READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE. TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER IV

THE AGE OF ASHURBANIPAL

THE prince whom Esarhaddon had appointed as his successor, Ashurbanipal (669—626 B.C.), had received an education which rendered him conversant with the science and letters of his age without neglecting the instruction in the chase and in warfare considered necessary for one of royal birth. His particular pride was his mastery of the art of tablet-writing (tup-sharruti), under which term is to be understood literary composition as well as the technical knowledge required for the writing of cuneiform; and that his boast of this accomplishment was justified is well known from the two magnificent libraries collected by him at Nineveh. Former princes—Sargon for example—had gathered texts together; but Ashurbanipal did more than this. From a colophon on some few tablets from the libraries it is clear that some texts were read to him for his approval; and it is not fanciful to find in the splendid series of historical records of the earlier part of his reign the work of the king himself. His interest in art also was as personal as had been Sennacherib’s; in his palace were discovered the reliefs which will always remain the finest examples of Assyrian art. For modern students ‘the age of Ashurbanipal’ marks a definite stage in the history of culture, and the modern term as rightly links that king’s name with his of Augustus.

It is impossible, may always be impossible, to appreciate justly this culture, largely because Assyrian cities have revealed to the excavator little but architectural remains and records written in cuneiform. The objects handled daily by this ancient people, whether of metal or wood or clay, as well as the rare and magnificent treasures once stored in their temples and palaces, have survived only in a few cases; so that, instead of the convincing testimony of the material object, recourse must be had to the laborious reconstruction of a civilization from the written word. Such a reconstruction is sure to be incomplete, and sometimes incorrect. Thus it is usual to assume that social and political organization in Babylon and Assyria were closely parallel, largely because the details learnt from the study of the one land have been used to complete our knowledge of the other; yet more recent research shows that the two countries were probably as distinct as Greece and Rome. The object of the following account of the Assyrian civilization is partly to explain, partly to justify, the ascendancy the nation won and held in Media, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine.

I.

ASSYRIAN RELIGION

A race like the Assyrians, living in a land without great natural advantages, condemned by their geographical position to constant struggles with animals and men, as well as with adverse incidents due to natural causes, is likely to hold gloomy views of the supernatural powers, and at the same time to be fanatically devoted to the practice of religion. To such a people, devils and evil spirits will seem to lurk in every desert place, and to hide in every dark corner, and it is not surprising that whole series of charms and incantations against all kinds of devils, against the utukku and the rabisu, the lilitu and the labartu, have been found. The priests who were entrusted with the task of exorcizing such demons had above all to discover the particular kind of demon with whom they had to deal. But the knowledge of the demon’s name was not always attainable, and then recourse must be had to the recital of the name of every possible kind of demon. As a prevention against the entry of such demons into a child or man, charms were worn, of various kinds. Demoniacal human heads, or monstrous animal forms, made in clay and metal, were suspended round the neck, on the principle that like averts like. Inscribed stone tablets, with seven magical words seven times repeated, with a cabalistic significance, were especially efficacious; and these tablets sometimes bore in relief representations of a labartu suckling her animal brood. It is unnecessary to linger on the details of these popular superstitions; they resemble the superstitions of all subsequent ages, and are exactly the same as those of Babylonia. It is, however, curious to note that while the existence of witchcraft and black magic is well attested, the only texts remaining are exorcisms; it is indeed scarcely to be expected that a test enlightening us as to the procedure of a witch will ever be found.

The Assyrian, much like his modern successors in the Tigris valley, had no taste for deductive reasoning. The mere fact that one event succeeded another led him to believe the first event to be a cause. This credulity, combined with great industry in observation, and infinite patience in arranging the material, led to the collection of great series of ‘Omens,’ in which the result of every kind of possible and impossible event was stated, and the method of avoiding evil results prescribed. The baru, or ‘seer,’ the class of priest specially concerned with the science of ‘omens,’ occupied a peculiarly important place in Assyrian religion, and while much of the literature concerned with astronomical and terrestrial observations was derived from foreign sources, especially Babylonia, a number of the texts were actually compiled in Assyria. This pseudo-science was not without its value in the ancient world; to it was due the habit of careful observation, both in astronomy and medicine, and from these great collections of observed facts real knowledge sprang, with which Greek and Roman writers were familiar.

The basis of Assyrian religion is shown by the popular superstitions to be fear; and that fear was not relieved, as amongst some other peoples, by the play of sprightly fancy. It is consonant with this that the personal relation of the individual to his gods finds expression in the confession of sin, wittingly or unwittingly committed. The sin may be a ritual or a moral sin; in either case the result is equally disastrous. The confession of sin, accompanied by a prayer for release from the consequence of the sin, was not, so far as is known, connected with a do ut abeas formula. The great gods were benevolent and beneficent, and reliance might be placed on their mercy. A distinctively Assyrian, as opposed to Babylonian, theology concerning the great gods does not seem to have existed save in one particular. The place occupied in the Babylonian pantheon by Marduk belonged in the northern kingdom to Ashur. In the Assyrian version of the Creation Epic recently found, Ashur was the hero of the great gods in their war against Tiamat. Ashur descended into the underworld after Zu stole the ‘tablet of ordinances’, and was resurrected. ‘Ashur’ and ‘Marduk’ are possibly epithets of one and the same god, used in distant ages by different tribes, in which case Ashur existed long before his people came to the city of Ashur. Most authorities, however, believe him to have been originally the local god of that city. Such matters must necessarily be obscure, but there are certain features of Ashur which show that in some respects Assyrian religion was independent of Babylonian influence, and must therefore be mentioned here.

The peculiar symbol of Ashur was the winged disk, within which the god himself is depicted leading his people in battle or investing his chosen with authority. Ashur was thus never represented simply as a human being with certain divine attributes, like the Babylonian deities. The Assyrian army carried the divine symbol in battle, preferably in the chariot of the king himself, and set it up in conquered cities to be worshipped by the new subjects. Opposition to the Assyrian overlord or rebellion against him was considered by Ashur’s people as sin against the supreme god; and it may be that the extreme cruelty of this people, which, in truth, consists rather in the frankness with which savage punishments are recapitulated than in the punishments themselves, as compared with those of other nations and periods, was due to the gloomy religious fanaticism which seems to have been natural to them.

