CHAPTER X

.

THE SWORD IN BABYLONIA, ASSYRIA AND PERSIA, AND ANCIENT INDIA.

[Illustration: FIG. 202.—ASSYRIAN SWORD.]

Although Professor Lepsius maintained and proved that the earliest Babylonian civilisation was imported from Egypt, Biblical leanings, and the fatal practice of reading myths and mysteries as literal history, have led many moderns to hold the Plain of Shinar (Babylon) and the ancient head of the Persian Gulf to be the cradle of culture and the origin of ‘Semitism.’ We still read, ‘Babylonia stands prominent as highly civilised and densely populated at a period when Egypt was still in her youthful prime.’[649] Only in Genesis (x. 10), a document treating of later ethnology, we find mention of Erech,[650] Urukh being the oldest traditional king of Babylon. On the other hand, the Egyptians declared Belus and his subjects to have been an Egyptian colony which taught the rude Babylonians astrology and other arts. The monumental Babylonian or pre-Chaldæan Empire begins only in B.C. 2300, many a century—say a score—after Menes. The late Mr. George Smith warns us that some scholars would make the annals ‘stretch nearly two thousand years beyond that time’; but he expressly declares no approximate date can be fixed for any king before Kara-Indas (circ. B.C. 1475?–1450?). Also, ‘The great temples of Babylonia were founded by the kings who preceded the conquest by Hammu-rabi, King of the Kassi’ Arabs (sixteenth century B.C.).[651]

The Burbur or Accad inscriptions found in Babylonia do not date before B.C. 2000. Ninus, the builder of Nineveh (Fish-town) and the founder of the Assyrian dynasties, is usually placed between B.C. 2317 and 2116. An extract, by Alexander Polyhistor from the Armenian[652] Chronicle, gives, by adding the dynasties, an origin-date of 2,317 years. Berosus the priest, declares from official documents, that Babylon (God’s Gate) had regal annals 1,000 years before Solomon (B.C. 993–953), in whose reign dynastic Jewish history begins. Diodorus Siculus, quoting Ctesias (B.C. 395) makes the monarchy commence one thousand years before the Siege of Troy, which we may place about B.C. 1200. Æmilius Sura, quoted by Paterculus, proposes the date B.C. 2145, and Eusebius the Armenian 1340 years before the first Olympiad (B.C. 776), or B.C. 2116. The great kingdom of the Khita (Hittites)[653] was succeeded on the rich lowlands of the Tigris-Euphrates system by Babylon, which the Nilotes called ‘Har,’ and by the Assyrians, whom the Egyptians called Mat or the People, and hieroglyphs notice the ‘Great King of the Mat.’ But [Cuneiform] Assur[654] was little known till the decline of the Pharaohs in the Twenty-first Dynasty (B.C. 1100–966) of the priest Hirhor and his successors: one of the latter—Ramessu or Ramses XVI.—married, when dethroned, a daughter of Pallasharnes, the ‘great king of the Assyrians,’ whose capital was Nineveh,[655] and thus led to the Assyrian invasions of Egypt.[656] We may, then, safely hold with Lepsius that early Babylonian civilisation was posterior to, if not imported from, Egypt.[657]

In Babylonia a third element, the so-called ‘Turanian’ (Chinese), first emerged from Egyptian and began to take its part in the drama of progress. The almost unknown quantity has assumed magnificent proportions in the eyes of certain students, and great things are still expected from Akkadian revelation. Yet the race typified by the Chinese could have had no effect upon the learning of Egypt. ‘At the time when the genealogical tables of Genesis were written (chap. x.) those regions were still so unknown and barbarous that the writer excluded them from the civilised world.’[658]

[Heading: _THE SWORD IN ASSYRIA._]

