THE RISE OF ASSHUR.
33
of this region, the confederation of the PELISHTIM,
-so well known to us as PHILISTINES, and from whose
name the modern one of the whole country PALES-
TINE is derived. It is no wonder that the weight
of the national greatness and power should gradually
have retired from them and centred in the more
solid Northern empire with its more numerous
Hittite population. As Assyria increased in might
and became more aggressive towards its Western
neighbors, the glory of the Hittites, weakened as
they were by the long wars with Egypt and harassed
by the Amorites and other peoples of Syria, began
to wane. At the time of the battle of Kadesh they
were perhaps at their culminating point. The de-
cline after that was neither sudden nor even marked,
yet the records of Assyria's warlike career show it
to have been steady and sure ; and seven hundred
years after the battle, the empire succumbed under
the persistent attacks of a long line of Assyrian con-
querors, the confederation dissolved, and the King
of Karkhemish made place for an Assyrian governor.
The race was, however, not destroyed, nor even its
rule extinct : the greatness that departed from one
branch of it shifted to another. Already at the
time of their greatest prosperity from the fifteenth
century B.C. the Hittites had begun to reach out
towards the west, or, rather, north-west. From
the cold, rugged mountain region, their oldest
known home, they passed into the vast peninsular
region of Western Asia, known as ASIA MINOR,
pushing onward to the beautiful littoral of that
loveliest portion of the Mediterranean. There they
34
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
founded or conquered cities and states. There we
shall find their traces again when those countries, in
their turn, take their places in the panorama which
the history of the East slowly unrolls before us ;
but there, for the present, we must leave them.
20. At all events, when the Hittite empire finally
perished, about 700 B.C., it cannot be said to have
met with an untimely end. It had endured, from
first to last, about three thousand years, a term
of existence nearly double that fated to its con-
conquerors. For already in the great astrological
work associated with the name of Sargon of Agade*
we find the following item entered in a list of astro-,
nomical observations in connection with events on
earth : "On the 16th day (of the month Ab) there
was an eclipse ; the King of Accad died ; the God
Nergal {i.e., war) devoured in the land. On the 20th
day there was an eclipse ; the king of the land
KJiatti attacked the country and took possession of the
throne." As " KHATTI " is the name invariably
given to the Hittites in the Chaldean and Assyrian
inscriptions, there can be no doubt but that this is a
record of an early Hittite invasion in Mesopotamia.
From which it follows that they were then already
settled in the region between the Orontes and Eu-
phrates (in other words, between Mesopotamia and
Phoenicia), i.e., virtually in the same regions which
they occupied later on, towards the end of the
fourth and the beginning of the third thousand
B.C., with the difference that at this early period the
* See " Story of Chaldea," p. 209.
THE RISE OF ASSHUR.
35
central point of their power lay probably rather in
the southern part of their territory than in Karkhe-
mish, their later capital.
21. Still, their relations to the ancient Chaldaean
states cannot always have been hostile. They must,
at some time, have been closely connected with those
venerable seats of civilization, if they have not, in
their migrations, actually passed through the great
valley between the rivers and sojourned awhile in it.
For their own culture, as regards both religion and
>art, bears the unmistakable stamp of a Chaldaean
origin. Of the former, indeed, little is yet known,
save that they gave to their highest god the name
of SUTEKH, " king of heaven and earth," and that
the goddess Ishtar, as worshipped in Karkhemish,
bore the name of Atargatis (Hittite corruption of
her Chaldaean name), and was ministered to in her
temple by a large band of girls and women, her con-
secrated, or " sacred," priestesses. As to their art,
-sculptured monuments of theirs have been discovered
which clearly prove its affinity with that of early
Babylon (see No. 5), although for their writing
they made use of signs or hieroglyphics entirely of
their own invention, and unlike either the cuneiform
or Egyptian writing. Little has been done as yet
for the decipherment of such Hittite inscriptions as
have been recovered. But when we consider that
as late as ten years ago no one yet dreamed of the
existence of a great Hittite nation, and a Hittite
empire reaching from the frontiers of Egypt to the
shores of the Bosphorus, we shall wonder not that
so little should be accomplished, but rather that so
S$
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
much new knowledge should have been partly se-
cured and partly indicated. It is to Professor A. H.
