Chapter IV: CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.――Federalists and anti-Federalists―― (2)

Our accounts of the Egyptian civilization are derived chiefly from the Greek historian Herodotus (B. C. 408), who visited Egypt and digested the information which he received from the priests as to its ancient history; and Manetho, a native Egyptian of later times, who wrote in Greek. From their accounts it is inferred that the country was anciently divided into thirty-six sections or provinces called _nomes_――ten in Upper, sixteen in Middle, and ten in Lower Egypt. ‘Many of the separate nomes were of considerable substantive importance, and had a marked local character each to itself, religious as well as political; though the whole of Egypt, from Elephantine to Pelusium and Kanopus, is said to have always constituted one kingdom.’ Of this kingdom, the population, according to a rough estimate, may have been about seven millions. The government was a monarchy based on an all-powerful priesthood, similar to the Brahminical system of India; and, as in India, the most striking feature in the Egyptian society was the division of the people into hereditary castes. ‘The population of Egypt,’ says Mr Grote in his History of Greece, ‘was classified into certain castes or hereditary professions, of which the number is represented differently by different authors. The priests stand clearly marked out as the order richest, most powerful, and most venerated, distributed all over the country, and possessing exclusively the means of reading and writing, besides a vast amount of narrative matter treasured up in the memory, the whole stock of medical and physical knowledge then attainable, and those rudiments of geometry (or rather land-measuring) which were so often called into use in a country annually inundated. To each god and to each temple throughout Egypt, lands and other properties belonged, whereby the numerous band of priests attached to him were maintained. Their ascendancy, both direct and indirect, over the minds of the people was immense; they prescribed that minute ritual under which the life of every Egyptian, not excepting the king himself, was passed, and which was for themselves more full of harassing particularities than for any one else. Every day in the year belonged to some particular god, and the priests alone knew to which. There were different gods in every nome, though Isis and Osiris were common to all; and the priests of each god constituted a society apart, more or less important, according to the comparative celebrity of the temple. The property of each temple included troops of dependents and slaves, who were stamped with “holy marks,” and who must have been numerous, in order to suffice for the service of the large buildings and their constant visitors.

Next in importance to the sacerdotal caste were the military caste or order, whose native name indicated that they stood on the left hand of the king, while the priests occupied the right. They were classified in Kalasires and Hermotybii, who occupied lands in eighteen particular nomes or provinces, principally in Lower Egypt. The Kalasiries had once amounted to 160,000 men, the Hermotybii to 250,000, when at the maximum of their population; but that highest point had long been past in the time of Herodotus. To each man of this soldier-caste was assigned a portion of land, equal to about 6½ English acres, free from any tax. The lands of the priests and the soldiers were regarded as privileged property, and exempt from all burdens; while the remaining soil was considered as the property of the king, who however, received from it a fixed proportion――one-fifth of the total produce――leaving the rest in the hands of the cultivators. The soldiers were interdicted from every description of art and trade.’

The other castes are differently given in different authors; the most probable account, however, is that which assigns them as three――the caste of the husbandmen, that of the artificers, and that of the herdsmen, which last caste included a variety of occupations held in contempt, the lowest and most degraded of all being that of swineherd. The separation between the husbandmen and the herdsmen seems to have arisen from the circumstance that different parts of the country, not suitable for agriculture, were entirely laid out in pasture. The artificers, constituting the vast town population of Egypt, were subdivided into a great variety of occupations, weavers, masons, sculptors, etc., who were compelled to these professions by hereditary obligation. It was by the labor of this vast town population, assisted by that of herds of slaves, that those huge works were accomplished, the remains of which attest the greatness of ancient Egypt. Part of the artisan population were exclusively occupied in skilled labor; and in a country where there was such a taste for works of masonry, sculpture was necessarily one of the most largely-stocked of the skilled occupations. ‘Perfect exactness of execution,’ it is said, ‘mastery of the hardest stone, and undeviating obedience to certain rules of proportion, are general characteristics of Egyptian sculpture. There are yet seen in their quarries obelisks not severed from the rock, but having three of their sides already adorned with hieroglyphics, so certain were they of cutting off the fourth side with precision.’ These skilled artificers may be supposed to have acted as foremen and overseers of the great numbers of laborers who were employed in public works such as the Pyramids. In the construction of these works no degree of labor for any length of time seems to have intimidated the Egyptians. The huge blocks of stone, sometimes weighing 1000 tons each, were dragged for hundreds of miles on sledges, and their transport, perhaps, did not occupy less time than a year; in one case which is known, 2000 men were employed three years in bringing a single stone from a quarry to the building in which it was to be placed. Usually, the sledges were drawn by men yoked in rows to separate ropes, all pulling at a ring fixed to the block. Where it was possible, the blocks were brought from the quarries on flat-bottomed boats on the Nile. But the transport of these masses was much more easily accomplished than the placing of them in elevated situations in the buildings. They were raised by the power of levers and inclined planes at immense trouble and cost. The waste of human life in these gigantic works must have been enormous. About 120,000 men are said to have perished in the digging of a canal, which was left unfinished, between the Red Sea and an arm of the Nile; and according to Herodotus, the Egyptian priests of his day described the building of the Pyramids as a time of extreme exhaustion and hardship to the whole country.

