[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Medes and the Persians remain as outstanding names.
But it was through the Balkan peninsula that Aryan tribes made their first
heavy thrust into the heart of the old-world civilization. They were already
coming southward and crossing into Asia Minor many centuries before 1000 B.C.
First came a group of tribes of whom the Phrygians were the most conspicuous,
and then in succession the aeolic, the Ionic and the Dorian Greeks. By 1000
B.C. they had wiped out the ancient aegean civilization both in the mainland
of Greece and in most of the Greek islands; the cities of Mycenae and Tiryns
were obliterated and Cnossos was nearly forgotten. The Greeks had taken to the
sea before 1000 A.D., they had settled in Crete and Rhodes, and they were
founding colonies in Sicily and the south of Italy after the fashion of the
Phoenician trading cities that were dotted along the Mediterranean coasts.
So it was, while Tiglath Pileser III and Sargon II and Sardanapalus were
ruling in Assyria and fighting with Babylonia and Syria and Egypt, the Aryan
peoples were learning the methods of civilization and making it over for their
own purposes in Italy and Greece and north Persia. The theme of history from
the ninth century B.C. onward for six centuries is the story of how these
Aryan peoples grew to power and enterprise and how at last they subjugated the
whole Ancient World, Semitic, aegean and Egyptian alike. In form the Aryan
peoples were altogether victorious; but the struggle of Aryan, Semitic and
Egyptian ideas and methods was continued long after the sceptre was in Aryan
hands. It is indeed a struggle that goes on through all the rest of history
and still in a manner continues to this day.
XX. The Last Babylonian Empire and the Empire of Darius I
WE have already mentioned how Assyria became a great military power under
Tiglath Pileser III and under the usurper Sargon II. Sargon was not this man's
original name; he adopted it to flatter the conquered Babylonians by reminding
Page 36
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
them of that ancient founder of the Akkadian Empire, Sargon I, two thousand
years before his time. Babylon, for all that it was a conquered city, was of
greater population and importance than Nineveh, and its great god Bel Marduk
and its traders and priests had to be treated politely. In Mesopotamia in the
eighth century B.C. we are already far beyond the barbaric days when the
capture of a town meant loot and massacre. Conquerors sought to propitiate and
win the conquered. For a century and a half after Sargon the new Assyrian
empire endured and, as we have noted, Assurbanipal (Sardanapalus) held at
least lower Egypt.
But the power and solidarity of Assyria waned rapidly. Egypt by an effort
threw off the foreigner under a Pharoah Psammetichus I, and under Necho II
attempted a war of conquest in Syria. By that time Assyria was grappling with
foes nearer at hand, and could make but a poor resistance. A Semitic people
from south-east Mesopotamia, the Chaldeans, combined with Aryan Medes and
Persians from the north-east against Nineveh, and in 606 B.C.-for now we are
coming down to exact chronology-took that city.
There was a division of the spoils of Assyria. A Median Empire was set up in
the north under Cyaxares. It included Nineveh, and its capital was Ecbatana.
Eastward it reached to the borders of India. To the south of this in a great
crescent was a new Chaldean Empire, the Second Babylonian Empire, which rose
to a very great degree of wealth and power under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar
the Great (the Nebuchadnezzar of the Bible). The last great days, the greatest
days of all, for Babylon began. For a time the two Empires remained at peace,
and the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar was married to Cyaxares.
Meanwhile Necho II was pursuing his easy conquests in Syria. He had defeated
and slain King Josiah of Judah, a small country of which there is more to tell
presently, at the battle of Megiddo in 608 B.C., and he pushed on to the
Euphrates to encounter not a decadent Assyria but a renascent Babylonia. The
Chaldeans dealt very vigorously with the Egyptians. Necho was routed and
driven back to Egypt, and the Babylonian frontier pushed down to the ancient
Egyptian boundaries.
From 606 until 539 B.C. the Second Babylonian Empire flourished insecurely.
It flourished so long as it kept the peace with the stronger, hardier Median
Empire to the north. And during these sixty-seven years not only life but
learning flourished in the ancient city.
Even under the Assyrian monarchs and especially under Sardanapalus, Babylon
had been a scene of great intellectual activity. Sardanapalus, though an
Assyrian, had been quite Babylonized. He made a library, a library not of
paper but of the clay tablets that were used for writing in Mesopotamia since
early Sumerian days. His collection has been unearthed and is perhaps the most
precious store of historical material in the world. The last of the Chaldean
line of Babylonian monarchs, Nabonidus, had even keener literary tastes. He [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl szkicerysunki.xlx.pl
Medes and the Persians remain as outstanding names.
