The dates assigned to the later kings, from Vul-lush II., to Esarhaddon inclusive, are derived from the Assyrian Canon taken in combination with the famous Canon of Ptolemy.  The agreement between these documents, and between the latter and the Assyrian records generally, is exact; and a conformation is thus afforded to Ptolemy which is of no small importance.  The dates from the accession of Vul-lush II. (B.C. 911) to the death of Esarhaddon (B.C. 668) would seem to have the same degree of accuracy and certainty which has been generally admitted to attach to the numbers of Ptolemy.  They have been confirmed by the notice of a great eclipse in the eighth year of Asshur-dayan III., which is undoubtedly that of June 15, B.C. 763.

The reign of Asshur-bani-pal (Sardanapalus), the son and successor of Esarhaddon, which commenced B.C. 668, is carried down to B.C. 626 on the combined authority of Berosus, Ptolemy, and the monuments.  The monuments show that Asshur-bani-pal proclaimed himself king of Babylon after the death of Saul-mugina whose last year was (according to Ptolemy) B.C. 647:  and that from the date of this proclamation he reigned over Babylon at least twenty years.  Polyhistor, who reports Berosus, has left us statements which are in close accordance, and from which we gather that the exact length of the reign of Asshur-bani-pal over Babylon was twenty-one years.  Hence, B.C. 626 is obtained as the year of his death.  As Nineveh appears to have been destroyed B.C. 625 or 624, two years only are left for Asshur-bani-pal’s son and successor, Asshur-emid-illin, the Saracus of Abydenus.

The framework of Assyrian chronology being thus approximately, and, to some extent, provisionally settled, we may proceed to arrange upon it the facts so far as they have come down to us, of Assyrian history.

In the first place, then, if we ask ourselves where the Assyrians came from, and at what time they settled in the country which thenceforth bore their name, we seem to have an answer,at any rate to the former of these two questions, in Scripture.  “Out of that land”—­the land of Shinar—­“went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh.”  The Assyrians, previously to their settlement on the middle Tigris, had dwelt in the lower part of the great valley—­the flat alluvial plain towards the mouths of the two streams.  It was here, in this productive region, where nature does so much for man, and so little needs to be supplied by himself, that they had grown from a family into a people; that they had learnt or developed a religion, and that they had acquired a knowledge of the most useful and necessary of the arts.  It has been observed in a former chapter that the whole character of the Assyrian architecture is such as to indicate that their style was formed in the low flat alluvium, where there were no natural elevations, and stone was not to be had.  It has also been remarked that their writing is manifestly derived from the Chaldaean; and that their religion is almost identical with that which prevailed in the lower country from a very early time.  The evidence of the monuments accords thus, in the most striking way, with the statement of the Bible, exhibiting to us the Assyrians as a people who had once dwelt to the south, in close contact with the Chaldaeans, and had removed after awhile to a more northern position.