurbanipal, as we
saw, ascended the throne in 668 B.C.; the reign of Gyges came to an end
in 653 B.C. Hence his messages to Assurbanipal could only fall between
the years 668 and 653 B.C. It is quite conceivable that Gyges when
pressed by a new advance of the Cimmerians towards the West sought the
aid of the king of Assyria, the powerful neighbour of the Cimmerians in
the East, in order that pressure might be put from that side on these
enemies of Lydia. Assurbanipal does not tell us that he sent any
assistance to Gyges; he merely tells us that Gyges after paying homage
to him was enabled by the glory of his (Assurbanipal's) name to bring
the Cimmerians to his feet, and fought successfully against them.
Afterwards Gyges hardened his heart, put confidence in his own power,
and sent his soldiers to aid Pisamilki of Egypt, who had thrown off the
yoke of Assyria. As a punishment for this the Cimmerians conquered and
devastated his whole land; his body was thrown to his enemies, and his
servants were carried away captive.

From these statements we must conclude that the wars which Gyges carried
on against the Greek cities belonged to the first twenty years of his
reign; that new incursions of the Cimmerians into Phrygia, and a fresh
advance on their part against Lydia, put an end to the attacks of Gyges
on the Greeks; and when Gyges had summoned the assistance of Assyria,
the Cimmerians were driven back. When delivered from the Cimmerians
Gyges intended no doubt to put an end to his dependence on Assyria, and
to aid in bringing to destruction this mighty power, which both from
Cilicia and from the Halys might bring ruin upon him. With this object
he may have entered into connections with Psammetichus, agreeing to send
him Ionians and Carians to overpower his fellow-princes, in order to
maintain the contest against Assyria at the head of the newly-united
Egypt. Lydia had little to fear from Assyria, if Egypt revolted at the
same time, since it was probable that all the efforts of that country
would be directed against the valley of the Nile. Gyges could not send
auxiliary troops into Egypt later than the year 653 B.C. (for his reign
came to an end in that year). Hence his relations to Assyria would fall
within the years 665-655 B.C. Whether Assurbanipal, in order to punish
the defection of Gyges, urged the Cimmerians to resume the war, we
cannot certainly say. We cannot contest the statement of the
inscriptions of Assurbanipal that Gyges fell in this war, though it is
remarkable that the Greeks know nothing or tell us nothing of such an
important occurrence. Herodotus tells us expressly that beside the wars
against Miletus, Smyrna, and Colophon, Gyges performed no action of
importance.[782]

Of the son and successor of Gyges, Assurbanipal tells us that he sent to
him, disapproved of his father's breach with Assyria, and pledged his
own submission (p. 178). The inscriptions which deal with the relations
of Assyria and Lydia are without dates. But from the connection of the
narrative, and with reference to the statement that Gyges fell in battle
against the Cimmerians, we must assume that the accession of Ardys, the
son of Gyges, took place in the midst of the war with the Cimmerians,
and that he made his pledge of submission to Assyria in the first year
of his reign, in that time of distress. Herodotus tells us that the
Cimmerians invaded Lydia in the reign of Ardys--which continued from 653
to 617 B.C.[783]--and took Sardis, except the Acropolis; that the cities
of the Ionians were attacked by the Cimmerians, and plundered though not
conquered.[784] It would be easy to connect this second capture of
Sardis with the narrative of the Assyrians and the fall of Gyges, and
thus place it in the commencement of the reign of Ardys. But this
connection would destroy the coincidence in time between the Scythian
invasion of Asia and the Cimmerian invasion of Ionia, which Herodotus
mentions, and at the same time removes the ground which can alone
explain the combination of the two (p. 277). Herodotus places the
incursion of the Scythians into Media quite definitely in the first year
of Cyaxares of Media, _i.e._ according to his chronology, in the year
633 to 630 B.C. The second capture of Sardis, therefore, and the attack
on the Ionian cities, must have taken place about 630 B.C.

It remains to assume that the Cimmerians, after inundating Lydia in the
time of Candaules and taking Sardis, after repeated wars with varied
success against Gyges in the last decade of his reign, which finally
ended in the death of Gyges, were a source of serious danger to Ardys in
the first and larger half of his reign. Concerning the campaign of the
Cimmerians, which brought Sardis for a second time into their hands, we
learn from Greek accounts that the Cimmerians were commanded by
Lygdamis,[785] and that they brought Ephesus into great straits.[786]
"Lygdamis," so Callimachus says, "led the army of the horse-milking
Cimmerians, which lay encamped on the strait of the daughter of
Inachus," against Ephesus; in the plain of the Cayster their chariots
rested, and he threatened to destroy the temple of Artemis, but the
goddess protected her shrine. Another statement tells us, on the
contrary, that Lygdamis burnt the temple of Artemis.[787] "It was a
passing raid," says Herodotus, "not a subjugation of the cities."

It is clear that Ardys became master of his land, at any rate, in the
last third of his reign. In this period, and under his successor
Sadyattes (617-612 B.C.), there were no further incursions of the
Cimmerians, and Alyattes, the successor of Sadyattes (612-563 B.C.),
succeeded in completely breaking their power. Herodotus tells us that
Alyattes drove the Cimmerians out of Asia.[788] This was not the case:
elsewhere we find it stated that it was they who again attacked
Alyattes.[789] They were no doubt confined by the arms of Alyattes to
their abode on the banks of the lower Halys; they became subject to the
Lydians, and were lost, as we saw, in the Cappadocians, whose name among
the Armenians is Gamir, _i.e._ Gimirai, Cimmerians.[790]

The repeated incursions of the Cimmerians into the west of Asia Minor in
the course of the seventh century had important consequences for the
lands affected by them on this side of the Halys. The nearest
neighbouring states, especially Phrygia, were severely shaken by them,
more severely, beyond a doubt, than Lydia.[791] From about the year 630
B.C., under the strong guidance of Ardys, Sadyattes, and Alyattes, Lydia
arose with firmness and energy, and became a protecting power against
the Cimmerians for the west of Asia Minor. This position, and the
superiority which Lydia also possessed in the harder and severer nature
of her population, brought about the result that when Gyges had
subjugated Mysia, Phrygia as far as the Halys became dependent on the
Lydian kingdom in the last years of Ardys, or in the time of his
successor Sadyattes. For the Lydian dominion over Asia Minor the
Cimmerians had prepared the way even more thoroughly than the Scythians
had prepared the way for the Medes in the East. As Lydia and Media were
the first to recover, they soon obtained the supremacy in the one case
as in the other. If it could be said of Alyattes that he expelled the
Cimmerians from Asia Minor, the dominion of Lydia must at least have
extended to the Halys. It was on this river that the two new powers,
rising on the East and the West, came into collision.

