CHAPTER II. THE FIRST OR OLD EMPIRE - TIGLATH-PILESER I

1. IN THE SOUTH and south-east portion of the vast mountain region which spreads between the great chain of the Caucasus and that of the Taurus with its prolongations, in more or less parallel ridges varying in height and rugged ness, there are two of the most remarkable lakes in the world: Lake Van and Lake Urumieh. In the first place, they are situated at an elevation at which one hardly expects to find such large sheets of water, the former over 5000 and the latter over 4000 feet above the level of the Mediterranean; and Lake Urumieh, the larger of the two, is, at a rough estimate, not very much inferior in size to Lake Ontario. Secondly, they have a peculiarity unusual in lakes: their water is salt. That of Lake Urumieh especially is far more so than that of any sea, enough to materially increase its weight and buoyancy, or, to use the scientific expression, "specific gravity." Sir Henry Rawlinson gives the following account of it: "The specific gravity of the water, from the quantity of salt which it retains in solution, is great; so much so indeed, that a vessel of 100 tons burthen, when loaded, is not expected to have more draught than three or four feet at the utmost. The heaviness of the water also prevents the lake from being much affected with storms. A gale of wind can raise the waters but a few feet; and as soon as the storm has passed they subside again into their deep, heavy, death-like sleep." Of course no fish or living thing of any sort can exist in such brine. What makes these peculiarities doubly striking is that they are the very same for which the great lake of Palestine, the so-called Dead Sea, has always been famous: a salt-water bottom, perhaps the lowest in the world, since it lies 1300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. These two lakes, with a difference of 5500 feet between their levels, yet identical in nature, are equally remnants of former seas, pools of that immense ocean of which the Caspian Sea is but a more gigantic memorial, and which once upon a time, ages before man had appeared on the earth, covered the greater part of Asia, Europe and Africa, with only the very highest mountain ridges-such as the Himalaya, the Caucasus, the Atlas, and, partly, the Alps-rising above the waters and forming solitary and widely scattered islands. The time will come when all these salt pools will dry up and leave nothing but banks of salt, like those deposits which are frequently met with in the sandy steppes of Central Asia and South-eastern Russia, and from a distance startle the traveler, parched with heat and half spent with thirst, with the appearance of snow-drifts.

2. Both Lake Urumieh and' Lake Van were well known to the Assyrians, and the peoples who lived around them again and again were subjected to their inroads and depredations. Of the two, Lake Van was perhaps the most familiar to the indefatigable conquerors. The exceedingly rough and severely cold county in which it is situated-part of the region now known under the name of Kurdistan-belonged to the vast mountain-land somewhat vaguely designated b\u8217? the Assyrians as Nairi, or Lands of Nairi. The valleys between the different mountain spurs were inhabited by independent tribes, each calling itself a nation, while their chieftains are all awarded the title of "king." Loosely, if at all, connected with each other, they were an easy prey to the compact and well-trained armies which, year after year, pushed further into their fastnesses, and before which they generally fled deeper and higher into the mountains-"like birds," in the expressive phrase of the historical inscriptions. There they would hide until the invaders, who had too much to do in many places to linger long in one, had departed, or else, pressed by hunger and cold, compelled by the destruction of their homesteads and the massacre of their warriors and such of their people as had stayed beautiful, they would come down, and, to put an end to the present misery, submit and pay tribute.

3. At one of the sources of the Tigris, somewhat to the west of Lake Van, there is a sculpture on a natural rock, smoothed for the purpose, representing a king in the attitude of pointing the way, with the following inscription: "By the help of Asshur, Shamash, Raman, the great gods, my lords, I, Tu-Kulti-Palesharra, King of Assyria, son of .." (here follow the names of his father and grandfather, with their titles)-"the conqueror from the great Sea of the West to the sea of the land of Nairi for the third time has invaded the land of Nairi." This monument, the oldest memorial of Assyria's conquests in the North, is also the earliest specimen of Assyrian bas-relief sculpture yet found and represents the first really great king of that country, at least the first whose doings are, owing to a series of lucky chances, well known to us. The manner of its discovery, too, is of unusual interest, as it did much in its time to finally silence the doubts which were for a long while entertained by over-cautious and skeptical scholars concerning the reliability of cuneiform decipherment. At the reading of a long inscription of Ashurnazirpal, a much later king, whose palace Layard laid open at Nimrud, some lines were made out to mention this very sculpture, with an exact description of its location. With no other guide than this, the place was explored and the sculpture found, a result which established beyond a doubt the claim of Assyriology to be real science, dealing with positive facts and systematic researches, and not merely with ingenious and more or less plausible guesses, as had by many been thought probable. However, this confirmation ought already to have been superfluous, for the discovery happened in 1862, and in 1857 an experiment had been made which ought itself to have been sufficient.

4. At the exploration of a vast mound at Kileh-Sherghat (ancient Asshur) the excavators had extracted from the four corner-chambers in the foundations four cylinders, in the form of octagonal prisms, about eighteen inches in height, which bore the name of Tu-Kulti-Palesharra, while the inscription stamped on the bricks revealed the fact that the mound had once been a temple of Raman, restored by the same king. Two of the cylinders were in excellent preservation; of the two others only a few fragments were available; but the loss was not great, as they all were but the repetition of the same inscription. As this was the first unbroken text of considerable length-over a thousand lines-which had as yet been recovered, the arrival of the cylinders at the British Museum created much excitement, and it was determined to make them the subject of an experiment which should be a decisive test of the value of the new science. When the inscription had been lithographed, copies were sent to the four scholars who were then foremost in the work of decipherment: Sir Henry Rawlinson, Mr. Fox Talbot, Dr. Hincks and Mr. J. Oppert. Each was to contribute a translation of the text independently of the others, and at the end of a month the work was completed and the manuscripts was sent in to the Royal Asiatic Society, which was to officiate as umpire. When the four translations were printed in four parallel columns, no layman but must have seen at a glance that they were the rendering of the same text, the discrepancies between them being only in details and such as were to be expected from the still imperfect knowledge of the language. The translation has since been rehandled and improved several times, and the latest and most perfect version is in many particulars very different from those first attempts; yet these were too convincing, on the whole, not to have been considered by most as final proof in favor of cuneiform research, and inveterate doubters, if such remained, had to yield to the evidence of the sculpture and inscription so strangely discovered five years later.

5. The- inscription, as it happened, proved of the greatest interest in itself, apart from the philological use to which it was put. It gives a minute account of the first five years of Tiglath-Pileser I (for this is the common, though corrupt, reading of the name), and brings before us this warrior king with the vividness of a full-length portrait, at the same time that it gives us a complete picture of the greatness Assyria had reached in his reign, which covers the end of the twelfth century B.C. - 1120-1100. Its beginnings were most brilliant and it is no idle boast when he declares, with more truth than modesty, in the long and elaborate preamble of which the opening paragraph has already been quoted: "No rival had I in battle. To the land of Assyria I added land, to its people I added people. I enlarged my territory, all their countries I subdued" (his enemies). That he was not the first to do these things, and that Assyria's conquests had already extended far beyond the original district on the Tigris, both to the north and west, is proved by the fact that most of the expeditions which occupied the first five years of his reign were directed against rebellious provinces and unsubmissive neighbors. Of these hitter the first to feel his might were certain Hittite tribes of the mountains between the sea and the Upper Euphrates, whom he attacked in their own country,-"a land difficult of access,"-and defeated with their five kings and twenty thousand warriors. "With their corpses," says the king, "I strewed the mountain passes and the heights. I took away their property, countless booty. Six thousand warriors, the remnant of their...