other." *

By this magnanimous act the last of a heroic race
saved his friend from a shameful deed, which he




73. ASSHURBANIPAL FEASTING.



could scarcely, under the circumstances, have helped
committing, and himself from worse than death.



* How strikingly like this tragedy is to that of Saul ! "Then said
Saul to his armor-bearer : ' Draw thy sword and thrust me
through therewith lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me
through and abuse me.' But his armor-bearer would not, for he was
sore afraid. Therefore Saul took his sword and fell upon it. And
when his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he Jikewise fell upon
his sword and died with him." (I. Samuel xxxi. 4, 5.)



404



THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.



His desperate determination has been fully justified
by a small fragment found among the rubbish of the
Royal Archives in Nineveh. It is the beginning of
a letter, and runs as follows : " From Ummanaldash,
king of Elam, to Asshurbanipal, king of Asshur.
Peace to my brother. . . . Forces do thou send ; for
Nabubelzikri to surrender I took. I will surrender
him to thee. . . ." Let us hope that the unfortunate
monarch, reduced to such abjectness, gave his friend
and guest a timely hint. However that be, he kept
word with the Assyrian to the letter : he surren-
dered the corpse of Nabubelzikri and the head of
his armor-bearer to the envoy, who took them both
into the royal presence. Asshurbanipal only re-
cords in his great cylinder that he would not give
burial to the body, but cut off the head and hung it
round the neck of a follower of Shamash-Shumukin,
who had gone with Nabubelzikri into Elam. But
a sculpture representing a feast scene in the royal
gardens completes this statement in the most
ghastly manner. Asshurbanipal reclines on an ele-
vated couch under a vine-arbor; his favorite queen
is seated on a throne at the foot of the couch ; both
are raising the wine-cup to their lips ; a small table
or stand is before them ; on another, behind the
couch, are deposited the king's bow, quiver and
sword. Numerous attendants ply the inevitable
fly-flappers, beyond these musicians are ranged.
Birds are playing and fluttering in the palm-trees
and cypresses. But the king's gaze is fixed on a
horrible object suspended in the branches of one
of the latter: it is the head of Nabubelzikri, placed



406



THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.



there that he may delight his eyes and enhance his
pleasure in the feast by gloating on the dishonored
relic of his dead enemy. They must have had
some way of preparing human heads in those days,
or they could never have got such prolonged enjoy-
ment out of them.

26. At the same time that Asshurbanipal thus
hunted down the last scion of the ancient house of
Yakin, he was very shrewdly desirous to reassure
and conciliate that prince's former subjects. Of
this we have a curious proof in a proclamation, by
which he, so to speak, introduced to them the
governor he sent to watch and rule them, with a
force of soldiers. A draft or copy of this docu-
ment turned up in the Library at Nineveh, and as
it may be interesting to see how an Assyrian royal
proclamation was worded, we give it here :

" The will of the king to the men of the coast, the sea, and the
sons of my servants. My peace to your hearts ; may you be well.
I am watching sharply, from out of my eyes, over you, and from the
face of the sin of Nabubelzikri .... entirely I have separated you.
Now Belibni, my servant, my deputy, to go before, to be over you
I send to you. I command .... of myself my forces I send. I have
joined with you, keeping your good and your benefit in my sight."

27. As for Ummanaldash, he dragged on a couple
of years longer a miserable phantom of royalty.
And yet, brought low as he was, there was found a
man foolish enough to covet the poor shreds of
power and pomp that still clung to him : Pakhe, an
obscure upstart, caused the country to revolt against
him, and Asshurbanipal thus relates the end of his
career in Elam : " From the face of the tumult of



408 THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.

his servants which they made against him, alone he
fled and took to the mountain. From the mountain,
the house of his refuge, the place he fled to, like a
raven I caught him and alive I brought him to
Assyria."