The Greeks of course can only give us precise information about the
struggles of Ardys, Sadyattes, and Alyattes against the cities of the
coast. Herodotus tells us that Ardys like Gyges attacked Miletus,
without achieving any success: he succeeded however in taking Priene,
opposite Miletus, at the entrance of the Milesian Gulf. Other accounts
and later events show that this conquest was not maintained.[792] We
must put the attacks of Ardys on the Greek cities in the last decade of
his reign (627-617 B.C.). Sadyattes directed his efforts against Smyrna
and Miletus, which at that time was governed by the tyrant
Thrasybulus.[793] The Milesians went out to meet the Lydian army in the
open field. But they were defeated in two great battles, first at
Limeneum, and then on the Mæander, and were thus compelled to shut
themselves up in the walls. Behind these Sadyattes could do them no
harm.

Herodotus tells us that Sadyattes contented himself with destroying the
harvest of the Milesians every year as soon as the corn was ripe in the
land of the city, and with cutting down the fruit-trees. This went on
for six years till his death, when his son and successor continued the
war in the same manner. When at length he believed that the Milesians
were brought into distress and scarcity by these continual devastations,
in the twelfth year of the war, he was deceived by a stratagem of
Thrasybulus. Thrasybulus learnt from Corinth that a herald of the king
would come into the city to offer a truce. The citizens were commanded,
therefore, to bring out into the market-place all the corn which was to
be found in the houses, as though it were for sale there, and to keep
holiday with banquets and merry-making. Convinced by the account of his
herald that all his efforts hitherto had been in vain, Alyattes
concluded a treaty of peace with the Milesians.[794] No weight can be
laid on the details of this narrative. In the twelfth year of the war,
according to Herodotus, when the fields were being laid waste and the
corn burned, the temple of Athene at Assessus was set on fire. Alyattes
then fell sick, and as he remained sick a long time he sent to Delphi to
inquire about his recovery. Delphi replied: The god would give no
answer till the temple was rebuilt. This became known to Periander of
Corinth, and he imparted the information to Thrasybulus--such at least,
Herodotus remarks, is the story of the Milesians. Thrasybulus assumed
that Alyattes would ask for an armistice in order that he might be able
to rebuild the temple; and made the arrangements already described. In
any case Alyattes was in a position to obtain more accurate information
about the condition of Miletus than could be got by a herald. How could
it be supposed that there would be a want of provisions in a great
trading city like Miletus, which Alyattes had not debarred and could not
debar from intercourse with the sea? When the peace and the treaty had
been concluded, and Alyattes had built two temples in the place of the
one that had been burnt, he recovered his health.

It is certain that Miletus maintained herself against the attacks of the
Lydian kings. Undisturbed by them she founded Parium and Lampsacus on
the Hellespont. In union with Phocæa, Teos, and Clazomenæ, she entered
into trade with Egypt, whose harbours Psammetichus had opened to the
Ionians; about the year 640 B.C. she sent her fleet to aid the Eretrians
in Euboea, who were engaged in a severe struggle with the Chalcidians;
about the year 630 B.C. she sent out a new colony to Sinope, which had
succumbed to the Cimmerians (I. 545), and built Tomi at the mouths of
the Danube. That the kings of Lydia directed their efforts mainly
against Miletus is intelligible. If the most powerful city of the Greeks
were subject to them, the others would submit without any further
struggle. It is possible that the rebellion of the people against the
nobles, the fierce party struggles which followed from these and allowed
Thrasybulus to establish a tyranny in Miletus, may have excited in the
Lydians the hope of overcoming the city with less difficulty. It speaks
much for the strength of Miletus that her citizens were able to meet the
Lydians in the open field. There can hardly be a doubt that the land of
the Milesians was devastated for several successive years. The Lydians
must have attempted to wear out the city by this means, to rouse
dissatisfaction among the landed proprietors by their losses, and among
the lower classes by causing a scarcity. The owners of the land lost
each year their crops and their sheep; with these the raw material for
the important wool industry of the Milesians was destroyed, and trade
with the interior was impossible. When, however, the Lydians found that
the city held out stubbornly they at length desisted, and preferred to
win the first city of the Greeks by treaty rather than by war.

According to the dates which we obtained above for the reign of Gyges
and his successors, the twelve years' war against Miletus mentioned by
Herodotus must have begun under Ardys, and ended under Sadyattes. It was
in the last years of Sadyattes (617-612 B.C.), in the year 615 B.C., as
we saw above, that the great war began between the Medes and the
Lydians, which Herodotus puts in the time of Alyattes (612-563 B.C.).
The advances of the Median power to the West and their approach to the
Halys must have compelled the Lydians to put an end to the war with
Miletus, in order to protect the eastern border of their kingdom. We
know the supposed cause and the course of the war between Lydia and
Media, which went on to the year 610 B.C., with varying fortune, but not
to the disadvantage of the Lydians.[795] The Lydians, though far weaker
in numbers, showed themselves vigorous opponents of the Medes. The
severe struggle could find no more honourable close for Media than the
treaty which made the Halys the limit between Lydia and Media, and
united the two countries by marriage as well as by treaty. Aryanis, the
daughter of Alyattes, became the wife of Astyages, the son of Cyaxares
of Media (p. 289).

