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+Project Gutenberg's A Primer of Assyriology, by Archibald Henry Sayce
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Primer of Assyriology
+
+Author: Archibald Henry Sayce
+
+Release Date: September 12, 2011 [EBook #37411]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PRIMER OF ASSYRIOLOGY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CLAY CYLINDER OF TIGLATH-PILESER I.]
+
+
+_Present Day Primers_
+
+
+_Primer of Assyriology_
+
+
+BY
+
+A. H. SAYCE, LL.D.
+
+PROFESSOR OF ASSYRIOLOGY, OXFORD
+AUTHOR OF 'FRESH LIGHT FROM THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS'
+'ASSYRIA, ITS PRINCES, PRIESTS, AND PEOPLE,' ETC.
+
+
+WITH SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
+56 PATERNOSTER ROW AND 65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD
+
+_First Edition, September, 1894._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                 PAGE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE
+
+Geography--Population and Language--The Chaldaeans--The Kassi--
+Natural Products--Canals--Architecture--Asphalt and Naphtha--
+Character of the Babylonians and Assyrians                          7
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE DISCOVERY AND DECIPHERMENT OF THE INSCRIPTIONS
+
+The Site of Babylon--The Site of Nineveh--Excavations--The
+Decipherment of the Inscriptions--The Decipherment tested--
+Sumerian--Vannic--Other Languages--The origin of the
+Cuneiform Syllabary--Simplification of the Syllabary               18
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN HISTORY
+
+Different States in Babylonia--The first Empire--The monuments
+of Tello--Chronology--The United Monarchy--The rise of Assyria--
+Babylon a sacred city--Tiglath-pileser I--The First Assyrian
+Empire--The Second Assyrian Empire--The Babylonian Empire--Cyrus
+and the Fall of Babylon--Belshazzar--Decay of Babylon              42
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+RELIGION
+
+The religions of Babylonia and Assyria--Differences between
+Babylonian and Assyrian religion--Sumerian religion Shamanistic--
+Two centres of Babylonian religion--Semitic influence--The goddess
+Istar--Bel-Merodach--Other deities--Sacred books and ritual--The
+Priests--The Temples--Astro-theology--Sacrifices and offerings--The
+Sabbath--Monotheistic tendency--The future life--Cosmology         80
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN LITERATURE
+
+Aids to the reading of the texts--The libraries--Varieties of
+literature--The texts autotypes--Astronomy--Mathematics--Medicine
+and law--History and mythology--The Chaldaean epic and the
+Deluge--Epic of the Creation                                       95
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SOCIAL LIFE
+
+The Contract-tablets--Married Life--Burial--Slavery--Lowness of
+Wages--Property--Taxes--Prices--Usury--The Army--Navy--The
+Bureaucracy                                                       109
+
+APPENDIX
+
+Assyrian Measures of Length--Measures of Capacity--Measures of
+Weight and Coinage--The Months of the Year                        118
+
+Babylonian Kings--Assyrian Kings--High Priests of Assur--Kings
+of Assyria                                                        120
+
+Synchronisms between Assyrian and Biblical History                125
+
+The Principal Deities of Babylonia and Assyria                    126
+
+
+
+
+A PRIMER OF ASSYRIOLOGY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE
+
+
+Geography.--The civilizations of Babylonia and Assyria grew up on the
+banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. The Tigris was called Idikna and
+Idikla in the Sumerian or primitive language of Babylonia, from which
+the Semites formed the name Idiklat, by means of the feminine suffix
+_-t_. In later times the name was shortened into Diklat, and finally
+assimilated by the Persians to the word Tigra, which in their language
+signified 'an arrow.' It is from Tigra that the classical name Tigris
+is derived. In Genesis (ii. 14), however, the ancient name Idikla,
+there written Hiddekel, is still preserved. The Euphrates was called
+Pura-nun, or 'great water,' in Sumerian, and was frequently known as
+simply the Pura or 'Water,' just as the Nile is known to-day to the
+modern Egyptians as simply 'the Sea.' Hence it is often spoken of in
+the Bible as 'the River,' without the addition of any other name. From
+Pura came the Semitic Purat, with the Semitic suffix _-t_; and Purat,
+the Perath of the Old Testament, was changed by the Persians into
+Ufratu, with a play upon their own word _u_ 'good.' The Persian Ufratu
+is the Greek Euphrates.
+
+The alluvial plain of Babylonia was the gift of the two great rivers.
+In the early days of Babylonian civilization they both flowed into the
+Persian Gulf. But salt marshes already existed at their mouths, and as
+time went on the marshes extended further and further to the south.
+What had once been sea became dry land, the silt brought down by the
+rivers forming an ever-increasing delta in the north of the Gulf.
+To-day the two rivers flow into one channel, and the point where they
+unite is eighty miles distant from the present line of coast. The
+marshes are called 'the country of Marratu' or 'the salt-sea' in the
+inscriptions, a name which reappears as Merathaim in Jer. 1. 21.
+
+One of the oldest of Babylonian cities was Eridu, 'the good city,'
+which was originally built on the shore of the Persian Gulf, though
+Abu-Shahrein, which now marks its site, is far inland, the sea having
+retreated from it for a distance of 100 miles. In early times, however,
+it was the chief Babylonian port, and through its intercourse with
+foreign countries it exercised a great influence on the culture and
+religion of Babylonia. Further to the north, but on the western side of
+the Euphrates, was Ur, the birth-place of Abraham, whose ruins are now
+called Mugheir or Muqayyar; and still further to the north, but on the
+opposite side of the river, were Larsa (probably the Ellasar of Gen.
+xiv. 1) now Senkereh, and Uruk or Erech (Gen. x. 10) the modern Warka.
+Considerably to the north of these again came Nipur (now Niffer), which
+played a leading part in the history of Babylonian religion. Nipur
+stood at the spot where the Tigris and Euphrates tended to approach one
+another, and northward, in the narrowest part of the territory which
+lay between them, were the important cities of Babel or Babylon, Kutha,
+and Sippara. Babylon, called Bab-ili, 'the gate of God,' on the
+monuments, lay on both sides of the Euphrates, its south-western suburb
+being Borsippa. The great temple of Bel-Merodach, called Ê-Saggila,
+rose within it; that of Nebo, the prophet and interpreter of Merodach,
+being at Borsippa. Ê-Zida, the temple of Nebo, is now known as the
+Birs-i-Nimrûd. Kutha (now Tell-Ibrahim), to the north of Babylon, was
+surrounded by vast cemeteries, which were under the protection of its
+patron-god Nergal. Sippara, still further to the north, was a double
+city, one part of it, the present Abu-Habba, being termed 'Sippara of
+the Sun-god,' while the other half was 'Sippara of the goddess Anunit.'
+It is in consequence of this double character that the Old Testament
+speaks of it as Sepharvaim 'the two Sipparas.'
+
+Northward of Sippara the Tigris and Euphrates again trend apart from
+one another and enclose the great plateau of Mesopotamia. To the east
+of the Tigris come the mountains of Elam, 'the highlands,' and to the
+north of them the Kurdish ranges, which were known to the primitive
+Babylonians under the name of Guti or Gutium. At the foot of these
+ranges, and northward of the Lower or Little Zab, the kingdom of
+Assyria arose. It took its name from its original capital of Assur, now
+Kalah-Sherghat, on the western bank of the Tigris, not far to the north
+of the junction of the latter river with the Lower Zab. The supremacy
+of Assur afterwards passed to Calah and Nineveh, which lay northward
+between the Tigris and the Upper or Greater Zab. Calah (now Nimrûd) was
+close to the junction of the two rivers; Nineveh (now Kouyunjik and
+Nebi Yunus opposite Mosul) was built along the bank of the Tigris, the
+stream of the Khoser flowing through the middle of it. Some miles to
+the north, under the shelter of the hills, Sargon built a palace which
+he called Dur-Sargon (the modern Khorsabad), and between Nineveh and
+Calah lay Res-eni 'the head of the Spring,' the Resen of Gen. x. 12.
+
+
+Population and Language.--Babylonia already had a long history behind
+it when the kingdom of Assyria first arose. The main bulk of the
+Assyrian population was Semitic, and the common language of the country
+was Semitic also. But it was otherwise in Babylonia. Here the pioneers
+of civilization, the builders of the great cities, the inventors of the
+cuneiform system of writing, of astronomy, of mathematics, and of other
+arts and sciences, belonged to a non-Semitic race and spoke an
+agglutinative language. It is in this language that the earliest
+records of the country are written and that the older clay-books were
+compiled. For want of a better name scholars have called the language
+and people to whom it belonged Accadian or Sumerian, or even
+Accado-Sumerian. Accad and Sumer were the names given to the northern
+and southern divisions of Babylonia respectively, and as it was in
+Sumer that the old race and language lingered the longest, 'Sumerian'
+would appear to be the best title to apply to them. Indeed it is
+possible that the city of Agade or Accad, from which the district of
+Accad seems to have derived its name, was of Semitic foundation. In any
+case the Semitic element in Accad was from very early times stronger
+than that in Sumer, and consequently the Sumerian dialect spoken in the
+north was more largely affected by Semitic influence and the resulting
+phonetic decay than was the dialect spoken in the south. Sumerian was
+agglutinative, like the languages of the modern Finns or Turks, the
+relations of grammar being expressed by suffixes (or prefixes) which
+retain an independent meaning of their own. Thus _dingir_ is 'god,'
+_dingir-ene_ 'gods,' _dingir-ene-ku_ 'to the gods;' _mu-ru_ 'I built,'
+_mu-na-ru_ 'I built it.'
+
+The Semitic dialects of Babylonia and Assyria differed very slightly
+from one another, and they are therefore called by the common name of
+Assyrian. We can trace the history of Assyrian by means of contemporaneous
+monuments for nearly 4,000 years, beginning with the records of Sargon
+of Accad (B.C. 3800) and ending with documents of the Parthian epoch.
+Assyrian belongs to the northern group of Semitic languages, being more
+closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic than it is to Arabic or Ethiopic.
+
+
+The Chaldaeans.--When the Semites first obtained political power in
+Babylonia we do not know. The earliest Semitic empire known to us is
+that of Sargon of Accad. Babylon did not become the capital of a united
+kingdom till much later, Khammurabi (B.C. 2350) being apparently the
+first who made it so. Strictly speaking, it is only after this event
+that the name of 'Babylonia' is applicable to the whole country. In the
+Old Testament the Babylonians are called Kasdim, a word of uncertain
+origin. It is rendered 'Chaldaeans' in the Authorized Version; the
+classical Chaldaeans, however, took their name from the Kaldâ, a tribe
+settled in the salt-marshes, of whom we first hear in an inscription of
+the twelfth century B.C. One of their princes was Merodach-baladan
+(Isaiah xxxix) who made himself master of all Babylonia. It is probable
+that Nebuchadrezzar was also of Kaldâ descent. After the time of
+Merodach-baladan the Kaldâ formed so integral a part of the population
+as to give their name to the whole of it in the writings of the Greeks
+and Romans, and after the fall of Babylonia, when Babylonian astrologers
+and fortune-tellers made their way to the west, 'Chaldaean' became
+synonymous with 'diviner.'
+
+
+The Kassi.--Another element in the Babylonian population consisted of
+the Kassi (the Kossaeans or Kissians of the Greeks), who came from the
+mountains of Elam. They spoke originally a non-Semitic language, and
+gave a dynasty of kings to Babylonia which lasted 576 years and nine
+months. The dynasty was reigning in the century before the Exodus when
+the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna were written, and we learn from
+them that the Babylonians were at that time called Kassi (or Kasi) in
+Canaan.
+
+
+Natural Products.--The soil of Babylonia was exceedingly fertile. It
+was the natural home of the wheat which still grows wild in the
+neighbourhood of Anah. Herodotus tells us that 'the leaf of the wheat
+and barley is as much as four fingers in width, and the stalks of the
+millet and sesame are so tall that no one who has never been in that
+country would believe me were I to mention their height.' It was
+calculated that grain produced on an average a return of two hundred
+for one on the seed sown, the return in favourable seasons being as
+much as three hundred. The chief tree of the country was the palm.
+Prices were frequently calculated in corn and dates, and the dates
+among other uses served to make wine. Though vines seem to have been
+grown, most of the grape-wine drunk in the country was imported from
+abroad.
+
+
+Canals.--The whole country was intersected by canals, and carefully
+irrigated by means of machines. The canals thus regulated the supply of
+water and enabled it to be carried beyond the reach of the rivers. The
+two principal canals were called the Nahar-Malcha or Royal River and
+the Pallacopas (Pallukat in the inscriptions).
+
+
+Architecture.--Babylonia was devoid of stone, which had to be brought
+from the mountains of Elam or elsewhere. In this respect it offered a
+striking contrast to Assyria, where good stone was plentiful. To this
+absence of stone may be traced some of the peculiarities of its early
+culture. It caused clay to become the common writing material of the
+country, the cuneiform characters being impressed with a stylus upon
+the tablet while the clay was still moist. It further obliged every
+building to be of brick. This led to a great development of columnar
+architecture, the wooden columns which supported the roof being
+subsequently imitated in brick. The use of brick further led to the use
+of stucco and painting. The walls of the Chaldaean houses, as we learn
+from Ezekiel (xxiii. 14), were decorated with 'images portrayed with
+vermilion,' unlike those of the Assyrian palaces which were lined with
+slabs of sculptured alabaster. Assyrian art was, however, borrowed from
+that of Babylonia; hence the colouration of the Assyrian bas-reliefs on
+stone; hence also the great mounds on which the Assyrian palaces were
+built. Such mounds were needful in the flat country of Babylonia where
+inundations were frequent; in Assyria they were not required.
+
+
+Asphalt and Naphtha.--Besides clay, Babylonia also furnishes asphalt
+and naphtha. According to Poseidonios the naphtha was partly white,
+partly black, the latter being that which was used for lamps. Naphtha
+is still found near Hit, 130 miles to the north of Babylon.
+
+
+Character of the Babylonians and Assyrians.--The contrast between the
+physical characteristics of Babylonia and Assyria was paralleled by a
+contrast between the characters of their inhabitants. The population of
+Babylonia was pre-eminently agricultural and peaceable, that of Assyria
+pre-eminently military. Babylonia was the land of letters; in Assyria
+the power to read and write was mainly confined to the scribes. Both
+Babylonians and Assyrians, however, were keen traders and merchants,
+but while 'the cry of the Chaldaeans was in their ships,' the Assyrians
+had no taste for the sea. The Babylonians seem to have been a gentler
+people, more pious and superstitious; the Assyrians, on the other hand,
+had a genius for organization and administrative work. Such differences
+may be traced as much to a difference in the conditions under which
+they lived as to a difference in race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE DISCOVERY AND DECIPHERMENT OF THE INSCRIPTIONS
+
+
+The Site of Babylon.--The site of Babylon was never forgotten. In the
+twelfth century, Benjamin of Tudela describes the ruins of
+Nebuchadrezzar's palace which he saw there, and in 1573 the English
+traveller Eldred visited the spot, and found the Tower of Babel in the
+Birs-i-Nimrûd, which he states to be a mile in circumference and about
+as high as St. Paul's Cathedral. Other travellers have left notices of
+the ruins. But the first to explore them scientifically was Rich, the
+Resident of the East India Company at Bagdad, who surveyed and made a
+map of them. His work on the site of the old city was published in
+1811. But it was not until 1850 that the first excavations were made
+by Sir A. H. Layard, which were followed in 1851-4 by the French
+expedition under Fresnel, Thomas, and Oppert. The fruit of the
+expedition was an elaborate memoir by Oppert, which marks an epoch in
+the history of cuneiform decipherment, and determined the ancient
+topography of Babylon. The excavations were resumed by Sir H. Rawlinson
+in 1854, who discovered the architectural records of Nebuchadrezzar, at
+the same time that other ancient sites of Babylonian civilization were
+being excavated by Loftus and Taylor. At a much later period (in 1879
+and 1882) the work of excavation was again taken up by Mr. Hormuzd
+Rassam, who discovered the site of Sippara, and disinterred the ancient
+temple there of the Sun-god. Equally important were the discoveries
+made by the French consul, M. de Sarzec, in 1877-81 at Tello (the
+ancient Lagas) in southern Chaldaea. Monuments of the early Sumerian
+period of Babylonian history were brought to light, including seated
+statues and bas-reliefs, which are now in the Museum of the Louvre.
+
+
+The Site of Nineveh.--The identification of Nineveh was less easy than
+that of Babylon. Its site was lost, although the natives of the
+district had not altogether forgotten the name of Nunia, and Niebuhr in
+the last century, believed that it marked the site of the Assyrian
+capital[1]. But its real discovery was due to Rich. Shortly before his
+visit to Mosul a bas-relief had been found on the opposite side of the
+Tigris, which the Mohammedans had destroyed as being the work of the
+'infidels.' His examination of the mounds from which it had come led to
+the discovery of walls and cuneiform inscriptions, which left no doubt
+in his mind that the site was that of Nineveh. He accordingly drew up a
+map of the ruins, which he sent to Europe along with his collection of
+Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities. A single case, three feet in
+diameter, was sufficient for their accommodation in the British Museum.
+
+        [1] In Dapper's _Circumstantial Description of Asia_, it is
+        stated that opposite Mosul is 'a little town called up to the
+        present day by Arab writers Nennouwi, and by the Turks Eski
+        Mosul,' or Old Mosul.
+
+
+Excavations.--These antiquities, however, inspired the French _savant_,
+Mohl, with the conviction that if excavations were undertaken at the
+place where they had been found, important results would follow.
+Accordingly, he induced Botta, who had been sent as French Consul to
+Mosul in 1842, to commence digging there the following year. Botta was
+led by a native to the mound of Khorsabad, and his labours were soon
+rewarded by the discovery of Assyrian sculptures covered with cuneiform
+writing. The French government granted funds for the continuation of
+the work, and before 1845 the palace of Sargon was laid bare.
+
+Meanwhile Layard had arrived on the spot, and with the help of funds
+principally supplied by Sir Stratford Canning, had opened trenches in
+the mound of Nimrûd (the ancient Calah). The spoils of the palaces he
+found here were transported to England in 1847. Among them was the
+famous Black Obelisk, on which mention is made of Jehu of Israel. At
+Kouyunjik also, among the ruins of the palaces of Sennacherib and
+Assur-bani-pal, excavations had been begun. But it was only after the
+return of Sir A. H. Layard to Mosul in 1849, with a grant from the
+British Museum, that a systematic exploration of this mound took place.
+Assisted by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, he discovered here the libraries of
+clay books from which most of our knowledge of Assyria and Babylonia
+is derived. Excavations were further undertaken at Kalah Sherghat
+(the ancient Assur), where the records of Tiglath-pileser I were
+disinterred, in the ruined palaces of Sennacherib and Esar-haddon at
+Nebi Yunus, at Arban on the Khabour (the ancient Sidikan), and at
+several other places. When the work was closed in 1852, a new world of
+art and literature had been revealed. Nothing further was done till
+the beginning of 1873, when George Smith was sent to Nineveh by the
+proprietors of the _Daily Telegraph_ in order to search for the missing
+portions of the Deluge-tablet, and a year later he was again sent out
+to excavate by the British Museum. After his death, near Aleppo, in
+1876, the excavations were entrusted to Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, who, in
+1878, discovered the bronze gates of Balawât, and three years later the
+site of Sippara in Babylonia, as well as a library in the temple of its
+Sun-god. A similar library has since been discovered (in 1891) by the
+American expedition in the mounds of Niffer, where monuments of Sargon
+of Accad (B.C. 3800) have been brought to light.
+
+
+The Decipherment of the Inscriptions.--The decipherment of the
+cuneiform texts has been one of the scientific triumphs of the present
+century. The key was given by the inscriptions on the ruined palaces
+and tombs of ancient Persia. Travellers at an early date had noticed
+these inscriptions at Persepolis and elsewhere, and while some compared
+the forms of the characters composing them to arrows, others considered
+them to be wedges, _cunei_ in Latin. The latter comparison was the
+origin of the term 'cuneiform,' ordinarily applied to them. We find it
+already used by Hyde in his _Historia Religionis veterum Persarum_,
+which was published at Oxford in 1700[2].
+
+        [2] Hyde's words are 'ductuli pyramidales seu cuneiformes.'
+
+The Italian traveller, Pietro della Valle, in 1621, was the first who
+made the characters known in Europe by printing a few of them; at the
+same time he put forward the correct suggestion that the inscriptions
+were to be read from left to right. A more important collection of
+signs, however, was published in 1693, in one of the early volumes (No.
+201) of the _Philosophical Transactions_ of the Royal Society from the
+papers of Mr. Flower, who had been specially charged by the East India
+Company with the duty of investigating the antiquities of Persia. But
+it was not till the middle of the eighteenth century that Cornelius van
+Bruyn (1714) and Carsten Niebuhr (1774-8), the father of the historian,
+first copied and published the inscriptions in anything like a complete
+and accurate manner. Niebuhr further pointed out that they comprised
+three different systems of cuneiform writing, which in the case of
+every text followed one another in a regular order. The first system of
+writing was the simplest, as it consisted of only forty-two different
+characters, whereas the number of characters in the second and third
+systems was very large.
+
+With Niebuhr's publication the work of decipherment became possible.
+In 1798, Professor Tychsen, of Rostock, discovered that in the first
+system an oblique wedge was used to divide the words from one another,
+and in 1802 the Danish Bishop, Münter, starting from this basis,
+showed that the language possessed suffixes, pointed out that certain
+characters denoted vowels, and even divined the word for 'king,' as
+well as the value of two letters, one of them being _a_. He also
+maintained that while the first system of writing was alphabetic,
+the second was syllabic, and the third ideographic, and that as
+the inscriptions were found in Persia and on the buildings of the
+Achaemenian kings, the text which always comes first must represent
+the language of ancient Persia, which he identified, though
+erroneously, with Zend.
+
+It is, however, to George Frederick Grotefend, of Hanover, that the
+discovery of the key which has unlocked the secrets of cuneiform
+literature is really due. On September 4, 1802, he read before the
+Royal Society of Göttingen a Memoir, in which he announced his
+discovery of the names of certain Achaemenian kings in the cuneiform
+inscriptions, and explained the method by which he had arrived at his
+results. By a curious coincidence it was at the same meeting of the
+Society that Heyne described the first efforts that had been made
+towards deciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Grotefend first showed
+convincingly that the inscriptions must be read from left to right, a
+portion of a word which ends a line on the right side in one of the
+texts beginning the next line on the left side in a duplicate copy of
+it. He next pointed out that the analogy of the Sassanian inscriptions,
+which had just been deciphered by de Sacy, indicated that the
+Persepolitan texts must commence with the names of the kings who had
+erected the monuments, followed by their titles, and that a comparison
+of the texts one with another made it pretty evident that such was
+actually the case. In this way he succeeded in finding (like Münter
+before him) the word for 'king,' and in addition to this the royal
+names preceding it. Those on the Persepolitan monuments represented a
+father and a son, though in certain cases the father added his own
+father's name, but without the royal titles. Thanks to the classical
+writers, it was known that the monuments were of Achaemenian origin,
+and the names of the Achaemenian kings had also been preserved. It only
+remained to fit them to the characters in the cuneiform texts.
+Hystaspes, Darius, and Xerxes alone suited, since Cyrus was too short
+and Artaxerxes too long; moreover, the letters _a_, _r_, and _sh_, in
+the names of Darius and Xerxes appeared in their right places if these
+names were adopted. So, too, did _a_ and _sh_ in the name of Hystaspes.
+Such a coincidence was sufficient to prove that Grotefend was right in
+his guess that the words in question represented proper names, for
+guess it was, though founded on strong probability and scientific
+induction. He had noticed that two of the names (those of Darius and
+Xerxes) occurred separately on two particular groups of monuments,
+whereas the word which followed them was always the same. It was
+natural to conclude that the latter word denoted 'king,' while those
+which preceded it were proper names.
+
+The alphabet Grotefend had constructed out of the proper names enabled
+him to read the word for 'king,' and thus to show its near affinity to
+the corresponding word in Zend. But he was a classical scholar rather
+than an orientalist, better known by his Latin grammar than by his
+knowledge of Eastern languages, and consequently as soon as his
+pioneering work of decipherment was accomplished, he lacked the
+philological knowledge which would have allowed him to continue it.
+Moreover, he was hampered by the false theory that the language of the
+inscriptions was identical with Zend. The next step of importance was
+taken by Rask in 1826, who discovered the termination of the genitive
+plural and the true reading of the title 'Achaemenian.' Rask was
+followed in 1836 by the great Zendic scholar Burnouf at Paris, and
+by Lassen at Bonn. Burnouf demonstrated that the language of the
+Achaemenian texts was not Zend, but a sister dialect spoken in western
+Persia, and his discovery of the names of the satrapies, in one of the
+inscriptions copied by Niebuhr, enabled him and Lassen simultaneously
+almost to complete what we may henceforth call the Old Persian
+alphabet. A few corrections in it were subsequently made by Beer,
+Jacquet, Holzmann, and Lassen himself.
+
+Meanwhile a young English officer in the East India Company's service,
+now Sir Henry Rawlinson, had been working in Persia unassisted, and at
+a distance from libraries, upon the Old Persian texts. He knew that
+Grotefend had discovered in them the names of the early Achaemenian
+monarchs, and with this clue he set himself to construct an alphabet
+and interpret the inscriptions. He soon found means of providing
+himself with fuller materials for the work of decipherment than those
+at the disposal of scholars in Europe, by copying the great inscription
+which Darius had caused to be engraved on the sacred rock of Bagistana
+or Behistun in commemoration of his accession to the throne of Persia,
+and re-conquest of the empire of Cyrus. The task of copying the
+inscription--by far the longest Persian one known--was an arduous
+one, and not unattended with danger, and it occupied several years.
+Rawlinson first saw the inscription in 1835; it was not till 1839 that
+the whole of it was copied. A few years later he revised it again, but
+his memoir upon it and upon the other Old Persian texts was not ready
+for publication till 1845. In the following year the text was published
+by the Royal Asiatic Society, and the translation and commentary
+followed in 1849. Dr. Hincks, of Dublin, had already (in 1846) given
+the last touch to the decipherment of the Old Persian alphabet by the
+discovery that the consonants composing it contained inherent vowels.
+
+As we have seen, Niebuhr had perceived that the Persepolitan
+inscriptions were in three different systems of writing. But it was
+only after the decipherment of the Persian texts that it was found that
+the three systems of writing embodied three separate languages, and
+belonged to three separate countries. As in modern Turkey a governor
+has to issue an edict in agglutinative Turkish, Semitic Arabic, and
+Aryan Persian, so too in ancient Persia a king who wished to be
+understood by all his subjects had to appeal to them in the Aryan
+language of Persian itself, in the Semitic language of Babylonia and
+Assyria, and in the agglutinative language of Susiania or Elam. When
+the second and third systems of writing came to be read it was
+discovered that the second contained the script and language of
+Elam--sometimes, but incorrectly, called Scythian, Medic or Protomedic,
+sometimes, more properly, Amardian or Neo-Susian--while the third was
+Babylonian. The three capitals of the empire, Persepolis, Susa and
+Babylon, were thus each of them represented.
+
+The number of characters used in Amardian, though large, was limited,
+and accordingly, with the help of the proper names occurring in the Old
+Persian texts, a syllabary, or list of characters each expressing a
+syllable, was soon formed and the work of translation commenced.
+Westergaard, the Dane, who had already travelled in Persia, and there
+copied the inscription on the tomb of Darius at Naksh-i-Rustem, led the
+way in 1845. He was followed by Hincks, de Saulcy, and above all Edwin
+Norris, the learned Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, who
+published in 1853 the Amardian (or as he called it the 'Scythic')
+version of the Behistun inscription, with an elaborate translation,
+commentary, and vocabulary. Further progress, in the study of the
+language was made by Oppert, whose book _Le Peuple et la Langue
+des Mèdes_ (1879) is a monument of systematic research. Sayce's
+decipherment of the inscriptions of Mal-Amir, south-east of Susa, in
+1884 (in the Proceedings of the Sixth Oriental Congress), showed that
+we must look to that part of Susiania for the origin of the Amardian
+syllabary and dialect. The language was, in fact, one of the
+agglutinative dialects spoken in Elam, the native language of Susa
+itself being closely related to it. Unfortunately, however, there is no
+known language with which the dialects of ancient Elam can be compared,
+and consequently our knowledge of them hardly extends beyond the help
+afforded by the trilingual Persian texts.
+
+The decipherment of the third system of writing long seemed to baffle
+the inquirer. The characters were multitudinous, some of them were
+plainly ideographs, denoting ideas and not letters or syllables, while
+the same character did not always appear to have the same value.
+Moreover, the belief that the characters must represent alphabetic
+letters long stood in the way of the decipherer. Grotefend had already
+observed that they resembled in form the characters found on some of
+the antiquities which came from Babylonia, but it was not till after
+the excavation of Nineveh that any serious effort was made to decipher
+them. Botta and Layard, at the very outset, pointed out that the script
+used in Assyria was the same as that of the third Achaemenian system,
+and thus attracted fresh attention to the latter. Löwenstern was the
+first to attack the problem in 1845. His first essays, however, were
+unsuccessful, like those of de Saulcy in 1847, and his second
+publication (in 1847) did little more than establish the fact that the
+same name might be written with different signs. In the same year de
+Longpérier correctly deciphered the words and ideographs denoting
+'palace,' 'king,' 'great,' and the like, though without being able to
+read phonetically any one of them. But in 1848 Botta published the
+numerous inscriptions he had discovered at Khorsabad, at the same time
+subjecting them to a careful analysis. He divided them into words,
+wherever it was possible, noting the variations in writing the same
+word, and drawing up a list of 642 classified characters. He further
+proved that the terminations or suffixes of words in the Assyrian texts
+agreed with those of the third Achaemenian system, an indication that
+the language was the same as well as the script. Finally he made it
+clear that the script contained not only phonetic characters, but also
+ideographs, and he correctly determined many of these ideographs,
+including that which denotes plurality. All that was now needed was to
+discover the phonetic equivalents of the characters.
+
+This was done half a year later by de Saulcy, who analyzed the
+Babylonian transcript of the Achaemenian inscription at Elwend, and
+gave phonetic values to 120 characters. He was, however, still under
+the belief that they represented letters instead of syllables, and was
+consequently obliged to admit the existence of 'homophones.' The fact
+that they really represented syllables,--_ba_, _bi_, _be_, _bu_,
+&c.--was discovered by Dr. Hincks immediately afterwards (1847 and
+1850). Hincks also discovered the name of Nebuchadrezzar in the
+Babylonian inscriptions, and by the further discovery that an
+inscription brought from Babylon by Sir Robert Ker-Porter, which was
+written in the complicated characters of early Babylonia, was a
+duplicate of one in the 'Neo-Babylonian' characters of the Achaemenian
+era, he made it possible to read the oldest forms of Babylonian script.
+From this time forward the work of decipherment went on apace. The
+Semitic character of the Assyro-Babylonian language, which had been
+guessed at by Löwenstern, was now put beyond question, and the
+well-known laws of Semitic grammar came to the help of the student in
+reading the text. In 1851 Rawlinson published the Babylonian text of
+the Behistun inscription, and in his commentary upon it announced to a
+wondering and incredulous world the existence in Assyrian of
+'polyphones.' If the method of decipherment were right, it was
+necessary to assume that the same character could have more than one
+phonetic value. The cause of this extraordinary fact--which, however,
+is paralleled in Old Egyptian as well as in Japanese--was soon made
+clear by Oppert, Hincks, and Rawlinson himself. The Assyrian syllabary,
+which had originally been a collection of pictorial hieroglyphs, was
+not the invention of the Semitic Babylonians, but of an earlier people
+who spoke an agglutinative language, and to whom the name of Accadians
+or Sumerians was given. When the script was adopted by the Semites, the
+Sumerian words denoting the objects or ideas for which the characters
+stood became phonetic values; thus _du_ 'to go' and _gub_ 'to stand'
+became the phonetic values of the character which had originally been a
+picture of a human leg.
+
+The interpretation of the Assyrian and Babylonian texts now advanced
+rapidly, in spite of the smallness of the body of students, and the
+incredulity of Orientalists, especially in Germany. In 1847 Rawlinson
+was able to give a fairly complete account of the several varieties of
+cuneiform writing, and in 1850 he published a translation of the long
+inscription of Shalmaneser II on the Black Obelisk of Nimrûd. The
+translation is on the whole marvellously correct, and proves
+conclusively the soundness of the method on which it was based. The
+proper names, however, were still but imperfectly read, and it was not
+till Hincks discovered the names of Jehu and Omri in the inscription
+(in 1851) that the age of it could be fixed. Shortly afterwards Hincks
+deciphered the names of Hezekiah and Jerusalem in the texts of
+Sennacherib, as well as the name of Sennacherib himself, and thus
+showed that Longpérier had been right in his conjecture that the king
+of the Khorsabad monuments was Sargon. The foundation of Assyrian
+grammar was next laid by Hincks in 1855 in a series of remarkable
+articles on the Assyrian verb, to which the progress of discovery has
+since added little that is important. A complete and systematic grammar
+itself was first written by Dr. Oppert in 1860, and eight years
+afterwards M. Ménant analyzed his results and tested their correctness.
+
+
+The Decipherment tested.--Orientalists, however, still looked askance
+at the new science which threatened to dwarf the older Semitic
+learning. The Council of the Royal Asiatic Society, accordingly,
+determined to subject it to a conclusive test. Copies of the annals of
+Tiglath-pileser I, which had been found at Kalah Sherghat, were sent to
+Rawlinson, Hincks, Fox Talbot, and Oppert; they were asked to translate
+them independently of one another, and send the translations under seal
+by a given date to the Secretary of the Society. When the translations
+were opened they were found to be in substantial agreement. This was in
+1857, a year which we may therefore regard as closing the first epoch
+of decipherment.
+
+
+Sumerian.--The decipherment of the Assyrian texts brought with
+it the decipherment of the Sumerian texts. The library of Nineveh was
+stocked with tablets intended to facilitate the study of the old
+language of Chaldaea. Among them are grammars, vocabularies, and
+reading-books, as well as interlinear or parallel translations of
+Sumerian texts in the Semitic language of Babylon and Assyria. Oppert
+in his _Expédition scientifique en Mésopotamie_ led the way to the
+use of them in 1859, and the outlines of Sumerian grammar were first
+sketched by Sayce in 1870, followed by Lenormant in 1873. Since then
+the labours of Lenormant, Haupt (who demonstrated the existence of two
+Accado-Sumerian dialects), Hommel, Amiaud, Ball and others, have given
+us an extensive knowledge of the primitive language of Babylonia.
+
+
+Vannic.--Northward of Assyria, in Ararat, the modern Armenia, the
+cuneiform script of Nineveh had been borrowed in the ninth century B.C.
+As the characters of the script continued to preserve their Assyrian
+values there was no difficulty in transliterating them, and as early as
+1852 Hincks read the names of the kings they had been employed to
+write, and even used them in determining the values of the characters
+found at Nineveh. The majority of the inscriptions, which had been
+copied by Schulz at the cost of his life in 1829, and published in
+France in 1840, were met with in the neighbourhood of Van; hence the
+term 'Vannic' which is usually applied to them. The language in which
+they are written was however utterly unknown, and bore no obvious
+relationship to any with which we are acquainted; consequently though
+the texts could be transliterated they could not be translated. More
+than one attempt was made to decipher them, but to no purpose, until
+1882 when Guyard pointed out that the formula with which many of them
+end corresponds with the imprecation often attached to the Assyrian
+inscriptions, and Sayce, following up this clue, with the help of the
+ideographs borrowed from Assyria, finally succeeded in solving the
+problem. A bilingual text (Assyrian and Vannic), recently discovered by
+M. de Morgan in the pass of Kelishin in Kurdistan, has verified the
+correctness of his results, which have been further modified or
+extended by D. H. Müller, Belck, and Lehmann.
+
+
+Other Languages.--Yet two more languages written in the cuneiform
+syllabary have lately been revealed by the cuneiform tablets found at
+Tel el-Amarna in Upper Egypt. One was the language of Mitanni, the
+Aram-Naharaim of the Old Testament, in which there is a long letter
+from the king of Mitanni to the Egyptian Pharaoh. The other language,
+which is quite distinct from that of Mitanni, was spoken at Arzawa in
+northern Syria. Both languages are still undeciphered[3].
+
+        [3] For the language of Mitanni, called that of Su(ri) in the
+        Assyrian lexical lists, see Jensen, Brünnow, and myself in the
+        _Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_, v. 2, 3 (Aug. 1890), and for
+        that of Arzawa see my letter to the _Academy_, Aug. 20, 1892,
+        pp. 154, 155.
+
+
+The origin of the Cuneiform Syllabary.--As we have seen, the pictorial
+origin of the cuneiform characters was perceived in the early days of
+Assyrian decipherment, as well as the cause of their polyphony. Their
+wedge-like forms were due to the use of clay as a writing material. The
+impression made by the stylus upon it resembled a wedge; curved lines
+became angles, and after a time the original picture passed into a
+conventional form. In the course of centuries the characters grew more
+and more simplified by the omission of unnecessary wedges, the least
+complicated being those of the official hand of Assyria, and the later
+Babylonian or Persepolitan script. It must not be supposed, however,
+that when the system of writing ceased to be pictorial it was already
+complete. Down to a comparatively late period new characters were
+invented or old characters combined in a new way, while new phonetic
+and ideographic values were assigned to the characters which already
+existed. Though the syllabary is essentially of Sumerian origin there
+is much in it which is traceable to a Semitic source. Many of the
+values given to the characters as well as many of their ideographic
+meanings are Semitic. Moreover the Sumerians and Semites lived in
+contact with one another long after the adoption of Sumerian culture by
+the Semitic nomads; consequently not only did the Semites borrow
+Sumerian words, the Sumerians borrowed Semitic words, more especially
+in the northern part of the country. The early date at which some of
+these were borrowed is shown by their having undergone the phonetic
+changes which distinguished the northern Accado-Sumerian dialect from
+the southern. False etymologizing also has given rise to new values
+just as it has given rise to new spellings in English. The Semitic
+scribes of a later day were as fond of deriving Semitic words from
+Sumerian as our own etymologists used to be of deriving Teutonic words
+from Latin, Greek, or Hebrew. Thus the purely Semitic _sabattu_
+'Sabbath,' from _sabâtu_ 'to rest,' is derived from the two Sumerian
+words _sa_ 'heart' and _bat_ 'to complete,' and interpreted to mean 'a
+day of rest for the heart.'
+
+
+Simplification of the Syllabary.--The script used at Susa before the
+overthrow of the kingdom of Elam was the same as the archaic script of
+Babylonia. But the Amardian syllabary was a selected one. Not only were
+the forms of the characters simplified, a comparatively small number
+of them was employed to each of which one value only was assigned. In
+the Vannic texts also polyphony was similarly avoided. Characters
+expressing open syllables like _ba_ and _ab_ were chosen, to which a
+few more denoting closed syllables and ideographs were added; but in no
+case was a character allowed to possess more than one value. Large use
+was further made of the vowels, the syllable _ba_, for example, being
+written _ba-a_, so that the syllabary tended to become an alphabet.
+This step was taken in Old Persian, where the forms of the letters were
+often so simplified as to lose all resemblance to their primitive
+forms. Apart from its alphabet of thirty-six letters Old Persian
+retained only one syllabic character (_t[r.]_) and a few ideographs.
+
+The pictorial origin of the syllabary has proved of important
+assistance in reading the texts. Certain of the ideographs were used as
+'determinatives' for indicating the generic character of the word to
+which they are prefixed or affixed. Thus there is a determinative to
+denote that the word which follows is the name of a 'city,' and another
+which shows that the preceding word is a plural. In this way a glance
+at an Assyrian, an Amardian, or a Vannic text will enable us at once to
+distinguish the names of men, women, towns, countries, animals, trees,
+metals, stones, and the like. It is a help which we look for in vain in
+Phoenician or Hebrew inscriptions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN HISTORY
+
+
+Different States in Babylonia.--More than one kingdom originally
+existed in Babylonia. Not only were there separate kingdoms in Accad
+and Sumer, or northern and southern Chaldaea, many of the great cities
+also once formed separate states. The excavations at Tello, for
+instance, have revealed the existence of a dynasty which had its seat
+there, and the ancestral kingdom of Sargon of Accad does not seem to
+have extended beyond the territory of its chief city. The smaller
+states were, however, absorbed by the larger ones, and a time came when
+the whole of Babylonia was united into a single monarchy, whose ruler
+assumed the imperial title of 'king of Sumer and Accad.' As in Egypt,
+therefore, a recollection of the original dual character of the kingdom
+was preserved in the title of its kings.
+
+It is probable that the various states of Babylonia were more than once
+brought into temporary union before the final unification of the
+monarchy took place. Sargon of Accad, for instance, seems to have
+claimed supremacy over the rest of Chaldaea, and the dynasties which
+subsequently arose at Urand other places adopted the imperial title,
+although the country was not finally united under a single head until
+the reign of Khammurabi. It was to this early period that the maritime
+trade and civilizing influence of Eridu chiefly belongs.
+
+
+The first Empire.--Sargon of Accad founded the earliest Semitic empire
+of which we know. According to Nabonidos he lived more than 3,200 years
+before the time of the last Babylonian king, that is to say about 3800
+B.C. His father, Itti-Bel, had no royal title, and legend gathered
+around his birth. His uncle, it was said, ruled in the mountains, and
+his mother concealed her child in an ark of rushes, daubed with pitch,
+which she entrusted to the waters of the Euphrates. Here he was found
+by a peasant, who brought him up as his own son. But the goddess Istar
+loved the peasant lad, and the time at last came when he was able to
+declare his true character and ascend the throne of his fathers.
+
+A copy has been preserved of the historical annals of Sargon and his
+son Naram-Sin, which must have been compiled in the reign of the
+latter, as they break off in the middle of it. We learn from them that
+Sargon not only established his rule over Babylonia and the adjoining
+districts, he also defeated the Elamites, and made four expeditions
+into Syria, 'the land of the Amorites.' The last of these expeditions
+occupied three years, and ended with the erection of images of the
+Chaldaean king on the shores of the Mediterranean, and with the
+conquest of the countries 'of the sea of the setting sun,' which he
+united 'into a single empire.' His last campaign was against the
+Aram-Naharaim of Scripture in north-western Mesopotamia. Babylon is
+already mentioned as one of his seats of power; his capital, however,
+was at Agade or Accad, where on one occasion he was unsuccessfully
+besieged by his revolted subjects. Here, too, he founded a famous
+library, for which the standard work on astronomy and astrology was
+compiled in seventy-two books. A translation of it into Greek was made
+in later days by the Chaldaean historian Bêrôssos.
+
+Sargon's son and successor Naram-Sin continued his father's victorious
+career, and Palestine being already secured behind him, marched into
+the land of Magan, by which name Midian and the Sinaitic peninsula were
+known, and captured its king. A record of the conquest was engraved on
+an alabaster vase discovered by the French Expedition to Babylonia, but
+unfortunately lost in the Tigris. Naram-Sin, like one or two other
+Babylonian monarchs of the same early epoch, received divine honours.
+
+
+The monuments of Tello.--The oldest monuments found at Tello in
+southern Chaldaea belong to the age of Sargon and Naram-Sin. But
+whereas the court of Sargon was Semitic, that of the kings of Tello was
+Sumerian. At a later date Tello lost its independence, and its rulers
+became merely _patesis_ or high-priests. One of these was Gudea, whose
+statue may be seen in the Louvre. In his time building-materials were
+brought to Chaldaea from all parts of Western Asia; thus cedar beams
+were imported from Mount Amanus, and diorite from the land of Magan. It
+was out of this diorite that the statues were cut. Another of the
+_patesis_ of Tello was the vassal of Dungi, king of Ur, whose father
+had built or restored the great temple of the Moon-god in that city,
+and had claimed sovereignty over the whole of Babylonia.
+
+
+Chronology.--These early sovereigns are known to us by the bricks and
+other objects which they have left behind, but we cannot arrange them
+in a chronological order. Chronology begins with what is called by the
+native historians 'the dynasty of Babylon.' From this time forward the
+tablets have preserved the names of the Babylonian kings divided into
+dynasties, together with the length of each reign as well as of each
+dynasty. The sixth king of the dynasty of Babylon was Khammurabi, who
+reigned fifty-five years (B.C. 2356-2301)[4], and whose reign marks an
+epoch in Babylonian history.
+
+        [4] The date partly depends upon the number of years assigned
+        to the dynasty to which Nabonassar belonged, which unfortunately
+        is not stated by the native historians. Consequently, other
+        Assyriologists make it, sometimes a little higher, sometimes a
+        little lower. For the justification of my date see the _Records
+        of the Past_, New Series, pp. viii-xi.
+
+
+The United Monarchy.--When Khammurabi ascended the throne, Babylonia
+was either wholly or in part under Elamite suzerainty. That portion of
+it of which Larsa was the capital was governed by Eri-Aku (probably the
+Arioch of Genesis), who was a son of the Elamite prince Kudur-Mabug.
+Kudur-Mabug was not himself king, but as he has the title of 'father of
+the land of the Amorites' he must have held rule in Syria. Khammurabi
+succeeded in overthrowing Eri-Aku and his Elamite allies and in making
+himself sole king of Babylonia. Babylon, his capital, thus became, and
+remained, the capital of the united kingdom. It was soon the scene of
+a great literary revival. The older literature of the country was
+re-edited, new authors arose, and the court of Khammurabi revived the
+literary glories of that of Sargon. As his great-grandson still calls
+himself 'king of the land of the Amorites' we may infer that the
+conquests in Syria were not lost.
+
+
+The rise of Assyria.--The dynasty of Khammurabi was followed by one
+which came from Tello, whose kings bear Sumerian names. Then Babylonia
+was conquered by Kassite princes who ruled over it for 576 years and
+nine months (B.C. 1806-1229). While the Kassite dynasty was reigning, a
+new kingdom arose in the north, that of Assyria. The high-priests of
+the city of Assur became kings, the first of whom seems to have been
+Bel-Kapkapu. The kingdom rapidly grew in power, and although Babylonia
+exacted tribute from it, its kings began to ally themselves by marriage
+with the rulers of the southern monarchy. In the fifteenth century B.C.
+Assuryuballidh of Assyria, like his contemporary Burna-buryas of
+Babylonia, sent letters and presents to the Egyptian Pharaoh and begged
+in return for Egyptian gold, and a century later the city of Calah was
+built (or restored) by Shalmaneser I. His son Tiglath-Uras in the sixth
+year of his reign marched against Babylonia, captured Babylon and
+governed it for seven years. He was then driven out of the country and
+subsequently murdered by his own son. The Kassite dynasty, however, did
+not last long after the Assyrian invasion. The Assyrian king had
+entered Babylon in B.C. 1291, and in B.C. 1229 the dynasty came to an
+end.
+
+
+Babylon a sacred city.--From this time forward for many centuries
+Assyria, and not Babylonia, occupies the chief place in the history of
+western Asia. It needed a Nebuchadrezzar to make Babylonia once more a
+conquering power. But Babylon itself remained the sacred city of the
+cultured nations of Asia. Its old _prestige_ and hallowed associations
+clung to it, and it became what Rome was to mediaeval Europe. An
+Assyrian king, however powerful he might be, could not claim the
+imperial title until he had 'taken the hands of Bel' and thereby been
+adopted as a son by the god of Babylon. Indeed it was only in this
+way that usurpers like Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon obtained any
+recognition of their legitimate right to the throne. The sanction of
+religion remained with Babylon, though the sword had passed to Assyria.
