KINGDOMS RISE AND FALL
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FOR over 2000 years one of the greatest of human achievements, the civilisation of Babylonia and Assyria, lay buried and almost forgotten beneath the soil of the land we now know as Iraq (earlier called Mesopotamia). There remained of it only certain accounts, of doubtful reliability, in Greek literature, together with some Biblical statements, perhaps biased, about the Assyrians, and more dubious traditions of a much earlier period in a land called Shinar. In Shinar, according to the Biblical account, had been built the tower of Babel; here too had lived the sole surviving family of the great Flood, whilst somewhere in this region, at the beginning of man's history, had been the Garden of Eden
THE LAND AND RACES OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
Babylonia and Assyria covered approximately the region which today is known as Iraq, though some places important in the ancient civilisation are to be found in Turkey and Syria. Iraq is a land which depends for its life, and in part for its physical existence, upon its great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris. Without these rivers two-thirds of the country would be an and desert, whilst it its these rivers which have created, by their silt deposits, the whole region, a great alluvial plain, which extends from about 100 miles north of Baghdad down to the Persian Gulf. This alluvial soil can be, under the influence of the sun and adequate irrigation, of astonishingly high fertility, and it was in the alluvial plain that the ancient civilisation had its origin and flowering. East and north of the alluvial plain the land rises into chains of foothills, and finally into mountains of up to 10,000 feet on the borders of Persia and Turkey. To the west of the Euphrates the land merges into the Syrian and Arabian deserts.It was the southern part of this land, roughly from the latitude of Baghdad, which in ancient times was Babylonia, the northern part being Assyria. The whole is sometimes referred to as Mesopotamia, from the Greek for 'between the rivers', though the Greeks themselves used this term of rather a rent area.
The story of Mesopotamian civilisation, and with it the story of our own civilisation, begins a little over 5000 years ago, in the hot swamps of South Iraq. A strange people, the Sumerians, whose ;precise origin is still unknown, had come (whether by land or sea we are not certain) from somewhere to the east or north-east to ,settle in the region around the head of the Persian Gulf. This region deficient in some of the basic materials of civilised existence, such as hard timber, stone, and metal ores, but is rich in three :hers, namely, sunshine, water, and mud. It was out of mud that the Sumerians built their civilisation, and it is mud, in the form of scribed clay tablets, which enables us to see back almost to the beginning of the 5000 years which separate us from the original Sumerian settlement.
The characteristic form into which Sumerian society grew was, from early in the third millennium B.C., the walled city at the centre of a small city-state, with a number of dependent villages in the surrounding countryside. It should perhaps be emphasised that the basis of the Sumerian city was agriculture and not industry. The two most prominent features of the Sumerian city were its irrigation system and its main temple built on a terrace. This terrace-temple in course of time developed to become the stepped tower known as the ziggurrat (p. 88). The city temple might be of considerable splendour with stone foundations, but most of the human occupants of the city still lived in small mud huts
In theory the city was the estate of the local deity, whose chief human representative was known as the En; this functionary could apparently be either a man or a woman. Originally control of the city-state had been in the hands of all free citizens, who arrived at decisions on major policy in public council. There are always some activities, however, which require on-the-spot decisions, and so the citizens came to appoint a man called the Ensi to direct and coordinate agricultural operations, whilst in times of crisis they would choose a king (Sumerian Lugal, literally 'Big Man') as military leader (5). Although both Ensi and Lugal were originally elected, once a man had been appointed there would be a strong tendency for his position to become permanent and hereditary, and also for the various leading positions in the city-state to be gathered Into one person. Thus the famous Gilgamesh of Erech (p. 45) was both En and Lugal, and a number of other Sumerian rulers were Lugal and Ensi. As a result the original democratic organisation gave way to a system of rulers and ruled.
