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THE DIVINE HISTORY OF JESUS CHRIST

READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

THE CREATION IF THE UNIVERSE ACCORDING GENESIS

 

 

BIOHISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN WORLD CIVILIZATION

BIOGRAPHYCAL UNIVERSAL LIBRARY

 

ANCIENT HISTORY:

ANCIENT WORLD PEOPLE
 

THE CLASSICAL AGE

BIOHISTORY:

FIRST MILLENNIUM OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA

 

MEDIEVAL AGES
MODERN HISTORY

 

XVI - XVII - XVII CENTURIES -

RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION - FROM THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA TO THE END OF THE THIRTY YEAR'S WAR

LIVES AND TIMES OF THE PEOPLE OF THE MODERN AGE :

XIX & XX centuries

 

ANCIENT HISTORY WORLD PEOPLE

 

THE PYRAMID BUILDERS

ZOSER - (SNEFRU) - CHEOPS - Djedefre - CHEPHREN -MYCERINUS

MESILIM OF KISH

2500 BC

MESILIM , At the earliest period of which we have any historical records it would appear that the city of Kish exercised a suzerainty over Sumer. Here there ruled at this time a king named Mesilim, to whom Lagash, and probably other great cities in the south, owed allegiance. During his reign a certain Lugal-shag-engur was patesi of Lagash, and we have definite record that he acknowledged Mesilim's supremacy. For a votive mace-head of colossal size has been found at Tello, which bears an inscription stating that it was dedicated to Ningirsu by Mesilim, who had restored his great temple at Lagash during the time that Lugal-shag-engur was patesi of that city. 

EANNATUM OF LAGASH

2454-2435

EANNATUM OF LAGASH, WHEN the patesiate of Lagash passed from Akurgal to his son Eannatum we may picture the city-state as owing a general allegiance to Akkad in the north. Nearer home, the relations of Lagash to Umma appear to have been of an amicable character. Whatever minor conflicts may have taken place between the two cities in the interval, the treaty of Mesilim was still regarded as binding, and its terms were treated with respect by both parties. The question whether Eannatum, like Akurgal, had had some minor cause of disagreement with the men of Umma at the beginning of his reign depends upon our interpretation of some broken passages in the early part of the text engraved upon the Stele of the Vultures.

URAKAGINA

2380-2360

URAKAGINA OF LASGASH, A small tablet in the Louvre mentions together certain men of Erech, of Adab and of Ninni-esh, and, when Lugal-zaggisi enumerates the benefits he had conferred on the cities of Southern Babylonia over which he ruled, he mentions Umma and Ninni-esh together, after referring to Erech, Ur, and Larsa. We may, therefore, conclude with some probability that the city in which lli was at this time acting as priest was situated not far from Umma. It was under the control of Lagash, and doubtless formed part of the empire which Eannatum had bequeathed to his successors upon the throne. 

LUGALZAGESI OF URUK

2350-2318

LUGALZAGESI OF URUK, Lugal-zaggisi, the conqueror of Lagash, is mentioned by name in the document from which our knowledge of the catastrophe is derived. The unknown writer that composition, as we have already seen, assigns to him the title "patesi of Umma", and, had we no other information concerning him, we might perhaps have concluded that his success against the ancient rival of his own city was merely an isolated achievement. In the long-continued struggle between these neighbouring states Umma had finally proved victorious, and the results of this victory might have been regarded as of little more than local importance.

SARGON I OF AKKAD

2334-2279

SARGON I OF AKKAD, The name of Sargon of Agade, or Akkad, bulks largely in later Babylonian tradition, and his reign has been regarded by modern writers as marking the most important epoch in the early history of his country. The reference in the text of Nabonidus to the age of Naram-Sin has caused the Dynasty of Akkad to be taken as the canon, or standard, by which to measure the relative age of other dynasties or of rulers whose inscriptions have from time to time been recovered upon various early Babylonian sites.

