Asshur-izir-pal appears, however, to have possessed a menagerie park in the neighborhood of Nineveh, in which were maintained a variety of strange and curious animals. Animals called paguts or pagats—perhaps elephants—were received as tribute from the Phoenicians during his reign, on at least one occasion, and placed in this enclosure, where (he tells us) they throve and bred. So well was his taste for such curiosities known, that even neighboring sovereigns sought to gratify it; and the king of Egypt, a Pharaoh probably of the twenty-second dynasty, sent him a present of strange animals when he was in Southern Syria, as a compliment likely to be appreciated. This love of the chase, which he no doubt indulged to some extent at home, found in Syria, and in the country on the Upper Tigris, its amplest and most varied exercise. In an obelisk inscription, designed especially to commemorate a great hunting expedition into these regions, he tells us that, besides antelopes of all sorts, which he took and sent to Asshur, he captured and destroyed the following animals:—lions, wild sheep, red deer, fallow-deer, wild goats or ibexes, leopards large and small, bears, wolves, jackals, wild boars, ostriches, foxes, hyaenas, wild asses, and a few kinds which have not been identified. From another inscription we learn that, in the course of another expedition, which seems to have been in the Mesopotamian desert, he destroyed 360 large lions, 257 large wild cattle, and thirty buffaloes, while he took and sent to Calah fifteen full-grown lions, fifty young lions, some leopards, several pairs of wild buffaloes and wild cattle, together with ostriches, wolves, red deer, bears, cheetas, and hyeenas. Thus in his peaceful hours he was still actively employed, and in the chase of many dangerous beasts was able to exercise the same qualities of courage, coolness, and skill in the use of weapons which procured him in his wars such frequent and such great successes.
Thus distinguished, both as a hunter and as a warrior, Asshur-izir-pal, nevertheless, excelled his predecessors most remarkably in the grandeur of his public buildings and the free use which he made of the mimetic and other arts in their ornamentation. The constructions of the earlier kings at Asshur (or Kileh-Sherghat), whatever merit they may have had, were beyond a doubt far inferior to those which, from the time of Asshur-izir-pal, were raised in rapid succession at Calah, Nineveh, and Beth-Sargina by that monarch and his successors upon the throne. The mounds of Kileh-Sherghat have yielded no bas-reliefs, nor do they show any traces of buildings on the scale of those which, at Nimrud, Koyunjik, and Khorsabad, provoke the admiration of the traveller. The great palace of Asshur-izir-pal was at Calah, which he first raised from a provincial town to be the metropolis of the empire. [PLATE CXLV., Fig. 1.] It was a building 360 feet long by 300 broad, consisting of seven or eight large halls, and a far greater number of small chambers, grouped round a central court 130 feet long and nearly 100 wide. The longest of the halls, which faced towards the north, and was the first room entered by one who approached from the town, was in length 154 and in breadth 33 feet. The others varied between a size little short of this, and a length of 65 with a breadth of less than 20 feet. The chambers were generally square, or nearly so, and in their greatest dimensions rarely exceeded ten yards. The whole palace was raised upon a lofty platform, made of sun-burnt brick, but externally cased on every side with hewn stone. There were two grand facades, one facing the north, on which side there was an ascent to the platform from the town: and the other facing the Tigris, which anciently flowed at the foot of the platform towards the west. On the northern front two or three gateways, flanked with andro-sphinxes, gave direct access to the principal hall or audience chamber, a noble apartment, but too narrow for its length, lined throughout with sculptured slabs representing the various actions of the king, and containing at the upper or eastern end a raised stone platform cut into steps, which, it is probable, was intended to support at a proper elevation the carved throne of the monarch. A grand portal in the southern wall of the chamber, guarded on either side by winged human-headed bulls in yellow limestone, conducted into a second hall considerably smaller than the first, and having less variety of ornament, which communicated with the central court by a handsome gateway towards the south; and, towards the east, was connected with a third hall, one of the most remarkable in the palace. This chamber was a better-proportioned room than most, being about ninety feet long by twenty-six wide; it ran along the eastern side of the great court, with which it communicated by two gateways, and, internally, it was adorned with sculptures of a more finished and elaborate character than any other room in the building. Behind this eastern hall was another opening into it, of somewhat greater length, but only twenty feet wide; and this led to five small chambers, which here bounded the palace. South of the Great Court were, again, two halls communicating with each other; but they were of inferior size to those on the north and west, and were far less richly ornamented. It is conjectured that there were also two or three halls on the west side of the court between it and the river; but of this there was no very clear evidence, and it may be doubted whether the court towards the west was not, at least partially, open to the river. Almost every hall had one or two small chambers attached to it, which were most usually at the ends of the halls, and connected with them by large doorways.
Such was the general plan of the palace of Asshur-izir-pal. Its great halls, so narrow for their length, were probably roofed with beams stretching across them from side to side, and lighted by small louvres in their roofs after the manner already described elsewhere. Its square chambers may have been domed, and perhaps were not lighted at all, or only by lamps and torches. They were generally without ornamentation. The grand halls, on the contrary, and some of the narrower chambers, were decorated on every side, first with sculptures to the height of nine or ten feet, and then with enamelled bricks, or patterns painted in fresco, to the height, probably, of seven or eight feet more. The entire height of the rooms was thus from sixteen to seventeen or eighteen feet.
The character of Asshur-izir-pal’s sculptures has been sufficiently described in an earlier chapter. They have great spirit, boldness, and force; occasionally they show real merit in the design; but they are clumsy in the drawing and somewhat coarse in the execution. What chiefly surprises us in regard to them is the suddenness with which the art they manifest appears to have sprung up, without going through the usual stages of rudeness and imperfection. Setting aside one mutilated statue, of very poor execution, and a single rock tablet, we have no specimens remaining of Assyrian mimetic art more ancient than this monarch. That art almost seems to start in Assyria, like Minerva from the head of Jove, full-grown. Asshur-izir-pal had undoubtedly some constructions of former monarchs to copy from, both in his palatial and in his sacred edifices; the old palaces and temples at Kileh-Sherghat must have had a certain grandeur; and in his architecture this monarch may have merely amplified and improved upon the models left him by his predecessors; but his ornamentation, so far as appears, was his own. The mounds of Kileh-Sherghat have yielded bricks in abundance, but not a single fragment of a sculptured slab. We cannot prove that ornamental bas-reliefs did not exist before the time of Asshur-izir-pal; indeed the rock tablets which earlier monarchs set up were sculptures of this character; but to Asshur-izir-pal seems at any rate to belong the merit of having first adopted bas-reliefs on an extensive scale as an architectural ornament, and of having employed them so as to represent by their means all the public life of the monarch.
The other arts employed by this king in the adornment of his buildings were those of enamelling bricks and painting in fresco upon a plaster. Both involve considerable skill in the preparation of colors, and the former especially implies much dexterity in the management of several very delicate processes.
The sculptures of Asshur-izir-pal, besides proving directly the high condition of mimetic art in Assyria at this time, furnish indirect evidence of the wonderful progress which had been made in various important manufactures. The metallurgy which produced the swords, sword-sheaths, daggers, earrings, necklaces, armlets, and bracelets of this period, must have been of a very advanced description. The coach-building which constructed the chariots, the saddlery which made the harness of the horses, the embroidery which ornamented the robes, must, similarly, have been of a superior character. The evidence of the sculptures alone is quite sufficient to show that, in the time of Asshur-izir-pal, the Assyrians were already a great and luxurious people, that most of the useful arts not only existed among them, but were cultivated to a high pitch, and that in dress, furniture, jewelry, etc., they were not very much behind the moderns.
