FREED from her Assyrian oppressors, Babylon now renewed her youth, and the city attained a material splendour and magnificence such as she had not achieved during the long course of her earlier history. But it took her more than a generation to realize to the full her newly awakened ambitions. After his declaration of independence, Nabopolassar's influence did not extend far beyond the walls of Babylon and Borsippa. The other great cities, both in the north and south, continued for a time to acknowledge Assyrian supremacy. But the sons of Ashurbanipal, who succeeded him upon the throne, had inherited a reduced empire, whose sole support, the Assyrian army, was now largely composed of disheartened mercenaries. In Ashurbanipal's reign there had been signs of coming change and of the appearance of new races before whom the Assyrians were doomed to disappear. The destruction of Urartu had removed a vital barrier against the incursion of the nomad tribes, and with its disappearance we find new racial elements pressing into Western Asia, of the same Indo-European family as that of the Medes and their Iranian kinsfolk. These were the Scythians, who in the middle of the seventh century had driven the Cimmerians before them into Asia Minor, and it was they who a generation later struck the death-blow of the Assyrian empire, pouring across it in resistless hordes. Assyria had no force in reserve with which to oppose their progress or repair their ravages.

For centuries this great military power had struck terror throughout Western Asia; but insatiable lust for dominion now met with its due reward. Since Sennacherib's day the ranks of the army had been filled with levies drawn from her subject peoples or with mercenary troops, and these were a poor substitute for the race of hardy fighters who had been sacrificed in their country's countless wars. So when the Medes invested Nineveh, with the possible assistance of the Scythians, and the passive encouragement of Babylon, the capital could look for no assistance from her provinces. According to Herodotus the Medes had already twice invaded Assyria before the final investment; and it was natural that Nabopolassar should have regarded them as his allies, and have concluded a definite alliance with them by marrying his son Nebuchadnezzar to the daughter of Cyaxares, the Median king. Sennacherib's mighty walls kept the enemy at bay for three years, but in C06 B.C. the city was taken by storm, and later ages preserved the tradition that Sinsharishkun, the Sarakos of the Greeks, perished in the flames of his palace, rather than fall alive into the besiegers' hands.

Though he does not appear to have taken any active part in the long siege of Nineveh, Nabopolassar was not slow in securing his share of the dismembered empire. The northern territory of Assyria, including Northern Mesopotamia, fell to the Medes, while the southern districts became parts of Nabopolassar's empire under a possible Median suzerainty. But Babylon was soon to put her newly organized army to the test. Two years before the fall of Nineveh Egypt had seized the opportunity, afforded her by Assyria's impotence, of occupying Palestine and Syria. She had crushed Josiah and his Hebrew army at Megiddo, and, though it is not certain whether Judah had the support of other allies, it is clear that Necho encountered no effective opposition on his advance to the Euphrates. But Nabopolassar did not intend to allow this portion of the Assyrian empire to fall to Egypt unchallenged, and he despatched a Babylonian force north-westwards along the Euphrates under the command of the crown-prince, Nebuchadnezzar. The two armies met at Carchemish in 604 B.C., where the Egyptians were utterly routed and driven back through Palestine. But Nebuchadnezzar did not press his pursuit beyond the borders of Egypt, for news reached him at Pelusium of Nabopolassar's death, and he was obliged to return at once to Babylon in order to carry out. at the capital the necessary ceremonies attending his accession to the throne.

In spite of his withdrawal from the country, the greater part of Syria and Palestine lost no time in transferring their allegiance to Babylon. The little state of Judah was an exception, for, though she paid her tribute at first, she soon put the warnings of the prophet Jeremiah at defiance, and her short-sighted revolt led to the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 596 B.C., and to the carrying away of a large portion of her population into captivity. A few years later Egypt made her last attempt to reoccupy Palestine and Syria, and Judah joined the Phoenician cities of Sidon and Tyre in rallying to her support. In 587 Nebuchadnezzar advanced into Northern Syria and took up a strong strategic position at lliblah on the Orontes, whence he despatched a part of his army to besiege Jerusalem. An attempt by Apries, the Egyptian king, to relieve the city was unsuccessful, and in 586 Jerusalem was once more taken and the greater part of the remnant of the Jews followed their fellow-countrymen into exile.The Babylonian army then occupied Phoenicia, though the city of Tyre offered an obstinate resistance and only acknowledged its allegiance to Babylon after a long siege, which is said to have lasted for thirteen years.

