* Assurnazirpal, in this fashion, took the town of Pitura in two days, in spite of its strong double ramparts.

The archers and slingers led the attack by advancing in couples till they were within the prescribed distance from the walls, one of the two taking careful aim, while the other sheltered his comrade behind his round-topped shield. The king himself would sometimes alight from his chariot and let fly his arrows in the front rank of the archers, while a handful of resolute men would rush against the gates of the town and attempt either to break them down or set them alight with torches. Another party, armed with stout helmets and quilted jerkins, which rendered them almost invulnerable to the shower of arrows or stones poured on them by the besieged, would attempt to undermine the walls by means of levers and pick-axes, and while thus engaged would be protected by mantelets fixed to the face of the walls, resembling in shape the shields of the archers. Often bodies of men would approach the suburbs of the city and endeavour to obtain access to the ramparts from the roofs of the houses in close proximity to the walls. If, however, they could gain admittance by none of these means, and time was of no consideration, they would resign themselves to a lengthy siege, and the blockade would commence by a systematic desolation of the surrounding country, in which the villages scattered over the plain would be burnt, the vines torn up, and all trees cut down.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

The Assyrians waged war with a brutality which the Egyptians would never have tolerated. Unlike the Pharaohs, their kings were not content to imprison or put to death the principal instigators of a revolt, but their wrath would fall upon the entire population. As long as a town resisted the efforts of their besieging force, all its inhabitants bearing arms who fell into their hands were subjected to the most cruel tortures; they were cut to pieces or impaled alive on stakes, which were planted in the ground just in front of the lines, so that the besieged should enjoy a full view of the sufferings of their comrades.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

Even during the course of a short siege this line of stakes would be prolonged till it formed a bloody pale between the two contending armies. This horrible spectacle had at least the effect of shaking the courage of the besieged, and of hastening the end of hostilities. When at length the town yielded to the enemy, it was often razed to the ground, and salt was strewn upon its ruins, while the unfortunate inhabitants were either massacred or transplanted en masse elsewhere. If the bulk of the population were spared and condemned to exile, the wealthy and noble were shown no clemency; they were thrown from, the top of the city towers, their ears and noses were cut off, their hands and feet were amputated, or they and their children were roasted over a slow fire, or flayed alive, or decapitated, and their heads piled up in a heap.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the bronze gate at Balawat. The two soldiers who represent the Assyrian army carry their shields before them; flames appear above the ramparts, showing that the conquerors have burnt the town.

The victorious sovereigns appear to have taken a pride in the ingenuity with which they varied these means of torture, and dwell with complacency on the recital of their cruelties. "I constructed a pillar at the gate of the city," is the boast of one of them; "I then flayed the chief men, and covered the post with their skins; I suspended their dead bodies from this same pillar, I impaled others on the summit of the pillar, and I ranged others on stakes around the pillar."

Two or three executions of this kind usually sufficed to demoralise the enemy. The remaining inhabitants assembled: terrified by the majesty of Assur, and as it were blinded by the brightness of his countenance, they sunk down at the knees of the victor and embraced his feet.*

* These are the very expressions used in the Assyrian texts: "The terror of my strength overthrew them, they feared the combat, and they embraced my feet;" and again: "The brightness of Assur, my lord, overturned them." This latter image is explained by the presence over the king of the winged figure of Assur directing the battle.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the bronze gates of Balawat; on the right the town is seen in flames, and on the walls on either side hangs a row of heads, one above another.

The peace secured at the price of their freedom left them merely with their lives and such of their goods as could not be removed from the soil. The scribes thereupon surrounded the spoil seized by the soldiery and drew up a detailed inventory of the prisoners and their property: everything worth carrying away to Assyria was promptly registered, and despatched to the capital.



Drawn by Faucher Gudin, from Layard.

The contents of the royal palace led the way; it comprised the silver, gold, and copper of the vanquished prince, his caldrons, dishes and cups of brass, the women of his harem, the maidens of his household, his furniture and stuffs, horses and chariots, together with his men and women servants. The enemy's gods, like his kings, were despoiled of their possessions, and poor and rich suffered alike. The choicest of their troops were incorporated into the Assyrian regiments, and helped to fill the gaps which war had made in the ranks;* the peasantry and townsfolk were sold as slaves, or were despatched with their families to till the domains of the king in some Assyrian village.* Tiglath-pileser I. in this manner incorporated 120 chariots of the Kashki and the Urumi into the Assyrian chariotry.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief of one of the gates of Balawat.

The monuments often depict the exodus of these unfortunate wretches. They were represented as proceeding on their way in the charge of a few foot-soldiers—each of the men carrying, without any sign of labour, a bag of provisions, while the women bear their young children on their shoulders or in their arms: herds of cows and flocks of goats and sheep follow, chariots drawn by mules bringing up the rear with the baggage. While the crowd of non-combatants were conducted in irregular columns without manacles or chains, the veteran troops and the young men capable of bearing arms were usually bound together, and sometimes were further secured by a wooden collar placed on their necks. Many perished on the way from want or fatigue, but such as were fortunate enough to reach the end of the journey were rewarded with a small portion of land and a dwelling, becoming henceforward identified with the indigenous inhabitants of the country. Assyrians were planted as colonists in the subjugated towns, and served to maintain there the authority of the conqueror. The condition of the latter resembled to a great extent that of the old Egyptian vassals in Phoenicia or Southern Syria. They were allowed to retain their national constitution, rites, and even their sovereigns; when, for instance, after some rebellion, one of these princes had been impaled or decapitated, his successor was always chosen from among the members of his own family, usually one of his sons, who was enthroned almost before his father had ceased to breathe. He was obliged to humiliate his own gods before Assur, to pay a yearly tribute, to render succour in case of necessity to the commanders of neighbouring garrisons, to send his troops when required to swell the royal army, to give his sons or brothers as hostages, and to deliver up his own sisters and daughters, or those of his nobles, for the harem or the domestic service of the conqueror. The unfortunate prince soon resigned himself to this state of servitude; he would collect around him and reorganise his scattered subjects, restore them to their cities, rebuild their walls, replant the wasted orchards, and sow the devastated fields. A few years of relative peace and tranquillity, during which he strove to be forgotten by his conqueror, restored prosperity to his country; the population increased with extraordinary rapidity, and new generations arose who, unconscious of the disasters suffered by their predecessors, had, but one aim, that of recovering their independence. We must, however, beware of thinking that the defeat of these tribes was as crushing or their desolation as terrible as the testimony of the inscriptions would lead us to suppose. The rulers of Nineveh were but too apt to relate that this or that country had been conquered and its people destroyed, when the Assyrian army had remained merely a week or a fortnight within its territory, had burnt some half-dozen fortified towns, and taken two or three thousand prisoners.*

* For example, Tiglath-pileser I. conquers the Kummukli in the first year of his reign, burning, destroying, and depopulating the towns, and massacring "the remainder of the Kummukh" who had taken refuge in the mountains, after which, in his second campaign, he again pillages, burns, destroys, and depopulates the towns, and again massacres the remainder of the inhabitants hiding in the mountains. He makes the same statements with regard to most of the other countries and peoples conquered by him, but we find them reappearing with renewed vigour on the scene, soon after their supposed destruction.

If we were to accept implicitly all that is recorded of the Assyrian exploits in Nairi or the Taurus, we should be led to believe that for at least half a century the valleys of the Upper Tigris and Middle Euphrates were transformed into a desert; each time, however, that they are subsequently mentioned on the occasion of some fresh expedition, they appear once more covered with thriving cities and a vigorous population, whose generals offer an obstinate resistance to the invaders. We are, therefore, forced to admit that the majority of these expeditions must be regarded as mere raids. The population, disconcerted by a sudden attack, would take refuge in the woods or on the mountains, carrying with them their gods, whom they thus preserved from captivity, together with a portion of their treasures and cattle; but no sooner had the invader retired, than they descended once more into the plain and returned to their usual occupations. The Assyrian victories thus rarely produced the decisive results which are claimed for them; they almost always left the conquered people with sufficient energy and resources to enable them to resume the conflict after a brief interval, and the supremacy which the suzerain claimed as a result of his conquests was of the most ephemeral nature. A revolt would suffice to shake it, while a victory would be almost certain to destroy it, and once more reduce the empire to the limits of Assyria proper.

Tukultiabalesharra, familiar to us under the name of Tiglath-pileser,* is the first of the great warrior-kings of Assyria to stand out before us with any definite individuality.

