Chapter III: The Medes and the Second Chaldæan Empire (1)

_The fall of Nineveh and the rise of the Chaldæan and Median empires--The XXVIth Egyptian dynasty: Cyaxares, Alyattes, and Nebuchadrezzar._

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the silver vase of
Tchertomlitsk, now in the museum of the Hermitage. The
vignette is also drawn by Faucher-Gudin, and represents an
Egyptian torso in the Turin museum; the cartouche which is
seen upon the arm is that of Psammetichus I.

The East was ever a land of kaleidoscopic changes and startling dramatic incidents. An Oriental empire, even when built up by strong hands and watched over with constant vigilance, scarcely ever falls to pieces in the slow and gradual process of decay arising from the ties that bind it together becoming relaxed or its constituent elements growing antiquated. It perishes, as a rule, in a cataclysm; its ruin comes like a bolt from the blue, and is consummated before the commencement of it is realised. One day it stands proud and stately in the splendour of its glory; there is no report abroad but that which tells of its riches, its industry, its valour, the good government of its princes and the irresistible might of its gods, and the world, filled with envy or with fear, deeming its good fortune immutable, never once applies to it, even in thought, the usual commonplaces on the instability of human things. Suddenly an ill wind, blowing up from the distant horizon, bursts upon it in destructive squalls, and it is overthrown in the twinkling of an eye, amid the glare of lightning, the resounding crash of thunder, whirlwinds of dust and rain: when the storm has passed away as quickly as it came, its mutterings heralding the desolation which it bears to other climes, the brightening sky no longer reveals the old contours and familiar outlines, but the sun of history rises on a new empire, emerging, as if by the touch of a magic wand, from the ruins which the tempest has wrought. There is nothing apparently lacking of all that, in the eyes of the many, invested its predecessor with glory; it seems in no wise inferior in national vigour, in the number of its soldiers, in the military renown of its chiefs, in the proud prosperity of its people, or in the majesty of its gods; the present fabric is as spacious and magnificent, it would seem, as that which has but just vanished into the limbo of the past. No kingdom ever shone with brighter splendour, or gave a greater impression of prosperity, than the kingdom of Assyria in the days succeeding its triumphs over Blam and Arabia: precisely at this point the monuments and other witnesses of its activity fail us, just as if one of the acts of the piece in which it had played a chief part having come to an end, the drop-curtain must be lowered, amid a flourish of trumpets and the illuminations of an apotheosis, to allow the actors a little breathing-space. Half a century rolls by, during which we have a dim perception of the subdued crash of falling empires, and of the trampling of armies in fierce fight; then the curtain rises on an utterly different drama, of which the plot has been woven behind the scenes, and the exciting _motif_ has just come into play. We no longer hear of Assyria and its kings; their palaces are in ruins; their last faithful warriors sleep in unhonoured graves beneath the ashes of their cities, their prowess is credited to the account of half a dozen fabulous heroes such as Ninus, Sardanapalus, and Semiramis--heroes whose names call up in the memory of succeeding generations only vague but terrible images, such as the phantasies of a dream, which, although but dimly remembered in the morning, makes the hair to stand on end with terror. The nations which erewhile disputed the supremacy with Assyria have either suffered a like eclipse--such as the Khâti, Urartu, the Cossæans, and Elam--or have fallen like Egypt and Southern Syria into the rank of second-rate powers. It is Chaldaea which is now in the van of the nations, in company with Lydia and with Media, whose advent to imperial power no one would have ventured to predict forty or fifty years before.

The principality founded by Deïokes about the beginning of the seventh century B.C., seemed at first destined to play but a modest part; it shared the fortune of the semi-barbarous states with which the Ninevite conquerors came in contact on the western boundary of the Iranian plateau, and from which the governors of Arrapkha or of Kharkhar had extorted tribute to the utmost as often as occasion offered. According to one tradition, it had only three kings in an entire century: Deïokes up till 655 B.C., Phraortes from 655 to 633, and after the latter year Cyaxares, the hero of his race.* Another tradition claimed an earlier foundation for the monarchy, and doubled both the number of the kings and the age of the kingdom.**

* This is the tradition gleaned by Herodotus, probably at
Sardes, from the mouths of Persians residing in that city.

** This is the tradition derived from the court of
Artaxerxes by Ctesias of Cnidus. Volney discovered the
principle upon which the chronology of his Median dynasty
was based by Ctesias. If we place his list side by side with
that of Herodotus--

We see that, while rejecting the names given by Herodotus,
Ctesias repeats twice over the number of years assigned by
the latter to the reigns of his kings, at least for the four
last generations--

At the beginning Herodotus gives before Deïokes an
interregnum of uncertain duration. Ctesias substituted the
round number of fifty years for the fifty-three assigned to
Deïokes, and replaced the interregnum by a reign which he
estimated at the mean duration of a human generation, thirty
years; he then applied to this new pair of numbers the
process of doubling he had employed for the couple mentioned
above--

The number twenty-eight has been attributed to the reign of
Arbakes, instead of the number thirty, to give an air of
truthfulness to the whole catalogue.