The expiation of sin against the national god could only be accomplished by ritual ceremonies; and though the texts make no mention of such rites when detailing the slaughter of prisoners, it is clear from a bas-relief from the palace of Ashur-Nasir-Pal at Kalakh that such were performed after a victory. On the relief referred to, there is a scene depicted in which captives are brought before a priest, so marked by the stole he wears across his left shoulder; he stands at the entrance of a tent which serves certain religious purposes, as is clear from the two goats which adorn its poles. In the upper register, representing by an artistic convention the background, an Assyrian soldier may be seen leading away two captives clad in lions’ heads and skins; that they are being led away to the slaughter is clear, for immediately adjoining this scene soldiers may be seen displaying the heads of their victims to the musicians and bowmen. The prisoners being dressed up in animal hides in this way, and the presence of the priest, point unmistakably to the conclusion that their execution was a religious ceremony. These facts serve to show the nature of Ashur; he was a solar god, peculiar to the Assyrian nation, leading and directing the nation, especially the king, in peace and war, inspiring the soldiery by his presence, and exacting divine vengeance on the enemies of his people. It is not difficult to understand why Ashur never gained willing adherents among other nationalities. It should be remembered, however, that when the Zoroastrian religion prevailed in the land which had once been Ashur’s, the symbol of the god still remained to testify to his former glory; for that symbol was adopted to represent the great and good Ahuramazda, and, together with the symbol rites and ceremonies once connected with the worship of Ashur, must have passed into the Zoroastrian faith.

The conquered provinces on which the worship of Ashur was imposed must have recognized in him a counterpart of the Baalim they themselves acknowledged; the religious difficulties with which Seleucid and Roman rulers in Syria were faced never troubled the Assyrians. It is probable that a bare tree trunk, ornamented with green branches and bound with metal collars, played an important part in the Ashur cult; and this so closely resembles the asherah worshipped in Syria, that apparently no dangerous alterations in local cults had to be undertaken. The acknowledgment of the supremacy of Ashur could then be easily imposed; for the same reason it was a supremacy entirely dependent on the military accomplishments of his people, and disappeared immediately once their arms failed to hold the field.

The Assyrians would seem to have been more gloomy and fanatical in their religious beliefs than the Babylonians, and their consequent fierceness and cruelty proved invaluable in enabling them to gain and keep possession of lands which have throughout all history been reduced to order by means of violence only. At the same time the fact that their national god was, in essentials, similar to the gods of the peoples whom they had to govern enabled them to impose on their subjects with the more ease a worship which did not interfere with ancient rites. When their subjects were greatly inferior in civilization, as in the north­eastern and eastern provinces, the religion of Ashur in certain respects made so great an impression that certain rites and symbols connected with it actually persisted for many centuries after the god himself was forgotten.

II.

THE ASSYRIAN STATE

It appears useless to attempt to explain Assyrian supremacy on geographical grounds, since the Assyrian people occupied a part of the Tigris valley not specially distinguished from any other except perhaps by certain military disadvantages. The essential difference between Assyria and the kingdoms which fell to the rank of tributaries in the empire is to be found in the constitution of the Assyrian state. From the earliest times, it would seem, the Assyrians formed a nation, not a congeries of city states, or tribal districts. The land of Ashur could be ruled by one king only; the district governors were his officers and servants. There was one institution above all which prevented the district governors from striving to set themselves up as independent kings, that of the office known as limmu. The limmu was the eponym official of the year; it is probable that the year was named after him in virtue of the fact that he conducted the religious ceremonies at the Nisan festival. At Babylon, it was the king himself who ‘took the hands of Bel,’ that is, he led Marduk out in his triumphal procession, after submitting to a ceremony in which he was yearly re-chosen and re-invested by the god. In Assyria the king performed this ceremony in his second year or as soon as military necessities allowed; thereafter the officers who were district governors performed the ceremony in the order of their importance. It is clear that such an institution must have great significance in supporting a central, national authority. Thus the limmu official who immediately followed the king was the turtanu, the commander-in-chief, and governor of the district of Harran. No one could be governor of Harran unless he were limmu the year after the king; no one could be limmu in that year unless he were the turtanu nominated by the king. For the years 856—752 the names of five turtans are known, partially accounting for 100 years, and in no case does a son succeed his father. In this way the central authority of the king must have been much more efficient than that exercised, for example, by a king of Babylon, for in that country the district officials conducted the religious ceremonies of the New Year in their own capitals and held office by hereditary right. In the home province of Ashur, indeed, the succession of son to father, in Babylonian fashion, is attested, in one case for four generations, but even here it was the exception rather than the rule. Throughout Assyrian history the prominent men in Assyria were the king’s personal attendants. The ill-advised attempt to abrogate the rotation of the limmu office by Ashur-Nirari IV was soon seen to be a mistake, and the institution remained in force until the fall of the empire.

In this unity of the Assyrian people, centred about the king, is to be sought the origin of Assyrian supremacy. In the time of Tukulti-Ninurta II, Ashur-Nasir-Pal and Shalmaneser III the state organization was still elementary; but their conquests necessitated an extension of the king’s authority, and the invention of new political terms which should meet the needs of their imperial designs. In their time, in addition to the king’s natural subjects, the people of the Assyrian lands, three other kinds of subjects are found. Firstly, the tributary peoples, bound to pay a fixed amount of goods yearly, were much in the same position as tribu­tary peoples had always been. Secondly, certain tributary peoples were bound to respect the king’s authority by the installation of an official in their own princes’ palaces, the zabil kuduri, who attended to the exaction not only of tribute but of forced labour. Thirdly, certain cities were reduced to a state of complete subjection by the presence of a governor, shaknu or urasu, whose word was law. These governors were themselves responsible to one of the great district governors.

