ward course, remained nomads of necessity, finding
no inducement to settle down to farming. But as
they moved still further westward and reached the
outposts of the Zagros and the mountains of Elam,
they did find such inducement, amply, since those
rich and fertile slopes and valleys and the adjoining
highlands had long been occupied by ancient peo-
ples of an earlier race ; so that they found cities and
well cultivated lands to take possession of, and a
native population ready to their hand, to be re-
duced to subjection and subserviency.
7. The name "Ariana" became corrupted into
ERAN, or Iran,* and this has been, and still is, the
designation under which comes the entire family
of Aryan peoples that have dispersed over this par-
ticular portion of Asia. In their wanderings over
the face of the Eranian steppes and deserts they
continually encountered-tribes of Turanian nomads,
who, being the older in possession, naturally treated
them as intruders. They were, moreover, encom-
passed on the north and north-east by unmixed
herds of the same race the TURCOMEN of mod-
ern TURKESTAN. Thus the most deep-rooted hos-
tility, the most inextinguishable hatred, was estab-
lished between the two races, and has endured, un-
* Practically the same as Erin, or Ireland, both being equally
evolved from the original Arya.
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM.
353
mitigated, from prehistoric times through all the
long line of ages. " Eran and Turan " are to this
day opposite terms in geography, ethnology and
Asiatic politics, and the strife of Eran and Turan,
as it has ever been the substance of those peoples'
life, has been all along the one theme of their na-
tional traditions, poetry and epos.
8. The first among Eranian nations to come for-
ward and win renown and power were the Medes,
called " Madai " in chapter ten of Genesis as well
as on the Assyrian monuments. It is impossible to
guess how long it took them to wander from Eastern
Eran to the foot of the Zagros. Towards the mid-
dle of the ninth century B.C. they must already have
been in possession of many of its valleys and outer
slopes, for it was about that time that they first
came in collision with Assyrian forces, and we find
their name in the inscriptions of Raman-nirari III.
(See p. 194.) After that we can see them gathering
power and importance, as shown by the fact that
they are mentioned more and more frequently in
later reigns, until expeditions against Medes, first in
the fastnesses and highlands of the Zagros, then far
beyond this barrier, even into the Eranian deserts,
become one of the chief preoccupations of Assyrian
kings. They speak of three kinds of Medes : the
" strong " or " powerful Medes," probably the war-
like tribes that had gained a permanent stand in the
fastnesses of the Zagros ; the " distant Medes," or
" Medes of the Rising Sun," with cities and settle-
ments scattered along the southern slopes of the
Elburz Mountains, and further east; and the " No-
23
354 rHE stor Y OF ASS YRIA .
madic Medes," apparently rovers of the Eranian
steppes. These latter are ingeniously called " Ma-
dai Aribi" ("Arab Medes"), to indicate that their
mode of life was similar to that of the Arabs. It is
the boast of later kings, from Tiglath-Pileser II.
downward, that they subdued the " distant Medes
of the Rising Sun," and that their rule extended
eastward to Mount Bikni. Unfortunately it is not
very clear as yet where exactly in the East these
mountains, said to be rich in marble or alabaster,
are to be looked for.
9. If these indications were not sufficient to show
that, even as late as Esarhaddon's reign, the Medes
did not yet form a united and compact nation, the
fact is fully proved by the absence of national gov-
ernment among them. Lavish as all ancient records
are with the title of " king," which is awarded to
every petty chieftain, we never hear of Median
" kingdoms " or u kings," but only of " towns " and
" heads " or "chiefs of towns," and that points to a
very loose social constitution, and a form of gov-
ernment the most primitive of all after the patri-
archal. It is what may be called the " clan-stage "
of society. They even fought in clans, -^spearmen,
archers, and cavalry " all mingled in one mass and
confused together," as they were brought into the
field by each clan chief, instead of being divided into
distinct bodies and companies as regularly organized
armies are. This detail we owe to Herodotus, the
Greek traveller and historian, who also informs us,
in perfect accordance with what we gather from the
Assyrian monuments, that the Medes in ancient
THE GA THERING OF THE STORM.
355
times " dwelt in scattered villages, without any cen-
tral authority."
