mighty mountain ridges " (the names are given) " I marched in my
chariot where the ground was good ; where it was inaccessible, I
cleared a way with axes, and bridges for the passage of my troops I
constructed excellently well. I crossed the Euphrates. The kings
of ... . " (here follows the list)" together twenty-three kings of the
lands of Nairi, assembled their chariots and troops in the midst of
their countries and came forth to do battle against me. By the im-
petuous onslaught of my mighty arms I conquered them. I destroyed
their numerous armies like Raman's' thundershower ; with the corpses
of their warriors I strewed the mountain heights and the enclosures
of their cities as with straw. Their 120 chariots I destroyed in the
battle ; sixty kings of the lands of Nairi, with those who had come to
53
54
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
their assistance, I pursued to the Upper Sea. Their great cities I took,
their spoils, their possessions I carried off, their towns I burned with
fire, I destroyed, laid them waste, made heaps of them and land for
the plough. Numerous herds of steeds, colts, calves, and implements
without number I carried home. The kings of the lands of Nairi
my hand captured alive, all of them. To these same kings I granted
favor. Captive and bound, I released them before Shamash, my lord,
and made them swear the oath of my great gods for all coming days,
made them swear allegiance forever. Their children, the offspring
of their royalty, I took as hostages. I imposed on them a tribute of.
1 200 steeds and 2000 bulls and dismissed them to their respective,
countries. Sini, king of Dayaini" (one of the twenty-three)
" who did not submit to Asshur, my lord, I brought captive and bound
to my city of Asshur. Favor I granted him, and from my city of
Asshur dismissed him, a devoted servant of the great gods, to live and
be submissive. The vast lands of Nairi I took in all their extent, and
all their kings I brought low to my feet."
It is impossible not to notice the remarkably mild
treatment which Tiglath-Pileser awarded to the King
of Nairi, a treatment so strongly contrasting with
his usual summary proceedings as plainly to indi-
cate a conciliatory intention. He could not but
admit that Assyria could not afford continual repe-
titions of such adventurous campaigns into remote
and inaccessible mountain wilds as he had just suc-
cessfully carried out, and was wisely content with
turning unruly and perhaps aggressive neighbors
into vassals and tributary allies, without attempting
actually to annex their countries or letting the hand
of " Asshur, his lord," weigh too heavily on them.
8. These conquests in the North seem to have
been his principal occupation and most important
achievement. An expedition to the South-east,/
into the outposts of the Zagros Mountains, is men-
tioned indeed as successful and profitable, but with-
IX. SCALING A FORTRESS, AND CARRYING AWAY CAPTIVES.
(Lenormant.)
56
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
out much emphasis. Neither does the inscription
dwell with any excessive complacency on a campaign
-in the West, directed against the " Aramaean River-
land," and which extended the rule of Assyria to
the Euphrates, where the river bulges out in an
immense bow, furthest towards the Mediterranean.
Yet this very paragraph is of great interest, as
being the first official mention of a people who were
destined to great power. For only a few hundred
years after the time of Tiglath-Pileser I., the Ara-
maeans, a purely Semitic race who had probably
also halted in the land of Shinar and migrated
thence, occupied the whole of modern Syria, form-
ing a single kingdom, of which Damascus, originally
a Hittite city, became the capital. This is one of
the very few cities in the world which never en-
tirely perished. Essentially a Semitic centre, it
retained its splendor and leading position all
through antiquity ; in the Middle Ages, when the
Arabs Semites also went abroad conquering
land after land as they preached the religion of
their prophet, Mahomet, Damascus became one of
their chief seats of power and learning, little inferior
to Baghdad itself ; and even when the barbarous
Turks had swept over all the fair countries of West-
ern Asia and engulfed them in their upstart empire,
Damascus still held its own, and to this day is a far
from unimportant place. This sums up for it a
-continuous existence of 3500 years at least, more,
perhaps, than any other living city can boast.
Though not founded by the Aramaeans, to this
nation it was indebted for its greatness. But here.
/
TIGLA TH PILESER I.
