Part 6

The history of the extraordinary nation which once inhabited this land, must be so much more familiar to our readers than that of any other ancient nation, that all that is necessary here is a brief sketch, such as will assist the imagination in tracing with due completeness the general career of the East till the establishment of the Persian empire. According to the accounts given of the Jews in Scripture, and in their history by Josephus, they were descended from Abraham, who was born in the 292d year (according to other authorities, in the 352d year) after the Deluge, ‘left the land of Chaldea when he was seventy-five years old, and, at the command of God, went into Canaan, and therein he dwelt himself, and left it to his posterity. He was a person of great sagacity, both for understanding of all things and persuading his hearers, and not mistaken in his opinions; for which reason he began to have higher notions of virtue than others had, and he determined to renew and to change the opinion all men happened then to have concerning God; for he was the first that ventured to publish this notion, that there was but ONE God, the Creator of the universe; and that as to other gods, if they contributed anything to the happiness of men, that each of them afforded it only according to His appointment, and not by their own power. For which doctrines, when the Chaldæans and other people of Mesopotamia raised a tumult against him, he thought fit to leave that country, and at the command of God he came and lived in the land of Canaan. And when he was there settled, he built an altar, and performed a sacrifice to God.’ After the death of Abraham’s son Isaac, _his_ younger son Jacob remained for a number of years in Canaan, surrounded by a family of twelve sons, one of whom, Joseph, as related in Scripture, became the cause of the removal of his father and brethren, and all belonging to them, into Egypt. The Hebrew emigrants were seventy in number, and formed at the first a respectable colony among the Egyptians. Jacob died after having been seventeen years in Egypt, and his body was carried by Joseph to Hebron, and buried in the sepulchre of his father and grandfather. Joseph also died in Egypt at the age of 110, and at length his brethren died likewise. Each of the twelve sons of Jacob became the progenitor of a family or tribe, and the twelve tribes, personified by the term ISRAEL, continued to reside in Egypt, where they increased both in number and in wealth. Their rapid increase and prosperity soon excited the jealousy of the masters of the country; and from being in high favor, the different tribes gradually fell under the lash of power, and came to be treated as public slaves.

The entire body of Israelites, guided by Moses, fled from Egypt in the year 1490 before Christ, at a time when Thebes, Memphis, and the other magnificent cities of that country, were in all their glory. Proceeding in a north-easterly direction from Rameses (near the site of modern Cairo), they went through the level region of the land of Goshen (now a barren sandy plain) to the head of the Gulf of Suez, the western branch of the Red Sea. Here they crossed in a miraculous manner to the opposite shore, to a spot now called the Wells of Moses, where, according to the Scripture narrative, they sang their song of thanksgiving for their deliverance. The country in which they had now arrived was a portion of Arabia Petræa, consisting of a dismal barren wilderness, now called the Desert of Sinai, from the principal mountain which rises within it. From the point at which the Israelites had crossed the Red Sea from Egypt, they were conducted by a most circuitous and tedious route towards the Promised Land of Canaan.

The country on the shore of the Mediterranean which was allotted as a settlement to this people, was at that time occupied by many warlike tribes, who had grown strong in its fertile plains and valleys; and the generation of the Hebrews who were conducted into it were compelled to fight for its possession. The struggle was not of long continuance. The whole land was conquered in the year B. C. 1450.

According to the account given in the 26th chapter of the book of Numbers, the Hebrew nation thus brought out of the land of Egypt and settled in Canaan amounted to 601,730 souls, unto whom the land was divided for an inheritance, according to the number of individuals in the respective tribes.

Moses dying before the inheritance was entered upon, was succeeded by Joshua as a leader, and by him the Israelites were conducted across the Jordan. The political government of the various tribes, after their conquest and settlement of Canaan, appears to have been republican, with military leaders called Judges; but these acted by the direction of the Priesthood, who were immediately counseled by the Deity within the sanctuary. This period of separate government in tribes, called the Period of the Judges, lasted 300 years (B. C. 1427-1112), and was one of daring actions and great deliverances――the heroic age of the Jews.

The epoch of kings succeeded that of judges. The reign of Saul, their first monarch, though the people were stronger by being united, was gloomy and troubled. David, who succeeded, was a soldier and a conqueror. He rendered the Hebrews formidable to the whole of their enemies, and gave them a regular and defensible position, expelling their old antagonists from every part of the country. He left an empire peaceful, respected, and strong; and, what was of as much importance, he selected from among his sons a successor who was able to improve all these advantages, and to add to the progress which his countrymen had already made in prosperity. Under Solomon, the name of the Hebrew government being able to protect its subjects in other countries, the people and their king began to employ themselves in commerce. Their trade was at first engrafted on that of the Phœnicians of Tyre. A greater contrast cannot be imagined than between the troubles of the time of the Judges (only 100 years before), and the peace, security, and enjoyment of this reign. ‘And the king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as sycamore trees that are in the vale for abundance; and Judah and Israel were many; as the sand which is by the sea-shore for multitude, eating, and drinking, and making merry.’ (1 Kings, x. 27.)

