The next dynasty commences with Tiglath-Pileser II., who carried on wars against Babylon and Syria and Israel. This was in the time of Ahaz, B.C. 729.
Conquests of Shalmanezer.
His son, Shalmanezer, made Hosea, king of Israel, his vassal, and reduced the country of the ten tribes to a province of his empire, and carried the people away into captivity. Hezekiah was also, for a time, his vassal. He was succeeded by Sargon, B.C. 721, according to Smith, but 715 B.C., according to others. He reigned, as Geseneus thinks, but two or three years; but fifteen according to Rawlinson, and built that splendid palace, the ruins of which, at Khorsabad, have supplied the Louvre with its choicest remains of Assyrian antiquity. He was one of the greatest of the Assyrian conquerors. He invaded Babylon and drove away its kings; he defeated the Philistines, took Ashdod and Tyre, received tribute from the Greeks at Cyprus, invaded even Egypt, whose king paid him tribute, and conquered Media.
Sennacherib. Culmination of the power of Nineveh.
His son, Sennacherib, who came to the throne, B.C. 702, is an interesting historical personage, and under him the Assyrian empire reached its culminating point. He added to the palace of Nineveh, and built one which exceeded all that had existed before him. No monarch surpassed this one in the magnificence of his buildings. He erected no less than thirty temples, shining with silver and gold. One of the halls of his palace was two hundred and twenty feet long, and one hundred and one wide. He made use of Syrian, Greek, and Phœnician artists. It is from the ruins of this palace at Koyunjik that Mr. Layard made those valuable discoveries which have enriched the British Museum. He subdued Babylonia, Upper Mesopotamia, Syria, Phœnicia, Philistia, Idumaen, and a part of Egypt, which, with Media, a part of Armenia, and the old Assyrian territory, formed his vast empireby far greater than the Egyptian monarchy at any period. He chastised also the Jews for encouraging a revolt among the Philistines, and carried away captive two hundred thousand people, and only abstained from laying siege to Jerusalem by a present from Hezekiah of three hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold. The destruction of his host, as recorded by Scripture, is thought by some to have occurred in a subsequent invasion of Judea, when it was in alliance with Egypt. That he returned to Nineveh and dwelt there is asserted by Scripture, but only to be assassinated by his sons, B.C. 680.
His son Esar-Haddon succeeded him, a warlike monarch, who fought the Egyptians, and colonized Samaria with Babylonian settlers. He also built the palace of Nimrod, and cultivated art.
Assyrian civilisation.
The civilization of the Assyrians shows a laborious and patient people. Its chief glory was in architecture. Sculpture was imitated from nature, but had neither the grace nor the ideality of the Greeks. War was the grand business of kings, and hunting their pleasure. The people were ground down by the double tyranny of kings and priests. There is little of interest in the Assyrian annals, and what little we know of their life and manners is chiefly drawn by inductions from the monuments excavated by Botta and Layard. The learned treatise of Rawlinson sheds a light on the annals of the monarchy, which, before the discoveries of Layard, were exceedingly obscure, and this treatise has been most judiciously abridged, by Smith, whom I have followed. It would be interesting to consider the mythology of the Assyrians, but it is too complicated for a work like this.
Decline of the monarchy.
Under his successors, the empire rapidly declined. Though it nominally included the whole of Western Asia, from the Mediterranean to the desert of Iran, and from the Caspian Sea and the mountains of Armenia to the Persian Gulf, it was wanting in unity. It embraced various kingdoms, and cities, and tribes, which simply paid tribute, limited by the power of the king to enforce it. The Assyrian armies, which committed so great devastations, did not occupy the country they chastised, as the Romans and Greeks did. Their conquests were like those of Tamerlane. As the monarchs became effeminated, new powers sprung up, especially Media, which ultimately completed the ruin of Assyria, under Cyaxares. The last of the monarchs was probably the Sardanapalus of the Greeks.
Destruction of Nineveh. Its remains.
The decline of this great monarchy was so rapid and complete, that even Nineveh, the capital city, was blotted out of existence. No traces of it remained in the time of Herodotus, and it is only from recent excavations that its site is known. Still, it must have been a great city. The eastern wall of it, as it now appears from the excavations, is fifteen thousand nine hundred feet (about three miles); but the city probably included vast suburbs, with fortified towers, so as to have been equal to four hundred and eighty stadias in circumference, or sixty milesthe three days' journey of Jonah. It is supposed, with the suburbs, to have contained five hundred thousand people. The palaces of the great were large and magnificent; but the dwellings of the people were mean, built of brick dried in the sun. The palaces consisted of a large number of chambers around a central hall, open to the sky, since no pillars are found necessary to support a roof. No traces of windows are found in the walls, which were lined with slabs of coarse marble, with cuneiform inscriptions. The façade of the palaces we know little about, except that the entrances to them were lined by groups of colossal bulls. These are sculptured with considerable spirit, but art, in the sense that the Greeks understood it, did not exist. In the ordinary appliances of life the Assyrians were probably on a par with the Egyptians; but they were debased by savage passions and degrading superstitions. They have left nothing for subsequent ages to use. Nothing which has contributed to civilization remains of their existence. They have furnished no models of literature, art, or government.