Sayce of Oxford, to his wonderful ingenuity, his
: I , . "
5. HITT1TE INSCRIPTION.
(HommeL)
untiring industry, and passionate pioneering zeal in
opening new fields of investigation, that we owe a
revelation which even now may already be termed
a revolution, so startling is the light it has unex-
THE RISE OF ASSHUR.
37
pectedly thrown on a vast tract of ancient history
hitherto obscure and utterly neglected.
22. From their position, the Khatti, or Hittites,
were the natural foes of Assyria formidable neigh-
bors to a rising power, obnoxious to an ambitious
one. Accordingly, they were the first against whom
the young but already aggressive nation tested its
weapons. Asshur-Uballit (the king who marched
down to Babylon to avenge the murder of his
grandson about 1380 B.C., see p. 21) directed short
expeditions to the west and north-west of Nineveh,
against mountain tribes, who were either Hittite
outposts or closely adjoined the territory of the
Hittites proper. His successors followed the same
impulse, only they pushed further into the mountains
and descended lower southward, not only firmly es.
<tablishing their dominion over all the land from
the Tigris to the Euphrates, which latter might
be considered Assyria's natural western boundary,
but gradually extending their invasions far beyond
it, into the plain-land of Syria. As booty abounded
and population increased, new cities sprang up
around the two older capitals, Asshur and Nineveh.
Each raid, too, brought thousands of captives, who
had to be disposed of in some way and what better
employment for them than to build those gigantic
mounds and ponderous palaces, the cost of which,
as valued in human labor, gives such bewildering
figures?* Thus we find King Shalma- Aboutl30 o
NESER I., shortly before 1300 B.C., found- B -^ ti f ^i
Mng the great city of Kalah, which became Kaiah;
a third capital, and the favorite residence of sev-
* See " Story of Chaldea," p. 48.
38
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA
eral of the most powerful later monarchs. This
is the city which Layard brought to light at
Nimrud, the deserted and dismantled " Larissa" of
Xenophon. Separated from each other only by a
few miles, and moreover united by the course of the
Tigris, these three cities almost appear like separate
quarters of one vast capital, and it is hardly to be
wondered at that the first explorers much inclined
to this view. This date of 1300 B.C. is a notable
one in Assyrian history. It is about that year
probably a few years later that the first conquest of
Babylon by an Assyrian king is recorded, a feat of
arms associated with the name of TUKULTI-NINEB,
son of Shalmaneser I., who had a signet ring made
bearing his name and title, with the in-
qie^of 1 " scription " Conqueror of Kar-Dunyash."
abyion; ^. g success ^ however, cannot have been a
permanent one, as it appears that he lost this very
signet ring, which the Babylonians, with pardon-
able vanity, preciously preserved in their royal
treasure, possibly in memory of the conqueror's pre-
cipitate and disastrous retreat, flattering to their na-
tional pride. Six hundred years later it was found
and carried home by one who achieved the same
-conquest far more thoroughly King SENNACHERIB,
who thought the recovery of this ancient trophy of
sufficient importance to record the occurrence and
the ring s history in his annals, thus enabling us to
secure one more among the few authentic dates of
early history ; a date the more interesting
& X eJ?4s f to us, that it coincides almost exactly
from Egypt, wJth that of the exodus of the j ews out
of Egypt under the leadership of Moses. Thus
THE RISE OF ASSHUR.
39
the beginning of the thirteenth century B.C. shows
us Assyria not only fast approaching the period of
her glory, but already confronted, in various stages
of their development, by the three powers which
of all others were to be connected, for good and
for evil, with her future destinies : the power of
Babylon, that of the Hittites (then already on the
wane), and that of the Jews the latter as yet only a
speck on the horizon, undiscernible to the eyes of
the high and mighty rulers of Asshur.
II.
THE FIRST OR OLD EMPIRE. TIGLATH-PILESER I.
