FUNERARY ARCHITECTURE.
Sec. 1.--_Chaldaean and Assyrian Notions as to a Future Life._
Of the remains that have come down to us from ancient Egypt the oldest, the
most important in some respects, and beyond dispute the most numerous, are
the sepulchres. Of the two lives of the Egyptian, that of which we know the
most is his posthumous life--the life he led in the shadows of that
carefully-hidden subterranean dwelling that he called his "good abode."
While in every other country bodies after a few years are nothing but a few
handfuls of dust, in Egypt they creep out in thousands to the light of day,
from grottoes in the flanks of the mountains, from pits sunk through the
desert sand and from hollows in the sand itself. They rise accompanied by
long inscriptions that speak for them, and make us sharers in their joys
and sorrows, in their religious beliefs and in the promises in which they
placed their hopes when their eyes were about to close for ever. A
peculiarity of which Egypt offers the only instance is thus explained. The
house of the Memphite citizen and the palace of the king himself, can only
now be restored by hints culled from the reliefs and inscriptions--hints
which sometimes lend themselves to more than one interpretation, while the
tombs of Egypt are known to us in every detail of structure and
arrangement. In more than one instance they have come down to us with their
equipment of epitaphs and inscribed prayers, of pictures carved and painted
on the walls and all the luxury of their sepulchral furniture, exactly in
fact as they were left when their doors were shut upon their silent tenants
so many centuries ago.[419]
We are far indeed from being able to say this of Assyria and Chaldaea. In
those countries it is the palace, the habitation of the sovereign, that has
survived in the best condition, and from it we may imagine what the houses
of private people were like; but we know hardly anything of their tombs.
Chaldaean tombs have been discovered in these latter years, but they are
anonymous and mute. We do not possess a single funerary inscription dating
from the days when the two nations who divided Mesopotamia between them
were still their own masters. The arrangements of the nameless tombs in
lower Chaldaea are extremely simple and their furnishing very poor, if we
compare them with the sepulchres in the Egyptian cemeteries. As for
Assyrian burying-places, none have yet been discovered. Tombs have
certainly been found at Nimroud, at Kouyundjik, at Khorsabad, and in all
the mounds in the neighbourhood of Mossoul, but never among or below the
Assyrian remains. They are always in the mass of earth and various _debris_
that has accumulated over the ruins of the Assyrian palaces, which is
enough to show that they date from a time posterior to the fall of the
Mesopotamian Empires. Any doubts that may have lingered on this point have
been removed by the character of the objects found, which are never older
than the Seleucidae or the Parthians, and sometimes date even from the Roman
epoch.[420]
What then did the Assyrians do with their dead? No one has attacked this
question more vigorously than Sir Henry Layard. In his attempt to answer it
he explored the whole district of Mossoul, but without result; he pointed
out the interest of the inquiry to all his collaborators, he talked about
it to the more intelligent among his workmen, and promised a reward to
whoever should first show him an Assyrian grave. He found nothing, however,
and neither Loftus, Place, nor Rassam have been more successful. Neither
texts nor monuments help us to fill up the gap. The excavations of M. de
Sarzec have indeed brought to light the fragments of an Assyrian stele in
which a funerary scene is represented, but unfortunately its meaning is by
no means clear.[421] I cannot point to an Assyrian relief in which the same
theme is treated. Among so many battle pictures we do not find a single
scene analogous to those so often repeated in the pictures and sculptures
of Greece. The death and burial of an Assyrian warrior gave a theme to no
Assyrian sculptor. It would appear that the national pride revolted from
any confession that Assyrians could be killed like other men. All the
corpses in the countless battlefields are those of enemies, who are
sometimes mutilated and beheaded.[422]
These despised bodies were left to rot where they fell, and to feed the
crows and vultures;[423] but it is impossible to believe that the
Assyrians paid no honours to the bodies of their princes, their nobles, and
their relations, and some texts recently discovered make distinct allusions
to funerary rites.[424] We can hardly agree to the suggestions of M. Place,
who asks whether it is not possible that the Assyrians committed their
corpses to the river, like the modern Hindoos, or to birds of prey, like
the Guebres.[425] Usages so entirely out of harmony with the customs of
other ancient nations would certainly have been noticed by contemporary
writers, either Greek or Hebrew. In any case some allusion to them would
survive in Assyrian literature, but no hint of the kind is to be found.
