Sumerian Origins of Merodach Revealed in Puzzling History of Nebuchadrezzar Lost City Υπότιτλοι Ελλ.

with the fall of the assyrian empire in 606 bc mesopotamia once more regained her national status this meant that her national god meridak was no longer subservient to the assyrian ashore in a political sense and regained his place as sole head of the mesopotamian pantheon grey must have been the satisfaction of the people of sumeria when this comparatively mild tyranny removed they could worship their gods in their way free from the humiliating remembrance that their northern neighbors regarded all sumerian sacred things as ebonages of the assyrian empire nabo palasser and nepika dresser his successor gave effect to these changes and the latter king placed naboo on a footing of equality with merodok was this the cause of his punishment was it because he had offended in a religious sense that he had to undergo the terrible inflection we read in the scriptures the priesthood of merodoc must have possessed immense and practically unlimited power in sumeria and we may feel sure that any such interference with their newfound privilege as is here suggested would have met with swift punishment was the ratchet monarch led to believe that an enchantment had been cast upon him and that he had been transformed into animal shape at the command of an outraged deity we cannot say the cause of his misfortune must forever remain one of the mysteries of the ancient world the unfortunate nobodist too attempted to replace the cults of merodak and nabo by that of shamash furthermore that hastened his doom for the priests became his better enemies and when the persian cyrus entered the gates of sumerian as a conqueror he was hailed as the savior of merodoc's honor the last native kings of mesopotamia were great temple builders in this policy they continued until the end indeed in the time of nebuchadnezzar there was a revival of ancient and half-forgotten cults and many local gods were exalted to a pitch of popularity here thurto unknown cyrus the man who conquered the world then in 539 bc came the conquering cyrus and the period of the decay the mesopotamian religion began the victor merely upheld the cults of merodak and nabu for reasons of policy and when the greeks ruled over sumeria they followed the persian lead in this respect by the defeat of the persian darius of the battle of arbella 331 bc the way to sumeria was left open to the mighty alexander the great this was the beginning of the end the old religion dragged out a broken existence until about the beginning of the christian era then slowly but surely vanished beneath the attacks of hellenic skepticism christian propaganda and pagan caprice that a faith so virile so ancient so entrenched in the love of a people as that of mesopotamia should fall into oblivion so profound as to be forgotten for nearly 19 centuries is a solemn and impressive reminder of the evanescent character of human affairs they were men of their hands these ancient mesopotamians great theologians great builders great soldiers however their mighty works their living faith left not a rack behind save mounds of rubbish which when excavated by the modern antiquary contained a few poor vestiges of the splendor that was mesopotamia and the pomps of the city of ashore does there not reside in this a great lesson from modernity must our civilization our faith all that is ours and that we have raised must these things too fade into the shadows of unremembrance as did the civilization of mesopotamia the answer to such a question depends upon ourselves upon every one of us if we quit ourselves as civilized men striving and ever striving to refine and purify our lives our conduct our intellectual outlook to spiritualize our faith then though the things of our hands may be dust the work of our minds of our souls shall not vanish but shall remain in the consciousness of our descendants so long as human memory lasts the faith of ancient sumeria went under because it was built rather on the worship of frail and bastille gods than the love of truth gods many of whom were devils in disguise but devils no wit worse than our fiends of ambition of greed of pugnacity of unsympathy through the worship of such gods mesopotamia came to oblivion let us contemplate the colossal wreck of that mighty work of man and as we gaze over the gulf of a score of centuries to where it's cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces glitter in the mirage of legend let us brace ourselves for the struggle which humanity has yet to wage with darkness with a disease with superstition nevertheless while we remember her fall with sadness let us think generously and kindly of her dead mightiness of the ancient effort she made striving after her lights of her picturesque and many colored life and not least of her achievements the invention of those symbols by which the words of man can be transferred to his brother across the silent ocean of time the ancient accounts of the kingdoms of sumerian descendants the sumerian and assyrian king's tales which we present in this chapter value because they are taken first from their historical accounts of the great events during their several reigns on a first examination these tablets appear dry and uninteresting but when studied more closely and patiently they will be found to contain matter as absorbing as that in the most exciting analysis of any country for example let us take the wonderful inscriptions