The only change in this administrative system introduced in later times consisted in a division of the great territorial districts into smaller administrative areas. Thus the home province of Ashur was divided into two, Ashur and Ekallate. These smaller areas were termed pakhati, a term borrowed apparently from Babylonia, where these smaller administrative districts had long been established. The governor of the new area is indifferently termed bel pakhati, the lord of the district, or shaknu, a term belonging originally to the ruler of the older territories. These district governors were supported by deputies, amelu shanu, burgomasters, khazanu, and other civil and military officers. The government of each of these areas was, in fact, in the Sargonid period, a replica of the Assyrian government in miniature; the total effect of the change must have been to secure a more effective control of the detail of government in distant provinces by the central authority. Tiglath-Pileser III was most probably the ruler who introduced the new division, which remained in force until the fall of Assyria, and the system is one more proof of the outstanding ability of that remarkable man. It is unfortunate that the general terms employed in the historical inscriptions for the various kinds of subjection to Assyrian authority do not allow of our distinguishing in all cases the class to which a province belonged. It is very often impossible to say whether a particular city or district retained an independent ruler under the tutelage of an Assyrian shaknu, or whether it was entirely subjected. The difficulty appears most clearly in the north-western provinces, where native rulers are mentioned almost immediately after their lands had been constituted Assyrian provinces. The careful government of the provinces is attested not only by the letters but by such documents as the Census-lists from Harran. Many details remain uncertain, but the Assyrian provincial government, in certain features exactly similar to that adopted by Rome in the same country, must be commended as a considerable development of, and advance on, the methods of Babylonian, Egyptian and Hittite kings.

The power of the king was probably unlimited, at least in theory; and, though none but skilful and energetic monarchs were able to maintain Assyrian supremacy, the country was in general well governed. In practice, however, a check upon their authority did exist, as it existed in the case of Croesus, or the Greek tyrants. In Assyria the personal application to the gods for guidance became, in the case of the king, a demand for direction in affairs of national importance. Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal were only copying the example of their forefathers when they asked Ishtar of Arbela whether they should set out on such and such an expedition, what the success of certain enemies was likely to be, and whether they should nominate such an one to a certain post. The oracles of the gods thus held a peculiar position in Assyria, even as in Greece, and it is clear that the political effect must have been to give the aristocratic class, which alone could hold the highest priestly offices, an indirect means of in­fluencing policy. Even a Sennacherib was not likely to disregard an unfavourable omen. The institution had its use; without unduly restricting the initiative of the leader on whom the country depended, it ensured his refraining from any enterprise definitely disapproved of by a number of those competent to judge.

III.

ASSYRIAN SOCIETY

It is unfortunate that the only commercial and legal documents from Assyria as yet known are concerned with members of the king’s household. Yet even so the partial picture of Assyrian society in the Sargonid period presented by these documents is of the greatest interest historically. Nineveh, from the time of Sennacherib onwards, was the kind of capital such an empire must inevitably have. Men from the far north-west jostled Medes and Elamites in the gate of the palace; the royal scribes wrote down as best they might in legal documents the queer words used by men of a strange tongue; and the keepers of the royal records appended notes in Aramaic to facilitate reference to the business documents. Indeed the policy of transplanting masses of Aramaeans to Assyria, which Ashur-Nasir-Pal seems to have followed so deliberately, bore remarkable fruit. An interesting letter in Aramaic concerning political events in Babylonia found in the excavations of Kalat Sherkat only serves as a culminating proof of the considerable extent to which the Aramaean language was commonly employed. In such a cosmopolitan city as Nineveh there must have been a brilliant social life concerning which it would be idle to speculate.

It was pointed out (by C. H. W. Johns) that in all probability the native Assyrians formed an actual minority of the inhabitants of Nineveh; yet it is not to be doubted that many of foreign extraction were reckoned Assyrian citizens and acquired rights as such. This may have been secured by many means, such as intermarriage and adoption, but nothing is known as to any law directly concerning naturalization. The great majority of the foreigners were unquestionably slaves; but since slaves could acquire personal property, many of them attained influential positions, as in imperial Rome. On the other hand, Assyrians themselves must have had their heads shaved and their ears pierced, the outward marks of slavery, for families in reduced circumstances might sell children into slavery. The actual treatment of slaves would appear to have been humane, but in law their position differed in no respect from that of other chattels.

The freeman in Assyria, as in Babylonia, necessarily belonged to one of three classes. These classes were termed the mar banuti, patricians; ummane, craftsmen; and khubshi, proletariat. The mar banuti, members of princely houses, were the class from which the kings selected their governors, chief priests and generals. Few in number, their privileges would yet seem to have been maintained successfully throughout the Assyrian period. In order that this might be so, recourse was had to more liberal measures than was usual in ancient society. It has already been noted that ladies of the royal blood in times of great stress occupied a ruling position in Assyria, Sammuramat, for example, and Nakia. Similarly in the Sargonid period the king not infrequently appointed women of the patrician class as governors. It must be remembered that the Assyrians were not a prolific race; the average family numbered only two or three sons, even in the lower classes, and amongst the mar banuti the birth-rate may have been even lower. It is possible, though this is uncertain, that the numbers of the patrician class were increased by the king from time to time by the inclusion of successful administrators and soldiers.

By far the greater number of the native Assyrians belonged to the class of ummane. In this term were included all who practised a definite profession; the banker (tamkaru) and the scribe (tupsharru) were considered to belong to the same class as the potter (pakharu) or the carpenter (naggaru). Difference in profession was, however, a matter of considerable importance, for each trade had a guild organization, and quarters were set aside in every ‘royal city’ for the different professions. The organization of these guilds, borrowed from the army, must have served several purposes. ‘The chief of ten,’ ‘the chief of fifty,’ ‘the chief of a kisir’ (company or battalion), were not only responsible for the work of those under term but were bound to see that the state dues were regularly paid. By the majority of the ummane these dues were paid in kind; military service, forced labour, and a payment of a portion of the produce of their labour to the temples did not require cash payments, though these were quite probably made by the richer among them in commutation for personal service. The merchant who equipped and provided for a slave, whether for military service or for labour, was himself exempt; and the city workers must have found it simpler to pay the temple-dues in silver than in kind, but of this we have no evidence. The complicated commercial traffic of Assyria was very vital to the welfare of the country, and was always carefully fostered by its kings. The caravan trade, diligently conducted by private enterprise, was supported by the money advanced by bankers; the travelling traders, sukharu, who generally agreed to pay 25 per cent, interest on the capital borrowed, must have realized considerable profits on their undertakings. The means of exchange in these commercial undertakings was, in the Sargonid period, gold, silver and copper; the lead once commonly employed had fallen into disuse for obvious reasons. The metal (generally silver) was cast in half-shekel pieces (zuzu), as we know from an inscription of Sennacherib, and was reckoned in two standards, that ‘of the King’ or that ‘of Carchemish’, more commonly the latter. The fluctuations in market prices were very considerable; successful campaigns would lead, for instance, to a great fall in the price of slaves, horses, or camels, and a proper investigation of economic cause and effect in these times may serve greatly to increase our knowledge of the causes and motives of Assyrian policy.

