nded from the Turnat and the mountains of Blam to the Arabian
desert and the Nar-Marratutn, and even though the Cossaeans, Elamites,
Kalda, Sumerians, Akkadians, and other remnants of ancient peoples who
formed its somewhat motley population, had dwelt there for centuries in
a state of chronic discord, they all agreed--in theory, at any rate--in
recognising the common suzerainty of Babylon. Babylon was, moreover, by
general acknowledgment, the ancient metropolis to which Assyria owed its
whole civilisation; it was the holy city whose gods and whose laws had
served as a prototype for the gods and laws of Assyria; from its temples
and its archives the Assyrian scribes had drawn such knowledge as they
had of the history of the ancient world, their religious doctrines and
ceremonies, their methods of interpreting the omens and of forecasting
the future--in short, their whole literature, both sacred and profane.
The King of Nineveh might conquer Babylon, might even enter within its
gates in the hour of triumph, and, when once he had it at his
mercy, might throw down its walls, demolish its palaces, destroy its
_ziggurat_, burn its houses, exterminate or carry off its inhabitants,
and blot out its name from the list of nations; but so long as he
recoiled from the sacrilege involved in such irreparable destruction,
he was not merely powerless to reduce it to the level of an ordinary
leading provincial town, such as Tela or Tushkhan, but he could not
even deprive it in any way of its rank as a capital, or hope to make it
anything less than the second city of his empire. As long as it remained
in existence, it necessarily took precedence of all others, thanks to
its extensive area, the beauty and antiquity of its buildings, and the
number of its inhabitants. The pride of its nobles and priests, subdued
for a moment by defeat, would almost instantly have reasserted itself,
had the victor sought to lower the dignity of their city; Babylon
only consented to accept an alien master provided he bowed himself
respectfully before its superiority, and was willing to forget that he
was a stranger within its gates, and was ready to comply with its laws
and masquerade as a Babylonian. Tiglath-pileser III. never dreamt,
therefore, of treating the Babylonians as slaves, or of subordinating
them to their Assyrian descendants, but left their liberties and
territory alike unimpaired. He did not attempt to fuse into a single
empire the two kingdoms