NINEVEH AND ITS WONDERS
_Here thou behold’st_
_Assyria, and her empire’s ancient bounds,_
_Araxes and the Caspian Lake; thence on_
_As far as Indus east, Euphrates west,_
_And oft beyond; to south the Persian bay_
_And, inaccessible, the Arabian drouth;_
_Here, Nineveh, of length within her wall_
_Several days’ journey, built by Ninus old,_
_Of that first golden monarchy the seat,_
_And seat of Salmanassar, whose success_
_Israel in long captivity still mourns._
MILTON, “Paradise Regained.”
Wrapt in the crispy air of a bright October morning, we found ourselves
on the shaky and crowded pontoon bridge that connects Mosul with
the long-buried city of Nineveh. Horses and camels jostled heaving,
shouting, unwashed Turks and Kurds and Arabs, who seemed to be
constantly in imminent danger of being shoved into the swift-flowing
Tigris. The variety of garb and multiplicity of tongues of the motley
and vociferous throng on the swaying and creaking bridge strikingly
recalled the clamorous and varicolored multitude that always crams the
outer bridge between Galata and Stamboul.
How often, during our delightful sojourn in Mosul, had we gazed on
the mysterious mounds on the eastern bank of the Tigris which were
insistently beckoning us to visit them! And how eager were we to
respond to the silent invitation and to explore the site of the once
proud capital of Assyria! But we resisted the persistent temptation
to interrupt our work in Mosul. We had there, with the assistance
of the scholarly sons of St. Dominic, a rare opportunity of getting
first-hand information regarding the social and economical condition of
the people of this part of Asia and of completing our investigations,
begun almost at the inception of our journey, respecting the various
schismatic churches of the East. Not, then, until we had completed
our observations in Mosul and coördinated our impressions, could we
be induced to suspend our self-imposed task. We wished to have it
completely off our hands in order that, once on the historic soil of
Nineveh, we might indulge in reverie without let or hindrance.
When, finally, we were ready to visit the ruins of Nineveh, ours was
the good fortune to have with us a learned Dominican of Mosul, who
was as familiar with the early history of the famous old Assyrian
metropolis as he was with the excavations which during the last two
generations have revealed artistic and literary treasures that have
been the marvel and the delight of the world. We could not have had a
more intelligent or a more enthusiastic guide among the devious ways
which led to the sites of ancient temples and palaces, whose existence
was absolutely unknown until uncovered by the pick and spade of the
archæologist but a few decades ago.
How strange it seemed to me, as we threaded our way through the maze of
passages that led to the locations of once famous palaces and temples,
that it was also a Dominican--a brother in religion of our guide--who
first awakened my interest in Nineveh! That was more than three score
years ago. And yet, so vivid was the impression then made on my
youthful mind that it seems but yesterday when I first came under the
spell of the famed lands of Assyria and Babylonia.
It came about in a very simple way. The Dominican in question--a dear,
venerable man--had visited the Holy Land shortly before I met him,
and took great pleasure in telling me his experiences in the East.
Seeing that I was greatly interested in his narrative he gave me a
large history of the Bible. It was not such a book, I have often since
thought, as the average boy would have cared to read. But the good
priest could not have selected a work that would have given me more
pleasure--certainly not one that would have benefited me more deeply
or influenced more profoundly all my subsequent reading and study. It
was, too, I must add, the first book I ever had in my hands outside
of my elementary school readers. But how I prized that book! And how
I read it again and again, and always with ever-increasing interest
and delight! I do not know how often I read it carefully from cover to
cover, but I do know that there is only one other volume that I have
read more frequently, and that, after the Bible, is my favorite of all
books--_The Divina Commedia_.
How often I have had reason to be grateful to the good old Dominican
who unconsciously directed my studies in such wise as to afford me
life-long pleasure and profit! As a consequence of the repeated
reading of the book which he placed in my hands I became familiar with
the history of the cradle of our race long before I had entered my
teens, and I felt quite well acquainted with Nineveh and Babylon when
Athens and Rome were yet to me but little more than mere names without
significance. And, although as I grew older, I became interested in
many other subjects, I never lost my early love of sacred history or of
the history and geography of the Near East. For no matter how occupied
I might be, I always contrived to find time to continue the studies
which had such a fascination for me in my early boyhood.
To the student of Assyrian or Babylonian history, nothing is more
impressive than the first view of one of those stupendous mounds which
are so frequent along the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates and
in the vast plain between Bagdad and Abu Sharein. But the impression
is greatly intensified when the place visited is associated with the
happiest days of one’s youth and when one may again dream the dreams
that once afforded such exquisite pleasure and such delightful visions
of long-departed glory and magnificence. This was my experience when I
first set foot on the soil that covers the superb structures which, in
my early boyhood, I had so frequently pictured in fancy that it almost
seemed that I had really wandered through their sculpture-adorned halls
and had been an actual spectator of the gorgeous processions which they
had so frequently witnessed when Nineveh was at the zenith of her power
and greatness.
I had been deeply impressed when I first ascended the hill on which
stood Homer’s Troy, but my emotion was not so great as when I found
myself on the crumbling ruins of “Nineveh, that great city in which
there were more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons that knew
not how to distinguish between their right hand and their left.”[353]
But this is easily explained. I was much younger when I became
acquainted with the enchanting story of Nineveh than when I first
conned the spell-weaving pages of the _Iliad_. My earlier
impressions were more vivid and, because of the intimate relation of
Assyria to the Holy Land, as exhibited in the Sacred Text, my interest
was correspondingly greater.