The numbers of the craftsmen class were well maintained by the natural method of a son succeeding his father; they were further increased by the system of apprenticing. A lad, whether free or slave, might be sent to a jeweller, for example, for a term of years, the jeweller agreeing, for a certain sum, to keep him and teach him the trade during that period. It will be seen that in many particulars the guild organization of the Assyrian ummane corresponded to the mediaeval craft guilds of western Europe. Unfortunately the position of the agricultural workers of this class in Assyria is not equally clear. Whether the majority of the farmers were in possession of their own land, or merely tenants of mar banuti, is not known. In the leases which are still extant the terms imposed on the tenants seem hard, but Assyria was probably no less fertile than Babylonia in Herodotus’ day, and labour was extremely cheap. It may be assumed that there was a large and prosperous body belonging to the class of ummane interested in agriculture.

The political welfare of a state is dependent upon the condition of the lowest class within its borders. The vigour of the Assyrian state may well be adduced as evidence for the physical well-being of the proletariat (khubshi). From this class must have come by far the larger proportion of the Assyrian standing army, from it too were drawn the Assyrian colonists who were scattered over the provinces. There is little to be learnt about the situation of the khubshi from the documents still extant, but it is clear that they had not inconsiderable rights which served to alleviate their extreme poverty. An interesting, but fragmentary, Assyrian law, which belongs to the code drawn up in the thirteenth or twelfth century, affords a signal example of this. It reads:

“If a woman has been given in marriage, and the enemy capture her husband; if she have no father-in-law and no son, she shall await her husband for two years. If during those two years she has no sustenance, she shall go and declare it. If she be a palace-servant, her... shall provide for her, she shall work for him. If she be... and of the plebs (khubshi)... she shall go and make the following declaration... the judges shall accordingly ask the city magistrates that they go to a field in that city. They shall hire the field and the house for two years, and give it to her that she may dwell there, and they shall write a tablet for her. She shall fulfil the two years, (then) she shall dwell with the husband she chooses. They shall write a tablet for her, that she is a widow. If subsequently her lost husband returns to the land, he shall take back his wife who has completed her time of waiting (ki-i-ti), he shall not approach the sons whom she has borne to her second husband, but the second husband shall take them”.

“The field and the house which have been given for her sustenance for the time of waiting for a fixed sum (lit. a complete sum, i.e. without interest), if he does not undertake forced labour for the king, he shall pay for on the conditions they were given, and he shall take them (for his possession). And if he does not return, but dies in another land, his field and his house, where the king gave them, he shall give (back)”.

It is unlikely that the arrangement for the provision for the sustenance of the poor was limited to this particular case; indeed, the tenour of the law seems to point to a well-understood system, by which such sustenance was a state-charge, since the king himself was the donor of the field, and in case of the husband’s return was to be paid by forced labour or by an agreed sum; if the husband did not return, only the relinquishment of the house and field could be legally demanded. The local judges and magistrates merely acted as representatives of the king’s authority. On the whole, it may be assumed that the condition of the khubshi in Assyria was tolerable at all times, and in such prosperous times as those of the Sargonid dynasty compared favourably with those of the lower classes in any ancient state.

IV.

ASSYRIAN ARMY

Military success may be gained by a nation owing to various accidents. The military genius of Alexander won the eastern world for Greece. Sheer weight of numbers brought predominance for a century to the Achaemenian dynasty of Persia. The religious enthusiasm of Islam won empires east and west of Arabia. Superiority of equipment may well account for the earlier victories of Egyptian Pharaohs in Palestine and Syria. Such explanations cannot be given when military predominance is won by such a state as Assyria. Not one king alone, but a series of kings asserted the superiority of the Assyrian army over any brought to meet it. In many cases the weight of numbers must have been opposed to the Assyrian arms; and though religious enthusiasm and patriotic feeling doubtless played an important part in the efficiency of the Assyrian army, another reason must be found for a predominance which lasted so long. As to military equipment, there is abundant evidence that the Babylonians, Syrians, Urartians and Elamites were as well armed as the Assyrians. The secret of Assyrian, as of Roman, success in the battlefield is to be found in the military organization of the state. In defeat, as in victory, Assyrian military organization continued unimpaired. Long periods of depression, in which the main sources of supply were cut off, such as that between 1100 and 900, failed to deprive that organization of the power of recovery; and the weakness of individual rulers, leading to civil strife, as in the years immediately preceding the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III, did not destroy its vitality.

During the Sargonid period it is clear that the king had at his command two classes of soldiers; the first class consisted of men undergoing a period of military service, the second formed the national militia. It may be that every male was subject to a term of military service in theory: in practice probably only those who could not afford to pay sums of money for exemption, or supply a slave to serve for them, actually underwent the exertion of continual training in the hunt or in military campaigns or in garrison duty. The methods employed for prolonging service in the army are not known; but the language employed in the letters seems to show that each governor had troops which consisted of his personal adherents, and remained always with him. On these troops the maintenance of the Assyrian empire depended, and if reinforcements were needed the king sent them from his own retinue. The arms employed by the Assyrians were chariotry, light cavalry, heavy and light infantry, and sappers. These were organized into regular military formations called kisri, but their exact size is unknown; discipline was maintained by subdivisions into ‘fifties’ and ‘tens.’ There is abundant proof in the inscriptions and the reliefs that considerable attention was paid to the science of warfare, and that in certain respects strategy and tactics were better understood during the Assyrian period than at any other time previous to the advent of Alexander. Campaigns were undertaken from fortified camps, and these camps appear to have been as well contrived as those of the Romans; in the field, the terrain to be invaded was always the factor which determined the numbers and type of the force employed. It was especially in siege-warfare that the Assyrians excelled. Rams for making breaches, platforms on wheels with arrow proof defences from which to fight the defenders, and mining methods were all freely employed; only the most cunningly fortified cities, Jerusalem for example, or Van, could be expected to withstand such an assault. When it is remembered that Herodotus states that the Persians did not arrange their army according to arms but according to tribes, and that the Greeks themselves until the third century B.C. were rarely successful in siege-operations, the efficiency of the Assyrian standing army will be readily appreciated.