of tiglath palester ii 950 bc which referred to his various conquests and which were discovered by george smith at nimrod in the temple of nebo tigloth commences with the usual oriental flourish of trumpets he styles himself the powerful warrior who in the service of ashore has trampled upon his haters swept over them like a flood and reduced them to shadows he has marched he says from the sea to the land of the rising sun and from the sea of the setting sun to egypt he enumerates the countless lands that he has conquered the city sarapanu and malalatu among others took by storm and captured the inhabitants to the number of hundred and fifty thousand men women all of whom he sent to assyria much tribute he received from the people of the conquered lands gold silver precious stones rare woods and cattle his custom seems to have been to make his successful generals rulers of the cities he conquered and it is noticeable that upon a victory he invariably offered to the gods his methods appear to have been drastic in the extreme irritated at the defiance of the people of sarapanu he reduced it to a heap of earth and crucified king nabu usabi in front of the gate of his city not content with his vengeance tigloth carried off his wealth his furniture his wife his son his daughters and lastly his gods so that no trace of the wretched monarch's kingdom should remain it is noticeable that throughout these campaigns tigloth invariably sent the prisoners to assyria which shows at least that he considered human life as relatively sacred probably these captive people were reduced to slavery the races of the neighboring desert too came and prostrated themselves before the assyrian hero kissing his feet and bringing him tribute carried by sailors tigloth then begins to boast about his gorgeous new residence with all the vulgarity of a nouveau rich he says that his house was decorated like a syrian palace for his glory he built gates of ivory with planks of cedar and seems to have had his prisoners the conquered kings of syria on exhibition in the palace precincts at the gates were gigantic lions and balls of clever artistry which he describes as cunning beautiful valuable in this place he called the palaces of rejoicing in a fragment which relates the circumstances of his eastern expeditions he tells how he built a city called humor and how he excavated the neighboring river patty which had been filled up in the past and along its bed led refreshing waters into certain of the cities he had conquered he complains in one text that sadhuri the king of ararat revolted against him and others the tigloth captured his camp and saw durie had the perforce to escape upon amir into the rugged mountains he rode by night and sought safety on their peaks later he took refuge with his warriors in the city of terusba after a siege tegloth succeeded in reducing the place afterward he destroyed ararat's land and made it a desert over an area of about 450 miles tegloth dedicated sawduri's couch to ishtar and carried off his royal riding carriage his seal his necklace his royal chariot his mace and lastly a great ship though we are not told how we accomplish this last feat it is strange to notice the inflated manner in which tigloth speaks in these descriptions he talks about people races and rulers sinning against him as if he were a god but it must be remembered that he like other assyrian monarchs regarded himself as the representative of the gods upon earth nevertheless though his language is boastful and absurd yet it is extremely beautiful and even poetic on other occasions in speaking of the tribute he received from various monarchs he says that he obtained from the clothing of wall and linen violet wall royal treasures the skins of sheep with fleece died in shining purple birds of the sky with feathers of shining violet horses camels and she camels with their young ones he appears too to have conflicted with the queen of sheba or saba one samsi whom he sent as a prisoner to syria with her gods and all her possessions ashur bonipal writes his own historical accounts in a former chapter we outlined the mythical history of ashur bonapal of sardinopolis and in this place may briefly review the story of his life as told in his inscriptions he commences by stating that he is the anunnaki of ashore and baltis but he intends to convey that he is their son in a spiritual sense only for he hastens to tell us that he is the son of the great king of radutu asar hadan he proceeds to tell of his triumphal progress throughout egypt whose kings he made tributary to him then he remarks in a hurt manner the good idea to them they despised and their hearts devised evil seditious words they spoke and talk evil counsel among themselves in short the kings of egypt had entered into an alliance to free themselves from the yoke of ashur bonapal but his generals heard of the plot anunnaki and captured several of the ringleaders amid their work they seized the royal conspirators and bound them in fetters of iron the assyrian generals then fell upon the populations of the revolting cities and cut off their inhabitants to a man but they brought the rulers of egypt to nineveh into the presence of ashur banapal to do him justice that monarch treated nico who is described as king of memphis and sars with the utmost consideration granting him a new covenant and placing upon him costly garments and ornaments of gold bracelets of gold a steel sword with a sheath of gold with chariots mules