Historic Ornament. James M Ward
a Turanian race which is supposed to have come from the plateau of Central Asia. The two languages were used side by side, the Semitic as the common tongue, and the Accadian as a literary language. The earliest known king of Chaldea was named Eannadu (B.C. 4500). The Chaldeans advanced slowly along the Tigris and pushed their kingdom towards Assyria in the north, where they built the cities of Ashur (Kal’at Sherkât), Calah (Nimroud), and Ninua (Nineveh).
The northern portion of the Chaldeo-Assyrian empire asserted its independence about 1700 B.C., and Assyria became a separate kingdom. From B.C. 1275, when Tukulti-Adar I., the Assyrian king, conquered Babylonia, down to the destruction of Nineveh, B.C. 609, the Chaldean kingdom took a place of secondary importance, while Assyria became the greatest power of Western Asia.
Tiglath-Pileser I. (B.C. 1100), and Ashur-nasir-pal (B.C. 885), were amongst the greatest kings of Assyria. The latter was a great builder. He built the great palace at Calah (Nimroud), the place to which he removed his seat of government from Ashur. Assyrian art reached a high state of development in his reign. His son and successor, Shalmaneser II. (B.C. 860-825) was no less powerful; he extended his kingdom by wars from the Persian Gulf to the Armenian mountains, and from Media to the Mediterranean. Jehu, King of Israel, sent him tribute. After his death Assyria declined and shrank within its borders, but under Tiglath-Pileser III. regained its lost ground again (B.C. 745). Sargon, the “Son of no one” (B.C. 722-705), usurps the throne, makes great wars, is the first King of Assyria that comes in contact with the Egyptians. He built the great palace at Khorsabad, which in late years has been excavated. Sennacherib, his son, succeeded him, whose wars with Hezekiah, King of Judah, are recorded in the Bible in the Book of Kings. He built a great palace at Nineveh, many of the wall slabs of which are now in the British Museum.
The death of the succeeding monarch, Esarhaddon, took place before he had completed his great palace at Calah (Nimroud). Another palace supposed to be his has lately been excavated at Nineveh. It lies buried under the mound of Nebi Yunus. The Assyrian kings were great builders of palaces. Each one, it appears, thought it his duty either to add a large portion to a palace of his predecessor, or to build a new one for himself. Ashur-bani-pal, who reigned for forty-two years (B.C. 668-626), was one of the most powerful and most cruel of all the Assyrian monarchs. His victory over the Elamites is depicted on the sculptured slabs that enrich the Ninevite gallery of the British Museum. At his death the Assyrian power was broken up, partly by the Scythian hordes that swept over that part of Asia, and partly by the Medes. Nineveh was besieged by Cyaxares of Media, and by Nabopolassar, an Assyrian general who held command in Babylonia. It was at length captured and destroyed (B.C. 609). The whole empire was then divided between the Medes and the Babylonians. The new Babylonian empire lasted seventy years, and in the reign of its last king, Nabonidus, when under the command of Belshazzar, his son, Babylon was captured by Cyrus of Persia (B.C. 539). From this time until its subjugation by Alexander the Great Babylon was under the Persians.
Fig. 154.—A Winged Bull, Assyria. (M)
The religion of the Chaldeo-Assyrian nation was the worship of the sun, moon, stars, and the various powers of nature. Their chief gods were Shamash, the sun; Sin, the moon; Marduk, a sun-god, the carrier of prayers from earth to heaven; Anum, the sky god; Bel, the god of the earth; and Ea, the god of great knowledge: the last three were the Trinity. Other gods were Dagon, the fish-god; Ishtar, their Venus; Nabu, their Mercury and scribe of the gods; Rammânu, the god of wind and thunder; and Negral, the god of war and hunting.
The Assyrian and Babylonian people have a proverbial name for being a warlike and cruel race, in opposition to their contemporaries, the more peaceful and gentle Egyptians. At the same time they have the reputation of being highly skilled in arts and sciences.
Fig. 155.—Demons, from the Palace of Assurbanipal, British Museum. (P. & C.)
The greatness of the Chaldeans in astronomy, in astrology, and as wise men generally, is too well known to be repeated. Their skill in the arts of building, sculpture, in the use of metals, in pottery, tiles, gem cutting, painting, embroidery and weaving, excites our wonder and admiration.
Fig. 156.—A Griffon in the Egyptian Style. (M.)
The art of the Assyrians is intensely earnest and full of realism, vigorous in the highest degree, and true art of its kind. It is the art of a people who were brave and powerful, and of princes that were despotic and stern. The keynote of their art was force, whether displayed in its physical and realistic aspects, in the sculptural representations of ferocious animals, as their lions and dogs, or embodied in their mysterious and wonderful creations of human-headed bulls, and other monsters and demons (Figs. 154, 155), or in the haughty self-consciousness of strength and power, with which their sculptors sought to invest the representations of the monarchs going forth to battle or to the lion hunt (Fig. 163); everywhere, in the higher aspects of Assyrian art, physical force, or personal force of will, is the culminating point of expression aimed at in all their efforts.
The sculptured lion of the Egyptians is couchant, half slumbering; the Assyrian lion is rampant and roaring for his prey. The simile may be used to illustrate the characteristic difference of the Art of both countries. The Assyrian made his art minister to his worldly uses and delights, the Egyptian lavished his on the tomb and for the hereafter.
The Assyrian religion and the Chaldean magicians’ and astrologers’ exposition of its mysteries, doubtless gave the subject-matter for the creation of those strange combinations of chimeras, monsters, and bi-form deities that are so common in Assyrian art.
The griffons and other curious hybrid creatures of the Middle Ages, and those that adorn the Gothic buildings of our own days, can be traced to their birthplace in Assyrian art.
Fig. 157—Eagle-headed Divinity from Nimroud, with the Sacred Tree. (P. & C.)
Fig. 158.—Figure of a Goddess in Act of Adoration, British Museum. (P. & C.)
The great god of the Assyrians was named Assur, the all-powerful god of battles. In his name all kinds of cruelty and torture were practised on heretics and apostates, and in his name, and to extend his kingdom of Assyria, the Ninevite kings found their excuses to make war with nations far and near. He seems to have been a later creation of the Assyrian gods, but became supreme as Nineveh rose in power. He was supposed to have descended from Sin, the moon-god. The winged-globe, with the god in the centre holding the bow and arrow, or thunder-bolt (Fig. 159), is by some thought to be a representation of Assur. A similar figure is seen at the top of the Assyrian standard, as the “Director of Armies” (Fig. 161). This figure in the centre of the ring or solar disk, who is evidently divine, by reason of his feathered lower garment, and his wings that raise him in mid-air, above all humanity, is quite likely to be the original type of the later Persian supreme god, Athurâ-Mazda (see Fig. 243), and the emblematic symbol of his divinity is quite likely to have been designed and adapted from the winged disk or “globe” of the Egyptians.
Fig. 159—The Winged Globe with the Figure of a God. (P. & C.)
Fig. 160.—The Winged Globe; from Layard. (P. & C.)
The winged globe (Fig. 160) of the Assyrians is an imitation of that of Egypt; this emblem having found its way into Assyria on many carvings in ivory and on articles in bronze, carried hither by the trading Phœnicians from Egypt, and the emblem in question was, according to Perrot, appropriated by the Assyrians.