General History for Colleges and High Schools Part 5

In arithmetic, also, the Chaldaeans made considerable advance. A tablet has been found which contains the squares and cubes of the numbers from one to sixty.

CONCLUSION.-This hasty glance at the beginnings of civilization among the primitive peoples of the Euphrates valley, will serve to give us at least some little idea of how much modern culture owes to the old Chaldaeans. We may say that Chaldaea was one of the main sources--Egypt was the other--of the stream of universal history.

CHAPTER IV.

a.s.sYRIA.

1. POLITICAL HISTORY.

TIGLATH-PILESER I. (1130-1110 B.C.).--It is not until about two centuries after the conquest of Chaldaea by the a.s.syrian prince Tiglathi-Nin (see p.

43), that we find a sovereign of renown at the head of a.s.syrian affairs.

This was Tiglath-Pileser I., who came to the throne about 1130 B.C. The royal records detail at great length his numerous war expeditions, and describe minutely the great temples which he constructed.

For the two centuries following the reign of Tiglath-Pileser, a.s.syria is quite lost to history; then it is again raised into prominence by two or three strong kings; after which it once more almost "drops below the historical horizon."

TIGLATH-PILESER II. (745-727 B.C.).--With this king, who was a usurper, begins what is known as the Second Empire. He was a man of great energy and of undoubted military talent,--for by him the a.s.syrian power was once more extended over the greater part of Southwestern Asia.

But what renders the reign of this king a landmark in a.s.syrian history, is the fact that he was not a mere conqueror like his predecessors, but a political organizer of great capacity. He laid the basis of the power and glory of the great kings who followed him upon the a.s.syrian throne.

SARGON (722-705 B.C.).--Sargon was one of the greatest conquerors and builders of the Second Empire. In 722 B.C., he took Samaria and carried away the Ten Tribes into captivity beyond the Tigris. The larger part of the captives were scattered among the Median towns, where they became so mingled with the native population as to be inquired after even to this day as the "lost tribes."

During this reign the Egyptians and their allies, in the first encounter (the battle of Raphia, 720 B.C.) between the empires of the Euphrates and the Nile valley, suffered a severe defeat, and the ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs became tributary to a.s.syria.

Sargon was a famous builder. Near the foot of the Persian hills he founded a large city, which he named for himself; and there he erected a royal residence, described in the inscriptions as "a palace of incomparable magnificence," the site of which is now preserved by the vast mounds of Khorsabad.

SENNACHERIB (705-681 B.C.).--Sennacherib, the son of Sargon, came to the throne 705 B.C. We must accord to him the first place of renown among all the great names of the a.s.syrian Empire. His name, connected as it is with the story of the Jews, and with many of the most wonderful discoveries among the ruined palaces of Nineveh, has become as familiar to the ear as that of Nebuchadnezzar in the story of Babylon.

The fulness of the royal inscriptions of this reign enables us to permit Sennacherib to tell us in his own words of his great works and military expeditions. Respecting the decoration of Nineveh, he says: "I raised again all the edifices of Nineveh, my royal city; I reconstructed all its old streets, and widened those that were too narrow. I have made the whole town a city shining like the sun."

Concerning an expedition against Hezekiah, king of Judah, he says: "I took forty-six of his strong fenced cities; and of the smaller towns which were scattered about I took and plundered a countless number. And from these places I captured and carried off as spoil 200,150 people, old and young, male and female, together with horses and mares, a.s.ses and camels, oxen and sheep, a countless mult.i.tude. And Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem, his capital city, like a bird in a cage, building towers round the city to hem him in, and raising banks of earth against the gates, so as to prevent escape." [Footnote: Rawlinson's _Ancient Monarchies_, Vol. II. p. 161.]

While Sennacherib was besieging Jerusalem, the king of Egypt appeared in the field in the south with aid for Hezekiah. This caused Sennacherib to draw off his forces from the siege to meet the new enemy; but near the frontiers of Egypt the a.s.syrian host, according to the Hebrew account, was smitten by "the angel of the Lord," [Footnote: This expression is a Hebraism, meaning often any physical cause of destruction, as a plague or storm. In the present case, the destroying agency was probably a pestilence. ] and the king returned with a shattered army and without glory to his capital, Nineveh.

Sennacherib employed the closing years of his reign in the digging of ca.n.a.ls, and in the erection of a splendid palace at Nineveh. He was finally murdered by his own sons.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIEGE OF A CITY, SHOWING USE OF BATTERING-RAM. (From Nimrud.)]

a.s.sHUR-BANI-PAL (668-626? B.C.).--This king, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, is distinguished for his magnificent patronage of art and literature. During his reign a.s.syria enjoyed her Augustan age.

