Part XIX

With the advent of Ashurbanapal in 668 B.C., we reach the climax in the glory of the Sargonide dynasty, as upon his death, in 626 B.C., the rapid decline sets in. Legend soon gathered around his name and as Sardan-apalos among the Greeks he sums up as it were the spirit of Assyria's greatness.

His efforts, to be sure, are largely taken up with maintaining the integrity of the vast empire claimed by Assyria. His campaigns in one direction or the other are therefore on the whole attempts to quell disturbances and to strengthen the hands of those governors of provinces who were merely the tools of Assyria. Now it is Egypt to which his armies turn, now Syria and Palestine which are forced to pledge themselves anew to do homage to the mighty power, and again it is the various groups of northern Syria, in and beyond the Taurus range, and the mountain hordes to the northwest which have to be kept in check.

In two directions Ashurbanapal branches out even beyond the ambitious scope of Esarhaddon. Lydia comes within his grasp on the one side, while in a series of campaigns he deals a severe blow against Elam, the old enemy on the east, and with the capture and death of Teumman, the Elamite king, puts an end for the time being to the independence of this district.

The opposition to Ashurbanapal began once more in the south, and it was the king's own brother, Shamash-shumukin, whom he had appointed as governor of Babylonia, who organized an uprising on all sides against the Assyrian yoke. Ashurbanapal wreaked vengeance on those who had assisted his treacherous brother and, after quieting Babylonia, proceeded to inflict punishment on Elam and Arabia for their share in the great uprising.

The agitation in the north, too, gradually subsided, but the greatest danger to Assyria, the pressure of hordes pouring into Asia Minor towards the south, was one that even Ashurbanapal was unable to resist. Already in the days of Esarhaddon new groups like the Cimmerians, Mannai and Ashguzeans make their appearance in the royal annals, representing a wave of Aryan migration across the Caucasus range and that appears to be one of a series of Volkerwanderungen in this general region.

Esarhaddon and Ashurbanapal were able to keep the advance in check, but only by tremendous efforts involving the dispatching of Assyrian armies of large size into the mountain ranges to the north and northeast. Twenty years after AshurbanapaPs death, Nineveh fell, through a combination between the Babylonians and the wild hordes of the northeast at that time grouped under the general designation of Manda.

The rapidity with which Assyria declined after 626 B.C., when Ashurbanapal passed away, will always remain a puzzling phenomenon. A gradual decline through exhausted vitality was to be expected, but that within twenty years the achievements of centuries should have crumbled like a house of cards is a sad reflection not only upon the transitoriness of mere worldly power, but upon the weakness of the foundations upon which the structure was reared.

A country divided against itself cannot endure. Babylonia fell under Assyrian sway because the south was pitted against the north and preferred to have recourse to intrigue and to combinations with the enemy to the east Elam or with Bedouin hordes from the west and southwest rather than to unite with the north. Only strong rulers, as they arose from time to time, were able to keep the north and south of the Euphrates Valley firmly knit together.

Similarly Babylonia and Assyria, although the latter was the offshoot of the former and both had practically everything in common, never held together, while even within Assyria as she expanded factions arose which threatened her unity at frequent intervals. Assyria and Babylonia both succumbed to this inherent weakness, but Assyria fell first because of the exhaustion of her vitality through incessant warfare.