Growth of Babylon.
While Nineveh was rising to greatness, Babylon was under an eclipse, and thus lasted six hundred and fifty years. It was in the year 1273 that this eclipse began. But a great change took place in the era of Narbonassar, B.C. 747, when Babylon threatened to secure its independence, and which subsequently compelled Esar-Haddon, the Assyrian monarch, to assume, in his own person, the government of Babylon, B.C. 680.
The Chaldean monarchy.
In 625 B.C. the old Chaldeans recovered their political importance, probably by an alliance with the Medes, and Nabopolassar obtained undisputed possession of Babylon, and founded a short but brilliant dynasty. He obtained a share of the captives of Nineveh, and increased the population of his capital. His son, Nebuchadnezzar, was sent as general against the Egyptians, and defeated their king, Neko, reconquered all the lands bordering on Egypt, and received the submission of Jehoiakim, of Jerusalem. The death of Nabopolassar recalled his son to Babylon, and his great reign began B.C. 604.
Nebuchadnezzar. Magnificence of Babylon.
It was he who enlarged the capital to so great an extent that he may almost be said to have built it. It was in the form of a square, on both banks of the Euphrates, forty-eight miles in circuit, according to Herodotus, with an area of two hundred square mileslarge enough to support a considerable population by agriculture alone. The walls of this city, if we accept the testimony of Herodotus, were three hundred and fifty feet high, and eighty-seven feet thick, and were strengthened by two hundred and fifty towers, and pierced with one hundred gates of brass. The river was lined by quays, and the two parts of the city were united by a stone bridge, at each end of which was a fortified palace. The greatest work of the royal architect was the new palace, with the adjoining hanging gardena series of terraces to resemble hills, to please his Median queen. This palace, with the garden, was eight miles in circumference, and splendidly decorated with statues of men and animals. Here the mighty monarch, after his great military expeditions, solaced himself, and dreamed of omnipotence, until a sudden stroke of madnessthat form which causes a man to mistake himself for a brute animalsent him from his luxurious halls into the gardens he had planted. His madness lasted seven years, and he died, after a reign of forty-three years, B.C. 561, and Evil-Merodach, his son, reigned in his stead.
Fall of the Monarchy.
He was put to death two years after, for lawlessness and intemperance, and was succeeded by his brother-in-law and murderer, Neriglissar. So rapid was the decline of the monarchy, that after a few brief reigns Babylon was entered by the army of Cyrus, and the last king, Bil-shar-utzur, or Bilshassar, associated with his father Nabonadius, was slain, B.C. 538. Thus ended the Chaldean monarchy, seventeen hundred and ninety-six years after the building of Babel by Nimrod, according to the chronology it is most convenient to assume.
CHAPTER IX.
THE EMPIRE OF THE MEDES AND PERSIANS
The country of the Medes and Persians. The martial character of the people. Early kings of Media.
The third of the great Oriental monarchies brought in contact with the Jews was that of the Medes and Persians, which arose on the dissolution of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. The nations we have hitherto alluded to were either Hamite or Shemite. But our attention is now directed to a different race, the descendants of Japhet. Madai, the third son of Japhet, was the progenitor of the Medes, whose territory extended from the Caspian Sea on the north, to the mountains of Persia on the south, and from the highlands of Armenia and the chain of Tagros on the west, to the great desert of Iran on the east. It comprised a great variety of climate, and was intersected by mountains whose valleys were fruitful in corn and fruits. The finest part of the country is an elevated region inclosed by the offshoots of the Armenian mountains, and surrounding the basin of the great lake Urumizu, four thousand two hundred feet above the sea, and the valleys of the ancient Mardus and the Araxes, the northern boundary of the land. In this mountain region stands Tabris, the delightful summer seat of the modern Persian shahs. The slopes of the Tagros furnish excellent pasture; and here were reared the famous horses which the ancients called Nisæan. The eastern districts are flat and pestilential, where they sink down to the shores of the Caspian Sea; rugged and sterile where they adjoin the desert of Iran. The people who inhabited this country were hardy and bold, and were remarkable for their horsemanship. They were the greatest warriors of the ancient world, until the time of the Greeks. They were called Aryans by Herodotus. They had spread over the highlands of Western Asia in the primeval ages, and formed various tribes. The first notice of this Aryan (or Arian) race, appears in the inscriptions on the black obelisk of Nimrod, B.C. 880, from which it would appear that this was about the period of the immigration into Media, and they were then exposed to the aggressions of the Assyrians. The first king who menaced their independence was the monarch whose victories are recorded on the black obelisk in the British Museum. He made a raid into, rather than a conquest of, the Median country. Sargon, the third monarch of the Lower Empire, effected something like a conquest, and peopled the cities which he founded with Jewish captives from Samaria, B.C. 710. Media thus became the most eastern province of his empire, but the conquest of it was doubtless incomplete. The Median princes paid tribute to the kings of Nineveh, or withheld it, according to their circumstances.