Our factual knowledge of Mesopotamian civilisation is mostly due to the labours of the present century. Professor Grotefend of Bonn, in 1801–1803, discovered the clue to the Persian cuneiform,[659] cuneatic or arrow-headed character. This great step in advance opened the labyrinth to a host of minor explorers—Heeren (1815), Burnouf (1836), Lassen (1836–44), Hincks, who attacked the Assyrian cuneiform, and, to mention no more, Rawlinson, whose ‘Reading made Easy’ popularised the study in England. Actual exploration of the Mesopotamian ruins was begun by the learned Consul Botta (Dec. 1842) who, after failing at Koyunjik opposite Mosul, worked successfully at Khorsabad, some ten miles to the north-east: four years afterwards (Dec. 1846) the first collection of Assyrian antiquities reached the Louvre. He was followed (Nov. 8, 1845) by Mr. (now Sir) H. A. Layard, who unfortunately was not an Orientalist: his various discoveries of a stamped-clay literature, and his popular publications, introduced to the public Koyunjik and Kal’at Ninawi (Nineveh), Hillah (Babylon), Warká, Sippara (Abu Nabbah) sixteen miles south-west of Baghdad, and a variety of Biblical sites.

This ‘recovery’ of antiquities buried twenty centuries ago, and a whole literature of bas-reliefs, enables us to compare the Nile Valley, the cradle and mother-country of science and art, with its rival-successor on the Tigris-Euphrates. The original workmanship of Assyria, like that of Egypt, is still unknown; and, though she borrowed from Nile-land, her art is rather a decadence than a rise. The difference, indeed, is between the porphyries, the granites, and the syenites of Egypt, and the mud-bricks, the coarse black marbles, the rough basalts, and the undurable alabasters (a calcareous carbonate) of Interamnian Assyria. But the industrious valley-men made the best of their poor material. The ruins show the true Egyptian arch; the so-called Ionic capital, the original volutes being goats’ horns;[660] the Caryatides and Atlantes, or human figures acting columns; the cornice, corbel, and bracket; with a host of architectural embellishments to fill up plain fields. Apparently all migrated from Nile-land. Such were the winged circle, the lotus,[661] the fir-cone, and the rosette: the latter, also found by Dr. Schliemann at ‘Troy’ (p. 160), became the _rosa mystica_ of Byzantine art, and was used by Christians to denote their origin. Again, we have the key-pattern, which is Trojan and Chinese as well as Greek; the honeysuckle, a symbol of the Homa or Assyrian ‘Tree of Life’;[662] the guilloche-scroll or wave-pattern; and the meander, also miscalled the Tuscan border: the latter is common in Egypt and Cyprus, and possibly derives from the Hittite Svasti, erroneously called Svastika.[663] Assyria equally excelled in literature,[664] in painting, in sculpture, in the minor arts, and in metallurgy. She made transparent glass: a crystal lens[665] found at Nineveh accounts for the diminutive size of some inscriptions. Her sons worked enamel, and thus adorned the humble brick: like their Egyptian teachers, they were skilful in ivory-carving, in cutting cylinders of jasper and _pietra dura_, and in gem-engraving on carnelian, onyx, sardonyx, amethyst, agate, chalcedony, and lapis lazuli.

As regards Assyrian metallurgy, few articles of iron have been found in the river-valley’s damp and nitrous soil, but the metal is denoted, as in Egypt, by a blue tint, and the god Ninib is termed the ‘lord of the iron coat.’ Gold and silver were profusely used as ornaments. Lead was dug in the Montes Gordæi (Kurd Mountains) near Mosul, the original Ararat of ‘Noah’s ark.’ Copper vessels, bright as gold when polished, were found in the palaces of Nimrúd: the ore was brought from the northern highlands heading the Tigris Valley, where the Arghana ma’adan (Diyar-i-Bekr mine) long supplied the Ottoman Empire. The place that exported their tin is disputed.[666] They worked well in bronze: of this alloy many castings have been found: utensils, as pots and cauldrons, cups, forks and spoons, dishes, and plates, plain and ornamented; tools, as picks, nails, and saws; thin plates; the so-called razors;[667] lamps; weapons; an ægis-like object also found in Egypt; lance-heads, shields, and door-sockets each weighing six pounds and three and three-quarter ounces.[668] The bronze gates of Balawat, with plates eight feet long showing the triumphs of Shalmaneser II. (B.C. 884–850), attest high art. Layard supplied the British Museum with many iron articles from the north-western palace at Nimrúd, and some had iron cores round which bronze had been cast for economy. Amongst them were iron chain-armour, two rusty helmets ornamented with bronze; picks, hammers, knives, and saws.[669] The approximate date may be assumed at B.C. 880.