But it was through the Balkan peninsula that Aryan tribes made their first
heavy thrust into the heart of the old-world civilization. They were already
coming southward and crossing into Asia Minor many centuries before 1000 B.C.
First came a group of tribes of whom the Phrygians were the most conspicuous,
and then in succession the aeolic, the Ionic and the Dorian Greeks. By 1000
B.C. they had wiped out the ancient aegean civilization both in the mainland
of Greece and in most of the Greek islands; the cities of Mycenae and Tiryns
were obliterated and Cnossos was nearly forgotten. The Greeks had taken to the
sea before 1000 A.D., they had settled in Crete and Rhodes, and they were
founding colonies in Sicily and the south of Italy after the fashion of the
Phoenician trading cities that were dotted along the Mediterranean coasts.
So it was, while Tiglath Pileser III and Sargon II and Sardanapalus were
ruling in Assyria and fighting with Babylonia and Syria and Egypt, the Aryan
peoples were learning the methods of civilization and making it over for their
own purposes in Italy and Greece and north Persia. The theme of history from
the ninth century B.C. onward for six centuries is the story of how these
Aryan peoples grew to power and enterprise and how at last they subjugated the
whole Ancient World, Semitic, aegean and Egyptian alike. In form the Aryan
peoples were altogether victorious; but the struggle of Aryan, Semitic and
Egyptian ideas and methods was continued long after the sceptre was in Aryan
hands. It is indeed a struggle that goes on through all the rest of history
and still in a manner continues to this day.
XX. The Last Babylonian Empire and the Empire of Darius I
WE have already mentioned how Assyria became a great military power under
Tiglath Pileser III and under the usurper Sargon II. Sargon was not this man's
original name; he adopted it to flatter the conquered Babylonians by reminding
Page 36
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
them of that ancient founder of the Akkadian Empire, Sargon I, two thousand
years before his time. Babylon, for all that it was a conquered city, was of
greater population and importance than Nineveh, and its great god Bel Marduk
and its traders and priests had to be treated politely. In Mesopotamia in the
eighth century B.C. we are already far beyond the barbaric days when the
capture of a town meant loot and massacre. Conquerors sought to propitiate and
win the conquered. For a century and a half after Sargon the new Assyrian
empire endured and, as we have noted, Assurbanipal (Sardanapalus) held at
least lower Egypt.
But the power and solidarity of Assyria waned rapidly. Egypt by an effort
threw off the foreigner under a Pharoah Psammetichus I, and under Necho II
attempted a war of conquest in Syria. By that time Assyria was grappling with
foes nearer at hand, and could make but a poor resistance. A Semitic people
from south-east Mesopotamia, the Chaldeans, combined with Aryan Medes and
Persians from the north-east against Nineveh, and in 606 B.C.-for now we are
coming down to exact chronology-took that city.
There was a division of the spoils of Assyria. A Median Empire was set up in
the north under Cyaxares. It included Nineveh, and its capital was Ecbatana.
Eastward it reached to the borders of India. To the south of this in a great
crescent was a new Chaldean Empire, the Second Babylonian Empire, which rose
to a very great degree of wealth and power under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar
the Great (the Nebuchadnezzar of the Bible). The last great days, the greatest
days of all, for Babylon began. For a time the two Empires remained at peace,
and the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar was married to Cyaxares.
Meanwhile Necho II was pursuing his easy conquests in Syria. He had defeated
and slain King Josiah of Judah, a small country of which there is more to tell
presently, at the battle of Megiddo in 608 B.C., and he pushed on to the
Euphrates to encounter not a decadent Assyria but a renascent Babylonia. The
Chaldeans dealt very vigorously with the Egyptians. Necho was routed and
driven back to Egypt, and the Babylonian frontier pushed down to the ancient
Egyptian boundaries.
From 606 until 539 B.C. the Second Babylonian Empire flourished insecurely.
It flourished so long as it kept the peace with the stronger, hardier Median
Empire to the north. And during these sixty-seven years not only life but
learning flourished in the ancient city.
Even under the Assyrian monarchs and especially under Sardanapalus, Babylon
had been a scene of great intellectual activity. Sardanapalus, though an
Assyrian, had been quite Babylonized. He made a library, a library not of
paper but of the clay tablets that were used for writing in Mesopotamia since
early Sumerian days. His collection has been unearthed and is perhaps the most
precious store of historical material in the world. The last of the Chaldean
line of Babylonian monarchs, Nabonidus, had even keener literary tastes. He [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]