This tradition ignored the monarchs who had rendered the second Assyrian empire illustrious, and substituted for them a line of inactive sovereigns, reputed to be the descendants of Ninus and Semiramis. The last of them, Sardanapalus, had, according to this account, lived a life of self-indulgence in his harem, surrounded by women, dressing himself in their garb, and adopting feminine occupations and amusements. The satrap of Media, Arbakes, saw him at his toilet, and his heart turned against yielding obedience to such a painted doll: he rebelled in concert with Belesys the Babylonian. The imminence of the danger thus occasioned roused Sardanapalus from his torpor, and revived in him the warlike qualities of his ancestors; he placed himself at the head of his troops, overcame the rebels, and was about to exterminate them, when his hand was stayed by the defection of some Bactrian auxiliaries. He shut himself up in Nineveh, and for two whole years heroically repulsed all assaults; in the third year, the Tigris, swollen by the rains, overflowed its banks and broke down the city walls for a distance of twenty stadia. The king thereupon called to mind an oracle which had promised him victory until the day when the river should betray him. Judging that the prediction was about to be accomplished, he resolved not to yield himself alive to the besieger, and setting fire to his palace, perished therein, together with his children and his treasures, about 788 B.C. Arbakes, thus rendered an independent sovereign, handed down the monarchy to his son Mandaukas, and he in his turn was followed successively by Sosarmos, Artykas, Arbianes, Artaios, Artynes, and Astibaras.* These names are not the work of pure invention; they are met with in more than one Assyrian text: among the petty kings who paid tribute to Sargon are enumerated some which bear such names as Mashdaku,** Ashpanda,*** Arbaku, and Khartukka,*** and many others, of whom traces ought to be found some day among the archives of princely families of later times.

* Oppert thought that the names given by Herodotus
represented Aryanised forms of Turanian names, of which
Otesias has given the Persian translation.

** Mashdaku is identified by Post with the Mandaukas or
Maydaukas of Ctesias, which would then be a copyists error
for Masdaukas. The identification with Vashd[t]aku, Vashtak,
the name of a fabulous king of Armenia, is rejected by Rost;
Mashdaku would be the Iranian Mazdaka, preserved in the
Mazakes of Arrian.

*** Ashpanda is the Aspandas or Aspadas which Ctesias gives
instead of the Astyages of Herodotus.

**** The name of Artykas is also found in the secondary form
Kardikoas, which is nearer the Khartukka of the Assyrian
texts.

There were in these archives, at the disposal of scribes and strangers inclined to reconstruct the history of Asia, a supply of materials of varying value--authentic documents inscribed on brick tablets, legends of fabulous exploits, epic poems and records of real victories and conquests, exaggerated in accordance with the vanity or the interest of the composer: from these elements it was easy to compile lists of Median kings which had no real connection with each other as far as their names, order of succession, or duration of reign were concerned. The Assyrian chronicles have handed down to us, in place of these dynasties which were alleged to have exercised authority over the whole territory, a considerable number of noble houses scattered over the country, each of them autonomous, and a rival of its neighbour, and only brought into agreement with one another at rare intervals by their common hatred of the invader. Some of them were representatives of ancient races akin to the Susians, and perhaps to the first inhabitants of Chaldæa; others belonged to tribes of a fresh stock, that of the Aryans, and more particularly to the Iranian branch of the Aryan family. We catch glimpses of them in the reign of Shalmaneser III., who calls them the Amadaî; then, after this first brush with Assyria, intercourse and conflict between the two nations became more and more frequent every year, until the distant Medes soon began to figure among the regular adversaries of the Ninevite armies, and even the haughtiest monarchs refer with pride to victories gained over them. Rammân-nirâri waged ceaseless war against them, Tiglath-pileser III. twice drove them before him from the south-west to the north-east as far as the foot of Demavend, while Sargon, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon, during their respective reigns, kept anxious watch upon them, and endeavoured to maintain some sort of authority over the tribes which lay nearest to them. Both in the personal names and names of objects which have come down to us in the records of these campaigns, we detect Iranian characteristics, in spite of the Semitic garb with which the inscriptions have invested them: among the names of countries we find Partukka, Diristânu, Patusharra, Nishaîa, Urivzân, Abîruz, and Ariarma, while the men bear such names as Ishpabarra, Eparna, Shîtirparna, Uarzân, and Dayaukku. As we read through the lists, faint resemblances in sound awaken dormant classical memories, and the ear detects familiar echoes in the names of those Persians whose destinies were for a time linked with those of Athens and Sparta in the days of Darius and of Xerxes: it is like the first breath of Greek influence, faint and almost imperceptible as yet, wafted to us across the denser atmosphere of the East.

The Iranians had a vague remembrance of a bygone epoch, during which they had wandered, in company with other nations of the same origin as themselves, in that cradle of the Aryan peoples, Aryanem-Vaêjô. Modern historians at first placed their mythical birthplace in the wilder regions of Central Asia, near the Oxus and the Jaxartes, and not far from the so-called table-land of Pamir, which they regarded as the original point of departure of the Indo-European races. They believed that a large body of these primitive Aryans must have descended southwards into the basin of the Indus and its affluents, and that other detachments had installed themselves in the oases of Margiana and Khorasmia, while the Iranians would have made their way up to the plateau which separates the Caspian Sea from the Persian Gulf, where they sought to win for themselves a territory sufficient for their wants. The compilers of the sacred books of the Iranians claimed to be able to trace each stage of their peregrinations, and to describe the various accidents which befell them during this heroic period of their history. According to these records, it was no mere chance or love of adventure which had led them to wander for years from clime to clime, but rather a divine decree. While Ahurômazdaô, the beneficent deity whom they worshipped, had provided them with agreeable resting-places, a perverse spirit, named Angrômaînyus, had on every occasion rendered their sojourn there impossible, by the plagues which he inflicted on them. Bitter cold, for instance, had compelled them to forsake Aryanem-Vaêjô and seek shelter in Sughdhâ and Mûru.* Locusts had driven them from Sughdhâ; the incursions of the nomad tribes, coupled with their immorality, had forced them to retire from Mûru to Bâkhdhî, the country of lofty banners, ** and subsequently to Nisaya, which lies to the south-east, between Mûru and Bâkhdhî. From thence they made their way into the narrow valleys of the Harôyu, and overran Vaêkereta, the land of noxious shadows.***

* Sughdhâ is Sogdiana; Mûru, in ancient Persian Margush, is
the modern Merv, the Margiana of classical geographers.

