erib is meant, but not named), " had laid hands on
the great temple of Marduk, in Babylon, and given
away all his treasures as the price of a bargain.
This angered the lord of the gods, Marduk ; he forth-
with determined to visit the land with chastisement,
and destroy its inhabitants." All .that followed is }
then described as the direct act of the god : it is he
who flooded the city with the waters of the Arakhtu,
who made it even with the ground, who demolished
its temples so that the gods and goddesses flew up
into heaven and so Sennacherib, it is implied (for
his name is not once mentioned), is cleared of all
blame, having been but the instrument of a divine
judgment. In the same manner Esarhaddon an-i
nounces himself as the chosen instrument of the god/
who " selects him from the midst of his brothers " to
restore the city and its sanctuaries. His affection for |
the great capital which he had, so to speak, raised
from the dead, was very great, and he made it his
favorite residence. He never, to the end of his life,
had to contend with rebellion in this quarter.
6. We may pass over those among Esarhaddon's
nine recorded campaigns which had no further ob-
ject than securing the frontiers from inroads and re-
bellions, and which were most probably not com
THE SARGONIDES: ESARHADDON.
337
manded by himself. An exception must be made
in favor of an expedition into " distant Media,"
where he affirms having penetrated further than any
of the kings before him, even to Bikni, " where the
mountains of alabaster are," and where he captured
several refractory " chiefs of cities," forgave and re-
instated some others, while three more, chiefs of
" cities of Media whose position is remote," brought
him to Nineveh an offering of choicest horses. An-
other incident of a frontier war which should not
pass unnoticed is the repulse and defeat of " TlUSH-
PA THE Gimirrai, a roving warrior whose own coun-
try was remote." He and his army were " destroyed
by the sword " in a region which has not been iden-
tified, but undoubtedly lay north of Cilicia, in the
Na'i'ri highlands, in the later province of Cappadocia.
" Gimirrai " is the Assyrian name of the nomadic
people usually called CIMMERIANS, who, like the
Medes, belonged to a different race from any of the
nations we have hitherto encountered. As this is
the race to which we ourselves belong, and as, at the
epoch of history we are now reaching, it is rapidly
coming to the front, it will soon be necessary to in-
terrupt the narrative and devote a chapter to its
migrations and progress.
7. With Elam, Esarhaddon's relations appear to
have been peaceable throughout. Not so with
Arabia. He gives a very remarkable account of an
expedition into an Arabian region Bazu, of which
the name has not yet been identified, but which
must have lain beyond a wide belt of desert. Some
22
338
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
scholars think it was Yemen. He describes the way
as lying through an arid waste, "a land of thirst,"
full of loose stones, where snakes and scorpions
covered the ground like grasshoppers ; then through
high, barren mountains a description which forcibly
recalls " the great and terrible wilderness" of Deu-
teronomy, viii. 15, "wherein were fiery serpents and
scorpions, and thirsty ground where was no water/'
There is no reason to doubt Esarhaddon's state-
ment, that no king had entered this region before
him. Eight Arabian sovereigns were slain in this)
campaign, two of them women, their wealth and
their gods carried away. One of the surviving
chieftains, LAILIE, who had at first fled before thei
invaders, having heard of the capture of " his gods,"
performed the extraordinary feat of following the
Assyrian king all the way to Nineveh, to try and
recover them, as the price of his submission. Esar-
haddon, whose disposition inclined to leniency,
" showed him compassion and spoke to him of
brotherhood." He restored to him " his gods
which had been carried off," having previously,
however, ordered an inscription to be engraved on
them, recording their capture and " the might of
Asshur his lord." Not content with this favor, the
king invested him with the sovereignty of the entire
province of Bazu, which he had just conquered, de-
manding from him of course allegiance and tribute.
This was not the only case of captive " gods " being
restored to their owners. On another occasion of
the same kind, the king mentions having caused
" their injuries to be repaired," before engraving on
THE SARGONIDES: ESARHADDON. ?>$Q
them his own name and " the might of Asshur his
lord."