As I contemplated the remains of the great city which had in tender
years been so frequently the subject of my dreams and in mature age had
been the subject of so much study and reflection, I found a thousand
thoughts presenting themselves to my mind regarding the great capital
which for so long a period played so important a rôle during the dawn
of civilization.
_The days of old return;--I breathe the air_
_Of the young world;--I see her giant sons_
_Like a gorgeous pageant in the sky_
_Of summer’s evening, cloud on fiery cloud_
_Thronging upheaved,--before me rise the walls_
_Of the Titanic city--brazen gates,--_
_Imperial Nineveh, the earthly queen!_
_In all her golden pomp I see her now._
No region in the world has a more venerable historic past than that
vast territory enclosed by the Euphrates and the Tigris, and no city in
this region, with the possible exception of Babylon, was for centuries
the center of greater power and influence than Nineveh. According to
the book of Genesis,[354] it was built by Asur, who came from the land
of Sennaar. How long ago this was is a matter of mere conjecture.
Its first certain mention occurs in the code of Hammurabi, who ruled
over Babylonia in the twenty-third century before our era, but it was
doubtless in existence many centuries before the time of this great
Babylonian lawgiver. It is, however, certain that from the time of
its foundation, it gradually increased in size and importance until
it became the celebrated capital of the Assyrian Empire--an empire
which at one time embraced the whole of the civilized world. But when
it was at the zenith of its greatness, when it was feared and hated
from the Nile to the Persian Gulf and from the scorching deserts of
Arabia to the Hittite lands to the north of the Taurus, it suddenly, in
707 B. C., collapsed under the combined attacks of the Medes and the
Babylonians led by Cyaxares and Nabopolassar, who left it a smoking
ruin, where, according to the victors, “the words of men, the tread of
cattle and sheep and the sound of happy music” were heard no more.
How execrated was the name of Assyria throughout the length and the
breadth of western Asia, and how the peoples whom she had so long
plundered and enslaved rejoiced when they heard of the downfall of her
capital is made clear by the prophet Nahum when he declares:
All who have heard of the fame of thee [thy destruction] have
clapped their hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy
wickedness passed continually.[355]
But the Prophet Zephaniah, who was a contemporary of the stupendous
event, gives an even more graphic account of the utter desolation
which followed the overthrow of the far-famed metropolis:
And the Lord of hosts ... will stretch out His hands upon the
north and will destroy Assyria and He will make the beautiful
city [Nineveh] a wilderness and as a place not passable and as a
desert.
And flocks shall lie down in the midst thereof, all the beasts
of the nations; and the bittern and the urchin shall lodge in
the threshold thereof; the voice of the singing bird in the
window, the raven on the upper post, for I will consume her
strength.
This is the glorious city that dwelt in security; that said in
her heart: I am, and there is none beside me; how is she become
a desert, a place for beasts to lie down in? Everyone that
passeth by her shall hiss and wag his hand.[356]
How completely these dire words of the Hebrew prophet were verified is
evidenced by the fact that when Xenophon and his Ten Thousand Greeks
two centuries later passed by the mounds which covered the remains of
Nineveh’s one-time magnificence, they were quite unaware of being in
the immediate vicinity of the sumptuous palaces and temples of the
erstwhile Queen City of the Tigris.[357]
Lucian, the Greek Voltaire, who was born at Samosata on the Euphrates
in the second century after Christ, tells us in one of his satirical
dialogues that all trace of Nineveh had disappeared. Representing
Charon as on a leave of absence from the infernal regions, where he
officiated as ferryman of the dead, and as starting with Hermes,
the swift-footed messenger of the gods, who acts as his guide, on a
short tour of this upper world, he gives us these two characteristic
paragraphs:
CHARON.--Show me the famous cities of which we hear
so much down below: The Nineveh of Sardanapalus and Babylon
and Mycenæ and Cleonæ and especially Troy. I remember to have
ferried over the Styx so many times from this last place that
I could not haul my boat upon the bank, or have it thoroughly
dried for ten whole years.
HERMES.--Nineveh, O Ferryman, perished long ago and
there is no trace of her remaining; nor would you be able to
tell where she stood. Babylon is yonder city with the fair
towers and the immense circuit of wall, but will soon have to be
sought for like Nineveh.[358]
But, although Assyria’s capital was so thoroughly demolished, its name
and fame still persisted. In the course of time a new Nineveh arose on
the site of the ancient metropolis and, although quite unimportant as
compared with its famous predecessor, it served at a later date to aid
in the identification of the ancient site and to pave the way to some
of the most extraordinary archæological discoveries of the last century.
The great Assyrian Empire came to an end after enduring more than a
thousand years, and being, a great part of this period, one of the
greatest powers of western Asia. Its downfall, after its long centuries
of glory and preëminence, occurred while Rome was yet in its infancy
and little more than a rendezvous of robbers and refugees from justice.
From that date, 707 B. C., nearly twenty-five centuries passed over the
grass and shrub-covered mounds on the site of ancient Nineveh before
any serious effort was made to determine whether they concealed any
remains of the long-buried metropolis of Mesopotamia.
Until the middle of the last century our knowledge of the history of
Assyria and Babylonia was based entirely on the historical books of
the Old Testament and on the accounts given by certain Greek and Latin
writers. The books of Scripture which are of special importance in
their relation to Assyrian and Babylonian history are Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, Nahum, and the Fourth Book of Kings.
