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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
It is now about two years since Sir H. Rawlinson published his discovery of the Assyrian Canon, that is to say, of a list of annual functionaries in the kingdom of Assyria, extending over a period of about two hundred and seventy years of the duration of that great empire. This is the most valuable contribution towards the recovery of ancient Asiatic chronology which has been made since the time when Selden deciphered and published the contents of the Parian Chronicle, in the reign of Charles the First; and there is every reason to believe that by means of this document, in conjunction with the well-established dates of the early portion of the Babylonian Canon, we shall be enabled, not only to fix with certainty the dates of the reigns of thirteen kings of Assyria, reaching as early as the year B.C. 907; but also, with much probability, to recover the exact date of the rise of the first Chaldean dynasty in Assyria; or, in other words, the commencement of the era of Ninus and Semiramis. Sufficient time has now elapsed for a full investigation of the contents and bearing of this valuable document, and three eminent Assyrian scholars, viz., Sir H. Rawlinson in England, Dr. Hincks in Ireland, and Monsieur Oppert in Paris, after careful and independent examination, have published their comments upon it. They are as yet undecided as to what was the exact nature of the functions of these annual officers, whether military, civil, or priestly.
page 145 note 1 These officers were probably military; considering the known character of some of them, and that the whole army at Nineveh was annually changed, and new officers appointed. See Diodorus, , Rhodom. ii. p. 108.Google Scholar
page 148 note 1 Belib-ni. Oppert and Rawlinson.
page 148 note 2 Babylon. R.
page 150 note 1 Certified by three eclipses in the first and second year.
page 150 note 2 Oppert's Inscrip. Assyr. des Sargonides, p. 28.
page 150 note 3 “Merodah Baladan, fils de Jakin, roi de Chaldée”…… “avait excité contre moi toutes les tribus nomades. II se prépara à une bataille, et se porta en avant. Pendant 12 ans, contre la volonté des dieux de Babylone, la ville de Bel qui juge les dieux, il avait excité le pays des Sumirs et des Accads et leur avait envoyé des embassades.”
page 150 note 4 Inscrip. Assyr. des Sargonides, p. 3.
page 150 note 5 Ibid. p. 20.
page 151 note 1 Sargon invaded Cyprus, as proved by his statue found at Idalium; but this invasion is not mentioned in his annals, extending over fifteen years.
page 151 note 2 Euseb. Auch. p. 26.
page 154 note 1 The figure in the text is 245. But if Castor has correctly preserved the interval of 1280 from Ninus to the end of the reign of Sardanapalus, there would appear to be exactly 100 years in excess in copying the figures from Berosus.
page 154 note 2 Chronologie des Assyriens et des Babylonians, p. 7. Les Inscriptions Assyriens des Sargonides, p. 12.
page 155 note 1 “Deinde singulos a Nino et Semiramide recenset, usque ad Sardanapallum, qui fuit omnium postremus: a quo usque ad primam Olympiadem efficiunter anni LXVII” (lege CLXVII). Abydenus itaque de regno Assyriorum singillatim ita scripsit. At non ipse solum, sed etiam Castor in primo Chronicorum brevi volumine, ad hujus exempli formam syllabatim quidem de Assyriorum regno narrat.—Euseb. Auch. p. 39.
page 155 note 2 Ibid. p. 109.
