"Will Durant's Fascination with the Ancient Empire of Assyria"

a Syria 1 chronicles beginnings cities race the conquerors Sennacherib and easter hadn't sardanapalus meanwhile 300 miles north of babylon another civilization had appeared forced to maintain a hard military life by the mountain tribes always threatening it on every side it had in time overcome its assailants and conquered its parent cities in Elam Sumeria Akkad and Babylonia had mastered Venetia and Egypt and had for two centuries dominated the Near East with brutal power Sumeria was to Babylonia and Babylonia to Assyria what crete was to Greece and Greece to Rome the first created a civilization the second developed it to its height the third inherited it added little to it protected it and transmitted it as a dying gift to the encompassing and victorious barbarians for barbarism is always around civilization amid it and beneath it ready to engulf it by arms or mass migration or unchecked fertility barbarism is like the jungle it never admits its defeat it waits patiently for centuries to recover the territory it has lost the new state grew about four cities fed by the waters or tributaries of the Tigris ashore which is now at Kailash air got Arbela which is Erbil kalach which is Nimrod and Nineveh which is unique just across the river from oily Missoula at a shore prehistoric obsidian flakes and knives have been found on black pottery with geometric patterns that suggest a Central Asian origin at tape Agora near the site of Nineveh a recent expedition unearthed a town which its proud discoverers date back to 3700 BC despite its many temples and tombs it's well carved cylinder seals it comes in jewelry and the oldest dice known to history a thought for reformers the god ashore gave his name to a city and finally to all Assyria there the earliest of the nations Kings had their residence until its exposure to the heat of the desert and the attacks of the neighbouring Babylonians led assures rulers to the secondary capital in cooler Nineveh named also after a god Nina the Ishtar of Assyria here in the heyday of Ashurbanipal 300,000 people lived and all the Western orient came to pay tribute to the universal King the population was a mixture of Semites from the civilized South Babylonia and acadia with non-semitic tribes from the west probably of hit I tour mitanni an affinity and Kurdish Mountaineers from the Caucasus they took their common language in their arts from Sumeria but modified them later into an almost indistinguishable similarity to the language and arts of Babylonia their circumstances however forbad them to indulge in the effeminate ease of Babylon from beginning to end they were a race of warriors mighty and muscled and courage abounding and proud hair and beard standing straight Stern and solid in their monuments and beasts riding with tremendous feet the east Mediterranean world their history is one of kings and slaves wars and conquests bloody victories and sudden defeat the early Kings once mere potatoes tributary to the south took advantage of the Kassite domination of Babylonia to establish their independence and soon enough one of them decked himself with that title which all the Monarchs of Assyria were to display king of universal rain out of the doll dynasties of these forgotten potentates certain figures emerge whose deeds illuminate the development of their country while Babylonia was still in the darkness of the Kassite era shall manisa the first brought the little city-states of the North under one rule and made kalach his capital but the first great name in Assyrian history is tiglath-pileser the first he was a mighty hunter before the Lord if it is wise to believe monarchs he slew 120 lions on foot and 800 from his chariot one of his inscriptions written by a scribe more Royalists than the King tells how he hunted Nations as well as animals in my fierce valour I marched against the people of Cooma conquered their cities carried off their booty their goods and their property without reckoning and burned their cities with fire destroyed and devastated them the people of a dance left their mountains and embraced my feet I imposed taxes upon them in every direction he led his armies conquering the Hittites the Armenians and 40 other nations capturing Babylon and frightening Egypt into sending him anxious gifts he was particularly mollified by a crocodile with the proceeds of his conquests he built temples to the Assyrian gods and goddesses who like anxious debutantes ask no questions about the source of his wealth then Babylon revolted defeated his armies pillaged his temples and carried his gods into Babylonian captivity TIG laughs policer died of shame his reign was a symbol in summary of all assyrian history death and taxes first for a serious neighbors then for herself asher nasser paul ii conquered a dozen petty states brought much booty home from the wars cut out with his own hand the eyes of princely captives enjoyed his harem and passed respectably away shall manisa the third carried these conquests as far as damascus fort costly battles killing 16,000 syrians in one engagement built temples levied tribute and was deposed by his son in a violent revolution Samora not ruled his Queen Mother for three years and provided a frail historical basis for this is all that we know of her for the Greek legend of Semiramis half goddess and half Queen great general great engineer and great statesman so attractively detailed by day odorous the sicilian tiglath-pileser the third gathered new armies reconquered armenia / ran syria and Babylonia made vassal cities of damascus samaria and babylon extended the rule of Assyria from the Caucasus to Egypt tired of war became an excellent administrator built many temples and palaces held his empire together with an iron hand and died peacefully in bed Sargon the second an officer in the army made himself King by a Napoleonic coup d'état led his troops in person