Chief among the classical writers is Herodotus. He was not only, as
Cicero calls him, the “Father of History,” but he was also the greatest
traveler of his time. Not only did he traverse a great part of Asia
Minor, Syria, and Egypt, but there is a strong probability that he
extended his peregrinations to the Euphrates and proceeded on its
waters to Babylon. Making all due allowance for numerous inaccuracies
which exist in his picturesque work and for not a few travelers’
tales,[359] the history of the brilliant Greek writer will always
possess value not only for its matchless style but also for the facts
which it contains and its descriptions, which are evidently from the
pen of an eye witness. I refer especially to that part of his charming
work which treats of Babylon and the culture of its inhabitants.
Of more importance was the great history of Babylonia written by
Berosus, a contemporary of Alexander the Great and a priest of Bel in
Babylon. Unfortunately we have only the fragments of this work which
have been preserved by Eusebius, Josephus, and other ancient writers.
But the works mentioned, as well as those of Ctesias, Dinon of
Colophon, and others, threw but little light on the civilization and
achievements of Assyria and Babylonia during their long and eventful
history. Detailed information respecting the development and decline
of these two mighty empires was to come only from native annals of
which not even the existence was suspected until the latter half of the
nineteenth century.
Nor was there before the beginning of the last century any certitude
regarding the sites of the great Assyrian and Babylonian cities which
had made such a profound impression upon the peoples of the ancient
world. Although history and tradition still spoke of the grandiose
palaces and temples of Nineveh and of the towers and hanging gardens
of Babylon, the general ignorance which almost from the time of the
Arab conquest had prevailed regarding the actual sites of Babylon and
Nineveh was not removed until the illustrious Danish scholar, Carsten
Niebuhr, proved that the site of Babylon was in the vicinity of the
modern village of Hillah, and the noted English investigator, Claudius
James Rich, demonstrated in 1821 that the mounds on the left bank of
the Tigris, just opposite Mosul, covered all that remained of the famed
city of Nineveh.[360]
But even after the sites of Nineveh and Babylon had been identified, it
was yet to be proved that amid the ruins of these famous cities there
were records and monuments which would shed light on the civilization
of which they were once such noted centers. The potsherds and fragments
of cylinders which travelers had found in and about the mounds of
Babylon and Nineveh led scholars to believe that discoveries of greater
value awaited the explorer. This conclusion was confirmed by the
finding in various places of bricks, tablets, and monuments covered
with strange inscriptions which were written in characters which are
now designated as cuneiform.
It was not, however, until 1842 when the French Government--to
which the world of science has long been indebted for intelligent
encouragement and generous assistance in every branch of research--sent
Paul Emil Botta to Mosul that decisive results were obtained. He was
ostensibly appointed to fill there the newly-created position of
vice-consul, but, as French commerce did not require the service of
such an official at that point, he was really designated to act as
the head of an archæological mission to Nineveh and its environs. His
appointment, as subsequent events proved, was a red-letter day in the
annals of Assyrian research. For, not long after his arrival in Mosul,
the world was thrilled by the news of his marvelous discoveries in the
long-buried city of Nineveh and the report that he was “sending home
the spoils of superb ancient edifices to increase the treasures of the
Louvre.... A city buried for more than twenty centuries offered its
remains for comparison with the aspects of modern London and Paris; and
the sculptured monuments of a bygone race rose up to offer a contrast
with the works of modern art.”[361]
Three years after Botta’s arrival in Mosul, Austen Henry Layard began
his memorable excavations at Nimroud, a short distance to the south
of Nineveh. So successful was he in his work here and subsequently at
Kuyunjik--Citadel of Nineveh--that he was soon able to send a larger
and a more valuable collection of antiquities to the British Museum
than that with which Botta had enriched the Louvre. Great, indeed,
was the excitement in France and England when the treasures of the
long-buried palaces of Nineveh were placed on exhibition and when
people had before their eyes tangible evidence of that famed Assyrian
capital which for more than twenty centuries had left no other trace of
its existence than a name which was a synonym of fabulous wealth and
magnificence.
In a work published shortly after Botta and Layard had electrified the
world by their startling discoveries, a well-known English scholar,
speaking of the unearthing of Nineveh, wrote:
More than two thousand years had it thus lain in its unknown
grave, when a French savant and a wandering English scholar,
urged by a noble inspiration, sought the seat of the once
powerful empire, and, searching till they found the dead city,
threw off its shroud of sand and ruin and revealed once more to
an astonished and curious world the temples, the palaces, the
idols; the representations of war and the triumphs of peaceful
art of the ancient Assyrians. The Nineveh of Scripture, the
Nineveh of the oldest historians; the Nineveh--twin-sister of
Babylon--glorying in a civilization of pomp and power, all
traces of which were believed to be gone; the Nineveh, in which
the captive tribes of Israel had labored and wept, was, after a
sleep of twenty centuries, again brought to light. The proofs
of ancient splendor were again beheld by living eyes, and, by
the skill of the draftsman and the pen of antiquarian travelers,
made known to the world.[362]
Notices like this which frequently appeared in books and periodical
literature had the effect of exciting widespread enthusiasm for
the advancement of Assyrian research. Societies were organized for
promoting excavations on a larger scale than was feasible for the first
explorers, who were greatly hampered by the lack of adequate funds, and
for giving due publicity to the work of the archæologists in the field.
The results were most gratifying, for it was not long before explorers
were investigating the mounds of Babylonia as well as those of Assyria.
Meantime, under the direction of George Smith and Ormuzd Rassam, the
mounds which covered the site of Nineveh were made to yield further
treasures which were quite as extraordinary as any which had been
brought to light by Botta and Layard. A discovery by Smith of a tablet
relating, it was supposed, to the Noachian deluge, convinced many that
Assyrian archæology was destined to render incalculable aid in the
study of Sacred Scripture. Although its apologetic value subsequently
proved to be greatly overestimated by some of the more enthusiastic
students of Assyrian antiquities, it soon became manifest that the
new science was destined to throw a flood of light not only on the
Old Testament but also on the history of the greatest nations of the
ancient world.
