FOOTNOTES:

58.—CYLINDER OF SARGON, FROM AGADÊ. (Hommel, "Gesch. Babyloniens u. Assyriens.")58.—CYLINDER OF SARGON, FROM AGADÊ.(Hommel, "Gesch. Babyloniens u. Assyriens.")

(Hommel, "Gesch. Babyloniens u. Assyriens.")

20. This Sharrukin must not be confounded withanother king of the same name, who reigned also in Agadê, some 1800 years later (about 2000b.c.), and in whose time was completed and brought into definite shape a vast religious reform which had been slowly working itself out ever since the Semitic and Accadian elements began to mix in matters of spiritual speculation and worship. What was the result of the amalgamation will form the subject of the next chapter. Suffice it here to say that the religion of Chaldea in the form which it assumed under the second Sharrukin remained fixed forever, and when Babylonian religion is spoken of, it is that which is understood by that name. The great theological work demanded a literary undertaking no less great. The incantations and magic forms of the first, purely Turanian, period had to be collected and put in order, as well as the hymns and prayers of the second period, composed under the influence of a higher and more spiritual religious feeling. But all this literature was in the language of the older population, while the ruling class—the royal houses and the priesthood—were becoming almost exclusively Semitic. It was necessary, therefore, that they should study the old language and learn it so thoroughly as not only to understand and read it, but to be able to use it, in speaking and writing. For that purpose Sargon not only ordered the ancient texts, when collected and sorted, to be copied on clay tablets with the translation—either between the lines, or on opposite columns—into the now generally used modern Semitic language, which we may as well begin to call by its usual name, Assyrian, but gave directions for the compilation of grammars and vocabularies,—the very works which have enabled the scholars of the present day to arrive at the understanding of that prodigiously ancient tongue which, without such assistance, must have remained a sealed book forever.

21. Such is the origin of the great collection in three books and two hundred tablets, the contents of which made the subject of the preceding chapter. To this must be added another great work, in seventy tablets, in Assyrian, on astrology, i.e., the supposed influence of the heavenly bodies, according to their positions and conjunctions, on the fate of nations and individuals and on the course of things on earth generally—an influence which was firmly believed in; and probably yet a third work, on omens, prodigies and divination. To carry out these extensive literary labors, to treasure the results worthily and safely, Sargon II. either founded or greatly enlarged the library of the priestly college at Urukh (Erech), so that this city came to be called "the City of Books." This repository became the most important one in all Chaldea, and when, fourteen centuries later, the Assyrian Asshurbanipal sent his scribes all over the country, to collect copies of the ancient, sacred and scientific texts for his own royal library at Nineveh, it was at Erech that they gathered their most abundant harvest, being specially favored there by the priests, who were on excellent terms with the king after he hadbrought back from Shushan and restored to them the statue of their goddess Nana. Agadê thus became the headquarters, as it were, of the Semitic influence and reform, which spread thence towards the South, forming a counter-current to the culture of Shumir, which had steadily progressed from the Gulf northward.

22. It is just possible that Sargon's collection may have also comprised literature of a lighter nature than those ponderous works on magic and astrology. At least, a work on agriculture has been found, which is thought to have been compiled for the same king's library,[AK]and which contains bits of popular poetry (maxims, riddles, short peasant songs) of the kind that is now called "folk-lore." Of the correctness of the supposition there is, as yet, no absolute proof, but as some of these fragments, of which unfortunately but few could be recovered, are very interesting and pretty in their way, this is perhaps the best place to insert them. The following four may be called "Maxims," and the first is singularly pithy and powerfully expressed.

Like an oven that is old

Against thy foes be hard and strong.

May he suffer vengeance,

May it be returned to him,

Who gives the provocation.

If evil thou doest,

To the everlasting sea

Thou shalt surely go.

Thou wentest, thou spoiledst

The land of the foe,

For the foe came and spoiled

Thy land, even thine.

23. It will be noticed that No. 3 alone expresses moral feeling of a high standard, and is distinctively Semitic in spirit, the same spirit which is expressed in a loftier and purely religious vein, and a more poetical form in one of the "Penitential Psalms," where it says:

Some fragments can be well imagined as being sung by the peasant at work to his ploughing team, in whose person he sometimes speaks:

5. A heifer am I,—to the cow I am yoked;

The plough handle is strong—lift it up! lift it up!

6. My knees are marching—my feet are not resting;

With no wealth of thy own—grain thou makest for me.[AL]

