Another change requires to be mentioned. Our readers will remember the

names of Ur, Erech, and many other cities which played a great part in the

early history of the country, and were all capitals in turn. Babylon,

however, in time acquired an unquestioned supremacy over them all. The

residence of the Assyrian viceroys during the supremacy of the northern

kingdom, it became the metropolis of the new empire after the fall of

Nineveh. Without having lost either their population or their prosperity,

the other cities sunk to the condition of provincial towns.

For some hundred years Babylon had been cruelly ill-treated by the

Assyrians, and never-ending revolts had been the consequence. Nabopolassar

began the work of restoration, and his son NEBUCHADNEZZAR, the real hero of

the Second Chaldee Empire, carried it on with ardour during the whole of

his long reign. "He restored the canals which united the Tigris to the

Euphrates above Babylon; he rebuilt the bridge which gave a means of

communication between the two halves of the city; he repaired the great

reservoirs in which the early kings had caught and stored the superfluous

waters of the Euphrates during the annual inundation. Upon these works his

prisoners of war, Syrians and Egyptians, Jews and Arabs, were employed in

vast numbers. The great wall of Babylon was set up anew; so was the temple

of Nebo at Borsippa; the reservoir at Sippara, the royal canal, and a part

at least of Lake Pallacopas, were excavated; Kouti, Sippara, Borsippa,

Babel, rose upon their own ruins. Nebuchadnezzar was to Chaldaea what

Rameses II. was to Egypt, and there is not a place in Babylon or about it

where his name and the signs of his marvellous activity cannot be

found."[80]

Nebuchadnezzar reigned forty-three years (604-561), and left Babylon the

largest and finest city of Asia. After his death the decadence was rapid. A

few years saw several kings succeed one another upon the throne, while a

revolution was being accomplished upon the plateau of Iran which was

destined to be fatal to Chaldaea. The supremacy in that region passed from

the feeble and exhausted Medes into the hands of the Persians, another

people of the same stock. The latter were a tribe of mountaineers teeming

with native energy, and their strength had been systematically organized by

a young and valiant chief, in whom they had full confidence because he had

given them confidence in themselves. CYRUS began by leading them to the

conquest of Media, Assyria, and Asia Minor, and by forcing the nations who

dwelt between the southern confines of Persia and the mountains of Upper

India to acknowledge his supremacy. Finally, he collected his forces for an

attack upon Chaldaea, and, in 536, Babylon fell before his arms.

* * * * *

And yet Babylon did not disappear from history in a day; she was not

destroyed, like Nineveh, by a single blow. Cyrus does not appear to have

injured her. She remained, under the Persian kings, one of the chief cities

of the empire. But she did not give up her habit of revolting whenever she

had a chance, and DARIUS, the son of Hystaspes, tired of besieging her,

ended by dismantling her fortifications, while XERXES went farther, and

pillaged her temples. But the chief buildings remained standing. Towards

the middle of the fifth century they excited the admiration of Herodotus,

and, fifty years later, that of Ctesias. Strabo, on the other hand, found

the place almost a desert.[81] Babylon had been ruined by the foundation of

Seleucia, on the Tigris, at a distance of rather more than thirty miles

from the ancient capital. Struck by the beauty of its monuments and the

advantages of its site, ALEXANDER projected the restoration of Babylon, and

proposed to make it his habitual residence; but he died before his

intention could be carried out, and SELEUCUS NICATOR preferred to build a

town which should be called after himself, and should at least perpetuate

his name. The new city had as many as six hundred thousand inhabitants.

Under the Parthians Ctesiphon succeeded to Seleucia, to be replaced in its

turn by Bagdad, the Arab metropolis of the caliphs. This latest comer upon

the scene would have equalled its predecessors in magnificence had the

routes of commerce not changed so greatly since the commencement of the

modern era, and, above all, had the Turks not been masters of the country.

There can be no doubt that the next generation will see the civilization of

the West repossess itself of the fertile plains in which it was born and

nursed, and a railway carried from the shores of the Mediterranean to those

of the Persian Gulf. Such a road would be the most direct route from Europe

to India, and its construction would awake Chaldaea to the feverish activity

of our modern life. Peopled, irrigated, and tilled into her remotest

corners, she would again become as prolific as of old. Her station upon the

wayside would soon change her towns into cities as populous as those of

Nebuchadnezzar, and we may even guess that her importance in the future

would reduce her past to insignificance, and would make her capital such a

Babylon as the world has not yet seen.

NOTES:

[57] TH. NOELDEKE, _Histoire litteraire de l'ancien Testament_, French

version. See chapter vii.

[58] This account of the fabulous origin of civilization in Chaldaea and

Assyria will be found in the second book of BEROSUS. See _Fragmenta

Historicorum Graecorum_ of Ch. MUeLLER, vol. i. fr. 4, 13. Book i. is

consecrated to the cosmogony, Book iii. to the Second Chaldee Empire.

[59] _Genesis_ xiv.

[60] F. LENORMANT, _Manuel de l'Histoire ancienne_, vol. ii. p. 24. SMITH

(_Assyrian Discoveries_, p. 224) puts the capture of Susa in 645, and thus

arrives at the date 2280 B.C.

[61] LENORMANT, _Manuel de l'Histoire ancienne_, vol. ii. p. 65, gives an

account of the system under which special magistrates gave their name to

each year, and of the lists which have been preserved.

[62] This was lately found at Bagdad after long being supposed to be lost.

It is now in the British Museum.

[63] It was visited under the best conditions, and has been best described

by W. KENNETH LOFTUS who was in it from 1849 to 1852. Attached as geologist

to the English mission, commanded by Colonel, afterwards General Sir

Fenwick Williams of Kars, which was charged with the delimitation of the

Turco-Persian frontier, he was accompanied by sufficient escorts and could

stay wherever he pleased. He was an ardent traveller and excellent

observer, and science experienced a real loss in his death. The only work

which he has left behind him may still be read with pleasure and profit,

namely, _Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana, with an Account of

Excavations at Warka, the "Ereich" of Nimrod, and Shush, "Shushan the

palace" of Esther_, 8vo, London: 1857. The articles contributed by J. E.

TAYLOR, English vice-consul at Bassorah, to vol. xv. of the _Journal of the

Asiatic Society_ (1855), may also be read with advantage. He passed over

the same ground, and also made excavations at certain points in Lower

Chaldaea which were passed over by Mr. Loftus. Finally, M. de Sarzec, the

French consul at Bassorah, to whom we owe the curious series of Chaldaean

objects which have lately increased the riches of the Louvre, was enabled

to explore the same region through the friendship of a powerful Arab chief.

It is much to be desired that he should give us a complete account of his

sojourn and of the searches he carried on.

[64] LENORMANT, _Manuel de l'Histoire ancienne_, vol. ii. p. 30.

[65] J. MENANT, _Inscriptions de Hammourabi, Roi de Babylone_; 1863, Paris.

These inscriptions are the oldest documents in phonetic character that have

come down to us. See OPPERT, _Expedition scientifique_, vol. i. p. 267.

[66] KER PORTER, _Travels in Georgia, Persia_, etc., 4to., vol. ii. p. 390.

LAYARD, _Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon_, p. 535.

"Alexander, after he had transferred the seat of his empire to the east, so

fully understood the importance of these great works that he ordered them

to be cleansed and repaired and superintended the work in person, steering

his boat with his own hands through the channels."

[67] This palace was the one called the _North-western Palace_.

[68] LAYARD, _The Monuments of Nineveh, from Drawings made on the spot,

Illustrated in one Hundred Plates_ (large folio, London: 1849), plates

53-56.

[69] It is now called the _Central Palace at Nimroud_.

[70] The chief work upon this period, the most brilliant and the best known

in Assyrian history, is the _Faites de Sargon_ of MM. OPPERT and MENANT

(Paris: 1865).

[71] The palace occupied the whole of the south-western angle of the mound.

[72] MASPERO (_Histoire ancienne_, p. 431) refers us to the authors by whom

the inscription, in which these relations between the kings of Lydia and

Assyria are recounted, was translated and explained. The chief of these is

George SMITH, who, in his _History of Assurbanipal_, has brought together

and commented upon the different texts from which we learn the facts of

this brilliant reign. The early death of this young scholar can never be

too much regretted. In spite of his comparative youth he added much to our

knowledge of Assyria, and, moreover, to him belongs the credit of having

recognized the true character of the Cypriot alphabet.

[73] RAWLINSON, _The Five Great Monarchies_, vol. ii. p. 196.

[74] The _Northern Palace_.

[75] This library has always attracted the attention of Assyriologists, and

the best preserved of its texts have been published at various times under

the supervision of Sir Henry RAWLINSON and George SMITH. These texts have

been translated into English, French, and German, and much discussed by the

scholars of all three nations. The reader may also consult the small volume

contributed by M. J. MENANT to the _Bibliotheque oriental elzevirienne_

under the title: _La Bibliotheque du Palais de Ninive_. 1 vol. 18mo., 1880

Ernest Leroux.

[76] HERODOTUS, i. 106.

[77] HERODOTUS (i. 106) alludes to this capital event only in a word or

two, in which he promises to give a more complete account of the whole

matter in another work--en heteroisi logoisi--doubtless in that _History of

Assyria_ ("Assurioi logoi" i. 184) which was either never written or soon

lost. Diodorus, who gives circumstantial details both of the coalition and

the siege, dates it a century too early, changes all the names, and mixes

up many fables with his recital (ii. 23-28). In forming a just idea of the

catastrophe and of its date we have to depend chiefly upon the lost

historians, such as Abydenus and Alexander Polyhistor, fragments of whose

works have been preserved for us by Eusebius and Georgius Syncellus. See

RAWLINSON, _The Five Great Monarchies_, etc., vol. ii. pp. 221-232.

[78] _Nahum_ ii. 11; iii. 1, 7.

[79] LAYARD, _Nineveh and its Remains_, vol. ii. pp. 38-39. _Discoveries_,

p. 655.

[80] MASPERO, _Histoire ancienne_, p. 506.

[81] STRABO, xvi. i. 5.

Sec. 6.--_The Chaldaean Religion._

We know much less about the religion of Chaldaea than about that of Egypt.

The religious monuments of Mesopotamia are much fewer than those of the

Nile valley, and their significance is less clear. Their series are neither

so varied nor so complete as those of the earlier civilization. Certain

orders of subjects are repeated to satiety, while others, which would be

more interesting, are completely absent.

It is in funerary inscriptions that the heart of man, touched by the

mystery of the tomb, lays bare its aspirations with the greatest frankness

and simplicity. Moved by the desire to escape annihilation on the one hand

and posthumous sufferings on the other, it is there that he addresses his

most ardent appeals to the supreme power, and allows us to arrive at a

clear understanding of his ideas as to the action, the character, and the

power of the divinity. At Memphis, Abydos, and Thebes, documents of this

kind have been found in thousands, the figures accompanying them serving as

commentaries upon their text, and helping us to clear up all doubts as to

their nature. We thus have voices speaking from the depths of every

Egyptian tomb; but the Chaldaean sepulchre is mute. It has neither

inscriptions, nor bas-reliefs, nor paintings. No Assyrian burial-place has

yet been found.

Dedications, phrases of homage to this or that divinity, the names and

distinguishing epithets of the gods, all these have been met with in

Mesopotamia; sometimes _in situ_, as artistic decorations, sometimes in

engraved fragments of unknown origin. We may say the same of the different

divine types. Sometimes we find them in monumental sculpture, more often on

those seals which we call _cylinders_. But how obscure, incomplete, and

poor such documents are in comparison with the long pages of hieroglyphs in

which the Pharaohs address their gods or make them speak for themselves!