RIMUSH & MANITUSHU

2279-2254

The next two kings of Agade and successors to the empire of Sargon were his two sons, Rimush and Manishtusu, who reigned, according to the king-list, in reverse order of age, for that authority assigns nine years to Rimush, and afterwards fifteen to Manishtusu, who is said to have been the elder brother of his predecessor; but it must be added that there are variants of the lengths of reigns. Both kings seem to have begun with campaigns against rebels, involving expeditions into the lands east of the Tigris and into Elam, but it is Manishtusu who, in one of his monuments, refers to 'all the lands. . .

NARAM SIN OF AKKAD

2254-2218

Manishtusu, according to an omen, was murdered in a palace conspiracy, and was succeeded by his son, Naram-Sin, destined to become the second of a pair whom later history ever regarded as the greatest figures in its annals. Because of this likeness Naram-Sin was known afterwards as the son of Sargon; if the word is pressed it is incorrect for the king-list rightly calls him son of Manishtusu. His reign was long and, until its closing years, glorious. But our information upon it is of varying authenticity, depending for the greatest part upon much later tradition. Of his own inscriptions, which were certainly many and informative, and of the sculptures which illustrated his campaigns and triumphs, very little has survived. By chance he has fared scantily even in the copies of these monuments at Nippur which are comparatively informative about the wars of his grandfather. 

SHARKALISHARRI

2218-2192

But if Naram-Sin ended his life with a realm not much impaired, there were already signs of decay, and ample presages of the troubles which were to burst upon his son. Elam under Kutik-In-Shushinak was growing independent and almost defiant, and the wild men of the Zagros were poised to swoop upon the wealthy land which they saw protected only by a weakening arm. The old king died at length after a reign of thirty-seven years, and left this menacing situation to his son Shar-kali-sharri. Whether he was the eldest is not known, but another son of Naram-Sin bore the significant name of Bin-kali-sharri, the two brothers thus standing in a relation which among the old Sumerian dynasts would have marked a king and his son destined to reign after him. But Shar-kali-sharri was to have no successor, at least not from the old family of Sargon.

ABRAHAM

2100-2000

The materials for the facts of the life of Abraham are found in Holy Scripture, in the Book of Genesis, and in some of the later writings. I have taken it for granted that these statements are authentic, and have not thought it necessary to follow Ewald and his school in distinguishing the various authors of them, assigning this to the Book of origins, and that to the First narrator, and that to the Second, and so on. Nor have I esteemed the details thus given as accretions that have grown up round a great central figure in the lapse of centuries, the outcome of hero-worship, the result of a natural desire to accumulate on a great forefather anything that would tend to elevate his personal character or exalt the favour with which he was regarded by God. The narrative appears to me to be, consistent, derived doubtless from different sources, but worked up by the compiler into a fairly complete biography, which, taken in conjunction with hints afforded by the later Scriptures, leaves on the mind a finished picture of the Father of the Faithful. 

ISAAC

2100-2000

This is the account of the family line of Abraham’s son Isaac. Abraham became the father of Isaac, and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram and sister of Laban the Aramean. Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was childless. The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant. The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, “Why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord. The Lord said to her,

JACOB.

2000-1900

Jacob’s early life was the usual life of a Bedouin boy, the son of a great sheikh, who was half agriculturist half nomad. He would be much with the cattle. As his father roamed over the Negeb from one place to another, according to the season of the year, or according to the reports which he received of the condition of the pasturage in this or that district, Jacob and Esau would accompany him, and would become familiar with all the ordinary routine of the pastoral life, with the feeding and the folding, the careful watching by night, the less anxious tending during the day, the exposure to heat and cold, the encounters with ravenous beasts, the occasional brush with marauders from a hostile tribe.

HAMMURABI

2131-2081

The military successes of Hammurabi fall within two clearly defined periods, the first during the five years which followed his sixth year of rule at Babylon, and a second period, of ten years' duration, beginning with the thirteenth of his reign. On his accession he appears to have inaugurated the reforms in the internal administration of the country, which culminated towards the close of his life in the promulgation of his famous Code of Laws; for he commemorated his second year as that in which he established righteousness in the land. The following years were uneventful, the most important royal acts being the installation of the chief-priest in Kashbaran, the building of a wall for the Gagum, or great Cloister of Sippar, and of a temple to Nannar in Babylon. But with his seventh year we find his first reference to a military campaign in a claim to the capture of Erech and Nisin.