Thus Nebuchadnezzar completed the work begun by his father, Nabopolassar, and, by the skilful and vigorous prosecution of his campaigns, established the Neo-Babylonian empire on a firm basis, so that its authority was unquestioned from the Persian Gulf to the Egyptian frontier. Of his later campaigns nothing has yet been published, beyond a fragmentary reference to a conflict with Amasis of Egypt in the thirty-seventh year of his reign. Though we do not know the circumstances under which it took place, we may assume that the Babylonian army was again victorious against the Egyptian troops and the Greek mercenaries who fought in their ranks. A tradition is indeed preserved by Josephus that Nebuchadnezzar made Egypt a Babylonian province, and although this is certainly an exaggeration, the evidence suggests that he may well have conducted at least one successful campaign on Egyptian territory. The troubles of Apries in consequence of his ill-advised expedition against Cyrene, followed by the revolt of Amasis and his own deposition and death, may well have furnished the occasion for a successful invasion of the country by Nebuchadnezzar.

A very large number of inscriptions have been recovered of the Neo-Babylonian kings, but, unlike the foundation-records of Assyria, they contain no accounts of military expeditions, but confine themselves to commemorating the restoration or erection of temples and palaces in Babylon and the other great cities in the land. Considering his military successes, this is surprising in Nebuchadnezzar's case, and the suggestion has been made that he may have told us so little of his expeditions and battles because they were perhaps undertaken at the bidding of Media as his suzerain. Cyaxares was his kinsman, and the part played by Babylon in the conflict of Media with Lydia may well be explained on that hypothesis.

With the passing of Assyrian power the political importance of Lydia had risen considerably, and under Sadyattes and Alyattes, the successors of Ardys upon the Lydian throne, the ravages of the Cimmerian invasion were repaired. These monarchs had conducted a long series of attacks upon the cities and states of' Ionia, and, though they were in the main successful, they used up the resources of the nation without obtaining material advantages in return. Handicapped to this extent, Lydia entered upon a five years' struggle with the growing power of Cyaxares, who pushed back her eastern frontier. Matters came to a head in 585 B.C., when the great battle was fought on the Halys between Cyaxares and Alyattes on May 28th. The battle is famous for the total eclipse of the sun, which took place on that day, and is said to have been foretold by the Greek astronomer Thales of Miletus. By the subsequent treaty the Halys was fixed as the frontier between Lydia and the Median empire, and, according to Herodotus, it was arranged in part through the mediation of Nebuchadnezzar. The intervention of Babylon must have been undertaken in the Median interest, and it is possible that Cyaxares could count on Nebuchadnezzar for more than benevolent neutrality in case of need.

Nebuchadnezzar appears in his inscriptions as a mighty builder, and we have already seen how he transformed the city of Babylon. He entirely rebuilt and enlarged his father's royal palace, and in the course of his, reconstructions raised its terraced platform to so great a height above the surrounding city and plain, that its Hanging Garden became one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. He rebuilt the great temples of E-zida at Borsippa and of E-sagila at Babylon, and the Sacred Procession-street within the city he sumptuously paved, spanning it between the temple of Ninmakh and his own palace with the famous Ishtar Gate, adorned with bulls and dragons in enamelled relief. The fortifications of the city he also greatly strengthened by the extension of its double line of walls and the erection of new citadels. During his long reign of forty-two years he devoted his energies and the new wealth of his kingdom to this work of rebuilding, both in the capital and in the other ancient religious centres of Babylonia. The decoration of the façade of Nebuchadnezzar's own palace reflects the influence of the West upon Babylonian art; and we may picture her markets and quays as thronged with foreign caravans and merchandise. Evidence of her extended horizon at this period may also be traced in the interest which Nebuchadnezzar showed in the sea-traffic on the Persian Gulf, which doubtless led him to construct a harbour in the swamps, and to protect it against Arab raids by the erection of the town of Teredon to the west of the Euphrates, as an outpost on the desert frontier.

