Chapter XI - Babylonia and Assyria (Part III)
[pg 177]
"Red of the Dawn!
Godless fury of peoples, and Christless frolic of kings,
And the bolt of war dashing down upon cities and blazing farms,
For Babylon was a child newborn, and Rome was a babe in arms,
And London and Paris and all the rest are as yet but in
leading-strings."
In a case in the Assyrian Room,
on the upper floor, there lies a brown and dusty skull, the fractures
of which show that its owner met with a violent death. That skull
is believed to have belonged to the soldier on guard in the palace of
the Assyrian king when Nineveh fell.
Lurid flashes of flame light up the awful scene across the twenty-five
centuries that have passed away from then to now, as we watch the fire
destroying what the enemies cannot take away. And after the crackling
and roaring of the fire, the shouts of the soldiers, and the bitter
cries of the despairing and terrified crowds of rich and poor as they
watch the destruction of the great city--their home--there comes the
desolate silence.
The pomp and splendour, the busy human life, the fine buildings with
magnificent adornments and [pg 178] treasures are all swept away, and
rain and flood, storm and wind, settle the ruins into the burial mounds
of dust and clay which have kept them safe till these later days.
"This is the rejoicing city, which dwelt carelessly, that said in her
heart, 'I am, and there is none beside me.' How is she become a
desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in?" (Zephaniah ii.15).
The allies who overthrew Nineveh were Nabopolassar, an Assyrian
general, holding a command in Babylonia, and the Medes, a race of
people from the east who were the forerunners of the Persians, and who
were much connected with them by conquest and marriage.
As the Medes destroyed and plundered the rest of the cities of Assyria
in the same way as the capital, the country never rose again; it
disappeared from history.
So, in the seventh century, Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire were
destroyed, though Assyria had been a separate kingdom from the
eighteenth century, or earlier.
Nabopolassar, in the second century B.C., became the first king of the
Second Babylonian Monarchy, which lasted about a hundred years. Let us
first find in the Babylonian Room
the clay cones of this king on which are told the story of his
restoration of a temple at Babylon, and the cutting of a canal from the
Euphrates to the city of Sippar, the Sun god. (You should look again at
the tablet showing the Babylonian king of the ninth century worshipping
in the beautiful shrine.) [pg 179]
The inscription on the clay cone of Nabopolassar describes how the
sides of the canal were made of bricks set in pitch, and this canal is
believed to have been but a restoration of one that was cut by the
great lawgiver, Khammurabi, about thirteen hundred years before.
The tablets of Nabopolassar relate to the sale of land, and various
kinds of loans, as do so many of the tablets of this Second Babylonian
Empire, especially those of Nebuchadnezzar the Great, whose name comes
early in the seventh century.
His tablets are deeply interesting; there is one about the dowry of the
bride Khamma, and the promises of her father that it shall be paid; the
sale of a female slave and her baby; lists of accounts, and endless
business documents to do with the sale of houses and estates. All these
are very much like those of the older Babylonian Empire, which we have
already seen, and as an example of the way in which the far past was
ever copied and borne in mind we must look at the weight text to the
cones of Nabopolassar. The inscription upon it says that it is an exact
copy of a weight made by Nebuchadnezzar II., who was king of Babylon
from 604 B.C. to 561 B.C. after the standard fixed by Dungi, king of
Ur, who lived about 2250 B.C.!
But this is not the only link with the far past. Nebuchadnezzar was a
great builder and restorer of temples and palaces, as well as an
enthusiastic business man and agriculturist, and the cast of the
celebrated inscription kept in the East India House reminds us of the
mounds at Birs i Nimrud (the ancient city of [pg 180] Borsippa),
near Babylon, traditionally (but erroneously) taken as the site of the
Tower of Babel.
Nebuchadnezzar tells us that "a king of olden time had built a famous
tower of great height, but he did not complete its head. Since that
time the earthquake and the thunder had dispersed its sun-dried clay;
the bricks of the casing had been split, and the earth of the interior
had been scattered in heaps."
