THE ORIGINS OF THE TWENTY-FIFTH DYNASTY

The historical tradition preserved in the pages of Manetho's history allows three kings to the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, Sabacon, Sebichos, and Tarcos, to be identified with Shabako, Shebitku, and Taharqa. These three are the middle monarchs of the five now generally included together to make the historical Twenty-fifth Dynasty of the monuments. Historians have expressed surprise that Manetho made no mention of Py (Piankhy), who established the fortunes of his line in Egypt, but his absence from the chronicler's list may be due more to a desire for chronological tidiness than to ignorance or malicious omission. For the greater part of his reign Py was absent from Egypt, and, as an earlier chapter of this history made clear, much of Egypt during this period was controlled by princes and chieftains, some of whom form, in Manetho's tradition, the lines of the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Dynasties. The overlap of dynastic lines presents problems to the annalistically-minded historian. To start the Twenty-fifth Dynasty with Shabako, who earned the royal title ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt’ by extending Nubian rule over the whole land in about 713 B.C., was altogether neater.

Unfortunately, neatness is not customarily to be observed in the sequences of historical events. The narrative of a country's history is like a river which, from time to time along its course, is joined by tributaries. Each tributary represents a new stream which, to be fully understood, needs retracing back along its separate course.

Many topics have been lightly touched upon in the preceding chapters which merit special attention, and it is the purpose of this chapter to fulfil that need. A synthesis of our knowledge of a given aspect of Assyrian civilization is full of lacunae and surmise, and I advise the reader of this now, for I have spared him endless repetitions of such phrases as ‘It would seem that’ or ‘Possibly so’. These topics are usually treated for Assyria and Babylonia together in secondary works, and I have therefore stressed some of the major contrasts with Babylonian civilization.

THE MONARCHY

The idea of monarchy was born with the emergence of the Assyrian state and the two grew to maturity together like twins. The seed for these developments may be found in the ancient city state of Ashur and its ruler who was called a vice-regent (išši' akku) of the city god Ashur. When Shamshi-Adad I captured this city state, he sought acceptance by the indigenous population of himself as the legitimate ruler and at the same time, by conquering other city states in the region and assuming the imperialistic title šarru (‘king’), dramatically altered the previous course of Ashur's history and set for its people and their heirs highly ambitious goals. The idea of an Assyrian state under an absolute monarch was conceived at that moment but lay dormant until the time of Ashuruballit I (1363–1328 B.C.), who not only won Assyrian independence but laid the foundations of an Assyrian nation and an Assyrian monarchy.

SOURCES

The sources for this period are neither rich nor of a consistent value. Of contemporary literary sources we have first the evidence of the Homeric poems, then some very scanty passages in Hesiod, a few fragments of lyric poets such as Archilochus and Alcaeus, to which may be added some data, fragmentary and imprecise, in the logographers, especially Hecataeus. The historians Herodotus and Thucydides provide valuable, if limited, information. In later Greek and Latin literature can be found statements directly bearing on our period, for example in Aristotle or Strabo, or in the scholia of Homer or of Apollonius Rhodius. There are in addition indirect literary references; they are concerned with later events, but show a process of evolution from earlier times. To this first category of sources should be added the material evidence provided by archaeologists, which is, however, in itself not very rich.

A GEOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY

After the migradons during the second half of the second millennium and the first centuries of the first millennium, the Thracians were settled in an extensive area stretching from the Euxine (Black) Sea to the neighbourhood of the Axius (Vardar), and from the Aegean Sea to the Transdanubian lands (below, Section IV). They straddled the Propontis (the Sea of Marmora), and had a foothold also in the Troad and in Bithynia.

HEZEKIAH'S LATER YEARS

Sennacherib failed to take Jerusalem in 701 B.C., and Judah remained an independent state, but the kingdom had been weakened, Sennacherib having laid waste, as he put it in monumental inscriptions on a bull colossus and a stone slab, ‘the wide district of Judah’. Pudu-ilu of Ammon, Kammusu-nadbi of Moab and Aiarammu of Edom had all escaped such devastation by paying tribute to Sennacherib without delay, and it seems likely that they now saw an opportunity to take advantage of the weakness of Judah. Levels II at Beersheba and VIII at Arad were destroyed at about this time, and though this might have been part of Sennacherib's operation, both cities lie rather far south of the area in which the Assyrians seem mainly to have conducted their campaign. It might well be that they mark an incursion of the Edomites, who indeed seem to have suffered an encroachment on the part of Judah earlier in Hezekiah's reign (I Chron. 4:41–3). That the Edomites were a threat in this area at about this time is suggested by a letter found in level VIII at Arad. This appears to have been sent by two officers, Gemariah and Nehemiah, in a military outpost to their superior Malkiah, presumably in Arad, and it states that the king should know that, thanks to trouble from the Edomites, they have been unable to send something (the text at that point is damaged). If the destruction of level VIII was the result of Edomite action this could have been a presage of the coming threat to the weakened state.