and took in every engagement the most dangerous post defeated Elam and Egypt reconquered Babylonia and received the homage of the Jews the Philistines and even of the preed Greeks ruled his empire well encouraged Arts and Letters handicrafts and trade and died in a victorious battle that definitely preserved Assyria from invasion by the wild Sumerian hordes his son Sennacherib put down revolts in the distant provinces adjoining the Persian Gulf attacked Jerusalem and Egypt without success sacked 89 cities and 820 villages captured 7,200 horses 11,000 asses 80,000 oxen 800,000 sheep and 208 thousand prisoners the official historian on his life did not under state these figures then irritated by the prejudice of Babylon in favor of freedom he besieged it took it and burned it to the ground nearly all the inhabitants young and old male and female were put to death so that mountains of corpses blocked the streets the temples and palaces were pillaged to the last shekel and the once omnipotent gods of Babylon were hacked to pieces or carried in bondage to Nineveh Marduk the God became a menial to assure such Babylonians has survived did not conclude that Marduk had been overrated they told themselves as the captive Jews would tell themselves a century later in that same Babylon that their God had condescended to be defeated in order to punish his people with the spoils of his conquests and pillage Sennacherib rebuilt Nineveh changed the course of rivers to protect it reclaimed wastelands with the vigor of countries suffering from an agricultural surplus and was assassinated by his sons while piously mumbling his prayers another sunny sir hadn't snatched the throne from his blood-stained brothers invaded Egypt to punish her for supporting Syrian revolts made her an assyrian province amazed western asia with his long triumphal progress from Memphis to Nineveh dragging endless booty and his train established Assyria in unprecedented prosperity as master of the whole Near Eastern world delighted Babylonia by freeing and honoring its captive gods and rebuilding its shattered capital conciliated Elam by feeding its famine-stricken people in an act of international beneficence almost without parallel in the ancient world and died on the way to suppress a revolt in Egypt after his empire the justest and kindly estroux lin it's half barbarous history his successor Ashurbanipal the sardanapalus of the greeks reap the fruits of easter Haddon's sowing during his long reign assyria reached the climax of its wealth and prestige after him his country ruined by 40 years of intermittent war fell into exhaustion and decay and ended its career hardly a decade after a Shabana Paul's death a scribe has preserved to us a yearly record of this rain it is a dull and bloody mess of war after war siege after siege starved cities and flayed captives the scribe represents Ashurbanipal himself as reporting his destruction of Elam for a distance of 1 month and 25 days March I devastated the districts of Elam I spread salt and thorn bush there to injure the soil sons of the Kings sisters of the Kings members of Elam 's royal family young and old prefix governors Knights artisans as many as there were inhabitants male and female big and little horses mules asses flocks and herds more numerous than a swarm of locusts I carried them off as booty to Assyria the dust of Susa of medoc two of hawked a marsh and of their other cities I carried it off to Assyria in a month of days I subdued Elam in its whole extent the voice of man the steps of flocks and herds the happy shouts of mirth I put an end to them in its fields which I left for the asses the gazelles and all manner of wild beasts to people the severed head of the ELA might King was brought to a shobana palace he feasted with his Queen in the palace garden he had the head raised on a pole in the midst of his guests and the royal revel went on later the head was fixed over the gate of Nineveh and slowly rotted away the ELA my general donna knew was flayed alive and then was bled like a lamb his brother had his throat cut and his body was divided into pieces which were distributed over the country as souvenirs it never occurred to Ashurbanipal that he and his men were brutal these clean cut penalties were surgical necessities in his attempt to remove rebellions and establish discipline among the heterogeneous and turbulent peoples from Ethiopia to Armenia and from Syria to media whom his predecessors had subjected to a Syrian rule it was his obligation to maintain this legacy intact he boasted of the peace that he had established in his empire and of the good order that prevailed in its cities and the boast was not without truth that he was not merely a conqueror intoxicated with blood he proved by his munificence as a builder and as a patron of letters and the arts like some Roman ruler calling to the Greeks he sent to all his dominions four sculptors and architects to design and adorn new temples and palaces he commissioned innumerable scribes to secure and copy for him all the classics of Sumerian and Babylonian literature and gathered these copies in his library at Nineveh where modern scholarship found them almost intact after 25 centuries of time and flowed over them like another Frederick he was his vein of his literary abilities as of his triumphs in war in the chase died odorous describes him as a dissolute and bisexual Nero but in the wealth of documents that have come down to us from this period there is little corroboration for this view from the composition of literary tablets Ashurbanipal passed with royal confidence armed with only a knife and javelin to hand-to-hand encounters with lions if we may credit the reports of his contemporaries he did not hesitate to lead the attack in person and often dealt with his own hand the decisive blow little wonder that Byron was fascinated with him and wove about him a drama half legend and half history in which all