10. It is probable that they intrenched themselves
first in the very rugged mountain land between the
head ridge of the Zagros now held by robber tribes
of Kurds and the Caspian Sea, then descended and
spread gradually to the south-east, occupying the
different countries and small kingdoms as the As-
syrians vacated them after plundering and devastat-
ing them, and choosing the times when they were
left prostrate, impoverished and incapable of effi-
cient resistance. Thus, some principalities were
formed which became the nucleus of the future
kingdom. One of the earliest was that kingdom of
Ellip, which, under the old king Dalta, had so long
been loyal to Sargon. (See p. 265.) When Media
had become a united and powerful state, its capital,
ECBATANA, or AGBATANA (modern Hamadan), was
situated in the midst of that very district, which
was called by the classics Media Proper, or Great
Media.
11. It is evident that they must everywhere have
found ancient populations, with set customs and in-
stitutions of their own. These populations were
mostly of Turanian stock, very likely mixed with
Hamitic, or even (as probably in Elam) with Semitic
elements. Aryans never were much inclined to
mix with other races ; so the newcomers formed a
haughty governing aristocracy among the people
whom they subjected to their rule. The distinction
was further kept up by the two greatest dividers
of men, next to race : difference of language and
356
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
difference of religion. Still it was hardly to be ex-
pected that the conquerors should not be influenced
at all by contact with nations who were far from be-
ing in a state of barbarism, whose culture, indeed,
being old and established, was, so far, superior to that
of their conquerors, who were only just coming out
of the nomadic stage. So, when the Medes have
become one nation and one state, (the name includ-
ing all the various alien elements either assimilated
or reduced to subjection by them), we shall find
them a very mixed people, and their religion es-
pecially, in its final form, a most remarkable product
of the fusion between older forms of worship of
entirely different, nay, opposite types. But these
subjects can be properly and fully treated only in
another volume, which will be principally devoted
to the ancient Eranian race. In this place we have
to do with the Medes in so far only as they form one
of the heaviest clouds in the storm that is fast gath-
ering over the too-exalted head of Asshur. Just
one moment longer, however, we may pause, to note
how unlike the real facts are to the string of fan-
tastic inventions that have been worked into a na-
tional mythical legend in the fabulous story of Sem-
iramis. (See pp. 196-200.) There we see a Median
empire flourishing and conquered by the Assyrian
Ninus over 2000 years B.C., i. e., about 1500 years
ahead of the time when Medes are heard of first as
an insignificant barbarous tribe, and some 400 years
before Assyria appears at all as a separate country.
But then the Greeks got the story from Median
sources, and the Medes, who had succeeded the
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM.
357
Assyrians as masters in Asia, may have liked, from
national vanity, to exaggerate the duration and
consequent importance of the empire they had
conquered, and also to represent their conquest in
the light of reprisals for one they had suffered in
ancient times at the hands of the now annihilated
rival.
12. But if the Medes, together with the Chal-
deans, alone reaped the fruit of the general revolt
which was now soon to encompass Asshur, seem-
ingly at the height of his glory, the catastrophe was
by no means due to these two agents alone. The
combined efforts of West, South and East would
still long have continued unavailing to lay the giant
prostrate, even though, in the words of a modern
writer, " his own victories were slowly bleeding
him to death." In the storm that was steadily
gathering, there was, far away in the North, a cloud
hitherto unregarded, which kept growing, darkening,
nearing, until, joining with the others, it overspread
the sky, and thundered forth Asshur's doom. In
countries far beyond the ken of the small fraction
of the world whose fortunes have hitherto occupied
us, the immense open region north of the Black
Sea, now known as Southern Russia, events had
been going on for years, probably hundreds of
years, which, obscure and confused as the knowl-
edge of them was forever to remain, were, in the
fulness of time, to give the decisive push to the
scales in which more than that small world's des-
tinies hung anxiously balanced. From the myste-
rious depths of Central Asia, Aryan hosts kept go'
358
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
ing forth at intervals, drawn in the same fateful di-
rection, crossing great rivers, skirting the north of
the Caspian, and pouring through the gap between
that and the Oural Mountains a gap which must
have been less wide than it is now, in proportion as
the Caspian Sea was more extensive. The plains of
Russia are seemingly boundless. No barriers there
but rivers, very many and wide, the noblest in the
world next to the mighty streams of the American
continent. There nation after nation could, expand,
disperse, roam, or settle at will. Truly, if Central
Asia were the cradle of the human race, here was
that of modern Europe, for there is not one of the
nations which now people it whose ancestors did
not at some time halt or wander in some part of
Russia in their westward progress. The ancestors
of the Greeks and Italians had passed long ago, for
at the time which we have reached Esarhaddon's
death, 668 B.C. Greece was a prosperous and al-
ready highly cultured land, and Rome herself was
nearly a hundred years old. So that the Aryan race
was flourishing and bravely working out the promise
of its brilliant destiny in the south of Europe, when
it was scarcely beginning to push its way to the
front in Western Asia.