We experienced special pleasure in exploring the mounds which covered
the remains of imperial Nineveh. There was not, truth to tell, much
to see which was either of interest or value, for everything of
importance, that could be transported, had been forwarded to the
museums of Europe as soon as they had been disinterred.
On the mound of Nebi Yunus--Prophet Jonas--we visited the mosque which
the Moslems declare contains the remains of the prophet who preached
repentance to the sinful Ninevites.
This mosque [said our Dominican companion] was originally a
Christian monastery that was built in the fourth century by a
disciple of St. Anthony of Egypt. He named it in honor of the
Prophet Jonas, but when the building, long afterwards, came
into the possession of the Mussulmans, it was converted into
a mosque. It, however, retained its original name--Prophet
Jonas--which it bears to this day.
The inhabitants here exhibit a flat stone which they guard as a
treasure beyond price. “It was upon this stone,” they aver, “that the
great fish deposited Jonas when it returned him to _terra firma_.”
Since that time the stone is reputed to have the power of curing
rheumatism by simply being brought into contact with the afflicted
part. So highly do the natives prize this remedial agent that nothing
could induce them to part with it. When we told them of the curative
powers attributed to the Hittite stone at Aleppo they gravely assured
us that the stone of Nebi Yunus possessed incomparably greater efficacy
and that it afforded certain relief to all cases of rheumatism however
malignant.
Although we were always interested in listening to the folklore of
the Mussulmans of the Near East, we preferred on this occasion to
stroll over the mounds beneath which were buried the remains of one of
antiquity’s most celebrated cities and to inspect the localities where
Botta and Layard and Ormuzd Rassam had made those famous finds which
contributed so greatly to our knowledge of Assyria and Babylonia. Most
of the excavations whence they drew such priceless treasures had been
refilled with earth, but this did not matter. We had in various museums
seen the valuable monuments that had been taken from them and were,
therefore, freer to indulge in day-dreams than we had been when we
visited Homer’s Troy.
Aided by the drawings of Place and Fergusson we found it easy to
reconstruct in fancy the superb palaces of Sargon and Eserhaddon and
Tiglath-pileser, whose names and achievements had so impressed us in
our youth. In imagination we contemplated the colossal statues of
winged lions with human heads, which stood at the portals of the palace
of Sennacherib, and fixed our gaze on the marvelous bas-relief and
sculptures--reminders of the frieze of the Parthenon--which adorned the
vast halls and exhibited the monarch’s exploits in the chase and in
wars innumerable.[363] We could observe Sennacherib himself standing on
an elevated outlook of his palace and watching “the marching forth of
the hosts of Assur and the smoke of their holocausts spreading over all
the lands,” or pensively pacing a lofty tiled terrace which overlooked
the swift-flowing waters of the Tigris and the broad expanse of the
western desert illumined by the crimson glow of the setting sun.
But a more fascinating scene engages our attention. It recalls
one described in the book of Esther,[364] in which King Assuerus
is represented as having his annalists and wise men read for him
“the histories and chronicles of former times.” Before us is
Asurbanipal--the Grand Monarch of Assyria--surrounded by his scribes
and sages and intent on the examination of a recent addition to the
royal library. For, after many years spent in military campaigns in
Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Susiana, and elsewhere, he resolved to devote
the remainder of his life to the arts and avocations of peace. Numerous
temples and palaces in many parts of Assyria and Babylonia bear witness
to his activity as a builder and to the magnificence of the structures
erected to his own glory and to that of his gods.
But it was in his gorgeous palace at Nineveh that he had the joy of
his life--that which was to perpetuate his name to the end of time.
This was his library--the largest and most valuable collection of
documents that the world had yet seen. Composed of myriads of inscribed
tablets, they were fortunately made of a material--baked and unbaked
clay--which, for more than two millennia, successfully withstood all
the ravages of war and the elements. They treated of mathematics,
astronomy, history, poetry, grammar, lexicography, law, religion--in a
word, of the entire circle of the sciences of the ancient world.
Asurbanipal--an Assyrian Mæcenas--was not only the patron of scholars,
whom he encouraged to produce new books on every branch of science and
literature, but was also, as a collector, the worthy forerunner and
rival of the bibliophilous rulers of Pergamum and Alexandria. He had
his scribes visit all the libraries of Babylonia--the earliest home of
science and letters--and had them make copies of all works of value
which did not exist in his own library. So indefatigable, indeed,
was the King as a collector that it is probably true--as has been
stated--that he had in his extensive library a copy of all the books
that existed in the numerous libraries of Assyria and Babylonia.
The discovery of Asurbanipal’s library surpassed in importance any
that had ever been made in either the valley of the Tigris or of the
Euphrates. But every tablet in this immense collection was absolutely
a sealed book, for there was not anyone living then who was able to
decipher a single sentence of those mysterious documents which had
thus so unexpectedly been brought to day. When Layard, in the course
of his exploration of the vast palace of Asurbanipal, first beheld the
priceless contents of the royal halls of records, his emotions must
have been like those of Shelley’s Alastor in the temples of Egypt, for
_Among the ruined temples there,_
_Stupendous columns and wild images_
_Of more than man, where marble demons watch_
_The zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead men_
_Have their mute thoughts on the mute walls around._
_He lingered, pouring on memorials_
_Of the world’s youth; nor when the moon_
_Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades_
_Suspended he that task, but ever gazed_
_And gazed_
on precious monuments before him which he knew full well contained
_The thrilling secrets of the birth of time_.[365]
The identification of the site of Nineveh and the unearthing of its
long-concealed monuments marked the beginning of a new era in Oriental
research. But nothing gave so great a stimulus to the study of all
things Assyrian and Babylonian as the discovery of the precious library
of Asurbanipal. For this wonderful collection of documents was destined
to disclose much of the history, science, literature, and politics
of the famous land bounded by the Tigris and the Euphrates, and to
show--what would not otherwise have been possible--the relation of this
land to the other great nations of the Near East.
