Part 17 (1/2)
The flat roofs of the houses of the city of Van may be seen to the left of the photograph nestling below the rock.
The centre and capital of this empire was the ancient city which stood on the site of the modern town of Van at the southwest corner of the lake which bears the same name. The city was built at the foot of a natural rock which rises precipitously from the plain, and must have formed an impregnable stronghold against the attack of the foe.
In this citadel at the present day remain the ancient galleries and staircases and chambers which were cut in the living rock by the kings who made it their fortress, and their inscriptions, engraved upon the face of the rock on specially prepared and polished surfaces, enable us to reconstruct in some degree the history of that ancient empire. From time to time there have been found and copied other similar texts, which are cut on the mountainsides or on the ma.s.sive stones which formed part of the construction of their buildings and fortifications. A complete collection of these texts, together with translations, will shortly be published by Prof. Lehmann. Meanwhile, this scholar has discussed and summarized the results to be obtained from much of his material, and we are thus already enabled to sketch the princ.i.p.al achievements of the rulers of this mountain race, who were constantly at war with the later kings of a.s.syria, and for two centuries at least disputed her claim to supremacy in this portion of Western Asia.
The country occupied by this ancient people of Van was the great table-land which now forms Armenia. The people themselves cannot be connected with the Armenians, for their language presents no characteristics of those of the Indo-European family, and it is equally certain that they are not to be traced to a Semitic origin. It is true that they employed the a.s.syrian method of writing their inscriptions, and their art differs only in minor points from that of the a.s.syrians, but in both instances this similarity of culture was directly borrowed at a time when the less civilized race, having its centre at Van, came into direct contact with the a.s.syrians.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 417.jpg ANCIENT FLIGHT OF STEPS AND GALLERY ON THE FACE OF THE ROCK-CITADEL OF VAN.
The exact date at which this influence began to be exerted is not certain, but we have records of immediate relations with a.s.syria in the second half of the ninth century before Christ. The district inhabited by the Vannic people was known to the a.s.syrians by the name of Urartu, and although the inscriptions of the earlier a.s.syrian kings do not record expeditions against that country, they frequently make mention of campaigns against princes and petty rulers of the land of Na'iri. They must therefore for long have exercised an indirect, if not a direct, influence on the peoples and tribes which lay more to the north.
The earliest evidence of direct contact between the a.s.syrians and the land of Urartu which we at present possess dates from the reign of Ashur-nasir-pal, and in the reign of his son Shalmaneser II three expeditions were undertaken against the people of Van. The name of the king of Urartu at this time was Arame, and his capital city, Arzasku, probably lay to the north of Lake Van. On all three occasions the a.s.syrians were victorious, forcing Arame to abandon his capital and capturing his cities as far as the sources of the Euphrates.
Subsequently, in the year 833 B.C., Shalmaneser II made another attack upon the country, which at that time was under the sway of Sarduris I.
Under this monarch the citadel of Van became the great stronghold of the people of Urartu, for he added to the natural strength of the position by the construction of walls built between the rock of Van and the harbour. The ma.s.sive blocks of stone of which his fortifications were composed are standing at the present day, and they bear eloquent testimony to the energy with which this monarch devoted himself to the task of rendering his new citadel impregnable. The fortification and strengthening of Van and its citadel was carried on during the reigns of his direct successors and descendants, Ispui-nis, Menuas, and Argistis I, so that when Tiglath-pile-ser III brought fire and sword into the country and laid siege to Van in the reign of Sarduris II, he could not capture the citadel.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 419.jpg PART OF THE ANCIENT FORTIFICATIONS OF THE CITY OF VAN, BETWEEN THE CITADEL AND THE LAKE.]
It was not difficult for the a.s.syrian king to a.s.sault and capture the city itself, which lay at the foot of the citadel as it does at the present day, but the latter, within the fortifications of which Sarduris and his garrison withdrew, proved itself able to withstand the a.s.syrian attack. The expedition of Tiglath-pileser III did not succeed in crus.h.i.+ng the Vannic empire, for Rusas I, the son and successor of Sarduris II, allied himself to the neighbouring mountain races and gave considerable trouble to Sargon, the a.s.syrian king, who was obliged to undertake an expedition to check their aggressions.