page 156 note 1 Professor Rawlinson, in his 2d vol. of “Ancient Monarchies,” published on the day that this paper was read, writes p. 288, “Berosus placed the destruction of Nineveh in the first year of Nabopolassar, or B.C. 625, according to the Canon of Ptolemy,” and too boldly asserts that “the direct authority for this important fact is Abydenus.” Now, if faith is to be placed in Herodotus, the destruction of Nineveh took place at the end of a period of twenty-eight years, which period both began and ended in the reign of Cyaxares, king of Media. If, then, these twenty-eight years ended in B.C. 625, they must have begun in B.C. 652. But will Mr. Rawlinson venture to affirm that Cyaxares was on the throne of Media so early as B.C. 652? Cyaxares reigned forty years, and was alive at the time of the eclipse of B.C. 585, so that he could not have come to the throne earlier than B.C. 626, nor could the arrival of the Scythians have taken place till after that date. Again, this is not the reckoning of Abydenus. On the contrary, we have already seen from a passage, not referred to by Mr. Rawlinson, that Abydenus placed the fall of Sardanapalus in the year B.C. 609; and in the passage to which the learned Professor does refer, Abydenus distinctly records that the destruction of Nineveh was at the end of the reign of Saracus, who reigned after Sardanapalus, the last Assyrian king. Moreover, he very plainly fixes the time of the overthrow of the city to the time when Nabuchodrossorus, son of Busalossor, that is, Nebuchadnezzar son of Nabopalassar, took the throne of Babylon, and surrounded that city with a strong wall. Clearly, therefore, the destruction of Nineveh as placed by Abydenus, copying from Berosus, was at the end, not at the beginning of the reign of Nabopolassar. This king undoubtedly began to reign in the year B.C. 625, and as certainly his son Nebuchadnezzar came to the throne of Babylon immediately after his death. But there is no such certainty as to the time of his death. The common idea is that he died twenty-one years after B.C. 625. But Polyhistor, who also took his history of Assyria from Berosus, tells us plainly that Sardanapalus was the father of Nebuchadnezzar*, that is, that Nabopalassar and Sardanapalus were one—that it was he who combined with the Medes to overthrow Nineveh—and that on the fall of Saracus he took the throne of Babylon, that is to say, in his old age, long after his ejection from the throne of Nineveh. With this also Clietarchus, the contemporary of Berosus, agrees, who says that Sardanapalus lived to a great age, after having lost the empire of Syria, that is, of Assyria. All this well accords with the testimony of Abydenus, who, though he does not give the actual length of the reign of Saracus, declares that Nineveh fell the full length of that reign after the year B.C. 609, thus leading us into the following century for the date of the event. When, therefore, Herodotus, as we have seen, actually fixes the time of the overthrow of Ninevch soon after the eclipse of B.C. 585; and when Demetrius, who wrote not long after Berosus, places the first year of Nebuchadnezzar—which followed immediately after the fall of Nineveh—in the year B.C. 582, the concurrence of historical testimony seems to place the destruction of Nineveh, not in the year B.C. 625, as the learned Professor suggests, but at the end of the twenty-eight years of Scythian domination, in B.C. 583. All which has been more fully set forth by the writer in Part iii., vol. ii. of the Transactions of the Chronological Institute.
page 156 note * Euseb. Auch. p. 22.
page 157 note 1 Journ. R. Asiatic Society, vol. xviii., part i., p. 79.Google Scholar
page 158 note 1 Apronadius was probably the brother of Sennacherib, reinstated on the fall of Belibus. The third year spoken of by Polyhistor is the third of Sennacherib, not the third of Belibus.
page 159 note 1 Professor Rawlinson observes—“The Hebrew and Assyrian numbers are here irreconcileable. I would propose to read in 2 Kings xviii. 13, twenty-seventh for fourteenth.” And again, in addition to this supposed invasion in the twenty-seventh year, suggests that Sennacherib invaded Judæa a second time in the twenty-ninth year of Hezekiah. All which is directly opposed to Jewish history, which leads us to suppose that the last years of Hezekiah were years of peace.— Anc. Mon. vol. ii. p. 434 and 439.
page 159 note 2 There is a tablet in the British Museum dated in the reign of Susub.—Rawlinson's, Anc. Mon. vol. ii. p. 452.Google Scholar
page 160 note 1 Sir Cornewall Lewis writes, Astronomy of the Ancients, p. 430, “Assuming the capture of Babylon by Cyrus to be fixed at B.C. 538, the chronology of Berosus would place the accession of Sennacherib at B.C. 693.”
page 161 note 1 See the writer's treatise on Hebrew chronology in Part iv. vol. ii. of the Transactions of the Chronological Institute.
page 161 note 2 Sir H. Rawlinson, who admits the force of this argument, assumes that there was a second invasion by Sennacherib in the year B.C. 689, in the last year of Hezekiah.
page 161 note 3 Josephus, , Ant. IX. xiv. 2.Google Scholar
page 161 note 4 Athenæum, August 22, 1863.
