Assyrians

“ The Assyrian People.—The Assyrians were a race of hunters and soldiers. Their bas-reliefs ordinarily represent them armed with bow and lance, often on horseback. They were good knights—alert, brave, clever in skirmish and battle; also bombastic, deceitful, and sanguinary. For six centuries they harassed Asia, issuing from their mountains to hurl themselves on their neighbors, and returning with entire peoples reduced to slavery. They apparently made war for the mere pleasure of slaying, ravaging, and pillaging. No people ever exhibited greater ferocity. ”

“ At the beginning of our knowledge of this region Assyria was only a province, a northern province, of Babylonia, and was ruled from Babylon. But the Assyrians became very strong and revolted, and conquered those who had been their masters, and it was during this victorious period that they made those incursions into Palestine of which the Bible tells us. But at length the Babylonians, their old masters, rose up against them and got the mastery over them again, and after this blaze of glory Assyria sinks back into its old place as a province of Babylon, in the northern part of the empire. ”

“ The Assyrians were a nation of warriors, the Babylonians of traders, agriculturists, and scribes. Assur is accordingly 'a man of war'; it was in reliance upon him that the Assyrian armies marched into foreign lands, and compelled their inhabitants to acknowledge him. Not to believe in Assur was a crime, since Assur represented Assyria. ”

“ True, the books are written upon clay, and not on paper, but they are none the less real books, dealing with all the subjects of knowledge known at the time they were compiled, and presenting us with a clear and truthful reflection of Assyrian thought and belief. We can not only trace the architectural plans of the Assyrian palaces, and study the bas-reliefs in which the Assyrians have pictured themselves and the life they led; we can also penetrate to their inmost thoughts and feelings, and read their history as they have told it themselves. ”

“ But at this epoch Assyria woke once more from her lethargy, and became the scourge of God to the guilty people and their guiltier kings. For a whole century the Assyrians had either been governed by kings who had abjured the lust of blood and conquest, or had been too seriously occupied on their own eastern and northern frontiers to intermeddle with the southern kingdoms, or break down the barriers erected by the confederacy of Hamath and Damascus between Nineveh and the weaker principalities of Palestine. ”

“ The Assyrians, under the leadership of ambitious kings, had in their turn carried their arms over the countries of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, but, like those of the Egyptians before them, their expeditions resembled rather the destructive raids of a horde in search of booty than the gradual and orderly advance of a civilised people aiming at establishing a permanent empire. ”

“ More fortunate than the nations of classical antiquity, whose comparative proximity to the time proved no advantage to them, we possess in the exhumed remains of this interesting people a mass of evidence upon the point, which, although in many respects sadly incomplete, still enables us to form a judgment for ourselves upon the subject, and to believe—on better grounds than they possessed—the artistic genius and multiform ingenuity of the Assyrians. ”

“ If it be borne in mind, in addition to all this, that the buildings of the Assyrians show them to have been well acquainted with the principle of the arch, that they constructed tunnels, aqueducts, and drains, that they knew the use of the pulley, the lever, and the roller, that they understood the arts of inlaying, enamelling, and overlaying with metals, and that they cut gems with the greatest skill and finish, it will be apparent that their civilization equalled that of almost any ancient country, and that it did not fall immeasurably behind the boasted achievements of the moderns. ”

“ It is not too much to say that we know the Assyrians, not merely artistically, but historically and ethnologically, chiefly through their bas reliefs, which seem to represent to us almost the entire life of the people. ”

“ Their grandchildren, born in the midst of Assyrians, became Assyrians themselves, and if they did not entirely divest themselves of every trace of their origin, at any rate became so closely identified with the country of their adoption, that it was difficult to distinguish them from the native race. The Assyrians who were sent out to colonise recently acquired provinces were at times exposed to serious risks. ”

“ The Assyrians, who are so frequently referred to in the Old Testament, were mainly, if not entirely Semitic: a martial and ruthless people whose conquests in the 14th‒7th centuries have made them world-famous. ”