[Illustration: FIG. 203.—ASSYRIAN LANCE WITH COUNTER-WEIGHT.]

[Illustration: FIG. 204.—ASSYRIAN SPEAR-HEAD.]

[Illustration: FIG. 205.—ASSYRIAN ‘RAZOR.’

A sickle-shaped tool from a bas-relief. A similar weapon in iron, found at Pæstum in Lucania, is preserved in the Musée d’Artillerie at Paris.]

In mimic war (hunting) the Assyrians were proficients. Many hundreds of bas-reliefs, which are more natural because less conventional than those of Egypt, illustrate the chase of the lion, stag, and jungle-swine; the wild horse, ass, and bull. They were equally skilled in the art of war, which is shown in all its phases, the march, the passage of streams, the siege, the battle, the sea-fight, or rather the river-fight, the pursuit, and the punishment of prisoners by torturing, impaling, flaying alive, crucifixion, and ‘tree-planting’ or vivi-interment. The abominable cruelties of these Asiatics, still practised by the Persian, the Kurd, and the ‘unspeakable’ Turk, contrast strongly with the mildness of the African Egyptians. Their walls, single or double, were provided with the fosse and the rampart, and with machicolations, crenelles, and battlements; the last two originally shields like the Egyptian cartouche. The _places fortes_ were attacked by the wheeled tower,[670] the iron-pointed battering ram, the scaling ladder, and the pavoise, or large shield common throughout Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.[671] In the field pennons are attached to the lances, and the standard-bearers carry eagles. The action begins with missiles, slings, darts, and arrows; the mace and spear then play their part, and the Sword is never absent. The warriors—who appear on foot or horseback, with gorgeous caparisons, in chariots or swimming with floats of inflated skins—wear helmets of many shapes, crested, crescented, capped with the _fleur-de-lys_ and perfectly plain; some are close-fitting with ear-flaps, the common skull-cap (_namms_) of Ancient Egypt, and the Indian Kan-top. The head-gear usually ended in a metal point—the _pickelhaube_. The sculptors show imbricated armour or hauberks (mail-coats) of the Norman type, with stockings of iron- (?) rings, gaiters, and boots laced up in front. The shields, either circular or rounded at the top and straight at the bottom, cover the whole body.

[Heading: _THE ASSYRIAN SWORD._]

The Assyrian Sword, like the Egyptian, is of four principal shapes. One, a long poniard of Nilotic form, is carried by all classes from king to slinger. The other (_Malmulla_, ? fig. 206, 3), by some translated ‘falchion,’ appears slightly curved, not like the Turkish scymitar, but with the half-bend of the Japanese and the Indian Talwár. The curved blades in the bas-reliefs mostly characterise conquered peoples. The third is the Sa-pa-ra or Khopsh, of which an illustration will be given (p. 208); and the fourth is a club-shaped blade thickening at the end, which is almost pointless.[672] In the cuneiforms a ‘double Sword’ is often mentioned: it may be of the kind called by the Greeks ‘Chelidonian’ (chap. ix. and xi.).[673] Fancy weapons appear in the bas-reliefs—for instance, the Sword from the Nineveh palace of the Sardanapalus-reign, B.C. 1000 (fig. 210).

[Illustration: FIG. 206.—1. BABYLONIAN BRONZE DAGGER; 2, 3. ASSYRIAN SWORDS (Layard); 4. ASSYRIAN BRONZE SWORD (bas-relief in Palace of Khorsabad, reign of Sargon, B.C. 721–706).]

[Illustration: FIG. 207.—DAGGER-SWORD IN SHEATH.]

[Illustration: FIG. 208.—DAGGER-SWORD.]

[Illustration: FIG. 209.—CLUB-SWORD.]

[Illustration: FIG. 210.—FANCY SWORD.]

