Chapter II: The Rise of the Assyrian Empire (3)

* _Donation to Rittimerodach,_ col. i. 11. 12-43. The
description of the battle as given in this document is
generally taken to be merely symbolical, and I have followed
the current usage. But if we bear in mind that the text lays
emphasis on the drought and severity of the season, we are
tempted to agree with Pinches and Budge that its statements
should be taken literally. The affair may have been begun in
a cloud of dust, and have ended in a downpour of rain so
heavy as to partly blind the combatants. The king was
probably drawn away from his men in the confusion; it was
probably then that he was in danger of being made prisoner,
and that Rittimerodach, suddenly coming up, delivered him
from the foes who surrounded him.

The Elamites renounced their claims to the possession of Namar, and restored the statues of the gods: Nebuchadrezzar at once laid hold of the hands of Bel, and thus legalised his accession to the throne. Other expeditions against the peoples of Lulurne and against the Cossæans restored his supremacy in the regions of the north-east, and a campaign along the banks of the Euphrates opened out the road to Syria. He rewarded generously those who had accompanied him on his raid against Elam. After issuing regulations intended to maintain the purity of the breed of horses for which Namar was celebrated, he reinstated in their possessions Shamuâ and his son Shamaî, the descendants of one of the priestly families of the province, granting them in addition certain domains near Upi, at the mouth of the Turnât. He confirmed Rittimerodach in possession of all his property, and reinvested him with all the privileges of which the King of Elam had deprived him. From that time forward the domain of Bitkarziabku was free of the tithe on corn, oxen, and sheep; it was no longer liable to provide horses and mares for the exchequer, or to afford free passage to troops in time of peace; the royal jurisdiction ceased on the boundary of the fief, the seignorial jurisdiction alone extended over the inhabitants and their property. Chaldæan prefects ruled in Namar, at Khalman, and at the foot of the Zagros, and Nebuchadrezzar no longer found any to oppose him save the King of Assyria.

The long reign of Assurdân in Assyria does not seem to have been distinguished by any event of importance either good or bad: it is true he won several towns on the south-east from the Babylonians, but then he lost several others on the north-west to the Mushku,* and the loss on the one side fully balanced the advantage gained on the other.

* Hommel has proved, by a very simple calculation, that
Assurdân must have been the king in whose reign the Mushku
made the inroad into the basin of the Upper Tigris and of
the Balikh, which is mentioned in the _Annals of Tiglath-
pileser I._ These _Annals_ are our authority for stating
that Assurdân was on the throne for a long period, though
the exact length of his reign is not known.

His son Mutakkilnusku lived in Assur at peace,* but his grandson, Assurîshishî, was a mighty king, conqueror of a score of countries, and the terror of all rebels: he scattered the hordes of the Akhlamê and broke up their forces; then Ninip, the champion of the gods, permitted him to crush the Lulumê and the G-uti in their valleys and on their mountains covered with forests. He made his way up to the frontiers of Elam,** and his encroachments on territories claimed by Babylon stirred up the anger of the Chaldæans against him; Nebuchadrezzar made ready to dispute their ownership with him.

* _Annals of Tiglath-pileser I_. Mutakkilnusku himself has
only left us one inscription, in which he declares that he
had built a palace in the city of Assyria.

** Smith discovered certain fragments of Annals, which he
attributed to Assurîshishî. The longest of these tell of a
campaign against Elam. Lotz attributed them to Tiglath-
pileser I., and is supported in this by most Assyriologists
of the day.