But a.s.shur-bani-pal was also possessed of a warlike spirit. He broke to pieces, with terrible energy, in swift campaigns, the enemies of his empire. All the scenes of his sieges and battles he caused to be sculptured on the walls of his palace at Nineveh. These pictured panels are now in the British Museum. They are a perfect Iliad in stone.

SARACUS OR ESARHADDON II. (?-606 B.C.).--Saracus was the last of the long line of a.s.syrian kings. His reign was filled with misfortunes for himself and his kingdom. For nearly or quite seven centuries the Ninevite kings had lorded it over the East. There was scarcely a state in all Western Asia that had not, during this time, felt the weight of their conquering arms; scarcely a people that had not suffered their cruel punishments, or tasted the bitterness of their servitude.

But now swift misfortunes were bearing down upon the oppressor from every quarter. The Scythian hordes, breaking through the mountain gates on the north, spread a new terror throughout the upper a.s.syrian provinces; from the mountain defiles on the east issued the armies of the recent-grown empire of the Aryan Medes, led by the renowned Cyaxares; from the southern lowlands, anxious to aid in the overthrow of the hated oppressor, the Babylonians, led by the youthful Nebuchadnezzar, the son of the traitor viceroy Nabopola.s.sar, joined, it appears, the Medes as allies, and together they laid close siege to the a.s.syrian capital.

The operations of the besiegers seem to have been aided by an unusual inundation of the Tigris, which undermined a section of the city walls. At all events the place was taken, and dominion pa.s.sed away forever from the proud capital [Footnote: Saracus, in his despair, is said to have erected a funeral pyre within one of the courts of his palace, and, mounting the pile with the members of his family, to have perished with them in the flames; but this is doubtless a poetical embellishment of the story.] (606 B.C.). Two hundred years later, when Xenophon with his Ten Thousand Greeks, in his memorable retreat (see p. 156), pa.s.sed the spot, the once great city was a crumbling ma.s.s of ruins, of which he could not even learn the name.

2. RELIGION, ARTS, AND GENERAL CULTURE.

RELIGION.--The a.s.syrians were Semites, and as such they possessed the deep religious spirit that has always distinguished the peoples of this family.

In this respect they were very much like the Hebrews. The wars which the a.s.syrian monarchs waged were not alone wars of conquest, but were, in a certain sense, crusades made for the purpose of extending the worship and authority of the G.o.ds of a.s.syria. They have been likened to the wars of the Hebrew kings, and again to the conquests of the Saracens.

As with the wars, so was it with the architectural works of these sovereigns. Greater attention, indeed, was paid to the palace in a.s.syria than in Babylonia; yet the inscriptions, as well as the ruins, of the upper country attest that the erection and adornment of the temples of the G.o.ds were matters of anxious and constant care on the part of the a.s.syrian monarchs. Their accounts of the construction and dedication of temples for their G.o.ds afford striking parallels to the Bible account of the building of the temple at Jerusalem by King Solomon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EMBLEM OF a.s.sHUR.]

Not less prominently manifested is the religious spirit of these kings in what we may call their sacred literature, which is filled with prayers singularly like those of the Old Testament.

As to the a.s.syrian deities and their worship, these were in all their essential characteristics so similar to those of the later Chaldaean system, already described (see p. 45), that any detailed account of them here is unnecessary. One difference, however, in the two systems should be noted. The place occupied by Il, or Ra, as the head of the Chaldaean deities, is in a.s.syria given to the national G.o.d a.s.shur, whose emblem was a winged circle with the figure of a man within, the whole perhaps symbolizing, according to Rawlinson, eternity, omnipresence, and wisdom.

CRUELTY OF THE a.s.sYRIANS.--The a.s.syrians have been called the "Romans of Asia." They were a proud, martial, cruel, and unrelenting race. Although possessing, as we have just noticed, a deep and genuine religious feeling, still the a.s.syrian monarchs often displayed in their treatment of prisoners the disposition of savages. In common with most Asiatics, they had no respect for the body, but subjected captives to the most terrible mutilations. The sculptured marbles taken from the palaces exhibit the cruel tortures inflicted upon prisoners; kings are being led before their conqueror by means of hooks thrust through one or both lips; [Footnote: See 2 Chron. x.x.xiii. 10-13 (Revised Version).] other prisoners are being flayed alive; the eyes of some are being bored out with the point of a spear; and still others are having their tongues torn out.

[Ill.u.s.tration: a.s.sYRIANS FLAYING THEIR PRISONERS ALIVE.]

