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E. WALTER MAUNDER, F.R.A.S., ON 



No doubt, baser motives were at work with the first would-be 

 conquerors, such as ambition, greed, the love of power and 

 display, and, above all, the intense excitement of successful 

 warfare. But, beyond these, there was the prompting of what 

 appeared to be political necessity ; the civilization of the river 

 valley had to be protected from the ruder tribes without. And 

 world-empire, could it be established, seemed to offer three 

 great boons. First, peace, by the subjugation of all possible 

 invaders ; next, plenty, by the more complete organization of 

 agriculture; and, thirdly, the accomplishment of great public 

 works, such as embankments, canals, and the building of 

 cities, towers and temples, or, as in Egypt, of tombs like the 

 pyramids, which, if of little usefulness, were supremely 

 impressive. 



We know that this idea of world conquest did present itself 

 to rulers in the valley of the twin rivers, for we find that they 

 often assumed to themselves the title of "kings of the four 

 regions of the world," or, more simply, " kings of the world." 

 Nor was this title in all cases merely a piece of grandiloquence. 

 Some 5,000 years ago, Sargon of Agade, and his successor, 

 Naram Sin, actually achieved this conquest, and pushed their 

 victories to the five seas — the Caspian, the Euxine, the Medi- 

 terranean, the Bed Sea, and the Persian Gulf. Sargon even 

 claims to have crossed the sea, and established his dominion 

 beyond it. And in the eighth century B.C. — that is to say, 

 roughly half-way from the time of the first Sargon to our own 

 day — a second conqueror, who assumed to himself the same 

 name, Sargon, repeated his conquest, and pushed the arms of 

 Assyria almost to the same limits. Under Sargon of Assyria 

 and his son, Sennacherib, Assyria became an armed camp ; the 

 nation was drained into the army ; the kingdom lived only for 

 war. The monuments of this time are concerned solely with the 

 military life : the army on the march, the army in battle, the 

 army besieging the cities, the army slaying or torturing captives, 

 the army laying waste an enemy's country. We have not yet 

 discovered and deciphered all the tablets and inscriptions that 

 relate to this period, and we may yet learn how the heart of 

 Sennacherib bled when he learnt of the destruction of some 

 Kirjath-Sepher (" book-city ") and the library for which it was 

 famed. But the principle of " frightf ulness " was well under- 

 stood by the Assyrian kings, and wholesale massacres, mutila- 

 tions, outrages and tortures, freely chronicled by the Assyrian 

 kings themselves, might almost pass for a description of devas- 

 tated Belgium in the autumn of the year of grace 1914. 



