CHAPTER II.. Assyria and Babylon.

ASSYRIA AND BABYLON.

THE GEOGRAPHY.--Assyria and Babylonia were geographically connected. They were inhabited by the same race, and, for the greater part of their history, were under one government. Babylonia comprised the lower basin of the Euphrates and Tigris, while Assyria included the hilly region along the upper and middle Tigris; the boundary being where the two rivers, in their long progress from their sources in the mountains of Armenia, at length approach one another at a place about three hundred and fifty miles from their outlet in the Persian Gulf. Both streams, in particular the Euphrates, annually flooded the adjacent territory, and by canals and dams were made to add to its productiveness. The shores of the Euphrates, after its descent from the plateau to the plains, were fertile beyond measure. Here the date-palm, whose juice as well as fruit were so highly prized, flourished. Even now wheat grows wild near the river's mouth.

THE EARLY INHABITANTS.--The oldest inhabitants of this region of whom we have any knowledge were the Sumerians, whose territory included both Sumer ("Shinar"), or southern Babylonia, and Akkad, or northern Babylonia. On the east were the Elamites, with Susa for their capital; to the north of these were the warlike Kassites. The Sumerians, who preceded the Semites in the occupancy of Babylonia, were of an unknown stock. They were the founders of Babylonian culture. Even by them the soil was skillfully cultivated with the help of dikes and canals. They were the inventors of the cuneiform writing. The cuneiform characters were originally pictures; but these were resolved into wedge-shaped characters of uniform appearance, the significance of which was determined by their position and local relation to one another. It is not known how long the Sumerian period lasted, nor even when it closed; the chronology of the earliest Semitic period is also very uncertain. The south-Babylonian kings Urukagina, of Shirpurla (Lagash), and Enshagkushana, of a district which included Nippur, are dated by most Assyriologists as early as 4000 B.C., or even earlier. Whether they were Sumerians, or Semites, is not certain; their inscriptions do not settle the question. It was probably not far from this time, however, that the one race supplanted the other. A Semitic people--coming either directly from the ancestral home, Arabia, or from a previous settlement in Mesopotamia, north-west of Babylonia--invaded the land and conquered the Sumerians. They planted themselves first in northern Babylonia, and then gradually extended their power over the districts on the south. The conquerors adopted the civilization of the conquered. The earliest Semitic kings all used the Sumerian dialect in their inscriptions. It was only by slow degrees that the native language was superseded by that of the new rulers. Later,--before the time of Hammurabi; see below,--these Semites carried their settlements northward, and became the founders of Assyria.

SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE.--Berosus, a Babylonian priest, wrote a history of his country as early as 250 B.C. He was a trustworthy writer, as far as his means of knowledge went; but it is only fragments of his work that we possess, and these in inaccurate quotations, partly at second hand. Greek writers, as Ctesias, drew from Persian sources; and their narratives up to the later times of the Persian rule can not be relied on. The great source of knowledge is the rapidly increasing store of records in the cuneiform character. A vast number of inscriptions on stone and clay, representing nearly every department of literature, have been unearthed, and the material which they afford has already given us an extensive knowledge of Babylonian and Assyrian history. The site of Nineveh has been extensively excavated, and we have, therefore, especially full information as to the history and literature of Assyria. Babylonian monuments in considerable number have more recently come to light. Aside from Nineveh and Babylon, especially important excavations have been undertaken at Nifpur, Lagash (Telloh)--thus far the chief source of Sumerian material--and Susa.

I. THE OLD KINGDOM OF BABYLON.

EARLY HISTORY.--The history of ancient Babylonia is still very obscure, and the chronology only tentative. We see at first a number of independent cities, each ruled by a petty king, who was also a priest. Then appear groups of cities, one of which exercised sway over a more or less extended district. The center of power was now in Erech, now in Ur, or Babylon, or some other city, whose king ruled supreme over numerous vassal kings. Among the first important names known to us are those of Sargon I. (3800 B.C.), king of Agade, a great conqueror and builder, and his son, Naram-sin. Another great builder was Gudea, king of Shirpurla. Most conspicuous of all is Hammurabi (2250 B.C.), king of Babylon, who is probably the "Amraphel" of Gen. xiv. His kingdom included not only the whole of Babylonia proper, but also Assyria, and probably even the "West Land" as far as the Mediterranean. The records show him to have been a truly great ruler, both in war and in peace. He is known to us chiefly from a collection of his Letters to certain officials of his kingdom, and from his elaborate Code of civil laws, found at Susa in 1899, and first published in 1902; perhaps the most important single monument of early civilization which has thus far come to light. The laws, written in the Babylonian (Semitic) language, and engraved on a stele of hard black stone, were about two hundred and eighty in number, and bear an interesting general resemblance to the old Hebrew laws, especially those preserved in Exodus xxi. and xxii.