I. In the south and south-east portion of the vast
mountain region which spreads between the great
chain of the Caucasus and that of the Taurus with
its prolongations, in more or less parallel ridges vary-
ing in height and ruggedness, there are two of the
most remarkable lakes in the world : LAKE Van and
LAKE UrUMIEH. In the first place, they are situ-
ated at an elevation at which one hardly expects to
find such large sheets of water, the former over 5000
and the latter over 4000 feet above the level of the
Mediterranean ; and Lake Urumieh, the larger of
the two, is, at a rough estimate, not very much in-
ferior in size to Lake Ontario. Secondly, they
have a peculiarity unusual in lakes : their water is
alt. That of Lake Urumieh especially is far
more so than that of any sea, enough to materially
increase its weight and buoyancy, or, to use the
scientific expression, "specific gravity." Sir Henry
.Rawlinson gives the followii g account of it: "The
specific gravity of the water, from the quantity of
salt which it retains in solution, is great ; so much
so indeed, that a vessel of 100 tons burthen, when
loaded, is not expected to have more draught than
three or four feet at the utmost. The heaviness
40
6. DEAD SEA (WHERE IT RECEIVES THE RIVER ARNON).
(Stade.)
41
42
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
of the water also prevents the lake from being
much affected with storms. ... A gale of wind
can raise the waters but a few feet ; and as soon as
the storm has passed they subside again into their
deep, heavy, death-like sleep." Of course no fish or
Jiving thing of any sort can exist in such brine.
What makes these peculiarities doubly striking is
that they are the very same for which the great lake
of Palestine, the so-called Dead Sea, has always been
famous : a salt-water bottom, perhaps the lowest in
the world, since it lies 1300 feet below the level of the
Mediterranean. These two lakes, with a difference
of 5500 feet between their levels, yet identical in
nature, are equally remnants of former seas, pools
of that immense ocean of which the Caspian Sea
is but a more gigantic memorial, and which once
upon a time, ages before man had appeared on the
earth, covered the greater part of Asia, Europe and
Africa, with only the very highest mountain
ridges such as the Himalaya, the Caucasus, the
Atlas, and, partly, the Alps rising above the waters
and forming solitary and widely scattered islands.
The time will come when all these salt pools will
dry up and leave nothing but banks of salt, like
those deposits which are frequently met with in the
sandy steppes of Central Asia and South-eastern
Russia, and from a distance startle the traveller,
parched with heat and half spent with thirst, with
the appearance of snow-drifts.
2. Both Lake Urumieh and Lake Van were well
known to the Assyrians, and the peoples who lived
around them again and again were subjected to
TIGLA TH PILESER L
43
their inroads and depredations. Of the two, Lake
Van was perhaps the most familiar to the indefati-
gable conquerors. The exceedingly rough and se-
verely cold country in which it is situated part of
the region now known under the-name of Kurdistan
belonged to the vast mountain-land somewhat
vaguely designated by the Assyrians as NAIRI, or
LANDS OF Nairi. The valleys between the differ-
ent mountain spurs were inhabited by independent
tribes, each calling itself a nation, while their
chieftains are all awarded the title of "king."
Loosely, if at all, connected with each other, they
were an easy prey to the compact and well-trained
armies which, year after year, pushed further into
their fastnesses, and before which they generally
fled deeper and higher into the mountains " like
birds," in the expressive phrase of the historical
inscriptions. There they would hide until the in-
vaders, who had too much to do in many places
to linger long in one, had departed, or else, pressed
by hunger and cold, compelled by the destruction
of their homesteads and the massacre of their war-
riors and such of their people as had stayed behind,
they would come down, and, to put an end to the
present misery, submit and pay tribute.
3. At one of the sources of the Tigris, somewhat
to the west of Lake Van, there is a sculpture on a
natural rock, smoothed for the purpose, represent-
ing a king in the attitude of pointing the way, with
the following inscription : " By the help of Asshur,
Shamash, Raman, the great gods, my lords, I, Tu-
KULTI-PALESHARRA, King of Assyria, son of . . /
44 THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
(here follow the names of his father and grand-
father, with their titles) " the conqueror from the
great Sea of the West to the sea of the land of
Nairi, for the third time have invaded the land of
-Na'iri." This monument, the oldest memorial of
Assyria's conquests in the North, is also the earliest
specimen of Assyrian bas-relief sculpture yet found,
and represents the first really great king of that
country, at least the first whose doings are, owing
to a series of lucky chances, well known to us.
