Part 9 (1/2)

a.s.sur-bani-pal was not a soldier himself, and he would have preferred remaining at peace with his warlike neighbour. But Elamite raids made this impossible, and the constant civil wars in Elam resulting from disputed successions to the throne afforded pretexts and favourable opportunities for invading it. The Elamites, however, defended themselves bravely, and it was only after a struggle of many years, when their cities had fallen one by one, and Shushan, the capital, was itself destroyed, that Elam became an a.s.syrian province. The conquerors, however, found it a profitless desert, wasted by fire and sword, and in the struggle to possess it their own resources had been drained and well-nigh exhausted.

The second a.s.syrian empire was now at the zenith of its power.

Amba.s.sadors came from Ararat and from Gyges of Lydia to offer homage, and to ask the help of the great king against the Kimmerian and Scythian hordes. His fame spread to Europe; the whole of the civilised world acknowledged his supremacy.

But the image was one which had feet of clay. The empire had been won by the sword, and the sword alone kept it together. Suddenly a revolt broke out which shook it to its foundations. Babylonia took the lead; the other subject nations followed in its train.

Saul-suma-yukin had become naturalised in Babylonia. The experiment of appointing an a.s.syrian prince as viceroy had failed; he had identified himself with his subjects, and like them dreamed of independence. He adopted the style and t.i.tles of the ancient Babylonian mouarchs; even the Sumerian language was revived in public doc.u.ments, and the son of Esar-haddon put himself at the head of a national movement. The a.s.syrian supremacy was rejected, and once more Babylon was free.

The revolt lasted for some years. When it began we do not know; but it was not till B.C. 648 that it was finally suppressed, and Saul-suma-yukin put to death after a reign of twenty years. Babylon had been closely invested, and was at last starved into surrender. But, taught by the experience of the past, a.s.sur-bani-pal did not treat it severely. The leaders of the revolt, it is true, were punished, but the city and people were spared, and its shrines, like those of Kutha and Sippara, were purified, while penitential psalms were sung to appease the angry deities, and the daily sacrifices which had been interrupted were restored. A certain Kandalanu was made viceroy, perhaps with the t.i.tle of king.

Chastis.e.m.e.nt was now taken upon the Arabian tribes who had joined in the revolt. But Egypt was lost to the empire for ever. Psammetikhos had seized the opportunity of shaking off the yoke of the foreigner, and with the help of the troops sent by Gyges from Lydia, had driven out the a.s.syrian garrisons and overcome his brother satraps.

a.s.sur-bani-pal was in no position to punish him. The war with Elam and the revolt of Babylonia had drained the country of its fighting men and the treasury of its resources. And a new and formidable enemy had appeared on the scene. The Scyths had followed closely on the footsteps of the Kimmerians, and were now pouring into Asia like locusts, and ravaging everything in their path. The earlier chapters of Jeremiah are darkened by the horrors of the Scythian invasion of Palestine, and a.s.sur-bani-pal refers with a sigh of relief to the death of that ”limb of Satan,” the Scythian king Tugdamme or Lygdamis. This seems to have happened in Cilicia, and a.s.syria was allowed a short interval of rest.

a.s.sur-bani-pal's victories were gained by his generals. He himself never appears to have taken the field in person. His tastes were literary, his habits luxurious. He was by far the most munificent patron of learning a.s.syria ever produced; in fact, he stands alone in this respect among a.s.syrian kings. The library of Nineveh was increased tenfold by his patronage and exertions; literary works were brought from Babylonia, and a large staff of scribes was kept busily employed in copying and re-editing them. Unfortunately, the superst.i.tion of the monarch led him to collect more especially books upon omens and dreams, and astrological treatises, but other works were not overlooked, and we owe to him a large number of the syllabaries and lists of words in which the cuneiform characters and the a.s.syrian vocabulary are explained.

When a.s.sur-bani-pal died the doom of the a.s.syrian empire had already been p.r.o.nounced. The authority of his two successors, a.s.sur-etil-ilani-yukin and Sin-sar-iskun, or Saracos, was still acknowledged both in Syria and in Babylonia, where Kandalanu had been succeeded as viceroy by Nabopola.s.sar. One of the contract-tablets from the north of Babylonia is dated as late as the seventh year of Sin-sar-iskun. But not long after this the Babylonian viceroy revolted against his sovereign, and with the help of the Scythian king, who had established himself at Ekbatana, defeated the a.s.syrian forces and laid siege to Nineveh. The siege ended in the capture and destruction of the city, the death of its king, and the overthrow of his empire. In B.C.

606 the desolator of the nations was itself laid desolate, and its site has never been inhabited again.

Nabopola.s.sar entered upon the heritage of a.s.syria. It has been supposed that he was a Chaldaean like Merodach-baladan; whether this be so or not, he was hailed by the Babylonians as a representative of their ancient kings. The a.s.syrian empire had become the prey of the first-comer. Elam had been occupied by the Persians, the Scyths, whom cla.s.sical writers have confounded with the Medes, had overrun and ravaged a.s.syria and Mesopotamia, while Palestine and Syria had fallen to the share of Egypt.