Nebuchadnezzar's son, Amel-Marduk, was an unworthy successor to his father. During his short reign he was restrained neither by law nor decency, and it is not surprising that in less than three years the priestly party should have secured his assassination and have set Neriglissar, his brother-in-law, in his place, a man of far stronger character and a soldier. The son of a private Babylonian, Bel-shum-ishkun, Neriglissar had married a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, and we may certainly identify him with Nergal-sharezer, the Rab-mag or Babylonian general who was present at the siege of Jerusalem. A striking proof that Neriglissar enjoyed high military rank in Nebuchadnezzar's reign has recently been obtained in a letter from Erech, which was written by a captain in charge of a body of troops stationed in the neighbourhood of that city. The date of the letter is certain, since the captain refers to soldiers on the roll of Nebuchadnezzar and Neriglissar; and incidentally it gives us a glimpse of the unsatisfactory condition of the Babylonian army during Nebuchadnezzar's closing years. The captain is anxious that the depleted state of his company, and the measures he contemplates in order to fill its ranks, should not be known to Gubaru, who exercised a high command in Nebuchadnezzar's army. It is possible that we may identify this general with the governor of Gutium, who played so prominent a part in the Persian conquest. Knowing, as he doubtless did, the unsatisfactory condition of his country's forces, he may perhaps have regarded the task of opposing the invaders as quite beyond their powers. Neriglissar's death, less than four years after his accession, must certainly have been the death-blow to any hopes his generals may have entertained of placing the country's military organization and defence upon a sound footing. For his son was little more than a child, and after nine months' reign the priestly party at the capital succeeded in deposing him in favour of one of their own number, Nabonidus, a man of priestly descentand thoroughly imbued with the traditions of the hierarchy. The new king carried on Nebuchadnezzar's tradition of temple-reconstruction with enthusiasm, but he had none of his great predecessor's military aptitude. To his own priestly detachment he added the unpractical character of the archaeologist, loving to occupy himself in investigating the past history of the temples he rebuilt, in place of controlling his country's administration. The bent of his mind is well reflected in the account he has left us of the dedication of his daughter, Bel-shalti-Nannar, as head of the college of votaries attached to the Moon-temple at Ur. It is clear that this act and the accompanying ceremonial interested him far more than the education of his son; and any military aptitude Belshazzar may have developed was certainly not fostered by his father or his father's friends. It was only when the enemy was at the frontier that the king must have realized his own fatuity.

Thus with the accession of Nabonidus the close of Babylon's last period of greatness is in sight. But the empire did not crumble of its own accord, for in one of his foundation-records the king boasts that the whole of Mesopotamia and the West, as far as Gaza on the Egyptian border, continued to acknowledge his authority. It required pressure from without to shatter the decaying empire, which from the first must have owed its success in no small measure to the friendly and protective attitude of Media. When that essential support was no longer forthcoming, it lay at the mercy of the new power before which Media herself had already gone down.

The Nabonidus Cylinder from Sippar (translation)

The Nabonidus Cylinder from Ur (translation)

 

The Persian kingdom of Cyrus, rising on a new wave of the Indo-European migration, had had little difficulty in absorbing that of the Medes. Five years after the accession of Nabonidus, Cyrus had deposed Astyages, and, uniting his own followers from the south of Iran with their Median kinsfolk, he proceeded to deal with Croesus of Lydia. Under her last king, the successor of Alyattes, the power of Lydia had risen to its greatest height, and the fame of Croesus' wealth had attracted many of the more cultured Greeks to his court at Sardis. But when Cyrus made himself master of the Median empire, Croesus began to fear his growing power. In 547 B.C. he fought an indecisive battle with the Persians at Pteria in Cappadoeia, near the site of the old Hittite capital, and he then retreated on Sardis. Here he sent for assistance to Sparta, Egypt and Babylon. But Cyrus did not delay before renewing his attack, and he appeared unexpectedly before the capital. The Lydian army was now signally defeated; Sardis, in which Croesus had taken refuge, was captured after a siege, and the Lydian empire brought to an end. Cyrus was then free to turn his attention to Babylon.