** Bâkhdhî is identical with Bactriana, but, as Spiegel
points out, this Avestic form is comparatively recent, and
readily suggests the modern Balkh, in which the consonants
have become weakened.

*** The Avesta places Nisaya between Mûru and Bâkhdhî to
distinguish it from other districts of the same name to be
found in this part of Asia: Eugène Burnouf is probably
correct in identifying it with the Nêssea of Strabo and of
Ptolemy, which lay to the south of Margiana, at the junction
of the roads leading to Hyrcania in one direction and
Bactriana in the other.

From this point forwards, the countries mentioned by their chroniclers are divided into two groups, lying in opposite directions: Arahvaiti, Haêtumant, and Haptahindu* on the east; and on the west, Urvâ,** Harôyu or Haraêva is the Greek Aria, the modern province of Herat.

* Arahvaiti, the Harauvatish of the Achsemenian
inscriptions, is the Greek Arachosia, and Haêtumant the
basin of their Etymander, the modern Helmend; in other
words, the present province of Seîstan. Hapta-Hindu is the
western part of the Indian continent, i.e. the Punjaub.

** The Pehlevi commentators identify Urvâ with Mesônê,
mentioned by classical writers, at the confluence of the
Tigris and Euphrates, or perhaps the plain around Ispahan
which bore the name of Masân in the Sassanid period. Fr.
Lenormant had connected it with the name Urivzân, which is
applied in the Assyrian inscriptions to a district of Media
in the time of Tiglath-pileser III.

The Pehlevi commentators identify Vaêkereta with Kabulistan, and also volunteer the following interpretation of the title which accompanies the name: The shadow of the trees there is injurious to the body, or as some say, the shadow of the mountains, and it produces fever there. Arguing from passages of similar construction, Lassen was led to recognise in the epithet _duzhako-shayanem_ a place-name, inhabitant of Duzhakô, which he identified with a ruined city in this neighbourhood called Dushak; Haug believed he had found a confirmation of this hypothesis in the fact that the Pairika Khnâthaiti created there by Angrô-maînyus recalls in sound, at any rate, the name of the people Parikani mentioned by classical writers, as inhabiting these regions. Khnenta-Vehrkâna,* Bhagâ,** and Chakhra,*** as far as the districts of Varena**** and the basin of the Upper Tigris.^ This legend was composed long after the event, in order to explain in the first place the relationship between the two great families into which the Oriental Aryans were divided, viz. the Indian and Iranian, and in the second to account for the peopling by the Iranians of a certain number of provinces between the Indus and the Euphrates. As a matter of fact, it is more likely that the Iranians came originally from Europe, and that they migrated from the steppes of Southern Russia into the plains of the Kur and the Araxes by way of Mount Caucasus.^^

* The name Khnenta seems to have been Hellenised into that
of Kharindas, borne by a river which formed the frontier
between Hyrcania and Media; according to the Pehlevi version
it was really a river of Hyrcania, the Djordjân. The epithet
Vehrkâna, which qualifies the name Khnenta, has been
identified by Burnouf with the Hyrcania of classical
geographers.

** Raghâ is identified with Azerbaijan in the Pehlevi
version of the Vendidâd, but is, more probably, the Rhago of
classical geographers, the capital of Eastern Media.

*** Chakhra seems to be identical with the country of Karkh,
at the northwestern extremity of Khorassan.

**** Varena is identified by the Pehlevi commentators with
Patishkhvargâr, i.e. probably the Patusharra of the Assyrian
inscriptions.

^ Haug proposed to identify this last station with the
regions situated on the shores of the Caspian, near the
south-western corner of that sea. But, as Garrez points out,
the Pehlevi commentators prove that it must be the countries
on the Upper Tigris.

^^ Spiegel has argued that Aryanem-Vaôjô is probably Arrân,
the modern Kazabadagh, the mountainous district between the
Kur and the Aras, and his opinion is now gaining acceptance.
The settlement of the Iranians in Russia, and their entrance
into Asia by way of the Caucasus, have been admitted by
Rost. Classical writers reversed this order of things, and
derived the Sauromato and other Scythian tribes from Media.

It is possible that some of their hordes may have endeavoured to wedge themselves in between the Halys and the Euphrates as far as the centre of Asia Minor. Their presence in this quarter would explain why we encounter Iranian personal names in the Sargonide epoch on the two spurs of Mount Taurus, such as that of the Kushtashpi, King of Kummukh, in the time of Tiglath-pileser III., and of the Kundashpi mentioned in the _Annals_ of Shalmaneser III. in the ninth century B.C.*

* The name Kushtashpi has been compared with that of
Vistâspa or Gushtâsp by Fr. Lenormant, the name Kundashpi
with that of Vindâspa by Gutschmid, and, later on, Ball has
added to these a long list of names in Egyptian and Assyrian
inscriptions which he looks upon as Iranian. Kundashpi
recalls at first sight Gundobunas, a name of the Sassanid
epoch, if this latter form be authentic. Tiele adopts the
identification of Kushtashpi with Vistâspa, and Justi has
nothing to say against it, nor against the identification of
Kundashpi with Vindâspa.

