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Sennacherib and the Ionians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

L. W. King
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Extract

We possess few contemporary records of the Ionian expansion, even in its later stages, and the gradual hellenization of the coast-lands of southern Asia Minor is a process that, in the absence of historical documents, has largely to be inferred from later developments and by archaeological research. At least as early as the eighth century the sea-faring Greeks were known to the Assyrians, under the generic name of Ionians, as pirates and freebooters who troubled the coasts of their maritime provinces. That they should occasionally come into armed conflict with the Assyrian power was to be expected, but it has not hitherto been realized that at the beginning of the seventh century they were sufficiently numerous and powerful within the area of Assyrian control to join other adventurous and discontented elements in conducting a land campaign of some magnitude, and in defying, for a time successfully, the Assyrian forces. That they were capable of doing so may be taken as evidence of a considerable Ionian expansion eastwards at the close of the eighth and the beginning of the seventh centuries, and, though the Assyrians had little difficulty in checking the movement, it is probable that fresh conflicts of a like nature would have been recorded in the later Assyrian annals, were it not that a few years afterwards the centre of Ionian power in Western Asia Minor began to be held in check by Lydia, and later, in company with Lydia, was shaken to its foundation by the Cimmerian invaders. In fact those Ionians, whom Sennacherib met and defeated, achieved little political success, and that of a temporary character. It is possible that the effects of their cultural relations with their conquerors were more lasting.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , 1910 , pp. 327 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1910

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References

1 For the publication of its text, with translation and introduction, see King, Cuneiform Texts in the British Museum, Part xxvi.

2 That the importance of an Assyrian expedition is not to be judged by its inclusion in the royal annals is well illustrated by Sennacherib's Fifth Campaign, in the neighbourhood of Mt. Nipur, which takes its place beside the wars in Palestine, Babylonia, and Elam. The position of Mt. Nipur has not hitherto been identified. In 1904 I found on the peak of the Jûdî Dagh, above the village of Shakh, some rock-sculptures and inscriptions of Sennacherib, which I am preparing for publication. They were carved in commemoration of this campaign, and enable us to identify Mt. Nipur with the Jûdî Dagh. Thus the Fifth Campaign of Sennacherib proves to have been little more than a raid on mountain villages within three days of Nineveh, and it owes its prominence in the official annals solely to the presence of the king. Operations of far greater importance at which the king was not present, such as those of 698 and 695 B.C., might for a time be included in the official records as a sort of appendix to the royal campaigns. But they were merely dated and not given a number in the series. After the king had again bestirred himself to accompany his troops, the sections dealing with them were omitted by the scribes, so that the numbered sequence of royal expeditions should remain unbroken.

3 See Rawlinson, , Cun. Inscr. West. Asia, i., Pl. 43, ll. 17 fGoogle Scholar.

4 Eusebi chron. lib. i., ed. Schoene, cols. 27 and 35.

5 These probably go back to Berossus, whose history was used by both Polyhistor and Abydenus.

5a Mr. G. F. Hill has suggested to me the possibility that we should identify Illubru with the classical Lyrbe, on the border of Pamphylia and Cilicia. This would necessitate the inclusion of Western Cilicia in Khilaku; but the text seems to indicate a site nearer the pass.

6 In his review of the official edition of the new text of Sennacherib, (in Orientalistische Literaturzeitnng, xiii. (1910), cols. 145 ff.Google Scholar) Prof. Hugo Winckler criticizes my suggestion that the traditions preserved by Alexander Polyhistor and Abydenus may be combined with the Assyrian account of this campaign. He would, in fact, confine the scene of operations to the Taurus, with which, in his opinion, ‘a conquest by Sennacherib of a Greek fleet’ can have had nothing to do. He also seems to resent the idea of Greek political influence in coastal cities within what was officially an Assyrian province. But, like the Turkish Empire, that of Assyria was often content with a comparatively nominal control over considerable areas within its outlying provinces, so long as its land-communications were not threatened. Besides, with regard to the evidence, he entirely ignores the fact that Polyhistor describes the campaign of Sennacherib against the Ionians as a land campaign in Cilicia. From the resemblance of other points in the extracts quoted by Eusebius, it is clear that both Polyhistor and Abydenus are referring to the same campaign, with which the capture and rebuilding of Tarsus were intimately connected. The passage about the fleet also presents no difficulty. Tarsus had its harbour five or six miles below the city, on the lagoon or lake connected with both city and sea by the Cydnus, the channel of which from an early period was improved for navigation (see especially Ramsay, , Cities of St. Paul, pp. 105 ffGoogle Scholar.). According to Prof. Winckler's theory we must either treat the extracts from Polyhistor and Abydenus as unhistorical legends, for which course there is no justification; or we must assume, against all probability, that there was more than one occasion on which Sennacherib invaded Cilicia and captured Tarsus. On the other hand, all difficulties disappear on the assumption that our three authorities refer to the same campaign, especially as their differences are such as we should expect to find in an Assyrian official record, and the writings of two Greek historians, by whom the participation of the Ionians in the revolt would naturally be emphasized. A further proof of the important part taken by the coastal regions of Eastern Cilicia in the campaign may be seen in the fact that from this time forward the tenishit Ḳue u Khilaku, ‘men of Ḳue and Khilaku’ take their place in the slave-gangs at Nineveh. It is significant that Ḳue is invariably mentioned before Khilaku in the official formula.

