Max Duncker
The History of Antiquity, Vol. 2 (of 6)

CHAPTER I
THE STORY OF NINUS AND SEMIRAMIS

About the middle course of the Tigris, where the mountain wall of the Armenian plateau steeply descends to the south, there is a broad stretch of hilly country. To the west it is traversed by a few water-courses only, which spring out of the mountains of Sindyar, and unite with the Tigris; from the east the affluents are far more abundant. On the southern shore of the lake of Urumiah the edge of the plateau of Iran abuts on the Armenian table-land, and then, stretching to the south-east, it bounds the river valley of the Tigris toward the east. From its vast, successive ranges, the Zagrus of the Greeks, flow the Lycus and Caprus (the Greater and the Lesser Zab), the Adhim and the Diala. The water, which these rivers convey to the land between the Zagrus and the Tigris, together with the elevation of the soil, softens the heat and allows olive trees and vines to flourish in the cool air on the hills, sesame and corn in the valleys between groups of palms and fruit-trees. The backs of the heights which rise to the east are covered by forests of oaks and nut trees. Toward the south the ground gradually sinks – on the west immediately under the mountains of Sindyar, on the east below the Lesser Zab – toward the course of the Adhim into level plains, where the soil is little inferior in fertility to the land of Babylonia. The land between the Tigris and the Greater Zab is known to Strabo and Arrian as Aturia.¹ The districts between the Greater and Lesser Zab are called Arbelitis and Adiabene by western writers.² The region bounded by the Lesser Zab and the Adhim or the Diala is called Sittacene, and the land lying on the mountains rising further toward the east is Chalonitis. The latter we shall without doubt have to regard as the Holwan³ of later times.

According to the accounts of the Greeks, it was in these districts that the first kingdom rose which made conquests and extended its power beyond the borders of its native country. In the old time – such is the story – kings ruled in Asia, whose names were not mentioned, as they had not performed any striking exploits. The first of whom any memorial is retained, and who performed great deeds, was Ninus, the king of the Assyrians. Warlike and ambitious by nature, he armed the most vigorous of his young men, and accustomed them by long and various exercises to all the toils and dangers of war. After collecting a splendid army, he combined with Ariæus, the prince of the Arabs, and marched with numerous troops against the neighbouring Babylonians. The city of Babylon was not built at that time, but there were other magnificent cities in the land. The Babylonians were an unwarlike people, and he subdued them with little trouble, took their king prisoner, slew him with his children, and imposed a yearly tribute on the Babylonians. Then with a still greater force he invaded Armenia and destroyed several cities. Barzanes, the king of Armenia, perceived that he was not in a position to resist. He repaired with costly presents to Ninus and undertook to be his vassal. With great magnanimity Ninus permitted him to retain the throne of Armenia; but he was to provide a contingent in war and contribute to the support of the army. Strengthened by these means, Ninus turned his course to Media. Pharnus, king of Media, came out to meet him with a strong force, but he was nevertheless defeated, and crucified with his wife and seven children, and Ninus placed one of his own trusty men as viceroy over Media. These successes raised in Ninus the desire to subjugate all Asia as far as the Nile and the Tanais. He conquered, as Ctesias narrates, Egypt, Phœnicia, Cœle Syria, Cilicia, Lycia and Caria, Lydia, Mysia, Phrygia, Bithynia, and Cappadocia, and reduced the nations on the Pontus as far as the Tanais. Then he made himself master of the land of the Cadusians and Tapyrians, of the Hyrcanians, Drangians, Derbiccians, Carmanians, Chorasmians, Barcians, and Parthians. Beside these, he overcame Persia, and Susiana, and Caspiana, and many other small nations. But in spite of many efforts he failed to obtain any success against the Bactrians, because the entrance to their land was difficult and the number of their men of war was great. So he deferred the war against the Bactrians to another opportunity, and led his army back, after subjugating in 17 years all the nations of Asia, with the exception of the Indians and Bactrians. The king of the Arabians he dismissed to his home with costly presents and splendid booty; he began himself to build a city which should not only be greater than any other then in existence, but should be such that no city in the future could ever surpass it. This city he founded on the bank of the Tigris,⁴ in the form of an oblong, and surrounded it with strong fortifications. The two longer sides measured 150 stades each, the two shorter sides 90 stades each, so that the whole circuit was 480 stades. The walls reached a height of 100 feet, and were so thick that there was room in the gangway for three chariots to pass each other. These walls were surmounted by 1500 towers, each of the height of 200 feet. As to the inhabitants of the city, the greater number and those of the most importance were Assyrians, but from the other nations also any who chose could fix his dwelling here, and Ninus allotted to the settlers large portions of the surrounding territory, and called the city Ninus, after his own name.

When the city was built Ninus resolved to march against the Bactrians. He knew the number and bravery of the Bactrians, and how difficult their land was to approach, and therefore he collected the armies of all the subject nations, to the number of 1,700,000 foot soldiers, 210,000 cavalry, and towards 10,600 chariots of war. The narrowness of the passes which protect the entrance to Bactria compelled Ninus to divide his army. Oxyartes, who at that time was king of the Bactrians, had collected the whole male population of his country, about 400,000 men, and met the enemy at the passes. One part of the Assyrian army he allowed to enter unmolested; when a sufficient number seemed to have reached the plains he attacked them and drove them back to the nearest mountains; about 100,000 Assyrians were slain. But when the whole force had penetrated into the land, the Bactrians were overcome by superior numbers and scattered each to his own city. The rest of the cities were captured by Ninus with little trouble, but Bactra, the chief city, where the palace of the king lay, he could not reduce, for it was large and well-provisioned, and the fortress was very strong.

When the siege became protracted, Onnes, the first among the counsellors of the king and viceroy of Syria, who accompanied the king on this campaign, sent for his wife Semiramis to the camp. Once when he was inspecting the flocks of the king in Syria, he had seen at the dwelling of Simmas, the keeper of these flocks, a beautiful maiden, and he was so overcome with love for her that he sought and obtained her as a wife from Simmas. She was the foster-child of Simmas. In a rocky place in the desert his shepherds had found the maiden about a year old, fed by doves with milk and cheese; as Simmas was childless he had taken the foundling as his child, and given her the name of Semiramis Onnes took her to the city of Ninus. She bore him two sons, Hyapates and Hydaspes, and as she had everything which beauty requires, she made her husband her slave; he did nothing without her advice, and everything succeeded admirably. She also possessed intelligence and daring, and every other gift likely to advance her. When requested by Onnes to come to the camp, she seized the opportunity to display her power. She put on such clothing that it could not be ascertained whether she was a man or a woman, and this succeeded so well that at a later time the Medes, and after them the Persians also, wore the robe of Semiramis. When she arrived in the camp she perceived that the attack was directed only against the parts of the city lying in the plain, not against the high part and the strong fortifications of the citadel, and she also perceived that this direction of the attack induced the Bactrians to be careless in watching the citadel. She collected all those in the army who were accustomed to climbing, and with this troop she ascended the citadel from a deep ravine, captured a part of it, and gave the signal to the army which was assaulting the walls in the plain. The Bactrians lost their courage when they saw their citadel occupied, and the city was taken. Ninus admired the courage of the woman, honoured her with costly presents, and was soon enchained by her beauty; but his attempts to persuade Onnes to give up Semiramis to him were in vain; in vain he offered to recompense him by the gift of his own daughter Sosana in marriage. At length Ninus threatened to put out his eyes if he did not obey his commands. The terror of this threat and the violence of his own love drove Onnes out of his mind. He hung himself. Thus Semiramis came to the throne of Assyria. When Ninus had taken possession of the great treasures of gold and silver which were in Bactra, and had arranged everything there, he led his army back. At Ninus Semiramis bore him a son, Ninyas, and at his death, when he had reigned 52 years, Ninus bequeathed to her the sovereign power. She buried his corpse in the royal palace, and caused a huge mound to be raised over the grave, 6000 feet in the circuit and 5400 feet high, which towered over the city of Ninus like a lofty citadel, and could be seen far through the plain in which Ninus lay.

As Semiramis was ambitious, and desired to surpass the fame of Ninus, she built the great city of Babylon, with mighty walls and towers, the two royal citadels, the bridge over the Euphrates, and the temple of Belus, and caused a great lake to be excavated to draw off the water of the Euphrates. Other cities also she founded on the Euphrates and the Tigris, and caused depôts to be made for those who brought merchandise from Media, Paraetacene, and the bordering countries. After completing these works she marched with a great army to Media and planted the garden near Mount Bagistanon. The steep and lofty face of this mountain, more than 10,000 feet in height, she caused to be smoothed, and on it was cut her picture surrounded by 100 guards; and an inscription was engraved in Syrian letters, saying that Semiramis had caused the pack-saddles of her beasts of burden to be piled on each other, and on these had ascended to the summit of the mountain. Afterwards she made another large garden near the city of Chauon, in Media,⁵ and on a rock in the middle of it she erected rich and costly buildings, from which she surveyed the blooming garden and the army encamped in the plain. Here she remained for a long time, and gave herself up to every kind of pleasure. She was unwilling to contract another marriage from fear of losing the sovereign power, but she lived with any of her warriors who were distinguished for their beauty. All who had enjoyed her favours she secretly put to death. After this retirement she turned her course to Egbatana, caused a path to be cut through the rocks of Mount Zagrus, and a short and convenient road to be made across them, in order to leave behind an imperishable memorial of her reign. In Egbatana she erected a splendid palace, and in order to provide the city with water she caused a tunnel to be made through the lofty mountain Orontes at its base, which conveyed the water of a lake lying on the other side of the heights into the city. After this she marched through Persia and all the countries of Asia which were subject to her, and caused the mountains to be cut through and straight and level roads to be built everywhere, while in the plains she at one place raised great mounds over her dead generals, and in another built cities on hills; and wherever the army was encamped eminences were raised for her tent so that she might overlook the whole. Of these works many are still remaining in Asia and bear the name of Semiramis. Then she subjugated Egypt,⁶ a great part of Libya, and nearly the whole of Ethiopia, and finally returned to Bactra.

A long period of peace ensued, till she resolved to subjugate the Indians on hearing that they were the most numerous of all nations, and possessed the largest and most beautiful country in the world. For two years preparations were made throughout her whole kingdom; in the third year she collected in Bactria 3,000,000 foot soldiers, 500,000 horsemen, and 100,000 chariots. Beside these, 100,000 camels were covered with the sewn skins of black oxen, and each was mounted by one warrior; these animals were intended to pass for elephants with the Indians. For crossing the Indus 2000 ships were built, then taken to pieces again, and the various parts packed on camels. Stabrobates, the king of the Indians, awaited the Assyrians on the bank of the Indus. He also had prepared for the war with all his power, and gathered together even a larger force from the whole of India. When Semiramis approached he sent messengers to meet her with the complaint that she was making war upon him though he had done her no wrong; and in his letter he reproached her licentious life, and calling the gods to witness, threatened to crucify her if victorious. Semiramis read the letter, laughed, and said that the Indians would find out her virtue by her actions. The fleet of the Indians lay ready for battle on the Indus. Semiramis caused her ships to be put together, manned them with her bravest warriors, and, after a long and stubborn contest, the victory fell to her share. A thousand ships of the Indians were sunk and many prisoners taken. Then she also took the islands and cities on the river, and out of these she collected more than 100,000 prisoners. But the king of the Indians, pretending flight, led his army back from the Indus; in reality he wished to induce the enemy to cross the Indus. As matters succeeded according to her wishes, Semiramis caused a large and broad bridge to be thrown skilfully over the Indus, and on this her whole army passed over. Leaving 60,000 men to protect the bridge, she pursued the Indians with the rest of her army, and sent on in front the camels clothed as elephants. At first the Indians did not understand whence Semiramis could have procured so many elephants and were alarmed. But the deception could not last. Soldiers of Semiramis, who were found careless on the watch, deserted to the enemy to escape punishment, and betrayed the secret. Stabrobates proclaimed it at once to his whole army, caused a halt to be made, and offered battle to the Assyrians. When the armies approached each other the king of the Indians ordered his horsemen and chariots to make the attack. Semiramis sent against them her pretended elephants. When the cavalry of the Indians came up their horses started back at the strange smell, part of them dislodged their riders, others refused to obey the rein. Taking advantage of this moment, Semiramis, herself on horseback, pressed forward with a chosen band of men upon the Indians, and turned them to flight. Stabrobates was still unshaken; he led out his elephants, and behind them his infantry. Himself on the right wing, mounted on the best elephant, he chanced to come opposite Semiramis. He made a resolute attack upon the queen, and was followed by the rest of the elephants. The soldiers of Semiramis resisted only a short time. The elephants caused an immense slaughter; the Assyrians left their ranks, they fled, and the king pressed forward against Semiramis; his arrow wounded her arm, and as she turned away his javelin struck her on the back. She hastened away, while her people were crushed and trodden down by their own numbers; and at last, as the Indians pressed upon them, were forced from the bridge into the river. As soon as Semiramis saw the greater part of her army on the nearer bank, she caused the cables to be cut which held the bridge; the force of the stream tore the beams asunder, and many Assyrians who were on the bridge were plunged in the river. The other Assyrians were now in safety, the wounds of Semiramis were not dangerous, and the king of the Indians was warned by signs from heaven and their interpretation by the seers not to cross the river. After exchanging prisoners Semiramis returned to Bactra. She had lost two-thirds of her army.

Some time afterwards she was attacked by a conspiracy, which her own son Ninyas set on foot against her by means of an eunuch. Then she remembered a prophecy given to her in the temple of Zeus Ammon during the campaign in Libya; that when her son Ninyas conspired against her she would disappear from the sight of men, and the honours of an immortal would be paid to her by some nations of Asia. Hence she cherished no resentment against Ninyas, but, on the contrary, transferred to him the kingdom, ordered her viceroys to obey him, and soon after put herself to death, as though, according to the oracle, she had raised herself to the gods. Some relate that she was changed into a dove, and flew out of the palace with a flock of doves. Hence it is that the Assyrians regard Semiramis as an immortal, and the dove as divine. She was 62 years old, and had reigned 42 years.

The preceding narrative, which is from Diodorus, is borrowed in essentials from the Persian history of Ctesias, who lived for some time at the Persian Court in the first two decades of the reign of Artaxerxes Mnemon (405-361 B.C.). On the end of Semiramis the account of Ctesias contained more details than the account of Diodorus. This is made clear by some fragments from Ctesias preserved by other writers. In Nicolaus of Damascus we are told that after the Indian war Semiramis marched through the land of the Medes. Here she visited a very lofty and precipitous mountain, which could only be ascended on one side. On this she at once caused an abode to be built from which to survey her army.

While encamped here, Satibaras the eunuch told the sons of Onnes, Hyapates and Hydaspes, that Ninyas would put them to death if he ascended the throne; they must anticipate him by removing their mother and Ninyas out of the way, and possessing themselves of the sovereign power. Moreover, it was to their great dishonour to be spectators of the licentiousness of their mother, who, even at her years, daily desired every youth that came in her way. The matter, he said, was easy of accomplishment; when he summoned them to the queen (he was entrusted with this business) they could come to the summit of the mountain and throw their mother down from it. But it happened that behind the altar, near which they held this conversation, a Mede was lying, who overheard them. He wrote down everything on a skin and sent it to Semiramis. When she had read it she caused the sons of Onnes to be summoned, and gave strict orders that they should come in arms. Delighted that the deity favoured the undertaking, Satibaras fetched the young men. When they appeared Semiramis bade the eunuch step aside, and then she spoke to them: "You worthless sons of an honest and brave father have allowed yourselves to be persuaded by a worthless slave to throw down from this height your mother, who holds her empire from the gods, in order to obtain glory among men, and to rule after the murder of your mother and your brother Ninyas. Then she spoke to the Assyrians."⁷ Here the fragment of Nicolaus breaks off. From the fragments of Cephalion we may gather that the sons of Onnes were put to death by Semiramis. Yet Cephalion gave a different account of the death of Semiramis from Ctesias; according to him Ninyas slew her.⁸ In Ctesias, as is clear from the account of Diodorus and other remains of Ctesias, nothing was spoken of beyond the conspiracy which Ninyas prepared against her.⁹

After the death of Semiramis, so Diodorus continues his narrative, Ninyas ruled in peace, for he by no means emulated his mother's military ambition and delight in danger. He remained always in the palace, was seen by no one but his concubines and eunuchs, took upon himself no care or trouble, thought only of pleasure and pastime, considered it the object of sovereign power to give himself up undisturbed to all sorts of enjoyment. His seclusion served to hide his excesses in obscurity; he seemed like an invisible God, whom no one ventured to offend even in word. In order to preserve his kingdom he put leaders over the army, viceroys, judges, and magistrates over every nation, and arranged everything as seemed most useful to himself. To keep his subjects in fear he caused each nation to provide a certain number of soldiers every year, and these were quartered together in a camp outside the city, and placed under the command of men most devoted to himself. At the end of the year they were dismissed and replaced by others to the same number. Hence his subjects always saw a great force in the camp ready to punish disobedience or defection. In the same way his descendants also reigned for 30 generations, till the empire passed to the Medes.¹⁰ Slightly differing from this account, Nicolaus tells us that Sardanapalus – to whom in the order of succession the kingdom of Ninus and Semiramis finally descended – neither carried arms nor went out to the hunting-field, like the kings in old times, but always remained in his palace. Yet even in his time the old arrangements were kept and the satraps of the subject nations gathered with the fixed contingent at the gate of the king.¹¹

From what source is the narrative of Ninus and Semiramis derived? what title to credibility can be allowed it? Herodotus states that the dominion of the Assyrians in Asia was the oldest; their supremacy was followed by that of the Medes, and the supremacy of the Medes was followed by the kingdom of the Achæmenids. Herodotus too is acquainted with the name of Semiramis; he represents her as ruling over Babylon, and building wonderful dykes in the level land, which the river had previously turned into a lake.¹² Strabo tells of the citadels, cities, mountain-roads, aqueducts, bridges, and canals which Semiramis constructed through all Asia, and to Semiramis Lucian traces back the old temples of Syria.¹³ We may assume in explanation that the tradition of Hither Asia has ascribed to the first king and queen of Assyria the construction of the ancient road over the Zagrus, of old dykes and aqueducts in the land of the Euphrates and Tigris, the building, not of Nineveh only, but also of Babylon, the erection of the great monuments of forgotten kings of Babylon, – as a fact, Assyrian kings built in Babylon also in the seventh century. We may find it conceivable that this tradition has gathered together and carried back to the time of the foundation all that memory retained of the acts of Assyrian rulers, the campaigns of conquest of a long series of warlike and mighty sovereigns, the sum total of the exploits to which Assyria owed her supremacy. Yet against such an origin of this narrative doubts arise not easy to be removed. It is true that when this tradition explains the mode of life and the clothing of the kings of Asia, and the clothing of the Medes and Persians, from the example of Semiramis, who wore in the camp a robe, half male and half female (p. 6); when this tradition derives the inaccessibility of the kings of Asia and their seclusion in the palace from the fact that Ninyas wished to hide his excesses, and appear to his subjects as a higher being, – traits of this kind can be set aside as additions of the Greeks. To the Babylonians and Assyrians, the Medes and Persians, the life and clothing of their rulers could not appear contemptible or remarkable, nor their own clothing half effeminate, though the Greeks might very well search for an explanation of customs so different from their own, and find them in the example and command of Semiramis, and the example of Ninyas. And if in Herodotus the empire of the Assyrians over Asia appears as a hegemony of confederates,¹⁴ this idea is obviously borrowed from Greek models. The opposite statement of the division of the Assyrian kingdom into satrapies, the yearly change of the contingents of troops, comes from Ctesias, who transferred the arrangements of the Persian kingdom, with which he was acquainted, to their predecessors, the kingdom of the Assyrians, or found this transference made in his authorities, Persian or Mede, and copied it.