Secured in the east by the alliance with Media Alyattes could direct his
whole force to the establishment of the Lydian power within the Halys.
The Carians were subjugated.[796] Alyattes did not obtain equal
successes over the Greek cities, though Miletus, true to the treaty,
held aloof. His attack on Smyrna was perhaps the occasion on which
Mimnermus repeated in his poems to his countrymen the brave deeds of the
Smyrnæans in old days against Gyges (p. 429), and attempted to rouse the
courage of the present generation by the memory of the achievements of
the past. He reminded the Smyrnæans how they had once driven the Lydians
out of the gates of their city. In some verses which have come down to
us he praises the deeds of a hero of olden time, not without a
reproachful side-glance at the living generation: "Not of such a kind
was the courage and the brave heart of the warrior, of whom the
forefathers told me, how that they had seen him, spear in hand, on the
plain of the Hermus, driving before him the troops of the mounted
Lydians. In the courage of his stout heart Pallas Athene herself could
find nothing to reproach, when in the bloody fight he pressed onward
with the foremost, beset with the thick volley of the enemy. Never man
knew better how to withstand the tumult of battle, so long as the sun
shone on him."[797] Perhaps the Smyrnæans were no longer fired with the
martial courage of old days; in any case the superiority of the Lydians
was very great. Alyattes took Smyrna, and in order to keep the city in
more complete subjection, he caused the walls to be thrown down, and
forced the Smyrnæans to dwell in an unfortified place.[798] Colophon was
also captured. This was a rich city even before the time of Gyges; the
greater part of the citizens are said to have been prosperous.
Xenophanes reproaches his fellow-citizens of Colophon that they had
learnt luxurious habits from the Lydians, that the senators of the
city--they were a thousand in number, chosen from all the men of
property--came to the market-place in "garments wholly coloured with
purple," "pluming themselves on their beautifully-arranged hair, and
drenched with the perfumes of costly ointments." According to the
account of Athenæus the meals of the Colophonians began in the morning
and continued till the lamps were lit, to the sound of harps and flutes
played by women after the manner of the Lydians; after this the night
was spent in drinking, so that some beheld neither the rising nor the
setting sun. In this way the Colophonians had lost their old military
valour, and had infected the Milesians.[799] We are not in a position to
decide whether the fine clothes of the Colophonians and their delight in
feasting and drinking took the vigour out of their defence of the city
or not; this only is clear, that isolated cities like Smyrna and
Colophon, even with the most heroic resistance, must eventually succumb
to a kingdom like that of the Lydians. In any case we have rather to
recognise the resistance which unimportant cities such as Priene made,
than lament the cowardice of the citizens. Theognis of Megara remarks
that Smyrna and Colophon, like Magnesia before them, came to destruction
owing to their excess of valour.[800] With the subjugation of Colophon
the successes of Alyattes ended. Priene resisted a long siege with
success: from Clazomenæ he was compelled to retire with great
losses.[801]

Gradually strengthening themselves in severe struggles, the Mermnadæ had
approved their position as leaders of the Lydians. How deeply rooted was
the attachment of the nation to the expelled royal family, and what
respect the Mermnadæ paid to this stubborn preference, is clear from the
fact that Gyges himself called his son Ardys after the name of a king of
the ancient house; and in the same way his grandson and great-grandson
repeat the ancient names Sadyattes and Alyattes. The reign of Alyattes,
extended almost to half a century, appears to have borne good fruits for
the domestic relations of Lydia. The subject nations, the Mysians,
Bithynians, Phrygians, Paphlagonians, and Carians, must without doubt
have paid heavy tribute. From this, from the product of the gold washing
in the Pactolus, the mines in Tmolus and Sipylus, Alyattes collected a
large treasure in the citadel at Sardis. The Lydians preserved a
grateful memory of Alyattes,[802] "the most just and wise of their
kings," as Xanthus calls him. His guidance had set them entirely free
from the risks so often brought upon their country by the Cimmerians,
had raised them to be the dominant nation in Asia Minor, and in time of
peace the kingdom was no doubt brought into excellent order by him.

Hipponax of Ephesus points out the way to Smyrna to a friend by the
following marks: "Go through the region of the Lydians, past the grave
of Alyattes, past the monument of Gyges and the pillars, past the
monument of Attys, the great king, with your face to the setting
sun."[803] Herodotus tells us: "Lydia possesses a work which is the
greatest of all, except the works of the Egyptians and the Babylonians,
and it is the monument of Alyattes. The lower part consists of great
stones, six stades and two plethra in circumference (3800 feet); the
remainder is a heap of earth, which the merchants and the traders, the
artizans and workmen, and the courtesans built. On the monument above
stood, even in my time, five stone pillars, and the inscriptions on
these told us what each section had paid, and the measure of that which
the courtesans built was the largest."[804] Xenophon also speaks of a
large tomb in the neighbourhood of Sardis, on the summit of which were
five pillars.[805]

