Part 1 (2/2)
THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE.
a.s.syria was the name given to the district which had been called 'the land of a.s.sur' by its own inhabitants. a.s.sur, however, had originally been the name, not of a country, but of a city founded in remote times on the western bank of the Tigris, midway between the Greater and the Lesser Zab. It was the primitive capital of the district in which it stood, and to which, accordingly, it lent its name. It seems to have been built by a people who spoke an agglutinative language, like the languages of the modern Fins and Turks, and who were afterwards supplanted by the Semitic a.s.syrians. The name in their language probably signified 'water-boundary.' When the country was occupied by the Semitic a.s.syrians the name was slightly changed, so as to a.s.sume the form of a word which in a.s.syrian meant 'gracious.'
It so happened that a.s.syrian mythology knew of a deity who represented the firmament, and was addressed as Sar. The name of Sar came in time to be confused with that of a.s.sur, the divine patron of the a.s.syrian capital, the result being that a.s.sur signified not only a city and country, but also the supreme deity wors.h.i.+pped by their inhabitants.
a.s.sur, in fact, became the divine impersonation of the power and const.i.tution of a.s.syria; at the same time he was also 'the gracious' G.o.d and the primaeval firmament of heaven.
a.s.sur, whose ruins are now called Kalah Sherghat, did not always remain the capital of a.s.syria. Its place was taken by a group of cities some 60 miles to the north, above the Greater Zab, and on the eastern side of the Tigris, namely, Nineveh, Calah, and Dur-Sargon. The foundation of Nineveh, the modern Kouyunjik, probably goes back to as early an age as that of a.s.sur, but it was not until a much later period that it became an important city, and supplanted the older capital of the kingdom.
Calah, now called Nimrd, though built some four centuries before, was not made the seat of royalty until the reigns of a.s.sur-natsir-pal and Shalmaneser II, in the 9th century B.C., and Dur-Sargon (the modern Khorsabad), as its name implies, was the creation of Sargon. Instead of Dur-Sargon the Book of Genesis (x. 11) mentions Resen 'between Nineveh and Calah.' The site of Resen has not been identified, though its name has been met with in the a.s.syrian inscriptions under the form of Res-eni, 'the head of the spring.'
The pa.s.sage of Genesis in which Resen is referred to unfortunately admits of a double translation. If we adopt the rendering of the margin, and translate 'out of that land he went forth into a.s.syria and builded Nineveh,' we might infer that Nineveh and its neighbouring towns had no existence before the days when Babylonian emigrants settled in the territory of the city of a.s.sur, and superseded its older inhabitants.
However this may be, we know from the cuneiform monuments that the rise of a.s.syria did not take place until the Babylonian monarchy was already growing old. The country afterwards known as a.s.syria had been comprised in Gutium or Kurdistan, a name which has been identified, with great probability, by Sir H. Rawlinson, with the Goyyim or 'nations' of Genesis xiv. over which Tidal was king. There seems to have been a time when the rulers of a.s.sur were mere governors appointed by the Babylonian monarchs; at all events, the earliest of whom we know do not give themselves the t.i.tle of king, but use a word which signifies 'viceroy'
in the Chaldean inscriptions.
These viceroys, however, managed eventually to shake off the yoke of their Babylonian masters, and one of them, Bel-kapkapi by name, established an independent kingdom at a.s.sur in the 17th or 16th century before our era. His kingdom extended on both sides of the Tigris, and doubtless included the country north of the Greater Zab, where Nineveh was situated. The exact frontiers of a.s.syria, however, were never accurately fixed. They varied with the military power and conquests of its monarchs. Sometimes portions of the plateau of Mesopotamia on the west were comprehended within it, as well as the country through which the Tigris flowed, as far south as the borders of Babylonia, and as far north as the Kurdish mountains. At other times a.s.syria was confined to the narrow s.p.a.ce within which its great cities stood.
The inhabitants of a.s.syria belonged to the Semitic stock, that is to say, they were allied in blood and language to the Hebrews, the Aramaeans, and the Arabs. The older population had been either expelled or destroyed. The a.s.syrians thus differed from the Babylonians, who were a mixed race, partly Semitic and partly non-Semitic. The non-Semitic element is generally termed Accadian; it spoke agglutinative dialects, and was the original possessor of the plain of Chaldaea. The Accadians invented the cuneiform system of writing, founded the chief cities and civilisation of Babylonia, and erected the earliest Babylonian monuments with which we are acquainted. It was only gradually that they yielded to the advance of the Semites; in fact, the final triumph of the Semites in Babylonia was only effected by their amalgamation with the old population of the country, and their complete acceptance of Accadian culture. The Accadian language lingered long, and when it died out was preserved as a learned language, like Latin in our own day, which every educated Babylonian was expected to know.
