THE RESURRECTION OF THE Assyrian world and the discovery of Sargon are synchronous. Prior to 1843, when Botta made his first excavations, it was no exaggeration to say that “a case scarcely three feet square enclosed all that remained, not only of the great city, Nineveh, but of Babylon itself”. When that scholar left his consulate at Baghdad to excavate in the huge shapeless mound of Khorsabad, a new world came into being. A new people and a new language, new customs and a new art, surprised the world; and Sargon, thus far known only by a single reference in the Bible, suddenly took his place by the side of Cyrus or Croesus as one of the great monarchs of the ancient Orient.
The first efforts of Botta were confined almost entirely to the securing of bas-reliefs and inscriptions. A later expedition, led by Place in 1851, yielded a less rich booty of such finds, but, by the careful uncovering of the whole palace mound, gave us what is still the best plan of an Assyrian palace. Another expedition, though adding nothing to our Assyrian material, gave Oppert an opportunity of studying the inscriptions and remains in situ. Thus for a considerable period, Sargon and his works were the most important matters Assyriologists had for discussion. But as new sites were excavated and new documents were found, the interest gradually shifted to other fields where more hope of startling discoveries was to be had. And, indeed, there is little reason to look for many new historical documents of Sargon’s reign being found; for the palace he built has been thoroughly excavated and most of the other places he occupied have been more or less fully explored. From the philological side there is no likelihood of great change, and the standard edition by Winckler is nearly final.
But though there is little call for a re-editing of the texts, two causes make a re-writing of the history very necessary. On the one hand, a large amount of new material has become available. This is not, of course, to any great extent of a historical nature. But in the wealth of letters, charters, business documents, and other material of this sort, we are not so very diffierently situated from the historian of Mediaeval Europe who uses the same kind of documents to check and amplify his chronicles.
But even more important is the change in our attitude toward these sources. We no longer are content with a collection, however exhaustive, of the material. We must first criticize our sources and then interpret them, not only in sympathy with the past, but with special reference to the historical demands of our own day. Let us see how all this affects our estimates of these inscriptions.
At first sight, nothing could be more certain than the accuracy of these sources. We have here no manuscripts corrupted by frequent copying. Our documents are originals, and, what is more, are the productions of contemporaries whose results are given us stamped with the stamp of official approval. Other reasons, no less potent though less recognized and less legitimate, were the natural prejudice in favor of the newest discoveries, especially when discovered in so wonderful a way, and the even more natural feeling of favor with which Christian men and women viewed the documents, risen from the earth, which so often refuted the over-zealous “higher critic”.
Our report must be much less favorable. These records are official. In that fact lies their strength and their weakness. The opportunities for securing the truth were ample. Royal scribes accompanied the various expeditions and the archive chambers were full of detailed reports from commanders in the field. But, like all official records, ancient or modern, these documents have been edited to a degree of which it is difficult to conceive. A few examples may not be out of place to show how far from trustworthy they are. Sometimes a foreign source may afford the needed correction, as when Rusash of Haldia turns up safe, sound, and victorious enough to erect the Topsana stele some time after the suicide the Assyrian scribes so pathetically describe, or as when the Hebrew account declares that the leader of the Ashdod expedition was the Tartan and not the king himself, or as when from the Babylonian chronicle we learn that the victory Sargon claims to have won at Dur ilu was really a defeat. In each of these cases there was every inducement for Sargon’s scribes not to tell the truth, while the foreign writers were under much less temptation.
But sometimes we do not need to go beyond Sargon himself. Out of his own mouth we may convict him of untruth. Note, for example, the three accounts of the fate of Merodach Baladan. In one he is captured. In the second he begs for peace. In the third, he runs away and escapes. Naturally, we are inclined to accept the last, and this is confirmed by the later course of events. But such an occurrence raises a doubt in our mind as to the accuracy of other cases where the official accounts do not agree among themselves. When, for instance, we have one account of the Ashdod expedition in which we are told that Iamani was captured and another where we learn that he fled to Meluhha whence he was brought back, we are inclined to wonder if he did not really escape.