and horses continuing ashore bonaparte recounts how gazia's king of lydia a remote place of which his fathers had not heard the name was granted a dream concerning the kingdom of assyria by the god ashore gises was greatly impressed by the dream and sent to assure banapal to request his friendship but having once sent an envoy to the assyrian court assure bonapal seemed to think that he should continue to do so regularly and when he failed in this attention the assyrian king prayed to assure to compass his discomforture shortly afterward the unhappy geishas was overthrown by the sumerians against whom ashurbanipal had often assisted him ashurbanipal then plaintively recounts how salmugina his younger brother conspired against him this brother he had made king of sumeria and after occupying the throne of that country for some time he sat on foot a conspiracy to throw off the assyrian yoke asir told ashurbanipal that he had had a dream in which the god sin spoke to him saying that he would overthrow and destroy samogina and his fellow conspirators ashore bonaparte marched against his brother whom he overthrew the people of mesopotamia overtaken by famine were forced to devour them and in their agony they attacked samogina and burned him to death with his goods his treasures and his wives as we have before pointed out this tale strangely enough closely resembles the legend concerning ashurbanipal himself swift was the vengeance of the assyrian king upon those who remained he cut out some tongues while others were thrown into pits to be eaten by dogs bears and eagles then after fixing a tribute and setting governors over them he returned to assyria it is noticeable that ashurbanipal distinctly states that he fixed upon the sumerians the gods of assyria and this seems to show that assyrian deities existed in contra distinction to those of samaria in one expedition into the land of elah ashurbanipal had a dream sent by ishtar to assure him that the crossing of the river itite which was in high flood could be accomplished by his army in perfect safety the warriors easily negotiated the crossing and inflicted great losses upon the enemy among other things they dragged the idol of susanne from its sacred grove and he remarks that any man in elam had never beheld it this with other idols he carried off to assyria he broke the winged lions which flanked the gates of the temple dried up the drinking wells and for a month and a day swept elam to its utmost extent so that neither man nor oxen nor trees could be found in it nothing but the wild ass the serpent and the beast of the desert the king says that the goddess nana who had dwelt in elam for over 1600 years had been desecrated by so doing that country he declares was a place not suited to her the return of her divinity she entrusted to me ashurbanipal she said bring me out from the midst of wicked elah and cause me to enter the temple of anna the goddess then took the road to the temple of ana at iraq where the king raised to her an enduring sanctuary those chiefs who had trusted the elamites now felt afflicted at heart and began to despair and one of them like saul begged his armor bearer to slay him master and man destroying each other ashore bonaparte refused to give his corpse burial and cutting off its head hung it around the neck of nabu kwati zabat one of the followers of salmogina his rebellious brother in another text ashurbanipal recounts in grand illoquint language how he built the temples of ashore and merodok the great gods in their assembly my glorious renown have heard and over the kings who dwell in palaces the glory of my name they have raised and have exalted my kingdom ashore bonaparte the designer the temples of assyria and sumeria with ashar hadan king of assyria had begun their foundations he had built but had not finished their tops and knew i built them i finished their tops saudi rabu matati the great mountain of the earth the temple of the god assure my lord completely i finished its chamber walls i adored with gold and silver great columns in it i fixed and in its gate the productions of land and sea i placed the god ashore into saudi rabu matati i brought and i raised him an everlasting sanctuary seagal the temple of merudak lord of the gods i built i completed its decorations bell and baltis the divinities of samaria and a the divine judge from the temple of i brought out and placed them in the city of sumeria its noble sanctuary a great with fifty talents of the brickwork i finished and raised over it i caused a ceiling of sycamore durable wood beautiful as the stars of heaven adorned with beaten gold over meradoc the great lord i rejoiced in heart i dead as well a noble chariot the carriage of miradoc ruler of the gods lord of lords in gold silver and precious stones i finished its quality to meridak king of the whole of heaven and earth destroyer of my enemies as a gift i gave it a couch of sycamore wood for the sanctuary covered with precious stones as ornaments as the resting couch of bell and beltus givers of favor makers of friendship skillfully i constructed in the gate the seat of xerod bonnet which adorned the wall i placed four balls of silver powerful guarding my royal threshold in the gate of the rising sun in the greatest gate in the gate of the temple sida which is in the midst of borsipa i set up asar hadan the father of ashur bhanipal has been called the most likable of the assyrian kings he did not press his military conquests for the mere