Many campaigns fought in the Sargonid period required the summoning of part or all of the national militia. Possibly every male capable of bearing arms was liable to be called upon thus; in fact, it would appear that only those who had actually served some period with the standing army fought in these levies, since the embodiment of raw levies amongst trained troops could only have led to confusion. For the purposes of the levy, so it would seem, a military organization in posse existed in the craftsmen’s guilds and amongst the officials engaged in the exaction of forced labour. Nevertheless, some time was required to assemble the militia; and to keep it in the field during certain months of the year was an impossibility. As always, the disadvantages of such a system were very considerable, yet the militia was constantly used. The rewards of military service were probably not inconsiderable. Officers and troops were provided for by the central government, and though we have copies of the usual complaints about garrisons being left to starve, that provision was amply supplemented by exactions in the immediate district. At the close of the campaign a share of the spoil was divided among the troops, so that a single successful campaign must often have brought greater profit to the individual than years of peace.

The efficiency of the army was backed by an intelligence system of which we still have records. Assyrian provincial governors and magistrates were all engaged in the important military duty of gathering information, and not a few of the extant letters in the Kuyunjik collection are specimens of their reports. In the home provinces the network of defences built by a succession of kings was not neglected, and Assyria proper was a series of well-fortified defences which would not fall into enemy hands except after such a series of defeats as would break the military organization.

V.

ASSYRIAN LEARNING

The knowledge of the Assyrians was in every respect based upon the knowledge of the Babylonians; there is, properly speaking, no distinctively Assyrian ‘science’, only in some respects Assyrian developments of Babylonian ‘science’. For general purposes it is none the less right to speak of Assyrian ‘science’, for during the whole of the period 900—600 B.C. the intellectual centre was the Assyrian capital, not the ancient cities of Babylonia. During the long disastrous rule of the Kassite dynasty in the southern land, culture had decayed; and in the welter of confusion caused by the Aramaean and Chaldean influx the pursuit of literature, of astronomy, of medicine, or of any of the pseudo-sciences was altogether neglected. Had it not been for the lively search for Babylonian antiquities instituted by Ashurbanipal, much of interest concerning the important earlier civilization of Babylonia would still be unknown; had it not been for the work of his predecessors in preserving and extending civilization as they knew it, the ‘science’ of the Hammurabi period would have perished without becoming, to a large extent, the common property of the ancient eastern world. The services of the Assyrians to ancient culture may once again be compared with those of the Romans; accepting in its entirety the civilization of a kindred people, they maintained it and spread it in a manner the original creators were entirely incapable of, at a time when a failure to do so would have considerably affected the course of history.

In our present state of knowledge it is impossible to define clearly the Assyrian developments, but the few details that are known serve to show that such developments were rather due to the Assyrian gift for arranging and systematizing than to a marked advance in thought. In astronomy, the patient accumulation of observed phenomena was the chief task of a whole class of officials who regularly reported direct to the king; and though the facts thus observed were used for the pseudo-science of astrology, there can be little doubt that much of this material was employed in the really scientific treatises of Seleucid times. In medicine, the Assyrians possessed an extensive vocabulary of physiological terms, studied the symptoms accompanying distinct diseases, and had a considerable knowledge of the pharmacopoeia. The full extent of their advance in this direction has not yet been duly recognized. In chemistry, their interest does not seem to have carried them beyond the practical processes commonly employed in their industries, especially in tanning and in the making of enamels. The dyeing of cloth, certainly practised by them, is not, to the writer’s knowledge, actually described. Some knowledge of important first principles in the physical sciences, derived entirely from practical experience, is implied by their engineering achievements.

Geology, as might be expected, was almost entirely neglected; even today the inhabitants of western Asia are extremely careless of the natural resources which lie hidden close to their hands. It is extraordinary for instance that the Assyrian kings should have remained in ignorance of the limestone that could be obtained at Balat until the time of Sennacherib. Nevertheless there are extant lists which enumerate a great number of different kinds of stone. In all these directions it will be noted that there was a complete absence of any speculative or reasoning effort; the developments merely arise from an accumulation of recorded experience. It was the distinctive gift of the Greeks for abstract reasoning which converted man’s knowledge of facts into apprehension of causes and effects. Nevertheless, the Assyrians, faithfully following Babylonian methods, performed a useful task, and unquestionably improved the material civilization of the lands over which they ruled.

Abstract problems cannot well be avoided, but they can be dealt with in a practical manner, and a curious example of such methods may be found in the way the Assyrians dealt with language. Linguistic attainments among the scribes probably varied considerably, yet even those who confined themselves to writing the business documents and so-called ‘letters’ must have received some instruction in the ancient Sumerian language, as well as a thorough grounding in their own; no one could read or write cuneiform otherwise. In addition to this, their work demanded a considerable knowledge of dialects of Semitic other than their own. Those who were occupied in copying or writing literary or scientific texts needed of course considerable linguistic training; and a whole class of texts show how this was obtained. From copying out personal names, the pupil proceeded to writing out phrases, first in Sumerian, then in Akkadian (Assyrian); and the method of arrangement, for instance in the school-book of legal phrases called ana ittishu, implies that the distinction of the various parts of speech was recognized, though no terminology seems to have been invented. The instruction was continued in long continuous texts, in which the Sumerian version was translated into Akkadian line by line. The translations are very often far from literal; their intention is to render the sense well enough for practical purposes. ‘Scholarly accuracy’ was not inculcated. So the problem was surmounted in the case of Sumerian, with considerable success; for the perpetuation of this ancient and dead language in the literary texts found in Assyria was due to this practical method of instruction. The study of other Semitic dialects did not require the same discipline; for these the careful collection of synonyms was sufficient, and long classified lists of these afford the modern philologist much help. Curiously enough the nature of cuneiform writing, besides giving rise to these studies, also led in some sort to a pseudo-science of philology; for it would seem that many of the interpretations of divine names offered by the scribes are purely fanciful interpretations of the signs in their ideographic meanings.