Sumerians were not the first inhabitants of what we now call Babylonia. Amongst their predecessors it is possible that one group was Semitic. If this was In fact so, this Semitic element would represent the first stage of a Movement of peoples which has been going on throughout history. The use of the term 'Semitic' here requires explanation. The word has an unfortunate modern history because of its misuse by the Hitler regime, and for that reason many people are nervous of using it at all, except as a term covering certain languages. In the latter sense it denotes a closely knit group of languages which include, amongst modern tongues, Hebrew and Arabic, and, amongst ancient ones, Akkadian and Aramaic. However, in the context of ancient history, it is also perfectly legitimate to use the term 'Semites' in a racial sense, of a community of peoples having single point of origin in prehistoric times. The ancient Semites (using the term as defined) were a people whose original home, as far as we know at present, was the interior of Arabia. From the end of the last Ice Age at about 8000 B.C. down to the present day Arabia (like much of the rest of the Near East) has suffered from relentless soil erosion, with the result that the desert area has extended and the population the land would support has become continually smaller. Throughout history the overflow from this population has been moving outwards to settle, usually in peaceful families, less commonly in larger warlike groups, on the more fertile fringes of the great desert.
The growing strength of the Semitic element in the population culminated in the coming into power of an Akkadian dynasty. In northern Babylonia the greatest Sumerian centre was the city of Kish, and the last King of Kish had as chief minister a man whom we know under the Semitic name of Sharrum-kin or Sargon, meaning 'true king', though this could hardly have been his original name. Sargon had founded a city called Agade (exact whereabouts still unknown), and when the King of Kish was overthrown by a Sumerian ruler from farther south, Sargon took over the reins of government and gained control of the whole of the land later known as Babylonia (2371 B.C.). Sargon's descendants reigned for over a century, and we refer to this dynasty as the Dynasty of Agade, or, using the Semitic spelling of the name, the Dynasty of Akkad
KINGDOMS RISE AND FALL
A PEOPLE called the Amorites are well known to readers of the Old Testament, where the term is used for one of the main groups of inhabitants of Palestine before the final entry of the Hebrews under Joshua. These Biblical Amorites were descendants of settlers who had come in from the desert several centuries before. They had formed part of a great group of peoples, called in cuneiform sources the Amurra (singular, An-iurru), on the move in the Syrian desert and threatening all the fertile lands from Palestine to Iraq. 'Amurru' was probably originally the name of a particular tribe, but it came to be used of the whole of a certain wave of invaders from the Syrian desert.The presence of people of the Amurru group within the areas mentione
d is shown in the first instance by the
nature of
the personal names, and afterwards, with the final collapse of the
Third Dynasty of Ur, by the rise in a number of cities of dynasties in
which the personal names, god names and institutions are obviously of
Amorite origin. Such dynasties may for convenience be called 'Amorite',
although some regard the term as inaccurate when used in this sense. As
might be expected in view of geography, it is on the Middle Euphrates
that a dynasty of Amorite origin is first in evidence, the city
concerned being Mari. In other cities, some of the earlier peaceful
Amorite settlers actually became officials in the service of the
Dynasty of Ur. One such was Ishbi-Erra, who was in charge of the city
of Isin under the last King of Ur and who, after loyal to the end,
subsequently founded a dynasty of his own.
The third Dynasty of Ur finally crumbled under the pressure of Amorite invaders, city after city ceasing to acknowledge the sovereignty of Ur. The final overthrow of the dynasty was, however, not the work of the Amorites, but of the Elamites (from southern Persia), who seized the opportunity to sack and occupy the capital, slaughtering the inhabitants and carrying away the King. This stunning blow, marking the final of the Sumerians as a political power, shows clear evidence in the relics of destruction found when the city was excavated. This disastrous event was long remembered in Babylonia.
With the breakdown of central control by Ur, dynasties arose in other cities, the two most prominent at first being Isin and Larsa. For this reason the century or so after the overthrow of Ur is often the Isin-Larsa period (2006-1894 B.C.). The Larsa dynasty increased its influence at the expense of Isin, but was finally itself overthrown (1763 B.C.) by the sixth ruler of the of Babylon, the great Hammurabi (1792-1750 B.C.).
The first Dynasty of Babylon (1894-1595 B.C.) is rightly thought of, particularly during the reign of Hammurabi, as one of the highlights of ancient civilisation. It was an age of material prosperity, and it is also fortunately one of the periods about which we are best informed. There are not only many thousands of business documents and letters from Babylon and other cities, but we also have the collection of laws promulgated by Hammurabi himself (82). Together these documents make it clear that the pre-eminence of Hammurabi amongst his contemporaries, which enabled him to raise Babylon to a cultural supremacy which it was never to lose, was not due solely to his military ability. It also owed much to his political insight and aptitude for diplomacy, and to his administrative ability and concern for social justice throughout his land.