sake of glory but in general to maintain his territory he is notable as the restorer of babu and the reviver of its culture he showed much clemency to political offenders and his court was the center of literary activity ashore bonapal his son speaks warmly of the sound education he received at his father's court and to that education and its enlightening influences we now owe the priceless series of cylinders and inscriptions found in his library he does not seem to have been able to control his rather turbulent neighbors and he was weak enough from the assyrian point of view to return the gods of the kingdom of aribi after he had led them captive to assyria he seems to have been good-natured enlightened and easy-going and if he did not boast so loudly as his son he had probably greater reason to do so one of the descendants of ashurbanipal baal zakir ishkhan speaks of his restoration of certain temples especially that of nebo and plaintively adds and after days the time of the kings my sons when this house decays and becomes old who repairs its ruin and restores its decay may he who does so see my name written on this inscription may he enclose it in a receptacle pour out a libation and write my name with his own but whoever defaces the writing of my name may the gods not establish him may they curse and destroy his seed from the land this is the last royal inscription of any length written in assyria and its almost prophetic terms seem to suggest that he who framed them must have foreseen the downfall of the civilization he represented does not the inscription almost foreshadow shelley's great sonnet on aussie mandias i met a traveler from an antique land who said two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert near them on the sand half sunk a shattered visage lies whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that it sculpt her well those passions read which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed moreover on the pedestal these words appear my name is ozymandias king of kings look on my works ye mighty and despair nothing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away the eclipse the darkened humanity the reign of ashore don iii 773 to 764 bc supplies us with a picturesque incident this assyrian monarch had marched several times into syria and had fought the chaldeans in sumeria numerous were his tributary states and widespread his power nevertheless disaster crept slowly upon him and although he made repeated efforts to stave it off these were quite in vain insurrection followed insurrection and it would seem that the priests of sumeria considered themselves slighted joined the malcontent party and assisted to ferment discord at the critical juncture of the fortunes of ashore dawn there happened an eclipse of the sun and as the black shadow crept over nineveh and the king lay upon his couch and watched the gradual blotting out of the sunlight he felt that his doom was upon him after this dire full portent he appears to have resisted no longer but to have resigned himself to his fate within the year he was slain and his rebel son adad narari iv sat upon his murdered father's throne however nemesis followed upon the parasite's footsteps for he in turn found a rebel in his son and the land was smitten with a terrible pestilence [Music] shall moniser circuit 1270 was cast in a martial and heroic mold and an ethic might arise from the legends of his conquests and military exploits assyria possessed a super abundant population that required an outlet in his time and thus the monarch deemed it his duty to supply after conquering the provinces of matani to the west of the euphrates he attacked samaria and so fiercely did he deal with the southern neighbors that we find him gathering the dust of their conquered cities and casting it to the four winds of heaven surely a more extreme manner of dealing summarily with a conquered enemy has never been recorded although the sumerian or assyrian king's life was lived in the full glare of publicity he had not encountered the same criticism regarding his actions the present-day monarchs must face for the moral code of the peoples of mesopotamia was fundamentally different from that which obtains at present as the monarch was regarded as the vice garant of the gods upon earth it therefore followed that he could do no wrong submission to his will was complete in the hands of a race of men who wielded this power unwisely it could have been nothing but disastrous to both the prince and the people nevertheless on the whole it may be said that the kings of this race bore themselves worthily according to their lights if their sense of dignity at times amounted to bombast that was because they were so full of their sense of delegated duty from above there is every reason to believe that before entering their kingly state they had to undergo a most rigorous education consisting of instruction upon religious subjects some history and the inculcation of moral precepts on the other hand they were by no means mere puppets for we find them initiating campaigns presiding over courts of law and framing the laws themselves and generally guiding the trend of the national policy as a whole they were a strong and determined race wise as well as warlike and by no means unmindful of the requirements of their people however with them the gods were first and their reading of the initial duty of a king seems to have been the building of temples and the celebration of