Babylonian exile

“ Seven years after the conquest of Babylonia revolts broke out against the emperor in Assyria and Babylonia, and he was murdered in his palace, which had been besieged and captured by an army headed by his own son, Ashur-natsir-pal I, who succeeded him. The Babylonian nobles meantime drove the Assyrian garrisons from their cities, and set on the throne the Kassite prince Adad-shum-utsur. ”

“ That the West-Semitic invasion of Babylonia differed so essentially from that of Egypt by the Hyksos is to be explained by this fringe of civilized settlements and petty kingdoms, which formed a check upon the nomad hordes behind them and dominated such of them as [Pg 133] succeeded in breaking through. In Egypt the damage wrought by the Semitic barbarians was remembered for generations after their expulsion, [25] whereas in Babylonia the invaders succeeded in establishing a dynasty which gave its permanent form to Babylonian civilization. ”

“ From the fall of the Ninth Dynasty, until the rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Babylonia was completely overshadowed by the power of Assyria. She became merely a subject province of the empire, and her Tenth Dynasty is mainly composed of Assyrian rulers or their nominees. Nabû-mukîn-zêr had reigned only three years when Tiglath-pileser again invaded Babylonia, took him captive, and ascended the throne of Babylon, where he ruled under his name of Pulu. ”

“ Babylon only consented to accept an alien master provided he bowed himself respectfully before its superiority, and was willing to forget that he was a stranger within its gates, and was ready to comply with its laws and masquerade as a Babylonian. Tiglath-pileser III. never dreamt, therefore, of treating the Babylonians as slaves, or of subordinating them to their Assyrian descendants, but left their liberties and territory alike unimpaired. ”

“ Since the extinction of the race of Nebuchadrezzar I. Babylon had been a prey to civil discord and foreign invasion. It was a period of calamity and distress, during which the Arabs or the Arameans ravaged the country, and an Elamite usurper overthrew the native dynasty and held authority for seven years. This intruder having died about the year 1030 B.C., a Babylonian of noble extraction expelled the Elamites and succeeded in bringing the larger part of the dominion under his rule. ”

“ Babylonia suffered less than Assyria by defeat in battle; its natural resources gave it great recuperative powers, and the native population was ever so intensely patriotic that centuries of alien sway could not obliterate their national aspirations. A conqueror of Babylon had to become a Babylonian. The Amorites and Kassites had in turn to adopt the modes of life and modes of thought of the native population. Like the Egyptians, the Babylonians ever achieved the intellectual conquest of their conquerors. ”

“ The Kings of Assyria, in fact, were not a little proud of being the rulers of Babylonia, and were extremely mild in their treatment of their southern subjects—very much more so, in fact, than they were in their behaviour toward the people of Elam or other conquered territories. We even find the kings alluding to themselves as being nominated by the gods to rule over the land of Bel.
The Assyrian monarchs strove hard not to disturb the ancient Babylonian cult, and Shalmaneser II, when he had conquered Babylonia, actually entered Merodach's temple and sacrificed to him. ”

“ Nîsin, the city in which, as we have seen, we first obtain an indication of the presence of West-Semitic rulers, probably lay in Southern Babylonia, and we may picture the earlier immigrants as descending the course of the Euphrates until they found an opportunity of establishing themselves in the Babylonian plain. The Elamite conquest, which put an end to the dynasty of Ur, and stripped Babylonia of her eastern provinces, [26] afforded Nîsin the opportunity of claiming the hegemony. ”

“ If a great people has frequently evolved a legal code of sterling merit there are cases on record where such an institution has served to make a people great, and it is probably no injustice to the Semites of Babylonia to say of them that the code of Khammurabi made them what they were. A copy of this world-famous code was found at Susa by J. de Morgan, and is now in the Louvre.
What the Babylonian chronologists called 'the First Dynasty of Babylon' fell in its turn, and it is claimed that a Sumerian line of eleven kings took its place. ”

