tribute; and captives 



her strength and it was infinite. Put and 

 Lubim were thy helpers. Yet was she 

 carried away, she went into captivity ; 

 her young children also were dashed in 

 pieces at the top of all the streets; and 

 they cast lots for her honorable men, and 

 all her great men were bound in chains." 

 Such was the miserable fate of the 

 greatest of ancient capitals in those cruel 

 days. Such before long was to be the 

 fate of Nineveh herself. 



FROM WAR TO WAR 



From slaughter in Egypt Ashurbanipal 

 turned cheerfully to slaughter in Baby- 

 lonia. A great war arose with the old 

 enemy Elam. and, in a fierce battle at 

 Tulliz, the Elamite King Teumman was 

 beaten and slain. 



The famous reliefs representing the 

 principal events of the battle give us the 

 clearest possible pictures of Assyrian 

 warfare, with all its ghastly "cruelty. We 

 see the stress of the conflict — the Elamite 

 King making his final despairing stand 

 and shooting his last arrow against his 

 triumphant foes. 



Then follows all the brutal savagery of 

 victory. The King's head is hacked off 

 with a dagger and borne in triumph be- 

 fore his conquerors. And then we have 

 a picture of Ashurbanipal feasting with 

 his wife and attendants in the garden of 

 his palace, while from a tree before him 

 hangs the ghastly head of the dead Elam- 

 ite King, blackening in the sun. Such was 

 an Assyrian conqueror and such were his 

 pleasures. 



Yet withal Ashurbanipal was one of 

 the most enlightened of Assyrian mon- 

 archs. He had a great taste for litera- 

 ture, and in this respect we owe him an 

 infinite debt. His scribes were com- 

 manded by him to make copies of the an- 

 nals of Babylonia and Assyria from the 

 libraries of all the most important cities 

 in the land, and it is from these copies, 

 made on clay tablets and preserved in the 

 library of the king's palace, that the bulk 

 of what is known of Assyrian and Baby- 

 lonian history and religion has been 

 learned. By the year 640 B. C. his cam- 

 paigns were over. Henceforth he de- 

 voted himself to a life of literature, hunt- 

 ing, and luxury. 



A MANV-SIDFJ) MONARCH 



Of all Assyrian monarchs he was by 

 far the most splendid. His triumphs in 

 the chase are recorded in magnificent re- 

 liefs, which remain for all time among 

 the artistic treasures of the human race 

 (see pages 154 and 202) ; his library was 

 the greatest of ancient days, and its very 

 wrecks are beyond comparison precious 

 to us (see page 167). 



It was his luxury, however, that chiefly 

 impressed the world of his time. The 

 fame of it crystallized at last into the 

 well-known Greek tradition of how Sar- 

 danapalus, last of the kings of Assvria, 

 lived a life of incredible luxury and self- 

 indulgence, and how, at last, when be- 

 sieged in his palace and hopeless of relief, 

 he closed his career by erecting a vast 

 and priceless funeral pyre, on which he 



155 