In the time of the kings Kadashman-bel and Burnaburiash II. (about 1400 B.C.) falls the Amarna Correspondence (see p. 40). At Tell el-Amarna, in upper Egypt, were unearthed, in 1887, more than three hundred clay tablets containing diplomatic dispatches, written in the cuneiform character, and nearly all in the Babylonian language. They were addressed to the Egyptian king, or to his ministers, and had been sent from various officials and royal personages in Babylonia, Assyria, Palestine (including a number of letters from Abdi-khiba of Jerusalem), and other districts. They furnish a large amount of important information as to conditions in western Asia at that early period.

An important Kassite dynasty occupied the throne of Babylon from the eighteenth century to the twelfth century B.C. Under these Kassite rulers, the kingdom at length declined, while the neighboring Assyrian state had increased in power. Later still, apparently not earlier than the ninth century B.C., the Chaldoeans (of Semitic stock?) pushed north-westward into Babylonia from their district about the mouth of the Euphrates, and eventually made themselves masters of the land.

RELIGION AND SCIENCE.--If the events connected with old Babylon are less known, more is ascertained respecting its civilization. The groundwork, as was stated, was laid by the earlier conquered people. The religion of the Babylonians rested on the basis of the old Sumerian worship. There was homage to demons, powerful for good or for evil, who were brought together into groups, and were figured now as human beings, now as lions or other wild animals, or as dragons and that sort of monsters. Of the great gods, Anu, the god of the sky, was the father and king of all. Sin, the moon-god, a Sumerian divinity, at the outset had the highest rank. Bel, or Baal, however, a Semitic divinity, was the god of the earth, and particularly of mankind. Ea was the god of the deep, and of the underworld. The early development of astrology and its great influence in old Babylon were closely connected with the supposed association of the luminaries above with the gods. The stars were thought to indicate at the birth of a child what his fortunes would be, and to afford the means of foretelling other remarkable events. Ishtar, a goddess of war and of love, was worshiped also under the name Beltis, the Greek Mylitta. This deity embodied the generative principle, the spring of fertility, whose beneficent agency was seen in the abundant harvest. She was clothed with sensual attributes, and propitiated with unchaste rites. It was in the worship of this divinity that the coarse and licentious side of the Semitic nature expressed itself. At the same time, there was an opposite ascetic side in the service of this deity. Her priests were eunuchs: they ministered at her altar in woman's attire. On the relation of the human soul to the gods, and its condition after death, there was little speculation. In general, the Babylonians were more interested in religion and worship, than the Assyrians. The former erected temples; the latter, palaces.

The attainments of the early Babylonians in mathematics and astronomy were far beyond those of the Egyptians. They divided the year into twelve months, and arrived at the signs of the ecliptic or zodiac. The week they fixed at seven days by the course of the moon. They divided the day into twelve hours, and the hour into sixty minutes. They invented weights and measures, the knowledge of which went from them to the other Asiatic nations. Architecture, as regards taste, was in a rude state. In pottery, they showed much skill and ingenuity, and invented the potter's wheel. In the engraving of gems, and in the manufacture of delicate fabrics,--linen, muslin, and silk,--they were expert. Trade and commerce, favored by the position of Babylon, began to flourish. As regards literature, the libraries of Nineveh and Babylon, at a later day, contained many books translated from the early Sumerian language. Among them are the "Gilgamesh legends," in which is contained a story of the flood that resembles in essential features the account in Genesis.

II. THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE.

GROWTH OF ITS POWER.--Assyria was even greater, as a conquering power, than Babylon. In the legends current among the Greeks, the building-up of the monarchy, and of Nineveh its capital, as well as of Babylon, is referred to the legendary heroes, Ninus and his queen Semiramis. The name of Ninus is not recorded on the monuments, and is, perhaps, a kind of mythical personification of Assyrian conquests and grandeur; and the name of Semiramis does not appear until the ninth century B.C. She may have been a princess or even queen. Assyrian independence began before 2300 B.C. Between 1500 and 1400 B.C., Assyria was a weak state. It gained a brief mastery over Babylon through a conquest by Tukulti-Ninib (1300 B.C.). Tiglath-Pileser I. (1100 B.C.) spread his conquests to the Mediterranean and the Caspian on the west, and south to the Persian Gulf. But these early acquisitions of Assyria were transient. There ensued a long interval, until the middle of the tenth century, when the monarchy was mostly confined within its own proper borders. A new series of strong and aggressive princes arose. The conflicts of Damascus and of the nations of Palestine with one another left room for the growth of the Assyrian might and for the spread of Assyrian dominion. Asshur-nasir-pal (formerly called Sardanapalus I.) levied tribute upon Tyre, and the other rich cities of the Syrian coast, and founded the Assyrian rule in Cilicia. About the middle of the eighth century, the kingdom of Israel, having renounced its vassalage to Assyria, in league with Rezin of Damascus, the ruler of Syria, made war upon the kingdom of Judah. Ahaz, the Judaean king, against the protest of the prophet Isaiah, invoked the aid of the Assyrian monarch, Tiglath-Pileser II. The call was answered. The league was overthrown by him in a great battle fought near the Euphrates, and numerous captives, according to the Assyrian practice, were carried away from Samaria and Damascus. We are told that Ahaz, seeing the offerings made by Tiglath-Pileser at Damascus, commanded his priests at Jerusalem, despite the remonstrance of Isaiah, to make offerings to the Assyrian gods. Judah, as the result of these events, became tributary to Assyria. All Syria, together with Babylonia, which was then made up of several states, western Iran, and Armenia, were subdued by this Assyrian conqueror. He formally assumed the title of "King of Babylon." Shalmaneser IV. (727-722 B.C.), bent on completing the subjugation of Syria, subdued anew the revolted cities, and conquered, as it would seem, the island of Cyprus. Tyre alone, that is, the insular city of that name, withstood a siege of five years. Hoshea, the king of Israel (733-722 B.C.), in order to throw off the Assyrian yoke, sent an embassy to Shabak, the king of Egypt, to procure his assistance. Hearing of this, Shalmaneser attacked Israel. After a siege of three years, Samaria, the capital, fell into the hands of Sargon, who had succeeded him, the kingdom of Israel was subverted, and a great part of the people dragged off into captivity. In 720 B.C., Sargon encountered Shabak, in the great battle of Raphia, in southern Palestine, whom he defeated, and put to flight. He received tribute from Egypt, conquered a part of Arabia, and received the homage of the king of Meroe, who made a journey from Ethiopia to bow before him. The reign of Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) was an eventful one, both for Assyria and for the neighboring countries. Hezekiah, king of Judah, hoped with the aid of Egypt to achieve his independence. Sennacherib was obliged to raise the siege of Jerusalem, after Hezekiah had vainly sought to propitiate him with large offerings of silver and gold; but the Assyrian was prevented from engaging in battle with Tirhaka of Egypt by a great calamity that befell his army. Against Babylon, which frequently revolted, he was more successful. "Berodach-baladan," as he is called in Scripture (2 Kings, chap. 20), who at an earlier day had sent an embassy from Babylon to Hezekiah, was overcome, and a new ruler enthroned in his place. Esarhaddon (681-668 B.C.) not only restored the Assyrian sway over Syria, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Judah, and a part of Arabia, countries that lost no opportunity to shake off the cruel and hateful rule of Nineveh, but also conquered Egypt, and parceled it out among twenty governors. By Esarhaddon, or by his successor, Manasseh, king of Judah, was conquered, and carried off as a captive, but afterwards restored to his throne. Assyria was now at the summit of its power. Asshur-bani-pal V. (668-626 B.C.), called Sardanapalus, although he lost Egypt, confirmed the Assyrian power in the other subject states, and received tribute from Lydia, on the western border of Asia Minor. Under him, Assyrian art made its farthest advance. He was the builder of magnificent palaces. It is his library, dug up from the grave in which it had been buried for two and a half decades of centuries, that has yielded a vast amount of welcome information concerning Assyrian and Babylonian history far back into the Sumerian period.