+
+
+Tiglath-pileser I.--One of the most famous of the early Assyrian
+conquerors was Tiglath-pileser I (B.C. 1100). He carried his arms in
+all directions. Eastward he chastised the Kurds, northward he
+penetrated into the mountains of Armenia and engraved his image at the
+sources of the Tigris; and in the west he overthrew the Moschians, the
+Meshech of the Bible, ravaging the land of Komagênê, laying Malatiyeh
+under tribute, threatening the Hittites in their stronghold at
+Carchemish, and making his way to the shores of the Mediterranean. Here
+he sailed over the sea in a ship of Arvad, and received presents from
+the terrified Pharaoh of Egypt which comprised a crocodile and a
+hippopotamus. Southward he invaded Babylonia, and though repulsed in
+his first attack he avenged himself by subsequently over-running the
+country and capturing Babylon. He was also mighty in the hunting-field
+as well as in war, and in the neighbourhood of Harran boasts of having
+slain the wild elephants which then existed there. His own capital
+Assur he adorned with the spoils of his victories and restored its
+temples.
+
+
+The First Assyrian Empire.--We have to pass over an interval of two
+centuries before we find another Assyrian monarch who emulated the
+distant campaigns of Tiglath-pileser. Assur-natsir-pal (B.C. 883-858)
+was the first of a line of conquerors who may be regarded as the
+founders of the first Assyrian empire. From henceforth, too, Assyrian
+chronology is accurately fixed. The Assyrians counted time by means
+of certain officers called _limmi_, who were changed from year to
+year. The name of a particular _limmu_ consequently indicated the year
+during which he had held office. Lists of the _limmi_ have been
+preserved which begin with the reign of Assur-natsir-pal's father
+and carry us down to that of Assur-bani-pal. As the annals not only
+of Tiglath-pileser I, but also of an older king, the father of
+Shalmaneser I, are dated in the years of office of certain _limmi_ it
+is clear that the institution went back to an early period, and that
+lists of the older _limmi_ may yet be recovered, carrying us, it may
+be, to the very foundation of the Assyrian kingdom.
+
+Calah, instead of Assur, had become the royal residence, and from Calah
+accordingly the Assyrian armies marched forth year after year to
+conquer and spoil. The fastnesses of the Kurdish mountains were
+explored, and the Kurdish tribes compelled to pay tribute to the
+Assyrian king. The cities of Armenia south of Lake Van were ravaged in
+repeated campaigns, one effect of which seems to have been the
+introduction of Assyrian culture and writing, and the rise of the
+Vannic monarchy. The merchant princes of Carchemish bought off the
+Assyrian attack with rich gifts, but the states on either bank of the
+Euphrates were overrun, and Assur-natsir-pal made his way across Amanus
+to the Gulf of Antioch, and across Lebanon to the Mediterranean. Here
+he received the tribute of the Phoenician cities, among them being Tyre
+and Sidon. In imitation of Tiglath-pileser I he hunted in northern
+Mesopotamia, but the elephant had disappeared from the region, and he
+had to content himself with the wild bull.
+
+Assur-natsir-pal was succeeded by his son Shalmaneser II, whose reign
+ended in B.C. 823. His long reign was a series of military campaigns.
+Countries previously untrodden by Assyrian feet were subdued or ravaged
+with fire and sword. Assyrian armies made their way through the passes
+of Kurdistan as far as Lake Urumiyeh and the land of the Minni. The
+newly-founded kingdom of Ararat was shaken, the Tibareni (called Tubal
+in Scripture) paid tribute, and Tarsus in Cilicia was compelled to open
+its gates. The passage of the Euphrates was secured by the capture of
+the Hittite fortress of Pethor at the junction of the Euphrates and the
+Sajur, and the whole weight of the Assyrian power was hurled against
+Syria. The Phoenician cities made their peace with the invader by
+offering gifts; so too did Jehu (Yahua) of Samaria, whose ambassadors
+are represented on the Black Obelisk. Hamath and Damascus, more
+especially the latter, had to bear the brunt of the Assyrian attack. In
+B.C. 853, thirteen years before the embassy of Jehu, Israel and Assyria
+had already met in the battle-field. A league had been formed by
+Hamath, Arvad, Ammon, and other states under the leadership of
+Hadadezer of Damascus--the Ben-hadad of the Old Testament--to resist
+the Assyrians, and one of the most important of the allies was 'Ahab of
+Israel,' who brought into the field 2,000 chariots and 10,000 men. But
+the confederacy was shattered at the battle of Qarqar, though
+Shalmaneser's own losses were too serious to allow him to follow up the
+attack. In B.C. 847 Hadadezer and his allies were again defeated, but
+without any result on the Assyrian side. Seven years later Hazael
+appears in the place of Hadadezer. Shalmaneser drove him from his camp
+into Damascus, where he 'shut him up,' taking from him 1,121 chariots
+and devastating the country as far as the Hauran. It was on this
+occasion that Jehu offered homage to the conqueror. Shalmaneser had
+already overrun Babylonia and sacrificed to the gods in Babylon,
+Borsippa, and Cutha. The Babylonian king was put to death, and the
+Assyrian troops penetrated into the salt-marshes of the Kaldâ in the
+extreme south. For a time, therefore, the larger part of western Asia
+lay at the feet of 'the great king.'
+
+A time came, however, when Shalmaneser could no longer lead his armies
+in person, but had to entrust them to the Tartan or commander-in-chief.
+His own son Assur-dain-pal rebelled against him, and led the chief
+cities of his kingdom, including Nineveh and Assur, into revolt (B.C.
+827). The revolt lasted for more than six years, and during its
+continuance the old king was succeeded by his son Samsi-Rimmon who
+eventually suppressed the insurrection. Assur-dain-pal seems to have
+been the original Sardanapallos of the Greeks. The campaigns of
+Samsi-Rimmon were principally directed against the Kurds and Medes, but
+towards the end of his reign he invaded Babylonia and defeated its
+king, Merodach-balásu-iqbi, the Greek Belesys. His successor
+Rimmon-nirari III (B.C. 810-781) claims to have overcome Media and
+Kurdistan, Tyre, Sidon, Samaria, and Palastu, 'the land of the
+Philistines,' under which title the Jews would be included. But his
+chief exploit was the conquest of Damascus, whose king Marih opened its
+gates to him and became an Assyrian vassal.
+
+The older Assyrian dynasty, however, was fast coming to an end. In B.C.
+753 its last representative, Assur-nirari, mounted the throne.
+Insurrection had already broken out at the beginning of his
+predecessor's reign, and pestilence had been added to insurrection. The
+old capital Assur had led the revolt, a solar eclipse on June 15, B.C.
+763 coinciding with its outbreak. The northern provinces had followed
+the lead of Assur, and though the revolt was crushed for a while, the
+flame of discontent still smouldered beneath the surface. The greater
+part of Assur-nirari's short reign was passed in inaction, but in B.C.
+746 Calah rebelled, and on the 13th of Iyyar in the following year Pulu
+or Pul, who took the name of Tiglath-pileser III, after that of the
+great conqueror of the older dynasty, was proclaimed king. With him
+begins the history of the second Assyrian empire.
+
+
+The Second Assyrian Empire.--With the second Assyrian empire a new
+political idea entered the world. Most of the campaigns made by the
+earlier Assyrian kings were mere raids, the object of which was booty
+and captives. It is true that in some cases cities and districts were
+annexed to the Assyrian kingdom and Assyrian colonists were planted in
+distant localities. But this was the exception, not the rule. The
+conquests made in one year by the Assyrian armies had to be made over
+again in the next. The campaigns of Tiglath-pileser III and his
+successors had a different object in view. They aimed at bringing the
+whole civilized world under the rule of 'the great king.' A great
+political organization was to be built up, which should bring the
+wealth of Western Asia into the imperial treasury of Nineveh and divert
+the trade of Phoenicia and Babylon into Assyrian hands. Trade interests
+had much to do with the wars of the New Empire.
+
+Accordingly, while the frontiers of the kingdom were secured from the
+wild tribes on the east and north, expedition after expedition was sent
+westward and southward which pushed steadily forward the Assyrian
+domination. Satraps and colonists followed in the wake of the generals;
+and the amount of annual tribute to be paid by each province was
+defined and rigorously exacted from its governor. The latter was
+appointed by the king, and held his office at the royal pleasure. At
+his side were military officers, and under him a body of officials who
+were responsible to the governor as he was to the king.
+
+The New Empire was thus governed by a vast bureaucracy, at the head of
+which stood the king. But the bureaucracy was military as well as
+civil, and the military and civil elements formed a check one upon the
+other. The military element was, however, predominant, the result of
+the fact that the empire itself was based on conquest.
+
+The army was carefully trained, well disciplined, and well armed. It
+thus soon became an irresistible weapon in the hands of a competent
+master. Before Tiglath-pileser's reign was half over there was no force
+in western Asia which was capable of resisting it in open fight.
+
+Tiglath-pileser reigned eighteen years (B.C. 745-727), and his
+organizing abilities proved to be as great as his military skill. An
+invasion of Babylonia first tested the strength of his army, and
+resulted in the subjection of the Aramaean tribes in that country to
+Assyrian rule. Then followed an expedition into Kurdistan. The Medes
+were massacred, and the Assyrian army pushed its way far eastward to
+Bikni, 'the mountain of the rising sun.' Next Tiglath-pileser turned to
+the north-west. Here he was met by a powerful confederacy, at the head
+of which was the king of Ararat. But the forces of the northern nations
+were cut to pieces in Komagene, and Arpad, which had become the centre
+of a hostile Syrian league, was captured after a siege of three years.
+The league had included Hamath and Azariah of Judah, and Hamath was
+consequently annexed to the Assyrian empire. The princes of the West
+hastened to offer homage to the conqueror, among them being Rezon of
+Damascus and Menahem of Samaria (B.C. 738). Tiglath-pileser was now
+free to march against Ararat, which had extended its power at the
+expense of Assyria in the later days of the old dynasty. The country
+was ravaged up to the gates of its capital, and the Vannic kingdom
+received a blow from which it never recovered. The Assyrian army next
+turned eastward to the southern shores of the Caspian, and made its way
+through Medic and other districts which neither before nor since were
+trodden by Assyrian feet. The exploit struck terror into the Kurdish
+tribes, and secured the Assyrian lowlands from their attack.
+
+Meanwhile Ahaz of Judah had been threatened by Rezon of Damascus and
+Pekah of Israel, and he now appealed to the Assyrian king for help.
+Tiglath-pileser, nothing loth, marched against the assailants. Rezon
+was blockaded in his capital, while Samaria, Ammon, Moab, and Philistia
+were overrun (B.C. 734). Two years later (B.C. 732), Damascus was taken
+and sacked, Rezon put to death and his kingdom placed under an Assyrian
+prefect. Pekah, too, had been murdered, and Tiglath-pileser had
+appointed Hosea king in his place. About the same time Tyre was
+compelled to purchase peace by the payment of 150 talents.
+
+With his empire consolidated in the west, and the road to the
+Mediterranean open to Assyrian trade, Tiglath-pileser was now free to
+legitimize his right to the throne by occupying Babylon and there
+becoming the adopted son of Bel. It was in B.C. 731 that the Babylonian
+campaign began; in B.C. 729 Tiglath-pileser, under his original name of
+Pul, 'took the hands of Bel,' and two years later, in the month of
+December, he died. He had introduced into history the idea of imperial
+centralization.
+
+On his death the crown was seized by Ululâ, who took the name of
+Shalmaneser IV. His reign lasted only five years, and when he died
+(December, B.C. 722) he was pressing the siege of Samaria. The capture
+of the city and its annexation to Assyria were the work of Sargon. The
+upper and military classes, amounting in all to 27,280 persons, were
+carried into captivity; but only fifty chariots were found in the city.
+
+Sargon was a usurper like his two predecessors, but, more fortunate
+than they, he succeeded in founding a dynasty. He was one of the best
+generals that Assyria ever produced, and under him the extension and
+organization of the empire went on apace. The death of Shalmaneser,
+however, had been the signal for revolt in Babylonia as well as in the
+west. Merodach-baladan, a Chaldaean from the sea-marshes, had seized
+Babylon in conjunction with the Elamites, and there reigned as
+legitimate monarch for twelve years. One of the first tasks of Sargon
+was to drive the Elamite forces from the Assyrian frontier. Hamath
+moreover rose in insurrection; but this too was speedily crushed. So
+also was a league between the Philistines and the Egyptians; the battle
+of Raphia decided, once for all, the question of Assyrian supremacy in
+Palestine.
+
+Sargon now had to face a more formidable coalition, that of the
+northern nations under Ursa of Ararat. The struggle lasted for six
+years and ended with the complete victory of the Assyrians. Carchemish,
+the Hittite stronghold on the Euphrates, fell in B.C. 717, leaving the
+road clear to the west and thus uniting Assyria with its rising empire
+on the shores of the Mediterranean. In the following year the Minni (to
+the east of Ararat) were overthrown, and two years later Ursa and his
+allies were utterly defeated. The fortress of Muzazir near Lake
+Urumiyeh was captured, thus extending the Assyrian frontier far to the
+east, and Ursa, in despair, committed suicide. Media was completely
+subdued in B.C. 713, and Ellip, where Ekbatana afterwards stood, became
+the vassal of Nineveh. In B.C. 711 a league was formed between
+Merodach-baladan and the nations of southern Syria to resist the common
+foe, and to this league Egypt promised assistance. But before the
+confederates were ready to act, Sargon had fallen upon them separately.
+Ashdod, the centre of the Palestinian confederacy, was besieged and
+taken (Isaiah xxi), and its ruler, a certain 'Greek,' who had been
+raised to power by the anti-Assyrian party, fled in vain for refuge to
+the Arabian desert, while Judah, Edom, and Moab were compelled to pay
+tribute. In B.C. 709 Merodach-baladan was driven out of Babylonia into
+his ancestral kingdom of Bit-Yagna. Sargon entered Babylon and there
+'took the hands of Bel.' Henceforward he ruled by divine right as well
+as by the right of the sword.
+
+It was by the sword, however, that he perished, being murdered by a
+soldier in B.C. 705. His son Sennacherib succeeded to the crown on the
+12th of Ab (July). Sennacherib was a different man from his father;
+boastfulness and vanity took the place of military skill, perhaps also
+of courage. There seems to have been some resemblance between his
+character and that of Xerxes.
+
+Babylonia was the new king's first object of attack. Merodach-baladan,
+who had re-entered Babylon on the news of Sargon's death, was driven
+back to the marshes, and Bel-ibni, an Assyrian vassal, appointed king
+in his place. The next campaign was against the Kassi or Kossaeans,
+some of whom were forced to descend from their mountain fastnesses and
+placed under an Assyrian governor. From the Kossaean mountains the
+Assyrian army marched into Ellip which was wasted with fire and sword.
+Then, in B.C. 701, came the campaign against Palestine where Hezekiah
+of Judah, in reliance upon Egypt, had revolted from his Assyrian lord.
+Elulaeus of Sidon fled to Cyprus, and Phoenicia, Ammon, Moab, and Edom
+submitted to the Assyrians. Sennacherib thereupon proceeded against the
+Philistines. A new king was set over Ashkelon, and Hezekiah was
+compelled to restore to Ekron its former prince whom he had imprisoned
+in Jerusalem on account of his faithfulness to Assyria. The priests and
+nobles of Ekron who had abetted Hezekiah were impaled on stakes.
+
+[Illustration: CAPTURE OF LACHISH BY SENNACHERIB.]
+
+Tirhakah, the Ethiopian king of Egypt, and the king of Melukh (the
+Arabian desert), who had come to the assistance of the Jewish prince,
+were defeated at Eltekeh, and Hezekiah vainly endeavoured to buy off
+the vengeance of his offended suzerain by rich and numerous presents,
+including 30 talents of gold and 800 talents of silver. The surrender
+of Jerusalem alone would content Sennacherib, who accordingly
+devastated Judah, destroying its cities and carrying into captivity
+200,150 of its inhabitants. Jerusalem itself was blockaded, Hezekiah
+being shut up in it 'like a bird in a cage.' Then, however, came the
+catastrophe which obliged Sennacherib to retire without punishing his
+rebellious vassal, and of which, of course, nothing is said in the
+inscriptions. But there is no further record of a campaign in the West.
+In the following year Sennacherib was in Babylonia, where he drove
+Merodach-baladan out of the marshes and obliged the Chaldaean prince
+and his subjects to fly in ships across the Persian Gulf to the
+opposite coast of Elam. Assur-nadin-suma, the son of Sennacherib, was
+now made king of Babylon. Six years later he was carried off to Elam
+and a new king, Nergal-yusezib, appointed in his place by the Elamite
+monarch. This was in return for an unprovoked assault made by
+Sennacherib on the Chaldaean colony in Elam, to which he had crossed in
+boats made by Tyrian workmen, and whose inhabitants he sent captive to
+Assyria.
+
+For a time Elam was all-powerful in Babylonia, though Nergal-yusezib
+had been defeated and captured in battle by the Assyrians. But in B.C.
+691 Sennacherib descended with the full might of Assyria upon the
+country. The Babylonians had sent the treasures of the temple of Bel to
+the Elamite monarch, begging his help. The Babylonian and Elamite
+forces met the army of Assyria at Khalule, and a hard-fought battle was
+the result. The slaughter was great on both sides, and Sennacherib
+claims a complete victory, though the Babylonian Chronicle--a cuneiform
+document compiled from a Babylonian point of view--implies that such
+was not altogether the case. At all events about two years were needed
+for the subjugation of Babylonia. In B.C. 689 Babylon was taken, its
+houses and temples destroyed, the images of its gods broken in pieces,
+and the ruins of the city thrown into the Arakhtu, the canal of
+Babylon. For some years Babylon lay desolate, and as there was no
+longer a temple or image of Bel to legitimize the rule of the Assyrian
+conqueror, Babylonia remained 'without kings.'
+
+On the 20th day of Tebet or December, B.C. 681, Sennacherib was
+murdered by two of his sons who seem to have been jealous of their
+brother Esar-haddon. Esar-haddon had been given the new name of
+Assur-etil-mukin-abla ('Assur the hero is the establisher of my son'),
+perhaps because he had been destined for the throne, and at the time of
+his father's murder he was commanding the Assyrian army in a war
+against Ararat. For forty-two days the conspirators held the capital;
+then they were compelled to fly to Erimenas of Ararat and seek his help
+against their brother. The decisive battle was fought on the 12th of
+Iyyar (April) near Malatiyeh in Kappadokia; the veterans of Assyria won
+the day, and at the close of it saluted Esar-haddon as king. He
+returned to Nineveh and on the 8th of Sivan (May) formally ascended the
+throne.
+
+Esar-haddon was great in counsel as well as in war, and knew how to
+conciliate as well as how to conquer. At the outset of his reign he
+restored Babylon, rebuilt its temples, brought back its gods and
+people, and made it one of his royal residences. For twelve years he
+was king alike of Babylonia and Assyria.
+
+A revolt of Sidon, which was easily put down, next occupied his
+attention. Then came a more formidable event. The Gimirrâ, called Gomer
+in Genesis, Kimmerians by the Greeks, suddenly appeared out of the
+north and menaced the civilized world. Esar-haddon met them on the
+frontier of his empire, defeated their chieftain, the 'Manda' or nomad
+Teuspa, and drove his hordes westward into Asia Minor. It now became
+necessary to secure the Assyrian frontier on the south. The Assyrian
+king accordingly marched into the very heart of Arabia, through burning
+and waterless deserts, and struck terror into the Arabian tribes. The
+march must have been one of the most remarkable ever made.
+
+Esar-haddon was at last free to complete the policy of Tiglath-pileser
+III by conquering the ancient kingdom of Egypt. Palestine gave no more
+trouble; Manasseh of Judah was already an obedient vassal of the
+Assyrian king. In B.C. 674 'the Assyrians marched into Egypt.' But two
+more campaigns were needed for its subjection. In B.C. 670 Esar-haddon
+drove the Egyptian forces before him in fifteen days (from the 3rd to
+the 18th of Tammuz or June) all the way from the frontier to Memphis,
+thrice defeating them with heavy loss and wounding Tirhakah their king.
+Three days later Memphis fell, and Tirhakah fled to Ethiopia, leaving
+Egypt to the conqueror. Egypt revolted two years afterwards (B.C. 668),
+and while on the march to reduce it Esar-haddon fell ill, and died on
+the 10th of Marchesvan or October. Assur-bani-pal, who had already
+been named as his successor, became king of Assyria, his brother
+Saul-suma-yukin taking Babylonia as his share. The king of Babylonia,
+however, was required to admit the supremacy of the Assyrian monarch.
+
+The Egyptian revolt was quickly suppressed and the country was again
+divided into twenty satrapies, each satrapy being placed under a native
+prince. But the arrangement answered badly. The satraps quarrelled
+with one another, intrigued with Tirhakah, and rebelled against
+Assur-bani-pal. Time after time Assyrian armies had to be sent to
+reconquer the land. Once Necho, the satrap of Sais, was brought in
+chains to Nineveh, there, however, to be pardoned and restored to his
+city. Twice Thebes was captured, once after it had been made for a time
+the seat of Tirhakah's government, a second time after the defeat of
+Urdaman (Rud-Amon), the step-son and successor of Tirhakah. On this
+occasion the city was utterly destroyed. Its temples and palaces were
+overthrown, its statues mutilated, and an immense spoil carried away to
+Nineveh. Among the spoil were two obelisks, over seventy tons in
+weight. The destruction of Thebes is alluded to by the prophet Nahum
+(iii. 8).
+
+Assur-bani-pal, the Sardanapallos of the Greeks, was the 'Grand
+Monarque' of Assyria, and a generous patron of literature and learning.
+But he lacked the warlike instincts of his fathers, and preferred to
+remain at home while his generals fought in the field. His long wars
+drained the country of its fighting-men and prepared the way for its
+downfall. They were waged mainly with Elam, the only civilized country
+of Western Asia which still preserved its independence, and lasted for
+several years. At last, however, Elam fell; its capital Shushan was
+sacked and burned, and a desolated country was added to the Assyrian
+dominions.
+
+The fame of Assur-bani-pal spread far and wide. Ambassadors came to his
+court from Ararat, as well as from Gyges of Lydia. At first no
+interpreter could be found for the latter. Gyges wanted help against
+the Kimmerians, which, however, 'the great king' does not seem to have
+afforded. The tribute of Gyges was accordingly withdrawn after a time,
+and he took part in the great rebellion which now shook the Assyrian
+empire to its foundations.
+
+Saul-suma-yukin put himself at its head, and proclaimed the
+independence of Babylonia. Psammetikhos, the son of Necho of Sais,
+imitated his example in Egypt, and with the assistance of Gyges put
+down the rival satraps, shook off the Assyrian yoke and founded the
+Twenty-sixth dynasty. Saul-suma-yukin was less fortunate. After a
+desperate struggle he was captured and put to death by his brother, and
+Babylonia was once more reduced to servitude. Punishment was also taken
+upon the tribes of northern Arabia who had joined the rebels.
+
+But the empire was terribly weakened. Egypt was lost to it for ever,
+and though Elam was added instead, it proved to be a barren possession.
+When Tuktamme the 'Manda' appeared upon the scene he was resisted with
+difficulty. The empire was tottering to its fall.
+
+Of its closing days we know but little from the monuments. Among the
+successors of Assur-bani-pal were Assur-etil-ilani-yukin (who still
+claimed rule in Babylonia), and Sin-sar-iskun. The latter has sometimes
+been identified with Sarakos, said by the Greek writer Abydênos to
+have been the last king of Assyria[5]. At all events the fall and
+destruction of Nineveh may be placed in B.C. 606.
+
+        [5] A contract-tablet exists dated at Sippara in the second
+        year of Sin-sar-iskun, which shows that the rule of the king
+        was acknowledged in Babylonia.
+
+
+The Babylonian Empire.--On its ruins rose the Babylonian empire of
+Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabopolassar. The battle of Carchemish
+placed him in possession of Syria, which the Egyptians had occupied
+after the fall of Nineveh. The battle was scarcely over when
+Nebuchadrezzar was recalled to Babylon by the death of his father (B.C.
+605). Unlike the Assyrian kings, he cared but little about recording
+his successes in war. His inscriptions are occupied with the account of
+his building operations, of his gifts to the gods, and of his devotion
+to Bel-Merodach. Under him Babylon became one of the most splendid
+cities in the world. Its palaces, its temples, its hanging gardens and
+its walls were alike on a vast and magnificent scale. The temples were
+roofed with cedar of Lebanon, overlaid with gold and silver, and the
+ramparts of the royal house were finished in fifteen days. The suburb
+of Borsippa was included within the fortifications of the city, which
+were so strong as to be practicably impregnable. At the same time the
+other cities of Babylonia were not forgotten, and their temples were
+enlarged and beautified.
+
+In B.C. 568 Nebuchadrezzar marched into Egypt, defeated the Pharaoh
+Amasis and occupied a part at least of the Delta. 'Phut of the Ionians'
+is mentioned in connexion with this campaign. It is the only military
+expedition mentioned in the texts we possess; even the monuments of
+Nebuchadrezzar found in Syria (at the mouth of the Nahr el-Kelb near
+Beyrout and in the Wadi Brissa near the ancient Riblah) are silent
+about his wars.
+
+He was a great organizer, a great builder, and above all a man of
+genuine piety, which breathes through all his inscriptions. When he
+died, B.C. 562, he was succeeded by his son Evil-Merodach, who
+reigned only two years. Then the throne was usurped by a certain
+Nergal-sharezer (the son of Bel-zakir-iskun) who had married the
+daughter of Nebuchadrezzar. Nergal-sharezer built himself a new palace
+and died B.C. 556. He was followed by his infant son who reigned only
+three months, when he was murdered and the throne seized by Nabonidos
+(Nabu-nahid), the son of Nebo-balasu-iqbi, who was not related to the
+royal family. Nabonidos was a man of some energy, but he offended a
+powerful party in Babylonia by attempting to do what Hezekiah had done
+in Jerusalem--centralize the religious worship of the country and
+therewith the political power in the capital. Nabonidos was also an
+antiquarian and caused excavations to be made in the different temples
+of Babylonia in order to discover the records of their founders.
+
+We are now well acquainted with the history of Nabonidos and the fall
+of his empire, thanks to three cuneiform documents which have been
+found in Babylonia. One is an inscription of Nabonidos himself; another
+an edict issued by Cyrus shortly after his conquest of the country; and
+the third the annals of the reign of Nabonidos, compiled the year after
+his overthrow. The empire of Nabonidos, we learn, extended as far
+westward as Gaza, but the 'Manda' or 'Nomads' of whom Astyages
+(Istuvegu) was king had devastated part of Western Asia and had
+destroyed the temple of the Moon-god at Harran. It was not until Cyrus,
+'the little servant' of Astyages, had overthrown the Manda that
+Nabonidos was able to enter Harran and rebuild the ruined shrine.
+
+
+Cyrus and the Fall of Babylon.--Cyrus, like his fathers, was king of
+Anzan in Elam, not of Persia. Anzan had been first occupied, it would
+appear, by his great-grandfather Teispes the Achaemenian. The conquest
+of Astyages and of his capital Ekbatana took place in B.C. 549, and a
+year or two later Cyrus obtained possession of Persia. In B.C. 538 the
+population in the south of Babylonia revolted, and Cyrus entered the
+country, where he was assisted by the native party which was hostile to
+Nabonidos. The Babylonian army was stationed in northern Babylonia, but
+it was utterly defeated at Opis in the month of Tammuz or June, and
+on the 14th of the month Sippara opened its gates to the conqueror.
+Gobryas, the governor of Kurdistan, was then sent by Cyrus against
+Babylon, which also opened its gates 'without fighting,' and Nabonidos,
+who had concealed himself, was taken prisoner. Gobryas placed the
+temple of Bel under a guard, and the daily services there proceeded as
+usual. The contract-tablets show that there was equally little
+cessation of business among the mercantile classes. But it was not
+until the 3rd of Marchesvan (October) that Cyrus himself arrived in
+Babylon and proclaimed a general amnesty, which was communicated by
+Gobryas to 'all the province of Babylon' of which he had been made
+governor. Shortly afterwards the wife of Nabonidos died; lamentation
+was made for her throughout Babylonia, and Kambyses, the son of Cyrus,
+conducted her funeral in one of the Babylonian temples.
+
+[Illustration: THE CYLINDER INSCRIPTION OF CYRUS.]
+
+Meanwhile Cyrus had assumed the title of 'King of Babylon,' thus
+claiming to be the legitimate descendant of the ancient Babylonian
+kings. He announced himself as the devoted worshipper of Bel and Nebo,
+who by the command of Merodach had overthrown the sacrilegious usurper
+Nabonidos, and he and his son accordingly offered sacrifices to ten
+times the usual amount in the Babylonian temples, and restored the
+images of the gods to their ancient shrines. At the same time he
+allowed the foreign populations who had been deported to Babylonia to
+return to their homes along with the statues of their gods. Among these
+foreign populations, as we know from the Old Testament, were the Jews.
+
+
+Belshazzar.--One of the sons of Nabonidos was Belshazzar, who is
+mentioned in the contract-tablets as well as by his father. He seems
+to have been 'the king's son' who commanded the Babylonian army in
+its camp near Sippara. If so, it would appear that he had died or
+been slain before the final invasion of Babylonia by Cyrus, since
+no reference is made to him on that occasion, and the pretenders
+who afterwards rose against Darius in Babylonia called themselves
+not Belshazzar but 'Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabonidos.'
+
+
+Decay of Babylon.--It was after the death of Kambyses and of the
+Pseudo-Smerdis that these revolts took place in B.C. 521 and 515(?).
+The first was a serious one, and was suppressed only after two
+engagements in the field and a siege of Babylon. The second revolt also
+needed a long siege for its suppression, and at its conclusion Darius
+partially destroyed the walls of the city. But in the reign of Xerxes,
+during the absence of the king in Greece, Babylon revolted again under
+a certain Samas-erba, who reigned for about a year. On the fall of
+this champion of Babylonian independence, the temple of Bel, the
+rallying-place of Babylonian nationality, was in part destroyed. From
+this time forward the only kings mentioned in the cuneiform tablets are
+foreigners, Persians, Greeks, and Parthians. The last dated tablet at
+present known to us is almost as late as the Christian era. It is an
+astrological text which is dated in the 168th year of Seleucus and the
+232nd year of Arsakes, that is to say in B.C. 80.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+RELIGION
+
+
+The religions of Babylonia and Assyria.--The religion of Assyria was
+borrowed from that of Babylonia. The deities worshipped in the two
+countries were the same, as also were the ritual and the religious
+beliefs of the people. Almost the only difference observable in the
+religion of the two kingdoms was that whereas Bel-Merodach was the
+supreme god of Babylon, Assur, the impersonation of the old capital,
+was the supreme god of Assyria.
+
+
+Differences between Babylonian and Assyrian religion.--But the
+different characters of the two populations were reflected in their
+religious conceptions. The Assyrians were a nation of warriors, the
+Babylonians of traders, agriculturists, and scribes. Assur is
+accordingly 'a man of war'; it was in reliance upon him that the
+Assyrian armies marched into foreign lands, and compelled their
+inhabitants to acknowledge him. Not to believe in Assur was a crime,
+since Assur represented Assyria. Assur, too, admitted no rival at his
+side: wifeless and childless he stood alone. Once or twice, indeed, an
+Assyrian scribe ascribes to him a wife or a child, but this is in
+imitation of Babylonian usage and the belief never took root in
+Assyria.
+
+Bel-Merodach, on the contrary, was a god of mercy. He is 'the merciful
+one' who hearkens to those that call upon him and who 'raises the dead
+to life' through trust in his power. Belat, or Beltis, 'the lady,'
+stood at his side, a reflection of himself, and the gods were his
+children who recognized him as their father and creator.
+
+
+Sumerian religion Shamanistic.--Babylonian religion was a compound of
+Sumerian and Semitic elements. Sumerian religion had originally been
+'Shamanistic' in character. That is to say it had no conception of
+deities or priests in the usual sense of the words. Each object or
+force of nature was believed to have its _zi_ or 'life' like men and
+beasts; the _zi_ was a sort of vital principle which caused the arrow
+to fly, the knife to wound, or the stars to move through the heaven. A
+personality was given to it, and it thus became what we may term a
+spirit. With these spirits, accordingly, the sky and earth were
+peopled; they were in fact as multitudinous as the objects and forces
+of nature to which they owed their birth. Necessarily the greater
+number of them were harmful, if not always at any rate at certain
+times and in certain places. Magical charms alone could protect man
+from their malevolence or bring down their blessing upon him, and
+these magical charms and ceremonies were known only to a particular
+class of persons. To such sorcerer-priests the name of 'shamans' has
+been assigned, the form of religion represented by them being termed
+'Shamanistic.'
+
+
+Two centres of Babylonian religion.--In prehistoric times two great
+religious centres existed in Babylonia, from which two divergent
+streams of religious influence flowed over the country. One of these
+was Nipur in the north, the other Eridu in the south. Nipur was the
+seat of Shamanism, and its patron deity in later days still retained
+the title of Mul-lil or El-lil, 'the lord of the ghost-world.' Eridu,
+on the other hand, was brought by its trade and situation into contact
+with foreign culture. It thus became the source of a higher and more
+spiritual form of faith. The spirit of the water, who had been its
+special object of adoration, became the culture-god Ea, the lord of the
+abyss, who is called Oannes in the Greek history of Bêrôssos and was
+believed to have been the author of Babylonian culture. To him its
+laws, its arts, and its sciences were alike traced back. Through his
+wisdom his son Asari-mulu-dugga, 'Asari who benefits mankind,' was
+enabled to cure the diseases and troubles of men, and teach them how to
+avoid evil. His teachings were embodied in writing, and so a sacred
+book grew up, half Bible, half Ritual, which contained hymns to the
+gods as well as rubrics for the performance of the ceremonies
+accompanying their recitation.
+
+Under the influence of Eridu the religion of Babylonia ceased to be so
+purely Shamanistic as it once had been. Certain of the spirits tended
+to take rank above their fellows and thus to pass into gods. How long
+this process of development lasted we do not know.
+
+
+Semitic Influence.--But a time came when the Semites entered the
+country and were brought into close contact, hostile or peaceable, with
+its Sumerian inhabitants. The result was a fusion of Sumerian and
+Semitic religious ideas. An official religion came into existence which
+consisted of a Semitic form of faith grafted upon a Sumerian root.
+
+The religion of the Semite was essentially different from that of the
+Sumerian. The primary object of his worship was the Baal, Bel, or
+'Lord,' who revealed himself in the sun. Each tribe and each locality
+had its own Baal; when the tribes coalesced or when the same tribe
+occupied more than one locality the various Baals were regarded as so
+many forms of the supreme God.
+
+Each Baal was the father of a family. At his side stood his wife, a
+colourless reflection of himself, as the wife was of the husband in the
+Semitic family on earth. Like the father of the family on earth, Baal
+too in heaven had his children.
+
+Where the religions of the Semite and the Sumerian met and combined,
+the Sumerian spirits who had emerged above the rest like Ea of Eridu or
+El-lil of Nipur, were assimilated to the Semitic Baalim. El-lil, in
+fact, was known throughout the Semitic period as Bel of Nipur. Wherever
+it was possible a solar character was given to them; in other cases the
+general characteristics of the Semitic deity were attached to the old
+Sumerian divinity. The great body of the spirits which had fallen into
+the background was grouped together as the 300 spirits of heaven
+(_Igigi_) and the 600 spirits of earth (_Anunnaki_).
+
+
+The goddess Istar.--In one instance, however, it was the Semite rather
+than the Sumerian who was affected by the contact between the two forms
+of faith. The spirit of the evening star became the goddess Istar, who
+retained her independent position by the side of the male deities.
+While the other goddesses were absorbed in the persons of their divine
+consorts like the wife in the Semitic family, Istar, having no consort,
+remained like the wife in the Sumerian family on a footing of equality
+with the man. When the name and worship of Istar were passed on to the
+Semitic peoples of the West, the anomaly led to more than one change in
+her character. In southern Arabia and Moab she was identified with a
+male deity; in Canaan her name received the feminine suffix _-th_
+(Ashtoreth), and she thus became in large measure an ordinary Semitic
+goddess.
+
+
+Bel-Merodach.--After the rise of Babylon as the capital of the kingdom,
+its patron-god Merodach became the supreme Baal or Bel of Babylonia. He
+had already been identified with Asari-mulu-dugga, the son of Ea, and
+the attributes of the latter were accordingly transferred to the new
+Bel. It was to him that the great temple of Ê-Saggil was erected in
+Babylon, while the interpreter of his will to men, Nebo, the divine
+'prophet,' had his temple Ê-Zida in the neighbouring suburb of
+Borsippa. At Nipur a god whose name has been variously read Uras,
+Nin-ip, Bar and Adar, but the true pronunciation of which is still
+unknown, stood in much the same relation to El-lil that Nebo did to
+Merodach. He was, however, regarded as a solar warrior instead of as a
+prophet.
+
+
+Other deities.--Nergal was worshipped in Kutha and its cemeteries;
+Samas, 'the Sun,' at Sippara; Sin, 'the Moon,' at Ur and Harran; Anu,
+'the Sky,' at Erech, where he was associated with Istar. Along with Ea
+and Bel of Nipur, Anu formed a triad which represented in the official
+religion the three elementary deities of the sea, the earth, and the
+heavens. The sea, however, was rather the primordial 'deep' out of
+which all things arose than the sea of the actual world, while 'the
+heaven of Anu' was beyond the visible sky, and Bel was the prince of
+the air and the underworld.
+
+[Illustration: WINGED BULL OR HOUSE-GUARDIAN.]
+
+
+Sacred books and ritual.--Along with the growth of the official
+religion went the growth and completion of the Chaldaean Bible and
+Prayer-book. The festivals of the gods were numerous; the ceremonies to
+be performed by the priests were more numerous still. The ceremonies
+were usually accompanied by the recitation of one or more hymns; these
+hymns were written in Sumerian, which had now become the sacred
+language of Chaldaea just as Latin is the sacred language of the Roman
+Church, and since Sumerian was no longer understood by the majority of
+the people they were provided with interlinear translations into
+Semitic Babylonian. From time to time the pronunciation of the old
+Sumerian words was indicated, for just as it was needful that the
+inspired words should be handed down without the slightest alteration,
+so also was it needful that they should be pronounced aright. An error
+even in pronunciation was supposed to invalidate the ceremony. Among
+the hymns is a collection of penitential psalms of which the following
+lines will give some idea:--
+
+    'O lord, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!
+    O my god, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!
+    O my goddess, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!
+
+
+    The lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me;
+    God in the fierceness of his heart has revealed himself to me.
+    The goddess has been violent against me, and has put me to grief.
+
+
+    I sought for help and none took my hand;
+    I wept and none stood at my side;
+    I cried aloud and there was none that heard me.
+    To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer.
+
+
+    O my god, seven times seven are my transgressions: forgive my sins!'
+
+
+The Priests.--The existence of a hierarchy of gods, of a Bible, and
+of a Prayer-book implies the existence of a priesthood. The sorcerer
+of prehistoric times became the priest of later Babylonia. The
+priests were distinguished into several classes. At the head came the
+High-priest who was often the monarch; in Assyria indeed this was
+commonly the case. Subordinate to him were other high-priests, and
+under them again the 'anointers' (who cleansed the sacred vessels of
+the sanctuary), the priests of Istar and the 'elders.' By the side of
+them stood the 'prophets' (_asipi_) under a 'chief.' The prophets
+could predict the future and were consulted on matters of state. We
+hear of armies being accompanied by them into the field, and when
+Assur-bani-pal suppressed the revolt of the Babylonians 'by the
+command of the prophets,' he says, 'I purified their shrines and
+cleansed their chief places of prayer. The angry gods and wrathful
+goddesses I soothed with supplications and penitential psalms. I
+restored and established in peace their daily sacrifices which they
+had discontinued.'
+
+
+The Temples.--The temples were provided with towers which served for
+the observation of the stars, and stood within large courts. In the
+shrine was a 'mercy-seat' whereon the god 'seated himself' on certain
+occasions. At Balawât near Nineveh the mercy-seat had the form of a
+coffer or ark, in which two written tables of stone were placed. In
+front of it stood the altar approached by steps. In the court was a
+'sea' or large basin of water, which like that of Solomon was, in one
+case at all events, supported on bulls of bronze. The images of the
+gods were almost invariably of human form.
+
+
+Astro-theology.--The prominence given to the study of astronomy had
+much to do with giving Babylonian religion an astral character. The
+stars were worshipped; Istar herself was originally the evening star,
+and most of the principal deities were identified with the planets and
+chief fixed stars. The importance of the stars for the regulation of
+the calendar, moreover, kept them constantly before the eyes of the
+priests. But whether Babylonian astrotheology was not really primitive
+or whether it went back to the pre-Semitic period we do not yet know.
+
+
+Sacrifices and offerings.--Sacrifices were offered to the stars, as to
+the other divinities. Besides the sacrifices, offerings were also made
+of meal, dates, oil, and wine. The sacrifices and offerings must have
+been numerous since in the larger temples there was not only 'the
+daily sacrifice' but also constant services both by day and night. On
+the great festivals, moreover, there were services of a special
+character, as also when days of thanksgiving or humiliation were
+ordained. The sacrifices and offerings were provided partly by
+endowments, partly by voluntary gifts (sometimes called _kurbanni_,
+the Hebrew _korban_), partly by obligatory contributions, the most
+important of which were the 'tithes.'
+
+
+The Sabbath.--Besides the festivals of the gods there was a _sabattu_
+or 'Sabbath,' observed on the 9th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th day of
+the month, on which various kinds of work were forbidden to be done.
+Food even was not allowed to be cooked, or medicine to be taken. The
+_sabattu_ is described as 'a day of rest for the heart,' and a
+'free-will offering' had to be made in the night of it.
+
+
+Monotheistic tendency.--Among the educated classes religious feeling
+seems to have been fervent, and at times the language used approaches
+that of monotheism. Thus in an early hymn to the Moon-god which was
+composed in the city of Ur, we read:--
+
+    'Father, long-suffering and full of forgiveness, whose hand upholds
+      the life of all mankind!...
+    First-born, omnipotent, whose heart is immensity, and there is none
+      who may fathom it!...
+    In heaven, who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme!
+    On earth, who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme!'
+
+So, again, Nebuchadrezzar prays as follows to Bel-Merodach:--
+
+    'O prince, thou art from everlasting, lord of all that exists, for
+    the king whom thou lovest, whom thou callest by name, as it seems
+    good to thee, thou guidest his name aright, thou watchest over him
+    in the path of righteousness. I, the prince who obeys thee, am the
+    work of thy hands; thou hast created me and hast entrusted to me
+    the sovereignty over multitudes of men, according to thy goodness,
+    O lord, which thou hast made to pass over them all. Let me love thy
+    supreme lordship, let the fear of thy divinity exist in my heart,
+    and give what seemeth good to thee, since thou maintainest my
+    life.'
+
+
+The future life.--The mass of the people, however, were sunk in the
+grossest superstition, and the future to which they looked forward was
+sufficiently dreary. Hades lay beneath the earth, where the spirits of
+the dead flitted about like bats in darkness with dust only for their
+food. A happier lot was reserved for the few, and a prayer is made for
+an Assyrian king that after death he should ascend to 'the land of the
+silver sky.'
+
+
+Cosmology.--In early Sumerian days the heaven was believed to rest on
+the peak of 'the mountain of the world,' in the far north-east, where
+the gods had their habitations (cf. Isa. xiv. 13), while an ocean or
+'deep' encircled the earth which rested upon its surface. With the
+progress of knowledge truer ideas of geography came to prevail. The
+later cosmogony is represented in the first tablet of the Creation
+story where the old gods are resolved into cosmical elements. The
+'deep' is said to have been 'the generator' of the heavens and the
+earth, 'Mummu-Tiamat' (the chaos of the sea) being 'the mother of them
+all.... At that time the gods had not appeared.... Then the [great]
+gods were created, Lakhmu and Lakhamu issued forth the first.' Next
+came the creation of An-sar and Ki-sar, 'the upper' and 'lower
+firmament,' who in their turn gave birth to Anu, Ea, and Bel. The
+struggle between Merodach, the god of light and order, with Tiamat, the
+dragon of darkness, chaos, and evil, occupied a prominent place in the
+Epic of the Creation. Along with Tiamat there were ranged in battle the
+evil creatures of night and destruction, most of whom had composite
+forms. The belief in them had been inherited from the age of Shamanism,
+and they were regarded as the products of a first and imperfect
+creation. Some of them came to symbolize the powers of darkness, others
+were transported to the skies, certain of the allies of Tiamat being
+the Zodiacal animals, while out of the skin of Tiamat Merodach
+constructed the heaven itself. In the Epic Tiamat is identified with
+the source of the fountains of the great deep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN LITERATURE
+
+
+Aids to the reading of the texts.--The origin of the cuneiform system
+of writing has been already described, as well as its chief
+peculiarities. We must now say something about the causes which have
+led to our being able to read an ordinary Assyrian text almost as
+easily as a page of the Old Testament.
+
+(1) The 'determinatives' have already been mentioned which define so
+many words and names.
+
+(2) The ideographs often prove a great assistance, as words of unknown
+meaning interchange with ideographs the signification of which is
+already known.
+
+(3) The fact that the characters express syllables gives us the precise
+pronunciation of the words, and so enables us to read them with a
+certainty which is impossible in Hebrew or Phoenician where the vowels
+are not denoted in writing.
+
+(4) Assyrian is a Semitic language, and the Semitic languages are as
+closely related to one another as are the Romanic languages (French,
+Italian, Spanish, &c.) in modern Europe. Consequently most of the words
+and grammatical forms found in Assyrian recur in one or other of the
+Semitic idioms.
+
+(5) But above all, the Assyrian scribes themselves have provided us
+with the most abundant materials for interpreting the inscriptions.
+
+
+The libraries.--The amount of Assyro-Babylonian literature already
+known is very large. If all the texts at present in the museums of
+Europe and America could be published, they would rival in extent the
+books of the Old Testament. Most of the texts are on tablets of clay
+and have come from the libraries of Nineveh and Babylonia. Every great
+Babylonian city had at least one library, and the Assyrian kings
+established other libraries in their own country in imitation of those
+of Babylonia. About two-thirds of the library of Nineveh, which was
+largely the creation of Assur-bani-pal, is now in the British Museum.
+Scribes were kept constantly at work there copying and re-editing old
+texts, and sometimes writing new ones. A considerable proportion of the
+texts was brought from Babylonia: a colophon attached to each tablet
+usually states from what library the text had originally come. The
+texts were carefully edited; when there was a lacuna in the original
+the scribe tells us so, and whether it was old or recent; also if the
+Babylonian character were one which he did not recognize he confesses
+that he could not read it. Besides the clay tablets, the libraries
+contained papyri which have now perished.
+
+
+Varieties of literature.--The texts related to all the branches of
+knowledge studied at the time. Astronomy and astrology, mathematics,
+geography, medicine, law, history, religion, and mythology, private and
+public correspondence, mercantile transactions, political documents,
+the pseudo-science of omens, lists of beasts, birds, vegetables, and
+stones, are all represented in it, and last, but not least, philology.