Besides the magnificent palace which he built at Calah, Asshur-izir-pal is known also to have erected a certain number of temples. The most important of these have been already described. They stood at the north-western corner of the Nimrud platform, and consisted of two edifices, one exactly at the angle, comprising the higher tower or ziggurat, which stood out as a sort of corner buttress from the great mound, and a shrine with chambers at the tower’s base; the other, a little further to the east, consisting of a shrine and chambers without a tower. These temples were richly ornamented both within and without; and in front of the larger one was an erection which seems to show that the Assyrian monarchs, either during their lifetime, or at any rate after their decease, received divine honors from their subjects. On a plain square pedestal about two feet in height was raised a solid block of limestone cut into the shape of an arched frame, and within this frame was carved the monarch in his sacerdotal dress, and with the sacred collar round his neck, while the five principal divine emblems were represented above his head. In front of this figure, marking (apparently) the object of its erection, was a triangular altar with a circular top, very much resembling the tripod of the Greeks. Here we may presume were laid the offerings with which the credulous and the servile propitiated the new god,—many a gift, not improbably, being intercepted on its way to the deity of the temple. [PLATE CXLV., Fig. 2.]
Another temple built by this monarch was one dedicated to Beltis at Nineveh. It was perhaps for the ornamentation of this edifice that he cut “great trees” in Amanus and elsewhere during his Syrian expedition, and had them conveyed across Mesopotamia to Assyria. It is expressly stated that these beams were carried, not to Calah, where Asshur-izir-pal usually resided, but to Nineveh.
A remarkable work, probably erected by this monarch, and set up as a memorial of his reign at the same city, is an obelisk in white stone, now in the British Museum. On this monument, which was covered on all its four sides with sculptures and inscriptions, now nearly obliterated, Asshur-izir-pal commemorated his wars and hunting exploits in various countries. The obelisk is a monolith, about twelve or thirteen feet high, and two feet broad at the base. It tapers slightly, and, like the Black Obelisk erected by this monarch’s son, is crowned at the summit by three steps or gradines. This thoroughly Assyrian ornamentation seems to show that the idea of the obelisk was not derived from Egypt, where the pyramidical apex was universally used, being regarded as essential to this class of ornaments. If we must seek a foreign origin for the invention, we may perhaps find it in the pillars [Greek —— ——] which the Phoenicians employed, as ornaments or memorials, from a remote antiquity, objects possibly seen by the monarch who took tribute from Tyre, Sidon, Aradus, Byblus, and most of the maritime Syrian cities.
Another most important work of this great monarch was the tunnel and canal already described at length, by which at a vast expenditure of money and labor he brought the water of the Greater Zab to Calah. Asshur-izir-pal mentions this great work as his in his annals; and he was likewise commemorated as its author in the tablet set up in the tunnel by Sennacherib, when, two centuries later, he repaired it and brought it once more into use.
It is evident that Asshur-izir-pal, though he adorned and beautified both the old capital, Asshur, and the now rising city of Nineveh, regarded the town of Calah with more favor than any other, making it the ordinary residence of his court, and bestowing on it his chief care and attention. It would seem that the Assyrian dominion had by this time spread so far to the north that the situation of Asshur (or Kileh-Sherghat) was no longer sufficiently central for the capital. The seat of government was consequently moved forty miles further up the river. At the same time it was transferred from the west bank to the east, and placed in the fertile region of Adiabene, near the junction of the Greater Zab with the Tigris. Here, in a strong and healthy position, on a low spur from the Jebel Maklub, protected on either side by a deep river, the new capital grew to greatness. Palace after palace rose on its lofty platform, rich with carved woodwork, gilding, painting, sculpture, and enamel, each aiming to outshine its predecessors; while stone lions, sphinxes, obelisks, shrines,and temple-towers embellished the scene, breaking its monotonous sameness by variety. The lofty ziggurat attached to the temple of Nin or Hercules, dominating over the whole, gave unity to the vast mass of palatial and sacred edifices. The Tigris, skirting the entire western base of the mound, glassed the whole in its waves, and, doubling the apparent height, rendered less observable the chief weakness of the architecture. When the setting sun lighted up the view with the gorgeous hues seen only under an eastern sky, Calah must have seemed to the traveller who beheld it for the first time like a vision from fairy-land.
After reigning gloriously for twenty-five years, from B.C. 883 to B.C. 858, this great prince—“the conqueror” (as he styles himself), “from the upper passage of the Tigris to Lebanon and the Great Sea, who has reduced under his authority all countries from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same”—died, probably at no very advanced age, and left his throne to his son, who bore the name of Shalmaneser.
Shalmaneser II., the son of Asshur-izir-pal, who may probably have been trained to arms under his father, seems to have inherited to the full his military spirit, and to have warred with at least as much success against his neighbors. His reign was extended to the unusual length of thirty-five years, during which time he conducted in person no fewer than twenty-three military expeditions, besides entrusting three or four others to a favorite general. It would be a wearisome task to follow out in detail these numerous and generally uninteresting campaigns, where invasion, battle, flight, siege, submission, and triumphant return succeeded one another with monotonous uniformity. The style of the court historians of Assyria does not improve as time goes on. Nothing can well be more dry and commonplace than the historical literature of this period, which recalls the early efforts of the Greeks in this department, and exhibits a decided inferiority to the compositions of Stowe and Holinshed. The historiographer of Tiglath-Pileser I., between two and three centuries earlier, is much superior, as a writer, to those of the period to which we are come, who eschew all graces of style, contenting themselves with the curtest and dryest of phrases, and with sentences modelled on a single unvarying type.
Instead, therefore, of following in the direct track of the annalist whom Shalmaneser employed to record his exploits, and proceeding to analyze his account of the twenty-seven campaigns belonging to this reign, I shall simply present the reader with the general result in a few words, and then draw his special attention to a few of the expeditions which are of more than common importance.
It appears, then, that Shalmaneser, during the first twenty-seven years of his reign, led in person twenty-three expeditions into the territories of his neighbors, attacking in the course of these inroads, besides petty tribes, the following nations and countries:—Babylonia, Chaldaea, Media, the Zimri, Armenia, Upper Mesopotamia, the country about the head-streams of the Tigris, the Hittites, the Patena, the Tibareni, the Hamathites, and the Syrians of Damascus. He took tribute during the same time from the Phoenieian cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Byblus, from the Tsukhi or Shuhites, from the people of Muzr, from the Bartsu or Partsu, who are almost certainly the Persians, and from the Israelites. He thus traversed in person the entire country between the Persian Gulf on the south and Mount Niphates upon the north, and between the Zagros range (or perhaps the Persian desert) eastward, and, westward, the shores of the Mediterranean. Over the whole of this region he made his power felt, and even beyond it the nations feared him and gladly placed themselves under his protection. During the later years of his reign, when he was becoming less fit for warlike toils, he seems in general to have deputed the command of his armies to a subject in whom he had great confidence, a noble named Dayan-Asshur. This chief, who held an important office as early as Shahnaneser’s fifth year, was in his twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth, thirtieth, and thirty-first employed as commander-in-chief, and sent out, at the head of the main army of Assyria, to conduct campaigns against the Armenians, against the revolted Patena, and against the inhabitants of the modern Kurdistan. It is uncertain whether the king himself took any part in the campaigns of these years, the native record the first and third persons are continually interchanged, some of the actions related being ascribed to the monarch and others to the general; but on the whole the impression left by the narrative is that the king, in the spirit of a well-known legal maxim assumes as his own the acts which he has accomplished through his representative. In his twenty-ninth year, however, Shalmaneser seems to have led an expedition in person into Khirki (the Niphates country), where he “overturned, beat to pieces, and consumed with fire the towns, swept the country with his troops, and impressed on the inhabitants the fear of his presence.”