the wealth and power of Assyria came to their height and broke into universal ruin and royal despair to a Syrian government imperialism a Syrian war the conscript God's law delicacies of penology administration the violence of Oriental monarchies if we should admit the Imperial principle that it is good for the sake of spreading law security commerce and peace that many states should be brought by persuasion or force under the authority of one government then we should have to concede to Assyria the distinction of having established in Western Asia a larger measure and area of order and prosperity than that region of the earth had ever to our knowledge enjoyed before the government of Ashurbanipal which ruled Assyria Babylonia Armenia media Palestine Syria Venetia Sumeria Elam and Egypt was without doubt the most extensive administrative organization yet seen in the Mediterranean or Near Eastern world only Hammurabi and tutmes the third had approached it and Persia alone would equal it before the coming of Alexander in some ways it was a liberal Empire it's larger cities retained considerable local autonomy and each nation in it was left its own religion law and ruler provided it paid its tribute promptly in so loose an organization every weakening of the central power was bound to produce rebellions or at the best a certain tributary negligence so that the subject states had to be conquered again and again to avoid these recurrent rebellions sigla the lisa the third established the characteristic assyrian policy of deporting conquered populations to alien habitats where mingling with the natives they might lose their unity and identity and have less opportunity to rebel revolts came nevertheless and Assyria had to keep herself always ready for war the army was therefore the most vital part of the government Assyria recognized frankly that government is the nationalization of force and her chief contributions to progress were in the art of war chariots cavalry infantry and sappers were organized into flexible formations siege mechanisms were as highly developed as among the Romans strategy and tactics were well understood tactics centered about the idea of rapid movement making possible a piecemeal attack so old is the secret of Napoleon ironworking had grown to the point of encasing the warrior with armor to a degree of stiffness rivaling a medieval knight even the archers and pikemen wore copper or iron helmets padded loin cloths enormous shields and a leather skirt covered with metal scales the weapons were arrows lances cutlasses maces clubs slings and battle axes the nobility fought from chariots in the van of the battle and the king and his royal chariot usually led them in person generals had not yet learned to die in bed Ashur Nasser Paul introduced the use of cavalry as an aid to the chariots and this innovation proved decisive in many engagements the principal siege engine was a battering ram tipped with iron sometimes it was suspended from a scaffold by ropes and was swung back to give it forward impetus sometimes it was run forward on wheels the besieged fought from the walls with missiles torches burning pitch chains designed to entangle the RAM and gaseous stink pots as they were called to befuddle the enemy again the novel is not new a captured city was usually plundered and burnt to the ground and its site was deliberately denuded by killing its trees the loyalty of the troops was secured by dividing a large part of the spoils among them their bravery was ensured by the general rule of the Near East that all captives in war might be enslaved or slain soldiers were rewarded for every severed head they brought in from the field so that the aftermath of a victory generally witnessed the wholesale decapitation of fallen foes most often the prisoners who would have consumed much food in a long campaign and would have constituted a danger a nuisance in the rear were dispatched after the battle they knelt with their backs to their captors who beat their heads in with clubs or cut them off with cutlasses scribes stood by to count the number of prisoners taken and killed by each soldier and apportioned the booty accordingly the king if time permitted provided that the slaughter the nobles among the defeated were given more special treatment their ears noses hands and feet were sliced off where they were thrown from high towers were they and their children were beheaded or flayed alive or roasted over a slow fire no compunction seems to have been felt at this waste of human life the birthrate would soon make up for it and meanwhile it relieved the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence probably it was in part by their reputation for mercy to prisoners of war that Alexander and Caesar undermined the morale of the enemy and conquered the Mediterranean world next to the army the chief reliance of the monarch was upon the church and he paid lavishly for the support of the priests the formal head of the state was by concerted fiction the God assure all pronouncements were in his name all laws were edicts of his Divine Will all taxes were collected for his Treasury all campaigns were fought to furnish him or occasionally another deity with spoils and glory the king had himself described as a God usually an incarnation of shamash the son the religion of Assyria like its language its science and its arts was imported from Sumeria and Babylonia with occasional adaptations to the needs of the military state the adaptation was most visible in the case of the law which was distinguished by a martial ruthlessness punishment ranged from public exhibition to forced labor twenty to a hundred lashes the slitting of nose and ears castration pulling out the tongue gouging out the eyes impalement and beheading the laws of Sargon the second prescribed such additional delicacies as the drinking of poison and the burning of the offender's son or daughter alive on the altar of the God