57
about 1 1 20 B.C. from the passing mention of the
" Aramaean riverland " which the Assyrian conqueror
crosses, to make a sudden and rapid razzia into the
land of the Khatti, where he surprises and " plunders ^
Karkhemish in one day" we find that it was as yet
only an unimportant tribe, which had not ventured
beyond the sheltering river. Evidently they were
the successors of the Hittites in the land we call
Syria, gathering strength as these lost it, treading
close on their heels, and occupying territory and
cities as fast as the Hittites evacuated them in
their retreating movement towards their mountain
strongholds.
9. After going over each of his campaigns more
or less minutely, Tiglath-Pileser thus sums up the
result of them in a concise yet comprehensive
statement, the utterly unadorned simplicity of which
lends it a certain impressive grandeur:
" Forty-two countries altogether and their princes, from beyond
the lower Zab, the remote forest districts at the boundaries, to the
land Khatti beyond the Euphrates and unto the Upper Sea of the
setting sun" (the Mediterranean above the mouth of the Orontes)
" my hand has conquered from the beginning of my reign until the
fifth year of my rule. I made them speak one language, received
their hostages, and imposed tribute on them."
10. So far the warrior and conqueror. But there
is another side to his character, which is pictured
with equal life-likeness in this invaluable record.
He shows himself to us as a prudent sovereign, who
devotes the leisure he has so hardly earned to
works of peace and to the increase of his country's
power ; " I made chariots and yokes, for the greater
58
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
might of my country, more than there were before,
and provided them with teams of horses. To the
land of Asshur I added land, to its people I added
people ; I improved the condition of my subjects,
I made them dwell in peaceful homesteads." He
tells us that he " fortified ruinous castles," filled the
royal granaries throughout Assyria, and collected
into herds, "like flocks of sheep," the wild goats,
deer, antelopes, which he had caused to be caught
in the forests of the mountainous countries through
which he passed ; they multiplied and furnished
choice victims for the altars of the great gods.
Nor did he omit to care for the adornment of his
capital and of his country generally. Even while
on the march, he found time to admire the beauti-
ful forest trees, and order numbers of them to be
carefully taken out of their native ground, trans-
sported to Assyria, and there planted in the royal
gardens and parks. He mentions cedars and two
other kinds of trees, of which the names have been
deciphered but not identified, and says of them:
"". ... these trees which in the times of the kings,
my* fathers of old, no one had planted, I took and
planted them in the gardens of my country ; also
precious garden grapes which I had not yet brought
into my country, I got and enriched with them the
gardens of Assyria."
ii. The king also makes us witness his favorite
pastime, the chase, in which he seems to have in-
dulged on an imposing scale during his various ex-
peditions. All the countries he visited, as well as
Assyria itself, swarmed with lions and other wild
TIGLA TH PILESER I. $g
beasts, differing according to the different regions ;
so that the abundance of game was as unlimited as
was the royal huntsman's ardor to pursue it. That
the distinction gained in this way was considered
most kingly and glorious, is evident from the pride
with which he recounts his exploits in the chase,
tendering due thanks always to " his patrons,"
Nineb and Nergal, the two tutelary deities of war
and hunting, especially Nergal, whose sacred emblem
seems to have been the human-headed winged lion.
Of four wild bulls which he killed in the desert, on
the border of the land of the Khatti, with his own
bow and sharp-pointed spear, he carried the hides
and horns as trophies to " his city of Asshur," as
also the hides and tusks of ten male elephants
killed by him in the desert, while four elephants he
took alive and brought to his capital. " Under the
auspices of Nineb, my patron," he goes on to say,
" I killed 1 20 lions in my youthful ardor, in the ful-
ness of my manly might on my own feet, and 800
lions I killed from my chariot. All kinds of beasts
and fowls I added to my hunting spoils."
12. So great was this king's fondness for curios-
ities in natural history that when the King of Egypt
wished to cement a courteous interchange of friend-
liness by some acceptable gift, he could think of
nothing more acceptable to send than a large river
animal surely a crocodile of the Nile and some
" beasts of the great sea." This curious incident,
however, we know, not from Tiglath-Pileser's own
cylinder, but from a fragment of a much later in-
scription, in which another famous conqueror-king
6o THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
goes over the deeds of his great predecessor.
