[Footnote 36:  To a late period Tyre and Sidon were mostly dependent on Palestine for their supply of grain.  The inhabitants of these cities desired peace with Herod (Agrippa) because their country was nourished by the king’s country (Acts xii., 20).]

RISE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA

DESTRUCTION OF NINEVEH

B.C. 789

F. LENORMANT AND E. CHEVALLIER

Mesopotamia for many centuries was the field of battle for the opposing hosts of Babylonia and Assyria, each striving for mastery over the other.  At first each city had its own prince, but at length one of these petty kingdoms absorbed the rest, and Nineveh became the capital of a united Assyria.  Babylonia had her own kings, but they were little more than hereditary satraps receiving investiture from Nineveh.

From about B.C. 1060 to 1020 Babylon seems to have recovered the upper hand.  Her victories put an end to what is known as the First Assyrian Empire.  After a few generations a new family ascended the throne and ultimately founded the Second Assyrian Empire.

The first princes whose figured monuments have come down to us belonged to those days.  The oldest of all was Assurnizirpal; the bas-reliefs with which his palace was decorated are now in the British Museum and the Louvre; most of them in the former.  His son Shalmaneser III, and later Shalmaneser IV, made many campaigns against the neighboring peoples, and Assyria became rapidly a great and powerful nation.  The effeminate Sardanapalus was the last of the dynasty.

The capital of Assyria was Nineveh, one of the most famous of cities.  It was remarkable for extent, wealth, and architectural grandeur.  Diodorus Siculus says its walls were sixty miles around and one hundred feet high.  Three chariots could be driven abreast around the summit of its walls, which were defended by fifteen hundred bastions, each of them two hundred feet in height.  These dimensions may be exaggerated, but the Hebrew scriptures and recent excavations at the ancient site leave no doubt as to the splendor of the Assyrian palaces and the greatness of the city of Nineveh in population, wealth, and power.  In historical times it was destroyed by the Medes, under King Cyaxares, and by the Babylonians, under Nebuchadnezzar, about B.C. 607.

We are indebted to the monuments, tablets, and “books” recently discovered for the history of Assyria and other ancient oriental nations.  Layard unearthed the greater portion, on the site of ancient Nineveh, of the Assyrian “books” (for so are named the tablets of clay, sometimes enamelled, at others only sun-dried or burnt).  The writing on these “books” is the cuneiform, and was done by impressing the “style” on the clay while in a waxlike condition.  Many of the tablets were broken