Assyria
In treating of Assyria it is extremely difficult not to speak at the same time of its sister, or rather mother country, Babylonia, as the peoples of these two countries, the Semitic Babylonians and Assyrians, are both ethnographically and linguistically the same race, with identical religion, language, literature, and civilization. Hence Assyro-Babylonian religion, mythology, and religious literature especially in their relation to the Old Testament will be treated in the article BABYLONIA, while the history of the modern explorations and discoveries in these two countries will be given in the present article.

GEOGRAPHY

Geographically, Assyria occupies the northern and middle part of Mesopotamia, situated between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris; while the southern half, extending as far south as the Persian Gulf, constitutes the countries of Babylonia and Chaldea. Assyria originally occupied but a scant geographical area, comprising the small triangular shaped land lying between the Tigris and Zab Rivers, but in later times, owing to its wonderful conquests its boundaries extended as far north as Armenia to Media on the east; to northern Syria, and to the country of the Hittites, on the west and to Babylonia and Elam on the south and southeast, occupying almost the entire Mesopotamian valley.

By the Hebrews it was known under the name of Aram-Naharaim, i.e. "Aram [or Syria] of the two rivers" to distinguish it from Syria proper, although it is doubtful whether the Hebrew name should be read as dual, or rather as a plural, i.e. Aram-Naharîm (Aram of the many rivers or "Of the great river" -- Euphrates. In later Old Testament times, it was known under the name of Asshur. By the Greeks and Romans it was called Mesopotamia, and Assyria; by the Aramaeans, Beth-naharim, "the country of the rivers"; by the Egyptians Nahrina; by the Arabs, Athûr, or Al-Gezirah, "the island", or Bain-al-nahrain, "the country between the two rivers" -- Mesopotamia. Whether the name Assyria is derived from that of the god Asshur, or vice versa, or whether Asshur was originally the name of a particular city and afterwards applied to the whole country cannot be determined.

The area of Assyria is about fifty thousand square miles. In physical character it is mountainous and well watered, especially in the northern part. Limestone and, in some places, volcanic rock form the basis of its fertile soil. Its southern part is more level, alluvial, and fertile. Its principal rivers are the Tigris and the Euphrates, which have their source in the Armenian mountains and run almost parallel as far south as Babylonia and Chaldea, flowing into the Persian Gulf. There are other minor rivers and tributaries, such as the Khabur; the Balikh, the Upper and Lower Zab, the Khoser the Turnat, the Radanu, and the Subnat. Assyria owes to these rivers, and especially to the Tigris and Euphrates, somewhat as Egypt owes to Nile, its existence, life, and prosperity.

The principal cities of Assyria are:

Asshur whose site is now marked by the mound of Kalah-Shergat, on the right bank of the Tigris.
Calah, the eastern bank of the Tigris and at its junction with the Upper Zab, a city built (c.1280 B.C.) by Shalmaneser I, who made it the capital of Assyria in place of Asshur. Its site is nowadays marked by the ruins of Nimroud.
Nineveh (in the Douay Version, Ninive), represented by the villages and ruins of the modern Kujunjik and Nebi-Yunus, on the eastern bank of the Tigris, opposite Mosul. Nineveh was undoubtedly one of the most ancient cities of Assyria, and in the time of Sennacherib (7th cent. B.C.) it became the capital of the empire, and the centre of the worship of Ishtar, the Assyro-Babylonian Venus, who was called Ishtar of Nineveh, to distinguish her from Ishtar of Arbela. In the Old Testament the city of Nineveh is well known in connection with the prophets, and especially as the theatre of Jonah's mission.
Dur-Sharrukin, or Dur-Sargon (i.e. Sargonsburg) built by Sargon II (8th cent. B.C.), the founder of the famous Sargonid dynasty. It was made first the royal residence of Sargon, and afterwards became the rival of Nineveh. Its site is represented by the modern Khorsabad.
Arhailu, or Arbela, famous in Greek and Persian annals for the decisive victory won by Alexander the Great over the formidable army of Darius, King of Persia and Babylon (331 B.C.).
Nasibina, or Nisibis, famous in the annals of Nestorian Christianity.
Harran, well known for the worship of Sin, the moon-god.
Ingur-Bel, corresponding to the modern Tell-Balawât.
Tarbis, corresponding to the modern Sherif-Khan. The sites and ruins of all these cities have been explored.
SOURCES OF ASSYRO-BABYLONIAN HISTORY

These may be grouped as: (1) the Old Testament; (2) the Greek, Latin, and Oriental writers, and (3) the monumental records and remains of the Assyrians and Babylonians themselves.