religious ceremonies of which a gorgeous and prolonged ritual was the special feature a royal time clock a sketch of a day in an assyrian or sumerian king's life may help the reader visualize the habits of royalty in a distant era the ceremonies of roving and ablution upon rising would necessitate the attendance of numerous special officials and the morning repast over a private religious ceremony would follow the business of the court would supervene perhaps an embassy from elam or egypt would occupy the early hours of the morning failing which the dictation of letters to the governors of provinces and cities or distant potentates would be overtaken as a scholar himself the kang would probably carefully scrutinize these productions a visit might then be paid to a temple in the course of construction where the architect would describe the progress of the building operations and the king would watch the slow rising of shrine and tower or perhaps the afternoon would be set apart for the pleasures of the chase leashes of great dogs not unlike those of the danish borehound breed would be gathered at a certain point and set out in a light but strong chariot the king would soon arrive at that point where the beaters had assured themselves of the presence of gazelles wild asses or even lions matters would of course be so arranged that the chief glories of the day should be left with royalty it is not clear whether the king was accompanied by his courtiers in the chase as was the case in the middle ages or if professional huntsman merely attended him be that as it may when the ceremony of pouring libations over the deadly game came to be celebrated we find no one except the king the harpers and professional huntsmen present for the kings of this virile and warlike race did not disdain to face the lion unattended and armed with nothing but bow and arrows and a short falcion unless the inscriptions they have left on the record are mendacious we must believe that many an assyrian king risked his life in close combat with lions great risk attends lion hunting when the sportsman is armed with the modern weapons of precision but the risk attending a personal encounter with these savage animals when the hunter is armed with the most primitive weapons seems appalling according to modern civilized ideas alternatively the afternoon might be occupied by a great ceremonial religious function the laying of the foundation stone of a temple the opening of a religious edifice or the celebration of a festival the king attended by a glittering retinue of courtiers and priests would be carried in a letter to the place of celebration where hymns to the god and whose honor the function were held were sung to the accompaniment of harps and other instruments libations to the god were poured out offered up and prayers made for continued protection an assyrian or sumerian king's private life was probably not of a very comfortable order surrounded as he was by sycophantic officials spies in the pay of his enemies schemers and office seekers of all descriptions as in most oriental countries the harem was the center of intrigue and political unrest its occupants were usually princesses from foreign countries who had probably received injunctions on leaving their native lands to gain as much ascendancy over the monarch as possible for swaying him in matters political many of these alliances were supposed to be made in the hope of maintaining peaceful relations between mesopotamia and the surrounding countries however there is little doubt that the numerous wives of a mesopotamian king were only too often little better than spies it was office it was to report periodically to their relatives the condition of things in sumeria or nineveh people swarmed in their palaces and these occupied a rather higher status than in some other countries a slave who possessed good attainments and was skilled in weaving the making of unduents or preserves was regarded as an asset the annunaki were cast but the laws regarding them were exact and not inhumane they were usually sold by auction in the marketplaces of the large towns a strange custom too is said by herodotus to have obtained among the sumerians in connection with marriage every marriageable woman obtained a husband in the following manner the most beautiful girls of marriageable age were put up to auction and the large sums realized by their sale were given to the planer young women as dowries who thus furnished with great means readily found husbands the life of a mesopotamian king was so hedged around by ceremonial as to leave little time for private pleasures these as in the case of ashurbanipal sometimes took the form of literary or antiquarian amusements but the more general form of relaxation seems to have been feasts or banquets at which the tables were well supplied with delicacies obtained from distant as well as neighboring regions dancing and music both furnished by a professional class followed the repast and during the evening the king might consult his soothsayers or astrologers as to some important that had been related to him or some dream he had experienced the royal lines of mesopotamia seem to have been composed of men grave sedate and conscious of the authority which reposed in them nevertheless few weaklings sat upon the thrones of mesopotamia or assyria and those who did were not infrequently swept aside to make room for better men

2021-04-02 01:53

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