The Historians' History of the World 01

A great part of the strength of the Assyrian armies consisted in chariots and horsemen, to which we have frequent allusion in the inspired writings. The chariots appear to have been used by the king and the highest officers of state, who are never seen in battle on horseback nor, except in sieges, on foot. They contained either two or three persons. The king was always accompanied by two attendants—the warrior protecting him with a shield (who was replaced during peace by the eunuch bearing the parasol), and the charioteer. The principal warriors were also frequently attended by their shield bearers, though more generally by the driver alone.

The chariot was used during a siege, as well as in open battle. The king and his warriors are frequently represented as fighting in chariots with the enemy beneath the walls of a castle, or as having dismounted from their cars, to discharge their arrows against the besieged. In the latter case, grooms on foot hold the horses. When the king in his chariot formed part of a triumphal procession, armed men led the horses. The chariot was also preceded and followed by men on foot.

The horsemen formed a no less important part of the Assyrian army than the charioteers.—“Assyrians clothed in blue, captains and rulers, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding upon horses” (Ezekiel xxiii. 6). Horsemen are seen in the most ancient sculptures of Nimrud. It is singular, as observes Sir Gardner Wilkinson (Ancient Egyptians, Vol. I, p. 288), that horsemen are nowhere represented on the monuments of Egypt, although there can be no doubt, from numerous passages in the sacred writings, that cavalry formed an important part of the Egyptian armies. I have already mentioned that disciplined bodies of cavalry were represented in the bas-reliefs of Kuyunjik. We learn from the Book of Judith that Holofernes had twelve thousand archers on horseback (Judith ii. 15). Solomon had twelve thousand horsemen (1 Kings x. 26). The king himself is never represented on horseback, although a horse richly caparisoned, apparently for his use,—perhaps to enable him to fly, should his chariot horses be killed,—is frequently seen led by a warrior, and following his chariot.

In the earliest sculptures the horses, except such as are led behind the king’s chariot, are unprovided with cloths or saddles. The rider is seated on the naked back of the animal. At a later period, however, a kind of pad appears to have been introduced; and in a sculpture at Kuyunjik was represented a high saddle not unlike that now in use in the East.b

THE ARTS OF PEACE IN BABYLONIA-ASSYRIA

Nothing else, perhaps, is so vitally important in the life-history of a nation as its contact with other nations. Such contact alone, it would seem, can enable a nation in some measure to ward off the lethargy of age, or to overcome the incubus of custom and superstition.

The isolated nation does not get beyond a certain stage of evolution. It learns a few secrets, and seems powerless to learn others of itself. Only through contact with another community can it improve its customs, get new ideas, acquire better habits of thought and action. We have already pointed out how Egypt profited in this regard through the foreign associations that came with the inroad of conquering tribes from the south and east.

Babylon, however, occupied a far more favourable position than Egypt for contact with other nations, not alone through such warlike channels, but also through the yet more beneficent channels of peaceful commerce. A glance at the map shows that Mesopotamia occupies the very centre of the world of ancient civilisation. By reaching out its hand, so to speak, this way or that, it came in contact with every civilised nation of the period except China. It was the connecting link between Persia and India on the one hand, and Lydia, Syria, and Egypt on the other. Even Chinese ideas were to some extent accessible through the mediation of India. No other great nation of antiquity compares with Babylonia in this regard; and perhaps this was the most important reason why this little strip of fertile land between the two great rivers supported a continuous civilisation, on the whole ever advancing, millennium after millennium.

If one would correctly understand the development of that Mesopotamian civilisation, of which our own culture is the direct outgrowth, one must give heed to the commercial relations which were so important a factor of national growth, without which, indeed, no such civilisation as that of Babylon and Nineveh could have come into existence.