24. A great deal of additional interest in the elder Sargon of Agadê has lately been excited by an extraordinary discovery connected with him, which produced a startling revolution in the hitherto accepted Chaldean chronology. This question of dates is always a most intricate and puzzling one in dealing with ancient Oriental nations, because they did not date their years from some particular event,as we do, and as did the Mohammedans, the Greeks and the Romans. In the inscriptions things are said to have happened in the year so-and-so of such a king's reign. Where to place that king is the next question—unanswerable, unless, as fortunately is mostly the case, some clue is supplied, to borrow a legal term, by circumstantial evidence. Thus, if an eclipse is mentioned, the time can easily be determined by the help of astronomy, which can calculate backward as well as forward. Or else, an event or a person belonging to another country is alluded to, and if they are known to us from other sources, that is a great help. Such a coincidence (which is called aSynchronism) is most valuable, and dates established by synchronisms are generally reliable. Then, luckily for us, Assyrian and Babylonian kings of a late period, whose dates are fixed and proved beyond a doubt, were much in the habit, in their historical inscriptions, of mentioning events that had taken place before their time and specifying the number of years elapsed, often also the king under whose reign the event, whatever it was, had taken place. This is the most precious clue of all, as it is infallible, and besides ascertaining one point, gives a firm foothold, whereby to arrive at many others. The famous memorandum of Asshurbanipal, already so often referred to, about the carrying away of the goddess Nana, (i.e., her statue) from her temple at Erech is evidence of this kind. Any dates suggested without any of these clues as basis are of necessity untrustworthy, and no true scholar dreams of offering any such date, except as atemporary suggestion, awaiting confirmation or abolition from subsequent researches. So it was with Sargon I. of Agadê. There was no positive indication of the time at which he lived, except that he could not possibly have lived later than 2000b.c.Scholars therefore agreed to assign that date to him, approximatively—a little more or less—thinking they could not go very far wrong in so doing. Great therefore was the commotion produced by the discovery of a cylinder of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon (whose date is 550b.c.), wherein he speaks of repairs he made in the great Sun-temple at Sippar, and declares having dug deep in its foundations for the cylinders of the founder, thus describing his success: "Shamash (the Sun-god), the great lord ... suffered me to behold the foundation-cylinder ofNaram-sin, the son of Sharrukin, which for thrice thousand and twice hundred years none of the kings that lived before me had seen." The simple addition 3200 + 550 gives 3750b.c.as the date of Naram-Sin, and 3800 as that of his father Sargon, allowing for the latter's long reign! A scene-shifting of 1800 years at one slide seemed something so startling that there was much hesitation in accepting the evidence, unanswerable as it seemed, and the possibility of an error of the engraver was seriously considered. Some other documents, however, were found independently of each other and in different places, corroborating the statement on Nabonidus' cylinder, and the tremendously ancient date of 3800b.c.is now generally accepted the elder Sargon of Agadê—perhaps the remotestauthenticdate yet arrived at in history.

25. When we survey and attempt to grasp and classify the materials we have for an early "History of Chaldea," it appears almost presumptuous to grace so necessarily lame an attempt with so ambitious a name. The landmarks are so few and far between, so unconnected as yet, and there is so much uncertainty about them, especially about placing them. The experience with Sargon of Agadê has not been encouraging to conjectural chronology; yet with such we must in many cases be content until more lucky finds turn up to set us right. What, for instance, is the proper place ofGudêa, thepatesiofSir-burla(also readSir-gullaorSirtilla, and, lately,Zirlaba), whose magnificent statues Mr. de Sarzec found in the principal hall of the temple of which the bricks bear his stamp? (See p.217.) The title ofpatesi, (not "king"), points to great antiquity, and he is pretty generally understood to have lived somewhere between 4000 and 3000b.c.That he was not a Semite, but an Accadian prince, is to be concluded not only from the language of his inscriptions and the writing, which is of the most archaic—i.e., ancient and old-fashioned—character, but from the fact that the head, which was found with the statues, is strikingly Turanian in form and features, shaved, too, and turbaned after a fashion still used in Central Asia. Altogether it might easily be taken for that of a modern Mongolian or Tatar.[AM]The discovery of this builder and patron of art hasgreatly eclipsed the glory of a somewhat later ruler,Ur-êa, King of Ur,[AN]who had long enjoyed the reputation of being the earliest known temple-builder. He remains at all events the first powerful monarch we read of in Southern Chaldea, of which Ur appears to have been in some measure the capital, at least in so far as to have a certain supremacy over the other great cities of Shumir.

26. Of these Shumir had many, even more venerable for their age and holiness than those of Accad. For the South was the home of the old race and most ancient culture, and thence both had advanced northward. Hence it was that the old stock was hardier there and endured longer in its language, religion and nationality, and was slower in yielding to the Semitic counter-current of race and culture, which, as a natural consequence, obtained an earlier and stronger hold in the North, and from there radiated over the whole of Mesopotamia. There wasEridhu, by the sea "at the mouth of the Rivers," the immemorial sanctuary of Êa; there wasSir-gulla, so lately unknown, now the most promising mine for research; there wasLarsam, famous with the glories of its "House of the Sun" (Ê-Babbarain the old language), the rival of Ur, the city of the Moon-god, whose kingsUr-êaand his sonDungiwere, it appears, the first to takethe ambitious title of "Kings of Shumir and Accad" and "Kings of the Four Regions." As for Babylon, proud Babylon, which we have so long been accustomed to think of as the very beginning of state life and political rule in Chaldea, it was perhaps not yet built at all, or only modestly beginning its existence under its Accadian name ofTin-tir-ki("the Place of Life"), or, somewhat later,Ka-Dimirra("Gate of God"), when already the above named cities, and several more, had each its famous temple with ministering college of priests, and, probably, library, and each its king. But political power was for a long time centred at Ur. The first kings of Ur authentically known to us are Ur-êa and his son Dungi, who have left abundant traces of their existence in the numerous temples they built, not in Ur alone, but in most other cities too. Their bricks have been identified at Larsam (Senkereh), and, it appears, at Sir-burla (Tel-Loh), at Nipur (Niffer) and at Urukh (Erech, Warka), and as the two latter cities belonged to Accad, they seem to have ruled at least part of that country and thus to have been justified in assuming their high-sounding title.

59.—STATUE OF GUDÊA, WITH INSCRIPTION; FROM TELL-LOH, (SIR-BURLA OR SIR-GULLA). SARZEC COLLECTION. (Hommel).59.—STATUE OF GUDÊA, WITH INSCRIPTION; FROM TELL-LOH, (SIR-BURLA OR SIR-GULLA). SARZEC COLLECTION.(Hommel).