But once established on the Babylonian throne, Nabopola.s.sar set about the work of re-organising western Asia, and the military abilities of his son Nebuchadrezzar enabled him to carry out his purpose. The marriage of Nebuchadrezzar to the daughter of the Scythian monarch opened the road through Mesopotamia to the Babylonian armies; the Egyptians were defeated at Carchemish in B.C. 604, and driven back to their own land. From Gaza to the mouth of the Euphrates, western Asia again obeyed the rule of a Babylonian king.

The death of Nabopola.s.sar recalled Nebuchadrezzar to Babylon, where he a.s.sumed the crown. But the Egyptians still continued to intrigue in Palestine, and the Jewish princes listened to their counsels. Twice had Nebuchadrezzar to occupy Jerusalem and carry the plotters into captivity. In B.C. 598 Jehoiachin and a large number of the upper cla.s.ses were carried into exile; in B.C. 588 Jerusalem was taken after a long siege, its temple and walls razed to the ground, and its inhabitants transported to Babylonia. The fortress-capital could no longer shelter or tempt the Egyptian foes of the Babylonian empire.

The turn of Tyre came next. For thirteen years it was patiently blockaded, and in B.C. 573 it pa.s.sed with its fleet into Nebuchadrezzar's hands. Five years later the Babylonian army marched into Egypt, the Pharaoh Amasis was defeated, and the eastern part of the Delta overrun. But Nebuchadrezzar did not push his advantage any further; he was content with impressing upon the Egyptians a sense of his power, and with fixing the boundaries of his empire at the southern confines of Palestine.

His heart was in Babylonia rather than in the conquests he had made. The wealth he had acquired by them was devoted to the restoration of the temples and cities of his country, and, above all, to making Babylon one of the wonders of the world. The temples of Merodach and Nebo were rebuilt with lavish magnificence, the city was surrounded with impregnable fortifications, a sumptuous palace was erected for the king, and the bed of the Euphrates was lined with brick and furnished with quays. Gardens were planted on the top of arched terraces, and the whole eastern world poured out its treasures at the feet of ”the great king.”

His inscriptions, however, breathe a singular spirit of humility and piety, and we can understand from them the friends.h.i.+p that existed between the prophet Jeremiah and himself. All he had done is ascribed to Bel-Merodach, whose creation he was and who had given him the sovereignty over mankind.

He was succeeded in B.C. 562 by his son Evil-Merodach, who had a short and inglorious reign of only two years. Then the throne was usurped by Nergal-sharezer, who had married a daughter of Nebuchadrezzar, and was in high favour with the priests. He died in B.C. 556, leaving a child, whom the priestly chroniclers accuse of impiety towards the G.o.ds, and who was murdered three months after his accession. Then Nabu-nahid or Nabonidos, the son of Nabu-balasu-iqbi, another nominee of the priesthood, was placed on the throne. He was unrelated to the royal family, but proved to be a man of some energy and a zealous antiquarian.

He caused excavations to be made in the various temples of Babylonia, in order to discover the memorial-stones of their founders and verify the history of them that had been handed down. But he offended local interests by endeavouring to centralise the religious wors.h.i.+p of the country at Babylon, in the sanctuary of Bel-Merodach, as Hezekiah had done in the case of Judah. The images of the G.o.ds were removed from the shrines in which they had stood from time immemorial, and the local priesthoods attached to them were absorbed in that of the capital. The result was the rise of a powerful party opposed to the king, and a spirit of disaffection which the gifts showered upon the temples of Babylon and a few other large cities were unable to allay. The standing army, however, under the command of the king's son, Belshazzar, prevented this spirit from showing itself in action.

But a new power was growing steadily in the East. The larger part of Elam, which went by the name of Anzan, had been seized by the Persians in the closing days of the a.s.syrian empire, and a line of kings of Persian origin had taken the place of the old sovereigns of Shushan.

Cyrus II., who was still but a youth, was now on the throne of Anzan, and, like his predecessors, acknowledged as his liege-lord the Scythian king of Ekbatana, Istuvegu or Astyages. His first act was to defeat and dethrone his suzerain, in B.C. 549, and so make himself master of Media.

A year or two later he obtained possession of Persia, and a war with Lydia in B.C. 545 led to the conquest of Asia Minor. Nabonidos had doubtless looked on with satisfaction while the Scythian power was being overthrown, and had taken advantage of its fall to rebuild the temple of the Moon-G.o.d at Harran, which had been destroyed by the Scythians fifty-four years before. But his eyes were opened by the conquest of his ally the King of Lydia, and he accordingly began to prepare for a war which he saw was inevitable. The camp was fixed near Sippara, towards the northern boundary of Babylonia, and every effort was made to put the country into a state of defence.

Cyrus, however, was a.s.sisted by the disaffected party in Babylonia itself, amongst whose members must doubtless be included the Jewish exiles. In B.C. 538 a revolt broke out in the south, in the old district of the Chaldaeans, and Cyrus took advantage of it to march into the country. The Babylonian army moved northward to meet him, but was utterly defeated and dispersed at Opis in the beginning of Tammuz, or June, and a few days later Sippara surrendered to the conqueror.

