Part 27 Discoveries among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon

Part 27

On the a.s.syrian tablet from the tunnel of Negoub[254], are apparently two royal names, which may be placed next in order. They are merely mentioned as those of ancestors or predecessors of the king who caused the record to be engraved. Dr. Hincks reads them Baldasi and Ashurkish. As the inscription is much mutilated, some doubt may exist as to the correctness of its interpretation.

The next king of whom we have any actual records appears to have rebuilt or added to the palace in the centre of the mound of Nimroud. The edifice was destroyed by a subsequent monarch, who carried away its sculptures to decorate a palace of his own. All the remains found amongst its ruins, with the exception of the great bulls and the obelisk, belong to a king whose name occurs on a pavement-slab discovered in the south-west palace.

The walls and chambers of this building were, it will be remembered, decorated with bas-reliefs brought from elsewhere. By comparing the inscriptions upon them, and upon a pavement-slab of the same period, with the sculptures in the ruins of the centre palace, we find that they all belong to the same king, and we are able to identify him through a most important discovery, for which we are also indebted to Dr. Hincks. In an inscription on a bas-relief representing part of a line of war-chariots, he has detected the name of Menahem, the king of Israel, amongst those of other monarchs paying tribute to the king of a.s.syria, in the eighth year of his reign.[255] This a.s.syrian king, must, consequently, have been either the immediate predecessor of Pul, Pul himself, or Tiglath Pileser, the name on the pavement-slab not having yet been deciphered.[256]

The bas-reliefs adorning his palace, like those at Khorsabad, appear to have been accompanied by a complete series of his annals. Unfortunately only fragments of them remain. His first campaign seems to have been in Chaldaea, and during his reign he carried his arms into the remotest parts of Armenia, and across the Euphrates into Syria as far as Tyre and Sidon.

There is a pa.s.sage in one of his inscriptions still unpublished, which reads, "as far as the river Oukarish," that might lead us to believe that his conquests were even extended to the central provinces of Asia and to the Oxus. His annals contain very ample lists of conquered towns and tribes. Amongst the former are Harran and Ur. He rebuilt many cities, and placed his subjects to dwell in them.

The next monarch, whose name is found on a.s.syrian monuments, was the builder of the palace of Khorsabad, now so well known from M. Botta's excavations and the engravings of its sculptures published by the French government. His name, though read with slight variations by different interpreters, is admitted by all to be that of Sargon, the a.s.syrian king mentioned by Isaiah. The names of his father and grandfather are said to have been found on a clay tablet discovered at Kouyunjik, but they do not appear to have been monarchs of a.s.syria. The ruins of Khorsabad furnish us with the most detailed and ample annals of his reign. Unfortunately an inscription, containing an account of a campaign against Samaria in his first or second year, has been almost entirely destroyed. But, in one still preserved, 27,280 Israelites are described as having been carried into captivity by him from Samaria and the several districts or provincial towns dependent upon that city. Sargon, like his predecessors, was a great warrior. He even extended his conquests beyond Syria to the islands of the Mediterranean Sea, and a tablet set up by him has been found in Cyprus. He warred also in Babylonia, Susiana, Armenia, and Media, and apparently received tribute from the kings of Egypt.

Colonel Rawlinson believed that the names "Tiglath Pileser" and "Shalmaneser," were found on the monuments of Khorsabad as epithets of Sargon, and that they were applied in the Old Testament to the same king.

He has now changed his opinion with regard to the first, and Dr. Hincks contends that the second is not a name of this king, but of his predecessor,--of whom, however, it must be observed, we have hitherto been unable to trace any mention on the monuments, unless, as that scholar suggests, he is alluded to in an inscription of Sargon from Khorsabad.

From the reign of Sargon we have a complete list of kings to the fall of the empire, or to a period not far distant from that event. He was succeeded by Sennacherib, whose annals have been given in a former part of this volume. His name was identified, as I have before stated, by Dr.