It would be a mistake to think of Babylon as the only city-state of significance at this period. Farther north there was the kingdom of Assyria, where another prince of Amorite origin, Shamshi-Adad I, an older contemporary of Hammurabi, established himself as king in 1814 B.C., and exerted considerable influence upon the regions to the south and south-west. In the early part of his reign Hammurabi had another powerful contemporary in the King of Eshnunna, who controlled the cities along the Diyala and in the neighbourhood of modern Baghdad. There were other Amorite centres of power in North Syria. The situation is summed up in a letter from this period which says
There is no king who of himself alone is strongest. Ten or fifteen kings follow Hammurabi of Babylon, the same number follow RimSin of Larsa, the same number follow lbal-pi-El of Eshnunna, the same number follow Amut-pi-El of Qatanum [in Syria], and twenty kings follow Yarim-Lim of Yamkhad [in North Syria].
Another city-state of considerable importance until finally conquered by Hammurabi in 1761 B.C. was Mari, on the Middle Euphrates. It was a city of respectable antiquity, having been one of the outposts of Sumerian civilisation, and in the early second millennium B.C. was the capital of a kingdom extending over 200 miles along the river. In 1796 B.C. it experienced what must have been common in its history, a change of dynasty, when Shamshi-Adad of Assyria, benefiting by a palace revolution in Mari, placed his own son Yasmakh-Adad on the throne of Mari as his sub-king and representative. French archaeologists working before the war at Tell Hariri, the site of ancient Mari, had the good fortune to discover the royal archives from this period, and amongst them correspondence between Shamshi-Adad and the sub-kings who were his sons, as well as correspondence between the various rulers and their officials. Of less immediate human interest, but still very important for many details of life of the time, ere the business documents. These various classes of texts, together with the physical remains of the buildings, combine to give us a surprisingly detailed picture of life at the time,
The way of life which crystallised at this period under the shadow of Hammurabi was, with minor changes, the general pattern in Babylonia until, with the Persian conquest of the country in 539 B.C. and the subsequent growth of Hellenistic (Greek) influence, Babylonian civilisation finally withered away. The actual political achievements of Hammurabi, in bringing all Babylonia, and some regions beyond, under the control of the city of Babylon, did not long survive him. In the reign of Hammurabi's successor the people of the marsh country of South Babylonia broke away, forming a separate and long-lasting dynasty, whilst the same ruler came into conflict with the Cassites, a non-Semitic people from the mountains north-east of Babylonia.
After this first evidence of Cassite pressure, the following century saw a gradual increase both of peaceful immigration of individual Cassites, and of organised movements of armed bands. This may be connected with pressure upon the Cassites themselves by a southward movement of Indo-European and other peoples farther north. Amongst these peoples two of the most prominent groups were the Hittites and the Hurrians. The names of both groups will be recognised in the Bible (the Hurrians under the form Horites), but it should be borne in mind that the people called Hittites and Horites in the Bible may have had only a very slender id distant link with the groups known as Hittites and Hurrians in the cuneiform documents. The Hittites, an Indo-European people whose language was closely related to Latin, had begun to pear in northern Anatolia (eastern Turkey) early in the second millennium and had established a powerful kingdom in Central Anatolia soon after 1700 B.C. The Hurrians, who were neither Indo-European nor Semitic, had been centred on the region around Lake Van since before the Agade period, but had begun pushing southwards on a large scale by the early second Millennium.