RELIGION AND ART.--It has been stated that the Assyrian culture was transplanted from Babylon. The religion was substantially the same, except that Asshur, the tutelary deity of the country, was made supreme. The Assyrians from the start were devoted to war, pillage, and conquest. Their unsparing cruelty and brutal treatment of their enemies are abundantly witnessed by their own monuments. They lacked the productive power in literature and art which belonged to the Babylonians. Although they might have built their edifices of stone, they generally made use of brick. Their sculptures in relief were much better than the full figures. They laid color upon their works in sculpture. But their art was merely a pictorial record of events. The sense of beauty and creative power were wanting. The more religious character of the Babylonians created a difference in the architecture of the two peoples. In gem-cutting both were singularly expert. The Assyrians gave less attention to the burial of the dead. They showed an aptitude for trade; and Nineveh, in the eighth and seventh centuries, was a busy mart.

THE FALL OF ASSYRIA.--The first important blow at the Assyrian imperial rule was struck by the Medes. After nearly a century of resistance, they had been subdued (710 B.C.), and were subject to Assyria for a century after. In 640 B.C., they rose in revolt, under Phraortes, one of their native chiefs, who fell in battle. The struggle was continued by his son, Cyaxares. His plans were interrupted, however, by

THE IRRUPTION OF THE SCYTHIANS (623 B.C.).--More than a century before, these wandering Asiatic tribes had begun to make predatory incursions into Asia Minor. When Cyaxares was before Nineveh, they came down in greater force, and a horde of them, moving southward from the river Halys, invaded Syria. Jerusalem and the stronger cities held out against them, but the open country was devastated. They were met by Psammeticus I., king of Egypt, and bribed to turn back. They entered Babylonia; but Nabopolassar, the viceroy of Asshur-bani-pal (Sardanapalus), successfully defended the city of Babylon against their attacks. By Cyaxares, either these or another horde were defeated; but it was not until 605 B.C. that the region south of the Black Sea was cleared of them. The kingdom of Lydia had now come to play an important part in the affairs of western Asia.

Our first knowledge of the peoples of Asia Minor is from the Homeric poems (about 900 B.C.). The Chalybeans were in Pontus; west of them, the Amazonians and Paphlagonians; west of these, the Mysians; on the Hellespont, small tribes related to the Trojans; on the Ægean, the Dardanians and the Trojans (on the north), the Carians and the Lycians (on the south); on the north-east of these last, the Phrygians.

A large portion of the early inhabitants of Asia Minor were Semitic, and closely related to the Syrians. Semitic divinities were worshiped; a goddess, Mylitta, under other names, was adored in Pontus, at Ephesus, in Phrygia, and in Lydia.

The Lydians were of the Semitic race. Cybele, the female divinity whom they served, was the same deity whose altars were at Babylon, Nineveh, and Tyre. The rulers of the dynasty of the Mermnadæ, Gyges and his successors, spread the Lydian dominion until it extended to the Hellespont, and included Mysia and Phrygia. Alyattes was able to extirpate the Cimmerian hordes from the Sea of Azoff, who had overrun the western part of Asia Minor, and to make the Halys his eastern boundary. Gyges had been slain in the contest with those fierce barbarians, called in the Old Testament Gomer. At first he had sought help from the Assyrians, but he broke away from this dependence.

Liberated from the troubles of the Scythian irruption, Cyaxares formed an alliance with Nabopolassar, the viceroy in Babylon, who had revolted, and gained his independence. The Median ruler had subdued Armenia, and established his control as far as the Halys, making a treaty with Lydia. Now ensued the desperate conflict on which hung the fate of the Assyrian Empire. Nineveh was taken (606 B.C.) by the Medes under Cyaxares, and the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Nabopolassar. The Grecian story of Sardanapalus burning himself on a lofty bier, is a myth. Assyria was divided by the Tigris between the Medes and Babylonians.

THE THREE POWERS: EGYPT.--On the fall of Nineveh, there were three principal powers left on the stage of action, which were bound together by treaty, Lydia, Media, and Babylon. Egypt proved itself unable to cope with Babylonian power. Necho, during the siege of Nineveh, had attacked Syria, and defeated the Jews on the plain of Esdraelon, where king Josiah was slain. He dethroned Jehoahaz, Josiah's son, and enthroned Jehoiakim in his stead. But when, in 605 B.C., he confronted Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish, and was defeated, he was compelled to give up Syria, and to retire within the boundaries of Egypt.