* Tiglath-pileser is one of the transcriptions given in the LXX. for the Hebrew version of the name: it signifies, "The child of Esharra is my strength." By "the child of Esharra" the Assyrians, like the Chaldaeans, understood the child of Ninib.

We find him, in the interval between two skirmishes, engaged in hunting lions or in the pursuit of other wild beasts, and we see him lavishing offerings on the gods and enriching their temples with the spoils of his victories; these, however, were not the normal occupations of this sovereign, for peace with him was merely an interlude in a reign of conflict. He led all his expeditions in person, undeterred by any consideration of fatigue or danger, and scarcely had he returned from one arduous campaign, than he proceeded to sketch the plan of that for the following year; in short, he reigned only to wage war. His father, Assurishishi, had bequeathed him not only a prosperous kingdom, but a well-organised army, which he placed in the field without delay. During the fifty years since the Mushku, descending through the gorges of the Taurus, had invaded the Alzi and the Puru-kuzzi, Assyria had not only lost possession of all the countries bordering the left bank of the Euphrates, but the whole of Kummukh had withdrawn its allegiance from her, and had ceased to pay tribute. Tiglath-pileser had ascended the throne only a few weeks ere he quitted Assur, marched rapidly across Eastern Mesopotamia by the usual route, through Singar and Nisib, and climbing the chain of the Kashiara, near Mardin, bore down into the very heart of Kummukh, where twenty thousand Mushku, under the command of five kings, resolutely awaited him. He repulsed them in the very first engagement, and pursued them hotly over hill and vale, pillaging the fields, and encircling the towns with trophies of human heads taken from the prisoners who had fallen into his hands; the survivors, to the number of six thousand, laid down their arms, and were despatched to Assyria.*

* The king, starting from Assur, must have followed the route through Sindjar, Nisib, Mardin, and Diarbekir—a road used later by the Romans, and still in existence at the present day. As he did not penetrate that year as far as the provinces of Alzi and Purukuzzi, he must have halted at the commencement of the mountain district, and have beaten the allies in the plain of Kuru-tchai, before Diarbekir, in the neighbourhood of the Tigris.

The Kummukh contingents, however, had been separated in the rout from the Mushku, and had taken refuge beyond the Euphrates, near to the fortress of Shirisha, where they imagined themselves in safety behind a rampart of mountains and forests. Tiglath-pileser managed, by cutting a road for his foot-soldiers and chariots, to reach their retreat: he stormed the place without apparent difficulty, massacred the defenders, and then turning upon the inhabitants of Kurkhi,* who were on their way to reinforce the besieged, drove their soldiers into the Nami, whose waters carried the corpses down to the Tigris. One of their princes, Kilite-shub, son of Kaliteshub-Sarupi, had been made prisoner during the action. Tiglath-pileser sent him, together with his wives, children, treasures, and gods,** to share the captivity of the Mushku; then retracing his steps, he crossed over to the right bank of the Tigris, and attacked the stronghold of Urrakhinas which crowned the summit of Panari.

* The country of the Kurkhi appears to have included at this period the provinces lying between the Sebbeneh-Su and the mountains of Djudi, probably a portion of the Sophene, the Anzanone and the Gordyenc of classical authors.

** The vanquished must have crossed the Tigris below Diarbekir and have taken refuge beyond Mayafarrikin, so that Shirisha must be sought for between the Silvan-dagh and the Ak-dagh, in the basin of the Batman-tchai, the present Nami.

The people, terror-stricken by the fate of their neighbours, seized their idols and hid themselves within the thickets like a flock of birds. Their chief, Shaditeshub, son of Khatusaru,* ventured from out of his hiding-place to meet the Assyrian conqueror, and prostrated himself at his feet. He delivered over his sons and the males of his family as hostages, and yielded up all his possessions in gold and copper, together with a hundred and twenty slaves and cattle of all kinds; Tiglath-pileser thereupon permitted him to keep his principality under the suzerainty of Assyria, and such of his allies as followed his example obtained a similar concession. The king consecrated the tenth of the spoil thus received to the use of his god Assur and also to Ramman;** but before returning to his capital, he suddenly resolved to make an expedition into the almost impenetrable regions which separated him from Lake Van.

* The name of this chief's father has always been read Khatukhi: it is a form of the name Khatusaru borne by the Hittite king in the time of Ramses II.

** The site of Urrakhinas—read by Winckler Urartinas—is very uncertain: the town was situated in a territory which could belong equally well to the Kummukh or to the Kurkhi, and the mention of the crossing of the Tigris seems to indicate that it was on the right bank of the river, probably in the mountain group of Tur-Abdin.

This district was, even more than at the present day, a confused labyrinth of wooded mountain ranges, through which the Eastern Tigris and its affluents poured their rapid waters in tortuous curves. As hitherto no army had succeeded in making its way through this territory with sufficient speed to surprise the fortified villages and scattered clans inhabiting the valleys and mountain slopes, Tiglath-pileser selected from his force a small troop of light infantry and thirty chariots, with which he struck into the forests; but, on reaching the Aruma, he was forced to abandon his chariotry and proceed with the foot-soldiers only. The Mildish, terrified by his sudden appearance, fell an easy prey to the invader; the king scattered the troops hastily collected to oppose him, set fire to a few fortresses, seized the peasantry and their flocks, and demanded hostages and the usual tribute as a condition of peace.*

* The Mildish of our inscription is to be identified with the country of Mount Umildish, mentioned by Sargon of Assyria.

In his first campaign he thus reduced the upper and eastern half of Kummukh, namely, the part extending to the north of the Tigris, while in the following campaign he turned his attention to the regions bounded by the Euphrates and by the western spurs of the Kashiari. The Alzi and the Purukuzzi had been disconcerted by his victories, and had yielded him their allegiance almost without a struggle. To the southward, the Kashku and the Urumi, who had, to the number of four thousand, migrated from among the Khati and compelled the towns of the Shubarti to break their alliance with the Ninevite kings, now made no attempt at resistance; they laid down their arms and yielded at discretion, giving up their goods and their hundred and twenty war-chariots, and resigning themselves to the task of colonising a distant corner of Assyria. Other provinces, however, were not so easily dealt with; the inhabitants entrenched themselves within their wild valleys, from whence they had to be ousted by sheer force; in the end they always had to yield, and to undertake to pay an annual tribute. The Assyrian empire thus regained on this side the countries which Shalmaneser I. had lost, owing to the absorption of his energies and interests in the events which were taking place in Chaldaea.

In his third campaign Tiglath-pileser succeeded in bringing about the pacification of the border provinces which shut in the basin of the Tigris to the north and east. The Kurkhi did not consider themselves conquered by the check they had received at the Nami; several of their tribes were stirring in Kharia, on the highlands above the Arzania, and their restlessness threatened to infect such of their neighbours as had already submitted themselves to the Assyrian yoke. "My master Assur commanded me to attack their proud summits, which no king has ever visited. I assembled my chariots and my foot-soldiers, and I passed between the Idni and the Ala, by a difficult country, across cloud-capped mountains whose peaks were as the point of a dagger, and unfavourable to the progress of my chariots; I therefore left my chariots in reserve, and I climbed these steep mountains. The community of the Kurkhi assembled its numerous troops, and in order to give me battle they entrenched themselves upon the Azubtagish; on the slopes of the mountain, an incommodious position, I came into conflict with them, and I vanquished them." This lesson cost them twenty-five towns, situated at the feet of the Aia, the Shuira, the Idni, the Shizu, the Silgu, and the Arzanabiu*—all twenty-five being burnt to the ground.

* The site of Kharia must be sought for probably between the sources of the Tigris and the Batman-tchai.

The dread of a similar fate impelled the neighbouring inhabitants of Adaush to beg for a truce, which was granted to them;* but the people of Saraush and of Ammaush, who "from all time had never known what it was to obey," were cut to pieces, and their survivors incorporated into the empire—a like fate overtaking the Isua and the Daria, who inhabited Khoatras.**

* According to the context, the Adaush ought to be between the Kharia and the Saraush; possibly between the Batman- tchai and the Bohtan-tchai, in the neighbourhood of Mildish.

** As Tiglath-pileser was forced to cross Mount Aruma in order to reach the Ammaush and the Saraush, these two countries, together with Isua and Daria, cannot be far from Mildish; Isua is, indeed, mentioned as near to Anzitene in an inscription of Shalmaneser II., which obliges us to place it somewhere near the sources of the Batman-tchai. The position of Muraddash and Saradaush is indirectly pointed out by the mention of the Lower Zab and the Lulume; the name of Saradaush is perhaps preserved in that of Surtash, borne by the valley through which runs one of the tributaries of the Lower Zab.