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These various pressures made the collapse of the central government in Babylonia inevitable, though surprisingly the actual overthrow of the city of Babylon was at the hands of the most distant of the peoples mentioned, the Hittites from central Anatolia. In 1595 B.C. the Hittite ruler made a sudden attack southwards into Syria, and then moved down the Euphrates to plunder Babylon. Political developments in his capital made the Hittite king return as suddenly as he had come, but Babylon was left powerless to resist a further aggressor, and Cassite forces descended from the hills to take over control of the capital and to impose their government upon North Babylonia. This Cassite dynasty, which rapidly adopted much of the culture and institutions of their predecessors in the land, lasted about 400 years (1595-c. 1150
Hurrians, whom we have seen were moving southwards during the first half of the second millennium B.C. Associated with them at this time was an aristocracy of the race which we know as Indo-European or Aryan. The Aryans derived ultimately from the steppes of Russia, one of the original homes of the wild horse. Because of this, the Aryans were always found in association with the horse, and it was the Aryan migrants of the second millennium who introduced the horse-drawn chariot as an instrument of war(20). This chariot-owning Aryan aristocracy, ruling over a population which was largely Hurrian, had succeeded, shortly before 1500 B.C., in establishing a powerful kingdom centred upon the Habur area. We know this kingdom as Mitanni
The kingdom of Mitanni is, oddly enough, best known not from evidence found in the kingdom itself, but from documents discovered in the land of the Hittites, in Syria, and above all in Egypt. All of these documents point to the considerable, if temporary, importance of Mitanni. The sources from Egypt are of two kinds. One is the Egyptian hieroglyphic documents, which have references to armed conflict with Mitanni in the Syrian region, the area in which the two States came into competition. The other Egyptian source, surprisingly, consists of clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform. These tablets are the famous El Amarna letters (44), found in Central Egypt at the end of last century, and constituting part of the diplomatic archives of the Egyptian kings at a period around 1400 B.C. These documents include letters to the Pharaoh from various princes of Palestine and Syria, from the kings of the Hittite land, Assyria and Babylonia, and from the King of Mitanni. The material concerned with the other rulers cannot be dealt with here, but the part of the correspondence involving Mitanni clearly shows that at time Mitanni was on an equality with Egypt. These letters show that marriage alliances were made between Mitanni and Egypt, and give evidence of several instances in which Mitannian princesses were sent as brides for the King of Egypt. (It may be added that the Cassite ruler of Babylonia also made marriage alliances of this kind with Egypt.) Mitanni was so powerful at this period that its eastern neighbour Assyria was completely eclipsed and indeed at one time came actually a vassal of Mitanni. By 1350 B.C., however, Mitanni, torn by internal dynastic strife, had become so weak that was virtually a dependency of the Hittite ruler Shuppiluliuma. Assyria was now able to reassert its independence, and this period, during the reign of Ashur-uballit I (1365-1330 B.C.), marks the beginning of the emergence of Assyria as one of the great Powers of the ancient Near East.
The Assyrians of the period 1350-612 B.C. were one of the most important, as well as one of the most maligned, peoples of the ancient world. Situated in northern Mesopotamia on the open plains immediately south of the great mountain ranges of Armenia, the people of Assyria had borne the brunt of the pressure generated by Indo-European peoples on the move in the steppes of Russia. We have already seen that Assyria was for a time actually a vassal of Mitanni, and in the following centuries, up to about 1000 B.C., it was to be subject to constant pressure from Aramaean peoples the region to the west. The human response to this continual pressure was the development of a sturdy warlike people prepared to fight ruthlessly for their existence.
Assyrian political history from 1350 B.C. onwards shows a curious rhythm between periods of expansion and decline. First came a period of about a century in which Assyria secured itself from the threat of domination by Babylonia, and finally settled the Mitannian problem by turning what remained of that once powerful kingdom into the westernmost province of Assyria. It was during this period that Assyria first felt the pressure of a new wave of Aramaean peoples, called the Akhlamu, moving in from the west. At this time also, there arose in the mountains of Armenia a new tribal confederation, known as Uruatri or Urartu (the, Biblical Ararat), shortly to become a kingdom of considerable importance.
This period of consolidation and expansion culminated in the capture by Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244-1208 B.C.) of Babylon. The significance of this was as if a King of Scotland in the Middle Ages had captured London. After this climax there was a sudden decline in the fortunes of Assyria. This was in part a direct consequence of the preceding period of expansion, in that repeated armed conflict with peoples to the north, east and south must have taken a serious toll of the cream of Assyrian manpower. Probably, however, a more important cause was the disturbed condition of the Near East as a whole. There was no longer a kingdom of Mitanni to wield political control in the Syrian area, whilst Egypt, which had frequently exercised suzerainty over Palestine and parts of Syria, was now quite unable to make its influence felt beyond its own boundaries. The Hittite Empire, which formerly had given political stability to Asia Minor and northern Syria, thereby protecting the trade routes, had, under the pressure of people migrating from Europe, rapidly crumbled away until by 1200 B.C. it was powerless. The disturbed situation throughout much of the Near at this time, with the trade routes insecure and the villages depopulated, is reflected in the Book of Judges, for example in 6-7: 'In the days of Shamgar.... caravans ceased and travellers kept to the byways. The peasantry ceased in Israel. . . .' This situation throughout the Near East was ultimately the result of a southward movement of peoples from Europe, of which the Greeks and probably the Biblical Philistines were a part. It was these people ultimately broke up the Hittite Empire, destroyed Egyptian authority in Syria and Palestine, and seriously weakened Egypt itself by a direct attempt at invasion, which was beaten off by a great sea battle in about 1190 B.C. In these circumstances Assyrian trade with the Mediterranean region and Asia Minor was disastrously affected, so that Assyria may have been unable to obtain adequate supplies of such basic materials as metals, for which Asia Minor was one of the chief sources. For a short period Assyria fell under the suzerainty of Babylonia, which by reason of its geographical position was largely screened from the trouble caused by the situation in Asia Minor and Syria.