An inscription by a.s.shur-n.a.z.ir-pal, found in one of the palaces at Nimrud, runs as follows: "Their men, young and old, I took prisoners. Of some I cut off the feet and hands; of others I cut off the noses, ears, and lips; of the young men's ears I made a heap; of the old men's heads I built a tower. I exposed their heads as a trophy in front of their city. The male children and the female children I burned in the flames."

ROYAL SPORTS.--The a.s.syrian king gloried in being, like the great Nimrod, "a mighty hunter before the Lord." The monuments are covered with sculptures that represent the king engaged in the favorite royal sport.

a.s.shur-n.a.z.ir-pal had at Nineveh a menagerie, or hunting-park, filled with various animals, many of which were sent him as tribute by va.s.sal princes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LION HUNT. (From Nineveh.)]

REMAINS OF a.s.sYRIAN CITIES.--Enormous gra.s.s-grown mounds, enclosed by crumbled ramparts, alone mark the sites of the great cities of the a.s.syrian kings. The character of the remains arises from the nature of the building material. City walls, palaces, and temples were constructed chiefly of sun-dried bricks, so that the generation that raised them had scarcely pa.s.sed away before they began to sink down into heaps of rubbish.

The rains of many centuries have beaten down and deeply furrowed these mounds, while the gra.s.s has crept over them and made green alike the palaces of the kings and the temples of the G.o.ds. [Footnote: Lying upon the left bank of the Upper Tigris are two enormous mounds surrounded by heavy earthen ramparts, about eight miles in circuit. This is the site of ancient Nineveh, the immense enclosing ridges being the ruined city walls.

These ramparts are still, in their crumbled condition, about fifty feet high, and average about one hundred and fifty in width. The lower part of the wall was constructed of solid stone masonry; the upper portion of dried brick. This upper and frailer part, crumbling into earth, has completely buried the stone bas.e.m.e.nt. The Turks of to-day quarry the stone from these old walls for their buildings.]

PALACE-MOUNDS AND PALACES.--In order to give a certain dignity to the royal residence, to secure the fresh breezes, and to render them more easily defended, the a.s.syrians, as well as the Babylonians and the Persians, built their palaces upon lofty artificial terraces, or platforms. These eminences, which appear like natural, flat-topped hills, were constructed with an almost incredible expenditure of human labor. The great palace-mound at Nineveh, called by the natives Koyunjik, covers an area of one hundred acres, and is from seventy to ninety feet high. Out of the material composing it could be built four pyramids as large as that of Cheops. Upon this mound stood several of the most splendid palaces of the Ninevite kings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RESTORATION OF A COURT IN SARGON'S PALACE AT KHORSABAD.

(After Fergusson.)]

The group of buildings const.i.tuting the royal residence was often of enormous extent; the various courts, halls, corridors, and chambers of the Palace of Sennacherib, which surmounted the great platform at Nineveh, covered an area of over ten acres. The palaces were usually one-storied.

The walls, constructed chiefly of dried brick, were immensely thick and heavy. The rooms and galleries were plastered with stucco, or panelled with precious woods, or lined with enamelled bricks. The main halls, however, and the great open courts were faced with slabs of alabaster, covered with sculptures and inscriptions, the ill.u.s.trated narrative of the wars and labors of the monarch. There were two miles of such sculptured panelling at Koyunjik. At the portals of the palace, to guard the approach, were stationed the colossal human-headed bulls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCULPTURES FROM A GATEWAY AT KHORSABAD.]

An important adjunct of the palace was the temple, a copy of the tower- temples of the Chaldaeans. Its position is marked at present by a lofty conical mound rising amidst and overlooking the palace ruins.

Upon the decay of the a.s.syrian palaces, the material forming the upper part of the thick walls completely buried and protected all the lower portion of the structure. In this way their sculptures and inscriptions have been preserved through so many centuries, till brought to light by the recent excavations of French and English antiquarians.

THE ROYAL LIBRARY AT NINEVEH.--Within the palace of a.s.shur-bani-pal at Nineveh, Layard discovered what is known as the Royal Library. There were two chambers, the floors of which were heaped with books, like the Chaldaean tablets already described, The number of books in the collection has been estimated at ten thousand. The writing upon some of the tablets is so minute that it cannot be read without the aid of a magnifying gla.s.s.

We learn from the inscriptions that a librarian had charge of the collection. Catalogues of the books have been found, made out on clay tablets. The library was open to the public, for an inscription says, "I [a.s.shur-bani-pal] wrote upon the tablets; I placed them in my palace for the instruction of my people."

a.s.shur-bani-pal, as we have already learned, was the Augustus of a.s.syria.