The earlier engagements went against the Assyrians; they were driven back in disorder, but the victor lost time before one of their strongholds, and, winter coming on before he could take it, he burnt his engines of war, set fire to his camp, and returned home. Next year, a rapid march carried him right under the walls of Assur; then Assurîshishî came to the rescue, totally routed his opponent, captured forty of his chariots, and drove him flying across the frontier. The war died out of itself, its end being marked by no treaty: each side kept its traditional position and supremacy over the tribes inhabiting the basins of the Turnât and Eadanu. The same names reappear in line after line of these mutilated Annals, and the same definite enumerations of rebellious tribes who have been humbled or punished. These kings of the plain, both Ninevite and Babylonian, were continually raiding the country up and down for centuries without ever arriving at any decisive result, and a detailed account of their various campaigns would be as tedious reading as that of the ceaseless struggle between the Latins and Sabines which fills the opening pages of Roman history. Posterity soon grew weary of them, and, misled by the splendid position which Assyria attained when at the zenith of its glory, set itself to fabricate splendid antecedents for the majestic empire established by the latter dynasties. The legend ran that, at the dawn of time, a chief named Ninos had reduced to subjection one after the other--Babylonia, Media, Armenia, and all the provinces between the Indies and the Mediterranean. He built a capital for himself on the banks of the Tigris, in the form of a parallelogram, measuring a hundred and fifty stadia in length, ninety stadia in width; altogether, the walls were four hundred and eighty stadia in circumference. In addition to the Assyrians who formed the bulk of the population, he attracted many foreigners to Nineveh, so that in a few years it became the most flourishing town in the whole world. An inroad of the tribes of the Oxus interrupted his labours; Ninos repulsed the invasion, and, driving the barbarians back into Bactria, laid siege to it; here, in the tent of one of his captains, he came upon Semiramis, a woman whose past was shrouded in mystery. She was said to be the daughter of an ordinary mortal by a goddess, the Ascalonian Derketô. Exposed immediately after her birth, she was found and adopted by a shepherd named Simas, and later on her beauty aroused the passion of Oannes, governor of Syria. Ninos, amazed at the courage displayed by her on more than one occasion, carried her off, made her his favourite wife, and finally met his death at her hands. No sooner did she become queen, than she founded Babylon on a far more extensive scale than that of Nineveh. Its walls were three hundred and sixty stadia in length, with two hundred and fifty lofty towers, placed here and there on its circuit, the roadway round the top of the ramparts being wide enough for six chariots to drive abreast. She made a kind of harbour in the Euphrates, threw a bridge across it, and built quays one hundred and sixty stadia in length along its course; in the midst of the town she raised a temple to Bel. This great work was scarcely finished when disturbances broke out in Media; these she promptly repressed, and set out on a tour of inspection through the whole of her provinces, with a view to preventing the recurrence of similar outbreaks by her presence. Wherever she went she left records of her passage behind her, cutting her way through mountains, quarrying a pathway through the solid rock, making broad highways for herself, bringing rebellious tribes beneath her yoke, and raising tumuli to mark the tombs of such of her satraps as fell beneath the blows of the enemy. She built Ecbatana in Media, Semiramocarta on Lake Van in Armenia, and Tarsus in Cilicia; then, having reached the confines of Syria, she crossed the isthmus, and conquered Egypt and Ethiopia. The far-famed wealth of India recalled her from the banks of the Nile to those of the Euphrates, _en route_ for the remote east, but at this point her good fortune forsook her: she was defeated by King Stratobates, and returned to her own dominions, never again to leave them. She had set up triumphal stelae on the boundaries of the habitable globe, in the very midst of Scythia, not far from the Iaxartes, where, centuries afterwards, Alexander of Macedon read the panegyric of herself which she had caused to be engraved there. Nature, she writes, gave me the body of a woman, but my deeds have put me on a level with the greatest of men. I ruled over the dominion of Ninos, which extends eastwards to the river Hinaman, southwards to the countries of Incense and Myrrh, and northwards as far as the Sacaa and Sogdiani. Before my time no Assyrian had ever set eyes on the sea: I have seen four oceans to which no mariner has ever sailed, so far remote are they. I have made rivers to flow where I would have them, in the places where they were needed; thus did I render fertile the barren soil by watering it with my rivers. I raised up impregnable fortresses, and cut roadways through the solid rock with the pick. I opened a way for the wheels of my chariots in places to which even the feet of wild beasts had never penetrated. And, amidst all these labours, I yet found time for my pleasures and for the society of my friends. On discovering that her son Ninyas was plotting her assassination, she at once abdicated in his favour, in order to save him from committing a crime, and then transformed herself into a dove; this last incident betrays the goddess to us. Ninos and Semiramis are purely mythical, and their mighty deeds, like those ascribed to Ishtar and Gilgames, must be placed in the same category as those other fables with which the Babylonian legends strive to fill up the blank of the prehistoric period.*

* The legend of Ninos and Semiramis is taken from Diodorus
Siculus, who reproduces, often word for word, the version of
Ctesias.

Drawn by Boudier, from the sketch published in Longpérier.

The real facts were, as we know, far less brilliant and less extravagant than those supplied by popular imagination. It would be a mistake, however, to neglect or despise them on account of their tedious monotony and the insignificance of the characters who appear on the stage. It was by dint of fighting her neighbours again and again, without a single days respite, that Rome succeeded in forging the weapons with which she was to conquer the world; and any one who, repelled by their tedious sameness, neglected to follow the history of her early struggles, would find great difficulty in understanding how it came about that a city which had taken centuries to subjugate her immediate neighbours should afterwards overcome all the states on the Mediterranean seaboard with such magnificent ease. In much the same way the ceaseless struggles of Assyria with the Chaldaeans, and with the mountain tribes of the Zagros Chain, were unconsciously preparing her for those lightning-like campaigns in which she afterwards overthrew all the civilized nations of the Bast one after another. It was only at the cost of unparalleled exertions that she succeeded in solidly welding together the various provinces within her borders, and in kneading (so to speak) the many and diverse elements of her vast population into one compact mass, containing in itself all that was needful for its support, and able to bear the strain of war for several years at time without giving way, and rich enough in men and horses to provide the material for an effective army without excessive impoverishment of her trade or agriculture.

Drawn by Boudier, from a painted bas-relief given in Layard.

The race came of an old Semitic strain, somewhat crude as yet, and almost entirely free from that repeated admixture of foreign elements which had marred the purity of the Babylonian stock. The monuments show us a type similar in many respects to that which we find to-day on the slopes of Singar, or in the valleys to the east of Mossul.