If we should be right in identifying Gobryas or Gubaru, the governor of Gutium, with the Babylonian general of that name, who had held high position under Nebuchadnezzar, we may trace the speed and ease of the Persian conquest of Babylonia directly to his action in espousing the cause of the invader. Foreseeing that the only hope for his country lay in its speedy submission, he may have considered that he would be acting in its best interests if he did not oppose its incorporation within the Persian empire, but rendered the revolution so far as possible a peaceful one. That would explain the action of Cyrus in entrusting the invasion largely to his hands; and the subsequent revolt of Sippar is the more easily accounted for if a Babylonian general with Gubaru's reputation had appeared as the envoy of the Persian king. In any case we must assume that a large section of the Akkadian population was of that way of thinking, quite apart from the opposition to himself that Nabonidus had aroused in the priestly party of the capital.

The defence of the country was entrusted by Nabonidus to his son Belshazzar, who met the advancing Persians at Opis, where he was defeated; and, as often as he attempted to rally his forces, they were again dispersed. Sippar then opened its gates without fighting, Nabonidus fled, and Gubaru advancing on the capital secured its peaceful surrender. The native chronicler of these events records that, during the early days of the Persian occupation of the city, the shields of Gutium surrounded the doors of E-sagila, so that no man's spear entered the sacred shrines and no military standard was brought in.The record gains fresh meaning if we may assume that the governor of Gutium was himself of native origin and a former general of the Babylonian army. On the third day of the following month Cyrus made his state entry into the capital, being received by all classes, and especially by the priesthood and the nobles, as a liberator. He appointed Gubaru his governor of Babylon, and the latter appears to have stamped out further resistance by pursuing Belshazzar and putting him to death. Nabonidus had already been taken, when the capital surrendered.

It is perhaps remarkable that the native priesthood, from whose ranks Nabonidus himself had sprung, should have welcomed the Persian king as their country's deliverer, whose victory had been brought about by Marduk, the national god. But, after securing the secular control, Nabonidus had given free rein to his priestly ambition, and, as a consequence, had estranged his own party. His imagination may have been fired by some ill-advised scheme of centralizing worship; but, whatever his motive, the king had collected many of the cult-images throughout the country into the capital, little recking that he thereby tore the gods from their ancient habitations. By restoring the gods to their local shrines, Cyrus gained in popularity, and completely won over the priesthood, by far the most powerful political section of the community. Thus it happened that Babylon made no further struggle to retain her freedom, and the whole of the territory she had enjoyed was incorporated without resistance in the Persian empire.

With the permanent loss of Babylon's independence, the period covered by this history draws to an end. The epoch forms a convenient stopping-place; but, unlike the fall of the Assyrian empire, her conquest made but little difference to the life and activities of the population as a whole. It may therefore be per­missible to glance ahead a little, and note her subsequent fortunes as a subject province, under the foreign domination of the powers which succeeded one another in the rule of that region of Western Asia. The tranquillity of the country under Cyrus formed a striking contrast to the unrest and intrigue which characterized its attitude under Assyrian rule; and this was due to the fact that the policy he inaugurated in the provinces of his empire was a complete reversal of Assyrian methods. For the nationality of each conquered race was respected, and it was encouraged to retain its own religion and its laws and customs. Hence Babylon's commercial life and prosperity suffered no interruption in consequence of the change in her political status. Taxation was not materially increased, and little w^ras altered beyond the name and title of the reigning king in the dates upon commercial and legal documents.