The princes of the Lydians had their sepulchres beyond the Hermus, on a
rocky plateau, about five miles to the north of Sardis, between the
Hermus and the southern shore of the great Gygæan lake. On this field of
the dead, which the Osmans call Bin Tepe, _i.e._ the thousand hills,
there rise to this day from sixty to eighty tombs, among which three
huge round tumuli stand pre-eminent. The smallest of these is 2000 feet
in the circuit and 110 feet in height; the largest is more than 3500
feet, and rises about 230 feet above the plain. Under this mound, right
opposite the acropolis of Sardis, rested king Alyattes. The Lydians
preferred to bury their dead in chambers of rock; where these were not
to be had, they buried them in chambers of strong masonry, over which
were placed layers of stone in a circle, to be finally crowned with the
sepulchral tumulus. In the same manner, only on a larger scale, the
tombs of the kings were prepared; and the statements of Herodotus about
the origin of the mound of Alyattes may have a foundation in so far as
the zeal of the people helped to raise it higher than the tombs of his
predecessors. In the tomb of Alyattes the flat elevation of rock was
changed into a large circular surface, but northwards the natural rock
was allowed to remain. On this wall of rock, to the south of the centre
of the circle, the sepulchral chamber of Alyattes was made to extend. It
was built of large greyish-white blocks of marble, beautifully polished.
These were cut with the greatest regularity, and carefully fitted to
each other, and united still more firmly by dovetails of molten lead.
The length of this quadrangular chamber is ten feet, the breadth six
feet, the height is more than six feet. The entrance lies on the south
side towards Sardis. This entrance was kept accessible by a portico,
which was also paved with squares of marble, furnished on either side
with blocks of marble as high as the door, and vaulted over with hewn
stones of irregular and angular shapes. The sepulchral chamber and
portico were then surrounded by masonry, which filled up the entire area
of the circle and was carried up to the same height as the sepulchral
chamber and the rock behind it. On this surface the funeral ceremonies
were held, and sacrifices offered, as is proved by a layer of cinders
two feet thick, which lies on the marble squares of the roof of the
sepulchral chamber. When the burial was over, the door of the chamber
was closed by marble blocks fitted into it, and other heavy blocks were
laid in front of these for the portico. After this the masonry, in order
to bear the mound better, was raised above the height of the chamber;
and last of all the mound was piled up in regular layers, a layer of
lime mixed with sand and large stones, a thinner layer of clay, a layer
of earth of equal thickness, on which was again placed a layer of lime
and sand broken with large stones. Finally the point of the mound was
surmounted with strong masonry of huge stones, the five pillars of
Herodotus, one pillar in each corner, and the fifth in the centre. Even
now the centre stone lies overthrown on the summit of the mound, half
buried in the earth. It is a huge block in the form of a cone, of more
than nine feet in diameter, resting on a low base. In the chamber, which
had been plundered, there was no longer any sarcophagus; some bones only
were found, and beside these jars of alabaster, clay vessels with
handles, with remains of other kinds of pottery.[806]

Croesus, the son of Alyattes, did not ascend the throne in the year
563 B.C. without opposition. His opponents intended to raise Pantaleon,
another son of Alyattes by an Ionian wife, to the throne. Among these
was Sadyattes the merchant, the richest man of Lydia. Croesus caused
him to be cruelly executed, his possessions to be confiscated, and his
landed property sold.[807] The new ruler found himself in the bloom of
life (he was 35 years of age) at the head of a well-arranged and
powerful kingdom. While for half a century, under the old Heracleids,
Lydia had not only been unable to move beyond her ancient borders, but
had even lost the land on the coast, she had gradually grown in power
since the accession of the Mermnadæ. It is true that the incursions of
the Cimmerians had brought upon Gyges and Ardys the most dangerous
struggles, and had inflicted the heaviest losses on the land; but in the
end these had been withstood successfully, and their immediate
consequence had been the extension of the Lydian power as far as the
Halys. Even from the dangerous trial of the Median war Lydia had
emerged, not only without loss, but even with honour. All Asia Minor on
this side of the Halys, with the exception of the Greek cities and the
secluded mountain territory of the Lycians, obeyed the kings of the
Lydians. Their country was on friendly terms with Babylon, and in close
relationship with Media. Even against the Greek cities, the reduction of
Smyrna and Colophon had at least opened the way to the sea. In such a
position, in the possession of such power, it was impossible but that
Croesus should be filled with the impulse to complete the work of his
forefathers, to carry to an end the subjugation of the Greek cities, and
thus gain for his kingdom in its full extent the harbours and marts
allotted to it by nature, together with a magnificent fleet.

Though for 120 years engaged in contests with the Lydians and not spared
by the Cimmerians, though torn asunder in their domestic relations by
the strife of parties, these cities continued to advance. The position
and the fortunes of Miletus down to the times of Alyattes have been
mentioned above. Ever since the attempt to smoothe the opposition of the
nation and the nobles by the rule of the "opulent" was wrecked, the
party struggles burst out in wilder fury than before, and passed into
revolutions and counter-revolutions. Nevertheless, one colony was
founded after another: Apollonia and Ordessus on the Thracian coast;
Panticapæum on the Cimmerian Bosphorus; Olbia and Tyras on the mouths of
the Dniester and the Dnieper. The Phocæans had at an earlier time
discovered the northern waters of the Adriatic; they now traded in the
land of silver beyond the pillars of Hercules, built Massalia at the
mouth of the Rhone, and fought with the Carthaginians on the Tyrrhenian
Sea. At the division of the seventh and sixth centuries the Samians
built a splendid temple to Hera, the Ephesians began to turn the ancient
shrine of Artemis into a magnificent structure, and the Phocæans to
erect a beautiful dwelling for Athene. Plastic art rose with
architecture: in skill the Greeks surpassed their Lydian teachers, while
Thales, Anaximander, and Cadmus of Miletus laid the foundations of Greek
science; the splendour of the epic, the bloom of elegiac poetry in
Ephesus and Smyrna, was followed in Lesbos by the bold flight of lyric
song; practical and political wisdom found representatives like Pittacus
and Bias. If the Greeks were more brilliant, more wealthy than in the
days of Gyges and Ardys, the dominion over them was the more to be
coveted. However splendid the resources which they had at command, there
was dissension in their midst: their vigorous colonisation, however much
it might advance trade, must at the same time weaken their population
available for war, and no city supported the other. Could such isolated
communities withstand the sovereigns who had conquered the Cimmerians,
and checked the Medes?

Gyges and his successors never intended to make a war of annihilation on
the Greek cities. We saw that it was only by the support of the Delphic
oracle that Gyges gained the throne; this source of help against his own
people he would not and could not give up. It would be utterly lost in a
war for life and death with the Greek cities. Such intentions were not,
so far as we can see, in the minds of Gyges and his successors, least of
all in the mind of Croesus. These princes wished to make the harbours
subject to their supremacy; they did not intend to put the Greeks in a
worse position than the Lydians. They worshipped the gods of the
Greeks, and gave them richer presents than any Greek city or canton
could give. Even Gyges entered into relations with Greek families of
distinction, which thus became allied to the royal house; from their
cities Alyattes took a wife. In Sardis interest was shown in Greek art;
prominent citizens of the Greek cities found a welcome at the Lydian
court. When Alyattes recovered from his sickness (p. 436), he dedicated
a silver mixing-bowl at Delphi, the base of which was made by Glaucus of
Chios. Herodotus mentions this as worthy of admiration among all the
dedicatory offerings at Delphi, and Pausanias has preserved a
description of it. Of the works of Theodorus of Samos, who first
practised the founding of brass among the Greeks, Alyattes obtained a
golden and a silver mixing-bowl--the latter contained 600 amphoræ--a
golden plane-tree, and a golden vine with bunches of inlaid precious
stones. The sculptors, Dipoenus and Skyllis of Crete, were also
employed at the Lydian court.[808]