Though extremely concise, this account reproduces
the essential statements of the lengthy original, and
even adds a few particulars, among which the most
interesting is a mention of the fact that Tiglath-Pile-
ser " mounted ships of Arvad and killed a . . . . (per-
haps a dolphin?) in the great sea." Now Arvad
(or Aradus) is the most northern of the Phoenician
dties, on the shore of that part of the Mediterranean
&hich the Assyrians called " the Upper Sea of the
letting sun," and it would seem from this passage
that our king was the first of his nation to go out
to sea. From what we already know of him we
can well fancy that he took no little pride in this
pleasure-sail, both as a political demonstration, a
sort of taking possession of the new element, con-
sidered until then as the exclusive domain of the
sons of Canaan along the shore, and also as an
opportunity to indulge his passionate love of sport
by a novel experience. It must have been a mem-
orable and festive occasion, and one wishes one
might have a glimpse of the pageant, graced as it
doubtless was by all the gorgeousness of Oriental
costume in its richest display and by the blue splen-
dor of those wonderful waters and skies.
13. We thus take leave of Tiglath-Pileser at the
height of his power and glory, with a feeling of
admiration for his heroic and brilliant personal
qualities ; and it is not without regret we learn that
towards the end of his reign that power was some-
what shaken and that glory dimmed. Like all the
other Assyrian kings of whom we possess records, he
TIG LA TH PIL ESER I. 6 1
had wars with Babylonia, and this was always their
unlucky direction. Even during the period of As-
syria's highest fortunes, when she was invariably
successful against the nations that surrounded her
to the west, north, and east, she often was roughly
checked in the South very naturally, since Baby-
lonia, once her metropolis and teacher, was now her
equal in the arts of peace and war, her equal if not
her superior still in culture. Yet, ever since Tu-
kulti-Nineb I. had entered Babylon in triumph and
written himself u conqueror of Kar-Dunyash," the
younger monarchy seems to have claimed supremacy
over the mother country, and the claim to have been,
at most times and in a general way, acknowledged
The kings of Babylon, too, from that very epoch,
suddenly appear with Semitic names instead of the
Accadian or Cossaean ones that had succeeded each
other in a long line ; and this alone more than sug-
gests a change of dynasty effected by the Assyrian
conquerors with a view to their own interests. Some
kind of allegiance, some form of homage must have
been agreed upon, though we have no documents to
throw light on the subject, for we often hear of
"tribute " from Babylon ; and when the kings of As-
syria march down into the country it is generally
to repress what they are pleased to term a "revolt."
At all events, the kings of Babylon never ceased to
assert their independence, alternately, as circum-
stances prompted, changing their attitude from one
of self-defence to one of aggression, with intervals
of submission and outward inactivity when fortune
had been too much against them. The relations
62 THE S TOR Y OF ASS YRIA .
of the two Mesopotamian monarchies during the
six hundred years which elapsed between the first
conquest and the final struggle for life may be de-
scribed as an unending game, with alternating vicis-
situdes, in which each player, when winning most
sweepingly, was liable to sudden defeat, and when
losing most deeply, was ready for his revenge.
Tiglath-Pileser I., like his ancestor, Tukulti-Ninb I.,
had to take his turn at the losing game, and, like
him, left a trophy of his defeat in his adversary's
hands a pledge which the renowned Sennacherib,
when he finally captured Babylon, 400 years later,
redeemed at the same time as the former conquer-
or's signet ring. In this case, as in the other, it is
only from Sennacherib's statement that we learn
anything of the disaster of which he was the final
avenger. It appears that Tiglath-Pileser, who in
almost every sentence of his great record betrays an
uncommonly religious turn of mind, and seems to
take more pride in the. building and restoration of
temples than even in his warlike deeds, carried
with him in his campaign to Babylonia the statues
of his favorite god Raman with the consort-goddess,
Shala ; that the " king of Accad " " took them away
and dragged them to Babel," whence Sennacherib
" brought them forth " and restored them to their
own temple.
14. This completes the information, so unex-
pectedly abundant, which we have concerning Tig-
lath-Pileser I., and to which by far the greatest part
he has himself contributed in his great cylinder, as
TIGLA TH PILESER I.
63
he distinctly intended to do when he had four
copies of it deposited under the four corner-stones
of his most important building " for later days,
for the day of the future, for all time! " he exclaims
vn the closing paragraph. The mighty figure of the
warrior king stands forth the more colossal and im-
posing that it stands alone, like a solitary, finely fin-
ished statue in a vivid ray of strong light, against
a dark background. For all is darkness around him,
scarce relieved by a few vaguely flitting shadows.