But after we have rejected those hypotheses the question is no nearer to
solution than before; we are still confronted by the remarkable fact that
the Assyrians so managed to hide their dead that no trace of them has ever
been discovered. A conjecture offered by Loftus is the most inviting.[426]
He reminds us that although cemeteries are entirely absent from Assyria,
Chaldaea is full of them. Between Niffer and Mugheir each mound is a
necropolis. The Assyrians knew that Chaldaea was the birthplace of their
race and they looked upon it as a sacred territory. We find the Ninevite
kings, even when they were hardest upon their rebellious subjects in the
south, holding it as a point of honour to preserve and restore the temples
of Babylon and to worship there in royal pomp. Perhaps the Assyrians, or
rather those among them who could afford the expenses of the journey, had
their dead transferred to the graveyards of Lower Chaldaea. The latter
country, or, at least, a certain portion of it, would thus be a kind of
holy-land where those Semites whose earliest traditions were connected with
its soil would think themselves assured of a more tranquil repose and of
protection from more benignant deities. The soil of Assyria itself would
receive none but the corpses of those slaves and paupers who, counting for
nothing in their lives, would be buried when dead in the first convenient
corner, without epitaph or sepulchral furnishing.
This hypothesis would explain two things that need explanation--the absence
from Assyria of such tombs as are found in every other country of the
Ancient World, and the great size of the Chaldaean cemeteries. Both Loftus
and Taylor received the same impression, that the assemblages of coffins,
still huge in spite of the numbers that have been destroyed during the last
twenty centuries, can never have been due entirely to the second and third
rate cities in whose neighbourhood they occur. Piled one upon another they
form mounds covering wide spaces of ground, and so high that they may be
seen for many miles across the plain.[427] This district must have been the
common cemetery of Chaldaea and perhaps of Assyria; the dead of Babylon must
have been conveyed there. Is it too much to suppose that by means of rivers
and canals those of Nineveh may have been taken there too? Was it not in
exactly that fashion that mummies were carried by thousands from one end of
the Nile valley to the other, to the places where they had to rejoin there
ancestors?[428]
But we need not go back to Ancient Egypt to find examples of corpses making
long journeys in order to reach some great national burying-place. Loftus
received the first hint of his suggestion from what he himself saw at
Nedjef and at Kerbela, where he met funeral processions more than once on
the roads of Irak-Arabi. From every town in Persia the bodies of Shiite
Mussulmans, who desire to repose near the mortal remains of Ali and his
son, are transported after death into Mesopotamia.[429] According to Loftus
the cemetery of Nedjef alone, that by which the mosque known as
_Meched-Ali_ is surrounded, receives the bodies of from five to eight
thousand Persians every year. Now the journey between Nineveh and Calah and
the plains of Lower Chaldaea was far easier than it is now--considering
especially the state of the roads--between Tauris, Ispahan, and Teheran, on
the one hand and Nedjef on the other. The transit from Assyria to Chaldaea
could be made, like that of the Egyptian mummy, entirely by water, that is
to say, very cheaply, very easily, and very rapidly.
We are brought up, however, by one objection. Although as a rule subject to
the Assyrians, the Chaldaeans were from the eleventh to the seventh century
before our era in a constant state of revolt against their northern
neighbours; they struggled hard for their independence and waged long and
bloody wars with the masters of Nineveh. Can the Assyrian kings have dared
to confide their mortal remains to sepulchres in the midst of a people who
had shown themselves so hostile to their domination? Must they not have
trembled for the security of tombs surrounded by a rebellious and angry
populace? And the furious conflicts that we find narrated in the Assyrian
inscriptions, must they not often have interrupted the transport of bodies
and compelled them to wait without sepulture for months and even years?
Further explorations and the decipherment of the texts will one day solve
the problem. Meanwhile we must attempt to determine the nature of
Chaldaeo-Assyrian beliefs as to a future life. We shall get no help from
Herodotus. Intending to describe the manners and customs of the Chaldaeans
in a special work that he either never wrote or that has been lost,[430] he
treated Mesopotamia in much less ample fashion than Egypt, in his history.