+The necessity of translating and explaining the Sumerian texts
+doubtless gave philology so prominent a place. Under the head of
+philology come interlinear and parallel translations of Sumerian
+documents, together with commentaries and exercises, reading-books and
+grammars of the two languages, endless lists of characters with their
+phonetic values and significations, and numerous vocabularies partly
+bilingual, partly containing catalogues of Semitic synonyms. The
+decipherer thus has at his command a most elaborate system for learning
+the Assyrian and Sumerian languages compiled by the Assyrians
+themselves. Time after time the signification of a new word is given by
+its synonym or synonyms in the lexical lists, and words of uncertain
+meaning in Hebrew have more than once been settled by means of their
+Assyrian equivalents.
+
+
+The texts autotypes.--The cuneiform texts further possess an advantage
+of which the student of the Old and New Testament Scriptures might well
+be envious. They are the autotypes of the scribes who wrote them for
+the libraries in the ruins of which they have been found. The texts
+have never passed through the hands of later copyists little acquainted
+with the language in which they were composed. The corruptions of the
+text, such as they are, go back to the scribes of Assur-bani-pal or
+Nebuchadrezzar, in some cases to the scribes even of the pre-Semitic
+period.
+
+[Illustration: PART OF AN ASSYRIAN BOOK.]
+
+
+Astronomy.--The great work on astronomy and astrology in seventy-two
+chapters or books was originally compiled for the library of Sargon of
+Accad. It contained chapters on the eclipses or conjunction of the sun
+and moon, on the planets, the fixed stars, and the comets, and proves
+that observations of the heavens had been made for a long while
+previous to its composition. The path of the sun through the signs of
+the Zodiac had already been mapped out: in fact the Zodiacal Signs owe
+their origin to the astronomers of Babylonia. At the time they were
+first named the vernal equinox began with Taurus.
+
+
+Mathematics.--Among the mathematical treatises may be mentioned tables
+of cube and square roots from the library of Senkereh. The Babylonian
+system of notation resembled that of the Romans, but by an ingenious
+application of the sexagesimal system high numbers could be expressed
+in a very small number of figures.
+
+
+Medicine and law.--The standard work on medicine was voluminous like
+that on astronomy. It contained a vast number of prescriptions for
+different diseases, which read very much like modern ones. Law occupied
+a large space in Babylonian and Assyrian life, and codes of law, which
+protected the slave as well as the woman, went back to Sumerian times.
+A considerable part of the law was based on cases which had already
+been decided by the judges. The judges were appointed by the king, and,
+at all events in a later age, were under a president. Important cases
+were heard before several judges at once; thus a case which was tried
+at Babylon in B.C. 547 was heard before six judges and registered by
+their two clerks.
+
+
+History and mythology.--Historical documents are numerous and include
+the lists of Assyrian eponyms, after whom the successive years were
+named, as well as of the dynasties of kings and the number of years
+each king reigned. Religious literature, however, was still more
+largely represented. As has been stated, a considerable portion of it
+consisted of hymns to the gods, psalms, and ritual texts. But there
+were also lists of the multitudinous deities and their temples, and
+more especially religious myths and legends. One of these described the
+visit of the goddess Istar to Hades in search of her dead husband
+Tammuz, the Sun-god, and told how she left some of her adornment at
+each of its seven gates, until at last she stood stripped and bare
+before the mistress of the Underworld, where the waters of life gush
+forth. In another the adventures of the first man Adapa are related,
+and how he was summoned to heaven to answer the charge of having broken
+the wings of the south-wind. We possess two fragments of this myth, the
+earlier part being written on a broken tablet which was found in the
+library of Nineveh, while the latter part of it has been found on one
+of the cuneiform documents discovered at Tel el-Amarna in Egypt, where
+it had been copied for Egyptian or Canaanite students some eight
+centuries before the library of Nineveh was in existence.
+
+
+The Chaldaean epic and the Deluge.--One of the most famous of the
+legends is the Chaldaean account of the Deluge, which was discovered by
+George Smith in 1872. Its close resemblance to the Biblical account of
+the same event is well known. It embodied at least two earlier versions
+of the story, and in its present form is inserted as an episode in the
+great Epic of the Babylonian hero Gilgames. The Epic was composed by
+a certain Sin-liqi-unnini in twelve books, and was arranged on an
+astronomical principle, the subject of each book corresponding with the
+name of a Zodiacal sign. Thus the account of the Deluge is introduced
+into the eleventh book, which answers to Aquarius the eleventh sign of
+the Zodiac.
+
+Gilgames, it was said, was the fated child of whom it had been
+prophesied that he would slay his grandfather. Though his mother had
+been confined in a tower, he was nevertheless born and conveyed to
+safety on the wings of an eagle. When grown to man's estate he saved
+Erech from the enemy and made it the seat of his dominion. He overthrew
+Khumbaba the tyrant of the forest of cedars, and found a friend and
+guide in the satyr Ea-bani. The goddess Istar wooed him in marriage,
+but he reproached her with the woes she had already brought on her
+hapless lovers and scorned her beauty. In revenge she besought Anu, her
+father, to create a winged bull, which should attack the hero.
+Gilgames, however, slew the bull and returned in triumph to Erech with
+his spoils. But misfortune fell upon him. Ea-bani was killed by the
+bite of a gad-fly, his soul rising up from the ground to the heaven of
+heroes, and Gilgames himself was smitten with a sore disease. To heal
+it he sailed beyond the mouth of the Euphrates and the river of death,
+and here conversed with Xisuthrus, the Chaldaean Noah, who, like Enoch,
+had been translated without seeing death. Xisuthrus told him the story
+of the Deluge, and instructed him how to cure his malady.
+
+
+Epic of the Creation.--The Assyrian Epic of the Creation, the discovery
+of which was also due to George Smith, has already been alluded to. Its
+parallelism with the account of the Creation, in the first chapter of
+Genesis, was noticed from the first. The first tablet opens with a
+description of the deep or watery chaos, while the fifth tablet
+describes the appointment of the heavenly bodies for signs and for
+seasons, and in the seventh comes an account of the creation of the
+animals. The second and third tablets, however, and possibly the
+fourth, were occupied with the story of the struggle between Tiamat the
+dragon of darkness, and Merodach the Sun-god, which finds its echo in
+the Apocalypse (Rev. xii. 7-9). Out of the skin of Tiamat, Merodach
+formed the firmament which 'divided the waters which were under the
+firmament from the waters which were above it.' Other accounts of the
+Creation existed, which differed essentially from that of the Epic.
+Thus there was one that was written for the Library of Kutha and
+described an imperfect creation which foreshadowed as it were the
+present one. Mr. Pinches, again, has discovered a Sumerian legend of
+the origin of things which seems to have been current at Eridu. But in
+the Epic a considerable number of the older cosmological legends were
+embodied and combined, and a gloss of materialistic philosophy put upon
+them. It is this gloss which makes it difficult to believe that the
+Epic can be of much antiquity. The materials of which it is composed
+doubtless go back to an early period, but in its present form it
+belongs to an age when the deities of the old faith were resolved into
+philosophical abstractions and the forces of nature. At present, at all
+events, we have no reasons for thinking that it is earlier than the
+time of the Second Assyrian Empire.
+
+[Illustration: CONTRACT-TABLETS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SOCIAL LIFE
+
+
+The Contract-tablets.--We have learnt a great deal about the social
+life of Babylonia and Assyria from the contract-tablets which have been
+found in enormous numbers in Babylonia. A few have also come from the
+library of Nineveh, relating for the most part to the sale and lease of
+house property. Some of them have Aramaic dockets attached to them,
+giving the names of the persons mentioned in the contract and the
+nature of its contents. These dockets serve to verify the method of
+cuneiform decipherment, and are an indication that in the time of
+Tiglath-pileser III and his successors Aramaic was the common language
+of trade.
+
+Some of the Babylonian contract-tablets go back to the time of
+Khammurabi and his dynasty, and are in Sumerian. But the larger number
+are of much later date, and extend from the reign of Kandalanu, the
+predecessor of Nabopolassar, to that of Xerxes. For many years we have
+a continuous series of documents dated month by month in each year. A
+contract-tablet was often enclosed in an envelope of clay, on which its
+principal contents were inscribed. They were kept in large jars which
+answered to our modern safes.
+
+
+Married Life.--From the contracts relating to matrimony we learn that
+polygamy was very rare, and that the wife enjoyed a considerable amount
+of independence. The dowry she brought with her on marriage had to be
+restored to her in case of divorce. Moreover the woman could act apart
+from her husband, entering into partnership, trading with her money and
+conducting law-suits in her own name. In B.C. 555 we find a father
+transferring all his property to his daughter, and reserving only the
+use of it during the rest of his life. On the other hand wives, like
+concubines, could sometimes be purchased, though in this case if the
+husband married again he stipulated that he would send his first wife
+back to her home along with a certain sum of money. Children could be
+adopted, and there was the utmost freedom as regards the devolution of
+property, which could be 'tied up' by will.
+
+
+Burial.--The dead were buried after complete or partial cremation. With
+the exception of the kings they were interred in cemeteries outside the
+towns, tombs and tombstones being erected over them, with rivulets,
+which symbolized 'the water of life,' flowing at their side.
+
+
+Slavery.--Slavery was an ancient institution, but the slave was
+protected by law as far back as the Sumerian period. In later times he
+could even appear as party to a suit, and could recover his freedom by
+manumission, by purchase, by proving that he had been unlawfully
+enslaved, or by his adoption into the family of a citizen. Slaves could
+be impressed into the royal service, so that in selling a slave it was
+usual to stipulate that the seller should be responsible for any
+trouble arising from such a cause. Poor parents sometimes sold their
+children into slavery, and the Sumerian law ordered a son who denied
+his father to be shorn and sold as a slave.
+
+
+Lowness of Wages.--Few persons were so poor as not to be able to keep
+one slave at least. But the existence of slavery caused wages to be
+low, and lowered the character and position of the free labourer. Thus
+we find that a skilled labourer, like a coppersmith, received only six
+_qas_ (about 8-1/2 quarts) of flour for overlaying a chariot with a
+lining of copper, and that only 1_s._ 6_d._ was paid for painting the
+stucco of a wall.
+
+
+Property.--The tenure of a farm was of various kinds. Sometimes the
+property belonged half to the landlord, half to the tenant, the tenant
+doing all the work and handing the landlord's half of the produce to
+his agent. Sometimes while the tenant gave his work, the landlord
+provided him with carts, oxen, and other necessaries. At other times
+the tenant received only a third, a fourth, or even a tenth of the
+produce, besides paying a fixed rent of two-thirds of the dates
+gathered from the palms on the estate. The landlord could dismiss the
+tenant, who was also required to build the farm house if one did not
+already exist.
+
+When house property or land was let or sold it was minutely described,
+and numerous witnesses to the deed of sale or lease were required. The
+length of the lease as well as the rent had to be stated, any
+transgression of the terms of the lease being punished with a severe
+fine. The tenant had to return the property in the state in which he
+found it. The rent of course depended on the size and value of the
+property, and could be paid half-yearly as well as three times a year.
+Houses, further, might be bought and sold through the intervention of
+an agent.
+
+
+Taxes.--Taxation was probably heavy. In the time of Sennacherib,
+Nineveh had to pay the treasury 30 talents a year, while Carchemish
+was assessed at 100 talents. Taxes were also levied in kind, and there
+was an _octroi_ duty upon goods entering the town. The metal,--gold,
+silver, and bronze,--was measured out by weight, a coinage not making
+its appearance until late in Babylonian history, though, as in Egypt,
+rings of gold or silver, which took the place of coins, were used at
+an early time.
+
+
+Prices.--The value of grain and dates necessarily varied from time to
+time. Under Nebuchadrezzar, the quart of sesame cost a little over a
+penny, in the twelfth year of Nabonidos it was a little less than
+1-1/2_d._ In the seventh year of Nebuchadrezzar dates were about a
+halfpenny a quart, in his thirty-eighth year the quart was only 1/25
+of a penny. In the reign of Cambyses a quart of corn cost 2-1/2_d._
+
+The prices of other things were higher. In the reign of Darius a lady
+sold 200 sheep for £135, in that of Nebuchadrezzar an ox, sacrificed
+in the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara, cost £2. We hear of asses
+sold for £7 10_s._, and £2, and of five casks of wine purchased for £1
+10_s._
+
+
+Usury.--Deeds of partnership are common; so also are deeds relating
+to money-lending. The usurer, in fact, was a prominent person in the
+trading community of Babylonia. Under Nebuchadrezzar and his successors
+the usual rate of interest was 20 per cent., the interest being paid
+each month, though we also hear of 13-1/3 per cent. In concluding a
+bargain, it was usually stipulated that if the money were not paid by a
+specified date, interest should be paid upon it until it was paid in
+full.
+
+
+The Army.--By the side of the commercial class stood a numerous body
+of military and civil officials. At the head of the Assyrian army was
+the Tartan (_turtannu_) or Commander-in-chief, and under him came a
+large staff of officers. The army itself was highly organized. In
+addition to the infantry and cavalry there were numerous chariots, in
+one of which the king rode when he commanded in person. In the time of
+Tiglath-pileser III, saddles, leathern drawers, and high boots were
+introduced for the cavalry, and a corps of slingers and pioneers was
+created by Sennacherib. The infantry were divided into heavy-armed and
+light-armed, many of the heavy-armed wearing coats of mail formed of
+metal scales sewn to a leather shirt. Helmets were largely used, as
+well as shields. The army carried with it on the march various engines
+for attacking the walls of a town--battering-rams, ladders, crow-bars,
+and the like--as well as tents. The royal tent was accompanied by a
+cooking and a dining-tent, and was elaborately furnished. We learn
+from the contract-tablets, that in the reign of Nabonidos, rather more
+than 2-1/2 bushels of wheat were furnished to each of the bowmen,
+while 54 _qas_ (75 quarts) of beer were provided on a particular day,
+'for the troops which had marched from Babylon.'
+
+
+Navy.--A fleet was kept in Babylonia, and the king had a State-barge on
+the Euphrates. The Assyrians, however, were not a naval people, and the
+biremes, employed by Sennacherib when he attacked the Chaldaean colony
+in the Persian Gulf, were built and manned by Phoenicians.
+
+
+The Bureaucracy.--The prefects or satraps of the Assyrian provinces
+and subject cities were appointed by the king, like the military
+officers, and were responsible to him. A certain number of them were
+eligible for the post of _limmu_, or eponym, after whom the year was
+named--an honour which they shared with the monarch. The office does
+not appear to have existed in Babylonia.
+
+Among the tablets which have come from the library of Nineveh are some
+which contain long lists of Assyrian officials. They were a very
+numerous body, but we need mention only the Rab-shakeh (_Rab-saki_),
+'chief of the princes,' or Vizier, the Rab-saris (_Rab-sa-resi_) or
+'chief of the nobles,' and the Rab-mag (_Rab-mugi_) or 'chief
+physician.' The identification of the two last is due to Mr. Pinches.
+
+The priests and judges have already been alluded to, as also the clerks
+or scribes, many of whom, at least in Babylonia, were also priests.
+Poets and musicians were attached to the court, and we hear of a grant
+of land being made to a court-poet, in Babylonia, for some verses in
+which he had doubtless flattered the king. Society, in short, was
+highly organized, and the principle of a subdivision of labour was
+fully understood.
+
+In one important respect, however, the basis upon which society rested
+in Babylonia and in Assyria was different. The government of Babylonia
+was theocratic, that of Assyria was military. While Assyria with its
+bureaucratic centralization is an anticipation of imperial Rome,
+Babylonia with its theocratic constitution is an anticipation of papal
+Rome. The king was the adopted son of Bel, and his right to rule was
+based on the fact that Bel, the true lord and ruler of the State, had
+delegated to him his power.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+
+ASSYRIAN MEASURES OF LENGTH.
+
+  60 Uban ('fingers')           1 Ammat ('cubit').
+   6 Ammat                      1 Qanu ('reed').
+   2 Qanu                       1 Gar.
+  60 Gar                        1 Sussu ('soss').
+  30 Sussi                      1 Kaspu.
+
+
+MEASURES OF CAPACITY[6].
+
+  10 GAR[7]                     1 QA.
+  27 QA                         1 AP.
+  36 QA                         1 PI (or Persian Ardeb).
+  60 QA                         1 Homer.
+   3 Homers (or 5 Ardebs)       1 GUR (about 250 quarts).
+
+        [6] As determined by Dr. Oppert.
+
+        [7] Capitals denote that the Semitic pronunciation of the
+        ideograph is unknown.
+
+
+MEASURES OF WEIGHT AND COINAGE.
+
+  60 Shekels                    1 Silver Mana ('Mina') = £9.
+  60 Silver Manas               1 Silver Talent.
+  60 Gold Manas                 1 Gold Talent (£8400).
+
+    The silver shekel was worth about 3_s._
+
+
+THE MONTHS OF THE YEAR.
+
+      Assyrian Name.              Sumerian Name.
+                    Zodiacal Sign.             Corresponding Months.
+
+   (1) Nisannu (Nisan)        Month of 'the dweller in the Asherah[8]
+                      Aries                      March-April.
+
+   (2) Aaru (Iyyar)           'The directing bull'
+                      Taurus                     April-May.
+
+   (3) Sivanu (Sivan)         'Bricks' (?)
+                      Gemini                     May-June.
+
+   (4) Duzu (Tammuz)          'The growth of seed'
+                      Cancer                     June-July.
+
+   (5) Abu (Ab)               'The fiery-hot'
+                      Leo                        July-August.
+
+   (6) Ululu (Elul)           'The message of Istar'
+                      Virgo                      August-September.
+
+   (7) Tasritu (Tisri)        'The holy mound'
+                      Libra                      September-October.
+
+   (8) Arakh-savna            'Opposite the foundation (of the year)
+       (Marchesvan, 'the eighth month')
+                     Scorpio                     October-November.
+
+   (9) Kisilivu (Chisleu)     'The cloudy'
+                     Sagittarius                 November-December.
+
+  (10) Dhabitu (Tebet)        'The cave of the dawn' (?)
+                     Capricornus                 December-January.
+
+  (11) Sabadhu (Sebat)        'The curse of rain'
+                     Aquarius                    January-February.
+
+  (12) Addaru (Adar)          The month of 'cultivation'
+                     Pisces                      February-March.
+
+  (13) Arakh-makhru (Ve-Adar), the intercalary month.
+
+        [8] _Zaggara_, rendered by the Semitic _bit ili_ (Beth-el),
+        'house of God,' as well as by _asirtu_, 'the symbol of the
+        goddess Asherah' (mistranslated 'grove' in the Authorized
+        Version of the Old Testament).
+
+
+BABYLONIAN KINGS.
+                                                                 B.C.
+
+  Sargon of Akkad                                                3800
+
+  Naram-Sin his son                                              3700
+
+   (1) The Dynasty of Babylon: 11 kings for 304 years       2478-2174
+      The sixth king of the dynasty was Khammurabi          2356-2301
+
+   (2) The Dynasty of Lagas: 11 kings for 368 years         2174-1806
+
+   (3) The Kassite Dynasty: 36 kings for 576 years 9 months 1806-1229
+
+Among the kings of this dynasty were Burna-buryas (cir. B.C. 1420),
+the contemporary of the Egyptian Pharaohs Amenophis III and Amenophis
+IV, and Kuri-galzu (cir. B.C. 1400).
+
+The last six kings were:
+
+  Rimmon-nadin-suma                                              1297
+  Conquest of Babylon by Tiglath-Uras of Assyria                 1291
+  Expulsion of the Assyrians; Rimmon-suma-natsir king            1284
+  Meli-sipak                                                     1261
+  Merodach-baladan I                                             1246
+  Zamama-nadin-sumi                                              1233
+  Bel-suma-nadin                                                 1232
+
+   (4) The Dynasty of Isin: 11 kings for 72 years 6 months  1229-1156
+
+   (5) The Dynasty of the Sea-coast: 3 kings for
+      21 years 5 months                                     1156-1135
+
+   (6) The Dynasty of Bit-Bazi: 3 kings for
+      20 years 3 months                                     1135-1115
+
+   (7) An Elamite usurper for 6 years                       1115-1109
+
+   (8) The 31 [kings] of the Dynasty of Babylon[9]          1109- 730
+
+  Among them were:
+
+      Nebuchadrezzar I                                      1109-1096
+      Merodach-nadin-akhi                                   1096-1090
+      Merodach-sapik-zirrat                                 cir. 1075
+      Nebo-baladan                                           cir. 880
+      Merodach-balasu-iqbi                                   cir. 820
+      Nabu-natsir (Nabonassar)                                    747
+      Nabu-nadin-ziri (Nadios) his son                            733
+      Nabu-suma-yukin his son                                     731
+
+   (9) The Dynasty of Sape: Yukin-zira (Chinziros)                730
+
+  (10) The Assyrian Dynasties:
+      Pulu (Pul, Pôros), called Tiglath-pileser III in Assyria    727
+      Ululâ, called Shalmaneser IV in Assyria                     725
+      Merodach-baladan II, the Chaldaean from the Sea-coast       721
+      Sargon of Assyria                                           709
+      Sennacherib his son                                         704
+      Merodach-zakir-sumi for 1 month                             702
+      Merodach-baladan III for six months                         702
+      Bel-ebus of Babylon                                         702
+      Assur-nadin-suma son of Sennacherib                         700
+      Nergal-yusezib                                              694
+      Musezib-Merodach                                            693
+      Sennacherib a second time                                   689
+      Esar-haddon his son                                         681
+      Samas-suma-yukin (Saosduchinos)                             668
+      Kandalanu (Kineladanos)                                     648
+      Nabu-pal-utsur (Nabopolassar)                               626
+      Nabu-kudurri-utsar (Nebuchadrezzar) his son                 605
+      Evil-Merodach his son                                       562
+      Nergal-sarra-utsur (Nergalsharezer)                         560
+      Laborosoarchod, his son, for 3 months                       556
+      Nabu-nahid (Nabonidos)                                      556
+      Cyrus conquers Babylon                                      538
+      Cambyses his son                                            529
+      Gomates (Gaumata) the Magian (the pseudo-Bardes or Smerdis) 521
+      Dareios (Dârayavaush) the son of Hystaspes (Vishtâspa)      521
+      Xerxes I (Khshayârshâ) his son                              485
+      Samas-erba, rebel-king                                      480
+      Xerxes restored                                             479
+      Artaxerxes I (Artakshatra) Longimanus his son               465
+      Xerxes II, his son, for two months                          425
+      Sogdianos, his half-brother, for seven months               425
+      Dareios II, Nothos (or Okhos) his brother                   424
+      Artaxerxes II (Mnêmôn) his son                              405
+      Okhos (Uvasu) the son of Artaxerxes                         362
+      Arses his son                                               339
+      Dareios III, Kodomannos                                     336
+      Conquered by Alexander the Great                            330
+
+        [9] The fracture of the tablet makes the arrangement of this
+        Dynasty not absolutely certain.
+
+
+ASSYRIAN KINGS.
+
+Sargon asserts he was preceded by 330 Assyrian kings.
+
+
+HIGH PRIESTS OF ASSUR.
+
+                                                                  B.C.
+
+  Isme-Dagon                                                cir. 1850
+  Samas-Rimmon I his son                                         1820
+
+  Igur-Kapkapu                                                      ?
+  Samas-Rimmon II his brother                                       ?
+
+  Khallu                                                            ?
+  Irisum his son                                                    ?
+
+
+KINGS OF ASSYRIA.
+
+                                                                  B.C.
+
+  Bel-Kapkapu 'the founder of the monarchy'                         ?
+
+  Ada'si                                                            ?
+  Bel-basi his son                                                  ?
+
+  Assur-bil-nisi-su, cir.                                        1450
+  Buzur-Assur,                                                   1440
+  Assur-nadin-akhi,                                              1420
+  Assur-yuballidh his son,                                       1400
+  Bel-nirari his son,                                            1380
+  Pudilu (Pedael) his son,                                       1360
+  Rimmon-nirari I his son,                                       1340
+  Shalmaneser I his son (founder of Calah),                      1320
+  Tiglath-Uras I his son,                                        1300
+  Assur-natsir-pal I his son,                                    1280
+  Assur-narara,                                                  1270
+  Nebo-dân his son,                                              1265
+
+  Bel-kudurri-utsur,                                             1230
+  Uras-pileser,                                                  1215
+  Assur-dân I his son,                                           1185
+  Mutaggil-Nebo his son,                                         1160
+  Assur-ris-ilim his son,                                        1140
+  Tiglath-pileser I his son,                                     1115
+  Assur-bil-kala his son,                                        1090
+  Samas-Rimmon I his brother,                                    1070
+
+  Assur-irbi                                                        ?
+
+  Tiglath-pileser II,                                             950
+  Assur-dân II his son,                                           930
+  Rimmon-nirari II his son,                                  B.C. 911
+  Tiglath-Uras II his son,                                        889
+  Assur-natsir-pal II his son,                                    883
+
+  Shalmaneser II his son                                          858
+  Assur-dain-pal (Sardanapallos), rebel-king                      825
+  Samas-Rimmon II his brother                                     823
+  Rimmon-nirari III his son                                       810
+  Shalmaneser III                                                 781
+  Assur-dân III                                                   771
+  Assur-nirari                                                    753
+  Tiglath-pileser III, Pulu (Pul, Pôros), usurper                 745
+  Shalmaneser IV, Ululâ, usurper                                  727
+  Sargon usurper                                                  722
+  Sennacherib (Sin-akhi-erba) his son                             705
+  Esar-haddon I (Assur-akhi-iddina) his son                       681
+  Assur-bani-pal (Sardanapallos) his son                          668
+  Assur-etil-ilani-yukinni his son                                  ?
+  Sin-sarra-iskun (Sarakos)                                         ?
+  Destruction of Nineveh                                          606
+
+
+SYNCHRONISMS BETWEEN ASSYRIAN AND BIBLICAL HISTORY.
+
+                                                                  B.C.
+
+  Battle of Qarqar; Shalmaneser II defeats Hadadezer of
+    Damascus, Ahab of Israel, &c.                                 853
+  Campaigns against Hadadezer of Damascus                     850-845
+  Campaign against Hazael of Damascus; tribute paid
+    to Shalmaneser by Jehu 'the son of Omri'                       41
+  Damascus captured by Rimmon-nirari III; tribute paid
+    by Samaria                                                    804
+  Pul, who takes the name of Tiglath-pileser III, usurps
+    the throne, April                                             745
+  War with Hamath; submission of Uzziah; fall of Arpad        843-840
+  Tribute paid to Tiglath-pileser (Pul) by Menahem of
+    Samaria and Rezon of Damascus                                 738
+  Damascus besieged; the tribes beyond the Jordan carried
+    away; Jehoahaz (Ahaz) of Judah becomes an Assyrian vassal     734
+  Pekah put to death; Hosea succeeds                      733 (? 729)
+  Damascus captured; Rezon slain; Ahaz at Damascus                732
+  Capture of Samaria by Sargon                                    722
+  Embassy of Merodach-baladan to Hezekiah                         712
+  Capture of Ashdod by the Assyrians                              711
+  Campaign of Sennacherib against Judah                           701
+  Murder of Sennacherib                                           681
+  Manasseh of Judah tributary to Esar-haddon                      676
+  Destruction of Thebes (No-Amon) in Egypt by the Assyrians       665
+  Babylonian invasion of Egypt                                    567
+
+
+THE PRINCIPAL DEITIES OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.
+
+  Arm (Sumerian Ana), the sky-god of Erech, and wife Anat.
+
+  Bel the elder (Sum. Mul-lil or El-lil), the earth-god of Nipur,
+    and wife Beltis.
+
+  Ea, the water-god of Eridu, and wife Dav-kina.
+
+  Bel-Merodach (Maruduk) of Babylon, the son of Ea, and wife Zarpanit.
+
+  Istar, the goddess of the evening-star, the daughter of Sin.
+
+  Sin, the Moon-god of Ur, the son of Bel of Nipur.
+
+  Samas, the Sun-god, the son of Sin; also called Â.
+
+  Rimmon (Rammanu) or Barqu (Sum. Mer), the air-god.
+
+  Uras[10], the warrior-god of Nipur, the minister of the elder Bel.
+
+  Nebo (Nabu), 'the prophet' of Borsippa, the minister of Merodach.
+
+  Tasmit, 'the hearer,' the wife of Nebo.
+
+  Nusku, a Sumerian deity identified with Nebo.
+
+  Nergal, the warrior-god of Kutha.
+
+  Assur, the national-god of Assyria.
+
+        [10] The reading of the name of this god is doubtful. It has
+        been variously transcribed Bar, Nin-ip, and Adar, the last of
+        which, however, is certainly wrong.
+
+
+Oxford
+
+HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Primer of Assyriology, by Archibald Henry Sayce
+
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's A Primer of Assyriology, by Archibald Henry Sayce
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Primer of Assyriology
+
+Author: Archibald Henry Sayce
+
+Release Date: September 12, 2011 [EBook #37411]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PRIMER OF ASSYRIOLOGY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/001.jpg" alt="Clay Cylinder of Tiglath" width="284" height="500"></div>
+<p class="caption"><span class="sc">Clay Cylinder of Tiglath-pileser I.</span>
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<p>
+<big><u><i>Present Day Primers</i></u></big>
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<h1>
+<i>Primer of Assyriology</i>
+</h1>
+
+<br>
+<h3>
+BY
+</h3>
+
+<h2>
+A. H. SAYCE, LL.D.
+</h2>
+
+<h3>
+PROFESSOR OF ASSYRIOLOGY, OXFORD<br>
+AUTHOR OF 'FRESH LIGHT FROM THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS'<br>
+'ASSYRIA, ITS PRINCES, PRIESTS, AND PEOPLE,' ETC.
+</h3>
+
+<br>
+<h3>
+WITH SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS
+</h3>
+<br>
+<h4>
+THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY<br>
+56 PATERNOSTER ROW AND 65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD
+</h4>
+
+<h4>
+<i>First Edition, September, 1894.</i>
+</h4>
+
+<hr class="med">
+
+
+<p class="head">
+CONTENTS
+</p>
+
+<table summary="Contents">
+<tr>
+<td class="txt">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="pg"><small>PAGE</small></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="chpt" colspan="2">CHAPTER I</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="c" colspan="2">THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt">Geography&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Population and Language&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The Chaldaeans&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The Kassi&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;
+Natural Products&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Canals&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Architecture&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Asphalt and Naphtha&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;
+Character of the Babylonians and Assyrians</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#I">7</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="chpt" colspan="2">CHAPTER II</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="c" colspan="2">THE DISCOVERY AND DECIPHERMENT OF THE INSCRIPTIONS</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt">The Site of Babylon&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The Site of Nineveh&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Excavations&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The
+Decipherment of the Inscriptions&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The Decipherment tested&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;
+Sumerian&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Vannic&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Other Languages&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The origin of the
+Cuneiform Syllabary&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Simplification of the Syllabary</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#II">18</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="chpt" colspan="2">CHAPTER III</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="c" colspan="2">BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN HISTORY</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt">Different States in Babylonia&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The first Empire&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The monuments
+of Tello&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Chronology&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The United Monarchy&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The rise of Assyria&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;
+Babylon a sacred city&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Tiglath-pileser I&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The First Assyrian
+Empire&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The Second Assyrian Empire&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The Babylonian Empire&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Cyrus
+and the Fall of Babylon&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Belshazzar&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Decay of Babylon</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#III">42</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="chpt" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="c" colspan="2">RELIGION</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt">The religions of Babylonia and Assyria&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Differences between
+Babylonian and Assyrian religion&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Sumerian religion Shamanistic&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;
+Two centres of Babylonian religion&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Semitic influence&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The goddess
+Istar&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Bel-Merodach&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Other deities&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Sacred books and ritual&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The
+Priests&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The Temples&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Astro-theology&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Sacrifices and offerings&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The
+Sabbath&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Monotheistic tendency&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The future life&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Cosmology</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#IV">80</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="chpt" colspan="2">CHAPTER V</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="c" colspan="2">BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN LITERATURE</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt">Aids to the reading of the texts&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The libraries&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Varieties of
+literature&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The texts autotypes&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Astronomy&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Mathematics&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Medicine
+and law&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;History and mythology&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The Chaldaean epic and the
+Deluge&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Epic of the Creation</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#V">95</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="chpt" colspan="2">CHAPTER VI</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="c" colspan="2">SOCIAL LIFE</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt">The Contract-tablets&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Married Life&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Burial&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Slavery&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Lowness of
+Wages&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Property&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Taxes&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Prices&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Usury&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The Army&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Navy&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The
+Bureaucracy</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#VI">109</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="chpt" colspan="2">APPENDIX</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt">Assyrian Measures of Length&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Measures of Capacity&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Measures of
+Weight and Coinage&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;The Months of the Year</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#appendix">118</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt">Babylonian Kings&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Assyrian Kings&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;High Priests of Assur&#8204;&#8212;&#8204;Kings
+of Assyria</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#Babylonian">120</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt">Synchronisms between Assyrian and Biblical History</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#Synchronisms">125</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt">The Principal Deities of Babylonia and Assyria</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#Principal">126</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="med">
+
+<p class="title">
+A PRIMER OF ASSYRIOLOGY
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<a name="I">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="firstchapter">CHAPTER I
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+<b>Geography.</b>&#8212;The civilizations of Babylonia and Assyria grew up
+on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. The Tigris was called Idikna
+and Idikla in the Sumerian or primitive language of Babylonia, from
+which the Semites formed the name Idiklat, by means of the feminine
+suffix <i>-t</i>. In later times the name was shortened into Diklat,
+and finally assimilated by the Persians to the word Tigra, which in
+their language signified 'an arrow.' It is from Tigra that the
+classical name Tigris is derived. In Genesis (ii. <b>14</b>), however,
+the ancient name Idikla, there written Hiddekel, is still preserved.
+The Euphrates was called Pura-nun, or 'great water,' in Sumerian, and
+was frequently known as simply the Pura or 'Water,' just as the Nile is
+known to-day to the modern Egyptians as simply 'the Sea.' Hence it is
+often spoken of in the Bible as 'the River,' without the addition of
+any other name. From Pura came the Semitic Purat, with the Semitic
+suffix <i>-t</i>; and Purat, the Perath of the Old Testament, was
+changed by the Persians into Ufratu, with a play upon their own word
+<i>u</i> 'good.' The Persian Ufratu is the Greek Euphrates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The alluvial plain of Babylonia was the gift of the two great rivers.
+In the early days of Babylonian civilization they both flowed into the
+Persian Gulf. But salt marshes already existed at their mouths, and as
+time went on the marshes extended further and further to the south.
+What had once been sea became dry land, the silt brought down by the
+rivers forming an ever-increasing delta in the north of the Gulf.
+To-day the two rivers flow into one channel, and the point where they
+unite is eighty miles distant from the present line of coast. The
+marshes are called 'the country of Marratu' or 'the salt-sea' in the
+inscriptions, a name which reappears as Merathaim in Jer. 1. 21.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the oldest of Babylonian cities was Eridu, 'the good city,'
+which was originally built on the shore of the Persian Gulf, though
+Abu-Shahrein, which now marks its site, is far inland, the sea having
+retreated from it for a distance of 100 miles. In early times, however,
+it was the chief Babylonian port, and through its intercourse with
+foreign countries it exercised a great influence on the culture and
+religion of Babylonia. Further to the north, but on the western side of
+the Euphrates, was Ur, the birth-place of Abraham, whose ruins are now
+called Mugheir or Muqayyar; and still further to the north, but on the
+opposite side of the river, were Larsa (probably the Ellasar of Gen.
+xiv. 1) now Senkereh, and Uruk or Erech (Gen. x. 10) the modern Warka.
+Considerably to the north of these again came Nipur (now Niffer), which
+played a leading part in the history of Babylonian religion. Nipur
+stood at the spot where the Tigris and Euphrates tended to approach one
+another, and northward, in the narrowest part of the territory which
+lay between them, were the important cities of Babel or Babylon, Kutha,
+and Sippara. Babylon, called Bab-ili, 'the gate of God,' on the
+monuments, lay on both sides of the Euphrates, its south-western suburb
+being Borsippa. The great temple of Bel-Merodach, called &#202;-Saggila,
+rose within it; that of Nebo, the prophet and interpreter of Merodach,
+being at Borsippa. &#202;-Zida, the temple of Nebo, is now known as the
+Birs-i-Nimr&#251;d. Kutha (now Tell-Ibrahim), to the north of Babylon, was
+surrounded by vast cemeteries, which were under the protection of its
+patron-god Nergal. Sippara, still further to the north, was a double
+city, one part of it, the present Abu-Habba, being termed 'Sippara of
+the Sun-god,' while the other half was 'Sippara of the goddess Anunit.'
+It is in consequence of this double character that the Old Testament
+speaks of it as Sepharvaim 'the two Sipparas.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Northward of Sippara the Tigris and Euphrates again trend apart from
+one another and enclose the great plateau of Mesopotamia. To the east
+of the Tigris come the mountains of Elam, 'the highlands,' and to the
+north of them the Kurdish ranges, which were known to the primitive
+Babylonians under the name of Guti or Gutium. At the foot of these
+ranges, and northward of the Lower or Little Zab, the kingdom of
+Assyria arose. It took its name from its original capital of Assur, now
+Kalah-Sherghat, on the western bank of the Tigris, not far to the north
+of the junction of the latter river with the Lower Zab. The supremacy
+of Assur afterwards passed to Calah and Nineveh, which lay northward
+between the Tigris and the Upper or Greater Zab. Calah (now Nimr&#251;d) was
+close to the junction of the two rivers; Nineveh (now Kouyunjik and
+Nebi Yunus opposite Mosul) was built along the bank of the Tigris, the
+stream of the Khoser flowing through the middle of it. Some miles to
+the north, under the shelter of the hills, Sargon built a palace which
+he called Dur-Sargon (the modern Khorsabad), and between Nineveh and
+Calah lay Res-eni 'the head of the Spring,' the Resen of Gen. x. 12.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Population and Language.</b>&#8212;Babylonia already had a long history
+behind it when the kingdom of Assyria first arose. The main bulk of the
+Assyrian population was Semitic, and the common language of the country
+was Semitic also. But it was otherwise in Babylonia. Here the pioneers
+of civilization, the builders of the great cities, the inventors of the
+cuneiform system of writing, of astronomy, of mathematics, and of other
+arts and sciences, belonged to a non-Semitic race and spoke an
+agglutinative language. It is in this language that the earliest
+records of the country are written and that the older clay-books were
+compiled. For want of a better name scholars have called the language
+and people to whom it belonged Accadian or Sumerian, or even
+Accado-Sumerian. Accad and Sumer were the names given to the northern
+and southern divisions of Babylonia respectively, and as it was in
+Sumer that the old race and language lingered the longest, 'Sumerian'
+would appear to be the best title to apply to them. Indeed it is
+possible that the city of Agade or Accad, from which the district of
+Accad seems to have derived its name, was of Semitic foundation. In any
+case the Semitic element in Accad was from very early times stronger
+than that in Sumer, and consequently the Sumerian dialect spoken in the
+north was more largely affected by Semitic influence and the resulting
+phonetic decay than was the dialect spoken in the south. Sumerian was
+agglutinative, like the languages of the modern Finns or Turks, the
+relations of grammar being expressed by suffixes (or prefixes) which
+retain an independent meaning of their own. Thus <i>dingir</i> is
+'god,' <i>dingir-ene</i> 'gods,' <i>dingir-ene-ku</i> 'to the gods;'
+<i>mu-ru</i> 'I built,' <i>mu-na-ru</i> 'I built it.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Semitic dialects of Babylonia and Assyria differed very slightly
+from one another, and they are therefore called by the common name of
+Assyrian. We can trace the history of Assyrian by means of
+contemporaneous monuments for nearly 4,000 years, beginning with the
+records of Sargon of Accad (<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 3800) and ending with
+documents of the Parthian epoch. Assyrian belongs to the northern group
+of Semitic languages, being more closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic
+than it is to Arabic or Ethiopic.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Chaldaeans.</b>&#8212;When the Semites first obtained political power
+in Babylonia we do not know. The earliest Semitic empire known to us is
+that of Sargon of Accad. Babylon did not become the capital of a united
+kingdom till much later, Khammurabi (<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 2350) being
+apparently the first who made it so. Strictly speaking, it is only
+after this event that the name of 'Babylonia' is applicable to the
+whole country. In the Old Testament the Babylonians are called Kasdim,
+a word of uncertain origin. It is rendered 'Chaldaeans' in the
+Authorized Version; the classical Chaldaeans, however, took their name
+from the Kald&#226;, a tribe settled in the salt-marshes, of whom we first
+hear in an inscription of the twelfth century <span class="sc">b.c.</span> One of
+their princes was Merodach-baladan (Isaiah xxxix) who made himself
+master of all Babylonia. It is probable that Nebuchadrezzar was also of
+Kald&#226; descent. After the time of Merodach-baladan the Kald&#226; formed so
+integral a part of the population as to give their name to the whole of
+it in the writings of the Greeks and Romans, and after the fall of
+Babylonia, when Babylonian astrologers and fortune-tellers made their
+way to the west, 'Chaldaean' became synonymous with 'diviner.'
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Kassi.</b>&#8212;Another element in the Babylonian population
+consisted of the Kassi (the Kossaeans or Kissians of the Greeks), who
+came from the mountains of Elam. They spoke originally a non-Semitic
+language, and gave a dynasty of kings to Babylonia which lasted 576
+years and nine months. The dynasty was reigning in the century before
+the Exodus when the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna were written,
+and we learn from them that the Babylonians were at that time called
+Kassi (or Kasi) in Canaan.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Natural Products.</b>&#8212;The soil of Babylonia was exceedingly
+fertile. It was the natural home of the wheat which still grows wild in
+the neighbourhood of Anah. Herodotus tells us that 'the leaf of the
+wheat and barley is as much as four fingers in width, and the stalks of
+the millet and sesame are so tall that no one who has never been in
+that country would believe me were I to mention their height.' It was
+calculated that grain produced on an average a return of two hundred
+for one on the seed sown, the return in favourable seasons being as
+much as three hundred. The chief tree of the country was the palm.
+Prices were frequently calculated in corn and dates, and the dates
+among other uses served to make wine. Though vines seem to have been
+grown, most of the grape-wine drunk in the country was imported from
+abroad.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Canals.</b>&#8212;The whole country was intersected by canals, and
+carefully irrigated by means of machines. The canals thus regulated the
+supply of water and enabled it to be carried beyond the reach of the
+rivers. The two principal canals were called the Nahar-Malcha or Royal
+River and the Pallacopas (Pallukat in the inscriptions).
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Architecture.</b>&#8212;Babylonia was devoid of stone, which had to be
+brought from the mountains of Elam or elsewhere. In this respect it
+offered a striking contrast to Assyria, where good stone was plentiful.
+To this absence of stone may be traced some of the peculiarities of its
+early culture. It caused clay to become the common writing material of
+the country, the cuneiform characters being impressed with a stylus
+upon the tablet while the clay was still moist. It further obliged
+every building to be of brick. This led to a great development of
+columnar architecture, the wooden columns which supported the roof
+being subsequently imitated in brick. The use of brick further led to
+the use of stucco and painting. The walls of the Chaldaean houses, as
+we learn from Ezekiel (xxiii. 14), were decorated with 'images
+portrayed with vermilion,' unlike those of the Assyrian palaces which
+were lined with slabs of sculptured alabaster. Assyrian art was,
+however, borrowed from that of Babylonia; hence the colouration of the
+Assyrian bas-reliefs on stone; hence also the great mounds on which the
+Assyrian palaces were built. Such mounds were needful in the flat
+country of Babylonia where inundations were frequent; in Assyria they
+were not required.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Asphalt and Naphtha.</b>&#8212;Besides clay, Babylonia also furnishes
+asphalt and naphtha. According to Poseidonios the naphtha was partly
+white, partly black, the latter being that which was used for lamps.
+Naphtha is still found near Hit, 130 miles to the north of Babylon.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Character of the Babylonians and Assyrians.</b>&#8212;The contrast
+between the physical characteristics of Babylonia and Assyria was
+paralleled by a contrast between the characters of their inhabitants.
+The population of Babylonia was pre-eminently agricultural and
+peaceable, that of Assyria pre-eminently military. Babylonia was the
+land of letters; in Assyria the power to read and write was mainly
+confined to the scribes. Both Babylonians and Assyrians, however, were
+keen traders and merchants, but while 'the cry of the Chaldaeans was in
+their ships,' the Assyrians had no taste for the sea. The Babylonians
+seem to have been a gentler people, more pious and superstitious; the
+Assyrians, on the other hand, had a genius for organization and
+administrative work. Such differences may be traced as much to a
+difference in the conditions under which they lived as to a difference
+in race.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<a name="II">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+CHAPTER II
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+THE DISCOVERY AND DECIPHERMENT OF THE INSCRIPTIONS
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Site of Babylon.</b>&#8212;The site of Babylon was never forgotten.
+In the twelfth century, Benjamin of Tudela describes the ruins of
+Nebuchadrezzar's palace which he saw there, and in 1573 the English
+traveller Eldred visited the spot, and found the Tower of Babel in the
+Birs-i-Nimr&#251;d, which he states to be a mile in circumference and about
+as high as St. Paul's Cathedral. Other travellers have left notices of
+the ruins. But the first to explore them scientifically was Rich, the
+Resident of the East India Company at Bagdad, who surveyed and made a
+map of them. His work on the site of the old city was published in
+1811. But it was not until 1850 that the first excavations were made by
+Sir A. H. Layard, which were followed in 1851-4 by the French
+expedition under Fresnel, Thomas, and Oppert. The fruit of the
+expedition was an elaborate memoir by Oppert, which marks an epoch in
+the history of cuneiform decipherment, and determined the ancient
+topography of Babylon. The excavations were resumed by Sir H. Rawlinson
+in 1854, who discovered the architectural records of Nebuchadrezzar, at
+the same time that other ancient sites of Babylonian civilization were
+being excavated by Loftus and Taylor. At a much later period (in 1879
+and 1882) the work of excavation was again taken up by Mr. Hormuzd
+Rassam, who discovered the site of Sippara, and disinterred the ancient
+temple there of the Sun-god. Equally important were the discoveries
+made by the French consul, M. de Sarzec, in 1877-81 at Tello (the
+ancient Lagas) in southern Chaldaea. Monuments of the early Sumerian
+period of Babylonian history were brought to light, including seated
+statues and bas-reliefs, which are now in the Museum of the Louvre.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Site of Nineveh.</b>&#8212;The identification of Nineveh was less
+easy than that of Babylon. Its site was lost, although the natives of
+the district had not altogether forgotten the name of Nunia, and
+Niebuhr in the last century, believed that it marked the site of the
+Assyrian capital<a href="#note1" name="noteref1">
+<small>[1]</small></a>. But its real discovery was due to Rich. Shortly
+before his visit to Mosul a bas-relief had been found on the opposite
+side of the Tigris, which the Mohammedans had destroyed as being the
+work of the 'infidels.' His examination of the mounds from which it had
+come led to the discovery of walls and cuneiform inscriptions, which
+left no doubt in his mind that the site was that of Nineveh. He
+accordingly drew up a map of the ruins, which he sent to Europe along
+with his collection of Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities. A single
+case, three feet in diameter, was sufficient for their accommodation in
+the British Museum.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Excavations.</b>&#8212;These antiquities, however, inspired the French
+<i>savant</i>, Mohl, with the conviction that if excavations were
+undertaken at the place where they had been found, important results
+would follow. Accordingly, he induced Botta, who had been sent as
+French Consul to Mosul in 1842, to commence digging there the following
+year. Botta was led by a native to the mound of Khorsabad, and his
+labours were soon rewarded by the discovery of Assyrian sculptures
+covered with cuneiform writing. The French government granted funds for
+the continuation of the work, and before 1845 the palace of Sargon was
+laid bare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile Layard had arrived on the spot, and with the help of funds
+principally supplied by Sir Stratford Canning, had opened trenches in
+the mound of Nimr&#251;d (the ancient Calah). The spoils of the palaces he
+found here were transported to England in 1847. Among them was the
+famous Black Obelisk, on which mention is made of Jehu of Israel. At
+Kouyunjik also, among the ruins of the palaces of Sennacherib and
+Assur-bani-pal, excavations had been begun. But it was only after the
+return of Sir A. H. Layard to Mosul in 1849, with a grant from the
+British Museum, that a systematic exploration of this mound took place.