Beyond this, again, on the banks of the Lesser Zab and the confines of Lulumo, the principalities of Muraddash and of Saradaush refused to come to terms. Tiglath-pileser broke their lines within sight of Muraddash, and entered the town with the fugitives in the confusion which ensued; this took place about the fourth hour of the day. The success was so prompt and complete, that the king was inclined to attribute it to the help of Ramman, and he made an offering to the temple of this god at Assur of all the copper, whether wrought or in ore, which was found among the spoil of the vanquished. He was recalled almost immediately after this victory by a sedition among the Kurkhi near the sources of the Tigris. One of their tribes, known as the Sugi, who had not as yet suffered from the invaders, had concentrated round their standards contingents from some half-dozen cities, and the united force was, to the number of six thousand, drawn up on Mount Khirikha. Tiglath-pileser was again victorious, and took from them twenty-five statues of their gods, which he despatched to Assyria to be distributed among the sanctuaries of Belit at Assur, of Anu, Bamman, and of Ishtar. Winter obliged him to suspend operations. When he again resumed them at the beginning of his third year, both the Kummukh and the Kurkhi were so peaceably settled that he was able to carry his expeditions without fear of danger further north, into the regions of the Upper Euphrates between the Halys and Lake Van, a district then known as Nairi. He marched diagonally across the plain of Diarbekir, penetrated through dense forests, climbed sixteen mountain ridges one after the other by paths hitherto considered impracticable, and finally crossed the Euphrates by improvised bridges, this being, as far as we know, the first time that an Assyrian monarch had ventured into the very heart of those countries which had formerly constituted the Hittite empire.

He found them occupied by rude and warlike tribes, who derived considerable wealth from working the mines, and possessed each their own special sanctuary, the ruins of which still appear above ground, and invite the attention of the explorer. Their fortresses must have all more or less resembled that city of the Pterians which flourished for so many ages just at the bend of the Halys;* its site is still marked by a mound rising to some thirty feet above the plain, resembling the platforms on which the Chaldaean temples were always built—a few walls of burnt brick, and within an enclosure, among the debris of rudely built houses, the ruins of some temples and palaces consisting of large irregular blocks of stone.

* The remains of the palace of the city of the Pterians, the present Euyuk, are probably later than the reign of Tiglath- pileser, and may be attributed to the Xth or IXth century before our era; they, however, probably give a very fair idea of what the towns of the Cappadocian region were like at the time of the first Assyrian invasions.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

Two colossal sphinxes guard the gateway of the principal edifice, and their presence proves with certainty how predominant was Egyptian influence even at this considerable distance from the banks of the Nile. They are not the ordinary sphinxes, with a human head surmounting the body of a lion couchant on its stone pedestal; but, like the Assyrian bulls, they are standing, and, to judge from the Hathorian locks which fall on each side of their countenances, they must have been intended to represent a protecting goddess rather than a male deity. A remarkable emblem is carved on the side of the upright to which their bodies are attached; it is none other than the double-headed eagle, the prototype of which is not infrequently found at Telloh in Lower Chaldaea, among remains dating from the time of the kings and vicegerents of Lagash.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The court or hall to which this gate gave access was decorated with bas-reliefs, which exhibit a glaring imitation of Babylonian art; we can still see on these the king, vested in his long flowing robes, praying before an altar, while further on is a procession of dignitaries following a troop of rams led by a priest to be sacrificed; another scene represents two individuals in the attitude of worship, wearing short loin-cloths, and climbing a ladder whose upper end has an uncertain termination, while a third person applies his hands to his mouth in the performance of some mysterious ceremony; beyond these are priests and priestesses moving in solemn file as if in the measured tread of some sacred dance, while in one corner we find the figure of a woman, probably a goddess, seated, holding in one hand a flower, perhaps the full-blown lotus, and in the other a cup from which she is about to drink. The costume of all these figures is that which Chaldaean fashion had imposed upon the whole of Western Asia, and consisted of the long heavy robe, falling from the shoulders to the feet, drawn in at the waist by a girdle; but it is to be noted that both sexes are shod with the turned-up shoes of the Hittites, and that the women wear high peaked caps.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The composition of the scenes is rude, the drawing incorrect, and the general technique reminds us rather of the low reliefs of the Memphite or Theban sculptors than of the high projection characteristic of the artists of the Lower Euphrates. These slabs of sculptured stone formed a facing at the base of the now crumbling brick walls, the upper surface of which was covered with rough plastering. Here and there a few inscriptions reveal the name, titles, and parentage of some once celebrated personage, and mention the god in whose honour he had achieved the work.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The characters in which these inscriptions are written are not, as a rule, incised in the stone, but are cut in relief upon its surface, and if some few of them may remind us of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the majority are totally unlike them, both in form and execution. A careful examination of them reveals a medley of human and animal outlines, geometrical figures, and objects of daily use, which all doubtless corresponded to some letter or syllable, but to which we have as yet no trustworthy key. This system of writing is one of a whole group of Asiatic scripts, specimens of which are common in this part of the world from Crete to the banks of the Euphrates and Orontes. It is thought that the Khati must have already adopted it before their advent to power, and that it was they who propagated it in Northern Syria. It did not take the place of the cuneiform syllabary for ordinary purposes of daily life owing to its clumsiness and complex character, but its use was reserved for monumental inscriptions of a royal or religious kind, where it could be suitably employed as a framework to scenes or single figures.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Hogarth.

It, however, never presented the same graceful appearance and arrangement as was exhibited in the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the signs placed side by side being out of proportion with each other so as to destroy the general harmony of the lines, and it must be regarded as a script still in process of formation and not yet emerged from infancy. Every square yard of soil turned up among the ruins of the houses of Euyuk yields vestiges of tools, coarse pottery, terra-cotta and bronze statuettes of men and animals, and other objects of a not very high civilization. The few articles of luxury discovered, whether in furniture or utensils, were not indigenous products, but were imported for the most part from Chaldaea, Syria, Phoenicia, and perhaps from Egypt; some objects, indeed, came from the coast-towns of the AEgean, thus showing that Western influence was already in contact with the traditions of the East.



Drawn by Paucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Hogarth. It will be remarked that both altars are in the form of a female without a head, but draped in the Assyrian robe.

All the various races settled between the Halys and the Orontes were more or less imbued with this foreign civilization, and their monuments, though not nearly so numerous as those of the Pharaohs and Ninevite kings, bear, nevertheless, an equally striking evidence of its power. Examples of it have been pointed out in a score of different places in the valleys of the Taurus and on the plains of Cappadocia, in bas-reliefs, steke, seals, and intaglios, several of which must be nearly contemporaneous with the first Assyrian conquest.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Hogarth.

One instance of it appears on the rocks at Ibriz, where a king stands in a devout attitude before a jovial giant whose hands are full of grapes and wheat-ears, while in another bas-relief near Frakhtin we have a double scene of sacrifice. The rock-carving at Ibriz is, perhaps, of all the relics of a forgotten world, that which impresses the spectator most favourably. The concept of the scene is peculiarly naive; indeed, the two figures are clumsily brought together, though each of them, when examined separately, is remarkable for its style and execution. The king has a dignified bearing in spite of his large head, round eyes, and the unskilful way in which his arms are set on his body. The figure of the god is not standing firmly on both feet, but the sculptor has managed to invest him with an air of grandeur and an expression of vigour and bonhomie, which reminds us of certain types of the Greek Hercules.