page 162 note 1 Rawlinson's, Herodotus, vol. i., p. 471.Google Scholar
page 162 note 2 Professor Rawlinson denies the identity of the two kings, but no reason for this denial is given. Anc. Mon. vol. ii., p. 131Google Scholar.
page 162 note 3 Herod. i. 1Google Scholar.
page 162 note 4 Justin, , xviii. 3Google Scholar.
page 163 note 1 Strabo, , xvi. 3Google Scholar.
page 163 note 2 Phœnicia, Kenrick's, p. 48Google Scholar.
page 163 note 3 Vincent's, Voyage of Nearchus, p. 358–362.Google Scholar
page 163 note 4 Heeren's, Manual of Ancient History, Eng. Trans, p. 27.Google Scholar
page 163 note 5 Isaiah, xxiii. 10Google Scholar.
page 163 note 6 Psalm IxxiiGoogle Scholar.
page 163 note 7 When Jonah fled to Tarshish, it was to the Persian Gulph that he fled, not to Tartessus in Spain, as many suppose. He took ship probably at Opis, on the Tigris, a place so called by the Greeks, but which may have had the same derivation as Joppa, both being probably named by traders from the Gulph. It is a curious fact, as connected with Jonah, that some of the houses at Siraff are said to have been built with the bones of whales, showing the abundance of that fish in the Persian Gulph.
page 163 note 8 Vincent's, Voyage of Nearchus, p. 365.Google Scholar
page 164 note 1 Strabo, , xvi. 3Google Scholar.
page 164 note 2 Vincent's, Voyage of Nearchus, p. 514.Google Scholar
page 164 note 3 Psalm IxxiiGoogle Scholar.
page 164 note 4 1 Kings ix. 26, 27Google Scholar.
page 164 note 5 Ibid. x. 22.
page 164 note 6 2 Chron. ix. 21Google Scholar.
page 165 note 1 1 Kings iv. 21–24Google Scholar.
page 165 note 2 See Vincent's Dissertation on the xxvii. chapter of Ezekiel.
page 165 note 3 Euseb. Auch. p. 28Google Scholar.
page 166 note 1 Arrian, , vii. 19Google Scholar.
page 167 note 1 When Rezin and Pekah conspired to dethrone Ahaz, “and to set a king in the midst” of Judah, “even the son of Tabeal,” Isaiah, vii. 6Google Scholar, it seems probable that Tabeal (qu. Tubaal) was a Tyrian prince.
page 167 note 2 See Rawlinson's map, Anc. Mon. vol. i.Google Scholar; and Journal of Sac. Lit., new series, ix. p. 194.Google Scholar
page 167 note 3 Isaiah, xxiii. 8–13Google Scholar.
page 168 note 1 Et Tarsum urbem, ipse ad similitudinem Babylonis condidit, quam appellavit Tharsin.—Euseb. Auch. p. 21.
page 170 note 1 Athenæum, August 22, 1863.
page 171 note 1 Shalmanezer was contemporary with So, or Sabaco, king of Egypt, who, according to Manetho, was not on the throne so early as B.C. 721. Dr. Hincks and Prof. Rawlinson accordingly alter the record of Manetho to suit their purpose.
page 172 note 1 Egyptian Dynasties of Manetho, Part i., p. 9.
page 172 note 2 Athenæum, August 22, 1863.
page 174 note 1 “Demetrius says,” in his work concerning the kings of Judea, “that from the time when the ten tribes were carried away from Samaria, to the reign of the fourth Ptolemy, was a period of five hundred and seventy-three (read four hundred and seventy-three years) and nine months, and from the carrying away from Jerusalem three hundred and thirty-eight years and three months.”—Clem. Alex. Heinsii. Strom. i. p. 337Google Scholar.
page 174 note 2 Hosea, x. 14, 15Google Scholar.
page 176 note 1 Tobit, i. 15Google Scholar.
page 176 note 2 Joseph. Ant. x. iiGoogle Scholar.
page 178 note 1 Trans. Chron. Inst., vol. ii., part iii., p. 42Google Scholar.