Mostly the weapons have richly decorated hilts and scabbards. In a royal sculpture the pommel is formed by a mound or hemisphere—a constant ornament—and below it is a ball between two flat discs: the upper jaws of two lions, placed opposite each other, embrace the blade and the grip where it presses against the metal sheath-mouth. Another has a lion’s head on the handle. The two-lion scabbard is common, and sometimes the beasts are locked in a death embrace. In another specimen the royal blade is much broader than usual, and two lions couchant form the ferrule, embracing the sheath with their paws and retrogardant or bending their heads backwards (fig. 212). The ferrule of another is enriched with a guilloche. In the inscriptions of Assur-bani-pal[674] (Sardanapalus) we read of a ‘steel Sword and its sheath of gold,’ and of ‘steel Swords of their girdles.’ Another legend runs—‘He lifted his great Sword called “Lord of the Storm,”’ proving that the Sword, like the horse, the chariot, the boat, and other favourites, had names and titles.

[Illustration: FIG. 211.—ASSYRIAN SWORDS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 212.—ASSYRIAN SWORDS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 213.—ASSYRIAN DAGGER.]

The dagger is often decorated with the head of the hippopotamus (a Nilotic, or rather African, beast) surmounting an imbricated handle (fig. 213).[675] This poniard is worn in the girdle, and in some cases it appears under and behind the surcoat. The longer weapon is carried by a narrow bauldric slung over the right shoulder and meeting another cord-shaped band at the breast, in fact suggesting our antiquated cross-belts. The Sword is always worn on the left side.[676] A royal Sword-belt bears several ranges of bosses and globules, which may be pearls: that of the eunuch-attendant has three wide rows, the central broken here and there by round plates. A Magian wears a broad scarf with long hanging fringes cast obliquely over the left shoulder: it is edged with a triple series of small rosettes placed in squares, and it passes over the Sword, to which, perhaps, it acts bauldric. A soldier’s bauldric is coloured red, like the wood of the bows and arrows. Another eunuch wears the Sword-belt buckled over the waist-sash, and holds in his right hand a scourge: this was the emblem of official rank, as the Egyptian carried a hide-Kurbáj.[677] Another soldier has, besides the Kamar-band (waist-sash), a red belt, and what seems to be its tassels hanging from the shoulders before and behind.

[Illustration: FIG. 214.—ASSYRIO-BABYLONIAN ARCHER in war coat, leggings, and fillet. Bas-relief, B.C. 700. (Museum of the Louvre.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 215.—ASSYRIAN FOOT SOLDIER with the coat, helmet and tall crest, greaves or leggings, target and lance. Bas-reliefs of Nineveh of Sardanapalus V. B.C. 700.]

[Illustration: FIG. 216.—ASSYRIAN SOLDIER HUNTING GAME. Bas-relief of Khorsabad, of the reign of Sargon. (British Museum.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 217.—FOOT SOLDIER OF THE ARMY OF SENNACHERIB (B.C. 712–707). From a bas-relief in the British Museum. The shape of the conical helmet is modern Persian; the coat and leggings appear to be of mail; the shield is round, large, and very convex.]

[Illustration: FIG. 218.—ASSYRIAN WARRIOR, WITH SWORD AND STAFF.]

[Illustration: FIG. 219.—ASSYRIAN WARRIORS AT A LION HUNT.]

[Illustration: FIG. 220.—ASSYRIAN EUNUCH. In mail-coat, with mace, bow, and dagger-Sword.]

[Heading: _THE SWORD IN ASSYRIA._]

The Sword and the Sword-dagger seem to have been universally used in Assyria—none but captives and working men are without them. The vulture-headed ‘Nisroch the god’ (of Nebuchadnezzar) carries two long poniards in his breast garment, whereas Ashur in statues shoots his bow. Assur-bani-pal ‘destroys the people of Arabia with his Sword.’ The king in his car, with his Cidaris (tiara) and fly-flap, has two daggers and a Sword in his girdle, from which hang cords and tassels. Another rests his right hand upon a staff, and his left upon the pommel of his weapon. A third plunges a short straight blade, like the matador’s _espada_, between the second and third vertebræ of a wild bull, where the spinal cord is most assailable: this would be done to-day in the spectacula of Spain. Swords are worn by the magi and the eunuchs;[678] and one of the latter draws his weapon to cut off a head. The body-guard bears by his side a Sword longer than usual, and holds arrows and other weapons for his lord’s use. Even the executioner does his work with the Sword.