Yet, after making as much allowance as we can for the amalgamating influence of native tradition, after going as far as we can in setting apart what may be due to the Greeks, how could such an accurate narrative, so well acquainted with every detail of the siege of Bactra, and the battle on the Indus, have been preserved for many centuries in the tradition of Hither Asia, retained even after the overthrow of Assyria, and down to the date when curious Greeks, 200 years after the fall of Nineveh, reached the Euphrates and Tigris? We possess a positive proof that about this time, in the very place to which this tradition must have clung most tenaciously, within the circuit of the old Assyrian country, no remembrance of that mighty past was in existence. When, in the year 401 B.C., Xenophon with his 10,000 marched past the ruins of the ancient cities of the Assyrian kingdom, the ruins of Asshur, Chalah, and Nineveh, before Ctesias wrote, he was merely told that these were cities of the Medes which could not be taken; into one of them the queen of the Medes had fled before the Persian king, and the Persians, with the help of heaven, took and destroyed it when they gained the dominion over Media.¹⁵ From the Assyrians, therefore, Herodotus and Ctesias could not have obtained the information given in their statements about Ninus and Semiramis, nor could their knowledge have come from the Babylonians. The tradition of Babylonia would never have attributed the mighty buildings of that city and land to the queen of another nation, to which Babylon had succumbed. Hence the account of the Greeks about Assyria and her rulers could only come from the Medes and Persians. But our narrative ascribes to Semiramis even the great buildings of the Median rulers, the erection of the royal citadel of Egbatana, the residence of the Median kings; the parks and rock sculptures of Media, even the rock figure on Mount Bagistanon (p. 7). This sculpture in the valley of the Choaspes on the rock-wall of Bagistan (Behistun) is in existence. The wall is not 10,000 but only 1500 feet high. It is not Semiramis who is pourtrayed in those sculptures, but Darius, the king of Persia, and before him are the leaders of the rebellious provinces. It was the proudest monument of victory in all the history of Persia. Would a Persian have shown this to a Greek as a monument of Semiramis? It would rather be a Mede, who would wish to hide from the Greeks that Media was among the provinces a second time conquered and brought to subjection.

The difficulty of ascertaining the sources of our narrative is still further increased in no inconsiderable degree by the fact that the books of Ctesias are lost, and that Diodorus has not drawn immediately from them, but from a reproduction of Ctesias' account of Assyria. Yet the express references to the statements of Ctesias which Diodorus found in his authority, as well as fragments relating to the subject which have been elsewhere preserved, allow us to fix with tolerable accuracy what belongs to Ctesias in this narrative, and what Clitarchus, the renewer of his work, whom Diodorus had before him, has added.¹⁶ It is Ctesias who enumerates the nations which Ninus subdued (p. 3). With him Semiramis was the daughter of a Syrian and Derceto, who throws herself into the lake of Ascalon, and is then worshipped as a goddess there.¹⁷ To Ctesias belongs the nourishment of the child Semiramis by the doves of the goddess, her rise from the shepherd's hut to the throne of Assyria. He represents her as raising the mountain or the tomb of Ninus; he ascribes to her the building of Babylon, its mighty walls and royal citadels, the aqueducts, and the great temple of Bel. He represented her as marching to the Indus¹⁸ and afterwards towards Media; as making gardens there and building the road over the Zagrus. He represented her as raising the mounds over the graves of her lovers;¹⁹ he told of her sensuality, of the designs of her sons by the first marriage, and the plot of Ninyas; he recounted her end, which was as marvellous as her birth and her youth: she flew out of the palace up to heaven with a flock of doves. If the conquest of Egypt by Semiramis also belongs to Ctesias,²⁰ the march through Libya, and the oracle given to her in the oasis of Ammon, together with the version of her death, which rests on this oracle (she caused herself to disappear, i. e. put herself to death, in order to share in divine honours), belong to Clitarchus.

If, therefore, we may regard it as an established fact that our narrative has not arisen out of Assyrian or Babylonian tradition, that the views and additions of Greek origin introduced into it leave the centre untouched; if we have succeeded in discovering, to a tolerably satisfactory degree, the outlines of the narrative of Ctesias, the main question still remains to be answered: from what sources is this narrative to be derived? In the first attempt to criticise this account we find ourselves astonished by the certainty of the statements, the minute and, in part, extremely vivid descriptions of persons and incidents. Not only the great prince who founded the power of Assyria, and the queen whose beauty and courage enchanted him, are known to Ctesias in their words and actions. He can mention by name the man who nurtured Semiramis as a girl, and her first husband. He knows the names of the princes of the Arabs, Medes, Bactrians, and Indians with whom Ninus and Semiramis had to do. The number of the forces set in motion against Bactria and India are given accurately according to the weapon used. The arrangements of the battle beyond the Indus, the progress of the fight, the wounds carried away by Semiramis, the exchange of prisoners, are related with the fidelity of an eye-witness. Weight is obviously laid on the fact that after Semiramis had conquered and traversed Egypt and Ethiopia, after her unbroken success, the last great campaign against the Indians fails because she attacked them without receiving any previous injury. The message which Stabrobates sends to her, the letter which he writes, the reproaches he makes upon her life, the minute details which Ctesias gives of the relation of Onnes to Semiramis, of the conspiracy of the sons by this marriage, who felt themselves dishonoured by the conduct of their now aged mother, of the letter of the Mede, whose fidelity discovered the plot to her, of the speeches which Semiramis made on this occasion, carry us back to a description at once vivid and picturesque. If we take these pictures together with the account of Ctesias about the decline of the Assyrian kingdom, in which also very characteristic details appear, if we consider the style and the whole tone of these accounts of the beginning and the end of the Assyrian kingdom, we cannot avoid the conclusion that Ctesias has either invented the whole narrative or followed a poetic source.

The first inference is untenable, because the whole narrative bears the colour and stamp of the East in such distinctness that Ctesias cannot have invented it, and, on the other hand, it contains so much poetry that if Ctesias were the author of these descriptions we should have to credit him with high poetic gifts. We are, therefore, driven to adopt the second inference – that a poetic source lies at the base of his account. If, as was proved above, neither Assyrian nor Babylonian traditions can be taken into consideration, Assyrian and Babylonian poems are by the same reasoning put out of the question. On the other hand, we find in Ctesias' history of the Medes episodes of at least equal poetic power with his narrative of Ninus and Semiramis. Plutarch tells us that the great deeds of Semiramis were praised in songs.²¹ It is certain that they could not be the songs of Assyria, which had long since passed away, but we find, on the other hand, that there were minstrels at the court of the Medes, who sang to the kings at the banquet; it is, moreover, a Mede who warns Semiramis against Hyapates and Hydaspes; and the other names in the narrative of Ctesias bear the stamp of the Iranian language. Further, we find, not only in the fragments of Ctesias which have come down to us, but also in the narratives of Herodotus and other Greeks concerning the fortunes of the Medes and Persians down to the great war of Xerxes against the Hellenes, remains and traces of poems which can only have been sung amongst the Medes and Persians. We have, therefore, good grounds for assuming that it was Medo-Persian poems which could tell the story of Ninus and Semiramis, and that this part of the Medo-Persian poems was the source from which Ctesias drew. It was the contents of these poems recounted to him by Persians or Medes which he no doubt followed in this case, as in his further narratives of Parsondes and Sparethra, of the rebellion and struggle of Cyrus against Astyages, just as Herodotus before him drew from such poems his account of the rebellion of the Magi, the death of Cambyses, and the conspiracy of the seven Persians.

After severe struggles the princes and people of the Medes succeeded in casting down the Assyrian empire from the supremacy it had long maintained; they conquered and destroyed their old and supposed impregnable metropolis. If the tribes of the Medes had previously been forced to bow before the Assyrians, they took ample vengeance for the degradation. Hence the Median minstrels had a most excellent reason to celebrate this crowning achievement of their nation; it afforded them a most agreeable subject. If, in the earlier and later struggles of the Medes against Assyria, the bravery of individual heroes was often celebrated in song, these songs might by degrees coalesce into a connected whole, the close of which was the overthrow of the Assyrian empire. The Median poems which dealt with this most attractive material must have commenced with the rise of the Assyrian kingdom; they had the more reason for explaining and suggesting motives for this mighty movement, as it was incumbent on them to make intelligible the wreck of the resistance of their own nation to the onset of the Assyrians, and the previous subjection of Media. In these poems no doubt they described the cruelty of the conqueror, who crucified their king, with his wife and seven children (p. 3). The more brilliant, the more overpowering the might of Assyria, as they described it, owing to eminent sovereigns in the earliest times, the wider the extent of the empire, the more easily explained and tolerable became the subjection of the Medes, the greater the glory to have finally conquered. This final retribution formed the close; the striking contrast of the former exaltation and subsequent utter overthrow, brought about by Median power and bravery, formed the centre of these poems.

The prince of the Assyrians whose success is unfailing till he finds himself checked in Bactria, the woman of unknown origin found in the desert, fostered by herdsmen, and raised from the lowest to the most elevated position,²² who in bravery surpasses the bravest, who outdoes the deeds of Ninus, whose charms allure to destruction every one who approaches her, who makes all whom she favours her slaves in order to slay them, who without regard to her years makes every youth her lover, and is, nevertheless, finally exalted to the gods – are these forms due to the mere imagination of Medo-Persian minstrels, or what material lay at the base of these lively pictures?

The metropolis of the Assyrians was known to the Greeks as Ninus; in the inscriptions of the Assyrian kings it is called Ninua. From this the name of Ninus, the founder of the empire, as well as Ninyas, is obviously taken. In Herodotus²³ and the chronographers Ninus is the son of Belus, i. e. of Bel, the sky-god already known to us (I. 265). The monuments of Assyria show us that the Assyrians worshipped a female deity, which was at once the war-goddess and goddess of sexual love – Istar-Bilit. Istar was not merely the goddess of battles – bringing death and destruction, though also conferring victory; she was at the same time the goddess of sensual love. We have already learned to know her double nature. In turn she sends life, pleasure, and death. If Istar of Arbela was the goddess of battle, Istar of Nineveh was the goddess of love (I. 270). As the goddess of love, doves were sacred to her. In the temples of Syria there were statues of this goddess with a golden dove on the head; she was even invoked there under the name of Semiramis, a word which may mean High name, Name of the Height.²⁴

Thus the Medo-Persian minstrels have changed the form and legend of a goddess who was worshipped in Assyria, whose rites were vigorously cultivated in Syria, into a heroine, the founder of the Assyrian empire; just as in the Greek and German epos divine beings have undergone a similar change. This heroine is the daughter of a maiden who slays the youth whom she has made happy with her love, who gave her her daughter, i. e. she is the daughter of the goddess herself. Like her mother, the goddess, the daughter, Semiramis, inspires men with irresistible love, and thus makes them her slaves. At the same time, as a war-goddess, she surpasses all men in martial courage, and brings death to all who have surrendered to her. The origin of the goddess thus transformed into a heroine is unknown and supernatural; her characteristics are marvellous powers of victory and charms of love. The neighbourhood of Ascalon, where we found the oldest and most famous temples of the Syrian goddess of love (I. 360), was the scene of the origin of the miraculous child. The doves of the Syrian goddess nourish and protect her in the desert. She grows up in Syria, where the worship of the goddess of sexual love was widely spread. Whether Simmas, her foster-father, has arisen out of Samas, the sun-god of the Semites, and Onnes, the first husband of Semiramis, out of Anu, the god of Babel and Asshur, cannot indeed be decided. But in her relation to Onnes, whom her charm makes her slave, to whom she brings uninterrupted success, till in despair at her loss he takes his life, the Medo-Persian minstrels describe the glamour of love and the sensual pleasure, as well as the destruction which proceeds from her, in the liveliest and most forcible manner. Even after the Indian campaign she indulges her passions, and then puts those to death to whom she grants her favours. In this life the poems found a motive for the plots of her sons, from which she was at first rescued by the fidelity of a Mede, – a trait which again reveals the origin of the poem. As Semiramis was a heroine merely, and not a goddess, to the minstrels, they could represent her overthrow, her defeat and wounds, on the Indus, which afterwards was the limit of the conquests of the Medians and Persians. At the end of her life the higher style reappears, the supernatural origin comes in once more. She flies out of the palace with the doves of Bilit, which protected her childhood. In Ctesias the goddess of Ascalon is Derceto,²⁵ and therefore later writers could maintain that the kings of Assyria, the descendants or successors of Semiramis, were named Dercetadæ.²⁶

CHAPTER II
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ASSYRIAN KINGDOM

To relegate Ninus and Semiramis with all their works and deeds to the realm of fiction may appear to be a startling step, going beyond the limits of a prudent criticism. Does not Ctesias state accurately the years of the reigns: Ninus reigned, according to his statement, 52 years; Semiramis was 62 years old, and reigned 42 years? Do not the chronographers assure us that in Ctesias the successors of Ninus and Semiramis, from Ninyas to Sardanapalus, the last ruler over Assyria, 34 kings, were enumerated, and the length of their reigns accurately given, and has not Eusebius actually preserved this list? Since, at the same time, we find out, through Diodorus and the chronographers, as well as through this list, that Ctesias fixed the continuance of the Assyrian kingdom at more than 1300 years, or more exactly at 1306, and the fall of the kingdom took place according to his reckoning in the year 883 B.C., Ninus must on these dates have ascended the throne in the year 2189 B.C. (883 + 1306), and the reign of Semiramis commenced in 2137 B.C. (883 + 1254). Eusebius himself puts the accession of Ninus at 2057 B.C.²⁷

If in spite of these accurate statements we persist in refusing to give credit to Ctesias, Berosus remains, who, according to the evidence of the chronographers, dealt with the rule of Semiramis over Assyria. After mentioning the dynasty of the Medes which reigned over Babylon from 2458-2224 B.C., the dynasty of the Elamites (2224-1976 B.C.), of the Chaldæans (1976-1518 B.C.), and of the Arabs, who are said to have reigned over Babylon from the year 1518 to the year 1273 B.C., Berosus mentioned the rule of Semiramis over the Assyrians. "After this," so we find it in Polyhistor, "Berosus enumerates the names of 45 kings separately, and allotted to them 526 years. After them there was a king of the Chaldæans named Phul, and after him Sennacherib, the king of the Assyrians, whose son, Esarhaddon, then reigned in his place."²⁸ If we take these 45 kings for kings of Assyria, who ruled over this kingdom after Semiramis, then, by allowing the supplements of these series of kings previously mentioned (I. 247), the era of these 45 kings will begin in the year 1273 B.C. and end in 747 B.C., and the date of Semiramis will fall immediately before the year 1273 B.C. In the view of Herodotus, Ninus was at the head of the Assyrian empire, but not Semiramis. As already observed (p. 14), he mentions Semiramis as a queen of Babylon, and does not place her higher than the middle of the seventh century B.C.;²⁹ but he regards the dominion of Assyria over Upper Asia as commencing far earlier. Before the Persians the Medes ruled over Asia for 156 years; before them the Assyrians ruled for 520 years; the Medes were the first of the subject nations who rebelled against the Assyrians; the rest of the nations followed their example. As the Median empire fell before the attack of the Persians in 558 B.C., the beginning of the Median empire would fall in the year 714 B.C. (558 + 156), and consequently the beginning of the Assyrian kingdom in the year 1234 B.C. (714 + 520), i. e. four or five decades later than Berosus puts the death of Semiramis. For the date of the beginning of the Assyrian dominion Herodotus and Berosus would thus be nearly in agreement. It has been assumed that the 45 kings whom the latter represents as following Semiramis were kings of Assyria, who ruled at the same time over Babylon, and were thus regarded as a Babylonian dynasty. This agreement would be the more definite if it could be supposed that, according to the view of Herodotus, the beginning of the 156 years which he gives to the Median empire was separated by an interval of some decades from the date of their liberation from the power of the Assyrians. In this case the empire of the Assyrians over Asia would not have commenced very long before the year 1273 B.C., and would have extended from that date over Babylonia. In complete contradiction to this are the statements of Ctesias, which carry us back beyond 2000 B.C. for the commencement of the Assyrian empire. They cannot be brought into harmony with the statements of Herodotus, even if the time allotted by Ctesias to the Assyrian empire (1306 years) is reckoned from the established date of the conquest of Nineveh by the Medes and Babylonians (607 B.C.). The result of such a calculation (607 + 1306) carries us back to 1913 B.C., a date far higher than Herodotus and Berosus give.