(Hommel).

27. It has been noticed that the bricks bearing the name of Ur-êa "are found in a lower position than any others, at the very foundation of buildings;" that "they are of a rude and coarse make, of many sizes and ill-fitted together;" that baked bricks are rare among them; that they are held together by the oldest substitutes for mortar—mud and bitumen—and that the writing upon them iscuriously rude and imperfect.[AO]But whatever King Ur-êa's architectural efforts may lack in perfection, they certainly make up in size and number. Those that he did not complete, his son Dungi continued after him. It is remarkable that these great builders seem to have devoted their energies exclusively to religious purposes; also that, while their names are Shumiro-Accadian, and their inscriptions are often in that language, the temples they constructed were dedicated to various deities of the new, or rather reformed religion. When we see the princes of the South, according to an ingenious remark of Mr. Lenormant, thus begin a sort of practical preaching of the Semitized religion, we may take it as a sign of the times, as an unmistakable proof of the influence of the North, political as well as religious. A very curious relic of King Ur-êa was found—his own signet cylinder—which was lost by an accident, then turned up again and is now in the British Museum. It represents the Moon-god seated on a throne,—as is but meet for the king of the Moon-god's special city—with priests presenting worshippers. No definite date is of course assignable to Ur-êa and the important epoch of Chaldean history which he represents. But a very probable approximative one can be arrived at, thanks to a clue supplied by the same Nabonidus, last King of Babylon, who settled the Sargon question for us so unexpectedly. That monarch was as zealous a repairer of temples as his predecessors had been zealous builders. He had reasons of his own to court popularity, and could think of nothing better than to restore the time-honored sanctuaries of the land. Among others he repaired the Sun-temple (Ê-Babbara) at Larsam, whereof we are duly informed by a special cylinder. In it he tells posterity that he found a cylinder ofKing Hammurabi intact in its chamber under the corner-stone, which cylinder states that the temple was founded 700 years before Hammurabi's time; as Ur-êa was the founder, it only remains to determine the latter king's date in order to know that of the earlier one.[AP]Here unfortunately scholars differ, not having as yet any decisive authority to build upon. Some place Hammurabibefore2000b.c., others a little later. It is perhaps safest, therefore, to assume that Ur-êa can scarcely have lived much earlier than 2800 or much later than 2500b.c.At all events, he must necessarily have lived somewhat before 2300b.c., for about this latter year took place the Elamite invasion recorded by Asshurbanipal, an invasion which, as this King expressly mentions, laid waste the land of Accad and desecrated its temples—evidently the same ones which Ur-êa and Dungi so piously constructed. Nor was this a passing inroad or raid of booty-seeking mountaineers. It was a real conquest. Khudur-Nankhundi and his successors remained in Southern Chaldea, called themselves kings of the country, and reigned, several of them in succession, so that this series of foreign rulers has become known in history as "the Elamite dynasty." There was no room then for a powerful and temple-building national dynasty like that of the kings of Ur.

28. This is the first time we meet authentic monumental records of a country which was destinedthrough the next sixteen centuries to be in continual contact, mostly hostile, with both Babylonia and her northern rival Assyria, until its final annihilation by the latter. Its capital wasShushan, (afterwards pronounced by foreigners "Susa"), and its own original nameShushinak. Its people were of Turanian stock, its language was nearly akin to that of Shumir and Accad. But at some time or other Semites came and settled in Shushinak. Though too few in number to change the country's language or customs, the superiority of their race asserted itself. They became the nobility of the land, the ruling aristocracy from which the kings were taken, the generals and the high functionaries. That the Turanian mass of the population was kept in subjection and looked down upon, and that the Semitic nobility avoided intermarrying with them is highly probable; and it would be difficult otherwise to explain the difference of type between the two classes, as shown in the representations of captives and warriors belonging to both on the Assyrian sculptures. The common herd of prisoners employed on public labor and driven by overseers brandishing sticks have an unmistakably Turanian type of features—high cheek-bones, broad, flattened face, etc., while the generals, ministers and nobles have all the dignity and beauty of the handsomest Jewish type. "Elam," the name under which the country is best known both from the Bible and later monuments, is a Turanian word, which means, like "Accad," "Highlands." It is the only name under which the historian of Chap. X. ofGenesis admits it into his list of nations, and, consistently following out his system of ignoring all members of the great yellow race, he takes into consideration only the Semitic aristocracy, and makes of Elam a son of Shem, a brother of Asshur and Arphakhshad. (Gen. x. 22.)

29. One of Khudur-Nankhundi's next successors,Khudur-Lagamar, was not content with the addition of Chaldea to his kingdom of Elam. He had the ambition of a born conqueror and the generalship of one. The Chap. XIV. of Genesis—which calls him Chedorlaomer—is the only document we have descriptive of this king's warlike career, and a very striking picture it gives of it, sufficient to show us that we have to do with a very remarkable character. Supported by three allied and probably tributary kings, that of Shumir (Shineâr), of Larsam, (Ellassar) and of theGoïm, (in the unrevised translation of the Bible "king of nations") i.e., the nomadic tribes which roamed on the outskirts and in the yet unsettled, more distant portions of Chaldea, Khudur-Lagamar marched an army 1200 miles across the desert into the fertile, wealthy and populous valleys of the Jordan and the lake or sea of Siddim, afterwards called the Dead Sea, where five great cities—Sodom, Gomorrah, and three others—were governed by as many kings. Not only did he subdue these kings and impose his rule on them, but contrived, even after he returned to the Persian Gulf, to keep on them so firm a hand, that for twelve years they "served" him, i.e., paid him tribute regularly, and only in the thirteenth year, encouraged by his prolonged absence, ventured to rebel. But they had underrated Khudur-Lagamar's vigilance and activity. The very next year he was among them again, together with his three faithful allies, encountered them in the vale of Siddim and beat them, so that they all fled. This was the battle of the "four kings with five." As to the treatment to which the victor subjected the conquered country it is very briefly but clearly described: "And they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their way."