As nothing is known of Assyria under his predeces-
sors, except the few morsels of facts about Ashur-
Uballit and Tukulti-Nineb, so for two hundred
.years nothing again comes to light of his successors.
His name embodies for us an entire revelation.
JHIis is the first important historical and literary
record that the Assyrian ruins have yielded us ; his
the first monument of Assyrian art we know ; after
him a blank. We have no artistic relics what-
ever, and, as to history, nothing more than, after an
interval of nearly two centuries, a list of a few royal
names, with not a scrap of reality about them.
44 Nothing is known at present of the history of
these monarchs," says Mr. G. Rawlinson in his
14 Five Monarchies." " No historical inscriptions
belonging to their reign have been recovered ; no
exploits are recorded of them in the inscriptions of
later sovereigns. They stand before us, mere
shadows of mighty names, proofs of the uncer-
tainty of posthumous fame, which is almost as
much the award of chance as the deserved recom-
6 4
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
pense of superior merit." * These lines are cer-
tainly forcible and impressive ; but, are they
equally true? Are those really " mighty names"
that are transmitted to us without a faintest record
of any achievement attached to them ? Deeds of
moment, greatness of any kind, generally survive in
some way, leave some trace or memory, occur indi-
rectly in later records if contemporary monuments
are wanting. Assyrian kings, absorbed as they
were in their own exploits and given to self-glorifi-
cation as they show themselves throughout their
monumental literature, were not forgetful of their
more eminent predecessors, and often refer to them
with reverence and admiration, or at least, as we
have already repeatedly seen, mention this or that
fact connected with their reigns. That no such
posthumous mention occurs of any of those who
succeeded, during the next two centuries, to the
power so firmly established by Tiglath-Pileser, is
perhaps in itself rather conclusive proof that there
avas little to record, nothing especially noteworthy,
either as event or personal character, to stand out
prominently in the memory of posterity and break
the monotonous if exciting routine of petty war-
fare, hunting, building, and despotic home-rule
which made up the average career of an Assyrian
monarch.
15. At all events, Tiglath-Pileser I. embodies for
us the first period of Assyria's rise and greatness,
known as " the First or Old Empire," because the
* " Five Monarchies," Vol. II. p. 336.
TIGLA TH PILESER I.
65
line of sovereigns who founded it had apparently
been as yet unbroken, through probably as much
as 800 years. This remarkable fact is indirectly
pointed out by Tiglath-Pileser himself, who, after
naming, in a paragraph of his great inscription de-
voted to his royal genealogy, his own father and
his ancestors up to the fourth generation back,
mentions his remotest ancestors, Ishmidagan and
Shamash-Raman (the first known Patesis, not yet
" kings," of Asshur), the latter as the original builder
of the Temple of Anu and Raman which he takes
so much pride in having reconstructed with greater
splendor than before. It is evidently under his
rule, and mainly by his efforts, that Assyria
jnay be said to have reached her normal extent
and boundaries. In the North, the conqueror's
own sculptured effigy, stern and commanding,
seems to be forever silently pointing from its rock
by the source of the Tigris to the mountain
ridge known to later antiquity as MONS Nl-
PHATES (" Snowy Mountains ") as the frontier he
gained for her. To the west the Euphrates seems
her most natural boundary, while to the east the
Zagros chain of many ridges is an unmistakable
barrier ; to the south alone the boundary, though
well marked by the line of the alluvium, is made
fluctuating by the uncertain relations between
Assyria and Babylonia. This region Mr. G. Raw-
linson defines " the country actually taken into
Assyria," covered by undoubted remains of Assyr-
ian cities and towns, as distinguished from " that
5
66 THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
which was merely conquered and held in subjec-
tion." The same author then continues:
" If Assyria be allowed the extent which is here assigned to her,
she will be a country not only very much larger than Chaldea or Baby-
lonia, but positively of considerable dimensions. Reaching on the
north to the 38th and on the south to the 34th parallel, she had a
length diagonally to the alluvium of 350 miles, and a breadth be-
tween the Euphrates and Mount Zagros varying from above 300 to
170 miles. ' Her area was probably not less than 75,000 square
miles, which is beyond that of the German provinces of Prussia or
Austria, more than double that of Portugal, and not much below
that of Great Britain. She would thus, from her mere size, be cal-
culated to play an important part in history ; and the more so, as
during the period of her greatness scarcely any nation with which
she came in contact possessed nearly so extensive a territory."*
*G. Rawlinson, " Five Monarchies," Vol. I. p. 227.
pt^^p
1
^
^fm^M^^hr,
ft:
III.