The main body, finding its expansion southwards checked by Urartu, diverged in a south-easterly direction, and sweeping before it all the non-Aryan or Turanian tribes who were too weak to stem its progress, gradually occupied the western edge of the great plateau, where it soon became mainly represented by the two compact groups, the Persians to the south on the farthest confines of Elam, and the Medes between the Greater Zab, the Turnât, and the Caspian. It is probable that the kingdom founded by Deïokes originally included what was afterwards termed _Media Magna_ by the Græco-Roman geographers. This sovereignty was formed by the amalgamation under a single monarch of six important tribes--the Buzo, Paraatakeni, Struchatas, Arizanti, Budii, and Magi. It extended north-westwards as far as the Kiziluzôn, which formed the frontier between the Persians and the Mannai on this side. Northwards, it reached as far as Demavend; the salt desert that rendered Central Iran a barren region, furnished a natural boundary on the east; on both the south and west, the Assyrian border-lands of Ellipi, Kharkhar, and Arrapkha prevented it from extending to the chief ranges of the Zagros and Cordioan mountains. The soil, though less fertile than that of Chaldæa or of Egypt, was by no means deficient in resources. The mountains contained copper, iron, lead, some gold and silver,* several kinds of white or coloured marble,** and precious stones, such as topaz, garnets, emeralds, sapphires, cornelian, and lapis-lazuli, the latter being a substance held in the highest esteem by Eastern jewellers from time immemorial; Mount Bikni was specially celebrated for the fine specimens of this stone which were obtained there.*** Its mountains were in those days clothed with dense forests, in which the pine, the oak, and the poplar grew side by side with the eastern plane tree, the cedar, lime, elm, ash, hazel, and terebinth.****

* Rawlinson has collected traditions in reference to gold
and silver mining among the mountains in the neighbourhood
of Takht-i-Suleiman; one of these is still called _Zerreh-
Shardn_, the mount of the _gold-washers_.

** The best known was the so-called Tauris marble quarried
from the hills in the neighbourhood of Lake Urumiyah.

*** The list of precious stones which Pliny tells us were
found in Media, contains several kinds which we are unable
to identify, _e.g_. the Zathênê, the gassinades and
narcissitis. Pliny calls lapis-lazuli _sapphirus_, and
declares that the bright specks of pyrites it contained
rendered it unsuitable for engraving. In the Assyrian
inscriptions Mount Bikni, the modern Demavend, is described
as a mountain of Uknu, or lapis-lazuli.

**** A large part of the mountains and plains is now
treeless, but it is manifest, both from the evidence of the
inscriptions and from the observations of travellers, that
the whole of Media was formerly well wooded.

The intermediate valleys were veritable orchards, in which the vegetation of the temperate zones mingled with tropical growths. The ancients believed that the lemon tree came originally from Persia.* To this day the peach, pear, apple, quince, cherry, apricot, almond, filbert, chestnut, fig, pistachio-nut, and pomegranate still flourish there: the olive is easily acclimatised, and the vine produces grapes equally suitable for the table or the winepress.** The plateau presents a poorer and less promising appearance--not that the soil is less genial, but the rivers become lost further inland, and the barrenness of the country increases as they come to an end one after another. Where artificial irrigation has been introduced, the fertility of the country is quite as great as in the neighbourhood of the mountains;*** outside this irrigated region no trees are to be seen, except a few on the banks of rivers or ponds, but wheat, barley, rye, oats, and an abundance of excellent vegetables grow readily in places where water is present.

* The apple obtained from Media was known as the Modicum
malum, and was credited with the property of being a
powerful antidote to poison: it was supposed that it would
not grow anywhere outside Media.

** In some places, as, for instance, at Kirmânshahàn, the
vine stocks have to be buried during the winter to protect
them from the frost.

*** Irrigation was effected formerly, as now, by means of
subterranean canals with openings at intervals, known as
_kanât_.

The fauna include, besides wild beasts of the more formidable kinds, such as lions, tigers, leopards, and bears, many domestic animals, or animals capable of being turned to domestic use, such as the ass, buffalo, sheep, goat, dog, and dromedary, and the camel with two humps, whose gait caused so much merriment among the Ninevite idlers when they beheld it in the triumphal processions of their kings; there were, moreover, several breeds of horses, amongst which the Nisasan steed was greatly prized on account of its size, strength, and agility.* In short, Media was large enough and rich enough to maintain a numerous population, and offered a stable foundation to a monarch ambitious of building up a new empire.**

* In the time of the Seleucides, Media supplied nearly the
whole of Asia with these animals, and the grazing-lands of
Bagistana, the modern Behistun, are said to have supported
160,000 of them. Under the Parthian kings Media paid a
yearly tribute of 3000 horses, and the Nisæan breed was
still celebrated at the beginning of the Byzantine era.
Horses are mentioned among the tribute paid by the Medic
chiefs to the kings of Assyria.

** The history of the Medes remains shrouded in greater
obscurity than that of any other Asiatic race. We possess no
original documents which owe their existence to this nation,
and the whole of our information concerning its history is
borrowed from Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions, and from
the various legends collected by the Greeks, especially by
Herodotus and Ctesias, from Persian magnates in Asia Minor
or at the court of the Achæmenian kings, or from fragments
of vanished works such as the writings of Borosus. And yet
modern archaeologists and philologists have, during the last
thirty years, allowed their critical faculties, and often
their imagination as well, to run riot when dealing with
this very period. After carefully examining, one after
another, most of the theories put forward, I have adopted
those hypotheses which, while most nearly approximating to
the classical legends, harmonise best with the chronological
framework--far too imperfect as yet--furnished by the
inscriptions dealing with the closing years of Nineveh; I do
not consider them all to be equally probable, but though
they may be mere stop-gap solutions, they have at least the
merit of reproducing in many cases the ideas current among
those races of antiquity who had been in direct
communication with the Medes and with the last of their
sovereigns.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph of the bas-relief from
Persepolis now in the British Museum.