But who was to decipher the cuneiform tablets which were thus so
unexpectedly brought to the light of day? That was the question that
was on the lips of everyone. Until this could be accomplished the
countless books of the royal library would be of little more value than
so many useless curiosities.
That the work of decipherment would eventually be achieved,
scholars had no doubt. That the languages in which the mysterious
inscriptions were written would one day be read with ease and
certainty, all investigators were convinced. The achievements of
Champollion in deciphering the hieroglyphics of Egypt and of De Sacy
in reading Pehlevi gave an assurance that eventually the mysterious
Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions would also be elucidated and that the
long-forgotten documents of Asurbanipal’s library would then become the
chief sources of our knowledge of the most ancient and most powerful
empires of western Asia.
Nothing in the entire history of intellectual advancement is more
interesting and romantic than the story of the gradual decipherment of
those strange cuneiform inscriptions whose interpretation long baffled
the powers of the greatest linguistic geniuses of Europe.
The discovery of the key to the Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions
was practically the work of one man--the immortal Jean François
Champollion. The decipherment of the Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions was
the joint achievement of many men, laboring during many generations,
in many and widely separated parts of Asia and Europe. It was effected
by daring travelers and explorers, by philologists, philosophers, and
historians, most of them laboring independently of one another, but all
working, although nearly always unconsciously, toward the same goal.
And an even more singular fact was that the first clue towards the
unraveling of the great enigma was found far away from both Assyria and
Babylonia and in a place where an explorer bent on searching for it
would certainly not look for it. This place was Persepolis, where are
the remains of the splendid edifices constructed by Darius I, Xerxes
I, and Artaxerxes I, the celebrated Persian Kings of the Achæmenian
dynasty.
So far as known the first European to visit these remarkable ruins was
the noted Franciscan friar, Fra Oderico, on his way to Cathay in the
first quarter of the fourteenth century.
In the latter half of the sixteenth century Persepolis was visited
by an Augustinian monk, Antonio de Gouvea, whom Philip III, King of
Spain and Portugal, had sent as an ambassador to Shah Abbas the Great,
King of Persia. Among the many things which attracted his attention
in the old Persian city were the inscriptions which he saw on the
monuments, which, “although they are in many parts very distinct, there
is nevertheless no one who can read them, for they are not written
in Persian, or Arabic or Armenian or Hebrew, which are the languages
spoken in this land.”[366]
Some thirty years later Gouvea was followed, as ambassador to Shah
Abbas from Philip III, by Don Garcia de Sylva y Figueroa, who wrote a
letter on the monuments of Persepolis which attracted deep interest
when published in Europe in 1620. In this communication he speaks of
“one notable inscription cut in a Jasper-table, with characters still
so fresh and faire that one would wonder how it could escape so many
ages without touch of the least blemish. The Letters themselves are
neither Chaldæan nor Hebrew, nor Greeke, nor Arabike, nor of any other
Nation which was ever found of old, or at this day, to be extant. They
are all three-cornered, but somewhat long, of the forms of a pyramide,
or such a little Obliske as I have set in the margine: (△) so that in
nothing do they differ one from one another, but in their placing and
situation, yet so conformed that they are wondrous plaine, distinct and
perspicuous.”[367]
But the first one to make known these peculiar characters to the
scholars of Europe was the learned traveler, Pietro della Valle,
of whom we have already spoken. And it was thus that this eminent
Roman patrician had the honor of being the first of that long line
of investigators whose labors have resulted in building up that
comprehensive branch of science now known as Assyriology.[368]
From the time of Pietro della Valle the number of travelers who visited
the ruins of Persepolis and wrote of the inscriptions which they saw on
the ruins of this old Persian capital rapidly increased. But, although
their published observations failed to arouse any special interest at
the time, some of them deserve at least a passing notice for the quaint
language in which the views of the authors found expression. Thus
Thomas Herbert, referring to the inscriptions of Persepolis, writes:
Wee noted above a dozen lynes of strange characters, very faire
and apparent to the eye, but so mysticall, so oddly framed, as
no Hierogliphick, no other deep conceit can be more difficultly
fancied, more adverse to the intellect.... And, though it have
small concordance with the Hebrew, Greek, or Latine letter,
yet questionlesse to the Inventer it was well knowne; and
peradventure may conceale some excellent matter, though to this
day wrapt up in the dim leafes of envious obscuritie.[369]
The Italian, Spanish, and English writers on Persepolis were followed
by travelers and writers of other nationalities. Among these were Jean
Chardin of France, Cornelis de Bruin of Holland, Engelrecht Kaempfer of
Germany, and Carsten Niebuhr, a German, long in the service of Denmark.
Each of these men made a contribution--small though it was--towards the
decipherment of the Persepolitan inscriptions.