28. According to the most probable calculations,
the open revolt of Shamash-Shumukin took place
about 650 B.C., and he perished in 648. Then the
two campaigns against Elam bring us to 645 as the
most likely date for its final destruction and the
sack of Shushan. After that we have the account
of one more expedition, that against the Arab
princes, who had been led to support the rebellious
viceroy. As usual, whenever Arabia is in question,
it is impossible to identify the places exactly. The
king tells us that he " ascended a lofty country,
passed through forests of which the shadow was
vast, with trees great and strong .... a road of
mighty wood," and " went to the midst of Vas, a
place arid and very difficult, where only the birds
of heaven and the wild asses are. . . ." The latter
description seems to indicate~a rather remote dis-
trict in the interior of ArabiaA In this, the last dis-
tant and victorious Assyrian expedition we hear of,
the spoil in camels and captives was so abundant,
that on the army's return to Assyria the captives
were gathered and bartered in droves, while camels
were distributed by the king to the people 'Mike
sheep," and those that were offered for sale in front
of the gates of Nineveh, sold for only half a shekel
of silver (about 31 cents) apiece. One of the most
powerful Arab chieftains, Vaiteh, whose territory



THE DECLINE OF ASSHUR. ^ g

bordered on Edom, Moab and Ammon, was captured,
and Asshurbanipal granted him his life, though
not his liberty, after having, with his own hand,
struck down his son before his eyes, " by command
of Asshur and Belit," of course. He returned by
the road of the sea-shore, for he mentions, incident-
ally, having " destroyed the people of Akko, who
were unsubmissive." These are the last warlike
deeds of Assyrian arms in Syria of which we have
any record.

29. Asshurbanipal, in the conviction that he had
brilliantly weathered the direst storm that ever yet
had imperilled the Empire, now considered himself
entitled to a public triumph of unexampled splen-
dor. On his return to Nineveh he organized a
festive show on a scale surpassing all precedents.
In accordance with the Assyrian character, it was of
a pre-eminently religious nature, and chiefly con-
sisted in sacrifices and drink-offerings to Belit,
"mother of the great gods, beloved wife of Asshur."
But the great feature of the procession was that
Asshurbanipal ordered the last three kings of Elam
Tammaritu, Ummanaldash and Pakhe, captive
and Vaiteh, the Arab chieftain, to be yoked to his
war-chariot, and was drawn by them in state to the
gates of the temple, where, having alighted, he lifted
up his hands and praised the gods before the assem-
bled army. It was a strange irony of fate which thus
placed on a foot of equality the two upstart usurp-
ers and the last descendant of a line of kings, reach-
ing back, for aught we know, to the first invaders of
Accad and a stranger still, that this act of insane



410



THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.



pride should be the last glimpse we have of Assyr-
ian greatness, to be almost immediately followed by
an utter and irretrievable fall. This is an almost too
pointed illustration of the trite, familiar saying !

30. For on this unnatural pinnacle we take leave
of Asshurbanipal, although he lived and reigned
many years longer. His death, indeed, cannot be
placed earlier than 626 B.C., and the latest of his
two great cylinders brings down his annals to about
640. But by reason of the absolute lack of monu-
ments this long interval is a blank, as far as knowl-
edge of any events that filled it goes. It is very
probable that the last of the great Assyrian mon-
archs spent those years mostly in enjoying the lux-
urious leisure to which he naturally inclined, and
indulging his literary and artistic tastes, as well as
his religious propensities. So much has been said in
another volume about his library,* and so often have
its contents been referred to, both in that volume
and the present one, that more details are uncalled
for except to mention that the palace in which the
library was situated, and the halls of which were
so lavishly decorated with historical slab-sculptures,
was not really a new structure, but rather Sen-
nacherib's old palace restored and considerably
enlarged. It was the captive Arab chieftains, with
their tribes, who were employed on the work of
carrying burdens and building the brickwork,
which, more than 2000 years later, other Arab



* See " Story of Chaldea," Chapter IV. of Introduction, "The Book
of the Past."




76. A PERFECTLY PRESERVED TABLET TWO COLUMNS ACCADIAN
HYMN, WITH ASSYRIAN TRANSLATION FACING IT FROM
ASSHURBANIPAL'S LIBRARY (koyunjik).



411



412



THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.



tribes under their sheikhs were, in their turn, to
clear from the rubbish of ages and uncover to
the eager gaze of curious foreigners. Another of
those strange coincidences with which history
abounds !

31. It was under Asshurbanipal that Assyrian art
attained its greatest perfection of execution and
detail. As regards mere ornamentation, nothing
could surpass the profusion and the exquisite finish




77. TAME LION AND LIONESS AT LIBERTY IN THE ROYAL PARK.
GRAPE VINE AND FLOWERS. (ASSHURBANIPAL'S PALACE.)

of the designs, the richness and delicacy of the tra-
cery. The historical sculptures, representing bat-
tles, sieges, treaties, scenes of war and peace both,
have been spoken of above (see p. 390). But the
hunting scenes and presentations of animals, as
usual, bear off the palm in point of interest and
artistic beauty. What can be finer, more perfect in
form, attitude and expression, than those hounds
starting for the chase ? (See ill. No. 80.) It seems as



THE DECLINE OF ASSHUR.