“ They showed themselves, in their carvings, to be but meanly endowed scholars of the Assyrians, and gained little by subjecting themselves to the influence of other nations, the spirit of which they did not comprehend or employ towards any possible improvement of Assyrian traditions. ”

“ The population of Assyria seems to have been more purely Semitic than that of Babylonia. Such at least was the case with the ruling classes. It was a population of free peasants, of soldiers, and of traders. Its culture was derived from Babylonia; even its gods, with the exception of Assur, were of Babylonian origin. We look in vain among the Assyrians for the peace-loving tendencies of the Babylonians; they were, on the contrary, the Romans of the East. They were great in war, and in the time of the Second Assyrian empire great also in law and administration. ”

“ No sooner had the Assyrians arrived, thanks to the ceaseless efforts of five or six generations, at the very summit of their ambition, than some incompetent, or perhaps merely unfortunate, king appeared on the scene, and lost in a few years all the ground which had been gained at the cost of such tremendous exertions: then the subject races would rebel, the neighbouring peoples would pluck up courage and reconquer the provinces which they had surrendered, till the dismembered empire gradually shrank back to its original dimensions. ”

“ On the revival of the Assyrian empire, about b.c. 990, we come again to numerous references to the Genesis legends, and these continue through almost every reign down to the close of the empire. The Assyrians carved the sacred tree and cherubims on their walls, they depicted in the temples the struggle between Merodach and the dragon, the figure of Oannes and the eagle-headed man, they decorated their portals with figures of Nimrod strangling a lion, and carved the struggles of Nimrod and Heabani with the lion and the bull even on their stone vases. ”

“ The Aramaean tribes of the Khabur and the Balikh, the Cossæans of the Turnat, the marauding shepherds of the Gordyæan hills and the slopes of the Masios, gradually became assimilated to their conquerors after a more or less protracted resistance, till at length—in spite of differences of origin, creed, and speech—they became the best of Assyrians, every whit as devoted to the person of their king and as jealous of his honour as the aboriginal Assyrians themselves. ”

“ In one half-century the Assyrians had effectually and permanently disabled the first of these kingdoms, and inflicted on the others such serious injuries that they were slow in recovering from them. The fate of these proud nations had intimidated the inferior states—Arabs, Medes, tribes of Asia Minor, barbarous Cimmerians or Scythians,—all alike were careful to repress their natural inclinations to rapine and plunder. ”

“ For Isḥâk was journeying to Baghdâd, and upon the road he fell ill, and Mâr Behnâm appeared to him and healed him. Verily the Assyrians were idolaters, but they came to know the true God. So the world changes.” The bishop broke off abruptly at this confusing point in the narrative, for even he felt that it would be an anachronism to assert that the Assyrian empire was Christian. But the historical sequence of events was nothing to ’Abdullah. ”

“ It was carried to battle with the king, so that wherever the king was, there was the national god of war. The heavily-bearded Assyrians were a fiercer and more war-like people than the mild shaven Babylonians, who were ever influenced by Sumerian modes of thought. The Assyrian temperament is reflected in its art, which at its best is characterized by vigorous realism and brilliant ferocity. ”

“ No people today can claim pure physical descent from this stock. The arid region occupied by the early Assyrian empire has been swept by one civilization after another. Their ancient Hamitic speech was largely replaced by that of conquering Medes and Persians and, later, of Mohammedan hosts. It finally disappeared after the Babylonians and Chaldeans, who used a Semitic tongue replaced the Assyrians in Mesopotamia. Turkish, Persian, Kurdish, and Arabian blood has been added to the ancestral stock of the modern Assyrians. ”

“ The warlike nature of the Assyrians was reflected in their conceptions of the gods, who thus became little Assurs by the side of the great protector of arms, the big Assur. The cult and ritual in the north likewise followed the models set up in the south. The hymns composed for the temples of Babylonia were transferred to Assur, Calah, Harran, Arbela and Nineveh in the north; and the myths and legends also wandered to Assyria, where, to be sure, they underwent certain modifications. To all practical purposes, however, the religion of Assyria was identical with that practised in the south. ”

