Assyria Sentence Examples

This part of the river's course, the ancient Assyria, is also a rich agricultural region.

The kingdom, however, was short-lived, and it was soon absorbed into the vassalage of Assyria.

Opposite Mosul are the ruins of ancient Nineveh, the last capital of Assyria, and 20 m.

This appears actually to be the case in the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon and also in the 7th century in Assyria, where early Babylonian customs were kept up conservatively.

In the course of centuries, however, they were absorbed into the Babylonian population; the kings adopted Semitic names and married into the royal family of Assyria.

In commercial matters, payment in kind was still common, though the contracts usually stipulate for cash, naming the standard expected, that of Babylon, Larsa, Assyria, Carchemish, &c. The Code enacted, however, that a debtor must be allowed to pay in produce according to statutory scale.

Before the 14th century B.C. the warrior kings of Egypt had carried the power of their arms southward from the delta of the Nile wellnigh to its source, and eastward to the confines of Assyria.

The hieroglyphic inscriptions of Egypt and the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria are rich in records of the movements and achievements of armies, the conquest of towns and the subjugation of peoples; but though many of the recorded sites have been identified, their discovery by wandering armies was isolated from their subsequent history and need not concern us here.

Among these petty chieftains, Sargon in 715 mentions Dayukku, "lieutenant of Man" (he probably was, therefore, a vassal of the neighbouring king of Man in the mountains of south-eastern Armenia), who joined the Urartians and other enemies of Assyria, but was by Sargon transported to Hamath in Syria "with his clan."

From this time forward it was against Assyria instead of Babylonia that Elam found itself compelled to exert its strength, and Elamite policy was directed towards fomenting revolt in Babylonia and assisting the Babylonians in their struggle with Assyria.

Just as we have in Assyria an Ishtar of Arbela and an Ishtar of Nineveh (treated in Assur-bani-pal's (Rassam) cylinder 2 like two distinct deities), as we have local Madonnas in Roman Catholic countries, so must it have been with the cults of Yahweh in the regal period carried on in the numerous high places, Bethel, Shechem, Shiloh (till its destruction in the days of Eli) and Jerusalem.

If Assyria finally overthrew Israel and carried off Yahweh's shrine, Assur (Asur), the tutelary deity of Assyria, was mightier than Yahweh.

Assyria is the " bee " and Egypt the " fly " for which Yahweh hisses.

And so the old limitations of Israel's popular religion, - the same limitations that encumbered also the religions of all the neighbouring races that succumbed in turn to Assyria's invincible progress, - now began to disappear.

The book of Deuteronomy, in conjunction with the reformation of Josiah's reign (which synchronizes with the rapid decline of Assyria and the reviving prestige of Yahweh), appeared to mark the triumph of the great prophetic movement.

Yet another expedition in 839 would seem to 2 See for chronology, Babylonia And Assyria, §§ v.

It is a natural assumption that Damascus could still count upon Israel as an ally in 842; not until the withdrawal of Assyria and the accession of Jehu did the situation change.

A diversion of this kind may explain the Israelite victories; the subsequent withdrawal of Assyria may have afforded the occasion for retaliation.

Assyria and Damascus would realize the recuperative power of the latter, and would perceive the danger of the short-sighted policy of Joash.

Hebrew religious institutions can be understood from the biblical evidence studied in the light of comparative religion; and without going afield to Babylonia, Assyria or Egypt, valuable data are furnished by the cults of Phoenicia, Syria and Arabia, and these in turn can be illustrated from excavation and from modern custom.

Assyria again appeared upon the scene under Tiglath, pileser IV.

Scarcely had Assyria withdrawn before Menahem lost his life in a conspiracy, and Pekah with the help of Gilead made himself king.

The disorganized state of Egypt and the uncertain allegiance of the desert tribes left Judah without direct aid; on the other hand, opposition to Assyria among the conflicting interests of Palestine and Syria was rarely unanimous.

Although no evidence is at hand, it is probable that Ahaz of Judah rendered service to Assyria by keeping the allies in check; possible, also, that the former enemies of Jerusalem had now been induced to turn against Samaria.

Ahaz had recognized the sovereignty of Assyria and visited Tiglath-pileser at Damascus.

It is uncertain whether Sennacherib invaded Judah again shortly before his death, never,- theless the land was practically under the control of Assyria.

The assumption that the decay of Assyria awoke the national feeling of independence is perhaps justified by those events which made the greatest impression upon the compiler, and an account is given of Josiah's religious reforms, based upon a source apparently identical with that which described the work of Jehoash.

A Chaldean prince, Nabopolassar, set himself up in Babylonia, and Assyria was compelled to invoke the aid of the Askuza.

Josiah at once interposed; it is uncertain whether, in spite of the power of Egypt, he had hopes of extending his kingdom, or whether the famous reformer was, like Manasseh, a vassal of Assyria.

Now the penalty had been paid, and the Babylonians, whose policy was less destructive than that of Assyria, contented themselves with appointing as governor a certain Gedaliah.

It would certainly be unwise to draw a sharp boundary line between the two districts; kings of Judah could be tempted to restore the kingdom of their traditional founder, or Assyria might be complaisant towards a faithful Judaean vassal.

They treat with almost unique fullness a few years in the middle of the 9th century B.C., but ignore Assyria; yet only the Assyrian inscriptions explain the political situation (§ 10 seq.), and were it not for them the true significance of the 8th-7th centuries could scarcely be realized (§ 15 seq.).

The movements mentioned above have been the chief factors of relatively modern Asiatic history, but in early times the centre of activity and culture lay farther west, in Babylonia and Assyria.

