Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/190

ASSYRIA. Tabal to the northeast, Nairi and Urartu to the north and northwest, were once more invaded and subdued more effectively than before, though the successors of Sargon — Sennacherib (B.C. 706- 081), Esarhaddon (b.c. fi80-08), and Asur- banipal (B.C. 068-26) — were obliged again to send their armies in various directions, in order to maintain the supremacy of Assyrian domin- ion. Rebellions, however, were quickly put down. Defection was seriously punished, and the kingdom of .Judah w'as among those that suffered from the tyranny of Assyrian rulers.

The great ambition of the Assyrian rulers was to gain control over Egypt, and in 07.3 Esar- haddon actually undertook an Egj'ptian cam- paign. A second followed in 670, in the course of which the King laid siege to Memphis, and practically secured control. In 668 he set out for a third time, but died on the way. Before set- ting out from Nineveh, he had his son Asurba- nipal formally proclaimed as his successor, and had set another son, Shamash-Shumukin, over Babylonia. Asurbanipal took up the political legacy of Esarhaddon and entered Egyjit in triumph, accompanied by twenty-two princes of the seacoast, who had joined him. Memphis was occujjied without opposition, and Astirbanipal received the homage of the prefects and officials whom Esarliaddon had placed in authority, but who, after the departure of the King, had been forced to abandon their posts. For all that, the conquest was not. permanent, and soon after Asurbanipal's departure a rebellion once again broke forth. Most of the King's time during his reign was occupied with Elam, to the south- east, and Babylonia, to the south. Media, to the east of Babylonia, held in check as long as Babylonia itself was powerful, grew in strength as Babylonia became weaker, and in time be- came a menace to Assyria as well as to Baby- lonia. Asurbanipal inflicted several severe de- feats, and brought about a change of rulers. Still, he was as little able to obtain a permanent foothold here as in Egypt, and before the end of his reign Egypt and Elam, as well as the States of Syria and Palestine, were practically independent. He was more successful in Baby- lonia, though not until after a severe struggle. He had succeeded in quelling an uprising organ- ized by his own brother, Shamash-Slunnukin, in Babylonia. Shamash-Shunuikin, in despair, com- mitted suicide in B.C. 647, and henceforward Asurbani]ial assumed the reins of government in the south likewise, though as a concession to the Babylonians he ruled under a ditTerent name (viz., Kandalani). Asurbanipal was un- questionably a great warrior; but upon his death the rapid decline of Assyria set in, and some twenty years afterwards — in B.C. 607 — Nineveh fell by a combination of Babylonia, which again came to the front, with the Indo- European hordes in the north known as the Manda, or Scythians, who had for some genera- tions been encroaching upon the domains of ancient Oriental civilization. Assyria fell, and with it departed the glory of Mesopotamia, for the Neo- Baby Ionian nionarcliy establislicd by the Chaldican Nabopolassar was of short dura- tion. See Babylonia.

GovERMiMENT AKD RELIGION. The government of -Assyria was, as everywhere in the ancient Orient, a monarchy in which the king was the undisputed autocrat. Everything centred in the monarch, and it is characteristic that, in the royal inscriptions detailing the campaigns, names ofoffieers or officials are rarely mentioned. The king does everything, and in the pictorial repre- sentations is always placed in the foreground. Yet we know that in many campaigns the rulers themselves were not present, and that the or- ganization of the vast armies necessarily in- volved delegating a large measure of authority to subordinates. The large cities had governors appointed by the king, and what did not fall directly under royal control was regulated by the priests, who were the judges of the courts, the scribes, the medical advisers, as well as the intermediaries between the gods and the people. The religion of the Assyrians was identical with that of Babylonia. Starting out with nature- worship, the particular object of nature per- sonified — primarily the sun or the moon — be- came associated with a specific place, and as that place grew in importance, the deity vcho was the special patron of the place also as- sumed greater significance. In this way the chief deity worshiped in the ancient capital Ashur ( .-sshur, Assur), the name of whom was likewise Ashur, became the chief of the Assyrian pantheon, jvist as in the south Marduk, as the pa- tron deity of the city of Babylon, became thehead of the Babylonian pantheon. When the capital was transferred from Ashur to Calah, and sub- sequently to Nineveh, the worship of Ashur was too firmly established to permit of any change, and so the god moved to the new capital, just as he left the capital with the Assyrian armies and accompanied them from place to place. The large temples that grew up in Assyria en- tailed an elaborate organization of priests, which w-as modeled, as was the religious architecture, upon Babylonian prototypes. In the ritual prob- ably some originality wa^ displayed in Assyria, though the methods of ascertaining the will of the deity, by means of oracles and omens, were practically identical in the north and south. Special prayers, however, were composed by As- syrian priests to fit conditions prevailing in the north.

The dependence of Assyria upon Babylonia in everything pertaining to intellectual life is illustrated in the copies which Assyrian kings, notably Asurbanipal, had prepared of the vast literary productions — legends, e])ies, omen collections, medical compilations, te.xt-books. etc.—which were the work of Baliylonian priests, and formed the archives in the temples of Babylonia. The Assyrian priests likewise controlled the legal organization of the Empire; and the temples of the north, as in the south, were also the depositories in which records of commercial transactions, of legal disputes, of official procedure—such as division of estates, marriage settlements, forms of adoption, and the like — were kept. The material used for writing was clay, readily furnished by the soil, which was baked after the characters had been inscribed, and which proved to be most duralde. See Ci'NEiFOKM In.scription.s.

. The Assyrian cities, soon after the fall of the Empire, fell into decay. In the ease of Nineveh, this decay was hastened by the destruction, through fire, of important edifices. After a few centuries, nothing but huge mounds were left to indicate the site of past glory, and it was reserved for the Nineteenth Century to reveal the remains of Assvria to the world. Ex-