30. Now there dwelt in Sodom a man of foreign race and great wealth, Lot, the nephew of Abraham. For Abraham and his tribe no longer lived at Chaldean Ur. The change of masters, and very probably the harsher rule, if not positive oppression, consequent on the Elamite conquest, had driven them thence. It was then they went forth into the land of Canaan, led by Terah and his son Abraham, and when Terah died, Abraham became the patriarch and chief of the tribe, which from this time begins to be called in the Bible "Hebrews," from an eponymous ancestor, Heber or Eber, whose name alludes to the passing of the Euphrates, or, perhaps, in a wider sense, to the passage of the tribe through the land of Chaldea.[AQ]For years the tribe travelled without dividing, from pasture topasture, over the vast land where dwelt the Canaanites, well seen and even favored of them, into Egypt and out of it again, until the quarrel occurred between Abraham's herdsmen and Lot's, (see Genesis, Chap. XIII.), and the separation, when Lot chose the plain of the Jordan and pitched his tent toward Sodom, while Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan as heretofore, with his family, servants and cattle, in the plain of Mamre. It was while dwelling there, in friendship and close alliance with the princes of the land, that one who had escaped from the battle in the vale of Siddim, came to Abraham and told him how that among the captives whom Khudur-Lagamar had taken from Sodom, was Lot, his brother's son, with all his goods. Then Abraham armed his trained servants, born in his own household, three hundred and eighteen, took with him his friends, Mamre and his brothers, with their young men, and starting in hot pursuit of the victorious army, which was now carelessly marching home towards the desert with its long train of captives and booty, overtook it near Damascus in the night, when his own small numbers could not be detected, and produced such a panic by a sudden and vigorous onslaught that he put it to flight, and not only rescued his nephew Lot with his goods and women, but brought back all the captured goods and the people too. And the King of Sodom came out to meet him on his return, and thanked him, and wanted him to keep all the goods for himself, only restoring the persons. Abraham consented that a proper share of the rescued goods should be given to his friendsand their young men, but refused all presents offered to himself, with the haughty words: "I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread, even to a shoe-latchet, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abraham rich."

31. Khudur-Lagamar, of whom the spirited Biblical narrative gives us so life-like a sketch, lived, according to the most probable calculations, about 2200b.c.Among the few vague forms whose blurred outlines loom out of the twilight of those dim and doubtful ages, he is the second with any flesh-and-blood reality about him, probably the first conqueror of whom the world has any authentic record. For Egypt, the only country which rivals in antiquity the primitive states of Mesopotamia, although it had at this time already reached the height of its culture and prosperity, was as yet confined by its rulers strictly to the valley of the Nile, and had not entered on that career of foreign wars and conquests which, some thousand years later, made it a terror from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.

32. The Elamitic invasion was not a passing raid. It was a real conquest, and established a heavy foreign rule in a highly prosperous and flourishing land—a rule which endured, it would appear, about three hundred years. That the people chafed under it, and were either gloomily despondent or angrily rebellious as long as it lasted, there is plenty of evidence in their later literature. It is even thought, and with great moral probability, that thespecial branch of religious poetry which has been called "Penitential Psalms" has arisen out of the sufferings of this long period of national bondage and humiliation, and if, as seems to be proved by some lately discovered interesting fragments of texts, these psalms were sung centuries later in Assyrian temples on mournful or very solemn public occasions, they must have perpetuated the memory of the great national calamity that fell on the mother-country as indelibly as the Hebrew psalms, of which they were the models, have perpetuated that of King David's wanderings and Israel's tribulations.

33. But there seems to have been one Semitic royal house which preserved a certain independence and quietly gathered power against better days. To do this they must have dissembled and done as much homage to the victorious barbarians as would ensure their safety and serve as a blind while they strengthened their home rule. This dynasty, destined to the glorious task of restoring the country's independence and founding a new national monarchy, was that of Tin-tir-ki, or Ka-dimirra—a name now already translated into the SemiticBab-ilu, ("the Gate of God"); they reigned over the large and important district ofKardunyash, important from its central position, and from the fact that it seems to have belonged neither to Accad, nor to Shumir, but to have been politically independent, since it is always mentioned by itself. Still, to the Hebrews, Babylon lay in the land of Shinar, and it is strongly supposed that the "Amraphel king of Shinar" who marched with Khudur-Lagamar, as his ally, against the five kings of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, was no other than a king of Babylon, one of whose names has been readAmarpal, while "Ariokh of Ellassar" was an Elamite,Eri-aku, brother or cousin of Khudur-Lagamar, and King of Larsam, where the conquerors had established a powerful dynasty, closely allied by blood to the principal one, which had made the venerable Ur its headquarters. This Amarpal, more frequently mentioned under his other name ofSin-Muballit, is thought to have been the father ofHammurabi, the deliverer of Chaldea and the founder of the new empire.