If the Lydian kings came forward to meet the Greeks in this manner, the
latter, on their part, were full of admiration for the Lydian power, the
splendour of the Lydian court, and the wealth of the Lydian kings. The
court of the Lydian kings was a seat of the monarchical life and manners
of the East, which the Greeks saw there in immediate proximity. The
"golden Sardis," where the treasures of Asia Minor were gathered, was to
the Greeks of that time the summit of all imaginable splendour. The
palace of the kings on the steep rocks of the citadel on the Pactolus,
from which the eye ranged far and wide into the country beyond the
blooming valley of the Hermus, the ancient temple of Cybele, were no
doubt magnificent buildings, and owing to the great wealth of the land
as well as the kings in precious metals, were provided without doubt
with ornaments of massive gold, though the houses in the city were built
of clay bricks, and roofed with reeds.[809] As might be expected from
the amount of treasure heaped together at Sardis, the court of the
Lydian kings was one of extraordinary splendour. With astonishment the
Greeks beheld the Lydian sovereigns surrounded by their wives, their
numerous servants, and a multitude of eunuchs. The Lydian Alcman who at
the end of the seventh century came as a slave to Sparta, proudly said,
"that he was not of boorish manners, rude and clownish; he was neither a
Thessalian, nor an Acarnanian, nor a shepherd; he came from lofty
Sardis."[810]

If the Greeks were already half overcome by the advances of the Lydian
kings and their own admiration of Lydian power and glory, and Lydian
gold, the conduct of Croesus made resistance more difficult still. He
saw that he could never bring matters to an end with great harbour
cities, especially with Miletus, which could never be invested without a
fleet. Following the example of his forefathers, he entered into a
friendly league with the Milesians. The loss of Smyrna and Colophon had
failed to teach the Greeks that each city must help the other, that the
forces of the cities must be combined into unity, if freedom was to be
preserved. Even in the teeth of the warlike preparations of Croesus
they did not listen to the counsel given by one of themselves, which
would in all probability have saved them. Thales of Miletus proposed
that each city should name representatives; these were to form a
council, to the resolutions of which the separate cities were to be
subservient, just as the demes of a city were subservient to the
resolutions of the council of the city. The seat of this council was to
be Teos, because that city was situated in the midst of the Ionian
cities (which lay to the north and south along the coast). The Ionians
disregarded the advice of Thales; they would not arrange themselves on
the basis thus proposed. On the contrary, in spite of the warning of
Thales, Miletus again entered into a league with Lydia.[811] It may be
that the peace, which after severe internal struggles the decision of
the Parians restored to the city, tended to incline them to accept the
overtures of the king. They wished to heal the self-inflicted wounds,
and shrank from taking upon them a new and serious struggle. Croesus
strengthened his relations to Miletus by sending the most costly
offerings to the temple of Apollo at Miletus, the god of which was not
in his eyes different from the Lydian sun-god, while the antiquity of
the shrine went back beyond the settlement of the Ionians. In these
offerings the gold alone weighed more than 270 talents.[812]

By this treaty Croesus had not only placed Miletus on his side, and
separated the cities; he had also shown them that good terms could be
got. An armed attack must now be employed to induce the rest to adapt
themselves to these terms. When the Ephesians hesitated to recognise the
supremacy of Croesus as he demanded, the city was invested, and the
walls attacked. When a tower on the walls fell, the Ephesians connected
the temple of Artemis--the new structure was scarcely half finished, and
lay 2000 paces from the gates in the depression--with the walls by a
long rope, in order to put the city under the immediate protection of
the deity. Nevertheless, the city was compelled to submit.[813]
Croesus now aided the building of the temple. He caused the unfinished
half of the large monolithic pillars, which were to support the roof of
the temple in a double row, to be erected at his own cost, and presented
the goddess with golden cattle. After the subjugation of Ephesus,
Croesus proceeded to attack the remaining cities, one after the other;
and thus he became master of the whole of the cities, not of the Ionian
only, but also of the Æolian and Dorian. He granted them the most
favourable conditions: he did not even require the opening of the
cities, or their attendance in war; he contented himself with the
recognition of his supremacy and with the yearly payment of
tribute.[814] Yet in any case freedom for the trade of the Lydians, and
protection at law for the Lydians in the walls of the Greek cities, as
well as for the settlement of Lydian subjects, must have been secured.
Some cities on the Hellespont, like Lampsacus, appear to have remained
entirely free.[815]

When the cities of the Greeks had recognised his supremacy, Croesus is
said to have been occupied with the thought how to draw into the circle
of his kingdom the rich islands on the coasts--Samos, Chios, and Lesbos.
Herodotus tells us that Croesus asked Bias of Priene, who was in
Sardis soon after the subjugation of the Greek cities, what was the news
among the Hellenes? Bias answered that the Greeks of the islands were
getting together a great army of cavalry in order to march against
Sardis. When Croesus said that he should rejoice to hear that the gods
had put such thoughts in the minds of the islanders, Bias replied that
the inhabitants of the islands were no less anxious to measure
themselves against him in a battle by sea. At this Croesus is said to
have abandoned the preparations he was making against the islands. As a
fact, Croesus could not hide from himself that an attack upon the
islands was only possible by means of the naval power of the cities on
the coast. Even if these supplied ships against their countrymen in the
islands, was it to be expected that they would fight vigorously against
them?--was there not rather a fear that they would unite their arms with
those of the islands against Lydia?