Is it possible in any other way to approach more closely to the beginning of the Assyrian kingdom, the date of its foundation, or the commencement of its conquests? We have already seen how the Pharaohs of Egypt, after driving out the shepherds in the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries B.C., reduced Syria to subjection; how the first and third Tuthmosis, the second and third Amenophis, forced their way beyond Syria to Naharina. The land of Naharina, in the inscriptions of these kings, was certainly not the Aram Naharaim, the high land between the Euphrates and Tigris, in the sense of the books of the Hebrews. It was not Mesopotamia, but simply "the land of the stream (Nahar)." For the Hebrews also Nahar, i. e. river, means simply the Euphrates. It has been already shown that the arms of the Egyptians hardly went beyond the Chaboras to the east; and if the inscriptions of Tuthmosis III. represent him as receiving on his sixth campaign against the Syrians, i. e. about the year 1584 B.C., the tribute of Urn Assuru, i. e. of the chieftain of Asshur, consisting of 50 minæ of lapis-lazuli; if these inscriptions in the year 1579 once more mention among the tribute of the Syrians the tribute of this prince in lapis-lazuli, cedar-trunks, and other wood, it is still uncertain whether the chief of the Assyrians is to be understood by this prince. Had Tuthmosis III. really reached and crossed the Tigris, were Assuru Assyria, then from the description of this prince, and the payment of tribute in lapis-lazuli and cedar-trunks, we could draw the conclusion that Assyria in the first half of the sixteenth century B.C. was still in the commencement of its civilisation, whereas we found above that as early as the beginning of the twentieth century B.C. Babylonia was united into a mighty kingdom, and had made considerable advance in the development of her civilisation.

Our hypothesis was that the Semites, who took possession of the valley of the Euphrates, were immigrants from the south, from Arabia, and that this new population forced its way by successive steps up the river-valley. We were able to establish the fact that the earliest governments among the immigrants were formed on the lower course of the Euphrates, and that the centre of the state in these regions slowly moved upwards towards Babel. We found, further, that Semitic tribes went in this direction as far as the southern slope of the Armenian table-land.³⁰ In this way the region on the Tigris, afterwards called Assyria, was reached and peopled by the Semites. With the Hebrews Asshur, beside Arphaxad and Aram, beside Elam and Lud, is the seed of Shem. "From Shinar" (i. e. from Babylonia), we are told in Genesis, "Asshur went forth and built Nineveh, and Rehoboth-Ir, and Chalah, and Resen between Nineveh and Chalah, which is the great city." There is no reason to call in question this statement that Assyria was peopled and civilised from Babylonia. Language, writing, and religion exhibit the closest relationship and agreement between Babylonia and Assyria.

On the west bank of the Tigris, some miles above the confluence of the Lesser Zab, at the foot of a ridge of hills, lie the remains of an ancient city. The stamps on the tiles of these ruins tell us that the name of the city was Asshur. Tiglath Pilesar, a king of Assyria, the first of the name, whose reign, though we cannot fix the date precisely, may certainly be put about the year 1110 B.C., narrates in his inscriptions: The temple of the gods Anu and Bin, which Samsi-Bin, the son of Ismidagon, built at Asshur 641 years previously, had fallen down; King Assur-dayan had caused the ruins to be removed without rebuilding it. For 60 years the foundations remained untouched; he, Tiglath Pilesar, restored this ancient sanctuary. Tiles from this ruin on the Tigris, from this city of Asshur, establish also the fact that a prince named Samsi-Bin, son of Ismidagon, once ruled and built in this city of Asshur. They have the inscription: "Samsi-Bin, the son of Ismidagon, built the temple of the god Asshur."³¹ Hence Samsi-Bin built temples in the city of Asshur to the god Asshur as well as to the gods Anu and Bin. His date falls, according as the 60 years of the inscription of Tiglath Pilesar, during which the temple of Anu and Bin was not in existence, are added to the space of 641 years or included in them, either about the year 1800 or 1740 B.C.; the date of his father Ismidagon about the year 1830 or 1770 B.C.

In any case it is clear that a place of the name of Asshur, the site of which is marked by the ruins of Kileh-Shergat, was inhabited about the year 1800 B.C., and that about this time sanctuaries were raised in it. The name of the place was taken from the god specially worshipped there. As Babel (Gate of El) was named after the god El, Asshur was named after the god of that name. The city was Asshur's city, the land Asshur's land. Beside the city of Asshur, about 75 miles up the Tigris, there must have been at the time indicated a second place of the name of Ninua (Nineveh), the site of which is marked by the ruins of Kuyundshik and Nebbi Yunus (opposite Mosul), since, according to the statement of Shalmanesar I., king of Assyria, Samsi-Bin built another temple here to the goddess Istar.³² Ismidagon, as well as Samsi-Bin, is called in the inscription of Tiglath Pilesar I. "Patis of Asshur." The meaning of this title is not quite clear; the word is said to mean viceroy. If by this title a vice-royalty over the land of Asshur is meant, we may assume that Assyria was a colony of Babylonia – that it was under the supremacy of the kings of Babylon, and ruled by their viceroys. But since at a later period princes of Assyria called themselves "Patis of Asshur," as well as "kings of Asshur," the title may be explained as meaning that the old princes of Assyria called themselves viceroys of the god of the land, of the god Asshur. Moreover, it would be strange that a colony of Babylonia, which was under the supremacy of that country, should make its protecting god a deity different from that worshipped in Babylonia.

From this evidence we may assume that about the year 1800 B.C. a state named Asshur grew up between the Tigris and the Lesser Zab. This state must have passed beyond the lower stages of civilisation at the time when the princes erected temples to their gods at more than one chief place in their dominions, when they could busy themselves with buildings in honour of the gods after the example of the ancient princes of Erech and Nipur, of Hammurabi, and his successors at Babylon. With this result the statements in the inscriptions of Tuthmosis III do not entirely agree. Two hundred years after the time of Ismidagon and Samsi-Bin they speak only of the chief of Asshur, and of tribute in lapis-lazuli and tree-trunks; but this divergence is not sufficient to make us affirm with certainty that the "Assuru" of Tuthmosis has no reference whatever to Assyria. If we were able to place the earliest formation of a state on the Lower Euphrates about the year 2500 B.C., the beginnings of Assyria, according to the inferences to be drawn from the evidence of the first Tiglath Pilesar and the tiles of Kileh-Shergat, could not be placed later than the year 2000 B.C.

Beside Ismidagon and Samsi-Bin, the inscriptions of Tiglath Pilesar and the tiles of the ruins of Kileh-Shergat mention four or five other names of princes who belong to the early centuries of the Assyrian empire, but for whom we cannot fix any precise place. The date of the two kings, who on Assyrian tablets are the contemporaries of Binsumnasir of Babylon, Assur-nirar, and Nabudan, could not have been fixed with certainty if other inscriptions had not made us acquainted with the princes who ruled over Assyria in succession from 1460 – 1280 B.C.³³ From these we may assume that Assur-nirar and Nabudan must have reigned before this series of princes, i. e. before 1460 B.C., from which it further follows that from about the year 1500 B.C. onwards Assyria was in any case an independent state beside Babylon. We found above that the treaty which Assur-bil-nisi, king of Assyria, concluded about the year 1450 B.C. with Karaindas, king of Babylon, for fixing the boundaries, must have been preceded by hostile movements on the part of both kingdoms. We saw that Assur-bil-nisi's successor, Busur-Assur, concluded a treaty with the same object with Purnapuryas of Babylon, and that Assur-u-ballit, who succeeded Busur-Assur on the throne of Assyria, gave his daughter in marriage to Purnapuryas. In order to avenge the murder of Karachardas, the son of Purnapuryas by this marriage, who succeeded his father on the throne of Babylon, Assur-u-ballit invaded Babylonia and placed Kurigalzu, another son of Purnapuryas, on the throne. We might assume that about this time, i. e. about 1400 B.C., the borders of Assyria and Babylonia touched each other in the neighbourhood of the modern Aker-Kuf, the ancient Dur-Kurigalzu.³⁴ Assur-u-ballit, who restored the temple of Istar at Nineveh which Samsi-Bin had built, was followed by Pudiel, Bel-nirar, and Bin-nirar.³⁵ The last tells us, on a stone of Kileh-Shergat, that Assur-u-ballit conquered the land of Subari, Bel-nirar the army of Kassi, that Pudiel subjugated all the land as far as the distant border of Guti; he himself overcame the armies of Kassi, Guti, Lulumi and Subari; the road to the temple of the god Asshur, his lord, which had fallen down, he restored with earth and tiles, and set up his tablet with his name, "on the twentieth day of the month Muhurili, in the year of Salmanurris."³⁶

Bin-nirar's son and successor was Shalmanesar I., who ascended the throne of Assyria about 1340 B.C. We learnt above from Genesis, that "Asshur built the cities of Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Resen and Chalah." Assur-nasirpal, who ruled over Assyria more than 400 years after Shalmanesar I., tells us that "Shalmanesar the mighty, who lived before him, founded the ancient city of Chalah."³⁷ It is thus clear that Assyria before the year 1300 B.C. obtained a third residence in addition to the cities of Asshur and Nineveh. Like Asshur and Nineveh, it lay on the banks of the Tigris, about 50 miles to the north of Asshur, and 25 to the south of Nineveh. It was not, however, like Asshur, situated on the western bank of the river, but on the eastern, like Nineveh, a little above the junction of the Upper Zab, in a position protected by both rivers, and thus far more secure than Asshur. Shalmanesar also built in both the old residences of Asshur and Nineveh. Tiles of Kileh-Shergat bear the stamp, "Palace of Shalmanesar, son of king Bin-nirar."³⁸ His buildings in Nineveh are certified by an inscription, in which Shalmanesar says: "The temple of Istar, which Samsi-Bin, the prince who was before me, built, and which my predecessor Assur-u-ballit restored, had fallen into decay in the course of time. I built it up again from the ground to the roof. The prince who comes after me and sees my cylinder (p. 37), and sets it again in its place, as I have set the cylinder of Assur-u-ballit in its place, him may Istar bless; but him who destroys my monument may Istar curse and root his name and race out of the land."³⁹ In the same inscription Shalmanesar calls himself conqueror of Niri, Lulumi and Musri, districts for which – at any rate for the two last – we shall have to look in the neighbourhood of Nineveh, in the chain of the Zagrus. The son of Shalmanesar I. was Tiglath Adar; he completed the restoration of the temple of Istar at Nineveh, and fought with such success against Nazimurdas of Babylon that he placed on his seal this inscription: "Tiglath Adar, king of the nations, son of Shalmanesar, king of Asshur, has conquered the land of Kardunias." But he afterwards lost this very seal to the Babylonians, who placed it as a trophy in the treasure-house of Babylon (about 1300 B.C.).⁴⁰

These are the beginnings of the Assyrian kingdom according to the indications of the monuments. After the series of kings from Assur-bil-nisi to Tiglath Adar, whose dates come down from about the year 1460 to about 1280 B.C., there is a gap in our knowledge of some decades. After this we hear at first of new struggles with Babylon. In these Belkudurussur of Assyria (about 1220 B.C.) lost his life. The Babylonians, led by their king, Binpaliddin, invaded Assyria with a numerous army in order to take the city of Asshur. But Adarpalbitkur, the successor of Belkudurussur, succeeded in forcing them to retire to Babylon.⁴¹ Of Adarpalbitkur his fourth successor proudly declares that "he was the protector of the might of Asshur, that he put an end to his weakness in his land, that he arranged well the army of the land of Assyria."⁴² His son, Assur-dayan (about 1180 B.C.) was able to remove the war again into the land of Babylonia; he claims to have carried the booty from three places in Babylonia – Zab, Irriya and Agarsalu – to Assyria.⁴³ It was he who had carried away the ruins of the fallen temple which Samsi-Bin had built at Asshur to Anu and Bin, but had not erected it again. According to the words of his great-grandson, "he carried the exalted sceptre, and prospered the nation of Bel; the work of his hands and the gifts of his fingers pleased the great gods; he attained great age and long life."⁴⁴ Of Assur-dayan's son and successor, Mutakkil-Nebu (about 1160 B.C.), we only find that "Asshur, the great lord, raised him to the throne, and upheld him in the constancy of his heart."⁴⁵ Mutakkil-Nebu's son, Assur-ris-ilim (between 1150 and 1130 B.C.) had to undergo severe struggles against the Babylonians, who repeatedly invaded Assyria under Nebuchadnezzar I. At length Assur-ris-ilim succeeded in repulsing Nebuchadnezzar, and took from him 40 (50) chariots of war with a banner. Tiglath Pilesar, the son of Assur-ris-ilim, says of the deeds of his father, doubtless with extreme exaggeration, "he conquered the lands of the enemy, and subjugated all the hostile lands."⁴⁶

The tiles of a heap of ruins at Asshur bear the inscription, "Tiglath Pilesar, the favoured of Asshur, has built and set up the temple of his lord the god Bin." At the four corners of the foundation walls of this building were discovered four octagonal cylinders of clay, about a foot and a half in height, on the inscriptions of which this king repeats the narrative of the deeds of the first five years of his life. He restored the royal dwelling-places and the fortresses of the land which were in a bad condition, and planted again the forests of the land of Asshur; he renovated the habitation of the gods, the temples of Istar and Bilit in the city of Asshur. At the beginning of his reign Anu and Bin, his lords, had bidden him set up again the temple which Samsi-Bin had once built for them. This he accomplished; he caused the two great deities to enter into their high dwelling-places and rejoiced the heart of their great divinity. "May Anu and Bin grant me prosperity for ever, may they bless the work of my hands, may they hear my prayer and lead me to victory in war and in fight, may they subdue to my dominion all the lands which rise up against me, the rebellious nations and the princes, my rivals, may they accept my sacrificial offerings for the continuance and increase of my race; may it be the will of Asshur and the great gods to establish my race as firm as the mountains to the remotest days."⁴⁷

These cylinders tell us of the campaign of Tiglath Pilesar. First he defeated 20,000 Moschi (Muskai) and their five kings. He marched against the land of Kummukh, which rebelled against him; even that part of the inhabitants which fled into a city beyond the Tigris which they had garrisoned he overcame after crossing the Tigris. He also conquered the people of Kurkhië (Kirkhië) who came to their help; he drove them into the Tigris and the river Nami, and took prisoner in the battle Kiliantaru, whom they had made their king; he conquered the land of Kummukh throughout its whole extent and incorporated it with Assyria.⁴⁸ After this he marched against the land of Kurkhië; next he crossed the Lower Zab and overcame two districts there. Then he turned against the princes of the land of Nairi (he puts the number of these at 23); these, and the princes who came from the upper sea to aid them, he conquered, carried off their flocks, destroyed their cities, and imposed on them a tribute of 1200 horses and 2000 oxen. These battles in the north were followed by a campaign in the west. He invaded the land of Aram, which knew not the god Asshur, his lord;⁴⁹ he marched against the city of Karkamis, in the land of the Chatti; he defeated their warriors on the east of the Euphrates; he crossed the Euphrates in pursuit of the fugitives and there destroyed six cities. Immediately after this the king marched again to the East, against the lands of Khumani and Musri and imposed tribute upon them.

"Two-and-forty lands and their princes," so the cylinders inform us, "from the banks of the Lower Zab as far as the bank of the Euphrates, the land of the Chatti, and the upper sea of the setting sun, all these my hand has reached since my accession; one after the other I have subjugated them; I have received hostages from them and laid tribute upon them."⁵⁰ "This temple of Anu and Bin and these towers," so the inscription of the cylinders concludes, "will grow old; he who in the succession of the days shall be king in my place at a remote time, may he restore them and place his name beside mine, then will Anu and Bin grant to him prosperity, joy and success in his undertakings. But he who hides my tablets, and erases or destroys them, or puts his name in the place of mine, him will Anu and Bin curse, his throne will they bring down, and break the power of his dominion, and cause his army to flee; Bin will devote his land to destruction, and will spread over it poverty, hunger, sickness, and death, and destroy his name and his race from the earth. On the twenty-ninth day of Kisallu, in the year of In-iliya-allik."⁵¹

In memory of his achievements against the land of Nairi, Tiglath Pilesar also set up a special monument. On a rock at one of the sources of the Eastern Tigris near Karkar we see his image hewn in relief. He wears the tall cap or kidaris; the hair and beard are long and curled; the robe falls in deep folds to the ancles. The inscription runs: "By the grace of Asshur, Samas and Bin, the great gods, my lords, I, Tiglath Pilesar, am ruler from the great sea of the west land (mat acharri) to the lake of the land of Nairi. Three times I have marched to the land of Nairi."⁵² The first subjugation of this district could not, therefore, have been complete.