34. The inscriptions which Hammurabi left are numerous, and afford us ample means of judging of his greatness as warrior, statesman and administrator. In his long reign of fifty-five years he had, indeed, time to achieve much, but what he did achievewasmuch even for so long a reign. In what manner he drove out the foreigners we are not told, but so much is clear that the decisive victory was that which he gained over the Elamite king of Larsam. It was probably by expelling the hated race by turns from every district they occupied, that Hammurabi gathered the entire land into his own hands and was enabled to keep it together and weld it into one united empire, including both Accad and Shumir, with all their time-honored cities and sanctuaries, making his own ancestral city, Babylon, the head and capital of them all. This king was in every respect a great and wise ruler,for, after freeing and uniting the country, he was very careful of its good and watchful of its agricultural interests. Like all the other kings, he restored many temples and built several new ones. But he also devoted much energy to public works of a more generally useful kind. During the first part of his reign inundations seem to have been frequent and disastrous, possibly in consequence of the canals and waterworks having been neglected under the oppressive foreign rule. The inscriptions speak of a city having been destroyed "by a great flood," and mention "a great wall along the Tigris"—probably an embankment, as having been built by Hammurabi for protection against the river. But probably finding the remedy inadequate, he undertook and completed one of the greatest public works that have ever been carried out in any country: the excavation of a gigantic canal, which he called by his own name, but which was afterwards famous under that of "Royal Canal of Babylon." From this canal innumerable branches carried the fertilizing waters through the country. It was and remained the greatest work of the kind, and was, fifteen centuries later, the wonder of the foreigners who visited Babylon. Its constructor did not overrate the benefit he had conferred when he wrote in an inscription which can scarcely be called boastful: "I have caused to be dug the Nahr-Hammurabi, a benediction for the people of Shumir and Accad. I have directed the waters of its branches over the desert plains; I have caused them to run in the dry channels and thus given unfailing waters to the people.... I have changed desert plains into well-watered lands. I have given them fertility and plenty, and made them the abode of happiness."

35. There are inscriptions of Hammurabi's son. But after him a new catastrophe seems to have overtaken Chaldea. He is succeeded by a line of foreign kings, who must have obtained possession of the country by conquest. They were princes of a fierce and warlike mountain race, theKasshi, who lived in the highlands that occupy the whole north-western portion of Elam, where they probably began to feel cramped for room. This same people has been called by the later Greek geographersCossæansorCissians, and is better known under either of these names. Their language, of which very few specimens have survived, is not yet understood; but so much is plain, that it is very different both from the Semitic language of Babylon and that of Shumir and Accad, so that the names of the Kasshi princes are easily distinguishable from all others. No dismemberment of the empire followed this conquest, however, if conquest there was. The kings of the new dynasty seem to have succeeded each other peacefully enough in Babylon. But the conquering days of Chaldea were over. We read no more of expeditions into the plains of Syria and to the "Sea of the Setting Sun." For a power was rising in the North-West, which quickly grew into a formidable rival: through many centuries Assyria kept the rulers of the Southern kingdom too busy guarding their frontiers and repelling inroads to allow them to think of foreign conquests.

FOOTNOTES:[AH]Names are often deceptive. That of the Hindu-Cush is now thought to mean "Killers of Hindus," probably in allusion to robber tribes of the mountains, and to have nothing to do with the Cushite race.[AI]"Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient," 1878, p. 160.[AJ]Translation of Professor A. H. Sayce.[AK]A. H. Sayce.[AL]Translated by A. H. Sayce, in his paper "Babylonian Folk-lore" in the "Folk-lore Journal," Vol. I., Jan., 1883.[AM]See Figs.44and45, p. 101.[AN]This name was at first read Urukh, then Likbabi, then Likbagash, then Urbagash, then Urba'u, and now Professor Friedr. Delitzsch announces that the final and correct reading is in all probability either Ur-ea or Arad-ea.[AO]Geo. Rawlinson, "Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World" (1862), Vol. I., pp. 198 and ff.[AP]Geo. Smith, in "Records of the Past," Vol. V., p. 75. Fritz Hommel, "Die Semiten," p. 210 and note 101.[AQ]It should be mentioned, however, that scholars have of late been inclined to see in this name an allusion to the passage of the Jordan at the time of the conquest of Canaan by Israel, after the Egyptian bondage.

[AH]Names are often deceptive. That of the Hindu-Cush is now thought to mean "Killers of Hindus," probably in allusion to robber tribes of the mountains, and to have nothing to do with the Cushite race.

[AI]"Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient," 1878, p. 160.

[AJ]Translation of Professor A. H. Sayce.

[AK]A. H. Sayce.

[AL]Translated by A. H. Sayce, in his paper "Babylonian Folk-lore" in the "Folk-lore Journal," Vol. I., Jan., 1883.

[AM]See Figs.44and45, p. 101.

[AN]This name was at first read Urukh, then Likbabi, then Likbagash, then Urbagash, then Urba'u, and now Professor Friedr. Delitzsch announces that the final and correct reading is in all probability either Ur-ea or Arad-ea.

[AO]Geo. Rawlinson, "Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World" (1862), Vol. I., pp. 198 and ff.

[AP]Geo. Smith, in "Records of the Past," Vol. V., p. 75. Fritz Hommel, "Die Semiten," p. 210 and note 101.

[AQ]It should be mentioned, however, that scholars have of late been inclined to see in this name an allusion to the passage of the Jordan at the time of the conquest of Canaan by Israel, after the Egyptian bondage.

BABYLONIAN RELIGION.

