Second Assyrian Empire
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Under Tiglath-Pileser III arose the Second Assyrian Empire, which differed from the first in its greater consolidation. For the first time in history, the idea of centralization was introduced into politics; the conquered provinces were organized under an elaborate bureaucracy at the head of which was the king, each district paying a fixed tribute and providing a military contingent. The Assyrian forces became a standing army, that, by successive improvements and careful discipline, was moulded into an irresistible fighting machine; and Assyrian policy was directed towards the definite object of reducing the whole civilized world into a single empire, thereby throwing its trade and wealth into Assyrian hands.
Kings of the Second Empire
With this object, after defeating Urartu and the Medes, and breaking the power of the Hittites, Tiglath-Pileser III secured the high-roads of commerce to the Mediterranean, together with the Phoenician seaports, then made himself master of Babylonia. In 729 BC, the summit of his ambition was attained when he was invested with the sovereignty of Asia in the 'holy' city of Babylon. He died two years later, in the month of Tebet, but his successor, who took the name of Shalmaneser V, continued the policy he had begun.
Shalmaneser died suddenly in Tebet of 722 BC, while pressing the siege of Samaria, and the seizure of the throne by another general, Sargon, on the 12th of the month, gave the Babylonians an opportunity to revolt. The Babylonian prince Marduk-baladan entered Babylon and was there crowned legitimate king. For twelve years, he successfully resisted the Assyrians; but the failure of his allies in the west to act in concert with him, and the overthrow of the Elamites, eventually compelled him to flee to his ancestral domains in the marshes of southern Babylonia. Sargon - who meanwhile had crushed the confederacy of the northern nations, taken (717 BC) the Hittite stronghold of Carchemish and reduced the future kingdom of Ecbatana to vassalage - was now accepted as king by the Babylonian priests; and his claim to be the successor of Sargon of Akkad was acknowledged up to the time of his murder in 705 BC.
His son Sennacherib, who succeeded him on the 12th of Ab, did not possess the military or administrative abilities of his father; and the success of his reign was not commensurate with his vanity. He was never crowned at Babylon - in a perpetual state of revolt - until, in 691 BC, he shocked the religious and political conscience of Asia by razing the 'holy' city of Babylon to the ground. His campaign against Hezekiah of Judah was as much a failure as was his policy in Babylonia, and in his murder by his sons on the 20th of Tebet 681 BC, both Babylonians and Jews saw the judgment of heaven.
Esarhaddon, who succeeded him, was of a different calibre from his father. He was commanding the army in a campaign against Urartu at the time of the murder; forty-two days later, the murderers fled Nineveh and took refuge at the court of Ararat. But the Urartean army was utterly defeated near Malatia on the 12th of Iyyar, and at the end of the day, Esarhaddon was saluted by his soldiers as king. He thereupon returned to Nineveh, and on the 8th of Sivan formally ascended the throne.
One of his first acts was to restore Babylon, to send back the image of Bel (god)-Marduk to its former home, and to re-people the city with such of the priests and the former population as had survived massacre. He was then solemnly declared king in the rebuilt temple of Bel-Merodach, and Babylon became the second capital of the empire. Esarhaddon's policy was successful and Babylonia remained quiet throughout his reign.
In February (674 BC) the Assyrians entered upon their invasion of Egypt, and in Nisan (or March) 670 BC an expedition on an unusually large scale set out from Nineveh. The Egyptian frontier was crossed on the 3rd of Tammuz (June), and the pharaoh Tirhakah, at the head of the Egyptian forces, was driven to Memphis after fifteen days of continuous fighting. During this time the Egyptians were thrice defeated with heavy loss, and Tirhakah himself was wounded. On the 22nd of the month, the victorious army entered Memphis, and Tirhaka fled to the south. A stele, commemorating the victory and representing Tirhakah with the features of a negro, was set up at Sinjirli (north of the Gulf of Antioch), and is now in the Berlin Museum. Two years later (668 BC) Egypt revolted, and while on the march to reduce it, Esarhaddon fell ill and died (on the 10th of Marchesvan or October).
Assurbanipal succeeded him as king of Assyria and its empire, while his brother, Samassumyukin, was made viceroy of Babylonia. The arrangement was evidently intended to flatter the Babylonians by giving them once more the semblance of independence. But it failed to work, as Samassumyukin became more Babylonian than his subjects. The viceroy claimed to be the successor of the monarchs whose empire had once stretched to the Mediterranean. Even the Sumerian language was revived as the official tongue, and a civil war broke out between the brothers that shook the Assyrian empire to its foundations. After several years of struggle, Babylon was starved into surrender and finally sacked in 648, and the rebel viceroy put himself to death in the palace by setting it afire.
Egypt had meanwhile recovered its independence with the help of mercenaries sent by Gyges of Lydia, who had vainly solicited aid from Assyria against his Cimmerian enemies. Assurbanipal had attempted to appease Egypt by making Psammetichus a vassal king in 663, but by 652 Psammetichus was able to declare himself independent ruler in Egypt. Next followed the contest with Elam, in spite of the efforts of Assurbanipal to ward it off. Assyria, however, was aided by a civil war within Elam itself; the country was wasted with fire and sword, and its capital Susa levelled to the ground. But the long struggle left Assyria maimed and exhausted. It had been drained of both wealth and fighting population; the devastated provinces of Elam and Babylonia could yield nothing to supply the needs of the imperial exchequer, and it was difficult to find sufficient troops even to garrison the conquered populations. Assyria, therefore, was ill-prepared to face the hordes of Scythians and Medes (or Manda, as they were called by the Babylonians) who now began to harass the frontiers. A Scythian power had grown up in the old kingdom of Ellip, to the east of Assyria, where Ecbatana was built by a Manda prince; Asia Minor was infested by the Cimmerians, and the death of the Scythian leader Dugdamm (the Lygdamis of Strabo) was regarded by Assurbanipal as a special mark of divine favour.
When Assurbanipal died in 625, his empire was fast breaking up. Under his successor, Assur-etil-ilani, the Scythians and Medes penetrated into Assyria and made their way as far as the borders of Egypt. Calah was burned, though the strong walls of Nineveh protected the remnants of the Assyrian army that had taken refuge behind them; and when the raiders had passed on to other fields of booty, a new palace was erected among the ruins of the neighbouring city. 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 to the fourth year of Assur-etil-ilani, though it is possible that his rule in Babylonia was disputed by his Ramshakeh, 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, Sinsatiskun (Sin-sarra-uzur), who seems to have been the Sarākos (Saracus) of Berossus. He was still reigning in Babylonia in his seventh year, as a contract dated in that year has been discovered at Erech, and an inscription of his, where he speaks of restoring the ruined temples and their priests, couples Merodach of Babylon with Assur of Nineveh. Babylonia, however, was again restless. After Samassumyukin was overthrown, Kandalanu, the Chineladanos of Ptolemy's canon, had been appointed viceroy. His successor was Nabopolassar, between whom and the last king of Assyria war broke out. The Mede king of Ecbatana, Cyaxares, came to the help of the Babylonians. Nineveh was captured and destroyed by the Mede army in 612 BC, along with those cities of northern Babylonia that had sided with Assyria, and by 605 the empire was at an end. The seat of empire was then transferred to Babylonia.