The campaigns of Shalmaneser which have the greatest interest are those of his sixth, eighth, ninth, eleventh, fourteenth, eighteenth, and twenty-first years. Two of these were directed against Babylonia, three against Ben-hadad of Damascus, and two against Khazail (Hazael) of Damascus.
In his eighth year Shalmaneser took advantage of a civil war in Babylonia between King Merodach-sum-adin and a younger brother, Merodach-bel-usati (?), whose power was about evenly balanced, to interfere in the affairs of that country, and under pretence of helping the legitimate monarch, to make himself master of several towns. In the following year he was still more fortunate. Having engaged, defeated, and slain the pretender to the Babylonian crown, he marched on to Babylon itself, where he was probably welcomed as a deliverer, and from thence proceeded into Chaldaea, or the tract upon the coast, which was at this time independent of Babylon, and forced its kings to become his tributaries. “The power of his army,” he tells us, “struck terror as far as the sea.”
The wars of Shalmaneser in Southern Syria commenced as early as his ninth year. He had succeeded to a dominion in Northern Syria which extended over the Patena, and probably over most of the northern Hittites; and this made his territories conterminous with those of the Phoenicians, the Hamathites, the southern Hittites, and perhaps the Syrians of Damascus. At any rate the last named people felt themselves threatened by the growing power on or near their borders, and, convinced that they would soon be attacked, prepared for resistance by entering into a close league with their neighbors. The king of Damascus, who was the great Ben-hadad, Tsakhulena, king of Hamath, Ahab, king of Israel, the kings of the southern Hittites, those of the Phoenician cities on the coast, and others, formed an alliance, and, uniting their forces, went out boldly to meet Shalnaneser, offering him battle. Despite, however, of this confidence, or perhaps in consequence of it, the allies suffered a defeat. Twenty thousand men fell in the battle. Many chariots and much of the material of war were captured by the Assyrians. But still no conquest was effected. Shalmaneser does not assert that he either received submission or imposed a tribute; and the fact that he did not venture to renew the war for five years seems to show that the resistance which he had encountered made him hesitate about continuing the struggle.
Five years, however, having elapsed, and the power of Assyria being increased by her successes in Lower Mesopotamia, Shalmaneser, in the eleventh year of his reign, advanced a second time against Hamath and the southern Hittites. Entering their territories unexpectedly, he was at first unopposed, and succeeded in taking a large number of their towns. But the troops of Ben-hadad soon appeared in the field. Phoenicia, apparently, stood aloof, and Hamath was occupied with her own difficulties; but Ben-hadad, having joined the Hittites, again gave Shalmaneser battle; and though that monarch, as usual, claims the victory, it is evident that he gained no important advantage by his success. He had once more to return to his own land without having extended his sway, and this time (as it would seem) without even any trophies of conquest.
Three years later, he made another desperate effort. Collecting his people “in multitudes that were not to be counted,” he crossed the Euphrates with above a hundred thousand men. Marching southwards, he soon encountered a large army of the allies, Damascenes, Hamathites, Hittites, and perhaps Phoenicians, the first-named still commanded by the undaunted Ben-hadad. This time the success of the Assyrians is beyond dispute. Not only were the allies put to flight, not only did they lose most of their chariots and implements of war, but they appear to have lost hope, and, formally or tacitly, to have forthwith dissolved their confederacy. The Hittites and Hamathites probably submitted to the conqueror; the Phoenicians withdrew to their own towns, and Damascus was left without allies, to defend herself as she best might, when the tide of conquest should once more flow in this direction.
In the fourth year the flow of the tide came. Shalmaneser, once more advancing southward, found the Syrians of Damascus strongly posted in the fastnesses of the Anti-Lebanon. Since his last invasion they had changed their ruler. The brave and experienced Ben-hadad had perished by the treachery of an ambitious subject, and his assassin, the infamous Hazael, held the throne. Left to his own resources by the dissolution of the old league, this monarch had exerted himself to the utmost in order to repel the attack which he knew was impending. He had collected a very large army, including above eleven hundred chariots, and, determined to leave nothing to chance, had carefully taken up a very strong position in the mountain range which separated his territory from the neighboring kingdom of Hamath, or valley of Coele-Syria. Here he was attacked by Shalmaneser, and completely defeated, with the loss of 16,000 of his troops, 1121 of his chariots, a quantity of his war material, and his camp. This blow apparently prostrated him; and when, three years later, Shalmaneser invaded his territory, Hazael brought no army into the field, but let his towns, one after another, be taken and plundered by the Assyrians.
It was probably upon this last occasion, when the spirit of Damascus was cowed, and the Phoenician cities, trembling at the thought of their own rashness in having assisted Hazael and Ben-hadad, hastened to make their submission and to resume the rank of Assyrian tributaries, that the sovereign of another Syrian country, taking warning from the fate of his neighbors, determined to anticipate the subjection which he could not avoid, and, making a virtue of necessity, to place himself under the Assyrian yoke. Jehu, “son of Omri,” as he is termed in the Inscription—i.e., successor and supposed descendant of the great Omri who built Samaria, sent as tribute to Shalmaneser a quantity of gold and silver in bullion, together with a number of manufactured articles in the more precious of the two metals. In the sculptures which represent the Israelitish ambassadors presenting this tribute to the great king, these articles appear carried in the hands, or on the shoulders, of the envoys, but they are in general too indistinctly traced for us to pronounce with any confidence upon their character. [PLATE CXLVI., Fig. 1]
Shalmaneser had the same taste as his father for architecture and the other arts. He completed the ziggurat of the Great Temple of Nin at Calah, which his father had left unfinished, and not content with the palace of that monarch, built for himself a new and (probably) more magnificent residence on the same lofty platform, at the distance of about 150 yards. This edifice was found by Mr. Layard in so ruined a condition, through the violence which it had suffered, apparently at the hands of Esarhaddon, that it was impossible either to trace its plan or to form a clear notion of its ornamentation. Two gigantic winged bulls, partly destroyed, served to show that the grand portals of the chambers were similar in character and design to those of the earlier monarch, while from a number of sculptured fragments it was sufficiently plain that the walls had been adorned with bas-reliefs of the style used in Asshur-izir-pal’s edifice. The only difference observable was in the size and subjects of the sculptures, which seemed to have been on a grander scale and more generally mythological than those of the North-West palace.
The monument of Shalmaneser which has attracted most attention in this country is an obelisk in black marble, similar in shape and general arrangement to that of Asshur-izir-pal, already described, but of a handsomer and better material. This work of art was discovered in a prostrate position under the debris which covered up Shalmaneser’s palace. It contained bas-reliefs in twenty compartments, five on each of its four sides; the space above, between, and below then being covered with cuneiform writing, sharply inscribed in a minute character. The whole was in most excellent preservation.