1. In relating the legend of the Divine Man-Fish, who came out of the Gulf, and was followed, at intervals, by several more similar beings, Berosus assures us, that he "taught the people all the things that make up civilization," so that "nothing new was invented after that any more." But if, as is suggested, "this monstrous Oannes" is really a personification of the strangers who came into the land, and, being possessed of a higher culture, began to teach the Turanian population, the first part of this statement is as manifestly an exaggeration as the second. A people who had invented writing, who knew how to build, to make canals, to work metals, and who had passed out of the first and grossest stage of religious conceptions, might have much to learn, but certainly noteverything. What the newcomers—whether Cushites or Semites—did teach them, was a more orderly way of organizing society and ruling it by means of laws and an established government, and, above all, astronomy and mathematics—sciences in which the Shumiro-Accads were little proficient, while the later and mixed nation, the Chaldeans, attained inthem a very high perfection, so that many of their discoveries and the first principles laid down by them have come down to us as finally adopted facts, confirmed by later science. Thus, the division of the year into twelve months corresponding to as many constellations, known as "the twelve signs of the Zodiac," was familiar to them. They had also found out the division of the year into twelve months, only all their months had thirty days. So they were obliged to add an extra month—an intercalary month, as the scientific term is—every six years, to start even with the sun again, for they knew where the error in their reckoning lay. These things the strangers probably taught the Shumiro-Accads, but at the same time borrowed from them their way of counting. The Turanian races to this day have this peculiarity, that they do not care for the decimal system in arithmetic, but count by dozens and sixties, preferring numbers that can be divided by twelve and sixty. The Chinese even now do not measure time by centuries or periods of a hundred years, but by a cycle or period of sixty years. This was probably the origin of the division, adopted in Babylonia, of the sun's course into 360 equal parts or degrees, and of the day into twelve "kasbus" or double hours, since the kasbu answered to two of our hours, and was divided into sixty parts, which we might thus call "double minutes," while these again were composed of sixty "double seconds." The natural division of the year into twelve months made this so-called "docenal" and "sexagesimal" system of calculationparticularly convenient, and it was applied to everything—measures of weight, distance, capacity and size as well as time.

2. Astronomy is a strangely fascinating science, with two widely different and seemingly contradictory aspects, equally apt to develop habits of hard thinking and of dreamy speculation. For, if on one hand the study of mathematics, without which astronomy cannot subsist, disciplines the mind and trains it to exact and complicated operations, on the other hand, star-gazing, in the solitude and silence of a southern night, irresistibly draws it into a higher world, where poetical aspirations, guesses and dreams take the place of figures with their demonstrations and proofs. It is probably to these habitual contemplations that the later Chaldeans owed the higher tone of religious thought which distinguished them from their Turanian predecessors. They looked for the deity in heaven, not on earth. They did not cower and tremble before a host of wicked goblins, the creation of a terrified fancy. The spirits whom they worshipped inhabited and ruled those beautiful bright worlds, whose harmonious, concerted movements they watched admiringly, reverently, and could calculate correctly, but without understanding them. The stars generally became to them the visible manifestations and agents of divine power, especially the seven most conspicuous heavenly bodies: the Moon, whom they particularly honored, as the ruler of night and the measurer of time, the Sun and the five planets then known, those which we call Saturn,Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury. It is but just to the Shumiro-Accads to say that the perception of the divine in the beauty of the stars was not foreign to them. This is amply proved by the fact that in their oldest writing the sign of a star is used to express the idea not of any particular god or goddess, but of the divine principle, the deity generally. The name of every divinity is preceded by the star, meaning "the god so-and-so." When used in this manner, the sign was read in the old language "Dingir"—"god, deity." The Semitic language of Babylonia which we call "Assyrian," while adapting the ancient writing to its own needs, retained this use of the sign "star," and read itîlu, "god." This word—IluorEl—we find in all Semitic languages, either ancient or modern, in the names they give to God, in the ArabicAllahas well as in the HebrewElohim.

3. This religion, based and centred on the worship of the heavenly bodies, has been calledSabeism, and was common to most Semitic races, whose primitive nomadic life in the desert and wide, flat pasture-tracts, with the nightly watches required by the tending of vast flocks, inclined them to contemplation and star-gazing. It is to be noticed that the Semites gave the first place to the Sun, and not, like the Shumiro-Accads, to the Moon, possibly from a feeling akin to terror, experiencing as they did his destructive power, in the frequent droughts and consuming heat of the desert.[AR]