This tower of Borsippa, which, we find, was not the far-famed Tower of
Babel, Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt in seven stories, each faced with tiles
of a different bright colour, such as we can see here in the Museum
cases.
There is much more that is interesting in the India House Inscription,
of which there is a cast here, such as accounts of travels of
Nebuchadnezzar through distant lands and over mountain ranges, and
lists of the precious things he brought to Babylon. Then follow details
of his great buildings which include the walls of Babylon, as well as
hundreds of temples and shrines for the gods.
"I love thy habitation on high," he says in his prayer to Marduk, "even
as I love mine own dear life."
The series of barrel-shaped cylinders, and the inscriptions on the
bronze doorstep and numberless bricks bearing his name and titles, all
confirm and add to his reputation as a builder. His name is very
familiar to us in Bible history, where we hear of his wars against
Egypt and the Jews; in the course of the latter wars he took Jerusalem,
seized and blinded the king, and carried the nation into captivity.
Nabonidus followed Nebuchadnezzar II., a few years [pg 181]
After Nebuchadnezzar's death, and the cylinders of the king describe
many building operations. He attempted to settle the dates of the
ancient history of Babylonia as far back as the thirty-eighth century,
but we now know that he was often wrong. Great was his satisfaction in
finding monuments of Burnaburiash, one of the writers of the
Tell-el-Amarna letters, a thousand years before his day, of
Khammurabi--the maker of laws and canals--a thousand years (nearly)
before Burnaburiash, and of Sargon I., as he thought, a thousand years
earlier than Khammurabi, though actually only about 600 years earlier.
Perhaps the satisfaction of Nabonidus was all the greater because
renowned builders such as Esar-haddon and Nebuchadnezzar had sought for
these monuments in vain.
From the tablets of Nabonidus we can gather that the busy prosperous
life was still going on in the carefully cultivated and watered fields
of Babylonia, for we have lists of shepherds, husbandmen, gardeners, as
well as numerous documents about the sale and transfer of land.
Nabonidus made his son, Belshazzar, governor of Babylon.
Perhaps you have seen a picture of Belshazzar's Feast, for artists have
more than once taken as a subject this most dazzling and exciting
scene. A feast of a thousand guest in a magnificent hall, loud
laughter, and revelry at its height, while wine is being drunk out of
the sacred vessels which belonged to the Jewish Temple.
Suddenly there flashed familiar words on the palace [pg 182] walls. The
terrified feasters could not imagine what those names of the four
common weights of the Babylonian market--such as our lbs. oz.
dwts.--could mean. Daniel himself, the chief of the College of
Wise Men, must come and explain it to Belshazzar and his company. "The
kingdom has been weighed in the scales and found wanting; it shall pass
to the Medes and Persians" was the solemn answer.
Outside the walls, a great army of hardy warriors, who rode well, spoke
the truth, drank water, not wine, were closing in on the careless city,
and, while the noisy feast went on, were silently turning aside the
course of the river that ran through it.
That night the Persians entered the city; Belshazzar was killed, and
Babylonia passed to Persian rule under Cyrus.
The baked clay cylinder of Cyrus, king of Babylonia, B.C. 538, and a
tablet amongst the other historical annals of the kingdom, give an
account of his entry with his Persians. From them we learn that he
entered the city of Babylon without battle and without fighting, and
that he spared Babylon tribulation.
We must read the notes that are given in the cases, and then as we pass
from one to another of the business tablets, belonging to the times of
the Persian kings, we realize that life in the country went on just as
it did before the Conquest. There are the same sort of documents
relating to dowries, debts, and loans; a loan of 3000 bunches of onions
sounds a large order!
There are also the same sales of slaves and land, with special
references to date plantations, and the [pg 183] apprenticeship of
slaves to learn trades such as weaving and stone-cutting, and also for
providing garments for the deities. (This is like the work of the
Athenian girls for Athene.)