How infinitely inferior in expression and significance to the vast pictures

which cover the walls of the Theban temples and bring all the persons of

the Egyptian pantheon before us in their turn! What hope is there that

excavations in Chaldaea and Assyria will ever provide us with such remains

as those groups of statues which fill our museums, in which the effigy of a

single god is repeated hundreds of times with every variation of type,

pose, and attribute given to it by the Egyptian theosophy? On the one hand,

what abundance, we may say what super-abundance; on the other, what

poverty, what gaping breaches in the chain of material history! Among the

gods and genii, whose names have come down to us, how few there are whose

images we can surely point to; and, again, what a small number of figures

we have upon which we can put a name without fear of error!

To write the history of these beliefs is a difficult task, not only because

the _idols_, as they would once have been called, are few, and the

Chaldaeo-Assyrian inscriptions historical and narrative rather than

religious and dogmatic, but also because the interpretation of the texts,

especially of the most ancient, is much less advanced than that of the

hieroglyphs. When documents in the old language, or at least written in the

primitive ideographic characters, are attacked, the process is one of

divination rather than of translation in the strict sense of the word.

Another difficulty has to be noticed; classic literature does little or

nothing to help us in filling up these voids and dissipating the

obscurities they cause. The Greeks were guilty of many errors when they

attempted to understand and describe foreign religions, but their relations

with the Egyptians and Phoenicians were so prolonged, and, towards the end,

so intimate, that at last they did succeed in grasping some of the doctrine

taught in the sanctuaries of Heliopolis and Thebes, of Byblos and

Hierapolis. With their lively intellects they could hardly frequent the

temples, examine the sacred images, and question the priests as to the

national rites and ceremonies without discovering at least a part of the

truth. It was not so with Chaldaea. Babylon was too far off. Until the time

of Alexander's conquests the boldest travellers did no more than glance

into its streets and monumental buildings, and by that time Nineveh had

long ceased to exist. It was only under the first of the Seleucidae, when a

Macedonian kingdom was established in the centre of Mesopotamia, that the

curiosity of the Greeks led them to make inquiries similar to those they

had pursued for some three centuries in the valley of the Nile. We cannot

doubt that this desire for information arose among the followers of those

princes themselves; many of them were very intelligent men; and when

Berosus determined to write his history in Greek, he may have wished to

answer the questions asked in his hearing by the Greek writers and

philosophers; by those Alexandrians who were not all at Alexandria.

Unfortunately, nearly the whole of his work has been lost.

At the end of a century and a half Babylon shook off Hellenism, and

Mesopotamia fell into the hands of the Parthians. These people affected, in

some degree, the poetry and arts of Greece, but at bottom they were nothing

more than Oriental barbarians. Their capital, Ctesiphon, seems never to

have attracted learned men, nor ever to have been a seat of those inquiries

into the past of the older races in which the cultured cities of the Greek

world took so great a pleasure. When Rome became the heir of Greece and the

perpetuator of her traditions, we may believe that, under Trajan, she set

about establishing herself in the country; but she soon found it necessary

to withdraw within the Euphrates, and it was her loss when the Parthians

fell from power to be succeeded in the lordship of Mesopotamia by the

Sassanids.[82]

We see, then, that, with the exception of one short period, Chaldaea was

what the Greeks called a barbarous country after the fall of its native

royalty, and that it will help us little in our endeavour to grasp the

nature and extent of its religious beliefs. The last of the Athenian

philosophers, Damascius, has certainly left us some information as to the

Babylonish deities which seems to have been taken from authentic

sources.[83] This, together with a few fragments from the work of Berosus,

is all that Hellenic tradition has handed down to us. There is nothing here

which can be even remotely compared to the treatises upon Isis and Osiris

and the Goddess of Syria preserved under the names of PLUTARCH and LUCIAN.

But we cannot enter upon the discussion of Chaldaean art without making an

effort to describe the gist of the national religion and its principal

personages. In every country the highest function of art is to translate

the religious conceptions of its people into visible forms. The architect,

the sculptor, the painter, each in his own fashion, carries out this idea;

the first by the dimensions he gives to his temples, by their plan, and by

the decoration of their walls; the second and third by their choice of

feature, expression and attribute for the images in which the gods become

visible to the people. The clearness and precision with which this

embodiment of an idea is carried out will depend upon the natural aptitudes

of the race and the assistance it receives from the capabilities of the

materials at hand. Plastic creations, from their very nature, must always

be inferior to the thought they are meant to express; by no means can they

go beyond it. This truth is nowhere more striking than in the art of

Greece. Fortunately we are there able to see how a single theme is treated,

in the first place, in poetry,--the interpreter of the popular

beliefs,--and afterwards in art; we can discover how Phidias and

Praxiteles, to speak only of sculptors, treated the types created by Homer

and Hesiod. In the case of Chaldaea we have no such opportunity. She has

left us neither monuments of sacerdotal theology like those we have

inherited in such countless numbers from Egypt, nor the brilliant imagery

in which the odes and epics of the Greeks sketched the personalities of

the gods. But even in Chaldaea art was closely united with religion, and, in

spite of the difficulty of the task, the historian of art must endeavour to

pierce the shadows that obscure the question, and discover the bond of

union between the two.

Thanks to the more recently deciphered texts, we do know something of the

religious rites and beliefs of the oldest nation that inhabited Mesopotamia

and left its trace in history. Whether we call them Accads or Sumirs, or by

both names at once, we know that to them the whole universe was peopled by

a vast crowd of spirits, some dwelling in the depths of the earth, some in

the sea, while others floated on the wind and lighted in the sky the fires

of the day and night.[84]

As, among men, some are good and some bad, so among these spirits some were

beneficent and others the reverse, while a third class was helpful or

mischievous according as it was propitiated by offerings or irritated by

neglect. The great thing was to know how to command the services of the

spirits when they were required. The employment of certain gestures,

sounds, and articulate words had a mysterious but irresistible effect upon

these invisible beings. How the effect was produced no one asked, but that

it was produced no one doubted. The highest of the sciences was magic, for

it held the threads by which the denizens of the invisible world were

controlled; the master of the earth was the sorcerer who could compel them

to obey him by a nod, a form of words, or an incantation. We can form some

idea of the practical results of such a system from what we know of the

manners and social condition of those Turanian races in Asiatic Russia who

profess what is called _chamanism_, and from the condition of most of the

negro tribes and Polynesian islanders. Among all these people, who still

remain in a mental condition from which the rest of the species has long

escaped, we find the highest places occupied by priest-magicians. Now and

then popular fury makes them pay cruelly for the ill-success of their

conjurations, but as a rule their persons and the illimitable power

ascribed to them inspire nothing but abject fear.

Fear is, indeed, the ruling sentiment in all religions in which a belief in

spirits finds a place. A man can never be sure that, in spite of all his

precautions, he has not incurred the displeasure of such exacting and

capricious masters. Some condition of the bargain which is being

perpetually driven with protectors who give nothing for nothing, may have

been unwittingly omitted. "The spirits and their worshippers are equally

selfish. As a general rule, the mischievous spirits receive more homage

than the good ones; those who are believed to live close at hand are more

dreaded than those at a distance; those to whom some special _role_ is

assigned are considered more important than spirits with a wider but less

definite authority."[85]

There were, of course, moments when men turned with gratitude towards the

hidden benefactor to whom they believed themselves indebted for some

unhoped-for cure or unexpected success, when joy and confidence moved their

hearts at the thought of the efficacious protection they had secured

against future ills; but such moments were few and short. The habitual

feeling was one of disquietude, we might almost say of terror, so that when

the imagination endeavoured to give concrete forms to the beings in

question, it figured them rather as objects of fear than love. The day

arrived for art to attempt the material realization of the dreams which

until then had been dimly seen in sleep or in the still more confused

visions of the waking hours, and for this hideous and threatening features

were naturally chosen. It is thus that the numerous figures of demons found

in Chaldaea and Assyria, sometimes in the bas-reliefs, sometimes in the

shape of small bronzes and terra-cottas, are accounted for. A human body is

crowned with the head of an angry lion, with dog's ears and a horse's mane;

the hands brandish long poignards, the feet are replaced by those of a bird

of prey, the extended claws seeming to grasp the soil (Fig. 6). The

gestures vary; the right arm is sometimes stretched downwards at full

length, sometimes bent at the elbow, but the combination of forms, the

character of the figure and its intention is always the same. We shall

encounter this type again when we come to speak of Cappadocia.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Demons; from the palace of Assurbanipal at

Kouyundjik. British Museum. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

This belief in spirits is the second phase that the primitive religion,

which we studied in Egypt under the name of _fetishism_ or _animism_, has

to pass through.[86] In the beginning mere existence is confounded with

life. All things are credited with a soul like that felt by man within

himself. Such lifeless objects as stones and mountains, trees and rivers,

are worshipped; so too are both useful and noxious animals.[87] Childish as

it seems to us the worship of spirits is at least an advance upon this. It

presupposes a certain power of reflection and abstraction by which men were

led to conclude that intelligence and will are not necessarily bound up

with a body that can be seen and touched. Life has been mobilized, if we

may use such a phrase, and thus we arrive at _polydemonism_; by which we

mean the theory that partitions the government of the world among a crowd

of genii, who, though often at war among themselves, are always more

powerful than man, and may do him much harm unless he succeeds in winning

their help and good will.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Demons. Louvre.]

The worship of stars is but one form of this religious conception. The

great luminaries of night and day were of course invested with life and

power by men who felt themselves in such complete dependence upon them.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Eagle-headed divinity, from Nimroud. Louvre.

Alabaster. Height forty inches. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

So far as we can judge, the primitive form of fetishism left but feeble

traces in the religion of civilized Chaldaea and Assyria. The signs are few

of that worship of sacred stones which played such an important part among

the Semites of the west, and even among the Greeks,[88] neither can we find

that either fear or gratitude ever led to the worship of animals, the

docile helpers or the redoubtable enemies of man, in the same degree as it

did in Egypt. And yet Chaldaea and Assyria followed the example of Egypt in

mixing up the forms of men with those of animals in their sacred statues.

This we know both from the texts and the figured monuments. But it was not

only in the budding art of a primitive population that such combinations

were employed, and it was not only the inferior genii that were

represented in such singular fashion. When, by the development of religion,

the capricious and unruly multitude of spirits had been placed under the

supremacy of a small number of superior beings, these, whom we may call the

sovereign gods, were often figured with the heads of lions or eagles (see

Fig. 8). Before any of these images had been found we already knew from

Berosus what the deity was like by whom the first germs of art and letters

had been sown upon the earth. "He had the whole body of a fish, but beneath

his fish's head he had another head [that of a man], while human feet

appeared below his fish's tail. He had also the voice of a man, and his

images are yet to be found."[89] More than one sculptural type has been

found answering to this description (see Fig. 9).

[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Anou or Dagon. Nimroud. Layard, _Discoveries_, p.

350.]

Why did art, in creating divine types, give such prominence to features

borrowed from the lower animals? Was it impelled by mere inability to

distinguish, by varieties of feature, form and attitude, between the

different gods created by the imagination? Or must we look upon the

attribution to this or that deity, of forms borrowed from the bull, the

lion, or the eagle, as a deliberate act of symbolism, meant to suggest that

the gods in question had the qualities of the animals of which their

persons were partly made up? In order to arrive at a just conclusion we

must, of course, take account both of the resistance of the material and of

the facilities which a transparent system of allegory would give to the

artist in the working out of his thought; we must also admit perhaps that

the national intelligence had been prepared to look for and admire such

combinations. It may have been predisposed towards them by the habits of

admiration for the patient strength of the draught-ox and the destructive

vigour of the eagle and the lion contracted during a long series of years.