In the first division belong the Fourth (in Authorized Version, Second) Book of Kings, Paralipomenon (Chronicles), the writings of the prophets Isaias, Nahum, Jeremias, Jonas, Ezechiel, and Daniel, as well as the Iaconic but extremely valuable fragments of information contained in Genesis, x, xi, and xiv. To the second group of sources belong the Chaldeo-Babylonian priest and historian Berosus, who lived in the days of Alexander the great (356-323 B.C.) and continued to live at least as late as Antiochus I, Soter (280-261 B.C.). He wrote in Greek a great work on Babylonian history, under the title of "Babyloniaca", or "Chaldaica". This valuable work, which was based on contemporary Babylonian monuments and inscriptions has unfortunately perished, and only a few excerpts from it have been preserved in later Greek and Latin writers. Then we have the writings of Polyhistor, Ctesias, Herodotus, Abydenus, Apollodorus, Alexander of Miletus, Josephus, Georgius Syncellus, Diodorus Siculus, Eusebius, and others. With the exception of Berosus, the information derived from all the above-mentioned historians is mostly legendary and unreliable, and even their quotations from Berosus are to be used with caution. This is especially true in the case of Ctesias, who lived at the Persian court in Babylonia. To the third category belong the numerous contemporary monuments and inscriptions discovered during the last fifty years in Babylonia, Assyria, Elam, and Egypt, which form an excellent and a most authoritative collection of historical documents.

For the chronology of Assyria we have some very valuable means information. These are

The "Eponym List" which covers the entire period from the reign of Ramman-nirari II (911-890 B.C.) down to that of Asshurbanipal (669-625 B.C.). The eponyms, or limmu, were like the eponymous archons at Athens and the consuls at Rome. They were officers, or governors, whose term of office lasted but one year, to which year they gave their name; so that if any event was to be recorded, or a contract drawn in the year e.g., 763 B.C., the number of the year would not be mentioned, but instead we are told that such and such an event took place in the year of Pur-Shagli, who was the limmu, or governor, in that year.
Another source is found in the chronological notices scattered throughout the historical inscriptions, such as Sennacherib's inscription engraved on the rock at Bavian, in which he tells us that one of his predecessors, Tiglath-pileser (Douay Version, Theglathphalasar) reigned about 418 years before him, i.e. about 1107 B.C.; or that of Tiglath-pileser himself, who tells us that he rebuilt the temple of Anu and Ramman, which sixty years previously had been pulled down by King Asshurdan because it had fallen into decay in the course of the 64I years since its foundation by King Shamshi-Ramman. This notice, therefore, proves that Asshur-dan must have reigned about the years 1170 or 1180 B.C. So also Sennacherib tells us that a seal of King Tukulti-Ninib l had been brought from Assyria to Babylon, where after 600 years he found it on his conquest of that city. As Sennacherib conquered Babylon twice, once in 702 and again in 689 B.C., it follows that Tukulti-Ninib I must have reigned over Assyria in any case before 1289 B.C., and possibly a few years before 1302 B.C.
Another chronological source is to be found in the genealogies of the kings, which they give of themselves and of their ancestors and predecessors.
Further valuable help may be obtained from the so-called "Synchronous History" of Babylonia and Assyria, which consists of a brief summary of the relations between the two countries from the earliest times in regard to their respective boundary lines. The usefulness of this document consists mainly in the fact that it gives the list of many Babylonian and Assyrian kings who ruled over their respective countries contemporaneously.
ASSYRO-BABYLONIAN EXPLORATION