The first person to conceive the idea of establishing one was, perhaps, a certain Fravartish, the Phraortes of the Greeks, whom Herodotus declares to have been the son and successor of Deiokes.*

* The ancient form of the name, Fravartish or Frawarti, has
been handed down to us by a passage in the great inscription
of Behistun; it means the man who proclaims faith in Ahura-
mazda, the believer.

He came to the throne about 655 B.C. at a time when the styar of Assur-bani-pal was still in the ascendant, and at first does not seem to have thought of trying to shake off the incubus of Assyrian rule. He began very wisely by annexing such of the petty neighbouring states as had hitherto remained independent, and then set himself to attack the one other nation of Iranian blood which, by virtue of the number and warlike qualities of its clans, was in a position to enter into rivalry with his own people. The Persians, originally concentrated in the interior, among the steep valleys which divide the plateau on the south, had probably taken advantage of the misfortunes of Elam to extend their own influence at its expense. Their kings were chosen from among the descendants of a certain Akhâmanish, the Achæmenes of the Greeks, who at the time of the Iranian invasion had been chief of the Pasargadæ, one of the Persian clans. Achæmenes is a mythical hero rather than a real person; he was, we are told, fed during infancy by an eagle--that mighty eagle whose shadow, according to a Persian belief in mediaeval times, assured the sovereignty to him on whom it chanced to fall. Achæmenes would seem to have been followed by a certain Chaispi--or Teispes--a less fabulous personage, described in the legends as his son. It was, doubtless, during his reign that Assur-bani-pal, in hot pursuit of Tiummân and Khumbân-khaldash, completed the downfall of Susa; Chaispi claimed the eastern half of Elam as his share of the spoil, and on the strength of his victory styled himself King of Anshân--a title on which his descendants still prided themselves a hundred years after his death.*

* The fact that Teispes was the immediate successor of
Achæmenes, indicated by Herodotus, is affirmed by Darius
himself in the Behistun inscription. According to Billet-
beck, the Anzân (Anshân) of the early Achæmenidæ was merely
a very small part of the ancient Anzân (Anshân), viz. the
district on the east and south-east of Kuh-i-Dena, which
includes the modern towns of Yezdeshast, Abadeh, Yoklîd, and
Kushkiserd.

Persia, as then constituted, extended from the mouths of the Oroatis--the modern Tab--as far as the entrance to the Straits of Ormuzd.* The coast-line, which has in several places been greatly modified since ancient times by the formation of alluvial deposits, consists of banks of clay and sand, which lie parallel with the shore, and extend a considerable distance inland; in some places the country is marshy, in others parched and rocky, and almost everywhere barren and unhealthy. The central region is intersected throughout its whole length by several chains of hills, which rise terrace-like, one behind the other, from the sea to the plateau; some regions are sterile, more especially in the north and east, but for the most part the country is well wooded, and produces excellent crops of cereals. Only a few rivers, such as the Oroatis, which forms the boundary between Persia and Susiana,** the Araxes, and the Bagradas succeed in breaking through the barriers that beset their course, and reach the Persian Gulf;*** most of the others find no outlet, and their waters accumulate at the bottom of the valleys, in lakes whose areas vary at the different seasons.

* Herodotus imagined Carmania and Persia Proper to be one
and the same province; from the Alexandrine period onwards
historians and geographers drew a distinction between the
two.

** The form of the name varies in different writers. Strabo
calls it the Oroatis, Nearchus the Arosis; in Pliny it
appears as Oratis and Zarotis, and in Ammianus Marcellinus
as Oroates.

*** The Araxes is the modern Bendamîr. The Kyros, which
flowed past Persepolis, is now the Pulwar, an affluent of
the Bendamîr. The Bagradas of Ptolemy, called the Hyperis by
Juba, is the modern Nabend.

Drawn by Boudier, from Costs and Flandin, _Voyage en Perse_,
vol. i. pl. xcvi.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph of the Naksh-i-Rustem
bas-relief taken by Dieulafoy.

The mountainous district is furrowed in all directions by deep ravines, with almost vertical sides, at the bottom of which streams and torrents follow a headlong course. The landscape wears a certain air of savage grandeur; giant peaks rise in needle-like points perpendicularly to the sky; mountain paths wind upward, cut into the sides of the steep precipices; the chasms are spanned by single-arched bridges, so frail and narrow that they seem likely to be swept away in the first gail that blows. No country could present greater difficulties to the movements of a regular army or lend itself more readily to a system of guerrilla warfare. It was unequally divided between some ten or twelve tribes:* chief among these were the Pasargadaa, from which the royal family took its origin; after them came the Maraphii and Maspii.

* Herodotus only mentions ten Persian tribes; Xenophon
speaks of twelve.

