Part 8 (1/2)
Sumerian princes still continued to rule in Sumer or southern Babylonia, but after the era of Sargon their power grew less and less. A Second Sumerian dynasty, however, arose at Ur, and claimed sovereignty over the rest of Chaldaea. One of its kings, Ur-Bau, was a great builder and restorer of the temples, and under his son and successor Dungi (B.C.
2700), a high-priest of the name of Gudea governed Lagas, the monuments of which have given us an insight into the condition of the country in his age. His statues of hard diorite from the Peninsula of Sinai are now in the Louvre; one of them is that of the architect of his palace, with a copy of its plan upon his lap divided according to scale. Gudea, though owning allegiance to Dungi, carried on wars on his own behalf, and boasts of having conquered ”Ansan of Elam.” The materials for his numerous buildings were brought from far. Hewn stones were imported from the ”land of the Amorites,” limestone and alabaster from the Lebanon, gold-dust and acacia-wood from the desert to the south of Palestine, copper from northern Arabia, and various sorts of wood from the Armenian mountains. Other trees came from Dilmun in the Persian Gulf, from Gozan in Mesopotamia, and from Gubin, which is possibly Gebal. The bitumen was derived from ”Madga in the mountains of the river Gurruda,” in which some scholars have seen the name of the Jordan, and the naphtha springs of the vale of Siddim.
The library of Gudea has been found entire, with its 30,000 tablets or books arranged in order on its shelves, and filled with information which it will take years of labour to examine thoroughly. Not long after his death, the Second dynasty of Ur gave way to a Third, this time of Semitic origin. Its kings still claimed that sovereignty over Syria and Palestine which had been won by Sargon. One of them, Ine-Sin, carried his arms to the west, and married his daughters to the ”high-priests” of Ansan in Elam, and of Mer'ash in northern Syria. His grandson, Gimil-Sin, marched to the ranges of the Lebanon and overran the land of Zamzali, which seems to be the Zamzummim of Scripture.
But with Gimil-Sin the strength of the dynasty seems to have come to an end. Babylonia was given over to the stranger, and a dynasty of kings from southern Arabia fixed its seat at Babylon. The language they spoke and the names they bore were common to Canaan and the south of Arabia, and sounded strangely in Babylonian ears. The founder of the dynasty was Sumu-abi, ”Shem is my father,” a name in which we cannot fail to recognise the Shem of the Old Testament. His descendants, however, had some difficulty in extending and maintaining their authority. The native princes of southern Babylonia resisted it, and the Elamites harried the country with fire and sword. In B.C. 2280 Kudur-Nankhundi, the Elamite king, sacked Erech and carried away the image of its G.o.ddess, and not long afterwards we find another Elamite king, Kudur-Laghghamar or Chedor-laomer, claiming lords.h.i.+p over the whole of Chaldsea. The western provinces of Babylonia shared in the fate of the sovereign power, and an Elamite prince, Kudur-Mabug by name, was made ”Father” or ”Governor of the land of the Amorites.” His son Eri-Aku, the Arioch of Genesis, was given the t.i.tle of king in southern Babylonia, with Larsa as his capital. Larsa had been taken by storm by the Elamite forces, and its native king, Sin-idinnam, driven out. He fled for refuge to the court of the King of Babylon, who still preserved a semblance of authority.
Khammurabi or Amraphel, the fifth successor of Sumu-abi, was now on the throne of Babylon. His long reign of fifty-five years marked an epoch in Babylonian history. At first he was the va.s.sal of Kudur-Laghghamar, and along with his brother va.s.sals, Eri-Aku of Larsa and Tudghula or Tidal of Kurdistan, had to serve in the campaigns of his suzerain lord in Canaan. But an opportunity came at last for revolt, it may be in consequence of the disaster which had befallen the army of the invaders in Syria at the hands of Abram and his Amorite allies. The war lasted long, and at the beginning went against the King of Babylon. Babylon itself was captured by the enemy, and its great temple laid in ruins.
But soon afterwards the tide turned. Eri-Aku and his Elamite supporters were defeated in a decisive battle. Larsa was retaken, and Khammurabi ruled once more over an independent and united Babylonia. Sin-idinnam was restored to his princ.i.p.ality, and we now possess several of the letters written to him by Khammurabi, in which his bravery is praised on ”the day of Kudur-Laghghamar's defeat,” and he is told to send back the images of certain Elamite G.o.ddesses to their original seats. They had doubtless been carried to Larsa when it fell into the hands of the Elamite invaders.
As soon as Babylonia was cleared of its enemies, Khammurabi set himself to the work of fortifying its cities, of restoring and building its temples and walls, and of clearing and digging ca.n.a.ls. The great ca.n.a.l known as that of ”the King,” in the northern part of the country, was either made or re-excavated by him, and at Kilmad, near the modern Bagdad, a palace was erected. Art and learning were encouraged, and a literary revival took place which brought back the old glories of the age of Sargon. Once more new editions were made of standard works, poets arose to celebrate the deeds of the monarch, and books became multiplied. Among the literary products of the period was the great Chaldaean Epic in twelve books, recording the adventures of the hero Gilgames, and embodying the Chaldaean story of the Deluge.