In politics these races have been less successful in modern times, but the Semitic states of Babylonia and Assyria were once the principal centres for the development and distribution of civilization.

Assyria was an offshoot of Babylonia lying to the north-west, and apparently -colonized before the second millennium.

Assyria, being essentially a military power, disappeared with the destruction of Nineveh, but Babylon continued to exercise an influence on culture and religion for many centuries after the Persian conquest.

The religion was remodelled by Zoroaster, who seems to be a historical character and to have lived about the 7th century B.C. About the same time they shook off the domination of Assyria.

In the astral theology of Babylonia and Assyria, Anu, Bel and Ea became the three zones of the ecliptic, the northern, middle and southern zone respectively.

Paphos was believed to have been founded either by the Arcadian Agapenor, returning from the Trojan War (c. 1180 B.C.), or by his reputed contemporary Cinyras, whose clan retained royal privileges down to the Ptolemaic conquest of Cyprus in 295 B.C., and held the Paphian priesthood till the Roman occupation in 58 B.C. The town certainly dates back to the close of the Mycenaean Bronze age, and had a king Eteandros among the allies of Assur-bani-pal of Assyria in 668 B.C.'

Syria, however, is probably the Babylonian Suri, used of a north Euphratean district, and a word distinct from Assyria.

They or their confederacy remained, however, the most powerful of the Syrian elements till the westward extension of Assyria about 1050 B.C., under Tiglath-Pileser I.

Mesopotamia and Assyria were given back to the Parthians, and the Armenians were allowed a king of their own.

The peculiar characteristics of Syro-Hittite art, and its relation to that of Assyria, are matters of great interest to the student of the civilization and art of the Nearer East.

We now know something of the early history of Assyria and of the succession of Mer kings from monuments found at Sherqat.

Though the Gilgamesh Epic is known to us chiefly from the fragments found in the royal collection of tablets made by Assur-bani-pal, the king of Assyria (668-626 B.C.) 'for his palace at Nineveh, internal evidence points to the high antiquity of at least some portions of it, and the discovery of a fragment of the epic in the older form of the Babylonian script, which can be dated as 2000 B.C., confirms this view.

While recognized by a temple of her own in Nippur and honoured by rulers at various times by having votive offerings made in her honour and fortresses dedicated in her name, she, as all other goddesses in Babylonia and Assyria with the single exception of Ishtar, is overshadowed by her male consort.

For a comparative study of the occurrence of the ark in the various deluge myths, in the present edition, see Deluge; Cosmogony; Babylonia And Assyria.

Smith, who follows it, suggests "Egypt from 608-605" as an alternative to Assyria (p. 124).

In Joel the enemies of Israel are the nations collectively, and among those specified by name neither Assyria nor Chaldaea finds a place.

The absence of all mention of one great oppressing world-power seems most natural before the westward march of Assyria involved Israel in the general politics of Asia.

The country of Assyria, which in the Assyro-Babylonian literature is known as mat Assur (ki), " land of Assur," took its name from the ancient city of Assur, situated at the 1 The name Assur is not connected with the Asshur of i Chron.ii.

The kingdom of Assyria, which was the outgrowth of the primitive settlement on the site of the city of Assur, was developed by a probably gradual process of colonization in the rich vales of the middle Tigris region, a district watered by the Tigris itself and also by several tributary streams, the chief of which was the lower Zab.'

It is probable that this nonSemitic form A-usar means "well watered region," a most appropriate designation for the river settlements of Assyria.

Special mention may be made here of the tale of Abikar - the wise and virtuous secretary of Sennacherib, king of Assyria - and of his wicked nephew Nadhan.

The disassociation from his local origin involved in this doctrine of the triad gave to Bel a rank independent of political changes, and we, accordingly, find Bel as a factor in the religion of Babylonia and Assyria to the latest days.

The kings of Assyria united in themselves the royal and priestly offices, and on the monuments they erected they are generally represented as offering incense and pouring out wine to the Tree of Life.

The monuments of Persepolis and the coins of the Sassanians show that the religious use of incense was as common in ancient Persia as in Babylonia and Assyria.

On one side of this a lion is engraved, and also a line of cuneiform characters, in which is the name of Sargon, king of Assyria, 722 B.C. Fragments of coloured glasses were also found there, but our materials are too scanty to enable us to form any decided opinion as to the degree of perfection to which the art was carried in Assyria.

The writers of antiquity clearly recognized this fact, speaking of the whole under the general name of Assyria, though Babylonia, as will be seen, would have been a more accurate designation.

In the earliest times of which we have any record, the northern portion was included in Mesopotamia; it was definitely marked off as Assyria only after the rise of the Assyrian monarchy.

Behind them tower the massive ridges of the Niphates and Zagros ranges, where the Tigris and Euphrates take their rise, and which cut off Assyria from Armenia and Kurdistan.

The name Assyria itself was derived from that of the city of Assur or Asur, now Qal'at Sherqat (Kaleh Shergat), which stood on the right bank of the Tigris, midway between the Greater and the Lesser Zab.

Layard's discovery of the library of Assurbani-pal put the materials for reconstructing the ancient life and history of Assyria and Babylonia into the hands of scholars.

One of these is the so-called " Synchronous History of Assyria and Babylonia," consisting of brief notices, written by an Assyrian, of the occasions on which the kings of the two countries had entered into relation, hostile or otherwise, with one another; a second is the Babylonian Chronicle discovered by Dr Th.

As in Assyria, so too in the states of Babylonia the patesi or high-priest of the god preceded the king.