Tiglath-pileser was probably attracted to Asia Minor as much by considerations of mercantile interest as by the love of conquest or desire for spoil. It would, indeed, have been an incomparable gain for him had he been able, if not to seize the mines themselves, at least to come into such close proximity to them that he would be able to monopolise their entire output, and at the same time to lay hands on the great commercial highway to the trade centres of the west. The eastern terminus of this route lay already within his domains, namely, that which led to Assur by way of Amid, Nisibe, Singar, and the valley of the Upper Tigris; he was now desirous of acquiring that portion of it which wound its way from the fords of the Euphrates at Malatiyeh to the crossing of the Halys. The changes which had just taken place in Kummukh and Nairi had fully aroused the numerous petty sovereigns of the neighbourhood. The bonds which kept them together had not been completely severed at the downfall of the Hittite empire, and a certain sense of unity still lingered among them in spite of their continual feuds; they constituted, in fact, a sort of loose confederation, whose members never failed to help one another when they were threatened by a common enemy. As soon as the news of an Assyrian invasion reached them, they at once put aside their-mutual quarrels and combined to oppose the invader with their united forces. Tiglath-pileser had, therefore, scarcely crossed the Euphrates before he was attacked on his right flank by twenty-three petty kings of Nairi,* while sixty other chiefs from the same neighbourhood bore down upon him in front. He overcame the first detachment of the confederates, though not without a sharp struggle; he carried carnage into their ranks, "as it were the whirlwind of Eamman," and seized a hundred and twenty of the enemy's chariots. The sixty chiefs, whose domains extended as far as the "Upper Sea,"** were disconcerted by the news of the disaster, and of their own accord laid down their arms, or offered but a feeble resistance.

* The text of the Annals of the Xth year give thirty instead of twenty-three; in the course of five or six years the numbers have already become exaggerated.

** The site of the "Upper Sea" has furnished material for much discussion. Some believe it to be the Caspian Sea or the Black Sea, others take it to be Lake Van, while some think it to be the Mediterranean, and more particularly the Gulf of Issus between Syria and Cilicia. At the present day several scholars have returned to the theory which makes it the Black Sea.

Tiglath-pileser presented some of them in chains to the god Shamash; he extorted an oath of vassalage from them, forced them to give up their children as hostages, and laid a tax upon them en masse of 1200 stallions and 2000 bulls, after which he permitted them to return to their respective towns. He had, however, singled out from among them to grace his own triumph, Sini of Dayana, the only chief among them who had offered him an obstinate resistance; but even he was granted his liberty after he had been carried captive to Assur, and made to kneel before the gods of Assyria.*

* Dayani, which is mentioned in the Annals of Shalmaneser II., has been placed on the banks of the Murad-su by Schrader, and more particularly in the neighbourhood of Melasgerd by Sayce; Delattre has shown that it was the last and most westerly of twenty-three kingdoms conquered by Tiglath-pileser I., and that it was consequently enclosed between the Murad-su and the Euphrates proper.

Before returning to the capital, Tiglath-pileser attacked Khanigalbat, and appeared before Milidia: as the town attempted no defence, he spared it, and contented himself with levying a small contribution upon its inhabitants. This expedition was rather of the nature of a reconnaissance than a conquest, but it helped to convince the king of the difficulty of establishing any permanent suzerainty over the country. The Asiatic peoples were quick to bow before a sudden attack; but no sooner had the conqueror departed, than those who had sworn him eternal fealty sought only how best to break their oaths. The tribes in immediate proximity to those provinces which had been long subject to the Assyrian rule, were intimidated into showing some respect for a power which existed so close to their own borders. But those further removed from the seat of government felt a certain security in their distance from it, and were tempted to revert to the state of independence they had enjoyed before the conquest; so that unless the sovereign, by a fresh campaign, promptly made them realise that their disaffection would not remain unpunished, they soon forgot their feudatory condition and the duties which it entailed.

Three years of merciless conflict with obstinate and warlike mountain tribes had severely tried the Assyrian army, if it had not worn out the sovereign; the survivors of so many battles were in sore need of a well-merited repose, the gaps left by death had to be filled, and both infantry and chariotry needed the re-modelling of their corps. The fourth year of the king's reign, therefore, was employed almost entirely in this work of reorganisation; we find only the record of a raid of a few weeks against the Akhlami and other nomadic Aramaeans situated beyond the Mesopotamian steppes. The Assyrians spread over the district between the frontiers of Sukhi and the fords of Carchemish for a whole day, killing all who resisted, sacking the villages and laying hands on slaves and cattle. The fugitives escaped over the Euphrates, vainly hoping that they would be secure in the very heart of the Khati. Tiglath-pileser, however, crossed the river on rafts supported on skins, and gave the provinces of Mount Bishri over to fire and sword:* six walled towns opened their gates to him without having ventured to strike a blow, and he quitted the country laden with spoil before the kings of the surrounding cities had had time to recover from their alarm.

* The country of Bishri was situated, as the Annals point out, in the immediate neighbourhood of Carchemish. The name is preserved in that of Tell Basher still borne by the ruins, and a modern village on the banks of the Sajur. The Gebel Bishri to which Hommel alludes is too far to the south to correspond to the description given in the inscription of Tiglath-pileser.

This expedition was for Tiglath-pileser merely an interlude between two more serious campaigns; and with the beginning of his fifth year he reappeared in the provinces of the Upper Euphrates to complete his conquest of them. He began by attacking and devastating Musri, which lay close to the territory of Milid. While thus occupied he was harassed by bands of Kumani; he turned upon them, overcame them, and imprisoned the remainder of them in the fortress of Arini, at the foot of Mount Aisa, where he forced them to kiss his feet. His victory over them, however, did not disconcert their neighbours. The bulk of the Kumani, whose troops had scarcely suffered in the engagement, fortified themselves on Mount Tala, to the number of twenty thousand; the king carried the heights by assault, and hotly pursued the fugitives as far as the range of Kharusa before Musri, where the fortress of Khunusa afforded them a retreat behind its triple walls of brick. The king, nothing daunted, broke his way through them one after another, demolished the ramparts, razed the houses, and strewed the ruins with salt; he then constructed a chapel of brick as a sort of trophy, and dedicated within it what was known as a copper thunderbolt, being an image of the missile which Eamman, the god of thunder, brandished in the face of his enemies. An inscription engraved on the object recorded the destruction of Khunusa, and threatened with every divine malediction the individual, whether an Assyrian or a stranger, who should dare to rebuild the city. This victory terrified the Kumani, and their capital, Kibshuna, opened its gates to the royal troops at the first summons. Tiglath-pileser completely destroyed the town, but granted the inhabitants their lives on condition of their paying tribute; he chose from among them, however, three hundred families who had shown him the most inveterate hostility, and sent them as exiles into Assyria.*

* The country of the Kumani or Kammanu is really the district of Comana in Cataonia, and not the Comana Pontica or the Khammanene on the banks of the Halys. Delattre thinks that Tiglath-pileser penetrated into this region by the Jihun, and consequently seeks to identify the names of towns and mountains, e.g. Mount Ilamuni with Jaur-dagh, the Kharusa with Shorsh-dagh, and the Tala with the Kermes-dagh; but it is difficult to believe that, if the king took this route, he would not mention the town of Marqasi-Marash, which lay at the very foot of the Jaur-dagh, and would have stopped his passage. It is more probable that the Assyrians, starting from Melitene, which they had just subdued, would have followed the route which skirts the northern slope of the Taurus by Albistan; the scene of the conflict in this case would probably have been the mountainous district of Zeitun.

With this victory the first half of his reign drew to its close; in five years Tiglath-pileser had subjugated forty-two peoples and their princes within an area extending from the banks of the Lower Zab to the plains of the Khati, and as far as the shores of the Western Seas. He revisited more than once these western and northern regions in which he had gained his early triumphs. The reconnaissance which he had made around Carchemish had revealed to him the great wealth of the Syrian table-land, and that a second raid in that direction could be made more profitable than ten successful campaigns in Nairi or upon the banks of the Zab. He therefore marched his battalions thither, this time to remain for more than a few days. He made his way through the whole breadth of the country, pushed forward up the valley of the Orontes, crossed the Lebanon, and emerged above the coast of the Mediterranean in the vicinity of Arvad.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of Balawat.

This is the first time for many centuries that an Oriental sovereign had penetrated so far west; and his contemporaries must have been obliged to look back to the almost fabulous ages of Sargon of Agade or of Khammurabi, to find in the long lists of the dynasties of the Euphrates any record of a sovereign who had planted his standards on the shores of the Sea of the Setting Sun.*

*This is the name given by the Assyrians to the Mediterranean.

Tiglath-pileser embarked on its waters, made a cruise into the open, and killed a porpoise, but we have no record of any battles fought, nor do we know how he was received by the Phoenician towns. He pushed on, it is thought, as far as the Nahr el-Kelb, and the sight of the hieroglyphic inscriptions which Ramses had caused to be cut there three centuries previously aroused his emulation. Assyrian conquerors rarely quitted the scene of their exploits without leaving behind them some permanent memorial of their presence. A sculptor having hastily smoothed the surface of a rock, cut out on it a figure of the king, to which was usually added a commemorative inscription. In front of this stele was erected an altar, upon which sacrifices were made, and if the monument was placed near a stream or the seashore, the soldiers were accustomed to cast portions of the victims into the water in order to propitiate the river-deities.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of Balawat.