Both historical analogy and the examination of sculptured types lead us to

think that the tribes of Mesopotamia passed through the same religious

phases as those of the Nile valley, but it would appear that the most

primitive beliefs were less long-lived in Chaldaea than in Egypt, and that

they were engraved less deeply upon the heart of the nation.

The belief in sorcery never died out in Chaldaea; up to the very last days

of antiquity it never lost its empire at least over the lower orders of the

people. As time passed on the priests joined the practice of astrology to

that of magic. How the transition took place may readily be understood. The

magician began by seeking for incantations sufficiently powerful to compel

not only the vulgar crowd of genii to obedience, but also those who, in the

shape of stars great and small, inhabited the celestial spaces and revealed

themselves to man by the brilliance of their fires. Supposing him to be

well skilled in his art his success would be beyond doubt so far as his

clients were concerned.

Many centuries after the birth of this singular delusion even the Greeks

and Romans did not refuse to believe that magic formulae had sometimes the

powers claimed for them. "Incantation," cries an abandoned lover in Virgil,

"may bring down the very moon from the sky:"

"_Carmina vel caelo possunt deducere lunam._"[90]

Although simple minds allowed themselves to believe that such prodigies

were not quite impossible, skilled men could not have failed to see that in

spite of the appeals addressed to them by priests and magicians, neither

sun nor moon had ever quitted their place in the firmament or interrupted

their daily course. As the hope of influencing the action of the stars died

away, the wish to study their motions grew stronger. In the glorious nights

of Chaldaea the splendour of the sky stirred the curiosity as well as the

admiration of mankind, and the purity of the air made observation easy.

Here and there, in the more thickly inhabited and best irrigated parts of

the plain, gentle mists floated over the earth at certain periods, but they

were no real hindrance to observation. To escape them but a slight

elevation above the plain was required. Let the observer raise himself a

few feet above the tallest palm trees, and no cloud interposed to prevent

his eyes from travelling from the fires that blazed in the zenith to the

paler stars that lay clustered upon the horizon. There were no accidents of

the ground by which the astronomer could lift himself above the smoke of

cities or the mists hanging over the lakes and canals, and to make up for

their absence the massive and many-storied towers which men began to

construct as soon as they understood how to make bricks and set them, must

soon have come into use. These towers were built upon artificial mounds

which were in themselves higher than the highest house or palm. The

platforms on their summits gave therefore the most favourable conditions

possible for the interrogation of the heavens before the invention of the

telescope.[91]

Thanks to the climate and to these great observatories which rose very

early in Chaldaean history all over the plain, the skies could be read like

an open book; and the Chaldaeans were fond of such reading, because it

afforded them, as they thought, a sure means of predicting the future. They

had no great belief in the power of their most formidable conjurations to

affect the majestic regularity of the heavenly movements--a regularity

which must have impressed each generation more strongly than the last, as

it compared its own experience with the registered observations of those

that had gone before it. But they could not persuade themselves that the

powerful genii who guided those great bodies on their unending voyage could

be indifferent to the destinies of man, and that there was no bond of

union, no mysterious connection, between him and them. They pretended to

discover this hidden bond. When a child uttered its first cry, an intimate

relation, they declared, was established between the new life and some one

of the countless bodies that people space. The impassive star, they said,

governed the life and fortune of the mortal who, perhaps, ignorantly looked

upon himself as his own master and the master of some of those about him.

The future of each man was decided by the character of the star that

presided at his birth, and according to the position occupied by it in the

sky at the time of any important action of his life, that action would be

fortunate in its issue or the reverse.[92] These statements contain the

germ of all the future developments of astrology. Among all civilized

peoples this imaginary science has at last fallen from its former repute.

From the remotest antiquity down to the end of the sixteenth century, and,

in some places, to a much later date, it enjoyed a rare power and prestige.

Traces of these are yet to be found in more than one familiar expression

recalling the beliefs and ideas that took shape in the plains of

Mesopotamia long before the palaces of Babylon and Nineveh were raised upon

the banks of its two great rivers.

Astrology could not fail to smooth the way for astronomy, its successor. In

order to profit by the indications of the stars, it was necessary to

foresee the positions they would occupy in the sky on a given day or hour.

There are many undertakings which succeed only when they are carefully

matured. If some great risk is to be run, it is not of much use to receive

the advice and warnings of the stars at the last moment, when the decisive

step has, perhaps, been made, and no retreat is possible. It would then be

too late to think about the chances of success, and a sudden withdrawal

from an action already begun or an equally sudden acceptance of a task for

which no sufficient preparation had been made, would be the too frequent

result.

There was only one mode of escaping such a danger or embarrassment as this,

and that was, first, to arrive by repeated observation at an exact

knowledge of the route followed by the stars across the sky, and of the

rapidity of their march; secondly, to distinguish them one from another, to

know each by its own name, to recognize its physiognomy, character, and

habits. The first duty of the astrologer was to prepare such an inventory,

and to discover the principle of these movements; then, and then only,

would he be in a position to give a satisfactory answer to one asking where

any particular star would be at the end of any specified number of days,

weeks, or months. Thanks to such information, his client could fix upon

some happy conjunction of the heavenly bodies, or at least avoid a moment

when their influence would be on the side of disaster. In every undertaking

of any importance the most favourable hour could be selected long before by

the person chiefly concerned, the hour in which his star would be in the

best quarter of the sky and in the most propitious relations with its

neighbours.

The phenomena produced in Chaldaea by these studies have been repeated more

than once in the history of civilization; they embody one of those

surprises to which humanity owes much of its progress. The final object of

all this patient research was never reached, because the relations upon

which a belief in its feasibility was based were absolutely chimerical, but

as a compensation, the accessory and preliminary knowledge, the mere means

to a futile end, have been of incalculable value. Thus, in order to give an

imposing and apparently solid basis to their astrological doctrines, the

Chaldaeans invented such a numeration as would permit really intricate

computations to be made. By the aid of this system they sketched out all

the great theories of astronomy at a very early age. In the course of a few

centuries, they carried that science to a point never reached by the

Egyptians.[93]

The chief difficulty in the way of a complete explanation of the Chaldaean

system of arithmetic lies in the interpretation of the symbols which served

it for ciphers, which is all the greater as it would seem that they had

several different ways of writing a single number. In some cases the

notation varied according to the purpose of the calculation. A

mathematician used one system for his own studies, and another for

documents which had to be read by the public. The doubts attending the

question are gradually being resolved, however, by the combined efforts of

Assyriologists and mathematicians. At the beginning of their civilization

the Chaldaeans did as other peoples have done when they have become

dissatisfied with that mere rough opposition of unity to plurality which is

enough for savage races, and have attempted to establish the series of

numbers and to define their properties. "They also began by counting on

their fingers, by _fives_ and _tens_, or in other words by units of _five_;

later on they adopted a notation by _sixes_ and _twelves_ as an improvement

upon the primitive system, in which the chief element, the _ten_, could be

divided neither into three nor four equal parts."[94] Two regular series

were thus formed, one in units of six, the other in units of five. Their

commonest terms were, of course, those that occur in both series. We know

from the Greek writers that the Chaldaeans counted time by _sosses_ of

sixty, by _ners_ of 600, and by _sars_ of 3,600, years, and these terms

were not reserved for time, they were employed for all kinds of quantities.

The _sosse_ could be looked at either as _five twelves_ or _six tens_. So,

too, with the _ner_ (600) which represents _six hundreds_, or a _sosse_ of

_tens_, or _ten sosses_ or _fifty twelves_. The _sar_ may be analysed in a

similar fashion.

A system of numeration was thus established which may be looked at from a

double point of view; in the first place from its _sexagesimal_ base, which

certainly adapts itself to various requirements with greater ease than any

other;[95] in the second from the extreme facility with which not only

addition, but all kinds of complex calculations may be made by its use.[96]

With but two symbols, one for the units, the other for the tens, every

number could be expressed by attending to a rule of position like that

governing our written numeration; at each step to the left, a single sign,

the vertical _wedge_, increased sixty-fold in value; the tens were placed

beside it, and a blank in this or that column answered to our zero.

Founded upon a sexagesimal numeration, the metrical system of Babylon and

Nineveh was "the most scientific of all those known and practised by the

ancients: until the elaboration of the French metrical system, it was the

only one whose every part was scientifically co-ordinated, and of which the

fundamental conception was the natural development of all measures of

superficies, of capacity, or of weight, from one single unit of length, a

conception which was adopted as a starting point by the French commission

of weights and measures."

The cubit of 525 millimetres was the base of the whole system.[97] We shall

not here attempt to explain how the other measures--itinerary, agrarian, of

capacity, of weight--were derived from the cubit; to call attention to the

traces left in our nomenclature by the duodecimal or sexagesimal system of

the Babylonians, even after the complete triumph of the decimal system, is

sufficient for our purposes. It is used for instance in the division of the

circle into degrees, minutes, and seconds, in the division of the year into

months, and of the day into hours and their fractions.

This convenient, exact, and highly developed system of arithmetic and

metrology enabled the Chaldaeans to make good use of their observations, and

to extract from them a connected astronomical doctrine. They began by

registering the phenomena. They laid out a map of the heavens and

recognized the difference between fixed stars and those movable bodies the

Greeks called planets--among the latter they naturally included the sun and

the moon, the most conspicuous of them all both in size and motion, whose

courses were the first to be studied and described. The apparent march of

the sun through the crowded ranks of the celestial army was defined, and

its successive stages marked by those twelve constellations which are still

called the _Signs of the Zodiac_. In time even these observations were

excelled, and it now appears certain that the Chaldaeans recognized the

annual displacement of the equinoctial point upon the ecliptic, a discovery

that is generally attributed to the Greek astronomers. But, like

Hipparchus, they made faults of calculation in consequence of the defects

of their instruments.[98]

It was the same with the moon. They succeeded in determining its mean daily

movements, and when they had established a period of two hundred and

twenty-three lunations, they contrived to foretell its eclipses. Eclipses

of the sun presented greater difficulties, and the Chaldaeans were content

with noting their occurrence. They were acquainted with the solar year of

three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter; they used it in their

astronomical calculations; but their religious and civil year was one

composed of twelve lunar months, alternately full and short, that is, of

twenty-nine and thirty days respectively. The lunar and solar years were

brought into agreement by an intercalary cycle of eight years.[99]

The assertion of the philosopher Simplicius has been called in question for

very plausible reasons. Simplicius declares, upon the faith of Porphyrius,

that Callisthenes sent from Babylon to his uncle Aristotle, a copy of

Chaldaean observations dating back as far as 1903 years before the entry of

Alexander into Mesopotamia, that is, to more than twenty-two centuries

before our era.[100]

However this may be, all ancient writers are agreed in admitting that the

Chaldaeans had begun to observe and record astronomical phenomena long

before the Egyptians;[101] moreover the remains of those clay tablets have

been found in various parts of Chaldaea and Assyria upon which, as Pliny

tells us upon the authority of the Greek astronomer Epigenes, the Chaldaeans

had inscribed and preserved the astronomical observations of seven hundred

and eighty thousand years.[102] We need not dwell upon the enormity of this

figure; it matters little whether it is due to the mistakes of a copyist or

to the vanity of the Chaldaeans, and the too ready credulity of the Greeks;

the important point is the existence of the astronomical tablets, and

those Epigenes himself saw. The library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh included

catalogues of stellary and planetary observations, among others the times

of Venus, Jupiter and Mars, and the phases of the moon, for every day in

the month.[103] Tablets have also been recently discovered giving the

arrangement of the stars in the sky for each season and explaining the rule

to be followed in the insertion of the intercalary months. Finally, a

fragment of an Assyrian planisphere has been found in the palace of

Sennacherib.[104]

Even if classic authors had been silent on the subject, and all the

original documents had disappeared, we might have divined from the

appearance of the figured monuments alone, how greatly the Chaldaeans

honoured the stars and how much study and research they devoted to them; we

might have guessed that they lived with their eyes fixed upon the firmament

and upon the sources of light. Look at the steles that bear royal effigies,

at the representations upon contracts and other documents of that kind (see

Fig. 10), at the cylindrical or conical seals which have gravitated in

thousands into our museums (Figs. 11 and 12); you will see a personage

adoring a star, still oftener you will find the sun's disk and the crescent

moon figured upon the field, with, perhaps, one or several stars. These

images are only omitted upon reliefs that are purely narrative and

historical, like most of those in the Assyrian palaces. Everywhere else,

upon every object and in every scene having a religious and sacred

character, a place is reserved for the symbols in question, if we may call

them so. Their presence is evidence of the homage rendered by the Chaldaeans

to the stars, and of the faith they placed in their supposed revelations.