By a happy combination of war and negotiation, by vigorous attack and
far-sighted concession, Croesus had put an end to the long struggle,
had subjugated the cities to his supremacy, and raised Lydia to the
summit of her fame and power. If the Lydians were the sovereign nation,
the Greeks were not to be a servile nation. They possessed complete
municipal freedom, they had not to render service in war, they had only
to pay tribute and give the Lydians and the Lydian trade as good a
position in their gates and harbours as was enjoyed by their own people
and their own trade. Croesus was at pains in everything to show a
favourable inclination to the Greeks. It was not merely that he
worshipped their gods, and made presents to their shrines. As he had
made the most costly presents to Apollo of Miletus, and Artemis of
Ephesus, so he presented a golden tripod to Ismenian Apollo at Thebes.
To Apollo of Delphi he gave presents as costly as those given to Apollo
of Miletus; to Athene of Delphi he gave a large shield of gold; to the
shrine of Amphiaraus at Thebes he gave a golden shield and a golden
lance. At other times also he showed himself favourable in every way to
the Greeks. When the Spartans wished to erect a golden statue to Apollo
on the summit of Mount Thornax, they sent to Sardis in order to purchase
the necessary gold. Croesus gave them as much as they required.[816] A
Greek merchant of Ephesus, who lent him money before his accession,
Croesus is said to have brought into the citadel, and given him
permission to carry away a cart-load of gold. Alcmæon, an Athenian
noble, who led the Athenians in the "sacred war" against Crissa, and
conquered at Olympia with his four-horse chariot, in the year 572 B.C.,
supported an embassy which Croesus sent to Delphi. In gratitude
Croesus invited him to Sardis, led him into the treasure-chamber, and
allowed him to take as much gold as he pleased. Though Alcmæon was now
advanced in years, and his son Megacles was in possession of the rich
inheritance of Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, he is said to have placed
a very free interpretation on this permission of the king. He put on a
loose coat and loose half-boots; these he crammed with gold, put
gold-dust in his hair, and filled his mouth with it, so that Croesus
when he saw the old man thus burdened and gilded, burst into laughter
and gave him as much again as he carried.[817] In addition to this
unbounded liberality Croesus engaged Greek artists, and bestowed his
favour on eminent men in the Greek cities. Miltiades of Athens, who had
emigrated to the Chersonese from the tyranny of the Pisistratids, and
had been taken in war against Lampsacus by the Lampsacenes, was set at
liberty by the powerful interposition of Croesus. The Greeks were not
insensible to the court paid to them by Croesus and his gold; they
were grateful for his liberality to their temples. Pindar in one of his
odes exclaims: "The friendly virtue of Croesus will not be
forgotten."[818]

The greatest of the Greeks, whom Croesus saw at Sardis, was Solon of
Athens.[819] Herodotus tells us, that Croesus entertained Solon for
several days in his palace, and by his servants showed him the splendour
of it, the riches and the treasure-chambers, all that he possessed in
precious stones, splendid robes, and treasures of art. Then in the pride
of the greatness of his dominion, the splendour of his throne, the
successes which he had obtained, Croesus asked Solon, whom he, who had
travelled so much in the world, considered the most fortunate of men?
Solon answered, Tellus the Athenian. Tellus lived a happy life,
according to human calculation; he had worthy sons and grandsons, not
one of whom died in his lifetime. In his day the commonwealth was
prosperous, and after a happy life he found a fortunate death; he fell
in battle for his father-land, when turning the enemy to flight, and the
Athenians buried him at the cost of the city, and paid him great honour.
Tellus had fallen, under Solon's eye, at Eleusis against the Megarians
(about 580 B.C.). Croesus further inquired, whom Solon considered the
happiest man after Tellus? Cleobis and Bito, two brothers of Argos,
Solon replied. These had possessions equal to their needs, and were
strong of body, so that both won the victory in the games, at one and
the same time. And once at the festival of Hera, when the mother of the
two young men had to go to the temple, and the oxen had not arrived, the
sons placed the yoke upon their necks, and drew their mother a distance
of 45 stades to the temple. The Argives assembled at the festival
commended the strength of the young men; the Argive women commended the
mother who had such sons. But the mother stepped before the statue of
the goddess and prayed that she would give to the sons who had done
their mother such honour the best reward that could be given to men.
When the sacrifice had been offered and the banquet held, the young men
went to sleep in the temple, and never woke again. The deed of the two
sons of Cydippe was highly praised among the Greeks. Their mother was
priestess of the ancient shrine of Hera near Argos. Each year the
Argives celebrated a great festival in honour of their goddess, to which
they marched in procession from the city to the temple, which lay in the
road to Mycenæ on the height of Euboea, at a distance of more than 40
stades from Argos. They offered a hecatomb to the goddess. The hundred
victims were crowned and led in the front of the procession; the young
men followed in their armour, and last of all the priestess of the
temple in a car drawn by two cows; the sacrifice was followed by a
banquet and games. The place of these animals was taken by Cleobis and
Bito. In remembrance of the noble deed the Argives caused statues to be
set up for the brothers at Delphi, and even at a later date a marble
group at Argos exhibited the two youths before the chariot of their
mother.[820]

Astonished at the answer of Solon, Croesus inquired of the Greek,
whether he considered the prosperity which had fallen to his
(Croesus') lot to be nothing, that he did not even place him on a
level with common men. Then Solon answered: You are asking a man about
the fortune of men, one who knows well that the deity is envious and
destructive. In a long life a man may see much that he would fain not
see, and endure much. I put the limit of man's life at 70 years. These
70 years make 25,200 days, if the intercalary months are not reckoned
in. If every other year receives a month in order that the seasons, as
is necessary, correspond, the seventy years allow 35 intercalary months,
which make up 1050 days. Of all these 26,250 days each brings something
new. Hence man is pure chance. You seem to me to be rich and the king of
many men, but the question you ask I can only answer when you have
brought your life to a happy end. He who has great possessions is no
happier than the man who has sufficient for the day, if he do not keep
his wealth till the end of life. Many wealthy men are unfortunate, and
many men of moderate possessions are fortunate. Only in two respects is
the wealthy but unfortunate man in advance of the man who is prosperous
with less wealth. The first can satisfy his desires more and bear
misfortune better; the second cannot satisfy his desires to the same
degree or resist misfortune so well; but his prosperity defends him from
misfortune. He is healthy, has worthy children, and is fair to look
upon. If in addition to all this he ends his life well, he is worthy to
be called happy. Before the end we may call no man happy; we can only
say, it is well with him. That a man should attain complete prosperity
is impossible; just as a country does not possess everything, but brings
forth one product and is in want of another, and the land which
possesses the most has the advantage, so it is with man. He does not
possess everything: one thing he has, another he has not. He who
possesses most to the end of life, and then brings his life to a noble
end, he may with justice bear the name of happy. In everything a man
must look to the issue, and many to whom the god has shown happiness he
has then cast to the ground.