The figures on the monuments are tall and straight, broad-shouldered and wide in the hips, the arms well developed, the legs robust, with good substantial feet. The swell of the muscles on the naked limbs is perhaps exaggerated, but this very exaggeration of the modelling suggests the vigour of the model; it is a heavier, more rustic type than the Egyptian, promising greater strength and power of resistance, and in so far an indisputable superiority in the great game of war. The head is somewhat small, the forehead low and flat, the eyebrows heavy, the eye of a bold almond shape, with heavy lids, the nose aquiline, and full at the tip, with wide nostrils terminating in a hard, well-defined curve; the lips are thick and full, the chin bony, while the face is framed by the coarse dark wavy hair and beard, which fell in curly masses over the nape of the neck and the breast. The expression of the face is rarely of an amiable and smiling type, such as we find in the statues of the Theban period or in those of the Memphite empire, nor, as a matter of fact, did the Assyrian pride himself on the gentleness of his manners: he did not overflow with love for his fellow-man, as the Egyptian made a pretence of doing; on the contrary, he was stiff-necked and proud, without pity for others or for himself, hot-tempered and quarrelsome like his cousins of Chaldæa, but less turbulent and more capable of strict discipline. It mattered not whether he had come into the world in one of the wretched cabins of a fellah village, or in the palace of one of the great nobles; he was a born soldier, and his whole education tended to develop in him the first qualities of the soldier--temperance, patience, energy, and unquestioning obedience: he was enrolled in an army which was always on a war footing, commanded by the god Assur, and under Assur, by the king, the vicegerent and representative of the god. His life was shut in by the same network of legal restrictions which confined that of the Babylonians, and all its more important events had to be recorded on tablets of clay; the wording of contracts, the formalities of marriage or adoption, the status of bond and free, the rites of the dead and funeral ceremonies, had either remained identical with those in use during the earliest years of the cities of the Lower Euphrates, or differed from them only in their less important details. The royal and municipal governments levied the same taxes, used the same procedure, employed the same magistrates, and the grades of their hierarchy were the same, with one exception. After the king, the highest office was filled by a soldier, the _tartan_ who saw to the recruiting of the troops, and led them in time of war, or took command of the staff-corps whenever the sovereign himself deigned to appear on the scene of action.*

* We can determine the rank occupied, by the _tartanu_ at
court by the positions they occupy in the lists of eponymous
_limmu_: they invariably come next after the king--a fact
which was noticed many years ago.

The more influential of these functionaries bore, in addition to their other titles, one of a special nature, which, for the space of one year, made its holder the most conspicuous man in the country; they became _limmu_, and throughout their term of office their names appeared on all official documents. The Chaldæans distinguished the various years of each reign by a reference to some event which had taken place in each; the Assyrians named them after the _limmu_.* The king was the _ex-officio limmu_ for the year following that of his accession, then after him the _tartan_, then the ministers and governors of provinces and cities in an order which varied little from reign to reign. The names of the _limmu_, entered in registers and tabulated--just as, later on, were those of the Greek archons and Roman consuls--furnished the annalists with a rigid chronological system, under which the facts of history might be arranged with certainty.**

* According to Delitzsch, the term _limu,_ or _limmu_, meant
at first any given period, then later more especially the
year during which a magistrate filled his office; in the
opinion of most other Assyriologists it referred to the
magistrate himself as eponymous archon.

** The first list of _limmu_ was discovered by H. Rawlinson.
The portions which have been preserved extend from the year
893 to the year 666 B.C. without a break. In the periods
previous and subsequent to this we have only names scattered
here and there which it has not been possible to classify:
the earliest _limmu_ known at present flourished under
Rammân-nirâri I., and was named Mukhurilâni. Three different
versions of the canon have como down to us. In the most
important one the names of the eponymous officials are
written one after another without titles or any mention of
important events; in the other two, the titles of each
personage, and any important occurrences which took place
during his year of office, are entered after the name.

The king still retained the sacerdotal attributes with which Cossæan monarchs had been invested from the earliest times, but contact with the Egyptians had modified the popular conception of his personality. His subjects were no longer satisfied to regard him merely as a man superior to his fellow-men; they had come to discover something of the divine nature in him, and sometimes identified him--not with Assur, the master of all things, who occupied a position too high above the pale of ordinary humanity--but with one of the demi-gods of the second rank, Shamash, the Sun, the deity whom the Pharaohs pretended to represent in flesh and blood here below. His courtiers, therefore, went as far as to call him Sun when they addressed him, and he himself adopted this title in his inscriptions.*

* Nebuchadrezzar I. of Babylon assumes the title of _Shamash
mati-shu_, the Sun of his country, and Hilprecht rightly
sees in this expression a trace of Egyptian influences;
later on, Assurnazirpal, King of Assyria similarly describes
himself as _Shamshu kishshat nishi_, the Sun of all
mankind. Tiele is of opinion that these expressions do not
necessarily point to any theory of the actual incarnation of
the god, as was the case in Egypt, but that they may be mere
rhetorical figures.