Further evidence to the same effect is given by the ancient writing, in

which the ideogram for _king_ was a star.

"The imaginations of the Egyptians were mainly impressed by the daily and

annual circlings of the sun. In that body they saw the most imposing

manifestation of the Deity and the clearest exemplification of the laws

that govern the world; to it, therefore they turned for their

personifications of the divine power."[105] The attention of the Chaldaeans,

on the other hand, was not so absorbed, and, so to speak, lost, in the

contemplation of a single star, superior though it was to all others in

its power for good or ill, and in its incomparable splendour. They watched

the sky with a curiosity too lively and too intelligent to permit of a

willing sacrifice of all the stars to one. _Samas_, the sun, and _Sin_, the

moon-god, played an important _role_ in their religion and theology, but it

does not appear that the gods of the other five planets were inferior to

them in rank. If we accept the parallels established by the Greeks and

Romans, these were _Adar_ (Saturn), _Merodach_ (Jupiter), _Nergal_ (Mars),

_Istar_ (Venus), and _Nebo_ (Mercury).

[Illustration: FIG. 10.--Stone of Merodach-Baladan I. (Smith's _Assyrian

Discoveries_).]

The chief atmospheric phenomena were also personified; of this we may give

one example. All travellers in Chaldaea agree in their descriptions of those

sudden storms which burst on the country from a clear sky, especially

towards the commencement of summer. Without a single premonitory symptom, a

huge, black water-spout advances from some point on the horizon, its flanks

shooting lightnings and thunder. In a few minutes it reaches the traveller

and wraps him in its black vapours; the sand-laden wind blinds him, the

rain pours upon him in solid sheets; but he has hardly realized his

position before the storm is past and the sun is again shining in the blue

depths above. But for torn and overthrown tents and trees uprooted or

struck by the electric fluid, a stranger to the country might almost

believe himself to have been the sport of a dream.[106]

[Illustration: FIG. 11.--Assyrian Cylinder, in the National Library, Paris.

Jasper.]

[Illustration: FIG. 12.--Assyrian Cylinder, in the National Library, Paris.

Serpentine.]

The force and suddenness of these visitations could hardly fail to impress

the imagination of a people exposed to them, and it is not surprising that

Mesopotamia had its god of storms and thunder. He, Raman, it is, perhaps,

who is figured in the bas-relief from Nimroud reproduced below (Figs. 13

and 14),[107] in which a god appears bearing an axe in his right hand, and,

in his left, a kind of faggot, whose significance might have escaped us but

for the light thrown upon it by classic sculpture. The latter no doubt

borrowed a well-known form from the east, and the object in question is

nothing less than the thunderbolt given by Greek artists to their Zeus.

[Illustration: FIG. 13.--Gods carried in procession; from Layard's

_Monuments of Nineveh_, first series, pl. 65.]

It was this adoration of the stars and planets that led by degrees to what

we call polytheism. Man partitioned those terrible powers of nature of

which he felt himself the sport, between a vast number of agents, between

crowds of genii upon whose mercies he thought himself dependent, and whom

he did his best to propitiate by gifts and to compel by magic. Little by

little, intelligence perfected that work of abstraction and simplification

by which all races but those who have stuck fast in the conceptions of

their infancy have arrived at a single conclusion. Without ceasing to

believe in the existence of genii, they invented the gods, a race of beings

far more powerful, not only than short-lived man, but even than the

confused army of demons, of those beings who enjoyed the control of not a

few of the mysterious agencies whose apparent conflict and final accord are

the causes of the life, movement, and equilibrium of the world.

[Illustration: FIG. 14.--Gods carried in procession; from Layard's

_Monuments of Nineveh_, first series, pl. 65.]

When the intellect had arrived at this doctrine, calmness and serenity fell

upon it. Each deity became a person with certain well-defined powers and

attributes, a person who could not escape the apprehension and the appeals

of mankind with the facility of the changing and fantastic crowd of demons.

His dwelling-place could be pointed out to the faithful, whether it were in

his own peculiar star, among the eternal snows upon the summits of the

distant mountains, or near at hand, in the temple built for him by his

worshippers. Such a deity could be approached like a sovereign whose honour

and interest are bound up with his word. So long as by prayer, and still

more by sacrifices, the conditions were observed on the suppliant's side,

the god, invisible though he was, would do his duty and protect those with

whom he had entered into an unwritten contract.

But in order to establish this mutual relationship between gods and men, it

was necessary that the former should be brought within reach of the

latter. With the development of the religious sentiment and of definite and

clear ideas as to the gods, the plastic faculty was called upon for greater

efforts than it had before made.

Something beside grimacing and monstrous images of genii was asked from it.

Figures were demanded which should embody something of the nobility and

majesty attributed to the eternal masters of the world. The divine effigy

was the incarnation of the deity, was one of the forms in which he

manifested himself, it was, as the Egyptians would say, one of his

_doubles_. Such an effigy was required to afford a worthy frame for the

supreme dignity of the god, and the house built by man's hands in which he

condescended to dwell had to be such that its superior magnificence should

distinguish it at a glance from the comparatively humble dwellings in which

mortals passed their short and fugitive lives.

It was thus that the temples and statues of the gods took form when the

various deities began to be clearly distinguished from one another, and, by

a process of mental condensation, to acquire a certain amount of

consistence and solidity. The Chaldaean temples, unlike those of Egypt and

Greece, have succumbed to time, and the ancient texts in which they are

described are short and obscure. Their ruins are little more than shapeless

heaps of _debris_. In endeavouring to arrive at a clear understanding of

the Chaldaean notions as to the gods, we are unable to study, as we did

elsewhere, the forms of their religious edifices, with their plans,

dimensions, and the instructive variety of decorative symbols and figures

with which the sanctuary and its dependencies were overspread.

On the other hand a sufficient number of figures of the gods have come down

to us. They abound upon small objects, such as cylinders, engraved stones,

cones, scarabaei, the bezels of rings, terra-cotta tablets and statuettes.

They are also found, though less frequently, among the _debris_ of

monumental sculpture, in the bas-reliefs of the Ninevite palaces, and even

among certain figures in the round which have been recovered from the ruins

of these latter buildings. We can therefore easily find out the particular

attributes given by the artist as the interpreter of the national beliefs

to those gods whose visible bodies it was his office to create; we can see

what choice and combination of forms he thought best fitted to solve the

problem presented to him. But as yet we are not in a position to put a

name to each even of the figures that recur most frequently. In the case of

Egypt there is no such difficulty: when we encounter the image of one of

her gods upon the walls of a temple or in the cases of a museum, we can say

without hesitation, "This is Osiris or Ptah," as the case may be, "Amen or

Horus, Isis, Sekhet, or Hathor." It is not so with Chaldaea. Figures are

there often found uninscribed, and even when an inscription is present it

not seldom offers difficulties of interpretation which have not yet been

cleared up; for the divine names are usually ideograms. Only a few have

been identified beyond all doubt, those namely of which we have Hebrew or

Greek transcriptions, preserving for us the real Chaldaean original; Ilou,

Bel, Nisroch, Beltis, Istar, are examples of this. Hence it results that

Assyriologists often feel no little embarrassment when they are asked to

point out upon the monuments the figures even of those gods of whose names

they are the least doubtful. The Assyrians and Chaldaeans, like other

nations of antiquity, had what we should now call their _figured

mythology_, but we are still imperfectly acquainted with it. Even for those

whom we may call the most exalted personages of the Chaldaean Olympus,

scholars have hardly succeeded in illustrating the texts by the monuments

and explaining the monuments by the texts; and we are yet far from being

able to institute a perpetual and standard comparison as we have done in

the case of Egypt and still more in that of Greece, between the divine

types as they appear in religious formulae and in the national poetry, and

the same types when embodied by the imagination of the artist.

A long time may elapse before a mythological gallery for Chaldaea, in which

all the important members of the Mesopotamian pantheon shall take their

places and be known by the names they bore in their own day, can be formed,

but even now the principles upon which they were represented by art may be

stated. The images of the various gods were built up in great part by the

aid of combinations similar to those made use of in realizing the minor

demons. A natural bent towards such a method of interpretation was perhaps

inherited from the days in which the _naive_ adoration of all those animals

which help or hurt mankind formed a part of the national worship; again,

certain animals were, by their shapes and constitution, better fitted than

others to personify this or that quality which, in its fulness, was

considered divine. It was natural, therefore, that the artist should, in

those early days, have indicated the powers of a deity by forms borrowed

from the strongest, the most beautiful, or the most formidable of animals.

Nothing could suggest the instantaneous swiftness of a god better than the

spreading wings of an eagle or vulture, or his destructive and irresistible

power better than their beaks and talons, the horns and dewlap of the bull,

or the mane and claws of the lion.

The sculptor had, therefore, a good reason for employing these forms and

many others offered to him by the fauna of the regions he inhabited. He

introduced them into his work with skill and decision, and obtained

composite types by their aid which we may compare to those of Egypt. But

there were some differences which deserve to be remembered. The human face

received more consideration from the Mesopotamian sculptors than from those

of Egypt. Except in the sphinxes and in two or three less important types

the Egyptians, as our readers will remember, crowned a human body with the

head of a snake, a lion, or a crocodile, an ibis or a hawk, and sometimes

of a clumsy beast like the hippopotamus,[108] and their figures are

dominated and characterized by the heads thus given to them. At Babylon and

Nineveh the case is reversed. Animals' heads are only found, as a rule,

upon the shoulders of those figures which are looked upon by common consent

as genii rather than gods. In the latter a contrary arrangement prevails.

They may have, like Dagon, a fish's tail hanging down their backs, or, like

the colossal guardians of the king's palace, the body and limbs of a lion

or bull with the wings of an eagle, but the head is that of a man and the

sculptor has given it all the beauty he could compass. To this, we believe,

there is but one exception--the eagle-headed god to whom Assyriologists

have assigned the name of Nisroch. He seems to have occupied a high place

among the Mesopotamian divinities (Fig. 8).

But the difference between the two systems does not end here. There are a

few deities, such as Ptah, Osiris, and Amen, to whom the Egyptians gave a

human form in its simple entirety; but even in such cases it was not

reproduced in its native elegance and nobility. The extremities of Ptah and

Osiris were enveloped in a kind of sheath, which made their figures look

more like mummies than beings with the power of life and motion. It was

not so in Chaldaea, as we shall see if we examine the procedure of the

Mesopotamian artist when he had to figure the greater gods, those in whom

the highest efforts of mental abstraction found concrete expression. Take,

for instance, Nebo, the god of intelligence and prophecy, and Istar, the

personification of the earth's fertility, of its power of creation and

destruction and its inexhaustible energy. Nebo stands upright, his head

covered with a horned tiara: his ample beard is gathered into three rows of

close curls: he wears a long robe falling straight to the ground (Fig. 16).