Babylonia, though more favourably placed than Assyria, did not altogether escape the effects of the general dislocation throughout the Near East, and it was during this period that the Cassite dynasty was finally overthrown. From the consequent chaos there emerged a new dynasty, known as the Second Dynasty of Isin, of which the most important ruler was Nebuchadnezzar I (1124-1103 B.C.). This King succeeded in extending Babylonian control over the mountain regions east and north-east of his country.
The establishment of stable conditions in Babylonia and the securing of the trade routes from farther east had a cumulative on the whole of Mesopotamia, and the end of the twelfth century marks the beginning of a new period of Assyrian expansion under Ashur-resh-ishi (1133-1116 B.C.) and his son Tiglath-Pileser I (1115-1077 B.C.). The former threw off the political suzerainty of Babylonia, and took the offensive both against the Akhlamu to the west and the mountain tribes to the east, thus giving security over a considerably greater area and the possibility of economic prosperity. Tiglath-Pileser had to deal with a direct threat resulting from the southward movement of peoples already referred to. This occurred when a large body of Mushku (the people known in the Old Testament as Meshech and in Greek literature as the Phrygians) moved into the Assyrian province of Kummukh in South Asia Minor. Tiglath-Pileser penetrated into Asia Minor to drive off these invaders, and thereby ensured Assyrian security in the north-west. With his northern flank secured, he was now able to conduct an expedition to the coast of Syria, where he received tribute: this was probably another way of saying that the Phoenician cities agreed to trade in timber and other commodities. Tiglath-Pileser also made diplomatic contact with the King of Egypt, from whom he received a live crocodile as a gesture of good will. The increased material prosperity resulting from Tiglath-Pileser's success in opening and maintaining the trade routes across western Asia is reflected in a considerable amount of building activity in connection with the temples of Assyria.
Soon after the death of Tiglath-Pileser the pendulum swung once again, so that a long period of difficulty and stress followed a time of relative prosperity. The main cause of the setback on this occasion was the growing pressure of the Aramaeans, already mentioned. This time Babylonia was affected as much as, or even more than, Assyria, so that ultimately an Aramaean prince, Adadapal-iddinam (1067-1046 B.C.), was able to usurp the throne of Babylonia. The Assyrian ruler of the time, Ashur-bel-kala (10741057 B.C.) was not only unable to assist the legitimate Babylonian ruler, but was even driven to recognise the usurper and make a marriage alliance with him.
The pressure of the Aramaean racial movement had passed its peak by 1000 B.C., and during the following century Assyria made a slow recovery. This became marked during the reign of Adadnirari 11 (911-891 B.C.). Under him Assyria effected a military expansion, and was able to safeguard its boundaries to south and east, and to protect the trade routes to the west by establishing fortified posts along the Middle Euphrates and in the Habur region. The security achieved by Adad-nirari 11's policy is reflected in economic well-being, and in one inscription this King writes: 'I built administrative buildings throughout my land. I installed ploughs throughout the breadth of my land. I increased grain stores over those of former times.... I increased the number of horses broken to the yoke. . . .' River trade was of importance, and is reflected in the rebuilding of the quay wall of the capital Ashur on the Tigris. Agriculture flourished (21).