All that he leaves us on the subject we are now studying is this passing
remark, "The Babylonians put their dead in honey, and their funerary
lamentations are very like those of the Egyptians."[431] Happily we have
the Chaldaean cemeteries and the sculptured monuments of Assyria to which we
can turn for information. The funerary writings of the Egyptians allow us
to read their hearts as an open book. We know that the men who lived in the
days of the ancient empire looked upon the posthumous life as a simple
continuation of life in the sun. They believed it to be governed by the
same wants, but capable of infinite prolongation so long as those wants
were supplied. And so they placed their dead in tombs where they were
surrounded by such things as they required when alive, especially by meat
and drink. Finally, they endeavoured to ensure them the enjoyment of these
things to the utmost limit of time by preserving their bodies against
dissolution. If these were to fall into dust the day after they entered
upon their new abode, the provisions and furniture with which it was
stocked would be of no use.
The Chaldaeans kept a similar object before them. They neglected nothing to
secure the body against the action of damp, in the first place by making
the sides of their vaults and the coffins themselves water-tight, secondly,
by providing for the rapid escape of rain water from the cemetery,[432]
and, finally, if they did not push the art of embalming so far as the
Egyptians, they entered upon the same path. The bodies we find in the
oldest tombs are imperfect mummies compared with those of Egypt, but the
skeleton, at least, is nearly always in an excellent state of preservation;
it is only when handled that it tumbles into dust. In the more spacious
tombs the body lies upon a mat, with its head upon a cushion. In most cases
the remains of bandages and linen cloths were found about it. Mats,
cushions, and bandages had all been treated with bitumen. A small
terra-cotta model in the British Museum shows a dead man thus stowed in his
coffin; his hands are folded on his breast, and round the whole lower part
of the body the bands that gave him the appearance of a mummy may be
traced.
The funerary furniture is far from being as rich and varied as it is in the
tombs of Egypt and Etruria, but the same idea has governed the choice of
objects in both cases. When the corpse is that of a man we find at his
side the cylinder which served him as seal, his arms, arrow heads of flint
or bronze, and the remains of the staff he carried in his hand.[433] In a
woman's tomb the body has jewels on its neck, its wrists and ankles; jewels
are strewn about the tomb and placed on the lid of the coffin. Among other
toilet matters have been found small glass bottles, fragments of a bouquet,
and cakes of the black pigment which the women of the East still employ to
lengthen their eyebrows and enhance their blackness.[434]
[Illustration: FIGS. 159, 160.--Vases; from Warka. British Museum.]
The vases which are always present in well-preserved tombs, show the ideas
of the Mesopotamians on death more clearly than anything else. Upon the
palm of one hand or behind the head is placed a cup, sometimes of bronze,
oftener of terra-cotta. From it the dead man can help himself to the water
or fermented liquors with which the great clay jars that are spread over
the floor of his grave are filled (Figs. 159 and 160). Near these also we
find shallow bowls or saucers, used no doubt as plates for holding food.
Date-stones, chicken and fish bones are also present in great numbers. In
one tomb the snout of a swordfish has been found, in another a wild boar's
skull. It would seem too that the idea of adding imitation viands to real
ones occurred to the Chaldaeans as well as to the Egyptians.[435] From one
grave opened by Taylor four ducks carved in stone were taken.
The sepulchres in which the objects we have been mentioning were found, are
the most ancient in Chaldaea--on this all the explorers are agreed. Their
situation in the lowest part of the funerary mounds, the aspect of the
characters engraved upon the cylinders and the style of the things they
contained, all go to prove their age. In similar tombs discovered by M. de
Sarzec at Sirtella, in the same region, a tablet of stone and a bronze
statuette, differing in no important particular from those deposited in
foundation stones, were found. The texts engraved upon them leave no doubt
as to their great antiquity.[436] It is then to the early Chaldaean monarchy
that we must assign these tombs, which so clearly betray ideas and beliefs
practically identical with those that find their freest expression in the
mastabas of the ancient Egyptian Empire.
In Mesopotamia, as in Egypt, the human intellect arrived with the lapse of
time at something beyond this childish and primitive belief. Men did not,
however, repel it altogether as false and ridiculous; they continued to
cherish it at the bottom of their hearts, and to allow it to impose certain
lines of action upon them which otherwise could hardly be explained or
justified. As in Egypt, and in later years in Greece, a new and more
abstract conception was imposed upon the first. Logically, the second
theory was the negation of its predecessor, but where imagination and
sentiment play the principal _role_, such contradictions are lost sight of.