As for Istar, she is a young woman, nude, large-hipped, and pressing her

breasts with her hands (Fig. 15). The awkwardness and rudeness which to

some extent characterizes these figures is due to the inexperience of the

artist; his intentions were good, but his skill was hardly equal to giving

them full effect. His Nebo was meant to be as majestic as a king or high

priest; his Istar is the spouse, the mother, the nurse; she is the goddess

"who," as the inscriptions say,[109] "rejoices mankind," who, when

fertilized by love, assures the duration and perpetuity of the species. It

was this method of interpretation that was in later years to lead to those

great creations of Greek art whose beauty is still the wonder of mankind.

Between these Chaldaean figures and those of the Greek sculptors the

difference was one of degree. The anthropomorphism of the Chaldees was

franker than that of the Egyptians, and so far the art of Chaldaea was an

advance upon that of Egypt, although it was excelled by the latter in

executive qualities. The method to which it had committed itself, the

diligent and passionate study of the human figure, was the royal road to

all excellence in the plastic arts.

[Illustration: FIG. 15.--Statue of Nebo; from Nimroud. British Museum.

Calcareous stone. Height 6 feet 5 inches.]

But our present business is to discover this people's real conceptions of

its gods and to get a clear idea of their characteristic qualities. We

shall not attempt, therefore, to show how most of them belonged to one of

those divine triads which are to be found, it is believed, in Chaldaea as

well as in Egypt: we shall not ask how these triads were subordinated,

first, one to another, and secondly, to a single supreme being, who, in

Mesopotamia as elsewhere, was in time perceived more or less clearly and

placed at the head of the divine hierarchy. These triads are nearly

always found in polytheistic religions, and that for sufficiently

obvious reasons.

[Illustration: FIG. 16.--Terra-cotta Statuette; from Heuzey's _Figurines

antiques du Musee du Louvre_.]

The most simple relationship offered by the organic world to the mind of

man is the relationship of the sexes, their contrast, and the necessity for

their union. Wherever religious conceptions spring up gods and goddesses

are created together. All the forces divined by human intelligence are

doubled into two persons, closely united, the one the complement of the

other. The one has the active, the other the passive _role_. Egypt,

Chaldaea, Greece, all had these divine couples; Apsou, or, as Damascius

calls him, Apason and Tauthe; Anou and Antou, the Anaitis of the Greek

writers; Bel and Belit, or Beltu, perhaps the Greek Mylitta; Samas, the

sun, and Allat, the queen of the dead; Merodach (or Marduk) and Zarpanit, a

goddess mother who protected unborn infants and presided at births; Nabou

and Nana; Assur and Istar; Dumouzi and Istar. Precise details as to the

status of these divinities are still wanting. Several among them seem to

have been at one time endowed with a distinct individuality, and at other

periods to have been almost indistinguishable from some other deity. They

were without the distinct features and attributes of the inhabitants of

Olympus, but we are left in no doubt as to the binary divisions of which we

have been speaking.

The attraction of desire and the union of the sexes leads to the birth of

the child; with the appearance of the latter the family is complete, and,

with it, the type upon which the triple classification of the gods was

founded. But even when we attempt to trace the composition of a single

group and to assign his proper place to each of its members, the

embarrassment is great. We find a single god sometimes filling, to all

appearance, the _role_ of husband and father, and sometimes that of the

son; or a single goddess acting at different times as the wife and daughter

of one and the same god. Some of these apparent contradictions must be

referred to the want of certainty in our interpretation of the

inscriptions, some to the floating quality of the conceptions to which they

relate. It may never, perhaps, be possible to make out a complete list, or

one which shall not be obnoxious to criticism on other grounds; moreover,

the historian of art has no need to enter into any such discussion, or to

give the details of a nomenclature as to which Assyriologists themselves

have many doubts. It suffices that he should point out the multiplicity of

couples and triads, the extreme diversity of deities, and thus indicate a

reason for the very peculiar aspect of the cylinders and engraved stones of

Chaldaea, for the complex forms of the gods, and for the multitude of varied

symbols which encumber the fields of her sculptured reliefs. Some of the

figures that crowd these narrow surfaces are so fantastic that they

astonish the eye as much as they pique the curiosity (see Fig. 17).

[Illustration: FIG. 17.--A Chaldaean Cylinder: from Menant's _La Bible et

les Cylindres Chaldeens_.]

The number of divine types and the consequent difficulties of

classification are increased, as in Egypt, by the fact that every important

town had its local deities, deities who were its own peculiar gods. In the

course of so many centuries and so many successive displacements of the

political centre of gravity, the order of precedence of the Mesopotamian

gods was often changed. The dominant city promoted its own gods over the

heads of their fellows and modified for a time which might be long or

short, the comparative importance of the Chaldaean divinities. Sin, the moon

god, headed the list during the supremacy of Ur, Samas during that of

Larsam. With the rise of Assyria its national god, Assur, doubtless a

supreme god of the heavens, acquired an uncontested pre-eminence. It was in

his name that the Assyrians subdued all Asia and shed such torrents of

blood. Their wars were the wars of Assur; they were undertaken to extend

his empire and to glorify his name. Hence the extreme rigour, the hideous

cruelty, of the punishments inflicted by the king on his rebellious

subjects; he was punishing heretics and apostates.[110]

In the religious effusions of Mesopotamia, we sometimes find an accent of

exalted piety recalling the tone of the Hebrew scriptures; but it does not

appear that the monotheistic idea towards which they were ever tending, but

without actually reaching it and becoming penetrated by its truth, had ever

acquired sufficient consistence to stimulate the Chaldaean artist to the

creation of a type superior in beauty and nobility to those of gods in the

second rank. The fact that the idea did exist is to be inferred from the

use of certain terms rather than from any mention of it in theological

forms or embodiment in the plastic arts.

At Nineveh, Assur was certainly looked upon as the greatest of the gods, if

not as the only god. Idols captured from conquered nations were sometimes

restored to their worshippers, but not before they had been engraved with

the words, "_To the glory of Assur_." Assur was always placed at the head

of the divine lists. He is thought to be descended from Anou or Sin: but he

was raised to such a height by his adoption as the national deity, that it

became impossible to trace in him the distinguishing characteristics of his

primary condition as a god of nature; he became, like the Jehovah of the

Israelites, a god superior to nature. His attributes were of a very general

kind, and were all more or less derived from his dignity as chief leader

and father, as master of legions and as president in the assemblies of the

gods. He was regarded as the supreme arbiter, as the granter of victory and

of the spoils of victory, as the god of justice, as the terror of evil

doers and the protector of the just. The great god of the Assyrians was, of

course, the god of battles, the director of armies, and in that capacity,

the spouse of Istar, who was no less warlike than himself. His name was

often used, in the plural, to signify the gods in general, as that of Istar

was used for the goddesses. No myth has come down to us in which he plays

the principal part, a fact which is to be accounted for by his

comparatively late arrival at a position of abstract supremacy.[111]

In the Babylon of the second Chaldee empire there was, it would seem, a

double embodiment of the divine superiority, in Merodach, the warrior god,

the god of royalty, and Nebo the god of science and inspiration. In Chaldaea

the power of the priests and learned men did not yield before that of the

monarch. And yet a certain latent and instinctive monotheism may be traced

in its complex religion. There were, indeed, many gods, but one was raised

above all the others, and, whether they turned to Merodach or Nebo, the

kings loved to style themselves the worshippers of the "Lord of Lords,"

_Bel Beli_.[112]

Like Assur at Nineveh, this supreme deity was sometimes called, by

abbreviation, _Ilou_, or god, a term which was employed, with slight

variants, by every nation speaking a Semitic tongue.[113]

But in spite of their aspirations and the august _role_ assigned to their

Merodach, their Nebo, and their Assur, Chaldaea and Assyria succeeded no

better than Egypt in giving a fit embodiment to the sovereign moderator of

the universe, to the king and common parent of gods and men. Their art was

without the skill and power required for the creation of an image which

should be worthy of the mental idea. Neither the temples of Nineveh nor

those of Babylon had an Olympian Jove.

Assur came nearer to the acquisition of a supreme and unique godhead than

any of his rivals, but we do not know with any certainty what features were

his in plastic representations. Some have recognized him in a group which

often occurs on the historic bas-reliefs and cylinders, here floating over

a field of battle, there introduced into some scene of adoration. You are

at once struck by the similarity of the group in question to one of the

commonest of Egyptian symbols--the winged globe on the cornice of almost

every temple in the Nile valley. Long before they had penetrated as

conquerors to Thebes and Memphis, the Assyrians may have found this motive

repeated a thousand times upon the ivories, the jewels, the various objects

of luxury which Phoenician merchants carried from the ports of the Delta to

distribute over every neighbouring country.[114]

[Illustration: FIG. 18.--The winged globe; from Layard.]

The Assyrians appropriated the emblem in question, sometimes with hardly a

modification upon its Egyptian form (Fig. 18), but more often with an

alteration of some significance. In the centre of the symbol and between

the outspread wings, appears a ring, and, within it, the figure of a man

draped in flowing robes and covered with a tiara. He is upright, in some

cases his right hand is raised as if in prayer, while his left grasps a

strong bow (Fig. 19); in others he is stretching his bow and about to

launch a triple-headed arrow, which can be nothing but a thunderbolt.

[Illustration: FIG. 19.--The winged globe with human figure; from Layard.]

The meaning attached to this plastic group by the Assyrians is made clear

to us by the important place it held in the religious imagery of the Aryans

of Media and Persia. These people, the last born of the ancient Asiatic

world, borrowed nearly the whole of their artistic motives from their

predecessors; they only modified their significance when the difference

between their religious notions and those of the inventors required it.

Now, we find this symbol upon the rocks of Behistan and Persepolis, where,

according to texts the meaning of which is beyond a doubt, it represents

Ahura-Mazda. The name has changed, but we may fairly conclude that the idea

and intention remained the same. Both in Mesopotamia and in Iran this group

was meant to embody the notion of a supreme being, the master of the

universe, the clement and faithful protector of the chosen race by whom his

images were multiplied to infinity.

* * * * *

In this rapid analysis of the beliefs held by the dwellers on the Tigris

and Euphrates, we have made no attempt to discriminate between Chaldaea and

Assyria. To one who looks rather to similarities than to differences, the

two peoples, brothers in blood and language, had, in fact, but one religion

between them. We possess several lists of the Assyrian gods and goddesses,

and when we compare them we find that they differ one from the other both

in the names and numbers of the deities inscribed upon them; but, with the

exception of Assur, they contain no name which does not also belong to

Chaldaea. Nothing could be more natural. Chaldaea was the mother-country of

the Assyrians, and the intimate relations between the two never ceased for

a day. Even when their enmity was most embittered they could not dispense

the one with the other. Babylon was always a kind of holy city for the

kings of Assyria; those among them who chastised the rebellious Chaldaeans

with the greatest severity, made it a point of honour to sacrifice to their

gods and to keep their temples in repair. It was in Babylon, at Borsippa,

and in the old cities near the coast, that the priests chiefly dwelt by

whom the early myths had been preserved and the doctrines elaborated to

which the inhabitants of Mesopotamia owed the superiority of their

civilization. The Assyrians invented nothing. Assur himself seems only to

have been a secondary form of some Chaldaean divinity, a parvenu carried to

the highest place by the energy and good fortune of the warlike people

whose patron he was, and maintained there until the final destruction of

their capital city. When Nineveh fell, Assur fell with her, while those

gods who were worshipped in common by the people of the north and those of

the south long preserved their names, their fame, and the sanctity of

their altars.

