Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading. George Park Fisher
art was merely a pictorial record of events. The sense of beauty and creative power were wanting. The more religious character of the Babylonians created a difference in the architecture of the two peoples. In gem-cutting both were singularly expert. The Assyrians gave less attention to the burial of the dead. They showed an aptitude for trade; and Nineveh, in the eighth and seventh centuries, was a busy mart.
THE FALL OF ASSYRIA.—The first important blow at the Assyrian imperial rule was struck by the Medes. After nearly a century of resistance, they had been subdued (710 B.C.), and were subject to Assyria for a century after. In 640 B.C., they rose in revolt, under Phraortes, one of their native chiefs, who fell in battle. The struggle was continued by his son, Cyaxares. His plans were interrupted, however, by
THE IRRUPTION OF THE SCYTHIANS (623 B.C.).—More than a century before, these wandering Asiatic tribes had begun to make predatory incursions into Asia Minor. When Cyaxares was before Nineveh, they came down in greater force, and a horde of them, moving southward from the river Halys, invaded Syria. Jerusalem and the stronger cities held out against them, but the open country was devastated. They were met by Psammeticus I., king of Egypt, and bribed to turn back. They entered Babylonia; but Nabopolassar, the viceroy of Asshur-bani-pal (Sardanapalus), successfully defended the city of Babylon against their attacks. By Cyaxares, either these or another horde were defeated; but it was not until 605 B.C. that the region south of the Black Sea was cleared of them. The kingdom of Lydia had now come to play an important part in the affairs of western Asia.
Our first knowledge of the peoples of Asia Minor is from the Homeric poems (about 900 B.C.). The Chalybeans were in Pontus; west of them, the Amazonians and Paphlagonians; west of these, the Mysians; on the Hellespont, small tribes related to the Trojans; on the Ægean, the Dardanians and the Trojans (on the north), the Carians and the Lycians (on the south); on the north-east of these last, the Phrygians.
A large portion of the early inhabitants of Asia Minor were Semitic, and closely related to the Syrians. Semitic divinities were worshiped; a goddess, Mylitta, under other names, was adored in Pontus, at Ephesus, in Phrygia, and in Lydia.
The Lydians were of the Semitic race. Cybele, the female divinity whom they served, was the same deity whose altars were at Babylon, Nineveh, and Tyre. The rulers of the dynasty of the Mermnadæ, Gyges and his successors, spread the Lydian dominion until it extended to the Hellespont, and included Mysia and Phrygia. Alyattes was able to extirpate the Cimmerian hordes from the Sea of Azoff, who had overrun the western part of Asia Minor, and to make the Halys his eastern boundary. Gyges had been slain in the contest with those fierce barbarians, called in the Old Testament Gomer. At first he had sought help from the Assyrians, but he broke away from this dependence.
Liberated from the troubles of the Scythian irruption, Cyaxares formed an alliance with Nabopolassar, the viceroy in Babylon, who had revolted, and gained his independence. The Median ruler had subdued Armenia, and established his control as far as the Halys, making a treaty with Lydia. Now ensued the desperate conflict on which hung the fate of the Assyrian Empire. Nineveh was taken (606 B.C.) by the Medes under Cyaxares, and the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Nabopolassar. The Grecian story of Sardanapalus burning himself on a lofty bier, is a myth. Assyria was divided by the Tigris between the Medes and Babylonians.
THE THREE POWERS: EGYPT.—On the fall of Nineveh, there were three principal powers left on the stage of action, which were bound together by treaty, Lydia, Media, and Babylon. Egypt proved itself unable to cope with Babylonian power. Necho, during the siege of Nineveh, had attacked Syria, and defeated the Jews on the plain of Esdraelon, where king Josiah was slain. He dethroned Jehoahaz, Josiah's son, and enthroned Jehoiakim in his stead. But when, in 605 B.C., he confronted Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish, and was defeated, he was compelled to give up Syria, and to retire within the boundaries of Egypt.