The religion of the Egyptians seems to have been, in its popular form at least, a mere gross Fetishism, whose principal characteristic was a worship of teeming animal life――the bull, the cat, the ibis, the crocodile, etc.; different animals in different nomes. Whatever profounder meaning lay hid under this gross ceremonial the priest-caste reserved to themselves, as one of the mysteries, the possession of which severed them from the rest of the population. Among these mysteries was the art of writing, which was practised both in the alphabetical and the hieroglyphic form; the latter being used for special purposes. Some vague notion of the immortality of the soul, resembling the Hindoo tenet of transmigration, seems to have pervaded the Egyptian religion; and this belief appears to have lain at the foundation of the Egyptian practice of embalming the dead. The business of embalming was a very dignified one, and was aided by a host of inferior functionaries, who made and painted coffins and other articles which were required. The bodies of the poorer classes were merely dried with salt or natron, and wrapt up in coarse cloths, and deposited in the catacombs. The bodies of the rich and great underwent the most complicated operations, wrapt in bandages dipped in balsam, and laboriously adorned with all kinds of ornaments. Thus prepared they were placed in highly-decorated cases or coffins, and then consigned to sarcophagi in the catacombs or pyramids. Bodies so prepared have been called mummies, either from the Arabian word _momia_, or the Coptic _mum_, signifying bitumen or gum-resin.

Although the Egyptians carried on from early times a caravan-commerce with the adjacent countries of Phœnicia, Palestine, and Arabia, importing such articles as wine, oil, and spices for embalming, yet exclusiveness and self-sufficiency were characteristics of their civilization. There, on the banks of the Nile, these millions lived, changeless in their methods through centuries, each individual mechanically pursuing the occupation to which he was born――millions cultivating the soil, and producing wheat, etc., for the subsistence of the whole: others tending the cattle necessary for food or sacrifice; millions, again, crowded into the numerous towns, occupied in the various handicrafts necessary to provide articles of clothing, luxury, etc.――a large proportion of this class being available for stupendous architectural works; and lastly, diffused through these country and town populations, two other proprietor-castes――the one a militia, occupied in gymnastic exercises alone; the other a sacerdotal or intellectual order, within whose body was accumulated all the speculative or scientific wisdom of the country. Relations existed between Egypt and the adjacent countries; and rumours of the nature of its peculiar civilization may have spread through the nations of the Mediterranean; but for a long while it was shut, like the present China, against foreign intrusion; and it was not till about the year 650 B. C. that it was thrown open to general inspection. In the sixth and fifth centuries B. C., the philosophers of other countries, and especially of Greece, used to visit Egypt in order to acquire, by intercourse with the Egyptian intellectual caste, some of that precious knowledge of which they were believed to be the depositaries.

Although the Egyptian civilization is known to have existed pretty much as we have described it from immemorial antiquity, yet, with the exception of what we learn from Scripture, we know little of Egyptian history, properly so called, anterior to the time when the country was thrown open to the Greeks. Herodotus and Manetho, indeed, have given us retrospective lists of the Egyptian kings, extending back into the primitive gloom of the world; but portions of these lists are evidently constructed backwards on mythical principles. Thus Manetho, preserving doubtless the traditions of the sacerdotal Egyptian caste, to which he is supposed to have belonged, carries back the imagination as far as 30,000 years before the birth of Christ. From this date till B. C. 5702, great divine personages ruled in Egypt; then (B. C. 5702) it came into the possession of human kings, the first of which was Menes. From the accession of Menes down to the incorporation of Egypt with the Persian empire (B. C. 525), Herodotus assigns 330 kings, or, as they are called in Scripture, Pharaohs, whose names he informs us, were read to him out of a papyrus manuscript by the Egyptian priests, who pledged themselves to its accuracy; and Manetho reckons up twenty-six dynasties, some of them native and others foreign, which divided the long period into portions of different lengths.

ARABIA. The great peninsula of Arabia was in the earliest times inhabited by a population of the Semitic stock, in all essential respects similar to that which inhabits it now, partly concentrated in cities, partly wandering in tribes through the extensive deserts which mark the surface of the country. The inhabitants of the towns subsist by agriculture and commerce; the wandering tribes by cattle rearing and pillage. In ancient times, as now, the Arabs were celebrated for their expert horsemanship, their hospitality, their eloquence, and their free indomitable spirit. In religion, however, the modern Arabs, who are Mohammedans, differ from the ancient Arabs, who were idolaters, chiefly worshippers of the celestial luminaries, nowhere so beautiful as in the sky of an Arabian desert. The Arabs themselves trace their history back, the older tribes to Kahtan (the Joktan of the 10th chapter of Genesis), the latter to Adnan, a descendant of Ishmael, the offspring of Abraham. It is unnecessary, however, to enter into this history, as Arabia was not incorporated with the Persian empire, and only assumed historical importance in later times, when it sent forth the religion of Mohammed over the East.

SYRIA. The Semitic or Aramaic population overspreading Syria――which name is generally applied to the country lying between the Euphrates and Arabian desert on the east, and the Mediterranean on the west――had early divided itself into various independent states or kingdoms, which ultimately resolved themselves, it would appear, into three. These were _Phœnicia_, a narrow strip of coast-land, extending from Mount Carmel to the river Eleutheros; _Palestine_, or the _Holy Land_, including the country south of Phœnicia, between the Arabian desert and the Mediterranean, as well as the inland district lying between Mount Carmel and Mount Herman; and _Syria Proper_, whose capital was Damascus, and which, when the power of the Damascan kings was at its highest, included all the country except Palestine and Phœnicia. Syrian history possesses no independent importance; we pass, therefore, to the history of the Phœnician and Jewish nations.