Deioces.
According to Ctesias, the Median monarchy commenced B.C. 875; but Herodotus, with greater probable accuracy, places the beginning of it B.C. 708. The revolt of Media from Assyria was followed by the election of Deioces, who reigned fifty-three years. The history of this king is drawn through Grecian sources, and can not much be depended upon. According to the legends, the seven tribes of the Medes, scattered over separate villages, suffered all the evils of anarchy, till the reputation of Deioces made him the arbiter of their disputes. He then retired into private life; anarchy returned, a king was called for, and Deioces was elected. He organized a despotic power, which had its central seat in Ecbatana, which he made his capital, built upon a hill, on the summit of which was the royal palace, where the king reigned in seclusion, transacting all business through spies, informers, petitions, and decrees. Such is the account which Rawlinson gives, and which Smith follows.
Cyaxares.
The great Median kingdom really began with Cyaxares, about the year B.C. 633, when the Assyrian empire was waning. He emerges from the obscurity like Attila and Gengis Khan, and other eastern conquerors, at the head of irresistible hordes, sweeps all away before him, and builds up an enormous power. This period was distinguished by a great movement among the Turanian races (Cimmerians), living north of the Danube, which, according to Herodotus, made a great irruption into Asia Minor, where some of the tribes effected a permanent settlement; while the Scythians, from Central Asia, overran Media, crossed the Zagros mountains, entered Mesopotamia, passed through Syria to Egypt, and held the dominion of Western Asia, till expelled by Cyaxares. He only established his new kingdom after a severe conflict between the Scythian and Aryan races, which had hitherto shared the possession of the tablelands of Media.
The irruption of the Turanian races.
From age to age the Turanian races have pressed forward to occupy the South, and it was one of these great movements which Cyaxares opposed, and opposed successfullythe first recorded in history. These nomads of Tartary, or Scythian tribes, which overran Western Asia in the seventh century before Christ, under the new names of Huns, Avari, Bulgarians, Magyars, Turks, Mongols, devastated Europe and Asia for fifteen successive centuries. They have been the scourge of the race, and they commenced their incursions before Grecian history begins.
Conquests of Cyaxares.
Learning from these Scythian invaders many arts, not before practiced in war, such as archery and cavalry movements, Cyaxares was prepared to extend his empire to the west over Armenia and Asia Minor, as far as the river Halys. He made war in Lydia with the father of Crœsus. But before these conquests were made, he probably captured Nineveh and destroyed it, B.C. 625. He was here assisted by the whole force of the Babylonians, under Nabopolassar, an old general of the Assyrians, but who had rebelled. In reward he obtained for his son, Nebuchadnezzar, the hand of the daughter of Cyaxares. The last of the Assyrian monarchs, whom the Greeks have called Sardanapalus, burned himself in his palace rather than fall into the hands of the Median conqueror.
War with Lydia.
The fall of Nineveh led to the independence of Babylon, and its wonderful growth, and also to the conquests of the Medes as far as Lydia to the west. The war with Lydia lasted six years, and was carried on with various success, until peace was restored by the mediation of a Babylonian prince. The reason that peace was made was an eclipse of the sun, which happened in the midst of a great battle, which struck both armies with superstitious fears. On the conclusion of peace, the son of the Median king, Astyages, married the daughter of the Lydian monarch, Alyattes, and an alliance was formed between Media and Lydia.
The Lydian monarchy.
At this time Lydia comprised nearly all of Asia Minor, west of the Halys. The early history of this country is involved in obscurity. The dynasty on the throne, when invaded by the Medes, was founded by Gyges, B.C. 724, who began those aggressions on the Grecian colonies which were consummated by Crœsus. Under the reign of Ardys, his successor, Asia Minor was devastated by the Cimmerians, a people who came from the regions north of the Black Sea, between the Danube and the Sea of Azov, being driven away by an inundation of Scythians, like that which afterward desolated Media. These Cimmerians, having burned the great temple of Diana, at Ephesus, and destroyed the capital city of Sardis, were expelled from Lydia by Alyattes, the monarch against whom Cyaxares had made war.