One of the half-effaced Assyrian stelae adjoining those of the Egyptian conqueror is attributed to Tiglath-pileser.*

*Boscawen thinks that we may attribute to Tiglath-pileser I. the oldest of the Assyrian stelae at Nahr el-Kelb; no positive information has as yet confirmed this hypothesis, which is in other respects very probable.

It was on his return, perhaps, from this campaign that he planted colonies at Pitru on the right, and at Mutkinu on the left bank of the Euphrates, in order to maintain a watch over Carchemish, and the more important fords connecting Mesopotamia with the plains of the Aprie and the Orontes.*

* The existence of these colonies is known only from an inscription of Shalmaneser II.

The news of Tiglath-pileser's expedition was not long in reaching the Delta, and the Egyptian monarch then reigning at Tanis was thus made acquainted with the fact that there had arisen in Syria a new power before which his own was not unlikely to give way. In former times such news would have led to a war between the two states, but the time had gone by when Egypt was prompt to take up arms at the slightest encroachment on her Asiatic provinces. Her influence at this time was owing merely to her former renown, and her authority beyond the isthmus was purely traditional. The Tanite Pharaoh had come to accept with resignation the change in the fortunes of Egypt, and he therefore contented himself with forwarding to the Assyrian conqueror, by one of the Syrian coasting vessels, a present of some rare wild beasts and a few crocodiles. In olden times Assyria had welcomed the arrival of Thutmosis III. on the Euphrates by making him presents, which the Theban monarch regarded in the light of tribute: the case was now reversed, the Egyptian Pharaoh taking the position formerly occupied by the Assyrian monarch. Tiglath-pileser graciously accepted this unexpected homage, but the turbulent condition of the northern tribes prevented his improving the occasion by an advance into Phoenicia and the land of Canaan. Nairi occupied his attention on two separate occasions at least; on the second of these he encamped in the neighbourhood of the source of the river Subnat. This stream, had for a long period issued from a deep grotto, where in ancient times a god was supposed to dwell. The conqueror was lavish in religious offerings here, and caused a bas-relief to be engraved on the entrance in remembrance of his victories.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by P. Taylor, in G. Rawlinson.

He is here represented as standing upright, the tiara on his brow, and his right arm extended as if in the act of worship, while his left, the elbow brought up to his side, holds a club. The inscription appended to the figure tells, with an eloquence all the more effective from its brevity, how, "with the aid of Assur, Shamash, and Eamman, the great gods, my lords, I, Tiglath-pileser, King of Assyria, son of Assurishishi, King of Assyria, son of Mutakkilnusku, King of Assyria, conqueror from the great sea, the Mediterranean, to the great sea of Nairi, I went for the third time to Nairi."

The gods who had so signally favoured the monarch received the greater part of the spoils which he had secured in his campaigns. The majority of the temples of Assyria, which were founded at a time when its city was nothing more than a provincial capital owing allegiance to Babylon, were either, it would appear, falling to ruins from age, or presented a sorry exterior, utterly out of keeping with the magnitude of its recent wealth. The king set to work to enlarge or restore the temples of Ishtar, Martu, and the ancient Bel;* he then proceeded to rebuild, from the foundations to the summit, that of Anu and Bamman, which the vicegerent Samsiramman, son of Ismidagan, had constructed seven hundred and one years previously. This temple was the principal sanctuary of the city, because it was the residence of the chief of the gods, Assur, under his appellation of Anu.**

* "Bel the ancient," or possibly "the ancient master," appears to have been one of the names of Anu, who is naturally in this connexion the same as Assur.

** This was the great temple of which the ruins still exist.

The soil was cleared away down to the bed-rock, upon which an enormous substructure, consisting of fifty courses of bricks, was laid, and above this were erected two lofty ziggurats, whose tile-covered surfaces shone like the rising sun in their brightness; the completion of the whole was commemorated by a magnificent festival. The special chapel of Bamman and his treasury, dating from the time of the same Samsiramman who had raised the temple of Anu, were also rebuilt on a more important scale.*

* The British Museum possesses bricks bearing the name of Tiglath-pileser I., brought from this temple, as is shown by the inscription on their sides.

These works were actively carried on notwithstanding the fact that war was raging on the frontier; however preoccupied he might be with warlike projects, Tiglath-pileser never neglected the temples, and set to work to collect from every side materials for their completion and adornment.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze doors at Balawat.

He brought, for example, from Nairi such marble and hard stone as might be needed for sculptural purposes, together with the beams of cedar and cypress required by his carpenters. The mountains of Singar and of the Zab furnished the royal architects with building stone for ordinary uses, and for those facing slabs of bluish gypsum on which the bas-reliefs of the king's exploits were carved; the blocks ready squared were brought down the affluents of the Tigris on rafts or in boats, and thus arrived at their destination without land transport.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the cast in the Louvre. The original is in the British Museum.

The kings of Assyria, like the Pharaohs, had always had a passion for rare trees and strange animals; as soon as they entered a country, they inquired what natural curiosities it contained, and they would send back to their own land whatever specimens of them could be procured.



Drawn by Boudier, from the bas-relief in Layard.

The triumphal cortege which accompanied the monarch on his return after each campaign comprised not only prisoners and spoil of a useful sort, but curiosities from all the conquered districts, as, for instance, animals of unusual form or habits, rhinoceroses and crocodiles,* and if some monkey of a rare species had been taken in the sack of a town, it also would find a place in the procession, either held in a leash or perched on the shoulders of its keeper.

* A crocodile sent as a present by the King of Egypt is mentioned in the Inscription of the Broken Obelisk. The animal is called namsukha, which is the Egyptian msuhu with the plural article na.

The campaigns of the monarch were thus almost always of a double nature, comprising not merely a conflict with men, but a continual pursuit of wild beasts. Tiglath-pileser, "in the service of Ninib, had killed four great specimens of the male urus in the desert of Mitanni, near to the town of Araziki, opposite to the countries of the Khati;* he killed them with his powerful bow, his dagger of iron, his pointed lance, and he brought back their skins and horns to his city of Assur. He secured ten strong male elephants, in the territory of Harran and upon the banks of the Khabur, and he took four of them alive: he brought back their skins and their tusks, together with the living elephants, to his city of Assur." He killed moreover, doubtless also in the service of Ninib, a hundred and twenty lions, which he attacked on foot, despatching eight hundred more with arrows from his chariot,** all within the short space of five years, and we may well ask what must have been the sum total, if the complete record for his whole reign were extant. We possess, unfortunately, no annals of the later years of this monarch; we have reason to believe that he undertook several fresh expeditions into Nairi,*** and a mutilated tablet records some details of troubles with Elam in the Xth year of his reign.

* The town of Araziki has been identified with the Eragiza (Eraziga) of Ptolemy; the Eraziga of Ptolemy was on the right bank of the Euphrates, while the text of Tiglath- pileser appears to place Araziki on the left bank.

** The account of the hunts in the Annals is supplemented by the information furnished in the first column of the "Broken Obelisk." The monument is of the time of Assur-nazir- pal, but the first column contains an abstract from an account of an anonymous hunt, which a comparison of numbers and names leads us to attribute to Tiglath-pileser I.; some Assyri-ologists, however, attribute it to Assur-nazir-pal.

* The inscription of Sebbeneh-Su was erected at the time of the third expedition into Nairi, and the Annals give only one; the other two expeditions must, therefore, be subsequent to the Vth year of his reign.

We gather that he attacked a whole series of strongholds, some of whose names have a Cossaean ring about them, such as Madkiu, Sudrun, Ubrukhundu, Sakama, Shuria, Khirishtu, and Andaria. His advance in this direction must have considerably provoked the Chaldaeans, and, indeed, it was not long before actual hostilities broke out between the two nations. The first engagement took place in the valley of the Lower Zab, in the province of Arzukhina, without any decisive result, but in the following year fortune favoured the Assyrians, for Dur-kurigalzu, both Sipparas, Babylon, and Upi opened their gates to them, while Akar-sallu, the Akhlame, and the whole of Sukhi as far as Eapiki tendered their submission to Tiglath-achuch-sawh-akhl-pileser.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the heliogravure in Pr. Lenormant. The original is in the British Museum. It is one of the boundary stones which were set up in a corner of a field to mark its legal limit.