Among the latter is one ordering the despatch of 2 4 0 soldiers from Assyria and Situllum, a proof that Assyria was at the time a Babylonian dependency.

Under this foreign dominion, which offers a striking analogy to the contemporary rule of the Hyksos in Egypt, Babylonia lost its empire over western Asia, Syria and Palestine became independent, and the high-priests of Assur made themselves kings of Assyria.

Assyria grew in power at the expense of Babylonia, and a time came when the Kassite king of Babylonia was glad to marry the daughter of Assur-yuballidh of Assyria, whose letters to Amenophis (Amon-hotep) IV.

His son Tukulti-In-aristi conquered Babylon, putting its king Bitilyasu to death, and thereby made Assyria the mistress of the oriental world.

Assyria had taken the place of Babylonia.

The empire of Assyria was again ex- Assurnazir- tended in all directions, and the palaces, temples and pal III.

When he ascended the throne of Babylon in 747 B.C. Assyria was in the throes of a revolution.

Assur-bani-pal succeeded him as king of Assyria and its empire, while his brother, Samas-sumyukin, was made viceroy of Babylonia.

Egypt had already recovered its independence (660 B.C.) with the help of mercenaries sent by Gyges of Lydia, who had vainly solicited aid from Assyria against his Cimmerian enemies.

Assyria, however, was aided by civil war in Elam itself; the country was wasted with fire and sword,, and its capital Susa or Shushan levelled with the ground.

When Assur-bani-pal died, his empire was fast breaking up. Under his successor, Assur-etil-ilani, the Scythians penetrated into Assyria and made their way as far as the borders of Egypt.

But its architectural poverty and small size show that the resources of Assyria were at a low ebb.

A contract has been found at Sippara, dated in the fourth year of Assur-etil-ilani, though it is possible that his rule in Babylonia was disputed by his Rab-shakeh (vizier), Assur-sum-lisir, whose accession year as king of Assyria occurs on a contract from Nippur (Niffer).

The last king of Assyria was probably the brother of Assur-etil-ilani, Sin - sar - iskun (Sin-sarra-uzur), who seems to have been the Sarakos (Saracus) of Berossus.

His successor was Nabo oPP Y P lassar, between whom and the last king of Assyria war broke out.

Tukulti-In-aristi of Assyria (1272 B.C.) for 7 years, native vassal kings being Bel-sum-iddin, II years.

Assyria and Babylonia contrasted.

Babylonia was a land of merchants and agriculturists; Assyria was an organized camp. The Assyrian dynasties were founded Dynasty of Isin of I i kings for 1324 years.

Hence the sudden collapse of Assyria when drained of its fighting population in the age of Assur-bani-pal.

The culture of Assyria, and still more of Babylonia, was essentially literary; we miss in it the artistic spirit of Egypt or Greece.

Assyria in this, as in other matters, the servile pupil of Babylonia, built its palaces and temples of brick, though stone was the natural building material of the country, even preserving the brick platform, so necessary in the marshy soil of Babylonia, but little needed in the north.

The ceramic history of Babylonia and Assyria has unfortunately not yet been traced; at Susa alone has the care demanded by the modern methods of archaeology been as yet expended on examining and separating the pottery found in the excavations, and Susa is not Babylonia.

The army was raised, at all events in part, by conscription; a standing army seems to have been first organized in Assyria.

In both countries there was a large body of slaves; above them came the agriculturists and commercial classes, who were, however, comparatively little numerous in Assyria.

The scribes, on the other hand, formed a more important class in Assyria than in Babylonia.

It is remarkable that thus far no cemetery older than the Seleucid or Parthian period has been found in Assyria.

Up to certain points no difference of opinion exists upon the dates to be assigned to the later kings who ruled in Babylon and in Assyria.

Thus all historians are agreed with regard to the Babylonian chronology back to the year 747 B.C., and with regard to that of Assyria back to the year 911 B.C. It is in respect of the periods anterior to these two dates that different writers have propounded differing systems of chronology, and, as might be imagined, the earlier the period we examine the greater becomes the discrepancy between the systems proposed.

In addition to the Kings' List, other important chronological data consist of references in the classical authorities to the chronological system of Berossus; chronological references to earlier kings occurring in the later native inscriptions, such as Nabonidus's estimate of the period of Khammurabi (or Hammuribi); synchronisms, also furnished by the inscriptions, between kings of Babylon and of Assyria; and the early Babylonian date-lists.

Andbabylonia Assyria Sennacherib's figure in the Bavian inscription; this he reduced by a hundred years,' instead of increasing it by sixty as Rost had suggested.

A peculiar difficulty arises in the case of the god of storms, who, written IM, was generally known in Babylonia as Ramman, " the thunderer," whereas in Assyria he also had the designation Adad.

During the later part of their history they were in continual contact with Assyria, and, as a Syrian power, and perhaps also as a Cappadocian one, they finally succumbed to Assyrian pressure.

His letter shows that he considered the rise of Assyria a menace to himself.

He would ascribe them to the Kummukh (Commagenians), who seem to have succeeded the Khatti as the strongest opponents of Assyria in these parts.

The establishment of the Hatti at Carchemish not only made them a commercial people and probably sapped their highland vigour, but also brought them into closer proximity to the rising North Semitic power of Assyria, whose advent had been regarded with apprehension by Hattusil II.

In 1845, encouraged and assisted by Canning, Layard left Constantinople to make those explorations among the ruins of Assyria with which his name is chiefly associated.

Tiglath-Pileser III., a usurper who came to the throne of Assyria in 745 B.C., and whose earlier name of Pul proved a source of confusion to the later Hebrew writers, left records that have served to clear up the puzzling chronology of a considerable period of the history of Samaria.