SHAMSHI ADAD I.

1813-1791

SCARCELY thirty years ago the figure of Hammurabi, the unifier of Babylonia, still stood out in striking isolation. In fact, at the time he ascended the throne another centralized empire already occupied the whole of northern Mesopotamia: it was the personal creation of Shamshi-Adad I, to whom recent discoveries have made it possible to give his place in history.Whereas Hammurabi had inherited a considerable territory from his father, Shamshi-Adad had more modest beginnings. He belonged to one of the numerous nomad clans which had infiltrated into Mesopotamia after the break-up of the Third Dynasty of Ur. His father, Ila-kabkabu, ruled over a land bordering on the kingdom of Mari, with which he had come into conflict. It is not well known what happened next. According to one version, the authenticity of which is not certain, Shamshi-Adad made his way into Babylonia, while his brother succeeded to Ila-kabkabu. Later on he seized Ekallatum; the capture of this fortress, on the left bank of the Tigris, in the southern reaches of the lower Zab, laid the gates of Assyria open to him.

ZIMRILIN OF MARI.

1779- 1757

Like Shamshi-Adad, Iakhdunlim, his unsuccessful opponent at Mari, was a Western Semite whose forebears had abandoned the nomadic life in order to settle in the Euphrates valley. Basically, Zimrilim’s kingdom was made up of the middle Euphrates and Khabur valleys. To the south it cannot have reached farther than Hit. To the north it undoubtedly included the mouth of the Balikh, but beyond that it is uncertain whether there lay territories directly dependent on Mari and administered by district governors, or simply more or less autonomous vassal princedoms. In his attempts to expand Zimrilim directed the best part of his efforts towards the 'High Country', that is to say Upper Mesopotamia, which in those days was split up into numerous little states. In particular the region, bordering on the upper Khabur, which at Mari was called Idamaraz, appears to have been under his control all the time. 

HATSHEPSUT.

1479-1457

The close of the reign of Thutmose I is involved in deep obscurity, and there is no reconstruction without its difficulties. The traces left on temple walls by family dissensions are not likely to be sufficiently conclusive to enable us to follow the complicated struggle with entire certainty three thousand five hundred years later. The current verdict of historians has long been that Thutmose II, a feeble and diseased son of the old Pharaoh, followed at once upon his father's demise. His brief reign is of such slight consequence, however, that its exact place in the transition from Thutmose I to Hatshepsut and Thutmose III is not of great importance. Hatshepsut’s partisans were not able to crown their favorite without a difficult struggle with a third Thutmose. He was the son of an obscure concubine named. Isis, and there is some uncertainty whether the first or the second Thutmose was his father. It is probable that he married Hatshepsut, thus gaining a valid title to the throne. 

THUTMOSE III.

1457-1425

THE peaceful and unmilitary Nile of Hatshepsut, falling as it did early in Egypt’s imperial career in Asia, was followed by serious consequences. Not having seen an Egyptian army for many years, the Syrian dynasts grew continually more restless. The king of Kadesh, once probably the suzerain of all Syria and Palestine, had stirred all the city-kings of northern Palestine and Syria to accept his leader ship in a great coalition, in which they at last felt themselves strong enough to begin open revolt. “Behold from Yeraza (in northern Judea) to the marshes of the earth (i.e. the upper Euphrates), they had begun to revolt against his majesty”. In these words the annals of Thutmose III

AMENHOTEP III .

1390-1353

He was but the great-grandson of Thutmose III, but with him the high tide of Egyptian power was already slowly on the ebb, and he was not the man to stem the tide. Nevertheless in the administration of his great empire Amenhotep III began well. Toward the close of ins fourth year trouble in Nubia called him south. After defeating the enemy decisively somewhere above the second cataract, Amenhotep marched southward for a month, taking captives and spoil as he went. It is difficult to determine the exact limit of his southern advance. In the land of Karoy, with which the reader is now acquainted as the region about Napata, he collected great quantities of gold for his Theban buildings, and at Kebehu-Hor, or the “Pool of Horus” he erected his tablet of victory, but we are unable to locate the place with certainty. It was certainly not much in advance of the frontier of his father. This was the last great invasion of Nubia by the Pharaohs.