The manner of its discovery, too, is of unusual
interest, as it did much in its time to finally silence
the doubts which were for a long while entertained
by over-cautious and sceptical scholars concerning
the reliability of cuneiform decipherment. At the
reading of a long inscription of Ashurnazirpal, a
much later king, whose palace Layard laid open at
Nimrud, some lines were made out to mention this
very sculpture, with an exact description of its loca-
tion. With no other guide than this, the place was
explored and the sculpture found, a result which es-
tablished beyond a doubt the claim of Assyriology
to be real science, dealing with positive facts and
systematic researches, and not merely with ingen-
ious and more or less plausible guesses, as had by
many been thought probable. However, this con-
firmation ought already to have been superfluous,
for the discovery happened in 1862, and in 1857 an
experiment had been made which ought itself to
have been sufficient.
4. At the exploration of a vast mound at Kileh-
Sherghat (ancient Asshur) the excavators had ex-
TIGLA TH PILESER T. 45
tracted from the four corner-chambers in the foun-
dations * four cylinders, in the form of octagonal
prisms,f about eighteen inches in height, which
bore the name of Tukulti-palesharra, while the in-
scription stamped on the bricks revealed the fact
that the mound had once been a temple of Raman,
restored by the same king. Two of the cylinders
were in excellent preservation ; of the two others
only a few fragments were available ; but the loss
was not great, as they all were but the repetition
of the same inscription. As this was the first un-
broken text of considerable length over a thou-
sand lines which had as yet been recovered, the
arrival of the cylinders at the British Museum
created much excitement, and it was determined to
make them the subject of an experiment which
should be a decisive test of the value of the new
science. When the inscription had been litho-
graphed, copies were sent to the four scholars who
were then foremost in the work of decipherment :
Sir Henry Rawlinson, Mr. Fox Talbot, Dr. Hincks,
and Mr. J. Oppert. Each was to contribute a trans-
lation of the text independently of the others, and
at the end of a month the work was completed and
the manuscripts were sent in to the Royal Asiatic
Society, which was to officiate as umpire. When
the four translations were printed in four parallel
columns, no layman but must have seen at a glance
that they were the rendering of the same text, the
* See " Story of Chaldea," p. 114.
t See Ibid., illustration No. 51.
46 THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
discrepancies between them being only in details,
and such as were to be expected from the still im-
perfect knowledge of the language. The transla-
tion has since been rehandled and improved several
times, and the latest and most perfect version is in
many particulars very different from those first
attempts ; yet these were too convincing, on the
whole, not to have been considered by most as final
proof in favor of cuneiform research, and invet-
erate doubters, if such remained, had to yield to
the evidence of the sculpture and inscription so
strangely discovered five years later.
5. The inscription, as it happened, proved of the
greatest interest in itself, apart from the philolog-
ical use to which it was put. It gives a minute
account of the first five years of TlGLATH-PlLESER I.
(for this is the common, though corrupt, reading of
the name), and brings before us this warrior king
with the vividness of a full-length portrait, at the
same time that it gives us a complete picture of the
greatness Assyria had reached in his reign, which
Tigiath Pi- covers the en< ^ of the twelfth century
JSJout 1 '" B,c - H2Q-IIOO. Its beginnings were
1100. most brilliant, and it is no idle boast when
he declares, with more truth than modesty, in the
long and elaborate preamble of which the open-
ing paragraph has already been quoted (see pp.
5 and 6) : " No rival had I in battle. To the land
of Assyria I added land, to its people I added
people. I enlarged my territory, all their countries
I subdued " (his enemies). That he was not the
*first to do these things, and that Assyria's con-
TIGLA TH PTLESER L
47
quests had already extended far beyond the orig-
inal district on the Tigris, both to the north and
west, is proved by the fact that most of the expedi-
tions which occupied the first five years of his reign
-were directed against rebellious provinces and un-
submissive neighbors. Of these latter the first to
feel his might were certain Hittite tribes of the
mountains between the sea and the Upper Euphra-
tes, whom he attacked in their own country, " a
land difficult of access," and defeated with their
five kings and twenty thousand warriors. " With
their corpses," says the king, " I strewed the moun-
tain passes and the heights. I took away their
property, a countless booty. Six thousand warri-
ors, the remnant of their army, who had fled before
my arms, embraced my feet. I carried them away
and counted them among the inhabitants of my
own land." This was only a beginning. From one
-mountain district to another the king marched labo-
riously but victoriously, through rugged, pathless
countries, which are vividly portrayed in a few scat-
tered notices. In one place the inscription mentions
that a way had to be cleared with the axe through
dense undergrowth and full-grown trees ; in another
again we read : " I entered high and steep mountains,
that had crests like the edge of a dagger, imprac-
ticable for my chariots. I left my chariots, and
climbed the steep mountains ; " or else : "Through
mighty mountains I made my way in my chariot as
far as the ground was even enough, and where it was
too rugged, on my feet."
