"Because Asshur was high of growth," such are the words of Jehovah in the prophet Ezekiel, "and shot up his top, and his heart was lifted up in its height, I have delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of the nations that he may deal with him at his pleasure; I have driven him out for his wickedness. And strangers, the terrible of the nations, have cut him off and cast him away. Upon the mountains and in all vallies his branches are fallen, and his boughs are broken by all the rivers in the land. All the people from the earth are gone down from his shadow and have left him. Upon his fallen trunk the fowls of the heaven remain, and all the beasts of the field shall be upon his branches. I made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down to hell with those that descend into the pit. In that day I caused a mourning, and restrained the floods round him; the great waters were stayed; I caused Lebanon to mourn for him, and all the trees of the field lamented him. Asshur's grave is made in the depth of the pit, round about are the graves of his host; all of them slain, fallen by the sword, which caused terror in the land of the living."[563] Media stood triumphant over the kingdom which had so long ruled over Hither Asia and the western edge of Iran; Babylon was victorious over the branch which had grown up out of her own root, had far surpassed the mother-stem, and had struck home the mother-country in many a tough struggle. Babylon had suffered far more heavily than Media. At last retribution had come. Chalah and Nineveh, which had received the tribute of the nations for so many years, which had seen so many vanquished princes, so many embassies of subjugated lands in their walls, were annihilated. And not the ancient cities only, but the condition of the Assyrian nation must have been severely smitten by this war of annihilation. Often as Babylon had been overthrown by the Assyrians--even though mastered by Cyrus--she still was able to rise repeatedly in stubborn rebellion against the Achæmenids: Elam repeatedly attempted to regain her old independence; but of the native land of Assyria, which after the fall of Nineveh became a part of Media, and passed with Media under the dominion of the Persians, we hear only once that the Assyrians, with the Armenians, rebelled against king Darius. But the picture of Behistun, which mentions the double rebellion of Babylon, the three rebellions of Elam against Darius, and exhibits the conquered leaders of these nations, is silent on the rebellion of the Assyrians and Armenians: it was not of enough importance to be mentioned.