As this monument proves, Tiglath Pilesar's campaigns could not have ended with the fifth year of his reign. From the synchronistic tablets we can ascertain that he had to undergo severe struggles with the Babylonians. Marduk-nadin-akh of Babylon invaded Assyria, crossed the Tigris, and the battle took place on the Lower Zab. In the next year, according to the same tablets, Tiglath Pilesar is said to have taken the border-fortresses of Babylon, Dur-Kurigalzu, Sippara, Babili and Upi (Opis ?).⁵³ However this may be, Tiglath Pilesar in the end was at a disadvantage in his contest with the Babylonians. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, tells us, "The gods of the city Hekali, which Marduk-nadin-akh, king of the land of Accad, had taken in the time of Tiglath Pilesar, king of Asshur, and carried to Babylon 418 years previously, I have caused to be brought back again from Babylon and put up again in their place." A Babylonian tablet from the tenth year of Marduk-nadin-akh of Babylon appears to deal with loans on conquered Assyrian territory.⁵⁴

When Tiglath Pilesar ascended the throne about the year 1130 B.C. the empire of Assyria, as his inscriptions show, had not as yet made any extensive conquests beyond the circle of the native country. The Muskai, i. e. the Moschi, whom we have found on the north-western slopes of the Armenian mountains, against whom Tiglath Pilesar first fought, had forced their way, as the cylinders tell us, into the land of Kummukh.⁵⁵ As the inhabitants of the land of Kummukh are conquered on the Tigris and forced into it, while others escape over the Tigris and defend a fortified city on the further side of the river, as the land itself is then incorporated with Assyria, we must obviously look for it at no great distance to the north on both shores of the Upper Tigris. We shall hardly be in error, therefore, if we take this land to be the district afterwards called Gumathene, on the Tigris, which Ammianus describes as a fruitful and productive land, i. e. as the canton of Amida.⁵⁶ The next conflicts of Tiglath Pilesar took place on the Lower Zab, i. e. at the south-eastern border of the Assyrian country. Further to the south, on the Zagrus, perhaps in the district of Chalonitis, or between the Lower Zab and the Adhim, or at any rate to the east, we must look for the land of Khumani and the land of Musri. The image at Karkar, Tiglath Pilesar's monument of victory, gives us information about the position of the land of Nairi. It comprises the mountain cantons between the Eastern Tigris and the upper course of the Great Zab, where that river traverses the land of Arrapachitis (Albak). The lake of the land of Nairi, to which the inscription of Karkar extends the rule of Tiglath Pilesar, and the upper sea from which auxiliaries come to the princes of the land of Nairi, are both, no doubt, Lake Van. The inhabitants of Nairi are not like those of the land of Kummukh, incorporated with Assyria, they have merely to pay a moderate tribute in horses and oxen. The campaign of Tiglath Pilesar against Karkamis (Karchemish) proves that the dominion of Assyria before his reign did not reach the Euphrates. He marches against the land of Aram and has then to fight with the army of Karchemish on this side, i. e. on the east side of the Euphrates; the results which he obtained on this campaign to the west of the Euphrates he does not himself rate very highly. We saw that in the end he remained at a disadvantage in his contest with Babylon. On the other hand, in campaigns which took place in years subsequent to the attempt against Karchemish, he must have forced his way to the west far beyond the Euphrates, in order to be able to boast on the monument at Karkar "that he ruled from the sea of Nairi as far as the great sea of the west land," i. e. to the Mediterranean. Hence we have to assume that he went forth from Karchemish westwards almost as far as the mouth of the Orontes. We should be more accurately informed on this matter if the fragment of an inscription on an obelisk beside an inscription of Assurnasirpal, who reigned more than 200 years after Tiglath Pilesar, could be referred to Tiglath Pilesar. The fragment speaks in the third person of the booty gained in hunting by a king, which is given in nearly the same totals as the results of Tiglath Pilesar's hunts on his cylinders. These represent him as slaying 120 lions and capturing 800. The fragment speaks of 120 and 800 lions, of Amsi killed in Charran on the Chabor, of Rim whom the king slew before the land of Chatti at the foot of Mount Labnani (Lebanon), of a crocodile (nasukh) which the king of Musri sent as a present. The hunter, it is said, ruled from the city of Babylon, in the land of Accad, as far as the land of the west (mat acharri).⁵⁷

According to the inscriptions on the cylinders the land of Aram lies to the east of the Euphrates; the city of Karchemish lies on the west bank in the land of the Chatti. The Chatti are the Hittites of the Hebrews, the Cheta of the Egyptians. We found that the inscriptions of Sethos and Ramses II. extended the name of the Cheta as far as the Euphrates (I. 151, 152). But although the kingdom of the Hittites had fallen two centuries before Tiglath Pilesar crossed the Euphrates, the name still clung to this region, as the inscriptions of Tiglath Pilesar and his successors prove, more especially to the region from Hamath and Damascus as far as Lebanon. The land of the west (mat acharri) in the strict sense is, of course, to the Assyrians, from their point of view, the coast of Syria. Whatever successes Tiglath Pilesar may have gained in this direction, they were of a transitory nature.

The first of his sons to succeed him was Assur-bel-kala, whose reign we may fix in the years 1100-1080 B.C. With three successive kings of Babylon, Marduk-sapik-kullat, Saduni (?), and Nebu-zikir-iskun, he came into contact, peaceful or hostile. With the first he made a treaty of peace, with Saduni he carried on war, with Nebu-zikir-iskun he again concluded a peace, which fixed the borders. This was confirmed by intermarriage;⁵⁸ Assur-bel-kala married his daughter to Nebu-zikir-iskun, while the latter gave his daughter to Assur-bel-kala. Of the exploits of his successor, Samsi-Bin II. (1080-1060 B.C.), a second son of Tiglath Pilesar, we have no account.⁵⁹ We cannot maintain with certainty whether Assur-rab-amar, of whom Shalmanesar II. tells us that he lost two cities on the Euphrates which Tiglath Pilesar had taken,⁶⁰ was the direct successor of Samsi-Bin.

After this, for the space of more than 100 years (1040-930), there is again a gap in our knowledge. Not till we reach Assur-dayan II., who ascended the throne of Assyria about the year 930 B.C., can we again follow the series of the Assyrian kings downwards without interruption. This Assur-dayan II. is followed by Bin-nirar II., about 900; Bin-nirar, by Tiglath Adar II., who reigned from 889-883 B.C. He had to contend once more against the land of Nairi, i. e. against the region between the Eastern Tigris and the upper course of the Upper Zab. As a memorial of the successes which he gained here he caused his image to be carved beside that of Tiglath Pilesar in the rocks at Karkar (see below). Besides this, there is in existence from his time a pass, i. e. a small tablet, with the inscription, "Permission to enter into the palace of Tiglath Adar, king of the land of Asshur, son of Bin-nirar, king of the land of Asshur."⁶¹

Neither at the commencement nor in the course of the history of Assyria do the monuments know of a king Ninus, a queen Semiramis, or of any warlike queen of this kingdom; they do not even mention any woman as standing independently at the head of Assyria. Once, it is true, we find the name Semiramis in the inscriptions in the form Sammuramat. Sammuramat was the wife of king Bin-nirar III., who ruled over Assyria from the year 810-781 B.C. On the pedestal of two statues, which an officer of this king, the prefect of Chalah, dedicated to the god Nebo, the inscription is: "To Nebo, the highest lord of his lords, the protector of Bin-nirar, king of Asshur, and protector of Sammuramat, the wife of the palace, his lady." The name of Ninyas is quite unknown to the monuments, and of the names of the 33 kings which Ctesias gives, with their names and reigns as successors of Ninyas down to the overthrow of the kingdom and Sardanapalus (p. 26), – unless we identify the last name in the list, that of Sardanapalus, with the Assurbanipal of the inscriptions, i. e. with the ruler last but one or two according to the records, – no single one agrees with the names of the monuments, which, moreover, give a higher total than six-and-thirty for the reigns of the Assyrian kings. The list of Ctesias appears to have been put together capriciously or merely invented; the lengths of the reigns are pure imagination, and arranged according to certain synchronisms.

Not less definite is the evidence of the monuments that the pre-eminence of Assyria over Upper Asia cannot have commenced in the year 2189 or 1913 B.C., as Ctesias asserts, or as may be assumed from his data, nor in 1273, as has been deduced from the statements of Berosus, nor finally in the year 1234, according to Herodotus' statements (p. 27). Though we are able to find only approximately the dates of the kings of Assyria, whose names and deeds we have passed in review, the result is, nevertheless, that the power of Assyria in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries did not go far beyond the native country – that her forces by no means surpassed those of Babylon – that precisely in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries B.C. the kingdom of Babylon was at least as strong as that of Assyria – that even towards the close of the twelfth century Tiglath Pilesar I. could gain no success against Babylon – that his successors sought to establish peaceful relations with Babylonia. There is just as little reason to maintain the period of 520 years which Herodotus allows for the Assyrian empire over Asia. This cannot in any case be assumed earlier than the date of Tiglath Pilesar I., who did at least cross the Euphrates and enter Northern Syria. The beginning of this empire would, therefore, be about 1130 B.C., not 1234 B.C. The date also which Herodotus gives for the close of this empire (before 700 B.C.) cannot, as will be shown, be maintained. According to this datum the decline and fall of Assyria must have began with the period in which, as a fact, she rose to the proudest height and extended her power to the widest extent. The period of 520 years can only be kept artificially by reckoning it upwards from the year 607 B.C., the year of the overthrow of the Assyrian empire; then it brings us from this date to 1127 B.C., i. e. to the time of Tiglath Pilesar I. But we saw that the conquests of Tiglath Pilesar did not extend very far, that his successes west of the Euphrates were of a transitory nature; in no case could a dominion of Assyria over Babylon be dated from his reign.

The complete agreement of the Assyrian and Babylonian style and civilisation is proved most clearly by the monuments. The names of the princes of Assyria are formed analogously to those of the Babylonians; the names and the nature of the deities which the Assyrians and Babylonians worship are the same. In Assyria we meet again with Anu the god of the high heaven, Samas the sun-god, Sin the moon-god, Bin (Ramman) the god of the thunder; of the spirits of the planets Adar, the lord of Saturn, Nebo, the god of Mercury, and Istar, the lady of Venus, in her double nature of destroyer and giver of fruit, reappear. There is only one striking difference: the special protector of Assyria, Asshur, the god of the land, stands at the head of the gods in the place of El of the Babylonians. He it is after whom the land and the oldest metropolis is named, whose representatives the oldest princes of Assyria appear to have called themselves. The name of Asshur is said to mean the good or the kind;⁶² which may even on the Euphrates have been an epithet of El, which on the Tigris became the chief name of the deity. As the ancient princes of Ur and Erech, of Nipur and Senkereh, as the kings of Babel – so also the kings of Assyria, as far back as our monuments allow us to go – built temples to their gods; like them they mark the tiles of their buildings with their names; like the kings of Babel, they cause inscriptions to be written on cylinders, intended to preserve the memory of their buildings and achievements, and then placed in the masonry of their temples. The language of the inscriptions of Assyria differs from those of the Babylonian inscriptions, as one dialect from another; the system of writing is the same. The population of Assyria transferred their language and writing, their religious conceptions and modes of worship, from the Lower Euphrates to the Upper Tigris. If the princes of Erech, Nipur and Babylon had to repel the attacks of Elam, the Assyrian land, a region of moderate extent, lay under the spurs of the Armenian table-land, under the ranges of the Zagrus. The struggle against the tribes of these mountains, in the Zagrus and in the region of the sources of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and the stubborn resistance of these tribes appears to have strengthened the warlike powers of the Assyrians, and these ceaseless campaigns trained them to that military excellence which finally, after a period of exercise which lasted for centuries, won for them the preponderance over Mesopotamia and Syria, over Babylonia and Elam, no less than over Egypt.

CHAPTER III
THE NAVIGATION AND COLONIES OF THE PHENICIANS

At the time when Babylonia, on the banks of the Euphrates, flourished under the successors of Hammurabi in an ancient and peculiar civilisation, and Assyria was struggling upwards beside Babylonia on the banks of the Tigris, strengthening her military power in the Armenian mountains and the ranges of the Zagrus, and already beginning to try her strength in more distant campaigns, a Semitic tribe succeeded in rising into eminence in the West also, in winning and exerting a deep-reaching influence on distant and extensive lands. It was a district of the most moderate extent from which this influence proceeded, its dominion was of a different kind from that of the Babylonians and Assyrians; it grew up on an element which elsewhere appeared not a favourite with the Semites, and sought its points of support in settlements on distant islands and coasts. By this tribe the sea was actively traversed and with ever-increasing boldness; by circumspection, by skill, by tough endurance and brave ventures it succeeded in extending its dominion in ever-widening circles, and making the sea the instrument of its wealth and the bearer of its power.

On the coasts of Syria were settled the tribes of the Arvadites, Giblites and Sidonians (I. 344). Their land extended from the mouth of the Eleutherus (Nahr el Kebir) in the north to the promontory of Carmel in the south. A narrow strip of coast under Mount Lebanon, from 10 to 15 miles in breadth and some 150 miles in length, was all that they possessed. Richly watered by the streams sent down from Lebanon to the sea, the small plains formed round their mouths and separated by the spurs of the mountain ranges are of the most abundant fertility. The Eleutherus is followed to the south by the Adonis (Nahr el Ibrahim), and this by the Lycus (Nahr el Kelb); then follow the Tamyras (Nahr Damur), the Bostrenus (Nahr el Auli⁶³), the Belus (the Sihor Libnath of the Hebrews, now Nahr Naman), and lastly the Kishon. Above the shore rise hills clothed with date-palms, vines and olives; higher up on Lebanon splendid mountain pastures spread out, and above these we come to the vast forests (I. 338) which provide shade in the glowing heat, as Tacitus says,⁶⁴ and to the bright snow-fields which crown the summit of Lebanon. Ammianus speaks of the region under Lebanon as full of pleasantness and beauty. The upper slopes of the mountain furnish pasture and forests; in the rocks are copper and iron. The high mountain-range, which sharply divided the inhabitants of the coast from the interior (at a much later time, even after the improvements of the Roman Cæsars, there were, as there are now, nothing but mule-tracks across Lebanon⁶⁵), lay behind the inhabitants of the coast, and before them lay the sea. At an early period they must have become familiar with that element. The name of the tribe which the Hebrew Scriptures call the "first-born of Canaan" means "fishermen." The places on the coast found the sea the easiest means of communication. Thus the sea, so rich in islands, the long but proportionately narrow basin which lay before the Sidonians, Giblites and Arvadites, would soon attract to longer voyages the fishermen and navigators of the coast.

We found that the beginning of civilisation in Canaan could not be placed later than about the year 2500 B.C., and we must therefore allow a considerable antiquity to the cities of the Sidonians, Giblites, Arvadites, Zemarites and Arkites. The settlement on the site of Sidon was founded, no doubt, before the year 2000 B.C., and that on the site of Byblus cannot certainly be placed later than this period.⁶⁶ The campaigns which the Pharaohs undertook against Syria and the land of the Euphrates after the expulsion of the Shepherds could not leave these cities unmoved. If the Zemar of the inscriptions of Tuthmosis III. is Zemar (Simyra) near Aradus, and Arathutu is Aradus itself, the territories of these cities were laid waste by this king in his sixth campaign (about the year 1580 B.C.); if Arkatu is Arka, south of Aradus, this place must have been destroyed in his fifteenth campaign (about the year 1570 B.C.). Sethos I. (1440-1400 B.C.) subdued the land of Limanon (i. e. the region of Lebanon), and caused cedars to be felled there. One of his inscriptions mentions Zor, i. e. Tyre, among the cities conquered by him. The son and successor of Sethos I., Ramses II., also forced his way in the first decades of the fourteenth century as far as the coasts of the Phenicians. At the mouth of the Nahr el Kelb, between Sidon and Berytus, the rocks on the coast display the memorial which he caused to be set up in the second and third year of his reign in honour of the successes obtained in this region.⁶⁷ In the fifth year of his reign Ramses, with the king of the Cheta' defeats the king of Arathu in the neighbourhood of Kadeshu on the Orontes, and Ramses III. about the year 1310 B.C., mentions beside the Cheta who attack Egypt the people of Arathu, by which name, in the one case as in the other, may be meant the warriors of Aradus.⁶⁸ If Arathu, like Arathutu, is Aradus, it follows, from the position which Ramses II. and III. give to the princes of Arathu, that beside the power to which the kingdom of the Hittites had risen about the middle of the fifteenth century B.C., and which it maintained to the end of the fourteenth,⁶⁹ the Phenician cities had assumed an independent position. The successes of the Pharaohs in Syria come to an end in the first decades of the fourteenth century. Egypt makes peace and enters into a contract of marriage with the royal house of the Cheta; the Syrians obtain even the preponderance against Egypt (I. 152), to which Ramses III. towards the end of the fourteenth century was first able to oppose a successful defence.

The overthrow of the kingdom of the Hittites, which succumbed to the attack of the Amorites (I. 348) soon after the year 1300 B.C., must have had a reaction on the cities of the Phenicians. Expelled Hittites must have been driven to the coast-land, or have fled thither, and in the middle of the thirteenth century the successes gained by the Hebrews who broke in from the East, over the Amorites, the settlement of the Hebrews on the mountains of the Amorites, must again have thrown the vanquished, i. e. the fugitives of this nation, towards the coast.

With this retirement of the older strata of the population of Canaan to the coast is connected the movement which from this period emanates from the coasts of the Phenicians, and is directed towards the islands of the Mediterranean and the Ægean. It is true that on this subject only the most scanty statements and traces, only the most legendary traditions have come down to us, so that we can ascertain these advances only in the most wavering outlines. One hundred miles to the west off the coast of Phœnicia lies the island of Cyprus. On the southern coast of this island, which looked towards Phœnicia, stood the city of Citium, Kith and Chith in the inscriptions of the Phenicians, and apparently Kittii in those of the Assyrians. Sidonian coins describe Citium as a daughter of Sidon.⁷⁰ After this city the whole island is known among the Semites as Kittim and Chittim; this name is even used in a wider sense for all the islands of the Mediterranean.⁷¹ The western writers state that before the time of the Trojan war Belus had conquered and subjugated the island of Cyprus, and that Citium belonged to Belus.⁷² The victorious Belus is the Baal of the Phenicians. The date of the Trojan war is of no importance for the settlement of the Phenicians in Cyprus, for this statement is found in Virgil only. More important is the fact that the settlers brought the Babylonian cuneiform writing to Cyprus. This became so firmly rooted in use that even the Greeks, who set foot on the island at a far later time, scarcely before the end of the ninth century, adopted this writing, which here meanwhile had gone through a peculiar development, and had become a kind of syllabic-writing, and used it on coins and in inscriptions even in the fifth century B.C.⁷³ The settlement of the Sidonians in Cyprus must therefore have taken place before the time in which the alphabetic writing, i. e. the writing specially known as Phenician, was in use in Syria, and hence at the latest before 1100 B.C. How long before this time the settlement of the Phenicians in Cyprus took place can, perhaps, be measured by the fact that the Cyprian alphabet is a simplification of the old Babylonian cuneiform writing. The simplified form would undoubtedly have been driven out by the far more convenient alphabetic writing of the Phenicians if the Cyprian writing had not become fixed in use in this island before the rise of the alphabetic writing. Further, since the Phenicians, as we shall see, set foot on the coast of Hellas from about the year 1200 B.C. onwards, we must place the foundation of the colonies on the coasts nearest them, the settlement in Cyprus, before this date, about the middle of the thirteenth century B.C.