+Assisted by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, he discovered here the libraries of
+clay books from which most of our knowledge of Assyria and Babylonia is
+derived. Excavations were further undertaken at Kalah Sherghat (the
+ancient Assur), where the records of Tiglath-pileser I were
+disinterred, in the ruined palaces of Sennacherib and Esar-haddon at
+Nebi Yunus, at Arban on the Khabour (the ancient Sidikan), and at
+several other places. When the work was closed in 1852, a new world of
+art and literature had been revealed. Nothing further was done till the
+beginning of 1873, when George Smith was sent to Nineveh by the
+proprietors of the <i>Daily Telegraph</i> in order to search for the
+missing portions of the Deluge-tablet, and a year later he was again
+sent out to excavate by the British Museum. After his death, near
+Aleppo, in 1876, the excavations were entrusted to Mr. Hormuzd Rassam,
+who, in 1878, discovered the bronze gates of Balaw&#226;t, and three years
+later the site of Sippara in Babylonia, as well as a library in the
+temple of its Sun-god. A similar library has since been discovered (in
+1891) by the American expedition in the mounds of Niffer, where
+monuments of Sargon of Accad (<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 3800) have been brought to
+light.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Decipherment of the Inscriptions.</b>&#8212;The decipherment of the
+cuneiform texts has been one of the scientific triumphs of the present
+century. The key was given by the inscriptions on the ruined palaces
+and tombs of ancient Persia. Travellers at an early date had noticed
+these inscriptions at Persepolis and elsewhere, and while some compared
+the forms of the characters composing them to arrows, others considered
+them to be wedges, <i>cunei</i> in Latin. The latter comparison was the
+origin of the term 'cuneiform,' ordinarily applied to them. We find it
+already used by Hyde in his <i>Historia Religionis veterum
+Persarum</i>, which was published at Oxford in 1700<a href="#note2" name="noteref2">
+<small>[2]</small></a>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Italian traveller, Pietro della Valle, in 1621, was the first who
+made the characters known in Europe by printing a few of them; at the
+same time he put forward the correct suggestion that the inscriptions
+were to be read from left to right. A more important collection of
+signs, however, was published in 1693, in one of the early volumes (No.
+201) of the <i>Philosophical Transactions</i> of the Royal Society from
+the papers of Mr. Flower, who had been specially charged by the East
+India Company with the duty of investigating the antiquities of Persia.
+But it was not till the middle of the eighteenth century that Cornelius
+van Bruyn (1714) and Carsten Niebuhr (1774-8), the father of the
+historian, first copied and published the inscriptions in anything like
+a complete and accurate manner. Niebuhr further pointed out that they
+comprised three different systems of cuneiform writing, which in the
+case of every text followed one another in a regular order. The first
+system of writing was the simplest, as it consisted of only forty-two
+different characters, whereas the number of characters in the second
+and third systems was very large.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With Niebuhr's publication the work of decipherment became possible. In
+1798, Professor Tychsen, of Rostock, discovered that in the first
+system an oblique wedge was used to divide the words from one another,
+and in 1802 the Danish Bishop, M&#252;nter, starting from this basis, showed
+that the language possessed suffixes, pointed out that certain
+characters denoted vowels, and even divined the word for 'king,' as
+well as the value of two letters, one of them being <i>a</i>. He also
+maintained that while the first system of writing was alphabetic, the
+second was syllabic, and the third ideographic, and that as the
+inscriptions were found in Persia and on the buildings of the
+Achaemenian kings, the text which always comes first must represent the
+language of ancient Persia, which he identified, though erroneously,
+with Zend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is, however, to George Frederick Grotefend, of Hanover, that the
+discovery of the key which has unlocked the secrets of cuneiform
+literature is really due. On September 4, 1802, he read before the
+Royal Society of G&#246;ttingen a Memoir, in which he announced his
+discovery of the names of certain Achaemenian kings in the cuneiform
+inscriptions, and explained the method by which he had arrived at his
+results. By a curious coincidence it was at the same meeting of the
+Society that Heyne described the first efforts that had been made
+towards deciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Grotefend first showed
+convincingly that the inscriptions must be read from left to right, a
+portion of a word which ends a line on the right side in one of the
+texts beginning the next line on the left side in a duplicate copy of
+it. He next pointed out that the analogy of the Sassanian inscriptions,
+which had just been deciphered by de Sacy, indicated that the
+Persepolitan texts must commence with the names of the kings who had
+erected the monuments, followed by their titles, and that a comparison
+of the texts one with another made it pretty evident that such was
+actually the case. In this way he succeeded in finding (like M&#252;nter
+before him) the word for 'king,' and in addition to this the royal
+names preceding it. Those on the Persepolitan monuments represented a
+father and a son, though in certain cases the father added his own
+father's name, but without the royal titles. Thanks to the classical
+writers, it was known that the monuments were of Achaemenian origin,
+and the names of the Achaemenian kings had also been preserved. It only
+remained to fit them to the characters in the cuneiform texts.
+Hystaspes, Darius, and Xerxes alone suited, since Cyrus was too short
+and Artaxerxes too long; moreover, the letters <i>a</i>, <i>r</i>, and
+<i>sh</i>, in the names of Darius and Xerxes appeared in their right
+places if these names were adopted. So, too, did <i>a</i> and <i>sh</i>
+in the name of Hystaspes. Such a coincidence was sufficient to prove
+that Grotefend was right in his guess that the words in question
+represented proper names, for guess it was, though founded on strong
+probability and scientific induction. He had noticed that two of the
+names (those of Darius and Xerxes) occurred separately on two
+particular groups of monuments, whereas the word which followed them
+was always the same. It was natural to conclude that the latter word
+denoted 'king,' while those which preceded it were proper names.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The alphabet Grotefend had constructed out of the proper names enabled
+him to read the word for 'king,' and thus to show its near affinity to
+the corresponding word in Zend. But he was a classical scholar rather
+than an orientalist, better known by his Latin grammar than by his
+knowledge of Eastern languages, and consequently as soon as his
+pioneering work of decipherment was accomplished, he lacked the
+philological knowledge which would have allowed him to continue it.
+Moreover, he was hampered by the false theory that the language of the
+inscriptions was identical with Zend. The next step of importance was
+taken by Rask in 1826, who discovered the termination of the genitive
+plural and the true reading of the title 'Achaemenian.' Rask was
+followed in 1836 by the great Zendic scholar Burnouf at Paris, and by
+Lassen at Bonn. Burnouf demonstrated that the language of the
+Achaemenian texts was not Zend, but a sister dialect spoken in western
+Persia, and his discovery of the names of the satrapies, in one of the
+inscriptions copied by Niebuhr, enabled him and Lassen simultaneously
+almost to complete what we may henceforth call the Old Persian
+alphabet. A few corrections in it were subsequently made by Beer,
+Jacquet, Holzmann, and Lassen himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile a young English officer in the East India Company's service,
+now Sir Henry Rawlinson, had been working in Persia unassisted, and at
+a distance from libraries, upon the Old Persian texts. He knew that
+Grotefend had discovered in them the names of the early Achaemenian
+monarchs, and with this clue he set himself to construct an alphabet
+and interpret the inscriptions. He soon found means of providing
+himself with fuller materials for the work of decipherment than those
+at the disposal of scholars in Europe, by copying the great inscription
+which Darius had caused to be engraved on the sacred rock of Bagistana
+or Behistun in commemoration of his accession to the throne of Persia,
+and re-conquest of the empire of Cyrus. The task of copying the
+inscription&#8212;by far the longest Persian one known&#8212;was an arduous one,
+and not unattended with danger, and it occupied several years.
+Rawlinson first saw the inscription in 1835; it was not till 1839 that
+the whole of it was copied. A few years later he revised it again, but
+his memoir upon it and upon the other Old Persian texts was not ready
+for publication till 1845. In the following year the text was published
+by the Royal Asiatic Society, and the translation and commentary
+followed in 1849. Dr. Hincks, of Dublin, had already (in 1846) given
+the last touch to the decipherment of the Old Persian alphabet by the
+discovery that the consonants composing it contained inherent vowels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we have seen, Niebuhr had perceived that the Persepolitan
+inscriptions were in three different systems of writing. But it was
+only after the decipherment of the Persian texts that it was found that
+the three systems of writing embodied three separate languages, and
+belonged to three separate countries. As in modern Turkey a governor
+has to issue an edict in agglutinative Turkish, Semitic Arabic, and
+Aryan Persian, so too in ancient Persia a king who wished to be
+understood by all his subjects had to appeal to them in the Aryan
+language of Persian itself, in the Semitic language of Babylonia and
+Assyria, and in the agglutinative language of Susiania or Elam. When
+the second and third systems of writing came to be read it was
+discovered that the second contained the script and language of
+Elam&#8212;sometimes, but incorrectly, called Scythian, Medic or Protomedic,
+sometimes, more properly, Amardian or Neo-Susian&#8212;while the third was
+Babylonian. The three capitals of the empire, Persepolis, Susa and
+Babylon, were thus each of them represented.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The number of characters used in Amardian, though large, was limited,
+and accordingly, with the help of the proper names occurring in the Old
+Persian texts, a syllabary, or list of characters each expressing a
+syllable, was soon formed and the work of translation commenced.
+Westergaard, the Dane, who had already travelled in Persia, and there
+copied the inscription on the tomb of Darius at Naksh-i-Rustem, led the
+way in 1845. He was followed by Hincks, de Saulcy, and above all Edwin
+Norris, the learned Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, who
+published in 1853 the Amardian (or as he called it the 'Scythic')
+version of the Behistun inscription, with an elaborate translation,
+commentary, and vocabulary. Further progress, in the study of the
+language was made by Oppert, whose book <i>Le Peuple et la Langue des
+M&#232;des</i> (1879) is a monument of systematic research. Sayce's
+decipherment of the inscriptions of Mal-Amir, south-east of Susa, in
+1884 (in the Proceedings of the Sixth Oriental Congress), showed that
+we must look to that part of Susiania for the origin of the Amardian
+syllabary and dialect. The language was, in fact, one of the
+agglutinative dialects spoken in Elam, the native language of Susa
+itself being closely related to it. Unfortunately, however, there is no
+known language with which the dialects of ancient Elam can be compared,
+and consequently our knowledge of them hardly extends beyond the help
+afforded by the trilingual Persian texts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The decipherment of the third system of writing long seemed to baffle
+the inquirer. The characters were multitudinous, some of them were
+plainly ideographs, denoting ideas and not letters or syllables, while
+the same character did not always appear to have the same value.
+Moreover, the belief that the characters must represent alphabetic
+letters long stood in the way of the decipherer. Grotefend had already
+observed that they resembled in form the characters found on some of
+the antiquities which came from Babylonia, but it was not till after
+the excavation of Nineveh that any serious effort was made to decipher
+them. Botta and Layard, at the very outset, pointed out that the script
+used in Assyria was the same as that of the third Achaemenian system,
+and thus attracted fresh attention to the latter. L&#246;wenstern was the
+first to attack the problem in 1845. His first essays, however, were
+unsuccessful, like those of de Saulcy in 1847, and his second
+publication (in 1847) did little more than establish the fact that the
+same name might be written with different signs. In the same year de
+Longp&#233;rier correctly deciphered the words and ideographs denoting
+'palace,' 'king,' 'great,' and the like, though without being able to
+read phonetically any one of them. But in 1848 Botta published the
+numerous inscriptions he had discovered at Khorsabad, at the same time
+subjecting them to a careful analysis. He divided them into words,
+wherever it was possible, noting the variations in writing the same
+word, and drawing up a list of 642 classified characters. He further
+proved that the terminations or suffixes of words in the Assyrian texts
+agreed with those of the third Achaemenian system, an indication that
+the language was the same as well as the script. Finally he made it
+clear that the script contained not only phonetic characters, but also
+ideographs, and he correctly determined many of these ideographs,
+including that which denotes plurality. All that was now needed was to
+discover the phonetic equivalents of the characters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was done half a year later by de Saulcy, who analyzed the
+Babylonian transcript of the Achaemenian inscription at Elwend, and
+gave phonetic values to 120 characters. He was, however, still under
+the belief that they represented letters instead of syllables, and was
+consequently obliged to admit the existence of 'homophones.' The fact
+that they really represented syllables,&#8212;<i>ba</i>, <i>bi</i>,
+<i>be</i>, <i>bu</i>, &#38;c.&#8212;was discovered by Dr. Hincks immediately
+afterwards (1847 and 1850). Hincks also discovered the name of
+Nebuchadrezzar in the Babylonian inscriptions, and by the further
+discovery that an inscription brought from Babylon by Sir Robert
+Ker-Porter, which was written in the complicated characters of early
+Babylonia, was a duplicate of one in the 'Neo-Babylonian' characters of
+the Achaemenian era, he made it possible to read the oldest forms of
+Babylonian script. From this time forward the work of decipherment went
+on apace. The Semitic character of the Assyro-Babylonian language,
+which had been guessed at by L&#246;wenstern, was now put beyond question,
+and the well-known laws of Semitic grammar came to the help of the
+student in reading the text. In 1851 Rawlinson published the Babylonian
+text of the Behistun inscription, and in his commentary upon it
+announced to a wondering and incredulous world the existence in
+Assyrian of 'polyphones.' If the method of decipherment were right, it
+was necessary to assume that the same character could have more than
+one phonetic value. The cause of this extraordinary fact&#8212;which,
+however, is paralleled in Old Egyptian as well as in Japanese&#8212;was soon
+made clear by Oppert, Hincks, and Rawlinson himself. The Assyrian
+syllabary, which had originally been a collection of pictorial
+hieroglyphs, was not the invention of the Semitic Babylonians, but of
+an earlier people who spoke an agglutinative language, and to whom the
+name of Accadians or Sumerians was given. When the script was adopted
+by the Semites, the Sumerian words denoting the objects or ideas for
+which the characters stood became phonetic values; thus <i>du</i> 'to
+go' and <i>gub</i> 'to stand' became the phonetic values of the
+character which had originally been a picture of a human leg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The interpretation of the Assyrian and Babylonian texts now advanced
+rapidly, in spite of the smallness of the body of students, and the
+incredulity of Orientalists, especially in Germany. In 1847 Rawlinson
+was able to give a fairly complete account of the several varieties of
+cuneiform writing, and in 1850 he published a translation of the long
+inscription of Shalmaneser II on the Black Obelisk of Nimr&#251;d. The
+translation is on the whole marvellously correct, and proves
+conclusively the soundness of the method on which it was based. The
+proper names, however, were still but imperfectly read, and it was not
+till Hincks discovered the names of Jehu and Omri in the inscription
+(in 1851) that the age of it could be fixed. Shortly afterwards Hincks
+deciphered the names of Hezekiah and Jerusalem in the texts of
+Sennacherib, as well as the name of Sennacherib himself, and thus
+showed that Longp&#233;rier had been right in his conjecture that the king
+of the Khorsabad monuments was Sargon. The foundation of Assyrian
+grammar was next laid by Hincks in 1855 in a series of remarkable
+articles on the Assyrian verb, to which the progress of discovery has
+since added little that is important. A complete and systematic grammar
+itself was first written by Dr. Oppert in 1860, and eight years
+afterwards M. M&#233;nant analyzed his results and tested their correctness.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Decipherment tested.</b>&#8212;Orientalists, however, still looked
+askance at the new science which threatened to dwarf the older Semitic
+learning. The Council of the Royal Asiatic Society, accordingly,
+determined to subject it to a conclusive test. Copies of the annals of
+Tiglath-pileser I, which had been found at Kalah Sherghat, were sent to
+Rawlinson, Hincks, Fox Talbot, and Oppert; they were asked to translate
+them independently of one another, and send the translations under seal
+by a given date to the Secretary of the Society. When the translations
+were opened they were found to be in substantial agreement. This was in
+1857, a year which we may therefore regard as closing the first epoch
+of decipherment.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Sumerian.</b>&#8212;The decipherment of the Assyrian texts brought with
+it the decipherment of the Sumerian texts. The library of Nineveh was
+stocked with tablets intended to facilitate the study of the old
+language of Chaldaea. Among them are grammars, vocabularies, and
+reading-books, as well as interlinear or parallel translations of
+Sumerian texts in the Semitic language of Babylon and Assyria. Oppert
+in his <i>Exp&#233;dition scientifique en M&#233;sopotamie</i> led the way to the
+use of them in 1859, and the outlines of Sumerian grammar were first
+sketched by Sayce in 1870, followed by Lenormant in 1873. Since then
+the labours of Lenormant, Haupt (who demonstrated the existence of two
+Accado-Sumerian dialects), Hommel, Amiaud, Ball and others, have given
+us an extensive knowledge of the primitive language of Babylonia.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Vannic.</b>&#8212;Northward of Assyria, in Ararat, the modern Armenia,
+the cuneiform script of Nineveh had been borrowed in the ninth century
+<span class="sc">b.c.</span> As the characters of the script continued to preserve
+their Assyrian values there was no difficulty in transliterating them,
+and as early as 1852 Hincks read the names of the kings they had been
+employed to write, and even used them in determining the values of the
+characters found at Nineveh. The majority of the inscriptions, which
+had been copied by Schulz at the cost of his life in 1829, and
+published in France in 1840, were met with in the neighbourhood of Van;
+hence the term 'Vannic' which is usually applied to them. The language
+in which they are written was however utterly unknown, and bore no
+obvious relationship to any with which we are acquainted; consequently
+though the texts could be transliterated they could not be translated.
+More than one attempt was made to decipher them, but to no purpose,
+until 1882 when Guyard pointed out that the formula with which many of
+them end corresponds with the imprecation often attached to the
+Assyrian inscriptions, and Sayce, following up this clue, with the help
+of the ideographs borrowed from Assyria, finally succeeded in solving
+the problem. A bilingual text (Assyrian and Vannic), recently
+discovered by M. de Morgan in the pass of Kelishin in Kurdistan, has
+verified the correctness of his results, which have been further
+modified or extended by D. H. M&#252;ller, Belck, and Lehmann.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Other Languages.</b>&#8212;Yet two more languages written in the
+cuneiform syllabary have lately been revealed by the cuneiform tablets
+found at Tel el-Amarna in Upper Egypt. One was the language of Mitanni,
+the Aram-Naharaim of the Old Testament, in which there is a long letter
+from the king of Mitanni to the Egyptian Pharaoh. The other language,
+which is quite distinct from that of Mitanni, was spoken at Arzawa in
+northern Syria. Both languages are still undeciphered<a href="#note3" name="noteref3">
+<small>[3]</small></a>.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The origin of the Cuneiform Syllabary.</b>&#8212;As we have seen, the
+pictorial origin of the cuneiform characters was perceived in the early
+days of Assyrian decipherment, as well as the cause of their polyphony.
+Their wedge-like forms were due to the use of clay as a writing
+material. The impression made by the stylus upon it resembled a wedge;
+curved lines became angles, and after a time the original picture
+passed into a conventional form. In the course of centuries the
+characters grew more and more simplified by the omission of unnecessary
+wedges, the least complicated being those of the official hand of
+Assyria, and the later Babylonian or Persepolitan script. It must not
+be supposed, however, that when the system of writing ceased to be
+pictorial it was already complete. Down to a comparatively late period
+new characters were invented or old characters combined in a new way,
+while new phonetic and ideographic values were assigned to the
+characters which already existed. Though the syllabary is essentially
+of Sumerian origin there is much in it which is traceable to a Semitic
+source. Many of the values given to the characters as well as many of
+their ideographic meanings are Semitic. Moreover the Sumerians and
+Semites lived in contact with one another long after the adoption of
+Sumerian culture by the Semitic nomads; consequently not only did the
+Semites borrow Sumerian words, the Sumerians borrowed Semitic words,
+more especially in the northern part of the country. The early date at
+which some of these were borrowed is shown by their having undergone
+the phonetic changes which distinguished the northern Accado-Sumerian
+dialect from the southern. False etymologizing also has given rise to
+new values just as it has given rise to new spellings in English. The
+Semitic scribes of a later day were as fond of deriving Semitic words
+from Sumerian as our own etymologists used to be of deriving Teutonic
+words from Latin, Greek, or Hebrew. Thus the purely Semitic
+<i>sabattu</i> 'Sabbath,' from <i>sab&#226;tu</i> 'to rest,' is derived from
+the two Sumerian words <i>sa</i> 'heart' and <i>bat</i> 'to complete,'
+and interpreted to mean 'a day of rest for the heart.'
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Simplification of the Syllabary.</b>&#8212;The script used at Susa before
+the overthrow of the kingdom of Elam was the same as the archaic script
+of Babylonia. But the Amardian syllabary was a selected one. Not only
+were the forms of the characters simplified, a comparatively small
+number of them was employed to each of which one value only was
+assigned. In the Vannic texts also polyphony was similarly avoided.
+Characters expressing open syllables like <i>ba</i> and <i>ab</i> were
+chosen, to which a few more denoting closed syllables and ideographs
+were added; but in no case was a character allowed to possess more than
+one value. Large use was further made of the vowels, the syllable
+<i>ba</i>, for example, being written <i>ba-a</i>, so that the
+syllabary tended to become an alphabet. This step was taken in Old
+Persian, where the forms of the letters were often so simplified as to
+lose all resemblance to their primitive forms. Apart from its alphabet
+of thirty-six letters Old Persian retained only one syllabic character
+(<i>t[r.]</i>) and a few ideographs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pictorial origin of the syllabary has proved of important
+assistance in reading the texts. Certain of the ideographs were used as
+'determinatives' for indicating the generic character of the word to
+which they are prefixed or affixed. Thus there is a determinative to
+denote that the word which follows is the name of a 'city,' and another
+which shows that the preceding word is a plural. In this way a glance
+at an Assyrian, an Amardian, or a Vannic text will enable us at once to
+distinguish the names of men, women, towns, countries, animals, trees,
+metals, stones, and the like. It is a help which we look for in vain in
+Phoenician or Hebrew inscriptions.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<a name="III">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+CHAPTER III
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN HISTORY
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Different States in Babylonia.</b>&#8212;More than one kingdom originally
+existed in Babylonia. Not only were there separate kingdoms in Accad
+and Sumer, or northern and southern Chaldaea, many of the great cities
+also once formed separate states. The excavations at Tello, for
+instance, have revealed the existence of a dynasty which had its seat
+there, and the ancestral kingdom of Sargon of Accad does not seem to
+have extended beyond the territory of its chief city. The smaller
+states were, however, absorbed by the larger ones, and a time came when
+the whole of Babylonia was united into a single monarchy, whose ruler
+assumed the imperial title of 'king of Sumer and Accad.' As in Egypt,
+therefore, a recollection of the original dual character of the kingdom
+was preserved in the title of its kings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is probable that the various states of Babylonia were more than once
+brought into temporary union before the final unification of the
+monarchy took place. Sargon of Accad, for instance, seems to have
+claimed supremacy over the rest of Chaldaea, and the dynasties which
+subsequently arose at Urand other places adopted the imperial title,
+although the country was not finally united under a single head until
+the reign of Khammurabi. It was to this early period that the maritime
+trade and civilizing influence of Eridu chiefly belongs.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The first Empire.</b>&#8212;Sargon of Accad founded the earliest Semitic
+empire of which we know. According to Nabonidos he lived more than
+3,200 years before the time of the last Babylonian king, that is to say
+about 3800 <span class="sc">b.c.</span> His father, Itti-Bel, had no royal title, and
+legend gathered around his birth. His uncle, it was said, ruled in the
+mountains, and his mother concealed her child in an ark of rushes,
+daubed with pitch, which she entrusted to the waters of the Euphrates.
+Here he was found by a peasant, who brought him up as his own son. But
+the goddess Istar loved the peasant lad, and the time at last came when
+he was able to declare his true character and ascend the throne of his
+fathers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A copy has been preserved of the historical annals of Sargon and his
+son Naram-Sin, which must have been compiled in the reign of the
+latter, as they break off in the middle of it. We learn from them that
+Sargon not only established his rule over Babylonia and the adjoining
+districts, he also defeated the Elamites, and made four expeditions
+into Syria, 'the land of the Amorites.' The last of these expeditions
+occupied three years, and ended with the erection of images of the
+Chaldaean king on the shores of the Mediterranean, and with the
+conquest of the countries 'of the sea of the setting sun,' which he
+united 'into a single empire.' His last campaign was against the
+Aram-Naharaim of Scripture in north-western Mesopotamia. Babylon is
+already mentioned as one of his seats of power; his capital, however,
+was at Agade or Accad, where on one occasion he was unsuccessfully
+besieged by his revolted subjects. Here, too, he founded a famous
+library, for which the standard work on astronomy and astrology was
+compiled in seventy-two books. A translation of it into Greek was made
+in later days by the Chaldaean historian B&#234;r&#244;ssos.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sargon's son and successor Naram-Sin continued his father's victorious
+career, and Palestine being already secured behind him, marched into
+the land of Magan, by which name Midian and the Sinaitic peninsula were
+known, and captured its king. A record of the conquest was engraved on
+an alabaster vase discovered by the French Expedition to Babylonia, but
+unfortunately lost in the Tigris. Naram-Sin, like one or two other
+Babylonian monarchs of the same early epoch, received divine honours.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The monuments of Tello.</b>&#8212;The oldest monuments found at Tello in
+southern Chaldaea belong to the age of Sargon and Naram-Sin. But
+whereas the court of Sargon was Semitic, that of the kings of Tello was
+Sumerian. At a later date Tello lost its independence, and its rulers
+became merely <i>patesis</i> or high-priests. One of these was Gudea,
+whose statue may be seen in the Louvre. In his time building-materials
+were brought to Chaldaea from all parts of Western Asia; thus cedar
+beams were imported from Mount Amanus, and diorite from the land of
+Magan. It was out of this diorite that the statues were cut. Another of
+the <i>patesis</i> of Tello was the vassal of Dungi, king of Ur, whose
+father had built or restored the great temple of the Moon-god in that
+city, and had claimed sovereignty over the whole of Babylonia.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Chronology.</b>&#8212;These early sovereigns are known to us by the
+bricks and other objects which they have left behind, but we cannot
+arrange them in a chronological order. Chronology begins with what is
+called by the native historians 'the dynasty of Babylon.' From this
+time forward the tablets have preserved the names of the Babylonian
+kings divided into dynasties, together with the length of each reign as
+well as of each dynasty. The sixth king of the dynasty of Babylon was
+Khammurabi, who reigned fifty-five years (<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 2356-2301)<a href="#note4" name="noteref4">
+<small>[4]</small></a>,
+and whose reign marks an epoch in Babylonian history.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The United Monarchy.</b>&#8212;When Khammurabi ascended the throne,
+Babylonia was either wholly or in part under Elamite suzerainty. That
+portion of it of which Larsa was the capital was governed by Eri-Aku
+(probably the Arioch of Genesis), who was a son of the Elamite prince
+Kudur-Mabug. Kudur-Mabug was not himself king, but as he has the title
+of 'father of the land of the Amorites' he must have held rule in
+Syria. Khammurabi succeeded in overthrowing Eri-Aku and his Elamite
+allies and in making himself sole king of Babylonia. Babylon, his
+capital, thus became, and remained, the capital of the united kingdom.
+It was soon the scene of a great literary revival. The older literature
+of the country was re-edited, new authors arose, and the court of
+Khammurabi revived the literary glories of that of Sargon. As his
+great-grandson still calls himself 'king of the land of the Amorites'
+we may infer that the conquests in Syria were not lost.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The rise of Assyria.</b>&#8212;The dynasty of Khammurabi was followed by
+one which came from Tello, whose kings bear Sumerian names. Then
+Babylonia was conquered by Kassite princes who ruled over it for 576
+years and nine months (<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 1806-1229). While the Kassite
+dynasty was reigning, a new kingdom arose in the north, that of
+Assyria. The high-priests of the city of Assur became kings, the first
+of whom seems to have been Bel-Kapkapu. The kingdom rapidly grew in
+power, and although Babylonia exacted tribute from it, its kings began
+to ally themselves by marriage with the rulers of the southern
+monarchy. In the fifteenth century <span class="sc">b.c.</span> Assuryuballidh of
+Assyria, like his contemporary Burna-buryas of Babylonia, sent letters
+and presents to the Egyptian Pharaoh and begged in return for Egyptian
+gold, and a century later the city of Calah was built (or restored) by
+Shalmaneser I. His son Tiglath-Uras in the sixth year of his reign
+marched against Babylonia, captured Babylon and governed it for seven
+years. He was then driven out of the country and subsequently murdered
+by his own son. The Kassite dynasty, however, did not last long after
+the Assyrian invasion. The Assyrian king had entered Babylon in
+<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 1291, and in <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 1229 the dynasty came to an
+end.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Babylon a sacred city.</b>&#8212;From this time forward for many
+centuries Assyria, and not Babylonia, occupies the chief place in the
+history of western Asia. It needed a Nebuchadrezzar to make Babylonia
+once more a conquering power. But Babylon itself remained the sacred
+city of the cultured nations of Asia. Its old <i>prestige</i> and
+hallowed associations clung to it, and it became what Rome was to
+mediaeval Europe. An Assyrian king, however powerful he might be, could
+not claim the imperial title until he had 'taken the hands of Bel' and
+thereby been adopted as a son by the god of Babylon. Indeed it was only
+in this way that usurpers like Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon obtained
+any recognition of their legitimate right to the throne. The sanction
+of religion remained with Babylon, though the sword had passed to
+Assyria.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Tiglath-pileser I.</b>&#8212;One of the most famous of the early Assyrian
+conquerors was Tiglath-pileser I (<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 1100). He carried his
+arms in all directions. Eastward he chastised the Kurds, northward he
+penetrated into the mountains of Armenia and engraved his image at the
+sources of the Tigris; and in the west he overthrew the Moschians, the
+Meshech of the Bible, ravaging the land of Komag&#234;n&#234;, laying Malatiyeh
+under tribute, threatening the Hittites in their stronghold at
+Carchemish, and making his way to the shores of the Mediterranean. Here
+he sailed over the sea in a ship of Arvad, and received presents from
+the terrified Pharaoh of Egypt which comprised a crocodile and a
+hippopotamus. Southward he invaded Babylonia, and though repulsed in
+his first attack he avenged himself by subsequently over-running the
+country and capturing Babylon. He was also mighty in the hunting-field
+as well as in war, and in the neighbourhood of Harran boasts of having
+slain the wild elephants which then existed there. His own capital
+Assur he adorned with the spoils of his victories and restored its
+temples.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The First Assyrian Empire.</b>&#8212;We have to pass over an interval of
+two centuries before we find another Assyrian monarch who emulated the
+distant campaigns of Tiglath-pileser. Assur-natsir-pal (<span class="sc">b.c.</span>
+883-858) was the first of a line of conquerors who may be regarded as
+the founders of the first Assyrian empire. From henceforth, too,
+Assyrian chronology is accurately fixed. The Assyrians counted time by
+means of certain officers called <i>limmi</i>, who were changed from
+year to year. The name of a particular <i>limmu</i> consequently
+indicated the year during which he had held office. Lists of the
+<i>limmi</i> have been preserved which begin with the reign of
+Assur-natsir-pal's father and carry us down to that of Assur-bani-pal.
+As the annals not only of Tiglath-pileser I, but also of an older king,
+the father of Shalmaneser I, are dated in the years of office of
+certain <i>limmi</i> it is clear that the institution went back to an
+early period, and that lists of the older <i>limmi</i> may yet be
+recovered, carrying us, it may be, to the very foundation of the
+Assyrian kingdom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Calah, instead of Assur, had become the royal residence, and from Calah
+accordingly the Assyrian armies marched forth year after year to
+conquer and spoil. The fastnesses of the Kurdish mountains were
+explored, and the Kurdish tribes compelled to pay tribute to the
+Assyrian king. The cities of Armenia south of Lake Van were ravaged in
+repeated campaigns, one effect of which seems to have been the
+introduction of Assyrian culture and writing, and the rise of the
+Vannic monarchy. The merchant princes of Carchemish bought off the
+Assyrian attack with rich gifts, but the states on either bank of the
+Euphrates were overrun, and Assur-natsir-pal made his way across Amanus
+to the Gulf of Antioch, and across Lebanon to the Mediterranean. Here
+he received the tribute of the Phoenician cities, among them being Tyre
+and Sidon. In imitation of Tiglath-pileser I he hunted in northern
+Mesopotamia, but the elephant had disappeared from the region, and he
+had to content himself with the wild bull.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Assur-natsir-pal was succeeded by his son Shalmaneser II, whose reign
+ended in <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 823. His long reign was a series of military
+campaigns. Countries previously untrodden by Assyrian feet were subdued
+or ravaged with fire and sword. Assyrian armies made their way through
+the passes of Kurdistan as far as Lake Urumiyeh and the land of the
+Minni. The newly-founded kingdom of Ararat was shaken, the Tibareni
+(called Tubal in Scripture) paid tribute, and Tarsus in Cilicia was
+compelled to open its gates. The passage of the Euphrates was secured
+by the capture of the Hittite fortress of Pethor at the junction of the
+Euphrates and the Sajur, and the whole weight of the Assyrian power was
+hurled against Syria. The Phoenician cities made their peace with the
+invader by offering gifts; so too did Jehu (Yahua) of Samaria, whose
+ambassadors are represented on the Black Obelisk. Hamath and Damascus,
+more especially the latter, had to bear the brunt of the Assyrian
+attack. In <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 853, thirteen years before the embassy of
+Jehu, Israel and Assyria had already met in the battle-field. A league
+had been formed by Hamath, Arvad, Ammon, and other states under the
+leadership of Hadadezer of Damascus&#8212;the Ben-hadad of the Old
+Testament&#8212;to resist the Assyrians, and one of the most important of
+the allies was 'Ahab of Israel,' who brought into the field 2,000
+chariots and 10,000 men. But the confederacy was shattered at the
+battle of Qarqar, though Shalmaneser's own losses were too serious to
+allow him to follow up the attack. In <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 847 Hadadezer and
+his allies were again defeated, but without any result on the Assyrian
+side. Seven years later Hazael appears in the place of Hadadezer.
+Shalmaneser drove him from his camp into Damascus, where he 'shut him
+up,' taking from him 1,121 chariots and devastating the country as far
+as the Hauran. It was on this occasion that Jehu offered homage to the
+conqueror. Shalmaneser had already overrun Babylonia and sacrificed to
+the gods in Babylon, Borsippa, and Cutha. The Babylonian king was put
+to death, and the Assyrian troops penetrated into the salt-marshes of
+the Kald&#226; in the extreme south. For a time, therefore, the larger part
+of western Asia lay at the feet of 'the great king.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A time came, however, when Shalmaneser could no longer lead his armies
+in person, but had to entrust them to the Tartan or commander-in-chief.
+His own son Assur-dain-pal rebelled against him, and led the chief
+cities of his kingdom, including Nineveh and Assur, into revolt
+(<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 827). The revolt lasted for more than six years, and
+during its continuance the old king was succeeded by his son
+Samsi-Rimmon who eventually suppressed the insurrection. Assur-dain-pal
+seems to have been the original Sardanapallos of the Greeks. The
+campaigns of Samsi-Rimmon were principally directed against the Kurds
+and Medes, but towards the end of his reign he invaded Babylonia and
+defeated its king, Merodach-bal&#225;su-iqbi, the Greek Belesys. His
+successor Rimmon-nirari III (<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 810-781) claims to have
+overcome Media and Kurdistan, Tyre, Sidon, Samaria, and Palastu, 'the
+land of the Philistines,' under which title the Jews would be included.
+But his chief exploit was the conquest of Damascus, whose king Marih
+opened its gates to him and became an Assyrian vassal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The older Assyrian dynasty, however, was fast coming to an end. In
+<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 753 its last representative, Assur-nirari, mounted the
+throne. Insurrection had already broken out at the beginning of his
+predecessor's reign, and pestilence had been added to insurrection. The
+old capital Assur had led the revolt, a solar eclipse on June 15,
+<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 763 coinciding with its outbreak. The northern provinces
+had followed the lead of Assur, and though the revolt was crushed for a
+while, the flame of discontent still smouldered beneath the surface.
+The greater part of Assur-nirari's short reign was passed in inaction,
+but in <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 746 Calah rebelled, and on the 13th of Iyyar in
+the following year Pulu or Pul, who took the name of Tiglath-pileser
+III, after that of the great conqueror of the older dynasty, was
+proclaimed king. With him begins the history of the second Assyrian
+empire.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Second Assyrian Empire.</b>&#8212;With the second Assyrian empire a
+new political idea entered the world. Most of the campaigns made by the
+earlier Assyrian kings were mere raids, the object of which was booty
+and captives. It is true that in some cases cities and districts were
+annexed to the Assyrian kingdom and Assyrian colonists were planted in
+distant localities. But this was the exception, not the rule. The
+conquests made in one year by the Assyrian armies had to be made over
+again in the next. The campaigns of Tiglath-pileser III and his
+successors had a different object in view. They aimed at bringing the
+whole civilized world under the rule of 'the great king.' A great
+political organization was to be built up, which should bring the
+wealth of Western Asia into the imperial treasury of Nineveh and divert
+the trade of Phoenicia and Babylon into Assyrian hands. Trade interests
+had much to do with the wars of the New Empire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Accordingly, while the frontiers of the kingdom were secured from the
+wild tribes on the east and north, expedition after expedition was sent
+westward and southward which pushed steadily forward the Assyrian
+domination. Satraps and colonists followed in the wake of the generals;
+and the amount of annual tribute to be paid by each province was
+defined and rigorously exacted from its governor. The latter was
+appointed by the king, and held his office at the royal pleasure. At
+his side were military officers, and under him a body of officials who
+were responsible to the governor as he was to the king.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The New Empire was thus governed by a vast bureaucracy, at the head of
+which stood the king. But the bureaucracy was military as well as
+civil, and the military and civil elements formed a check one upon the
+other. The military element was, however, predominant, the result of
+the fact that the empire itself was based on conquest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The army was carefully trained, well disciplined, and well armed. It
+thus soon became an irresistible weapon in the hands of a competent
+master. Before Tiglath-pileser's reign was half over there was no force
+in western Asia which was capable of resisting it in open fight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tiglath-pileser reigned eighteen years (<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 745-727), and his
+organizing abilities proved to be as great as his military skill. An
+invasion of Babylonia first tested the strength of his army, and
+resulted in the subjection of the Aramaean tribes in that country to
+Assyrian rule. Then followed an expedition into Kurdistan. The Medes
+were massacred, and the Assyrian army pushed its way far eastward to
+Bikni, 'the mountain of the rising sun.' Next Tiglath-pileser turned to
+the north-west. Here he was met by a powerful confederacy, at the head
+of which was the king of Ararat. But the forces of the northern nations
+were cut to pieces in Komagene, and Arpad, which had become the centre
+of a hostile Syrian league, was captured after a siege of three years.
+The league had included Hamath and Azariah of Judah, and Hamath was
+consequently annexed to the Assyrian empire. The princes of the West
+hastened to offer homage to the conqueror, among them being Rezon of
+Damascus and Menahem of Samaria (<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 738). Tiglath-pileser
+was now free to march against Ararat, which had extended its power at
+the expense of Assyria in the later days of the old dynasty. The
+country was ravaged up to the gates of its capital, and the Vannic
+kingdom received a blow from which it never recovered. The Assyrian
+army next turned eastward to the southern shores of the Caspian, and
+made its way through Medic and other districts which neither before nor
+since were trodden by Assyrian feet. The exploit struck terror into the
+Kurdish tribes, and secured the Assyrian lowlands from their attack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile Ahaz of Judah had been threatened by Rezon of Damascus and
+Pekah of Israel, and he now appealed to the Assyrian king for help.
+Tiglath-pileser, nothing loth, marched against the assailants. Rezon
+was blockaded in his capital, while Samaria, Ammon, Moab, and Philistia
+were overrun (<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 734). Two years later (<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 732),
+Damascus was taken and sacked, Rezon put to death and his kingdom
+placed under an Assyrian prefect. Pekah, too, had been murdered, and
+Tiglath-pileser had appointed Hosea king in his place. About the same
+time Tyre was compelled to purchase peace by the payment of 150
+talents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With his empire consolidated in the west, and the road to the
+Mediterranean open to Assyrian trade, Tiglath-pileser was now free to
+legitimize his right to the throne by occupying Babylon and there
+becoming the adopted son of Bel. It was in <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 731 that the
+Babylonian campaign began; in <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 729 Tiglath-pileser, under
+his original name of Pul, 'took the hands of Bel,' and two years later,
+in the month of December, he died. He had introduced into history the
+idea of imperial centralization.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On his death the crown was seized by Ulul&#226;, who took the name of
+Shalmaneser IV. His reign lasted only five years, and when he died
+(December, <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 722) he was pressing the siege of Samaria. The
+capture of the city and its annexation to Assyria were the work of
+Sargon. The upper and military classes, amounting in all to 27,280
+persons, were carried into captivity; but only fifty chariots were
+found in the city.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sargon was a usurper like his two predecessors, but, more fortunate
+than they, he succeeded in founding a dynasty. He was one of the best
+generals that Assyria ever produced, and under him the extension and
+organization of the empire went on apace. The death of Shalmaneser,
+however, had been the signal for revolt in Babylonia as well as in the
+west. Merodach-baladan, a Chaldaean from the sea-marshes, had seized
+Babylon in conjunction with the Elamites, and there reigned as
+legitimate monarch for twelve years. One of the first tasks of Sargon
+was to drive the Elamite forces from the Assyrian frontier. Hamath
+moreover rose in insurrection; but this too was speedily crushed. So
+also was a league between the Philistines and the Egyptians; the battle
+of Raphia decided, once for all, the question of Assyrian supremacy in
+Palestine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sargon now had to face a more formidable coalition, that of the
+northern nations under Ursa of Ararat. The struggle lasted for six
+years and ended with the complete victory of the Assyrians. Carchemish,
+the Hittite stronghold on the Euphrates, fell in <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 717,
+leaving the road clear to the west and thus uniting Assyria with its
+rising empire on the shores of the Mediterranean. In the following year
+the Minni (to the east of Ararat) were overthrown, and two years later
+Ursa and his allies were utterly defeated. The fortress of Muzazir near
+Lake Urumiyeh was captured, thus extending the Assyrian frontier far to
+the east, and Ursa, in despair, committed suicide. Media was completely
+subdued in <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 713, and Ellip, where Ekbatana afterwards
+stood, became the vassal of Nineveh. In <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 711 a league was
+formed between Merodach-baladan and the nations of southern Syria to
+resist the common foe, and to this league Egypt promised assistance.
+But before the confederates were ready to act, Sargon had fallen upon
+them separately. Ashdod, the centre of the Palestinian confederacy, was
+besieged and taken (Isaiah xxi), and its ruler, a certain 'Greek,' who
+had been raised to power by the anti-Assyrian party, fled in vain for
+refuge to the Arabian desert, while Judah, Edom, and Moab were
+compelled to pay tribute. In <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 709 Merodach-baladan was
+driven out of Babylonia into his ancestral kingdom of Bit-Yagna. Sargon
+entered Babylon and there 'took the hands of Bel.' Henceforward he
+ruled by divine right as well as by the right of the sword.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was by the sword, however, that he perished, being murdered by a
+soldier in <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 705. His son Sennacherib succeeded to the
+crown on the 12th of Ab (July). Sennacherib was a different man from
+his father; boastfulness and vanity took the place of military skill,
+perhaps also of courage. There seems to have been some resemblance
+between his character and that of Xerxes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Babylonia was the new king's first object of attack. Merodach-baladan,
+who had re-entered Babylon on the news of Sargon's death, was driven
+back to the marshes, and Bel-ibni, an Assyrian vassal, appointed king
+in his place. The next campaign was against the Kassi or Kossaeans,
+some of whom were forced to descend from their mountain fastnesses and
+placed under an Assyrian governor. From the Kossaean mountains the
+Assyrian army marched into Ellip which was wasted with fire and sword.
+Then, in <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 701, came the campaign against Palestine where
+Hezekiah of Judah, in reliance upon Egypt, had revolted from his
+Assyrian lord. Elulaeus of Sidon fled to Cyprus, and Phoenicia, Ammon,
+Moab, and Edom submitted to the Assyrians. Sennacherib thereupon
+proceeded against the Philistines. A new king was set over Ashkelon,
+and Hezekiah was compelled to restore to Ekron its former prince whom
+he had imprisoned in Jerusalem on account of his faithfulness to
+Assyria. The priests and nobles of Ekron who had abetted Hezekiah were
+impaled on stakes.
+</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/002.jpg" alt="Capture of Lachish by Sennacherib" width="500" height="290"></div>
+<p class="caption"><span class="sc">Capture of Lachish by Sennacherib.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tirhakah, the Ethiopian king of Egypt, and the king of Melukh (the
+Arabian desert), who had come to the assistance of the Jewish prince,
+were defeated at Eltekeh, and Hezekiah vainly endeavoured to buy off
+the vengeance of his offended suzerain by rich and numerous presents,
+including 30 talents of gold and 800 talents of silver. The surrender
+of Jerusalem alone would content Sennacherib, who accordingly
+devastated Judah, destroying its cities and carrying into captivity
+200,150 of its inhabitants. Jerusalem itself was blockaded, Hezekiah
+being shut up in it 'like a bird in a cage.' Then, however, came the
+catastrophe which obliged Sennacherib to retire without punishing his
+rebellious vassal, and of which, of course, nothing is said in the
+inscriptions. But there is no further record of a campaign in the West.