As late as 1849, Sir Henry Layard, the foremost pioneer of Assyro-Babylonian explorations, in the preface to his classical work entitled "Nineveh and Its Remains" remarked how, previously, with the exception of a few cylinders and gems preserved elsewhere, a case, hardly three feet square, in the British Museum, enclosed all that remained not only of the great city, Nineveh, but of Babylon itself. At that time few indeed would have had the presumption even to imagine that within fifty years the exploration of Assyria and Babylonia would have given us the most primitive literature of the ancient world. What fifty years ago belonged to the world of dreams is at the present time a striking reality; for we now in possession of the priceless libraries of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians, of their historical annals, civil and military records, State archives, diplomatic correspondences, textbooks and school exercises, grammers and dictionaries, hymns, bank accounts and business transactions, laws and contracts; and extensive collection of geographical, astronomical, mythological, magical, and astrological texts and inscriptions. These precious monuments are actually scattered in all the public and private museums and art collections of Europe, America, and Turkey. The total number of tablets, cylinders, and cuneiform inscriptions so far discovered is approximately estimated at more than three hundred thousand, which, if published, would easily cover 400 octavo volumes of 400 pages each. Unfortunately, only about one-fifth of all the inscriptions discovered have been published so far; but even this contains more than eight times as much literature as is contained in the Old Testament. The British Museum alone has published 440 folio, and over 700 quarto, pages, about one-half as much more has appeared in various archaeological publications. The British Museum has more than 40, 000 cuneiform tablets, the Louvre more than 10, 000, the Imperial Museum of Berlin more than 7, 000, that of the University of Pennsylvania more than 20, 000, and that of Constantinople many thousands more, awaiting the patient toil of our Assyriologists. The period of time covered by these documents is more surprising than their number. They occur from prehistoric times, or about 5000 B.C., down to the first century before the Christian Era. But this is not all, for, according to the unanimous opinion of all Assyriologists, by far the largest part of the Assyro-Babylonian literature and inscriptions are still buried under the fertile soil of these wonderful regions, which have ever been the land of surprises, awaiting further explorers and decipherers.

As has already been remarked, the meagre and often unreliable information concerning Assyria and Babylonia which has come down to us through the Persian, Greek, Latin, and Arabic writers -- historians and geographers -- has contributed little or nothing to the advancement of our knowledge of these wonderful countries. The early European travellers in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates valley such as Benjamin of Tudela (1160), John Eldred (1583), Anthony Shirley (1599), Pietro della Valle (1614-26), John Cartwright (1610), Gasparo Balbi (1590), John Otter (1734), Niebuhr (1765), Beauchamp, Olivier, Hagers, and others at the end of the eighteenth century, have left us a rather vague and superficial account of their personal visits and impressions. Later travellers, however, such as Claudius James Rich (1811, 1821-22), J.S. Buckingham (1816), Sir Robert Ker Porter (1817-20), Captain Robert Mignan (1826-28), G. Baillie-Fraser (1834-35), the Euphrates Expedition under Colonel Chesney (1835-47), James Felix Jones, Lynch, Selby, Collingwood, Bewsher, and others of the first half of the nineteenth century made a far more searching and scientific study of the Mesopotamian region. But the real founders and pioneers of Assyro-Babylonian explorations are Emile Rotta (1842-45), Sir Henry Austen Layard (1840-52), Victor Place (1851-55), H. Rassam (1850, 1878-82), Loftus (1850), Jules Oppert, Fresnel and Thomas (1851-52), Taylor (1851), Sir Henry Rawlinson, G. Smith, and others who have not only opened, but paved, the way for future researches and explorations. The first methodical and scientific explorations in Babylonia, however, were inaugurated and most successfully carried out by the intrepid French consul at Bassora and Bagdad, M. de Sarzec, who, from about 1877 with 1899, discovered at Tello some of the earliest and most precious remains and inscriptions of the pre-Semitic and Semitic dynasties of Southern Babylonia. Contemporaneously with de Sarzec there came other explorers, such as Rassam, already mentioned above, who was to continue George Smith's excavations; the American Wolf expedition, under the direction of Dr. Ward, of New York (1884-85); and above all, the various expeditions to Nippur, under Peters, Hayes, and Hilprecht, respectively, sent by the University of Pennsylvania (1888-1900). The Turkish Government itself has not altogether stood aloof from this praiseworthy emulation, sending an expedition to Abu Habba, or Sippar, under the direction of the well-known Dominican scholar, Father F. Scheil of Paris, in 1894 and the following years. Several German, French, and American expeditions have later been busily engaged in excavating important mounds and ruins in Babyloma. One of these is the German expedition under Moritz and Koldewey, with the assistance of Dr. Meissner, Delitzsch, and others, at Shurgul, El-Hibba, Al-Kasr, Tell-ibrahim, etc. The expedition of the University of Chicago, under the direction of Dr. Banks, at Bismaya, in South Babylonia, came unfortunately to an early termination.