Another question and one which must affect our estimate of Sargon’s character, is how far the use of the first person actually means personal command in the field. In one or two cases, where the absurdity of this would have been self-evident, due credit is given to the local commander. The use of the first person means no more than does the triumph of a Roman emperor mean that he was in the field himself. In many cases it would clearly have been impossible for Sargon to have been in widely separated parts of the empire at practically the same time. Many campaigns are too petty for the great king to have troubled himself about. Only once does the Hebrew allow us to check and then, in the important Ashdod revolt, it is the Tartan and not the king who is in command. Indeed, from the letters and the prayers to Shamash, we find that it was the exception rather than the rule for the king to war at the head of his army. In several cases it has already been recognized that we must see separate movements under separate commanders to the consequent clearing up of the history. Much must still be done along this line.
A mere reference may be made here to the exaggerated and discordant figures given in the various documents. The plea of Oriental disregard for numbers may be made, but can hardly stand in the face of the small and exact numbers of the epistolary literature. Nor should we forget the stereo-typed formulae which have no more real meaning than have the accounts of battles in Diodorus. Enough has been shown, it would seem, to indicate the care with which we must study these sources, even when their statements are not directly challenged by other evidence. Even within the official inscriptions themselves there are groups of varying degrees of trustworthiness. Unfortunately, the one least valuable is the fullest, and has, until the present, been too fully trusted. Unfortunately, too, our other evidence is of a fragmentary character and so often we must accept the version of the official inscriptions of this group or trust to mere conjecture. This group is that comprising the various documents dating from about the year 707 and coming down to us inscribed on the walls of Sargon’s new capital of Dur Sharrukin. It includes the Annals, the Annals of Hall XIV, the Display Inscription, which form a sub-group of larger inscriptions, and a group of smaller ones including the Cylinders from the foundations, the inscriptions on the Bulls, the tablets found in the foundation stone, those on the gate pavements, and those on the backs of the sculptured slabs.
Of the two sub-groups, the first is not only fuller, but generally more accurate, though there are cases where the second seems to point to a more probable situation. Of the first, again, the Annals is the most trustworthy as well as the backbone of our chronology. As compared with the other documents of the Dur Sharrukin group, details are given most fully, numbers are still fairly reasonable, and the facts seem least distorted. Yet often the four versions of the Annals differ among themselves in a most remarkable manner and in some cases two slightly differing accounts have been incorporated one after the other. The greatest value of the Annals lies in its chronology, for indeed without it we would have no solid basis for the dating of many events of the reign and no general chronology at all. Yet a careful examination of its chronological data gives an unsatisfactory impression. Under the year 710, for example, we have a brief account of the events from the accession of Merodach Baladan, while at the end of the same year we have the account of the “seizing the hands of Bel”, which logically closes the Babylonian campaign, but really belongs to the following year. The section dealing with 716, as already seen, clearly contains the records of more than one year. The frontier wars were evidently chronic, yet they are forced into the chronological scheme. Nor does the scheme agree with what we find elsewhere.
It is difficult to acknowledge that the scribes of Sargon, near the close of his reign, did not know or did not care to know the real succession of affairs. The putting together of the Prism fragments has perhaps given a new point of view. In the earlier years, the date is one year earlier than that of the Annals, in the later, two years. It is simply inconceivable that in 707 the scribes did not know whether the Ashdod revolt took place four or six years before. There are two distinct systems here, one in the Annals and one in the Prism B, both probably artificial to a considerable extent. Which is more probable and to how great a degree either is true is a difficult question, but a study of the whole chronology seems to indicate that that of Prism B should be more trusted, and this seems to be borne out by a comparison of the two.
It is difficult to explain the system of the Annals from that of the Prism, but the reverse is easy. It looks a little as if there had been a break in the series of campaigns, the Assyrian Chronicle has for one year “in the land,” that is, no expedition, and that later the scribes had padded out these gaps with the events of other more crowded years. A most glaring example of the inaccuracy of the Annals is in its dating the battle of Dur ilu in 721, whereas not only the Babylonian Chronicle, but also an official inscription of Sargon of very early date assign it to 720. Again we ask: Why was this transfer and what really happened in 721? Was that year taken up with putting down revolts? The chronology of the Assyrian Chronicle belongs to a group of its own, but so far as its data can be brought into relation to the others, it rather supports that of the Prism. But, however we may distrust the artificial scheme of the Annals, we must ac- knowledge that the others may also have an artificial character while, as the only full and complete system, it must still be retained for at least relative chronology in so far as an artificial system cannot be detected. A very inferior version of the Annals is that of Hall XIV, which omits much and abandons the chronological order.