Formerly he had only attained this apotheosis after death, later on he was permitted to aspire to it during his lifetime. The Chaldæans adopted the same attitude, and in both countries the royal authority shone with the borrowed lustre of divine omnipotence. With these exceptions life at court remained very much the same as it had been; at Nineveh, as at Babylon, we find harems filled with foreign princesses, who had either been carried off as hostages from the country of a defeated enemy, or amicably obtained from their parents. In time of war, the command of the troops and the dangers of the battle-field; in time of peace, a host of religious ceremonies and judicial or administrative duties, left but little leisure to the sovereign who desired to perform conscientiously all that was required of him. His chief amusement lay in the hunting of wild beasts: the majority of the princes who reigned over Assyria had a better right than even Amenôthes III. himself to boast of the hundreds of lions which they had slain. They set out on these hunting expeditions with quite a small army of charioteers and infantry, and were often away several days at a time, provided urgent business did not require their presence in the palace. They started their quarry with the help of large dogs, and followed it over hill and dale till they got within bowshot: if it was but slightly wounded and turned on them, they gave it the finishing stroke with their lances without dismounting.

Drawn by Boudier, from a bas-relief in the British Museum.

Occasionally, however, they were obliged to follow their prey into places where horses could not easily penetrate; then a hand-to-hand conflict was inevitable. The lion would rise on its hind quarters and endeavour to lay its pursuer low with a stroke of its mighty paw, but only to fall pierced to the heart by his lance or sword.

Drawn by Boudier, from a bas-relief in the British Museum.

This kind of encounter demanded great presence of mind and steadiness of hand; the Assyrians were, therefore, trained to it from their youth up, and no hunter was permitted to engage in these terrible encounters without long preliminary practice. Seeing the lion as they did so frequently, and at such close quarters, they came to know it quite as well as the Egyptians, and their sculptors reproduce it with a realism and technical skill which have been rarely equalled in modern times. But while the Theban artist generally represents it in an attitude of repose, the Assyrians prefer to show it in violent action in all the various attitudes which it assumes during a struggle, either crouching as it prepares to spring, or fully extended in the act of leaping; sometimes it rears into an upright position, with arched back, gaping jaws, and claws protruded, ready to bite or strike its foe; at others it writhes under a spear-thrust, or rolls over and over in its dying agonies. In one instance, an arrow has pierced the skull of a male lion, crashing through the frontal bone a little above the left eyebrow, and protrudes obliquely to the right between his teeth: under the shock of the blow he has risen on his hind legs, with contorted spine, and beats the air with his fore paws, his head thrown back as though to free himself of the fatal shaft. Not far from him the lioness lies stretched out upon its back in the rigidity of death.

The rimu, or urus, was, perhaps, even a more formidable animal to encounter than any of the _felido_, owing to the irresistible fury of his attack. No one would dare, except in a case of dire necessity, to meet him on foot. The loose flowing robes which the king and the nobles never put aside--not even in such perilous pastimes as these--were ill fitted for the quick movements required to avoid the attack of such an animal, and those who were unlucky enough to quit their chariot ran a terrible risk of being gored or trodden underfoot in the encounter. It was the custom, therefore, to attack the beast by arrows, and to keep it at a distance. If the animal were able to come up with its pursuer, the latter endeavoured to seize it by the horn at the moment when it lowered its head, and to drive his dagger into its neck. If the blow were adroitly given it severed the spinal cord, and the beast fell in a heap as if struck by lightning. A victory over such animals was an occasion for rejoicing, and solemn thanks were offered to Assur and Ishtar, the patrons of the chase, at the usual evening sacrifice.

Drawn by Boudier, from a bas-relief in the British Museum.

The slain beasts, whether lion or urus, were arranged in a row before the altar, while the king, accompanied by his flabella, and umbrella-bearers, stood alongside them, holding his bow in his left hand. While the singers intoned the hymn of thanksgiving to the accompaniment of the harp, the monarch took the bowl of sacred wine, touched his lips with it, and then poured a portion of the contents on the heads of the victims. A detailed account of each hunting exploit was preserved for posterity either in inscriptions or on bas-reliefs.*

* In the _Annals of Tiglath-pileser I._ the king counts the
number of his victims: 4 urus, 10 male elephants, 120 lions
slain in single combat on foot, 800 lions killed by arrows
let fly from his chariot. In the _Annals of Assurnazirpal,_
the king boasts of having slain 30 elephants, 250 urus, and
370 lions.

The chase was in those days of great service to the rural population; the kings also considered it to be one of the duties attached to their office, and on a level with their obligation to make war on neighbouring nations devoted by the will of Assur to defeat and destruction.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Hommel.