SUPPILULIUMAS.

1368-1328

The inactivity of the Egyptians in Syria made it possible for Tushratta to remain on friendly terms with Amenophis III during all of the latter's reign. During the later part of Tushratta’s reign, good relations with Egypt became more and more a necessity, because a powerful personality had in the meantime ascended the Hittite throne and had initiated a period of Hittite renascence.Probably not long after the events which brought Tushratta to the throne of Mitanni (c. 1385), a shift of rulership also took place in the Hittite country. Under Tudkhaliash III the previously mighty kingdom had shrunk into insignificance from which it had only partially recovered before the king's death. If some of the lost territory, especially along the eastern border had been regained, this had been due to the military leadership of the king's son, Shuppiluliumash. Upon his father's death Shuppiluliumash became king as the next in line. The ambitions which must have spurred Shuppiluliumash from the outset made him cast his eyes almost automatically upon Syria, where earlier Hittite kings had won glory. Hence an armed conflict with Tushratta became inevitable. It was postponed for some time only because Shuppiluliumash had to reorganize his homeland before he could think of embarking on a war of conquest in Syria.

AKNATON.

1353-1338

The reign of Akhnaton, for seventeen years Pharaoh of Egypt (from B.C. 1375 to 1358), stands out as the most interesting epoch in the long sequence of Egyptian history. We have watched the endless line of dim Pharaohs go by, each ht momentarily by the pale lamp of our present knowledge, and most of them have left httle impression upon the mind. They are so misty and far off, they have been dead and gone for such thousands of years, that they have almost entirely lost their individuality. We call out some royal name, and in response a vague figure passes into view, stiffly moves its arms, and passes again into the darkness. The Tomb of Queen Tiy, in which lay the mummy believed to be that of Akhnaton, was discovered in January, 1907, during the excavations which were being conducted by Mr. Theodore M. Davis in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes.

ASHUR-UBALLIT(1365-1330 ) ENLIL-NIRARI (1330-1319 ) ARIK-DEN-ILI (1319–1308 )

The restorer of the power of Assyria was, beyond doubt, Ashur-uballit who was destined to become a leading figure of his day, but he has told us nothing to the purpose about himself. Half-a-dozen short inscriptions concern the repair of two temples and some work upon a well in his city of Ashur, no more than the least distinguished of his predecessors. The Assyrian kings had not yet learned the art of appending to their building-inscriptions those notes of contemporary events which were soon to expand themselves into the detailed annals of later reigns. A first mention of the great king’s deeds is made, in his own family, by his great-grandson, looking back over the glories of his line and taking Ashur-uballit as the inaugurator of these. In the general documentation of his age he makes a better appearance, though sometimes anonymously. His own most interesting relics are two letters found in distant Egypt among the celebrated archive of Amarna.

MURSHILISH II (1321-1295) MUWATALLISH II (1295-1272)

Immediate successor to Shuppiluliumash was his son Arnuwandash. The potentially dangerous situation created by the death of the conqueror was aggravated by the circumstances that the new king was seriously ill and, therefore, could not demand the authority which was needed. Syria, on possession of which the Hittite claim for world leadership rested, was naturally the critical danger spot. Arnuwandash made haste to confirm his brother Piyashilish as king of Carchemish and also appointed him to the position of the tuhkantis (a high rank in the government). He was apparently the mainstay of Hittite domination in the provinces south of the Taurus, and is known from then on by the (Hurrian) name Sharre-Kushukh. With some justification one may consider it fortunate that the reign of Arnuwandash was only of short duration. Murshilish, a younger son of Shuppiluliumash, who now assumed kingship, was still very young but in the full possession of his powers. He proved himself an extremely able and energetic ruler.

RAMSES II.