THE LANGUAGE AND CUNEIFORM WRITING

All these wonderful archaeological researches and discoveries would have been useless and destitute of interest, had not the language of Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions been deciphered and studied. These inscriptions were all written in a language, and by means of characters, which seemed for a while to defy all human skill and ingenuity. The very existence of such a language had been forgotten, and its writing seemed so capricious and bewildering that the earlier European travellers mistook the characters for fantastic and bizarre ornamental decorations; their dagger- or arrow-headed shape (from which their name of cuneiform) presenting a difficult puzzle. However, the discovery, and tentative decipherment, of the old Persian inscriptions (especially those of Persepolis and of the Behistun rock, not far from Hamadan, in Persia), by Grotefend, Heeren, the Abbe Saint Martin, Rask, Bournouf, Lassen, Westergaard, de Saulcy, and Rawlinson, all taking place at about the end of the first half of the nineteenth century, opened the way for the decipherment of the Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions. The principal credit unquestionably belongs to Rawlinson, Norris, J. Oppert, Fox Talbot, and especially to Dr. Hinks of Dublin. The acute and original researches of these scholars were successfully carried out by other Semitic scholars and linguists no less competent, such as E. Schrader and Fred. Delitzsch, in Germany; Ménant, Halévy, and Lenormant, in France; Sayce and G. Smith, in England.

The Assyro-Babylonian language belongs to the so-called Semitic family of languages, and in respect to grammar and lexicography offers no more difficulty to the interpreter than either Hebrew or Aramaic, or Arabic. It is more closely allied to Hebrew and Aramaic than to Arabic and the other dialects of the South-Semitic group. The principal difficulty of Assyrian Consists in its extremely complicated system of writing. For, unlike all other Semitic dialects, Assyrian is written not alphabetically, but either syllabically or ideographically, which means that Assyrian characters represent not consonants, but syllables, open or closed, simple or compound, and ideas or words, such as ka, bar, ilu, zikara, etc. These same characters may also have both a syllabic and an ideographic value, nearly always more than one syllabic value and as many as five or six; so that a sign like the following (=|) may be read syllabically as ud, ut, u, tu, tam, bir, par, pir, lah, lih, hish, and his; ideographically as umu, "day"; pisu "white"; Shamash, the Sungod; etc. The shape of these signs is that of a wedge, hence the name cuneiform (from the Latin cuneus, "a wedge"). The wedges, arranged singly or in groups, either are called "ideograms" and stand for complete ideas, or then stand for syllables. In course of time the same ideographic signs came to have also the phonetic value of syllables, without losing however, their primitive ideographic value, as can be seen from the example quoted above. This naturally caused a great difficulty and embarrassment even to the Assyro-Babylonians themselves and is still the principal obstacle to the correct and final reading of many cuneiform words and inscriptions. To remedy this great inconvenience, the Assyro-Babylonians themselves placed other characters (called determinatives) before many of these signs in order to determine their use and value in certain particular cases and sentences. Before all names of gods, for example, either a sign meaning "devine being" was prefixed, or a syllabic character (phonetic complement), which indicated the proper phonetic value with which the word in question should end, was added after it. In spite of these and other devices, many signs and collocations of signs have so many possible syllabic values as to render exactness in the reading very difficult. There are about five hundred of these different signs used to represent words or syllables. Their origin is still a subject of discussion among scholars. The prevailing theory is that they were originally picture-signs, representing the ideas to be conveyed; but at present only about sixty of these 500 signs can be with certainty traced back to their original picture-meanings.

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