The army charged to carry out the will of the god had not yet acquired the homogeneity and efficiency which it afterwards attained, yet it had been for some time one of the most formidable in the world, and even the Egyptians themselves, in spite of their long experience in military matters, could not put into the field such a proud array of effective troops. We do not know how this army was recruited, but the bulk of it was made up of native levies, to which foreign auxiliaries were added in numbers varying with the times.* A permanent nucleus of troops was always in garrison in the capital under the tartan, or placed in the principal towns at the disposal of the governors.**

* We have no bas-relief representing the armies of Tiglath-
pileser I. Everything in the description which follows is
taken from the monuments of Assurnazirpal and Shalmaneser
II., revised as far as possible by the inscriptions of
Tiglath-pileser; the armament of both infantry and chariotry
must have been practically the same in the two periods.

** This is based on the account given in the Obelisk of
Shalmaneser, where the king, for example, after having
gathered his soldiers together at Kalakh [Calah], put at
their head Dainassur the artan, the master of his
innumerable troops.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin.

The contingents which came to be enrolled at these centres on the first rumour of war may have been taken from among the feudal militia, as was the custom in the Nile valley, or the whole population may have had to render personal military service, each receiving while with the colours a certain daily pay. The nobles and feudal lords were accustomed to call their own people together, and either placed themselves at their head or commissioned an officer to act in their behalf.*

* The assembling of foot-soldiers and chariots is often
described at the beginning of each campaign; the _Donation
of Bittimerodach_ brings before us a great feudal lord, who
leads his contingent to the King of Chaldæa, and anything
which took place among the Babylonians had its counterpart
among the Assyrians. Sometimes the king had need of all the
contingents, and then it was said he assembled the
country. Auxiliaries are mentioned, for example, in the
_Annals of Assurnazirpal_, col. iii. 11. 58-77, where the
king, in his passage, rallies one after the other the troops
of Bît-Bakhiâni, of Azalli, of Bît-Adini, of Garganish, and
of the Patinu.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Mansell.

These recruits were subjected to the training necessary for their calling by exercises similar to those of the Egyptians, but of a rougher sort and better adapted to the cumbrous character of their equipment. The blacksmiths art had made such progress among the Assyrians since the times of Thûtmosis III. and Ramses IL, that both the character and the materials of the armour were entirely changed.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from G. Rawlinson.

While the Egyptian of old entered into the contest almost naked, and without other defence than a padded cap, a light shield, and a leather apron, the Assyrian of the new age set out for war almost cased in metal. The pikemen and archers of whom the infantry of the line was composed wore a copper or iron helmet, conical in form, and having cheek-pieces covering the ears; they were clad in a sort of leathern shirt covered with plates or imbricated scales of metal, which protected the body and the upper part of the arm; a quilted and padded loin-cloth came over the haunches, while close-fitting trousers, and buskins laced up in the front, completed their attire. The pikemen were armed with a lance six feet long, a cutlass or short sword passed through the girdle, and an enormous shield, sometimes round and convex, sometimes arched at the top and square at the bottom. The bowmen did not encumber themselves with a buckler, but carried, in addition to the bow and quiver, a poignard or mace. The light infantry consisted of pikemen and archers--each of whom wore a crested helmet and a round shield of wicker-work--of slingers and club-bearers, as well as of men armed with the two-bladed battle-axe. The chariots were heavier and larger than those of the Egyptians. They had high, strongly made wheels with eight spokes, and the body of the vehicle rested directly on the axle; the panels were of solid wood, sometimes covered with embossed or carved metal, but frequently painted; they were further decorated sometimes with gold, silver, or ivory mountings, and with precious stones. The pole, which was long and heavy, ended in a boss of carved wood or incised metal, representing a flower, a rosette, the muzzle of a lion, or a horses head. It was attached to the axle under the floor of the vehicle, and as it had to bear a great strain, it was not only fixed to this point by leather thongs such as were employed in Egypt, but also bound to the front of the chariot by a crossbar shaped like a spindle, and covered with embroidered stuff--an arrangement which prevented its becoming detached when driving at full speed. A pair of horses were harnessed to it, and a third was attached to them on the right side for the use of a supplementary warrior, who could take the place of his comrade in case of accident, or if he were wounded. The trappings were very simple; but sometimes there was added to these a thickly padded caparison, of which the various parts were fitted to the horse by tags so as to cover the upper part of his head, his neck, back, and breast. The usual complement of charioteers was two to each vehicle, as in Egypt, but sometimes, as among the Khâti, there were three--one on the left to direct the horses, a warrior, and an attendant who protected the other two with his shield; on some occasions a fourth was added as an extra assistant. The equipment of the charioteers was like that of the infantry, and consisted of a jacket with imbricated scales of metal, bow and arrows, and a lance or javelin. A standard which served as a rallying-point for the chariots in the battle was set up on the front part of each vehicle, between the driver and the warrior; it bore at the top a disk supported on the heads of two bulls, or by two complete representations of these animals, and a standing figure of Assur letting fly his arrows. The chariotry formed, as in most countries of that time, the picked troops of the service, in which the princes and great lords were proud to be enrolled. Upon it depended for the most part the issue of the conflict, and the position assigned to it was in the van, the king or commander-in-chief reserving to himself the privilege of conducting the charge in person. It was already, however, in a state of decadence, both as regards the number of units composing it and its methods of manoeuvring; the infantry, on the other hand, had increased in numbers, and under the guidance of abler generals tended to become the most trustworthy force in Assyrian campaigns.*

* Tiglath-pileser is seen, for instance, setting out on a
campaign in a mountainous country with only thirty chariots.