THE PHŒNICIANS. Phœnicia was an exceedingly small country, its length being only about 120 miles, and its breadth nowhere greater than 20 miles. Indeed it may be described as a mere slip of coast-land, sufficiently large to accommodate a range of port towns, such as a merchant people required. The most northern of these Phœnician cities was Aradus, situated on a small island; the most southern was the famous Tyre; and between the two were situated many others, of which the chief were Sidon, Berytus, Tripolis, and Byblus. The greater part of the population was contained in these cities, the rural population being small in proportion.

Originally, Phœnicia was divided into a number of little states or communities, each having a town for its metropolis, with a hereditary king of its own; and ere the country was restricted by the formation of the Jewish nation, the number of these Phœnician or Canaanitish principalities must have been considerable. The Phœnicians were a fragment of the Canaanites of Scripture; and doubtless in the annals of the separate Phœnician towns, such as Tyre, Sidon, and Aradus, were preserved record from the Phœnician point of view, of many of those ancient transactions which are related in the Scriptural account of the settlement of the Jews in Canaan. Without going back, however, into the remoter period of Phœnician history, one of the questions connected with which is, whether Tyre (founded, it was said, B. C. 2700) or Sidon was the more ancient town, let us give a summary view of the nature of the Phœnician civilization at the period of its highest celebrity――namely, from B. C. 1200 to B. C. 700, at which time we find Tyre exercising a presiding influence over the other Phœnician communities.

The Phœnicians were the great trading nation of antiquity. Situated at so convenient a point on the Mediterranean, it devolved on them to transport to the sea-shore the commodities of the East, brought to them overland by Arabian and Egyptian caravans, and from the sea-shore to distribute them among the expecting nations of the west. Nor were they without valuable products of their own. The sand of their coasts was particularly suitable for the manufacture of glass; their bays abounded in species of fish which produced a fine purple dye――the celebrated Tyrian purple of antiquity; and in various parts of the country there were excellent mines of iron and copper. It was, in fact, essential for the general interests of the race that the people inhabiting that portion of the Mediterranean coasts should devote themselves to commerce. In anticipation of this, as it might seem, the mountains of Libanus, which separated the narrow Phœnician territory from Syria, were stocked with the best timber, which, transported over the short distance which intervened between these mountains and the sea, abundantly supplied the demands of the Phœnician dockyards. There was something in the Phœnician character, also, which suited the requirements of their geographical position. Skillful, enterprising, griping in their desire for wealth, and in other respects resembling much their neighbors the Jews, to whom they were allied in race, and whose language was radically identical with their own――theirs was essentially the merchant type of character.

Standing as the Phœnicians did as the people by whom the exchange between the East and the West was managed, a complete view of their life and manner of activity should embrace _first_, their relations with the East――that is, their overland trade with Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, Persia, and India; _secondly_, their relations with the West――that is, their maritime trade with the various nations of the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts; and _thirdly_, the peculiar character of mind which either accompanied or resulted from the consciousness of such a position in the great family of mankind.

With regard to the overland trade of the Phœnicians with the Eastern countries, little requires to be said except that it was one attended with great risks――the journey of a caravan across the deserts, and through the roaming tribes which separated Phœnicia from interior Asia, being a more serious enterprise than a long sea voyage. It is probable that the Phœnicians managed this commerce not in their own persons, but as wealthy speculative merchants, dealing in a skillful manner with the native Egyptian, Assyrian, or Arabian caravan-proprietors, with whom they maintained an understood connection. At the same time it is likely that they stimulated and regulated the Eastern commerce, by means of Phœnician agents or emissaries despatched into the interior with general instructions, just as in later times European agents were often despatched into the interior of Africa to direct the movements of native merchants. It was in their maritime trade with the West, however, that the Phœnicians chiefly exhibited the resources of their own character. Shipping the Oriental commodities, as well as their native products, at Tyre or Sidon, they carried them to all the coasts of the Mediterranean as far as Spain, selling them there at immense profit, and returning with freights of Western goods. With some of the nations of the Mediterranean their intercourse would be that of one civilized nation with another; with others, and especially with those of the West, it must have been an intercourse similar to that of a British ship with those rude islanders who exchange their valuable products for nails, bits of looking-glass, and other trifles. Whether their customers were civilized or savage, however, the Phœnicians reaped profits from them. Their aim was to monopolise the commerce of the Mediterranean. ‘If at any time,’ it is said, ‘their ships bound on a voyage observed that a stranger kept them company, or followed them in their track, they were sure to get rid of him, or deceive him if they could; and in this they went so far as to venture the loss of their ships, and even of their lives, so that they could but destroy or disappoint him; so jealous were they of foreigners, and so bent on keeping all to themselves. And to add to the dangers of the sea, and discourage other nations from trading, they practiced piracy, or pretended to be at war with such as they met when they thought themselves strongest.’ This policy succeeded so far, that hardly a merchant ship was to be seen in the Mediterranean not manned by Phœnicians. From this extension of the Phœnician commerce throughout the Mediterranean resulted, by necessity, an extensive system of colonization. The distance, for instance, of Spain from Phœnicia, rendered all the greater by the ancient custom of always sailing close by the coast, made it necessary for the Phœnician traders to have intermediate ports, settlement, or factories, to which their vessels might resort, not to say that such settlements were required for the collection of the produce which was to be taken back to Phœnicia. Accordingly, in process of time, Phœnician colonies were established at all available points of the Mediterranean――on the coasts of Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, and in the Balearic Islands; the rising maritime spirit of the Greeks excluding the Phœnicians from the Ægean and the coasts of Asia Minor. Among the most ancient of the colonies from Tyre were Carthage and Utica on the African coast, and Gades (Cadiz) in Spain; all of which were founded before the first of the Greek Olympiads (B. C. 884). From these afterwards arose smaller settlements, which diffused the Phœnician agency still more extensively among the uncivilized nations of Africa and western Europe. Gades in Spain, situated, according to the ancient mode of navigation, at a distance of seventy-five days’ sail from Tyre and Sidon――a distance larger than that which now divides Liverpool from Bombay――was a colony of special importance; first, as commanding the inland Spanish trade, particularly valuable at that time, inasmuch as the gold and silver mines of Spain caused it to be regarded as the Mexico or Peru of the ancient world; and secondly, as forming a point from which the Phœnician commerce could be still farther extended along the extra-Mediterranean shores. From this point, we are told, the Phœnician ships extended their voyages southward for thirty days’ sail along the coast of Africa, and northwards as far as Britain, where they took in tin from Cornwall, and even as far as the Baltic, where they collected amber. Upon what a scale of profit must these expeditions have been conducted, when, from Tyre to Cornwall, not a merchant ship besides those of the Phœnicians was to be seen! And who can tell what influence these Phœnician visits may have had on the then rude nations bordering the Atlantic?――or how far these ante-historic Phœnician impulses may have stimulated the subsequent career of these nations? Like the visit of an English merchantman now to a South Sea Island, so must have been the visit of a Phœnician trading vessel 3000 years ago to the Britons of Cornwall.