Adad-nirari II's successors
(Tukulti-Ninurta 11, 890-884 B.C., Ashurnasirpal II, 883-859 B.C., and
Shalmaneser III, 858-824 B.C.) successfully continued the policy of
military and economic expansion, gradually extending the area
controlled by Assyria until the whole region from the Mediterranean
coast to the Zagros Mountains, and from Cilicia to Babylonia was either
directly administered by Assyria or ruled by vassals accepting Assyrian
overlordship. All the trade routes of the Near East, except those of
Palestine, thus came into Assyrian hands.
It was during the reign of Shalmaneser
III that Assyria first came into conflict with the kingdom of Israel,
though the incident concerned is known only from the Assyrian records
and not from the Bible. The clash occurred when the Syrian and
Palestinian States formed a coalition to meet an Assyrian expedition to
the Mediterranean in 853 B.C. According to the Assyrian records the
coalition forces included "2,000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers of
Akhabbu of the land of Sir'ala". Akhabbu of Sir'ala was unquestionably
Ahab of Israel. Shalmaneser claimed a defeat of the western forces, a
claim borne out by the fact that a monument of four years later shows
an emissary of Jehu, Ahab's successor, paying tribute (25).
Assyrian contact with Syria from this time is reflected in the collections of ancient Near Eastern art in modern museums. As we learn from the Bible (I Kings x 18, xxii 39; Amos iii 15, vi 4), decoration in ivory was much appreciated in Palestine; and it seems that the Assyrian kings shared this taste. Syrian craftsmen Were famous for their skill in ivory carving, and so from this time onwards the Assyrian kings carried off such men to the cities of Assyria, where they were employed in beautifying the royal palaces. Great quantities of carved ivory have been found at Nimrud, the site of the ancient capital Calah (22, 83).
Towards the end of the reign of Shalmaneser III (23) there was a rebellion involving some of the principal Assyrian cities. The great ancient cities of Assyria and Babylonia had always claimed a degree of independence, and in times of crisis the kings were often forced to recognise this by exempting the citizens from certain forms of taxation and liability to forced labour. It is likely that the long period of growing Assyrian power since the time of Adad-nirari II had put the King in a strong position, in which he was able to whittle away the privileges of the ancient cities of Assyria. This was probably
one of the factors which led to the
insurrection.
It was finally put down, and Shalmaneser was succeeded by his accepted
heir, Shamshi-Adad V (823-811 B.C.). This King continued the policy of
his predecessors, undertaking military action in the north and
north-east to defend Assyrian interests against Urartu and the Medes
(an Iranian 22 Carved ivory from Nimrud people who had recently
migrated into North-West Persia). He also extended the area under his
direct control to include the north-eastern edge of Babylonia, along
the Diyala, and even intervened within Babylonia itself to impose
submission upon some tribes called the Kaldu, whom we later know as
Chaldaeans. These tribes, occupying the most southerly part of
Babylonia, were virtually independent of the weak Babylonian King, and
it may have been their interference with trade routes from the Persian
Gulf region which led to Shamshi-Adad's action against them.
From about 800 B.C. Urartian influence began to expand, especially in the North Syrian area, at the expense of Assyria, and the following half century saw a drastic decline in the fortunes of Assyria. Conditions within the homeland became so bad that in 746 B.C. there was a revolt in the capital, Calah, the whole of the royal family being murdered.
The man who came to the throne, who was probably of royal descent though not of the family of his predecessor, was a certain Pul, who took as his throne name Tiglath-Pileser (27). Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 B.C.) was one of the most able of Assyrian kings. He undertook extensive administrative .reforms, reducing the power of provincial governors and at the same time increasing the efficiency of provincial administration (pp. 58-60). His reign saw a fresh extension of Assyrian influence to Babylon in the south and to Syria and Palestine in the west. His successor, Shalmaneser V (726-722 B.C.) maintained the same general policy; he is best known for his 27 Tiglath-Pileser III siege of Samaria, the capital of Israel, which culminated, in accordance with the usual Assyrian policy, in the deportation to Assyria of the best of the population of the land (2 Kings xvii 6).
The story of the remaining period of the Assyrian Empire is one of continual expansion up to just after 640 B. C., and then a dramatic collapse. The principal kings of this period (known as the Sargonid period after the first of them) were Sargon 11 (721-705 B.C.), Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.), Esarhaddon (680-669 B.C.), and Ashurbanipal (680-626 B.C.). The political events of individual reigns need not detain us, but it may be useful to say a word about the men
themselves. Sargon seems to have had a taste
for
poetry, and some of his annals are written in an elegant verse form as
against the dry prose of some other Assyrian kings. (It is not of
course suggested that Sargon personally composed the annals in verse.)
