A General History for Colleges and High Schools

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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 Assyrian 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 Nabopolassar, joined, it appears, the Medes as allies, and
together they laid close siege to the Assyrian 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 passed 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), passed the spot, the once
great city was a crumbling mass of ruins, of which he could not even learn
the name.

2. RELIGION, ARTS, AND GENERAL CULTURE.

RELIGION.--The Assyrians 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
Assyrian 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 gods of Assyria. 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 Assyria
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
gods were matters of anxious and constant care on the part of the Assyrian
monarchs. Their accounts of the construction and dedication of temples for
their gods afford striking parallels to the Bible account of the building
of the temple at Jerusalem by King Solomon.

[Illustration: EMBLEM OF ASSHUR.]

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 Assyrian 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 Assyria given to the national god Asshur, 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 ASSYRIANS.--The Assyrians 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 Assyrian 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. xxxiii. 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.

[Illustration: ASSYRIANS FLAYING THEIR PRISONERS ALIVE.]

An inscription by Asshur-nazir-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 Assyrian 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.
Asshur-nazir-pal had at Nineveh a menagerie, or hunting-park, filled with
various animals, many of which were sent him as tribute by vassal princes.

[Illustration: LION HUNT. (From Nineveh.)]

REMAINS OF ASSYRIAN CITIES.--Enormous grass-grown mounds, enclosed by
crumbled ramparts, alone mark the sites of the great cities of the
Assyrian 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 passed 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 grass has crept over them and made green alike the
palaces of the kings and the temples of the gods. [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 basement. 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 Assyrians, 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.

[Illustration: RESTORATION OF A COURT IN SARGON'S PALACE AT KHORSABAD.
(After Fergusson.)]

The group of buildings constituting 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 illustrated 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.

[Illustration: 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 Assyrian 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 Asshur-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 glass.
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
[Asshur-bani-pal] wrote upon the tablets; I placed them in my palace for
the instruction of my people."

Asshur-bani-pal, as we have already learned, was the Augustus of Assyria.
It was under his patronage and direction that most of the books were
prepared and placed in the Ninevite collection. The greater part of these
were copies of older Chaldaean tablets; for the literature of the
Assyrians, as well as their arts and sciences, was borrowed almost in a
body from the Chaldaeans. All the old libraries of the low country were
ransacked, and copies of their tablets made for the Royal Library at
Nineveh. Rare treasures were secured from the libraries founded or
enlarged by Sargon of Agade (see p. 42). In this way was preserved the
most valuable portion of the early Chaldaean literature, which would
otherwise have been lost to the world.

The tablets embrace a great variety of subjects; the larger part, however,
are lexicons and treatises on grammar, and various other works intended as
text-books for scholars. Perhaps the most curious of the tablets yet found
are notes issued by the government, and made redeemable in gold and silver
on presentation at the king's treasury.

From one part of the library, which seems to have been the archives
proper, were taken copies of treaties, reports of officers of the
government, deeds, wills, mortgages, and contracts. One tablet, known as
"the Will of Sennacherib," conveys to certain priests some personal
property to be held in trust for one of his sons. This is the oldest will
in existence.

CHAPTER V.

BABYLONIA.

BABYLONIAN AFFAIRS FROM 1300 TO 625 B.C.--During the six centuries and
more that intervened between the conquest of the old Chaldaean monarchy by
the Assyrian king Tiglathi-Nin and the successful revolt of the low
countries under Nabopolassar (see pp. 43, 51), the Babylonian peoples bore
the Assyrian yoke very impatiently. Again and again they made violent
efforts to throw it off; and in several instances they succeeded, and for
a time enjoyed home rulers. But for the most part the whole country as far
as the "Sea," as the Persian Gulf is called in the inscriptions, was a
dependency of the great overshadowing empire of the north.