As might be expected, this great merchant people were among the most cultured of antiquity, and especially skilled in all the arts of luxurious living. The 27th chapter of the book of Ezekiel presents a most striking picture of the pride and magnificence of the Tyrians, and embodies many minute particulars relative to Phœnician customs and mode of life. Indeed it has been pronounced the most early and most authentic record extant relative to the commerce of the ancients.

Among the contributions made by the Phœnicians to the west, were alphabetical writing, the Greek alphabet being a derivative from the Phœnician; the scale of weight; and that of coined money. Having made these and other contributions to the west, Phœnicia began about (700 B. C.) to decline in importance; the Ionian Greeks, and latterly the Egyptians, becoming its commercial rivals on the Mediterranean: and the invasions of the Assyrians from the east depriving it of independence. Subdued by the Assyrians and Babylonians, Phœnicia was transferred by them to the Persians. Among the last of the Phœnician achievements was the circumnavigation of Africa B. C. 600――a feat undertaken by Phœnician sailors at the command of the Egyptian king Nekos, one of the immediate successors of Psammetik: and, as is now believed, really performed――the course pursued being from the Red Sea round Africa to Spain――the reverse, therefore, of that followed by Vasco de Gama 2000 years later. About the time that Phœnicia began to wane, her colony, Carthage, assumed her place in the affairs of the world. Carthaginian civilization was essentially a mere repetition of the Phœnician, although under a different form of government; Carthaginian history interweaves itself with that of the Romans.

PALESTINE――THE JEWS. Palestine extends from north to south a length of about 200 miles, and 50 in breadth; and is therefore, in point of size, of nearly the same extent as Scotland. The general character of the country is that of a hilly region, interspersed with moderately fertile vales; and being thus irregular in surface, it possesses a number of brooks or streams, which for the most part are swollen considerably after rains, but are almost dry in the hot seasons of the year. The present condition of Palestine scarcely corresponds with its ancient fertility. This is chiefly attributable to the devastating effects of perpetual wars; and some physical changes have also contributed to the destruction of agricultural industry. Yet, after all, so excellent would the soil appear to be, and so ample its resources, that Canaan may still be characterized as a land flowing with milk and honey.

The history of the extraordinary nation which once inhabited this land, must be so much more familiar to our readers than that of any other ancient nation, that all that is necessary here is a brief sketch, such as will assist the imagination in tracing with due completeness the general career of the East till the establishment of the Persian empire. According to the accounts given of the Jews in Scripture, and in their history by Josephus, they were descended from Abraham, who was born in the 292d year (according to other authorities, in the 352d year) after the Deluge, ‘left the land of Chaldea when he was seventy-five years old, and, at the command of God, went into Canaan, and therein he dwelt himself, and left it to his posterity. He was a person of great sagacity, both for understanding of all things and persuading his hearers, and not mistaken in his opinions; for which reason he began to have higher notions of virtue than others had, and he determined to renew and to change the opinion all men happened then to have concerning God; for he was the first that ventured to publish this notion, that there was but ONE God, the Creator of the universe; and that as to other gods, if they contributed anything to the happiness of men, that each of them afforded it only according to His appointment, and not by their own power. For which doctrines, when the Chaldæans and other people of Mesopotamia raised a tumult against him, he thought fit to leave that country, and at the command of God he came and lived in the land of Canaan. And when he was there settled, he built an altar, and performed a sacrifice to God.’ After the death of Abraham’s son Isaac, _his_ younger son Jacob remained for a number of years in Canaan, surrounded by a family of twelve sons, one of whom, Joseph, as related in Scripture, became the cause of the removal of his father and brethren, and all belonging to them, into Egypt. The Hebrew emigrants were seventy in number, and formed at the first a respectable colony among the Egyptians. Jacob died after having been seventeen years in Egypt, and his body was carried by Joseph to Hebron, and buried in the sepulchre of his father and grandfather. Joseph also died in Egypt at the age of 110, and at length his brethren died likewise. Each of the twelve sons of Jacob became the progenitor of a family or tribe, and the twelve tribes, personified by the term ISRAEL, continued to reside in Egypt, where they increased both in number and in wealth. Their rapid increase and prosperity soon excited the jealousy of the masters of the country; and from being in high favor, the different tribes gradually fell under the lash of power, and came to be treated as public slaves.