but there is no evidence of these laws being carried out in the last millennium before Christ adultery rape and some forms of theft were considered capital crimes trial by ordeal was occasionally employed the accused sometimes bound in fetters was flung into the river and his guilt was left to the arbitrament of the water in general Assyrian law was less secular and more primitive than the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi which apparently preceded it in time the oldest extant Assyrian laws are 90 articles contained on three tablets found at a shore and dating circa 1300 BC local administration originally by feudal barons fell in the course of time into the hands of provincial prefect sore governor's appointed by the king this form of Imperial Government was taken over by Persia and passed on from Persia to Rome the prefix were expected to collect taxes to organize the corvée for works which like irrigation could not be left to personal initiative and above all to raise regiments and lead them in the royal campaigns meanwhile royal spies or as we should say intelligence officers kept watch on these prefect send their aides and informed the king concerning the state of the nation all in all the Assyrian government was primarily an instrument of war for war was often more profitable than peace it cemented discipline intensified patriotism strengthened the royal power and brought abundant spoils and slaves for the enrichment and service of the capital hence Assyrian history is largely a picture of cities sacked and villages or fields laid waste when Ashurbanipal suppressed the revolt of his brother Shah ma shumou keen and captured Babylon after a long and bitter siege the city presented a terrible spectacle and shocked even the Assyrians most of the numerous victims to pestilence are family about the streets are in the public squares afraid to the dogs and swine such of the inhabitants and the soldiery as were comparatively strong had endeavored to escape into the country and only those remained who had not sufficient strength to drag themselves beyond the walls Ashurbanipal pursued the fugitives and having captured nearly all of them vented on them the full fury of his vengeance he caused the tongues of the soldiers to be torn out and then had them clubbed to death he massacred the common folk in front of the great wing two bulls which had already witnessed a similar butchery half a century before under his grandfather Sennacherib the corpses of the victims remained long unburied afraid to all unclean beasts and birds the weakness of Oriental monarchies was bound up with this addiction to violence not only did the subject provinces repeatedly revolt but within the royal palace or family itself violence again and again attempted to upset what violence had established and maintained at or near the end of almost every reign some disturbance broke out over the succession to the throne the aging monarchs or conspiracies forming around him and in several cases he was hastened to his end by murder the nations of the Near East preferred violent uprisings to corrupt elections and their form of recall was assassination some of these wars were doubtless inevitable barbarians prowled about every frontier and one rain of weakness would see the Citians the Sumerians or some other horde sweeping down upon the wealth of the Assyrian cities and perhaps we exaggerated the frequency of war and violence in these oriental states through the accident that ancient monuments and modern chroniclers have preserved the dramatic record of battles and ignored the victories of peace historians have been prejudiced in favor of bloodshed they found it or thought their readers would find it more interesting than the quiet achievements of the mind we think war less frequent today because we are conscious of the lucid intervals of peace while history seems conscious only of the fevered crises of war three Assyrian life industry and trade marriage and morals religion and science letters and libraries the Assyrian ideal of a gentleman the economic life of Assyria did not differ much from that of Babylonia for in many ways the two countries were merely the north and south of one civilization the southern kingdom was more commercial the northern more agricultural rich Babylonians were usually merchants rich Assyrians were most often landed gentry actively supervising great estates and looking with Roman scorn upon men who made their living by buying cheap and selling deer nevertheless the same rivers flooded and nourished the land the same method of ridges and canals controlled the overflow the same shadows raised the water from ever deeper beds to fields zone with the same wheat and barley millet and sesame other products of Assyrian cultivation were olives grapes garlic onions lettuce cress beets turnips radishes cucumbers alfalfa and liquorice meat was rarely eaten by any but the aristocracy except for fish this warlike nation was largely vegetarian the same industries supported the life of the towns the same system of weights and measures governed the exchange of goods and though Nineveh and her sister capitals were too far north to be great centers of Commerce the wealth brought to them by a serious sovereigns filled them with handicrafts and trade metal was mined were imported in new abundance and towards 700 BC iron replaced bronze is the basic metal of Industry and armament metal was cast glass was blown textiles were dyed earth and where was enameled and houses were as well-equipped in Nineveh as in Europe before the Industrial Revolution a tablet of Sennacherib circa 700 BC contains the oldest known reference to cotton the tree that bore wool they clipped and shredded four cotton it was probably imported from India during the reign of Sennacherib an aqueduct was built with brought water to Nineveh from 30 miles away a thousand feet of it recently discovered constitute the oldest aqueduct known