Chardin was the first to reproduce in his superbly illustrated
work[370] an entire inscription from one of the monuments of
Persepolis. This, to scholars, was incomparably more valuable than
any of the fragments that had hitherto come to Europe. De Bruin, who
visited Persepolis in 1704, and subsequently published a book with
magnificent views of the ruins of the old Achæmenia capital, together
with numerous inscriptions from its monuments, put more material in
the hands of scholars than had any of his predecessors. Kaempfer
advanced a step further when he published in 1712 a long inscription in
Assyro-Babylonian.
But of the four travelers mentioned the one who performed the most
important work was Niebuhr, an experienced traveler, an accurate
observer and a man of broad scholarship. Besides making careful
drawings and measurements of the monuments of Persepolis--monuments
which in many respects were the most important in the East--he made
copies of numerous cuneiform texts which had not appeared in any
preceding work. His studies of the inscriptions also led him to
conclude that there were three classes of them and that they were, as
some of his predecessors had surmised, to be read from left to right.
He had thus not only supplied scholars with new and valuable material
but, by his comparative study, blazed the way which led to their final
decipherment.
Among the first to attempt decipherment of these inscriptions were such
distinguished philologists as Professor Tychsen, of the University
of Rostock, and Friedrich Munter, of Copenhagen, and such eminent
Orientalists as Eugène Burnouf, Anquetil-Duperron, and Silvestre de
Sacy, who was the most eminent Arabist of his age. They did not succeed
in solving the problem which had so long baffled the keenest minds of
Europe, but they had accumulated the material that was necessary for
its solution.
Several years before Botta and Layard sent their vast stores of tablets
from Nineveh and Nimroud to the Louvre and the British Museum, it was
evident from the few specimens of cuneiform inscriptions which had
reached Europe from Mesopotamia that the script on the Babylonian
tablets was the same as one of the varieties occurring in the
trilingual inscriptions of Persepolis. It was then only a step to
the conclusion that these two scripts were identical and represented
identical languages. Thanks to the researches of De Sacy, Burnouf,
Anquetil-Duperron, and others, it was now possible to make the old
Persian script--the first class--of the trilingual inscriptions of
Persepolis serve as a key to the third class, or what is now designated
as the Assyro-Babylonian script. The process was exactly similar to
that which enabled Champollion to use the Greek on the Rosetta stone as
a key to the mysterious hieroglyphics of the Egypt of the Pharaohs.
But, although the method to be adopted seemed simple enough, the labor
involved was incomparably greater than that which was required of the
illustrious French _savant_. For the Greek on the Rosetta stone
was a well-known language, whereas Old Persian, which was to serve as
the key for deciphering the Babylonian script, was itself quite as
unknown as the writing to be deciphered. It was only after a knowledge
of Old Persian had been acquired by comparing it with Avestan,
Pahlavi, and Sanscrit, that it could serve as the long-sought key to
Assyro-Babylonian.
The first one to read an Old Persian word was Georg Friederich
Grotefend. This was in 1802, when he was only twenty-seven years of
age and without any knowledge of oriental languages. Nevertheless, he
was, wonderful to relate, able “to solve the riddle practically in a
few days, that had puzzled much older men and scholars apparently much
better qualified than himself. Under the magical touch of his hand the
mystic and complicated characters of ancient Persia suddenly gained new
life. But when he was far enough advanced to announce to the Academy
of Sciences in Göttingen the epoch-making discovery which established
his reputation for ever, that learned body, though comprising men of
eminent mental training and intelligence, strange to say, declined to
publish the Latin memoirs of this little-known college teacher, who did
not belong to the University circle proper nor was even an Orientalist
by profession. It was not until ninety years later--1893--that his
original papers were rediscovered and published by Prof. Wilhelm Meyer,
of Göttingen, in the Academy’s transactions--a truly unique case of
_post mortem_ examination in science.”[371]
Notwithstanding, however, the attitude of the Göttingen Academy of
Sciences, scholars like De Sacy, Heeren, and others were not slow to
recognize the importance of Grotefend’s far-reaching discoveries.
The number of investigators in the studies of Europe and in the
ruin-dotted plains of Persia and Mesopotamia gradually increased.
The careful researches of Niebuhr were followed in the first half of
the nineteenth century by the painstaking observations of Rich, Ker
Porter, and Colonel Chesney. But while those noted explorers were
winning laurels in the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates, Sir
Henry Rawlinson “forced the inaccessible rock of Behistun to surrender
the great trilingual inscription of Darius, which, in the quietude of
his study on the Tigris, became the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of Assyriology
and in his master hand the key to the understanding of the Assyrian
documents.”[372]
While Rawlinson was conducting his celebrated investigations relating
to the trilingual inscription of Behistun, and Layard and Rassam were
unearthing the priceless documents of Asurbanipal’s library, Edward
Hincks in Ireland, Edwin Norris in England, Eugène Burnouf and M.
de Saulcy in France, Westergaard, a Dane, and Lassen, a Norwegian,
both living in Germany, were astonishing the learned world by their
wonderful contributions towards the decipherment of the inscriptions of
Persepolis and Behistun and of tablets and seals and cylinders taken
from the temples and palaces of Assyria and Babylonia.
Thanks to the investigators named and to a rapidly increasing number
of others, the decipherment of Assyrian inscription was gradually
assuming the dignity of an exact science. But there were still scholars
of acknowledged eminence who questioned the validity of the system
employed and who openly expressed grave doubts about the translations
of the cuneiform inscriptions which had been published by divers
scholars of Great Britain and the Continent.