Merodach-nadin-akhi, who was at this time reigning in Chaldaea, was like his ancestor Nebuchadrezzar I., a brave and warlike sovereign: he appears at first to have given way under the blow thus dealt him, and to have acknowledged the suzerainty of his rival, who thereupon assumed the title of Lord of the four Houses of the World, and united under a single empire the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. But this state of things lasted for a few years only; Merodach-nadin-akhi once more took courage, and, supported by the Chaldaean nobility, succeeded in expelling the intruders from Sumir and Akkad. The Assyrians, however, did not allow themselves to be driven out without a struggle, but fortune turned against them; they were beaten, and the conqueror inflicted on the Assyrian gods the humiliation to which they had so often subjected those of other nations. He took the statues of Eamman and Shala from Ekallati, carried them to Babylon, and triumphantly set them up within the temple of Bel. There they remained in captivity for 418 years.* Tiglath-pileser did not long survive this disaster, for he died about the year 1100 B.C.,** and two of his sons succeeded him on the throne. The elder, Assur-belkala,*** had neither sufficient energy nor resources to resume the offensive, and remained a passive spectator of the revolutions which distracted Babylon.

* We know this fact from the inscription of Bavian, in which Sennacherib boasts of having brought back these statues to Assyria after they had been 418 years in the possession of the enemy. I have followed the commonly received opinion, which places the defeat of Tiglath-pileser after the taking of Babylon; others think that it preceded the decisive victory of the Assyrians. It is improbable that, if the loss of the statues preceded the decisive victory, the Assyrian conquerors should have left their gods prisoners in a Babylonian temple, and should not have brought them back immediately to Ekallati.

** The death of Tiglath-pileser must have followed quickly on the victory of Babylon; the contents of the inscription of Bavian permit us to fix the taking of Ekallati by the Chaldaeans about the year 1108-1106 B.C. We shall not be far wrong in supposing Tiglath-pileser to have reigned six or eight years after his defeat.

*** I followed the usually received classification. It is, however, possible that we must reverse the order of the sovereigns.

Merodach-nadin-akhi had been followed by his son Merodach-shapik-zirim,* but this prince was soon dethroned by the people, and Bamman-abaliddin, a man of base extraction, seized the crown.

* The name of the Babylonian king has been variously read Merodach-shapik-zirat, Merodach-shapik-kullat, Merodach- shapik-zirmati and Merodach-shapik-zirim.

Assur-belkala not only extended to this usurper the friendly relations he had kept up with the legitimate sovereign, but he asked for the hand of his daughter in marriage, and the rich dowry which she brought her husband no doubt contributed to the continuation of his pacific policy. He appears also to have kept possession of all the parts of Mesopotamia and Kammukh conquered by his father, and it is possible that he may have penetrated beyond the Euphrates. His brother, Samsi-ramman III., does not appear to have left any more definite mark upon history than Assur-belkala; he decorated the temples built by his predecessors, but beyond this we have no certain record of his achievements. We know nothing of the kings who followed him, their names even having been lost, but about a century and a half after Tiglath-pileser, a certain Assurirba seems to have crossed Northern Syria, and following in the footsteps of his great ancestor, to have penetrated as far as the Mediterranean: on the rocks of Mount Amanus, facing the sea, he left a triumphal inscription in which he set forth the mighty deeds he had accomplished. This is merely a gleam out of the murky night which envelops his history, and the testimony of one of his descendants informs us that his good fortune soon forsook him: the Aramaeans wrested from him the fortresses of Pitru and Mutkinu, which commanded both banks of the Euphrates near Carchemish. Nor did the retrograde movement slaken after his time: Assyria slowly wasted away down to the end of the Xth century, and but for the simultaneous decadence of the Chaldaeans, its downfall would have been complete. But neither Ramman-abaliddin nor his successor was able to take advantage of its weakness; discord and want of energy soon brought about their own ruin. The dynasty of Pashe disappeared towards the middle of the Xth century, and a family belonging to the "Countries of the Sea" took its place: it had continued for about one hundred and thirty-two years, and had produced eleven kings.*

* It is no easy matter to draw up an exact list of this dynasty, and Hilprecht's attempt to do so contains more than one doubtful name. The following list is very imperfect and doubtful, but the best that our present knowledge enables us to put forward.



What were the causes of this depression, from which Babylon suffered at almost regular intervals, as though stricken with some periodic malady? The main reason soon becomes apparent if we consider the nature of the country and the material conditions of its existence. Chaldaea was neither extensive enough nor sufficiently populous to afford a solid basis for the ambition of her princes. Since nearly every man capable of bearing arms was enrolled in the army, the Chaktean kings had no difficulty in raising, at a moment's notice, a force which could be employed to repel an invasion, or make a sudden attack on some distant territory; it was in schemes which required prolonged and sustained effort that they felt the drawbacks of their position. In that age of hand-to-hand combats, the mortality in battle was very high, forced marches through forests and across mountains entailed a heavy loss of men, and three or four consecutive campaigns against a stubborn foe soon reduced an army to a condition of dangerous weakness. Recruits might be obtained to fill the earlier vacancies in the ranks, but they soon grew fewer and fewer if time was not given for recovery after the opening victories in the struggle, and the supply eventually ceased if operations were carried on beyond a certain period.

The total duration of the dynasty was, according to the Royal Canon, 72 years 6 months. Peiser has shown that this is a mistake, and he proposes to correct it to 132 years 6 months, and this is accepted by most Assyri-ologists.

A reign which began brilliantly often came to an impotent conclusion, owing to the king having failed to economise his reserves; and the generations which followed, compelled to adopt a strictly defensive attitude, vegetated in a sort of anaemic condition, until the birth-rate had brought the proportion of males up to a figure sufficiently high to provide the material for a fresh army. When Nebuchadrezzar made war upon Assurishishi, he was still weak from the losses he had incurred during the campaign against Elam, and could not conduct his attack with the same vigour as had gained him victory on the banks of the Ulai; in the first year he only secured a few indecisive advantages, and in the second he succumbed. Merodach-nadin-akhi was suffering from the reverses sustained by his predecessors when Tiglath-pileser provoked him to war, and though he succeeded in giving a good account of an adversary who was himself exhausted by dearly bought successes, he left to his descendants a kingdom which had been drained of its last drop of blood. The same reason which explains the decadence of Babylon shows us the cause of the periodic eclipses undergone by Assyria after each outburst of her warlike spirit. She, too, had to pay the penalty of an ambition which was out of all proportion to her resources. The mighty deeds of Shalmaneser and Tukulti-ninip were, as a natural consequence, followed by a state of complete prostration under Tukultiassurbel and Assurnirari: the country was now forced to pay for the glories of Assurishishi and of Tiglath-pileser by falling into an inglorious state of languor and depression. Its kings, conscious that their rule must be necessarily precarious as long as they did not possess a larger stock of recruits to fall back on, set their wits to work to provide by various methods a more adequate reserve. While on one hand they installed native Assyrians in the more suitable towns of conquered countries, on the other they imported whole hordes of alien prisoners chosen for their strength and courage, and settled them down in districts by the banks of the Tigris and the Zab. We do not know what Eammanirani and Shalmaneser may have done in this way, but Tiglath-pileser undoubtedly introduced thousands of the Mushku, the Urumseans, the people of Kummukh and Nairi, and his example was followed by all those of his successors whose history has come down to us. One might have expected that such an invasion of foreigners, still smarting under the sense of defeat, might have brought with it an element of discontent or rebellion; far from it, they accepted their exile as a judgment of the gods, which the gods alone had a right to reverse, and did their best to mitigate the hardness of their lot by rendering unhesitating obedience to their masters. Their grandchildren, born in the midst of Assyrians, became Assyrians themselves, and if they did not entirely divest themselves of every trace of their origin, at any rate became so closely identified with the country of their adoption, that it was difficult to distinguish them from the native race. The Assyrians who were sent out to colonise recently acquired provinces were at times exposed to serious risks. Now and then, instead of absorbing the natives among whom they lived, they were absorbed by them, which meant a loss of so much fighting strength to the mother country; even under the most favourable conditions a considerable time must have passed before they could succeed in assimilating to themselves the races amongst whom they lived. At last, however, a day would dawn when the process of incorporation was accomplished, and Assyria, having increased her area and resources twofold, found herself ready to endure to the end the strain of conquest. In the interval, she suffered from a scarcity of fighting men, due to the losses incurred in her victories, and must have congratulated herself that her traditional foe was not in a position to take advantage of this fact.