4. A very prominent feature of the new order of things was the great power and importance of the priesthood. A successful pursuit of science requires two things: intellectual superiority and leisure to study, i.e., freedom from the daily care how to procure the necessaries of life. In very ancient times people in general were quite willing to acknowledge the superiority of those men who knew more than they did, who could teach them and help them with wise advice; they were willing also to support such men by voluntary contributions, in order to give them the necessary leisure. That a race with whom science and religion were one should honor the men thus set apart and learned in heavenly things and allow them great influence in private and public affairs, believing them, as they did, to stand in direct communion with the divine powers, was but natural; and from this to letting them take to themselves the entire government of the country as the established rulers thereof, was but one step. There was another circumstance which helped to bring about this result. The Chaldeans were devout believers in astrology, a form of superstition into which an astronomical religion like Sabeism is very apt to degenerate. For once it is taken for granted that the stars are divine beings, possessed of intelligence, and will, and power, what more natural than to imagine that they can rule and shape the destinies of men by a mysterious influence? This influence was supposed to depend on their movements, their position in the sky, their ever changing combinations and relations to each other; under this supposition every movement of a star—its rising, its setting, or crossing the path of another—every slightest change in the aspect of the heavens, every unusual phenomenon—an eclipse, for instance—must be possessed of some weighty sense, boding good or evil to men, whose destiny must constantly be as clearly written in the blue sky as in a book. If only one could learn the language, read the characters! Such knowledge was thought to be within the reach of men, but only to be acquired by the exceptionally gifted and learned few, and those whom they might think worthy of having it imparted to them. That these few must be priests was self-evident. They were themselves fervent believers in astrology, which they considered quite as much a real science as astronomy, and to which they devoted themselves as assiduously. They thus became the acknowledged interpreters of the divine will, partakers, so to speak, of the secret councils of heaven. Of course such a position added greatly to their power, and that they should never abuse it to strengthen their hold on the public mind and to favor their own ambitious views, was not in human nature. Moreover, being the clever and learned ones of the nation, they really were at the time the fittest to rule it—and rule it they did. When the Semitic culture spread over Shumir, whither it gradually extended from the North, i.e., the land of Accad, there arose in each great city—Ur, Eridhu, Larsam, Erech,—a mighty temple, with its priests, its library, itsZiggurator observatory. The cities and thetracts of country belonging to them were governed by their respective colleges. And when in progress of time, the power became centred in the hands of single men, they still were priest-kings,patesis, whose royalty must have been greatly hampered and limited by the authority of their priestly colleagues. Such a form of government is known under the name oftheocracy, composed of two Greek words and meaning "divine government."

5. This religious reform represents a complete though probably peaceable revolution in the condition of the "Land between the Rivers." The new and higher culture had thoroughly asserted itself as predominant in both its great provinces, and in nothing as much as in the national religion, which, coming in contact with the conceptions of the Semites, was affected by a certain nobler spiritual strain, a purer moral feeling, which seems to have been more peculiarly Semitic, though destined to be carried to its highest perfection only in the Hebrew branch of the race. Moral tone is a subtle influence, and will work its way into men's hearts and thoughts far more surely and irresistibly than any amount of preaching and commanding, for men are naturally drawn to what is good and beautiful when it is placed before them. Thus the old settlers of the land, the Shumiro-Accads, to whom their gross and dismal goblin creed could not be of much comfort, were not slow in feeling this ennobling and beneficent influence, and it is assuredly to that we owe the beautiful prayers and hymns which mark the higher stage of their religion. The consciousness of sin, the feeling of contrition, of dependence on an offended yet merciful divine power, so strikingly conspicuous in the so-called "Penitential Psalms" (see p.178), the fine poetry in some of the later hymns, for instance those to the Sun (see p. 171), are features so distinctively Semitic, that they startle us by their resemblance to certain portions of the Bible. On the other hand, a nation never forgets or quite gives up its own native creed and religious practices. The wise priestly rulers of Shumir and Accad did not attempt to compel the people to do so, but even while introducing and propagating the new religion, suffered them to go on believing in their hosts of evil spirits and their few beneficent ones, in their conjuring, soothsaying, casting and breaking of spells and charms. Nay, more. As time went on and the learned priests studied more closely the older creed and ideas, they were struck with the beauty of some few of their conceptions—especially that of the ever benevolent, ever watchful Spirit of Earth, Êa, and his son Meridug, the mediator, the friend of men. These conceptions, these and some other favorite national divinities, they thought worthy of being adopted by them and worked into their own religious system, which was growing more complicated, more elaborate every day, while the large bulk of spirits and demons they also allowed a place in it, in the rank of inferior "Spirits of heaven" and "Spirits of earth," which were lightly classed together and counted by hundreds. By the time a thousand years had passed, the fusion had become so complete thatthere really was both a new religion and a new nation, the result of a long work of amalgamation. The Shumiro-Accads of pure yet low race were no longer, nor did the Semites preserve a separate existence; they had become merged into one nation of mixed races, which at a later period became known under the general name of Chaldeans, whose religion, regarded with awe for its prodigious antiquity, yet was comparatively recent, being the outcome of the combination of two infinitely older creeds, as we have just seen. When Hammurabi established his residence at Babel, a city which had but lately risen to importance, he made it the capital of the empire first completely united under his rule (see p.226), hence the name of Babylonia is given by ancient writers to the old land of Shumir and Accad, even more frequently than that of Chaldea, and the state religion is called indifferently the Babylonian or Chaldean, and not unfrequently Chaldeo-Babylonian.

6. This religion, as it was definitely established and handed down unchanged through a succession of twenty centuries and more, had a twofold character, which must be well grasped in order to understand its general drift and sense. On the one hand, as it admitted the existence of many divine powers, who shared between them the government of the world, it was decidedlyPolytheistic—"a religion of many gods." On the other hand, a dim perception had already been arrived at, perhaps through observation of the strictly regulated movements of the stars, of the presence of One supreme rulingand directing Power. For a class of men given to the study of astronomy could not but perceive that all those bright Beings which they thought so divine and powerful, were not absolutely independent; that their movements and combinations were too regular, too strictly timed, too identical in their ever recurring repetition, to be entirely voluntary; that, consequently, theyobeyed—obeyed a Law, a Power above and beyond them, beyond heaven itself, invisible, unfathomable, unattainable by human thought or eyes. Such a perception was, of course, a step in the right direction, towardsMonotheism, i.e., the belief in only one God. But the perception was too vague and remote to be fully realized and consistently carried out. The priests who, from long training in abstract thought and contemplation, probably could look deeper and come nearer the truth than other people, strove to express their meaning in language and images which, in the end, obscured the original idea and almost hid it out of sight, instead of making it clearer. Besides, they did not imagine the world ascreatedby God, made by an act of his will, but as being a form of him, a manifestation, part of himself, of his own substance. Therefore, in the great all of the universe, and in each of its portions, in the mysterious forces at work in it—light and heat and life and growth—they admired and adored not the power of God, but his very presence; one of the innumerable and infinitely varied forms in which he makes himself known and visible to men, manifests himself to them—in short,an emanationof God. The word "emanation" has been adopted as the only one which to a certain extent conveys this very subtle and complicated idea. An emanation is not quite a thing itself, but it is a portion of it, which comes out of it and separates itself from it, yet cannot exist without it. So the fragrance of a flower is not the flower, nor is it a growth or development of it, yet the flower gives it forth and it cannot exist by itself without the flower—it is an emanation of the flower. The same can be said of the mist which visibly rises from the warm earth in low and moist places on a summer evening—it is an emanation of the earth.