6. The king prides himself on having "passed
4 8
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
through precipitous defiles, the inside of which no
king before him had beheld," and on having travelled
high and far, where no road was ever made. Indeed,
he seems to have pushed very nearly as far north
'into the Armenian ranges as any Assyrian ever did ;
many of his successors followed his footsteps, but
7. PROCESSION (PROBABLY OF GODS).
(1-errot and Chipiez.)
none much advanced on them in this direction. And
as he attacked successively and separately the vari-
ous independent kingdoms located among the high-
lands around the Upper Euphrates and Upper Tigris,
the result was everywhere the same : monotonously
TIGLA TH PILESER I.
49
terrible and disastrous to the mountaineers ; monot-
onous too in the reading, as the same horrible details
are repeated in the same almost stereotype phrases
of cold, matter-of-fact narrative, which make the
picture of devastation all the more impressively-
ghastly. Forests, passes, heights filled and covered
5. CARRIED INTO CAPTIVITY.
(Perrot and Chipiez.)
with the bodies of their defenders, corpses thrown
into the Tigris or carried into it by its affluents;
cities burned and destroyed, palaces robbed and
" made heaps of " ; the families of kings led away
captive with thousands of their subjects, or, if the
kings submitted and their homage were graciously
accepted, carried to Assyria as hostages ; then mi-
4
5o
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
nute enumerations of spoils in horses, chariots, cattle,
plate, and bars of bronze, etc., not forgetting " the
gods M of the vanquished these few lines sum up
pages of Tiglath-Pileser's triumphant inscription.
Of the first half of it almost every paragraph re-
counts the conquest of some one country or king-
dom, and generally concludes with one of the fol-
lowing statements : " I carried away their posses-
sions, I burned all their cities with fire, I demanded
from them hostages, tribute and contributions ; "
or, " I laid on them the heavy yoke of my rule, and
commanded them to bring me yearly tribute to my
city of Asshur ; " or, " I conquered the land in all
its extent and added it to the territory of my coun-
try ; " or, lastly, " I pardoned them, imposed trib-
ute on them, and made them subject to Asshur,
my lord." From one country he took " their twenty-
five gods," and, having brought them to " his city
of Asshur," placed them in its principal temples,
very much in the same spirit with which he would
have incorporated royal prisoners in his own house-
hold as slaves.
7. One expedition must have been fraught with
more than ordinary difficulty and danger, to judge
from the particulars into which the inscription en-
ters and the peculiar solemnity of the preamble,
which is, on a smaller scale, almost a repetition of
the great opening paragraphs. Tiglath-Pileser had
to deal on this occasion not with separate tribes or
nations, but with a coalition of nearly all the kings
of the land of Nairi. At least he gives a list of
twenty-three, to whom he adds sixty more in a
5i
52
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
lump eighty-three in all. Even though the mag-
nitude of this figure is a positive proof that the. so-
called " kings " were in reality no more than chief-
tains of mountain tribes (perhaps something like the
great Highland " clans " of old Scotland), still their
union must have made them formidable, especially
in a wild region of wooded mountain fastnesses and
narrow passes, as familiar and friendly to them as
they were unknown and dangerous to the invaders.
For this is the paragraph in which particular men-
tion is made of the fact that no king before Tiglath-
Pileser had ever before entered that region. The
entire relation of this remarkable campaign is so
lively and entertaining, so full of characteristic de-
tails, that it may stand here, almost unabridged, as
a specimen of the early monumental literature of
Assyria at its best.
" In those days, . . . Asshur, the Lord, sent me, who knows no
victor in war, no rival in battle, whose rule is righteous, over the
four quarters of the world, towards distant kingdoms on the shores
of the Upper Sea, which knew not submission, and I went forth.
Across impracticable heights and through precipitous defiles the in-
side of which no king had beheld before, I passed. Through sixteen