Cyrus was especially favourable to the Jewish exiles he found in
Babylonia, and at the end of the seventy years' captivity he sent a
caravan of about 50,000 of them up the Euphrates valley and across the
desert under Zerubbabel, to seek their old homes, and rebuild the
Temple. It is thought that they cheered the long weary march of some
three or four months with the beautiful strains of their national
music, perhaps Psalm lxxxiv., for once more, as hopeful and free men
they could happily sing the songs of Zion, which had been impossible to
them as they wept by the waters of Babylon.
The wise Daniel is said to have been one of those who stayed behind,
and to this time is attributed the story of the den of lions when the
Great Darius had ascended the throne, after the short reign of the mad
Cambyses, who wrought such havoc in Egypt and in his own family.
We have many reminders of Darius in the Museum. There is, in the Babylonian Room, a cylinder seal
with his name in three languages, Persian, Susian, and Babylonian. The
national god of the Persians hovers over the king, hunting in his
chariot, as the Assyrian Ashur hovered over Ashur-nazir-pal and his
successors.
Then there are the casts of many important inscriptions of his times
and later, including the Squeezes from the Rock of Behistun, engraved
as we have seen [pg 184] on the face of a very high cliff, well out of
reach, even of the scholars who wished to unravel the mystery of the
arrow-headed writing with their help. The name of Darius, as on the
cylinder seal, is in the three languages of the chief peoples over whom
he ruled. The scene cut in the rock at Behistun, showing Darius
receiving the submission of ten chiefs with ropes round their necks,
and the hovering god above, is very fine. Darius, who did much for
trade and security in his wide dominions by settling the coinage and
establishing good roads, reigned from 521 B.C. to 485.
This latter date brings us to that wonderful fifth century B.C.,
already so full of names. It was during the middle years of this
century that we learnt about the Nile from Herodotus, the Father of
History, who had also much to say about the Persians and mighty
Babylon, with walls fifteen miles square, pierced by a hundred brazen
gates. He showed us, too, the busy quays on the Euphrates, the
wonderful hanging gardens, the brilliant temples and palaces. For, as
you will remember, it was the history of the wars between the Greeks
and Persians that he set out to write, while the events of that great
world-struggle between East and West were still fresh in men's minds.
The struggles began in the reign of Darius with differences between the
Greek colonies in Asia Minor and the Persian ruler to whom they owed
taxes and service. When the Athenians sympathized with their countrymen
across the blue sea of many islands and helped them burn an important
town, Darius burst [pg 185] out in a rage. "The Athenians, who are
they? Great Jove, grant me vengeance on the Athenians!"
The struggle that followed in the first years of the fifth century B.C.
is marked by the names of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis. Darius, with
ten times as many Persians as there were Greeks, was utterly routed at
Marathon; his son, Xerxes, who succeeded him, at Salamis; Thermopylae,
where the Spartans were killed to a man, was for the Greeks a defeat
greater than any victory.
In the Babylonian Room, we can
find a deed of partnership of the reign of Xerxes, next to numerous
deeds of his father's reign; there are also a few fragments of
alabaster vases inscribed with his names and titles.
When his vast host--from two to five millions--failed to spread over
Europe, as it would have done, but for gallant little Greece, Xerxes
retired to his capital at Susa, and it is here that the Bible history
(if Xerxes be Ahasuerus) admits us to an audience with the hero of the
ivory throne, and the fetters fro the unruly Hellespont as in the Greek
fable. He had always favoured the Jews, and we can see how much
influence they had if you read the story of Esther, the beautiful
Jewess he made his wife.
Artaxerxes, his son, had a Jewish cup-bearer, Nehemiah, whom he sent
with Ezra to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and teach the people the
Law of God. There are a few deed tablets of Artaxerxes next to those of
his father and grandfather.