Assyria under Sargon defeated the southern confederation at Rapihi (Raphia on the border of Egypt) and captured Hanun; the significance of the victory is evident from the submission of the queen of Aribi (Arabia), the Sabaean Itamara, and Musri.

He may also have composed at Thurii that special work on the history of Assyria to which he twice refers in his first book, and which is quoted by Aristotle.

In tracing the growth of Persia from a petty subject kingdom to a vast dominant empire, he has occasion to set out the histories of Lydia, Media, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Scythia, Thrace, and to describe the countries and the peoples inhabiting them, their natural productions, climate, geographical position, monuments, &c.; while, in noting the contemporaneous changes in Greece, he is led to tell of the various migrations of the Greek race, their colonies, commerce, progress in the arts, revolutions, internal struggles, wars with one another, legislation, religious tenets and the like.

Four princes of the oldest period bear the name Yatha'amar, and one of these may, with the greatest probability, be held to be the " Itamara Sabai " who paid tribute to Sargon of Assyria.

The special god of this city was Ea, god of the sea and of wisdom, and the prominence given to this god in the incantation literature of Babylonia and Assyria suggests not only that many of our magical texts are to be traced ultimately to the temple of Ea at Eridu, but that this side of the Babylonian religion had its origin in that place.

The investigations which have been carried on in recent years by King, Tallquist and Zimmern, as well as by Briinnow and Craig, on the magic and ritual of Babylonia and Assyria have been fruitful of results.

The exact dates of events in Hebrew history can be determined only when the figures given in the Old Testament can be checked and, if necessary, corrected by the contemporary monuments of Assyria and Babylonia, or (as in the post-exilic period) by the knowledge which we independently possess of the chronology of the Persian kings.

And so too it is not through the material organization of the Judaean kingdom that Isaiah looks for deliverance from Assyria.

Evidence seems to favour the view that Ramman was the name current in Babylonia, whereas Adad was more common in Assyria.

A god Hadad who was a prominent deity in ancient Syria is identical with Adad, and in view of this it is plausible to assume - for which there is also other evidence - that the name Adad represents an importation into Assyria from Aramaic districts.

However this name may have originally been pronounced, so much is certain, - that through Aramaic influences in Babylonia and Assyria he was identified with the storm-god of the western Semites, and a trace of this influence is to be seen in the designation Amurru, also given to this god in the religious literature of Babylonia, which as an early name for Palestine and Syria describes the god as belonging to the Amorite district.

The process of assimilation did not proceed so far in Babylonia and Assyria, but Shamash and Adad became in combination the gods of oracles and of divination in general.

Buildings in Assyria and Babylonia show 20.5 to 20.6.

In Assyria the same digit appears as 0.730, particularly at Nimrud (25); and in Persia buildings show the 10-digit length of 7.34 (25).

Oppert (24) concludes from inscriptions that there was in Assyria a royal cubit (7/6)ths of the U cubit, or 25.20; and four monuments show (25) a cubit averaging 25.28.

From Assyria also it passed into Asia Minor, being found on the city standard of Ushak in Phrygia (33), engraved as 21.8, divided into the Assyrian foot of 10.8, and half and quarter, 5.4 and 2.7.

The main series on which we shall rely here are those -- (1) from Assyria (38) about 800 B.C.; (2) from the eastern Delta of Egypt (29) (Defenneh); (3) from western Delta (28) (Naucratis); (4) from Memphis (44) -- all these about the 6th century B.C., and therefore before much interference from the decreasing coin standards; (5) from Cnidus; (6) from Athens; (7) from Corfu; and (8) from Italy (British Museum) (44).

There is no doubt but that in the Maccabean times and onward 218 was the shekel; but the use of the word darkemon by Ezra and Nehemiah, and the probabilities of their case, point to the daragmaneh, 1/60 maneh or shekel of Assyria; and the mention of 1/3 shekel by Nehemiah as poll tax nearly proves that the 129 and not 218 grains is intended, as 218 is not divisible by 3.

The history of Nineveh is, of course, bound up with that of Assyria in general.

Archaeological discoveries in India, Persia, Assyria and Egypt show that in the polished stone age quaternary man had domesticated the horse, while a Chinese treatise, the Goei-leaotse, the fifth book of the Vouking, a sort of military code dating from the reign of the emperor Hoang-Ti (2637 years B.C.), places the cavalry on the wings of the army.

The legend of the Omophorus and Splenditeneus, rival giants who sustain earth and luminous heavens on their respective shoulders, even if it already figures in the cuneiform texts of Assyria, is yet to be traced in Mithraic bas-reliefs.

From other sources we obtain no information whatever about Phraortes; but the data of the Assyrian inscriptions prove that Assur-banipal (see Babylonia And Assyria), at least during the greater part of his reign, maintained the Assyrian supremacy in Western Asia, and that in 645 he conquered Susa.

Thus the early kings of Assyria were priests of Assur (Asur), the tutelary deity of Assyria.

In the twelfth year of his reign Nebuchadrezzar, who is described as king of Assyria,having his capital in Nineveh, makes war against Arphaxad, king of Media, and overcomes him in his seventeenth year.

For example, under Trajan Mesopotamia reached the gulf and was bounded by Assyria and Armenia.

It would thus include the country lying between Babylonia on the south and the Armenian Taurus highlands on the north, the maritime Syrian district on the west, and Assyria proper on the east.

The most natural explanation is that Aryans had made their way into the highlands east of Assyria, and thence bands had penetrated into Mesopotamia, peacefully or otherwise, and then, like the Turks in the days of the Caliphate, founded dynasties.