industry and trade were financed in part by private bankers who charged 25 percent for loans led copper silver and gold served as currency and about 700 BC Sennacherib minted silver into half shekel pieces one of our earliest examples of an official coinage the people fell into five classes patricians or nobles craftsmen or master artisans organized in guilds and including the professions as well as the trades the unskilled but free workmen and peasants of town and village serfs bound to the soil on great estates in the manner of medieval Europe and slaves captured in war or attached for debt compelled to announce their status by pierced ears and shaven head and performing most of the menial labor everywhere on a bow relief of Sennacherib we see supervisors holding the whip over slaves who in long parallel lines are drawing a heavy piece of statuary on a wooden sledge like all military states Assyria encouraged a high birthrate by its moral code and its laws abortion was a capital crime a woman who secured miscarriage even a woman who died of attempting it was to be impaled on a stake though women rose to considerable power through marriage and intrigue their position was lower than in Babylonia severe penalties were laid upon them for striking their husbands wives were not allowed to go out in public unveiled and strict fidelity was exacted of them though their husbands might well have all the concubines they could afford prostitution was accepted as inevitable and was regulated by the state the king had a varied harem whose inmates were condemned to a secluded life of dancing singing quarreling needlework and conspiracy a cuckolded husband might kill his rival in flagrante delicto and was held to be within his rights this is a custom that has survived many codes for the rest the law of matrimony was as in Babylonia except that marriage was often by simple purchase and in many cases the wife lived in her father's house visited occasionally by her husband in all departments of the Syrian life we meet with the patriarchal sternest natural to a people that lived by conquest and in every sense on the border of barbarism just as Romans took thousands of prisoners into lifelong slavery after their victories and dragged others to the Circus Maximus to be torn to pieces by starving animals so the Assyrians seemed to find satisfaction or a necessary tutelage for their sons in torturing captives blinding children before the eyes of their parents slaying men alive roasting them in kilns chaining them in cages for the amusement of the populace and then sending the survivors off to execution Ashur Nasser Paul tells how all the Chiefs who had revolt and I flayed with their skins I covered the pillar some in the midst I walled up others on stakes i impaled still others I arranged around the pillar on stakes as for the Chieftains and royal officers who had rebelled I cut off their members Ashurbanipal boasts that I burned three thousand captives with fire I left not a single one among them alive to serve as a hostage another of his inscriptions reads these warriors who had sinned against Ashur and had plotted evil against me from their hostile mouths have I torn their tongues and I have compass their destruction as for the others who remained alive I offered them as a funerary sacrifice their lacerated members have I given under the dogs the swine the wolves by accomplishing these deeds I have rejoiced the heart of the great gods another monarch instructs his artisans to engrave upon the bricks these claims on the admiration of posterity my war chariots crush men and beasts the monuments which I erect are made of human corpses from which I have cut the head and limbs I cut off the hands of all those whom I capture alive reliefs at Nineveh show men being impaled or flayed or having their tongues torn out one shows a king gouging out the eyes of prisoners with a Lance while he holds their heads conveniently in place with a cord passed through their lips as we read such pages we become reconciled to our own mediocrity religion apparently did nothing to modify this tendency to brutality and violence it had less influence with the government than in Babylonia and took its cue from the needs and tastes of the kings assure the national deity was a solar God warlike and merciless to his enemies his people believed that he took a divine satisfaction in the execution of prisoners before his shrine the essential function of Assyrian religion was to train the future citizen to a patriotic docility and to teach him the art of weaving favors out of the gods by magic and sacrifice the only religious texts that survived from Assyria are exorcisms and omens long lists of omens have come down to us in which the inevitable results of every manner of event are given and methods of avoiding them are prescribed the world was pictured as crowded with demons who had to be warded off by charms suspended about the neck or by long and careful incantations in such an atmosphere the only science that flourished was that of war Assyrian medicine was merely Babylonian medicine Assyrian astronomy was merely Babylonian astrology the stars were studied chiefly with a view to divination we find no evidence of philosophical speculation no secular attempt to explain the world Assyrian philologists made lists of plants probably for the use of medicine and thereby contributed moderately to establish botany others scribes made lists of nearly all the objects they had found under the Sun and their attempts to classify these objects ministered slightly to the natural science of the Greeks from these lists our language has taken usually through the Greeks such words as hanger gypsum camel plinth shekel rose ammonia Jasper cane cherry laudanum naphtha sesame hyssop and myrrh the tablets recording the deeds of the Kings though they have the distinction of being at once bloody and dull must be accorded the honor of being among the oldest extant