It was probably Rusas I who erected the buildings on Toprak Kala, the hill to the east of Van, traces of which remain to the present day. He built a palace and a temple, and around them he constructed a new city with a reservoir to supply it with water, possibly because the slopes of Toprak Kala rendered it easier of defence than the city in the plain (beneath the rock and citadel) which had fallen an easy prey to Tiglath-pileser III. The site of the temple on Toprak Kala has been excavated by the trustees of the British Museum, and our knowledge of Vannic art is derived from the s.h.i.+elds and helmets of bronze and small bronze figures and fittings which were recovered from this building. One of the s.h.i.+elds brought to the British Museum from the Toprak Kala, where it originally hung with others on the temple walls, bears the name of Argistis II, who was the son and successor of Rusas I, and who attempted to give trouble to the a.s.syrians by stirring the inhabitants of the land of k.u.mmukh (Kommagene) to revolt against Sargon. His son, Rusas II, was the contemporary of Esarhaddon, and from some recently discovered rock-inscriptions we learn that he extended the limits of his kingdom on the west and secured victories against Mushki (Meshech) to the southeast of the Halys and against the Hitt.i.tes in Northern Syria. Rusas III rebuilt the temple on Toprak Kala, as we know from an inscription of his on one of the s.h.i.+elds from that place in the British Museum. Both he and Sarduris III were on friendly terms with the a.s.syrians, for we know that they both sent emba.s.sies to Ashur-bani-pal.
By far the larger number of rock-inscriptions that have yet been found and copied in the mountainous districts bordering on a.s.syria were engraved by this ancient Vannic people, and Drs. Lehmann and Belck have done good service by making careful copies and collations of all those which are at present known. Work on other cla.s.ses of rock-inscriptions has also been carried on by other travellers. A new edition of the inscriptions of Sennacherib in the gorge of the Gomel, near the village of Bavian, has been made by Mr. King, who has also been fortunate enough to find a number of hitherto unknown inscriptions in Kurdistan on the Judi Dagh and at the sources of the Tigris. The inscriptions at the mouth of the Nahr el-Kelb, ”the Dog River,” in Syria, have been reexamined by Dr. Knudtzon, and the long inscription which Nebuchadnezzar II cut on the rocks at Wadi Brissa in the Lebanon, formerly published by M. Pognon, has been recopied by Dr. Weissbach.
Finally, the great trilingual inscription of Darius Hystaspes on the rock at Bisutun in Persia, which was formerly copied by the late Sir Henry Raw-linson and used by him for the successful decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, was completely copied last year by Messrs. King and Thompson.
Messrs. King and Thompson are preparing a new edition of this inscription.
The main facts of the history of a.s.syria under her later kings and of Babylonia during the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods were many years ago correctly ascertained, and recent excavation and research have done little to add to our knowledge of the history of these periods. It was hoped that the excavations conducted by Dr. Koldewey at Babylon would result in the recovery of a wealth of inscriptions and records referring to the later history of the country, but unfortunately comparatively few tablets or inscriptions have been found, and those that have been recovered consist mainly of building-inscriptions and votive texts. One such building-inscription contains an interesting historical reference.
It occurs on a barrel-cylinder of clay inscribed with a text of Nabopola.s.sar, and it was found in the temple of Ninib and records the completion and restoration of the temple by the king. In addition to recording the building operations he had carried out in the temple, Nabopola.s.sar boasts of his opposition to the a.s.syrians. He says: ”As for the a.s.syrians who had ruled all peoples from distant days and had set the people of the land under a heavy yoke, I, the weak and humble man who wors.h.i.+ppeth the Lord of Lords (i.e. the G.o.d Marduk), through the mighty power of Nab and Marduk, my lords, held back their feet from the land of Akkad and cast off their yoke.”
It is not yet certain whether the Babylonians under Nabopola.s.sar actively a.s.sisted Cyaxares and the Medes in the siege and in the subsequent capture of Nineveh in 606 B.C. but this newly discovered reference to the a.s.syrians by Nabopola.s.sar may possibly be taken to imply that the Babylonians were pa.s.sive and not active allies of Cyaxares. If the cylinder were inscribed after the fall of Nineveh we should have expected Nabopola.s.sar, had he taken an active part in the capture of the city, to have boasted in more definite terms of his achievement. On his stele which is preserved at Constantinople, Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian empire, who himself suffered defeat at the hands of Cyrus, King of Persia, ascribed the fall of Nineveh to the anger of Marduk and the other G.o.ds of Babylon because of the destruction of their city and the spoliation of their temples by Sennacherib in 689 B.C. We see the irony of fate in the fact that Cyrus also ascribed the defeat and deposition of Nabonidus and the fall of Babylon to Marduk's intervention, whose anger he alleges was aroused by the attempt of Nabonidus to concentrate the wors.h.i.+p of the local city-G.o.ds in Babylon.