The king mentioned above (Shaushatar) conquered Asshur (Assur), and Assyria remained subordinate to Mitanni till near the middle of the 14th century, when, on the death of Tushratta, it overthrew Mitanni with the help of Alshe, a north Mesopotamian state, the allies dividing the territory between them.

When Mitanni fell Babylon no doubt adhered to its older claims on Mesopotamia; but the Kassite kings could do little to contest the advance of Assyria, although several rectifications of the boundary between their spheres are reported.

These were convinced that Assyria was master, but refused their tribute when they thought they dared.

It never passed for long into Israelite hands, though subject for a while to Hezekiah of Judah; from him it passed to Assyria.

Between the withdrawal of the Egyptian rule in Syria and the western advance of Assyria there comes an interval during which the city-states of Phoenicia owned no suzerain.

From the time of Ethbaal onwards the independence of Phoenicia was threatened by the advance of Assyria.

Tyre also came in for its share of hardship. Elulaeus was followed by Baal, who in 672 consented to join Tirhaka, the Ethiopian king of Egypt, in a rebellion against Assyria.

In the last crisis of the dying power of Assyria the Egyptians for a short time laid hands on Phoenicia; but after their defeat at the battle of Carchemish (605), the Chaldaeans became the masters of western Asia.

Further, we know that in the 8th century B.C., there were observatories in most of the large cities in the valley of the Euphrates, and that professional astronomers regularly took observations of the heavens, copies of which were sent to the king of Assyria; and from a cuneiform inscription found in the palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh, the text of which is given by George Smith,5 we learn that at that time the epochs of eclipses of both sun and moon were predicted as possible - probably by means of the cycle of 223 lunations or Chaldaean Saros - and that observations were made accordingly.

The old name is an ethnic term, evidently to be connected with the terms Amurru and Amar, used by Assyria and Egypt respectively.

For many centuries Assur and the surrounding district, which came accordingly to be called the land of Assur (Assyria), were governed by high-priests under the suzerainty of Babylonia.

The city survived the fall of Assyria, and extensive buildings as well as tombs of the Parthian age have been found upon the site.

It is not improbable that Assyria and Babylon, with their splendid rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris, may have taken the idea from the Nile, and that Carthage and Phoenicia as well as Greece and Italy may have followed the same example.

Apollodorus, Strabo's authority for Parthian history (c. 80 B.C. ?), was from the Greek city of Artemita in Assyria.

Ultimately the Egyptians, when their insularity disappeared under the successive dominations of Ethiopia, Assyria and Persia, described themselves as rem-n-Ki.ni, men of Egypt.

Josiah alone, faithful to the king of Assyria, opposed him with his feeble force at Megiddo and was easily overcome and slain.

A king Kisu of Silna (Salamis) is mentioned in a list of tributaries of Assur-bani-pal of Assyria in 668 B.C., and Assyrian influence is marked in the fine terra-cotta figures from a shrine at Toumba excavated in 1890-1891.

In Egypt, Chaldaea, Assyria, China, it reaches far back, to perhaps 4000 years before the Christian era.

The royal road followed a route so difficult and circuitous that it is quite unintelligible as the direct path from any centre in Persia, Assyria or Syria to the west of Asia Minor.

Here must have stood the capital of some great empire connected with its extremities, Sardis or Ephesus on the west, Sinope on the north, the Euphrates on the east, the Cilician Gates on the south, by roads so well made as to continue in use for a long time after the centre of power had changed to Assyria, and the old road-system had become circuitous and unsuitable.

On this site Winckler found in 1907 the records of the Hittite kings who fought against Egypt and Assyria.

The history of Assyria can now be traced back approximately to 2500 B.C., though it does not rise to political prominence until c. 2000 B.C. The name of the god is identical with that of the city, though an older form A-shir, signifying "leader," suggests that a differentiation between the god and the city was at one time attempted.

Originally like Marduk a solar deity with the winged disk - the disk always typifying the sun 8 - as his symbol, he becomes as Assyria develops into a military power a god of war, indicated by the attachment of the figure of a man with a bow to the winged disk.

While the cult of the other great gods and goddesses of Babylonia was transferred to Assyria, the worship of Assur so overshadowed that of the rest as to give the impression of a decided tendency towards the absorption of all divine powers by the one god.

Apart from this concession, it is Assur who pre-eminently presides over the fortunes of Assyria.'

With the fall of Assyria the rule of Assur also comes to an end, whereas it is significant that the cult of the gods of Babylonia - more particularly of Marduksurvives for several centuries the loss of political independence through Cyrus' capture of Babylonia in 539 B.C. The name of Assur's temple at Assur, represented by the mounds of Kaleh Sherghat, was known as E-khar-sag-gal-kur-kurra, i.e.

Damascus is closely connected with Galilee and Gilead, and has always been in contact with Mesopotamia, Assyria, Asia Minor and Armenia.

Syria could control the situation, and it in turn was influenced by the ambitions of Assyria, to whose advantage it was when the small states were rent by mutual suspicion and hostility.

It is possible, too, that, as the states did not scruple to take advantage of the difficulties of their rivals, Assyria played a more prominent part in keeping these jealousies alive than the evidence actually states.

It is possible that Judah (under Uzziah and Jotham) had come to an understanding with Assyria; at all events Ahaz was at once encircled by fierce attacks, and was only saved by Tiglath-Pileser's campaign against Philistia, north Israel and Damascus.

With the siege and fall of Damascus (733-32) Assyria gained the north, and its supremacy was recognized by the tribes of the Syrian desert and Arabia (Aribi, Tema, Sheba).