8. For over twenty years the West had not been
visited by Assyrian armies, not since Sennacherib's
disastrous retreat. As the royal inscriptions never
mention any country unless it is the scene of an
Assyrian expedition, we do not know what was go-
ing on during this long interval of peace in the
lands of Khatti and the sea-coast. They were prob-
ably gathering strength for a new rising. It broke
out in Phoenician Sidon, which appears to have
got rid of the king set over it by Sennacherib,
and to have begun operations in advance of all its
neighbors, supported only by some mountain tribes
of Lebanon. If others were going to join the insur-
rection, they had no time to do so, for Esarhaddon
was beforehand with them. He invested the offend-
ing city before any help could reach it, " rooted up
its citadel and dwellings and flung them into the
sea," then built a new city, which he named "city
of Esarhaddon." The rebel king, who had fled to
some island, name not given he " caught like a
fish from out of the sea and cut off his head ; "
the same treatment was inflicted on the Lebanon
chieftain, who was taken " from out of the moun-
tains, like a bird," and both heads were sent to Nin-
eveh with the prisoners and spoil.
9. After returning to Assyria, Esarhaddon con-
voked the " kings of Khatti and of the nations be-
yond the sea." They came to Nineveh, twenty-two
in number, ten from the island of Cyprus and twelve
from the principal Syrian states the latter proba-
340
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
bly glad at heart that they had had no opportunity
of committing themselves. The list is headed by
Baal, king of Tyre, and Manasseh, king of Judah (the
son of Hezekiah). Then come the kings of Edom,
of Moab, of Gaza, of Ascalon, of Gebal, of Arvad,
of Ammon, of Ashdod, and two more (unidentified) :
"altogether twenty-two kings of Khatti and the
sea-coast, and the islands, and I passed them in re-
view before me." They had not, of course, come
empty-handed. Esarhaddon was then building, and
their gifts whether voluntary or demanded from
them were appropriate to the occasion. They
consisted of " great beams and rafters of ebony, cedar
and cypress," from Lebanon and other mountains,
slabs of alabaster and other stones, which " from
the mountain quarries, the place of their origin,
for the adornment of the palace, with labor and
difficulty unto Nineveh they brought along with
them/'
10. The palace thus endowed is that which the
mound of Nebbi Yunus still encloses, unexplored.
It is to be hoped that it may some day be laid
open, for its furnishings and appointments must
have been of the most costly magnificence, judging
from the detailed description given on one of Esar-
haddon's cylinders. The feast of inauguration,
too, was celebrated with great pomp and lavish-
ness.
" Asshur, Ishtar of Nineveh, and the gods of Assyria I feasted
within it ; victims, precious and beautiful, I sacrificed before them,
and I caused them to receive my gifts. The great assembly of my
kingdom, the chiefs, and the people of the land, all of them, accord-
THE SARGONIDES: ESARHADDON.
341
ing to their tribes and cities, on lofty seats I seated within it, and I
made the company joyful. With the wine of grapes I furnished
their tables and I let martial music resound among them."*
11. We do not know the immediate occasion of *yT
Esarhaddon's expedition into Egypt (his tenth cam-
paign), for the cylinders stop just short of it, and
we have nothing but fragments for the last years of
this king's reign. With the help of these, however,
and by the light of former precedents, it is not im-
possible to give a very probable guess at the course
of events. ' It was, beyond a doubt, the old story: J
the Syrian princes looking to Egypt for help. In-
deed, one fragment expressly states that " Baal,
king of Tyre, putting his trust in Tarku (Taharka),
king of Kush, threw off the yoke of Assyria." No\^
this same Baal of Tyre heads the list of vassal kings
who paid their court at Nineveh. So he can have
lost no time after his return home. He would
scarcely risk the venture alone, and there is in the
Bible books a statement which makes it probable
that the king of Judah for one, at all events, eitherj
actually joined him or was ready to do so. One of
the Hebrew historians (Second Chronicles, xxxiii.)
tells that " the captains of the host of the king of
Assyria " took Manasseh out of his capital, "bound
him with fetters and carried him to Babylon," but
adds that he was soon pardoned and sent back to
Jerusalem. This statement tallies very well with
what we know of *Lsarhaddon as a king, who dwelt
much m Babylon, and who, unlike his predecessors,
Translation of H. F Talbot, in " Records of the Past," Vol. III.