Sennacherib is generally thought of as a ruthless barbarian, not
perhaps without justification, for he was one of the few conquerors of
Babylon to sack that centre of culture. At the same time he was, like
many other barbarians, very interested in technological progress. His
boast was that he had invented a new method of metal casting, devised
new irrigation equipment, and found new mineral resources. He was also
proud of having laid out Nineveh as his new capital, with parks to
beautify it and a 
newEsarhaddon little is known apart from his military and political achievements. In the political sphere he tried two new ideas, both of which had disastrous results. One was to attempt to incorporate Egypt into his Empire: this over-stretched Assyrian military resources and was one factor underlying the later collapse. The other new policy was to bequeath Babylonia to one son and Assyria and the rest of the Empire to another: the result here was that the two brothers, at first the best of friends, became personally involved in the old tensions between Assyria and Babylonia, so that civil war broke out. This, however, is to anticipate.
The accession of a king, if approved by the gods, was accompanied by various favourable signs. Esarhaddon said that when he ascended (after putting down an attempted usurpation), 'there blew the south wind, the breath of Ea, the wind whose blowing is good for the exercise of kingship; favourable signs appeared in the heavens and on the earth'.
The son to whom Esarhaddon bequeathed Assyria and the major part of the Empire was Ashurbanipal (26). This King prided him self on his literacy and tells us - 'I grasped the wisdom of Nabu [the scribal god], the whole of the scribal art of all the experts.' Some Assyriologists, with an elder-sisterly attitude to cuneiform studies, consider such a boast a presumption on the part of a mere Assyrian monarch, but we have no real evidence entitling us to dismiss Ashurbanipal's claim. Certainly he was keenly interested in cuneiform literature, for it was he who was mainly responsible for collecting one of the great libraries of Nineveh, the source of the thousands of Kuyunjik tablets (p. 10).
The civil war between Ashurbanipal and
his brother in Babylon undoubtedly seriously weakened the Empire. None
the less, when Ashurbanipal finally captured Babylon in 648 B.C., his
position seemed superficially as strong as ever, so that between then
and 639 B.C. he was able to undertake a series of campaigns to overrun
Elam. There were, however, fresh factors in the world scene. In Iran,
north of Elam, the Medes, a group of vigorous Iranian tribes (a branch
of the Indo-European race) who had migrated into the area at about 900
B.C., were becoming a force to reckon with. Already at the time of
Esarhaddon they had been of sufficient importance for that King to bind
them by treaty to support his arrangement for the succession after his
death, and by 650 B.C. they had consolidated themselves into a powerful
kingdom which could, and ultimately did, successfully oppose Assyria.
North of Assyria, the kingdom of Urartu had been knocked out by fresh
hordes from Central Asia, who penetrated deep into Asia Minor. Although
Ashurbanipal succeeded for a while in using them to his own advantage
(as when he set them against a king on the coast of Asia Minor who was
supporting the independence movement in Egypt), it was only a matter of
time before some of these hordes turned against Assyria itself.
We know very little about Ashurbanipal's reign after 639 B.C. except that the situation for Assyria was becoming increasingly grave. When Ashurbanipal died in 626 B.C. a certain Nabopolassar, relying on support from the Chaldaean (Kaldu) tribes of Babylonia, assumed the kingship of that land, although Ashurbanipal's successors Ashur-etillu-ili and Sin-shar-ishkun seem to have retained partial authority in parts of the southern kingdom. However, Nabopolassar made an alliance with the Medes, and his complete success against Assyria was almost inevitable.
At the very end Assyria found an unexpected ally in Egypt, a Power which would not view favourably the eventual handing over of the trade routes of the Near East, hitherto controlled by Assyria, to the mercy of such upstart and unpredictable people as the Medes and Chaldaeans. The Egyptian support was, however, too late to restore the old order and Nineveh fell in 612 B.C., the remnant of the Assyrian forces, with their Egyptian allies, making a last stand at Carchemish in 605 B.C., only to meet with final defeat. The Assyrian Power was irrevocably at an end.