In the bloom and vigour of his years, conqueror of the Greek cities,
victorious over the land of the coast, after bringing to completion the
political aims of his forefathers, in possession of an inexhaustible
treasure, at the head of a state carried to the limit of its natural
frontiers, and flourishing in trade, commanding an excellent army,
respected by his subjects, and lord of Asia Minor--Croesus, in the
year 560 B.C., had many reasons for counting himself a happy man, a
ruler specially favoured by the gods. Like all Oriental princes he was
not without a haughty confidence in his power and his success; he was in
a high degree self-conscious. Solon, when he saw Sardis, was close upon
his eightieth year. Grown up amid violent commotions in his city, amid
the fierce strife of parties, with a deed of blood before his eyes,
Solon had early had occasion to reflect on the plans and aspirations of
men, on their lust of possessions and power, on the fortune allotted to
them, on the punishments which though often late the gods awarded to
unjust deeds. Beyond other men he had devoted his life to his
fatherland, a canton of moderate extent. He had refused the position of
tyrant in order to serve his country in a much more difficult position
with unwearied devotion and perseverance. If by such fidelity he had
succeeded in turning destruction aside from his community, and
establishing a constitution which ensured order and freedom to it, this
constitution, and with it the work of his life, which he had defended
with the dedication of all his powers, was wrecked. If the form given by
Herodotus to the conversation of Solon and Croesus is a part of his
mode of narration, and the observation on the envy of the deity a part
of his view of life, Solon had nevertheless reason in his own bitter
experience to tell the sovereign of Asia Minor that no one could be
accounted happy before the end of life. Compared with his own fortune
the lot of Cleobis and Bito, who died immediately after their glorious
deed, the death of Tellus, who ended a good life by dying in victory for
his country, must have appeared a fortune to be envied.

FOOTNOTES:

[778] Strabo, p. 590.

[779] Strabo, p. 620. Nicol. Damas. fragm. 62, ed. Müller. Which
Magnesia is meant is not clear; Magnesia on Sipylus is more probable
than the other.

[780] Herod. 1, 14. Paus. 4, 21, 3; 9, 29, 4.

[781] According to Herodotus, _loc. cit._ Gyges takes the city but not
the citadel of Colophon; according to Athenæus (p. 256) he concluded a
friendly treaty with Colophon. In Polyænus also the Colophonians
remained for a long time in league with the Lydians, before Alyattes
deprived them of their country by treachery; 7, 2, 2.

[782] Herod. 1, 14.

[783] In Herod. from 681 to 632 B.C.; cf. _supra_, p. 276.

[784] Herod. 1, 6, 15.

[785] Strabo, p. 61. Plut. "Marc." c. 11.

[786] Strabo, p. 627, 647. Athenæus (p. 525), it is true, does not
entirely agree with this.

[787] Callim. "Hymn in Dian." 252-260. Hesych. [Greek: Lygdamis].

[788] Herod. 1, 16.

[789] Polyæn. "Strateg." 7, 2, 1.

[790] Vol. I. p. 549.

[791] On the long stay of the Cimmerians in Phrygia, Steph. Byzant.
[Greek: Syassos].

[792] Herod. 1, 15. Diog. Laert. 1, 83.

[793] The attack of Sadyattes on Smyrna is vouched for by Nicolaus,
fragm. 64, ed. Müller.

[794] Herod. 1, 17-19.

[795] The reasons for which I believe it necessary to maintain this date
are given above, p. 288, _n._

[796] Nicol. Damasc. fragm. 64, ed. Müller. At the time of this Carian
campaign of Alyattes, Croesus, according to this fragment, was viceroy
of the region of Adramytteum. It must therefore be placed about the year
580, since Croesus was born in 598 B.C. Adramytteum is said to have
been founded by a brother of Croesus of the name of Adramyttus: Steph.
Byz. _s. v._ In Nicolaus Adramys is an illegitimate son of Sadyattes.
The city was certainly much older. Athenæus, p. 515, mentions an old
king of Lydia of the name of Adramyttus.

[797] Mimnerm. fragm. 11, ed. Bergk. If Mimnermus, the contemporary of
Solon, is sometimes called a Smyrnæan, and sometimes a Colophonian, the
explanation is that Mimnermus derived his race from the Colophonians,
who had taken Smyrna from the Achæans. Strabo, p. 634. It is not strange
that Mimnermus as a boy may have heard the story of the struggles
against Gyges from his fathers and grandfathers. The attack of Alyattes
upon Smyrna, belongs to the period after 580, the last decade of
Alyattes, because Croesus continues the war against the Greek cities
without any break.

[798] Herod. 1, 16. Nic. Damasc. frag. 64. Strabo (p. 646) tells us that
the Smyrnæans had been compelled to dwell separately in several open
villages, and that they lived in this manner for 400 years, down to the
time of Antigonus. In this reckoning, in any case, there is a century
too much; moreover, Pindar (fragm. incert. 152, ed. Dissen) speaks of
the charming city of Smyrna. Hence the view given in the text is taken.

[799] Xenophan, fragm. 3. Arist. "Pol." 4, 3, 9. Athenæus, p. 526.
Pausan. 7, 5, 4.

[800] Theogn. fragm. 1103, ed. Gaisford.

[801] Herod. 1, 16; Diog. Laert. 1, 83.

[802] Suidas [Greek: Alyattês].