forms of historiography they were in the early years mere chronicles registering royal victories and admitting of no defeats they became in later days embellished and literary accounts of the important events of the reign the clearest title of Assyria - a place in a history of civilization was its libraries that of Ashurbanipal contained 30,000 clay tablets classified in catalogued each tablet bearing an easily identifiable tag many of them bore the Kings bookmark whoso shall carry off this tablet may assure and billet overthrow him in Wrath and just Troi his name and posterity from the land a large number of the tablets are copies of undated older works of which earlier forms are being constantly discovered the avowed purpose of ashurbanipal's library was to preserve the literature of Babylonia from oblivion but only a small number of the tablets would now be classed as literature the majority of the more official records astrological and all Gural observations Oracle's medical prescriptions and reports exorcisms hymns prayers and genealogies of the Kings and the gods among the least dull of the tablets are two in which Ashurbanipal confesses with quaint insistence his scandalous delight in books and knowledge I Ashurbanipal understood the wisdom of Nabu the god of wisdom corresponding to both Hermes and mercury I acquired an understanding of all the arts of tablet writing I learned to shoot the bow to ride horses and chariots to hold the reins Marduk the wise one of the gods presented me with information and understanding as a gift a Norton Nergal made me Verrill and strong of incomparable force I understood the craft of the wise Oedipa the hidden secrets of all the scribal art in heavenly and earthly buildings I read and pondered in the meetings of clerks I was present I watched the omens I explained the heavens with the learned priests recited the complicated multiplications and divisions that are not immediately apparent the beautiful writings in Sumerian that are obscure in Akkadian that are difficult to bear in mind it was my joy to repeat i mounted colts rode them with prudence so that they were not violent I drew the bow sped the arrow the sign of the warrior I flung the quivering javelins like short Lance's I held the reins like a charioteer I directed the weaving of reed shields and breastplates like a pioneer I had the learning that all clerks of every kind possessed when their time of maturity comes at the same time I learned what is proper for lordship I went my royal ways for Assyrian art minor arts bar relief statuary building a page from sardanapalus that last in the field of art to Syria equaled her preceptor Babylonia and in bar relief surpassed her stimulated by the influx of wealth into a Shore kalach and Nineveh artists and artisans began to produce for nobles and their ladies for kings and palaces for priests and temples jewels of every description cast metal is skillfully designed and finely wrought is on the great gate set to follow up and luxurious furniture of richly carved in costly woods strengthened with metal and inlaid with gold silver bronze or precious stones pottery was poorly developed in music like so much else was merely imported from Babylon but tempera painting in bright colors under a thin glaze became one of the characteristic arts of Assyria from which had passed to its perfection in Persia painting as always in the ancient East was a secondary and dependent art in the heyday of sargon ii Sennacherib esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal and presumably through their lavish patronage the art of bar relief created new masterpieces for the British Museum one of the best examples however dates from Asher Nasser paul ii it represents in chaste alabaster the good god Marduk overcoming the evil god of chaos Tiamat the human figures in Assyrian reliefs are stiff and coarse and all alike as if some perfect model had insisted on being reproduced forever all the men have the same massive heads the same brush of whiskers the same stout bellies the same invisible necks even the gods are these same Assyrians in very slight disguise only now intended the human figures take on vitality is in the alabaster relief depicting spirits in adoration before palmetto tree and the fine limestone steely of sham sia dad vii founded Kalakh usually it is the animal reliefs that stir us never before or since has carving pictured animals so successfully the panels monotonous ly repeat scenes of warned of the hunt but the eye never tires of their vigour of action their flow of motion and their simple directness of line it is as if the artist forbidden to portray his masters realistically or individually and given all his lore and skill to the animals he sense them in a profusion of species lions horses asses goats dogs deer birds grasshoppers and in every attitude except rest too often he shows them in the agony of death but even then they are the center and life of his picture and his art the majestic horses of Sargon the second on the reliefs at Khorsabad the wounded lioness from Sennacherib palace at Nineveh the dying lion and alabaster from the palace of Ashurbanipal the lion hunts of azure nasa pulled the second and Ashurbanipal the resting lioness and the lion released from a trap the fragment in which a lion and his mate bask in the shade of the trees these are among the world's choicest masterpieces in this form of art the representation of natural objects in the reliefs is stylized and crude the forms are heavy the outlines are hard the muscles are exaggerated and there is no other attempted perspective than the placing of the distant in the upper half of the picture on the same scale as the foreground presented below gradually however the guild of sculptors under Sennacherib learned to offset these defects with a boldly realistic portrayal a technical finish and above all a vivid perception of action which in the field of animal sculpture have