This state of things would doubtless have continued, had not the authority of the Persian empire itself been rudely shaken during the reign of Cambyses, Cyrus' son and successor. The conquest of Egypt and its incorporation as an integral part of the Achaemenian empire, to which he directed his main energies, were achieved after the battle of Pelusium and the fall of Memphis. But when attempting to extend his sway over Nubia in the south, he received news of revolt in Persia. Before his departure for Egypt he had murdered his brother Bardiya, known to the Greeks as Smerdis. The murder had been kept a secret, and the revolt against the absent king was now headed by a Magian, named Gaumata, who gave himself out as the missing Smerdis and the true heir to the throne. Cambyses made preparations to repress the revolt, but died on his return journey in Syria in 522. The death of the king gave a fresh impetus to the forces of rebellion, which now began to spread through the provinces of the Persian empire. But Gaumata, the Persian rebel, soon met his fate. For after Cambyses' death, the Persian army was led back by Darius, a prince of the same house as Cyrus and his son; Gaumata was surprised and murdered, and Darius firmly established on the throne. Darius continued to act with extraordinary energy, and the course of a single year succeeded in quelling the rebellions in Babylon and in the various provinces. On the rock-face of Behistun in Persia, on the road from Babylon to Ecbatana, he has left us sculptured portraits of himself and the rebel leaders he subdued. The latter include Nidintu-Bel and Arakha, the two pretenders to the Babylonian throne.

The sieges of Babylon by Darius mark the beginning of the city's decay. Her defences had not been seriously impaired by Cyrus, but they now suffered considerably. The city was again restless during Darius' closing years, and further damage was done to it in the reign of Xerxes, when the Babylonians made their last bids for independence. For Xerxes is said not only to have dismantled the walls, but to have plundered and destroyed the great temple of Marduk itself. Large areas in the city, which had been a wonder of the nations, now began to lie permanently in ruins. Babylon entered on a new phase in 331 B.C., when the long struggle between Greece and Persia was ended by the defeat of Darius III at Gaugamela. For Susa and Babylon submitted to Alxander, who on proclaiming himself King of Asia, took Babylon as his capital. We may picture him gazing on the city's great buildings, many of which now lay ruined and deserted. Like Cyrus before him, he sacrificed to Babylon's gods; and he is said to have wished to restore E-sagila, Marduk's great temple, but to have given up the idea, as it would have taken ten thousand men more than two months to remove the rubbish from the ruins. But he seems to have made some attempt in that direction, since a tablet has been found, dated in his sixth year, which records a payment of ten manehs of silver for " clearing away the dust of E-sagila."

While the old buildings decayed, some new ones arose in their place, including a Greek theatre for the use of the large Greek colony. Many of the Babylonians themselves adopted Greek names and fashions, but the more conservative elements, particularly among the priesthood, continued to retain their own separate life and customs. In the year 270 B.C. we have a record that Antiochus Soter restored the temples of Nabu and Marduk at Babylon and Borsippa, and the recent diggings at Erech have shown that the old temple in that city retained its ancient cult under a new name. In the second century we know that, in a corner of the great temple at Babylon, Marduk and the God of Heaven were worshipped as a two-fold deity under the name of Anna-Bel; and we hear of priests attached to one of Babylon's old shrines as late as the year 29 b.C. Services in honour of the later forms of the Babylonian gods were probably continued into the Christian era.

The life of the ancient city naturally flickered longest around the ruined temples and seats of worship. On the secular side, as a commercial centre, she was then but a ghost of her former self. Her real decay had set in when Seleucus, after securing the satrapy of Babylon on Alexander's death, had recognized the greater advantages offered by the Tigris for maritime communication. On the foundation of Seleucia, Babylon as a city began rapidly to decay. Deserted at first by the official classes, followed later by the merchants, she decreased in importance as her rival grew. Thus it was by a gradual and purely economic process, and through no sudden blow, that Babylon slowly bled to death.