342
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
was averse to cruelty and much given to acts of
grace. The restoration of Manasseh, who, we may
be sure, did not spare protestations of repentance
and promises for the future, may have taken place
after the Egyptian war was victoriously ended, as
he would, not unnaturally, be detained as hostage
in Babylon while it lasted.*
12. The king of Judah was probably included \
among " the allies," when we are told (on another j
fragment) that Esarhaddon sent out his host /
" against Tarku, king of Kush, against the men of
Egypt and against the allies of Tyre." Taharka, it
is said, fled. But Tyre, as once before, under Shal-
maneser and Sargon, held out a long time, being in-
accessible on its island rock. Esarhaddon, who was
now marching down the coast, left a body of troops
to reduce it by famine and thirst. The city did not
surrender until the war had been decided against
Taharka. " Its king, Baal, was pardoned and al-
lowed to retain possession of his throne, and we find
both him and Manasseh of Judah again at the head
of a list of vassal kings under Asshurbanipal.
13. The march from Raphia into Egypt was most\
wearisome, and could scarcely have been accom-l
plished but for a contingent of camels and supplies |
of water in skins, which were furnished by a greatj
Bedouin sheikh. Details about the war itself are
unfortunately wanting, but the results are known.
* Professor E. Schrader thinks that this incident happened fully
twenty-five years later, in the reign of Esarhaddon's son, Asshurba-
nipal. As Manasseh is said to have reigned fifty years, there would
be no chronological impossibility in the way.
THE SARGONIDES : ESARHADDON. 343
Taharka retired southwards into his own native \
kingdom of Kush. Memphis, the capital of Lower \
Egypt, was taken and sacked, Taharka's family cap-
tured, and the Assyrian rule established over the/
land. It is probable that this, as it would seerriy
rather easy victory, was in great part brought
about by dissensions among the Egyptians. The
local dynasties of the numerous principalities, which
had been shorn of their independence and subjected
to a firm central authority by Shabaka, the founder
of the Ethiopian dynasty (see p. 242), would hardly
miss such an opportunity of reasserting themselves.
This is the state of things depicted by the prophet
Isaiah, whose profound knowledge of contemporary
politics made him foresee the doom of Egypt, weak
and divided against itself :
" And I will stir up the Egyptians against the Egyptians ; and they
shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his
neighbor ; city against city and kingdom against kingdom. . . . The
counsel of the wisest counsellors of Pharaoh has become brutish ....
they have caused Egypt to go astray that are the corner-stone of her
tribes .... as a drunken man staggereth." (Isaiah, xix.)
Thus it came to pass that Esarhaddon left Egypt
divided among twenty petty rulers, native princes,
with the exception of a very few Assyrians, who
were probably set in the places of such as had been
true to Taharka and his now ruined fortunes. One
NECHO, hereditary prince of Sais (an important but
comparatively new city on the left arm of the Nile),
he set over the rest, having first ordered him to give
his son an Assyrian name, and to change in like
manner that of his capital. So when Esarhaddon, tin
344
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
his way home, had a stele of himself cut in a rock
of the Phoenician coast, at the mouth of the river
now called Nahr-el-kelb (see ill. No. 66), side by side
with that of his father, he could with literal truth
assume the new and peculiar title which heads the
long inscription on that monument : " King of the
kings of Muzur (Egypt)." On that same rock, six
hundred years before, Ramses II., the victor of Ka-
desh (see p. 30), had had his effigy carved out, to-
gether with several more sculptures, to commemo-
rate his triumphs in his wars against the Hittites.
When, therefore, the Assyrian conquerors joined
their steles to those of the older Egyptian conqueror,
it was with the distinct intention of humiliating
Egypt by contrasting her former glory with her pres-
ent low state. And there they are to this day,
peaceably together, and the distance between them
is as though it were not ; the six centuries that di-
vide them have melted into the hazy background of
time, the murmuring waves of which beat drowsily
around their mighty memories, as those of the
bluest of seas against the rock from which they si-
lently preach of greatness departed, of rivalries
hushed, fierce passions quenched in the cool shadow
of Death, which mellows all glare, and soothes all
turmoil into glorified dreams of the past.
14. Among Assyrian rulers, Esarhaddon undoubt-
edly is, as has been unanimously admitted, by far
" the noblest and most gracious figure." * His end-
too, has a certain romantic charm. He voluntarily
*Ed. Meyer, " Geschichte des Alterthums," \o\. I., p. 474.
THE SARGONIDES: ESARHADDON.