After the death of Solomon, the country fell into the same divisions which had weakened it in the time of the Judges. Each of the districts of North and South Israel was under a separate king, and the people were exposed both to the attacks of their enemies and to quarrels with each other. Their history is a succession of agitating conflicts for independence, and of unexpected and remarkable deliverances, of a similar nature to those of the earlier period, and they continued for about the same length of time (380 years); but they are marked by fewer of those traits of heroic devotion which distinguished the epoch of the Judges. The backslidings, errors, and misgovernment of their kings, is the chief and painful subject which is presented to us; and though these are relieved at times by the appearance of such monarchs as Josiah, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah, yet the whole history of this period is overcast with the gloominess of progressive decline.

By far the most delightful parts of it are those which relate to the lives of the prophets, who were raised up at intervals to warn the nation and its rulers of the fate which they incurred by forsaking the religion of their fathers. These inspired men sometimes sprang up from among the humblest classes of the community: one from the ‘herdsmen of Tekoa,’ another from ‘ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen;’ several were of the priestly order, and one (Isaiah) is said to have been of royal lineage; but the works of all are marked with the same sacredness, force, and authority. They reprehend their countrymen, in the most eloquent strains, at one time for idolatry, and at another for hypocrisy; and their indignation is expressed with the same freedom and dignity against the vices of the highest and the lowest.

Of the two kingdoms into which Palestine divided itself after the death of Solomon (B. C. 975), the northern, called the Kingdom of Israel, was conquered by the Assyrians of Nineveh (B. C. 722), who carried off many thousand of the people into captivity. Little is known of their fate. By some they are supposed to have been carried to India, by others to Tartary: ‘what became of all the Israelites of the ten tribes,’ is still a question with historians. The southern kingdom, called the kingdom of Judah, retained its independence till B. C. 588, when it was invaded and subdued by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who destroyed Jerusalem, and carried away a great number of the principal Jews into captivity at Babylon. On the subversion of the Babylonian dominion by Cyrus, seventy years afterwards, the captives, to the number of 42,360, were permitted to return to their own land, and rebuild Jerusalem. At this period, the whole of Palestine merged in the growing Persian empire.

THE ASSYRIANS AND BABYLONIANS. That large extent of level country situated between and on the banks of the two great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, was in the earliest antiquity, the seat of a Semitic population living under an organized government. Of the cities, the most important ultimately were Babylon, built, by Nimrod, (B. C. 2217); and Nineveh (called Ninos by the Greeks), built either by Asshur or Nimrod about the same time, but afterwards rebuilt and enlarged, according to ancient tradition, by a great king, Ninus, (B. C. 1230). With these two cities as capitals, the country divided itself into two corresponding parts or kingdoms――the kingdom of Assyria proper, including, besides part of Mesopotamia, the country to the right of the Tigris as far as Mount Zagros; and the kingdom of Babylonia, including the western part of Mesopotamia, together with the country to the left of the Euphrates as far as Syria proper. The two kingdoms, however, are often included under the joint name of Assyria; a word which, as well as the shorter form Syria, was often employed by the ancient Greek writers to designate the whole region lying along the courses of the two great rivers from the Black Sea to the northern angle of the Persian Gulf.

Although Babylon was according to Scripture, the earlier of the two powers, yet the Assyrians of Nineveh attained such strength under their hero Ninus, as to reduce the Babylonians to a species of dependence. Under Ninus, and his wife and successor the great conqueress Semiramis, says ancient mythical history, the city of the Tigris extended its dominions far and wide, from Egypt to the border of India. This empire, known in the common chronologies by the name of ‘The Assyrian Empire,’ lasted, according to the usual accounts, five or six centuries, during which it was governed, in the absolute Oriental manner, by the successors of Ninus and Semiramis. Of these several are mentioned in Scripture――Phul, the contemporary of Menahem, king of Israel (B. C. 761), Tiglath Pileser (B. C. 730), both of whom were mixed up with the affairs of Israel and Judah; Salmanassar, cotemporary with Hezekiah, king of Judah, and Hoseah, king of Israel, by whom it was that Samaria was taken (B. C. 722), and the Israelites led into captivity (B. C. 722); and Sennacherib, or Sanherib (B. C. 714), who attacked Egypt, and whose fruitless invasion of Judah forms the subject of the striking narrative in the 18th and 19th chapters of the second book of Kings. The last of the great line of the Assyrian kings of Nineveh was the luxurious Sardanapalus, in whose reign the empire was dissolved, through the instrumentality of its revolted subjects the Medes (B. C. 626).