Notwithstanding the weight of his equipment, the Assyrian foot-soldier was as agile as the Egyptian, but he had to fight usually in a much more difficult region than that in which the Pharaohs troops were accustomed to manouvre.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

The theatre of war was not like Syria, with its fertile and almost unbroken plains furrowed by streams which offered little obstruction to troops throughout the year, but a land of marshes, arid and rocky deserts, mighty rivers, capable, in one of their sudden floods, of arresting progress for days, and of jeopardising the success of a campaign;* violent and ice-cold torrents, rugged mountains whose summits rose into points like daggers, and whose passes could be held against a host of invaders by a handful of resolute men.**

* Sennacherib was obliged to arrest his march against Elam,
owing to his inability to cross the torrents swollen by the
rain; a similar contretemps must have met Assurbanipal on
the banks of the Ididi.

** The Assyrian monarchs dwell with pleasure on the
difficulties of the country which they have to overcome.

Bands of daring skirmishers, consisting of archers, slingers, and pikemen, cleared the way for the mass of infantry marching in columns, and for the chariots, in the midst of which the king and his household took up their station; the baggage followed, together with the prisoners and their escorts.*

* Assurbanipal relates, for instance, that he put under his
escort a tribe which had surrendered themselves as
prisoners.

If they came to a river where there was neither ford nor bridge, they were not long in effecting a passage.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze
gates of Balawât.

Each soldier was provided with a skin, which, having inflated it by the strength of his lungs and closed the aperture, he embraced in his arms and cast himself into the stream. Partly by floating and partly by swimming, a whole regiment could soon reach the other side. The chariots could not be carried over so easily.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the
bronze gates of Balawât.

If the bed of the river was not very wide, and the current not too violent, a narrow bridge was constructed, or rather an improvised dyke of large stones and rude gabions filled with clay, over which was spread a layer of branches and earth, supplying a sufficiently broad passage for a single chariot, of which the horses were led across at walking pace.*

* Flying bridges, _tîturâti_, were mentioned as far back as
the time of Tiglath-pileser I.

But when the distance between the banks was too great, and the stream too violent to allow of this mode of procedure, boats were requisitioned from the neighbourhood, on which men and chariots were embarked, while the horses, attended by grooms, or attached by their bridles to the flotilla, swam across the river.* If the troops had to pass through a mountainous district intersected by ravines and covered by forests, and thus impracticable on ordinary occasions for a large body of men, the advance-guard were employed in cutting a passage through the trees with the axe, and, if necessary, in making with the pick pathways or rough-hewn steps similar to those met with in the Lebanon on the Phoenician coast.**

* It was in this manner that Tiglath-pileser I. crossed the
Euphrates on his way to the attack of Carchemish.

** Tiglath-pileser I. speaks on several occasions, and not
without pride, of the roads that he had made for himself
with bronze hatchets through the forests and over the
mountains.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze gates of Balawât.

The troops advanced in narrow columns, sometimes even in single file, along these improvised roads, always on the alert lest they should be taken at a disadvantage by an enemy concealed in the thickets. In case of attack, the foot-soldiers had each to think of himself, and endeavour to give as many blows as he received; but the charioteers, encumbered by their vehicles and the horses, found it no easy matter to extricate themselves from the danger. Once the chariots had entered into the forest region, the driver descended from his vehicle, and led the horses by the head, while the warrior and his assistant were not slow to follow his example, in order to give some relief to the animals by tugging at the wheels. The king alone did not dismount, more out of respect for his dignity than from indifference to the strain upon the animals; for, in spite of careful leading, he had to submit to a rough shaking from the inequalities of this rugged soil; sometimes he had too much of this, and it is related of him in his annals that he had crossed the mountains on foot like an ordinary mortal.*

* The same fact is found in the accounts of every
expedition, but more importance is attached to it as we
approach the end of the Ninevite empire, when the kings were
not so well able to endure hardship. Sennacherib mentions it
on several occasions, with a certain amount of self-pity for
the fatigue he had undergone, but with a real pride in his
own endurance.

A halt was made every evening, either at some village, whose inhabitants were obliged to provide food and lodging, or, in default of this, on some site which they could fortify by a hastily thrown up rampart of earth. If they were obliged to remain in any place for a length of time, a regular encircling wall was constructed, not square or rectangular like those of the Egyptians, but round or oval.*

* The oval inclines towards a square form, with rounded
corners, on the bas-reliefs of the bronze gates of
Shalmaneser II. at Balawât.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Mansell, taken in the
British Museum.

It was made of dried brick, and provided with towers like an ancient city; indeed, many of these entrenched camps survived the occasion of their formation, and became small fortified towns or castles, whence a permanent garrison could command the neighbouring country. The interior was divided into four equal parts by two roads, intersecting each other at right angles. The royal tents, with their walls of felt or brown linen, resembled an actual palace, which could be moved from place to place; they were surrounded with less pretentious buildings reserved for the kings household, and the stables.