III. THE NEW BABYLONIAN EMPIRE.

TRIUMPS OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR.--Syria was now at the mercy of Nebuchadnezzar. He captured Jerusalem (597 B.C.), despoiled the temple and palace, and led away Jehoiakim as a captive. He placed on the throne of Judah Jehoiakim's uncle, Zedekiah. But this king, having arranged an alliance between Egypt and the Phoenician cities, revolted (590 B.C.), refusing to pay his tribute. Again Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, but raised the siege, in order to drive home Apries II. (Hophra), the Egyptian ally of Zedekiah. The city was taken, the king's sons were killed in his presence, his own eyes were put out; and, after the temple and palace had been burned and the city sacked, he, with all the families of the upper class who had not escaped to the desert, was carried away to Babylon (586 B.C.). Tyre (the old city) in like manner was taken by assault (585 B.C.).

By Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon was enlarged, and adorned on a scale of unequaled splendor. The new palace, with its "hanging gardens," the bridge over the Euphrates, the Median wall connecting the Euphrates and the Tigris on his northern boundary, and magnificent waterworks, are famous structures which belong to this reign. Wealth and luxury abounded. But vigor of administration fell away under his successors; and Babylon, after a dominion short when compared with the long sway of Nineveh, was conquered by Cyrus, the Medo-Persian king, in 538 B.C. The last king was Nabonetus.

THE CITY OF BABYLON.--Babylon was a city of the highest antiquity. The name (Bab-ili, "Gate of God") is Semitic. The city is mentioned in the earliest cuneiform records, and from the time of Hammurabi was the chief city of the land. Destroyed by Sennacherib (690 B.C.), it was rebuilt by Esarhaddon, but not fully restored and adorned until the reigns of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar.

Babylon surpassed all ancient cities in size and magnificence. Its walls were forty miles in circumference. This extent of wall probably included Borsippa, or "Babylon the Second," on the right bank of the river. Babylon proper was mainly on the left. Within the walls were inclosed gardens, orchards, and fields: the space was only filled in part by buildings; but the whole area was laid out with straight streets intersecting one another at right angles, like the streets of Philadelphia. The wall was pierced by a hundred gates, probably twenty-five in each face. The Euphrates, lined with quays on both sides, and spanned with drawbridges, ran through the town, dividing it into two nearly equal parts. The city was protected without by a deep and wide moat. The wall was at least seventy or eighty feet in height, and of vast and unusual thickness. On the summit were two hundred and fifty towers, placed along the outer and inner edges, opposite to one another, but so far apart, according to Herodotus, that there was room for a four-horse chariot to pass between. The temple of Bel was in a square inclosure, about a quarter of a mile both in length and breadth. The tower of the temple was ascended on the outside by an inclined plane carried around the four sides. An exaggerated statement of Strabo makes its height six hundred and six feet. Possibly, this represents the length of the inclined plane. In the shrine on the top were a golden table and a couch; according to Diodorus, before the Persian conquest there were colossal golden images of three divinities, with two golden lions, and two enormous serpents of silver. It is thought that Herodotus may have described the splendid temple of Nebo (now Birs Nimrûd), and have mistaken it, by reason of its enormous ruins, for the temple of Bel, which it rivaled in magnificence. The great palace is represented to have been larger than the temple of Bel, the outermost of its three inclosing walls being three miles in circumference. Its exterior was of baked brick. The "Hanging Gardens" was a structure built on a square, consisting of stages or stories, one above another, each supported by arches, and covered on the top, at the height of at least seventy-five feet, with a great mass of earth in which grew flowers and shrubs, and even large trees. The ascent to the top was by steps. On the way up were stately and elegant apartments. The smaller palace was on the other side of the river.

LITERATURE.--Works on Oriental History mentioned on p. 42. Tiele, Babylonisch-assyrische Geschichte (1888); Kaulen, Assyrien und Babylonien (5th ed., 1899); Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria (1901); Goodspeed, History of the Babylonians and Assyrians (1902); King, Articles Assyria and Babylonia in the Encyclopedia Biblica; Sayce, Babylonians and Assyrians: Life and Customs (1899); Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament; Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (1898); Perrot & Chipiez, Histoire de l'art dans l'antiquité, vol. ii., Chaldèe et Assyrie.