The first wave of the Assyrian invasion had barely touched Syria; it had swept hurriedly over the regions in the north, and then flowed southwards to return no more, so that the northern races were able to resume the wonted tenor of their lives. For centuries after this their condition underwent no change; there was the same repetition of dissension and intrigue, the same endless succession of alliances and battles without any signal advantage on either side. The Hittites still held Northern Syria: Carchemish was their capital, and more than one town in its vicinity preserved the tradition of their dress, their language, their arts, and their culture in full vigour. The Greek legends tell us vaguely of some sort of Cilician empire which is said to have brought the eastern and central provinces of Asia Minor into subjection about ten centuries before our era.*

* Solinus, relying on the indirect evidence of Hecatseus of Miletus, tells us that Cilicia extended not only to the countries afterwards known as Cataonia, Commagene, and Syria, but also included Lydia, Media, Armenia, Pamphylia, and Cappadocia; the conquests of the Assyrian kings must have greatly reduced its area. I am of opinion that the tradition preserved by Hecatous referred both to the kingdom of Sapalulu and to that of the monarchs of this second epoch.

Is there any serious foundation for such a belief, and must we assume that there existed at this time and in this part of the world a kingdom similar to that of Sapalulu? Assyria was recruiting its forces, Chaldaea was kept inactive by its helplessness, Egypt slumbered by the banks of its river, there was no actor of the first rank to fill the stage; now was the opportunity for a second-rate performer to come on the scene and play such a part as his abilities permitted. The Cilician conquest, if this be indeed the date at which it took place, had the boards to itself for a hundred years after the defeat of Assurirba. The time was too short to admit of its striking deep root in the country. Its leaders and men were, moreover, closely related to the Syrian Hittites; the language they spoke was, if not precisely the Hittite, at any rate a dialect of it; their customs were similar, if, perhaps, somewhat less refined, as is often the case with mountain races, when compared with the peoples of the plain. We are tempted to conclude that some of the monuments found south of the Taurus were their handiwork, or, at any rate, date from their time. For instance, the ruined palace at Sinjirli, the lower portions of which are ornamented with pictures similar to those at Pteria, representing processions of animals, some real, others fantastic, men armed with lances or bending the bow, and processions of priests or officials. Then there is the great lion at Marash, which stands erect, with menacing head, its snarling lips exposing the teeth; its body is seamed with the long lines of an inscription in the Asiatic character, in imitation of those with which the bulls in the Assyrian palaces are covered. These Cilicians gave an impulse to the civilization of the Khati which they sorely needed, for the Semitic races, whom they had kept in subjection for centuries, now pressed them hard on all the territory over which they had formerly reigned, and were striving to drive them back into the hills.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph of the cast shown at the Paris Exhibition of 1889.

The Aramaeans in particular gave them a great deal of trouble. The states on the banks of the Euphrates had found them awkward neighbours; was this the moment chosen by the Pukudu, the Eutu, the Gambulu, and a dozen other Aramaean tribes, for a stealthy march across the frontier of Elam, between Durilu and the coast? The tribes from which, soon after, the Kaldi nation was formed, were marauding round Eridu, Uru, and Larsa, and may have already begun to lay the foundations of their supremacy over Babylon: it is, indeed, an open question whether those princes of the Countries of the Sea who succeeded the Pashe dynasty did not come from the stock of the Kaldi Aramaeans. While they were thus consolidating on the south-east, the bulk of the nation continued to ascend northwards, and rejoined its outposts in the central region of the Euphrates, which extends from the Tigris to the Khabur, from the Khabur to the Balikh and the Aprie. They had already come into frequent conflict with most of the victorious Assyrian kings, from Eammanirari down to Tiglath-pileser; the weakness of Assyria and Chaldaea gave them their opportunity, and they took full advantage of it. They soon became masters of the whole of Mesopotamia; a part of the table-land extending from Carchemish to Mount Amanus fell into their hands, their activity was still greater in the basin of the Orontes, and their advanced guard, coming into collision with the Amorites near the sources of the Litany, began gradually to drive farther and farther southwards all that remained of the races which had shown so bold a front to the Egyptian troops. Here was an almost entirely new element, gradually eliminating from the scene of the struggle other elements which had grown old through centuries of war, and while this transformation was taking place in Northern and Central, a similar revolution was effecting a no less surprising metamorphosis in Southern Syria. There, too, newer races had gradually come to displace the nations over which the dynasties of Thutmosis and Ramses had once held sway. The Hebrews on the east, the Philistines and their allies on the south-west, were about to undertake the conquest of the Kharu and its cities. As yet their strength was inadequate, their temperament undecided, their system of government imperfect; but they brought with them the quality of youth, and energies which, rightly guided, would assure the nation which first found out how to take advantage of them, supremacy over all its rivals, and the strength necessary for consolidating the whole country into a single kingdom.



CHAPTER III—THE HEBREWS AND THE PHILISTINES—DAMASCUS

THE ISRAELITES IN THE LAND OF CANAAN: THE JUDGES—THE PHILISTINES AND THE HEBREW KINGDOM—SAUL, DAVID, SOLOMON, THE DEFECTION OF THE TEN TRIBES—THE XXIst EGYPTIAN DYNASTY—SHESHONQ OR SHISHAK DAMASCUS.

The Hebrews in the desert: their families, clans, and tribes—The Amorites and the Hebrews on the left bank of the Jordan—The conquest of Canaan and the native reaction against the Hebrews—The judges, Ehud, Deborah, Jerubbaal or Gideon and the Manassite supremacy; Abimelech, Jephihdh.

The Philistines, their political organisation, their army and fleet—Judah, Dan, and the story of Samson—Benjamin on the Philistine frontier—Eli and the ark of the covenant—The Philistine dominion over Israel; Samuel, Saul, the Benjamite monarchy—David, his retreat to the desert of Judah and his sojourn at Zilclag—The battle of Gilboa and the death of Saul—The struggle between Ish-bosheth and David—David sole king, and the final defeat of the Philistines—Jerusalem becomes the capital; the removal of the ark—Wars with the peoples of the East—Absalom's rebellion; the coronation of Solomon.

Solomon's government and his buildings—Phoenician colonisation in Spain: Hiram I. and the enlargement of Tyre—The voyages to Ophir and Tarshish—The palace at Jerusalem, the temple and its dedication: the priesthood and prophets—The death of Solomon; the schism of the ten tribes and the division of the Hebrew kingdom.

The XXIst Egyptian dynasty: the Theban high priests and the Tanite Pharaohs—The Libyan mercenaries and their predominance in the state: the origin of the XXIInd (Bubastite) dynasty—Sheshonq I. as king and his son Auputi as high priest of Amon; the hiding-place at Deir el-Bahari—Sheshonq's expedition against Jerusalem.

The two Hebrew "kingdoms"; the fidelity of Judah to the descendants of Solomon, and the repeated changes of dynasty in Israel—Asa and Baasha—The kingdom of Damascus and its origin—Bezon, Tabrimmon, Benhadad I.—Omri and the foundation of Samaria: Ahab and the Tyrian alliance—The successors of Hiram I. at Tyre: Ithobaal I.—The prophets, their struggle against Phonician idolatry, the story of Elijah—The wars between Israel and Damascus up to the time of the Assyrian invasion.



CHAPTER III—THE HEBREWS AND THE PHILISTINES—DAMASCUS

The Israelites in the land of Canaan: the judges—The Philistines and the Hebrew kingdom—Saul, David, Solomon, the defection of the ten tribes—the XXIst Egyptian dynasty—Sheshonq—Damascus.

After reaching Kadesh-barnea, the Israelites in their wanderings had come into contact with various Bedawin tribes—Kenites, Jerahmelites, Edomites, and Midianites, with whom they had in turn fought or allied themselves, according to the exigencies of their pastoral life. Continual skirmishes had taught them the art of war, their numbers had rapidly increased, and with this increase came a consciousness of their own strength, so that, after a lapse of two or three generations, they may be said to have constituted a considerable nation. Its component elements were not, however, firmly welded together; they consisted of an indefinite number of clans, which were again subdivided into several families. Each of these families had its chief or "ruler," to whom it rendered absolute obedience, while the united chiefs formed an assembly of elders who administered justice when required, and settled any differences which arose among their respective followers. The clans in their turn were grouped into tribes,* according to certain affinities which they mutually recognised, or which may have been fostered by daily intercourse on a common soil, but the ties which bound them together at this period were of the most slender character. It needed some special event, such as a projected migration in search of fresh pasturage, or an expedition against a turbulent neighbour, or a threatened invasion by some stranger, to rouse the whole tribe to corporate action; at such times they would elect a "nasi," or ruler, the duration of whose functions ceased with the emergency which had called him into office.**

* The tribe was designated by two words signifying "staff" or "branch."