THE SONS OF CANAAN: THEIR MIGRATIONS.
THE PHOZNICIANS.
I. When we read of Tiglath-Pileser I.'s holiday
sail in ships of Arvad, and of his killing that big sea-
fish, there is something in the whole occurrence, a
certain inappropriateness, which involuntarily com-
pels a smile, as at some boyish freak. Maritime
honors sit awkwardly on the hero of a hundred land
battles, the adventurous invader of unknown, im-
passable mountain regions, and Assyria was so emi-
nently a continental power that her king and arm-
ies appear out of place on the sea-shore amidst a
people of traders and sailors. At all events, this
was but a passing excursion, a military visit, and
the Phoenician merchant-princes who on this oc-
casion no doubt entertained the royal intruder and
did him courteous lip-homage, not unaccompanied,
we may be sure, by costly gifts, probably consid-
ered it in no other light, nor dreamed that the hour
was not so far distant when the iron rule of Asshur
should stretch to their luxurious homes by the sea,
their docks and ship-yards, their warehouses and
factories, and lie long and heavy on the necks of
their descendants. The Assyrians, one of whose
chief characteristics was insatiable greed, were not
6 7
68 THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
likely to forget such a glimpse of boundless wealth
and overflowing prosperity as now dazzled their
astonished, coveting eyes. For the Phoenicians, at
this very time, had already reached the towering
point of their career, and while their unbidden
guests were wonderingly enjoying the novelty of a
sail and a bit of sea-sport, they ranged and reigned
as masters over the blue element as far as human
knowledge went and ships would bear both knowl-
edge and ships being exclusively their own. In-
deed, the date which has been ascertained as that
of Tiglath-Pileser noo B.C. and thereabouts is
also given approximative^ as that of the founda
tion of the remotest Phoenician colony and one of
Foundation tn d r most important stations GADES
abont des ~ (now Cadiz) in Spain, on the other side
1100 B.C. of the Strait of Gibraltar. To arrive
there they must have touched and gained firm foot-
ing at a great many intermediate points ; and it
mu$t have taken them many centuries, for the way
is long from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic
Ocean, and all ancient authors agree that their
original starting-point was a group of small islands
in that gulf, " the Great Sea of the Rising Sun,"
as Assyrian geography names it. Such was also
their own account of themselves.
2. This group of small islands, now known by the
name of BAHREIN ISLANDS, is situated about the
middle of the western shore of the gulf, close to
the coast of Arabia, a tract, as nearly everywhere
along the sea, fertile and habitable, being separated
by mountains from the sands and parching winds
THE SONS OF CANAAN.
69
of the inland deserts. Here seems to have been
the first known home of the Hamites of Canaan be-
fore they separated and multiplied into the numer-
ous tribes which overspread all the pleasant and
fruitful portions of Syria and were to play so im-
portant a part in the fortunes of the Hebrews, for
which reason the biblical historian gives so full and
particular a list of them. (See Genesis, x. 15-19.)
Here, not on the islands alone, but also on the lit-
toral, they must have dwelt for centuries. One of
these Hamitic tribes was even then of sufficient
pre-eminence to have received a separate name,
that of Punt or Puna, (the Phut or Put of Gene-
sis, x. 6), later corrupted under Greek influences
into Phoenicians, and to have been personified as
one of Ham's own sons. They retained their sepa-
rate identity through the great westward migration,
while their kindred took their generic name from
the land of Canaan, over which they spread, receiv-
ing their special denominations from the districts
or cities they inhabited. The Puna were essen-
tially a commercial race, and preferably chose for
their settlements such regions as offered fair play
to this peculiar instinct of theirs. An important
branch of them gained possession of the finest por-
tion of Arabia the present Yemen, the south-east-
ern corner of the peninsula by the Strait of Bab-EL-
Mandeb and the opposite protruding corner of East-
ern Africa, now known as the Somali coast a posi-
tion which evidently commands the commerce of
the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and even the more