The religion of Nineveh differed from that of Babylon, however, in minor

particulars, to which attention has already been called.[115] A single

system of theology is differently understood by men whose manner and

intellectual bent are distinct. Rites seem to have been more voluptuous and

sensual at Babylon than at Nineveh; it was at the former city that

Herodotus saw those religious prostitutions that astonished him by their

immorality.[116] The Assyrian tendency to monotheism provoked a kind of

fanaticism of which no trace is to be found in Chaldaea. The Ninevite

conquerors set themselves to extend the worship of their great national

god; they sacrificed by hecatombs the presumptuous enemies who blasphemed

the name of Assur. The sacrifice of chastity was in favour at Babylon, that

of life seemed to the Assyrians a more effectual offering. A soldier

people, they were hardened by the strife of centuries, by the perpetual

hardships of the battlefield, by the never-ending conflicts in which they

took delight. Their religious conceptions were, therefore, narrower and

more stern, their rites more cruel than those of their southern neighbours.

The civilization of Babylon was more refined, men gave themselves more

leisure for thought and enjoyment; their manners were less rude, their

ideas less rigid and conservative; they were more inclined towards

intellectual analysis and speculation. So that when we find traces of the

beliefs and useful arts of Mesopotamia on the coasts, and even among the

isles, of the AEgaean, the honour of them must be given to Babylon rather

than to Nineveh.

NOTES:

[82] The _History of the Assyrians and Medes_, which EUSEBIUS (_Preparation

evangelique_, 1, 12, and 41) attributes to the writer whom he calls

ABYDENUS, dates perhaps from the period when the Roman Empire turned its

attention to the basin of the Euphrates and attempted to regain possession

of it. The few extant fragments of this author have been collected in Ch.

MUeLLER'S _Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum_, vol. iv. p. 279. We know

nothing as to when he lived, but he wrote in the Ionian dialect, as did

ARRIAN in his book on India, and it would seem difficult to put him later

than the second century. It is probable that his undertaking belonged to

that movement towards research which began in the reign of Augustus and was

prolonged to the last years of the Antonines.

[83] Damaskiou diadochou aporiai kai luseis peri ton proton archon (edition

published by Kopp, Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1826, 8vo), ch. 125. Ch. Emile

RUELLE, _Le Philosophe Damascius; Etude sur sa Vie et ses Ouvrages, suivie

de neuf Morceaux inedits, Extraits du Traite des premiers Principes et

traduits en Latin_ (in the _Revue archeologique_, 1861), fragments i. and

ix.

[84] On this subject the reader should consult M. Fr. LENORMANT'S _La Magie

chez les Chaldeens et les Origines Accadiennes_, Paris: 1874, 8vo. The

English translation, dated 1877, or, still better, the German version

published at Jena in 1878 (_Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst der Chaldaeer_,

8vo), will be found more useful than the French original. Both are, in

fact, new editions, with fresh information.

[85] TIELE, _Manuel de l'Histoire des Religions_ (Leroux, 1880, 8vo). In

our explanation of the Chaldaeo-Assyrian religions we shall follow this

excellent guide, supplementing it by information taken from another work by

the same author, _Histoire comparee des anciennes Religions de l'Egypte et

des Peuples Semitiques_--both from the Dutch.

[86] _A History of Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. pp. 47-57.

[87] At Erzeroum Mr. LAYARD heard of some Kurdish tribes to the south-west

of that place who, he was told, "are still idolatrous, worshipping

venerable oaks, great trees, huge solitary rocks, and other grand features

of nature." _Discoveries_, p. 9.

[88] Francois LENORMANT, _Les Betyles_ (extracted from the _Revue de

l'Histoire des Religions_, p. 12):--"The cuneiform inscriptions mention the

seven black stones worshipped in the principal temple of Urukh in Chaldaea,

which personify the seven planets." In the same paper a vast number of

facts are brought together which show how widely spread this worship was in

Syria and Arabia, and with what persistence it maintained itself, at least

until the preaching of Islamism. It would be easy to show that it still

subsists in the popular superstitions. As to this worship among the Greeks,

see also the paper by M. HEUZEY, entitled, _La Pierre sacree d'Antibes_

(_Memoires de la Societe des Antiquaires de France_, 1874, p. 99).

[89] BEROSUS, fragment 1. Sec. 3. in the _Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum_ of

CH. MUeLLER, vol. ii. p. 496.

[90] VIRGIL, _Bucolics_, viii. 69. See in the edition of Benoist

(Hatchette, 8vo, 1876) passages cited from Horace and Ovid, which prove

that the superstition in question was then sufficiently widespread to

enable poets to make use of it without too great a violation of

probability.

[91] This was very clearly seen by the ancients. It could not be put better

than by Cicero: "Principio Assyrii, propter planitiem magnitudinemque

regionum quas incolebant, cum caelum ex omni parte patens et apertum

intuerentur, trajectiones motusque stellarum observaverunt."--_De

Divinatione_, i. 1, 2.

[92] "Chaldaei ... diuturna observatione siderum scientiam putantur

effecisse, ut praedeci posset quid cuique eventurum et quo quisque fato

natus esset."--CICERO, _De Divinatione_, i. 1, 2.

[93] This has been clearly shown by LAPLACE in the _Precis de l'Histoire de

l'Astronomie_, which forms the fifth book of his _Exposition du Systeme du

Monde_ (fifth edition). He gives a _resume_ of what he believes to have

been the chief results obtained by the Chaldaean astronomers (pp. 12-14 in

the separate issue of the _Precis_ 1821, 8vo). It would now, perhaps, be

possible, thanks to recent discoveries, to give more precise and

circumstantial details than those of Laplace.

[94] AURES, _Essai sur le Systeme metrique assyrien_, p. 10 (in the

_Recueil de Travaux relatifs a la Philologie et a l'Archeologie egyptiennes

et assyriennes_, vol. iii. Vieweg, 4to, 1881). We refer those who are

interested in these questions to this excellent paper, of which but the

first part has as yet been published (1882). All previous works upon the

subject are there quoted and discussed.

[95] "Sixty may be divided by any divisor of ten or twelve. Of all numbers

that could be chosen as an invariable denominator for fractions, it has

most divisors."--FR. LENORMANT, _Manuel d'Histoire ancienne_, vol. ii. p.

177, third edition.

[96] AURES, _Sur le Systeme metrique assyrien_, p. 16. A terra-cotta

tablet, discovered in Lower Chaldaea among the ruins of Larsam, and believed

with good reason to be very ancient, bears a list of the squares of the

fractionary numbers between 1/60 2 and 60/60 2, or 1/60, calculated with

perfect accuracy (LENORMANT, _Manuel_, &c. vol. ii. p. 37). See also SAYCE,

_Babylonian Augury by means of Geometrical Figures_, in the _Transactions

of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_, vol. iv. p. 302.

[97] LENORMANT, _Manuel_, &c. vol. ii. p. 177, third edition.

[98] _Ibid._ p. 37.

[99] LENORMANT, _Manuel_, vol. ii. pp. 175, 178, 180. G. SMITH, _Assyrian

Discoveries_ (London, 1876, 8vo), pp. 451, 452. RAWLINSON, _Ancient

Monarchies_, vol. i. pp. 100, 101, fourth edition. We know that the

_Astronomical Canon_ of Ptolemy begins with the accession of a king of

Babylon named Nabonassar, in 747 B.C. M. Fr. LENORMANT thinks that the date

in question was chosen by the Alexandrian philosopher because it coincided

with the substitution, by that prince, of the solar for the lunar year.

Astronomical observations would thus have become much easier to use, while

those registered under the ancient system could only be employed after long

and difficult calculations. A reason is thus given for Ptolemy's

contentment with so comparatively modern a date. (_Essai sur les Fragments

cosmogoniques de Berose_, pp. 192-197.)

[100] See the paper by M. T. H. MARTIN, of Rennes, _Sur les Observations

astronomiques envoyees, dit on, de Babylone en Grece par Callisthene_,

Paris, 1863.

[101] The texts to this effect will be found collected in the essay of M.

Martin. We shall be content here with quoting a phrase from Cicero which

expresses the general opinion: "Chaldaei cognitione siderum sollertiaque

ingeniorum antecellunt." _De Divinatione_, i. 91.

[102] PLINY, _Natural History_, vii. 57, 3. The manuscripts give 720, but

the whole context proves that figure to be far too low, neither does it

accord with the writer's thought, or with the other statements which he

brings together with the aim of showing that the invention of letters may

be traced to a very remote epoch. The copyists have certainly omitted an M

after the DCCXX. Sillig, following Perizonius has introduced this

correction into his text.

[103] LENORMANT, _Manuel_, &c. vol. ii. p. 175.

[104] G. SMITH, _Assyrian Discoveries_, p. 407.

[105] LENORMANT, _Manuel_, &c. vol. ii. p. 181.

[106] LAYARD, _Nineveh and its Remains_, vol. i. p. 124. These storms

hardly last an hour.

[107] Some Assyriologists believe this to represent Merodach.

[108] _History of Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. pp. 56, 57, and figs.

39-45.

[109] RAWLINSON, _The Five Great Monarchies_, &c. vol. i. p. 139.

[110] TIELE, _Histoire comparee des anciennes Religions de l'Egypte et des

Peuples Semitiques_, translated by Collins, p. 222. The first volume of an

English translation, by James Ballingal, has been published in Truebner's

Oriental Series.--ED.

[111] _Ibid._ p. 224.

[112] TIELE, _Histoire_, &c. p. 237.

[113] Hence the name Babylon, which has been handed down to us, slightly

modified, by classic tradition. The true Chaldaean form is _Bab-Ilou_,

literally "The Gate of God."

[114] _History of Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. pp. 399-400 and figs.

311-313.

[115] TIELE, _Manuel_, &c. pp. 77, 78.

[116] HERODOTUS, i. 99.

Sec. 7.--_The People and Government._

We have already explained how it is that the religions of Chaldaea and

Assyria are less well known to us than that of Egypt; the insufficiency of

our knowledge of the political and social organization of the two kingdoms

is to be explained by the same reasons. The inscriptions, prolix enough on

some subjects, hardly touch on others that would be much more interesting,

and, moreover, their interpretation is full of difficulty. The Greek

travellers knew nothing of Nineveh, while their visits to Babylon were

paid in its years of decadence. They seem to have been chiefly struck with

the sort of sacerdotal caste to which they gave the name of Chaldaioi.

The origin of this priestly corps has been much discussed. Some see in it

the descendants and heirs of the primitive population, of those whom they

believe to have been Turanians; others believe them to have been Semitic

immigrants, coming from the north and bringing with them arts and doctrines

of which they constituted themselves the guardians and expounders in the

new country. We are hardly qualified to take part in the controversy. It is

certain, on the one hand, that the influence of these quasi-clergy began to

make itself felt at a remote period in the national history, and, on the

other, that they had become, like the population that bowed before them,

Semitic both in race and language at a very early date. The idiom employed

by the Chaldaeans belongs to the same family of languages as Arabic, Hebrew,

and Aramaean; their gods are to be found, with slight modifications of name

and attributes, from Yemen in the south to the north of Syria and as far

west as the table-land of Cappadocia.

It is, no doubt, upon the authority of Ctesias, his favourite guide in

matters of oriental history, that Diodorus talks of the _Chaldaeans_.