After Nineveh, the greatest city in the Assyrian dominion was Babylon. Even while under the dominion of the kings of Nineveh, Babylon appears to have possessed a special organization under its own chiefs, several of whose names――such as Beldesis (B. C. 888), and Nabonassar (B. C. 747)――have been preserved; and, together with the whole province of which it was the capital, to have pursued a special career. The peculiar element in the Babylonian society which distinguished it from that of Assyria proper, was its Chaldæan priesthood. ‘The Chaldæan order of priests,’ says Mr. Grote, ‘appear to have been peculiar to Babylon and other towns in its territory, especially between that city and the Persian Gulf; the vast, rich, and lofty temple of Belus in that city served them at once as a place of worship and an astronomical observatory; and it was the paramount ascendancy of this order which seems to have caused the Babylonian people generally to be spoken of as Chaldæans, though some writers have supposed, without any good proof, a conquest of Assyrian Babylon by barbarians called Chaldæans from the mountains near the Euxine. There were exaggerated statements respecting the antiquity of their astronomical observations,[2] which cannot be traced, as of definite and recorded date, higher than the era of Nabonassar (B. C. 747), as well as respecting the extent of their acquired knowledge, so largely blended with astrological fancies and occult influences of the heavenly bodies on human affairs. But however incomplete their knowledge may appear when judged by the standard of after-times, there can be no doubt that, compared with any of their cotemporaries of the sixth century B. C.――either Egyptians, Greeks, or Asiatics――they stood preëminent, and had much to teach, not only to Thales and Pythagoras, but even to later inquirers, such as Eudoxus and Aristotle. The conception of the revolving celestial sphere, the gnomon, and the division of the day into twelve parts, are affirmed by Herodotus to have been first taught to the Greeks by the Babylonians.’ This learned Chaldæan class seems to have pervaded the general mass of Babylonian society, as the corresponding priest-caste in Egypt pervaded Egyptian society, with this difference, that Babylonian society does not appear to have been parceled out like the Egyptian into a rigorous system of castes.

On the dissolution of the Assyrian empire of Nineveh by the Medes (B. C. 626), the Chaldæan fragment of it rose to eminence on its ruins, chiefly by the efforts of Nabopolassar, a viceroy of the last Assyrian king. Establishing Babylonia as an independent power in the east, Nabopolassar came into collision with Nekos, king of Egypt, who was at that time extending his empire into Asia. It was in opposing Nekos (Pharaoh-Necho) on his march to Babylon, that Josiah, king of Judah, was slain. At length (B. C. 608) Nebuchadnezzar, or Nebuchodonosor, the son of Nabopolassar, defeated Nekos, and annexed all his conquests in Asia to his father’s kingdom. Two years afterwards the same prince took Jerusalem, and carried away a number of captives to Babylon, among whom were Daniel and his companions. Succeeding his father, B. C. 605, Nebuchadnezzar reigned over Babylon forty-three years (B. C. 605-561); and during his reign extended the empire to the Mediterranean and the borders of Egypt, adding to it Palestine, Phœnicia, etc. With his countenance the Medes and Lydians destroyed Nineveh (B. C. 601). The great abduction of Jewish captives by his orders took place B. C. 588. He was succeeded (B. C. 561) by his son, Evil-Merodach, who was dethroned (B. C. 559) by his brother-in-law Neriglissar, whose son and successor, Laboroso-archod, was dethroned, after a brief reign, by Nabonnedus, the Belshazzar of Scripture (B. C. 555); in the eighteenth year of whose reign (B. C. 538) Babylon was taken by Cyrus, and passed into the hands of the Persians.

It was during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar that the city of Babylon attained that glory which has rendered it a known word to all who are at all acquainted with history. Herodotus, who saw the city in its decline, gives a description of it which has seemed incredible to many, although now fully verified. ‘The city, divided in the middle by the Euphrates, was surrounded with walls in thickness 75 feet, in height 300 feet and in compass 480 stadia, or about 60 of our miles.’ Within this circuit there was included, besides the houses, a space of vacant ground, gardens, pasture, etc., sufficient to accommodate the country population in case of invasion: the height and strength of the walls rendered the city itself to all appearance impregnable. ‘These walls formed an exact square, each side of which was 120 stadia, or 15 miles in length; and were built of large bricks cemented together with bitumen, a glutinous slime which issues out of the earth in that country, and in a short time becomes harder than the very brick or stone which it cements. The city was encompassed without the walls of a vast ditch filled with water, and lined with bricks on both sides; and as the earth that was dug out of it served to make the bricks, we may judge of the depth and largeness of the ditch from the height and thickness of the walls. In the whole compass of the walls there were a hundred gates――that is, twenty-five on each side, all made of solid brass. At intervals round the walls were 250 towers. From each of the twenty-five gates there was a straight street extending to the corresponding gate, in the opposite wall; the whole number of streets was therefore fifty, crossing each other at right angles, and each fifteen miles long. The breadth of the streets was about 150 feet. By their intersection the city was divided into 676 squares, each about two miles and a quarter in compass, round which were the houses, three or four stories in height; the vacant spaces within being laid out in gardens,’ etc. Within the city the two greatest edifices were the royal palace with its hanging gardens, and the temple of Belus, composed of eight towers built one above another, to the enormous height, it is said, of a furlong.

