Part 22 (2/2)
All the deities of a.s.syria were imported from Babylonia except, as some hold, Ashur, the national G.o.d.[299] The theory that Ashur was identical with the Aryo-Indian Asura and the Persian Ahura is not generally accepted. One theory is that he was an eponymous hero who became the city G.o.d of a.s.shur, although the early form of his name, As.h.i.+r, presents a difficulty in this connection. a.s.shur was the first capital of a.s.syria. Its city G.o.d may have become the national G.o.d on that account.
At an early period, perhaps a thousand years before Thothmes III battled with the Mitannians in northern Syria, an early wave of one of the peoples of Aryan speech may have occupied the a.s.syrian cities. Mr.
Johns points out in this connection that the names of Ushpia, Kikia, and Adasi, who, according to a.s.syrian records, were early rulers in a.s.shur, ”are neither Semitic nor Sumerian”. An ancient name of the G.o.ddess of Nineveh was Shaushka, which compares with Shaushkash, the consort of Teshup, the Hitt.i.te-Mitanni hammer G.o.d. As many of the Mitannian names ”are”, according to Mr. Johns, ”really Elamitic”, he suggests an ethnic connection between the early conquerors of a.s.syria and the people of Elam.[300] Were the pre-Semitic Elamites originally speakers of an agglutinative language, like the Sumerians and present-day Basques, who were conquered in prehistoric times by a people of Aryan speech?
The possibility is urged by Mr. Johns's suggestion that a.s.syria may have been dominated in pre-Semitic times by the congeners of the Aryan military aristocracy of Mitanni. As has been shown, it was Semitized by the Amoritic migration which, about 2000 B.C., brought into prominence the Hammurabi Dynasty of Babylon.
A long list of kings with Semitic names held sway in the a.s.syrian cities during and after the Hammurabi Age. But not until well on in the Ka.s.site period did any of them attain prominence in Western Asia.
Then Ashur-bel-nish-eshu, King of a.s.shur, was strong enough to deal on equal terms with the Ka.s.site ruler Kara-indash I, with whom he arranged a boundary treaty. He was a contemporary of Thothmes III of Egypt.
After Thothmes III had secured the predominance of Egypt in Syria and Palestine he recognized a.s.syria as an independent power, and supplied its king with Egyptian gold to a.s.sist him, no doubt, in strengthening his territory against their common enemy. Gifts were also sent from a.s.syria to Egypt to fan the flame of cordial relations.
The situation was full of peril for Saushatar, king of Mitanni.
Deprived by Egypt of tribute-paying cities in Syria, his exchequer must have been sadly depleted. A standing army had to be maintained, for although Egypt made no attempt to encroach further on his territory, the Hitt.i.tes were ever hovering on his north-western frontier, ready when opportunity offered to win back Cappadocia.
Eastward, a.s.syria was threatening to become a dangerous rival. He had himself to pay tribute to Egypt, and Egypt was subsidizing his enemy.
It was imperative on his part, therefore, to take action without delay. The power of a.s.syria had to be crippled; its revenues were required for the Mitannian exchequer. So Saushatar raided a.s.syria during the closing years of the reign of Thothmes III, or soon after his successor, Amenhotep II, ascended the Egyptian throne.
Nothing is known from contemporary records regarding this campaign; but it can be gathered from the references of a later period that the city of a.s.shur was captured and plundered; its king, Ashur-nadin-akhe, ceased corresponding and exchanging gifts with Egypt. That Nineveh also fell is made clear by the fact that a descendant of Saushatar (Tushratta) was able to send to a descendant of Thothmes III at Thebes (Amenhotep III) the image of Ishtar (Shaushka) of Nineveh. Apparently five successive Mitannian kings were overlords of a.s.syria during a period which cannot be estimated at much less than a hundred years.
Our knowledge regarding these events is derived chiefly from the Tell-el-Amarna letters, and the tablets found by Professor Hugo Winckler at Boghaz-Koi in Cappadocia, Asia Minor.
The Tell-el-Amarna letters were discovered among the ruins of the palace of the famous Egyptian Pharaoh, Akhenaton, of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who died about 1358 B.C. During the winter of 1887-8 an Egyptian woman was excavating soil for her garden, when she happened upon the cellar of Akhenaton's foreign office in which the official correspondence had been stored. The ”letters” were baked clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform alphabetical signs in the Babylonian-a.s.syrian language, which, like French in modern times, was the language of international diplomacy for many centuries in Western Asia after the Hyksos period.
The Egyptian natives, ever so eager to sell antiquities so as to make a fortune and retire for life, offered some specimens of the tablets for sale. One or two were sent to Paris, where they were promptly declared to be forgeries, with the result that for a time the inscribed bricks were not a marketable commodity. Ere their value was discovered, the natives had packed them into sacks, with the result that many were damaged and some completely destroyed. At length, however, the majority of them reached the British Museum and the Berlin Museum, while others drifted into the museums at Cairo, St.
Petersburg, and Paris. When they were deciphered, Mitanni was discovered, and a flood of light thrown on the internal affairs of Egypt and its relations with various kingdoms in Asia, while glimpses were also afforded of the life and manners of the times.
The letters covered the reigns of Amenhotep III, the great-grandson of Thothmes III, and of his son Akhenaton, ”the dreamer king”, and included communications from the kings of Babylonia, a.s.syria, Mitanni, Cyprus, the Hitt.i.tes, and the princes of Phoenicia and Canaan. The copies of two letters from Amenhotep III to Kallima-Sin, King of Babylonia, had also been preserved. One deals with statements made by Babylonian amba.s.sadors, whom the Pharaoh stigmatizes as liars.