The bas-reliefs represent the monarch, accompanied by his vizier and other chief officers, receiving the tribute of five nations, whose envoys are ushered into the royal presence by officers of the court, and prostrate themselves at the Great King’s feet ere they present their offerings. The gifts brought are, in part, objects carried in the hand—gold, silver, copper in bars and cubes, goblets, elephants’ tusks, tissues, and the like—in part, animals such as horses, camels, monkeys and baboons of different kinds, stags, lions, wild bulls, antelopes, and—strangest of all—the rhinoceros and the elephant. One of the nations, as already mentioned, is that of the Israelites. The others are, first, the people of Kirzan, a country bordering on Armenia, who present gold, silver, copper, horses, and camels, and fill the four highest compartments with a train of nine envoys: secondly, the Muzri, or people of Muzr, a country nearly in the same quarter, who are represented in the four central compartments, with six envoys conducting various wild animals; thirdly, the Tsukhi, or Shuhites, from the Euphrates, to whom belong the four compartments below the Muzri, which are filled by a train of thirteen envoys, bringing two lions, a stag, and various precious articles, among which bars of metal, elephants’ tusks, and shawls or tissues are conspicuous; and lastly, the Patera, from the Orontes, who fill three of the lowest compartments with a train of twelve envoys bearing gifts like those of the Israelites.
Besides this interesting monument, there are very few remains of art which can be ascribed to Shalmaneser’s time with any confidence. The sculptures found on the site of his palace belonged to a later monarch, who restored and embellished it. His own bas-reliefs were torn from their places by Esarhaddon, and by him defaced and used as materials in the construction of a new palace. We are thus left almost without materials for judging of the progress made by art during Shalmaneser’s reign. Architecture, it may be conjectured, was modified to a certain extent, precious woods being employed more frequently and more largely than before; a fact of which we seem to have an indication in the frequent expeditions made by Shalmaneser into Syria, for the single purpose of cutting timber in its forests. Sculpture, to judge from the obelisk, made no advance. The same formality, the same heaviness of outline, the same rigid adherence to the profile in all representations both of man and beast, characterize the reliefs of both reigns equally, so far as we have any means of judging.
Shalmaneser seems to have held his court ordinarily at Calah, where he built his palace and set up his obelisk; but sometimes he would reside for a time at Nineveh or at Asshur. He does not appear to have built any important edifice at either of these two cities, but at the latter he left a monument which possesses some interest. This is the stone statue, now in a mutilated condition, representing a king seated, which was found by Mr. Layard at Kileh-Sherghat, and of which some notice has already been taken. Its proportions are better than those of the small statue of the monarch’s father, standing in his sacrificial dress, which was found at Nimrud; and it is superior to that work of art, in being of the size of life; but either its execution was originally very rude, or it must have suffered grievously by exposure, for it is now wholly rough and unpolished.
The later years of Shahuaneser appear to have been troubled by a dangerous rebellion. The infirmities of age were probably creeping upon him. He had ceased to go out with his armies; and had handed over a portion of his authority to the favorite general who was entrusted with the command of his forces year after year. The favor thus shown may have provoked jealousy and even alarm. It may have been thought that the legitimate successor was imperilled by the exaltation of a subject whose position would enable him to in gratiate himself with the troops, and who might be expected, on the death of his patron, to make an effort to place the crown on his own head. Fears of this kind may very probably have so worked on the mind of the heir apparent as to determine him not to await his father’s demise, but rather to raise the standard of revolt during his lifetime, and to endeavor, by an unexpected coup-de-main, to anticipate and ruin his rival. Or, possibly, Asshur-danin-pal, the eldest son of Shalmaneser, like too many royal youths, may have been impatient of the long life of his father, and have conceived the guilty desire, with which our fourth Henry is said to have taxed his first-born, a “hunger for the empty chair” of which the aged monarch, still held possession. At any rate, whatever may have been the motive that urged him on, it is certain that Asshur-danin-pal rebelled against his sire’s authority, and, raising the standard of revolt, succeeded in carrying with him a great part of the kingdom. At Asshur, the old metropolis, which may have hoped to lure back the Court by its subservience, at Arbela in the Zab region, at Amidi on the Upper Tigris, at Tel-Apni near the site of Orfa, and at more than twenty other fortified places, Asshur-danin-pal was pro-claimed king, and accepted by the inhabitants for their sovereign. Shalmaneser must have felt himself in imminent peril of losing his crown. Under these circumstances he called to his assistance his second son Shamas-Vul, and placing him at the head of such of his troops as remained firm to their allegiance, invested him with full power to act as he thought best in the existing emergency. Shamas-Vul at once took the field, attacked and reduced the rebellious cities one after another, and in a little time completely crushed the revolt and reestablished peace throughout the empire. Asshur-danin-pal, the arch conspirator, was probably put to death; his life was justly forfeit; and neither Shamas-Vul nor his father is likely to have been withheld by any inconvenient tenderness from punishing treason in a near relative, as they would have punished it in any other person. The suppressor of the revolt became the heir of the kingdom; and when, shortly afterwards, Shalmaneser died, the piety or prudence if his faithful son was rewarded by the rich inheritance of the Assyrian Empire.
Shalmaneser reigned, in all, thirty-five years, from B.C. 858 to B.C. 823. His successor, Shamas-Vul, held the throne for thirteen years, from B.C. 823 to B.C. 810. Before entering upon the consideration of this latter monarch’s reign, it will be well to cast your eyes once more over the Assyrian Empire, such as it has now become, and over the nations with which its growth had brought it into contact. Considerable changes had occurred since the time of Tiglath-Pileser I., the Assyrian boundaries having been advanced in several directions, while either this progress, or the movements of races beyond the frontier, had brought into view many new and some very important nations.
The chief advance which the “Terminus” of the Assyrians had made was towards the west and the north-west. Instead of their dominion in this quarter being bounded by the Euphrates, they had established their authority over the whole of Upper Syria, over Phoenicia, Hamath, and Samaria, or the kingdom of the Israelites. These countries were not indeed reduced to the form of provinces; on the contrary, they still retained their own laws, administration, and native princes; but they were henceforth really subject to Assyria, acknowledging her suzerainty, paying her an annual tribute, and giving a free passage to her armies through their territories. The limit of the Assyrian Empire towards the west was consequently at this time the Mediterranean, from the Gulf of Iskanderun to Cape Carmel, or perhaps we should say to Joppa. Their north-western boundary was the range of Taurus next beyond Amanus, the tract between the two belonging to the Tibareni (Tubal), who had submitted to become tributaries. Northwards, little if any progress had been made. The chain of Niphates—“the high grounds over the effluents of the Tigris and Euphrates”—where Shalmaneser set up “an image of his majesty,” seems still to be the furthest limit. In other words, Armenia is unconquered, the strength of the region and the valor of its inhabitants still protecting it from the Assyrian arms. Towards the east some territory seems to have been gained, more especially in the central Zagros region, the district between the Lower Zab and Holwan, which at this period bore the name of Hupuska; but the tribes north and south of this tract were still for the most part unsubdued. The southern frontier may be regarded as wholly unchanged: for although Shalmaneser warred in Babylonia, and even took tribute on one occasion from the petty kings of the Chaldaean towns, he seems to have made no permanent impression in this quarter. The Tsukhi or Shuhites are still the most southern of his subjects.