The chiefs of these two tribes were elected from among the members of seven families, who, at first taking equal rank with that of the Pasargadaæ, had afterwards been reduced to subjection by the Achæmenidæ, forming a privileged class at the court of the latter, the members of which shared the royal prerogatives and took a part in the work of government. Of the remaining tribes, the Panthialad, Derusiæi, and Carmenians lived a sedentary life, while the Dai, Mardians, Dropici, and Sagartians were nomadic in their habits. Each one of these tribes occupied its own allotted territory, the limits of which were not always accurately defined; we know that Sagartia, Parseta-kônê, and Mardia lay towards the north, on the confines of Media and the salt desert,* Taokênê extended along the seaboard, and Carmania lay to the east. The tribes had constructed large villages, such as Armuza, Sisidôna, Apostana, Gogana, and Taôkê, on the sea-coast (the last named possessing a palace which was one of the three chief residences of the Achæmenian kings),** and Carmana, Persepolis, Pasargadæ, and Gabæ in the interior.***

* Parsetakênê, which has already been identified with the
Partukkanu (or Partakkanu) of the Assyrian inscriptions, is
placed by Ptolemy in Persia; Mardia corresponds to the
mountainous district of Bebahan and Kazrun.

** The position of most of these towns is still somewhat
doubtful. Armuza is probably Ormuz (or Hormuz) on the
mainland, the forerunner of the insular Hormuz of the
Portuguese, as the French scholar dAnville has pointed out;
Sisidôna has been identified with the modern village of
Mogu, near Ras-Jerd, Apostana with the town of Shewâr, the
name seeming to be perpetuated in that of the Jebel Asban
which rises not far from there. Gogana is probably Bender
Kongûn, and Taokô, at the mouth of the Granis, is either
Khor Gasseîr or Rohilla at the mouth of the Bishawer. The
palace, which was one of the three principal residences of
the Achæmenian kings, is probably mentioned by Strabo, and
possibly in Dionysius Periegetes.

*** Carmana is the modern Kermân; the exact position of
Gabæ, which also possesses a palace, is not known.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph of one of the bas-
reliefs at Persepolis, in Dieulafoy.

The Persians were a keen-witted and observant race, inured to all kinds of hardships in their occupation as mountain shepherds, and they were born warriors. The type preserved on the monuments differs but little from that which still exists at the present day in the more remote districts. It was marked by a tall and slender figure, with sturdy shoulders and loins, a small head, with a thick shock of hair and curling beard, a straight nose, a determined mouth, and an eye steady and alert. Yet, in spite of their valour, Phraortes overpowered them, and was henceforward able to reckon the princes of Anshân among his vassals; strengthened by the addition of their forces to his own, he directed his efforts to the subjection of the other races of the plateau. If we may believe the tradition of the Hellenic epoch, he reduced them to submission, and, intoxicated by his success, ventured at last to take up arms against the Assyrians, who for centuries past had held rule over Upper Asia.

This was about 635 B.C., or less than ten years after the downfall of Elam, and it does not seem likely that the vital forces of Assyria can have suffered any serious diminution within so short a space of time.*

* The date is indicated by the figures given by Herodotus in
regard to the Medic kings, based on the calculations of
himself or his authorities. Phraortes died in 634 B.C.,
after a reign of twenty-two years, and as the last year of
his reign coincides with the war against Assyria, the
preparations for it cannot have been much earlier than 635
or 636 B.C., a year or two before the catastrophe.

Assur-bani-pal, weary of fighting, even though he no longer directed operations in person, had apparently determined to remain entirely on the defensive, and not to take the field, unless absolutely compelled to do so by rebellion at home or an attack from outside. In view of the growing need of rest for the Assyrian nation, he could not have arrived at a wiser decision, provided always that circumstances allowed of its being carried into effect, and that the tributary races and frontier nations were willing to fall in with his intentions. They did so at first, for the fate of Elam had filled even the most unruly among them with consternation, and peace reigned supreme from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. Assur-bani-pal took advantage of this unexpected lull to push forward the construction of public works in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. The palace of Sennacherib, though it had been built scarcely fifty years before, was already beginning to totter on its foundations; Assur-bani-pal entirely remodeled and restored it--a proceeding which gave universal satisfaction. The common people had, as usual, to make the bricks with their own hands and convey them to the spot, but as the chariots employed for this purpose formed part of the booty recently brought back from Elam, the privilege of using these trophies did something to lighten the burden of the tasks imposed on them. Moreover, they had the satisfaction of seeing at work among the squads of labourers several real kings, the Arabian chiefs who had been pursued and captured in the heart of the desert by Assur-bani-pals generals; they plodded along under their heavy baskets, stimulated by the crack of the whip, amid insults and jeers. This palace was one of the largest and most ornate ever built by the rulers of Assyria. True, the decoration does not reveal any novel process or theme; we find therein merely the usual scenes of battle or of the chase, but they are designed and executed with a skill to which the sculptor of Nineveh had never before attained. The animals, in particular, are portrayed with a light and delicate touch--the wild asses pursued by hounds, or checked while galloping at full speed by a cast of the lasso; the herds of goats and gazelles hurrying across the desert; the wounded lioness, which raises herself with a last dying effort to roar at the beaters. We are conscious of Egyptian influence underlying the Asiatic work, and the skilful arrangement of the scenes from the Elamite campaigns also reminds us of Egypt. The picture of the battle of Tullîz recalls, in the variety of its episodes and the arrangement of the perspective, the famous engagement at Qodshu, of which Ramses II. has left such numerous presentments on the Theban pylons. The Assyrians, led by the vicissitudes of invasion to Luxor and the Ramesseum, had, doubtless, seen these masterpieces of Egyptian art in a less mutilated state than that in which we now possess them, and profited by the remembrance when called upon to depict the private life of their king and the victories gained by his armies.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by Place.

It was in this magnificent residence that Assur-bani-pal led an existence of indolent splendour, such as the chroniclers of a later age were wont to ascribe to all the Assyrian monarchs from the time of Semiramis onwards.*

* Stories of the effeminacy of Sardanapalus had been
collected by Ctesias of Cnidus; they soon grew under the
hands of historians in the time of Alexander, and were
passed on by them to writers of the Roman and Byzantine
epochs.