The entire body of Israelites, guided by Moses, fled from Egypt in the year 1490 before Christ, at a time when Thebes, Memphis, and the other magnificent cities of that country, were in all their glory. Proceeding in a north-easterly direction from Rameses (near the site of modern Cairo), they went through the level region of the land of Goshen (now a barren sandy plain) to the head of the Gulf of Suez, the western branch of the Red Sea. Here they crossed in a miraculous manner to the opposite shore, to a spot now called the Wells of Moses, where, according to the Scripture narrative, they sang their song of thanksgiving for their deliverance. The country in which they had now arrived was a portion of Arabia Petræa, consisting of a dismal barren wilderness, now called the Desert of Sinai, from the principal mountain which rises within it. From the point at which the Israelites had crossed the Red Sea from Egypt, they were conducted by a most circuitous and tedious route towards the Promised Land of Canaan.

The country on the shore of the Mediterranean which was allotted as a settlement to this people, was at that time occupied by many warlike tribes, who had grown strong in its fertile plains and valleys; and the generation of the Hebrews who were conducted into it were compelled to fight for its possession. The struggle was not of long continuance. The whole land was conquered in the year B. C. 1450.

According to the account given in the 26th chapter of the book of Numbers, the Hebrew nation thus brought out of the land of Egypt and settled in Canaan amounted to 601,730 souls, unto whom the land was divided for an inheritance, according to the number of individuals in the respective tribes.

Moses dying before the inheritance was entered upon, was succeeded by Joshua as a leader, and by him the Israelites were conducted across the Jordan. The political government of the various tribes, after their conquest and settlement of Canaan, appears to have been republican, with military leaders called Judges; but these acted by the direction of the Priesthood, who were immediately counseled by the Deity within the sanctuary. This period of separate government in tribes, called the Period of the Judges, lasted 300 years (B. C. 1427-1112), and was one of daring actions and great deliverances――the heroic age of the Jews.

The epoch of kings succeeded that of judges. The reign of Saul, their first monarch, though the people were stronger by being united, was gloomy and troubled. David, who succeeded, was a soldier and a conqueror. He rendered the Hebrews formidable to the whole of their enemies, and gave them a regular and defensible position, expelling their old antagonists from every part of the country. He left an empire peaceful, respected, and strong; and, what was of as much importance, he selected from among his sons a successor who was able to improve all these advantages, and to add to the progress which his countrymen had already made in prosperity. Under Solomon, the name of the Hebrew government being able to protect its subjects in other countries, the people and their king began to employ themselves in commerce. Their trade was at first engrafted on that of the Phœnicians of Tyre. A greater contrast cannot be imagined than between the troubles of the time of the Judges (only 100 years before), and the peace, security, and enjoyment of this reign. ‘And the king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as sycamore trees that are in the vale for abundance; and Judah and Israel were many; as the sand which is by the sea-shore for multitude, eating, and drinking, and making merry.’ (1 Kings, x. 27.)

After the death of Solomon, the country fell into the same divisions which had weakened it in the time of the Judges. Each of the districts of North and South Israel was under a separate king, and the people were exposed both to the attacks of their enemies and to quarrels with each other. Their history is a succession of agitating conflicts for independence, and of unexpected and remarkable deliverances, of a similar nature to those of the earlier period, and they continued for about the same length of time (380 years); but they are marked by fewer of those traits of heroic devotion which distinguished the epoch of the Judges. The backslidings, errors, and misgovernment of their kings, is the chief and painful subject which is presented to us; and though these are relieved at times by the appearance of such monarchs as Josiah, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah, yet the whole history of this period is overcast with the gloominess of progressive decline.

By far the most delightful parts of it are those which relate to the lives of the prophets, who were raised up at intervals to warn the nation and its rulers of the fate which they incurred by forsaking the religion of their fathers. These inspired men sometimes sprang up from among the humblest classes of the community: one from the ‘herdsmen of Tekoa,’ another from ‘ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen;’ several were of the priestly order, and one (Isaiah) is said to have been of royal lineage; but the works of all are marked with the same sacredness, force, and authority. They reprehend their countrymen, in the most eloquent strains, at one time for idolatry, and at another for hypocrisy; and their indignation is expressed with the same freedom and dignity against the vices of the highest and the lowest.

Of the two kingdoms into which Palestine divided itself after the death of Solomon (B. C. 975), the northern, called the Kingdom of Israel, was conquered by the Assyrians of Nineveh (B. C. 722), who carried off many thousand of the people into captivity. Little is known of their fate. By some they are supposed to have been carried to India, by others to Tartary: ‘what became of all the Israelites of the ten tribes,’ is still a question with historians. The southern kingdom, called the kingdom of Judah, retained its independence till B. C. 588, when it was invaded and subdued by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who destroyed Jerusalem, and carried away a great number of the principal Jews into captivity at Babylon. On the subversion of the Babylonian dominion by Cyrus, seventy years afterwards, the captives, to the number of 42,360, were permitted to return to their own land, and rebuild Jerusalem. At this period, the whole of Palestine merged in the growing Persian empire.