Ctesias may have seen them at Babylon, in the exercise of their functions,

in the time of Artaxerxes Mnemon. "The Chaldaeans," writes the historian,

"are the most ancient Babylonians ... (and) hold the same station and

dignity in the commonwealth as the Egyptian priests do in Egypt; for, being

deputed to divine offices, they spend all their time in the study of

philosophy, and are especially famous for the art of astrology. They are

mightily given to divination, and foretell future events, and employ

themselves either by purifications, sacrifices, or other enchantments to

avert evils, or procure good fortune and success. They are skilful,

likewise, in the art of divination by the flying of birds, and interpreting

of dreams and prodigies; and are reputed as the oracles (in declaring what

will come to pass) by their exact and diligent viewing of the entrails of

the sacrifices. But they attain not to this knowledge in the same manner as

the Greeks; for the Chaldaeans learn it by tradition from their ancestors,

the son from the father, who are all in the meantime free from all other

public offices and attendances; and because their parents are their tutors,

they both learn everything without envy, and rely with more confidence

upon the truth of what is taught them; and being trained up in this

learning from their very childhood, they become most famous philosophers,

being at the age most capable of learning."[117]

Centuries were required for the growth of such a corporation and for the

firm establishment of its power upon a well-knit system of rites and

doctrines. The institutions described by Ctesias would hardly show any

sensible change from those in force in the same country before the Persian

conquests. In their double character of priests and astrologers the

Chaldaeans would enjoy an almost boundless influence over both kings and

private individuals; the general belief in their powers of divination made

them in a sense the masters and arbiters of every destiny. Under the

national kings "members of their caste led the national armies and occupied

all the chief posts in the kingdom." The royal houses that succeeded one

another at Babylon sprang from their ranks both in the days of vassalage to

Assyria and in those of full independence. Their hierarchy was headed by an

archimagus; we do not know his title in the national language, but we do

know that, after the king, he was the chief person in the empire. He

accompanied the sovereign wherever he went, even to the wars, in order to

regulate his actions according to the rules of his art and the indications

of the heavens. When the king died and his successor was not on the spot to

assume the reins of government, the archimagus was regent during the

interregnum, as, for instance, between the death of Nabopolassar and the

accession of Nebuchadnezzar.[118]

The almost theocratic character of this regime had both its advantages and

its inconveniences. These priests were the savants of their time. The

honours that were paid to them must have had their effect in stimulating

intellectual culture and material well being, but, on the other hand, the

constant intervention of a sacerdotal body in public affairs could not but

do something to enfeeble the military spirit and the energy and

responsibility of the commanders. Not that the priests were less penetrated

by the national sentiment than their fellow countrymen. Proud of their

ancient traditions and of the superiority of their science, they added

contempt to the detestation they felt for a foreign master, whether he came

from Babylon or Susa. The priests were the ringleaders in those risings

against Assyria, and, in later years, against Persia, which cost Babylon so

dearly. Once only was the success they promised achieved, and that was in

the time of Nabopolassar, when Nineveh was exhausted by its long succession

of wars and victories. On every other occasion the upper hand remained with

races less instructed, indeed, and less refined, but among whom the power

concentrated in the hands of the sovereign had been utilized to drive all

the vital forces of the kingdom into the practice of war and preparation

for it.

On the other hand, Babylon enjoyed certain elements of prosperity and

guarantees of a long national existence which were wanting to those rivals

under whose yoke she had more than once to pass. The ruling classes in

Chaldaea were quicker in intellect and far better educated than elsewhere.

Their country lent itself to a wide and well-organised system of

cultivation better than the hilly districts of Assyria or the narrow

valleys and sterile plains of Iran. Communication was more prompt and easy

than among the terraces which rise one above another from the left bank of

the Euphrates up to the high lands of Persia and Media: in order to pass

from one of these terraces to another, the bare rock has to be climbed in a

fashion that brings no little danger to the traveller and his patient

beasts of burden.[119] In Chaldaea, on the other hand, the proximity of the

two rivers to each other, and the perfect horizontality of the soil, make

the work of irrigation very easy. The agriculturists were not exposed to

the danger of a complete failure of crops, a misfortune which overtook the

upper regions of Mesopotamia often enough. There the Euphrates and Tigris

are wide apart, and the land between them is far from being a dead level.

Many districts had to depend almost entirely upon the rainfall for

irrigation. Again, when it was a question of journeying from one city to

another or transporting the produce of the fields, the Chaldaean could

choose between the land routes that lay along the banks of the canals, or

the waterways that intersected each other over the whole surface of the

country. In these days the journey between Bagdad and Bassorah, a distance

of some three hundred miles, involves a long detour to the east along the

foot of the mountains, in order to avoid impassable marshes and bands of

wandering Arabs devoted to murder and pillage. The flat country is infested

with mounted brigands who strip unprotected travellers, but in ancient

times it swarmed with traffic, every road was encumbered with the movements

of merchandise and the march of caravans, the fields were crossed in every

direction by canals, and the tall sails of the boats that moved between

their banks rose over the waving crops as they do to-day in the deltas of

the Meuse and the Rhine, for Chaldaea was a southern Holland.

The incomparable situation of Babylon was sure to lead to great industrial

and commercial activity in spite of any shortcomings in her rulers. She

stood in the centre of a marvellously fertile region, between upper and

western Asia. Two great rivers were at her doors, bringing her, without

cost or effort, the products of their upper basins, while, on the other

hand, they placed her in easy communication with the Persian Gulf and the

Indian Ocean. The merchants of Babylon had communication with the people of

the Levant by easy and well-worn roads crossing the fords of the middle

Euphrates. Less direct roads farther to the north were used nearly as much.

Some of these traversed the Cilician passes, crossed the Amanus and Taurus

into the plateau of Asia Minor, and ended at the coasts of the AEgaean and

the Euxine; others passed through Assyria into Media, and through the

Caspian passes up to the central plateau of Asia and into distant Bactria,

whence easy passes led down into the upper valley of the Indus. Babylon was

thus an _entrepot_ for caravans both from the east and west, and for

navigators coming from the ports of Africa, Arabia, and India.

There are, if we may use the expression, natural capitals and capitals that

are artificial. The sites of the first are determined by the configuration

of the earth. When they perish it is but a temporary death, to be followed

by a life often more full and brilliant than the first. The second owe

their prosperity to the caprice of a sovereign, or to political

combinations that pass away and leave no trace. Thebes and Nineveh were

artificial cities; both have disappeared and left behind them nothing but

their ruins; they have been replaced only by villages and unimportant

towns. On the other hand, Memphis lives again in Cairo, and, when the

depopulation of Babylon was complete, Seleucia and Ctesiphon, Kouffa and

Bagdad sprang up to carry on her work.

The centre of a refined civilization and of wide-stretching commercial

relations, Babylon could not have been without an original art, and one

marked with the peculiar characteristics of the national genius. Unhappily,

the materials at her command were far inferior to those of which the

Egyptians and Greeks could dispose. From this it has resulted that, on the

one hand, her productions never passed a certain level of excellence, and,

on the other, that they have been ill preserved. The Babylonians were not

among those happy peoples whose artists could exercise their tools upon the

one material that gives birth to great sculptors and great architects--a

stone soft enough to yield kindly to the chisel, but hard enough to

preserve to eternity the suggestive forms impressed upon it by the hand of

man.

Our knowledge, therefore, of Chaldaean art will bear no comparison with what

we have discovered as to the art of Egypt and Greece, of Etruria and Rome.

So far as we can form a judgment from the remains that have come down to

us, it was an art much less varied and comprehensive than that of Egypt.

The tombs of Memphis and Thebes, with their pictured walls, reflect, as in

a faithful mirror, the most interesting and most amusing of all spectacles,

the daily life of the oldest of all civilized societies. In Chaldaea there

is nothing of the kind. The Chaldaean tomb gives us, by its arrangement and

furnishing, glimpses of a faith similar at bottom to that of Egypt, but we

find nothing parallel to the representations of daily work and pleasure

which fill the mastabas and the Theban sepulchres; there is nothing that

can be compared to those animated forms and images that play over again on

the tomb walls the long drama of a hundred acts whose first performance

occupied so many centuries and filled a stage stretching from the swamps of

the Delta to the cataracts of Syene. We are more especially grateful to

these funerary scenes for handing down to us, in a safe niche in the temple

of the arts, those poor and humble folk who count for so little in this

world where they bear the heaviest burdens, who depend for remembrance

after death upon the services they render to the great. We shall search in

vain among the scanty remnants of Babylonian sculpture for the attitude,

gestures, and features of the laborious workmen upon whom the prosperity of

the country was built. We shall find neither the tradesmen and artisans of

the towns, nor the agriculturists who cultivated the fields and gave them

the water for which they never ceased to thirst. No hint is given of those

fishermen of the Persian Gulf who lived entirely, according to Herodotus,

upon dried fish ground to powder and made into a kind of cake.[120] The

naive, picturesque, and anecdotic illustrations of common life, which are

so plentiful in Egypt, are almost completely wanting to the art of Chaldaea.

On the other hand, we find, as we might have expected from what we know of

Chaldaean society, continual traces of the sacerdotal spirit, and of the

great part played by the king with the help and under the tutelage of the

priesthood. Upon the walls of palaces, temples, and towns, on the

statuettes of bronze and terra-cotta which were buried under the thresholds

of buildings and placed as votive offerings in the temples, upon cylinders

and engraved stones, we find only complex and varied emblems, fantastic and

symbolic forms, attitudes suggestive of worship and sacrifice (Figs. 20 and

21), images of gods, goddesses, and secondary genii, princes surrounded

with royal pomp and offering their homage to the deity. Hence a certain

poverty and monotony and the want of recuperative power inseparable from an

absorbed contemplation of sacred types and of a transcendental world.

[Illustration: FIG. 20.--Chaldaean Cylinder.]

[Illustration: FIG. 21.--Chaldaean Cylinder; from the British Museum.[121]]

Assyrian society was different in many respects from that of Chaldaea. The

same gods, no doubt, were adored in both countries, and their worship

involved a highly-placed priesthood; but at Nineveh the royal power rested

on the army, and the initiative and independence of the sovereign were

much greater than in the case of Babylon. Assyria was a military monarchy

in the fullest sense of the word. Almost as often as the spring came round

the king led his invincible legions to the conquest of new subjects for

Assur. He traversed deserts, crossed trackless mountain chains, and plunged

into forests full of hidden dangers. He destroyed the walls and towers of

hostile cities, in spite of the rain of arrows, stones, and boiling pitch

that poured upon himself and his hosts; he was at once the skilful captain

and the valiant soldier, he planned the attack and never spared himself in

the _melee_. First in danger, he was the first in honour. In person he

implored the good will of the god for whom he braved so many dangers, in

person he thanked him for success and presented to him the spoils of the

conquered enemy. If he was not deified, like the Pharaohs, either alive or

after his death, he was the vicar of Assur upon earth, the interpreter of

his decrees and their executor, his lieutenant and pontif, and the

recipient of his confidences.[122]

There was no room by the side of this armed high priest for a sacerdotal

caste at all equal to him in prestige. The power and glory of the king grew

with every successive victory, and in the vast empire of the Sargonids, the

highest places were filled by men whom the monarch associated with himself

in the never-ending work of conquest and repression. First of all came a

kind of grand vizier, the _Tartan_, or commander-in-chief of the royal

armies. This is the personage we so often find in the bas-reliefs facing

the king and standing in an attitude at once dignified and respectful (see

Fig. 22). Next came the great officers of the palace, the _ministers_ as we

should call them in modern parlance, and the governors of conquered

provinces. Eunuchs were charged with the supervision of the harem and, as

in the modern East, occupied high places at court. They may be recognized

in the bas-reliefs, where they are grouped about the king, by their round,

beardless faces (see Figs. 23 and 24). The _Kislar-Aga_ is, in the

Constantinople of to-day what more than one of these personages must have

been in Nineveh. Read the account given by Plutarch, on the authority of

Ctesias, of the murderous and perfidious intrigues that stained the palace

of Susa in the time of Artaxerxes-Mnemon. You will then have some idea of

the part, at once obscure and preponderant, that the more

intelligent among these miserable creatures were able to play in the

households of the great conquerors and unwearied hunters by whom the

palaces at Khorsabad, Kouyundjik, and Nimroud, were successively occupied.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.--The King Sargon and his Grand Vizier. Bas-relief

from Khorsabad; in the Louvre. Alabaster. Height 116 inches. Drawn by

Saint-Elme Gautier.]