4*3



though we feel them tugging at the leash, and hear
their deep, eager bay. Asshurbanipal's royal kennel
has yielded many splendid models to the artists, and
he was so fond of his dogs that he had portraits of
his especial favorites made in terra-cotta. Several
of these statuettes have been found, bearing the ani-
mal's name " TEAR-THE-FOE," and such like
along its back or on its collar (see ill. No. 78). The




78. TERRA-COTTA DOG. (ONE OF ASSHURBANIPAL'S FAVORITES.)

king was a patron of every kind of sport. Lesser
game wild asses, antelopes was hunted in many
and various ways : stalked, netted, lassoed, driven
to a centre. But the game which the king himself
almost exclusively affected, was the game of games,
the royal lion ; not Asshurnazirpal himself had
been a more passionate lion-hunter, and never does
his handsome figure show to better advantage than
in the exercise of his favorite and dangerous pas-
time, attired in the close-fitting, becoming tunic,



4H



THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.



richly embroidered, short-sleeved and cut high
above the knee, in order to give full liberty to
every movement, full play to every muscle.* The
lion-hunts represented on Asshurbanipal's sculp-




79. THRESHOLD-SLAB IN ASSHURBANIPAL'S PALACE (KOYUNJIK).

tures are very numerous, and the Assyrian artists, as
usual, appear at their very best when portraying the



* See Frontispiece. A particularly spirited and finished compo-
sition ; unique, too, as in no other do we see the king leading a spare
horse. The explanation which suggests itself is that the animal may



416



THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.



noble beast in the manifold attitudes called forth
by the various stages and moments of the chase.
Some of their works in this line have become uni-
versally admitted classical models in art ; for in-
stance, the famous dying lion and lioness. (See ill.
Nos. 74 and 75.) The latter especially, with her
broken back and paralyzed hindquarters, painfully
rising on her front paws to hurl a last roar of defi-
ance at the foe, is a masterpiece in the highest sense.
32. Asshurbanipal's name was known to the
Greeks in the corrupted form of Sardanapalus.
They made of him the last king of Assyria, an
effeminate tyrant, who spent all his life within his
palace, in the enervating luxury and idleness of
the harem, until the last crisis came, when he
roused himself from his unmanly torpor, and, sud-
denly developing into a hero, fought for two years
for life and~ crown, and at the last, being over-
powered by numbers, erected an immense pyre, on
which he burned himself, all his wives and all his
treasures. This story, derived from the same source
as that of Semiramis (see p. 196, ff.), is as utterly
worthless, nor was it believed by all the Greeks.
Herodotus, for instance, knew better, and speaks of
Asshurbanipal's successor.



have been a favorite one, and that the rider, being thrown or dragged
from the saddle, the king may have secured the bridle, to try and
save the frightened horse. The whole scene is too peculiar not to
have been the reproduction of a real occurrence, possibly executed
at the king's especial command.



XIII.

THE FALL OF ASSHUR.

1. It is much to be regretted, though perhaps
scarcely to be wondered at, that Assyrian monu-
ments should utterly fail us for the short period
after Asshurbanipal's death, during which the long
score standing against Assyria was summarily wound
up and paid in full. It is quite in accordance with
what we know of Assyrian annalists, that they should
be silenced by disasters, and besides, the end, coming
so suddenly, must have been preceded by a time of
convulsion and tumult, during which the last rulers
of an empire, hastening headlong to dissolution,
were not in the mood, nor had the leisure to build,
to sculpture slabs and engrave inscriptions. We are
therefore thrown entirely on Greek traditions and
accounts, always incomplete, seldom trustworthy
and very fragmentary. To reconstruct in a general
way the course of events is about as tedious and un-
certain an operation as recomposing a torn-up letter
out of fragments rescued from the waste-paper
basket, with many of the scraps lost.

2. We do not even know for certain whether
Asshurbanipal's immediate successor were the last
king of Assyria, or whether there was one more, or
even two. In a corner of the great platform at

2J 417



4i8



THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.