The principal changes which time and conquest had made among the neighbors of Assyria were the following. Towards the west she was brought into contact with the kingdom of Damascus, and, through her tributary Samaria with Judea. On the north-west she had new enemies in the Quins (Coans?) who dwelt on the further side of Amanus, near the Tibareni, in a part of the country afterwards called Cilicia, and the Cilicians themselves, who are now first mentioned. The Moschi seem to have withdrawn a little from this neighborhood, since they no longer appear either among Assyria’s enemies or her tributaries. On the north all minor powers had disappeared; and the Armenians (Urarda) were now Assyria’s sole neighbors. Towards the east she had come into contact with the Mannai, or Minni, about Lake Urumiyeh, with the Harkhar in the Van region and in north-western Kurdistan, with the Bartsu or Persians and the Mada or Medes in the country east of Zagros, the modern province of Ardelan, and with the Tsimri, or Zimri, in Upper Luristan. Among all her fresh enemies, she had not, however, as yet found one calculated to inspire any serious fear. No new organized monarchy presented itself. The tribes and nations upon her borders were still either weak in numbers or powerless from their intestine divisions; and there was thus every reason to expect a long continuance of the success which had naturally attended a large centralized state in her contests with small kingdoms or loosely-united confederacies. Names celebrated in the after history of the world, as those of the Medes and Persians, are now indeed for the first time emerging into light from the complete obscurity which has shrouded there hitherto; and tinged as they are with the radiance of their later glories, they show brightly among the many insignificant tribes and nations with which Assyria has been warring for centuries; but it would be a mistake to suppose that these names have any present importance in the narrative or represent powers capable as yet of contending on equal terms with the Assyrian Empire, or even of seriously checking the progress of her successes. The Medes and Persians are at this period no more powerful than the Zimri, the Minni, the Urarda, or than half a dozen others of the border nations, whose appellations sound strange in the ears even of the advanced student. Neither of the two great Arian peoples had as yet a capital city, neither was united under a king: separated into numerous tribes, each under its chief, dispersed in scattered towns and villages, poorly fortified or not fortified at, all, they were in the same condition as the Nairi, the Qummukh, the Patena, the Hittites, and the other border races whose relative weakness Assyria had abundantly proved in a long course of wars wherein she had uniformly been the victor.
The short reign of Shamas-Vul II., presents but little that calls for remark. Like Shalmaneser II., he resided chiefly at Calah, where, following the example of his father and grandfather, he set up an obelisk (or rather a stele) in commemoration of his various exploits. This monument, which is covered on three sides with an inscription in the hieratic or cursive character, contains an opening invocation to Nin or Hercules, conceived in the ordinary terms, the genealogy and titles of the king, an account of the rebellion of Asshur-bani-pal, together with its suppression, and Shamas-Vul’s own annals for the first four years of his reign. From these we learn that he displayed the same active spirit as his two predecessors, carrying his arms against the Nairi on the north, against Media and Arazias on the east, and against Babylonia on the south. The people of Hupuska, the Minni, and the Persians (Bartsu) paid him tribute. His principal success was that of his fourth campaign, which was against Babylon. He entered the country by a route often used, which skirted the Zagros mountain range for some distance, and then crossed the flat, probably along the course of the Diyaleh, to the southern capital. The Babylonians, alarmed at his advance, occupied a strongly fortified place on his line of route, which he besieged and took after a vigorous resistance, wherein the blood of the garrison was shed like water. Eighteen thousand were slain; three thousand were made prisoners; the city itself was plundered and burnt, and Shamas-Vul pressed forward against the flying enemy. Hereupon the Babylonian monarch, Merodach-belatzu-ikbi, collecting his own troops and those of his allies, the Chaldaeans, the Aramaeans or Syrians, and the Zimri—a vast host—met the invader on the river Daban—perhaps a branch of the Euphrates—and fought a great battle in defence of his city. He was, however, defeated by the Assyrians, with the loss of 5000 killed, 2000 prisoners, 100 chariots, 200 tents, and the royal standard and pavilion. What further military or political results the victory may have had is uncertain. Shamas-Vul’s annals terminate abruptly at this point, and we are left to conjecture the consequences of the campaign and battle. It is possible that they were in the highest degree important; for we find, in the next reign, that Babylonia, which has so long been a separate and independent kingdom, is reduced to the condition of a tributary, while we have no account of its reduction by the succeeding monarch, whose relations with the Babylonians, so far as we know, were of a purely peaceful character.
The stele of Shamas-Vul contains one allusion to a hunting exploit, by which we learn that this monarch inherited his grandfather’s partiality for the chase. He found wild bulls at the foot of Zagros when he was marching to invade Babylonia, and delaying his advance to hunt them, was so fortunate as to kill several.
We know nothing of Shamas-Vul as a builder, and but little of him as a patron of art. He seems to have been content with the palaces of his father and grandfather, and to have been devoid of any wish to outshine them by raising edifices which should throw theirs into the shade. In his stele he shows no originality; for it is the mere reproduction of a monument well known to his predecessors, and of which we have several specimens from the time of Asshur-izir-pal downwards. It consists of a single figure in relief—a figure representing the king dressed in his priestly robes, and wearing the sacred emblems round his neck, standing with the right arm upraised, and enclosed in the customary arched frame. This figure, which is somewhat larger than life, is cut on a single solid block of stone, and then placed on another broader block, which serves as a pedestal. It closely resembles the figure of Asshur-izir-pal, whereof a representation has been already given.
The successor of Shamas-Vul was his son Vul-lush, the third monarch of that name, who ascended the throne B.C. 810, and held it for twenty-nine years, from B.C. 810 to B.C. 781. The memorials which we possess of this king’s reign are but scanty. They consist of one or two slabs found at Nimrod, of a short dedicatory inscription on duplicate statues of the god Nebo brought from the same place, of some brick inscriptions from the mound of Nebbi Vunus, and of the briefest possible notices of the quarters in which he carried on war, contained in one copy of the Canon. As none of these records are in the shape of annals except the last, and as only these and the slab notices are historical, it is impossible to give any detailed account of this long and apparently important reign. We can only say that Vul-lush III., was as warlike a monarch as any of his predecessors, and that his efforts seem to have extended the Assyrian dominion in almost every quarter. He made seven expeditions across the Zagros range into Media, two into the Van country, and three into Syria. He tells us that in one of these expeditions he succeeded in making himself master of the great city of Damascus, whose kings had defied (as we have seen) the repeated attacks of Shalmaneser. He reckons as his tributaries in these parts, besides Damascus, the cities of Tyre and Sidon, and the countries of Khumri or Samaria, of Palestine or Philistia, and of Hudum (Idumaea or Edom). On the north and east he received tokens of submission from the Nairi, the Minni, the Medes, and the Partsu, or Persians. On the south, he exercised a power, which seems like that of a sovereign, in Babylonia; where homage was paid him by the Chaldaeans, and where, in the great cities of Babylon, Borsippa, and Cutha (or Tiggaba), he was allowed’to offer sacrifice to the gods Bel, Nebo, and Nergal. There is, further, some reason to suspect that, before quitting Babylonia, he established one of his sons as viceroy over the country; since he seems to style himself in one place “the king to whose son Asshur, the chief of the gods, has granted the kingdom of Babylon.”