The supremacy over western Asia pa.s.sed to Khammurabi, along with sovereignty over Babylonia, and he a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of ”King of the land of the Amorites.” So too did his great-grandson, Ammi-ditana. Two generations later, with Samas-ditana the First dynasty of Babylon came to an end. It had made Babylon the capital of the country--a position which it never subsequently lost. It had raised Bel-Merodach, the G.o.d of Babylon, to the head of the pantheon, and it had lasted for 304 years.
It was followed by a Sumerian dynasty from the south, which governed the country for 368 years, but of which we know little more than the names of the kings composing it and the length of their several reigns.
It fell before the avalanche of an invasion from the mountains of Elam.
The Ka.s.sites poured into the Babylonian plain, and Ka.s.site kings ruled at Babylon for 576 years and a half. During their domination the map of western Asia underwent a change. The Ka.s.site conquest destroyed the Babylonian empire; Canaan was lost to it for ever, and eventually became a province of Egypt. The high-priests of a.s.sur, now Kaleh Sherghat, near the confluence of the Tigris and Lower Zab, made themselves independent and founded the kingdom of a.s.syria, which soon extended northward into the angle formed by the Tigris and Upper Zab, where the cities of Nineveh and Calah afterwards arose. The whole country had previously been included by the Babylonians in Gutium or Kurdistan.
The population of a.s.syria seems to have been more purely Semitic than that of Babylonia. Such at least was the case with the ruling cla.s.ses.
It was a population of free peasants, of soldiers, and of traders. Its culture was derived from Babylonia; even its G.o.ds, with the exception of a.s.sur, were of Babylonian origin. We look in vain among the a.s.syrians for the peace-loving tendencies of the Babylonians; they were, on the contrary, the Romans of the East. They were great in war, and in the time of the Second a.s.syrian empire great also in law and administration.
But they were not a literary people; education among them was confined to the scribes and officials, rather than generally spread as in Babylonia. War and commerce were their two trades.
The Ka.s.site conquerors of Babylonia soon submitted to the influences of Babylonian civilisation. Like the Hyksos in Egypt, they adopted the manners and customs, the writing and language, of the conquered people, sometimes even their names. The army, however, continued to be mainly composed of Ka.s.site troops, and the native Babylonians began to forget the art of fighting. The old claims to sovereignty in the west, however, were never resigned; but the Ka.s.site kings had to content themselves with intriguing against the Egyptian government in Palestine, either with disaffected Canaanites, or with the Hitt.i.tes and Mitannians, while at the same time they professed to be the firm friends of the Egyptian Pharaoh. Burna-buryas in B.C. 1400 writes affectionately to his ”brother” of Egypt, begging for some of the gold which in Egypt he declares is as abundant ”as the dust,” and which he needs for his buildings at home. He tells the Egyptian king how his father Kuri-galzu had refused to listen to the Canaanites when they had offered to betray their country to him, and he calls Khu-n-Aten to account for treating the a.s.syrians as an independent nation and not as the va.s.sals of Babylonia.
The a.s.syrians, however, did not take the same view as the Babylonian king. They had been steadily growing in power, and had intermarried into the royal family of Babylonia. a.s.sur-yuballidh, one of whose letters to the Pharaoh has been found at Tel el-Amarna, had married his daughter to the uncle and predecessor of Burna-buryas, and his grandson became king of Babylon. A revolt on the part of the Ka.s.site troops gave the a.s.syrians an excuse for interfering in the affairs of Babylonia, and from this time forward their eyes were turned covetously towards the kingdom of the south.
As a.s.syria grew stronger, Babylonia became weaker. Calah, now _Nimrud_, was founded about B.C. 1300 by Shalmaneser I., and his son and successor Tiglath-Ninip threw off all disguise and marched boldly into Babylonia in the fifth year of his reign. Babylon was taken, the treasures of its temple sent to a.s.sur, and a.s.syrian governors set over the country, while a special seal was made for the use of the conqueror. For seven years the a.s.syrian domination lasted. Then Tiglath-Ninip was driven back to a.s.syria, where he was imprisoned and murdered by his son, and the old line of Ka.s.site princes was restored in the person of Rimmon-sum-uzur.
But it continued only four reigns longer. A new dynasty from the town of Isin seized the throne, and ruled for 132 years and six months.
It was while this dynasty was reigning that a fresh line of energetic monarchs mounted the a.s.syrian throne. Rimmon-nirari I., the father of Shalmaneser I. (B.C. 1330-1300) had already extended the frontiers of a.s.syria to the Khabur in the west and the Kurdish mountains in the north, and his son settled an a.s.syrian colony at the head-waters of the Tigris, which served to garrison the country. But after the successful revolt of the Babylonians against Tiglath-Ninip the a.s.syrian power decayed. More than a century later a.s.sur-ris-isi entered again on a career of conquest and reduced the Kurds to obedience.
His son, Tiglath-pileser I., was one of the great conquerors of history.