Nimrud (Kalah), Layard uncovered the ruins of a
comparatively small, poorly constructed, meanly
ornamented building, the bricks of which bear the
name of " ASSHUR-IDIL-ILI, king of Asshur, son of
Asshurbanipal, king of Asshur, son of Esarhaddon,
king of Asshur." But there are some fragments
with still another royal name, and the last king of
all is called by Herodotus and other Greek histo-
rians SARAKOS, which could very well be an abbre-
viation and corruption of " AssAur-akhi-id'ma." ;
there are, too, a couple of small fragments which
evidently refer to a time of disaster and tribulation,
and bear that very name. It is therefore not at all
impossible that the long line of Assyrian rulers may
have closed with an Esarhaddon II.

3. What is certain is, that after Asshurbanipal's
death, Assyria's downward course was incredibly
rapid and constant, having begun most probably
even in the last years of that monarch's lifetime.
One Greek chronicler states that " Sardanapalus
died at an advanced age, when the power of the
Assyrians had been broken down." Now we have
seen that Egypt, Syria and Media had slipped from
his hold while he was throwing all his weight
against Elam and Babylon. Nor does he seem to
have made any effort to recover lost ground after
his final victory in that direction. He must have
known that Psammetik steadily labored to bring
the Syrian states under Egypt's dominion, for we
read that the Egyptian king made war in those
parts during twenty-nine years, in the course of
which he took Ashdod and probably other cities,



THE FALL OF ASSHUR.



419



too. The time was not long gone when such tid-
ings would have sufficed to bring down an Assyrian
force, yet no interference appears to have been
attempted. True, Urartu had been friendly now
for many years ; but Scythians and Cimmerians
threatened from the north and north-west, yet
nothing had been done to check them since that
one campaign into the Armenian mountains, which
ended with the capture of Gog, the Scythian chief's,
two sons. As for the Medes, they also had been let
alone since the first years of the reign, and had
wisely kept aloof, having work of vital importance
to attend to at home. And when they reappear,
it is no longer as a loose federation of separate
tribes, under independent chieftains, but as a com-
pact nation, united under the strong rule of a pow-
erful, universally acknowledged king.

4. Exactly how or in how long a time the change
was effected, will never be known, as we have no
monuments to guide us, but only the Medes' own
traditions, as retailed to us by Greek writers. He-
rodotus tells us that the founder of the new royalty
was a certain DEIOKES, originally a simple city-chief,
who gained so much renown for his great wisdom
and uprightness, that not only his own clansmen,
but people of other tribes and cities as well came to
him when they had any quarrels and submitted the
issues to his judgment instead of fighting them out ;
that he cleverly improved his ever increasing and
widening influence until he converted it into a real
power, so that when, backed by a certain number of
devoted followers, he proclaimed himself king over



420



THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.



all the Median cities or tribes, he met no resistance.
He built himself a royal residence, the city of Hag-
matana (Agbatana), in the country formerly called
Ellip, and wasted by Sennacherib (see p. 301), and
established tKere a thoroughly organized central
government. When he died, his son, Phraortes,
quite naturally succeeded him as king of all Media.
5. Now this name of Deiokes is an unusually cor-
rect rendering of one which we find on some Assyr-
ian monuments: DAYAUKKU. Sargon, in one of his
wars with Urza of Van (715 B.C.), mentions having
taken prisoner and carried to Nineveh a certain
Dayaukku and his son. And two years later he
goes to a country which he calls Bit-Dayaukku,
and which appears to border on Ellip, to the north
or north-west. " The house of Dayaukku," after
the analogy of " the house of Omri," " the house of
Yakin," must have been a principality founded by
a chief of that name. It was evidently of some
importance, since Sargon takes the trouble of nam-
ing it individually, together with Ellip, instead of
including it in the total of " forty-five city-chiefs,"
whose submission he received that year. There is
therefore nothing improbable in the supposition that
a prince of the house of Dayaukku, and bearing the
founder's name, was the first to unite the scattered
tribes of his nation into a whole. It may very well
be that he established the seat of power in Ellip, on
account of its beauty and fertility, after that country
had been laid waste and its royal line exterminated
by Sennacherib ; nor is there anything to prove that
he built a new capital, while it seems very likely



THE FALL OF ASSHUR.



421



that he should have restored and enlarged the old
royal city of Ellip. What the origin of the name
Hagmatana was, we do not know.