Judah itself was next involved in an anti-Assyrian league (with Edom, Moab and Philistia), but apparently submitted in time; nevertheless a decade later (70r), after the change of dynasty in Assyria, it participated in a great but unsuccessful effort from Phoenicia to Philistia to shake off the yoke, and suffered disastrously.3 With the crushing blows upon Syria and Samaria the centre of interest moves southwards and the history is influenced by Assyria's rival Babylonia (under Marduk-baladan and his successors), by north Arabia and by Egypt.

At this stage disturbances, now by Aramaean tribes, now by Arabia, combine with the new rise of Egypt and the weakness of Assyria to mark a turning-point in the world's history.

At all events, Egypt (under Necho, 609-593) prepared to take advantage of the decay of Assyria, and marched into Asia.

But Egypt was now at once confronted by the Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean Empire (under Nabopolassar), which, after annihilating Assyria with the help of the Medians, naturally claimed a right to the Mediterranean coast-lands.

These still indicate communication with Egypt and the north (Syria, Asia Minor; Assyria and the Levant not excluded), and even when a novel culture presents itself, as in certain graves at Gezer, the affinities are with Cyprus and Asia Minor (Caria) of about the r rth or 10th century.'

The sweeping conquests the of Assyria were " as critical for religious as for civil history."

The numerous objects of bronze and other metals brought to light by the excavations in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, though mostly on a small scale, bear witness to the great skill and artistic power of the people who produced them; while the discovery of some bronze statuettes, shown by inscriptions on them to be not later than 2200 B.C., proves how early was the development of this branch of art among the people of Assyria.

There are some reasons for believing that the oldest seat, and possibly the original seat, of the Anu cult was in Erech, as it is there where the Ishtar cult that subsequently spread throughout Babylonia and Assyria took its rise.

While frequently associated with Marduk, and still more closely with the chief god of Assyria, the god Assur (who occupies in the north the position accorded to Marduk in the south), so much so as to be sometimes spoken of as Assur's consort - the lady or Belit par excellence - the belief that as the source of all life she stands apart never lost its hold upon the people and found an expression also in the system devised by the priests.

To all practical purposes, however, the religion of Assyria was identical with that practised in the south.

An important factor which thus served to maintain the rites in a more or less stable condition was the predominance of what may be called the astral theology as the theoretical substratum of the Babylonian religion, and which is equally pronounced in the religious system of Assyria.

It left its trace in incantations, omens and hymns, and it gave birth to astronomy, which was assiduously cultivated because a knowledge of the heavens was the very foundation of the system of belief unfolded by the priests of Babylonia and Assyria.

It is significant that in the royal collection of cuneiform literature made by King Assur-bani-pal of Assyria (668-626 B.C.) and deposited in his palace at Nineveh, the omen collections connected with the astral theology of Babylonia and Assyria form the largest class.

On the ethical side, the religion of Babylonia more particularly, and to a less extent that of Assyria, advances to noticeable conceptions of the qualities associated with the gods and goddesses and of the duties imposed on man.

On the religious literature of Babylonia and Assyria, see also chapters xv.

In a short time they had taken from the Aryans all the principal old Semitic lands - Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Assyria and Babylonia.

Treaties are recorded on the monuments of Egypt and Assyria; they occur in the Old Testament Scriptures; and questions arising under vvvBijrcar, and foedera occupy much space in the Greek and Roman historians.'

Great discoveries in Cappadocia, Assyria and Egypt were then only at their beginning, and any statement was liable to be quickly disproved by the appearance of new evidence.

Sesostris is evidently a mythical figure calculated to satisfy the pride of the Egyptians in their ancient achievements, after they had come into contact with the great conquerors of Assyria and Persia.

In the year 854 B.C. Hamath was taken by Shalmaneser II., king of Assyria, who defeated a large army of allied Hamathites, Syrians and Israelites at Karkor and slew 14,000 of them.

For the failure of Assyria in Egypt in 668-664, and the revival of Egypt as a phil-Hellene state under the XXVIth Dynasty, admitted strong GraecoEgyptian influences in industry and art, and led about 560 B.C. to the political conquest of Cyprus by Amasis (Ahmosi) II.; once again Cypriote timber maintained a foreign sea-power in the Levant.

The two great empires, Assyria and Babylon, which grew up on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, can be separated as little historically as geographically.

But whereas Assyria takes the first place in the classical accounts to the exclusion of Babylonia, the decipherment of the inscriptions has proved that the converse was really the case, and that, with the exception of some seven or eight centuries, Assyria might be described as a province or dependency of Babylon.

Colebrooke, began to make known the treasures of Sanskrit literature, which the great scholars of Germany and France proceeded to develop. In Egypt the discovery of the Rosetta stone placed the key to the hieroglyphics within Western reach; and the decipherment of the cuneiform character enabled the patient scholars of Europe to recover the clues to the contents of the ancient libraries of Babylonia and Assyria.

In the time of Adad-nirari of Assyria (812-783 B.C.) Edom is mentioned as an independent tributary with Beth-Omri (Israel) and Palashtu (Philistia); the absence of Judah is perplexing.

It joined the great coalition in which Philistia and Israel were leagued against Assyria, and drove out the Judaeans who had been in possession of Elath.

The first historical king would seem to have been Phraortes, who probably succeeded in subduing the small local princes of Media and in rendering himself independent of Assyria.

Syria and the south he abandoned to Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadrezzar; while, on the other hand, Assyria proper, east of the Tigris, the north of Mesopotamia with the town of Harran (Carrlwe) and the mountains of Armenia were annexed by the Medes.