545
laid down the burden of royalty and abdicated in
favor of his son, Asshurbanipal. It were vain to
look for motives and explanations in Assyrian an-
nals ; they give the bare facts. It is thought, how-
ever, that the king's health was impaired, and that
he did not feel equal to face the difficult and troub-
lous times which were coming on ; for already Ta-
harka was rallying from the defeat he had suffered
only four years before ; the princes who had fallen
off from him had found that they had not gained
much by exchanging his supremacy against the As-
syrian rule, and a formidable coalition was preparing
to re-open hostilities, which would call for speedy
and vigorous action. It was natural that the weary
king, with the presentiment on him of his approach-
ing end, should resign the task into the hands of his
young and active son, who, moreover, seems to have
been associated for some time with the cares and
duties of power. He solemnly and publicly re-
signed to him the royalty of Assyria. We know,
from the annals of Asshurbanipal, the very date of
the event. On the 12th day of April, 668 B.C. aA
lucky day, " he assembled the people of Asshur,
great and small, and from the shores of the Upper
and Lower Seas (the Mediterranean and the Per-
sian Gulf)," for the consecration of his son's royalty,
to whom the oath of allegiance was sworn before
the great gods. From this moment Asshurbanipal
" ruled the kingdom of Asshur," and " entered, with
joy and shouting," into the royal palace of Sennach-
erib " in which his father, Esarhaddon, was born, and
had grown to man's estate .... where he had
346
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
reigned, and whence he had extended his dominion
over all the kings, and increased the number of his
subjects at the cost of foreign nations."
15. Esarhaddon reserved to himself the royalty
of Babylon, whither he retired, but even that only
nominally, for he appointed as viceroy a younger J
son of his, SHAMASH-SHUMUKIN. There is a letter
to him from Asshurbanipal, wherein the young king
entitles himself '' king of Asshur," and addresses
his father as " king of Kar-Dunyash, of Shumir and
Accad." Esarhaddon died at Babylon within the
year after his abdication.
XL
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM. THE LAST COMER
AMONG THE GREAT RACES.*
I. If we pause to think of it, we shall be sur-
prised to find what a very small patch of our earth
has hitherto engrossed us. We have, indeed, had
side-glimpses of Egypt and even Arabia, and the
Phoenicians drew our eyes for a moment towards
the far west of Europe. But. on the whole, we
have, in reality, for nearly two volumes, been cir-
cling round and round within a truncated triangle
of land, bounded on three sides by mountain ranges,
those of Lebanon, Nairi and Zagros, and on the
fourth by an imaginary line drawn across the des-
ert from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean ;
and the merest glance at a map of the world will
show us what an imperceptible particle of the east-
ern hemisphere that makes. And of the four
great races which count in the history of mankind,
as being so-called " culture-races," only three have
appeared as prominent actors on this limited but
most momentous area : the Turanian, the Hamitic
and the Semitic. Of these we have seen the former
* This chapter should be followed step by step on the second map,
" Navigations of the Phoenicians," etc., or it will be read to very little
purpose.
347
348
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
consistently supplanted, if not obliterated, by the
two later and more gifted sister races, and among
these again the Semitic race steadily gaining pre-
eminence. We have now reached the time when
the fourth, the last comer among the great races,
advances rapidly to the front, the race which is
henceforth to lead in the world ; which even now
maintains its rule, nay, spreads it each day more
widely and plants it more firmly over all the earth ;
the race to which the people of this continent be-
long, as inheritors of the blood and culture of classi-
cal antiquity and of all the nations of Europe.
2. This is the race, several members of which are
mentioned in Chapter X. of Genesis (2-5) as chil-
dren of Japhet. With some of these we have
become slightly acquainted in the course of the
preceding pages: Yavan, Elishah, KlTTIM, all
branches of the Greek family of peoples; TARSHISH
in the West, and, in the opposite direction, Madai
(the Medes), and, quite lately, GOMER (the GlMlR-
RAI of the inscriptions, the CIMMERIANS of the
classics). (See p. 338.) But the members of the
Japhetic family known to the biblical Hebrews
were only a very few offshoots of that most prolific
stock, of which, moreover, we must seek the orig-
inal seat in a more remotely eastern region than
any they had any knowledge of, that vast and im-
perfectly explored " Table-land of Central Asia,"
which is more and more generally thought to have
been the common cradle of mankind.*
* See " Story of Chaldea," p. 186.