[803] Hipponact., fragm. 15, ed. Bergk. Schneidewin's conjecture to read
Alyattes for Attales ought certainly to be adopted, though Alyattes had
a son called Attales. The way must have been fixed by the largest
monument. [Greek: Attyos] for [Greek: Ôtys] seems certain; on the other
hand [Greek: Myrsilou] for [Greek: Mytalidi] is not permissible.

[804] Herod. 1, 93.

[805] Xenophon makes use of it in the Cyropædia for his own object (7,
3). Clearchus of Soli calls the tomb of Alyattes "the tomb of the
Hetæra." Athen. p. 573. Gyges loved a paramour so passionately that she
governed him and the kingdom. After her death he collected the Lydians
and heaped up a mound in her honour, which was still called the grave of
the Hetæra; it was so high that all the Lydians had it before their
eyes, and every traveller who journeyed within Tmolus. All this may be
founded on a participation of the numerous Lydian Hetæræ (vol. I. p.
566) in the tomb of Alyattes. Cf. Strabo, p. 627.

[806] Hamilton, "Asia Minor," p. 144, 145. Spiegelthal, "Monatsber. B.
A." 1854, s. 700 ff. Olfers, "Die lydischen Königsgräber, Abhandl. B.
A." 1858, s. 539 ff.

[807] Herod. 1, 92. Nicol. Damasc. fragm. 65, ed. Müller.

[808] Herod. 1, 25. Pausan. 10, 16, 1, 2. Athen. p. 210.

[809] Aesch. "Pers." v. 45. Herod. 1, 29; 5, 101.

[810] Fragm. 11, ed. Welcker.

[811] Herod. 1, 170. Diog. Laert. 1, 25.

[812] Herod. 1, 82, says: "as many as to Delphi, and like the Delphian
presents."

[813] Æl. "Var. Hist." 3, 26. Polyæn. "Strateg." 6, 50. If Ælian tells
us that Pindarus was at that time tyrant of Ephesus, and had received
the throne by inheritance, the statement is corrected by the tenor of
the narrative in which Pindarus gives advice, not orders, to the
Ephesians. The "tyranny" of Pindarus therefore was no more than a
prominent position in the city, such as would fall to a man of the race
of the Basilidæ, who carried the sceptre and wore purple. This does not
set aside the fact that Melas, the father of Pindarus, had to wife a
daughter of Alyattes: only I observe that Nicolaus of Damascus calls the
Milesian, who had to wife a sister of Sadyattes, a descendant of Melas,
the brother-in-law of Gyges.

[814] Herod. 1, 27. That the Ionians did not render service in war is
clear from the account which Herodotus gives of the war of Croesus
against Cyrus. Another point is more doubtful. Herodotus remarks, 1,
141, that the cities at the approach of Cyrus had "surrounded themselves
with walls." If we take this in the strictest sense, we might draw the
conclusion, that the cities had been compelled to throw down their walls
when subjugated by Croesus.

[815] Herod. 6, 37.

[816] Herod. 1, 69.

[817] Herod. 6, 125. If Herodotus on this occasion has in his mind the
embassy which Croesus sent to Delphi in 551 B.C., Alcmæon must at that
time have been at least 70 years old. But Croesus had sent to Delphi
earlier (Herod. 1, 85). Xenophon ("Cyr. inst." 7, 2, 7) represents
Croesus as sending to Delphi before he had any sons born to him, and
again after the death of Attys. According to the Parian Marble, Ep. 41,
42, the first mission of Croesus was 14 years before his overthrow, in
the first year of his reign.

[818] Pind. "Pyth." 1, 184.

[819] The chronological difficulties which are brought against this
meeting, and to which Plutarch refers, "Sol." c. 27, rest on the fact
that Plutarch, like Herodotus, represents Solon as going to Sardis after
the establishment of the Athenian constitution. According to this the
meeting occurred in 593, or rather in 583 B.C. Either date is
impossible: in 593 B.C. Croesus was five years old, in 583 B.C. he was
fifteen, and he did not ascend the throne till 563 B.C. The meeting with
Croesus therefore cannot be placed earlier than 560 B.C. when Solon
left Athens after Pisistratus became tyrant. After 558 B.C. Croesus
could no longer count as the happiest of mortals, with whom everything
went well, for in 558 B.C. Cyrus had already deposed Astyages, the
connection of Croesus. Herodotus says (1, 34, 46), that Croesus had
bewailed the loss of his son Attys for two years before the account of
the fall of Astyages was brought to him; Attys must have died in 560
B.C. With this the exact account of Phanias of Eresus, a scholar of
Aristotle (Suidas, [Greek: Phanias]), entirely agrees. He tells us that
Solon did not live two complete years after Pisistratus had seized the
tyranny, for Pisistratus became tyrant under the archonship of Comias;
Solon died under the archonship of Hegestratus (Plut. "Sol." 32); the
archonship of Comias falls in the year 559 B.C. Cf. Ælian, "Var. Hist."
8, 16. Diogenes Laertius, 1, 50, 62, remarks that Solon, after
Pisistratus had become tyrant, went to Croesus, to Cilicia and Cyprus;
that he died in Cyprus in his eightieth year. If Suidas tells us that
Solon went to Soli in Cilicia after Pisistratus became tyrant, this,
like the founding of the city in Diogenes, is a confusion with Soli in
Cyprus. Solon went to Cyprus, where he had been so well received between
583 and 573 B.C., where Soli, his own foundation, offered him a worthy
refuge. As there can hardly have been direct communication between
Athens and Soli, he went by way of the Ionian harbours. The general
statement of Heracleides of Pontus, that Solon lived for a long time
after the tyranny of Pisistratus (Plut. "Sol." c. 32), proves nothing
against the precise statement of Phanias, and that Solon, as Plutarch
says without giving his authority, died in Athens as the adviser of
Pisistratus, is as much opposed to the character of Solon as to the
statement that he died in Cyprus.

[820] Schol. Pind. "Olymp." 7, 152; Aen. Tact. c. 17. Pausan. 2, 20, 3.
Plut. fragm. 22, 7, ed. Dübner.



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