Diodorus Siculus (ii. 3) says that it was 480 stadia, or 48 English miles round. The Book of Jonah tells us that it was a great city of three days' journey, by which the writer seems to mean that it was a journey of three days to pass through the city; but he adds rather more exactly, that it held within its walls cattle for its maintenance, and a population of more than 120,000 persons, who, in their heathen ignorance, he said, did not know their right hand from their left. Its palaces were, no doubt, chiefly built in the reigns of Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon; but it is not impossible that it may have been further ornamented with buildings and sculptures by Nabopolassar. These civil wars between Nineveh and Babylon may have given encouragement to Necho, king of Egypt, to push his arms eastward, and to claim authority over Samaria and Judea. But Josiah, king of Judah, was true to the Babylonians. When Necho landed on the coast, and marched northwards towards the Euphrates, Josiah led an army against him. But the Egyptians were victorious; Josiah was slain at Megiddo, and Jerusalem and the whole of Palestine was in the power of the Egyptians, who set up a new king over Judah. A few years later, however, Nabopolassar again reduced the Jews to their former state of vassalage under Babylon.' Nabopolassar was now old, and his son Nebuchadnezzar commanded for him as general, and carried on the war against the Egyptians on the debateable ground of Palestine. After three years Necho again entered the country, and marched as far as Carchemish, on the Euphrates. Here he was wholly defeated by the Babylonian army under Nebuchadnezzar. By this great battle the Babylonians regained their power over Jerusalem, and drove the Egyptians out of the country. Nebuchadnezzar carried captive to Babylon the Jewish nobles, and Judea remained a province of that great monarchy. In B.C. 605, Nebuchadnezzar succeeded to his father, and governed that kingdom in his own name, which he had hitherto been enlarging as a general. He fixed his seat of 1 2 Kings, xxiii. 29. 22 Kings, xxv. 1. 2 Chron. xxxv. 20; xxxvi. 1. Berosus in Josephus. 84 A SKETCH OF ASSYRIAN HISTORY. government at Babylon, a city which soon became as large as Nineveh, which it had overthrown. Jerusalem twice rebelled against him, but he easily reduced it to obedience, although on the second rebellion Hophra, king of Egypt, came up to help the Jews. Nebuchadnezzar defeated the Egyptians, and took away from them every possession that they had held in Palestine, Arabia, or the island of Cyprus. He died in the forty-third year of his reign.1 [B.C. 562.] After the death of Nebuchadnezzar, four other kings of less note reigned over Babylon, and held Nineveh. But the Median power was now rising. The Medes were in close alliance with the Persians, and the young Cyrus, at the head of the united armies, routed the Babylonians in several battles, and at last conquered Babylon, and put an end to the monarchy. After a few years, Cyrus united the kingdoms of Media and Persia, by right of inheritance; and he thus (B.C. 536) added to the land of his birth the whole of the possessions which had been held by Sennacherib, and more than those of Nebuchadnezzar. Notwithstanding its conquest by Persia, Babylon continued a large city, being still the capital of the plain watered by the Tigris and Euphrates. Though no longer the seat of government, it was still the seat of trade, and of great importance when visited by Alexander, on his overthrow of the Persian monarchy in the year B.c. 324. Alexander died there, and on the division of his wide conquests among his generals, Babylon in a few years became the kingdom of Seleucus and his successors. This city of Nebuchadnezzar was now to fall yet lower. It was governed by Greeks, and Seleucus found Syria the most suitable province in his empire for the capital. Accordingly, he built Antioch, on the Orontes, for the seat of his government, and Seleucia, on the Mediterranean, as the port of that new city, and Babylon never rose again to be a place of importance. The chronology of the times that we have been describing, from Pul, king of Assyria, to Cyrus, king. of Persia, will be better understood by the help of the following Table. By the side are written the years before our era; at the top are the 1 Berosus in Josephus. 2 Kings, xxv.8. 86 A SKETCH OF ASSYRIAN HISTORY. names of the countries; and from the whole we are enabled to see at a glance the width of kingdom under each sovereign. When the wedge-shaped characters shall have been more certainly read by the able decipherers now engaged on them, we shall no longer be at liberty to guess by what kings the palaces of Nineveh were built and ornamented. In the meantime, it seems reasonable to suppose that it was during those years when the nation's energy was shown in its. width of empire, that it was also engaged on its largest, most costly and most lasting buildings. Success in arms is usually followed by success in arts; and, the size of the palace bears some proportion to the size of the kingdom. Fig. 13.-NAME ON Among the Assyrian sculptured monuments there has been found a small ivory slab, or lid of a box, ornamented with Egyptian sculpture and rudely carved hieroglyphics (Fig. 13). This naturally leads us to enquire when and how far one of these nations was indebted to the other for its knowledge of art. The first trace of Egyptian fashion in Nineveh is in the name of King Tiglath Pileser. Of this the latter half is formed of the Assyrian words Pul and Asser; but the first half is borrowed from the name of King Tacelothe, who reigned in Bubastis one hundred and fifty years earlier. In the same way the first half of the names of Nebo-pulassar, and Nebochednezzar, is perhaps from the Egyptian word Neb, lord; which is also seen in the name of Nebo. Again, when Rameses II. marched through Palestine, he left behind him sculptured monuments in boast of his victories. One of these is still remaining in Syria, near Beyrout; and when the Assyrian conqueror (perhaps Sennacherib, or perhaps the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar) afterwards marched through the same country he carved a yet larger monument, on the face of the rock beside that of Rameses, in imitation of the Egyptian but in such less convenient place as was left for him. (See Fig. 14.-HEAD OF CYRUS. wood-cut, fig. 30, Nahr-al-Kelb monument.) Again, on a monument at Persepolis, the sculptured figure of Cyrus, the Persian king, bears an Egyptian head-dress (Fig. 14). It has horns copied from those of the god Knef, and above the horns are two basilisks or sacred serpents. These instances, taken together, are enough to prove that Egyptian fashion and Egyptian art were copied by their eastern neighbours; and this is yet further shown in more modern cases. The names of Soter, Philadelphus, and Euergetes, when used by kings in Asia, had always been already used by kings of Egypt. The Egyptians seem in every case to have set the fashion to their neighbours, and were far before the Assyrians in skill as artists. Fig. 15. NAME OBENRA. www 9 This ivory slab of which we have been speaking, bears the name of Aobeno Ra, written in hieroglyphics, within a ring or oval, in the usual style of an Egyptian king's name. This is, however, not a king's name, but only the eastern way of pronouncing the name of the god Amun Ra. On a mummy-case, in Dr. Lee's museum at Hartwell, the name of the god is written Oben-Ra (Fig. 15) under a large disc or figure of the sun, as the head of the inscription (Fig. 15). The style of this mummy-case makes it probable that it was made at Memphis, under the rule of the Persians, and no doubt at a time when those conquerors had introduced their own sun-worship and pronunciation. On the sarcophagus of Amyrtæus, one of the Egyptian kings who rebelled successfully against the Persians, the name of the god is also spelt Oben-Ra (Fig. 16). (See Egyptian Inscriptions, plate 30.) These two instances of the use of this name, prove its meaning on the ivory slab from Nineveh, while the last, which was sculptured about в.c. 450, would lead us to think the ivory slab not much older. Fig.16.-OBEN RA. Tradition tells us that the city of Balbec, near Damascus, was ornamented with a temple to the Sun by a king of Assyria who held Syria, and was friendly to Egypt, from |