LITMIR.BIZ

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(After Fergusson.)]

      The group of buildings constituting the royal residence was often of enormous extent; the various courts, halls, corridors, and chambers of the Palace of Sennacherib, which surmounted the great platform at Nineveh, covered an area of over ten acres. The palaces were usually one-storied. The walls, constructed chiefly of dried brick, were immensely thick and heavy. The rooms and galleries were plastered with stucco, or panelled with precious woods, or lined with enamelled bricks. The main halls, however, and the great open courts were faced with slabs of alabaster, covered with sculptures and inscriptions, the illustrated narrative of the wars and labors of the monarch. There were two miles of such sculptured panelling at Koyunjik. At the portals of the palace, to guard the approach, were stationed the colossal human-headed bulls.

      [Illustration: SCULPTURES FROM A GATEWAY AT KHORSABAD.]

      An important adjunct of the palace was the temple, a copy of the tower- temples of the Chaldæans. Its position is marked at present by a lofty conical mound rising amidst and overlooking the palace ruins.

      Upon the decay of the Assyrian palaces, the material forming the upper part of the thick walls completely buried and protected all the lower portion of the structure. In this way their sculptures and inscriptions have been preserved through so many centuries, till brought to light by the recent excavations of French and English antiquarians.

      THE ROYAL LIBRARY AT NINEVEH.—Within the palace of Asshur-bani-pal at Nineveh, Layard discovered what is known as the Royal Library. There were two chambers, the floors of which were heaped with books, like the Chaldæan tablets already described, The number of books in the collection has been estimated at ten thousand. The writing upon some of the tablets is so minute that it cannot be read without the aid of a magnifying glass. We learn from the inscriptions that a librarian had charge of the collection. Catalogues of the books have been found, made out on clay tablets. The library was open to the public, for an inscription says, "I [Asshur-bani-pal] wrote upon the tablets; I placed them in my palace for the instruction of my people."

      Asshur-bani-pal, as we have already learned, was the Augustus of Assyria. It was under his patronage and direction that most of the books were prepared and placed in the Ninevite collection. The greater part of these were copies of older Chaldæan tablets; for the literature of the Assyrians, as well as their arts and sciences, was borrowed almost in a body from the Chaldæans. All the old libraries of the low country were ransacked, and copies of their tablets made for the Royal Library at Nineveh. Rare treasures were secured from the libraries founded or enlarged by Sargon of Agade (see p. 42). In this way was preserved the most valuable portion of the early Chaldæan literature, which would otherwise have been lost to the world.

      The tablets embrace a great variety of subjects; the larger part, however, are lexicons and treatises on grammar, and various other works intended as text-books for scholars. Perhaps the most curious of the tablets yet found are notes issued by the government, and made redeemable in gold and silver on presentation at the king's treasury.

      From one part of the library, which seems to have been the archives proper, were taken copies of treaties, reports of officers of the government, deeds, wills, mortgages, and contracts. One tablet, known as "the Will of Sennacherib," conveys to certain priests some personal property to be held in trust for one of his sons. This is the oldest will in existence.

CHAPTER V.

       Table of Contents

      BABYLONIA.

      BABYLONIAN AFFAIRS FROM 1300 TO 625 B.C.—During the six centuries and more that intervened between the conquest of the old Chaldæan monarchy by the Assyrian king Tiglathi-Nin and the successful revolt of the low countries under Nabopolassar (see pp. 43, 51), the Babylonian peoples bore the Assyrian yoke very impatiently. Again and again they made violent efforts to throw it off; and in several instances they succeeded, and for a time enjoyed home rulers. But for the most part the whole country as far as the "Sea," as the Persian Gulf is called in the inscriptions, was a dependency of the great overshadowing empire of the north.

      NABOPOLASSAR (625–604 B.C.).—Nabopolassar was the first king of what is called the New Babylonian Monarchy. When troubles and misfortunes began to thicken about the last Assyrian king, Saracus, he intrusted to the care of Nabopolassar, as his viceroy, the towns and provinces of the South. The chance now presented of obtaining a crown proved too great a temptation for the satrap's fidelity to his master. He revolted and became independent (625 B.C.). Later, he entered into an alliance with the Median king, Cyaxares, against his former sovereign (see p. 51). Through the overthrow of Nineveh and the break-up of the Assyrian Empire, the new Babylonian kingdom received large accessions of territory.

      NEBUCHADNEZZAR (604–561 B.C.).—Nabopolassar was followed by his renowned son Nebuchadnezzar, whose oppressive wars and gigantic architectural works rendered Babylon at once the scourge and the wonder of the ancient world.

      Jerusalem, having repeatedly revolted, was finally taken and sacked. The temple was stripped of its sacred vessels of silver and gold, which were carried away to Babylon, and the temple itself with the adjoining palace was given to the flames; the people, save a miserable remnant, were also borne away into the "Great Captivity" (586 B.C.).

      With Jerusalem subdued, Nebuchadnezzar pushed with all his forces the siege of the Phoenician city of Tyre, whose investment had been commenced several years before. In striking language the prophet Ezekiel (ch. xxix. 18) describes the length and hardness of the siege: "Every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled." After a siege of thirteen years, the city seems to have fallen into the hands of the Babylonian king, and his authority was now undisputed from the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean.

      The numerous captives of his many wars, embracing peoples of almost every nation in Western Asia, enabled Nebuchadnezzar to rival even the Pharaohs in the execution of enormous works requiring an immense expenditure of human labor: Among his works were the Great Palace in the royal quarter of the city; the celebrated Hanging Gardens; and gigantic reservoirs, canals, and various engineering works, embracing a vast system of irrigation that reached every part of Babylonia.

      In addition to all these works, the indefatigable monarch seems to have either rebuilt or repaired almost every city and temple throughout the entire country. There are said to be at least a hundred sites in the tract immediately about Babylon which give evidence, by inscribed bricks bearing his legend, of the marvellous activity and energy of this monarch.

      In the midst of all these gigantic undertakings, surrounded by a brilliant court of councillors and flatterers, the reason of the king was suddenly and mysteriously clouded. [Footnote: "Nebuchadnezzar fell a victim to that mental aberration which has often proved the penalty of despotism, but in the strange and degrading form to which physicians have given the name of lycanthropy; in which the patient, fancying himself a beast, rejects clothing and ordinary food, and even (as in this case) the shelter of a roof, ceases to use articulate speech, and sometimes persists in going on all-fours."—Smith's Ancient History of the East, p. 357.] After a period the cloud passed away, "the glory of his kingdom, his honor, and brightness returned unto him." But it was the splendor of the evening; for the old monarch soon after died at the age of eighty, worn out by the toils and cares of a reign of forty-three years, the longest, most memorable, and instructive in the annals of the Babylonian or Assyrian kings.

      THE FALL OF BABYLON.—In 555 B.C., Nabonadius, the last king of Babylon, began his reign. He seems to have associated with himself in the government his son Belshazzar, who shared with his father the duties and honors of royalty, apparently on terms of equal co-sovereignty.

      To the east of the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, beyond the ranges of the Zagros, there had been growing up an Aryan kingdom, the Medo-Persian, which, at the time now reached by us, had excited by its aggressive spirit the alarm of all the nations of Western Asia. For purposes of mutual defence, the king of Babylon, and Croesus, the well- known monarch of Lydia, a state of Asia Minor, formed an alliance against Cyrus, the

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