*

supremacy over Egypt lasted under part of the next reign that of Ashur-bani-pal, or Sardanapalus-and then ceased; only it appears from the writings of the Hebrew prophets and of Berosus that Nebuchadnezzar, who, at the end of the seventh century before Christ, succeeded to the empire of the Assyrian monarchs, invaded Egypt with success in the course of his reign.* Esarhaddon had set up a number of princes in Egypt, as representatives of the Assyrian power, and the first expedition of his son and successor, Sardanapalus, was undertaken in order to defend these servants of his against the attack of the Ethiopian king, Tirhakah, who had proved unfaithful to his suzerain. The campaign was successful; the army of Tirhakah was defeated before Memphis, and this prince fled from Memphis to Thebes. The governors appointed by Esarhaddon were restored to their posts, among them being Necho, prince of Memphis, of the same name as the Pharaoh-nechoh who invaded Syria in the reign of Josiah, and slew the latter king at Megiddo.†

This was not the only campaign of Sardanapalus in Egypt. He undertook a second campaign against Urdamani, son of that So, or Sabaco, who had supported the Philistines against Assyria in the reign of Sargon.‡ It was during this war that the plunder of No, or Thebes, took place, which is alluded to by the prophet Nahum. Seven campaigns of Sardanapalus are described in his records as undertaken during his reign of forty-two years. Besides the conquest of Egypt, he

* See above, p. 351, note.

2 Kings xxiii. 29. See above, p. 341.

subdued the Elamites, and placed over them a prince of his own choosing; he conquered some of the tribes in Northern Arabia, and he vanquished and put to death his own brother, Shamash-shum-ukin (in Greek, Saosduchinos, or Sammuges), who had been placed on the throne of Babylon by the will of his father, Esarhaddon; in the west he vanquished the Phoenicians and some of the nations of Asia Minor. Many of the natives of the conquered countries were carried away to Assyria or to other countries, where they replaced the former inhabitants, for Sardanapalus continued to follow the practice of deportation so characteristic of the political methods of his nation.

With Sardanapalus the days of Assyrian supremacy are over. Of his two successors we know little, except the Greek tradition about the effeminacy of the last king, Saracus, or Sin-shar-ishkun, for whose name they so frequently substitute that of Sardanapalus; although some of their writers were aware of the warlike character of Ashur-bani-pal, whom they distinguish as Sardanapalus the First. With the end of the seventh century before Christ, came the fall of Nineveh and the overthrow of the Assyrian Empire, the bulk of which passed into the power of the kings of Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar carried on the traditions of conquest handed down to him from his predecessors, the kings of Assyria; he overran the countries of Western Asia, enforced the payment of tribute, and deposed or slew the princes who refused to acknowledge his supremacy; and he carried away whole nations into

captivity, like Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, or Sardanapalus. The native records of his reign that have already been found, however, are not occupied with the wars, but with the buildings of Nebuchadnezzar, and we still await the discovery of an account in cuneiform characters of the taking of Jerusalem and the deportation of the Jews into Babylonia.

The accounts that have been given above of the course of conquest which attended the development of the Assyrian power are meant to illustrate the passages in the prophets and historians of Judah which allude to the extensive conquests of the Assyrians, to their warlike and ruthless character, and to their peculiar methods of warfare. These accounts enable us to understand, as we could not do before the decipherment of the inscriptions, what the passages of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Micah, Nahum, and Zephaniah mean, which speak of the Assyrian and Babylonian armies, of the terror which they inspired, of the devastation which followed in their track. They show that the carrying off of the people of Samaria and of Judah was part of a settled policy, followed by the rulers of the Assyrian Empire, to enforce absolute submission, and to ensure the receipt of the tribute, which was the real object of their expeditions. Is not the course of conquest in Syria pursued by the Assyrians from the days of Tiglath-Pileser the First to the time of Sardanapalus, and described by the cuneiform inscriptions, accurately epitomised in the following words of Isaiah ?

"Thou hast said, By the multitude of my chariots am I come up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon; and I will cut down the tall cedars thereof, and the choice fir trees [or cypresses] thereof and I will enter into the height of his border, and the forest of his Carmel,

"I have digged, and drunk water; and with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers of the besieged places.

"Hast thou not heard long ago, how I have done it; and of ancient times, that I have formed it? now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste defenced cities into ruinous heaps.

"Therefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were dismayed and confounded: they were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up."

In the words of Hezekiah, "the kings of Assyria had laid waste all the nations and their countries."

It was not until the discovery and interpretation of the native records taught us how terrible a scourge Assyria had been for many centuries to the surrounding nations that we are able fully to understand the exultation that was felt when the rumour of the fall of Nineveh first reached the ears of men :

"There is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually ?”*

*Nahum iii. 19.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CULTURE OF ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA.

THE cities of Nineveh and Babylon are represented to us by the Hebrew writers of the seventh and sixth centuries before Christ as being wealthy and luxurious beyond all others of their time. They were the great centres of trade and civilisation, from which the rest of the world purchased, or which they imitated in arts and refinements. The merchants of Nineveh were "multiplied above the stars of heaven." When the Chaldæans and Medes destroyed Nineveh, Babylon succeeded to the high place formerly occupied by the latter as the capital of Western Asia and the centre of the commerce of that region-then, with Egypt, the most civilised in the world. Babylon was a "city of merchants"; she was "abundant in treasures"; she is compared to "golden cup in the Lord's hand that made all the earth drunken." The concourse of strangers and of traders from foreign countries to Babylon was so great that it is said that "all nations flowed together unto it."

a

The palaces of the kings of Assyria at Nineveh are described as being roofed with cedar, and filled with gold and silver and an endless store of "pleasant furniture." The city was strongly fortified with brick walls.