Drawn by Boudier, from Layard.

The tent-poles at the angles of these habitations were plated with metal, and terminated at their upper extremities in figures of goats and other animals made of the same material. The tents of the soldiers, were conical in form, and each was maintained in its position by a forked pole placed inside. They contained the ordinary requirements of the peasant---bed and head-rest, table with legs like those of a gazelle, stools and folding-chairs; the household utensils and the provisions hung from the forks of the support. The monuments, which usually give few details of humble life, are remarkable for their complete reproductions of the daily scenes in the camp. We see on them, the soldier making his bed, grinding corn, dressing the carcase of a sheep, which he had just killed, or pouring out wine; the pot boiling on the fire is watched by the vigilant eye of a trooper or of a woman, while those not actively employed are grouped together in twos and threes, eating, drinking, and chatting. A certain number of priests and soothsayers accompanied the army, but they did not bring the statues of their gods with them, the only emblems of the divinities seen in battle being the two royal ensigns, one representing Assur as lord of the territory, borne on a single bull and bending his bow, while the other depicted him standing on two bulls as King of Assyria.* An altar smoked before the chariot on which these two standards were planted, and every night and morning the prince and his nobles laid offerings upon it, and recited prayers before it for the well-being of the army.

Military tactics had not made much progress since the time of the great Egyptian invasions. The Assyrian generals set out in haste from Nineveh or Assur in the hope of surprising their enemy, and they often succeeded in penetrating into the very heart of his country before he had time to mobilise or concentrate his forces. The work of subduing him was performed piecemeal; they devastated his fields, robbed his orchards, and, marching all through the night,** they would arrive with such suddenness before one or other of his towns, that he would have no time to organise a defence. Most of their campaigns were mere forced marches across plains and mountains, without regular sieges or pitched battles.

* It is possible that each of these standards corresponded
to some dignity of the sovereign; the first belonged to him,
inasmuch as he was _shar kishshati,_ king of the regions,
and the other, by virtue of his office, of _shar Ashshur_,
King of Assyria.

** Assurnazirpal mentions several night marches, which
enabled him to reach the heart of the enemys country.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Mansell. The
inhabitants of the town who have been taken prisoners, are
leaving it with their cattle under the conduct of Assyrian
soldiers.

Should the enemy, however, seek an engagement, and the men be drawn up in line to meet him, the action would be opened by archers and light troops armed with slings, who would be followed by the chariotry and heavy infantry for close attack; a reserve of veterans would await around the commanding-general the crucial moment of the engagement, when they would charge in a body among the combatants, and decide the victory by sheer strength of arm.*

* Tiglath-pileser I. mentions a pitched battle against the
Muskhu, who numbered 20,000 men; and another against
Kiliteshub, King of Kummukh, in his first campaign. In one
of the following campaigns he overcame the people of Saraush
and those of Maruttash, and also 6000 Sugi; later on he
defeated 23 allied kings of Naîri, and took from them 120
chariots and 20,000 people of Kumanu. The other wars are
little more than raids, during which he encountered merely
those who were incapable of offering him any resistance.

The pursuit of the enemy was never carried to any considerable distance, for the men were needed to collect the spoil, despatch the wounded, and carry off the trophies of war. Such of the prisoners as it was deemed useful or politic to spare were stationed in a safe place under a guard of sentries. The remainder were condemned to death as they were brought in, and their execution took place without delay; they were made to kneel down, with their backs to the soldiery, their heads bowed, and their hands resting on a flat stone or a billet of wood, in which position they were despatched with clubs. The scribes, standing before their tent doors, registered the number of heads cut off; each soldier, bringing his quota and throwing it upon the heap, gave in his name and the number of his company, and then withdrew in the hope of receiving a reward proportionate to the number of his victims.*

* The details of this bringing of heads are known to us by
representations of a later period. The allusions contained
in the _Annals of Tiglath-pileser I_. show that the custom
was in full force under the early Assyrian conquerors.

When the king happened to accompany the army, he always presided at this scene, and distributed largesse to those who had shown most bravery; in his absence he required that the heads of the enemys chiefs should be sent to him, in order that they might be exposed to his subjects on the gates of his capital. Sieges were lengthy and arduous undertakings. In the case of towns situated on the plain, the site was usually chosen so as to be protected by canals, or an arm of a river on two or three sides, thus leaving one side only without a natural defence, which the inhabitants endeavoured to make up for by means of double or treble ramparts.*

* The town of Tela had three containing walls, that of
Shingisha had four, and that of Pitura two.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

These fortifications must have resembled those of the Syrian towns; the walls were broad at the base, and, to prevent scaling, rose to a height of some thirty or forty feet: there were towers at intervals of a bowshot, from which the archers could seriously disconcert parties making attacks against any intervening points in the curtain wall; the massive gates were covered with raw hides, or were plated with metal to resist assaults by fire and axe, while, as soon as hostilities commenced, the defence was further completed by wooden scaffolding. Places thus fortified, however, at times fell almost without an attempt at resistance; the inhabitants, having descended into the lowlands to rescue their crops from the Assyrians, would be disbanded, and, while endeavouring to take refuge within their ramparts, would be pursued by the enemy, who would gain admittance with them in the general disorder. If the town did not fall into their hands by some stroke of good fortune, they would at once attempt, by an immediate assault, to terrify the garrison into laying down their arms.*

* Assurnazirpal, in this fashion, took the town of Pitura in
two days, in spite of its strong double ramparts.

