HISTORY.—No. 3.

Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume II, Issue 10, 31 October 1856, Page 10

HISTORY.—No. 3.

Assyria. Now that all the Old Testament has been translated into Maori, it is to be hoped that the whole Bible will soon be in the hands of the Native people. There they will find much said about Assyria, and the Assyrian kings. The Prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Nahum are of Assyria. Therefore it will be worth our while to give a short history of Assyria and its great city, Nineveh. To the north west >f Syria and Judea, there are two large rivers, that flow from the . mountains near Ararat down to the South East into the Persian Gulf. The names of these two rivers are Euphrates, the one on the west side, andTigristheoneonthe East. These two rivers meet in one stream before they reach the Persian Gulph. Now, on the river Tigris, about half way down, was the great city called Nineveh. No < mr knew much about that city, till lately some Frenchmen and Englishmen have discovered

lis ruins. All that was seen formerly was some great mounds of sand near the river. A bout ten years ago, these Pakehas dug deep 'down into the sand, and found enormous temples, with statues of false god?, and palaces with figures of kings, and slaves, and so forth. There were a great many words written on ihe walls of these temples and palaces, and as the Pakehas knew the ancient language, they learnt a great deal of the history of Nineveh and Assyria, written by themselves on their stonewalls 2000 and 3000 years ago. And all that they Wrote | on their walls agrees very well with what Sve read i:i the Bible about them, asdescribed by the Piophets, and Historians. We are told in the 10th chapter of Genesis that Babylon on ihe Euphrates was built bv Nimro.l the grandson of Ham-—but Nineveh on the Tigris was built by Asshur the son of Shem. Thai is the first thing we read about Nineveh. That was 20(H) years before Christ, and we know nothing more forcerla n about Ihat city till the lime of Jonah the Prophet. 800 B.C. But heathen writers tell us ihat the Egyptians and Assyrians were often fighting with one another," and those Pakehas who lately discovered the stonebuildings under ground at Nineveh, found Egyptian temples and idols in different parts of the city. Therefore we suppose that some Egyptian king must -have conquered the city, and made slaves of the people, whom they forced to build temples for them. The book of the Prophet Jonah tells us that it look him three days to walk round the waljs. So that we may suppose it was sixty miles in circumference. God had sent liim lo warn the king and people that unless they repented of their sins, he would destroy them. They did repent, and God spared them for a time. The next king of whom we read was Salmaneser who carried away the ten tribes of Jsrael into Assyria about 720 8.C., as we find written in the 47ih chapter of the 2nd Book of Kings. Hezekiah was king of Judah at that time, and Sennachnrib who

became king of Nineveh after Salmaneser, came up against Judah hoping to carry captive tb3 people of Israel, just as his predecessor Salmaneser had led captive the people of Isfael. But Hezekiab was a good man, and prayed to God—=and God sent His angel 'lnto the camp of the Assyrians, -and destroyed 185,000 men, and Sennacharib alone escaped back to Nineveh, where his own sons killed him. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead. One of the books in the Apocrypha, called Judith, tells us that soon after the reign of Esarhaddon a great king arose in Nineveh, named Nabuchodonosor. He is not the same man as Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon—he lived a hundred years before the king of Babylon. He raised the empire for a little time to a great pilch of power, he defeated the Medes, and sacked their chief city. He too sentan army against Judea, under his famous general-Holofernes. And this great general was killed by the Jewish woman, Judith, who cut off his head. And when the army had losl its leader, ii was entirely routed and destroyed. Soon after that, Exaxares, the Median king, anxious to avenge the death of his father who had been killed by Nabuchodonosor, combined with the ruler of Babylon and attacked Nineveh. The Prophet Nabum had foretold that Nineveh should be destroyed by its own River Tigris, (ii. 6). The king of Nineveh at this time was Sardinapalus, whose name is a Proverb for voluptuousness luxury. He was successful at first against the Medes—and so he regaled his troops with wine and made them drunk. Then the Medes fell upon the army by night and drove them into the city. After a two years' siege, the Medes could not lake the city, but at last the River Tigris overflowed its banks and swept away 2£ miles of the city wall. Then as Nahum foretold 44 the faces of all in the city gathered blackness." (ii. 40). The king collected together all his gold and silver ornaments aud riches, and built a funeral pile, and burnt himself, and his wives and his.palace and all his wealth. (iii. 15). So Nineveh was utterly destroyed B.C. 606.