Hincks, and this great discovery furnished the first satisfactory starting-point, from which the various events recorded in the inscriptions have been linked with Scripture history. Colonel Rawlinson places the accession of Sennacherib to the throne in 716, Dr. Hincks in 703, which appears to be more in accordance with the canon of Ptolemy. The events of his reign, as recorded in the inscriptions on the walls of his palace, are mostly related or alluded to in sacred and profane history. I have already described his wars in Judaea, and have compared his own account with that contained in Holy Writ. His second campaign in Babylonia is mentioned in a fragment of Polyhistor, preserved by Eusebius, in which the name given to Sennacherib's son, and the general history of the war appear to be nearly the same as those on the monuments. The fragment is highly interesting as corroborating the accuracy of the interpretation of the inscriptions. I was not aware of its existence when the translation given in the sixth chapter of this volume was printed. "After the reign of the brother of Sennacherib, Acises reigned over the Babylonians, and when he had governed for the s.p.a.ce of thirty days he was slain by Merodach Baladan, who held the empire by force during six months; and he was slain and succeeded by a person named Elibus (Belib). But in the third year of his (Elibus) reign Sennacherib, king of the a.s.syrians, levied an army against the Babylonians; and in a battle, in which they were engaged, routed and took him prisoner with his adherents, and commanded them to be carried into the land of the a.s.syrians. Having taken upon himself the government of the Babylonians, he appointed his son, Asordanius, their king, and he himself retired again into a.s.syria." This son, however, was not Essarhaddon, his successor on the throne of a.s.syria. The two names are distinguished by a distinct orthography in the cuneiform inscriptions.

Sennacherib raised monuments and caused tablets recording his victories to be carved in many countries which he visited and subdued. His image and inscriptions at the mouth of the Nahr-el-Kelb in Syria are well known.

During my journey to Europe I found one of his tablets near the village of Hasana (or Hasan Agha), chiefly remarkable from being at the foot of Gebel Judi, the mountain upon which, according to a widespread Eastern tradition, the ark of Noah rested after the deluge.[257]

Essarhaddon, his son, was his successor, as we know from the Bible. He built the south-west palace at Nimroud, and an edifice whose ruins are now covered by the mound of the tomb of Jonah opposite Mosul. Like his father he was a great warrior, and he styles himself in his inscriptions "King of Egypt, conqueror of aethiopia." It was probably this king who carried Mana.s.seh, king of Jerusalem, captive to Babylon.[258]

The name of the son and successor of Essarhaddon was the same as that of the builder of the north-west palace at Nimroud. His father had erected a dwelling for him in the suburbs or on the outskirts of Nineveh. His princ.i.p.al campaign appears to have been in Susiana or Elam. As the great number of the inscribed tablets found in the ruins of the palace of Sennacherib, at Kouyunjik, are of his time, many of them bearing his name, we may hope to obtain some record of the princ.i.p.al events of his reign.

His son built the south-east palace on the mound of Nimroud, probably over the remains of an earlier edifice. Bricks from its ruins give his name, which has not yet been deciphered, and those of his father and grandfather. We know nothing of his history from cotemporaneous records.

He was one of the last, if not the last, king of the second dynasty; and may, indeed, as I have already suggested, have been that monarch, Sardanapalus, or Saracus, who was conquered by the combined armies of the Medes and Babylonians under Cyaxares in B. C. 606, and who made of his palace, his wealth, and his wives one great funeral pile.[259]

For convenience of reference I give a table of the royal names, according to the versions of Dr. Hincks and Col. Rawlinson, the princ.i.p.al monuments on which they are found, and the approximate date of the reigns of the several kings. In a second table will be found the most important proper and geographical names in the a.s.syrian inscriptions which have been identified with those in the Bible. A third table contains the names of the thirteen great G.o.ds of a.s.syria, according to the version of Dr.

Hincks.

TABLE I.--NAMES of a.s.sYRIAN KINGS in the Inscriptions from Nineveh.

--------------------------+------------------------------+-------------- Conjectural reading. | Where found. |Approximate | |Date of reign.

--------------------------+------------------------------+-------------- 1. Derceto (R[260]) | Pavement Slab, (B. M. Series,| 1250 B. C.

| p. 70, l. 25) | | | 2. Divanukha (R) |Standard Inscription, Nimroud,| 1200 B. C.

TABLE II.--NAMES OF KINGS, COUNTRIES, CITIES, &c., mentioned in the Old Testament, which occur in the A Inscriptions.