never been surpassed ba relief was to the Assyrian what sculpture was to the Greek or painting to the Italians of the Renaissance a favorite art uniquely expressing the National ideal of form and character we cannot say as much for a Syrian sculpture the Carver's of nineveh and calah seem to have preferred relief to work in the round very little full sculpture has come down to us from the ruins and none of it is of a high order the animals are full of power and majesty as if conscious of not only physical but moral superiority to man like the Bulls that guarded the gateway of course about the human or divine figures are primitively coarse and heavy adorned but undistinguished erect but dead an exception might be made for the massive statue of Ashur Nasser Paul the second now in the British Museum through all its heavy lines one sees a man every inch a king royal sceptre firmly grasped thick lips set with determination eyes cruel and alert a bull like neck boding short shrift for enemies and falsifiers of tax reports and two gigantic feet full poised on the back the world we must not take too seriously our judgments of this sculpture very likely the assyrians idolised knotted muscles and short necks and would have looked with martial scorn upon our almost feminine slenderness or the smooth voluptuous grace of tracksuit Elise's Hermes and the Apollo Belvedere as for Assyrian architecture how can we estimate its excellence when nothing remains of it but ruins almost level with the sand and serving chiefly as a hook upon which brave archaeologists may hang their imaginative restorations like Babylonian and recent American architecture the Assyrian aimed not at beauty but at grandeur and sorted by mass design following the traditions of Mesopotamian art Assyrian architecture adopted brick as its basic material but went its own way by facing it more lavishly with stone he'd inherited the arch and the vault from the South developed them and made some experiments in columns which led the way to the caryatids and the volute 'add ionic capitals of the Persians and the Greeks the palaces squatted over great areas of ground and were wisely limited to two or three storeys in height ordinarily they were designed as a series of halls and chambers enclosing a quiet and shaded court the portals of the royal residences regarded with monstrous stone animals the entrance hall was lined with historical reliefs and statuary the floors were paved with alabaster slabs the walls were hung with costly tapestries or paneled with precious woods and bordered with elegant moldings the roofs were reinforced with massive beams sometimes covered with leaf of silver or gold and the ceilings were often painted with representations of natural scenery the six mightiest warriors of Assyria were also its greatest builders TIG laughs beliefs are the first rebuilt in stone the temples of oshawa and left word about one of them that he had made its interior brilliant like the vault of heaven decorated its walls with the splendor of the Rising Stars and made it superb with shining brightness the later Emperor's gave generously to the temples but like Solomon they preferred their palaces Asher Nasir Paul the second built at Kalakh an immense edifice of stone faced brick ornamented with reliefs praising piety and war near by at Bala Wat rasam found the ruins of another structure from which he rescued two bronze gates of magnificent workmanship sargon ii commemorated himself by raising a spacious palace at door shah rukh in that his fort Sargon on the side of the modern Khorsabad its gateway was flanked by wing and bulls its walls were decorated with reliefs and shining tiles its vast rooms were equipped with delicately carved furniture and were adorned with imposing statuary from every victory Sargon brought more slaves to work on this construction and more marble lapis lazuli bronze silver and gold to beautify it around it he said a group of temples and in the rear he offered to the God as igger out of seven stories topped with silver and gold Sennacherib raised at Nineveh a royal mansion called the incomparable surpassing in size all other palaces of antiquity its walls and floors sparkled with precious metals woods and stones its tiles BIDIN their brilliance with the luminaries of day and night the metal workers cast for a gigantic lions and oxen of copper and the sculptors carved for it winged and bulls of limestone and alabaster and lined its walls with pastoral symphonies in bar relief ether hadn't continued the rebuilding and enlargement of Nineveh and excelled all his predecessors in the grandeur of his edifices and the luxuriousness of their equipment a dozen provinces provided him with materials and men new ideas for columns and decorations came to him during his sojourn in Egypt and when at last his palaces and temples were complete they were filled with the artistic booty and conceptions of the whole Near Eastern world the worst commentary on Assyrian architecture lies in the fact that within 60 years after Easter hadn't and finished his palace it was crumbling into ruins Ashurbanipal tells us how he rebuilt it as we read his inscription the centuries fade and we see dimly into the heart of the king at that time the harem the resting place of the palace which Sennacherib my grandfather had built for his royal dwelling had become old with joy and gladness and its walls had fallen I Ashurbanipal the great king the mighty King the king of the world the king of Assyria because I had grown up in that hair and our shores in shamash ramen Belle Nabu Ishtar ninive Nergal and new SKU and preserved me there in his Crown Prince and it extended their good protection and shelter of prosperity over me and and constantly sent me joyful tidings there in the victory over my enemies and because my dreams in my bed at night were pleasant and in the morning by fancies were bright I tore down its ruins in order to extend its area I tore it