In 729 BCE, following the death of the Babylonian ruler Nabu-nasir, the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III led a campaign into Babylonia. After a series of military victories, he managed to establish Assyrian ascendancy over the region and make himself king of Babylonia. The Assyrians remained overlords of Babylon until 626 BCE, when a Chaldean general called Napolassar led a campaign of determined onslaughts aimed at ousting the Assyrians from the Babylonian plain.
Napolassar successfully managed to drive the Assyrians out. He then took the Babylonian crown for himself, restoring Babylonian independence from Assyria and ushering in the greatest period of Babylonian history.
The power of Assyria was on the wane, and Napolassar followed up his victory at home by joining forces with the Medes from the Iranian plain and attacking the Assyrians from two sides. Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, was taken in 612 BCE; three years later, the Assyrian Empire was totally destroyed. By this victory, Napolassar became king of a vast empire that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf.
EPIC OF GILGAMESH
Many works of literature have survived from Babylonian times, the most famous of which is the Epic of Gilgamesh. This epic, inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform, was found on clay tablets among the remains of the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (ruled 668-627 BCE) when his capital, Nineveh, was being excavated in the 19th century CE. This epic dates from the time of Hammurabi and tells the story of Gilgamesh, a legendary king of Sumer whose character may have been based on that of one of the early rulers of Uruk.
As befits a legendary hero, Gilgamesh is immensely tall—11 feet (3.35 m)—and is two-thirds god and one-third human. He is described as striding “through the streets of Uruk like a wild ox, sublime of gait.” Gilgamesh acquires a companion, a wild hairy man called Enkidu, who has proved the king's equal in a wrestling match. Together, the two heroes go forth into the world to perform great deeds. Their first adventure involves a trip to the forests of Lebanon, where they defeat the fearsome giant Chumbaba, king of the Cedar Mountain.
After more adventures, Enkidu falls ill and dies. Gilgamesh is heartbroken, and from then on, the story is no longer about an invincible hero and his glorious deeds; it is about a desperate, only-too-human Gilgamesh engaged in a bitter fight with death, the only enemy he cannot escape. Setting out on a search for immortality, Gilgamesh journeys to the “island of the blessed,” where he eventually finds the herb of life deep in a spring. He picks the herb and starts on his return journey. Along the way, however, he goes swimming in a lake, leaving the precious herb of life on the shore, where it is eaten by a snake.
Robbed of his chance at immortality, Gilgamesh must settle for being mortal. However, he finds solace in contemplating his life's work. He built
The walls of the great city of Uruk, and these walls are so strong that he predicts they will last for all eternity. So far, he has not been proved wrong.
This Assyrian relief sculpture from the eighth century BCE is believed to depict the hero Gilgamesh.
World History