What population the Phenicians found on Cyprus it is not possible to discover. Herodotus tells us that the first inhabitants of the island were Ethiopians, according to the statements of the Cyprians. It is beyond a doubt that not Citium only, but the greater part of the cities of the island were founded by the Phenicians, and that the Phenician element became the ruling element of the whole island.⁷⁴ It is Belus who is said to have conquered Cyprus, and to whom the city of Citium is said to belong; i. e. Citium worshipped the god Baal. At Amathus, to the west of Citium, on the south coast of the island, which was called the oldest city on Cyprus, and which nevertheless bears a distinctly Semitic name (Hamath), Adonis and Ashera-Astarte were worshipped,⁷⁵ and these deities had also one of their oldest and most honoured seats of worship at Paphos (Pappa in the inscriptions), on the west coast. The Homeric poems represent Aphrodite as hastening to her altar at Paphos in Cyprus. Pausanias observes that the Aphrodite of Cyprus was a warlike Aphrodite,⁷⁶ and as the daughters of the Cyprians surrendered themselves to the foreign seamen in honour of this goddess,⁷⁷ it was the Astarte-Ashera of the Phenicians who was worshipped at Amathus and Paphos. The Zeus of the Cyprian city Salamis (Sillumi in the inscriptions of the Assyrians), to whom, according to the evidence of western writers, human sacrifices were offered, can only be Baal Moloch, the evil sun-god of the Phenicians. In the beginning of the tenth century B.C. the cities of Cyprus stood under the supremacy of the king of Tyre.⁷⁸ The island was of extraordinary fertility. The forests furnished wood for ship-building; the mountains concealed rich veins of the metal which has obtained the name of copper from this island.⁷⁹ Hence it was a very valuable acquisition, an essential strengthening of the power of Sidon in the older, and Tyre in the later, period.

Following Zeno of Rhodes, who wrote the history of his home in the first half of the second century B.C.,⁸⁰ Diodorus tells us: The king of the Phenicians, Agenor, bade his son Cadmus seek his sister Europa,⁸¹ who had disappeared, and bring back the maiden, or not return himself to Phœnicia. Overtaken by a violent storm, Cadmus vowed a shrine to Poseidon. He was saved, and landed on the island of Rhodes, where the inhabitants worshipped before all other gods the sun, who had here begotten seven sons and among them Makar. Cadmus set up a temple in Rhodes to Poseidon, as he had vowed to do, and left behind Phenicians to keep up the service; but in the temple which belonged to Athena at Cnidus in Rhodes he dedicated a work of art, an iron bowl, which bore an inscription in Phenician letters, the oldest inscription which came from Phœnicia to the Hellenes. From Rhodes Cadmus came to Samothrace, and there married Harmonia. The gods celebrated this first marriage by bringing gifts, and blessing the married pair to the tones of heavenly music.⁸²

Ephorus says that Cadmus carried off Harmonia while sailing past Samothrace, and hence in that island search was still made for Harmonia at the festivals.⁸³ Herodotus informs us that Cadmus of Tyre, the son of Agenor, in his search for Europa, landed on the island of Thera, which was then called Callisto, and there left behind some Phenicians, either because the land pleased him or for some other reason. These Phenicians inhabited the island for eight generations before Theras landed there from Lacedæmon. The rest went to the island of Thasos and there built a temple to Heracles, which he had himself seen, and the city of Thasos. This took place five generations before Heracles the son of Amphitryon was born. After that Cadmus came to the land now called Bœotia, and the Phenicians who were with him inhabited the land and taught the Hellenes many things, among others the use of writing, "which as it seems to me the Hellenes did not possess before. They learnt this writing, as it was used by the Phenicians; in the course of time the form of the letters changed with the language. From these Phenicians the Ionians, among whom they dwelt, learnt the letters, altered their form a little, and extended their use. As was right, they called them Phenician letters, since the Phenicians had brought them into Greece. I have myself seen inscriptions in Cadmeian letters (i. e. from the time of Cadmus) in the temple of Ismenian Apollo at Thebes."⁸⁴ According to the narrative of Hellanicus, Cadmus received an oracle, bidding him follow the cow which bore on her back the sign of the full moon, and found a city where she lay down. Cadmus carried out the command, and when the cow lay down wearied, where Thebes now stands, Cadmus built there the Cadmeia (the citadel of Thebes).⁸⁵ According to the statement of Pherecydes Cadmus also built the city of Thebes.⁸⁶ With Hecatæus of Miletus Cadmus passes as the discoverer of letters; according to others he also discovered the making of iron armour and the art of mining.⁸⁷

The direction of the Phenician settlements, which proceeds in the Ægean sea from S.E. to N.W., cannot be mistaken in these legends. First Rhodes, then the Cyclades, then the islands on the Thracian coast, Samothrace and Thasos, were colonised; and at length, on the strait of Eubœa, the mainland of Hellas was trodden by the Phenicians, who are said to have gained precisely from this point a deep-reaching influence over the Hellenes. The legend of Cadmus goes far back among the Greeks. In the Homeric poems the inhabitants of Thebes are "Cadmeians." The Thebaid praised "the divine wisdom of Cadmus;" in the poems of Hesiod he leads home Harmonia, "the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite," and Pindar describes how the Muses sang for "the divine Cadmus, the wealthiest of mortals, when in seven-gated Thebes he led the ox-eyed Harmonia to the bridal-bed."⁸⁸ Agenor, the father of Cadmus, is a name which the Greeks have given to the Baal of the Phenicians.⁸⁹ Cadmus himself, the wealthiest of mortals, who leads home the daughter of a god and a goddess, – who celebrates the first marriage at which the gods assemble, bring gifts and sing, – whose wife was worshipped as the protecting goddess of Thebes,⁹⁰– whose daughters, Ino, Leucothea and Semele, are divine creatures, whom Zeus leads to the Elysian fields,⁹¹– can only be a god. He seeks the lost Europa, and is to follow the cow which bears the sign of the full moon. We know the moon-goddess of the Phenicians, who bears the crescent moon and cow's horns, the horned Astarte, who wears a cow's head, the goddess of battle and sensual desire, and thus the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. "The great temple of Astarte at Sidon," so we find in the book of the Syrian goddess, "belongs, as the Sidonians say, to Astarte; but a priest told me that it was a temple of Europa, the sister of Cadmus." The meaning of the word Europa has been discussed previously (I. 371). Cadmus, who seeks the lost moon-goddess, who at length finds and overcomes her, and celebrates with her the holy marriage, is the Baal Melkarth of the Phenicians. The death-bringing Istar-Astarte is changed into Bilit-Ashera, into the fruit-giving goddess;⁹² the gloomy Europa changes into Harmonia, the goddess of union, birth and increase, yet not without leaving to her descendants deadly gifts. It is the myth of Melkarth and Astarte which the Greeks present to us in the story of Cadmus; with this myth they have connected the foundation of the Phenician settlements in Rhodes, Thera, Samothrace, Thasos and Bœotia; they have changed it into the foundation of these colonies. The name Cadmus means the man of the East; to the Hebrews the Arabs who dwelt to the east of them were known as Beni Kedem, i. e. sons of the East.⁹³ To the Greeks the Phenicians were men of the East, just as to the English of the thirteenth century the merchants of Lubeck were Easterlings. The citadel of Thebes, which the men of the East built, preserved the name of Cadmus the son of the East, and kept it alive among the Greeks.

What we can gather from Grecian legend is confirmed by some statements of historians and by traces which tell of settlements of the Phenicians. Thucydides informs us that the Phenicians colonised most of the islands of the Ægean.⁹⁴ Diodorus has already told us with regard to Rhodes that in the temples of this island were Phenician works of art and inscriptions, and that in Rhodes the sun-god and the seven children which he begot there were worshipped. In the number eight made by these deities we can hardly fail to recognise the eight great deities of the Phenicians; the sun-god at their head is the Baal of the Phenicians (I. 357). And if Diodorus mentions Makar among the seven sons of the sun-god of Rhodes, – if according to others Rhodes, like Cyprus, was called Macaria, – Makar is a Greek form of the name Melkarth. We further learn that on the highest mountain summit in Rhodes, on Atabyris, Zeus was worshipped under the form of a bull, and that a human sacrifice was offered yearly to Cronos. In Atabyris we cannot fail to recognise the Semitic Tabor, i. e. the height. We found above that the Phenicians worshipped Baal under the form of a bull, and the Greeks are wont to denote Baal Moloch by the name of Cronos.⁹⁵ These forms of worship continued to exist even when at a later time Hellenic immigrants had got the upper hand in Rhodes. It was the Dorians who here met with resistance from the Phenicians at Camirus and Ialysus; they got the upper hand, but admitted Phenician families into their midst,⁹⁶ and continued their sacred rites. Diodorus informs us that the Phenicians whom Cadmus had left behind on Rhodes had formed a mixed community with the Ialysians, and that it was said that priests of their families had performed the sacred duties.⁹⁷ Even at a later time Rhodes stood in close relation with Phœnicia, especially with the city of Aradus.⁹⁸ Thus it happened that the colonies which the Rhodians planted in the seventh and sixth centuries in Sicily, Gela and Acragas, carried thither the worship of Zeus Atarbyrius. Zeus Atarbyrius was the protecting deity of Acragas, and human sacrifices were offered to his iron bull-image on the citadel of that city as late as the middle of the sixth century. The coins of Gela also exhibit a bull.⁹⁹ Of the island of Thera, Herodotus told us that the Phenicians colonised it and inhabited it for eight generations, i. e. for more than 250 years according to his computation. Herodotus names the chief of the Phenicians whom Cadmus left behind on Thera; others speak of the two altars which he erected there.¹⁰⁰ The descendants of these Phenicians were found here by the Greek settlers from Laconia. It is certain that even in the third century B.C. the island worshipped the hero Phœnix.¹⁰¹ Of the island of Melos we learn that it was occupied by Phenicians of Byblus, and named by them after their mother city;¹⁰² the island of Oliaros near Paros was, on the other hand, according to Heraclëides Ponticus, occupied by the Sidonians.¹⁰³ Strabo informs us that Samothrace was previously called Melite (Malta); from its height (the island is a mountain rising high in the sea and covered with oak forests; the summit reaches 5000 feet) it obtained the name of Samos, "for high places are called Sami;"¹⁰⁴ as a matter of fact the stem of the word of this meaning, like the name Melite, belongs to the Phenician language. Ephorus has already told us (p. 56) that the Samothracians sought for Harmonia at their festivals; Diodorus represents Cadmus as celebrating the marriage with Harmonia on Samothrace as well as at Thebes, and we learn from Herodotus that the Cabiri, i. e. the great gods of the Phenicians, were worshipped on Samothrace; votive tablets of the island dating from Roman times still bear the inscription, "to the great gods," i. e. to the Cabiri.¹⁰⁵ The islands of Imbros and Lemnos also worshipped the Cabiri; Lemnos especially worshipped Hephæstus, who had a leading place in this circle.¹⁰⁶ The island of Thasos is said, according to the statement of the Greeks, to have been called after a son of Phœnix, or Agenor, of the name of Thasos, who was consequently a brother of Cadmus. Herodotus saw on the island a temple which the Phenicians had built to Heracles, i. e. to Baal-Melkarth, and the mines which they had made on the coast opposite Samothrace; "they had overturned a great mountain in order to get gold from it."¹⁰⁷ Herodotus also tells us that the temple of Aphrodite Urania on the island of Cythera off the coast of Laconia was founded by the Phenicians, and Pausanias calls this temple the oldest and most sacred temple of Urania among the Hellenes; the wooden image in this temple exhibited the goddess in armour. Aphrodite Urania is with the Greeks the Syrian Aphrodite; if she was represented on Cythera in armour it is clear that she was worshipped there by the Phenicians as Astarte-Ashera, i. e. as the goddess of war and love.¹⁰⁸

Not in the islands only, but on the coasts of Hellas also, the Phenicians have left traces of their ancient occupation, especially in the form of worship belonging to them. On the isthmus of Corinth Melicertes, i. e. Melkarth, was worshipped as a deity protecting navigation; Corinthian coins exhibit him on a dolphin.¹⁰⁹ Aphrodite, whose shrine stood on the summit of Acrocorinthus, was worshipped by prostitution like the Ashera-Bilit of the Phenicians. In Attica also, in the deme of Athmonon, there was a shrine of the goddess of Cythera, which king Porphyrion, i. e. the purple man, the Phenician, is said to have founded there at a very ancient time "before king Actaeus."¹¹⁰ At Marathon, where Heracles was worshipped, and of whom the name represents the Phenician city Marathus, rose a fountain which had the name Makaria, i. e. Makar,¹¹¹ the name of Melkarth, which we have already met with in Cyprus and Rhodes, and shall meet with again. More plainly still do the tombs lately discovered in Hymettus at the village of Spata attest the ancient settlement of the Phenicians on the Attic coast. These are chambers dug deeply into the rock after the Phenician manner, with horizontal roofs after the oldest fashion of Phenician graves; and shafts lead down to them from the surface. The ornaments and works in glass, ivory, gold and brass discovered here, which are made after Babylonian and Egyptian models, can only have been brought by the Phenicians.¹¹² The citadel of Thebes, as has been said, retains the name of Cadmus; the poetry of the Greeks praised the mighty walls, the seven gates of Thebes. We know the number seven of the great Phenician gods; we can prove that the seven gates were dedicated to the gods of the sun, the moon and the five planets;¹¹³ and the Greeks have already admitted to us that they received the wearing of armour, the art of mining and masonry and finally their alphabet from Cadmus, i. e. from the Phenicians, the Cadmeans of Thebes.

In the Homeric poems Europa, the daughter of Phœnix, bears Minos to Zeus. The abode of Minos is the "great city" of Cnossus in Crete; he receives each nine years the revelations of his father Zeus; for his daughter Ariadne Dædalus adorns a dancing place at Cnossus. After his death Minos carries in the under world the golden sceptre, and by his decisions puts an end to the contentions of the shades.¹¹⁴ His descendants rule in Crete.¹¹⁵ Later accounts tell us that Zeus in the form of a bull carried off Europa from Phœnicia, and bore her over the sea to Crete. The wife of her son Minos, Pasiphaë, then united with a bull which rose out of the sea, and brought forth the Minotaur, i. e. the Minos-bull, a man with a bull's head.¹¹⁶ The son of Minos, Androgeos (earth-man) or Eurygyes (Broadland), was destroyed in Attica by the bull of Marathon, who consumed him in his flames.¹¹⁷ To avenge the death of Androgeos Minos seized Megara, and blight and famine compelled the Athenians to send, in obedience to the command of Minos, seven boys and seven girls every ninth year to Crete, who were then sacrificed to the Minotaur.¹¹⁸ Others narrate that Hephæstus had given Minos a man of brass, who wandered round the island and kept off foreign vessels, and clasped to his glowing breast all who were disobedient to Minos.¹¹⁹ When Dædalus retired before the wrath of Minos from Crete to Sicily, Minos equipped his ships to bring him back; but he there found, according to Herodotus, a violent death.¹²⁰ The king of the Sicanians, so Diodorus tells us, gave him a friendly welcome, and caused a warm bath to be prepared, and then craftily suffocated him in it. The Cretans buried their king in a double grave; they laid the bones in a secret place, and built upon them a temple to Aphrodite, and as they could not return to Crete because the Cretans had burned their ships, they founded the city Minoa in Sicily; but the tomb of Minos was shown in Crete also.¹²¹

A bull-god carries the daughter of Phœnix over the sea to Crete and begets Minos; a bull who rises out of the sea begets with Pasiphaë, i. e. the all-shining, the Minos-bull, to which in case of blight and famine boys and girls are sacrificed in the number sacred among the Semites; Androgeos succumbs to the heat of the bull of Marathon, an iron man slays his victims by pressing them to his glowing breast. These legends of the Greeks are unmistakable evidence of the origin of the rites observed in Crete from the coast of Syria, of the settlement of Phenicians in Crete. The bull-god may be the Baal Samim or the Baal Moloch of the Phenicians; Europa has already revealed herself to us as the moon-goddess of the Phenicians (p. 58); Pasiphaë is only another name for the same goddess, the lady of the nightly sky, the starry heaven. We know that on occasions of blight human sacrifices were offered to Baal Moloch, the fiery, consuming, angry sun-god, and that these sacrifices were burnt. Ister, a writer of the third century B.C., tells us quite simply; In ancient times children were sacrificed to Cronos in Crete.¹²² Before the harbour of Megara lay an island of the name of Minoa; at the time of the summer heat before the corn was ripe, the Athenians offered peace-offerings at the Thargelia, "in the place of human sacrifices,"¹²³ that the consuming sun might not kill the harvest. The name of the island and this custom, as well as the flames of the bull of Marathon, prove that beside the worship of the Syrian goddess at Athmonon, and the worship of Melkarth at Marathon, the worship of Baal Moloch had penetrated as far as Megara and Attica. Minos, the son of the sky-god, the husband of the moon-goddess, who from time to time receives revelations from heaven, and even after his death is judge of the dead, is himself a god; his proper name is Minotaur, a name taken from the form of the bull's image and the bull's head. When Baal Melkarth had found and overcome Astarte, after he had celebrated with her the holy marriage, he went to rest according to the Phenician myth in the waters of the western sea which he had warmed. The Phenicians were of opinion that the beams of the sun when sinking there in the far west had the most vigorous operation because of their greater proximity.¹²⁴ Minos goes to Sicily; there in a hot bath he ends his life, and over his resting-place rises the temple of Astarte-Ashera, with whom he celebrated his marriage in the west, and who by this marriage is changed from the goddess of war into the goddess of love. The tombs of Minos in Crete, Sicily, and finally at Gades, of which the Greeks speak, are in the meaning of the Phenician myth merely resting-places of the god, who in the spring wakes from his slumber into new power. The Greeks made Minos, who continued to live in the under-world, a judge in the causes of the shades, and finally a judge of the souls themselves. On the southern coast of Sicily, at the mouth of the Halycus, lay the city which the Greeks called Minoa or Heraclea-Minoa after Minos. To the Phenicians it was known as Rus Melkarth (p. 78), a title which proves beyond doubt that Minos was one of the names given by the Greeks to this god of the Phenicians.