During the time of confusion and plots that followed [pg 186] the death
of this Artaxerxes I., when the great empire of a hundred and
twenty-seven provinces that stretched from India to Ethiopia, was
slowly breaking up, a body of Greek soldiers, employed by one brother
against another, was led into the very heart of the country, to Babylon
itself. When the fortune of war failed them, the leader of their long
weary homeward journey through an unfriendly country, was a young
Athenian named Xenophon.
The story of their sufferings and hardships by the way, how they were
borne, their shouts of joy when seeing at last, shining below them, the
waters of the Black Sea, is all related by Xenophon, in one of the best
known books of ancient times--The
Retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks.
Through the first part of this fourth century, the quarrels amongst the
States of Greece were preparing the way for the rise of the kingdom of
Macedon, which about 333 B.C. brings us face to face with Alexander,
the world conqueror.
In the course of a few years what was known of Europe, Africa, Asia,
fell before him. He defeated Darius III., in more than one battle, and
after the death of the Persian king, became monarch of the East.
Perhaps there is no picture in all the romantic story more thrilling
than the meeting of the conqueror with the widow and children of the
man whose splendour was now his.
When we looked at Alexander's face--the bust in the Ephesus Room, the coins in the Room of Greek and Roman Life--we
thought of him chiefly as the conqueror [pg 187] of Egypt, and the
founder of Alexandria. As we look at him again--remembering how
Caracalla is said to have been proud to imitate the turn of his
head--we stand confused and overwhelmed at the thought of his triumphs
in Asia, his magnificence and mad folly. He died at Babylon, a few
years after the battle of Arbela, in which the Old Persian Empire came
to an end.
There are many centuries lying between Alexander's days and ours,
during which the modern nations of Europe, Germany, France, England,
and the rest, have been born, and have grown to what they are now. It
is a long and intricate story how these centuries of growth in the West
have passed chiefly in decay in the land of the Two Rivers in the East.
The few illustrative objects in the Museum are but as stepping-stones
here and there with which the bridge the stream of time, as waves of
conquest passed by, nations rose an fell, and misrule, neglect,
ignorance, brought the once cultivated land, well watered by canals
carefully kept up, back to its first desert state.
Perhaps you would like to find a few of these stepping-stones for the
sake of future study. To the Persian period belong a considerable
number of tablets containing scientific observations of the rise and
fall of certain stars and the omens connected with them. One of them
served as a reading book for students; they remind us of the Wise Men
of the East led by a bright star to Bethlehem a little later. Parthian
earthenware coffins, and some smaller bronze and clay objects, vases,
cups, lamps, come in the centuries [pg 188] between the Greek and Roman
occupations. Portraits of the rulers can be found amongst the coins
belonging to the time of the Decline of Art.
The Roman necklaces of cornelian, crystal, and other beads date from
the centuries when the dwellers in the Eastern Countries were
fellow-subjects with the ancient Britons under the world-empire of Rome.
Of special interest are the medicine bowls dating from the third
century B.C. to the fourth A.D. Fancy reciting with the doctor when one
is ill the text round a bowl of water, immediately before or after
drinking it!
From the Sassanian or New Persian period--from the third to the seventh
centuries A.D.--we have bronze helmets and inlaid silver bracelets,
rings, and cut gems, adorned with lions, bulls, and winged horses, and
some with named portraits.
The beautiful copy of the Koran in the Buddhist
Room (beyond the Gallery of
Indian Religions) will remind us of the great power of the
followers of Mahomet after the sixth century A.D. They are still
paramount in the lands of the Two Rivers.
"Red of the Dawn!
Is it turning a fainter red? So be it, but when shall we lay
The ghost of the Brute that is walking and haunting us yet, and be free?
In a hundred, a thousand winters? Ah, what will our children be?
The men of a hundred thousand, a million summers away!"
--Tennyson.
(typed by Dawn Taylor)