It thus appears that by the time of Vul-lush III., or early in the eighth century u.e., Assyria had with one hand grasped Babylonia, while with the other she had laid hold of Philistia and Edom. She thus touched the Persian Gulf on the one side, while on the other she was brought into contact with Egypt. At the same time she had received the submission of at least some portion of the great nation of the Medes, who were now probably moving southwards from Azerbijan and gradually occupying the territory which was regarded as Media Proper by the Greeks and Romans. She held Southern Armenia, from Lake Van to the sources of the Tigris; she possessed all Upper Syria, including Commagene and Amanus she had tributaries even on the further side of that mountain range; she bore sway over the whole Syrian coast from Issus to Gaza; her authority was acknowledged, probably, by all the tribes and kingdoms between the coast and the desert, certainly by the Phoenicians, the Hamathites, the Patena, the Hittites, the Syrians of Damascus, the people of Israel, and the Idumaeans, or people of Edom. On the east she had reduced almost all the valleys of Zagros, and had tributaries in the great upland on the eastern side of the range. On the south, if she had not absorbed Babylonia, she had at least made her influence paramount there. The full height of her greatness was not indeed attained till a century later; but already the “tall cedar” was “exalted above all the trees of the field; his boughs were multiplied; his branches had become long; and under his shadow dwelt great nations.”
Not much is known of Vul-lush III., as a builder, or as a patron of art. He calls himself the “restorer of noble buildings which had gone to decay,” an expression which would seem to imply that he aimed rather at maintaining former edifices in repair than at constructing new ones. He seems, however, to have built some chambers on the mound of Nimrod, between the north-western and the south-western palaces, and also to have had a palace at Nineveh on the mound now called Nebbi Ynnus. The Nimrud chambers were of small size and poorly ornamented; they contained no sculptures; the walls were plastered and then painted in fresco with a variety of patterns. They may have been merely guard-rooms, since they appear to have formed a portion of a high tower. The palace at Nebbi Ynnus was probably a more important work; but the superstitious regard of the natives for the supposed tomb of Jonah has hitherto frustrated all attempts made by Europeans to explore that mass of ruins.
Among all the monuments recovered by recent researches, the only works of art assignable to the reign of Vul-lush are two rude statues of the god Nebo, almost exactly resembling one another. From the representation of one of them, given on a former page of this volume, the reader will see that the figures in question have scarcely any artistic merit. The head is disproportionately large, the features, so far as they can be traced, are coarse and heavy, the arms and hands are poorly modelled, and the lower part is more like a pillar than the figure of a man. We cannot suppose that Assyrian art was incapable, under the third Vul-lush, of a higher flight than these statues indicate; we must therefore regard them as conventional forms, reproduced from old models, which the artist was bound to follow. It would seem, indeed, that while in the representation of animals and of men of inferior rank, Assyrian artists were untrammelled by precedent, and might aim at the highest possible perfection, in religious subjects, and in the representation of kings and nobles, they were limited, by law or custom, to certain ancient forms and modes of expression, which we find repeated from the earliest to the latest times with monotonous uniformity.
If these statues, however, are valueless as works of art, they have yet a peculiar interest for the historian, as containing the only mention which the disentombed remains have furnished of one of the most celebrated names of antiquity—a name which for many ages vindicated to itself a leading place, not only in the history of Assyria, but in that of the world. To the Greeks and Romans Semiramis was the foremost of women, the greatest queen who had ever held a sceptre, the most extraordinary conqueror that the East had ever produced. Beautiful as Helen or Cleopatra, brave as Tomyris, lustful as Messalina, she had the virtues and vices of a man rather than a woman, and performed deeds scarcely inferior to those of Cyrus or Alexander the Great. It is an ungrateful task to dispel illusions, more especially such as are at once harmless and venerable for their antiquity; but truth requires the historian to obliterate from the pages of the past this well-known image, and to substitute in its place a very dull and prosaic figure—a Semiramis no longer decked with the prismatic hues of fancy, but clothed instead in the sober garments of fact. The Nebo idols are dedicated, by the Assyrian officer who had them executed, “to his lord Vul-lush and his lady Sammuramit” from whence it would appear to be certain, in the first place, that that monarch was married to a princess who bore this world-renowned name, and, secondly, that she held a position superior to that which is usually allowed in the East to a queen-consort. An inveterate Oriental prejudice requires the rigid seclusion of women; and the Assyrian monuments, thoroughly in accord with the predominant tone of Eastern manners, throw a veil in general over all that concerns the weaker sex, neither representing to us the forms of the Assyrian women in the sculptures, nor so much as mentioning their existence in the inscriptions. Very rarely is there an exception to this all but universal reticence. In the present instance, and in about two others, the silence usually kept is broken; and a native woman comes upon the scene to tantalize us by her momentary apparition. The glimpse that we here obtain does not reveal much. Beyond the fact that the principal queen of Vul-lush III., was named Semiramis, and the further fact, implied in her being mentioned at all, that she had a recognized position of authority in the country, we can only conclude, conjecturally, from the exact parallelism of the phrases used, that she bore sway conjointly with her husband, either over the whole or over a part of his dominions. Such a view explains, to some extent, the wonderful tale of the Ninian Semiramis, which was foisted into history by Ctesias; for it shows that he had a slight basis of fact to go upon. It also harmonizes, or may be made to harmonize, with the story of Semiramis as told by Herodotus, who says that she was a Babylonian queen, and reigned five generations before Nitocris, or about B.C. 755. For it is quite possible that the Sammuramit married to Vul-lush III., was a Babylonian princess, the last descendant of a long line of kings, whom the Assyrian monarch wedded to confirm through her his title to the southern provinces; in which case a portion of his subjects would regard her as their legitimate sovereign, and only recognize his authority as secondary and dependent upon hers. The exaggeration in which Orientals indulge, with a freedom that astonishes the sober nations of the West, would seize upon the unusual circumstance of a female having possessed a conjoint sovereignty, and would gradually group round the name a host of mythic details, which at last accumulated to such an extent that, to prevent the fiction from becoming glaring, the queen had to be thrown back into mythic times, with which such details were in harmony. The Babylonian wife of Vul-lush III., who gave him his title to the regions of the south, and reigned conjointly with him both in Babylonia and Assyria, became first a queen of Babylon, ruling independently and alone, and then an Assyrian empress, the conqueror of Egypt and Ethiopia, the invader of the distant India, the builder of Babylon, and the constructor of all the great works which were anywhere to be found in Western Asia. The grand figure thus produced imposed upon the uncritical ancients, and was accepted even by the moderns for many centuries. At length the school of Heeren and Niebuhr, calling common sense to their aid, pronounced the figure a myth. It remained for the patient explorers of the field of Assyrian antiquity in our own day to discover the slight basis of fact on which the myth was founded, and to substitute for the shadowy marvel of Ctesias a very prosaic and commonplace princess, who, like Atossa or Elizabeth of York, strengthened her husband’s title to his crown, but who never really made herself conspicuous by either great works or by exploits.
With Vul-lush III., the glories of the Nimrud line of monarchs come to a close, and Assyrian history is once more shrouded in a partial darkness for a space of nearly forty years, from B.C. 781 to B.C. 745. The Assyrian Canon shows us that three monarchs bore sway during this interval—Shalmaneser III., who reigned from B.C. 78l to B.C. 771, Asshur-dayan III., who reigned from B. C. 771 to B.C. 753, and Asshur-lush, who held the throne from the last-mentioned date to B.C.. 745, when he was succeeded by the second Tiglatli-Pileser. The brevity of these reigns, which average only twelve years apiece, is indicative of troublous times, and of a disputed, or, at any rate, a disturbed succession. The fact that none of the three monarchs left buildings of any importance, or, so far as appears, memorials of any kind, marks a period of comparative decline, during which there was a pause in the magnificent course of Assyrian conquests, which had scarcely known a check for above a century. The causes of the temporary inaction and apparent decline of a power which had so long been steadily advancing, would form an interesting subject of speculation to the political philosopher; but they are too obscure to be investigated here, where our space only allows us to touch rapidly on the chief known facts of the Assyrian history.