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM. 340
3. There is every reason to believe that, when the
first great dispersion took place (in the course of
how many centuries who shall say ?), a large divis-
ion lingered behind in the old homesteads for ages,
thereby developing a very distinctive type, both
physical and moral, and a language more varied,
more flexible, more capable of perfectionment than
any of the others the language which became the
parent-tongue of all the European languages, ancient
and modern, and of some Oriental ones. In that
tongue, when these loiterers at length obeyed the
common law and began to move and disperse in their
turn in quest of novelty and adventure, they called
themselves Aryas, i.e., " the noble," " the vener-
able," doubtless asserting thereby their own superi-
ority over the native tribes or peoples which they
found wherever they pushed their way, and which
they invariably subjugated or destroyed, and, in all
cases, looked upon with the utmost contempt. For
this reason, this entire division of mankind the
fourth great race, with all the nations into which it
divided and subdivided in the course of time has
been called the Aryan Race. This, at least, is one
of the names under which it is most generally
known. There is another, which took its origin in
the manner of the division of the race.
4. For while one portion restricted their wander-
ings within the limits of their own continent, Asia,
the other, at long intervals but in huge instalments,
poured into Europe, mainly through the wide gap
of flat steppe-land that stretches between the south-
ern outspurs of the Oural Mountains and the Cas-
35o
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
pian Sea, a gap which may be said rather to unite
the two continents than to separate them, it is so
invitingly accessible. The only obstacle which it
opposed to migrating crowds was the Oural River,
and rivers are never much of a barrier ; where a
ridge of mountains will arrest a migration for a hun-
dred years, a river will not do so for a month. All
the nations of Europe could trace their origin to these
migrations if there were a sufficiency of monuments.
As to the Asiatic portion of the race, an important,
in some respects the most important, branch of
it, descended into the great peninsula of India ; not,
of course, across the wide and utterly impassable belt
of the Himalaya, the highest mountain range in the
world, but through that break between the western
end of the Himalaya and the chain of the Hindu-
Kush, through which the river Indus forces its way
by an abrupt bend. For this reason, the Asiatic
and European branches of the Aryan race have
been comprised under the double name of The
Indo-European Race, which felicitously recalls
their original unity, while indicating their present
divergence. German scholars at one time introduced
the fashion of calling the race Indo-Germani-c,
pointedly ignoring all other European nations with
a superciliousness somewhat savoring of arrogance.
But the scientific world in general very properly
ignored this bit of misplaced patriotism, and adopted
the other far more correct and comprehensive name.
As to the biblical one Japhetic Race it has been
discarded altogether, as insufficient.
5. The Indo-European race entered the historical
THE GA THERING OF THE STORM.
351
stage of the world under very auspicious conditions.
Not only were they the inheritors of all that had
already been done by others in the way of culture,
but they brought, fully developed, to their task of
continuing the great work, the two great character-
istics which stamp the race as the noblest and most
perfect variety of the human species, and by which
they were to make the world their own : the fac-
ulty of enduring and adapting themselves to any
conditions of life, and highest gift of all the fac-
ulty of indefinite improvement, unlimited achieve-
ment in any line of knowledge, thought, art or ac-
tion to which they might be led to apply them-
selves.
6. The great Asiatic half of the Aryan race came
in time to split itself into two distinct portions. One,
as already mentioned, descended into India and
stayed there. The other, wandering to the south-
west of the primeval home, and after crossing sun-
dry mountain ridges, spread over the vast region
comprising the modern countries of KABOUL and
AFGHANISTAN and the eastern half of modern Per-
sia. This region was, in classical antiquity, broken
up into many not particularly well known countries
with strange, unfamiliar names. Of these, BaC-
TRIA is perhaps the most clearly defined ; but by
far the greater part of this remote territory went
under the vague but significant name of ARIANA,
i. e., territory occupied by Aryan peoples. Or per-
haps, more properly, " tribes " ; for all this region,
unlike Bactria, which is a pleasant land of moun-
tains and valleys, not ill-provided with water, is com-
352 THE STOR Y OF ASS YRIA.
posed of grassy steppes alternating with sandy-
wastes, where rivers, after a brief course through
some oasis, run dry or soak into the sand, so that
migrating crowds, as they traversed it in their west-