Important was the Assyrian contribution to civilization in perpetuating and spreading Babylonian literature, the service rendered in extending the use of cuneiform script was no less considerable. It is probable that the Hittites learnt cuneiform from men who bore Assyrian names at the beginning of the second millennium B.C.; it is certain that in later times the simplified script was carried into Media and Urartu by them, there to.be adopted for the native languages. The simplification of the cuneiform script is very typical of the Assyrian genius. From about 2000 B.C. onwards there is constant progress in the Assyrian inscriptions in reducing the number of wedges used in a sign, and in rendering the writing more square in appearance. The final result, the calligraphy of the library scribes, deserves to be reckoned as an art.

VI.

ASSYRIAN LAW

It has long been recognized by scholars, on the evidence of the legal documents of the Sargonid period, that Assyrian law was in no way derived from the Babylonian codes. The formulae and technical terms are entirely different, the penalties mentioned quite distinct. The famous Hammurabi Code was never in force in Assyria, though it was carefully studied there in the thirteenth century B.C., and possibly earlier. Its terms indeed were far too mild for a country inhabited by a vigorous race in continual contact with men of hill-districts, whose lawlessness is even now a byword. The fortunate discovery of fragments of an Assyrian code dating from the thirteenth or twelfth century B.C. at Kalat Sherkat has thrown light on a question which is further illuminated by the discovery of Hittite laws among the archives from Boghaz Keui. Careful study of these codes will, in future years, greatly advance the study of early law and our knowledge of the civilization of the Near East. Until full discussion of them has led to a consensus of opinion as to the conclusions to be derived from them, all but the bare statement of the facts must be considered an expression of individual opinion, and liable to errors due to prejudice or ignorance. The following summary of our knowledge of Assyrian law cannot claim to be exempt from this disadvantage.                                              

The Assyrian laws extant are written on three large tablets; there are also fragments, which possibly belong to different editions. The largest and most important of these tablets contains sixty paragraphs, all dealing with the law relating to women. Another, in a bad state of preservation, contains thirty-one laws relating to land. The third tablet, of which whole paragraphs are lost, once consisted of a series of laws dealing with breach of confidence. The first two tablets are of special interest linguistically, since they show that the Assyrian dialect of Semitic had forms distinct from those in use in Akkadian, and that many peculiarities found in the letters of the Sargonid period are really characteristic of that dialect. In content also they show a complete absence of Babylonian influence; and the interesting question arises, as to whether this Assyrian code was first promulgated in the thirteenth century, or whether it is derived from a still earlier code. All analogy would lead to the supposition that this thirteenth century code was copied from laws already in existence, just as the Hammurabi Code was copied from Sumerian and Akkadian laws long current in Babylonia. Unfortunately, there is at present no evidence on the subject—although the language is a strong argument for an early date—and the question must remain unanswered. Another interesting question also occurs: may not the Assyrian code of the thirteenth or twelfth century have derived certain features from Mitanni or Hanigalbat, lands which had exercised suzerainty over Assyria in the middle of the second millennium? Again, the question must remain unanswered, though it would seem extremely probable that such influences are to be found in the laws. Little is known of Mitanni and Hanigalbat at present, yet it is not to be doubted that the i­habitants of those lands had reached the same level of civilization as the Hittites; Assyria could not fail to be affected, especially by the commercial law of these peoples, since they commanded all the caravan-routes which were the arteries of the Assyrian commonwealth. Considered as a whole, however, the Assyrian code is essentially Assyrian; the social conditions dealt with are in certain cases peculiarly Assyrian, the severe punishments inflicted accord with the national temperament, and the legal administration depended on the authority of an Assyrian king.

Though the term ‘Assyrian code’ has been used above of these laws for convenience, it is by no means clear that the documents really represent a true ‘code.’ The style in which the ‘laws’ are worded differs widely from that in which the Hammurabi laws are drafted; instead of a terse phrase describing some general type of delinquency, followed by the punishment to be awarded, the Assyrian ‘laws’ often detail a specific and highly peculiar case, elaborate possibly variations in details, and may be rather an ordered series of actual judgments given in court than a unified code promulgated as a consecutive whole. P. Koschaker, after examining the texts from the standpoint of an historian of ancient law, has come to the conclusion that the Assyrian ‘code’ is really a jurist’s commentary on the common law administered in the courts, and has detailed a series of passages which he considers ‘glosses.’ The circumstances of Assyrian society were in any case infinitely more complicated than in Babylonia in the Hammurabi period. A striking proof of this may be found in the two completely different types of marriage allowed for in the ‘laws’; in the one, resembling the Babylonian, the bride joins the household of her husband, and belongs to his family, while in the other the bride remains in her father’s house, where she is visited by her husband. It is well known that the actual practice of the Babylonian courts in the Hammurabi period differs somewhat from the code; it may well be that the Assyrian ‘code,’ while less strictly logical in construction, was more closely in accord with the practice of the time in Assyria. On these points only further evidence can throw light; for the present the term ‘Assyrian code’ may conveniently be kept if Koschaker’s arguments are borne in mind.

The most interesting laws are unquestionably those concerning the status of women, because they are the fullest ancient laws dealing with this subject. The various classes of crime are dealt with in detail. Thus theft of various kinds by women, attacks on men by women or vice versa, improper conduct and adultery, abortion, voluntary desertion by the wife, are all the subject of separate ordinances. It is interesting to find calumny of a wife by false witnesses included among such subjects. Involving wives in commercial dealings without the knowledge of the husband is also enumerated in the list of offences. The regulations concerning the bridal gifts, maintenance and divorce of the wife, are reasonable, judged by ancient standards, and seem to allow of some latitude of interpretation; a good instance of this may be found in the law dealing with the rights of a man who has arranged that a girl should be married to his son.