+In the following year Sennacherib was in Babylonia, where he drove
+Merodach-baladan out of the marshes and obliged the Chaldaean prince
+and his subjects to fly in ships across the Persian Gulf to the
+opposite coast of Elam. Assur-nadin-suma, the son of Sennacherib, was
+now made king of Babylon. Six years later he was carried off to Elam
+and a new king, Nergal-yusezib, appointed in his place by the Elamite
+monarch. This was in return for an unprovoked assault made by
+Sennacherib on the Chaldaean colony in Elam, to which he had crossed in
+boats made by Tyrian workmen, and whose inhabitants he sent captive to
+Assyria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a time Elam was all-powerful in Babylonia, though Nergal-yusezib
+had been defeated and captured in battle by the Assyrians. But in
+<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 691 Sennacherib descended with the full might of Assyria
+upon the country. The Babylonians had sent the treasures of the temple
+of Bel to the Elamite monarch, begging his help. The Babylonian and
+Elamite forces met the army of Assyria at Khalule, and a hard-fought
+battle was the result. The slaughter was great on both sides, and
+Sennacherib claims a complete victory, though the Babylonian
+Chronicle&#8212;a cuneiform document compiled from a Babylonian point of
+view&#8212;implies that such was not altogether the case. At all events
+about two years were needed for the subjugation of Babylonia. In
+<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 689 Babylon was taken, its houses and temples destroyed,
+the images of its gods broken in pieces, and the ruins of the city
+thrown into the Arakhtu, the canal of Babylon. For some years Babylon
+lay desolate, and as there was no longer a temple or image of Bel to
+legitimize the rule of the Assyrian conqueror, Babylonia remained
+'without kings.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the 20th day of Tebet or December, <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 681, Sennacherib
+was murdered by two of his sons who seem to have been jealous of their
+brother Esar-haddon. Esar-haddon had been given the new name of
+Assur-etil-mukin-abla ('Assur the hero is the establisher of my son'),
+perhaps because he had been destined for the throne, and at the time of
+his father's murder he was commanding the Assyrian army in a war
+against Ararat. For forty-two days the conspirators held the capital;
+then they were compelled to fly to Erimenas of Ararat and seek his help
+against their brother. The decisive battle was fought on the 12th of
+Iyyar (April) near Malatiyeh in Kappadokia; the veterans of Assyria won
+the day, and at the close of it saluted Esar-haddon as king. He
+returned to Nineveh and on the 8th of Sivan (May) formally ascended the
+throne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Esar-haddon was great in counsel as well as in war, and knew how to
+conciliate as well as how to conquer. At the outset of his reign he
+restored Babylon, rebuilt its temples, brought back its gods and
+people, and made it one of his royal residences. For twelve years he
+was king alike of Babylonia and Assyria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A revolt of Sidon, which was easily put down, next occupied his
+attention. Then came a more formidable event. The Gimirr&#226;, called Gomer
+in Genesis, Kimmerians by the Greeks, suddenly appeared out of the
+north and menaced the civilized world. Esar-haddon met them on the
+frontier of his empire, defeated their chieftain, the 'Manda' or nomad
+Teuspa, and drove his hordes westward into Asia Minor. It now became
+necessary to secure the Assyrian frontier on the south. The Assyrian
+king accordingly marched into the very heart of Arabia, through burning
+and waterless deserts, and struck terror into the Arabian tribes. The
+march must have been one of the most remarkable ever made.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Esar-haddon was at last free to complete the policy of Tiglath-pileser
+III by conquering the ancient kingdom of Egypt. Palestine gave no more
+trouble; Manasseh of Judah was already an obedient vassal of the
+Assyrian king. In <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 674 'the Assyrians marched into Egypt.'
+But two more campaigns were needed for its subjection. In <span class="sc">b.c.</span>
+670 Esar-haddon drove the Egyptian forces before him in fifteen days
+(from the 3rd to the 18th of Tammuz or June) all the way from the
+frontier to Memphis, thrice defeating them with heavy loss and wounding
+Tirhakah their king. Three days later Memphis fell, and Tirhakah fled
+to Ethiopia, leaving Egypt to the conqueror. Egypt revolted two years
+afterwards (<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 668), and while on the march to reduce it
+Esar-haddon fell ill, and died on the 10th of Marchesvan or October.
+Assur-bani-pal, who had already been named as his successor, became
+king of Assyria, his brother Saul-suma-yukin taking Babylonia as his
+share. The king of Babylonia, however, was required to admit the
+supremacy of the Assyrian monarch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Egyptian revolt was quickly suppressed and the country was again
+divided into twenty satrapies, each satrapy being placed under a native
+prince. But the arrangement answered badly. The satraps quarrelled with
+one another, intrigued with Tirhakah, and rebelled against
+Assur-bani-pal. Time after time Assyrian armies had to be sent to
+reconquer the land. Once Necho, the satrap of Sais, was brought in
+chains to Nineveh, there, however, to be pardoned and restored to his
+city. Twice Thebes was captured, once after it had been made for a time
+the seat of Tirhakah's government, a second time after the defeat of
+Urdaman (Rud-Amon), the step-son and successor of Tirhakah. On this
+occasion the city was utterly destroyed. Its temples and palaces were
+overthrown, its statues mutilated, and an immense spoil carried away to
+Nineveh. Among the spoil were two obelisks, over seventy tons in
+weight. The destruction of Thebes is alluded to by the prophet Nahum
+(iii. 8).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Assur-bani-pal, the Sardanapallos of the Greeks, was the 'Grand
+Monarque' of Assyria, and a generous patron of literature and learning.
+But he lacked the warlike instincts of his fathers, and preferred to
+remain at home while his generals fought in the field. His long wars
+drained the country of its fighting-men and prepared the way for its
+downfall. They were waged mainly with Elam, the only civilized country
+of Western Asia which still preserved its independence, and lasted for
+several years. At last, however, Elam fell; its capital Shushan was
+sacked and burned, and a desolated country was added to the Assyrian
+dominions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fame of Assur-bani-pal spread far and wide. Ambassadors came to his
+court from Ararat, as well as from Gyges of Lydia. At first no
+interpreter could be found for the latter. Gyges wanted help against
+the Kimmerians, which, however, 'the great king' does not seem to have
+afforded. The tribute of Gyges was accordingly withdrawn after a time,
+and he took part in the great rebellion which now shook the Assyrian
+empire to its foundations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Saul-suma-yukin put himself at its head, and proclaimed the
+independence of Babylonia. Psammetikhos, the son of Necho of Sais,
+imitated his example in Egypt, and with the assistance of Gyges put
+down the rival satraps, shook off the Assyrian yoke and founded the
+Twenty-sixth dynasty. Saul-suma-yukin was less fortunate. After a
+desperate struggle he was captured and put to death by his brother, and
+Babylonia was once more reduced to servitude. Punishment was also taken
+upon the tribes of northern Arabia who had joined the rebels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the empire was terribly weakened. Egypt was lost to it for ever,
+and though Elam was added instead, it proved to be a barren possession.
+When Tuktamme the 'Manda' appeared upon the scene he was resisted with
+difficulty. The empire was tottering to its fall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of its closing days we know but little from the monuments. Among the
+successors of Assur-bani-pal were Assur-etil-ilani-yukin (who still
+claimed rule in Babylonia), and Sin-sar-iskun. The latter has sometimes
+been identified with Sarakos, said by the Greek writer Abyd&#234;nos to have
+been the last king of Assyria<a href="#note5" name="noteref5">
+<small>[5]</small></a>. At all events the fall and
+destruction of Nineveh may be placed in <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 606.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Babylonian Empire.</b>&#8212;On its ruins rose the Babylonian empire
+of Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabopolassar. The battle of Carchemish
+placed him in possession of Syria, which the Egyptians had occupied
+after the fall of Nineveh. The battle was scarcely over when
+Nebuchadrezzar was recalled to Babylon by the death of his father
+(<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 605). Unlike the Assyrian kings, he cared but little
+about recording his successes in war. His inscriptions are occupied
+with the account of his building operations, of his gifts to the gods,
+and of his devotion to Bel-Merodach. Under him Babylon became one of
+the most splendid cities in the world. Its palaces, its temples, its
+hanging gardens and its walls were alike on a vast and magnificent
+scale. The temples were roofed with cedar of Lebanon, overlaid with
+gold and silver, and the ramparts of the royal house were finished in
+fifteen days. The suburb of Borsippa was included within the
+fortifications of the city, which were so strong as to be practicably
+impregnable. At the same time the other cities of Babylonia were not
+forgotten, and their temples were enlarged and beautified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 568 Nebuchadrezzar marched into Egypt, defeated the
+Pharaoh Amasis and occupied a part at least of the Delta. 'Phut of the
+Ionians' is mentioned in connexion with this campaign. It is the only
+military expedition mentioned in the texts we possess; even the
+monuments of Nebuchadrezzar found in Syria (at the mouth of the Nahr
+el-Kelb near Beyrout and in the Wadi Brissa near the ancient Riblah)
+are silent about his wars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a great organizer, a great builder, and above all a man of
+genuine piety, which breathes through all his inscriptions. When he
+died, <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 562, he was succeeded by his son Evil-Merodach, who
+reigned only two years. Then the throne was usurped by a certain
+Nergal-sharezer (the son of Bel-zakir-iskun) who had married the
+daughter of Nebuchadrezzar. Nergal-sharezer built himself a new palace
+and died <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 556. He was followed by his infant son who
+reigned only three months, when he was murdered and the throne seized
+by Nabonidos (Nabu-nahid), the son of Nebo-balasu-iqbi, who was not
+related to the royal family. Nabonidos was a man of some energy, but he
+offended a powerful party in Babylonia by attempting to do what
+Hezekiah had done in Jerusalem&#8212;centralize the religious worship of the
+country and therewith the political power in the capital. Nabonidos was
+also an antiquarian and caused excavations to be made in the different
+temples of Babylonia in order to discover the records of their
+founders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We are now well acquainted with the history of Nabonidos and the fall
+of his empire, thanks to three cuneiform documents which have been
+found in Babylonia. One is an inscription of Nabonidos himself; another
+an edict issued by Cyrus shortly after his conquest of the country; and
+the third the annals of the reign of Nabonidos, compiled the year after
+his overthrow. The empire of Nabonidos, we learn, extended as far
+westward as Gaza, but the 'Manda' or 'Nomads' of whom Astyages
+(Istuvegu) was king had devastated part of Western Asia and had
+destroyed the temple of the Moon-god at Harran. It was not until Cyrus,
+'the little servant' of Astyages, had overthrown the Manda that
+Nabonidos was able to enter Harran and rebuild the ruined shrine.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Cyrus and the Fall of Babylon.</b>&#8212;Cyrus, like his fathers, was
+king of Anzan in Elam, not of Persia. Anzan had been first occupied, it
+would appear, by his great-grandfather Teispes the Achaemenian. The
+conquest of Astyages and of his capital Ekbatana took place in
+<span class="sc">b.c.</span> 549, and a year or two later Cyrus obtained possession of
+Persia. In <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 538 the population in the south of Babylonia
+revolted, and Cyrus entered the country, where he was assisted by the
+native party which was hostile to Nabonidos. The Babylonian army was
+stationed in northern Babylonia, but it was utterly defeated at Opis in
+the month of Tammuz or June, and on the 14th of the month Sippara
+opened its gates to the conqueror. Gobryas, the governor of Kurdistan,
+was then sent by Cyrus against Babylon, which also opened its gates
+'without fighting,' and Nabonidos, who had concealed himself, was taken
+prisoner. Gobryas placed the temple of Bel under a guard, and the daily
+services there proceeded as usual. The contract-tablets show that there
+was equally little cessation of business among the mercantile classes.
+But it was not until the 3rd of Marchesvan (October) that Cyrus himself
+arrived in Babylon and proclaimed a general amnesty, which was
+communicated by Gobryas to 'all the province of Babylon' of which he
+had been made governor. Shortly afterwards the wife of Nabonidos died;
+lamentation was made for her throughout Babylonia, and Kambyses, the
+son of Cyrus, conducted her funeral in one of the Babylonian temples.
+</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/003.jpg" alt="The Cylinder Inscription of Cyrus" width="248" height="501"></div>
+<p class="caption"><span class="sc">The Cylinder Inscription of Cyrus.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile Cyrus had assumed the title of 'King of Babylon,' thus
+claiming to be the legitimate descendant of the ancient Babylonian
+kings. He announced himself as the devoted worshipper of Bel and Nebo,
+who by the command of Merodach had overthrown the sacrilegious usurper
+Nabonidos, and he and his son accordingly offered sacrifices to ten
+times the usual amount in the Babylonian temples, and restored the
+images of the gods to their ancient shrines. At the same time he
+allowed the foreign populations who had been deported to Babylonia to
+return to their homes along with the statues of their gods. Among these
+foreign populations, as we know from the Old Testament, were the Jews.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Belshazzar.</b>&#8212;One of the sons of Nabonidos was Belshazzar, who is
+mentioned in the contract-tablets as well as by his father. He seems to
+have been 'the king's son' who commanded the Babylonian army in its
+camp near Sippara. If so, it would appear that he had died or been
+slain before the final invasion of Babylonia by Cyrus, since no
+reference is made to him on that occasion, and the pretenders who
+afterwards rose against Darius in Babylonia called themselves not
+Belshazzar but 'Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabonidos.'
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Decay of Babylon.</b>&#8212;It was after the death of Kambyses and of the
+Pseudo-Smerdis that these revolts took place in <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 521 and
+515(?). The first was a serious one, and was suppressed only after two
+engagements in the field and a siege of Babylon. The second revolt also
+needed a long siege for its suppression, and at its conclusion Darius
+partially destroyed the walls of the city. But in the reign of Xerxes,
+during the absence of the king in Greece, Babylon revolted again under
+a certain Samas-erba, who reigned for about a year. On the fall of this
+champion of Babylonian independence, the temple of Bel, the
+rallying-place of Babylonian nationality, was in part destroyed. From
+this time forward the only kings mentioned in the cuneiform tablets are
+foreigners, Persians, Greeks, and Parthians. The last dated tablet at
+present known to us is almost as late as the Christian era. It is an
+astrological text which is dated in the 168th year of Seleucus and the
+232nd year of Arsakes, that is to say in <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 80.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<a name="IV">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+CHAPTER IV
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+RELIGION
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+<b>The religions of Babylonia and Assyria.</b>&#8212;The religion of Assyria
+was borrowed from that of Babylonia. The deities worshipped in the two
+countries were the same, as also were the ritual and the religious
+beliefs of the people. Almost the only difference observable in the
+religion of the two kingdoms was that whereas Bel-Merodach was the
+supreme god of Babylon, Assur, the impersonation of the old capital,
+was the supreme god of Assyria.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Differences between Babylonian and Assyrian religion.</b>&#8212;But the
+different characters of the two populations were reflected in their
+religious conceptions. The Assyrians were a nation of warriors, the
+Babylonians of traders, agriculturists, and scribes. Assur is
+accordingly 'a man of war'; it was in reliance upon him that the
+Assyrian armies marched into foreign lands, and compelled their
+inhabitants to acknowledge him. Not to believe in Assur was a crime,
+since Assur represented Assyria. Assur, too, admitted no rival at his
+side: wifeless and childless he stood alone. Once or twice, indeed, an
+Assyrian scribe ascribes to him a wife or a child, but this is in
+imitation of Babylonian usage and the belief never took root in
+Assyria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel-Merodach, on the contrary, was a god of mercy. He is 'the merciful
+one' who hearkens to those that call upon him and who 'raises the dead
+to life' through trust in his power. Belat, or Beltis, 'the lady,'
+stood at his side, a reflection of himself, and the gods were his
+children who recognized him as their father and creator.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Sumerian religion Shamanistic.</b>&#8212;Babylonian religion was a
+compound of Sumerian and Semitic elements. Sumerian religion had
+originally been 'Shamanistic' in character. That is to say it had no
+conception of deities or priests in the usual sense of the words. Each
+object or force of nature was believed to have its <i>zi</i> or 'life'
+like men and beasts; the <i>zi</i> was a sort of vital principle which
+caused the arrow to fly, the knife to wound, or the stars to move
+through the heaven. A personality was given to it, and it thus became
+what we may term a spirit. With these spirits, accordingly, the sky and
+earth were peopled; they were in fact as multitudinous as the objects
+and forces of nature to which they owed their birth. Necessarily the
+greater number of them were harmful, if not always at any rate at
+certain times and in certain places. Magical charms alone could protect
+man from their malevolence or bring down their blessing upon him, and
+these magical charms and ceremonies were known only to a particular
+class of persons. To such sorcerer-priests the name of 'shamans' has
+been assigned, the form of religion represented by them being termed
+'Shamanistic.'
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Two centres of Babylonian religion.</b>&#8212;In prehistoric times two
+great religious centres existed in Babylonia, from which two divergent
+streams of religious influence flowed over the country. One of these
+was Nipur in the north, the other Eridu in the south. Nipur was the
+seat of Shamanism, and its patron deity in later days still retained
+the title of Mul-lil or El-lil, 'the lord of the ghost-world.' Eridu,
+on the other hand, was brought by its trade and situation into contact
+with foreign culture. It thus became the source of a higher and more
+spiritual form of faith. The spirit of the water, who had been its
+special object of adoration, became the culture-god Ea, the lord of the
+abyss, who is called Oannes in the Greek history of B&#234;r&#244;ssos and was
+believed to have been the author of Babylonian culture. To him its
+laws, its arts, and its sciences were alike traced back. Through his
+wisdom his son Asari-mulu-dugga, 'Asari who benefits mankind,' was
+enabled to cure the diseases and troubles of men, and teach them how to
+avoid evil. His teachings were embodied in writing, and so a sacred
+book grew up, half Bible, half Ritual, which contained hymns to the
+gods as well as rubrics for the performance of the ceremonies
+accompanying their recitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Under the influence of Eridu the religion of Babylonia ceased to be so
+purely Shamanistic as it once had been. Certain of the spirits tended
+to take rank above their fellows and thus to pass into gods. How long
+this process of development lasted we do not know.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Semitic Influence.</b>&#8212;But a time came when the Semites entered the
+country and were brought into close contact, hostile or peaceable, with
+its Sumerian inhabitants. The result was a fusion of Sumerian and
+Semitic religious ideas. An official religion came into existence which
+consisted of a Semitic form of faith grafted upon a Sumerian root.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The religion of the Semite was essentially different from that of the
+Sumerian. The primary object of his worship was the Baal, Bel, or
+'Lord,' who revealed himself in the sun. Each tribe and each locality
+had its own Baal; when the tribes coalesced or when the same tribe
+occupied more than one locality the various Baals were regarded as so
+many forms of the supreme God.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Each Baal was the father of a family. At his side stood his wife, a
+colourless reflection of himself, as the wife was of the husband in the
+Semitic family on earth. Like the father of the family on earth, Baal
+too in heaven had his children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Where the religions of the Semite and the Sumerian met and combined,
+the Sumerian spirits who had emerged above the rest like Ea of Eridu or
+El-lil of Nipur, were assimilated to the Semitic Baalim. El-lil, in
+fact, was known throughout the Semitic period as Bel of Nipur. Wherever
+it was possible a solar character was given to them; in other cases the
+general characteristics of the Semitic deity were attached to the old
+Sumerian divinity. The great body of the spirits which had fallen into
+the background was grouped together as the 300 spirits of heaven
+(<i>Igigi</i>) and the 600 spirits of earth (<i>Anunnaki</i>).
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The goddess Istar.</b>&#8212;In one instance, however, it was the Semite
+rather than the Sumerian who was affected by the contact between the
+two forms of faith. The spirit of the evening star became the goddess
+Istar, who retained her independent position by the side of the male
+deities. While the other goddesses were absorbed in the persons of
+their divine consorts like the wife in the Semitic family, Istar,
+having no consort, remained like the wife in the Sumerian family on a
+footing of equality with the man. When the name and worship of Istar
+were passed on to the Semitic peoples of the West, the anomaly led to
+more than one change in her character. In southern Arabia and Moab she
+was identified with a male deity; in Canaan her name received the
+feminine suffix <i>-th</i> (Ashtoreth), and she thus became in large
+measure an ordinary Semitic goddess.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Bel-Merodach.</b>&#8212;After the rise of Babylon as the capital of the
+kingdom, its patron-god Merodach became the supreme Baal or Bel of
+Babylonia. He had already been identified with Asari-mulu-dugga, the
+son of Ea, and the attributes of the latter were accordingly
+transferred to the new Bel. It was to him that the great temple of
+&#202;-Saggil was erected in Babylon, while the interpreter of his will to
+men, Nebo, the divine 'prophet,' had his temple &#202;-Zida in the
+neighbouring suburb of Borsippa. At Nipur a god whose name has been
+variously read Uras, Nin-ip, Bar and Adar, but the true pronunciation
+of which is still unknown, stood in much the same relation to El-lil
+that Nebo did to Merodach. He was, however, regarded as a solar warrior
+instead of as a prophet.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Other deities.</b>&#8212;Nergal was worshipped in Kutha and its
+cemeteries; Samas, 'the Sun,' at Sippara; Sin, 'the Moon,' at Ur and
+Harran; Anu, 'the Sky,' at Erech, where he was associated with Istar.
+Along with Ea and Bel of Nipur, Anu formed a triad which represented in
+the official religion the three elementary deities of the sea, the
+earth, and the heavens. The sea, however, was rather the primordial
+'deep' out of which all things arose than the sea of the actual world,
+while 'the heaven of Anu' was beyond the visible sky, and Bel was the
+prince of the air and the underworld.
+</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/004.jpg" alt="Winged Bull or House-Guardian" width="450" height="405"></div>
+<p class="caption"><span class="sc">Winged Bull or House-Guardian.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Sacred books and ritual.</b>&#8212;Along with the growth of the official
+religion went the growth and completion of the Chaldaean Bible and
+Prayer-book. The festivals of the gods were numerous; the ceremonies to
+be performed by the priests were more numerous still. The ceremonies
+were usually accompanied by the recitation of one or more hymns; these
+hymns were written in Sumerian, which had now become the sacred
+language of Chaldaea just as Latin is the sacred language of the Roman
+Church, and since Sumerian was no longer understood by the majority of
+the people they were provided with interlinear translations into
+Semitic Babylonian. From time to time the pronunciation of the old
+Sumerian words was indicated, for just as it was needful that the
+inspired words should be handed down without the slightest alteration,
+so also was it needful that they should be pronounced aright. An error
+even in pronunciation was supposed to invalidate the ceremony. Among
+the hymns is a collection of penitential psalms of which the following
+lines will give some idea:&#8212;
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>'O lord, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!</p>
+<p>O my god, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!</p>
+<p>O my goddess, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!</p></div></div>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>The lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me;</p>
+<p>God in the fierceness of his heart has revealed himself to me.</p>
+<p>The goddess has been violent against me, and has put me to grief.</p></div></div>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>I sought for help and none took my hand;</p>
+<p>I wept and none stood at my side;</p>
+<p>I cried aloud and there was none that heard me.</p>
+<p>To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer.</p></div></div>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>O my god, seven times seven are my transgressions: forgive my sins!'</p></div></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Priests.</b>&#8212;The existence of a hierarchy of gods, of a Bible,
+and of a Prayer-book implies the existence of a priesthood. The
+sorcerer of prehistoric times became the priest of later Babylonia. The
+priests were distinguished into several classes. At the head came the
+High-priest who was often the monarch; in Assyria indeed this was
+commonly the case. Subordinate to him were other high-priests, and
+under them again the 'anointers' (who cleansed the sacred vessels of
+the sanctuary), the priests of Istar and the 'elders.' By the side of
+them stood the 'prophets' (<i>asipi</i>) under a 'chief.' The prophets
+could predict the future and were consulted on matters of state. We
+hear of armies being accompanied by them into the field, and when
+Assur-bani-pal suppressed the revolt of the Babylonians 'by the command
+of the prophets,' he says, 'I purified their shrines and cleansed their
+chief places of prayer. The angry gods and wrathful goddesses I soothed
+with supplications and penitential psalms. I restored and established
+in peace their daily sacrifices which they had discontinued.'
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Temples.</b>&#8212;The temples were provided with towers which served
+for the observation of the stars, and stood within large courts. In the
+shrine was a 'mercy-seat' whereon the god 'seated himself' on certain
+occasions. At Balaw&#226;t near Nineveh the mercy-seat had the form of a
+coffer or ark, in which two written tables of stone were placed. In
+front of it stood the altar approached by steps. In the court was a
+'sea' or large basin of water, which like that of Solomon was, in one
+case at all events, supported on bulls of bronze. The images of the
+gods were almost invariably of human form.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Astro-theology.</b>&#8212;The prominence given to the study of astronomy
+had much to do with giving Babylonian religion an astral character. The
+stars were worshipped; Istar herself was originally the evening star,
+and most of the principal deities were identified with the planets and
+chief fixed stars. The importance of the stars for the regulation of
+the calendar, moreover, kept them constantly before the eyes of the
+priests. But whether Babylonian astrotheology was not really primitive
+or whether it went back to the pre-Semitic period we do not yet know.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Sacrifices and offerings.</b>&#8212;Sacrifices were offered to the stars,
+as to the other divinities. Besides the sacrifices, offerings were also
+made of meal, dates, oil, and wine. The sacrifices and offerings must
+have been numerous since in the larger temples there was not only 'the
+daily sacrifice' but also constant services both by day and night. On
+the great festivals, moreover, there were services of a special
+character, as also when days of thanksgiving or humiliation were
+ordained. The sacrifices and offerings were provided partly by
+endowments, partly by voluntary gifts (sometimes called
+<i>kurbanni</i>, the Hebrew <i>korban</i>), partly by obligatory
+contributions, the most important of which were the 'tithes.'
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Sabbath.</b>&#8212;Besides the festivals of the gods there was a
+<i>sabattu</i> or 'Sabbath,' observed on the 9th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and
+28th day of the month, on which various kinds of work were forbidden to
+be done. Food even was not allowed to be cooked, or medicine to be
+taken. The <i>sabattu</i> is described as 'a day of rest for the
+heart,' and a 'free-will offering' had to be made in the night of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Monotheistic tendency.</b>&#8212;Among the educated classes religious
+feeling seems to have been fervent, and at times the language used
+approaches that of monotheism. Thus in an early hymn to the Moon-god
+which was composed in the city of Ur, we read:&#8212;
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>'Father, long-suffering and full of forgiveness, whose hand upholds
+the life of all mankind!...</p>
+<p>First-born, omnipotent, whose heart is immensity, and there is none
+who may fathom it!...</p>
+<p>In heaven, who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme!</p>
+<p>On earth, who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme!'</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+So, again, Nebuchadrezzar prays as follows to Bel-Merodach:&#8212;
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+<p>
+'O prince, thou art from everlasting, lord of all that exists, for the
+king whom thou lovest, whom thou callest by name, as it seems good to
+thee, thou guidest his name aright, thou watchest over him in the path
+of righteousness. I, the prince who obeys thee, am the work of thy
+hands; thou hast created me and hast entrusted to me the sovereignty
+over multitudes of men, according to thy goodness, O lord, which thou
+hast made to pass over them all. Let me love thy supreme lordship, let
+the fear of thy divinity exist in my heart, and give what seemeth good
+to thee, since thou maintainest my life.'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The future life.</b>&#8212;The mass of the people, however, were sunk in
+the grossest superstition, and the future to which they looked forward
+was sufficiently dreary. Hades lay beneath the earth, where the spirits
+of the dead flitted about like bats in darkness with dust only for
+their food. A happier lot was reserved for the few, and a prayer is
+made for an Assyrian king that after death he should ascend to 'the
+land of the silver sky.'
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Cosmology.</b>&#8212;In early Sumerian days the heaven was believed to
+rest on the peak of 'the mountain of the world,' in the far north-east,
+where the gods had their habitations (cf. Isa. xiv. 13), while an ocean
+or 'deep' encircled the earth which rested upon its surface. With the
+progress of knowledge truer ideas of geography came to prevail. The
+later cosmogony is represented in the first tablet of the Creation
+story where the old gods are resolved into cosmical elements. The
+'deep' is said to have been 'the generator' of the heavens and the
+earth, 'Mummu-Tiamat' (the chaos of the sea) being 'the mother of them
+all.... At that time the gods had not appeared.... Then the [great]
+gods were created, Lakhmu and Lakhamu issued forth the first.' Next
+came the creation of An-sar and Ki-sar, 'the upper' and 'lower
+firmament,' who in their turn gave birth to Anu, Ea, and Bel. The
+struggle between Merodach, the god of light and order, with Tiamat, the
+dragon of darkness, chaos, and evil, occupied a prominent place in the
+Epic of the Creation. Along with Tiamat there were ranged in battle the
+evil creatures of night and destruction, most of whom had composite
+forms. The belief in them had been inherited from the age of Shamanism,
+and they were regarded as the products of a first and imperfect
+creation. Some of them came to symbolize the powers of darkness, others
+were transported to the skies, certain of the allies of Tiamat being
+the Zodiacal animals, while out of the skin of Tiamat Merodach
+constructed the heaven itself. In the Epic Tiamat is identified with
+the source of the fountains of the great deep.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<a name="V">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+CHAPTER V
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN LITERATURE
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Aids to the reading of the texts.</b>&#8212;The origin of the cuneiform
+system of writing has been already described, as well as its chief
+peculiarities. We must now say something about the causes which have
+led to our being able to read an ordinary Assyrian text almost as
+easily as a page of the Old Testament.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(1) The 'determinatives' have already been mentioned which define so
+many words and names.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(2) The ideographs often prove a great assistance, as words of unknown
+meaning interchange with ideographs the signification of which is
+already known.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(3) The fact that the characters express syllables gives us the precise
+pronunciation of the words, and so enables us to read them with a
+certainty which is impossible in Hebrew or Phoenician where the vowels
+are not denoted in writing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(4) Assyrian is a Semitic language, and the Semitic languages are as
+closely related to one another as are the Romanic languages (French,
+Italian, Spanish, &#38;c.) in modern Europe. Consequently most of the words
+and grammatical forms found in Assyrian recur in one or other of the
+Semitic idioms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(5) But above all, the Assyrian scribes themselves have provided us
+with the most abundant materials for interpreting the inscriptions.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The libraries.</b>&#8212;The amount of Assyro-Babylonian literature
+already known is very large. If all the texts at present in the museums
+of Europe and America could be published, they would rival in extent
+the books of the Old Testament. Most of the texts are on tablets of
+clay and have come from the libraries of Nineveh and Babylonia. Every
+great Babylonian city had at least one library, and the Assyrian kings
+established other libraries in their own country in imitation of those
+of Babylonia. About two-thirds of the library of Nineveh, which was
+largely the creation of Assur-bani-pal, is now in the British Museum.
+Scribes were kept constantly at work there copying and re-editing old
+texts, and sometimes writing new ones. A considerable proportion of the
+texts was brought from Babylonia: a colophon attached to each tablet
+usually states from what library the text had originally come. The
+texts were carefully edited; when there was a lacuna in the original
+the scribe tells us so, and whether it was old or recent; also if the
+Babylonian character were one which he did not recognize he confesses
+that he could not read it. Besides the clay tablets, the libraries
+contained papyri which have now perished.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Varieties of literature.</b>&#8212;The texts related to all the branches
+of knowledge studied at the time. Astronomy and astrology, mathematics,
+geography, medicine, law, history, religion, and mythology, private and
+public correspondence, mercantile transactions, political documents,
+the pseudo-science of omens, lists of beasts, birds, vegetables, and
+stones, are all represented in it, and last, but not least, philology.
+The necessity of translating and explaining the Sumerian texts
+doubtless gave philology so prominent a place. Under the head of
+philology come interlinear and parallel translations of Sumerian
+documents, together with commentaries and exercises, reading-books and
+grammars of the two languages, endless lists of characters with their
+phonetic values and significations, and numerous vocabularies partly
+bilingual, partly containing catalogues of Semitic synonyms. The
+decipherer thus has at his command a most elaborate system for learning
+the Assyrian and Sumerian languages compiled by the Assyrians
+themselves. Time after time the signification of a new word is given by
+its synonym or synonyms in the lexical lists, and words of uncertain
+meaning in Hebrew have more than once been settled by means of their
+Assyrian equivalents.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The texts autotypes.</b>&#8212;The cuneiform texts further possess an
+advantage of which the student of the Old and New Testament Scriptures
+might well be envious. They are the autotypes of the scribes who wrote
+them for the libraries in the ruins of which they have been found. The
+texts have never passed through the hands of later copyists little
+acquainted with the language in which they were composed. The
+corruptions of the text, such as they are, go back to the scribes of
+Assur-bani-pal or Nebuchadrezzar, in some cases to the scribes even of
+the pre-Semitic period.
+</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/005.jpg" alt="Part of an Assyrian Book" width="293" height="475"></div>
+<p class="caption"><span class="sc">Part of an Assyrian Book.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Astronomy.</b>&#8212;The great work on astronomy and astrology in
+seventy-two chapters or books was originally compiled for the library
+of Sargon of Accad. It contained chapters on the eclipses or
+conjunction of the sun and moon, on the planets, the fixed stars, and
+the comets, and proves that observations of the heavens had been made
+for a long while previous to its composition. The path of the sun
+through the signs of the Zodiac had already been mapped out: in fact
+the Zodiacal Signs owe their origin to the astronomers of Babylonia. At
+the time they were first named the vernal equinox began with Taurus.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Mathematics.</b>&#8212;Among the mathematical treatises may be mentioned
+tables of cube and square roots from the library of Senkereh. The
+Babylonian system of notation resembled that of the Romans, but by an
+ingenious application of the sexagesimal system high numbers could be
+expressed in a very small number of figures.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Medicine and law.</b>&#8212;The standard work on medicine was voluminous
+like that on astronomy. It contained a vast number of prescriptions for
+different diseases, which read very much like modern ones. Law occupied
+a large space in Babylonian and Assyrian life, and codes of law, which
+protected the slave as well as the woman, went back to Sumerian times.
+A considerable part of the law was based on cases which had already
+been decided by the judges. The judges were appointed by the king, and,
+at all events in a later age, were under a president. Important cases
+were heard before several judges at once; thus a case which was tried
+at Babylon in <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 547 was heard before six judges and
+registered by their two clerks.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>History and mythology.</b>&#8212;Historical documents are numerous and
+include the lists of Assyrian eponyms, after whom the successive years
+were named, as well as of the dynasties of kings and the number of
+years each king reigned. Religious literature, however, was still more
+largely represented. As has been stated, a considerable portion of it
+consisted of hymns to the gods, psalms, and ritual texts. But there
+were also lists of the multitudinous deities and their temples, and
+more especially religious myths and legends. One of these described the
+visit of the goddess Istar to Hades in search of her dead husband
+Tammuz, the Sun-god, and told how she left some of her adornment at
+each of its seven gates, until at last she stood stripped and bare
+before the mistress of the Underworld, where the waters of life gush
+forth. In another the adventures of the first man Adapa are related,
+and how he was summoned to heaven to answer the charge of having broken
+the wings of the south-wind. We possess two fragments of this myth, the
+earlier part being written on a broken tablet which was found in the
+library of Nineveh, while the latter part of it has been found on one
+of the cuneiform documents discovered at Tel el-Amarna in Egypt, where
+it had been copied for Egyptian or Canaanite students some eight
+centuries before the library of Nineveh was in existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Chaldaean epic and the Deluge.</b>&#8212;One of the most famous of
+the legends is the Chaldaean account of the Deluge, which was
+discovered by George Smith in 1872. Its close resemblance to the
+Biblical account of the same event is well known. It embodied at least
+two earlier versions of the story, and in its present form is inserted
+as an episode in the great Epic of the Babylonian hero Gilgames. The
+Epic was composed by a certain Sin-liqi-unnini in twelve books, and was
+arranged on an astronomical principle, the subject of each book
+corresponding with the name of a Zodiacal sign. Thus the account of the
+Deluge is introduced into the eleventh book, which answers to Aquarius
+the eleventh sign of the Zodiac.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gilgames, it was said, was the fated child of whom it had been
+prophesied that he would slay his grandfather. Though his mother had
+been confined in a tower, he was nevertheless born and conveyed to
+safety on the wings of an eagle. When grown to man's estate he saved
+Erech from the enemy and made it the seat of his dominion. He overthrew
+Khumbaba the tyrant of the forest of cedars, and found a friend and
+guide in the satyr Ea-bani. The goddess Istar wooed him in marriage,
+but he reproached her with the woes she had already brought on her
+hapless lovers and scorned her beauty. In revenge she besought Anu, her
+father, to create a winged bull, which should attack the hero.
+Gilgames, however, slew the bull and returned in triumph to Erech with
+his spoils. But misfortune fell upon him. Ea-bani was killed by the
+bite of a gad-fly, his soul rising up from the ground to the heaven of
+heroes, and Gilgames himself was smitten with a sore disease. To heal
+it he sailed beyond the mouth of the Euphrates and the river of death,
+and here conversed with Xisuthrus, the Chaldaean Noah, who, like Enoch,
+had been translated without seeing death. Xisuthrus told him the story
+of the Deluge, and instructed him how to cure his malady.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+Epic of the Creation.&#8212;The Assyrian Epic of the Creation, the discovery
+of which was also due to George Smith, has already been alluded to. Its
+parallelism with the account of the Creation, in the first chapter of
+Genesis, was noticed from the first. The first tablet opens with a
+description of the deep or watery chaos, while the fifth tablet
+describes the appointment of the heavenly bodies for signs and for
+seasons, and in the seventh comes an account of the creation of the
+animals. The second and third tablets, however, and possibly the
+fourth, were occupied with the story of the struggle between Tiamat the
+dragon of darkness, and Merodach the Sun-god, which finds its echo in
+the Apocalypse (Rev. xii. 7-9). Out of the skin of Tiamat, Merodach
+formed the firmament which 'divided the waters which were under the
+firmament from the waters which were above it.' Other accounts of the
+Creation existed, which differed essentially from that of the Epic.
+Thus there was one that was written for the Library of Kutha and
+described an imperfect creation which foreshadowed as it were the
+present one. Mr. Pinches, again, has discovered a Sumerian legend of
+the origin of things which seems to have been current at Eridu. But in
+the Epic a considerable number of the older cosmological legends were
+embodied and combined, and a gloss of materialistic philosophy put upon
+them. It is this gloss which makes it difficult to believe that the
+Epic can be of much antiquity. The materials of which it is composed
+doubtless go back to an early period, but in its present form it
+belongs to an age when the deities of the old faith were resolved into
+philosophical abstractions and the forces of nature. At present, at all
+events, we have no reasons for thinking that it is earlier than the
+time of the Second Assyrian Empire.
+</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/006.jpg" alt="Contract-Tablets" width="446" height="550"></div>
+<p class="caption"><span class="sc">Contract-Tablets.</span>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<a name="VI">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+CHAPTER VI
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+SOCIAL LIFE
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Contract-tablets.</b>&#8212;We have learnt a great deal about the
+social life of Babylonia and Assyria from the contract-tablets which
+have been found in enormous numbers in Babylonia. A few have also come
+from the library of Nineveh, relating for the most part to the sale and
+lease of house property. Some of them have Aramaic dockets attached to
+them, giving the names of the persons mentioned in the contract and the
+nature of its contents. These dockets serve to verify the method of
+cuneiform decipherment, and are an indication that in the time of
+Tiglath-pileser III and his successors Aramaic was the common language
+of trade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of the Babylonian contract-tablets go back to the time of
+Khammurabi and his dynasty, and are in Sumerian. But the larger number
+are of much later date, and extend from the reign of Kandalanu, the
+predecessor of Nabopolassar, to that of Xerxes. For many years we have
+a continuous series of documents dated month by month in each year. A
+contract-tablet was often enclosed in an envelope of clay, on which its
+principal contents were inscribed. They were kept in large jars which
+answered to our modern safes.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Married Life.</b>&#8212;From the contracts relating to matrimony we learn
+that polygamy was very rare, and that the wife enjoyed a considerable
+amount of independence. The dowry she brought with her on marriage had
+to be restored to her in case of divorce. Moreover the woman could act
+apart from her husband, entering into partnership, trading with her
+money and conducting law-suits in her own name. In <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 555 we
+find a father transferring all his property to his daughter, and
+reserving only the use of it during the rest of his life. On the other
+hand wives, like concubines, could sometimes be purchased, though in
+this case if the husband married again he stipulated that he would send
+his first wife back to her home along with a certain sum of money.
+Children could be adopted, and there was the utmost freedom as regards
+the devolution of property, which could be 'tied up' by will.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Burial.</b>&#8212;The dead were buried after complete or partial
+cremation. With the exception of the kings they were interred in
+cemeteries outside the towns, tombs and tombstones being erected over
+them, with rivulets, which symbolized 'the water of life,' flowing at
+their side.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Slavery.</b>&#8212;Slavery was an ancient institution, but the slave was
+protected by law as far back as the Sumerian period. In later times he
+could even appear as party to a suit, and could recover his freedom by
+manumission, by purchase, by proving that he had been unlawfully
+enslaved, or by his adoption into the family of a citizen. Slaves could
+be impressed into the royal service, so that in selling a slave it was
+usual to stipulate that the seller should be responsible for any
+trouble arising from such a cause. Poor parents sometimes sold their
+children into slavery, and the Sumerian law ordered a son who denied
+his father to be shorn and sold as a slave.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Lowness of Wages.</b>&#8212;Few persons were so poor as not to be able to
+keep one slave at least. But the existence of slavery caused wages to
+be low, and lowered the character and position of the free labourer.
+Thus we find that a skilled labourer, like a coppersmith, received only
+six <i>qas</i> (about 8-1/2 quarts) of flour for overlaying a chariot
+with a lining of copper, and that only 1<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> was paid
+for painting the stucco of a wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Property.</b>&#8212;The tenure of a farm was of various kinds. Sometimes
+the property belonged half to the landlord, half to the tenant, the
+tenant doing all the work and handing the landlord's half of the
+produce to his agent. Sometimes while the tenant gave his work, the
+landlord provided him with carts, oxen, and other necessaries. At other
+times the tenant received only a third, a fourth, or even a tenth of
+the produce, besides paying a fixed rent of two-thirds of the dates
+gathered from the palms on the estate. The landlord could dismiss the
+tenant, who was also required to build the farm house if one did not
+already exist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When house property or land was let or sold it was minutely described,
+and numerous witnesses to the deed of sale or lease were required. The
+length of the lease as well as the rent had to be stated, any
+transgression of the terms of the lease being punished with a severe
+fine. The tenant had to return the property in the state in which he
+found it. The rent of course depended on the size and value of the
+property, and could be paid half-yearly as well as three times a year.
+Houses, further, might be bought and sold through the intervention of
+an agent.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Taxes.</b>&#8212;Taxation was probably heavy. In the time of Sennacherib,
+Nineveh had to pay the treasury 30 talents a year, while Carchemish was
+assessed at 100 talents. Taxes were also levied in kind, and there was
+an <i>octroi</i> duty upon goods entering the town. The metal,&#8212;gold,
+silver, and bronze,&#8212;was measured out by weight, a coinage not making
+its appearance until late in Babylonian history, though, as in Egypt,
+rings of gold or silver, which took the place of coins, were used at an
+early time.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Prices.</b>&#8212;The value of grain and dates necessarily varied from
+time to time. Under Nebuchadrezzar, the quart of sesame cost a little
+over a penny, in the twelfth year of Nabonidos it was a little less
+than 1-1/2<i>d.</i> In the seventh year of Nebuchadrezzar dates were
+about a halfpenny a quart, in his thirty-eighth year the quart was only
+1/25 of a penny. In the reign of Cambyses a quart of corn cost
+2-1/2<i>d.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The prices of other things were higher. In the reign of Darius a lady
+sold 200 sheep for &#163;135, in that of Nebuchadrezzar an ox, sacrificed in
+the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara, cost &#163;2. We hear of asses sold
+for &#163;7 10<i>s.</i>, and &#163;2, and of five casks of wine purchased for &#163;1
+10<i>s.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Usury.</b>&#8212;Deeds of partnership are common; so also are deeds
+relating to money-lending. The usurer, in fact, was a prominent person
+in the trading community of Babylonia. Under Nebuchadrezzar and his
+successors the usual rate of interest was 20 per cent., the interest
+being paid each month, though we also hear of 13-1/3 per cent. In
+concluding a bargain, it was usually stipulated that if the money were
+not paid by a specified date, interest should be paid upon it until it
+was paid in full.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Army.</b>&#8212;By the side of the commercial class stood a numerous
+body of military and civil officials. At the head of the Assyrian army
+was the Tartan (<i>turtannu</i>) or Commander-in-chief, and under him
+came a large staff of officers. The army itself was highly organized.
+In addition to the infantry and cavalry there were numerous chariots,
+in one of which the king rode when he commanded in person. In the time
+of Tiglath-pileser III, saddles, leathern drawers, and high boots were
+introduced for the cavalry, and a corps of slingers and pioneers was
+created by Sennacherib. The infantry were divided into heavy-armed and
+light-armed, many of the heavy-armed wearing coats of mail formed of
+metal scales sewn to a leather shirt. Helmets were largely used, as
+well as shields. The army carried with it on the march various engines
+for attacking the walls of a town&#8212;battering-rams, ladders, crow-bars,
+and the like&#8212;as well as tents. The royal tent was accompanied by a
+cooking and a dining-tent, and was elaborately furnished. We learn from
+the contract-tablets, that in the reign of Nabonidos, rather more than
+2-1/2 bushels of wheat were furnished to each of the bowmen, while 54
+<i>qas</i> (75 quarts) of beer were provided on a particular day, 'for
+the troops which had marched from Babylon.'
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Navy.</b>&#8212;A fleet was kept in Babylonia, and the king had a
+State-barge on the Euphrates. The Assyrians, however, were not a naval
+people, and the biremes, employed by Sennacherib when he attacked the
+Chaldaean colony in the Persian Gulf, were built and manned by
+Phoenicians.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>The Bureaucracy.</b>&#8212;The prefects or satraps of the Assyrian
+provinces and subject cities were appointed by the king, like the
+military officers, and were responsible to him. A certain number of
+them were eligible for the post of <i>limmu</i>, or eponym, after whom
+the year was named&#8212;an honour which they shared with the monarch. The
+office does not appear to have existed in Babylonia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among the tablets which have come from the library of Nineveh are some
+which contain long lists of Assyrian officials. They were a very
+numerous body, but we need mention only the Rab-shakeh
+(<i>Rab-saki</i>), 'chief of the princes,' or Vizier, the Rab-saris
+(<i>Rab-sa-resi</i>) or 'chief of the nobles,' and the Rab-mag
+(<i>Rab-mugi</i>) or 'chief physician.' The identification of the two
+last is due to Mr. Pinches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The priests and judges have already been alluded to, as also the clerks
+or scribes, many of whom, at least in Babylonia, were also priests.