He carried his arms far and wide. Kurdistan and Armenia, Mesopotamia and Comagene, were all alike overrun by his armies in campaign after campaign. The Hitt.i.tes paid tribute, as also did Phoenicia, where he sailed on the Mediterranean in a s.h.i.+p of Arvad and killed a dolphin in its waters. The Pharaoh of Egypt, alarmed at the approach of so formidable an invader, sent him presents, which included a crocodile and a hippopotamus, and on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, near Carchemish and Pethor, he hunted wild elephants, as Thothmes III. had done before him. His son still claimed supremacy in the west, as is shown by the fact that he erected statues in ”the land of the Amorites.”
But the energy of the dynasty was now exhausted, and a.s.syria for a time pa.s.sed under eclipse. This was the period when David established his empire; there was no other great power to oppose him in the Oriental world, and it seemed as if Israel was about to take the place that had once been filled by Egypt and Babylon. But the opportunity was lost; the murder of Joab and the unwarlike character of Solomon effectually checked all dreams of conquest, and Israel fell back into two petty states.
The military revival of a.s.syria was as sudden as had been its decline.
In B.C. 885, a.s.sur-n.a.z.ir-pal II. ascended the throne. His reign of twenty-five years was pa.s.sed in constant campaigns, in ferocious ma.s.sacres, and the burning of towns. In both his inscriptions and his sculptures he seems to gloat over the tortures he inflicted on the defeated foe. Year after year his armies marched out of Nineveh to slaughter and destroy, and to bring back with them innumerable captives and vast amounts of spoil. Western Asia was overrun, tribute was received from the Hitt.i.tes and from Phoenicia, and Armenia was devastated by the a.s.syrian forces as far north as Lake Van. The policy of a.s.sur-n.a.z.ir-pal was continued by his son and successor Shalmaneser II., with less ferocity, but with more purpose (B.C. 860-825). a.s.syria became dominant in Asia; its empire stretched from Media on the east to the Mediterranean on the west. But it was an empire which was without organisation or permanency. Every year a new campaign was needed to suppress the revolts which broke out as soon as the a.s.syrian army was out of sight, or to supply the treasury with fresh spoil. The campaigns were in most cases raids rather than the instruments of deliberately planned conquest. Hence it was that the a.s.syrian monarch found himself checked in the west by the petty kings of Damascus and the neighbouring states. Ben-Hadad and Hazael, it is true, were beaten again and again along with their allies, while Omri of Israel offered tribute to the invader, like the rich cities of Phoenicia; but Damascus remained untaken and its people unsubdued.
The war with a.s.syria, however, saved Israel from being swallowed up by its Syrian neighbour. Hazael's strength was exhausted in struggling for his own existence; he had none left for the conquest of Samaria.
Shalmaneser himself, towards the end of his life, was no longer in a position to attack others. A great revolt broke out against him, headed by his son a.s.sur-dain-pal, the Sardanapallos of the Greeks, who established himself at Nineveh, and there reigned as rival king for about seven years. His brother Samas-Rimmon, who had remained faithful to his father, at last succeeded in putting down the rebellion. Nineveh was taken, and its defenders slain. Henceforth Samas-Rimmon reigned with an undisputed t.i.tle.
But a.s.syria was long in recovering from the effects of the revolt, which had shaken her to the foundations. The dynasty itself never recovered.
Samas-Rimmon, indeed, at the head of the army which had overcome his brother, continued the military policy of his predecessors; the tribes of Media and southern Armenia were defeated, and campaigns were carried on against Babylonia, the strength of which was now completely broken.
In B.C. 812 Babylon was taken, but two years later Samas-Rimmon himself died, and was succeeded by his son Rimmon-nirari III. His reign was pa.s.sed in constant warfare on the frontiers of the empire, and in B.C.
804 Damascus was surrendered to him by its king Mariha, who became an a.s.syrian tributary. In the following year a pestilence broke out, and when his successor, Shalmaneser III., mounted the throne in B.C. 781, he found himself confronted by a new and formidable power, that of Ararat or Van. The eastern and northern possessions of a.s.syria were taken from her, and the monarchy fell rapidly into decay. In B.C. 763 an eclipse of the sun took place on the 15th of June, and was the signal for the outbreak of a revolt in a.s.sur, the ancient capital of the kingdom. It spread rapidly to other parts of the empire, and though for a time the government held its own against the rebels, the end came in B.C. 745.
a.s.sur-nirari, the last of the old dynasty, died or was put to death, and Pulu or Pul, one of his generals, was proclaimed king on the 13th of Iyyar or April under the name of Tiglath-pileser III.
Tiglath-pileser III. was the founder of the Second a.s.syrian empire, which was based on a wholly different principle from that of the first.
Occupation and not plunder was the object of its wars. The ancient empire of Babylonia in western Asia was to be restored, and the commerce of the Mediterranean to be diverted into a.s.syrian hands. The campaigns of Tiglath-pileser and his successors were thus carried on in accordance with a deliberate line of policy. They aimed at the conquest of the whole civilised world, and the building up of a great organisation of which Nineveh and its ruler were the head. It was a new principle and a new idea. And measures were at once adopted to realise it.