NABOPOLASSAR (625-604 B.C.).--Nabopolassar was the first king of what is
called the New Babylonian Monarchy. When troubles and misfortunes began to
thicken about the last Assyrian king, Saracus, he intrusted to the care of
Nabopolassar, as his viceroy, the towns and provinces of the South. The
chance now presented of obtaining a crown proved too great a temptation
for the satrap's fidelity to his master. He revolted and became
independent (625 B.C.). Later, he entered into an alliance with the Median
king, Cyaxares, against his former sovereign (see p. 51). Through the
overthrow of Nineveh and the break-up of the Assyrian Empire, the new
Babylonian kingdom received large accessions of territory.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR (604-561 B.C.).--Nabopolassar was followed by his renowned
son Nebuchadnezzar, whose oppressive wars and gigantic architectural works
rendered Babylon at once the scourge and the wonder of the ancient world.

Jerusalem, having repeatedly revolted, was finally taken and sacked. The
temple was stripped of its sacred vessels of silver and gold, which were
carried away to Babylon, and the temple itself with the adjoining palace
was given to the flames; the people, save a miserable remnant, were also
borne away into the "Great Captivity" (586 B.C.).

With Jerusalem subdued, Nebuchadnezzar pushed with all his forces the
siege of the Phoenician city of Tyre, whose investment had been commenced
several years before. In striking language the prophet Ezekiel (ch. xxix.
18) describes the length and hardness of the siege: "Every head was made
bald, and every shoulder was peeled." After a siege of thirteen years, the
city seems to have fallen into the hands of the Babylonian king, and his
authority was now undisputed from the Zagros Mountains to the
Mediterranean.

The numerous captives of his many wars, embracing peoples of almost every
nation in Western Asia, enabled Nebuchadnezzar to rival even the Pharaohs
in the execution of enormous works requiring an immense expenditure of
human labor: Among his works were the Great Palace in the royal quarter of
the city; the celebrated Hanging Gardens; and gigantic reservoirs, canals,
and various engineering works, embracing a vast system of irrigation that
reached every part of Babylonia.

In addition to all these works, the indefatigable monarch seems to have
either rebuilt or repaired almost every city and temple throughout the
entire country. There are said to be at least a hundred sites in the tract
immediately about Babylon which give evidence, by inscribed bricks bearing
his legend, of the marvellous activity and energy of this monarch.

In the midst of all these gigantic undertakings, surrounded by a brilliant
court of councillors and flatterers, the reason of the king was suddenly
and mysteriously clouded. [Footnote: "Nebuchadnezzar fell a victim to that
mental aberration which has often proved the penalty of despotism, but in
the strange and degrading form to which physicians have given the name of
lycanthropy; in which the patient, fancying himself a beast, rejects
clothing and ordinary food, and even (as in this case) the shelter of a
roof, ceases to use articulate speech, and sometimes persists in going on
all-fours."--Smith's _Ancient History of the East_, p. 357.] After a
period the cloud passed away, "the glory of his kingdom, his honor, and
brightness returned unto him." But it was the splendor of the evening; for
the old monarch soon after died at the age of eighty, worn out by the
toils and cares of a reign of forty-three years, the longest, most
memorable, and instructive in the annals of the Babylonian or Assyrian
kings.

THE FALL OF BABYLON.--In 555 B.C., Nabonadius, the last king of Babylon,
began his reign. He seems to have associated with himself in the
government his son Belshazzar, who shared with his father the duties and
honors of royalty, apparently on terms of equal co-sovereignty.

To the east of the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, beyond the
ranges of the Zagros, there had been growing up an Aryan kingdom, the
Medo-Persian, which, at the time now reached by us, had excited by its
aggressive spirit the alarm of all the nations of Western Asia. For
purposes of mutual defence, the king of Babylon, and Croesus, the well-
known monarch of Lydia, a state of Asia Minor, formed an alliance against
Cyrus, the strong and ambitious sovereign of the Medes and Persians. This
league awakened the resentment of Cyrus, and, after punishing Croesus and
depriving him of his kingdom (see p. 75), he collected his forces to
chastise the Babylonian king.