“ We have no knowledge of the ordinary houses of the Assyrians other than that which we derive from the single representation which the sculptures furnish of a village certainly Assyrian. It appears from this specimen that the houses were small, isolated from one another, and either flat-roofed, or else covered in with a dome or a high cone. ”

“ Assyrians.—A Semitic people—warlike and conquering race—great in architecture and sculpture—very wealthy and luxurious—empire extended over Asia Minor (east of river Halys) , Syria, Phœnicia, Palestine, most of Egypt, Media, and countries on Tigris and Euphrates to Persian Gulf—artistic workers in glass, metals, gems—rule despotic over loosely connected nations. ”

“ In mental power the Assyrians certainly deserve to be considered as among the foremost of the Asiatic races. They had not perhaps so much originality as the Chaldaeans, from whom they appear to have derived the greater part of their civilization ”

“ The Assyrians derived the greater part of their deities and religious beliefs, like their literature and culture generally, from Babylonia. The Babylonian gods were the gods of Assyria also. Most of them were of Accadian or præ-Semitic origin, but the Semitic Babylonians, when they appropriated the civilisation of the Accadians, modified them in accordance with their own conceptions. The Accadians believed that every object and phenomenon of nature had its Zi or 'spirit,' some of them beneficent, others hostile to man, like the objects and phenomena they represented. ”

“ These Assyrians and Babylonians above all—they are stronger than we, and richer, and better clothed, and cleverer; they have horses and chariots, and all sorts of luxuries and comforts which we Jews cannot get. ”

“ The Assyrian king accordingly marched into the very heart of Arabia, through burning and waterless deserts, and struck terror into the Arabian tribes. The march must have been one of the most remarkable ever made.
Esar-haddon was at last free to complete the policy of Tiglath-pileser III by conquering the ancient kingdom of Egypt. Palestine gave no more trouble; Manasseh of Judah was already an obedient vassal of the Assyrian king. In b.c. 674 'the Assyrians marched into Egypt.' But two more campaigns were needed for its subjection. ”

“ RELIGION AND ART.—It has been stated that the Assyrian culture was transplanted from Babylon. The religion was substantially the same, except that Asshur, the tutelary deity of the country, was made supreme. The Assyrians from the start were devoted to war, pillage, and conquest. Their unsparing cruelty and brutal treatment of their enemies are abundantly witnessed by their own monuments. They lacked the productive power in literature and art which belonged to the Babylonians. Although they might have built their edifices of stone, they generally made use of brick. ”

“ It was the ten tribes that were carried away by the Assyrians.
Verse 24
The king of Assyria brought men from Babylon - He removed one people entirely, and substituted others in their place; and this he did to cut off all occasion for mutiny or insurrection; for the people being removed from their own land, had no object worthy of attention to contend for, and no patrimony in the land of their captivity to induce them to hazard any opposition to their oppressors. ”

“ The dynasty of Pashê: Nebuchadrezzar I., his disputes with Elam, his defeat by Assurrîshishî—The legend of the first Assyrian empire, Ninos and Semiramis—The Assyrians and their political constitution: the limmu, the king and his divine character, his hunting and his wars—The Assyrian army: the infantry and chariotry, the crossing of rivers, mode of marching in the plains and in the mountain districts—Camps, battles, sieges; cruelty shown to the vanquished, the destruction of towns and the removal of the inhabitants, the ephemeral character of the Assyrian conquests. ”

“ His son Esar-Haddon succeeded him, a warlike monarch, who fought the Egyptians, and colonized Samaria with Babylonian settlers. He also built the palace of Nimrod, and cultivated art.
Assyrian civilisation. The civilization of the Assyrians shows a laborious and patient people. Its chief glory was in architecture. Sculpture was imitated from nature, but had neither the grace nor the ideality of the Greeks. War was the grand business of kings, and hunting their pleasure. The people were ground down by the double tyranny of [pg 085] kings and priests. ”