7. The Chaldeo-Babylonian priests knew of many such divine emanations, which, by giving them names and attributing to them definite functions, they made into so many separate divine persons. Of these some ranked higher and some lower, a relation which was sometimes expressed by the human one of "father and son." They were ordered in groups, very scientifically arranged. Above the rest were placed twoTriadsor "groups of three." The first triad comprisedAnu,ÊaandBel, the supreme gods of all—all three retained from the old Shumiro-Accadian list of divinities.AnuisAna, "Heaven," and the surnames or epithets, which are given him in different texts, sufficiently show what conception had been formed of him: he is called "the Lord of the starry heavens," "the Lord of Darkness," "the first-born, the oldest, the Father of the Gods."Êa, retaining his ancient attributions as "Lord of the Deep," thepre-eminently wise and beneficent spirit, represents the Divine Intelligence, the founder and maintainer of order and harmony, while the actual task of separating the elements of chaos and shaping them into the forms which make up the world as we know it, as well as that of ordering the heavenly bodies, appointing them their path and directing them thereon, was devolved on the third person of the triad,Bel, the son ofÊa. Bel is a Semitic name, which means simply "the lord."

8. From its nature and attributions, it is clear that to this triad must have attached a certain vagueness and remoteness. Not so the second triad, in which the Deity manifested itself as standing in the nearest and most direct relation to man as most immediately influencing him in his daily life. The persons of this triad were the Moon, the Sun, and the Power of the Atmosphere,—Sin,Shamash, andRamân, the Semitic names for the Shumiro-AccadianUru-KiorNannar,UdorBabbar, andImorMermer. Very characteristically, Sin is frequently called "the god Thirty," in allusion to his functions as the measurer of time presiding over the month. Of the feelings with which the Sun was regarded and the beneficent and splendid qualities attributed to him, we know enough from the beautiful hymns quoted in Chap. III. (see p.172). As to the godRamân, frequently represented on tablets and cylinders by his characteristic sign, the double or triple-forked lightning-bolt—his importance as the dispenser of rain, the lord of the whirlwind and tempest, made him very popular, anobject as much of dread as of gratitude; and as the crops depended on the supply of water from the canals, and these again could not be full without abundant rains, it is not astonishing that he should have been particularly entitled "protector or lord of canals," giver of abundance and "lord of fruitfulness." In his more terrible capacity, he is thus described: "His standard titles are the minister of heaven and earth," "the lord of the air," "he who makes the tempest to rage." He is regarded as the destroyer of crops, the rooter-up of trees, the scatterer of the harvest. Famine, scarcity, and even their consequence, pestilence, are assigned to him. He is said to have in his hand a "flaming sword" with which he effects his works of destruction, and this "flaming sword, which probably represents lightning, becomes his emblem upon the tablets and cylinders."[AS]

9. The astronomical tendencies of the new religion fully assert themselves in the third group of divinities. They are simply the five planets then known and identified with various deities of the old creed, to whom they are, so to speak, assigned as their own particular provinces. ThusNin-dar(also calledNiniporNinêb), originally another name or form of the Sun (see p.172), becomes the ruler of the most distant planet, the one we now call Saturn; the old favorite, Meridug, under the Semitized name ofMarduk, rules the planet Jupiter. It is he whom later Hebrew writers have calledMerodach,the name we find in the Bible. The planet Mars belongs toNergal, the warrior-god, and Mercury toNebo, more properlyNabu, the "messenger of the gods" and the special patron of astronomy, while the planet Venus is under the sway of a feminine deity, the goddessIshtar, one of the most important and popular on the list. But of her more anon. She leads us to the consideration of a very essential and characteristic feature of the Chaldeo-Babylonian religion, common, moreover, to all Oriental heathen religions, especially the Semitic ones.

10. There is a distinction—the distinction of sex—which runs through the whole of animated nature, dividing all things that have life into two separate halves—male and female—halves most different in their qualities, often opposite, almost hostile, yet eternally dependent on each other, neither being complete or perfect, or indeed able to exist without the other. Separated by contrast, yet drawn together by an irresistible sympathy which results in the closest union, that of love and affection, the two sexes still go through life together, together do the work of the world. What the one has not or has in an insufficient degree it finds in its counterpart, and it is only their union which makes of the world a whole thing, full, rounded, harmonious. The masculine nature, active, strong, and somewhat stern, even when merciful and bounteous, inclined to boisterousness and violence and often to cruelty, is well set off, or rather completed and moderated, by the feminine nature, not less active, but more quietly so, dispensing gentle influences, open to milder moods, more uniformly soft in feeling and manner.

Back to Index Next