[Illustration: FIG. 23.--The suite of Sargon, _continued_. Bas-relief from

Khorsabad; in the Louvre. Alabaster. Height 90 inches. Drawn by Saint-Elme

Gautier.]

[Illustration: FIG. 24.--The suite of Sargon, _continued_. Bas-relief from

Khorsabad. Alabaster. Height 97 inches. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

All these military officers and administrators, these priests of the

different gods, and the domestics who were often the most powerful of all,

looked to the hand of the king himself and depended upon no other master.

Courage and military talent must have been the surest roads to advancement,

but sometimes, as under the Arab caliphs and the Ottoman sultans, the

caprice of the sovereign would lead him to raise a man from the lowest

ranks to the highest dignities of the state. The _regime_ of Assyria may be

described in the words applied to that of Russia, it was despotism tempered

with assassination. "And it came to pass, as he (Sennacherib) was

worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer

his sons smote him with the sword: and they escaped into the land of

Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead."[123] Sennacherib's

father, Sargon, perished in the same fashion.

These murders were, perhaps, the revenge for some outrage or punishment

imprudently inflicted in a moment of anger; but however that may have been,

neither in the one case nor the other did they hinder the legitimate heir

from succeeding his father. Sennacherib replaced Sargon, and Esarhaddon

Sennacherib. The Assyrian supremacy was only supported by the constant

presence, at the head of the army, of a king ready for every eventuality; a

few weeks of anarchy or interregnum would have thrown the whole empire into

confusion; the royal power was the keystone of the arch, the element upon

which depended the stability of a colossal edifice subjected to various

strains. In such a society, art could hardly have had a mission other than

the glorification of a power without limit and without control--a power to

which alone the Assyrians had to look for a continuance of their dearly-won

supremacy. The architect, the sculptor, and the painter, exhausted the

resources of their arts, the one in building a palace for the prince on a

high mound raised to dominate the surrounding plain, the others in

decorating it when built and multiplying the images of its almost divine

inhabitant. The exploits of the sovereign, his great and never-ending

achievements as a conqueror and destroyer of monsters, as pontif of Assur

and the founder of palaces and cities--such are the themes to which

Assyrian sculpture devoted itself for many centuries, taking them up and

varying them in countless ways, and that, apparently, without any fear that

he for whom the whole work was intended would ever grow weary of the

repetition.

Such themes presuppose the actual occurrence of the events represented and

the artists' realization either from personal observation or from

descriptions. This gives rise to a very sensible difference between

Chaldaean sculpture and that of Assyria, so far at least as the latter is to

be studied in the decorations of a palace. In those characteristics and

qualities of execution which permit of a definition, the style is no doubt

the same as in Chaldaea. The artists of Babylon and those of Nineveh were

pupils in one school--they saw nature with the same eyes; the same features

interested and attracted the attention of both; they had the same

prejudices and the same conventions. The symbols and combinations of forms

we have noticed as proper to Chaldaean art are here also; scenes of

invocation to gods and genii; ornamental groups and motives. An instance of

the latter is to be found in the rich embroidery with which the robes of

the Assyrian kings are covered.[124] Finally, we must remember that all

Assyrian art was not included in the adornment of the palace. Before a

complete and definite judgment can be formed upon it the monuments of

religious and industrial art should be passed under review, but, unhappily,

no temple interior, and a very small number of objects of domestic luxury

and daily use, have come down to us. These gaps are to be regretted, but we

must not forget that the bas-reliefs were ordered by the king, that the

thousands of figures they contain were introduced for the sake of giving

_eclat_ to the power, the valour, and the genius of the sovereign, and that

the best artists of which Assyria could boast were doubtless entrusted with

their execution. Under the reserves thus laid down we may, then, devote

ourselves to the study of the Ninevite sculptures that fill the museums of

London and Paris; we may consider them the strongest and most original

creations of Assyrian art.

[Illustration: FIG. 25.--Fragment of a bas-relief in alabaster. Louvre.

Height 23 inches. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

Now the sculpture upon the alabaster slabs with which the palace walls of

Shalmaneser and Sargon, of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal, were covered,

confines itself mainly to marches, combats, and sieves, it is more

_realistic_ than the sculpture of Chaldaea, a country that had done less,

especially upon fields of battle, but had invented more and done more

thinking than its bellicose rival. We owe no small debt of gratitude to the

swordsmen of Assyria, in spite of the blood they shed and the horrible

cruelties they committed and delighted in seeing commemorated in the

figured histories of their reigns. The works entrusted to their artists

have left us precious documents and the elements for a restoration of a

vanished world. Philologists may take their time over the decipherment of

the texts inscribed on the reliefs, but the great people of prey who, for

at least four centuries, pillaged all Asia without themselves becoming

softened by the possession of so much accumulated wealth, live,

henceforward, in the long series of pictures recovered for the world by

Layard and Botta. The stern conquerors reappear, armed, helmeted, and

cuirassed, as they passed before the trembling nations thirty centuries

ago. They are short of stature, but vigorous and sturdy, with an

exceptional muscular development. They were, no doubt, prepared for their

military duties from infancy by some system of gymnastic exercises, such as

have been practised by other nations of soldiers. Their noses are high and

hooked, their eyes large, their features as a whole strongly Semitic (see

Fig. 25).

[Illustration: FIG. 26.--Bas-relief of Tiglath Pileser II.; from Nimroud.

British Museum. Height 44 inches. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

[Illustration: FIG. 27.--Feast of Assurbanipal; from Kouyundjik. British

Museum. Height 20-3/4 inches. No. 1, The servants of the feast.]

[Illustration: FIG. 28.--Feast of Assurbanipal, _continued_. No. 2, The

king and queen at table. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

The moral character of the people is shown with no less clearness. The

ferocity they preserved amid all the luxurious appliances of their

civilization is commemorated. Atrocities of every kind find a place in the

reliefs. Among the prisoners of war the most fortunate are those led by a

cord passed through their lips. Others are mutilated, crucified, flayed

alive. Tiglath Pileser II. is shown to us besieging a city, before whose

walls he has impaled three prisoners taken from the defenders (see Fig.

26). Elsewhere we find scribes counting over heaps of heads before paying

the price for them.[125] When these had come from the shoulders of

important enemies they were carried in procession and treasured as

honourable trophies. In one relief we find Assurbanipal, after his return

to Nineveh from the subjugation of the southern rebels, lying upon a

luxurious couch in the garden of his harem and sharing a sumptuous meal

with a favoured wife. Birds are singing in the trees, an attendant touches

the harp, flowers and palms fill the background, while a head, the head of

the Elamite king, whom Assurbanipal conquered and captured in his last

campaign, hangs from a tree near the right[126] of the scene (see Figs. 27

and 28). The princes who took pleasure in these horrors were scrupulous in

their piety. We find numberless representations of them in attitudes of

profound respect before their gods, and sometimes they bring victims and

libations in their hands (see Fig. 29). Thus, without any help from the

inscriptions, we may divine from the sculptures alone what strange

contrasts were presented by the Assyrian character--a character at once

sanguinary and voluptuous, brutal and refined, mystical and truculent.

[Illustration: FIG. 29.--Offerings to a god; Alabaster relief. Louvre.

Height 10 feet. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

It is not only by what it says, it is by what it leaves untold, by what it

forgets to tell, that art has left us such a sincere account of this

singular nation. The king and his lieutenants, his ministers and household

officers, the veterans who formed the strength of his legions and the young

men from whom their numbers were recruited, did not constitute the whole of

the Assyrian nation. There were also the tillers of the soil, the followers

of those countless trades implied by a civilized society--the peasants,

artisans, and merchants of every kind, who fed, clothed, and equipped the

armies; the men who carried on the useful but modest work without which the

fighting machine must soon have come to a standstill. And yet they are

entirely absent from the sculptures in which the artist seems to have

included everything that to him seemed worthy of interest. We meet them

here and there, but only by accident. They may be descried now and then in

the background of some scene of war, acting as labourers or in some other

humble capacity. Otherwise the sculptor ignored their existence. They were

not soldiers, which was much as to say they were nothing. Can any other

instance be cited of an art so well endowed entirely suppressing what we

should call the civil element of life? Neither do we find women in the

bas-reliefs: that in which the queen of Assurbanipal occurs is quite unique

in its way. Except in scenes representing the capture of a town and the

carrying off of its inhabitants as prisoners of war, females are almost

entirely wanting. On those occasions we sometimes find them carried on

mules or in chariots (see Figs. 30 and 31). In certain bas-reliefs of

Assurbanipal, treating of his campaign against Susa, women are playing the

tambourine and singing the king's praises. But all these are exceptions.

Woman, whose grace and beauty were so keenly felt by the Egyptians, is

almost completely absent from the sculpture of Assyria.

[Illustration: FIG. 30.--Convoy of prisoners. Kouyundjik. From Layard.]

By thus limiting its scope, sculpture condemned itself to much repetition

and to a uniformity not far removed from sameness; but its very silences

are eloquent upon the inhuman originality of a system to which Assyria owed

both the splendour of her military successes and the finality of her fall.

The great entrenched camp, of which Nineveh was the centre, once forced;

the veteran ranks, in which constant war, and war without quarter, had made

such wide gaps, once broken, nothing remained of the true Assyria but the

ignorant masses of a second-class state to whom a change of masters had

little meaning, and a few vast buildings doomed soon to disappear under

their own ruins.

[Illustration: FIG. 31.--Convoy of prisoners. Kouyundjik. From Layard.]

When we have completed our examination of Assyrian sculpture, so rich in

some respects, so poor in others, we shall understand the rapidity with

which silence and oblivion overtook so much glory and power; we shall

understand how some two centuries after the victory of Nabopolassar and the

final triumph of Babylon and her allies, Xenophon and his Greeks could

mount the Tigris and gaze upon the still formidable walls of the deserted

cities of Mespila and Larissa without even hearing the name of Nineveh

pronounced. Eager for knowledge as they were, they passed over the ground

without suspecting that the dust thrown up by their feet had once been a

city famous and feared over all Asia, and that the capital of an empire

hardly less great than that of the Artaxerxes whom they had faced at

Cunaxa, had once covered the ground where they stood.

NOTES:

[117] DIODORUS, ii. 29.

[118] Fr. LENORMANT, _Manuel de l'Histoire ancienne de l'Orient_, vol. ii.

p. 252.

[119] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana_, p. 309. The

Greeks gave the appropriate name of klimakes to those stepped roads that

lead from the valley and the sea coast to the high plains of Persia.

[120] HERODOTUS, i. 200. A similar article of food is in extensive use at

the present day in the western islands of Scotland, and upon other distant

coasts where the soil is poor.--ED.

[121] Upon the subject of this cylinder, in which George Smith wished to

recognize a representation of Adam and Eve tempted by the serpent, see M.

JOACHIM MENANT'S paper entitled, _La Bible et les Cylindres Chaldeens_

(Paris, 1880, Maisonneuve, 8vo). M. Menant makes short work of this forced

interpretation and of several similar delusions which were beginning to win

some acceptance.

[122] Upon the sacred functions of the king, see LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol.

ii. p. 474.

[123] 2 Kings xix. 37.

[124] LAYARD, _The Monuments of Nineveh_ (folio, 1849), plates 43-50.

[125] LAYARD, _A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh_ (folio, 1853),

plates 26 and 27. The scribes in question seem to be writing upon rolls of

leather.

[126] Throughout this work the words "right" and "left" refer to the right

and left of the cuts, _not_ of the reader. By this system alone can

confusion be avoided in describing statues and compositions with

figures.--ED.

[Illustration]