13. The south of Russia, by its extraordinary fer-
tility, has always been unusually attractive, either to
the nomad who wanted pasture, or to the farmer who
wanted crops. It was, indeed, just the land to tempt
the nomad into settling and farming, and its ancient
populations long lived in a stage of culture partak-
ing of both modes of life. The Greeks knew them
THE GA THE RING OF THE STORM.
359
vaguely under the general name of CIMMERIANS
(more correctly KlMMERIANS). Herodotus knows
of certain " Cimmerian cities," and tells that the
straits which unite the Azoff Sea to the Black Sea
were called " Cimmerian Bosphorus." To the
Greeks this region was the extremest north, situated
at the uttermost bounds of the world, and the absurd-
est stories were current about it. Thus it was a
vulgar belief that there lay one of the entrances to
the lower world (the land of the dead), and that the
sun never shone there, whence the proverbial expres-
sion : " Cimmerian darkness." Educated, well-trav-
elled men, of course, knew better ; witness Herodo-
tus, who, though he never got as far as the lands
north of the Black Sea himself, took great pains to
collect trustworthy information about it.*
14. It appears that, at some time not specified,
another large instalment of Eranian nomads, being
pressed upon from behind by certain savage tribes
east of the Caspian, took the usual road, crossed the
Oural River, the Ra (modern Volga), the Tanais
(modern Don), and overran the vast plains long
held by the Cimmerians. The Greeks called these
hordes SCYTHS, or SCYTHIANS, the Asiatics Sakhi,
or SAKI, both exceedingly vague and misleading
denominations, since they denoted all the roving
barbarous peoples of the extreme North and North-
east, many of which, especially in the latter direc-
* About the Cimmerians and their kindred peoples, see espe-
cially the chapter " Gomer" in Fr. Lenormant's u Origines de l'His-
toire" (Vol. II., part 2d, p. 332, ff.).
360
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
tion, were undoubtedly Turanian. But the Scythi-
ans that passed into Europe were as undoubtedly
Aryan, of the Eranian branch. These late comers,
coveting the undivided possession of the land, drove
the Cimmerians steadily before them, and although
a part of these seem to have intrenched themselves
in the peninsula now named Crimea, by means of a
wall across the narrow isthmus (known to Herod-
otus as " the Cimmerian Wall "), the mass of the
people, after making a desperate stand on the banks
of the river Tyras (modern Dniester) and suffer-
ing a signal and murderous defeat, abandoned the
now desert land to the invaders and retreated fur-
ther West, or rather to the south-west. Having thus
been forced to resume their wandering mode of life,
they crossed the river ISTER (modern Danube),
descended into the rugged land known to the
ancients as Thrace (now Bulgaria and Rou-
MELIA), already occupied by a settled population
of the same stock as themselves, the wild and war-
like nation of the Thracians, which never thoroughly
mixed with the Greeks, nor assimilated their refine-
ment of mind and manners. A large surplus of the
dislodged Cimmerians overflowed, across the Bos-
phorus, into Asia Minor, where they caused a com-
motion not unlike that raised in water by the fall
of a stone.
15. History begins, for Asia Minor, far later than
for the Semitic river-land and the sea-coast of
Canaan. Even the beginnings of the Greek colo-
nies along the Ionian coast-land and the southern
shore of the Black Sea are wrapt in the twilight
6y. HITTITE ROCK-SCULPTURE IN THE PASS OF KARABEL (NEAR SMYRNA).
(ERRONEOUSLY THOUGHT BY THE GREEKS TO REPRESENT RAMSES II.)
3 62
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
of myth and epic legend which, on the Euphrates,
had made way for authentic monumental records as
early as 2000 B.C., and, in some instances, much
earlier still. As to the population, political divis-
ion, and culture of the wonderfully favored land
which goes by the general name of " Asia Minor,"
it is only lately that we have been enabled to form
a tolerably trustworthy, though still very vague and
general idea on these subjects. The researches,
based on recently discovered monuments to which
Professor A. H. Sayce has especially devoted him-
self for the last few years, have shown that it was
the seat of an ancient and very high culture,
brought thither by Hittite settlers who, probably as
early as the fifteenth century B.C., began to spread
vn that direction from the mountain-lands of
Taurus and Nairi (later Armenia), which we found
occupied in their eastern portions by an impor-
tant branch of the race, the people of Urartu
(Alarodians). (See pp. 30, 31, 33, 203-205.)