Thus it will be seen that recent excavation and research have not yet supplied the data for filling in such gaps as still remain in our knowledge of the later history of a.s.syria and Babylon. The closing years of the a.s.syrian empire and the military achievements of the great Neo-Babylonian rulers, Nabopola.s.sar, Nerig-lissar, and Nebuchadnezzar II, have not yet been found recorded in any published a.s.syrian or Babylonian inscription, but it may be expected that at any moment some text will be discovered that will throw light upon the problems connected with the history of those periods which still await solution.
Meanwhile, the excavations at Babylon, although they have not added much to our knowledge of the later history of the country, have been of immense service in revealing the topography of the city during the Neo-Babylonian period, as well as the positions, plans, and characters of the princ.i.p.al buildings erected by the later Babylonian kings. The discovery of the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar II on the mound of the Kasr, of the small but complete temple E-makh, of the temple of the G.o.ddess Nin-makh to the northeast of the palaces, and of the sacred road dividing them and pa.s.sing through the Great Gate of Ishtar (adorned with representations of lions, bulls, and dragons in raised brick upon its walls) has enabled us to form some conception of the splendour and magnificence of the city as it appeared when rebuilt by its last native rulers. Moreover, the great temple E-sagila, the famous shrine of the G.o.d Marduk, has been identified and partly excavated beneath the huge mound of Tell Amran ibn-Ali, while a smaller and less famous temple of Ninib has been discovered in the lower mounds which lie to the eastward.
Finally, the sacred way from E-sagila to the palace mound has been traced and uncovered. We are thus enabled to reconst.i.tute the scene of the most solemn rite of the Babylonian festival of the New Year, when the statue of the G.o.d Marduk was carried in solemn procession along this road from the temple to the palace, and the Babylonian king made his yearly obeisance to the national G.o.d, placing his own hands within those of Marduk, in token of his submission to and dependence on the divine will.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 425.jpg WITHIN THE SHRINE OP E-MAKH, THE TEMPLE OP THE G.o.dDESS NIN-MAKH.]
Though recent excavations have not led to any startling discoveries with regard to the history of Western Asia during the last years of the Babylonian empire, research among the tablets dating from the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods has lately added considerably to our knowledge of Babylonian literature. These periods were marked by great literary activity on the part of the priests at Babylon, Sippar, and elsewhere, who, under the royal orders, scoured the country for all remains of the early literature which was preserved in the ancient temples and archives of the country, and made careful copies and collections of all they found. Many of these tablets containing Neo-Babylonian copies of earlier literary texts are preserved in the British Museum, and have been recently published, and we have thus recovered some of the princ.i.p.al grammatical, religious, and magical compositions of the earlier Babylonian period.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 426.jpg TRENCH IN THE BABYLONIAN PLAIN]
Between The Mound Of The Kasr And Tell Amran Ibn-Ali, Showing A Section Of The Paved Sacred Way.
Among the most interesting of such recent finds is a series of tablets inscribed with the Babylonian legends concerning the creation of the world and man, which present many new and striking parallels to the beliefs on these subjects embodied in Hebrew literature. We have not s.p.a.ce to treat this subject at greater length in the present work, but we may here note that discovery and research in its relation to the later empires that ruled at Babylon have produced results of literary rather than of historical importance. But we should exceed the s.p.a.ce at our disposal if we attempted even to skim this fascinating field of study in which so much has recently been achieved. For it is time we turned once more to Egypt and directed our inquiry towards ascertaining what recent research has to tell us with regard to her inhabitants during the later periods of her existence as a nation of the ancient world.
CHAPTER IX--THE LAST DAYS OF ANCIENT EGYPT
Before we turned from Egypt to summarize the information, afforded by recent discoveries, upon the history of Western Asia under the kings of the a.s.syrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, we noted that the Asiatic empire of Egypt was regained by the reactionary kings of the XIXth Dynasty, after its temporary loss owing to the vagaries of Akhunaten.
Palestine remained Egyptian throughout the period of the judges until the foundation of the kingdom of Judah. With the decline of military spirit in Egypt and the increasing power of the priesthood, authority over Asia became less and less a reality. Tribute was no longer paid, and the tribes wrangled without a restraining hand, during the reigns of the successors of Ramses III. By the time of the priest-kings of Thebes (the XXIst Dynasty) the authority of the Pharaohs had ceased to be exercised in Syria. Egypt was itself divided into two kingdoms, the one ruled by Northern descendants of the Ramessids at Tanis, the other by the priestly monarchs at Thebes, who reigned by right of inheritance as a result of the marriage of the daughter of Ramses with the high priest Amenhetep, father of Herhor, the first priest-king. The Thebans fortified Gebelen in the South and el-Hebi in the North against attack, and evidently their relations with the Tanites were not always friendly.