+Poets and musicians were attached to the court, and we hear of a grant
+of land being made to a court-poet, in Babylonia, for some verses in
+which he had doubtless flattered the king. Society, in short, was
+highly organized, and the principle of a subdivision of labour was
+fully understood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In one important respect, however, the basis upon which society rested
+in Babylonia and in Assyria was different. The government of Babylonia
+was theocratic, that of Assyria was military. While Assyria with its
+bureaucratic centralization is an anticipation of imperial Rome,
+Babylonia with its theocratic constitution is an anticipation of papal
+Rome. The king was the adopted son of Bel, and his right to rule was
+based on the fact that Bel, the true lord and ruler of the State, had
+delegated to him his power.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<a name="appendix">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+APPENDIX
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="section">
+<span class="sc">Assyrian Measures of Length.</span>
+</p>
+
+<table summary="Measures of length">
+<tr>
+<td class="r">60</td>
+<td>Uban ('fingers')</td>
+<td width="6%">&nbsp;</td>
+<td>1 Ammat ('cubit').</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">6</td>
+<td>Ammat</td>
+<td width="6%">&nbsp;</td>
+<td>1 Qanu ('reed').</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">2</td>
+<td>Qanu</td>
+<td width="6%">&nbsp;</td>
+<td>1 Gar.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">60</td>
+<td>Gar</td>
+<td width="6%">&nbsp;</td>
+<td>1 Sussu ('soss').</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">30</td>
+<td>Sussi</td>
+<td width="6%">&nbsp;</td>
+<td>1 Kaspu.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="section">
+<span class="sc">Measures of Capacity<a href="#note6" name="noteref6">
+<small>[6]</small></a>.</span>
+</p>
+
+<table summary="Measures of capacity">
+<tr>
+<td class="r">10</td>
+<td>d><span class="sc">gar</span><a href="#note7" name="noteref7">
+<small>[7]</small></a></td>
+<td width="6%">&nbsp;</td>
+<td>1 <span class="sc">qa.</span></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">27</td>
+<td><span class="sc">qa</span></td>
+<td width="6%">&nbsp;</td>
+<td>1 <span class="sc">ap.</span></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">36</td>
+<td><span class="sc">qa</span></td>
+<td width="6%">&nbsp;</td>
+<td>1 <span class="sc">pi</span> (or Persian Ardeb).</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">60</td>
+<td>Q<span class="sc">a</span></td>
+<td width="6%">&nbsp;</td>
+<td>1 Homer.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">3</td>
+<td>Homers (or 5 Ardebs)</td>
+<td width="6%">&nbsp;</td>
+<td>1 <span class="sc">gur</span> (about 250 quarts).</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="section">
+<span class="sc">Measures of Weight and Coinage.</span>
+</p>
+
+<table summary="Measures of weight and coinage">
+<tr>
+<td class="r">60</td>
+<td>Shekels</td>
+<td width="6%">&nbsp;</td>
+<td>1 Silver Mana ('Mina') = &#163;9.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">60</td>
+<td>Silver Manas</td>
+<td width="6%">&nbsp;</td>
+<td>1 Silver Talent.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">60</td>
+<td>Gold Manas</td>
+<td width="6%">&nbsp;</td>
+<td>1 Gold Talent (&#163;8400).</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+    The silver shekel was worth about 3<i>s.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="section">
+<span class="sc">The Months of the Year.</span>
+</p>
+
+<table summary="The Months of the Year" cellspacing="6">
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hd">Assyrian Name.</td>
+<td class="hd">Sumerian Name.</td>
+<td class="hd">Zodiacal Sign.</td>
+<td class="hd">Corresponding Months.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(1)</td>
+<td width="25%">Nisannu (Nisan)</td>
+<td width="25%">Month of 'the dweller in the Asherah<a href="#note8" name="noteref8">
+<small>[8]</small></a></td>
+<td>Aries</td>
+<td>March-April.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(2)</td>
+<td width="25%">Aaru (Iyyar)</td>
+<td width="25%">'The directing bull'</td>
+<td>Taurus</td>
+<td>April-May.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(3)</td>
+<td width="25%">Sivanu (Sivan)</td>
+<td width="25%">'Bricks' (?)</td>
+<td>Gemini</td>
+<td>May-June.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(4)</td>
+<td width="25%">Duzu (Tammuz)</td>
+<td width="25%">'The growth of seed'</td>
+<td>Cancer</td>
+<td>June-July.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(5)</td>
+<td width="25%">Abu (Ab)</td>
+<td width="25%">'The fiery-hot'</td>
+<td>Leo</td>
+<td>July-August.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(6)</td>
+<td width="25%">Ululu (Elul)</td>
+<td width="25%">'The message of Istar'</td>
+<td>Virgo</td>
+<td>August-September.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(7)</td>
+<td width="25%">Tasritu (Tisri)</td>
+<td width="25%">'The holy mound'</td>
+<td>Libra</td>
+<td>September-October.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(8)</td>
+<td width="25%">Arakh-savna (Marchesvan, 'the eighth month')</td>
+<td width="25%">'Opposite the foundation (of the year)</td>
+<td>Scorpio</td>
+<td>October-November.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(9)</td>
+<td width="25%">Kisilivu (Chisleu)</td>
+<td width="25%">'The cloudy'</td>
+<td>Sagittarius</td>
+<td>November-December.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(10)</td>
+<td width="25%">Dhabitu (Tebet)</td>
+<td width="25%">'The cave of the dawn' (?)</td>
+<td>Capricornus</td>
+<td>December-January.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(11)</td>
+<td width="25%">Sabadhu (Sebat)</td>
+<td width="25%">'The curse of rain'</td>
+<td>Aquarius</td>
+<td>January-February.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(12)</td>
+<td width="25%">Addaru (Adar)</td>
+<td width="25%">The month of 'cultivation'</td>
+<td>Pisces</td>
+<td>February-March.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(13)</td>
+<td colspan="4">Arakh-makhru (Ve-Adar), the intercalary month.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<a name="Babylonian">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="section">
+<span class="sc">Babylonian Kings.</span>
+</p>
+<table summary="Babylonian Kings">
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="mid">B.C.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2">Sargon of Akkad</td>
+<td class="r">3800</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2">Naram-Sin his son</td>
+<td class="r">3700</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(1)</td>
+<td class="hang">The Dynasty of Babylon: 11 kings for 304 years</td>
+<td class="r">2478-2174</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">The sixth king of the dynasty was Khammurabi</td>
+<td class="r">2356-2301</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(2)</td>
+<td class="hang">The Dynasty of Lagas: 11 kings for 368 years</td>
+<td class="r">2174-1806</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(3)</td>
+<td class="hang">The Kassite Dynasty: 36 kings for 576 years 9 months</td>
+<td class="r">1806-1229</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2">Among the kings of this dynasty were Burna-buryas (cir. <span class="sc">b.c.</span>
+1420), the contemporary of the Egyptian Pharaohs Amenophis III and
+Amenophis IV, and Kuri-galzu (cir. <span class="sc">b.c.</span> 1400).</td>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2">The last six kings were:</td>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Rimmon-nadin-suma</td>
+<td class="r">1297</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Conquest of Babylon by Tiglath-Uras of Assyria</td>
+<td class="r">1291</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Expulsion of the Assyrians; Rimmon-suma-natsir king</td>
+<td class="r">1284</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Meli-sipak</td>
+<td class="r">1261</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Merodach-baladan I</td>
+<td class="r">1246</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Zamama-nadin-sumi</td>
+<td class="r">1233</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Bel-suma-nadin</td>
+<td class="r">1232</td>
+</tr>
+
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(4)</td>
+<td class="hang">The Dynasty of Isin: 11 kings for 72 years 6 months</td>
+<td class="r">1229-1156</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(5)</td>
+<td class="hang">The Dynasty of the Sea-coast: 3 kings for 21 years 5 months</td>
+<td class="r">1156-1135</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(6)</td>
+<td class="hang">The Dynasty of Bit-Bazi: 3 kings for 20 years 3 months</td>
+<td class="r">1135-1115</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(7)</td>
+<td class="hang">An Elamite usurper for 6 years</td>
+<td class="r">1115-1109</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(8)</td>
+<td class="hang">The 31 [kings] of the Dynasty of Babylon<a href="#note9" name="noteref9">
+<small>[9]</small></a></td>
+<td class="r">1109-&nbsp;&nbsp;730</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Among them were:</td>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Nebuchadrezzar I</td>
+<td class="r">1109-1096</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Merodach-nadin-akhi</td>
+<td class="r">1096-1090</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Merodach-sapik-zirrat</td>
+<td class="r">cir. 1075</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Nebo-baladan</td>
+<td class="r">cir. 880</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">span="2">Merodach-balasu-iqbi</td>
+<td class="r">cir. 820</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Nabu-natsir (Nabonassar)</td>
+<td class="r">747</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Nabu-nadin-ziri (Nadios) his son</td>
+<td class="r">733</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Nabu-suma-yukin his son</td>
+<td class="r">731</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(9)</td>
+<td class="hang">The Dynasty of Sape: Yukin-zira (Chinziros)</td>
+<td class="r">730</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">(10)</td>
+<td class="hang">The Assyrian Dynasties:</td>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Pulu (Pul, P&#244;ros), called Tiglath-pileser III in Assyria</td>
+<td class="r">727</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Ulul&#226;, called Shalmaneser IV in Assyria</td>
+<td class="r">725</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Merodach-baladan II, the Chaldaean from the Sea-coast</td>
+<td class="r">721</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Sargon of Assyria</td>
+<td class="r">709</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Sennacherib his son</td>
+<td class="r">704</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Merodach-zakir-sumi for 1 month</td>
+<td class="r">702</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Merodach-baladan III for six months</td>
+<td class="r">702</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Bel-ebus of Babylon</td>
+<td class="r">702</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Assur-nadin-suma son of Sennacherib</td>
+<td class="r">700</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Nergal-yusezib</td>
+<td class="r">694</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Musezib-Merodach</td>
+<td class="r">693</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Sennacherib a second time</td>
+<td class="r">689</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Esar-haddon his son</td>
+<td class="r">681</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Samas-suma-yukin (Saosduchinos)</td>
+<td class="r">668</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Kandalanu (Kineladanos)</td>
+<td class="r">648</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Nabu-pal-utsur (Nabopolassar)</td>
+<td class="r">626</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Nabu-kudurri-utsar (Nebuchadrezzar) his son</td>
+<td class="r">605</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Evil-Merodach his son</td>
+<td class="r">562</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Nergal-sarra-utsur (Nergalsharezer)</td>
+<td class="r">560</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Laborosoarchod, his son, for 3 months</td>
+<td class="r">556</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Nabu-nahid (Nabonidos)</td>
+<td class="r">556</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Cyrus conquers Babylon</td>
+<td class="r">538</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Cambyses his son</td>
+<td class="r">529</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Gomates (Gaumata) the Magian (the pseudo-Bardes or Smerdis)</td>
+<td class="r">521</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Dareios (D&#226;rayavaush) the son of Hystaspes (Visht&#226;spa)</td>
+<td class="r">521</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Xerxes I (Khshay&#226;rsh&#226;) his son</td>
+<td class="r">485</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Samas-erba, rebel-king</td>
+<td class="r">480</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Xerxes restored</td>
+<td class="r">479</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Artaxerxes I (Artakshatra) Longimanus his son</td>
+<td class="r">465</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Xerxes II, his son, for two months</td>
+<td class="r">425</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Sogdianos, his half-brother, for seven months</td>
+<td class="r">425</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Dareios II, Nothos (or Okhos) his brother</td>
+<td class="r">424</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Artaxerxes II (Mn&#234;m&#244;n) his son</td>
+<td class="r">405</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Okhos (Uvasu) the son of Artaxerxes</td>
+<td class="r">362</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Arses his son</td>
+<td class="r">339</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Dareios III, Kodomannos</td>
+<td class="r">336</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="hang">Conquered by Alexander the Great</td>
+<td class="r">330</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="section">
+<span class="sc">Assyrian Kings.</span>
+</p>
+
+<table summary="Assyrian Kings">
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Sargon asserts he was preceded by 330 Assyrian kings.</td>
+<td class="r">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="section">
+<span class="sc">High Priests of Assur.</span>
+</p>
+
+<table summary="High Priests of Assur">
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="mid">B.C.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Isme-Dagon</td>
+<td class="r">cir. 1850</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Samas-Rimmon I his son</td>
+<td class="r">1820</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Igur-Kapkapu</td>
+<td class="r">?</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Samas-Rimmon II his brother</td>
+<td class="r">?</td>
+</tr>
+
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Khallu</td>
+<td class="r">?</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Irisum his son</td>
+<td class="r">?</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="section">
+<span class="sc">Kings of Assyria.</span>
+</p>
+
+<table summary="Kings of Assyria">
+
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="mid">B.C.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Bel-Kapkapu 'the founder of the monarchy'</td>
+<td class="r">?</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Ada'si</td>
+<td class="r">?</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Bel-basi his son</td>
+<td class="r">?</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-bil-nisi-su, cir.</td>
+<td class="r">1450</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Buzur-Assur,</td>
+<td class="r">1440</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-nadin-akhi,</td>
+<td class="r">1420</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-yuballidh his son,</td>
+<td class="r">1400</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Bel-nirari his son,</td>
+<td class="r">1380</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Pudilu (Pedael) his son,</td>
+<td class="r">1360</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Rimmon-nirari I his son,</td>
+<td class="r">1340</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Shalmaneser I his son (founder of Calah),</td>
+<td class="r">1320</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Tiglath-Uras I his son,</td>
+<td class="r">1300</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-natsir-pal I his son,</td>
+<td class="r">1280</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-narara,</td>
+<td class="r">1270</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Nebo-d&#226;n his son,</td>
+<td class="r">1265</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Bel-kudurri-utsur,</td>
+<td class="r">1230</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Uras-pileser,</td>
+<td class="r">1215</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-d&#226;n I his son,</td>
+<td class="r">1185</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Mutaggil-Nebo his son,</td>
+<td class="r">1160</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-ris-ilim his son,</td>
+<td class="r">1140</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Tiglath-pileser I his son,</td>
+<td class="r">1115</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-bil-kala his son,</td>
+<td class="r">1090</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Samas-Rimmon I his brother,</td>
+<td class="r">1070</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-irbi</td>
+<td class="r">?</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Tiglath-pileser II,</td>
+<td class="r">950</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-d&#226;n II his son,ther,</td>
+<td class="r">930</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Rimmon-nirari II his son,ther,</td>
+<td class="r"><span class="sc">b.c.</span> 911</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Tiglath-Uras II his son,ther,</td>
+<td class="r">889</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-natsir-pal II his son,ther,</td>
+<td class="r">883</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Shalmaneser II his sonther,</td>
+<td class="r">858</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-dain-pal (Sardanapallos), rebel-kingther,</td>
+<td class="r">825</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Samas-Rimmon II his brotherther,</td>
+<td class="r">823</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Rimmon-nirari III his sonther,</td>
+<td class="r">810</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Shalmaneser IIIther,</td>
+<td class="r">781</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-d&#226;n IIIther,</td>
+<td class="r">771</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-nirarither,</td>
+<td class="r">753</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Tiglath-pileser III, Pulu (Pul, P&#244;ros), usurperther,</td>
+<td class="r">745</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Shalmaneser IV, Ulul&#226;, usurperther,</td>
+<td class="r">727</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Sargon usurperther,</td>
+<td class="r">722</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Sennacherib (Sin-akhi-erba) his sonther,</td>
+<td class="r">705</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Esar-haddon I (Assur-akhi-iddina) his sonther,</td>
+<td class="r">681</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-bani-pal (Sardanapallos) his sonther,</td>
+<td class="r">668</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur-etil-ilani-yukinni his sonther,</td>
+<td class="r">?</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Sin-sarra-iskun (Sarakos)ther,</td>
+<td class="r">?</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Destruction of Ninevehther,</td>
+<td class="r">606</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<a name="Synchronisms">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="section">
+<span class="sc">Synchronisms between Assyrian and Biblical History.</span>
+</p>
+
+<table summary="Synchronisms between Assyrian and Biblical History">
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="mid" width="13%">B.C.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Battle of Qarqar; Shalmaneser II defeats Hadadezer of Damascus, Ahab of Israel, &#38;c.</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">853</td>
+</tr>
+
+ <tr>
+<td class="hang"> Campaigns against Hadadezer of Damascus</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">850-845</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Campaign against Hazael of Damascus; tribute paid to Shalmaneser by Jehu 'the son of Omri'</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">41</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Damascus captured by Rimmon-nirari III; tribute paid by Samaria</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">804</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Pul, who takes the name of Tiglath-pileser III, usurps the throne, April</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">745</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">War with Hamath; submission of Uzziah; fall of Arpad</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">843-840</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Tribute paid to Tiglath-pileser (Pul) by Menahem of Samaria and Rezon of Damascus</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">738</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Damascus besieged; the tribes beyond the Jordan carried away; Jehoahaz (Ahaz) of Judah becomes an Assyrian vassal</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">734</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Pekah put to death; Hosea succeeds</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">733 (? 729)</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Damascus captured; Rezon slain; Ahaz at Damascus</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">732</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Capture of Samaria by Sargon</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">722</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Embassy of Merodach-baladan to Hezekiah</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">712</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Capture of Ashdod by the Assyrians</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">711</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Campaign of Sennacherib against Judah</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">701</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Murder of Sennacherib</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">681</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Manasseh of Judah tributary to Esar-haddon</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">676</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Destruction of Thebes (No-Amon) in Egypt by the Assyrians</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">665</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Babylonian invasion of Egypt</td>
+<td class="r" width="13%">567</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<a name="Principal">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="section">
+<span class="sc">The Principal Deities of Babylonia and Assyria.</span>
+</p>
+
+<table summary="Principal Deities of Babylonia and Assyria">
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Arm (Sumerian Ana), the sky-god of Erech, and wife Anat.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Bel the elder (Sum. Mul-lil or El-lil), the earth-god of Nipur, and wife Beltis.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Ea, the water-god of Eridu, and wife Dav-kina.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Bel-Merodach (Maruduk) of Babylon, the son of Ea, and wife Zarpanit.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Istar, the goddess of the evening-star, the daughter of Sin.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Sin, the Moon-god of Ur, the son of Bel of Nipur.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Samas, the Sun-god, the son of Sin; also called &#194;.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Rimmon (Rammanu) or Barqu (Sum. Mer), the air-god.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Uras<a href="#note10" name="noteref10">
+<small>[10]</small></a>, the warrior-god of Nipur, the minister of the elder Bel.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Nebo (Nabu), 'the prophet' of Borsippa, the minister of Merodach.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Tasmit, 'the hearer,' the wife of Nebo.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Nusku, a Sumerian deity identified with Nebo.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Nergal, the warrior-god of Kutha.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="hang">Assur, the national-god of Assyria.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<b>Oxford</b>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
+</p>
+
+<hr class="med">
+
+<p class="head">Footnotes</p>
+
+<p class="fn"><a name="note1" href="#noteref1">&nbsp;&nbsp;[1]</a> In Dapper's <i>Circumstantial Description of Asia</i>, it
+is stated that opposite Mosul is 'a little town called up to the
+present day by Arab writers Nennouwi, and by the Turks Eski Mosul,' or
+Old Mosul.
+</p>
+
+<p class="fn"><a name="note2" href="#noteref2">&nbsp;&nbsp;[2]</a> Hyde's words are 'ductuli pyramidales seu cuneiformes.'
+</p>
+
+<p class="fn"><a name="note3" href="#noteref3">&nbsp;&nbsp;[3]</a> For the language of Mitanni, called that of Su(ri) in the
+Assyrian lexical lists, see Jensen, Br&#252;nnow, and myself in the
+<i>Zeitschrift f&#252;r Assyriologie</i>, v. 2, 3 (Aug. 1890), and for that
+of Arzawa see my letter to the <i>Academy</i>, Aug. 20, 1892, PP. 154,
+155.
+</p>
+
+<p class="fn"><a name="note4" href="#noteref4">&nbsp;&nbsp;[4]</a> The date partly depends upon the number of years assigned
+to the dynasty to which Nabonassar belonged, which unfortunately is not
+stated by the native historians. Consequently, other Assyriologists
+make it, sometimes a little higher, sometimes a little lower. For the
+justification of my date see the <i>Records of the Past</i>, New
+Series, pp. viii-xi.
+</p>
+
+<p class="fn"><a name="note5" href="#noteref5">&nbsp;&nbsp;[5]</a> A contract-tablet exists dated at Sippara in the second
+year of Sin-sar-iskun, which shows that the rule of the king was
+acknowledged in Babylonia.
+</p>
+
+<p class="fn"><a name="note6" href="#noteref6">&nbsp;&nbsp;[6]</a> As determined by Dr. Oppert.
+</p>
+
+<p class="fn"><a name="note7" href="#noteref7">&nbsp;&nbsp;[7]</a> Capitals denote that the Semitic pronunciation of the
+ideograph is unknown.
+</p>
+
+<p class="fn"><a name="note8" href="#noteref8">&nbsp;&nbsp;[8]</a> <i>Zaggara</i>, rendered by the Semitic <i>bit ili</i>
+(Beth-el), 'house of God,' as well as by <i>asirtu</i>, 'the symbol of
+the goddess Asherah' (mistranslated 'grove' in the Authorized Version
+of the Old Testament).
+</p>
+
+<p class="fn"><a name="note9" href="#noteref9">&nbsp;&nbsp;[9]</a> The fracture of the tablet makes the arrangement of this
+Dynasty not absolutely certain.
+</p>
+
+<p class="fn"><a name="note10" href="#noteref10">&nbsp;&nbsp;[10]</a> The reading of the name of this god is doubtful. It has
+been variously transcribed Bar, Nin-ip, and Adar, the last of which,
+however, is certainly wrong.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Primer of Assyriology, by Archibald Henry Sayce
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+Project Gutenberg's A Primer of Assyriology, by Archibald Henry Sayce
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Primer of Assyriology
+
+Author: Archibald Henry Sayce
+
+Release Date: September 12, 2011 [EBook #37411]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PRIMER OF ASSYRIOLOGY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CLAY CYLINDER OF TIGLATH-PILESER I.]
+
+
+_Present Day Primers_
+
+
+_Primer of Assyriology_
+
+
+BY
+
+A. H. SAYCE, LL.D.
+
+PROFESSOR OF ASSYRIOLOGY, OXFORD
+AUTHOR OF 'FRESH LIGHT FROM THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS'
+'ASSYRIA, ITS PRINCES, PRIESTS, AND PEOPLE,' ETC.
+
+
+WITH SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
+56 PATERNOSTER ROW AND 65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD
+
+_First Edition, September, 1894._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                 PAGE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE
+
+Geography--Population and Language--The Chaldaeans--The Kassi--
+Natural Products--Canals--Architecture--Asphalt and Naphtha--
+Character of the Babylonians and Assyrians                          7
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE DISCOVERY AND DECIPHERMENT OF THE INSCRIPTIONS
+
+The Site of Babylon--The Site of Nineveh--Excavations--The
+Decipherment of the Inscriptions--The Decipherment tested--
+Sumerian--Vannic--Other Languages--The origin of the
+Cuneiform Syllabary--Simplification of the Syllabary               18
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN HISTORY
+
+Different States in Babylonia--The first Empire--The monuments
+of Tello--Chronology--The United Monarchy--The rise of Assyria--
+Babylon a sacred city--Tiglath-pileser I--The First Assyrian
+Empire--The Second Assyrian Empire--The Babylonian Empire--Cyrus
+and the Fall of Babylon--Belshazzar--Decay of Babylon              42
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+RELIGION
+
+The religions of Babylonia and Assyria--Differences between
+Babylonian and Assyrian religion--Sumerian religion Shamanistic--
+Two centres of Babylonian religion--Semitic influence--The goddess
+Istar--Bel-Merodach--Other deities--Sacred books and ritual--The
+Priests--The Temples--Astro-theology--Sacrifices and offerings--The
+Sabbath--Monotheistic tendency--The future life--Cosmology         80
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN LITERATURE
+
+Aids to the reading of the texts--The libraries--Varieties of
+literature--The texts autotypes--Astronomy--Mathematics--Medicine
+and law--History and mythology--The Chaldaean epic and the
+Deluge--Epic of the Creation                                       95
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SOCIAL LIFE
+
+The Contract-tablets--Married Life--Burial--Slavery--Lowness of
+Wages--Property--Taxes--Prices--Usury--The Army--Navy--The
+Bureaucracy                                                       109
+
+APPENDIX
+
+Assyrian Measures of Length--Measures of Capacity--Measures of
+Weight and Coinage--The Months of the Year                        118
+
+Babylonian Kings--Assyrian Kings--High Priests of Assur--Kings
+of Assyria                                                        120
+
+Synchronisms between Assyrian and Biblical History                125
+
+The Principal Deities of Babylonia and Assyria                    126
+
+
+
+
+A PRIMER OF ASSYRIOLOGY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE
+
+
+Geography.--The civilizations of Babylonia and Assyria grew up on the
+banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. The Tigris was called Idikna and
+Idikla in the Sumerian or primitive language of Babylonia, from which
+the Semites formed the name Idiklat, by means of the feminine suffix
+_-t_. In later times the name was shortened into Diklat, and finally
+assimilated by the Persians to the word Tigra, which in their language
+signified 'an arrow.' It is from Tigra that the classical name Tigris
+is derived. In Genesis (ii. 14), however, the ancient name Idikla,
+there written Hiddekel, is still preserved. The Euphrates was called
+Pura-nun, or 'great water,' in Sumerian, and was frequently known as
+simply the Pura or 'Water,' just as the Nile is known to-day to the
+modern Egyptians as simply 'the Sea.' Hence it is often spoken of in
+the Bible as 'the River,' without the addition of any other name. From
+Pura came the Semitic Purat, with the Semitic suffix _-t_; and Purat,
+the Perath of the Old Testament, was changed by the Persians into
+Ufratu, with a play upon their own word _u_ 'good.' The Persian Ufratu
+is the Greek Euphrates.
+
+The alluvial plain of Babylonia was the gift of the two great rivers.
+In the early days of Babylonian civilization they both flowed into the
+Persian Gulf. But salt marshes already existed at their mouths, and as
+time went on the marshes extended further and further to the south.
+What had once been sea became dry land, the silt brought down by the
+rivers forming an ever-increasing delta in the north of the Gulf.
+To-day the two rivers flow into one channel, and the point where they
+unite is eighty miles distant from the present line of coast. The
+marshes are called 'the country of Marratu' or 'the salt-sea' in the
+inscriptions, a name which reappears as Merathaim in Jer. 1. 21.
+
+One of the oldest of Babylonian cities was Eridu, 'the good city,'
+which was originally built on the shore of the Persian Gulf, though
+Abu-Shahrein, which now marks its site, is far inland, the sea having
+retreated from it for a distance of 100 miles. In early times, however,
+it was the chief Babylonian port, and through its intercourse with
+foreign countries it exercised a great influence on the culture and
+religion of Babylonia. Further to the north, but on the western side of
+the Euphrates, was Ur, the birth-place of Abraham, whose ruins are now
+called Mugheir or Muqayyar; and still further to the north, but on the
+opposite side of the river, were Larsa (probably the Ellasar of Gen.
+xiv. 1) now Senkereh, and Uruk or Erech (Gen. x. 10) the modern Warka.
+Considerably to the north of these again came Nipur (now Niffer), which
+played a leading part in the history of Babylonian religion. Nipur
+stood at the spot where the Tigris and Euphrates tended to approach one
+another, and northward, in the narrowest part of the territory which
+lay between them, were the important cities of Babel or Babylon, Kutha,
+and Sippara. Babylon, called Bab-ili, 'the gate of God,' on the
+monuments, lay on both sides of the Euphrates, its south-western suburb
+being Borsippa. The great temple of Bel-Merodach, called E-Saggila,
+rose within it; that of Nebo, the prophet and interpreter of Merodach,
+being at Borsippa. E-Zida, the temple of Nebo, is now known as the
+Birs-i-Nimrud. Kutha (now Tell-Ibrahim), to the north of Babylon, was
+surrounded by vast cemeteries, which were under the protection of its
+patron-god Nergal. Sippara, still further to the north, was a double
+city, one part of it, the present Abu-Habba, being termed 'Sippara of
+the Sun-god,' while the other half was 'Sippara of the goddess Anunit.'
+It is in consequence of this double character that the Old Testament
+speaks of it as Sepharvaim 'the two Sipparas.'
+
+Northward of Sippara the Tigris and Euphrates again trend apart from
+one another and enclose the great plateau of Mesopotamia. To the east
+of the Tigris come the mountains of Elam, 'the highlands,' and to the
+north of them the Kurdish ranges, which were known to the primitive
+Babylonians under the name of Guti or Gutium. At the foot of these
+ranges, and northward of the Lower or Little Zab, the kingdom of
+Assyria arose. It took its name from its original capital of Assur, now
+Kalah-Sherghat, on the western bank of the Tigris, not far to the north
+of the junction of the latter river with the Lower Zab. The supremacy
+of Assur afterwards passed to Calah and Nineveh, which lay northward
+between the Tigris and the Upper or Greater Zab. Calah (now Nimrud) was
+close to the junction of the two rivers; Nineveh (now Kouyunjik and
+Nebi Yunus opposite Mosul) was built along the bank of the Tigris, the
+stream of the Khoser flowing through the middle of it. Some miles to
+the north, under the shelter of the hills, Sargon built a palace which
+he called Dur-Sargon (the modern Khorsabad), and between Nineveh and
+Calah lay Res-eni 'the head of the Spring,' the Resen of Gen. x. 12.
+
+
+Population and Language.--Babylonia already had a long history behind
+it when the kingdom of Assyria first arose. The main bulk of the
+Assyrian population was Semitic, and the common language of the country
+was Semitic also. But it was otherwise in Babylonia. Here the pioneers
+of civilization, the builders of the great cities, the inventors of the
+cuneiform system of writing, of astronomy, of mathematics, and of other
+arts and sciences, belonged to a non-Semitic race and spoke an
+agglutinative language. It is in this language that the earliest
+records of the country are written and that the older clay-books were
+compiled. For want of a better name scholars have called the language
+and people to whom it belonged Accadian or Sumerian, or even
+Accado-Sumerian. Accad and Sumer were the names given to the northern
+and southern divisions of Babylonia respectively, and as it was in
+Sumer that the old race and language lingered the longest, 'Sumerian'
+would appear to be the best title to apply to them. Indeed it is
+possible that the city of Agade or Accad, from which the district of
+Accad seems to have derived its name, was of Semitic foundation. In any
+case the Semitic element in Accad was from very early times stronger
+than that in Sumer, and consequently the Sumerian dialect spoken in the
+north was more largely affected by Semitic influence and the resulting
+phonetic decay than was the dialect spoken in the south. Sumerian was
+agglutinative, like the languages of the modern Finns or Turks, the
+relations of grammar being expressed by suffixes (or prefixes) which
+retain an independent meaning of their own. Thus _dingir_ is 'god,'
+_dingir-ene_ 'gods,' _dingir-ene-ku_ 'to the gods;' _mu-ru_ 'I built,'
+_mu-na-ru_ 'I built it.'
+
+The Semitic dialects of Babylonia and Assyria differed very slightly
+from one another, and they are therefore called by the common name of
+Assyrian. We can trace the history of Assyrian by means of contemporaneous
+monuments for nearly 4,000 years, beginning with the records of Sargon
+of Accad (B.C. 3800) and ending with documents of the Parthian epoch.
+Assyrian belongs to the northern group of Semitic languages, being more
+closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic than it is to Arabic or Ethiopic.
+
+
+The Chaldaeans.--When the Semites first obtained political power in
+Babylonia we do not know. The earliest Semitic empire known to us is
+that of Sargon of Accad. Babylon did not become the capital of a united
+kingdom till much later, Khammurabi (B.C. 2350) being apparently the
+first who made it so. Strictly speaking, it is only after this event
+that the name of 'Babylonia' is applicable to the whole country. In the
+Old Testament the Babylonians are called Kasdim, a word of uncertain
+origin. It is rendered 'Chaldaeans' in the Authorized Version; the
+classical Chaldaeans, however, took their name from the Kalda, a tribe
+settled in the salt-marshes, of whom we first hear in an inscription of
+the twelfth century B.C. One of their princes was Merodach-baladan
+(Isaiah xxxix) who made himself master of all Babylonia. It is probable
+that Nebuchadrezzar was also of Kalda descent. After the time of
+Merodach-baladan the Kalda formed so integral a part of the population
+as to give their name to the whole of it in the writings of the Greeks
+and Romans, and after the fall of Babylonia, when Babylonian astrologers
+and fortune-tellers made their way to the west, 'Chaldaean' became
+synonymous with 'diviner.'
+
+
+The Kassi.--Another element in the Babylonian population consisted of
+the Kassi (the Kossaeans or Kissians of the Greeks), who came from the
+mountains of Elam. They spoke originally a non-Semitic language, and
+gave a dynasty of kings to Babylonia which lasted 576 years and nine
+months. The dynasty was reigning in the century before the Exodus when
+the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna were written, and we learn from
+them that the Babylonians were at that time called Kassi (or Kasi) in
+Canaan.
+
+
+Natural Products.--The soil of Babylonia was exceedingly fertile. It
+was the natural home of the wheat which still grows wild in the
+neighbourhood of Anah. Herodotus tells us that 'the leaf of the wheat
+and barley is as much as four fingers in width, and the stalks of the
+millet and sesame are so tall that no one who has never been in that
+country would believe me were I to mention their height.' It was
+calculated that grain produced on an average a return of two hundred
+for one on the seed sown, the return in favourable seasons being as
+much as three hundred. The chief tree of the country was the palm.
+Prices were frequently calculated in corn and dates, and the dates
+among other uses served to make wine. Though vines seem to have been
+grown, most of the grape-wine drunk in the country was imported from
+abroad.
+
+
+Canals.--The whole country was intersected by canals, and carefully
+irrigated by means of machines. The canals thus regulated the supply of
+water and enabled it to be carried beyond the reach of the rivers. The
+two principal canals were called the Nahar-Malcha or Royal River and
+the Pallacopas (Pallukat in the inscriptions).
+
+
+Architecture.--Babylonia was devoid of stone, which had to be brought
+from the mountains of Elam or elsewhere. In this respect it offered a
+striking contrast to Assyria, where good stone was plentiful. To this
+absence of stone may be traced some of the peculiarities of its early
+culture. It caused clay to become the common writing material of the
+country, the cuneiform characters being impressed with a stylus upon
+the tablet while the clay was still moist. It further obliged every
+building to be of brick. This led to a great development of columnar
+architecture, the wooden columns which supported the roof being
+subsequently imitated in brick. The use of brick further led to the use
+of stucco and painting. The walls of the Chaldaean houses, as we learn
+from Ezekiel (xxiii. 14), were decorated with 'images portrayed with
+vermilion,' unlike those of the Assyrian palaces which were lined with
+slabs of sculptured alabaster. Assyrian art was, however, borrowed from
+that of Babylonia; hence the colouration of the Assyrian bas-reliefs on
+stone; hence also the great mounds on which the Assyrian palaces were
+built. Such mounds were needful in the flat country of Babylonia where
+inundations were frequent; in Assyria they were not required.
+
+
+Asphalt and Naphtha.--Besides clay, Babylonia also furnishes asphalt
+and naphtha. According to Poseidonios the naphtha was partly white,
+partly black, the latter being that which was used for lamps. Naphtha
+is still found near Hit, 130 miles to the north of Babylon.
+
+
+Character of the Babylonians and Assyrians.--The contrast between the
+physical characteristics of Babylonia and Assyria was paralleled by a
+contrast between the characters of their inhabitants. The population of
+Babylonia was pre-eminently agricultural and peaceable, that of Assyria
+pre-eminently military. Babylonia was the land of letters; in Assyria
+the power to read and write was mainly confined to the scribes. Both
+Babylonians and Assyrians, however, were keen traders and merchants,
+but while 'the cry of the Chaldaeans was in their ships,' the Assyrians
+had no taste for the sea. The Babylonians seem to have been a gentler
+people, more pious and superstitious; the Assyrians, on the other hand,
+had a genius for organization and administrative work. Such differences
+may be traced as much to a difference in the conditions under which
+they lived as to a difference in race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE DISCOVERY AND DECIPHERMENT OF THE INSCRIPTIONS
+
+
+The Site of Babylon.--The site of Babylon was never forgotten. In the
+twelfth century, Benjamin of Tudela describes the ruins of
+Nebuchadrezzar's palace which he saw there, and in 1573 the English
+traveller Eldred visited the spot, and found the Tower of Babel in the
+Birs-i-Nimrud, which he states to be a mile in circumference and about
+as high as St. Paul's Cathedral. Other travellers have left notices of
+the ruins. But the first to explore them scientifically was Rich, the
+Resident of the East India Company at Bagdad, who surveyed and made a
+map of them. His work on the site of the old city was published in
+1811. But it was not until 1850 that the first excavations were made
+by Sir A. H. Layard, which were followed in 1851-4 by the French
+expedition under Fresnel, Thomas, and Oppert. The fruit of the
+expedition was an elaborate memoir by Oppert, which marks an epoch in
+the history of cuneiform decipherment, and determined the ancient
+topography of Babylon. The excavations were resumed by Sir H. Rawlinson
+in 1854, who discovered the architectural records of Nebuchadrezzar, at
+the same time that other ancient sites of Babylonian civilization were
+being excavated by Loftus and Taylor. At a much later period (in 1879
+and 1882) the work of excavation was again taken up by Mr. Hormuzd
+Rassam, who discovered the site of Sippara, and disinterred the ancient
+temple there of the Sun-god. Equally important were the discoveries
+made by the French consul, M. de Sarzec, in 1877-81 at Tello (the
+ancient Lagas) in southern Chaldaea. Monuments of the early Sumerian
+period of Babylonian history were brought to light, including seated
+statues and bas-reliefs, which are now in the Museum of the Louvre.
+
+
+The Site of Nineveh.--The identification of Nineveh was less easy than
+that of Babylon. Its site was lost, although the natives of the
+district had not altogether forgotten the name of Nunia, and Niebuhr in
+the last century, believed that it marked the site of the Assyrian
+capital[1]. But its real discovery was due to Rich. Shortly before his
+visit to Mosul a bas-relief had been found on the opposite side of the
+Tigris, which the Mohammedans had destroyed as being the work of the
+'infidels.' His examination of the mounds from which it had come led to
+the discovery of walls and cuneiform inscriptions, which left no doubt
+in his mind that the site was that of Nineveh. He accordingly drew up a
+map of the ruins, which he sent to Europe along with his collection of
+Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities. A single case, three feet in
+diameter, was sufficient for their accommodation in the British Museum.
+
+        [1] In Dapper's _Circumstantial Description of Asia_, it is
+        stated that opposite Mosul is 'a little town called up to the
+        present day by Arab writers Nennouwi, and by the Turks Eski
+        Mosul,' or Old Mosul.
+
+
+Excavations.--These antiquities, however, inspired the French _savant_,
+Mohl, with the conviction that if excavations were undertaken at the
+place where they had been found, important results would follow.
+Accordingly, he induced Botta, who had been sent as French Consul to
+Mosul in 1842, to commence digging there the following year. Botta was
+led by a native to the mound of Khorsabad, and his labours were soon
+rewarded by the discovery of Assyrian sculptures covered with cuneiform
+writing. The French government granted funds for the continuation of
+the work, and before 1845 the palace of Sargon was laid bare.
+
+Meanwhile Layard had arrived on the spot, and with the help of funds
+principally supplied by Sir Stratford Canning, had opened trenches in
+the mound of Nimrud (the ancient Calah). The spoils of the palaces he
+found here were transported to England in 1847. Among them was the
+famous Black Obelisk, on which mention is made of Jehu of Israel. At
+Kouyunjik also, among the ruins of the palaces of Sennacherib and
+Assur-bani-pal, excavations had been begun. But it was only after the
+return of Sir A. H. Layard to Mosul in 1849, with a grant from the
+British Museum, that a systematic exploration of this mound took place.
+Assisted by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, he discovered here the libraries of
+clay books from which most of our knowledge of Assyria and Babylonia
+is derived. Excavations were further undertaken at Kalah Sherghat
+(the ancient Assur), where the records of Tiglath-pileser I were
+disinterred, in the ruined palaces of Sennacherib and Esar-haddon at
+Nebi Yunus, at Arban on the Khabour (the ancient Sidikan), and at
+several other places. When the work was closed in 1852, a new world of
+art and literature had been revealed. Nothing further was done till
+the beginning of 1873, when George Smith was sent to Nineveh by the
+proprietors of the _Daily Telegraph_ in order to search for the missing
+portions of the Deluge-tablet, and a year later he was again sent out
+to excavate by the British Museum. After his death, near Aleppo, in
+1876, the excavations were entrusted to Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, who, in
+1878, discovered the bronze gates of Balawat, and three years later the
+site of Sippara in Babylonia, as well as a library in the temple of its
+Sun-god. A similar library has since been discovered (in 1891) by the
+American expedition in the mounds of Niffer, where monuments of Sargon
+of Accad (B.C. 3800) have been brought to light.
+
+
+The Decipherment of the Inscriptions.--The decipherment of the
+cuneiform texts has been one of the scientific triumphs of the present
+century. The key was given by the inscriptions on the ruined palaces
+and tombs of ancient Persia. Travellers at an early date had noticed
+these inscriptions at Persepolis and elsewhere, and while some compared
+the forms of the characters composing them to arrows, others considered
+them to be wedges, _cunei_ in Latin. The latter comparison was the
+origin of the term 'cuneiform,' ordinarily applied to them. We find it
+already used by Hyde in his _Historia Religionis veterum Persarum_,
+which was published at Oxford in 1700[2].
+
+        [2] Hyde's words are 'ductuli pyramidales seu cuneiformes.'
+
+The Italian traveller, Pietro della Valle, in 1621, was the first who
+made the characters known in Europe by printing a few of them; at the
+same time he put forward the correct suggestion that the inscriptions
+were to be read from left to right. A more important collection of
+signs, however, was published in 1693, in one of the early volumes (No.
+201) of the _Philosophical Transactions_ of the Royal Society from the
+papers of Mr. Flower, who had been specially charged by the East India
+Company with the duty of investigating the antiquities of Persia. But
+it was not till the middle of the eighteenth century that Cornelius van
+Bruyn (1714) and Carsten Niebuhr (1774-8), the father of the historian,
+first copied and published the inscriptions in anything like a complete
+and accurate manner. Niebuhr further pointed out that they comprised
+three different systems of cuneiform writing, which in the case of
+every text followed one another in a regular order. The first system of
+writing was the simplest, as it consisted of only forty-two different
+characters, whereas the number of characters in the second and third
+systems was very large.
+
+With Niebuhr's publication the work of decipherment became possible.
+In 1798, Professor Tychsen, of Rostock, discovered that in the first
+system an oblique wedge was used to divide the words from one another,
+and in 1802 the Danish Bishop, Muenter, starting from this basis,
+showed that the language possessed suffixes, pointed out that certain
+characters denoted vowels, and even divined the word for 'king,' as
+well as the value of two letters, one of them being _a_. He also
+maintained that while the first system of writing was alphabetic,
+the second was syllabic, and the third ideographic, and that as
+the inscriptions were found in Persia and on the buildings of the
+Achaemenian kings, the text which always comes first must represent
+the language of ancient Persia, which he identified, though
+erroneously, with Zend.
+
+It is, however, to George Frederick Grotefend, of Hanover, that the
+discovery of the key which has unlocked the secrets of cuneiform
+literature is really due. On September 4, 1802, he read before the
+Royal Society of Goettingen a Memoir, in which he announced his
+discovery of the names of certain Achaemenian kings in the cuneiform
+inscriptions, and explained the method by which he had arrived at his
+results. By a curious coincidence it was at the same meeting of the
+Society that Heyne described the first efforts that had been made
+towards deciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Grotefend first showed
+convincingly that the inscriptions must be read from left to right, a
+portion of a word which ends a line on the right side in one of the
+texts beginning the next line on the left side in a duplicate copy of
+it. He next pointed out that the analogy of the Sassanian inscriptions,
+which had just been deciphered by de Sacy, indicated that the
+Persepolitan texts must commence with the names of the kings who had
+erected the monuments, followed by their titles, and that a comparison
+of the texts one with another made it pretty evident that such was
+actually the case. In this way he succeeded in finding (like Muenter
+before him) the word for 'king,' and in addition to this the royal
+names preceding it. Those on the Persepolitan monuments represented a
+father and a son, though in certain cases the father added his own
+father's name, but without the royal titles. Thanks to the classical
+writers, it was known that the monuments were of Achaemenian origin,
+and the names of the Achaemenian kings had also been preserved. It only
+remained to fit them to the characters in the cuneiform texts.
+Hystaspes, Darius, and Xerxes alone suited, since Cyrus was too short
+and Artaxerxes too long; moreover, the letters _a_, _r_, and _sh_, in
+the names of Darius and Xerxes appeared in their right places if these
+names were adopted. So, too, did _a_ and _sh_ in the name of Hystaspes.
+Such a coincidence was sufficient to prove that Grotefend was right in
+his guess that the words in question represented proper names, for
+guess it was, though founded on strong probability and scientific
+induction. He had noticed that two of the names (those of Darius and
+Xerxes) occurred separately on two particular groups of monuments,
+whereas the word which followed them was always the same. It was
+natural to conclude that the latter word denoted 'king,' while those
+which preceded it were proper names.
+
+The alphabet Grotefend had constructed out of the proper names enabled
+him to read the word for 'king,' and thus to show its near affinity to
+the corresponding word in Zend. But he was a classical scholar rather
+than an orientalist, better known by his Latin grammar than by his
+knowledge of Eastern languages, and consequently as soon as his
+pioneering work of decipherment was accomplished, he lacked the
+philological knowledge which would have allowed him to continue it.
+Moreover, he was hampered by the false theory that the language of the
+inscriptions was identical with Zend. The next step of importance was
+taken by Rask in 1826, who discovered the termination of the genitive
+plural and the true reading of the title 'Achaemenian.' Rask was
+followed in 1836 by the great Zendic scholar Burnouf at Paris, and
+by Lassen at Bonn. Burnouf demonstrated that the language of the
+Achaemenian texts was not Zend, but a sister dialect spoken in western
+Persia, and his discovery of the names of the satrapies, in one of the
+inscriptions copied by Niebuhr, enabled him and Lassen simultaneously
+almost to complete what we may henceforth call the Old Persian
+alphabet. A few corrections in it were subsequently made by Beer,
+Jacquet, Holzmann, and Lassen himself.
+
+Meanwhile a young English officer in the East India Company's service,
+now Sir Henry Rawlinson, had been working in Persia unassisted, and at
+a distance from libraries, upon the Old Persian texts. He knew that
+Grotefend had discovered in them the names of the early Achaemenian
+monarchs, and with this clue he set himself to construct an alphabet
+and interpret the inscriptions. He soon found means of providing
+himself with fuller materials for the work of decipherment than those
+at the disposal of scholars in Europe, by copying the great inscription
+which Darius had caused to be engraved on the sacred rock of Bagistana
+or Behistun in commemoration of his accession to the throne of Persia,
+and re-conquest of the empire of Cyrus. The task of copying the
+inscription--by far the longest Persian one known--was an arduous
+one, and not unattended with danger, and it occupied several years.
+Rawlinson first saw the inscription in 1835; it was not till 1839 that
+the whole of it was copied. A few years later he revised it again, but
+his memoir upon it and upon the other Old Persian texts was not ready
+for publication till 1845. In the following year the text was published
+by the Royal Asiatic Society, and the translation and commentary
+followed in 1849. Dr. Hincks, of Dublin, had already (in 1846) given
+the last touch to the decipherment of the Old Persian alphabet by the
+discovery that the consonants composing it contained inherent vowels.
+
+As we have seen, Niebuhr had perceived that the Persepolitan
+inscriptions were in three different systems of writing. But it was
+only after the decipherment of the Persian texts that it was found that
+the three systems of writing embodied three separate languages, and
+belonged to three separate countries. As in modern Turkey a governor
+has to issue an edict in agglutinative Turkish, Semitic Arabic, and
+Aryan Persian, so too in ancient Persia a king who wished to be
+understood by all his subjects had to appeal to them in the Aryan
+language of Persian itself, in the Semitic language of Babylonia and
+Assyria, and in the agglutinative language of Susiania or Elam. When
+the second and third systems of writing came to be read it was
+discovered that the second contained the script and language of
+Elam--sometimes, but incorrectly, called Scythian, Medic or Protomedic,
+sometimes, more properly, Amardian or Neo-Susian--while the third was
+Babylonian. The three capitals of the empire, Persepolis, Susa and
+Babylon, were thus each of them represented.
+
+The number of characters used in Amardian, though large, was limited,
+and accordingly, with the help of the proper names occurring in the Old
+Persian texts, a syllabary, or list of characters each expressing a
+syllable, was soon formed and the work of translation commenced.
+Westergaard, the Dane, who had already travelled in Persia, and there
+copied the inscription on the tomb of Darius at Naksh-i-Rustem, led the
+way in 1845. He was followed by Hincks, de Saulcy, and above all Edwin
+Norris, the learned Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, who
+published in 1853 the Amardian (or as he called it the 'Scythic')
+version of the Behistun inscription, with an elaborate translation,
+commentary, and vocabulary. Further progress, in the study of the
+language was made by Oppert, whose book _Le Peuple et la Langue
+des Medes_ (1879) is a monument of systematic research. Sayce's
+decipherment of the inscriptions of Mal-Amir, south-east of Susa, in
+1884 (in the Proceedings of the Sixth Oriental Congress), showed that
+we must look to that part of Susiania for the origin of the Amardian
+syllabary and dialect. The language was, in fact, one of the
+agglutinative dialects spoken in Elam, the native language of Susa
+itself being closely related to it. Unfortunately, however, there is no
+known language with which the dialects of ancient Elam can be compared,
+and consequently our knowledge of them hardly extends beyond the help
+afforded by the trilingual Persian texts.