Finally, in 1857, it was suggested to make a test which should silence
all objectors and demonstrate that the method of the decipherers
reposed on a scientific basis. An Assyrian text was translated
independently by Hincks, Talbot, Oppert, and Rawlinson, and sent sealed
to the Royal Asiatic Society. When these versions were compared by a
committee of distinguished scholars they were found to show such a
remarkable correspondence that there could no longer be any reasonable
doubt as to the system of decipherment or the substantial accuracy
of the four translations which had been offered to the distinguished
committee of the Royal Asiatic Society.
But, notwithstanding this remarkable confirmation of the correctness
of the method of decipherment employed by Assyriologists, there
still remained a certain number of skeptics even among the most
noted scholars of the age--men like Gutschmid in Germany and Renan
and Gobineau in France--who refused to admit the conclusiveness
of the demonstration which had silenced most other objectors. Even
after the French Institute on July 15, 1863, had awarded to Oppert
the coveted quinquennial prize of twenty thousand francs for “that
work or discovery which is best calculated to honor or serve the
country,” skepticism still persisted among certain Orientalists.[373]
Indeed, it was not until the appearance in 1872 of the masterly _Die
Assyrisch--Babylonischen-Keilinschriften_ of Eberhard Schrader that
general confidence in the prevailing system of cuneiform decipherment
was firmly established and that all opposition to its methods was
finally abandoned.
Seventy years had elapsed from the reading by Grotefend of his epochal
paper before the Göttingen Academy to the publication of Schrader’s
great work on the cuneiform writing and language. From the time of
Schrader, who has been called the father of early Assyriology, to
the splendid achievements of his illustrious countryman, Friedrich
Delitzsch, who is known as the father of contemporary Assyriology,
progress in the new science has been as rapid as the activity of its
countless votaries has been enthusiastic. This is evidenced by the
large number of cuneiform monuments which are now found in the museums
of Europe and America and by the ever-increasing number of scholars who
are devoting all their time to the study of Assyrian science, religion,
and literature.
It is estimated that there are now, in the divers museums of the world,
more than a half million inscribed tablets. Besides the immense number
of tablets found in the great library of Asurbanipal, Rassam discovered
in Abu-Habba, formerly Hillah, no fewer than seventy thousand. In 1894
M. Ernest de Sarzec took from a single chamber in the ruined city
of Telloh, in the alluvial plain of Babylonia, fully thirty thousand
tablets, while a few years later Haynes and Hilprecht to the north of
Telloh, in the ruins of Nippur, discovered more than forty thousand
tablets, which have proved to be of inestimable value to the student
of the history, religion, and social conditions of the inhabitants of
ancient Sumer and Akkad. Still other stores of tablets were unearthed
by Banks at Bismya and De Morgan at Susa. Among the precious monuments
brought to light by the distinguished French explorer of Susa was the
important code of Hammurabi--the oldest compilation of laws in the
world--the code by which Babylonia was governed at a period which
antedated the Christian era by fully two thousand years.
But the inscribed clay tablets--some baked, others unbaked--are not the
only monuments of value as sources of history which have been uncovered
by the pick and spade of the excavator in the tells of Assyria and
Babylonia. There are also seals, statues, cylinders, and bas-reliefs
innumerable which bear cuneiform inscriptions of the utmost value
to the historian and the man of science. There are even numberless
uninscribed monuments which are also of immense historical importance.
Such are the sculptured alabaster slabs which once adorned the palace
of Sennacherib in Nineveh. These marvelous bas-reliefs exhibit scenes
of domestic life, the peculiar garbs of men and women, of masters and
slaves, of natives and foreigners with almost photographic exactness.
They likewise show spirited representations of battles and sieges,
which portray in the most lifelike manner the types of the combatants,
their divers instruments of warfare, the punishments inflicted by the
victor on helpless captives, and long processions of the vanquished
bringing tribute to the triumphant monarch of Assyria.
Without the knowledge of a single cuneiform character [declares
Professor Hilprecht] we learned the principal events of
Sennacherib’s government, and, from a mere study of those
sculptured walls, we got familiar with customs and habits of
the ancient Assyrians, at the same time obtaining a first clear
glance of the whole civilization of Western Asia.[374]
The foregoing pages show the extraordinary progress that has been made
in Assyriology since Botta and Layard began their famous excavations
in the ruins of Nineveh in the middle of the last century. But,
although much, very much, has been achieved, far more remains to be
accomplished. For there are, we are assured, hundreds of ruin-mounds
and earth-covered cities in Western Asia awaiting the spade and the
pick of the excavator to disclose treasures that will equal, if
not surpass in value any that have yet rewarded the labors of the
explorer. Even such important ruins as those of Babylon and Nineveh,
where such splendid results have been obtained, have so far yielded,
there is reason to believe, but a part, possibly but a small part,
of their precious stores. For it has been computed that to excavate
Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunus--the two principal mounds of Nineveh--would
require the labor of a thousand men working continually for a hundred
and seventy-four years. “The recent excavations and tunnelings at
Kuyunjik”--the Citadel of Nineveh--“fruitful as they have been in
results, have made little impression on the vast mass of ruin, and only
prove how much might be gained by complete clearance.”[375]
But as the work of excavation is still almost in its infancy, so
is also that of decipherment and coördination of the myriads of
inscriptions now in the museums of the world. For, notwithstanding the
wonderful achievements of Assyriologists during the last three-quarters
of a century, many generations must yet elapse before the vast amount
of material which has been already collected and to which additions
are being constantly made, can be properly interpreted and made
available for students who are not professional Orientalists. As
yet there is in Assyrian neither a complete grammar nor a complete
dictionary, and, on account of the immense number of ideograms yet
undeciphered and the astonishing number of polyphonous signs in the
Assyrian language--signs which have each several distinct syllabic
values--it is certain that many decades will elapse before the
countless difficulties can be overcome.