We have elsewhere[437] traced the process by which the imagination was led
to sketch out a new explanation of the mystery of death. As man's
experience increased, and his faculty for observation became more powerful,
he had to make a greater mental effort before he could believe in the
immortality of the body, and in a life prolonged to infinity in the
darkness of the tomb. In order to satisfy the craving for perpetuity, a
something was imagined, we can hardly say what, a shade, an _imago_, that
detached itself from the body at the moment of death, and took itself off
with the lightness of a bird. A great space, with no definite size, shape,
or situation, in which these shades of the departed could meet each other
and enjoy greater freedom than in the tomb, was added to the first
conception. This less material belief was better adapted than the first to
the moral instincts of humanity. A material and organic existence passed in
the grave dealt out the same fate to good and bad alike. On the other
hand, nothing was more easy than to divide the kingdom of the shades into
two compartments, into two distinct domains, and to place in one those
whose conduct had been deserving of reward; in the other, those whose
crimes and vices had been insufficiently punished upon earth.
It is not to the Chaldaean sepulchres that we owe our knowledge that the
Semites of Mesopotamia followed in the footsteps of the Egyptians, when
they found themselves in face of the problem of life and death; it is to
the literature of the Assyrians. Among those tablets of terra-cotta from
the library of Assurbanipal that are now preserved in the British Museum,
George Smith discovered, in 1873, a mythological document in which the
descent of Istar to the infernal regions in search of her lover Tammouz is
recounted. Of this he gives a first translation, which is already out of
date. Since his discovery was announced, the most learned Assyriologists
have made a study of the document, and now even those among them who most
seldom think alike, are in agreement as to its meaning except in a few
unimportant particulars.[438] No doubt remains as to the general
significance of the piece; we may even compare it with other documents from
the same library in which there is much to confirm and complete its
contents.
Even if there were no evidence to the contrary, we might safely affirm that
the first conception was not effaced from the minds of the Assyrians by the
second. M. Halevy has translated an Assyrian text, whose meaning he thus
epitomizes: "What becomes of the individual deposited in a tomb? A curious
passage in one of the 'books' from the library of Assurbanipal answers this
question, indirectly, indeed, but without any ambiguity. After death the
vital and indestructible principle, the incorporeal spirit, is disengaged
from the body; it is called in Assyrian _ekimmou_ or _egimmou_.... The
_ekimmou_ inhabits the tomb and reposes upon the bed (_zalalu_) of the
corpse. If well treated by the children of the defunct, he becomes their
protector; if not, their evil genius and scourge. The greatest misfortune
that can befall a man is to be deprived of burial. In such a case his
spirit, deprived of a resting-place and of the funerary libations, leads a
wandering and miserable existence; he is exposed to all kinds of
ill-treatment at the hands of his fellow spirits, who show him no mercy."
Here we find certain elements of that primitive belief that would escape us
in a mere examination of the Chaldaean tombs. We see how they understood the
connection between the living and the dead, and why they so passionately
desired to receive due sepulture. These ideas and sentiments are identical
with those which M. Fustel de Coulanges has analysed so deeply in his _Cite
antique_. They subsisted in all their strength in Assyria, and must have
had all the consequences, all the social effects that they had elsewhere,
and yet we find mentioned a home for the dead, a joyless country in which
they could assemble in their countless numbers; as Egypt had its _Ament_
and Greece her _Hades_, so Chaldaea and Assyria had their hell, their place
of departed ghosts. We know from the narrative of Istar that they looked
upon it as an immense building, situated in the centre of the earth and
bounded on every side by the great river whose waters bathe the foundations
of the world. This country of the dead is called the "land where one sees
nothing" (_mat la namari_), or the "land whence one does not return" (_mat
la tayarti_). The government of the country is in the hands of Nergal, the
god of war, and his spouse Allat, the sister of Astarte. The house is
surrounded by seven strong walls. In each wall there is a single door,
which is fastened by a bolt as soon as a new comer has entered. Each door
is kept by an incorruptible guardian. We cannot quote the whole of the
story; we give, however, a few lines in which the chief features of the
Assyrian conception is most clearly shown. Istar speaks:--
Let me return [toward the house],
* * * * *
[Toward] the house in which Irkalla lives,
In which the evening has no morning,
[Towards the country] whence there is no return,
[Whose inhabitants,] deprived of light,
[Have dust for food] and mud to nourish them,
A tunic and wings for vesture,
[Who see no day,] who sit in the shadows,
[In the house] into which I must enter,
[They live there,] (once) the wearers of crowns,
[The wearers] of crowns who governed the world in ancient days,
Of whom Bel and Anou have perpetuated the names and memory.