The archers and slingers led the attack by advancing in couples till they were within the prescribed distance from the walls, one of the two taking careful aim, while the other sheltered his comrade behind his round-topped shield. The king himself would sometimes alight from his chariot and let fly his arrows in the front rank of the archers, while a handful of resolute men would rush against the gates of the town and attempt either to break them down or set them alight with torches. Another party, armed with stout helmets and quilted jerkins, which rendered them almost invulnerable to the shower of arrows or stones poured on them by the besieged, would attempt to undermine the walls by means of levers and pick-axes, and while thus engaged would be protected by mantelets fixed to the face of the walls, resembling in shape the shields of the archers. Often bodies of men would approach the suburbs of the city and endeavour to obtain access to the ramparts from the roofs of the houses in close proximity to the walls. If, however, they could gain admittance by none of these means, and time was of no consideration, they would resign themselves to a lengthy siege, and the blockade would commence by a systematic desolation of the surrounding country, in which the villages scattered over the plain would be burnt, the vines torn up, and all trees cut down.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

The Assyrians waged war with a brutality which the Egyptians would never have tolerated. Unlike the Pharaohs, their kings were not content to imprison or put to death the principal instigators of a revolt, but their wrath would fall upon the entire population. As long as a town resisted the efforts of their besieging force, all its inhabitants bearing arms who fell into their hands were subjected to the most cruel tortures; they were cut to pieces or impaled alive on stakes, which were planted in the ground just in front of the lines, so that the besieged should enjoy a full view of the sufferings of their comrades.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

Even during the course of a short siege this line of stakes would be prolonged till it formed a bloody pale between the two contending armies. This horrible spectacle had at least the effect of shaking the courage of the besieged, and of hastening the end of hostilities. When at length the town yielded to the enemy, it was often razed to the ground, and salt was strewn upon its ruins, while the unfortunate inhabitants were either massacred or transplanted _en masse_ elsewhere. If the bulk of the population were spared and condemned to exile, the wealthy and noble were shown no clemency; they were thrown from, the top of the city towers, their ears and noses were cut off, their hands and feet were amputated, or they and their children were roasted over a slow fire, or flayed alive, or decapitated, and their heads piled up in a heap.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the
bronze gate at Balawât. The two soldiers who represent the
Assyrian army carry their shields before them; flames appear
above the ramparts, showing that the conquerors have burnt
the town.

The victorious sovereigns appear to have taken a pride in the ingenuity with which they varied these means of torture, and dwell with complacency on the recital of their cruelties. I constructed a pillar at the gate of the city, is the boast of one of them; I then flayed the chief men, and covered the post with their skins; I suspended their dead bodies from this same pillar, I impaled others on the summit of the pillar, and I ranged others on stakes around the pillar.

Two or three executions of this kind usually sufficed to demoralise the enemy. The remaining inhabitants assembled: terrified by the majesty of Assur, and as it were blinded by the brightness of his countenance, they sunk down at the knees of the victor and embraced his feet.*

* These are the very expressions used in the Assyrian texts:
The terror of my strength overthrew them, they feared the
combat, and they embraced my feet; and again: The
brightness of Assur, my lord, overturned them. This latter
image is explained by the presence over the king of the
winged figure of Assur directing the battle.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the
bronze gates of Balawât; on the right the town is seen in
flames, and on the walls on either side hangs a row of
heads, one above another.

The peace secured at the price of their freedom left them merely with their lives and such of their goods as could not be removed from the soil. The scribes thereupon surrounded the spoil seized by the soldiery and drew up a detailed inventory of the prisoners and their property: everything worth carrying away to Assyria was promptly registered, and despatched to the capital.

Drawn by Faucher Gudin, from Layard.

The contents of the royal palace led the way; it comprised the silver, gold, and copper of the vanquished prince, his caldrons, dishes and cups of brass, the women of his harem, the maidens of his household, his furniture and stuffs, horses and chariots, together with his men and women servants. The enemys gods, like his kings, were despoiled of their possessions, and poor and rich suffered alike. The choicest of their troops were incorporated into the Assyrian regiments, and helped to fill the gaps which war had made in the ranks;* the peasantry and townsfolk were sold as slaves, or were despatched with their families to till the domains of the king in some Assyrian village.* Tiglath-pileser I. in this manner incorporated 120 chariots of the Kashki and the Urumi into the Assyrian chariotry.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief of one of the
gates of Balawât.