+
+The decipherment of the third system of writing long seemed to baffle
+the inquirer. The characters were multitudinous, some of them were
+plainly ideographs, denoting ideas and not letters or syllables, while
+the same character did not always appear to have the same value.
+Moreover, the belief that the characters must represent alphabetic
+letters long stood in the way of the decipherer. Grotefend had already
+observed that they resembled in form the characters found on some of
+the antiquities which came from Babylonia, but it was not till after
+the excavation of Nineveh that any serious effort was made to decipher
+them. Botta and Layard, at the very outset, pointed out that the script
+used in Assyria was the same as that of the third Achaemenian system,
+and thus attracted fresh attention to the latter. Loewenstern was the
+first to attack the problem in 1845. His first essays, however, were
+unsuccessful, like those of de Saulcy in 1847, and his second
+publication (in 1847) did little more than establish the fact that the
+same name might be written with different signs. In the same year de
+Longperier correctly deciphered the words and ideographs denoting
+'palace,' 'king,' 'great,' and the like, though without being able to
+read phonetically any one of them. But in 1848 Botta published the
+numerous inscriptions he had discovered at Khorsabad, at the same time
+subjecting them to a careful analysis. He divided them into words,
+wherever it was possible, noting the variations in writing the same
+word, and drawing up a list of 642 classified characters. He further
+proved that the terminations or suffixes of words in the Assyrian texts
+agreed with those of the third Achaemenian system, an indication that
+the language was the same as well as the script. Finally he made it
+clear that the script contained not only phonetic characters, but also
+ideographs, and he correctly determined many of these ideographs,
+including that which denotes plurality. All that was now needed was to
+discover the phonetic equivalents of the characters.
+
+This was done half a year later by de Saulcy, who analyzed the
+Babylonian transcript of the Achaemenian inscription at Elwend, and
+gave phonetic values to 120 characters. He was, however, still under
+the belief that they represented letters instead of syllables, and was
+consequently obliged to admit the existence of 'homophones.' The fact
+that they really represented syllables,--_ba_, _bi_, _be_, _bu_,
+&c.--was discovered by Dr. Hincks immediately afterwards (1847 and
+1850). Hincks also discovered the name of Nebuchadrezzar in the
+Babylonian inscriptions, and by the further discovery that an
+inscription brought from Babylon by Sir Robert Ker-Porter, which was
+written in the complicated characters of early Babylonia, was a
+duplicate of one in the 'Neo-Babylonian' characters of the Achaemenian
+era, he made it possible to read the oldest forms of Babylonian script.
+From this time forward the work of decipherment went on apace. The
+Semitic character of the Assyro-Babylonian language, which had been
+guessed at by Loewenstern, was now put beyond question, and the
+well-known laws of Semitic grammar came to the help of the student in
+reading the text. In 1851 Rawlinson published the Babylonian text of
+the Behistun inscription, and in his commentary upon it announced to a
+wondering and incredulous world the existence in Assyrian of
+'polyphones.' If the method of decipherment were right, it was
+necessary to assume that the same character could have more than one
+phonetic value. The cause of this extraordinary fact--which, however,
+is paralleled in Old Egyptian as well as in Japanese--was soon made
+clear by Oppert, Hincks, and Rawlinson himself. The Assyrian syllabary,
+which had originally been a collection of pictorial hieroglyphs, was
+not the invention of the Semitic Babylonians, but of an earlier people
+who spoke an agglutinative language, and to whom the name of Accadians
+or Sumerians was given. When the script was adopted by the Semites, the
+Sumerian words denoting the objects or ideas for which the characters
+stood became phonetic values; thus _du_ 'to go' and _gub_ 'to stand'
+became the phonetic values of the character which had originally been a
+picture of a human leg.
+
+The interpretation of the Assyrian and Babylonian texts now advanced
+rapidly, in spite of the smallness of the body of students, and the
+incredulity of Orientalists, especially in Germany. In 1847 Rawlinson
+was able to give a fairly complete account of the several varieties of
+cuneiform writing, and in 1850 he published a translation of the long
+inscription of Shalmaneser II on the Black Obelisk of Nimrud. The
+translation is on the whole marvellously correct, and proves
+conclusively the soundness of the method on which it was based. The
+proper names, however, were still but imperfectly read, and it was not
+till Hincks discovered the names of Jehu and Omri in the inscription
+(in 1851) that the age of it could be fixed. Shortly afterwards Hincks
+deciphered the names of Hezekiah and Jerusalem in the texts of
+Sennacherib, as well as the name of Sennacherib himself, and thus
+showed that Longperier had been right in his conjecture that the king
+of the Khorsabad monuments was Sargon. The foundation of Assyrian
+grammar was next laid by Hincks in 1855 in a series of remarkable
+articles on the Assyrian verb, to which the progress of discovery has
+since added little that is important. A complete and systematic grammar
+itself was first written by Dr. Oppert in 1860, and eight years
+afterwards M. Menant analyzed his results and tested their correctness.
+
+
+The Decipherment tested.--Orientalists, however, still looked askance
+at the new science which threatened to dwarf the older Semitic
+learning. The Council of the Royal Asiatic Society, accordingly,
+determined to subject it to a conclusive test. Copies of the annals of
+Tiglath-pileser I, which had been found at Kalah Sherghat, were sent to
+Rawlinson, Hincks, Fox Talbot, and Oppert; they were asked to translate
+them independently of one another, and send the translations under seal
+by a given date to the Secretary of the Society. When the translations
+were opened they were found to be in substantial agreement. This was in
+1857, a year which we may therefore regard as closing the first epoch
+of decipherment.
+
+
+Sumerian.--The decipherment of the Assyrian texts brought with
+it the decipherment of the Sumerian texts. The library of Nineveh was
+stocked with tablets intended to facilitate the study of the old
+language of Chaldaea. Among them are grammars, vocabularies, and
+reading-books, as well as interlinear or parallel translations of
+Sumerian texts in the Semitic language of Babylon and Assyria. Oppert
+in his _Expedition scientifique en Mesopotamie_ led the way to the
+use of them in 1859, and the outlines of Sumerian grammar were first
+sketched by Sayce in 1870, followed by Lenormant in 1873. Since then
+the labours of Lenormant, Haupt (who demonstrated the existence of two
+Accado-Sumerian dialects), Hommel, Amiaud, Ball and others, have given
+us an extensive knowledge of the primitive language of Babylonia.
+
+
+Vannic.--Northward of Assyria, in Ararat, the modern Armenia, the
+cuneiform script of Nineveh had been borrowed in the ninth century B.C.
+As the characters of the script continued to preserve their Assyrian
+values there was no difficulty in transliterating them, and as early as
+1852 Hincks read the names of the kings they had been employed to
+write, and even used them in determining the values of the characters
+found at Nineveh. The majority of the inscriptions, which had been
+copied by Schulz at the cost of his life in 1829, and published in
+France in 1840, were met with in the neighbourhood of Van; hence the
+term 'Vannic' which is usually applied to them. The language in which
+they are written was however utterly unknown, and bore no obvious
+relationship to any with which we are acquainted; consequently though
+the texts could be transliterated they could not be translated. More
+than one attempt was made to decipher them, but to no purpose, until
+1882 when Guyard pointed out that the formula with which many of them
+end corresponds with the imprecation often attached to the Assyrian
+inscriptions, and Sayce, following up this clue, with the help of the
+ideographs borrowed from Assyria, finally succeeded in solving the
+problem. A bilingual text (Assyrian and Vannic), recently discovered by
+M. de Morgan in the pass of Kelishin in Kurdistan, has verified the
+correctness of his results, which have been further modified or
+extended by D. H. Mueller, Belck, and Lehmann.
+
+
+Other Languages.--Yet two more languages written in the cuneiform
+syllabary have lately been revealed by the cuneiform tablets found at
+Tel el-Amarna in Upper Egypt. One was the language of Mitanni, the
+Aram-Naharaim of the Old Testament, in which there is a long letter
+from the king of Mitanni to the Egyptian Pharaoh. The other language,
+which is quite distinct from that of Mitanni, was spoken at Arzawa in
+northern Syria. Both languages are still undeciphered[3].
+
+        [3] For the language of Mitanni, called that of Su(ri) in the
+        Assyrian lexical lists, see Jensen, Bruennow, and myself in the
+        _Zeitschrift fuer Assyriologie_, v. 2, 3 (Aug. 1890), and for
+        that of Arzawa see my letter to the _Academy_, Aug. 20, 1892,
+        pp. 154, 155.
+
+
+The origin of the Cuneiform Syllabary.--As we have seen, the pictorial
+origin of the cuneiform characters was perceived in the early days of
+Assyrian decipherment, as well as the cause of their polyphony. Their
+wedge-like forms were due to the use of clay as a writing material. The
+impression made by the stylus upon it resembled a wedge; curved lines
+became angles, and after a time the original picture passed into a
+conventional form. In the course of centuries the characters grew more
+and more simplified by the omission of unnecessary wedges, the least
+complicated being those of the official hand of Assyria, and the later
+Babylonian or Persepolitan script. It must not be supposed, however,
+that when the system of writing ceased to be pictorial it was already
+complete. Down to a comparatively late period new characters were
+invented or old characters combined in a new way, while new phonetic
+and ideographic values were assigned to the characters which already
+existed. Though the syllabary is essentially of Sumerian origin there
+is much in it which is traceable to a Semitic source. Many of the
+values given to the characters as well as many of their ideographic
+meanings are Semitic. Moreover the Sumerians and Semites lived in
+contact with one another long after the adoption of Sumerian culture by
+the Semitic nomads; consequently not only did the Semites borrow
+Sumerian words, the Sumerians borrowed Semitic words, more especially
+in the northern part of the country. The early date at which some of
+these were borrowed is shown by their having undergone the phonetic
+changes which distinguished the northern Accado-Sumerian dialect from
+the southern. False etymologizing also has given rise to new values
+just as it has given rise to new spellings in English. The Semitic
+scribes of a later day were as fond of deriving Semitic words from
+Sumerian as our own etymologists used to be of deriving Teutonic words
+from Latin, Greek, or Hebrew. Thus the purely Semitic _sabattu_
+'Sabbath,' from _sabatu_ 'to rest,' is derived from the two Sumerian
+words _sa_ 'heart' and _bat_ 'to complete,' and interpreted to mean 'a
+day of rest for the heart.'
+
+
+Simplification of the Syllabary.--The script used at Susa before the
+overthrow of the kingdom of Elam was the same as the archaic script of
+Babylonia. But the Amardian syllabary was a selected one. Not only were
+the forms of the characters simplified, a comparatively small number
+of them was employed to each of which one value only was assigned. In
+the Vannic texts also polyphony was similarly avoided. Characters
+expressing open syllables like _ba_ and _ab_ were chosen, to which a
+few more denoting closed syllables and ideographs were added; but in no
+case was a character allowed to possess more than one value. Large use
+was further made of the vowels, the syllable _ba_, for example, being
+written _ba-a_, so that the syllabary tended to become an alphabet.
+This step was taken in Old Persian, where the forms of the letters were
+often so simplified as to lose all resemblance to their primitive
+forms. Apart from its alphabet of thirty-six letters Old Persian
+retained only one syllabic character (_t[r.]_) and a few ideographs.
+
+The pictorial origin of the syllabary has proved of important
+assistance in reading the texts. Certain of the ideographs were used as
+'determinatives' for indicating the generic character of the word to
+which they are prefixed or affixed. Thus there is a determinative to
+denote that the word which follows is the name of a 'city,' and another
+which shows that the preceding word is a plural. In this way a glance
+at an Assyrian, an Amardian, or a Vannic text will enable us at once to
+distinguish the names of men, women, towns, countries, animals, trees,
+metals, stones, and the like. It is a help which we look for in vain in
+Phoenician or Hebrew inscriptions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN HISTORY
+
+
+Different States in Babylonia.--More than one kingdom originally
+existed in Babylonia. Not only were there separate kingdoms in Accad
+and Sumer, or northern and southern Chaldaea, many of the great cities
+also once formed separate states. The excavations at Tello, for
+instance, have revealed the existence of a dynasty which had its seat
+there, and the ancestral kingdom of Sargon of Accad does not seem to
+have extended beyond the territory of its chief city. The smaller
+states were, however, absorbed by the larger ones, and a time came when
+the whole of Babylonia was united into a single monarchy, whose ruler
+assumed the imperial title of 'king of Sumer and Accad.' As in Egypt,
+therefore, a recollection of the original dual character of the kingdom
+was preserved in the title of its kings.
+
+It is probable that the various states of Babylonia were more than once
+brought into temporary union before the final unification of the
+monarchy took place. Sargon of Accad, for instance, seems to have
+claimed supremacy over the rest of Chaldaea, and the dynasties which
+subsequently arose at Urand other places adopted the imperial title,
+although the country was not finally united under a single head until
+the reign of Khammurabi. It was to this early period that the maritime
+trade and civilizing influence of Eridu chiefly belongs.
+
+
+The first Empire.--Sargon of Accad founded the earliest Semitic empire
+of which we know. According to Nabonidos he lived more than 3,200 years
+before the time of the last Babylonian king, that is to say about 3800
+B.C. His father, Itti-Bel, had no royal title, and legend gathered
+around his birth. His uncle, it was said, ruled in the mountains, and
+his mother concealed her child in an ark of rushes, daubed with pitch,
+which she entrusted to the waters of the Euphrates. Here he was found
+by a peasant, who brought him up as his own son. But the goddess Istar
+loved the peasant lad, and the time at last came when he was able to
+declare his true character and ascend the throne of his fathers.
+
+A copy has been preserved of the historical annals of Sargon and his
+son Naram-Sin, which must have been compiled in the reign of the
+latter, as they break off in the middle of it. We learn from them that
+Sargon not only established his rule over Babylonia and the adjoining
+districts, he also defeated the Elamites, and made four expeditions
+into Syria, 'the land of the Amorites.' The last of these expeditions
+occupied three years, and ended with the erection of images of the
+Chaldaean king on the shores of the Mediterranean, and with the
+conquest of the countries 'of the sea of the setting sun,' which he
+united 'into a single empire.' His last campaign was against the
+Aram-Naharaim of Scripture in north-western Mesopotamia. Babylon is
+already mentioned as one of his seats of power; his capital, however,
+was at Agade or Accad, where on one occasion he was unsuccessfully
+besieged by his revolted subjects. Here, too, he founded a famous
+library, for which the standard work on astronomy and astrology was
+compiled in seventy-two books. A translation of it into Greek was made
+in later days by the Chaldaean historian Berossos.
+
+Sargon's son and successor Naram-Sin continued his father's victorious
+career, and Palestine being already secured behind him, marched into
+the land of Magan, by which name Midian and the Sinaitic peninsula were
+known, and captured its king. A record of the conquest was engraved on
+an alabaster vase discovered by the French Expedition to Babylonia, but
+unfortunately lost in the Tigris. Naram-Sin, like one or two other
+Babylonian monarchs of the same early epoch, received divine honours.
+
+
+The monuments of Tello.--The oldest monuments found at Tello in
+southern Chaldaea belong to the age of Sargon and Naram-Sin. But
+whereas the court of Sargon was Semitic, that of the kings of Tello was
+Sumerian. At a later date Tello lost its independence, and its rulers
+became merely _patesis_ or high-priests. One of these was Gudea, whose
+statue may be seen in the Louvre. In his time building-materials were
+brought to Chaldaea from all parts of Western Asia; thus cedar beams
+were imported from Mount Amanus, and diorite from the land of Magan. It
+was out of this diorite that the statues were cut. Another of the
+_patesis_ of Tello was the vassal of Dungi, king of Ur, whose father
+had built or restored the great temple of the Moon-god in that city,
+and had claimed sovereignty over the whole of Babylonia.
+
+
+Chronology.--These early sovereigns are known to us by the bricks and
+other objects which they have left behind, but we cannot arrange them
+in a chronological order. Chronology begins with what is called by the
+native historians 'the dynasty of Babylon.' From this time forward the
+tablets have preserved the names of the Babylonian kings divided into
+dynasties, together with the length of each reign as well as of each
+dynasty. The sixth king of the dynasty of Babylon was Khammurabi, who
+reigned fifty-five years (B.C. 2356-2301)[4], and whose reign marks an
+epoch in Babylonian history.
+
+        [4] The date partly depends upon the number of years assigned
+        to the dynasty to which Nabonassar belonged, which unfortunately
+        is not stated by the native historians. Consequently, other
+        Assyriologists make it, sometimes a little higher, sometimes a
+        little lower. For the justification of my date see the _Records
+        of the Past_, New Series, pp. viii-xi.
+
+
+The United Monarchy.--When Khammurabi ascended the throne, Babylonia
+was either wholly or in part under Elamite suzerainty. That portion of
+it of which Larsa was the capital was governed by Eri-Aku (probably the
+Arioch of Genesis), who was a son of the Elamite prince Kudur-Mabug.
+Kudur-Mabug was not himself king, but as he has the title of 'father of
+the land of the Amorites' he must have held rule in Syria. Khammurabi
+succeeded in overthrowing Eri-Aku and his Elamite allies and in making
+himself sole king of Babylonia. Babylon, his capital, thus became, and
+remained, the capital of the united kingdom. It was soon the scene of
+a great literary revival. The older literature of the country was
+re-edited, new authors arose, and the court of Khammurabi revived the
+literary glories of that of Sargon. As his great-grandson still calls
+himself 'king of the land of the Amorites' we may infer that the
+conquests in Syria were not lost.
+
+
+The rise of Assyria.--The dynasty of Khammurabi was followed by one
+which came from Tello, whose kings bear Sumerian names. Then Babylonia
+was conquered by Kassite princes who ruled over it for 576 years and
+nine months (B.C. 1806-1229). While the Kassite dynasty was reigning, a
+new kingdom arose in the north, that of Assyria. The high-priests of
+the city of Assur became kings, the first of whom seems to have been
+Bel-Kapkapu. The kingdom rapidly grew in power, and although Babylonia
+exacted tribute from it, its kings began to ally themselves by marriage
+with the rulers of the southern monarchy. In the fifteenth century B.C.
+Assuryuballidh of Assyria, like his contemporary Burna-buryas of
+Babylonia, sent letters and presents to the Egyptian Pharaoh and begged
+in return for Egyptian gold, and a century later the city of Calah was
+built (or restored) by Shalmaneser I. His son Tiglath-Uras in the sixth
+year of his reign marched against Babylonia, captured Babylon and
+governed it for seven years. He was then driven out of the country and
+subsequently murdered by his own son. The Kassite dynasty, however, did
+not last long after the Assyrian invasion. The Assyrian king had
+entered Babylon in B.C. 1291, and in B.C. 1229 the dynasty came to an
+end.
+
+
+Babylon a sacred city.--From this time forward for many centuries
+Assyria, and not Babylonia, occupies the chief place in the history of
+western Asia. It needed a Nebuchadrezzar to make Babylonia once more a
+conquering power. But Babylon itself remained the sacred city of the
+cultured nations of Asia. Its old _prestige_ and hallowed associations
+clung to it, and it became what Rome was to mediaeval Europe. An
+Assyrian king, however powerful he might be, could not claim the
+imperial title until he had 'taken the hands of Bel' and thereby been
+adopted as a son by the god of Babylon. Indeed it was only in this
+way that usurpers like Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon obtained any
+recognition of their legitimate right to the throne. The sanction of
+religion remained with Babylon, though the sword had passed to Assyria.
+
+
+Tiglath-pileser I.--One of the most famous of the early Assyrian
+conquerors was Tiglath-pileser I (B.C. 1100). He carried his arms in
+all directions. Eastward he chastised the Kurds, northward he
+penetrated into the mountains of Armenia and engraved his image at the
+sources of the Tigris; and in the west he overthrew the Moschians, the
+Meshech of the Bible, ravaging the land of Komagene, laying Malatiyeh
+under tribute, threatening the Hittites in their stronghold at
+Carchemish, and making his way to the shores of the Mediterranean. Here
+he sailed over the sea in a ship of Arvad, and received presents from
+the terrified Pharaoh of Egypt which comprised a crocodile and a
+hippopotamus. Southward he invaded Babylonia, and though repulsed in
+his first attack he avenged himself by subsequently over-running the
+country and capturing Babylon. He was also mighty in the hunting-field
+as well as in war, and in the neighbourhood of Harran boasts of having
+slain the wild elephants which then existed there. His own capital
+Assur he adorned with the spoils of his victories and restored its
+temples.
+
+
+The First Assyrian Empire.--We have to pass over an interval of two
+centuries before we find another Assyrian monarch who emulated the
+distant campaigns of Tiglath-pileser. Assur-natsir-pal (B.C. 883-858)
+was the first of a line of conquerors who may be regarded as the
+founders of the first Assyrian empire. From henceforth, too, Assyrian
+chronology is accurately fixed. The Assyrians counted time by means
+of certain officers called _limmi_, who were changed from year to
+year. The name of a particular _limmu_ consequently indicated the year
+during which he had held office. Lists of the _limmi_ have been
+preserved which begin with the reign of Assur-natsir-pal's father
+and carry us down to that of Assur-bani-pal. As the annals not only
+of Tiglath-pileser I, but also of an older king, the father of
+Shalmaneser I, are dated in the years of office of certain _limmi_ it
+is clear that the institution went back to an early period, and that
+lists of the older _limmi_ may yet be recovered, carrying us, it may
+be, to the very foundation of the Assyrian kingdom.
+
+Calah, instead of Assur, had become the royal residence, and from Calah
+accordingly the Assyrian armies marched forth year after year to
+conquer and spoil. The fastnesses of the Kurdish mountains were
+explored, and the Kurdish tribes compelled to pay tribute to the
+Assyrian king. The cities of Armenia south of Lake Van were ravaged in
+repeated campaigns, one effect of which seems to have been the
+introduction of Assyrian culture and writing, and the rise of the
+Vannic monarchy. The merchant princes of Carchemish bought off the
+Assyrian attack with rich gifts, but the states on either bank of the
+Euphrates were overrun, and Assur-natsir-pal made his way across Amanus
+to the Gulf of Antioch, and across Lebanon to the Mediterranean. Here
+he received the tribute of the Phoenician cities, among them being Tyre
+and Sidon. In imitation of Tiglath-pileser I he hunted in northern
+Mesopotamia, but the elephant had disappeared from the region, and he
+had to content himself with the wild bull.
+
+Assur-natsir-pal was succeeded by his son Shalmaneser II, whose reign
+ended in B.C. 823. His long reign was a series of military campaigns.
+Countries previously untrodden by Assyrian feet were subdued or ravaged
+with fire and sword. Assyrian armies made their way through the passes
+of Kurdistan as far as Lake Urumiyeh and the land of the Minni. The
+newly-founded kingdom of Ararat was shaken, the Tibareni (called Tubal
+in Scripture) paid tribute, and Tarsus in Cilicia was compelled to open
+its gates. The passage of the Euphrates was secured by the capture of
+the Hittite fortress of Pethor at the junction of the Euphrates and the
+Sajur, and the whole weight of the Assyrian power was hurled against
+Syria. The Phoenician cities made their peace with the invader by
+offering gifts; so too did Jehu (Yahua) of Samaria, whose ambassadors
+are represented on the Black Obelisk. Hamath and Damascus, more
+especially the latter, had to bear the brunt of the Assyrian attack. In
+B.C. 853, thirteen years before the embassy of Jehu, Israel and Assyria
+had already met in the battle-field. A league had been formed by
+Hamath, Arvad, Ammon, and other states under the leadership of
+Hadadezer of Damascus--the Ben-hadad of the Old Testament--to resist
+the Assyrians, and one of the most important of the allies was 'Ahab of
+Israel,' who brought into the field 2,000 chariots and 10,000 men. But
+the confederacy was shattered at the battle of Qarqar, though
+Shalmaneser's own losses were too serious to allow him to follow up the
+attack. In B.C. 847 Hadadezer and his allies were again defeated, but
+without any result on the Assyrian side. Seven years later Hazael
+appears in the place of Hadadezer. Shalmaneser drove him from his camp
+into Damascus, where he 'shut him up,' taking from him 1,121 chariots
+and devastating the country as far as the Hauran. It was on this
+occasion that Jehu offered homage to the conqueror. Shalmaneser had
+already overrun Babylonia and sacrificed to the gods in Babylon,
+Borsippa, and Cutha. The Babylonian king was put to death, and the
+Assyrian troops penetrated into the salt-marshes of the Kalda in the
+extreme south. For a time, therefore, the larger part of western Asia
+lay at the feet of 'the great king.'
+
+A time came, however, when Shalmaneser could no longer lead his armies
+in person, but had to entrust them to the Tartan or commander-in-chief.
+His own son Assur-dain-pal rebelled against him, and led the chief
+cities of his kingdom, including Nineveh and Assur, into revolt (B.C.
+827). The revolt lasted for more than six years, and during its
+continuance the old king was succeeded by his son Samsi-Rimmon who
+eventually suppressed the insurrection. Assur-dain-pal seems to have
+been the original Sardanapallos of the Greeks. The campaigns of
+Samsi-Rimmon were principally directed against the Kurds and Medes, but
+towards the end of his reign he invaded Babylonia and defeated its
+king, Merodach-balasu-iqbi, the Greek Belesys. His successor
+Rimmon-nirari III (B.C. 810-781) claims to have overcome Media and
+Kurdistan, Tyre, Sidon, Samaria, and Palastu, 'the land of the
+Philistines,' under which title the Jews would be included. But his
+chief exploit was the conquest of Damascus, whose king Marih opened its
+gates to him and became an Assyrian vassal.
+
+The older Assyrian dynasty, however, was fast coming to an end. In B.C.
+753 its last representative, Assur-nirari, mounted the throne.
+Insurrection had already broken out at the beginning of his
+predecessor's reign, and pestilence had been added to insurrection. The
+old capital Assur had led the revolt, a solar eclipse on June 15, B.C.
+763 coinciding with its outbreak. The northern provinces had followed
+the lead of Assur, and though the revolt was crushed for a while, the
+flame of discontent still smouldered beneath the surface. The greater
+part of Assur-nirari's short reign was passed in inaction, but in B.C.
+746 Calah rebelled, and on the 13th of Iyyar in the following year Pulu
+or Pul, who took the name of Tiglath-pileser III, after that of the
+great conqueror of the older dynasty, was proclaimed king. With him
+begins the history of the second Assyrian empire.
+
+
+The Second Assyrian Empire.--With the second Assyrian empire a new
+political idea entered the world. Most of the campaigns made by the
+earlier Assyrian kings were mere raids, the object of which was booty
+and captives. It is true that in some cases cities and districts were
+annexed to the Assyrian kingdom and Assyrian colonists were planted in
+distant localities. But this was the exception, not the rule. The
+conquests made in one year by the Assyrian armies had to be made over
+again in the next. The campaigns of Tiglath-pileser III and his
+successors had a different object in view. They aimed at bringing the
+whole civilized world under the rule of 'the great king.' A great
+political organization was to be built up, which should bring the
+wealth of Western Asia into the imperial treasury of Nineveh and divert
+the trade of Phoenicia and Babylon into Assyrian hands. Trade interests
+had much to do with the wars of the New Empire.
+
+Accordingly, while the frontiers of the kingdom were secured from the
+wild tribes on the east and north, expedition after expedition was sent
+westward and southward which pushed steadily forward the Assyrian
+domination. Satraps and colonists followed in the wake of the generals;
+and the amount of annual tribute to be paid by each province was
+defined and rigorously exacted from its governor. The latter was
+appointed by the king, and held his office at the royal pleasure. At
+his side were military officers, and under him a body of officials who
+were responsible to the governor as he was to the king.
+
+The New Empire was thus governed by a vast bureaucracy, at the head of
+which stood the king. But the bureaucracy was military as well as
+civil, and the military and civil elements formed a check one upon the
+other. The military element was, however, predominant, the result of
+the fact that the empire itself was based on conquest.
+
+The army was carefully trained, well disciplined, and well armed. It
+thus soon became an irresistible weapon in the hands of a competent
+master. Before Tiglath-pileser's reign was half over there was no force
+in western Asia which was capable of resisting it in open fight.
+
+Tiglath-pileser reigned eighteen years (B.C. 745-727), and his
+organizing abilities proved to be as great as his military skill. An
+invasion of Babylonia first tested the strength of his army, and
+resulted in the subjection of the Aramaean tribes in that country to
+Assyrian rule. Then followed an expedition into Kurdistan. The Medes
+were massacred, and the Assyrian army pushed its way far eastward to
+Bikni, 'the mountain of the rising sun.' Next Tiglath-pileser turned to
+the north-west. Here he was met by a powerful confederacy, at the head
+of which was the king of Ararat. But the forces of the northern nations
+were cut to pieces in Komagene, and Arpad, which had become the centre
+of a hostile Syrian league, was captured after a siege of three years.
+The league had included Hamath and Azariah of Judah, and Hamath was
+consequently annexed to the Assyrian empire. The princes of the West
+hastened to offer homage to the conqueror, among them being Rezon of
+Damascus and Menahem of Samaria (B.C. 738). Tiglath-pileser was now
+free to march against Ararat, which had extended its power at the
+expense of Assyria in the later days of the old dynasty. The country
+was ravaged up to the gates of its capital, and the Vannic kingdom
+received a blow from which it never recovered. The Assyrian army next
+turned eastward to the southern shores of the Caspian, and made its way
+through Medic and other districts which neither before nor since were
+trodden by Assyrian feet. The exploit struck terror into the Kurdish
+tribes, and secured the Assyrian lowlands from their attack.
+
+Meanwhile Ahaz of Judah had been threatened by Rezon of Damascus and
+Pekah of Israel, and he now appealed to the Assyrian king for help.
+Tiglath-pileser, nothing loth, marched against the assailants. Rezon
+was blockaded in his capital, while Samaria, Ammon, Moab, and Philistia
+were overrun (B.C. 734). Two years later (B.C. 732), Damascus was taken
+and sacked, Rezon put to death and his kingdom placed under an Assyrian
+prefect. Pekah, too, had been murdered, and Tiglath-pileser had
+appointed Hosea king in his place. About the same time Tyre was
+compelled to purchase peace by the payment of 150 talents.
+
+With his empire consolidated in the west, and the road to the
+Mediterranean open to Assyrian trade, Tiglath-pileser was now free to
+legitimize his right to the throne by occupying Babylon and there
+becoming the adopted son of Bel. It was in B.C. 731 that the Babylonian
+campaign began; in B.C. 729 Tiglath-pileser, under his original name of
+Pul, 'took the hands of Bel,' and two years later, in the month of
+December, he died. He had introduced into history the idea of imperial
+centralization.
+
+On his death the crown was seized by Ulula, who took the name of
+Shalmaneser IV. His reign lasted only five years, and when he died
+(December, B.C. 722) he was pressing the siege of Samaria. The capture
+of the city and its annexation to Assyria were the work of Sargon. The
+upper and military classes, amounting in all to 27,280 persons, were
+carried into captivity; but only fifty chariots were found in the city.
+
+Sargon was a usurper like his two predecessors, but, more fortunate
+than they, he succeeded in founding a dynasty. He was one of the best
+generals that Assyria ever produced, and under him the extension and
+organization of the empire went on apace. The death of Shalmaneser,
+however, had been the signal for revolt in Babylonia as well as in the
+west. Merodach-baladan, a Chaldaean from the sea-marshes, had seized
+Babylon in conjunction with the Elamites, and there reigned as
+legitimate monarch for twelve years. One of the first tasks of Sargon
+was to drive the Elamite forces from the Assyrian frontier. Hamath
+moreover rose in insurrection; but this too was speedily crushed. So
+also was a league between the Philistines and the Egyptians; the battle
+of Raphia decided, once for all, the question of Assyrian supremacy in
+Palestine.
+
+Sargon now had to face a more formidable coalition, that of the
+northern nations under Ursa of Ararat. The struggle lasted for six
+years and ended with the complete victory of the Assyrians. Carchemish,
+the Hittite stronghold on the Euphrates, fell in B.C. 717, leaving the
+road clear to the west and thus uniting Assyria with its rising empire
+on the shores of the Mediterranean. In the following year the Minni (to
+the east of Ararat) were overthrown, and two years later Ursa and his
+allies were utterly defeated. The fortress of Muzazir near Lake
+Urumiyeh was captured, thus extending the Assyrian frontier far to the
+east, and Ursa, in despair, committed suicide. Media was completely
+subdued in B.C. 713, and Ellip, where Ekbatana afterwards stood, became
+the vassal of Nineveh. In B.C. 711 a league was formed between
+Merodach-baladan and the nations of southern Syria to resist the common
+foe, and to this league Egypt promised assistance. But before the
+confederates were ready to act, Sargon had fallen upon them separately.
+Ashdod, the centre of the Palestinian confederacy, was besieged and
+taken (Isaiah xxi), and its ruler, a certain 'Greek,' who had been
+raised to power by the anti-Assyrian party, fled in vain for refuge to
+the Arabian desert, while Judah, Edom, and Moab were compelled to pay
+tribute. In B.C. 709 Merodach-baladan was driven out of Babylonia into
+his ancestral kingdom of Bit-Yagna. Sargon entered Babylon and there
+'took the hands of Bel.' Henceforward he ruled by divine right as well
+as by the right of the sword.
+
+It was by the sword, however, that he perished, being murdered by a
+soldier in B.C. 705. His son Sennacherib succeeded to the crown on the
+12th of Ab (July). Sennacherib was a different man from his father;
+boastfulness and vanity took the place of military skill, perhaps also
+of courage. There seems to have been some resemblance between his
+character and that of Xerxes.
+
+Babylonia was the new king's first object of attack. Merodach-baladan,
+who had re-entered Babylon on the news of Sargon's death, was driven
+back to the marshes, and Bel-ibni, an Assyrian vassal, appointed king
+in his place. The next campaign was against the Kassi or Kossaeans,
+some of whom were forced to descend from their mountain fastnesses and
+placed under an Assyrian governor. From the Kossaean mountains the
+Assyrian army marched into Ellip which was wasted with fire and sword.
+Then, in B.C. 701, came the campaign against Palestine where Hezekiah
+of Judah, in reliance upon Egypt, had revolted from his Assyrian lord.
+Elulaeus of Sidon fled to Cyprus, and Phoenicia, Ammon, Moab, and Edom
+submitted to the Assyrians. Sennacherib thereupon proceeded against the
+Philistines. A new king was set over Ashkelon, and Hezekiah was
+compelled to restore to Ekron its former prince whom he had imprisoned
+in Jerusalem on account of his faithfulness to Assyria. The priests and
+nobles of Ekron who had abetted Hezekiah were impaled on stakes.
+
+[Illustration: CAPTURE OF LACHISH BY SENNACHERIB.]
+
+Tirhakah, the Ethiopian king of Egypt, and the king of Melukh (the
+Arabian desert), who had come to the assistance of the Jewish prince,
+were defeated at Eltekeh, and Hezekiah vainly endeavoured to buy off
+the vengeance of his offended suzerain by rich and numerous presents,
+including 30 talents of gold and 800 talents of silver. The surrender
+of Jerusalem alone would content Sennacherib, who accordingly
+devastated Judah, destroying its cities and carrying into captivity
+200,150 of its inhabitants. Jerusalem itself was blockaded, Hezekiah
+being shut up in it 'like a bird in a cage.' Then, however, came the
+catastrophe which obliged Sennacherib to retire without punishing his
+rebellious vassal, and of which, of course, nothing is said in the
+inscriptions. But there is no further record of a campaign in the West.
+In the following year Sennacherib was in Babylonia, where he drove
+Merodach-baladan out of the marshes and obliged the Chaldaean prince
+and his subjects to fly in ships across the Persian Gulf to the
+opposite coast of Elam. Assur-nadin-suma, the son of Sennacherib, was
+now made king of Babylon. Six years later he was carried off to Elam
+and a new king, Nergal-yusezib, appointed in his place by the Elamite
+monarch. This was in return for an unprovoked assault made by
+Sennacherib on the Chaldaean colony in Elam, to which he had crossed in
+boats made by Tyrian workmen, and whose inhabitants he sent captive to
+Assyria.
+
+For a time Elam was all-powerful in Babylonia, though Nergal-yusezib
+had been defeated and captured in battle by the Assyrians. But in B.C.
+691 Sennacherib descended with the full might of Assyria upon the
+country. The Babylonians had sent the treasures of the temple of Bel to
+the Elamite monarch, begging his help. The Babylonian and Elamite
+forces met the army of Assyria at Khalule, and a hard-fought battle was
+the result. The slaughter was great on both sides, and Sennacherib
+claims a complete victory, though the Babylonian Chronicle--a cuneiform
+document compiled from a Babylonian point of view--implies that such
+was not altogether the case. At all events about two years were needed
+for the subjugation of Babylonia. In B.C. 689 Babylon was taken, its
+houses and temples destroyed, the images of its gods broken in pieces,
+and the ruins of the city thrown into the Arakhtu, the canal of
+Babylon. For some years Babylon lay desolate, and as there was no
+longer a temple or image of Bel to legitimize the rule of the Assyrian
+conqueror, Babylonia remained 'without kings.'
+
+On the 20th day of Tebet or December, B.C. 681, Sennacherib was
+murdered by two of his sons who seem to have been jealous of their
+brother Esar-haddon. Esar-haddon had been given the new name of
+Assur-etil-mukin-abla ('Assur the hero is the establisher of my son'),
+perhaps because he had been destined for the throne, and at the time of
+his father's murder he was commanding the Assyrian army in a war
+against Ararat. For forty-two days the conspirators held the capital;
+then they were compelled to fly to Erimenas of Ararat and seek his help
+against their brother. The decisive battle was fought on the 12th of
+Iyyar (April) near Malatiyeh in Kappadokia; the veterans of Assyria won
+the day, and at the close of it saluted Esar-haddon as king. He
+returned to Nineveh and on the 8th of Sivan (May) formally ascended the
+throne.
+
+Esar-haddon was great in counsel as well as in war, and knew how to
+conciliate as well as how to conquer. At the outset of his reign he
+restored Babylon, rebuilt its temples, brought back its gods and
+people, and made it one of his royal residences. For twelve years he
+was king alike of Babylonia and Assyria.
+
+A revolt of Sidon, which was easily put down, next occupied his
+attention. Then came a more formidable event. The Gimirra, called Gomer
+in Genesis, Kimmerians by the Greeks, suddenly appeared out of the
+north and menaced the civilized world. Esar-haddon met them on the
+frontier of his empire, defeated their chieftain, the 'Manda' or nomad
+Teuspa, and drove his hordes westward into Asia Minor. It now became
+necessary to secure the Assyrian frontier on the south. The Assyrian
+king accordingly marched into the very heart of Arabia, through burning
+and waterless deserts, and struck terror into the Arabian tribes. The
+march must have been one of the most remarkable ever made.
+
+Esar-haddon was at last free to complete the policy of Tiglath-pileser
+III by conquering the ancient kingdom of Egypt. Palestine gave no more
+trouble; Manasseh of Judah was already an obedient vassal of the
+Assyrian king. In B.C. 674 'the Assyrians marched into Egypt.' But two
+more campaigns were needed for its subjection. In B.C. 670 Esar-haddon
+drove the Egyptian forces before him in fifteen days (from the 3rd to
+the 18th of Tammuz or June) all the way from the frontier to Memphis,
+thrice defeating them with heavy loss and wounding Tirhakah their king.
+Three days later Memphis fell, and Tirhakah fled to Ethiopia, leaving
+Egypt to the conqueror. Egypt revolted two years afterwards (B.C. 668),
+and while on the march to reduce it Esar-haddon fell ill, and died on
+the 10th of Marchesvan or October. Assur-bani-pal, who had already
+been named as his successor, became king of Assyria, his brother
+Saul-suma-yukin taking Babylonia as his share. The king of Babylonia,
+however, was required to admit the supremacy of the Assyrian monarch.
+
+The Egyptian revolt was quickly suppressed and the country was again
+divided into twenty satrapies, each satrapy being placed under a native
+prince. But the arrangement answered badly. The satraps quarrelled
+with one another, intrigued with Tirhakah, and rebelled against
+Assur-bani-pal. Time after time Assyrian armies had to be sent to
+reconquer the land. Once Necho, the satrap of Sais, was brought in
+chains to Nineveh, there, however, to be pardoned and restored to his
+city. Twice Thebes was captured, once after it had been made for a time
+the seat of Tirhakah's government, a second time after the defeat of
+Urdaman (Rud-Amon), the step-son and successor of Tirhakah. On this
+occasion the city was utterly destroyed. Its temples and palaces were
+overthrown, its statues mutilated, and an immense spoil carried away to
+Nineveh. Among the spoil were two obelisks, over seventy tons in
+weight. The destruction of Thebes is alluded to by the prophet Nahum
+(iii. 8).
+
+Assur-bani-pal, the Sardanapallos of the Greeks, was the 'Grand
+Monarque' of Assyria, and a generous patron of literature and learning.
+But he lacked the warlike instincts of his fathers, and preferred to
+remain at home while his generals fought in the field. His long wars
+drained the country of its fighting-men and prepared the way for its
+downfall. They were waged mainly with Elam, the only civilized country
+of Western Asia which still preserved its independence, and lasted for
+several years. At last, however, Elam fell; its capital Shushan was
+sacked and burned, and a desolated country was added to the Assyrian
+dominions.
+
+The fame of Assur-bani-pal spread far and wide. Ambassadors came to his
+court from Ararat, as well as from Gyges of Lydia. At first no
+interpreter could be found for the latter. Gyges wanted help against
+the Kimmerians, which, however, 'the great king' does not seem to have
+afforded. The tribute of Gyges was accordingly withdrawn after a time,
+and he took part in the great rebellion which now shook the Assyrian
+empire to its foundations.
+
+Saul-suma-yukin put himself at its head, and proclaimed the
+independence of Babylonia. Psammetikhos, the son of Necho of Sais,
+imitated his example in Egypt, and with the assistance of Gyges put
+down the rival satraps, shook off the Assyrian yoke and founded the
+Twenty-sixth dynasty. Saul-suma-yukin was less fortunate. After a
+desperate struggle he was captured and put to death by his brother, and
+Babylonia was once more reduced to servitude. Punishment was also taken
+upon the tribes of northern Arabia who had joined the rebels.
+
+But the empire was terribly weakened. Egypt was lost to it for ever,
+and though Elam was added instead, it proved to be a barren possession.
+When Tuktamme the 'Manda' appeared upon the scene he was resisted with
+difficulty. The empire was tottering to its fall.
+
+Of its closing days we know but little from the monuments. Among the
+successors of Assur-bani-pal were Assur-etil-ilani-yukin (who still
+claimed rule in Babylonia), and Sin-sar-iskun. The latter has sometimes
+been identified with Sarakos, said by the Greek writer Abydenos to
+have been the last king of Assyria[5]. At all events the fall and
+destruction of Nineveh may be placed in B.C. 606.
+
+        [5] A contract-tablet exists dated at Sippara in the second
+        year of Sin-sar-iskun, which shows that the rule of the king
+        was acknowledged in Babylonia.
+
+
+The Babylonian Empire.--On its ruins rose the Babylonian empire of
+Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabopolassar. The battle of Carchemish
+placed him in possession of Syria, which the Egyptians had occupied
+after the fall of Nineveh. The battle was scarcely over when
+Nebuchadrezzar was recalled to Babylon by the death of his father (B.C.
+605). Unlike the Assyrian kings, he cared but little about recording
+his successes in war. His inscriptions are occupied with the account of
+his building operations, of his gifts to the gods, and of his devotion
+to Bel-Merodach. Under him Babylon became one of the most splendid
+cities in the world. Its palaces, its temples, its hanging gardens and
+its walls were alike on a vast and magnificent scale. The temples were
+roofed with cedar of Lebanon, overlaid with gold and silver, and the
+ramparts of the royal house were finished in fifteen days. The suburb
+of Borsippa was included within the fortifications of the city, which
+were so strong as to be practicably impregnable. At the same time the
+other cities of Babylonia were not forgotten, and their temples were
+enlarged and beautified.
+
+In B.C. 568 Nebuchadrezzar marched into Egypt, defeated the Pharaoh
+Amasis and occupied a part at least of the Delta. 'Phut of the Ionians'
+is mentioned in connexion with this campaign. It is the only military
+expedition mentioned in the texts we possess; even the monuments of
+Nebuchadrezzar found in Syria (at the mouth of the Nahr el-Kelb near
+Beyrout and in the Wadi Brissa near the ancient Riblah) are silent
+about his wars.
+
+He was a great organizer, a great builder, and above all a man of
+genuine piety, which breathes through all his inscriptions. When he
+died, B.C. 562, he was succeeded by his son Evil-Merodach, who
+reigned only two years. Then the throne was usurped by a certain
+Nergal-sharezer (the son of Bel-zakir-iskun) who had married the
+daughter of Nebuchadrezzar. Nergal-sharezer built himself a new palace
+and died B.C. 556. He was followed by his infant son who reigned only
+three months, when he was murdered and the throne seized by Nabonidos
+(Nabu-nahid), the son of Nebo-balasu-iqbi, who was not related to the
+royal family. Nabonidos was a man of some energy, but he offended a
+powerful party in Babylonia by attempting to do what Hezekiah had done
+in Jerusalem--centralize the religious worship of the country and
+therewith the political power in the capital. Nabonidos was also an
+antiquarian and caused excavations to be made in the different temples
+of Babylonia in order to discover the records of their founders.
+
+We are now well acquainted with the history of Nabonidos and the fall
+of his empire, thanks to three cuneiform documents which have been
+found in Babylonia. One is an inscription of Nabonidos himself; another
+an edict issued by Cyrus shortly after his conquest of the country; and
+the third the annals of the reign of Nabonidos, compiled the year after
+his overthrow. The empire of Nabonidos, we learn, extended as far
+westward as Gaza, but the 'Manda' or 'Nomads' of whom Astyages
+(Istuvegu) was king had devastated part of Western Asia and had
+destroyed the temple of the Moon-god at Harran. It was not until Cyrus,
+'the little servant' of Astyages, had overthrown the Manda that
+Nabonidos was able to enter Harran and rebuild the ruined shrine.
+
+
+Cyrus and the Fall of Babylon.--Cyrus, like his fathers, was king of
+Anzan in Elam, not of Persia. Anzan had been first occupied, it would
+appear, by his great-grandfather Teispes the Achaemenian. The conquest
+of Astyages and of his capital Ekbatana took place in B.C. 549, and a
+year or two later Cyrus obtained possession of Persia. In B.C. 538 the
+population in the south of Babylonia revolted, and Cyrus entered the
+country, where he was assisted by the native party which was hostile to
+Nabonidos. The Babylonian army was stationed in northern Babylonia, but
+it was utterly defeated at Opis in the month of Tammuz or June, and
+on the 14th of the month Sippara opened its gates to the conqueror.
+Gobryas, the governor of Kurdistan, was then sent by Cyrus against
+Babylon, which also opened its gates 'without fighting,' and Nabonidos,
+who had concealed himself, was taken prisoner. Gobryas placed the
+temple of Bel under a guard, and the daily services there proceeded as
+usual. The contract-tablets show that there was equally little
+cessation of business among the mercantile classes. But it was not
+until the 3rd of Marchesvan (October) that Cyrus himself arrived in
+Babylon and proclaimed a general amnesty, which was communicated by
+Gobryas to 'all the province of Babylon' of which he had been made
+governor. Shortly afterwards the wife of Nabonidos died; lamentation
+was made for her throughout Babylonia, and Kambyses, the son of Cyrus,
+conducted her funeral in one of the Babylonian temples.
+
+[Illustration: THE CYLINDER INSCRIPTION OF CYRUS.]