Babylonia and Assyria, Egypt, Greece and Rome alike contribute to our inheritance of letters.

When in 734-733 B.C. Ahaz, king of Judah, alarmed at the preparations made against him by the Syro-Ephraimitish alliance, was inclined to seek aid from Tiglath-pileser of Assyria, the prophet Isaiah endeavoured to allay his fear by telling him that the danger would pass away, and as a sign from Yahweh that this should be so, any young woman who should within the year bear a son, might call his name Immanuel in token of the divine protection accorded to Judah.

Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (Boston, 1898); see also BABYLON, BABEL.

He had been publicly nominated king of Assyria (on the 12th of Iyyar) by his father Esar-haddon, some time before the latter's death, Babylonia being assigned to his twinbrother Samas-sum-yukin, in the hope of gratifying the national feeling of the Babylonians.

Tirhakah died 66 7 B.C., and his successor Tandaman (Tanuat-Amon) entered Upper Egypt, where a general revolt against Assyria took place, headed by Thebes.

Egypt was thus lost to Assyria for ever (660 B.C.).

But the effort had exhausted Assyria.

It has taken great interest in non-orthodox churches, such as those of Assyria, Abyssinia and Egypt.

The ruins proved to be those of the town of Dur-Sharrukin, "Sargon's Castle," built by Sargon, king of Assyria, as a royal residence.

On the clay stoppers of wine jars of the remote age which goes by the name of the pre-dynastic period, and which preceded the historic period of the first Pharaohs, there are seal impressions which must have been produced from matrices, like those of Babylonia and Assyria, of the cylinder type, the impress of the design having been repeated as the cylinder was rolled along the surface of the moist clay.

The Phoenicians, as was only to be expected of those traders and artisans of the ancient world, appear to have adopted both the cylinder of Assyria and the scarab of Egypt as have survived the numerous engraved stones or g pebbles, technically called gems, which served as matrices and in most instances were undoubtedly mounted as finger-rings or were furnished with swivels.

Phoenician names are found cut both on cylinder matrices and on scarabs by the Phoenician engravers employed in Assyria and Egypt; and, when the cone-shaped matrix superseded the cylinder in Western Asia, the Phoenicians conformed to the change.

From the inscriptions of Sargon of Assyria we know one "Arbaku Dynast of Arnashia" as one of forty-five chiefs of Median districts who paid tribute to Sargon in 713 B.C. See MEDIA.

There has also to be considered whether the text of the poetical passages has not often become corrupt, not only from ordinary causes but through the misunderstanding and misreading of north Arabian names on the part of late scribes and editors, the danger to Judah from north Arabia being (it is held) not less in pre-exilic times than the danger from Assyria and Babylonia, so that references to north Arabia are only to be expected.

In 1857 he was appointed professor of Sanscrit in the school of languages connected with the National Library in Paris, and in this capacity he produced a Sanscrit grammar; but his attention was chiefly given to Assyrian and cognate subjects, and he was especially prominent in establishing the Turanian character of the language originally spoken in Assyria.

In 1865 he published a history of Assyria and Chaldaea in the light of the results of the different exploring expeditions.

For some years after this Assyria was unable to interfere, and war broke out between Damascus and Israel.

They have also been found in Assyria.

After the death of Menahem, Pekah, king of Israel, and Rezin (rather Rasun), king of Syria, allied against Assyria, invaded Judah, and laid siege to Jerusalem in the hope of setting up one of their puppets upon the throne.

The only serious 'rival to Marduk after 1200 B.C. is Assur in Assyria.

A centre of his cult in Assyria was in Harran, where, because of the predominating character of the moon-cult, he is viewed as the son of the moongod Sin.

While temples and sanctuaries to Nusku-Girru are found in Babylonia and Assyria, he is worshipped more in symbolical form than the other gods.

On his death Babylonia was left to his elder son Samas-sum-yukin, who eventually headed a revolt against his brother Assur-bani-pal of Assyria.

G.) From Egypt the figure of the sphinx passed to Assyria, where it appears with a bearded male head on cylinders; the female sphinx, lying down and furnished with wings, is first found in the palace of Esar-haddon (7th cent.

The removal of prominent inhabitants, by Assyria and later by Babylonia, the introduction of colonists from distant lands, and the movements of restless tribes around Palestine were more fatal to the continuity of trustworthy tradition than to the persistence of popular thought.

The individual's interests are not in any way involved, and we must descend many centuries and pass beyond the confines of Babylonia and Assyria before we reach that phase which in medieval and modern astrology is almost exclusively dwelt upongenethliology or the individual horoscope.

A few years later Gyges joined in the revolt against Assyria, and the Ionic and Carian mercenaries he despatched to Egypt enabled Psammetichus to make himself independent.

Assyria, however, was soon avenged.

As a vassal of Assyria he was contemporary with Sennacherib, Esar-haddon (681-668 B.C.) and Assur-bani-pal (668-626 B.C.), and his name (Me-na-si-e) appears among the tributaries of the two latter.

The states which Ben-Hadad had brought together into a coalition against the advancing power of Assyria all revolted; and Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, took advantage of this in 842 and attacked Syria.

Ahaz appealed to Tiglath-Pileser III., king of Assyria, sent him gifts, and besought his protection.

Tiglath-Pileser invaded Syria, and in 732 succeeded in reducing Damascus (see also Babylonia And Assyria, Chronology, § 5, and Jews, §§ ro sqq.).

The town of "Sillu," whose king Irisu was an ally of Assur-bani-pal of Assyria in 668 B.C., is commonly supposed to represent Soli.'