One important difficulty presents itself at this point of the narrative, in an apparent contradiction between the native records of the Assyrians and the casual notices of their history contained in the Second Book of Kings. The Biblical Pul—“the king of Assyria” who came up against the land of Israel and received from Menahem a thousand talents of silver, “that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand,” is unnoticed in the native inscriptions, and even seems to be excluded from the royal lists by the absence of any name at all resembling his in the proper place in the famous Canon. Pul appears in Scripture to be the immediate predecessor of Tiglath Pileser. At any rate, as his expedition against Menahem is followed within (at the utmost) thirty-two years by an expedition of Tiglath Pileser against Pekah, his last year (if he was indeed a king of Assyria) cannot have fallen earlier than thirty-two years before Tiglath-Pileser’s first. In other words, if the Hebrew numbers are historical some portion of Pul’s reign must necessarily fill into the interval assigned by the Canon to the kings for which it is the sole authority—Shalmaneser III., Asshur-dayan III., and Asshur-lush. But these names are so wholly unlike the name of Pul that no one of them can possibly be regarded as its equivalent, or even as the original from which it was corrupted. Thus the Assyrian records do not merely omit Pul, but exclude him: and we have to inquire how this can be accounted for, and who the Biblical Pul is, if he is not a regular and recognized Assyrian monarch.
Various explanations of the difficulty have been suggested. Some would regard Pul as a general of Tiglath-Pileser (or of some earlier Assyrian king), mistaken by the Jews for the actual monarch. Others would identify him with Tiglath-Pileser himself. But perhaps the most probable supposition is, that he was a pretender to the Assyrian crown, never acknowledged at Nineveh, but established in the western (and southern) provinces so firmly, that he could venture to conduct an expedition into Lower Syria, and to claim there the fealty of Assyrians vassals. Or possibly he may have been a Babylonian monarch, who in the troublous times that had now evidently come upon the northern empire, possessed himself of the Euphrates valley, and thence descended upon Syria and Palestine. Berosus, it must be remembered, represented Pul as a Chaldaean king; and the name itself, which is wholly alien to the ordinary Assyrian type, has at least one counterpart among known Babylonian namies.
The time of Pul’s invasion may be fixed by combining the Assyrian and the Hebrew chronologies within very narrow limits. Tiglath-Pileser relates that he took tribute from Menahem in a war which lasted from his fourth to his eighth year, or from B.C. 742 to B.C. 738. As Menahem only reigned ten years, the earliest date that can be assigned to Puls expedition will be B.C. 752, while the latest possible date will be B.C. 746, the year before the accession of Tiglath-Pileser. In any case the expedition fells within the eight years assigned by the Assyrian Canon to the reign of Asshur-lush, Tiglath-Pileser’s immediate predecessor.
It is remarkable that into this interval falls also the famous era of Nabonassar, which must have marked some important change, dynastic or other, at Babylon. The nature of the change will be considered at length in the Babylonia a section. At present it is sufficient to observe that, in the declining condition of Assyria under the kings who followed Vul-lush III., there was naturally a growth of power and independence among the border countries. Babylon, repenting of the submission which she had made either to Vul-lush III., or to his father, Shamas-Vul II., once more vindicated her right to freedom, and resumed the position of a separate and hostile monarchy. Samaria, Damascus, Judaea, ceased to pay tribute. Enterprising kings, like Jeroboam II., and Menahem, taking advantage of Assyria’s weakness, did not content themselves with merely throwing off her yoke, but proceeded to enlarge their dominions at the expense of her feudatories. Judging of the unknown from the known, we may assume that on the north and east there were similar defections to those on the west and south—that the tribes of Armenia and of the Zagros range rose in revolt, and that the Assyrian boundaries were thus contracted in every quarter.
At the same time, within the limits of what was regarded as the settled Empire, revolts began to occur. In the reign of Asshur-dayan III. (B.C. 771-753), no fewer than three important insurrections are recorded—one at a city called Libzu, another at Arapkha, the chief town of Arrapachitis, and a third at Gozan, the chief city of Gauzanitis or Mygdonia. Attempts were made to suppress these revolts; but it may be doubted whether they were successful. The military spirit had declined; the monarchs had ceased to lead out their armies regularly year by year, preferring to pass their time in inglorious ease at their rich and luxurious capitals. Asshur-dayan III., during nine years of his eighteen, remained at home, under-taking no warlike enterprise. Asshur-lush, his successor, displayed even less of military vigor. During the eight years of his reign he took the field twice only, passing six years in complete inaction. At the end of this time, Calah, the second city in the kingdom, revolted; and the revolution was brought about which ushered in the splendid period of the Lower Empire.
It was probably during the continuance of the time of depression, when an unwarlike monarch was living in inglorious ease amid the luxuries and refinements of Nineveh, and the people, sunk in repose, gave the themselves up to vicious indulgences more hateful in the eye of God than even the pride and cruelty which they were want to exhibit in war, that the great capital was suddenly startled by a voice of warning in the streets—a voice which sounded everywhere, through corridor, and lane, and square, bazaar and caravanserai, one shrill monotonous cry—“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” A strange wild man, clothed in a rough garment of skin, moving from place to place, announced to the inhabitants their doom. None knew who he was or whence he had come; none had ever beheld him before; pale, haggard, travel-stained, he moved before then like a visitant from another sphere; and his lips still framed the fearful words—“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” Had the cry fallen on them in the prosperous time, when each year brought its tale of victories, and every nation upon their borders trembled at the approach of their arms, it would probably have been heard with apathy or ridicule, and would have failed to move the heart of the nation. But coming, as it did, when their glory had declined; when their enemies, having been allowed a breathing space, had taken courage and were acting on the offensive in many quarters; when it was thus perhaps quite within the range of probability that some one of their numerous foes might shortly appear in arms before the place, it struck them with fear and consternation. The alarm communicated itself from the city to the palace; and his trembling attendants “came and told the king of Nineveh,” who was seated on his royal throne in the great audience-chamber, surrounded by all the pomp and magnificence of his court. No sooner did he hear, than the heart of the king was touched, like that of his people; and he “arose from his throne, and laid aside his robe from him, and covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes.” Hastily summoning his nobles, he had a decree framed, and “caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed, nor drink water: but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.” Then the fast was proclaimed, and the people of Nineveh, fearful of God’s wrath, put on sackcloth “from the greatest of them even to the least of them.” The joy and merriment, the revelry and feasting of that great city were changed into mourning and lamentation; the sins that had provoked the anger of the Most High ceased; the people humbled themselves; they “turned from their evil way,” and by a repentance, which, if not deep and enduring, was still real and unfeigned, they appeased for the present the Divine wrath. Vainly the prophet sat without the city, on its eastern side, under his booth woven of boughs, watching, waiting, hoping (apparently) that the doom which he had announced would come, in spite of the people’s repentance. God was more merciful than man. He had pity on the “great city,” with its “six score thousand persons that could not discern between their right hand and their left,” and, sparing the penitents, left their town to stand unharmed for more than another century.