** The word nasi, first applied to the chiefs of the tribes (Exod. xxxiv. 31; Lev. iv. 22; Numb. ii. 3), became, after the captivity, the title of the chiefs of Israel, who could not be called kings owing to the foreign suzerainty (Esdras i. 8).

Both clans and tribes were designated by the name of some ancestor from whom they claimed to be descended, and who appears in some cases to have been a god for whom they had a special devotion; some writers have believed that this was also the origin of the names given to several of the tribes, such as Gad, "Good Fortune," or of the totems of the hyena and the dog, in Arabic and Hebrew, "Simeon" and "Caleb."* Gad, Simeon, and Caleb were severally the ancestors of the families who ranged themselves under their respective names, and the eponymous heroes of all the tribes were held to have been brethren, sons of one father, and under the protection of one God. He was known as the Jahveh with whom Abraham of old had made a solemn covenant; His dwelling-place was Mount Sinai or Mount Seir, and He revealed Himself in the storm;** His voice was as the thunder "which shaketh the wilderness," His breath was as "a consuming fire," and He was decked with light "as with a garment." When His anger was aroused, He withheld the dew and rain from watering the earth; but when His wrath was appeased, the heavens again poured their fruitful showers upon the fields.***

* Simeon is derived by some from a word which at times denotes a hyena, at others a cross between a dog and a hyena, according to Arab lexicography. With regard to Caleb, Renan prefers a different interpretation; it is supposed to be a shortened form of Kalbel, and "Dog of El" is a strong expression to denote the devotion of a tribe to its patron god.

** Cf. the graphic description of the signs which accompanied the manifestations of Jahveh in the Song of Deborah (Judges v. 4, 5), and also in 1 Kings xix. 11-13.

*** See 1 Kings xvii., xviii., where the conflict between Elijah and the prophets of Baal for the obtaining of rain is described.

He is described as being a "jealous God," brooking no rival, and "visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." We hear of His having been adored under the figure of a "calf,"* and of His Spirit inspiring His prophets, as well as of the anointed stones which were dedicated in His honour. The common ancestor of the nation was acknowledged to have been Jacob, who, by his wrestling with God, had obtained the name of Israel; the people were divided theoretically into as many tribes as he had sons, but the number twelve to which they were limited does not entirely correspond with all that we know up to the present time of these "children of Israel." Some of the tribes appear never to have had any political existence, as for example that of Levi,** or they were merged at an early date into some fellow-tribe, as in the case of Reuben with Gad;*** others, such as Ephraim, Manasseh, Benjamin, and Judah, apparently did not attain their normal development until a much later date.

* The most common of these animal forms was that of a calf or bull (Exod. xxxii.; Deut. ix. 21; and in the kingly period, 1 Kings xii. 28-30; 2 Kings x. 29); we are not told the form of the image of Micah the Ephraimite (Judges xviii. 14, 17, 18, 20, 30, 31).

** Levi appears to have suffered dispersion after the events of which there are two separate accounts combined in Gen. xxxiv. In conjunction with Simeon, he appears to have revenged the violation of his sister Dinah by a massacre of the Shechemites, and the dispersion alluded to in Jacob's blessing (Gen. xlix. 5-7) is mentioned as consequent on this act of barbarism.

*** In the IXth century Mesha of Moab does not mention the Reubenites, and speaks of the Gadites only as inhabiting the territory formerly occupied by them. Tradition attributed the misfortunes of the tribe to the crime of its chief in his seduction of Bilhah, his father's concubine (Gen. xlix. 3, 4; cf. xxxv. 22)

The Jewish chroniclers attempted by various combinations to prove that the sacred number of tribes was the correct one. At times they included Levi in the list, in which case Joseph was reckoned as one;* while on other occasions Levi or Simeon was omitted, when for Joseph would be substituted his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh.** In addition to this, the tribes were very unequal in size: Ephraim, Gad, and Manasseh comprised many powerful and wealthy families; Dan, on the contrary, contained so few, that it was sometimes reckoned as a mere clan.

* As, for instance, in Jacob's blessing (Gen. xlix. 5-7) and in the enumeration of the patriarch's sons at the time of his journey to Egypt (Gen. xlvi. 9-26).

** Numb. i. 20, et seq., where the descendants of Levi are not included among the twelve, and Deut. xxxiii. 6-25, where Simeon is omitted from among the tribes blessed by Moses before his death.

The tribal organisation had not reached its full development at the time of the sojourn in the desert. The tribes of Joseph and Judah, who subsequently played such important parts, were at that period not held in any particular estimation; Reuben, on the other hand, exercised a sort of right of priority over the rest.*

* This conclusion is drawn from the position of eldest son given to him in all the genealogies enumerating the children of Jacob. Stade, on the contrary, is inclined to believe that this place of honour was granted to him on account of the smallness of his family, to prevent any jealousy arising between the more powerful tribes, such as Ephraim and Judah (Ges. des Vollces Isr., vol. i. pp. 151, 152).

The territory which they occupied soon became insufficient to support their numbers, and they sought to exchange it for a wider area, such as was offered by the neighbouring provinces of Southern Syria. Pharaoh at this time exercised no authority over this region, and they were, therefore, no longer in fear of opposition from his troops; the latter had been recalled to Egypt, and it is doubtful even whether he retained possession of the Shephelah by means of his Zakkala and Philistine colonies; the Hebrews, at any rate, had nothing to fear from him so long as they respected Gaza and Ascalon. They began by attempting to possess themselves of the provinces around Hebron, in the direction of the Dead Sea, and we read that, before entering them, they sent out spies to reconnoitre and report on the country.* Its population had undergone considerable modifications since the Israelites had quitted Goshen. The Amorites, who had seriously suffered from the incursions of Asiatic hordes, and had been constantly harassed by the attacks of the Aramaeans, had abandoned the positions they had formerly occupied on the banks of the Orontes and the Litany, and had moved southwards, driving the Canaanites before them; their advance was accelerated as the resistance opposed to their hordes became lessened under the successors of Ramses III., until at length all opposition was withdrawn. They had possessed themselves of the regions about the Lake of Genesareth, the mountain district to the south of Tabor, the middle valley of the Jordan, and, pressing towards the territory east of that river, had attacked the cities scattered over the undulating table-land. This district had not been often subjected to incursions of Egyptian troops, and yet its inhabitants had been more impressed by Egyptian influence than many others.



Drawn by Paucher-Gudin, from the squeezes and sketches published in the Zeitschrift ties Palcistina-Vereins.

Whereas, in the north and west, cuneiform writing was almost entirely used, attempts had been made here to adapt the hieroglyphs to the native language.

The only one of their monuments which has been preserved is a rudely carved bas-relief in black basalt, representing a two-horned Astarte, before whom stands a king in adoration; the sovereign is Ramses II., and the inscriptions accompanying the figures contain a religious formula together with a name borrowed from one of the local dialects.*

*This is the "Stone of Job" discovered by Strahmacher. The inscription appears to give the name of a goddess, Agana- Zaphon, the second part of which recalls the name of Baal- Zephon.

The Amorites were everywhere victorious, but our information is confined to this bare fact; soon after their victory, however, we find the territory they had invaded divided into two kingdoms: in the north that of Bashan, which comprised, besides the Hauran, the plain watered by the Yarrnuk; and to the south that of Heshbon, containing the district lying around the Arnon, and the Jabbok to the east of the Dead Sea.* They seem to have made the same rapid progress in the country between the Jordan and the Mediterranean as elsewhere. They had subdued some of the small Canaanite states, entered into friendly relation with others, and penetrated gradually as far south as the borders of Sinai, while we find them establishing petty kings among the hill-country of Shechem around Hebron, on the confines of the Negeb, and the Shephelah.** When the Hebrew tribes ventured to push forward in a direct line northwards, they came into collision with the advance posts of the Amorite population, and suffered a severe defeat under the walls of Hormah.*** The check thus received, however, did not discourage them. As a direct course was closed to them, they turned to the right, and followed, first the southern and then the eastern shores of the Red Sea, till they reached the frontier of Gilead.****