The worship of Baal Moloch, which the Phenicians brought to Crete and the shores of Megara and Attica, was not all that the Greeks personified in the form of Minos; they did not confine themselves to one side of the myth of Baal Melkarth. When Grecian colonists settled subsequently in Crete they found the cities of the Phenicians full of artistic capacity, and their life regulated by legal ordinances. Thus their legend could place the artist Dædalus, the discoverer and pattern of all art-industry, beside Minos, and refer to Minos the ordinances of the cities. Zeus himself had revealed these arrangements to him. At a later time the Greek cities of Crete traced their own institutions back to Minos; here and there they may perhaps have followed a Phenician model, or they may have given out that such a model had been followed. Plato represents Minos as receiving the wise laws which he introduced into Crete from Zeus. With Aristotle also Minos is the founder of the Cretan laws.¹²⁵ In the circle of the Cabiri the sky-god Baal Samim was the protector and defender of law (I. 377).

Lastly, Minos is with the Greeks at once the representation and expression of the dominion which the Phenicians exercised in ancient times over the islands of the Ægean sea, before the settlements of the Greeks obtained the supremacy over the islands and the ships of the Greeks took the lead in these waters. In the age of the Heroes, so Herodotus tells us, Minos established the first naval empire; the Carians, who inhabited the islands, he made his subjects; they did not indeed pay tribute, but they had to man his ships whenever necessary.¹²⁶ "The oldest king," says Thucydides, "of whom tradition tells us that he possessed a fleet was Minos. He ruled over the greatest part of the Greek sea and the Cyclades, which he colonised, driving out the Carians and making his sons lords of the islands."¹²⁷ Minos, as a king ruling by law, is then said to have put an end to piracy.

The Phenicians could not certainly have left out of sight the largest of the islands, which forms the boundary of the Ægean sea; and the traditions of the Greeks can hardly go wrong if they make this island the centre of the naval supremacy of Minos, i. e. of the supremacy of the Phenicians over the Cyclades. Crete must have been the mainstay of their activity in the Ægean, just as Thebes was the point on the mainland where they planted the firmest foot. The title Minoa seems to lie at the base of the name of Minos, a title borne not only by the island off Megara and the city in Sicily, but also by two cities in Crete (one on the promontory of Drepanum, the other in the region of Lyctus), by some islands near Crete, a city in Amorgus, and a city in Siphnus. The name Minoa (from navah) could mean dwelling; it is certain evidence of a Phenician settlement. But the Phenicians have left traces of their existence in Crete beside the names Minos and Minoa and the forms of worship denoted by them. Coins of the Cretan cities Gortys and Phæstus exhibit a bull or a bull-headed man as a stamp. Near the Cretan city of Cydonia the Jardanus, i. e. the Jordan, falls into the sea; the name of the city Labana goes back to the Phenician word libanon, i. e. "white." Cnossus, the abode of Minos in Homer and Herodotus,¹²⁸ was previously named Kairatus; Karath in Phenician means city. Itanus, in Crete (Ethanath in the Semitic form), is expressly stated to be a foundation of the Phenicians.¹²⁹

With regard to the state of civilisation reached by Syria before the year 1500 B.C., we may draw some conclusions from the fact that not merely did the civilisation of Egypt influence the shepherds of Semitic race who ruled over Egypt at that period, but that Semitic manners and customs left behind traces in Egypt (I. 128). Hence we may assume that the Syrians carried their wine and their oil to the Nile at the time when their kinsmen ruled there (1950-1650 B.C.). The civilisation of Syria appears more clearly from the tributes imposed by Tuthmosis III. on Syria, which are here and there illustrated by the pictures accompanying the inscriptions of this Pharaoh. The burdens imposed on the Syrians consist not only of corn, wine, oil and horses; not only of gold, silver and iron, but also of arms and works of art, among which the pictures allow us to recognise carefully-decorated vessels. On the other hand, it is clear from the fact that the Babylonian weights and measures were in use in Syria at this time (I. 304) that the Syrians before this period were in lively intercourse with the land of the Euphrates, that even before the sixteenth century B.C. caravans must have traversed the Syrian deserts in every direction, and even then the Syrians must have exchanged the products of their land for Babylonian stuffs and the frankincense which the Arabians on their part carried to Babylon. The dependence of Syria on Egypt under the Tuthmosis and Amenophis can only have augmented the intercourse of the Syrians with the land of the Nile. Afterwards Sethos I. (1440-1400) caused wood to be felled on Lebanon; it must have been the places on the coast under Lebanon which carried to Egypt in their ships, along with the wine and oil of the coast and the interior, the wood so necessary there for building and exchanged it for the fabrics of Egypt. Wood for building could not be conveyed on the backs of camels, and the way by sea from the Phenician towns to the mouths of the Nile was far easier and less dangerous than the road by land over rocky heights and through sandy deserts. Hence, as early as the fifteenth century B.C., we may regard the Phenician cities as the central points of a trade branching east and west, which must have been augmented by the fact that they conveyed not only products of the Syrian land to the Euphrates and the Nile, but could also carry the goods which they obtained in exchange in Egypt to Babylonia, and what they obtained beyond the Euphrates to Egypt. At the same time the fabrics of Babylon and Egypt roused them to emulation, and called forth an industry among the Phenicians which we see producing woven stuffs, vessels of clay and metal, ornaments and weapons, and becoming pre-eminent in the colouring of stuffs with the liquor of the purple-fish, which are found on the Phenician coasts. This industry required above all things metals, of which Babylonia and Egypt were no less in need, and when the purple-fish of their own coasts were no longer sufficient for their extensive dyeing, colouring-matter had to be obtained. Large quantities of these fish produced a proportionately small amount of the dye. Copper-ore was found in Cyprus, gold in the island of Thasos, and purple-fish on the coasts of Hellas. When the fall of the kingdom of the Hittites and the overthrow of the Amorite princes in the south of Canaan augmented the numbers of the population on the coast, these cities were no longer content to obtain those possessions of the islands by merely landing and making exchanges with the inhabitants. Intercourse with semi-barbarous tribes must be protected by the sword. Good harbours were needed where the ships could be sheltered from storm and bad weather, where the crews could find safety from the natives, rest and fresh stores of water and provisions. Thus arose protecting forts on the distant islands and coasts, which received the ships of the native land. Under the protection of these intercourse could be carried on with the natives, and they were points of support for the collection of the fish and the sinking of mines.

In order to obtain the raw material necessary for their industry no less than to carry off the surplus of population, the Phenicians were brought to colonise Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, Thera, Melos, Oliarus, Samothrace, Imbros, Lemnos and Thasos. In the bays of Laconia and Argos, in the straits of Eubœa,¹³⁰ purple-fish were found in extraordinary quantities. The Phenicians settled in the island of Cythera in the bay of Laconia, which, as Aristotle says, was once called Porphyrussa from its purple-fish,¹³¹ and there erected that ancient temple to the oriental Aphrodite, Aphrodite in armour, just as in Attica in the deme of Athmonon they founded the temple of the Syrian Aphrodite and excavated the tombs on Hymettus.¹³² Midway between the straits of Eubœa and the bay of Corinth, which abounded with purple-fish, rose the strong fortress of the Cadmeia, and on Acrocorinthus the shrine of Ashera.

Herodotus and Thucydides told us above (p. 67) that the Carians inhabited the islands of the Ægean sea. These were they whom Minos had made subject to his dominion. Beside this, we are informed more particularly that the Carians had possessed the island of Rhodes, which lay off their coast, and had dwelt on Chios and Samos (I. 571). What degree of civilisation was reached by the population of the islands of the Ægean sea before the Phenicians came into relations with them may be inferred to some extent from the discoveries made in the island of Thera. In and beneath three layers of ashes and tufa caused by vast eruptions of the volcanos of this island have been discovered stone instruments, pottery of the most rudimentary kind, in part with the rudest indications of the human face and figure, and beside these weapons of copper and brass. In the upper layers of the tufa we find far better pottery decorated in the Phenician style. On Melos also, and in the tombs at Camirus in Rhodes, vessels of the same kind have been discovered; and, finally, in the highest of the layers at Thera are gold ornaments of the most various kinds, and ornaments of electron, i. e. of mixed gold and silver, all of a workmanship essentially non-Hellenic. From these facts we may draw the conclusion that the ships of the Phenicians brought to these inhabitants their earliest weapons in brass and copper, their pottery and ornaments; that the Carians of the islands, following these patterns, raised their own efforts to a higher stage, and that afterwards the Phenicians themselves settled in the islands and made themselves masters of them. Perhaps we may even go a step further. In the lower strata of the excavations at Hissarlik, on the Trojan coast, we find exactly the same primitive pottery, with the same indications of human forms, as in Thera, while in the refuse lying above this are idols and pottery adorned after Phenician patterns, which correspond exactly to the idols of Cyprus, as well as ornaments like those of Thera. Hence in this region also we may assume that the Phenicians gave the impulse and the example to the development of civilisation, and the more so as the name of the city of Adramyttion on the Trojan coast repeats the name of a Phenician foundation on the coast of North Africa (Adrames, Hadrumetum), and even Strabo ascribes the worship of the Cabiri to some places on the Trojan coast.¹³³ Far more definite traces of the Phenician style and skill are in existence on the shore of the bay of Argos. The ancient tombs which have been recently discovered behind the lions' gate at Mycenæ are hewn in the rocks after the manner of the Phenicians. As in the ancient burying-places of the Phenicians, a perpendicular shaft forms the entrance to the sepulchral chambers; the corpses are laid in them without coffins, as was the most ancient custom in Phœnicia. The masks of beaten gold-leaf which were found on the faces of five or six of the corpses buried here are evidence of a custom which the Phenicians borrowed from the gilded faces of Egyptian coffins.¹³⁴ The corpses are covered with gold ornaments and other decorations. There is a large number of weapons and ornaments of gold, silver, copper, brass and glass in the tombs; the execution exhibits a technical skill sometimes more, sometimes less practised. The ornaments remind us of Babylonian and Assyrian patterns; the idols in burnt clay are in the Phenician style; the palm-leaves and palms, antelopes and leopards which frequently occur, point to regions of the East; the articles of amber and the ostrich egg can only have reached the bay of Argos in Phenician ships. Still there are grave reasons for refusing to believe that the persons buried in this tomb are princes of the Phenicians. The numerous pieces of armour show that the dead who rest here were buried with their armour, which is not the traditional custom either with regard to the Phenicians or the Hellenes, but which Thucydides quotes as a mark of the tombs of the Carians.¹³⁵ We learn, moreover, even from the Homeric poems, that the Carians loved gold ornaments, and further, that the Greeks improved their armour after the pattern of the Carians (I. 572). As we also find the double axe of the Carian god, the "Zeus Stratius" as the Greeks called him, the "axe-god," the Chars-El in the Carian language (I. 573), on some ornaments of the tombs of Mycenæ, the supposition forces itself upon us that Carians from the western islands must have occupied the shore of the bay of Argos. In any case, the tombs of Mycenæ, both from their position and their contents, announce to us that the people who excavated them and placed their dead in them were dependent on the style and skill of the Phenicians.

Can we fix the time at which the Phenicians first set foot on the islands of Hellas? Herodotus tells us that Troy was taken in the third generation after the death of Minos.¹³⁶ If we put three full generations, according to the calculation of Herodotus, between the death of Minos and the conquest of Ilium, the first event took place 100 years before the second. Since, according to the data of Herodotus, the capture of Ilium falls in the year 1280 or 1260 B.C., Minos would have died in the year 1380 or 1360 B.C. The landing of the Phenicians on Thasos and the expedition of Cadmus from Phœnicia beyond the islands to Bœotia are placed by Herodotus five generations before Heracles, and Heracles is placed 900 years before his own time. If we reckon upwards from the year 450 or 430 B.C., Heracles lived about the year 1350 or 1330 B.C., and Cadmus five generations, i. e. 166⅔ years, before this date, or about the year 1516 or 1496 B.C.¹³⁷ On the island of Thera, Herodotus further remarks, the Phenicians whom Cadmus left behind him there had dwelt for eight generations, i. e. 266⅔ years, before the Dorians came to the island.¹³⁸ Melos was also occupied by Dorians, who asserted in 416 B.C. that their community had been in existence 700 years,¹³⁹ according to which statement the Dorians came to Melos in the year 1116 B.C. With this event the Phenician rule over the island came to an end. If we assume that Thera, which is close by Melos, was taken from the Phenicians by the Dorians at the same time as the latter island, the eight generations given by Herodotus for the settlements of the Phenicians on Thera would carry us back to the year 1382 B.C. (1116 + 266⅔), a date which is certainly in agreement with his statement about the death of Minos, but contradicts the date given for Cadmus, who yet, according to the narrative of Herodotus, left behind the settlers on Thera and Thasos when he first sailed to Bœotia. Herodotus fixes dates according to generations and the genealogies of legend. The five generations which separated Cadmus from Heracles were for him, no doubt, Polydorus, Labdacus, Laius, Œdipus and Polynices; for the three generations between the death of Minos and the capture of Troy we find in Homer only two, Deucalion and Idomeneus.¹⁴⁰ But we can still find from Herodotus' calculations how far back the Greeks placed the beginning and the end of the empire of the Phenicians over their islands and coasts. Beyond this the chronographers do not give us any help. Eusebius and Hieronymus (Jerome) place the rape of Europa in the year 1429 or 1426 B.C.; the rule of Cadmus at Thebes in the year 1427 B.C. or 1319 (1316) B.C.; the settlement of the Phenicians on Thera, Melos, and Thasos in the year 1415 B.C.; the beginning of the rule of Minos in the year 1410 B.C., or, according to another computation, in the year 1251 B.C.¹⁴¹

We can hardly obtain fixed points for determining the time of the settlements of the Phenicians in the Ægean sea. In the lower strata of the excavations at Hissarlik, on the coast of Troas, clay lentils have been found with Cyprian letters upon them.¹⁴² Since the Greeks declared that they learnt their alphabet from the Phenicians and Cadmus, and since as a fact it is the alphabet of the Phenicians which lies at the root of the Greek, the Cyprian letters can only have been brought thither by Phenician ships from Cyprus before the discovery of the Phenician letters, or from the islands off the Trojan coast occupied by the Phenicians, from Lemnos, Imbros and Samothrace; otherwise they must have come to the Troad at a later time by Cyprian ships or settlers, a supposition which is forbidden by the antiquity of the other remains discovered with or near the lentils. Among the sons of Japheth, the representative of the northern nations, Genesis mentions Javan, i. e. the Ionian, the Greek; and enumerates the sons of Javan: Elisha, Tarshish, Chittim, and Dodanim or Rodanim – the reading is uncertain.¹⁴³ It is a question whether the genealogical table in Genesis belongs to the first or second text of the Pentateuch, i. e. whether it was written down in the middle of the eleventh or of the tenth century B.C. In any case it follows that in the beginning of the eleventh or tenth century B.C. the name and nation of the Ionians was known not only in the harbour-cities of Phœnicia, but in the interior of Syria, and the inhabitants of the islands and of the northern coasts of the Mediterranean were reckoned in the stock of these Ionians. Chittim is, as was remarked above, primarily the island of Cyprus; the Rodanim are the inhabitants of Rhodes (Dodanim would have to be referred to Dodona); Elisha is Elis in the Peloponnese, or the island of Sicily, if the name is not one given generally to western coasts and islands;¹⁴⁴ Tarshish is Tartessus, i. e. the region at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. If Ezekiel mentions the purple which the Phenicians bring from "the isles of Elishah,"¹⁴⁵ the islands and coasts of the Ægean sea are plainly meant, on which the Phenicians collected the fish for their purple dye. This much is clear, that at least about the year 1000 B.C. not only the islands and coasts of the Ægean were known in Syria, but even then the name of the distant land of Tarshish was current in Syria. We shall further see that as early as 1100 B.C. Phenician ships had passed the straits of Gibraltar. Hence we may conclude that the Phenicians must have set foot on Cyprus about the year 1250 B.C., and on the islands and coasts of Hellas about the year 1200 B.C.

