AUTHORITIES:

Rawlinson, Duncker, Oppert, M. von Niebuhr, etc.

The mighty empire of the Assyrians, which constitutes one of the first links in the chain of positive history, has hitherto been best known by the great catastrophes which finally closed its existence. The Hebrew Scriptures testify to the wealth, the luxury, and the military power of the Assyrians; but neither these nor the fragments in other ancient historical writers, dispel the obscurity enveloping the interior organism of that great antique people. Neither do the outlines of Babylonian history given by Herodotus afford much insight into the details of her social structure.

In that fore-world which history has not yet penetrated, the region between the Mediterranean sea and the head-waters and affluents of the Euphrates and the Tigris, formed the theatre of a tumultuous confusion of races, nations and civilizations, which has no parallel in the known history of mankind. Social and ethnic structures of the most heterogeneous kind covered those regions, with their various creeds, theocracies, municipalities monarchies and despotisms of every degree.

[Pg 70]

When, about fifteen centuries B.C., history unveils the empire of the Assyrians or Ninevites, their dominion extended in a direct line from the head-waters of the Euphrates and Tigris to the mouths of those rivers; on the north-east, also, they ruled over Media (thus touching the Caspian), and from thence their dominion stretched across Armenia, southern Caucasus and Georgia, westward to the mouth of the river Halys (the modern Kizil-Ermak), in the Black Sea, and embraced also Palestine, Ph?nicia and Kilikia. As the dynasty of Ninus once ruled over Lydia, it is probable that the Ninevite empire at one time extended over at least a part of Asia Minor, as far as the Egean Sea.

This great Assyrian empire rose on the ruins of Babylon, which was once her master, and which was also far superior to her in antiquity.

History has preserved the names of some of the races and tribes which may here at one time have dwelt side by side, but which were subsequently conquered and ruled by the more powerful nation. History, we say, has preserved some, and comparative philology is constantly disentangling others from the chaos of antique Mesopotamian ethnology.[Pg 71][10]

The Assyrian and Babylonian empires stand recorded in the history of humanity as having been the cradles of Eastern despotism and political slavery. How this terrible tyranny arose in Assyria there are no means of ascertaining. Doubtless there were a number of conspiring causes, just as many rills unite to form a powerful stream. In the history of Rome, fortunately we shall be able clearly to seize the genesis of her despotism, and exhibit the germ as well as the wreck of her social structure. Reasoning from all historic analogy, however, it may safely be asserted that Assyrian despotism was generated by war, while political bondage nursed and fostered domestic chattelhood. Evil ever reproducing its own substance and shadow!

The social and domestic economy of the Assyrians must, in its general features, have been similar to that of the Nabatheans and Hebrews. In the course of[Pg 72] time, domestic slavery may, to some extent, have been developed in both empires; bu............