Jehu, Omri, Menahem, Hezekiah, Hazael, Merodach Baladan, Pharoah, Sargon, Sennacherib, Essarhaddon, Dagon, Nebo, Judaea, Jerusalem, Samaria, Ashdod, Lachish, Damascus, Hamath, Hitt.i.tes (the), Tyre, Sidon, Gaza, Ekron, Askelon, Arvad, Gubal (the people of), Lebanon, Egypt, Euphrates, Carchemish, Hebar or Chebar (river), Harran, Ur, Gozan (the people of), Mesopotamia, Children of Eden, Tigris, Nineveh, Babylon, Elam, Shushan, Media, Persia, Yavan, Ararat, Hagarenes, Nabathaeans, Aramaeans, Chaldaeans, Meshek, Tubal, a.s.syria, a.s.syrians, Pethor, Tela.s.sar.

TABLE III.--Names of THIRTEEN GREAT G.o.dS OF a.s.sYRIA, as they occur on the upright tablet of the King, discovered at Nimroud.

1. a.s.sHUR, the King of the Circle of the Great G.o.ds.

2. ANU, the Lord of the Mountains, or of Foreign Countries.

3.(?) [Not yet deciphered.]

4. SAN.

5. MERODACH (? Mars).

6. YAV (? Jupiter).

7. BAR.

8. NEBO (? Mercury).

9. (?) Mylit (or Gula), called the Consort of Bel and the Mother of the Great G.o.ds (? Venus).

10. (?) Dagon.

11. BEL (? Saturn) Father of the G.o.ds.

12. SHAMASH (the Sun).

13. ISHTAR (the Moon).

Although no mention appears to be made in the a.s.syrian inscriptions of kings who reigned before the twelfth century B. C., this is by no means a proof that the empire, and its capital Nineveh, did not exist long before that time. I cannot agree with those who would limit the foundation of both to that period. The supposition seems to me quite at variance with the testimony of sacred and profane history. The existence of the name of Nineveh on monuments of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty is still considered almost certain by Egyptian scholars. I have in my former work quoted an instance of it on a tablet of the time of Thothmes III., or of the beginning of the fourteenth century B. C.[261] Mr. Birch has since pointed out to me three interesting cartouches copied by Dr. Lepsius in Egypt, which completely remove any doubt as to the name of a.s.syria having been also known as early as the eighteenth dynasty. They occur at the foot of one of the columns of Soleb, and are of the age of Amenophis III., or about the middle of the fourteenth century before Christ. The three figures, with their arms bound behind, represent Asiatic captives, as is proved by their peculiar features and head-dress, a knotted fillet round the temples, corresponding with that seen in the Nineveh sculptures. Each cartouche contains the name of the country from which the prisoner was brought. The first is Patana, or Padan-Aram; the second is written A-su-ru, or a.s.syria; and the third, Ka-ru-ka-mishi, Carchemish. On another column are Saenkar (? Shinar or Sinjar); Naharaina, or Mesopotamia; and the Khita, or Hitt.i.tes. The mention in succession of these Asiatic nations, contiguous one to the other, proves the correctness of the reading of the word a.s.syria, which might have been doubted had the name of that country stood alone.

Mr. Birch has detected a still earlier notice of a.s.syria in the statistical tablet of Karnak. The king of that country is there stated to have sent to Thothmes III., in his fortieth year, a tribute of fifty pounds nine ounces of some article called chesbit, supposed to be a stone for coloring blue. It would appear, therefore, that in the fifteenth century a kingdom, known by the name of a.s.syria, with Nineveh for its capital, had been established on the borders of the Tigris. Supposing the date now a.s.signed by Col. Rawlinson to the monuments at Nimroud to be correct, no sculptures or relics have yet been found which we can safely attribute to that period; future researches and a more complete examination of the ancient sites may, however, hereafter lead to the discovery of earlier remains.

As I have thus given a general sketch of the contents of the inscriptions, it may not be out of place to make a few observations upon the nature of the a.s.syrian records, and their importance to the study of Scripture and profane history. In the first place, the care with which the events of each king's reign were chronicled is worthy of remark. They were usually written in the form of regular annals, and in some cases, as on the great monoliths at Nimroud, the royal progress during a campaign appears to have been described almost day by day. We are thus furnished with an interesting ill.u.s.tration of the historical books of the Jews. There is, however, this marked difference between them, that whilst the a.s.syrian records are nothing but a dry narrative, or rather register, of military campaigns, spoliations, and cruelties, events of little importance but to those immediately concerned in them, the historical books of the Old Testament, apart from the deeds of war and blood which they chronicle, contain the most interesting of private episodes, and the most sublime of moral lessons. It need scarcely be added, that this distinction is precisely what we might have expected to find between them, and that the Christian will not fail to give to it a due weight.