Thucydides observes that in ancient times the Phenicians had occupied the promontories of Sicily and the small islands lying around Sicily, in order to carry on trade with the Sicels.¹⁴⁶ Diodorus Siculus tells us that when the Phenicians extended their trade to the western ocean they settled in the island of Melite (Malta), owing to its situation in the middle of the sea and excellent harbours, in order to have a refuge for their ships. The island of Gaulus also, which lies close to Melite, is said to have been a colony of the Phenicians.¹⁴⁷ On the south-eastern promontory of Malta there was a temple of Heracles-Melkarth,¹⁴⁸ the foundation walls of which appear to be still in existence, and still more definite evidence of the former population of this island is given by the Phenician inscriptions found there. The island, like the mother-country, carried on weaving, and the products were much sought after in antiquity. On Gaulus also, a name mentioned on Phenician coins, are the remains of a Phenician temple. Between Sicily and the coast of Africa, where it approaches Sicily most nearly, lay the island of Cossyra, coins of which bear Phenician legends. Along with a dwarfish figure they present the name "island of the sons,"¹⁴⁹ i. e. no doubt, the children of the sun-god whom we met with in Rhodes. On the east coast of Sicily there lay, on a small promontory scarcely connected with the mainland (now Isola degli Magnisi), the city of Thapsos, the name of which reveals its founders; Tiphsach means coming over, here coming over to the mainland. In the same way the promontory of Pachynus (pachun means wart), further to the south, and the harbour of Phœnicus are evidence of Phenician colonisation. On the south coast of Sicily, not far from the mouth of the Halycus, the Phenicians built that city which is known to the Greeks as Makara and Minoa, or Heracleaminoa; the coins of the city present in Phenician characters the name Rus-Melkart, i. e. "head (promontory) of Melkarth."¹⁵⁰ Off the west coast of Sicily the Phenicians occupied the small island of Motye.¹⁵¹ On this coast of the larger island, on Mount Eryx, which rises steeply out of a bald table land (2000 feet above the sea), they founded the city of Eryx, and on the summit of the mount, 5000 feet high, they built a temple to the Syrian Aphrodite. In Diodorus it is Eryx the son of Aphrodite who builds this temple; Æneas then adorns it with many votive offerings, "since it was dedicated to his mother."¹⁵² Virgil represents the temple as being founded on the summit of Eryx, near to the stars, in honour of Venus Idalia, i. e. the goddess worshipped at Idalion (Idial) on Cyprus by the immigrants from the East, who, with him, are the companions of Æneas.¹⁵³ The courtezans at this temple, the sensual character of the worship, and the sacred doves kept here (in a red one the goddess herself was supposed to be seen¹⁵⁴), even without the Phenician inscriptions found there, would leave no doubt of its Syrian origin. The mighty substructure of the building is still in existence. Dædalus is said to have built it for the king of the Sicanians (p. 64). Beside the Syrian goddess, the Phenicians also worshipped here the Syrian god Baal Melkarth. According to the account of Diodorus, Heracles overcame Eryx in wrestling, and so took his land from him, though he left the usufruct of it to the inhabitants.¹⁵⁵ The kings of Sparta traced their origin to Heracles. When Dorieus, the son of Anaxandridas, king of Sparta, desired to emigrate in his anger that the crown had fallen to his brother Cleomenes, the oracle bade him retire to Eryx; the land of Eryx belonged to the Heraclids because their ancestor won it. The Carthaginians, it is true, did not acknowledge this right; Dorieus was slain, and most of those who followed him.¹⁵⁶ On the north coast of Sicily, Panormus (Palermo) and Soloeis were the most important colonies of the Phenicians. Panormus, on coins of the Phenicians Machanath, i. e. the camp, worshipped the goddess of the sexual passion; Soloeis (sela, rock) worshipped Melkarth. In a hymn to Aphrodite, Sappho inquires whether she lingers in Cyprus or at Panormus.¹⁵⁷ Motye, Soloeis and Panormus were in the fifth century the strongest outposts of the Carthaginians in Sicily.¹⁵⁸

On Sardinia also, as Diodorus tells us, the Phenicians planted many colonies.¹⁵⁹ The mountains of Sardinia contained iron, silver, and lead. According to the legend of the Greeks, Sardus, the son of Makeris, as the Libyans called Heracles, first came with Libyans to the island. Then Heracles sent his brother's son Iolaus, together with his own sons, whom he had begotten in Attica, to Sardinia. As Heracles had been lord of the whole West, these regions belonged of right to Iolaus and his companions. Iolaus conquered the native inhabitants, took possession of and divided the best and most level portion of the land which was afterwards known by the name of Iolaus; then he sent for Dædalus out of Sicily and erected large buildings, which, Diodorus adds, are still in existence; but in Sicily temples were erected to himself, and honour paid as to a hero, and a famous shrine was erected in Agyrion, "where," as Diodorus remarks of this his native city, "even to this day yearly sacrifices are offered."¹⁶⁰ Makeris, the supposed father of Sardus, is, like Makar, a form of the name Melkarth. If Sardinia and the whole West as well as Eryx is said to have belonged to Heracles, if Heracles sends out his nearest relations to Sardinia, if the artist Dædalus is his companion here as he was the companion of Minos in Crete and Sicily, it becomes obvious that the temples of Baal Melkarth on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily lie at the base of these legends of the Greeks, that it was the Phenicians who brought the worship of their god along with their colonies to these coasts, to which they were led by the wealth of the Sardinian mountains in copper. As we already ventured to suppose (I. 368), Iolaus may be an epithet or a special form of Baal.¹⁶¹

The legend of the Greeks makes Heracles, i. e. Baal Melkarth, lord of the whole West. As a fact, the colonies of the Phenicians went beyond Sardinia in this direction. Their first colonies on the north coast of Africa appear to have been planted where the shore runs out nearest Sicily; Hippo was apparently regarded as the oldest colony.¹⁶² In the legends of the coins mentioned above (p. 53) Hippo is named beside Tyre and Citium as a daughter of Sidon. When a second Hippo was afterwards founded further to the west, opposite the south coast of Sardinia, at the mouth of the Ubus, the old Hippo got the name of "Ippoacheret," and among the Greeks "Hippon Zarytos," i. e. "the other Hippo."¹⁶³ Ityke (atak, settlement, Utica), on the mouth of the Bagradas (Medsherda), takes the next place after this Hippo, if indeed it was not founded before it. Aristotle tells us that the Phenicians stated that Ityke was built 287 years before Carthage,¹⁶⁴ and Pliny maintains that Ityke was founded 1178 years before his time.¹⁶⁵ As Carthage was founded in the year 846 B.C. (below, chap. 11), Ityke, according to Aristotle's statement, was built in the year 1133 B.C. With this the statement of Pliny agrees. He wrote in the years 52-77 A.D., and therefore he places the foundation of Ityke in the year 1126 or 1100 B.C.

About the same time, i. e. about the year 1100 B.C., the Phenicians had already reached much further to the west. In his Phenician history, Claudius Iolaus tells us that Archaleus (Arkal, Heracles¹⁶⁶), the son of Phœnix, built Gadeira (Gades).¹⁶⁷ "From ancient times," such is the account of Diodorus, "the Phenicians carried on an uninterrupted navigation for the sake of trade, and planted many colonies in Africa, and not a few in Europe, in the regions lying to the west. And when their undertakings succeeded according to their desire and they had collected great treasures, they resolved to traverse the sea beyond the pillars of Heracles, which is called Oceanus. First of all, on their passage through these pillars, they founded upon a peninsula of Europe a city which they called Gadeira, and erected works suitable to the place, chiefly a beautiful temple to Heracles, with splendid offerings according to the custom of the Phenicians. And as this temple was honoured at that time, so also in later times down to our own days it was held in great reverence. When the Phenicians, in order to explore the coasts beyond the pillars, took their course along the shore of Libya, they were carried away far into the Oceanus by a strong wind, and after being driven many days by the storm they came to a large island opposite Libya, where the fertility was so great and the climate so beautiful that it seemed by the abundance of blessings found there to be intended for the dwelling of the gods rather than men."¹⁶⁸ Strabo says, the Gaditani narrated that an oracle bade the Tyrians send a colony to the pillars of Heracles. When those who had been sent reached the straits of Mount Calpe they were of opinion that the promontories which enclosed the passage, Calpe and the opposite headland of Abilyx in Libya,¹⁶⁹ were the pillars which bounded the earth, and the limit of the travels of Heracles, which the oracle mentioned. So they landed on this side of the straits, at the spot where the city of the Axitani (Sexi) now stands; but since the sacrifices were not favourable there they turned back. Those sent out after them sailed through the straits, and cast anchor at an island sacred to Heracles, 1500 stades beyond the pillars, opposite the city of Onoba in Iberia; but as the sacrifices were again unfavourable they also again turned home. Finally, a third fleet landed on a little island 750 stades beyond Mount Calpe, close to the mainland, and not far from the mouth of the Bætis. Here, on the east side of the island, they built a temple to Heracles; on the opposite side of the island they built the city of Gadeira, and on the extreme western point the temple of Cronos. In the temple of Heracles there were two fountains and "two pillars of brass, eight cubits in height, on which is recorded the cost of the building of this temple."¹⁷⁰ This foundation of Gades, which on the coins is called Gadir and Agadir, i. e. wall, fortification, the modern Cadiz, and without doubt the most ancient city in Europe which has preserved its name, is said to have taken place in the year 1100 B.C.¹⁷¹ If Ityke was founded before 1100 B.C. or about that time, we have no reason to doubt the founding of Gades soon after that date. Hence the ships of the Phenicians would have reached the ocean about the time when Tiglath Pilesar I. left the Tigris with his army, trod the north of Syria, and looked on the Mediterranean.

The marvellous and impressive aspect of the rocky gate which opens a path for the waves of the Mediterranean to the boundless waters of the Atlantic Ocean might implant in the Phenician mariners who first passed beyond it the belief that they had found in these two mountains the pillars which the god set up to mark the end of the earth; in the endless ocean beyond them they could easily recognise the western sea in which their sun-god went to his rest. That Gades, on the shore of the sea into which the sun went down, was especially zealous in the worship of Melkarth, that the descent of the god into the western ocean (the supposed death of Heracles¹⁷²) and the awakening of the god with the sun of the spring were here celebrated with especial emphasis, is a fact which requires no explanation. The legends of the Hesperides, the daughters of the West, in whose garden Melkarth celebrates the holy marriage with Astarte (I. 371), of the islands of the blest in the western sea, appear to have a local background in the luxuriant fertility and favoured climate of Madeira and the Canary islands.

The land off the coast of which Gades lay, the valley of the Guadalquivir, was named by the Phenicians Tarsis (Tarshish), and by the Greeks Tartessus. The genealogical table in Genesis places Tarsis among the sons of Javan. The prophet Ezekiel represents the ships of Tarshish as bringing silver, iron, tin and lead to Tyre. "The ships of Tarshish," so he says to the city of Tyre, "were thy caravans; so wert thou replenished and very glorious in the midst of the sea."¹⁷³ The Sicilian Stesichorus of Himera expresses himself in more extravagant terms. He sang of the "fountains of Tartessus (the Guadalquivir) rooted in silver." The Greeks represent the Tartessus, the river which brought down gold, tin, iron in its waters, as springing from the silver mountain,¹⁷⁴ and according to Herodotus the first Greek ship, a merchantman of Samos, which was driven about the year 630 B.C. by a storm from the east to Tartessus, made a profit of 60 talents.¹⁷⁵ Aristotle tells us that the first Phenicians who sailed to Tartessus obtained so much silver in exchange for things of no value that the ships could not carry the burden, so that the Phenicians left behind the tackle and even the anchor they had brought with them and made new tackle of silver.¹⁷⁶ Poseidonius says that among that people it was not Hades, but Plutus, who dwelt in the under-world. Once the forests had been burned, and the silver and gold, melted by an enormous fire, flowed out on the surface; every hill and mountain became a heap of gold and silver. On the north-west of this land the ground shone with silver, tin and white gold mixed with silver. This soil the rivers washed down with them. The women drew water from the river and poured it through sieves, so that nothing but gold, silver and tin remained in the sieve.¹⁷⁷ Diodorus tells the same story of the ancient burning of the forests on the Pyrenees (from which fire they got their name), by which the silver ore was rendered fluid and oozed from the mountains, so that many streams were formed of pure silver. To the native inhabitants the value of silver was so little known that the Phenicians obtained it in exchange for small presents, and gained great treasures by carrying the silver to Asia and all other nations. The greed of the merchants went so far that when the ships were laden, and there was still a large quantity of silver remaining, they took off the lead from the anchors and replaced it with silver. Strabo assures us that the land through which the Bætis flows was not surpassed in fertility and all the blessings of earth and sea by any region in the world; neither gold nor silver, copper nor iron, was found anywhere else in such abundance and excellence. The gold was not only dug up, but also obtained by washing, as the rivers and streams brought down sands of gold. In the sands of gold pieces were occasionally found half-a-pound in weight, and requiring very little purification. Stone salt was also found there, and there was abundance of house cattle and sheep, which produced excellent wool, of corn and wine. The coast of the shore beyond the pillars was covered with shell-fish and large purple-fish, and the sea was rich in fish (the tunnies and the Tartessian murena so much sought after in antiquity),¹⁷⁸ which the ebb and flow of the tide brought up to the beach. Corn, wine, the best oil, wax, honey, pitch and cinnabar were exported from this fortunate land.¹⁷⁹

If the Phenicians were able in the thirteenth century to settle upon Cyprus and Rhodes, the islands of the Ægean and the coasts of Hellas, their population must have been numerous, their industry active, their trade lucrative. That subsequently in the twelfth century they also took into possession the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia and North Africa by means of their colonies is a proof that the request for the raw products and metals of the West was very lively and increasing in Syria and in Egypt, in Assyria and Babylonia. The market of these lands must have been very remunerative to the Phenicians in order to induce them to make their discoveries, their distant voyages and remote settlements. If the Phenicians about the year 1100 B.C. were in a position to discover the straits of Gibraltar, the fact shows us that they must have practised navigation for a long time. The horizon of the Greek mariner ended even in the ninth century in the waters of Sicily, and in the fifth century B.C. the voyage of a Greek ship from the Syrian coast to the pillars of Heracles occupied 80 days.¹⁸⁰ After the founding of Gades the Phenicians ruled over the whole length of the Mediterranean by their harbour fortresses and factories. Their ships crossed the long basin in every direction, and everywhere they found harbours of safety. They showed themselves no less apt and inventive in the arts of navigation than the Babylonians had shown themselves in technical inventions and astronomy; they were bolder and more enterprising than the Assyrians in the campaigns which the latter attempted at the time when the Phenicians were building Gades; they were more venturesome and enduring on the water than their tribesmen the Arabians on the sandy sea of the desert. In the possession of the ancient civilisation of the East their mariners and merchants presented the same contrast to the Thracians and Hellenes, the Sicels, the Libyans and Iberians which the Portuguese and the Spaniards presented 2500 years later to the tribes of America.

CHAPTER IV
THE TRIBES OF ISRAEL

Not far removed from the harbour-cities, whose ships discovered the land of silver, which carried the natural wealth of the West to the lands of the Euphrates and Tigris, and the Nile, in order to exchange them for the productions of those countries, in part immediately upon the borders of the marts which united the East and the West, and side by side with them, dwelt the Israelites on the heights and in the valleys which they had conquered, in very simple and original modes of life.

Even during the war against the ancient population of Canaan, immediately after the first successes against the Amorites, they had, as we have seen, dropped any common participation in the struggle, any unity under one leader. According to their numbers and bravery, and the resistance encountered, the various tribes had won larger or smaller territories, better or inferior districts. Immigration and conquest did not lead among the Israelites to a combination of their powers under the supremacy of one leader, but rather to separation into clans and cantons, which was also favoured by the nature of the country conquered, a district lying in unconnected parts, and possessing no central region adapted for governing the whole. Thus, after the settlement, the life of the nation became divided into separate circles according to the position and character of the mountain canton which the particular tribe had obtained, and the fortune which it had experienced. Even if there was an invasion of the enemy, the tribe attacked was left to defend itself as well as it could. It was only very rarely, and in times of great danger, that the nobles and elders of the whole land, and a great number of the men of war from all the tribes, were collected round the sacred ark at Shiloh, at Bethel, at Mizpeh, or at Gilgal for common counsel or common defence. But even when a resolution was passed by the nobles and elders and the people, individual tribes sometimes resisted, even by force of arms, the expressed will of the nation, or at least of a great part of the nobles and people, and the division of the tribes sometimes led even to open war.

Within the tribes also there was no fixed arrangement, no fixed means for preserving peace. The clans and families for the most part possessed separate valleys, glens, or heights. The heads of the oldest families were also the governors of these cantons, and composed the differences between the members of the clan, canton, or city by their decisions; while in other places bold and successful warriors at the head of voluntary bands made acquisitions, in which the descendants of the leader took the rank of elder and judge. Eminent houses of this kind, together with the heads of families of ancient descent, formed the order of nobles and elders; "who hold the judge's staff in their hands, and ride on spotted asses with beautiful saddles, while the common people go afoot."¹⁸¹ If a tribe fell into distress and danger, the nobles and elders assembled and took counsel, while the people stood round, unless some man of distinction had already risen and summoned the tribe to follow him. For the people did not adhere exclusively to the chief of the oldest family in the canton; nobles and others within, and in special cases without, the tribe, who had obtained a prominent position by warlike actions, or by the wisdom of their decisions, whose position and power promised help, protection and the accomplishment of the sentence, were invited to remove strife and differences, unless the contending persons preferred to help themselves. Only the man who could not help himself sought, as a rule, the decision of the elder or judge.

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1

Strabo, pp. 736, 737. Arrian, "Anab." 3, 7, 7. The same form of the name, Athura, is given in the inscriptions of Darius.

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2

Plin. "Hist. Nat." 6, 27; 5, 12: Adiabene Assyria ante dicta. Ptolemæus (6, 1) puts Adiabene and Arbelitis side by side. Diodorus, 18, 39. Arrian, Epit. 35: τὴν μὲν μἑσην τῶν ποταμῶν γῆν καὶ τὴν Ἀρβηλῖτιν ἔνειμε Ἀμφιμάχῳ.

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3

Polyb. 5, 54. The border line between the original country of Assyria and Elam cannot be ascertained with certainty. According to Herodotus (5, 52) Susa lay 42 parasangs, i. e. about 150 miles, to the south of the northern border of Susiana. Hence we may perhaps take the Diala as the border between the later Assyria and Elam. The use of the name Assyria for Mesopotamia and Babylonia, as well as Assyria proper, in Herodotus (e. g. 1, 178) and other Greeks, – the name Syria, which is only an abbreviation of Assyria (Herod. 7, 63), – arises from the period of the supremacy of Assyria in the epoch 750-650 B.C. Cf. Strabo, pp. 736, 737, and Nöldeke, ΑΣΣΥΡΙΟΣ, Hermes, 1871 (5), 443 ff.

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4

The Euphrates, which Diodorus mentions 2, 3 and also 2, 27, is not to be put down to a mistake of Ctesias, since Nicolaus (Frag. 9, ed. Müller) describes Nineveh as situated on the Tigris in a passage undoubtedly borrowed from Ctesias. The error belongs, as Carl Jacoby ("Rhein. Museum," 30, 575 ff.) has proved, to the historians of the time of Alexander and the earliest Diadochi, who had in their thoughts the city of Mabog (Hierapolis), on the Euphrates, which was also called Nineveh. The mistake has passed from Clitarchus to the narrative of Diodorus.