Kallima-Sin had sent his daughter to the royal harem of Egypt, and desired to know if she was alive and well. He also asked for ”much gold” to enable him to carry on the work of extending his temple. When twenty minas of gold was sent to him, he complained in due course that the quant.i.ty received was not only short but that the gold was not pure; it had been melted in the furnace, and less than five minas came out. In return he sent to Akhenaton two minas of enamel, and some jewels for his daughter, who was in the Egyptian royal harem.
Ashur-uballit, king of Ashur, once wrote intimating to Akhenaton that he was gifting him horses and chariots and a jewel seal. He asked for gold to a.s.sist in building his palace. ”In your country”, he added, ”gold is as plentiful as dust.” He also made an illuminating statement to the effect that no amba.s.sador had gone from a.s.syria to Egypt since the days of his ancestor Ashur-nadin-akhe. It would therefore appear that Ashur-uballit had freed part of a.s.syria from the yoke of Mitanni.
The contemporary king of Mitanni was Tushratta. He corresponded both with his cousin Amenhotep III and his son-in-law Akhenaton. In his correspondence with Amenhotep III Tushratta tells that his kingdom had been invaded by the Hitt.i.tes, but his G.o.d Teshup had delivered them into his hand, and he destroyed them; ”not one of them”, he declared, ”returned to his own country”. Out of the booty captured he sent Amenhotep several chariots and horses, and a boy and a girl. To his sister Gilu-khipa, who was one of the Egyptian Pharaoh's wives, he gifted golden ornaments and a jar of oil. In another letter Tushratta asked for a large quant.i.ty of gold ”without measure”. He complained that he did not receive enough on previous occasions, and hinted that some of the Egyptian gold looked as if it were alloyed with copper.
Like the a.s.syrian king, he hinted that gold was as plentiful as dust in Egypt. His own presents to the Pharaoh included precious stones, gold ornaments, chariots and horses, and women (probably slaves). This may have been tribute. It was during the third Amenhotep's illness that Tushratta forwarded the Nineveh image of Ishtar to Egypt, and he made reference to its having been previously sent thither by his father, Sutarna.
When Akhenaton came to the throne Tushratta wrote to him, desiring to continue the friends.h.i.+p which had existed for two or three generations between the kings of Mitanni and Egypt, and made complimentary references to ”the distinguished Queen Tiy”, Akhenaton's mother, who evidently exercised considerable influence in shaping Egypt's foreign policy. In the course of his long correspondence with the Pharaohs, Tushratta made those statements regarding his ancestors which have provided so much important data for modern historians of his kingdom.
During the early part of the Tell-el-Amarna period, Mitanni was the most powerful kingdom in Western Asia. It was chiefly on that account that the daughters of its rulers were selected to be the wives and mothers of great Egyptian Pharaohs. But its numerous enemies were ever plotting to accomplish its downfall. Among these the foremost and most dangerous were the Hitt.i.tes and the a.s.syrians.
The ascendancy of the Hitt.i.tes was achieved in northern Syria with dramatic suddenness. There arose in Asia Minor a great conqueror, named Subbi-luliuma, the successor of Hattusil I, who established a strong Hitt.i.te empire which endured for about two centuries. His capital was at Boghaz-Koi. Sweeping through Cappadocia, at the head of a finely organized army, remarkable for its mobility, he attacked the buffer states which owed allegiance to Mitanni and Egypt. City after city fell before him, until at length he invaded Mitanni; but it is uncertain whether or not Tushratta met him in battle. Large numbers of the Mitannians were, however, evicted and transferred to the land of the Hitt.i.tes, where the Greeks subsequently found them, and where they are believed to be represented by the modern Kurds, the hereditary enemies of the Armenians.
In the confusion which ensued, Tushratta was murdered by Sutarna II, who was recognized by Subbi-luliuma. The crown prince, Mattiuza, fled to Babylon, where he found protection, but was unable to receive any a.s.sistance. Ultimately, when the Hitt.i.te emperor had secured his sway over northern Syria, he deposed Sutarna II and set Mattiuza as his va.s.sal on the throne of the shrunken Mitanni kingdom.
Meanwhile the Egyptian empire in Asia had gone to pieces. When Akhenaton, the dreamer king, died in his palace at Tell-el-Amarna, the Khabiri were conquering the Canaanite cities which had paid him tribute, and the Hitt.i.te ruler was the acknowledged overlord of the Amorites.
The star of a.s.syria was also in the ascendant. Its king, Ashur-uballit, who had corresponded with Akhenaton, was, like the Hitt.i.te king, Subbi-luliuma, a distinguished statesman and general, and similarly laid the foundations of a great empire. Before or after Subbi-luliuma invaded Tushratta's domains, he drove the Mitannians out of Nineveh, and afterwards overcame the Shubari tribes of Mitanni on the north-west, with the result that he added a wide extent of territory to his growing empire.
He had previously thrust southward the a.s.syro-Babylonian frontier. In fact, he had become so formidable an opponent of Babylonia that his daughter had been accepted as the wife of Karakhardash, the Ka.s.site king of that country. In time his grandson, Kadashman-Kharbe, ascended the Babylonian throne. This young monarch co-operated with his grandfather in suppressing the Suti, who infested the trade routes towards the west, and plundered the caravans of merchants and the messengers of great monarchs with persistent impunity.
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