We would gladly believe that he varied the monotony of his hunting expeditions, his banquets, and entertainments in the gardens in company with the women of the harem, by pleasures of a more refined nature, and that he took an unusual interest in the history and literature of the races who had become subject to his rule. As a matter of fact, there have been discovered in several of the ruined chambers of his palaces the remains of a regular library, which must originally have contained thousands of clay tablets, all methodically arranged and catalogued for his use. A portion of them furnish us at first-hand with the records of his reign, and include letters exchanged with provincial governors, augural predictions, consultation of oracles, observations made by the royal astrologers, standing orders, accounts of income and expenditure, even the reports of physicians in regard to the health of members of the royal family or of the royal household: these documents reveal to us the whole machinery of government in actual operation, and we almost seem to witness the secret mechanism by which the kingdom was maintained in activity. Other tablets contain authentic copies of works which were looked upon as classics in the sanctuaries of the Euphrates. Probably, when Babylon was sacked, Sennacherib had ordered the books which lay piled up in E-Sagilla and the other buildings of the city to be collected and carried away to Nineveh along with the statues and property of the gods. They had been placed in the treasury, and there they remained until Esarhaddon re-established the kingdom of Karduniash, and Assur-bani-pal was forced to deliver up the statue of Marduk and restore to the sanctuaries, now rebuilt, all the wealth of which his grandfather had robbed them: but before sending back the tablets, he ordered copies to be made of them, and his secretaries set to work to transcribe for his use such of these works as they considered worthy of reproduction. The majority of them were treatises compiled by the most celebrated adepts in the sciences for which Chaldæa had been famous from time immemorial; they included collections of omens, celestial and terrestrial, in which the mystical meaning of each phenomenon and its influence on the destinies of the world was explained by examples borrowed from the Annals of world-renowned conquerors, such as Naramsin and Sargon of Agade; then there were formulæ for exorcising evil spirits from the bodies of the possessed, and against phantoms, vampires, and ghosts, the recognised causes of all disease; prayers and psalms, which had to be repeated before the gods in order to obtain pardon for sin; and histories of divinities and kings from the time of the creation down to the latest date. Among these latter were several versions of the epic of Grilgames, the story of Etana, of Adapa, and many others; and we may hope to possess all that the Assyrians knew of the old Chaldæan literature in the seventh century B.C., as soon as the excavators have unearthed from the mound at Kouyunjik all the tablets, complete or fragmentary, which still lie hidden there. Even from the shreds of information which they have already yielded to us, we are able to piece together so varied a picture that we can readily imagine Assur-bani-pal to have been a learned and studious monarch, a patron of literature and antiquarian knowledge. Very possibly he either read himself, or had read to him, many of the authors whose works found a place in his library: the kings of Nineveh, like the Pharaohs, desired now and then to be amused by tales of the marvellous, and they were doubtless keenly alive to the delightful rhythm and beautiful language employed by the poets of the past in singing the praises of their divine or heroic ancestors. But the mere fact that his palace contained the most important literary collection which the ancient East has so far bequeathed to us, in no way proves that Assur-bani-pal displayed a more pronounced taste for literature than his predecessors; it indicates merely the zeal and activity of his librarians, their intelligence, and their respect and admiration for the great works of the past. Once he had issued his edict ordering new editions of the old masters to be prepared, Assur-bani-pal may have dismissed the matter from his mind, and the work would go on automatically without need for any further interference on his part. The scribes enriched his library for him, in much the same way as the generals won his battles, or the architects built his monuments: they were nothing more than nameless agents, whose individuality was eclipsed by that of their master, their skill and talent being all placed to his credit. Babylonia shared equally with Assyria in the benefits of his government. He associated himself with his brother Shamash-shumukin in the task of completing the temple of Ê-Sagilla; afterwards, when sole monarch, he continued the work of restoration, not only in Babylon, but in the lesser cities as well, especially those which had suffered most during the war, such as Uru, Uruk, Borsippa, and Cutha.*

He refers to the works at Borsippa and Kuta towards the end
of the account of his campaign against Shamash-shumukin, and
to those at Uruk in describing the war against Khumbân-
khaldash.

He remodelled the temple of Bel at Nippur, the walls built there by him being even now distinguishable from the rest by the size of the bricks and the careful dressing of the masonry. From the shores of the Persian Gulf to the mountains of Armenia, Assyria and Karduniash were covered with building-yards just as they had been in the most peaceful days of the monarchy.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the photograph published by
Peters.

It was at this unique juncture of apparent grandeur and prosperity that Phraortes resolved to attack Assur-bani-pal. There is nothing to indicate that his action took place simultaneously with some movement on the part of other peoples, or with a serious insurrection in any of the Assyrian provinces. For my part, I prefer to set it down to one of those sudden impulses, those irresistible outbursts of self-confidence, which from time to time actuated the princes tributary to Nineveh or the kings on its frontier. The period of inactivity to which some previous defeat inflicted on them or on their predecessors had condemned them, allowed them to regain their strength, and one or two victories over less powerful neighbours served to obliterate the memory of former humiliation and disaster; they flew to arms full of hope in the result, and once more drew down defeat upon their heads, being lucky indeed if their abortive rising led to nothing worse than the slaughter of their armies, the execution of their generals, and an increase in the amount of their former tribute. This was the fate that overtook Phraortes; the conqueror of the Persians, when confronted by the veteran troops of Assyria, failed before their superior discipline, and was left dead upon the field of battle with the greater part of his army. So far the affair presented no unusual features; it was merely one more commonplace repetition of a score of similar episodes which had already taken place in the same region, under Tiglath-pileser III. or the early Sargonides; but Huvakshatara, the son of Phraortes, known to the Greeks as Cyaxares,* instead of pleading for mercy, continued to offer a stubborn resistance. Cyaxares belongs to history, and there can be no doubt that he exercised a decisive influence over the destinies of the Oriental world, but precise details of his exploits are wanting, and his personality is involved in such obscuring mists that we can scarcely seize it; the little we have so far been able to glean concerning him shows us, not so much the man himself, as a vague shadow of him seen dimly through the haze.