Nabopolassar died at this moment. His son and successor Nebuchadnezzar II had been his father's Commander-in-Chief, and was a general of great experience and ability. He grasped the remains of the Assyrian Empire, and extended his authority to the Egyptian border, his two attacks upon Jerusalem (597 and 587 B.C.), and the deportation of the Jews to Babylonia, being very well known. These were, in fact, simply incidents in Nebuchadnezzar's struggle to impose his authority over an area which the new Egyptian dynasty was coming to regard as its own sphere of influence. The Medes at the same time extended their realm to include the old kingdom of Urartu and much of Asia Minor.
The Neo-Babylonian Empire, as the empire founded by Nebuchadnezzar is usually called, suffered economically from the fact that the Medes now controlled the trade routes from farther east passing through the old kingdom of Urartu and Asia Minor to the west. It was in an attempt to rectify this that the Neo-Babylonian rulers tried to extend their authority in the south-west, so that they would benefit by the trade routes coming up from Arabia. We have seen that Nebuchadnezzar took steps to control the whole of Syria and Palestine, and later in his reign there is evidence that he unsuccessfully attempted an invasion of Egypt itself. His second successor, Neriglissar, was probably actuated by similar economic motives when he undertook a campaign into Asia Minor (just before 556 B.C.). It was, however, the last Neo-Babylonian King, Nabu-na'id (Nabonidus) (555-539 B.C.), who made the most determined endeavours to put the Empire on a sounder economic footing. Much of his reign was spent in western Arabia, where he established a chain of military colonies along what is known as the 'incense route' from Teima to Yathrib (modern Medina).
By the time of Nabu-na'id relations between Babylonia and the Medes had gravely deteriorated, and Nabu-na)id in the early years of his reign had looked with favour upon a certain prince who was in revolt against the Median King. This prince was Cyrus the Persian. Cyrus, however, once he had gained control of the Median Empire, proceeded upon an expansionist policy which quickly brought him into conflict with Babylonia. By brilliant generalship he succeeded in gaining control, in 547 B.C., of the whole of Asia Minor as far as the Greek settlements on the west coast, and then seized the eastern part of Assyria, which of course fell within the Babylonian sphere of influence. War broke out, and Cyrus invaded the Babylonian Empire over a wide front. Public opinion through-out the civilised world at this time is reflected in Isaiah xlv I and 4, where the Hebrew prophet hails Cyrus as the chosen one of the Lord. Nabu-na)id was much less happily placed. Even within Babylonia he was unpopular, in part from the economic difficulties which faced the country and in part from attempts he had made at religious reform, and when Cyrus finally marched upon Babylon, he already had many adherents within the city. Babylon fell to I him in 539 B.C.
The Persian Empire, into which Egypt was incorporated in 525 B.C., now exceeded in extent any which had gone before it, and of this Empire Babylonia and Assyria formed only one province. Babylonian and Assyrian culture had, however, a continuing influence, and amongst other things Persian art (30), civil administration and military science owed much to their Babylonian or Assyrian roots. Babylon was, if not the political, certainly the -administrative and cultural capital of the whole Persian Empire.
After 500 B.C. the Persian Empire came into collision with Greece, and conflict continued intermittently until in 331 B.C. the Macedonian Alexander the Great overthrew the Persian power at a battle near Arbela, proceeding afterwards to extend his authority to the borders of India. Had Alexander lived, it was his intention to establish a world empire with its capital at Babylon, but his premature death at Babylon in 323 B.C., at the age of thirty-two, left his territories to be divided up amongst his generals. The eastern provinces, including Babylonia and Assyria, eventually fell to Seleucus 1 (301-281 B.C.). Under the Seleucids Babylonia and Assyria came increasingly under Hellenistic cultural influence, and Akkadian, which had already 'been superseded by Aramaic as the language of everyday speech, was no longer even written, except for religious or astronomical purposes. The old culture of Babylonia and Assyria was dead, and the future lay with Palestine, Greece, and Rome.
happen
if his wife were childless. When the slave-girl grew old and ugly, she
would come in for such duties as grinding the corn, drawing the water,
and so on. The average household at the time of Nebuchadnezzar had two
or three slaves, though of course an average does not tell the whole
story: wealthy families might own considerably more and poor families
none. We do find some wealthy families owning a hundred or more slaves,
but most of these would have been used on the land or in workshops and
would not have been included in the household.