It was natural, therefore, that the pure-blooded Semites of a.s.syria and the mixed population of Babylonia should differ from one another in many respects. The Babylonians were agriculturists, fond of literature and peaceful pursuits. The a.s.syrians, on the contrary, have been appropriately termed the Romans of the East: they were a military people, caring for little else save war and trade. Their literature, like their culture and art, was borrowed from Babylonia, and they never took kindly to it. Even under the magnificent patronage of a.s.sur-bani-pal, a.s.syrian literature was an exotic. It was cultivated only by the few; whereas in Babylonia the greater part of the population seems to have been able to read and write. If the a.s.syrian was less luxurious than his Babylonian neighbour, he was also less humane.
Indeed, the a.s.syrian annals glory in the record of a ferocity at which we stand aghast. On the other hand, the a.s.syrian was not so superst.i.tious as the Babylonian, though he ascribed his successes to the favour of a.s.sur, and impaled the inhabitants of conquered towns or burnt them alive because they did not believe in his national deity. He was, as Nahum declared, the lion which 'did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin.'
a.s.syria was so wholly a military power, that the destruction of Nineveh not only destroyed the a.s.syrian Empire but blotted out the a.s.syrian nation itself. When 'the gates of the rivers' of Nineveh-the Tigris and Khusur-were opened, and 'the palace dissolved,' a.s.syria ceased to exist. In the Sa.s.sanian period the mounds which covered the ruins of the old city were for a short time occupied by the houses of a village, but these, too, disappeared after a while, and the very site of Nineveh remained for centuries unknown. Rich, in 1818, conjectured that the mounds of Kouyunjik, opposite the modern town of Mosul, concealed its ruins beneath them, but it was not until the excavations of the Frenchman Botta, in 1842, and the Englishman Layard, in 1845, that the remains first of Dur-Sargon, and then of Nineveh itself, were revealed to the eyes of a wondering world. The capital of the a.s.syrian Empire was recovered, and with it the sculptured monuments of its kings, and the relics of its clay-inscribed library. The discovery came at an opportune moment. The cuneiform inscriptions of Persia had at last yielded up their secrets to the patient sagacity of European scholars, and had furnished the key to other inscriptions,-also in cuneiform characters, but of a wholly different kind, and expressing a wholly different language-which now proved to be the long-lost records of the a.s.syrian people. Little by little the records were deciphered; fresh expeditions to the buried cities of a.s.syria and Babylonia returned to Europe with fresh spoils, and it is now possible to describe the history and even the daily life and thoughts of a people who but half a century ago were but a mere name. The following pages are intended to give a picture of that history and life.
CHAPTER II.
a.s.sYRIAN HISTORY.
a.s.syrian history, as we have seen, begins with the _patesis_ or viceroys of the city of a.s.sur. We know little about them except their names; contemporaneous annals do not commence until a.s.syria has ceased to be the dependency of a foreign power, and has become an independent kingdom. It was in the 17th or 16th century before the Christian era that Bel-kapkapi first gave himself the t.i.tle of king. For two or three centuries afterwards our chief information about the monarchy he founded is derived from the relations, sometimes hostile and sometimes peaceable, which his successors had with Babylonia. One of them, however, Rimmon-nirari I by name (about B.C. 1320), has left us an inscription in which he recounts the wars he waged against the Babylonians, the Kurds, the Aramaeans, and the Shuites, nomad tribes who extended along the western bank of the Euphrates. It was his son, Shalmaneser I, to whom the foundation of Calah is ascribed. For six generations his descendants followed one another on the throne; then came Tiglath-Pileser I, who may be regarded as the founder of the first a.s.syrian Empire. He carried his arms as far as Cilicia and Malatiyeh on the west, and the wild tribes of Kurdistan on the east; he overthrew the Moschi or Meshech, defeated the Hitt.i.tes and their Colchian allies, and erected a memorial of his conquests at the sources of the Tigris. The Hitt.i.te city of Pethor, at the junction of the Euphrates and Sajur, was garrisoned with a.s.syrian soldiers, and at Arvad the a.s.syrian monarch symbolised his subjection of the Mediterranean by embarking in a s.h.i.+p and killing a dolphin in the sea. In Nineveh he established a botanical garden, which he filled with the strange trees he had brought back with him from his campaigns. In B.C. 1130 he marched into Babylonia, and, after a momentary repulse at the hands of the Babylonian king, defeated his antagonists on the banks of the Lower Zab. Babylonia was ravaged, and Babylon itself was captured.
With the death of Tiglath-Pileser I, a.s.syrian history becomes for awhile obscure. The sceptre fell into feeble hands, and the distant conquests of the empire were lost. It was during this period of abeyance that the kingdom of David and Solomon arose in the west. The a.s.syrian power did not revive until the reign of a.s.sur-dan II, whose son, Rimmon-nirari II (B.C. 911-889), and great-grandson, a.s.sur-natsir-pal (B.C. 883-858), led their desolating armies through Western Asia, and made the name of a.s.syria once more terrible to the nations around them. a.s.sur-natsir-pal was at once one of the most ferocious and most energetic of the a.s.syrian kings. His track was marked by impalements, by pyramids of human heads, and by other barbarities too horrible to be described. But his campaigns reached further than those of Tiglath-Pileser had done.
Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Kurdistan, were overrun again and again; the Babylonians were forced to sue for peace; Sangara, the Hitt.i.te king of Carchemish, paid tribute, and the rich cities of Phnicia poured their offerings into the treasury of Nineveh. The armies of a.s.syria penetrated even to Nizir, where the ark of the Chaldaean Noah was believed to have rested on the peak of Rowandiz. In a.s.syria itself the cities were embellished with the spoils of foreign conquest; splendid palaces were erected, and Calah, which had fallen into decay, was restored. A library was erected there, and it became the favourite residence of a.s.sur-natsir-pal.
He was succeeded by his son Shalmaneser II, so named, perhaps, after the original founder of Calah. Shalmaneser's military successes exceeded even those of his father, and his long reign of thirty-five years marks the climax of the first a.s.syrian Empire. His annals are chiefly to be found engraved on three monuments now in the British Museum. One of these is a monolith from Kurkh, a place about twenty miles from Diarbekr. The full-length figure of Shalmaneser is sculptured upon it, and the surface of the stone is covered with the inscription. Another monument is a small 'obelisk' of polished black stone, the upper part of which is shaped like three ascending steps. Inscriptions run round its four sides, as well as small bas-reliefs representing the tribute offered to 'the great king' by foreign states. Among the tribute-bearers are the Israelitish subjects of 'Jehu, son of Omri.' The third monument is one which was discovered in 1878 at Balawat, about nine miles from Nimrd or Calah. It consists of the bronze framework of two colossal doors, of rectangular shape, twenty-two feet high and twenty-six feet broad. The doors opened into a temple, and were made of wood, to which the bronze was fastened by means of nails. The bronze was cut into bands, which ran in a horizontal direction across the doors, and were each divided into two lines of embossed reliefs. These reliefs were hammered out, and not cast, and the rudeness of their execution proves that they were the work of native artists, and not of the Phnician settlers in Nineveh, of whose skill in such work we have several specimens. Short texts are added to explain the reliefs, so that the various campaigns and cities represented in them can all be identified.
Among the cities is the Hitt.i.te capital Carchemish, and the warriors of Armenia are depicted in a costume strikingly similar to that of the ancient Greeks.
Shalmaneser's first campaign was against the restless tribes of Kurdistan. He then turned northward, and fell upon the Armenian king of Van and the Manna or Minni (see Jer. li. 27), who inhabited the country between the mountains of Kotr and Lake Urumiyeh. The Hitt.i.tes of Carchemish, with their allies from Cilicia and other neighbouring districts, were next compelled to sue for peace, and the acquisition of Pethor, which had been lost after Tiglath-Pileser's death, again gave the a.s.syrians the command of the ford over the Euphrates. The result of this was, that in B.C. 854 Shalmaneser came into conflict with the kingdom of Hamath. The common danger had roused Hadadezer of Damascus, called Benhaded II in the Bible, to make common cause with Hamath, and a confederacy was formed to resist the a.s.syrian advance. Among the confederates 'Ahab of Israel' is mentioned as furnis.h.i.+ng the allies with 2,000 chariots and 10,000 infantry. But the confederacy was shattered at Karkar or Aroer, although Shalmaneser had himself suffered too severely to be able to follow up his victory. For a time, therefore, Syria remained unmolested, and the a.s.syrian king turned his attention to Babylonia, which he reduced to a state of va.s.salage, under the pretext of a.s.sisting the Babylonian sovereign against his rebel brother.
Twelve years, however, after the battle of Karkar, Shalmaneser was once more in the west. Hadadezer had been succeeded by Hazael on the throne of Damascus, and it was against him that the full flood of a.s.syrian power was turned. For some time he managed to stem it, but in B.C. 841 he suffered a crus.h.i.+ng defeat on the heights of Shenir (see Deut. iii.
9), and his camp, along with 1,121 chariots and 470 carriages, fell into the hands of the a.s.syrians, who proceeded to besiege him in his capital, Damascus. The siege, however, was soon raised, and Shalmaneser contented himself with ravaging the Hauran and marching to Beyrout, where his image was carved on the rocky promontory of Baal-rosh, at the mouth of the Nahr el-Kelb. It was while he was in this neighbourhood that the amba.s.sadors of Jehu arrived with offers of tribute and submission. The tribute, we are told, consisted of 'silver, gold, a golden bowl, vessels of gold, goblets of gold, pitchers of gold, a sceptre for the king's hand and spear-handles,' and Jehu is erroneously ent.i.tled 'the son of Omri.'
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