* The original form of the name is furnished by passages in
the Behistun inscription, where Chitrantakhma of Sagartia
and Fravartish of Media, two of the claimants for the throne
who rose against Darius, are represented as tracing their
descent from Huvakshatara.

His achievements prove him to have been one of those perfect rulers of men, such as Asia produces every now and then, who knew how to govern as well as how to win battles--a born general and lawgiver, who could carry his people with him, and shone no less in peace than in war.*

* G. Rawlinson takes a somewhat different view of Cyaxares
character; he admits that Cyaxares knew how to win
victories, but refuses to credit him with the capacity for
organisation required in order to reap the full benefits of
conquest, giving as his reason for this view the brief
duration of the Medic empire. The test applied by him does
not seem to me a conclusive one, for the existence of the
second Chaldæan empire was almost as short, and yet it would
be decidedly unfair to draw similar inferences touching the
character of Nabopolassar or Nebuchadrezzar from this fact.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Coste and Flandin. The first
and third figures are Medes, the second and fourth Persians.

The armies at the disposal of his predecessors had been little more than heterogeneous assemblies of feudal militia; each clan furnished its own contingent of cavalry, archers, and pikemen, but instead of all these being combined into a common whole, with kindred elements contributed by the other tribes, each one acted separately, thus forming a number of small independent armies within the larger one. Cyaxares saw that defeat was certain so long as he had nothing but these ill-assorted masses to match against the regular forces of Assyria: he therefore broke up the tribal contingents and rearranged the units of which they were composed according to their natural affinities, grouping horsemen with horsemen, archers with archers, and pikemen with pikemen, taking the Assyrian cavalry and infantry as his models.*

* Herodotus tells us that Cyaxares was the first to divide the Asiatics into different regiments, separating the pikemen from the archers and horsemen; before his time, these troops were all mixed up haphazard together. I have interpreted his evidence in the sense which seems most in harmony with what we know of Assyrian military tactics. It seems incredible that the Medic armies can have fought pell-mell, as Herodotus declares, seeing that for two hundred years past the Medes had been frequently engaged against such well-drilled troops as those of Assyria: if the statement be authentic, it merely means that Cyaxares converted all the small feudal armies which had hitherto fought side by side on behalf of the king into a single royal army in which the different kinds of troops were kept separate.

The foot-soldiers wore a high felt cap known as a tiara; they had long tunics with wide sleeves, tied in at the waist by a belt, and sometimes reinforced by iron plates or scales, as well as gaiters, buskins of soft leather, and large wickerwork shields covered with ox-hide, which they bore in front of them like a movable bulwark; their weapons consisted of a short sword, which depended from the belt and lay along the thigh, one or two light javelins, a bow with a strongly pronounced curve, and a quiver full of arrows made from reeds.* Their horsemen, like those of other warlike nations II of the East, used neither saddle nor stirrups, and though they could make skilful use of lance and sword, their favourite weapon was the bow.**

* Herodotus describes the equipment of the Persians in much
the same terms as I have used above, and then adds in the
following chapter that the Medes had the same equipment,
for it is the equipment of the Medes and not that of the
Persians.

** Herodotus says that the Medic horsemen were armed in the
same manner as the infantry.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a cast of the Medic intaglio in
the Cabinet des Médailles.

Accustomed from their earliest childhood to all kinds of equestrian exercises, they seemed to sit their horses as though they actually formed part of the animal. They seldom fought in line, but, from the very beginning of an action, hung like a dense cloud on the front and flanks of the enemy, and riddled them with missiles, without, however, coming to close quarters. Like the Parthians of a later epoch, they waited until they had bewildered and reduced the foe by their ceaseless evolutions before giving the final charge which was to rout them completely. No greater danger could threaten the Assyrians than the establishment of a systematically organised military power within the borders of Media. An invader starting from Egypt or Asia Minor, even if he succeeded in overthrowing the forces sent out to meet him, had still a long way to go before he could penetrate to the heart of the empire. Even if Cilicia and Syria should be conquered, nothing was easier than to oppose a further advance at the barrier of the Euphrates; and should the Euphrates be crossed, the Khabur still remained, and behind it the desert of Singar, which offered the last obstacle between Nineveh and the invaders. The distances were less considerable in the case of an army setting out from Urartu and proceeding along the basin of the Tigris or its affluents; but here, too, the difficulties of transit were so serious that the invader ran a great risk of gradually losing the best part of his forces on the road. On the north-east and east, however, the ancient heritage of Assur lay open to direct and swift attack. An enemy who succeeded in destroying or driving back the garrisons stationed as outposts on the rim of the plateau, from Kharkhar to Parsua, if he ventured to pursue his advantage and descended into the plain of the Tigris, had no less than three routes to choose from--the Kirind road on the south, the Baneh road on the north, and the Suleimanych road between the two. The last was the easiest of all, and led almost straight to the fords of Altun-Keupri and the banks of the Lesser Zab, on the confines of Assyria proper, close under the walls of Arbela, the holy city of Ishtar.