Gobryas, the governor of Kurdistan, was then sent to Babylon, which also opened its gates ”without fighting,” and Nabonidos, who had concealed himself, was taken prisoner. The daily services in the temples as well as the ordinary business of the city proceeded as usual, and on the 3rd of Marchesvan Cyrus himself arrived and proclaimed a general amnesty, which was communicated by Gobryas to ”all the province of Babylon,” of which he had been made the prefect. Shortly afterwards, the wife--or, according to another reading, the son--of Nabonidos died; public lamentations were made for her, and Kambyses, the son of Cyrus, conducted the funeral in one of the Babylonian temples. Cyrus now took the t.i.tle of ”King of Babylon,” and a.s.sociated Kambyses with himself in the government. Conquest had proved his t.i.tle to the crown, and the priests and G.o.d of Babylon hastened to confirm it. Cyrus on his side claimed to be the legitimate descendant of the ancient Babylonian kings, a true representative of the ancient stock, who had avenged the injuries of Bel-Merodach and his brother-G.o.ds upon Nabonidos, and who professed to be their devoted wors.h.i.+pper. Offerings to ten times the usual amount were bestowed on the Babylonian temples, and the favour of the Babylonian priesthood was secured. The images which Nabonidos had sacrilegiously removed from their shrines were restored to their old homes, and the captive populations in Babylonia were allowed to return to their native soil. The policy of transportation had proved a failure; in time of invasion the exiles had been a source of danger to the government, and not of safety.

Each people was permitted to carry back with it its ancestral G.o.ds. The Jews alone had no images to take; the sacred vessels of the temple of Jerusalem were accordingly given to them. It was a faithful remnant that returned to the land of their fathers, consisting mostly of priests and Levites, determined henceforward to obey strictly the laws of their G.o.d, and full of grat.i.tude to their deliverer. In Jerusalem Cyrus thus had a colony whose loyalty to himself and his successors could be trusted, and who would form, as it were, an outpost against attacks on the side of Egypt.

As long as Cyrus and his son Kambyses lived Babylonia also was tranquil.

They flattered the religious and political prejudices of their Babylonian subjects, and the priesthood saw in them the successors of a Sargon of Akkad. But with the death of Kambyses came a change. The new rulers of the empire of Cyrus were Persians, proud of their nationality and zealous for their Zoroastrian faith. They had no reverence for Bel, no belief in the claim of Babylon to confer a t.i.tle of legitimacy on the sovereign of western Asia. The Babylonian priesthood chafed, the Babylonian people broke into revolt. In October B.C. 521 a pretender appeared who took the name of Nebuchadrezzar II., and reigned for nearly a year. But after two defeats in the field, he was captured in Babylon by Darius and put to death in August 520. Once more, in B.C. 514, another revolt took place under a second pretender to the name of ”Nebuchadrezzar the son of Nabonidos.” The strong walls of Babylon resisted the Persian army for more than a year, and the city was at last taken by stratagem. The walls were partially destroyed, but this did not prevent a third rebellion in the reign of Xerxes, while the Persian monarch was absent in Greece. On this occasion, however, it was soon crushed, and e-Sagila, the temple of Bel, was laid in ruins. But a later generation restored once more the ancient sanctuary of Merodach, at all events in part, and services in honour of Bel continued to be held there down to the time when Babylon was superseded by the Greek town of Seleucia, and the city of Nebuchadrezzar became a waste of shapeless mounds.

Babylonian religion was a mixture of Sumerian and Semitic elements. The primitive Sumerian had believed in a sort of animism. Each object had its _zi_ or ”spirit,” like men and beasts; the _zi_ gave it its personality, and endowed it, as it were, with vital force. The _zi_ corresponded with the _ka_ or ”double” of the Egyptians, which accompanied like a shadow all things in heaven and earth. The G.o.ds themselves had each his _zi_; it was this alone that made them permanent and personal. With such a form of religion there could be neither deities nor priests in the usual sense of the words. The place of the priest was taken by the sorcerer, who knew the spells that could avert the malevolence of the ”spirits” or bring down their blessings upon mankind.

With the progress of civilisation, certain of the ”spirits” emerged above the rest, and became veritable G.o.ds. The ”spirit” of heaven became Ana of Erech, the Sky-G.o.d; the ”spirit” of earth pa.s.sed into El-lil of Nippur; and the ”spirit” of the deep into Ea of Eridu. The change was hastened by contact with the Semite. The Semite brought with him a new religious conception. He believed in a G.o.d who revealed himself in the sun, and whom he addressed as Baal or ”Lord.” By the side of Baal stood his colourless reflection, the G.o.ddess Baalath, who owed her existence partly to the feminine gender possessed by the Semitic languages, partly to the a.n.a.logy of the human family. But the Baalim were as mult.i.tudinous as their wors.h.i.+ppers and the high-places whereon they were adored; there was little difficulty, therefore, in identifying the G.o.ds and ”spirits”

of Sumer with the local Baals of the Semitic creed.