“ It was never forgotten that Babylonia had once been the mistress of Western Asia, and it was, accordingly, the sceptre of Western Asia that was conferred by Bel Merodach upon his [pg 172] adopted sons. Like the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages, Babylonian sovereignty brought with it a legal, though shadowy, right to rule over the civilized kingdoms of the world. It was this which made the Assyrian conquerors of the second Assyrian empire so anxious to secure possession of Babylon and there “take the hands of Bel.” ”

“ They made their capital in what had hitherto been a small up-river town, Babylon, and their empire is called the first Babylonian Empire. It was consolidated by a great king called Hammurabi (circa 2100 B.C.) who made the earliest code of laws yet known to history.
The narrow valley of the Nile lies less open to nomadic invasion than Mesopotamia, but about the time of Hammurabi occurred a successful Semitic invasion of Egypt and a line of Pharaohs was set up, the Hyksos or “shepherd kings,” which lasted for several centuries. ”

“ Thus terminated the Babylonian empire, after a duration of two hundred and ten years, from the beginning of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, who was its founder; and the fate of which had been so truly foretold.
"Babylon, the glory of kingdoms," says Isaiah, "and the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited: neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the Arabians pitch their tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there; but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there ”

“ Although Babylonia was not so great a world power under the Kassites as it had been during the Hammurabi Dynasty, it prospered greatly as an industrial, agricultural, and trading country. The Babylonian language was used throughout western Asia as the language of diplomacy and commerce, and the city of Babylon was the most important commercial metropolis of the ancient world. ”

“ Once more the curtain falls, and Canaan is hidden for a while out of our sight. Babylonia has become a united kingdom with its capital and centre at Babylon. Khammurabi (B.C. 2356-2301) has succeeded in shaking off the suzerainty of {63} Elam, in overthrowing his rival Eri-Aku, king of Larsa, with his Elamite allies, and in constituting himself sole monarch of Babylonia. His family seems to have been in part, if not wholly, of South Arabian extraction. Their names are Arabian rather than Babylonian, and the Babylonian scribes found a difficulty in transcribing them correctly. ”

“ His name was still on the lips of those who had fought under him, and since the death of his conqueror, Hammurabi, his prestige must have tended to increase. When, therefore, his native land of Emutbal, allying itself with the neighbouring Elamite district of Idamaraz, followed up the Kassite onslaught by an organized invasion, Rîm-Sin raised a revolt in Southern Babylonia, and succeeded in gaining possession of Erech and Nîsin. It would appear that the Babylonian garrison in Larsa, too, was overcome, and that the city passed once more under the independent control of its old ruler. ”

“ When the real Assur-bani-pal succeeded Esar-haddon as King of Assyria, his brother Samas-sum-yukin was created Viceroy of Babylonia, but shortly after he claimed the kingship itself, revived the old Sumerian language as the official tongue of the Babylonian court, and initiated a revolt which shook the Assyrian empire from one end to the other. A great struggle ensued between the northern and southern powers, and at last Babylon was forced to surrender through starvation, and Samas-sum-yukin was put to death. ”

“ The new-comers probably owed their speedy success in Babylonia in great part to the fact that many of the immigrant tribes had already acquired the elements of Babylonian culture. During their previous residence within the sphere of settled civilization they had adopted a way of life and a social organization which differed but little from that of the country into which they came. That they should have immigrated at all in a south-easterly direction, in preference to remaining within their own borders, was doubtless due to racial pressure to which they themselves had been subjected. ”

“ The importance attached by Babylon to the suppression of this revolt is attested by the fact that for five years it formed an era for the dating of documents, which was only discontinued when the city of Kazallu, under the leadership of Iakhzir-ilum, administered a fresh shock to the growing kingdom by an invasion of Babylonian territory. Iakhzir-ilum appears to have secured the co-operation of Kish by inciting it once more to rebellion, for in the following year Babylon destroyed the wall of Anu in that city ”

