Persian Literature, Ancient and Modern - Elizabeth A. Reed

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of which the names were not given. It was recorded, however, that they were destroyed by a rain of fire, and the legend gives an account of a person who escaped the general destruction.

      The inscriptions of ancient kings reveal to a certain extent the times and the facts connected with their reigns, but in discussing the tablets and monuments, the pillars and palace walls of these royal historians, it must be borne in mind that these heathen kings were far from infallible, and whatever resulted in their own aggrandizement was most eagerly recorded, while their military defeats and political humiliations were either passed over in silence or qualified to such an extent as to virtually lose their force. This is especially true of Sennacherib, who has the reputation among Assyriologists of being “the least trustworthy of the royal historians of Assyria.” Nevertheless, these records are of inestimable value as giving an account of their own wars and achievements by interested participants.

      A hexagonal prism of clay, which was found at Nineveh and carried to the British Museum[32] contains an account of the first eight years of the reign of Sennacherib and of his siege of Jerusalem under the reign of King Hezekiah, when, according to the tablets, the king of Jerusalem “had given command to strengthen the bulwarks of the great gate of the city,” when it was found to be so strong that the Assyrian king refrained from assaulting it.[33]

      The strange libraries of Assyria and Babylon abounded also in astronomical and astrological reports, the records of lawsuits, contract tablets and other inscriptions, also a number of official dispatches sent by the king of Jerusalem and other potentates to foreign courts.

      There are also Assyrian deeds of real estate,[34] bills of sale of Israelites for slaves, also a bill of sale of a woman to an Egyptian lady (Nitocris), who made the purchase in order to obtain a wife for her son, as well as the contract tablets of Belshazzar, and the “annals” of other kings.

      Hundreds of these historic tablets have been brought to light, for the soil ruled over by Persian kings was indeed rich in this imperishable literature. Manuscripts may fade beneath the touch of time, or be burned by barbarian invaders, but these clay tablets have safely kept their records beneath the dust of centuries, and the germs of their thought lived, and were developed among other races, after they had lain for ages in the valley of the Euphrates.

      THE INSCRIPTIONS OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR.

      These annals begin by declaring him to be “the King of Babylon, the exalted prince, the worshipper of the god Marduk, the prince supreme, the beloved of the god Nebo.” This mighty king was the patron of all forms of idolatry, and one of the principal objects of his reign appears to have been the restoration of the idol temples, and the reconstruction of their images. The first or “lofty-headed,” was the shrine of the god Bel. The celebrated golden image which Nebuchadnezzar set up represented this god.[35] There is but little genuine history[36] in his inscriptions, as he seemed to consider the account of the rebuilding of the city, and the restoration of the idol temples, of more importance than the record of his military triumphs. The work of rebuilding Babylon was surely a necessity, for the Babylonians having rebelled, Sennacherib had almost wholly destroyed it.[37] The vengeance of the Assyrian king must have been terrible, for in the Bavian inscription, he declares that he swept the city from end to end—that he destroyed the houses, threw down the wall and fortifications, and the ruins were, by his order, thrown into the river. It is true that he and Assur-bani-pal reconstructed many buildings, but Babylon[38] never regained her title of “the Glory of the East” until the time of Nebuchadnezzar, who was engaged throughout his long reign[39] in rebuilding the temples and cities of his kingdom.

      There are in the British Museum some thirty or forty inscriptions of this king, which record the structure of great buildings. There are also a few fragments pertaining to his historical career, but the account thus given is so incomplete, that while it agrees with the Biblical record of his campaigns, it is far less definite in detail. Nebuchadnezzar III, son of Nabupolasser, came to the throne in the latter part of the seventh century B. C, having taken command of the Babylonian army during the war between his father and Necho, the king of Egypt. He routed the Egyptian troops at Carchemish, “and took all that pertained to the king of Egypt, from the river of Egypt unto the river Euphrates.”Euphrates.”[40]

      No royal penman ever took greater delight in recording his achievements than did Nebuchadnezzar in describing the glories of his capital city: “Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?”[41] Upon the cylinders found at Senkereh in the ruins of the temple of the sun, upon tablets taken from the ruins of Birs Nimrud,[42] which still rise one hundred and fifty-three feet above the level of the plain, and elsewhere, we find the boastful records of this haughty monarch, and in one instance a single inscription consists of six hundred and nineteen lines. Thus writes the great king:

      “The fanes of Babylon I built, I adorned. Four thousand cubits complete, the walls of Babylon, whose banner is invincible, as a high fortress by the ford of the rising sun, I carried around Babylon its fosse which I dug. With cement and brick I reared up a tall tower at its side like a mountain. I built the great gates, whose walls I constructed with pine woods and covering of copper. I overlaid them to keep off enemies from the front of the wall of unconquered Babylon. Those large gates for the admiration of multitudes of men, with wreathed work I filled—the invincible castle of Babylon, which no king had previously effected, the city of Babylon I fitted to be a treasure city,”[43] etc.

      These few lines indicate the style and general character of the chronicles found upon many cylinders and slabs. During his reign Jerusalem was besieged, and captured[44] after a siege of a year and a half. King Zedekiah fled by night “by the way of the gate between the two walls which is in the king’s garden,” but was overtaken in the plains of Jericho, and brought before the king of Babylon at Riblah, where his sons were slain before him and his eyes were destroyed. A few years later Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre, with doubtful success. He had left Gedaliah in charge of Judah, but the new ruler was slain by Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah. Again the king of Babylon came to take vengeance, and carried the Jews away to Babylon. He afterward turned his attention to the capture of Egypt, whose king had incited Palestine to rebellion. Nebuchadnezzar defeated and deposed him, swept over Egypt and installed a king who was tributary to Babylon.[45] After this he devoted himself to the rebuilding of his city, using thousands of captives as laborers and drawing upon all his provinces for his supplies.

      All the writers of this period give their testimony to the glory of his city, his palaces, temples, hanging gardens, and the golden images of his gods. He builded the shrines of multitudes of gods at Babylon, and Jeremiah alludes to this fact when he says: “For it is a land of graven images, and they confide in their idols.”[46] The prophets of Israel never stayed in their denunciation of this idolatrous king, even though they and their people were within the grasp of his mailed hand.

      The land of Palestine has been called “the Piedmont of Western Asia;” being situated midway between the two great empires of Egypt and Assyria, it became the battle-field of the Orient, and it was here that the fiercest conflict was waged. But during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar the Chaldean supremacy in Asia remained unshaken, for the active policy of that iron-handed ruler, with his mighty army kept all Western Asia under his control.

      THE FALL OF BABYLON.

      There are several tablets pertaining to the fall of Babylon which throw additional light upon that event. It appears from these chronicles that Belshazzar reigned in connection with his father Nabonidus, Belshazzar being the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar on the maternal side. Under the date of the ninth year of Nabonidus,[47] the record says: “Nabonidus, the king, was in the city of Teva, the son of the king (Belshazzar), the chieftains, and the soldiers were in the land of Accad (North Babylonia). … The king until the month Nisan (first month) to Babylon went not, Nebo to Babylon came not, Bel went not forth. … In the month Nisan, Cyrus, king of Persia, his army gathered, and below Arbela the river Tigris he crossed.” The chronicle is here mutilated, and it can be

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