Anticipating the attack, Nabonadius had strengthened the defences of
Babylon, and stationed around it supporting armies. But he was able to
avert the fatal blow for only a few years. Risking a battle in the open
field, his army was defeated, and the gates of the capital were thrown
open to the Persians (538 B.C.). [Footnote: The device of turning the
Euphrates, which Herodotus makes an incident of the siege, was not
resorted to by Cyrus; but it seems that a little later (in 521-519 B.C.),
the city, having revolted, was actually taken in this way by the Persian
king Darius. Herodotus confused the two events.]

With the fall of Babylon, the sceptre of dominion, borne for so many years
by Semitic princes, was given into the hands of the Aryan peoples, who
were destined, from this time forward, to shape the course of events, and
control the affairs of civilization.

THE GREAT EDIFICES OF BABYLON.--The deep impression which Babylon produced
upon the early Greek travellers was made chiefly by her vast architectural
works,--her temples, palaces, elevated gardens, and great walls. The
Hanging Gardens of Nebuchadnezzar and the walls of the city were reckoned
among the wonders of the world.

[Illustration: BIRS-NIMRUD. (Ruins of the great Temple of the Seven
Spheres, near Babylon.)]

The Babylonians, like their predecessors the Chaldaeans, accorded to the
sacred edifice the place of pre-eminence among their architectural works.
Sacred architecture in the time of Nebuchadnezzar had changed but little
from the early Chaldaean models (see p. 44); save that the temples were now
larger and more splendid, being made, in the language of the inscriptions,
"to shine like the sun." The celebrated Temple of the Seven Spheres, at
Borsippa, a suburb of Babylon, may serve as a representative of the later
Babylonian temples. This structure was a vast pyramid, rising in seven
consecutive stages, or platforms, to a height of over one hundred and
fifty feet. Each of the stages was dedicated to one of the seven planets,
or spheres. (The sun and moon were reckoned as planets.) The stages sacred
to the sun and moon were covered respectively with plates of gold and
silver. The chapel, or shrine proper, surmounted the uppermost stage. An
inscribed cylinder discovered under the corner of one of the stages (the
Babylonians always buried records beneath the corners of their public
edifices), informs us that this temple was a restoration by Nebuchadnezzar
of a very ancient one, which in his day had become, from "extreme old
age," a heap of rubbish. This edifice in its decay has left one of the
grandest and most impressive ruins in all the East.

The Babylonian palaces and palace-mounds, in all essential features, were
like those of the Assyrians, already described.

The so-called Hanging Gardens excited the greatest admiration of the
ancient Greek visitors to Babylon. They were constructed by
Nebuchadnezzar, to please his wife Amytis, who, tired of the monotony of
the Babylonian plains, longed for the mountain scenery of her native
Media. The gardens were probably built somewhat in the form of the tower-
temples, the successive stages being covered with earth, and beautified
with rare plants and trees, so as to simulate the appearance of a mountain
rising in cultivated terraces towards the sky.

Under the later kings, Babylon was surrounded with stupendous walls.
Herodotus affirms that these defences enclosed an area just fourteen miles
square. A recently discovered inscription corroborates the statement of
the historian. The object in enclosing such an enormous district seems to
have been to bring sufficient arable ground within the defences to support
the inhabitants in case of a protracted siege. No certain traces of these
great ramparts can now be found.

CHAPTER VI.

THE HEBREWS.

THE PATRIARCHAL AGE.--Hebrew history begins with the departure of Abraham
out of Ur of the Chaldees, about 2000 B.C. The story of Abraham and his
nephew Lot, of Isaac and his sons Jacob and Esau, of the sojourn of the
descendants of Jacob in Egypt, of the Exodus, of the conquest of Canaan
and the apportionment of the land among the twelve tribes of Israel,--all
this marvellous story is told in the Hebrew Scriptures with a charm and
simplicity that have made it the familiar possession of childhood.

THE JUDGES (from about 1300 to 1095 B.C.).--Along period of anarchy and
dissension followed the conquest and settlement of Canaan by the Hebrews.
"There was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his
own eyes." During this time there arose a line of national heroes, such as
Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson, whose deeds of valor and daring, and the
timely deliverance they wrought for the tribes of Israel from their foes,
caused their names to be handed down with grateful remembrance to
following ages.