III. THE NEW BABYLONIAN EMPIRE.
TRIUMPS OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR.—Syria was now at the mercy of Nebuchadnezzar. He captured Jerusalem (597 B.C.), despoiled the temple and palace, and led away Jehoiakim as a captive. He placed on the throne of Judah Jehoiakim's uncle, Zedekiah. But this king, having arranged an alliance between Egypt and the Phoenician cities, revolted (590 B.C.), refusing to pay his tribute. Again Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, but raised the siege, in order to drive home Apries II. (Hophra), the Egyptian ally of Zedekiah. The city was taken, the king's sons were killed in his presence, his own eyes were put out; and, after the temple and palace had been burned and the city sacked, he, with all the families of the upper class who had not escaped to the desert, was carried away to Babylon (586 B.C.). Tyre (the old city) in like manner was taken by assault (585 B.C.).
By Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon was enlarged, and adorned on a scale of unequaled splendor. The new palace, with its "hanging gardens," the bridge over the Euphrates, the Median wall connecting the Euphrates and the Tigris on his northern boundary, and magnificent waterworks, are famous structures which belong to this reign. Wealth and luxury abounded. But vigor of administration fell away under his successors; and Babylon, after a dominion short when compared with the long sway of Nineveh, was conquered by Cyrus, the Medo-Persian king, in 538 B.C. The last king was Nabonetus.
THE CITY OF BABYLON.—Babylon was a city of the highest antiquity. The name (Bab-ili, "Gate of God") is Semitic. The city is mentioned in the earliest cuneiform records, and from the time of Hammurabi was the chief city of the land. Destroyed by Sennacherib (690 B.C.), it was rebuilt by Esarhaddon, but not fully restored and adorned until the reigns of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar.
Babylon surpassed all ancient cities in size and magnificence. Its walls were forty miles in circumference. This extent of wall probably included Borsippa, or "Babylon the Second," on the right bank of the river. Babylon proper was mainly on the left. Within the walls were inclosed gardens, orchards, and fields: the space was only filled in part by buildings; but the whole area was laid out with straight streets intersecting one another at right angles, like the streets of Philadelphia. The wall was pierced by a hundred gates, probably twenty-five in each face. The Euphrates, lined with quays on both sides, and spanned with drawbridges, ran through the town, dividing it into two nearly equal parts. The city was protected without by a deep and wide moat. The wall was at least seventy or eighty feet in height, and of vast and unusual thickness. On the summit were two hundred and fifty towers, placed along the outer and inner edges, opposite to one another, but so far apart, according to Herodotus, that there was room for a four-horse chariot to pass between. The temple of Bel was in a square inclosure, about a quarter of a mile both in length and breadth. The tower of the temple was ascended on the outside by an inclined plane carried around the four sides. An exaggerated statement of Strabo makes its height six hundred and six feet. Possibly, this represents the length of the inclined plane. In the shrine on the top were a golden table and a couch; according to Diodorus, before the Persian conquest there were colossal golden images of three divinities, with two golden lions, and two enormous serpents of silver. It is thought that Herodotus may have described the splendid temple of Nebo (now Birs Nimrûd), and have mistaken it, by reason of its enormous ruins, for the temple of Bel, which it rivaled in magnificence. The great palace is represented to have been larger than the temple of Bel, the outermost of its three inclosing walls being three miles in circumference. Its exterior was of baked brick. The "Hanging Gardens" was a structure built on a square, consisting of stages or stories, one above another, each supported by arches, and covered on the top, at the height of at least seventy-five feet, with a great mass of earth in which grew flowers and shrubs, and even large trees. The ascent to the top was by steps. On the way up were stately and elegant apartments. The smaller palace was on the other side of the river.
LITERATURE.—Works on Oriental History mentioned on p. 42. Tiele, Babylonisch-assyrische Geschichte (1888); Kaulen, Assyrien und Babylonien (5th ed., 1899); Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria (1901); Goodspeed, History of the Babylonians and Assyrians (1902); King, Articles Assyria and Babylonia in the Encyclopedia