“If a man has either poured oil on (a girl’s) head or brought bridal gifts (i.e. performed the regular betrothal ceremonies) and the son for whom they intended her as a wife either dies or runs away, he shall give her to any one of his sons he pleases, from his eldest to his youngest, who (must be) 10 years old. If the father dies, and the son for whom they intended her as wife is dead, a grandson of the deceased who is ten years old, shall marry her: if after waiting ten years the sons of the son are minors, the father of the girl shall give his girl (in marriage) if he pleases, or, if he pleases, mutual recompense shall be made. If there be no son (of the deceased) (the girl’s father) shall return all that they have received, precious stones and everything save food, up to the total sum, but he shall not return food”.

Many other laws might be cited at length to show the wisdom with which various cases are provided for. Those who drew up the Assyrian code were not inferior in ability to Hammurabi himself.

Some adverse criticism of the code has, however, been expressed on other grounds. In general the punishments are severe; the slitting of ears and noses, the imposition of 20 to 100 lashes, castration, public exhibition as well as heavy fines and forced labour are mentioned as penalties. Then in certain instances the individual is allowed to take the law into his own hands; thus the husband who kills the adulterer when found with his wife is not guilty of murder. Finally the large number of paragraphs devoted to unnatural and illegal sexual intercourse have been thought to point to a more immoral society than that provided for in the Hammurabi Code. These grounds do not seem sufficient to the present writer to justify the conclusion that Assyrian society was less settled and more immoral than Babylonian. The absence of laws against unnatural vice amongst savage tribes in central Africa cannot be held to prove that they are innocent of such vice; the public flagellation practised in public schools until quite recently does not really imply that England was less civilized than lands in which such a punishment was unknown. The most severe law in the whole Assyrian code is the following: “If a woman of her own free will causes a miscarriage, they shall examine her and confront her with evidence. They shall impale her on stakes, and refrain from burying her. If she dies of her miscarriage, they shall impale her on stakes, they shall refrain from burying her...” Intentional abortion is here recognized as a crime against the state and against morality; the fact that it was so recognized points to a highly civilized social and moral standard. The objection that laws which allow of summary punishment by the person or persons injured are no laws is more serious, and the Assyrian legal system must be judged imperfect in this respect. Such summary justice, however, will always be found in certain countries under given conditions, and it is unlikely that the necessity for it will ever disappear entirely.

Two interesting features of the Assyrian laws are the importance attached to the veiling of women and to the ordeal by water. Married women were to be veiled, but unmarried priestesses, prostitutes and slaves were forbidden to walk the streets veiled; and severe penalties, including the slitting of the ear, fifty strokes, and a month’s forced labour, were imposed on men who knowingly allowed prostitutes and slaves to go veiled. The ordeal by water, inflicted for instance on the slanderer of a man’s wife, or on one who involved a wife in commercial dealings, without her husband’s knowledge, was of two kinds. The accused was taken down to the river bank, and in the one case bound in fetters, in the other case not so bound; he was then thrown into the river. In some cases undoubtedly the result must have been death, while in others the accused was thrown back by the river: even then he was not always allowed to go free, but was liable to further penalties. The ordeal by water also appears in the Hammurabi Code, but recourse to it is not so frequent as in the Assyrian laws.

The punishments invoked in the business documents of the Sargonid period for breaches of contract and so forth seem to be of quite a different character to those prescribed in the laws. Though later in date, the prohibitory clauses in the Sargonid documents represent an earlier stage in the development of law than the thirteenth century code. The penalties mentioned in them are all of a religious character, and so date from a time when the sanction of law was derived from religious belief; whereas that stage had been outgrown even in Hammurabi’s time, when crime was punished as a civil offence. The clauses in question detail the penalties to be imposed on anyone who, having completed a transaction, received payment, and sealed a tablet, brings a legal process to recover possession. The penalties are very various: the delinquent is to pay a sum of money, generally ten times the agreed price, into the treasury of a specified deity; to yoke ‘two white horses at the feet of’ a certain god (that is, supply the horses to draw the divine chariot in the great processions); and ‘dedicate a bow to Ninurta, who dwells in Kalakh.’ Other provisions are that he is to drink some obviously poisonous concoction, and that the eldest son or the eldest daughter is to be burnt before a god—an isolated reminder of the bloody cults of the western Semites with whom the Assyrians had in the earliest periods been in close contact. It is not to be thought that these penalties were actually executed in the Sargonid period. They remain as fossilized formulae in the documents, the only witness to an earlier stage of Assyrian civilization than any we yet know. In the civil law of the later time any such process as these penalties are invoked to prevent was simply non-suited.

The Assyrian provinces probably benefited considerably if the Assyrian legal system was applied to their government; and it seems most probable from the documents as yet obtained that it was applied. Not only was the central authority sufficiently strong to enforce the law—a difficult matter in the Upper Euphrates valley—but the fact that the Assyrian code was recognized throughout Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine would have been greatly to the advantage not only of the trader, but of the poor. In this respect again there may possibly be found a curious similarity between the Assyrian and the Roman rule in western Asia; for so far as is known these were the only periods in which a uniform legal practice can have obtained.

VII.

ASSYRIAN ARTS AND LITERATURE

Sculpture and architecture have been briefly dealt with under the reigns of various kings. In the reign of Ashurbanipal both arts reached a level of perfection beyond which development would seem impossible without a complete change of style. The poor remains of Ashurbanipal’s palace in the mound of Kuyunjik long since acquainted English excavators with the ability of the Assyrian architect. The reliefs taken from that palace remain the finest artistic work recovered in the river valleys. The spacious treatment first noticeable on the Sargon reliefs, combined with the composition and pictorial sense to be found in the Sennacherib slabs, are present in the art of the Ashurbanipal reliefs; but there is in them yet one further merit. The masons no longer cut figure after figure, whether human or animal, in the same attitude, with the same expression, in monotonous succession. The attempt to differentiate, to give each figure an individual interest, renders the Frieze of the Lion-Hunt the most interesting of all the Assyrian sculptures; and a careful examination of the battle-scenes will show a more sustained effort of the same kind in a crowded field. Above all, there is a fertility of invention and an exquisite delicacy of carving, both illustrated in the scene which shows Ashurbanipal and his queen feasting; a rare combination of qualities which had previously been lacking in work of this type.