THE ASSYRIANS AND BABYLONIANS. That large extent of level country situated between and on the banks of the two great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, was in the earliest antiquity, the seat of a Semitic population living under an organized government. Of the cities, the most important ultimately were Babylon, built, by Nimrod, (B. C. 2217); and Nineveh (called Ninos by the Greeks), built either by Asshur or Nimrod about the same time, but afterwards rebuilt and enlarged, according to ancient tradition, by a great king, Ninus, (B. C. 1230). With these two cities as capitals, the country divided itself into two corresponding parts or kingdoms――the kingdom of Assyria proper, including, besides part of Mesopotamia, the country to the right of the Tigris as far as Mount Zagros; and the kingdom of Babylonia, including the western part of Mesopotamia, together with the country to the left of the Euphrates as far as Syria proper. The two kingdoms, however, are often included under the joint name of Assyria; a word which, as well as the shorter form Syria, was often employed by the ancient Greek writers to designate the whole region lying along the courses of the two great rivers from the Black Sea to the northern angle of the Persian Gulf.

Although Babylon was according to Scripture, the earlier of the two powers, yet the Assyrians of Nineveh attained such strength under their hero Ninus, as to reduce the Babylonians to a species of dependence. Under Ninus, and his wife and successor the great conqueress Semiramis, says ancient mythical history, the city of the Tigris extended its dominions far and wide, from Egypt to the border of India. This empire, known in the common chronologies by the name of ‘The Assyrian Empire,’ lasted, according to the usual accounts, five or six centuries, during which it was governed, in the absolute Oriental manner, by the successors of Ninus and Semiramis. Of these several are mentioned in Scripture――Phul, the contemporary of Menahem, king of Israel (B. C. 761), Tiglath Pileser (B. C. 730), both of whom were mixed up with the affairs of Israel and Judah; Salmanassar, cotemporary with Hezekiah, king of Judah, and Hoseah, king of Israel, by whom it was that Samaria was taken (B. C. 722), and the Israelites led into captivity (B. C. 722); and Sennacherib, or Sanherib (B. C. 714), who attacked Egypt, and whose fruitless invasion of Judah forms the subject of the striking narrative in the 18th and 19th chapters of the second book of Kings. The last of the great line of the Assyrian kings of Nineveh was the luxurious Sardanapalus, in whose reign the empire was dissolved, through the instrumentality of its revolted subjects the Medes (B. C. 626).

After Nineveh, the greatest city in the Assyrian dominion was Babylon. Even while under the dominion of the kings of Nineveh, Babylon appears to have possessed a special organization under its own chiefs, several of whose names――such as Beldesis (B. C. 888), and Nabonassar (B. C. 747)――have been preserved; and, together with the whole province of which it was the capital, to have pursued a special career. The peculiar element in the Babylonian society which distinguished it from that of Assyria proper, was its Chaldæan priesthood. ‘The Chaldæan order of priests,’ says Mr. Grote, ‘appear to have been peculiar to Babylon and other towns in its territory, especially between that city and the Persian Gulf; the vast, rich, and lofty temple of Belus in that city served them at once as a place of worship and an astronomical observatory; and it was the paramount ascendancy of this order which seems to have caused the Babylonian people generally to be spoken of as Chaldæans, though some writers have supposed, without any good proof, a conquest of Assyrian Babylon by barbarians called Chaldæans from the mountains near the Euxine. There were exaggerated statements respecting the antiquity of their astronomical observations,[2] which cannot be traced, as of definite and recorded date, higher than the era of Nabonassar (B. C. 747), as well as respecting the extent of their acquired knowledge, so largely blended with astrological fancies and occult influences of the heavenly bodies on human affairs. But however incomplete their knowledge may appear when judged by the standard of after-times, there can be no doubt that, compared with any of their cotemporaries of the sixth century B. C.――either Egyptians, Greeks, or Asiatics――they stood preëminent, and had much to teach, not only to Thales and Pythagoras, but even to later inquirers, such as Eudoxus and Aristotle. The conception of the revolving celestial sphere, the gnomon, and the division of the day into twelve parts, are affirmed by Herodotus to have been first taught to the Greeks by the Babylonians.’ This learned Chaldæan class seems to have pervaded the general mass of Babylonian society, as the corresponding priest-caste in Egypt pervaded Egyptian society, with this difference, that Babylonian society does not appear to have been parceled out like the Egyptian into a rigorous system of castes.

On the dissolution of the Assyrian empire of Nineveh by the Medes (B. C. 626), the Chaldæan fragment of it rose to eminence on its ruins, chiefly by the efforts of Nabopolassar, a viceroy of the last Assyrian king. Establishing Babylonia as an independent power in the east, Nabopolassar came into collision with Nekos, king of Egypt, who was at that time extending his empire into Asia. It was in opposing Nekos (Pharaoh-Necho) on his march to Babylon, that Josiah, king of Judah, was slain. At length (B. C. 608) Nebuchadnezzar, or Nebuchodonosor, the son of Nabopolassar, defeated Nekos, and annexed all his conquests in Asia to his father’s kingdom. Two years afterwards the same prince took Jerusalem, and carried away a number of captives to Babylon, among whom were Daniel and his companions. Succeeding his father, B. C. 605, Nebuchadnezzar reigned over Babylon forty-three years (B. C. 605-561); and during his reign extended the empire to the Mediterranean and the borders of Egypt, adding to it Palestine, Phœnicia, etc. With his countenance the Medes and Lydians destroyed Nineveh (B. C. 601). The great abduction of Jewish captives by his orders took place B. C. 588. He was succeeded (B. C. 561) by his son, Evil-Merodach, who was dethroned (B. C. 559) by his brother-in-law Neriglissar, whose son and successor, Laboroso-archod, was dethroned, after a brief reign, by Nabonnedus, the Belshazzar of Scripture (B. C. 555); in the eighteenth year of whose reign (B. C. 538) Babylon was taken by Cyrus, and passed into the hands of the Persians.