Happily for students, an ancient Assyrian bronze Sword was bought by Colonel Hanbury from the Bedawin at Nardin.[679] He could not ascertain whence it originally came, but it was probably placed in the hands of a statue, perhaps of Maruduk (Mars, father of Nebo or Mercury[680]): it certainly resembles those with which the god is represented upon the Cylinders[681] when fighting with the Dragon. The dimensions are:

Length of blade 16 inches Length of hilt 5⅜ „ Total length 21⅜ „ Width at hilt 1⅛ „ Width at hilt base 1⅞ „

The weapon has a richly jewelled hilt inlaid with ivory. It is of the kind known in the Assyrian inscriptions as [Cuneiform] (Sa-pa-ra).[682] It bears the following (cuneiform) inscription in three places: (1) along the whole length of the flat blade, inside edge; (2) along the back; and (3) on the outside edge, where it is divided into two lines:—

E-kal Vul-nirari sar kissati abli Bu-di-il Sar Assuri Abli Bel-nirari Sar Assuri va—

(The Palace of Vul-nirari, King of Nations, son of Budil,[683] Sar (king) of Assyria, son of Bel-nirari, Sar of Assyria, and—)

[Illustration: FIG. 221.—BRONZE SWORD BEARING THE NAME OF VUL-NIRARI I., FOUND NEAR DIARBEKR.]

[Heading: _THE SWORD IN PERSIA._]

And now, proceeding east, we may note that the Persepolis sculptures distinctly show, as we might expect, Assyrian and Babylonian derivation. The Persians are, despite their prodigious pretensions, a comparatively modern people,[684] and they were rude enough when armed only with sling, lasso, and knife. The date of Hakhámanish (Achæmenes), the _hero eponymus_ of the ruling family, can hardly be made to precede B.C. 700. This was about the time (B.C. 721–706) when Sargon II. first mentions the Greeks as the Yaha of Yatnan (Yunan = Ionia), who sent him tribute from Cyprus and beyond. The Medes, before the reign of Cyaxares had conducted the Persians from the Caspian regions into Media Magna, were mere barbarians, like the Iliyát or Iranian nomades of the present day, who number from a quarter to a half of the population. But in starting into life Persia succeeded to a rich inheritance—Babylon. To this conquest (B.C. 538) she was led by her hero king, Cyrus the Great, or rather Kurush[685] the elder, son of Cambyses (Xenophon), not father of Cambyses (Herodotus), and a contemporary of Darius the Mede.[686] Their courage and conduct, their loyalty and simplicity, their wise laws, their generosity and their love of truth,[687] now unhappily extinct, raised them in Herodotus’ day to the proud position of ‘Lords of Asia.’

[Illustration: FIG. 222.—PERSIAN ARCHER. From a bas-relief of Persepolis, the ancient capital of Persia (B.C. 560). The long coat, probably of leather, descends to the ankle. The headdress has nothing of the helmet, but nevertheless indicates workmanship in metal.]

[Illustration: FIG. 223.—PERSIAN WARRIOR. From a bas-relief of Persepolis; a cast is in the British Museum. The shield, high enough to rest on, is almost hemispherical; the helmet, with ear and neck coverings in one single piece, differs from the Assyrian.]

[Illustration: FIG. 224.—THE PERSIAN CIDARIS, OR TIARA.]

Between the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad and those of Persepolis there is the same difference as between the early Egyptian sculptures and the degenerate days of what Macrobius calls the ‘tyranny’ of the Ptolemies.[688] The drawing is less pure, the forms are heavier, the anatomical details are wanting or badly indicated—they are, in fact, clumsy imitations of far higher models.

Herodotus (VII. ch. lx.-lxxxiii.), when reviewing the army of Xerxes (Khshhershe = Ahasuerus[689]) in B.C. 480, numbers forty-five nations, of which only the six (including Colchians and Caspians) wore Swords. The long straight dagger was carried by the Pactyans, by the Paphlagonians, by the Thracians, and by the Sagartians, who spoke Persian, and who were in dress half Persians and half Pactyans (Afghans?).[690] The Sagartian Nomades (chap. lxxxv.) were armed with a short blade and with lassos of plaited thongs ending in a running noose: this denotes that they were cattle-breeders.[691]