NATURE 



361 



THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1900. 



ORIENTAL HISTORY FROM B.C. 850 TO 

 B.C. 330. 

 The Passing of the Empires. By G. Maspero. English 

 Edition. Pp. xiv + 814. (Society for the Promotion 

 of Christian Knowledge, 1900.) 



THE appearance of the third and concluding volume 

 of the English translation of M. Maspero's " Histoire 

 ancienne des Peuples de I'Orient " will be welcomed by 

 many, for this section of the work deals with a period 

 which is full of interest for every student of the records 

 of the past. In the centuries which passed between the 

 rise of the Assyrian kingdom under Assurnasirpal and 

 the advent of Alexander the Great, vast empires sprang 

 into being and decayed, mighty dynasties in Babylonia, 

 Assyria, Elam, Persia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt rose 

 and fell, and the balance of power among the nations of 

 Western Europe and North-East Africa changed so fre- 

 quently, and in changing produced such unexpected 

 results, that the history of that period in the world's life is 

 as remarkable as that of any which has come down to us. 

 Moreover, the mass of material which is now available 

 for constructing a connected account of the last great 

 Semitic Empires which developed and flourished before 

 the birth of Christ is very large, and we are enabled, by 

 means of the documents now before us, not only to read 

 the narratives of the events which occurred in that com- 

 paratively remote period, but also to understand many 

 of the motives which prompted the policy of some of the 

 greatest Oriental despots to whom Providence deputed 

 the sway of empire. Indeed, more is known of the 

 military prowess of the kings of Western Asia than of 

 their civilisation ; but we must hope that masses of tablets 

 inscribed, in cuneiform still lie buried beneath the mounds 

 in Mesopotamia, and that when the excavations, which 

 will certainly be conducted in future years, have been 

 successfully concluded, and the newly-discovered texts 

 have been fully investigated, we may learn fuller details 

 of the daily life and interests of the peoples whose victories 

 in war, though only made known to us twenty-five cen- 

 turies after they were won, fascinate us by their glory, 

 and indicate by their frequency the vigour of the power 

 which could strike so quickly and so hard. 



M. Maspero divides the volume of his work now before 

 us into seven chapters, each of which is tolerably com- 

 plete in itself The first deals with the rise of the great 

 Assyrian Empire of Assurnasirpal, and the struggle for 

 the possession of Northern Syria and Palestine between 

 that king and the warlike, powerful tribes of people 

 whose ancestors had, centuries before, withstood the 

 might of Rameses the Great of Egypt. Assurnasirpal 

 and his son, Shalmaneser II., once more made the 

 Assyrian power predominant in Syria, and they gained 

 possession of the lands over which their ancestor, 

 Tiglath-Pileser I., about B.C. iioo, had hunted the lion 

 of the desert and jungle, but not without a series of fierce 

 fights. The second chapter discusses the development 

 of the Assyrian rule under Tiglath-Pileser III., about 

 B.C. 740, and describes the downfall of Babylon and the 

 collapse of the Jewish power, which had been long fore- 

 VO. 1561, VOL. 01 I 



seen by thoughtful Jewish politicians. By the end of 

 the eighth century B.C., the whole of Western Asia was 

 in the hands of the " great kin'g, the King of Assyria.' 

 To many the third chapter will appear the most interest- 

 ing in the book ; for it treats of the rise of Nineveh, 

 and of the subjugation of Palestine by Sennacherib, and 

 of the siege and fall of Jerusalem. The foolish idea of 

 obtaining support from the kings of Egypt led Hezekiah 

 and his governors of cities hopelessly astray, and this 

 fact M. Maspero has well brought out. Had Hezekiah 

 seen as clearly as the shrewd Isaiah, he could never 

 have failed to discover that sooner or later his "buffer" 

 kingdom must be crushed between those of his great 

 neighbours Assyria and Egypt. When once Sennacherib 

 had shown that it was possible to overrun Syria and 

 Palestine, and to march on to the frontiers of Egypt, his 

 successors, Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, were not slow 

 to follow in his footsteps. In the fourth chapter the 

 deeds of the last two kings are described at length ; and 

 by means of their annals we can watch their victorious 

 progress until we find Assurbanipal actually appointing 

 Assyrians to be governors of some of the greatest cities 

 in the delta of Egypt ! But two hundred and fifty 

 years of conquest had enriched Assyria, and made it 

 greater than the greatest of its ancient kings had ever 

 succeeded in making it ; and under the vigorous rule 

 of Assurbanipal, Nineveh became the centre of all the 

 known arts and sciences, of literature, and of luxury and 

 wealth. The warlike tribes on the eastern and southern 

 frontiers of Assyria watched with eagle eyes the gradual 

 relaxation of the hold which the last of its kings kept upon 

 his tributary peoples, and they silently made ready to claim 

 their independence when the opportunity for doing so 

 should arrive. They had not long to wait, for before the 

 close of the seventh century before Christ we find that 

 the eastern portion of the Assyrian Empire had been 

 seized by the Medes, and that Babylon and all the rich 

 land about it had become the possession of Nebuchad- 

 nezzar II., whose character has suffered so much at the 

 hands of the writer or editor of the Book of Daniel. 

 Under the hand of this last-named king the Jews lost 

 their kingdoms in Palestine, and the glory of Israel was 

 transferred to Babylon, where it introduced a new element 

 into the cosmopolitan population of Babylon. But 

 Nebuchadnezzar's empire was doomed not to last, and 

 in the reign of Nabonidus, who seems to have been 

 interested in the archaeology of his country, if we may 

 judge by his annals, it fell into the hands of Cyrus, who 

 captured Babylon about B.C. 538. Under the rule of 

 the Persian or Acha^menian kings the Babylonians and 

 Assyrians enjoyed great freedom, and the liberal-minded 

 Cyrus gave the Jews the opportunity to rebuild their 

 temple at Jerusalem. At the beginning of the fourth 

 century we find the Persian rule becoming as lax as was 

 that of the Assyrians in the days of Nabopolassar, the 

 father of Nebuchadnezzar, and all the nations that were 

 nominally subject to it anxiously looked for the appear- 

 ance of a king who would protect their fast vanishing 

 interests and lead them in successful battle. About the 

 same time the power of Egypt was crumbling away, and 

 towards the period of the birth of Alexander the Great 

 her once mighty empire was presided over by a king 

 who, if we may believe tradition, spent more time in 



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