“ And it is true that from the second millennium onwards we have evidence of the gradual spread of Babylonian culture throughout the greater part of Western Asia. Before the close of the fifteenth century, to cite a single example of such influence, we find that Babylonian had become the language of Eastern diplomacy. It is not surprising perhaps that the Egyptian king should have adopted the Babylonian tongue and method of writing for his correspondence with rulers of Babylon itself or of Assyria. ”

“ The process of disintegration, which caused the Babylonian empire to crumble away, was doubtlessly hastened by its division into four regions, each of which in latter times possessed its capital and became the centre of various independent forms of rival cults. During many centuries Babylonia was closely associated with the cult of Marduk-Bel, the “lord of rest;” while Shamash, another form of the central supreme lord, was the deity of Larsa and Sippar. ”

“ Their own culture was inferior, and Babylonia was their teacher in the arts and comforts of life. The wild Bedâwin, who tended the flocks of their Babylonian masters, the Amorite merchants from Canaan, who formed trading settlements in the Babylonian cities, even the South Arabian princes who headed the national revolt against Elamite supremacy and made Babylon the capital of their kingdom, were all alike absorbed into the Babylonian race. They became the children of Babylonian civilisation, and, along with the culture, they adopted the language of the Babylonian people. ”

“ It is but natural that southern and central Canaan should have long remained inaccessible to outside influence, and that the effects of Babylonian civilization should have been confined at first to eastern Syria and to the frontier districts scattered along the middle course of the Euphrates. Recent digging by natives so far to the north as the neighbourhood of Carchemish, for example, have revealed some remarkable traces of connexion with Babylonia at a very early period. ”

“ In its general character the Babylonian Empire was little more than a reproduction of the Assyrian. The same loose organization of the provinces under native kings rather than satraps almost universally prevailed, with the same duties on the part of suzerain and subjects and the same results of ever-recurring revolt and re-conquest. Similar means were employed under both empires to check and discourage rebellion—mutilations and executions of chiefs, pillage of the rebellious region, and wholesale deportation of its population. ”

“ Vast numbers of contract tablets, dated in the reigns of Khammurabi and other kings of the dynasty, have been discovered, as well as autograph letters of the kings themselves, more especially of Khammurabi. Among the latter is one ordering the despatch of 240 soldiers from Assyria and Situllum, a proof that Assyria was at the time a Babylonian dependency. Constant intercourse was kept up between Babylonia and the west, Babylonian officials and troops passing to Syria and Canaan, while “Amorite” colonists were established in Babylonia for the purposes of trade. ”

“ The king’s affection for Babylon had certainly aroused jealousy and anxiety among his Assyrian subjects, and perhaps some further tokens of preference made them uneasy lest’ he should select Shamash-shumukîn, one of his children who manifested the same tendencies, and who was, moreover, the son of a Babylonian wife. Most of the nobles who had been led to join the conspiracy paid for their indiscretion with their heads, but their opposition gave the sovereign cause for reflection, and decided him to modify his schemes. ”

“ In time his grandson, Kadashman-Kharbe, ascended the Babylonian throne. This young monarch co-operated with his grandfather in suppressing the Suti, who infested the trade routes towards the west, and plundered the caravans of merchants and the messengers of great monarchs with persistent impunity.
A reference to these bandits appears in one of the Tell-el-Amarna letters. Writing to Akhenaton, Ashur-uballit said: "The lands (of Assyria and Egypt) are remote, therefore let our messengers come and go. ”

“ Of one thing we may rest assured—that Babylonia was in a comparatively high state of civilisation about six thousand years before the Christian era. For at about this date from the East came Babylonian settlers, who found their way towards the setting sun and, finally halting to the North-West of the Red Sea, colonised the region on either side of the Nile. Here, then, they arrived from Babylonia, not a barbarian wild tribe, but, as we know from the most learned Egyptologists, a highly civilised people, possessing great ability in certain arts and of definite intellectual development. ”