It was during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar that the city of Babylon attained that glory which has rendered it a known word to all who are at all acquainted with history. Herodotus, who saw the city in its decline, gives a description of it which has seemed incredible to many, although now fully verified. ‘The city, divided in the middle by the Euphrates, was surrounded with walls in thickness 75 feet, in height 300 feet and in compass 480 stadia, or about 60 of our miles.’ Within this circuit there was included, besides the houses, a space of vacant ground, gardens, pasture, etc., sufficient to accommodate the country population in case of invasion: the height and strength of the walls rendered the city itself to all appearance impregnable. ‘These walls formed an exact square, each side of which was 120 stadia, or 15 miles in length; and were built of large bricks cemented together with bitumen, a glutinous slime which issues out of the earth in that country, and in a short time becomes harder than the very brick or stone which it cements. The city was encompassed without the walls of a vast ditch filled with water, and lined with bricks on both sides; and as the earth that was dug out of it served to make the bricks, we may judge of the depth and largeness of the ditch from the height and thickness of the walls. In the whole compass of the walls there were a hundred gates――that is, twenty-five on each side, all made of solid brass. At intervals round the walls were 250 towers. From each of the twenty-five gates there was a straight street extending to the corresponding gate, in the opposite wall; the whole number of streets was therefore fifty, crossing each other at right angles, and each fifteen miles long. The breadth of the streets was about 150 feet. By their intersection the city was divided into 676 squares, each about two miles and a quarter in compass, round which were the houses, three or four stories in height; the vacant spaces within being laid out in gardens,’ etc. Within the city the two greatest edifices were the royal palace with its hanging gardens, and the temple of Belus, composed of eight towers built one above another, to the enormous height, it is said, of a furlong.

Without the city were numerous canals, embankments, etc., for the purpose of irrigating the country, which, as little or no rain fell, depended on the river for moisture. ‘The execution of such colossal works as those of Babylon and Egypt,’ it has been remarked, ‘demonstrates habits of regular industry, a concentrated population under one government, and above all, an implicit submission to the regal and kingly sway――contrasted forcibly with the small self-governing communities of Greece and western Europe, where the will of the individual citizen was so much more energetic.’ In the latter countries only such public works were attempted as were within the limits of moderate taste. Nineveh is said to have been larger even than Babylon, and is described as an oblong, three days’ journey round――that is, upwards of 60 miles.

THE MEDES AND PERSIANS. Extending, as we have said, from the Mediterranean to the Indus, the Assyrian empire had included not only the chief Semitic nations of western Asia, but also that portion of the Indo-Germanic family which was contained between Mount Zagros and the river Indus. Essentially a prolongation of the great race which inhabited Hindoostan, the nature of their country――a vast table-land, here and there rising into hills, or presenting spots of great fertility――had made them quite different in character and habits from the settled and stereotyped Hindoos. All parts of this plateau of Iran, as it was called, including the present countries of Persia, Cabool, and Belochistan, were not alike; in some portions, where the soil was fertile, there existed a dense agricultural population; in others, the inhabitants were nomadic horse-breeders, cattle-rearers, and shepherds. All the tribes, however, were bound together by the ties of a common Indo-Persic language, quite distinct from that spoken by their Semitic neighbors and masters, and by a common religion. This religion, called the Religion of Zend, a modification probably of some more ancient form, from which Hindooism may also have sprung, was taught by Zerdusht or Zoroaster, a great native reformer and spiritual teacher, who lived six or seven centuries before Christ. The principal doctrine of his religion was that of the existence of two great emanations from the Supreme and perfect Deity――the one a good spirit (Ormuzd), who created man, and fitted him for happiness; the other an evil spirit, named Ahriman, who has marred the beauty of creation by introducing evil into it. Between these two spirits and their adherents there is an incessant struggle for the mastery; but ultimately Ormuzd will conquer, and Ahriman and evil will be banished from the bosom of creation into eternal darkness. The worship annexed to this doctrine was very simple, dispensing with temples or images, and consisting merely of certain solemn rites performed on mountain tops, etc. Fire, and light, and the sun, were worshiped either as symbols or as inferior deities. A caste of priests, called the Magi, answering in some respects to the Brahmins of India or the Chaldæans of Babylon, superintended these ceremonies, and commented on the religion of Zoroaster.

Various of the tribes of Iran, associating themselves together, constituted little nations. Thus adjacent to Assyria, and separated from it by Mount Zagros, was an agglomeration of seven tribes or villages, under the special name of the Medes, the country which they inhabited being thence called Media. South from Media, and nearer the sea, was another district of Iran, called Persis or Persia, inhabited also by an association of tribes calling themselves the Persians. Other nations of Iran were the Parthians, the Bactrians, etc.――all originally subject to the Assyrian empire.