The circumstances under which Tiglath-Pileser II., ascended the throne in the year B.C. 745 are unknown to us. No confidence can be placed in the statement of Bion and Polyhistor which seems to have been intended to refer to this monarch, whom they called Beletaras—a corruption perhaps of the latter half of the name—that he was, previously to his elevation to the royal dignity, a mere vine-dresser, whose occupation was to keep in order the gardens of the king. Similar tales of the low origin of self-raised and usurping monarchs are too common in the East, and are too often contradicted by the facts, when they come known to us, for much credit to attach to the story told by these late writers, the earlier of whom, must have written five or six hundred years after Tiglath-Pileser’s time. We aught, however, conclude, without much chance of mistake, from such a story being told, that the king-intended acquired the throne irregularly; that either he was not of the blood royal, or that, being so, he was at any rate not the legitimate heir. And the conclusion at which we should thus arrive is confirmed by the monarch’s inscriptions; for though he speaks repeatedly of “the kings his fathers.” and even calls the royal buildings at Galati. “the palaces of his fathers,” yet he never mentions his actual father’s name in any record that has come down to us. Such a silence is so contrary to the ordinary practice of Assyrian monarchs, who glory in their descent and parade it on every possible occasion, that, where it occurs, we are justified in concluding the monarch to have been an usurper, deriving his title to the crown, not from his ancestry or from any law of succession, but from a successful revolution, in which he played the principal part. It matters little that such a monarch, when he is settled upon the throne, claims, in a vague and general way, connection with the kings of former times. The claim may often have a basis of truth; for in monarchies where polygamy prevails, and the kings have numerous daughters to dispose of, almost all the nobility can boast that they are of the blood royal. Where the claim is in no sense true, it will still be made; for it flatters the vanity of the monarch, and there is no one to gainsay it.
Only in such cases we are sure to find a prudent vagueness—an assertion of the fact of the connection, expressed in general terms, without any specification of the particulars on which the supposed fact rests.
On obtaining the crown whatever the circumstances under which he obtained it—Tiglath-Pileser immediately proceeded to attempt the restoration of the Empire by engaging in a series of wars, now upon one, now upon another frontier, seeking by his unwearied activity and energy to recover the losses suffered through the weakness of his predecessors, and to compensate for their laches by a vigorous discharge of all the duties of the kingly office. The order of these wars, which formerly it was impossible to determine, is now fixed by means of the Assyrian Canon, and we may follow the course of the expeditions conducted by Tiglath-Pileser II., with as much confidence and certainty as those of Tiglath-Pileser I., Asshur-izir-pal, or the second Shalmaneser. It is scarcely necessary, however, to detain the reader by going through the entire series. The interest of Tiglath-Pileser’s military operations attaches especially to his campaigns in Babylonia and in Syria, where he is brought into contact with persons otherwise known to us. His other wars are comparatively unimportant. Under these circumstances it is proposed to consider in detail only the Babylonian and Syrian expeditions, and to dismiss the others with a few general remarks on the results which were accomplished by them.
Tiglath-Pileser’s expeditions against Babylon were in his first and in his fifteenth years, B.C. 745 and 731. No sooner did he find himself settled upon the throne, than he levied an army, and marched against Southern Mesopotamia, which appears to have been in a divided and unsettled condition. According to the Canon of Ptolemy, Nabonassar then ruled in Babylon. Tiglath-Pileser’s annals confuse the accounts of his two campaigns; but the general impression which we gather from them is that, even in B.C. 745, the country was divided up into a number of small principalities, the sea-coast being under the dominion of Merodach-Baladan, who held his court in his father’s city of Bit-Yakin; while in the upper region there were a number of petty princes, apparently independent, among whom may be recognized names which seem to occur later in Ptolemy’s list, among the kings of Babylon to whom he assigns short reigns in the interval between Nabonassar and Mardocempalus (Merodach-Baladan). Tiglath-Pileser attacked and defeated several of these princes, taking the towns of Kur-Galzu (now Akkerkuf), and Sippara or Sepharvaim, together with many other places of less consequence in the lower portion of the country, after which he received the submission of Merodach-Baladan, who acknowledged him for suzerain, and consented to pay an annual tribute. Tiglath-Pileser upon this assumed the title of “King of Babylon” (B.C. 729), and offered sacrifice to the Babylonian gods in all the principal cities.
The first Syrian war of Tiglath-Pileser was undertaken in his third year (B.C. 743), and lasted from that year to his eighth. In the course of it he reduced to subjection Damascus, which had regained its independence, and was under the government of Rezin; Samaria, where Menahem, the adversary of Pul, was still reigning; Tyre, which was under a monarch bearing the familiar name of Hiram; Hamath, Gebal, and the Arabs bordering upon Egypt, who were ruled by a queen called Khabiba. He likewise met and defeated a vast army under Azariah (or Uzziah), king of Judah, but did not succeed in inducing him to make his submission. It would appear by this that Tiglath-Pileser at this time penetrated deep into Palestine, probably to a point which no Assyrian king but Vul-lush III., had reached previously. But it would seem, at the same time, that his conquests were very incomplete; they did not include Judaea or Philistia, Idumaea, or the tribes of the Hauran; and they left untouched the greater number of the Phoenician cities. It causes us, therefore, no surprise to find that in a short time, B.C. 734, he renewed his efforts in this quarter, commencing by an attack on Samaria, where Pekah was now king, and taking Ijon, and Abel-beth-maachah, and Jamoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, and all the land of Naphtali, and carrying them captive to Assyria, thus “lightly afflicting, the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali,” or the more northern portion of the Holy Land, about Lake Merom, and from that to the Sea of Gennesareth.
This attack was-followed, shortly (B.C. 733) by the most important of Tiglath-Pileser’s Syrian wars. It appears that the common danger, which had formerly united the Hittites, Hamathites, and Damascenes in a close alliance, now caused a league to be formed between Damascus and Samaria, the sovereigns of which—Pekah and Rezin—made an attempt to add Judaea to their confederation, by declaring war against Ahaz, attacking his territory, and threatening to substitute in his place as king of Jerusalem a creature of their own, “the son of Tabeal.” Hard pressed by his enemies, Ahaz applied to Assyria, offering to become Tiglath-Pileser’s “servant”—i.e, his vassal and tributary—if he would send troops to his assistance, and save him from the impending danger. Tiglath-Pileser was not slow to obey this call. Entering Syria at the head of an army, he fell first upon Rezin, who was defeated, and fled to Damascus, where Tiglath-Pileser besieged him for two years, at the end of which time he was taken and slain. Next he attacked Pekah, entering his country on the north-east, where it bordered upon the Damascene territory, and overrunning the whole of the Trans-Jordanic provinces, together (apparently) with some portion of the Cis-Jordanic region. The tribes of Reuben and Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, who had possessed the country between the Jordan and the desert from the time of Moses, were seized and carried away captive by the conqueror, who placed them in Upper Mesopotamia, on the affluents of the Bilikh and the Khabour, from about Harran to Nisibis. Some cities situated on the right bank of the Jordan, in the territory of Issachar, but belonging to Manasseh, were at the same time seized and occupied. Among these, Megiddo in the great plain of Esdraelon, and Dur or Dor upon the coast, some way below Tyre, were the most important. Dur was even thought of sufficient consequence to receive an Assyrian governor at the same time with the other principal cities of Southern Syria.