The monuments of Nineveh, as well as the testimony of history, tend to prove that the a.s.syrian monarch was a thorough Eastern despot, unchecked by popular opinion, and having complete power over the lives and property of his subjects--rather adored as a G.o.d than feared as a man, and yet himself claiming that authority and general obedience in virtue of his reverence for the national deities and the national religion. It was only when the G.o.ds themselves seemed to interpose that any check was placed upon the royal pride and l.u.s.t; and it is probable that when Jonah entered Nineveh crying to the people to repent, the king, believing him to be a special minister from the supreme deity of the nation, "arose from his throne, and laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes."[262] The Hebrew state, on the contrary, was, to a certain extent, a limited monarchy. The Jewish kings were amenable to, and even guided by, the opinion of their subjects. The prophets boldly upbraided and threatened them; their warnings and menaces were usually received with respect and fear. "Good is the word of the Lord which thou hast spoken,"

exclaimed Hezekiah to Isaiah, when the prophet reproved him for his pride, and foretold the captivity of his sons and the destruction of his kingdom;[263] a prophecy which none would have dared utter in the presence of the a.s.syrian king, except, as it would appear by the story of Jonah, he were a stranger. It can scarcely, therefore, be expected that any history other than bare chronicles of the victories and triumphs of the kings, omitting all allusion to their reverses and defeats, could be found in a.s.syria, even were portable rolls or books still to exist, as in Egypt, beneath the ruins.

It is remarkable that the a.s.syrian records should, on the whole, be so free from the exaggerated forms of expression, and the magniloquent royal t.i.tles, which are found in Egyptian doc.u.ments of the same nature, and even in those of modern Eastern sovereigns. I have already pointed out the internal evidence of their truthfulness so far as they go. We are further led to place confidence in the statements contained in the inscriptions by the very minuteness with which they even give the amount of the spoil; the two registrars, "the scribes of the host," as they are called in the Bible,[264] being seen in almost every bas-relief, writing down the various objects brought to them by the victorious warriors,--the heads of the slain, the prisoners, the cattle, the sheep,[265] the furniture, and the vessels of metal.

The next reflection arising from an examination of the a.s.syrian records relates to the political condition and const.i.tution of the empire, which appear to have been of a very peculiar nature. The king, we may infer, exercised but little direct authority beyond the immediate districts around Nineveh. The a.s.syrian dominions, as far as we can yet learn from the inscriptions, did not extend much further than the central provinces of Asia Minor and Armenia to the north, not reaching to the Black Sea, though probably to the Caspian. To the east they included the western provinces of Persia; to the south, Susiana, Babylonia, and the northern part of Arabia. To the west the a.s.syrians may have penetrated into Lycia, and perhaps Lydia; and Syria was considered within the territories of the great king; Egypt and Meroe (aethiopia) were the farthest limits reached by the a.s.syrian armies. According to Greek history, however, a much greater extent must be a.s.signed to a.s.syrian influence, if not to the actual a.s.syrian empire, and we may hereafter find that such was in fact the case.

I am here merely referring to the evidence afforded by actual records as far as they have been deciphered.

The empire appears to have been at all times a kind of confederation formed by many tributary states, whose kings were so far independent, that they were only bound to furnish troops to the supreme lord in time of war, and to pay him yearly a certain tribute. Hence we find successive a.s.syrian kings fighting with exactly the same nations and tribes, some of which were scarcely more than four or five days' march from the gates of Nineveh.

The Jewish tribes, as it had long been suspected by biblical scholars, can now be proved to have held their dependent position upon the a.s.syrian king, from a very early period, indeed, long before the time inferred by any pa.s.sage in Scripture. Whenever an expedition against the kings of Judah or Israel is mentioned in the a.s.syrian records, it is stated to have been undertaken on the ground that they had not paid their customary tribute.[266]

The political state of the Jewish kingdom under Solomon appears to have been very nearly the same as that of the a.s.syrian empire. The inscriptions in this instance again furnish us with an interesting ill.u.s.tration of the Bible. The scriptural account of the power of the Hebrew king resembles, almost word for word, some of the paragraphs in the great inscriptions at Nimroud. "Solomon reigned over the kingdoms from the river unto the land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt: they brought presents, and served Solomon all the days of his life.... He had dominion over all the region on this side the river, from Tipsah even unto the Azzah, _over all the kings_ on this side the river."[267]

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