These popular leaders were called Judges because they usually exercised
judicial functions, acting as arbiters between the different tribes, as
well as between man and man. Their exploits are narrated in the Book of
Judges, which is a collection of the fragmentary, yet always interesting,
traditions of this early and heroic period of the nation's life. The last
of the Judges was Samuel, whose life embraces the close of the anarchical
age and the beginning of the monarchy.

FOUNDING OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY (about 1095 B.C.).--During the period of
the Judges, the tribes of Israel were united by no central government.
Their union was nothing more than a league, or confederation, which has
been compared to the Saxon Heptarchy in England. But the common dangers to
which they were exposed from the attacks of the half-subdued Canaanitish
tribes about them, and the example of the great kingdoms of Egypt and
Assyria, led the people to begin to think of the advantages of a closer
union and a stronger government. Consequently the republic, or
confederation, was changed into a kingdom, and Saul, of the tribe of
Benjamin, a man chosen in part because of his commanding stature and royal
aspect, was made king of the new monarchy (about 1095 B.C.).

The king was successful in subduing the enemies of the Hebrews, and
consolidated the tribes and settled the affairs of the new state. But
towards the close of his reign, his reason became disturbed: fits of gloom
and despondency passed into actual insanity, which clouded the closing
years of his life. At last he and his three sons fell in battle with the
Philistines upon Mount Gilboa (about 1055 B.C.).

THE REIGN OF DAVID (about 1055-1015 B.C.).--Upon the death of Saul, David,
son of Jesse, of the tribe of Judah, who had been previously anointed and
encouraged to expect the crown by the prophet Samuel, assumed the sceptre.
This warlike king transformed the pastoral and half-civilized tribes into
a conquering people, and, in imitation of the monarchs of the Nile and the
Euphrates, extended the limits of his empire in every direction, and waged
wars of extermination against the troublesome tribes of Moab and Edom.

Poet as well as warrior, David enriched the literature of his own nation
and of the world with lyric songs that breathe such a spirit of devotion
and trust that they have been ever since his day the source of comfort and
inspiration to thousands. [Footnote: The authorship of the different
psalms is a matter of debate, yet critics are very nearly agreed in
ascribing the composition of at least a considerable number of them to
David.] He had in mind to build at Jerusalem, his capital city, a
magnificent temple, and spent the latter years of his life in collecting
material for this purpose. In dying, he left the crown to Solomon, his
youngest son, his eldest, Absalom, having been slain in a revolt against
his father, and the second, Adonijah, having been excluded from the
succession for a similar crime.

THE REIGN OF SOLOMON (about 1015-975 B.C.).--Solomon did not possess his
father's talent for military affairs, but was a liberal patron of
architecture, commerce, and learning. He erected, with the utmost
magnificence of adornment, the temple at Jerusalem, planned by his father
David. King Hiram of Tyre, who was a close friend of the Hebrew monarch,
aided him in this undertaking by supplying him with the celebrated cedar
of Lebanon, and with Tyrian architects, the most skilled workmen at that
time in the world. The dedication ceremonies upon the completion of the
building were most imposing and impressive. Thenceforth this temple was
the centre of the Jewish worship and of the national life.

[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON. (A Restoration.)]

For the purpose of extending his commerce, Solomon built fleets upon the
Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The most remote regions of Asia and Africa
were visited by his ships, and their rich and wonderful products made to
contribute to the wealth and glory of his kingdom.

Solomon maintained one of the most magnificent courts ever held by an
oriental sovereign. When the Queen of Sheba, attracted by the reports of
his glory, came from Southern Arabia to visit the monarch, she exclaimed,
"The half was not told me." He was the wisest king of the East. His
proverbs are famous specimens of sententious wisdom. He was versed, too,
in botany, being acquainted with plants and trees "from the hyssop upon
the wall to the cedar of Lebanon."

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