1303-1212

When Ramses II ascended the throne the Hittites had remained in undisputed possession of their Syrian conquests for probably more than twenty years since the attempt of Seti I to dislodge them. The long peace had given their king, Mutallu, an opportunity, of which he made good use, to render their position in Syria impregnable. Advancing southward, up the valley of the Orontes, he had seized Kadesh, the centre of the Syrian power in the days of Thutmose III, which, we remember, had given him more trouble and held out with more tenacious resistance than any other kingdom in Syria. We have already seen the strategic importance of the district, an importance which was quickly grasped by the Hittite king, who made the place the bulwark of his southern frontier. Ramses’s plan for the war was like that of his great ancestor, Thutmose III. He proposed first to gain the coast, that he might use one of its harbors as a base, enjoying quick and easy communication with Egypt by water. Our sources tell us nothing of his operations on the first campaign, when this purpose was accomplished.

MERNEPTAH&RAMSES III

(1213-1156)

The death of Ramses II was not followed by any disturbance in the Asiatic dominions in so far as we can see. The northern border in Syria was as far north as the upper Orontes valley, including at least part of the Amorite country in which Merneptah had a royal city bearing his name, probably inherited from his father and renamed. With the Hittite kingdom he enjoyed undisturbed peace, doubtless under the terms of the old treaty, negotiated by his father forty-six years before. Indeed, Merneptah sent shiploads of grain to the Hittites to relieve them in time of famine. By the end of his second year, however, he had reason to rue the good-will shown his father's ancient enemy. Among the allies of the Hittites at the battle of Kadesh there were already maritime peoples like the Lycians and Dardanians. In some way Merneptah discovered that the Hittites were now involved in the incursions of these people in the western Delta in alliance with the Libyans. In the year three (about 1223 BC) the Pharaoh found widespread revolt against him in Asia: Askalon at the very gates of Egypt, the powerful city of Gezer at the lower end of the valley of Aijalon, leading up from the sea-plain to Jerusalem; Yenoam, given by Thutmose III to Amon two hundred and sixty years before; some of the tribes of Israel and all western Syria-Palestine as far as it was controlled by the Pharaoh all these rose against their Egyptian overlord. 

TIGLATH PILESER I

1114 –1076 BC

TIGLATH PILESER I (about 1120 BC) was the grand monarch of western Asia in his day, and the glory of his achievements was held in memory in Assyria for ages after. It is fitting that one who wrought such marvels in peace and war should have caused his deeds to be written down with care and preserved in more than one copy. To his gods he ascribed the credit of his works. Their names, a formidable number, stand at the very head of the chief written memorials of his reign. Here are Asshur, the ancient patron deity of his land, "the great lord, the director of the hosts of the gods," and Bel also, and Sin, the moon god; Shamash, the sun god; Adad, the god of the air, of storms, of thunder, and rain; Ninib, "the hero"; and, last of all, the goddess Ishtar, "the firstborn of the gods", whose name was ever to resound and be hallowed in the later history of Nineveh. With so great a pantheon had the people of Assyria already enriched themselves.

GIDEON

(1252-1152)

Gideon, with whose biography and achievements we are now concerned, was a native of the plain of Esdraelon. His birth­place is called Ophrah. Two villages bearing this name are mentioned in the Old Testament There was an Ophrah, belonging to the tribe of Benjamin, now known as El Taiybeh —a group of hamlets “perched aloft on a dark conical hill, like the villages of the Apennines.” But the Ophrah in which the future deliverer of Israel was born, nestled on slopes south ot the town of Jezreel, and connecting with Mount Gilboa. No trace of it remains; except for its connection with Gideon, it would have been wholly undistinguished and unknown.

KING DAVID

1040-970 BC

KING SOLOMON

970-931

PROPHET ELIJAH

900-849

PROPHET ISAIAH

740 - 686 

ASSUR-NAZIR-PAL

SHALMANESER III

SHAMSHI ADAD V (823-811 BC), ADAD NIRARI III (811 BC-783 BC), SHALMANESER IV (782-773), ASSURDAN III (772-755), ASSUR NIRARI III (754-745)

 

PIANKHI OF NUBIA

SARGON

SENNACHERIB

ESARHADDON

ASSHURBANIPAL

SOLON

NABOPOLASSAR, 626 - 605 B. C.

AND

NEBUCHADREZZAR II, 605 - 562 B. C.

 

 

DANIEL,

HIS LIFE AND TIMES

ZOROASTER AND HIS WORLD , 628-551

PDF 1 // PDF 2

 

 

 

THE CLASSICAL AGE