+
+Meanwhile Cyrus had assumed the title of 'King of Babylon,' thus
+claiming to be the legitimate descendant of the ancient Babylonian
+kings. He announced himself as the devoted worshipper of Bel and Nebo,
+who by the command of Merodach had overthrown the sacrilegious usurper
+Nabonidos, and he and his son accordingly offered sacrifices to ten
+times the usual amount in the Babylonian temples, and restored the
+images of the gods to their ancient shrines. At the same time he
+allowed the foreign populations who had been deported to Babylonia to
+return to their homes along with the statues of their gods. Among these
+foreign populations, as we know from the Old Testament, were the Jews.
+
+
+Belshazzar.--One of the sons of Nabonidos was Belshazzar, who is
+mentioned in the contract-tablets as well as by his father. He seems
+to have been 'the king's son' who commanded the Babylonian army in
+its camp near Sippara. If so, it would appear that he had died or
+been slain before the final invasion of Babylonia by Cyrus, since
+no reference is made to him on that occasion, and the pretenders
+who afterwards rose against Darius in Babylonia called themselves
+not Belshazzar but 'Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabonidos.'
+
+
+Decay of Babylon.--It was after the death of Kambyses and of the
+Pseudo-Smerdis that these revolts took place in B.C. 521 and 515(?).
+The first was a serious one, and was suppressed only after two
+engagements in the field and a siege of Babylon. The second revolt also
+needed a long siege for its suppression, and at its conclusion Darius
+partially destroyed the walls of the city. But in the reign of Xerxes,
+during the absence of the king in Greece, Babylon revolted again under
+a certain Samas-erba, who reigned for about a year. On the fall of
+this champion of Babylonian independence, the temple of Bel, the
+rallying-place of Babylonian nationality, was in part destroyed. From
+this time forward the only kings mentioned in the cuneiform tablets are
+foreigners, Persians, Greeks, and Parthians. The last dated tablet at
+present known to us is almost as late as the Christian era. It is an
+astrological text which is dated in the 168th year of Seleucus and the
+232nd year of Arsakes, that is to say in B.C. 80.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+RELIGION
+
+
+The religions of Babylonia and Assyria.--The religion of Assyria was
+borrowed from that of Babylonia. The deities worshipped in the two
+countries were the same, as also were the ritual and the religious
+beliefs of the people. Almost the only difference observable in the
+religion of the two kingdoms was that whereas Bel-Merodach was the
+supreme god of Babylon, Assur, the impersonation of the old capital,
+was the supreme god of Assyria.
+
+
+Differences between Babylonian and Assyrian religion.--But the
+different characters of the two populations were reflected in their
+religious conceptions. The Assyrians were a nation of warriors, the
+Babylonians of traders, agriculturists, and scribes. Assur is
+accordingly 'a man of war'; it was in reliance upon him that the
+Assyrian armies marched into foreign lands, and compelled their
+inhabitants to acknowledge him. Not to believe in Assur was a crime,
+since Assur represented Assyria. Assur, too, admitted no rival at his
+side: wifeless and childless he stood alone. Once or twice, indeed, an
+Assyrian scribe ascribes to him a wife or a child, but this is in
+imitation of Babylonian usage and the belief never took root in
+Assyria.
+
+Bel-Merodach, on the contrary, was a god of mercy. He is 'the merciful
+one' who hearkens to those that call upon him and who 'raises the dead
+to life' through trust in his power. Belat, or Beltis, 'the lady,'
+stood at his side, a reflection of himself, and the gods were his
+children who recognized him as their father and creator.
+
+
+Sumerian religion Shamanistic.--Babylonian religion was a compound of
+Sumerian and Semitic elements. Sumerian religion had originally been
+'Shamanistic' in character. That is to say it had no conception of
+deities or priests in the usual sense of the words. Each object or
+force of nature was believed to have its _zi_ or 'life' like men and
+beasts; the _zi_ was a sort of vital principle which caused the arrow
+to fly, the knife to wound, or the stars to move through the heaven. A
+personality was given to it, and it thus became what we may term a
+spirit. With these spirits, accordingly, the sky and earth were
+peopled; they were in fact as multitudinous as the objects and forces
+of nature to which they owed their birth. Necessarily the greater
+number of them were harmful, if not always at any rate at certain
+times and in certain places. Magical charms alone could protect man
+from their malevolence or bring down their blessing upon him, and
+these magical charms and ceremonies were known only to a particular
+class of persons. To such sorcerer-priests the name of 'shamans' has
+been assigned, the form of religion represented by them being termed
+'Shamanistic.'
+
+
+Two centres of Babylonian religion.--In prehistoric times two great
+religious centres existed in Babylonia, from which two divergent
+streams of religious influence flowed over the country. One of these
+was Nipur in the north, the other Eridu in the south. Nipur was the
+seat of Shamanism, and its patron deity in later days still retained
+the title of Mul-lil or El-lil, 'the lord of the ghost-world.' Eridu,
+on the other hand, was brought by its trade and situation into contact
+with foreign culture. It thus became the source of a higher and more
+spiritual form of faith. The spirit of the water, who had been its
+special object of adoration, became the culture-god Ea, the lord of the
+abyss, who is called Oannes in the Greek history of Berossos and was
+believed to have been the author of Babylonian culture. To him its
+laws, its arts, and its sciences were alike traced back. Through his
+wisdom his son Asari-mulu-dugga, 'Asari who benefits mankind,' was
+enabled to cure the diseases and troubles of men, and teach them how to
+avoid evil. His teachings were embodied in writing, and so a sacred
+book grew up, half Bible, half Ritual, which contained hymns to the
+gods as well as rubrics for the performance of the ceremonies
+accompanying their recitation.
+
+Under the influence of Eridu the religion of Babylonia ceased to be so
+purely Shamanistic as it once had been. Certain of the spirits tended
+to take rank above their fellows and thus to pass into gods. How long
+this process of development lasted we do not know.
+
+
+Semitic Influence.--But a time came when the Semites entered the
+country and were brought into close contact, hostile or peaceable, with
+its Sumerian inhabitants. The result was a fusion of Sumerian and
+Semitic religious ideas. An official religion came into existence which
+consisted of a Semitic form of faith grafted upon a Sumerian root.
+
+The religion of the Semite was essentially different from that of the
+Sumerian. The primary object of his worship was the Baal, Bel, or
+'Lord,' who revealed himself in the sun. Each tribe and each locality
+had its own Baal; when the tribes coalesced or when the same tribe
+occupied more than one locality the various Baals were regarded as so
+many forms of the supreme God.
+
+Each Baal was the father of a family. At his side stood his wife, a
+colourless reflection of himself, as the wife was of the husband in the
+Semitic family on earth. Like the father of the family on earth, Baal
+too in heaven had his children.
+
+Where the religions of the Semite and the Sumerian met and combined,
+the Sumerian spirits who had emerged above the rest like Ea of Eridu or
+El-lil of Nipur, were assimilated to the Semitic Baalim. El-lil, in
+fact, was known throughout the Semitic period as Bel of Nipur. Wherever
+it was possible a solar character was given to them; in other cases the
+general characteristics of the Semitic deity were attached to the old
+Sumerian divinity. The great body of the spirits which had fallen into
+the background was grouped together as the 300 spirits of heaven
+(_Igigi_) and the 600 spirits of earth (_Anunnaki_).
+
+
+The goddess Istar.--In one instance, however, it was the Semite rather
+than the Sumerian who was affected by the contact between the two forms
+of faith. The spirit of the evening star became the goddess Istar, who
+retained her independent position by the side of the male deities.
+While the other goddesses were absorbed in the persons of their divine
+consorts like the wife in the Semitic family, Istar, having no consort,
+remained like the wife in the Sumerian family on a footing of equality
+with the man. When the name and worship of Istar were passed on to the
+Semitic peoples of the West, the anomaly led to more than one change in
+her character. In southern Arabia and Moab she was identified with a
+male deity; in Canaan her name received the feminine suffix _-th_
+(Ashtoreth), and she thus became in large measure an ordinary Semitic
+goddess.
+
+
+Bel-Merodach.--After the rise of Babylon as the capital of the kingdom,
+its patron-god Merodach became the supreme Baal or Bel of Babylonia. He
+had already been identified with Asari-mulu-dugga, the son of Ea, and
+the attributes of the latter were accordingly transferred to the new
+Bel. It was to him that the great temple of E-Saggil was erected in
+Babylon, while the interpreter of his will to men, Nebo, the divine
+'prophet,' had his temple E-Zida in the neighbouring suburb of
+Borsippa. At Nipur a god whose name has been variously read Uras,
+Nin-ip, Bar and Adar, but the true pronunciation of which is still
+unknown, stood in much the same relation to El-lil that Nebo did to
+Merodach. He was, however, regarded as a solar warrior instead of as a
+prophet.
+
+
+Other deities.--Nergal was worshipped in Kutha and its cemeteries;
+Samas, 'the Sun,' at Sippara; Sin, 'the Moon,' at Ur and Harran; Anu,
+'the Sky,' at Erech, where he was associated with Istar. Along with Ea
+and Bel of Nipur, Anu formed a triad which represented in the official
+religion the three elementary deities of the sea, the earth, and the
+heavens. The sea, however, was rather the primordial 'deep' out of
+which all things arose than the sea of the actual world, while 'the
+heaven of Anu' was beyond the visible sky, and Bel was the prince of
+the air and the underworld.
+
+[Illustration: WINGED BULL OR HOUSE-GUARDIAN.]
+
+
+Sacred books and ritual.--Along with the growth of the official
+religion went the growth and completion of the Chaldaean Bible and
+Prayer-book. The festivals of the gods were numerous; the ceremonies to
+be performed by the priests were more numerous still. The ceremonies
+were usually accompanied by the recitation of one or more hymns; these
+hymns were written in Sumerian, which had now become the sacred
+language of Chaldaea just as Latin is the sacred language of the Roman
+Church, and since Sumerian was no longer understood by the majority of
+the people they were provided with interlinear translations into
+Semitic Babylonian. From time to time the pronunciation of the old
+Sumerian words was indicated, for just as it was needful that the
+inspired words should be handed down without the slightest alteration,
+so also was it needful that they should be pronounced aright. An error
+even in pronunciation was supposed to invalidate the ceremony. Among
+the hymns is a collection of penitential psalms of which the following
+lines will give some idea:--
+
+    'O lord, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!
+    O my god, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!
+    O my goddess, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!
+
+
+    The lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me;
+    God in the fierceness of his heart has revealed himself to me.
+    The goddess has been violent against me, and has put me to grief.
+
+
+    I sought for help and none took my hand;
+    I wept and none stood at my side;
+    I cried aloud and there was none that heard me.
+    To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer.
+
+
+    O my god, seven times seven are my transgressions: forgive my sins!'
+
+
+The Priests.--The existence of a hierarchy of gods, of a Bible, and
+of a Prayer-book implies the existence of a priesthood. The sorcerer
+of prehistoric times became the priest of later Babylonia. The
+priests were distinguished into several classes. At the head came the
+High-priest who was often the monarch; in Assyria indeed this was
+commonly the case. Subordinate to him were other high-priests, and
+under them again the 'anointers' (who cleansed the sacred vessels of
+the sanctuary), the priests of Istar and the 'elders.' By the side of
+them stood the 'prophets' (_asipi_) under a 'chief.' The prophets
+could predict the future and were consulted on matters of state. We
+hear of armies being accompanied by them into the field, and when
+Assur-bani-pal suppressed the revolt of the Babylonians 'by the
+command of the prophets,' he says, 'I purified their shrines and
+cleansed their chief places of prayer. The angry gods and wrathful
+goddesses I soothed with supplications and penitential psalms. I
+restored and established in peace their daily sacrifices which they
+had discontinued.'
+
+
+The Temples.--The temples were provided with towers which served for
+the observation of the stars, and stood within large courts. In the
+shrine was a 'mercy-seat' whereon the god 'seated himself' on certain
+occasions. At Balawat near Nineveh the mercy-seat had the form of a
+coffer or ark, in which two written tables of stone were placed. In
+front of it stood the altar approached by steps. In the court was a
+'sea' or large basin of water, which like that of Solomon was, in one
+case at all events, supported on bulls of bronze. The images of the
+gods were almost invariably of human form.
+
+
+Astro-theology.--The prominence given to the study of astronomy had
+much to do with giving Babylonian religion an astral character. The
+stars were worshipped; Istar herself was originally the evening star,
+and most of the principal deities were identified with the planets and
+chief fixed stars. The importance of the stars for the regulation of
+the calendar, moreover, kept them constantly before the eyes of the
+priests. But whether Babylonian astrotheology was not really primitive
+or whether it went back to the pre-Semitic period we do not yet know.
+
+
+Sacrifices and offerings.--Sacrifices were offered to the stars, as to
+the other divinities. Besides the sacrifices, offerings were also made
+of meal, dates, oil, and wine. The sacrifices and offerings must have
+been numerous since in the larger temples there was not only 'the
+daily sacrifice' but also constant services both by day and night. On
+the great festivals, moreover, there were services of a special
+character, as also when days of thanksgiving or humiliation were
+ordained. The sacrifices and offerings were provided partly by
+endowments, partly by voluntary gifts (sometimes called _kurbanni_,
+the Hebrew _korban_), partly by obligatory contributions, the most
+important of which were the 'tithes.'
+
+
+The Sabbath.--Besides the festivals of the gods there was a _sabattu_
+or 'Sabbath,' observed on the 9th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th day of
+the month, on which various kinds of work were forbidden to be done.
+Food even was not allowed to be cooked, or medicine to be taken. The
+_sabattu_ is described as 'a day of rest for the heart,' and a
+'free-will offering' had to be made in the night of it.
+
+
+Monotheistic tendency.--Among the educated classes religious feeling
+seems to have been fervent, and at times the language used approaches
+that of monotheism. Thus in an early hymn to the Moon-god which was
+composed in the city of Ur, we read:--
+
+    'Father, long-suffering and full of forgiveness, whose hand upholds
+      the life of all mankind!...
+    First-born, omnipotent, whose heart is immensity, and there is none
+      who may fathom it!...
+    In heaven, who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme!
+    On earth, who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme!'
+
+So, again, Nebuchadrezzar prays as follows to Bel-Merodach:--
+
+    'O prince, thou art from everlasting, lord of all that exists, for
+    the king whom thou lovest, whom thou callest by name, as it seems
+    good to thee, thou guidest his name aright, thou watchest over him
+    in the path of righteousness. I, the prince who obeys thee, am the
+    work of thy hands; thou hast created me and hast entrusted to me
+    the sovereignty over multitudes of men, according to thy goodness,
+    O lord, which thou hast made to pass over them all. Let me love thy
+    supreme lordship, let the fear of thy divinity exist in my heart,
+    and give what seemeth good to thee, since thou maintainest my
+    life.'
+
+
+The future life.--The mass of the people, however, were sunk in the
+grossest superstition, and the future to which they looked forward was
+sufficiently dreary. Hades lay beneath the earth, where the spirits of
+the dead flitted about like bats in darkness with dust only for their
+food. A happier lot was reserved for the few, and a prayer is made for
+an Assyrian king that after death he should ascend to 'the land of the
+silver sky.'
+
+
+Cosmology.--In early Sumerian days the heaven was believed to rest on
+the peak of 'the mountain of the world,' in the far north-east, where
+the gods had their habitations (cf. Isa. xiv. 13), while an ocean or
+'deep' encircled the earth which rested upon its surface. With the
+progress of knowledge truer ideas of geography came to prevail. The
+later cosmogony is represented in the first tablet of the Creation
+story where the old gods are resolved into cosmical elements. The
+'deep' is said to have been 'the generator' of the heavens and the
+earth, 'Mummu-Tiamat' (the chaos of the sea) being 'the mother of them
+all.... At that time the gods had not appeared.... Then the [great]
+gods were created, Lakhmu and Lakhamu issued forth the first.' Next
+came the creation of An-sar and Ki-sar, 'the upper' and 'lower
+firmament,' who in their turn gave birth to Anu, Ea, and Bel. The
+struggle between Merodach, the god of light and order, with Tiamat, the
+dragon of darkness, chaos, and evil, occupied a prominent place in the
+Epic of the Creation. Along with Tiamat there were ranged in battle the
+evil creatures of night and destruction, most of whom had composite
+forms. The belief in them had been inherited from the age of Shamanism,
+and they were regarded as the products of a first and imperfect
+creation. Some of them came to symbolize the powers of darkness, others
+were transported to the skies, certain of the allies of Tiamat being
+the Zodiacal animals, while out of the skin of Tiamat Merodach
+constructed the heaven itself. In the Epic Tiamat is identified with
+the source of the fountains of the great deep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN LITERATURE
+
+
+Aids to the reading of the texts.--The origin of the cuneiform system
+of writing has been already described, as well as its chief
+peculiarities. We must now say something about the causes which have
+led to our being able to read an ordinary Assyrian text almost as
+easily as a page of the Old Testament.
+
+(1) The 'determinatives' have already been mentioned which define so
+many words and names.
+
+(2) The ideographs often prove a great assistance, as words of unknown
+meaning interchange with ideographs the signification of which is
+already known.
+
+(3) The fact that the characters express syllables gives us the precise
+pronunciation of the words, and so enables us to read them with a
+certainty which is impossible in Hebrew or Phoenician where the vowels
+are not denoted in writing.
+
+(4) Assyrian is a Semitic language, and the Semitic languages are as
+closely related to one another as are the Romanic languages (French,
+Italian, Spanish, &c.) in modern Europe. Consequently most of the words
+and grammatical forms found in Assyrian recur in one or other of the
+Semitic idioms.
+
+(5) But above all, the Assyrian scribes themselves have provided us
+with the most abundant materials for interpreting the inscriptions.
+
+
+The libraries.--The amount of Assyro-Babylonian literature already
+known is very large. If all the texts at present in the museums of
+Europe and America could be published, they would rival in extent the
+books of the Old Testament. Most of the texts are on tablets of clay
+and have come from the libraries of Nineveh and Babylonia. Every great
+Babylonian city had at least one library, and the Assyrian kings
+established other libraries in their own country in imitation of those
+of Babylonia. About two-thirds of the library of Nineveh, which was
+largely the creation of Assur-bani-pal, is now in the British Museum.
+Scribes were kept constantly at work there copying and re-editing old
+texts, and sometimes writing new ones. A considerable proportion of the
+texts was brought from Babylonia: a colophon attached to each tablet
+usually states from what library the text had originally come. The
+texts were carefully edited; when there was a lacuna in the original
+the scribe tells us so, and whether it was old or recent; also if the
+Babylonian character were one which he did not recognize he confesses
+that he could not read it. Besides the clay tablets, the libraries
+contained papyri which have now perished.
+
+
+Varieties of literature.--The texts related to all the branches of
+knowledge studied at the time. Astronomy and astrology, mathematics,
+geography, medicine, law, history, religion, and mythology, private and
+public correspondence, mercantile transactions, political documents,
+the pseudo-science of omens, lists of beasts, birds, vegetables, and
+stones, are all represented in it, and last, but not least, philology.
+The necessity of translating and explaining the Sumerian texts
+doubtless gave philology so prominent a place. Under the head of
+philology come interlinear and parallel translations of Sumerian
+documents, together with commentaries and exercises, reading-books and
+grammars of the two languages, endless lists of characters with their
+phonetic values and significations, and numerous vocabularies partly
+bilingual, partly containing catalogues of Semitic synonyms. The
+decipherer thus has at his command a most elaborate system for learning
+the Assyrian and Sumerian languages compiled by the Assyrians
+themselves. Time after time the signification of a new word is given by
+its synonym or synonyms in the lexical lists, and words of uncertain
+meaning in Hebrew have more than once been settled by means of their
+Assyrian equivalents.
+
+
+The texts autotypes.--The cuneiform texts further possess an advantage
+of which the student of the Old and New Testament Scriptures might well
+be envious. They are the autotypes of the scribes who wrote them for
+the libraries in the ruins of which they have been found. The texts
+have never passed through the hands of later copyists little acquainted
+with the language in which they were composed. The corruptions of the
+text, such as they are, go back to the scribes of Assur-bani-pal or
+Nebuchadrezzar, in some cases to the scribes even of the pre-Semitic
+period.
+
+[Illustration: PART OF AN ASSYRIAN BOOK.]
+
+
+Astronomy.--The great work on astronomy and astrology in seventy-two
+chapters or books was originally compiled for the library of Sargon of
+Accad. It contained chapters on the eclipses or conjunction of the sun
+and moon, on the planets, the fixed stars, and the comets, and proves
+that observations of the heavens had been made for a long while
+previous to its composition. The path of the sun through the signs of
+the Zodiac had already been mapped out: in fact the Zodiacal Signs owe
+their origin to the astronomers of Babylonia. At the time they were
+first named the vernal equinox began with Taurus.
+
+
+Mathematics.--Among the mathematical treatises may be mentioned tables
+of cube and square roots from the library of Senkereh. The Babylonian
+system of notation resembled that of the Romans, but by an ingenious
+application of the sexagesimal system high numbers could be expressed
+in a very small number of figures.
+
+
+Medicine and law.--The standard work on medicine was voluminous like
+that on astronomy. It contained a vast number of prescriptions for
+different diseases, which read very much like modern ones. Law occupied
+a large space in Babylonian and Assyrian life, and codes of law, which
+protected the slave as well as the woman, went back to Sumerian times.
+A considerable part of the law was based on cases which had already
+been decided by the judges. The judges were appointed by the king, and,
+at all events in a later age, were under a president. Important cases
+were heard before several judges at once; thus a case which was tried
+at Babylon in B.C. 547 was heard before six judges and registered by
+their two clerks.
+
+
+History and mythology.--Historical documents are numerous and include
+the lists of Assyrian eponyms, after whom the successive years were
+named, as well as of the dynasties of kings and the number of years
+each king reigned. Religious literature, however, was still more
+largely represented. As has been stated, a considerable portion of it
+consisted of hymns to the gods, psalms, and ritual texts. But there
+were also lists of the multitudinous deities and their temples, and
+more especially religious myths and legends. One of these described the
+visit of the goddess Istar to Hades in search of her dead husband
+Tammuz, the Sun-god, and told how she left some of her adornment at
+each of its seven gates, until at last she stood stripped and bare
+before the mistress of the Underworld, where the waters of life gush
+forth. In another the adventures of the first man Adapa are related,
+and how he was summoned to heaven to answer the charge of having broken
+the wings of the south-wind. We possess two fragments of this myth, the
+earlier part being written on a broken tablet which was found in the
+library of Nineveh, while the latter part of it has been found on one
+of the cuneiform documents discovered at Tel el-Amarna in Egypt, where
+it had been copied for Egyptian or Canaanite students some eight
+centuries before the library of Nineveh was in existence.
+
+
+The Chaldaean epic and the Deluge.--One of the most famous of the
+legends is the Chaldaean account of the Deluge, which was discovered by
+George Smith in 1872. Its close resemblance to the Biblical account of
+the same event is well known. It embodied at least two earlier versions
+of the story, and in its present form is inserted as an episode in the
+great Epic of the Babylonian hero Gilgames. The Epic was composed by
+a certain Sin-liqi-unnini in twelve books, and was arranged on an
+astronomical principle, the subject of each book corresponding with the
+name of a Zodiacal sign. Thus the account of the Deluge is introduced
+into the eleventh book, which answers to Aquarius the eleventh sign of
+the Zodiac.
+
+Gilgames, it was said, was the fated child of whom it had been
+prophesied that he would slay his grandfather. Though his mother had
+been confined in a tower, he was nevertheless born and conveyed to
+safety on the wings of an eagle. When grown to man's estate he saved
+Erech from the enemy and made it the seat of his dominion. He overthrew
+Khumbaba the tyrant of the forest of cedars, and found a friend and
+guide in the satyr Ea-bani. The goddess Istar wooed him in marriage,
+but he reproached her with the woes she had already brought on her
+hapless lovers and scorned her beauty. In revenge she besought Anu, her
+father, to create a winged bull, which should attack the hero.
+Gilgames, however, slew the bull and returned in triumph to Erech with
+his spoils. But misfortune fell upon him. Ea-bani was killed by the
+bite of a gad-fly, his soul rising up from the ground to the heaven of
+heroes, and Gilgames himself was smitten with a sore disease. To heal
+it he sailed beyond the mouth of the Euphrates and the river of death,
+and here conversed with Xisuthrus, the Chaldaean Noah, who, like Enoch,
+had been translated without seeing death. Xisuthrus told him the story
+of the Deluge, and instructed him how to cure his malady.
+
+
+Epic of the Creation.--The Assyrian Epic of the Creation, the discovery
+of which was also due to George Smith, has already been alluded to. Its
+parallelism with the account of the Creation, in the first chapter of
+Genesis, was noticed from the first. The first tablet opens with a
+description of the deep or watery chaos, while the fifth tablet
+describes the appointment of the heavenly bodies for signs and for
+seasons, and in the seventh comes an account of the creation of the
+animals. The second and third tablets, however, and possibly the
+fourth, were occupied with the story of the struggle between Tiamat the
+dragon of darkness, and Merodach the Sun-god, which finds its echo in
+the Apocalypse (Rev. xii. 7-9). Out of the skin of Tiamat, Merodach
+formed the firmament which 'divided the waters which were under the
+firmament from the waters which were above it.' Other accounts of the
+Creation existed, which differed essentially from that of the Epic.
+Thus there was one that was written for the Library of Kutha and
+described an imperfect creation which foreshadowed as it were the
+present one. Mr. Pinches, again, has discovered a Sumerian legend of
+the origin of things which seems to have been current at Eridu. But in
+the Epic a considerable number of the older cosmological legends were
+embodied and combined, and a gloss of materialistic philosophy put upon
+them. It is this gloss which makes it difficult to believe that the
+Epic can be of much antiquity. The materials of which it is composed
+doubtless go back to an early period, but in its present form it
+belongs to an age when the deities of the old faith were resolved into
+philosophical abstractions and the forces of nature. At present, at all
+events, we have no reasons for thinking that it is earlier than the
+time of the Second Assyrian Empire.
+
+[Illustration: CONTRACT-TABLETS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SOCIAL LIFE
+
+
+The Contract-tablets.--We have learnt a great deal about the social
+life of Babylonia and Assyria from the contract-tablets which have been
+found in enormous numbers in Babylonia. A few have also come from the
+library of Nineveh, relating for the most part to the sale and lease of
+house property. Some of them have Aramaic dockets attached to them,
+giving the names of the persons mentioned in the contract and the
+nature of its contents. These dockets serve to verify the method of
+cuneiform decipherment, and are an indication that in the time of
+Tiglath-pileser III and his successors Aramaic was the common language
+of trade.
+
+Some of the Babylonian contract-tablets go back to the time of
+Khammurabi and his dynasty, and are in Sumerian. But the larger number
+are of much later date, and extend from the reign of Kandalanu, the
+predecessor of Nabopolassar, to that of Xerxes. For many years we have
+a continuous series of documents dated month by month in each year. A
+contract-tablet was often enclosed in an envelope of clay, on which its
+principal contents were inscribed. They were kept in large jars which
+answered to our modern safes.
+
+
+Married Life.--From the contracts relating to matrimony we learn that
+polygamy was very rare, and that the wife enjoyed a considerable amount
+of independence. The dowry she brought with her on marriage had to be
+restored to her in case of divorce. Moreover the woman could act apart
+from her husband, entering into partnership, trading with her money and
+conducting law-suits in her own name. In B.C. 555 we find a father
+transferring all his property to his daughter, and reserving only the
+use of it during the rest of his life. On the other hand wives, like
+concubines, could sometimes be purchased, though in this case if the
+husband married again he stipulated that he would send his first wife
+back to her home along with a certain sum of money. Children could be
+adopted, and there was the utmost freedom as regards the devolution of
+property, which could be 'tied up' by will.
+
+
+Burial.--The dead were buried after complete or partial cremation. With
+the exception of the kings they were interred in cemeteries outside the
+towns, tombs and tombstones being erected over them, with rivulets,
+which symbolized 'the water of life,' flowing at their side.
+
+
+Slavery.--Slavery was an ancient institution, but the slave was
+protected by law as far back as the Sumerian period. In later times he
+could even appear as party to a suit, and could recover his freedom by
+manumission, by purchase, by proving that he had been unlawfully
+enslaved, or by his adoption into the family of a citizen. Slaves could
+be impressed into the royal service, so that in selling a slave it was
+usual to stipulate that the seller should be responsible for any
+trouble arising from such a cause. Poor parents sometimes sold their
+children into slavery, and the Sumerian law ordered a son who denied
+his father to be shorn and sold as a slave.
+
+
+Lowness of Wages.--Few persons were so poor as not to be able to keep
+one slave at least. But the existence of slavery caused wages to be
+low, and lowered the character and position of the free labourer. Thus
+we find that a skilled labourer, like a coppersmith, received only six
+_qas_ (about 8-1/2 quarts) of flour for overlaying a chariot with a
+lining of copper, and that only 1_s._ 6_d._ was paid for painting the
+stucco of a wall.
+
+
+Property.--The tenure of a farm was of various kinds. Sometimes the
+property belonged half to the landlord, half to the tenant, the tenant
+doing all the work and handing the landlord's half of the produce to
+his agent. Sometimes while the tenant gave his work, the landlord
+provided him with carts, oxen, and other necessaries. At other times
+the tenant received only a third, a fourth, or even a tenth of the
+produce, besides paying a fixed rent of two-thirds of the dates
+gathered from the palms on the estate. The landlord could dismiss the
+tenant, who was also required to build the farm house if one did not
+already exist.
+
+When house property or land was let or sold it was minutely described,
+and numerous witnesses to the deed of sale or lease were required. The
+length of the lease as well as the rent had to be stated, any
+transgression of the terms of the lease being punished with a severe
+fine. The tenant had to return the property in the state in which he
+found it. The rent of course depended on the size and value of the
+property, and could be paid half-yearly as well as three times a year.
+Houses, further, might be bought and sold through the intervention of
+an agent.
+
+
+Taxes.--Taxation was probably heavy. In the time of Sennacherib,
+Nineveh had to pay the treasury 30 talents a year, while Carchemish
+was assessed at 100 talents. Taxes were also levied in kind, and there
+was an _octroi_ duty upon goods entering the town. The metal,--gold,
+silver, and bronze,--was measured out by weight, a coinage not making
+its appearance until late in Babylonian history, though, as in Egypt,
+rings of gold or silver, which took the place of coins, were used at
+an early time.
+
+
+Prices.--The value of grain and dates necessarily varied from time to
+time. Under Nebuchadrezzar, the quart of sesame cost a little over a
+penny, in the twelfth year of Nabonidos it was a little less than
+1-1/2_d._ In the seventh year of Nebuchadrezzar dates were about a
+halfpenny a quart, in his thirty-eighth year the quart was only 1/25
+of a penny. In the reign of Cambyses a quart of corn cost 2-1/2_d._
+
+The prices of other things were higher. In the reign of Darius a lady
+sold 200 sheep for L135, in that of Nebuchadrezzar an ox, sacrificed
+in the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara, cost L2. We hear of asses
+sold for L7 10_s._, and L2, and of five casks of wine purchased for L1
+10_s._
+
+
+Usury.--Deeds of partnership are common; so also are deeds relating
+to money-lending. The usurer, in fact, was a prominent person in the
+trading community of Babylonia. Under Nebuchadrezzar and his successors
+the usual rate of interest was 20 per cent., the interest being paid
+each month, though we also hear of 13-1/3 per cent. In concluding a
+bargain, it was usually stipulated that if the money were not paid by a
+specified date, interest should be paid upon it until it was paid in
+full.
+
+
+The Army.--By the side of the commercial class stood a numerous body
+of military and civil officials. At the head of the Assyrian army was
+the Tartan (_turtannu_) or Commander-in-chief, and under him came a
+large staff of officers. The army itself was highly organized. In
+addition to the infantry and cavalry there were numerous chariots, in
+one of which the king rode when he commanded in person. In the time of
+Tiglath-pileser III, saddles, leathern drawers, and high boots were
+introduced for the cavalry, and a corps of slingers and pioneers was
+created by Sennacherib. The infantry were divided into heavy-armed and
+light-armed, many of the heavy-armed wearing coats of mail formed of
+metal scales sewn to a leather shirt. Helmets were largely used, as
+well as shields. The army carried with it on the march various engines
+for attacking the walls of a town--battering-rams, ladders, crow-bars,
+and the like--as well as tents. The royal tent was accompanied by a
+cooking and a dining-tent, and was elaborately furnished. We learn
+from the contract-tablets, that in the reign of Nabonidos, rather more
+than 2-1/2 bushels of wheat were furnished to each of the bowmen,
+while 54 _qas_ (75 quarts) of beer were provided on a particular day,
+'for the troops which had marched from Babylon.'
+
+
+Navy.--A fleet was kept in Babylonia, and the king had a State-barge on
+the Euphrates. The Assyrians, however, were not a naval people, and the
+biremes, employed by Sennacherib when he attacked the Chaldaean colony
+in the Persian Gulf, were built and manned by Phoenicians.
+
+
+The Bureaucracy.--The prefects or satraps of the Assyrian provinces
+and subject cities were appointed by the king, like the military
+officers, and were responsible to him. A certain number of them were
+eligible for the post of _limmu_, or eponym, after whom the year was
+named--an honour which they shared with the monarch. The office does
+not appear to have existed in Babylonia.
+
+Among the tablets which have come from the library of Nineveh are some
+which contain long lists of Assyrian officials. They were a very
+numerous body, but we need mention only the Rab-shakeh (_Rab-saki_),
+'chief of the princes,' or Vizier, the Rab-saris (_Rab-sa-resi_) or
+'chief of the nobles,' and the Rab-mag (_Rab-mugi_) or 'chief
+physician.' The identification of the two last is due to Mr. Pinches.
+
+The priests and judges have already been alluded to, as also the clerks
+or scribes, many of whom, at least in Babylonia, were also priests.
+Poets and musicians were attached to the court, and we hear of a grant
+of land being made to a court-poet, in Babylonia, for some verses in
+which he had doubtless flattered the king. Society, in short, was
+highly organized, and the principle of a subdivision of labour was
+fully understood.
+
+In one important respect, however, the basis upon which society rested
+in Babylonia and in Assyria was different. The government of Babylonia
+was theocratic, that of Assyria was military. While Assyria with its
+bureaucratic centralization is an anticipation of imperial Rome,
+Babylonia with its theocratic constitution is an anticipation of papal
+Rome. The king was the adopted son of Bel, and his right to rule was
+based on the fact that Bel, the true lord and ruler of the State, had
+delegated to him his power.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+
+ASSYRIAN MEASURES OF LENGTH.
+
+  60 Uban ('fingers')           1 Ammat ('cubit').
+   6 Ammat                      1 Qanu ('reed').
+   2 Qanu                       1 Gar.
+  60 Gar                        1 Sussu ('soss').
+  30 Sussi                      1 Kaspu.
+
+
+MEASURES OF CAPACITY[6].
+
+  10 GAR[7]                     1 QA.
+  27 QA                         1 AP.
+  36 QA                         1 PI (or Persian Ardeb).
+  60 QA                         1 Homer.
+   3 Homers (or 5 Ardebs)       1 GUR (about 250 quarts).
+
+        [6] As determined by Dr. Oppert.
+
+        [7] Capitals denote that the Semitic pronunciation of the
+        ideograph is unknown.
+
+
+MEASURES OF WEIGHT AND COINAGE.
+
+  60 Shekels                    1 Silver Mana ('Mina') = L9.
+  60 Silver Manas               1 Silver Talent.
+  60 Gold Manas                 1 Gold Talent (L8400).
+
+    The silver shekel was worth about 3_s._
+
+
+THE MONTHS OF THE YEAR.
+
+      Assyrian Name.              Sumerian Name.
+                    Zodiacal Sign.             Corresponding Months.
+
+   (1) Nisannu (Nisan)        Month of 'the dweller in the Asherah[8]
+                      Aries                      March-April.
+
+   (2) Aaru (Iyyar)           'The directing bull'
+                      Taurus                     April-May.
+
+   (3) Sivanu (Sivan)         'Bricks' (?)
+                      Gemini                     May-June.
+
+   (4) Duzu (Tammuz)          'The growth of seed'
+                      Cancer                     June-July.
+
+   (5) Abu (Ab)               'The fiery-hot'
+                      Leo                        July-August.
+
+   (6) Ululu (Elul)           'The message of Istar'
+                      Virgo                      August-September.
+
+   (7) Tasritu (Tisri)        'The holy mound'
+                      Libra                      September-October.
+
+   (8) Arakh-savna            'Opposite the foundation (of the year)
+       (Marchesvan, 'the eighth month')
+                     Scorpio                     October-November.
+
+   (9) Kisilivu (Chisleu)     'The cloudy'
+                     Sagittarius                 November-December.
+
+  (10) Dhabitu (Tebet)        'The cave of the dawn' (?)
+                     Capricornus                 December-January.
+
+  (11) Sabadhu (Sebat)        'The curse of rain'
+                     Aquarius                    January-February.
+
+  (12) Addaru (Adar)          The month of 'cultivation'
+                     Pisces                      February-March.
+
+  (13) Arakh-makhru (Ve-Adar), the intercalary month.
+
+        [8] _Zaggara_, rendered by the Semitic _bit ili_ (Beth-el),
+        'house of God,' as well as by _asirtu_, 'the symbol of the
+        goddess Asherah' (mistranslated 'grove' in the Authorized
+        Version of the Old Testament).
+
+
+BABYLONIAN KINGS.
+                                                                 B.C.
+
+  Sargon of Akkad                                                3800
+
+  Naram-Sin his son                                              3700
+
+   (1) The Dynasty of Babylon: 11 kings for 304 years       2478-2174
+      The sixth king of the dynasty was Khammurabi          2356-2301
+
+   (2) The Dynasty of Lagas: 11 kings for 368 years         2174-1806
+
+   (3) The Kassite Dynasty: 36 kings for 576 years 9 months 1806-1229
+
+Among the kings of this dynasty were Burna-buryas (cir. B.C. 1420),
+the contemporary of the Egyptian Pharaohs Amenophis III and Amenophis
+IV, and Kuri-galzu (cir. B.C. 1400).
+
+The last six kings were:
+
+  Rimmon-nadin-suma                                              1297
+  Conquest of Babylon by Tiglath-Uras of Assyria                 1291
+  Expulsion of the Assyrians; Rimmon-suma-natsir king            1284
+  Meli-sipak                                                     1261
+  Merodach-baladan I                                             1246
+  Zamama-nadin-sumi                                              1233
+  Bel-suma-nadin                                                 1232
+
+   (4) The Dynasty of Isin: 11 kings for 72 years 6 months  1229-1156
+
+   (5) The Dynasty of the Sea-coast: 3 kings for
+      21 years 5 months                                     1156-1135
+
+   (6) The Dynasty of Bit-Bazi: 3 kings for
+      20 years 3 months                                     1135-1115
+
+   (7) An Elamite usurper for 6 years                       1115-1109
+
+   (8) The 31 [kings] of the Dynasty of Babylon[9]          1109- 730
+
+  Among them were:
+
+      Nebuchadrezzar I                                      1109-1096
+      Merodach-nadin-akhi                                   1096-1090
+      Merodach-sapik-zirrat                                 cir. 1075
+      Nebo-baladan                                           cir. 880
+      Merodach-balasu-iqbi                                   cir. 820
+      Nabu-natsir (Nabonassar)                                    747
+      Nabu-nadin-ziri (Nadios) his son                            733
+      Nabu-suma-yukin his son                                     731
+
+   (9) The Dynasty of Sape: Yukin-zira (Chinziros)                730
+
+  (10) The Assyrian Dynasties:
+      Pulu (Pul, Poros), called Tiglath-pileser III in Assyria    727
+      Ulula, called Shalmaneser IV in Assyria                     725
+      Merodach-baladan II, the Chaldaean from the Sea-coast       721
+      Sargon of Assyria                                           709
+      Sennacherib his son                                         704
+      Merodach-zakir-sumi for 1 month                             702
+      Merodach-baladan III for six months                         702
+      Bel-ebus of Babylon                                         702
+      Assur-nadin-suma son of Sennacherib                         700
+      Nergal-yusezib                                              694
+      Musezib-Merodach                                            693
+      Sennacherib a second time                                   689
+      Esar-haddon his son                                         681
+      Samas-suma-yukin (Saosduchinos)                             668
+      Kandalanu (Kineladanos)                                     648
+      Nabu-pal-utsur (Nabopolassar)                               626
+      Nabu-kudurri-utsar (Nebuchadrezzar) his son                 605
+      Evil-Merodach his son                                       562
+      Nergal-sarra-utsur (Nergalsharezer)                         560
+      Laborosoarchod, his son, for 3 months                       556
+      Nabu-nahid (Nabonidos)                                      556
+      Cyrus conquers Babylon                                      538
+      Cambyses his son                                            529
+      Gomates (Gaumata) the Magian (the pseudo-Bardes or Smerdis) 521
+      Dareios (Darayavaush) the son of Hystaspes (Vishtaspa)      521
+      Xerxes I (Khshayarsha) his son                              485
+      Samas-erba, rebel-king                                      480
+      Xerxes restored                                             479
+      Artaxerxes I (Artakshatra) Longimanus his son               465
+      Xerxes II, his son, for two months                          425
+      Sogdianos, his half-brother, for seven months               425
+      Dareios II, Nothos (or Okhos) his brother                   424
+      Artaxerxes II (Mnemon) his son                              405
+      Okhos (Uvasu) the son of Artaxerxes                         362
+      Arses his son                                               339
+      Dareios III, Kodomannos                                     336
+      Conquered by Alexander the Great                            330
+
+        [9] The fracture of the tablet makes the arrangement of this
+        Dynasty not absolutely certain.
+
+
+ASSYRIAN KINGS.
+
+Sargon asserts he was preceded by 330 Assyrian kings.
+
+
+HIGH PRIESTS OF ASSUR.
+
+                                                                  B.C.
+
+  Isme-Dagon                                                cir. 1850
+  Samas-Rimmon I his son                                         1820
+
+  Igur-Kapkapu                                                      ?
+  Samas-Rimmon II his brother                                       ?
+
+  Khallu                                                            ?
+  Irisum his son                                                    ?
+
+
+KINGS OF ASSYRIA.
+
+                                                                  B.C.
+
+  Bel-Kapkapu 'the founder of the monarchy'                         ?
+
+  Ada'si                                                            ?
+  Bel-basi his son                                                  ?
+
+  Assur-bil-nisi-su, cir.                                        1450
+  Buzur-Assur,                                                   1440
+  Assur-nadin-akhi,                                              1420
+  Assur-yuballidh his son,                                       1400
+  Bel-nirari his son,                                            1380
+  Pudilu (Pedael) his son,                                       1360
+  Rimmon-nirari I his son,                                       1340
+  Shalmaneser I his son (founder of Calah),                      1320
+  Tiglath-Uras I his son,                                        1300
+  Assur-natsir-pal I his son,                                    1280
+  Assur-narara,                                                  1270
+  Nebo-dan his son,                                              1265
+
+  Bel-kudurri-utsur,                                             1230
+  Uras-pileser,                                                  1215
+  Assur-dan I his son,                                           1185
+  Mutaggil-Nebo his son,                                         1160
+  Assur-ris-ilim his son,                                        1140
+  Tiglath-pileser I his son,                                     1115
+  Assur-bil-kala his son,                                        1090
+  Samas-Rimmon I his brother,                                    1070
+
+  Assur-irbi                                                        ?
+
+  Tiglath-pileser II,                                             950
+  Assur-dan II his son,                                           930
+  Rimmon-nirari II his son,                                  B.C. 911
+  Tiglath-Uras II his son,                                        889
+  Assur-natsir-pal II his son,                                    883
+
+  Shalmaneser II his son                                          858
+  Assur-dain-pal (Sardanapallos), rebel-king                      825
+  Samas-Rimmon II his brother                                     823
+  Rimmon-nirari III his son                                       810
+  Shalmaneser III                                                 781
+  Assur-dan III                                                   771
+  Assur-nirari                                                    753
+  Tiglath-pileser III, Pulu (Pul, Poros), usurper                 745
+  Shalmaneser IV, Ulula, usurper                                  727
+  Sargon usurper                                                  722
+  Sennacherib (Sin-akhi-erba) his son                             705
+  Esar-haddon I (Assur-akhi-iddina) his son                       681
+  Assur-bani-pal (Sardanapallos) his son                          668
+  Assur-etil-ilani-yukinni his son                                  ?
+  Sin-sarra-iskun (Sarakos)                                         ?
+  Destruction of Nineveh                                          606
+
+
+SYNCHRONISMS BETWEEN ASSYRIAN AND BIBLICAL HISTORY.
+
+                                                                  B.C.
+
+  Battle of Qarqar; Shalmaneser II defeats Hadadezer of
+    Damascus, Ahab of Israel, &c.                                 853
+  Campaigns against Hadadezer of Damascus                     850-845
+  Campaign against Hazael of Damascus; tribute paid
+    to Shalmaneser by Jehu 'the son of Omri'                       41
+  Damascus captured by Rimmon-nirari III; tribute paid
+    by Samaria                                                    804
+  Pul, who takes the name of Tiglath-pileser III, usurps
+    the throne, April                                             745
+  War with Hamath; submission of Uzziah; fall of Arpad        843-840
+  Tribute paid to Tiglath-pileser (Pul) by Menahem of
+    Samaria and Rezon of Damascus                                 738
+  Damascus besieged; the tribes beyond the Jordan carried
+    away; Jehoahaz (Ahaz) of Judah becomes an Assyrian vassal     734
+  Pekah put to death; Hosea succeeds                      733 (? 729)
+  Damascus captured; Rezon slain; Ahaz at Damascus                732
+  Capture of Samaria by Sargon                                    722
+  Embassy of Merodach-baladan to Hezekiah                         712
+  Capture of Ashdod by the Assyrians                              711
+  Campaign of Sennacherib against Judah                           701
+  Murder of Sennacherib                                           681
+  Manasseh of Judah tributary to Esar-haddon                      676
+  Destruction of Thebes (No-Amon) in Egypt by the Assyrians       665
+  Babylonian invasion of Egypt                                    567
+
+
+THE PRINCIPAL DEITIES OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.
+
+  Arm (Sumerian Ana), the sky-god of Erech, and wife Anat.
+
+  Bel the elder (Sum. Mul-lil or El-lil), the earth-god of Nipur,
+    and wife Beltis.
+
+  Ea, the water-god of Eridu, and wife Dav-kina.
+
+  Bel-Merodach (Maruduk) of Babylon, the son of Ea, and wife Zarpanit.
+
+  Istar, the goddess of the evening-star, the daughter of Sin.
+
+  Sin, the Moon-god of Ur, the son of Bel of Nipur.
+
+  Samas, the Sun-god, the son of Sin; also called A.
+
+  Rimmon (Rammanu) or Barqu (Sum. Mer), the air-god.
+
+  Uras[10], the warrior-god of Nipur, the minister of the elder Bel.
+
+  Nebo (Nabu), 'the prophet' of Borsippa, the minister of Merodach.
+
+  Tasmit, 'the hearer,' the wife of Nebo.
+
+  Nusku, a Sumerian deity identified with Nebo.
+
+  Nergal, the warrior-god of Kutha.
+
+  Assur, the national-god of Assyria.
+
+        [10] The reading of the name of this god is doubtful. It has
+        been variously transcribed Bar, Nin-ip, and Adar, the last of
+        which, however, is certainly wrong.
+
+
+Oxford
+
+HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Primer of Assyriology, by Archibald Henry Sayce
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