16. In Ionia proper, on the road between the
ancient cities EPHESUS and Sardis, the capital of
ancient Lydia, and 25 miles from modern Smyrna,
there is a pass through a steep and rocky ridge.
In that pass the traveller is confronted by sculp-
tures cut in the rock, and representing a warrior in
an unfamiliar garb. Herodotus saw them when
they were probably in better preservation than
they are now, and marvelled much at them. He
admits that the Ionians did not know whom they
represented, but is under the impression that they
were meant for the Egyptian conqueror, Ramses
68. HITTITE ROCK-SCULPTURE AT IBRIZ IN CILICIA, REPRESENTING
A HITTITE GOD.
363
3 6 4
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
II., whom the Greeks knew under the name of
SESOSTRIS, and erroneously believed to have ex-
tended his rule beyond the Taurus. There is a
certain humor in the fact that', instead of being the
memorial of an Egyptian conquest, these sculp-
tures should have turned out to commemorate the
advance and rule of the Egyptians' most constant
and powerful enemies. (See ill. 6j)
17. Another most interesting Hittite monument
is the rock-sculpture at IBRIZ, in Cilicia, somewhat
to the north-west of Tarsus. It is described as
" representing a thanksgiving to the god who gives fertility to the
earth. The god is a husbandman, marked as a giver of corn and
wine by his attributes . . . . ne wears the very dress still used by
the peasantry .... the high-peaked cap still in use among some
Kurdish tribes ; the tunic fastened round the waist by a girdle . . . . ;
and the tip-tilted shoes are the ordinary sandals of the country,
with exactly the same bandages and mode of fastening. ... It
is interesting also to notice that some of the patterns on the priest's
dress have not yet gone out of fashion amongst the Cappadocian
peasantry." * (See ill. 68.)
18. Cappadocia boasts numerous Hittite remains
not only rock-sculptures and sepulchres hewn in
the rock, but buildings, cities, palaces, with portals
guarded by lions, and apartments disposed much in
the Assyrian fashion. The most important of
these ruins are those discovered at BOGHAZ-KEUI,
where the palace is overlooked by a flat rock,
crowned with two citadels, a little beyond which
rise walls of live rock, and these, having been
slightly smoothed for the purpose, are covered with
* Colonel Sir C. W. Wilson, quoted in Wright's " Empire of the
Hittites," p. 61.
THE GA THERING OF THE STORM.
365
sculptures representing an entire procession of
strange looking personages and animals almost
surely of mythological import. All over Asia
Minor, in fact, are scattered traces of an early
and powerful Hittite culture, much of which must
have survived the greatness of this remarkable
race. Thus when a Greek colony was established
at Ephesus, in Ionia, they found there a sanctuary
of Atargatis (the Hittite nature-goddess, answer-
ing to the Semitic Ishtar and Canaanitic Ashtoreth),
the centre of whose worship was the national capi-
tal, Karkhemish. (See p. 35.) They were especially
struck by the characteristic peculiarity of this wor-
ship the hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of
ministering women, and their vivid fancy at once
transformed it into a wild and fantastic legend, that
of the warrior-women, the Amazons. " In early
art," says Professor Sayce, " the Amazons are robed
in Hittite costume, and armed with the double-
headed axe ; and the dances they performed with
shield and bow, in honor of the goddess of war and
love, gave rise to the myths which saw in them a
nation of woman warriors."* According to Greek
traditions, not only Ephesus, but Smyrna and sev-
eral more cities along the Ionian coast-land, were
founded by Amazons. This in every instance points
to the Hittite origin of the cities, as indicated by
the most characteristic feature of the Hittite re-
ligion, which it had in common with those of Canaan
and the Assyro-Babylonians. The Greeks, who
* A. H. Sayce's " Herodotus," p. 430.
