Note 1275 — Chapter XXXI

Asshur or Assyria fell in 607 (as we have seen), but her name was transferred to her successor Babylon (2 Kings xxiii. 29; Jer. ii. 18; Lam. v. 6), and even to Babylon’s successor Persia (Ezra vi. 22). When Seleucus secured what was virtually the old Assyrian Empire with large extensions to Phrygia on the west and the Punjaub on the east, the name would naturally be continued to his dominion, especially as his first capital was Babylon, from his capture of which in 312 the Seleucid era took its start. There is actual record of this. Brugsch (Gesch. Aeg., p. 218) states that in the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the Ptolemæan period the kingdom of the Seleucids is called Asharu (cf. Stade, Z.A.T.W., 1882, p. 292, and Cheyne, Book of Psalms, p. 253, and Introd. to Book of Isaiah, p. 107, n. 3). As the Seleucid kingdom shrank to this side of the Euphrates, it drew the name Assyria with it. But in Greek mouths this had long ago (cf. Herod.) been shortened to Syria: Herodotus also appears to have applied it only to the west of the Euphrates. Cf. Hist. Geog., pp. 3 f.