Median history begins with a hero king called Deiokes (B. C. 710-657), who effected some important changes in the constitution of the nation, and founded the Median capital Ekbatana in one of the most pleasant sites in the world. His son, Phraortes (B. C. 657-635), pursued a career of conquest, subjugated Persia and other districts of Iran, and perished in an invasion of Assyria. He was succeeded by his son Cyaxares, who continued his designs of conquest, and extended the Median dominion as far westward into Asia Minor as the river Halys. He was engaged in a repetition of his father’s attempt against Nineveh, when he was called away to defend his kingdom against a great roving population, belonging, as is most likely, to the Scythian branch of the Caucasian race (although some reckon them Mongols), who, bursting with their herds of horses and mares from their native seat in Central Asia, had driven the Cimmerians, a kindred race, before them into Asia Minor, and then had poured themselves over the plateau of Iran. Defeating Cyaxares, they kept him from his throne for a period of twenty-eight years, during which they ruled in savage fashion over Media, Persia, etc. At length, having assassinated their chiefs by a stratagem, Cyaxares regained his dominions, and drove the invaders back into the north. He then renewed his attempt against Nineveh; took it; and reduced the Assyrian empire, with the exception of Babylonia, under his dominion. The Median empire, thus formed, he bequeathed (B. C. 595) to his son Astyages.

Astyages having given his daughter Mandane in marriage to a Persian chieftain named Cambyses, the issue of this marriage was the famous Cyrus, the founder of the Persian monarchy. The circumstances which led to the revolt of the Persians under Cyrus against the Medes, and the dethronement by him of his grand-father Astyages (B. C. 560), had been woven into a romance resembling the story of Romulus, even so early as the age of Herodotus (B. C. 408), so that that accurate historian could not ascertain the particulars. ‘The native Persians,’ says Mr. Grote, ‘whom Cyrus conducted, were an aggregate of seven agricultural and four nomadic tribes, all of them rude, hardy, and brave, dwelling in a mountainous region, clothed in skins, ignorant of wine or fruit, of any of the commonest luxuries of life, and despising the very idea of purchase or sale. Their tribes were very unequal in point of dignity; first in estimation among them stood the Pasargadæ; and the first clan among the Pasargadæ were the Achæmenidæ, to whom Cyrus belonged. Whether his relationship to the Median king whom he dethroned was a fact or a politic fiction we cannot well determine, but Xenophon gives us to understand that the conquest of Media by the Persians was reported to him as having been an obstinate and protracted struggle.’

Master of Media, the Persian chief in his turn became a great Oriental conqueror; indeed all the Oriental conquests bear the same character. A nomadic race, led by a chief of great abilities, invades the more organized states, and conquers them; the chief assumes the government, and founds a dynasty, which after a rule of several generations, becomes enervated, and gives way before some new nomadic incursion. The first power against which Cyrus turned his arms, after having subdued the Medes, was the famous Lydian kingdom, which then subsisted in Asia Minor under the great Crœsus. And here, therefore, we must give some account of the ancient condition of Asia Minor and its principalities.

STATES OF ASIA MINOR――THE LYDIANS. The river Halys divided Asia Minor into two parts. East of the Halys, or near its source, were various nations of the Semitic stock――Cappadocians, Cilicians, Pamphylians etc.――each organized apart, but all included under the Assyrian, and latterly, as we have seen, under the Median empire. West of the Halys, the inhabitants were apparently of the Indo-Germanic race, although separated by many removes from the Indo-Germans of Persia. Overspreading this part of Asia Minor, as well as Thrace and other parts of south-eastern Europe, this great race had been broken up into fragments distinguished by characteristic differences. To enumerate these various nations, assigning to each its exact geographical limits, is impossible; the chief, however, were the Bithynians, a sort of Asiatic Thracians on the southern coast of the Euxine; the Lydians and Carians in the south-west; and, intermediate between the two, geographically as well as in respect of race and language, the Mysians and Phrygians. These were the native states; but along the whole Ægean shore was diffused a large Greek population, emigrants, it is believed, from European Greece, chiefly gathered into cities. These Greeks of Asia Minor were of three races――the Æolic Greeks in the north, and the Ionian and Dorian Greeks in the south; and perhaps the earliest manifestations of Greek genius, political or literary, were among these Greeks of Asia. The intercourse of these Greeks with the native Lydians, Phrygians, etc., gave rise to mixture of population as well as to interchange of habits; the native music especially of the Lydians and Phrygians became incorporated with that of the Greeks.

When Lydia, with its capital Sardis, first began to be a powerful state, is not known; it is remarkable, however, that the Lydians are not mentioned in Homer. According to Herodotus, the Lydians traced their history back through three dynasties. 1_st_, The Atyadæ, from the earliest times to B. C. 1221; 2_d_, The Heracleidæ, from B. C. 122 to B. C. 716; and 3_d_, The Mermnadæ. Only the last dynasty is historic; the manner in which it succeeded to that of the Heracleidæ forms the subject of a curious Lydian legend.

The first king of the Mermoad dynasty was Gyges (B. C. 716-678), the second Ardys (B. C. 678-629), in whose reign the Cimmerians invaded Asia Minor, the third Sadyattes (B. C. 629-617), the fourth Alyattes (B. C. 617-560). Each of these Lydian kings was engaged in wars both with the Asiatic Greeks of the coast and the native states of the interior. The growth of the Lydian power was impeded by the Cimmerian invasion; but those savage nomades were at length expelled by Alyattes; and Crœsus, the son of Alyattes by an Ionian wife, having succeeded his father B. C. 560, soon raised himself to the position of a great potentate, ruling over nearly the whole country westward of the Halys, comprehending Æolian, Ionian, and Dorian Greeks; Phrygians; Mysians, Paphlagonians, Bithynians, Carians, Pamphylians, etc. At Sardis, the capital of this extensive dominion, was accumulated an immense treasure, composed of the tribute which the Lydian monarch derived from the subject states; hence the proverb, ‘as rich as Crœsus.’