366 THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
always willingly adapted foreign ideas to their own,
retained the worship of the Hittite goddess at
Ephesus, but gave her a Greek name. Her
sanctuary became one of the most popular and re-
nowned holy places in the Greek world ; her temple
was so lavishly endowed by Greek wealth and
adorned by Greek art as to be proclaimed one of
the wonders of the world. Yet neither goddess
nor worship were ever quite divested of certain
Asiatic peculiarities and a certain barbaric splen-
dor, foreign to the usual chaste refinement and
moderation of Greek thought and taste.
1 8. Ephesus, Smyrna, and several other of the
more important Greek-Ionian cities, were scattered
along the coast-land of a country' which became very
famous under the name of LYDIA, at the mouths of
its finest rivers. When Greek emigrants, driven
from home by political feuds, began to settle
in the choicest valleys of this beautiful littoral,
as early as about iooo B.C., they encountered but
feeble opposition from the population whom they
found in possession, foi the Lydians, a people prin-
cipally of Hittite race, though brave, were rather
effeminate and of careless habits. They had long
been governed by kings, but no trustworthy in-
formation about them is attainable until some three
centuries later. There are indeed traditions of two
dynasties, with long lists of sovereigns, but they
are of as mythical a nature as the early dynasties
of Berosus, being represented as of divine origin,
i. e., directly descended from the Lydians' supreme
god MANES and his son Attys. The latter was
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM.
367
clearly the "mild sun-god," very much the coun-
terpart of the Adonis-Tammuz of Babylon and
Canaan. He, too, was young and fair, and met a
tragic end, according to some versions, from a wild
boar's tusk. He also was loved by the nature-
goddess (here called Kybele), who, frantic with
grief at having lost him, roamed through the world
shouting and weeping, in search of him. The fes-
tival of Attys, like that of Adonis-Tammuz, came
round at the opening of spring, lasted three days,
and was of decidedly orgiastic character.* It was
introduced, together with the names of the three
deities (and popular tradition preserved a distinct
recollection of the fact), from Phrygia, the country
bordering on Lydia from the East, where the Hittite
emigrants would naturally have stopped first on
their way to the sea. But the name Phrygia must
have been of later date, as it is not of Hittite origin.
19. Taken in a broad and general way, it de-
notes the Aryan population which,- at some time,
gradually overspread the peninsular region, bounded
on the east by the mountains of Armenia and
known as Asia Minor, and it supplanted the earlier
Hittite rule. The Phrygians, in this comprehen-
sive sense, were themselves a branch of that great
and mighty Aryan stock whom we have learned to
know as the settlers of Thrace (see p. 361), and a
part of whom for a long time continued to call
themselves Bhryges (their local way of pronounc-
* See pp. 130-132, 141, 142 ; and " Story of Chaldea," pp. 323-
326.
368
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
ing "PHRYGES"). So universally recognized is
the kinship between the nations on both sides of the
Bosphorus and Hellespont, that they are often
distinguished from each other only by the name
of " European Thracians " and " Asiatic Thracians,"
or as frequently enclosed in the sweeping designa-
tion of "the Phrygo-Thracian or Thraco-Phrygian
family of nations." Contrary to precedents, their
migration appears to have taken place in the di-
rection from west to east, from across the Bos-
phorus to the Armenian Mountains. This is one
of a very few exceptional cases in history of a
partial deviation from a great rule. In their prog-
ress they of course broke up into several nations ;
but Phrygia, from its name, appears to have been
the headquarters of the original stock. It was
this branch of Aryans which eventually filled all
the highlands of Nairi, pushed through to the two
lakes, entirely ousted and supplanted the Alarodi-
ans of Urartu and the neighboring mountain-coun-
tries, and became the ancestors of the Armenian
nation, which, mixed with later Eranian elements,
is firmly established there to this day. At the
point of history we have reached, the Armenian
division of the Thraco-Phrygian race had as yet ar-
rived no further than the western outskirts of the
Armenian range, where they had formed a small
but warlike and enterprising pioneering people.
It is this to which Chapter x. of Genesis refers in
the Japhetic family as ToGARMAH, son of Gomer,
and to which the Hebrew prophets repeatedly refer
as Beth-Togarmah "the House of Togarmah."
THE GA THE RING OF THE STORM.
369
20. It is highly improbable that the ancient
Hebrews should have had any knowledge of the
Cimmerians who dwelt north of the Black Sea.
Late researches make it more and more probable
that when they speak of Gomer and his sons they
mean the Thraco- Phrygian nations south of that
sea, to which those Cimmerians also belonged, al-
though, when they crossed the Bosphorus, flying be-