The only other art worthily represented in modern museums is that of the seal-engraver. Great numbers of Assyrian seals are of course artistically worthless, as objects produced in such quantities are likely to be. There are, however, some very fine specimens of Assyrian work in this kind both on cylinder seals and on the equally popular cone seals, which leave no doubt that the jewel engraver of the Achaemenian period deliberately copied Assyrian subjects and methods rather than Babylonian. Yet even the best Assyrian seals are inferior to the early Sumerian examples, and their real interest is to be found in the light they throw on Assyrian religion.

As to the minor arts, though a little information can be gained from written documents, so very little remains that it is impossible to speak with any certainty. Weaving of the most ornate kind was commonly practised; furniture was embellished with metal decorations; and metal was also extensively worn for personal adornment. Curiously enough, the potter seems to have made no great effort to improve his wares; the Assyrian of Ashurbanipal’s time was as content with the rough pots and platters of plain buff ware as had been his forefathers in ruder times. But no trace of the coloured glazed pottery found by Andrae at Ashur in strata belonging to the fifteenth to twelfth centuries has been found in Sargonid palaces. Indeed, though Assyria must be reckoned a wealthy country at this time, the people had not lost the Spartan simplicity once enforced by necessity, and only a few essential articles of furniture were customarily used.

Recent excavations in Assyria have proved that the diligent copying and editing of the great literary works of Babylonia practised in the time of Ashurbanipal commenced in Assyria at least six centuries earlier; it is indeed a curious anomaly that the two most important extant works of Babylonian literature, the Gilgamesh epic and the ‘Seven Tablets’ of the Creation story, would be almost unknown were it not for the Assyrian editions found at Ashur and Nineveh. Unfortunately there is at present not sufficient evidence to show whether the borrowing was all on the Assyrian side. Indeed, the problem of literary sources has been rather complicated by the discovery of fragments of important literary texts in the ‘Akkadian’ language side by side with texts in other, non-Semitic, languages at Boghaz Keui and el-Amarna. Few are likely to question the fact that the legends and epics known were originally written down in their present form at Babylon, and that the Assyrian versions, with their compressions and alterations, are merely later editions of the Babylonian works; yet the question whether certain forms of the literature, such as the animal fables, may not have arisen elsewhere than in Babylon, can by no means be summarily dismissed. It is much to be hoped that excavations of sites in Syria and along the middle Euphrates may throw light on the question of the literary origins and development of cuneiform texts now known, so that the different elements may be to some extent distinguished. The generally accepted hypothesis that all the classes of literature represented in Ashurbanipal’s library were immediately derived from the south in any case needs substantiation. The main fact, however, that there was no independent Assyrian literature, save in two respects, may be confidently affirmed.

The political importance of the oracle in Assyria has already been mentioned; that such oracles also influenced literary development will be readily understood. Oracular utterances are of two kinds; they may be terse and precise in meaning, as ‘I, Ishtar of Arbela, march before Ashurbanipal, the king whom my hands created,’ or general in import and ambiguous in interpretation, as “Fear not, Esarhaddon. It is I, Bel, who speak to thee.... The 60 great gods are with me... Sin is on thy right hand, Shamash on thy left, the 60 great gods stand at thy side. They stand firm at their post. Put no trust in men. Direct thy eyes to me. Regard me”. Of the various tricks associated with oracular utterances, for instance in Greece, the Assyrian priests doubtless made repeated use. The play with numbers, the use of the anagram and so forth were well known to the Assyrians, and the influence of the oracles in introducing a high-flown and slightly bombastic style may be seen in the historical inscriptions, which develop from simple statements of events into highly-coloured and imaginative literary documents; an interesting example may be found in the account of Ashurbanipal’s narrative of his relations with Gyges. In this regard Nabonidus seems to have been following Assyrian rather than Babylonian models in the curious accounts of his dreams.

The most important development in Assyrian literature is to be found in the royal inscriptions. These were modelled on the old Babylonian building inscription, which was stereotyped. The form almost invariably commenced with a dedication to a god, who is praised in some specific aspect, and with the name and titles of the king; then the nature of the building or other object dedicated is specified, sometimes with a reference to the historical circumstances of the dedication; finally come the curses on whoever injures the dedication and the inscription, and sometimes a prayer for those who restore and repair them. From this fixed form the Assyrians developed the long historical inscriptions on which our knowledge of the ancient history of Mesopotamia is largely based. By elaborating the titles of the king, and giving a more discursive account of the circumstances of the dedication, the scribes were able to give general accounts of the principal events of their time. But in Assyria first came the vital change which converted the building inscription into a historical record, namely the partial suppression of the dedication. Thus arose the general account of a king’s exploits. The next step was to arrange the events in their chronological sequence, either under the year of the king’s reign or according to the number of campaigns, the events being baldly stated. This form arose in the fourteenth century, or earlier. Finally came the development which characterized the Sargonid period, when each year or each campaign was elaborately and separately described, and then a complete history of the reign up to the time of composition recorded on clay or stone with all the literary art of which the writer was capable. The inscriptions on the prisms of Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal are instances of a literary form borrowed from Babylonia, yet so expanded as to be distinctively Assyrian. The building inscription remains, the annalistic element is entirely new. Once again it is probable that another influence has combined with the Babylonian to produce the Assyrian type as it is known to us; the long historical preambles of the Hittite treaties found at Boghaz Keui may serve to show whence that influence came. In any case the annals of the Assyrian kings from Sargon onwards deserve to be classed with the most important literary works in cuneiform.

CHAPTER V

ASHURBANIPAL AND THE FALL OF ASSYRIA