7 The latter, I take it, is what Prof. Winckler means by his assertion, unbacked by any evidence, that the Assyrian army came ‘from the North.’

8 Probably the Beilan Pass, which would be the natural route of the Assyrian army.

9 Cf. Cun. Inscr. West. Asia, i. Pl. 36, l. 21.

10 See Cun. Texts in the Brit. Mus. xxvi. pp. 21 ff.

11 Cf. Col. vi. ll. 80 ff. This I think is the meaning of the rather obscure phrases (op. cit. p. 25).

12 Cf. Col. vii. ll. 45 ff.

13 Cf. Col. vi. ll. 20 ff.

14 The greatest prizes Sennacherib secured for his gardens, according to the new text, were ‘trees that bear wool,’ which the Assyrians sheared and shredded for making garments (Cf. Col. vii. l. 56, and Col. viii. l. 64). It is interesting to note that Sennacherib's description of the cotton-plant is precisely similar to that of Herodotus (iii. 106). Apart from Indian tradition of the use of cotton for the sacred thread of the Brahman, which is referred to in the Ásvaláyana Srauta Sútra and probably goes back to about 800 B.C. (see Thomas, F. W. in Watt, , The Wild and Cultivated Cotton Plants of the World, p. 9)Google Scholar, the references in Sennacherib's text are by far the earliest record of the cultivation of cotton. Since Herodotus refers to cotton-trees as growing wild in India, I suggested, with Dr.Rendle's, A. B. approval, the identification of the tree imported by Sennacherib, with Gossypium arboreum (see Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch. xxxi. pp. 339 ff.)Google Scholar. But Sir George Watt places little reliance in the details mentioned by Herodotus, since the later account given by Theophrastus exactly corresponds to cotton-growing in India today. He writes to me that he has little doubt Sennacherib's cotton was not tree-cotton but the annual plant botanists now call G. herbacenm, which, in his opinion, originated in Arabia, whence it eventually spread northwards to the shores of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

15 See Puchstein, , Das ionische Capitel (1887)Google Scholar, Die ionische Säule (1907), and Perrot, and Chipiez, , Hist, de ľart, vii. pp. 611 ff.Google Scholar; and cp. Meurer, , Vergleichende Formenlehre des Ornamentes und der Pflanze, pp. 488 ffGoogle Scholar.

16 Cf. Meurer, op. cit. p. 493, Fig. 4.

17 See Schumacher, , Tell el-Mutesellim, i. p. 118, Fig. 178Google Scholar; the circumstances of its discovery do not admit of an accurate date (cf. p. 119 f.).

18 Cf. Les civilisations préhelléniques, p. 190 f.

19 See Koldewey, , Neandria, pp. 34, 36, 38Google Scholar, and Lesbos, Tafel 16; and cf. Perrot and Chipiez, op. cit. vii. Pl. LII.

20 See Cun. Inscr. West. Asia, v. Pl. 60, and cf. Perrot and Chipiez, op. cit. ii. p. 211.

21 Cf. Botta, Monument de Ninive, ii. Pl. 114. The sketches reproduced in the text are from the pen of my colleague Mr. P. D. Scott-Moncrieff.

22 Assyrian Saloon, slab No. 92; cf. Perrot and Chipiez, ii. p. 143.

23 The horizontal lines between the columns are probably not intended to represent a wall immediately behind them; they are rather to be regarded as a naive device of the sculptor, faced with a comparatively unfamiliar subject, to indicate an interior. Similarly the stele engraved with the royal figure, which is set to the left of the temple, stood probably within it; the memorial tablet on which Sennacherib commemorated his victory undoubtedly was of this form.

24 See SirSmith's, Cecil description in Ephesus, pp. 182 ffGoogle Scholar.

25 Cf. Hogarth, , Ionia and the East, p. 60Google Scholar.

26 Les civilisations préhelléniques, p. 186 f.