all down I erected a building the site of whose structure was fifty tim-ki and extent I raised a terrace but I was afraid before the shrines of the great gods my Lords and did not raise that structure very high in a good month on a favorable day I put in its foundations upon that Terrace and laid its brickwork I emptied wine of sesame and wine of grapes upon its cellar and Ford them also upon its earthen wall in order to build that harem the people of my land hold its bricks there in wagons of Elam which I had carried away as spoiled by the command of the gods I made the kings of Arabia who had violated their treaty with me and whom I had captured alive in battle with my own hands carry baskets and wear workman's caps in order to build that harem they spent their days in moulding its bricks and performing forest service for it to the playing of music with joy and rejoicing I built it from its foundations to its roof I made more room in it than before and made the work upon it splendid I laid upon it long beams of cedar which screw upon tsurara and Lebanon I covered doors of Liara wood whose odor is pleasant with a sheath of copper and hung them in its doorways I planted around it a grove of all kinds of trees and fruits of every kind I finished the work of its construction offered splendid sacrifices to the gods my Lords dedicated it with joy and rejoicing and entered there in under a splendid canopy five Assyria passes the last days of a king sources of Assyrian decay the fall of Nineveh nevertheless the great king the mighty King the king of the world the king of Assyria complained in his old age of the misfortunes that had come to his lot the last tablet bequeathed us by his way raises again the questions of Ecclesiastes and job I did well unto God and man to dead and living why have sickness and misery befallen me I cannot do away with the strife in my country and the dissensions in my family disturbing scandals oppressed me always illness of mind and flesh bow me down with cries of woe I bring my days to an end on the day of the city God the day of the festival I am wretched death is seizing hold upon me and bears me down with lamentation and mourning i wail day and night i groan oh god grant even to one who is impious that he may see thy light die odorous how reliably we cannot save pictures the king is rioting away his years in feminine comforts and genderless immorality and credits him with composing his own reckless epitaph knowing full well that thou wert mortal born thy heart lifts up take thy delight in feasts when dead no pleasure more is thine thus i once our mighty Ninus ruled and north but dust yet these are mine which gave me joy in life the food I ate my wantonness and loves delights but all these other things men Dean felicities are left behind perhaps there is no inconsistency between this mood and that pictured in the text the one may have been the medical preliminary to the other we do not know how I shall bana fall died the story dramatized by Byron that he set fire to his own palace and perished in the flames rests on the authority of the Marvel loving not easiest and maybe merely legend his death was in any case a symbol and an omen soon assyria too was to die and from causes of which Ashurbanipal had been apart for the economic vitality of Assyria had been derived to rationally from abroad it depended upon profitable conquests bringing in riches and trade at any moment it could be ended with the decisive defeat gradually the qualities of body and character that had helped to make the Assyrian armies invincible were weakened by the very victories that they won in each victory it was the strongest and bravest who died while the infirm and cautious survived to multiply their kind it was a dis Jenny process that perhaps made for civilization by weeding out the more brutal types but undermined the biological basis upon which assyria had risen to power the extent of her conquests had helped to weaken her not only had they depopulated her fields to feed in satiate Mars but they had brought into Assyria as captives millions of destitute aliens who bred with the fertility of the hopeless destroying all national unity of character and blood and became by their growing numbers a hostile and disintegrating force in the very midst of the conquerors more and more the army itself was filled by these men of other lands while semi barbarous Marauders harassed every border and exhausted the resources of the country in an endless defense of it's unnatural frontiers Ashurbanipal died in 626 BC fourteen years later an army of Babylonians under neva Palliser United with an army of Metis under syak Suri's and a horde of Citians from the Caucasus and with amazing ease and swiftness captured the Citadel's of the north Nineveh was laid waste as ruthlessly and completely as her Kings had once ravaged Susa and Babylon the city was put to the torch the population was slaughtered or enslaved and the palace so recently built by Ashurbanipal was sacked and destroyed at one blow Assyria disappeared from history nothing remained ever except certain tactics and weapons of war certain velu today paddles of semi ionic columns and certain methods of provincial administration that passed down to Persia Macedon and Rome the Near East remembered her for a while as a merciless unifier of a dozen lesser states and the Jews recalled Nineveh vengefully as the bloody city full of lies and robbery in a little while all but the mightiest of the great kings were forgotten and all their royal palaces were in ruins under the drifting sands two hundred years after its capture Xenophon's ten thousand marched over the mounds that had been Nineveh and never suspected that these were the site of the ancient metropolis that had ruled half the world not a stone remained visible of all the temples with which a serious pious Warriors had sought to beautify their greatest capital even Ashur the everlasting God was dead