see p. 43), that we find a sovereign of renown at the head of Assyrian affairs. This was Tiglath-Pileser I., who came to the throne about 11

lost to history; then it is again raised into prominence by two or three stro

as the Second Empire. He was a man of great energy and of undoubted military talent,-for b

not a mere conqueror like his predecessors, but a political organizer of great capacity. He la

and carried away the Ten Tribes into captivity beyond the Tigris. The larger part of the captives were scattered among the Medi

f Raphia, 720 B.C.) between the empires of the Euphrates and the Nile valley, suffered

amed for himself; and there he erected a royal residence, described in the inscriptions as "a palac

mong all the great names of the Assyrian Empire. His name, connected as it is with the story of the Jews, and with many of the most wonde

and military expeditions. Respecting the decoration of Nineveh, he says: "I raised again all the edifices of Nineveh, my royal city;

places I captured and carried off as spoil 200,150 people, old and young, male and female, together with horses and mares, asses and camels, oxen and sheep, a countless multitude. And Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusale

emy; but near the frontiers of Egypt the Assyrian host, according to the Hebrew account, was smitten by "the angel of the Lord," [Footnote: This expression is a Hebraism, meaning often any physical c

e digging of canals, and in the erection of a splendid pa

F A CITY, SHOWING USE

rud

he Greeks, is distinguished for his magnificent patronage of art

paigns, the enemies of his empire. All the scenes of his sieges and battles he caused to be sculptured on the wall

dom. For nearly or quite seven centuries the Ninevite kings had lorded it over the East. There was scarcely a state in all Western Asia that had not, during th

ces; 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

aracus, 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 embellishmen