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5

Steph. Byzant. Χαύων, χώρα τῆς Μηδίας, Κτησίας ἐν πρώτῳ Περτικῶν. Η δὲ Σεμιραμις ἐντεῦθεν ἐξελαύνει, κ. τ. λ.

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6

Diod. 1, 56.

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7

Frag. 7, ed. Müller.

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8

Frag. 1, 2, ed. Müller; cf. Justin. 1, 1.

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9

Anonym. tract. "De Mulier." c. 1.

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10

Diod. 2, 21.

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11

Nicol. Frag. 8, ed. Müller.

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12

1, 184.

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13

Strabo, pp. 80, 529, 737; Lucian, "de Syria dea," c. 14.

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14

Herod. 1, 102.

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15

Xenoph. "Anab." 3, 4, 6-10.

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16

Diodorus tells us himself (2, 7) that in writing the first 30 chapters of his second book he had before him the book of Clitarchus on Alexander. Carl Jacoby (loc. cit.) – by a comparison with the statements in point in Curtius, who transcribed Clitarchus, and by the proof that certain passages in the narrative of Diodorus which relate to Bactria and India are in agreement with passages in the seventeenth book, in which Diodorus undoubtedly follows Clitarchus; that certain observations in the description of Babylon in Diodorus can only belong to Alexander and his nearest successors; that certain preparations of Semiramis for the Indian campaign agree with certain preparations of Alexander for his Indian campaign, and certain incidents in Alexander's battle against Porus with certain incidents in the battle of Semiramis against Stabrobates; and finally by showing that the situation of the ancient Nineveh was unknown to the historians of the time of Alexander, who were on the other hand acquainted with a Nineveh on the Euphrates (Hierapolis, Mabog; Plin. "Hist. Nat." 5, 23; Ammian. Marcell. 14, 8, 7) – has made it at least very probable that Diodorus had Ctesias before him in the revision of Clitarchus. We may allow that Clitarchus brought the Bactrian Oxyartes into the narrative, unless we ought to read Exaortes in Diodorus; but that the name of the king in Ctesias was Zoroaster is in my opinion very doubtful. The sources of Ctesias were stories related by Persians or Medes from the epic of West Iran. That this should put Zoroaster at the time of Ninus, and make him king of the Bactrians, in order to allow him to be overthrown by the Assyrians, is very improbable. Whether Ctesias ascribed to Semiramis the building of Egbatana is also very doubtful; that he mentioned her stay in Media, and ascribed to her the building of the road over the Zagrus and the planting of gardens, follows from the quotation of Stephanus given above. Ctesias has not ascribed to her the hanging gardens at Babylon. Diodorus makes them the work of a later Syrian king, whom Ctesias would certainly have called king of Assyria. Ctesias too can hardly have ascribed to her the obelisk at Babylon (Diod. 2, 11); so at least the addition of Diodorus, "that it belonged to the seven wonders," seems to me to prove.

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17

"Catasterism." c. 38; Hygin. "Astronom." 2, 41. In Diodorus Aphrodite, enraged by a maiden, Derceto, imbues her with a fierce passion for a youth. In shame she slays the youth, exposes the child, throws herself into the lake of Ascalon, and is changed into a fish. For this reason the image of the goddess Derceto at Ascalon has the face of a woman and the body of a fish (2, 4).

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18

Diod. 2, 17, init.

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19

Georg. Syncell. p. 119, ed. Bonn.

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20

Diod. 1, 56.

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21

"De Iside," c. 24.

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22

Diod. 2, 4, init.

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23

Herod. 1, 7.

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24

Lucian, "De Syria dea," c. 33, 14, 38. The name Semiramoth is found 1 Chronicles xv. 18, 20; xvi. 5; 2, xvii. 8.

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25

Ctesias in Strabo, p. 785.

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26

Agathias, 2, 24.

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27

Diod. 2, 21; Euseb. "Chron." 1, p. 56; 2, p. 11, ed. Schöne; Syncellus, "Chron." 1, 313, 314, ed. Bonn; Brandis, "Rer. Assyr. tempor. emend." p. 13 seq.

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28

Euseb. "Chron." 1, p. 26, ed. Schöne.

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29

1, 184, 187.

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30

Vol. i. 512.

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31

Ménant, "Annal." p. 18.

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32

G. Smith, "Discov." p. 249.

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33

The date of Tiglath Adar is fixed by the statement of Sennacherib that he lost his seal to the Babylonians 600 years before Sennacherib took Babylon, i. e. about the year 1300 B.C. As the series of seven kings who reigned before Tiglath Adar is fixed, Assur-bil-nisi, the first of these, can be placed about 1460 B.C. if we allow 20 years to each.

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34

Vol. i. p. 262.

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35

This series, Pudiel, Bel-nirar and Bin-nirar, is established by tiles of Kileh-Shergat, and the fact that it joins on to Assur-u-ballit, by the tablet of Bin-nirar discovered by G. Smith, in which he calls himself great grandson of Assur-u-ballit, grandson of Bel-nirar, and son of Pudiel; G. Smith, "Discov." p. 244.

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36

G. Smith, "Discov." pp. 244, 245.

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37

E. Schrader, "Keilinschriften und A. T." s. 20; "Records of the Past," 7, 17.

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38

Ménant, "Annal." p. 73.

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39

G. Smith, loc. cit. p. 249.

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40

G. Smith, loc. cit. p. 250; E. Schrader, "A. B. Keilinschriften," s. 294. As Sennacherib states that he brought back this seal from Babylon after 600 years, and as Sennacherib took Babylon twice in 704 and 694 B.C., the loss of it falls either in the year 1304 or 1294 B.C. As he brings back the Assyrian images of the gods at the second capture (694 B.C.), the seal of Tiglath Adar may have been brought back on this occasion.

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41

G. Smith, loc. cit. p. 250.

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42

So the passage runs according to a communication from E. Schrader. On the reading Adarpalbitkur as against the readings Ninpalazira and Adarpalassar, see E. Schrader, "A. B. Keilinschriften," s. 152. On what Ménant ("Annal." p. 29) grounds the assumption that Belkudurussur was the immediate successor of Tiglath Adar I cannot say; it would not be chronologically impossible, but the synchronistic tablet merely informs us that Adarpalbitkur was the successor of Belkudurussur; G. Rawlinson, "Mon." 2, 49. Still less am I able to find any foundation for the statement that Binpaliddin of Babylon, the opponent of Belkudurussur and Adarpalbitkur, was a vassal-king set up by Assyria. The date of Tiglath Pilesar I. is fixed by the Bavian inscription, which tells us that Sennacherib at his second capture of Babylon brought back out of that city the images of the gods lost by Tiglath Pilesar 418 years previously (Bav. 43-50), at the period between 1130 and 1100 B.C. If he began to reign 1130, then the five kings before him (the series from Adarpalbitkur to Tiglath Pilesar is fixed by the cylinder of the latter), allowing 20 years to each reign, bring us to 1230 B.C. for the beginning of Belkudurussur. To go back further seems the more doubtful, as Tiglath Pilesar put Assur-dayan, the third prince of this series, only 60 years before his own time.

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43

Sayce, "Records of the Past," 3, 31; Ménant, loc. cit. p. 31.

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44

Communication from E. Schrader.

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45

Cf. G. Smith, loc. cit. p. 251.

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46

Vol. i. p. 263; Ménant, loc. cit. p. 32.

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47

Ménant, "Annal." pp. 47, 48.

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48

Column, 1, 62, seqq., 1, 89.

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49

Column, 5, 44.

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50

Column, 6, 39.

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51

Ménant, loc. cit. p. 48.

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52

Vol. i. p. 519; E. Schrader, "Keilinschriften und A. T." s. 16.

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53

Ménant, loc. cit. p. 51.

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54

Vol. i. p. 263; Bavian Inscrip. 48-50; Ménant, "Annal." pp. 52, 236. Inscription on the black basalt-stone in Oppert et Ménant, "Documents juridiques," p. 98. Is the name of the witness (col. 2, 27), Sar-babil-assur-issu (p. 115), correctly explained by "The king of Babel has conquered Asshur"?

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55

Col. 1, 62.

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56

Ammian. Marcell. 18, 9.

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57

Araziki cannot be taken for Aradus, the name of which city on the obelisk and in the inscriptions of Assurnasirpal, Shalmanesar, and elsewhere is Arvadu.

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58

Sayce, "Records," 3, 33; Ménant, "Annal." p. 53; "Babylone," pp. 129, 130.

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59

According to G. Smith ("Discov." p. 91, 252) this Samsi-Bin II. restored the temple of Istar at Nineveh which Samsi-Bin I. had built (above, p. 3).

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60

Inscription of Kurkh, "Records of the Past," 3, 93; Ménant, "Annal." p. 55.

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61

Ménant, "Annal." p. 63.

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62

E. Schrader, "Keilinschriften und A. T." s. 7.

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63

Robinson, "Palestine," 3, 710.

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64

Tac. "Hist." 5, 6.

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65

Rénan, "Mission de Phénicie," p. 836.

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66

Vol. i. pp. 344, 345.

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67

Vol. i. p. 151.

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68

Vol. i. p. 153.

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69

Vol. i. p. 344.

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70

The legend runs, "From the Sidonians, Mother of Kamb, Ippo, Kith(?), Sor," Movers, "Phœniz." 2, 134.

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71

Isaiah xxiii. 1, 19; Jeremiah ii. 10; Ezekiel xxvii. 6; Joseph. "Antiq." 1, 6, 1.

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72

Virgil, "Æn." 1, 619, 620.

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73

Brandis, "Monatsberichte Berl. Akad." 1873, s. 645 ff.

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74

Herod. 7, 90.

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75

Stephan. Byz. Ἀμαθοῦς.

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76

"Odyss." 8, 362; Tac. "Annal." 2, 3; Pausan. 1, 14, 6; Pompon. Mela, 2, 7.

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77

Vol. i. p. 359.

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78

Joseph. "in Apion." 1, 18; "Antiq." 8, 5, 3, 9, 14, 2.

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79

Movers, "Phœniz." 2, 239, 240.

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80

Diod. 5, 56.

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81

In Homer Europa is not the daughter of Agenor but of Phœnix ("Il." 14, 321), just as Cadmus, Thasos, and Europa are sometimes children of Agenor and sometimes of Phœnix. In Hdt. 1, 2 it is Cretans who carry off Europa, the daughter of the king of Tyre.

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82

Diod. 4, 2, 60; 5, 56, 57, 58, 48, 49.

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83

Ephor. Frag. 12, ed. Müller.

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84

Herod. 4, 147; 2, 45, 49; 5, 58, 59.

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85

Frag. 8, 9, ed. Müller.

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86

Frag. 40-42, 43-45, ed. Müller.

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87

Frag. 163, ed. Müller.

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88

"Theog." 937, 975; Pind. "Pyth." 3, 88 seqq.

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89

Movers, "Phœniz." 1, 129, 131.

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90

Plut. "Pelop." c. 19.

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91

Pind. "Olymp." 2, 141.

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92

Vol. i. 271.

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93

Movers, "Phœniz." 1, 517.

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94

Thac. 1, 8.

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95

Vol. i. 363, 364.

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96

Athenæus, p. 360.

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97

Diod. 5, 58.

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98

Bœckh. C. I. G. 2526.

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99

Hefter, "Götterdienste auf Rhodos," 3, 18; Welcker, "Mythologie," 1, 145; Brandis, "Munzwesen," s. 587.

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100

Schol. Pind. "Pyth." 4, 88; Pausan. 3, 1, 7, 8; Steph. Byz. Μεμβλίαρος.

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101

Bœckh. C. I. G. 2448.

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102

Herod. 4, 147; Steph. Byz. Μῆλος.

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103

Steph. Byz. Ὠλίαρος.

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104

Strabo, pp. 346, 457, 472; Diod. 5, 47.

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105

Vol. i. 378; Herod. 2, 51; Conze, "Inseln des Thrakischen Meeres," e. g. s. 91.

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106

Strabo, p. 473; Steph. Byz. Ἴμβρος; vol. i. 378.

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107

Herod. 2, 44; 6, 47.

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108

Herod. 1, 105; Pausan. 1, 14, 7; 3, 23, 1.

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109

Pausan. 10, 11, 5; Bœckh, "Metrologie," s. 45.

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110

Pausan. 1, 2, 5; 1, 14, 6, 7.

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111

Strabo, p. 377; Pausan. 1, 32, 5.

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112

ΑΘΗΝΑΙΟΝ ς´ γ´, 1877, and below, chap. xi.

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113

Brandis, "Hermes," 2, 275 ff. I cannot agree in all points with the deductions of this extremely acute inquiry.

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114

"Il." 14, 321; 18, 593; "Odyss." 19, 178; 11, 568.

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115

"Odyss." 11, 523.

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116

Diod. 4, 60.

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117

Serv. ad "Æneid." 6, 30.

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118

Hesych. ἐπ᾿ Εὐρυγύν ἀγών; Plut. "Thes." c. 15; Diod. 4, 65.

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119

Apollodor. 1, 9, 26; Suidas, Σαρδώνιος γέλως.

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120

Herod. 7, 110.

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121

Diod. 4, 76-78; Schol. Callim. "Hymn. in Jovem," 8.

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122

Istri frag. 47, ed. Müller.

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123

Istri frag. 33, ed. Müller.

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124

Müllenhoff, "Deutsche Alterthumskunde," i. 222.

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125

Plato, "Minos," pp. 262, 266, 319, 321; "De. Legg," init.; Aristot. "Pol." 2, 8, 1, 2; 7, 9, 2.

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126

Herod. 1, 171; 3, 122; 7, 169-171.

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127

Herod. 1, 4.

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128

Herod. 3, 122.

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129

Strabo, p. 476; Steph. Byz. Ἰτανός.

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130

Pausan. 3, 21, 6.

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131

Aristotle, in Steph. Byz. Κύθηρα.

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132

Above, p. 63.

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133

Strabo, p. 479.

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134

Below, chap. 11.

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135

Thuc. 1, 8.

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136

Herod. 7, 171.

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137

Herod. 2, 44, 145.

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138

Herod. 4, 147.

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139

Thuc. 5, 112.

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140

Herod. 5, 89; "Il." 13, 451; "Odyss." 19, 178.

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141

Euseb. "Chron." 2, p. 34 seqq. ed. Schöne. Even in Diodorus, 4, 60, we find two Minoses, an older and a younger.

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142

Lenormant, "Antiq. de la Troade," p. 32.

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143

Genesis x. 2-4: 1 Chron. i. 5-7.

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144

Kiepert, "Monatsberichte Berl. Akad." 1859.

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145

Ezek. xxvii. 7.

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146

Thuc. vi. 2.

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147

Diod. v. 12.

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148

Ptolem. 4, 3, 47.

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149

Ai benim; Movers, "Phœniz." 2, 355, 359, 362.

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150

Heracl. Pont. frag. 29, ed. Müller; Gesen. "Monum." p. 293; Olshausen, "Rh. Mus." 1852, S. 328.

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151

Thuc. 6, 2.

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152

Diod. 4, 83.

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153

"Æn." 5, 760.

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154

Diod. 4, 83; Strabo, p. 272; Athenæus, p. 374; Aelian, "Hist. An." 4, 2; 10, 50.

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155

Diod. 4, 23.

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156

Herod. 5, 43.

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157

Steph. Byz. Σολοῦς. Sapphon. frag. 6, ed. Bergk; it is possible that Panormus on Crete may be meant.

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158

Thuc. 6, 2.

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159

Diod. 5, 35.

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160

Diod. 4, 24, 29, 30; 5, 15; Arist. "De mirab. ausc." c. 104; Pausan. 10, 17, 2.

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161

Movers ("Phœniz." 1, 536) assumes that Iolaus may be identical with Esmun (I. 377).

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162

Sallust, "Jugurtha," 19, 1.

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163

Movers, loc. cit. s. 144.

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164

"De mirab. ausc." c. 146.

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165

"Hist. nat." 16, 79.

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166

Arkal or Archal may mean "fire of the All," "light of the All."

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167

Etym. Magn. Γαδεῖρα.

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168

Diod. 5, 19, 20.

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169

On the meaning given in Avienus ("Ora marit") of Abila as "high mountain," and Calpa as "big-bellied jar," cf. Müllenhoff, "Deutsche Alterthumsk," 1, 83.

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170

Strabo, pp. 169-172. Justin (44, 5) represents the Tyrians as founding Gades in consequence of a dream. In regard to the name cf. Avien. "Ora marit," 267-270.

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171

Movers, "Phœniz." 2, 622. Strabo (p. 48) puts the first settlements of the Phenicians in the midst of the Libyan coast and at Gades just after the Trojan war, Velleius (1, 2, 6, in combination with 1, 8, 4), in the year 1100 B.C. Cf. Movers, loc. cit. S. 148, note 90. The Greeks called both land and river Tartessus. The pillars of the Tyrian god "Archaleus," are with them the pillars of their "Heracles," which he sets up as marks of his campaigns. Here, opposite the mouth of the Tartessus, they place the island Erythea, i. e. the red island on which the giant Geryon, i. e. "the roarer," guards the red oxen of the sun: Erythea is one of the islands near Cadiz; Müllenhoff, Deutsche "Alterthumsk: " 1, 134 ff.

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172

Sall. "Jugurtha," c. 19.

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173

Ezek. xxvii. 12, 25.

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174

In Strabo, p. 148; Müllenhoff, loc. cit. 1, 81.

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175

Herod. 4, 152.

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176

"De mirab. ausc." c. 147.

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177

In Strabo, p. 148.

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178

Aristoph. "Ranae," 475.

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179

Diod. 5, 35; Strabo, p. 144 seqq.

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180

Scylax, "Peripl." c. 111.

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181

Judges v. 10, 14; x. 4.

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