6. The Medes had about fifty years of compara-
tive peace, and, of late, total freedom from invasion,
in which to accomplish their work of national con-
solidation and organization under a leader fitted
for the task, a time amply sufficient for a people al-
ready ripe for the change. When that leader's son
succeeded him on the throne which he had built,
the first hereditary king of Media, the young na-
tion was anxious -to try its strength, and against
whom so naturally as against Assyria, its oldest and
most deadly foe, weakened also at this time by her
late terrible struggle for life? For the first time
the parts were reversed and the invader was invad-
ed. Phraortes (the Greek corruption of the Me-
dian name FRAVARTISH), after some successful expe-
ditions against sundry less formidable neighbors,
crossed the Zagros and descended into Assyria.
The move, however, was imprudent and premature.
The old lion, if lamed, was not yet to be bearded
with impunity in his own den by one solitary assail-
ant. There was a battle, in which the invaders
were routed and driven back, and Fravartish re-
mained on the field. This may possibly have taken
place in the last years of Asshurbanipal.

7. The invasion, however, was soon repeated.
UVAKSHATARA, called by the Greeks Kyax-
ARES, the son and successor of Fravartish, was
a far greater man and better warrior. He attrib-
uted his father's defeat to the defective organ-



422.



THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.



ization of his army, and at once proceeded to abol-
ish the old division by clans (see p. 354), which gave
no chance against such perfectly organized and
drilled veteran troops as the Assyrian. Herodotus
reports of him that he

" divided his troops into companies, forming distinct bodies of the
spearmen, the archers and the cavalry, who before his time had been
mingled in one mass and confused together. . . . This prince, col-
lecting together all the nations which owned his sway, marched
against Nineveh, resolved to avenge his father, and cherishing a hope
that he might succeed in taking the city. A battle was fought, in
which the Assyrians suffered a defeat, and Kyaxares had already be-
gun the siege of the place, when a numerous horde of Scyths, under
their king, Madyes, son of Protothyes, burst into Asia in pursuit
of the Cimmerians, whom they had driven out of Europe, and en-
tered the Median territory."

8. So far Herodotus. We have already seen
(p. 359) that the motive he ascribes to the great
Scythian invasion is a fanciful one, and a good hun-
dred years out of the way, since it was as long ago, at
the least, that the Cimmerians had appeared on the
southern shore of the Black Sea. But the invasion
itself is a fact, as authentic as any in history. The
barbarians who came thus opportunely to gain a
respite for the Assyrian capital, by suddenly drawing
Kyaxares away to defend his own kingdom, were
the people of Magog (see p. 383), and it has been
suggested that their chief, Madyes, may have been
a grandson of Gog (Gagi), since his father's name,
PROTOTHYES, looks uncommonly like that of Pa-
RITIYA, one of those sons of Gog whom Asshur-
banipal captured.* They were a people of horse-

* Fr. Lenormant : " Origines de l'Histoire," Vol. II., First Part,
p. 465.



THE FALL OF ASSHUR. a 2 ?

men and bowmen, who ate the flesh of horses and
drank the milk of mares, whose warfare was one of
raids and plunder, like that of the Cimmerians.
What started them from their quarters at the foot of
the Caucasus, on the river Kyros (see p. 383), is a
mystery ; most probably they were tempted by the
state of general agitation into which the entire
Nairi region was thrown through the withdrawal of
the heavy pressure exerted on it by the fear of an
ever impending Assyrian interference. Left to
themselves, the petty nations of the mountain-land
were more independent, but also more defenceless,
and promised to fall an easy prey to hordes of
mounted bandits.

9. Media was by no means the only victim of
the Scythian visitation. They swept through the
greatest part of Asia Minor, dislodged various peo-
ples, whom they carried along with them on their
further road as a wild torrent carries along the trees
it uproots and the bridges it breaks to pieces on its
way. The Cimmerians, who still roamed about the
lands, but were becoming few and scattered, were
easily engulfed, and the whole mass rushed and
rolled southward. They had overrun Syria and
Palestine almost before the unfortunate peoples of
those much-suffering countries had heard of their
coming, and, according to a tradition recorded by
Herodotus, would have gone on straight into
Egypt, had not Psammetik "met them with gifts
and prevailed on them to advance no further."
Whereupon they turned back, but, passing by the
city of Ascalon, a body of stragglers stopped to



424 THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.

plunder its famous temple, devoted to the Syrian
goddess Atargatis or Derketo.

io. This was the emptying of that " seething
caldron " which the prophet Jeremiah, who lived
at this very time in Judah, saw " in the North."