If the Annals had been completely preserved, there would be little use for the Display Inscription, but the former is so badly mutilated that the frequently literal quotation by the latter is often our only source. But the accounts are much abbreviated and are arranged in geographical rather than in chronological order, although chronology does play some part within these sections. Failure to understand this arrangement has led to sad mistakes, an example of which is the time-honored error which places an Arabian tribute, immediately after the battle of Rapihu, merely because the two are closely connected in this inscription.
The minor inscriptions of this group give but little that is new. There is no chronological arrangement and their variant readings, though interesting to the philologist and topographer, have but little for the historian. The Cylinders seem to be the earliest as they are the most important. In fact, so close is the agreement in places with the deed of gift document of 714 that we may postulate an earlier date for this, perhaps soon after the conquest of Babylon. For the building of Dur Sharrukin, it is our best authority and may perhaps be a source for the accounts of the others, while it is often of value for other phases of the culture life. The Larnaka stele is of interest, because it is the identical stone Sargon sent to Cyprus, as we are informed in the other inscriptions. Its text is comparatively short, but in type it agrees rather with the large than the small ones. Sometimes it gives a more likely account, as when we have the version of the subjection of Cyprus intended for the Cypriotes themselves, or the fuller account of Hamath. Its date is about the same as that of the Dur Sharrukin group, to which it belongs in spite of its distant location.
A second group would contain the inscriptions of the two Prisms. Prism A has been fairly well studied. It gives us the well-known Ashdod revolt, the list of Median princes, and a Dalta episode. Prism B has remained largely unnoticed. The fragments have now been arranged, and large parts of four out of eight columns recovered. The results are in general disappointingly meager in all but one direction. This is the chronology which, however artificial, seems, as already noted, to be more nearly correct than that of the Annals. The two prisms, though not identical, are quite similar. They are of Annal type, though entirely unrelated to the Annals. They seem earlier than the Dur Sharrukin group, though they cannot be much older. They appear to come from Nineveh, where Sargon would seem to have resided prior to his occupation of his new capital.
Another group is that containing the more strictly chronological documents. The so-called Eponym Canon gives us the list of eponyms orlimmu, and this bare list of names now begins to be amplified by the dated commercial documents. More important are two fragments which add to the name and office of the eponym some sort of a historical statement. One belongs to the so-called Assyrian Chronicle and covers practically the whole reign. The chronological clue has now fortunately been discovered, and it can now be utilized. The date is entirely a matter of conjecture, and its sources cannot be found in any inscriptions known to us. Its tendencies seem to be priestly, but its chronology agrees fairly well with Prism B, and it seems quite reliable. The other is not very different from this type, but its exact parallel is still to be found. Each year from 708 to 704 has several lines devoted to historical data. It has close affinities with the Babylonian Chronicle, but seems in at least one case not to have so well repeated its tradition. It has no relationship with the first fragment. Though probably late, it used good sources and seems trustworthy.
The fourth group consists of the early inscriptions. The Nimrud inscription comes from Kalhu, the early capital of Sargon. Its date is about 716. Unfortunately it is brief, and is not in chronological order. Some new facts are to be gleaned, such as the conquest of Iaudu and the capture of Carchemish. A brief fragment from year six has little value, but the one from year two (720) is extremely important not only for its chronology but for the vivid light it casts on the causes of Sargon’s accession. A few other fragments are known but are either unpublished or of little importance. No affinities have been found within this group.
We may conclude our survey of the official material by mentioning the labels on the sculptures, the bricks, the inscribed fragments of pottery and of glass, and the minor building inscriptions. In some periods, all this would have great value, but so full are our sources that we rarely need their help, though the building inscriptions add to the culture history and the labels enable us to utilize the beautiful bas-reliefs which have a real historic value.