But now swift misfortunes were bearing down upon the oppressor from every quarter. The Scythian hordes, breaking through the mountain gates on the north, spread a new terror throughout the upper Assyrian provinces; from the mountain defiles on the east issued the armies of the recent-grown empire of the Aryan Medes, led by the renowned Cyaxares; from the southern lowlands, anxious to aid in the overthrow of the hated oppressor, the Babylonians, led by the youthful Nebuchadnezzar, the son of the traitor viceroy Nabopolassar, joined, it appears, the Medes as allies, and together they laid close siege to the Assyrian capital.
The operations of the besiegers seem to have been aided by an unusual inundation of the Tigris, which undermined a section of the city walls. At all events the place was taken, and dominion passed away forever from the proud capital [Footnote: Saracus, in his despair, is said to have erected a funeral pyre within one of the courts of his palace, and, mounting the pile with the members of his family, to have perished with them in the flames; but this is doubtless a poetical embellishment of the story.] (606 B.C.). Two hundred years later, when Xenophon with his Ten Thousand Greeks, in his memorable retreat (see p. 156), passed the spot, the once great city was a crumbling mass of ruins, of which he could not even learn the name.
RELIGION.--The Assyrians were Semites, and as such they possessed the deep religious spirit that has always distinguished the peoples of this family. In this respect they were very much like the Hebrews. The wars which the Assyrian monarchs waged were not alone wars of conquest, but were, in a certain sense, crusades made for the purpose of extending the worship and authority of the gods of Assyria. They have been likened to the wars of the Hebrew kings, and again to the conquests of the Saracens.
As with the wars, so was it with the architectural works of these sovereigns. Greater attention, indeed, was paid to the palace in Assyria than in Babylonia; yet the inscriptions, as well as the ruins, of the upper country attest that the erection and adornment of the temples of the gods were matters of anxious and constant care on the part of the Assyrian monarchs. Their accounts of the construction and dedication of temples for their gods afford striking parallels to the Bible account of the building of the temple at Jerusalem by King Solomon.