Considering, however, the complexity of the problem which confronted
Orientalists at the beginnings of their researches, it is, indeed, a
wonder that their achievements during the last two generations have
been so fruitful and of so far-reaching importance. For in a few
decades they have changed completely our conception of the ancient
peoples of Assyria and Babylonia and shown that their civilization
“stands before us in all its ramifications as one of the great forces
in the ancient history of mankind, the direct or indirect influence
of which is to be seen in many a phase of our modern culture.”[376]
They have proved that the Assyrian language was not only the speech
of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia but that it was also long used as
the language of diplomacy by the Hittites and the Egyptians and by
the peoples of Syria and Palestine. More than this, it was a kind of
_lingua franca_ from the Euxine to the valley of the Nile and from
Cyprus to the plateau of Susiana. This fact is most strikingly proved
by the priceless collections of cuneiform inscriptions which, only a
few years ago, were found in Tel-el-Armana, Egypt, and in Boghaz-Keui,
Asia Minor. These finds are indications that there are other, probably
many other, similar discoveries to reward the patient and well-directed
excavations of the explorer in the ruin-spread lands of the Near East.
How often, while wandering among the ruins of Kuyunjik, Nebi Yunus,
and Khorsabad, have I not had brought home to me the far-reaching
changes in our knowledge of the Near East, which have been effected by
the startling discoveries that were made three-quarters of a century
ago in the palaces of Sargon and Sennacherib and Asurbanipal! But
nothing impressed me more than the first question which Scriptural
students always make regarding these discoveries, “How do they bear
on the Bible”? It is the same question which has so often been asked
about the revelations of geology in their bearings on the Sacred
Text. Something is discovered which at the first blush is regarded
as militating against the accuracy of the Sacred Scriptures. After
further investigation, this same discovery is viewed as being strongly
confirmatory of the Bible, while still more careful examination shows
that the teachings of the new science not only do not but, by their
very nature, cannot question, much less impeach the veracity of the
Book of Books.
It is true that one’s view of the Bible may be enlarged with one’s
advancing years; that one’s understanding of it may be improved by more
profound study, and by the progress of research; but science, whether
it appear in the guise of geology, or Assyriology, or of what has
falsely been called the science of evolution, can never invalidate a
single one of the fundamental teachings either of Scripture or of the
Church of Christ.
This thought was borne in upon me with unwonted force as I stood one
day above the ruins of Asurbanipal’s library. Gazing at a cluster of
keleks--skin rafts--bearing their light traffic down the historic
Tigris, as they did when Assyria ruled the East, and recalling the
pictures I had formed of “Nineveh the great city” when as a boy I read
my first history of the Bible--a book that was to exert so paramount an
influence on the studies and thoughts of my after life--I asked myself,
“In what respect does my faith to-day differ from that which I held
three score years ago”? I had then, as Pasteur once said of himself
when at the zenith of his fame and mental vigor, the faith of a Breton
peasant.[377] Since that far-off time when I delighted to picture
the glories of Nineveh and Babylon and dwell on the famous campaigns
and victories, the superb palaces and entertainments of Sennacherib
and Assuerus and Nebuchadnezzar, I have striven to keep abreast with
the intellectual movement of my time and, in so doing, I have never
found anything in any of the new sciences that could by any legitimate
interpretation be construed as being at variance with the teachings of
the religion of my boyhood. We now know incomparably more about the
history, the social and economic condition of the ancient Assyrians
and Babylonians than we did before the explorer brought to light the
literary treasures of Nippur, Telloh, Abu-Habba, and Nineveh; but we
have discovered nothing which is competent to discredit any of the
eternal verities on which our faith is founded. The higher criticism
may, indeed, cause us to modify some of our views regarding literary or
textual problems, but as to the basal truths of Scripture, they stand
absolutely in all their divine immutability untouched and absolutely
unassailable. It was, indeed, with a feeling of joy and gratitude that
I could, sixty years after my first acquaintance with Nineveh, feel,
while contemplating the ruins of the famous city, that there was still
in my soul nothing changed of that faith of a Breton peasant--a faith
which, as it was my most precious inheritance in early youth, has
ever continued to be my greatest consolation from then to beyond the
Scriptural age of three score years and ten.
That the discoveries at Nineveh or elsewhere should ever prove to be
in conflict with revealed truth, has to me never seemed possible. How
could they be? Science and religion belong to entirely different
spheres of thought. They are as far separated from each other as are
the theories of electricity, of the constitution of matter, of the
origin of species, and of universal gravitation from the doctrines
of creation, redemption, Providence, sanctification. For this reason
I can now repeat as unreservedly as I did a quarter of a century ago
that “I am as firmly convinced as I can be of anything, that God is
the Lord of science, that science is the handmaid of religion, that
the two, speaking of the same Author, must voice the same testimony,
and that this testimony must be not only unequivocally true but also
unequivocally one.”[378]
When, therefore, the eminent Assyriologist, Friedrich Delitzsch, tells
us that “the conviction is becoming more general that it is the results
of the excavations in Babylonia and Assyria in particular, that are
destined to inaugurate a new epoch as regards both the way in which
we must understand the Old Testament and the estimate we must form of
it,”[379] we must tell him that our viewpoint will be unchanged in all
essential matters and that, whatever may be the future discoveries of
Assyriologists, all of them will eventually be harmonized with the
Bible and with the fundamental doctrines of the Church just as science
and religion have always been reconciled with each other from the days
of Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine of Hippo to those of Bossuet of Meaux
and Wiseman of Westminster.