Without the city were numerous canals, embankments, etc., for the purpose of irrigating the country, which, as little or no rain fell, depended on the river for moisture. ‘The execution of such colossal works as those of Babylon and Egypt,’ it has been remarked, ‘demonstrates habits of regular industry, a concentrated population under one government, and above all, an implicit submission to the regal and kingly sway――contrasted forcibly with the small self-governing communities of Greece and western Europe, where the will of the individual citizen was so much more energetic.’ In the latter countries only such public works were attempted as were within the limits of moderate taste. Nineveh is said to have been larger even than Babylon, and is described as an oblong, three days’ journey round――that is, upwards of 60 miles.

THE MEDES AND PERSIANS. Extending, as we have said, from the Mediterranean to the Indus, the Assyrian empire had included not only the chief Semitic nations of western Asia, but also that portion of the Indo-Germanic family which was contained between Mount Zagros and the river Indus. Essentially a prolongation of the great race which inhabited Hindoostan, the nature of their country――a vast table-land, here and there rising into hills, or presenting spots of great fertility――had made them quite different in character and habits from the settled and stereotyped Hindoos. All parts of this plateau of Iran, as it was called, including the present countries of Persia, Cabool, and Belochistan, were not alike; in some portions, where the soil was fertile, there existed a dense agricultural population; in others, the inhabitants were nomadic horse-breeders, cattle-rearers, and shepherds. All the tribes, however, were bound together by the ties of a common Indo-Persic language, quite distinct from that spoken by their Semitic neighbors and masters, and by a common religion. This religion, called the Religion of Zend, a modification probably of some more ancient form, from which Hindooism may also have sprung, was taught by Zerdusht or Zoroaster, a great native reformer and spiritual teacher, who lived six or seven centuries before Christ. The principal doctrine of his religion was that of the existence of two great emanations from the Supreme and perfect Deity――the one a good spirit (Ormuzd), who created man, and fitted him for happiness; the other an evil spirit, named Ahriman, who has marred the beauty of creation by introducing evil into it. Between these two spirits and their adherents there is an incessant struggle for the mastery; but ultimately Ormuzd will conquer, and Ahriman and evil will be banished from the bosom of creation into eternal darkness. The worship annexed to this doctrine was very simple, dispensing with temples or images, and consisting merely of certain solemn rites performed on mountain tops, etc. Fire, and light, and the sun, were worshiped either as symbols or as inferior deities. A caste of priests, called the Magi, answering in some respects to the Brahmins of India or the Chaldæans of Babylon, superintended these ceremonies, and commented on the religion of Zoroaster.

Various of the tribes of Iran, associating themselves together, constituted little nations. Thus adjacent to Assyria, and separated from it by Mount Zagros, was an agglomeration of seven tribes or villages, under the special name of the Medes, the country which they inhabited being thence called Media. South from Media, and nearer the sea, was another district of Iran, called Persis or Persia, inhabited also by an association of tribes calling themselves the Persians. Other nations of Iran were the Parthians, the Bactrians, etc.――all originally subject to the Assyrian empire.

Median history begins with a hero king called Deiokes (B. C. 710-657), who effected some important changes in the constitution of the nation, and founded the Median capital Ekbatana in one of the most pleasant sites in the world. His son, Phraortes (B. C. 657-635), pursued a career of conquest, subjugated Persia and other districts of Iran, and perished in an invasion of Assyria. He was succeeded by his son Cyaxares, who continued his designs of conquest, and extended the Median dominion as far westward into Asia Minor as the river Halys. He was engaged in a repetition of his father’s attempt against Nineveh, when he was called away to defend his kingdom against a great roving population, belonging, as is most likely, to the Scythian branch of the Caucasian race (although some reckon them Mongols), who, bursting with their herds of horses and mares from their native seat in Central Asia, had driven the Cimmerians, a kindred race, before them into Asia Minor, and then had poured themselves over the plateau of Iran. Defeating Cyaxares, they kept him from his throne for a period of twenty-eight years, during which they ruled in savage fashion over Media, Persia, etc. At length, having assassinated their chiefs by a stratagem, Cyaxares regained his dominions, and drove the invaders back into the north. He then renewed his attempt against Nineveh; took it; and reduced the Assyrian empire, with the exception of Babylonia, under his dominion. The Median empire, thus formed, he bequeathed (B. C. 595) to his son Astyages.