That this was still a recent settlement in the 7th century is suggested by an allusion in a list of the allies of Assur-bani-pal of Assyria in 668 B.C. to a King Damasu of Kartihadasti (Phoenician for "New-town"), where Citium would be expected.

When Israel began to recover its prosperity and regained confidence, its policy halted between obedience to Assyria and reliance upon this ambiguous " Egypt."

Precisely what form his worship took is a matter of conjecture; but it is possible that the religion must not be judged too strictly from the standpoint of the late compiler, and that Manasseh merely assimilated the older Yahwehworship to new Assyrian forms. 2 Politics and religion, however, were inseparable, and the supremacy of Assyria meant the supremacy of the Assyrian pantheon.

What part Judah took in the Transjordanic disturbances, in which Moab fought invading Arabian tribes on behalf of Assyria, is unknown (see MoAB).

With the exception of Babylonia and Assyria, we can hardly even conjecture what was the condition of this continent much before i 50o B.C. At that period the Chinese were advancing along the Hwang-ho, and the Aryans were entering India from the northwest.

After the exodus, which perhaps took place about 1300 B.C., they moved northwards again and founded a state of modest dimensions, which attained a short-lived unity under Solomon, but succumbed to internal dissensions and to the attacks of Assyria and Babylon.

Pinches gave the equivalent Gilgamesh (see Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 468).

Assyria, therefore, was ill prepared to face the hordes of Scythians - or Manda, as they were called by the Babylonians - who now began to harass the frontiers.

The invasion of Babylonia by Cyrus was doubtless facilitated by the existence of a disaffected party in the state, as well as by the presence of foreign exiles like the Jews, who had 1 The following is a list of the later dynasties and kings of Babylonia and Assyria so far as they are known at present.

Chronological Systems. - The extreme divergence in the chronological schemes employed by different writers on the history of Babylonia and Assyria has frequently caused no small perplexity to readers who have no special knowledge of the subject.

The Babylonian syllabary which thus arose, and which, as the culture passed on to the north - known as Assyria - became the Babylonian Assyrian syllabary, 3 was enlarged and modified in the course of time, the Semitic equivalents for many of the signs being distorted or abbreviated to form the basis of new "phonetic" values that were thus of " Semitic " origin; but, on the whole, the " non-Semitic " character of the signs used as syllables in the phonetic method of writing Semitic words was preserved; and, furthermore, down to the latest days of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires the mixed method of writing continued, though there were periods when " purism " was the fashion, and there was a more marked tendency to spell out the words laboriously in preference to using signs with a phonetic complement as an aid in suggesting the reading desired in any given instance.

What had been happening to their Cappadocian province meanwhile we do not yet know; but the presence of Phrygian inscriptions at Euyuk and Tyana, ancient seats of their power, suggests that the client monarchy in the Sangarius valley shook itself free during the early part of the Hittite struggle with Assyria, and in the day of Hatti weakness extended its dominion over the home territory of its former suzerain.

The foreign tyrants fall; the lordship of Assyria and Egypt has an end; the autonomy and martial power of the nation are restored.

It is tempting, but incorrect, to suppose that ' See Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 428.

He was a man of great ability, both military and administrative, and initiated a new system of policy in Assyria which he aimed at making the head of a centralized empire, bound together by a bureaucracy who derived their power from the king.

It is at least possible that common enmity to Mitanni led to a treaty with Assyria (under Ashur-nadin-akhe).

It is still doubtful (see discussion on the name in the preceding article) whether the national god of Assyria took his name from that of the city or whether the converse was the case.

Through the fortunate discovery of cuneiform tablets deposited by his successor in the archives at Tell el-Amarna, we can see how the rulers of the great kingdoms beyond the river, Mitanni, Assyria and even Babylonia, corresponded with Amenophis, gave their daughters to him in marriage, and congratulated themselves on having his friendship. The king of Cyprus too courted him; while within the empire the descendants of the Syrian dynasts conquered by his father, having been educated in Egypt, ruled their paternal possessions as the abject slaves of Pharaoh.

The heraldic type of the second class is found also in the art of Assyria, and was undoubtedly adopted by the Phrygians from earlier art; but it is used so frequently in Phrygia as to be specially characteristic of that country.

The name indicates the existence of the same conception regarding sacred edifices in Assyria as in Babylonia, where we find such names as E-Kur ("mountain house") for the temple of Bel at Nippur, and E-Saggila ("lofty house") for Marduk's temple at Babylon and that of Ea at Eridu, and in view of the general dependence of Assyrian religious beliefs as of Assyrian culture in general, there is little reason to doubt that the name of Assur's temple represents a direct adaptation of such a name as E-Kur, further embellished by epithets intended to emphasize the supreme control of the god to whom the edifice was dedicated.

It is quite evident, for example, from the Semitic character of the Chaldaean king-names, that the language of these Chaldaeans differed in no way from the ordinary Semitic Babylonian idiom which was practically identical with that of Assyria.

The learned societies and great men of Assyria--where are they?

The two chief seats of his worship were Ur in the S., and Harran considerably to the N., but the cult at an early period spread to other centres, and temples to the moon-god are found in all the large cities of Babylonia and Assyria.

On the great estates in Assyria and its subject provinces were many serfs, mostly of subject race, settled captives, or quondam slaves, tied to the soil they cultivated and sold with the estate but capable of possessing land and property of their own.

But beyond the fact that both Babylonia and Assyria were large producers of cereals, little is known of their husbandry.

Hadrian's first important act was to abandon as untenable the conquests of Trajan beyond the Euphrates (Assyria, Mesopotamia and Armenia), a recurrence to the traditional policy of Augustus.