There too stand the foundations of the earth, the meeting of the
mighty waters,
In the palace of dust into which I must come,
Live the prince and the noble,
Live the king and the strong man,
Live the guardians of the depths of the great gods,
Live Ner and Etana.
A long dialogue follows between Istar and the guardian of the gate, by
which we find that there was a rigorous law compelling all who came to
strip themselves of their clothes before they could enter. In spite of her
resistance, Istar herself was obliged to submit to this law. From other
texts we learn that the entrance to these infernal regions was situated at
the foot of the "northern mountain," a sort of Assyrian Olympus.
According to the fragment above quoted the condition of the dead was truly
piteous; they had no food but dust and mud; their dwelling is sometimes
called _bit-edi_, the "house of solitude," because in the life of misery
and privation they lead no one takes any thought for others, his only care
is to relieve his own troubles. Consequently there are no families nor any
social or common life. The conscience protested against the injustice of
confounding with the crowd those mortals who had distinguished themselves
when alive by their exploits or virtues. Thus we find in a recently copied
passage from the great epic of Izdubar, the Assyrian Hercules, that valiant
soldiers--those no doubt who had fallen in the "Wars of Assur"--were
rewarded for their prowess. As soon as they entered the shadow kingdom they
were stretched upon a soft couch and surrounded by their relations. Their
father and mother supported the head the enemy's sword had wounded, their
wives stood beside them and waited on them with zeal and tenderness. They
were refreshed and had their strength restored by the pure water of life.
The idea of a final reward is expressed in still more unmistakable accents
in a religious song of which two fragments have come down to us. The poet
celebrates the felicity of the just taking his food with the gods and
become a god himself:--
Wash thy hands, purify thy hands,
The gods, thine elders, will wash and purify their hands;
Eat the pure nourishment in the pure disks,
Drink the pure water from the pure vases;
Prepare to enjoy the peace of the just!
* * * * *
They have brought their pure water,
Anat, the great spouse of Anou,
Has held thee in her sacred arms;
Iaou has transferred thee into a holy place;
He has transferred thee from his sacred hands;
He has transferred thee into the midst of honey and fat,
He has poured magic water into thy mouth,
And the virtue of the water has opened thy mouth.
* * * * *
As to where this paradise was placed we have no certain information. It
could hardly have been a mere separate district of that abode of shades
that is painted in such sombre colours. We must suppose that it was open to
the sunlight; it was perhaps on one of the slopes of the _Northern
Mountain_, in the neighbourhood of the luminous summit on which the gods
and goddesses had their home.
The idea of a reward for the just carries as its corollary that of a
punishment for the unjust, but in spite of the logical connection between
the two notions, we cannot affirm that the Elysium of these Semites had a
Tartarus by its side. No allusion to such a place has been found in any of
the texts already translated. On the other hand, we find some evidence that
the Assyrians believed in the resurrection of the dead. Marduk and his
spouse Zarpanitu often bear the title of "those who make the dead live
again" (_muballith_ or _muballithat miti_ or _mituti_). The same epithet is
sometimes given to other deities, especially to Istar. As yet we do not
know when and under what conditions renewed life was to be granted.
We need hardly add that the ideas that find expression in the Assyrian
texts were by no means peculiar to the northern people. All Assyriologists
agree that in everything connected with the intellect, the Assyrians
invented nothing; they did nothing but adapt and imitate, translate and
copy from the more prolific Chaldaeans, who furnished as it were the bread
upon which their minds were nourished. It is the Chaldee intellect that we
study when we question the texts from the library of Assurbanipal.
Other passages in these terra-cotta books help to complete and illustrate
those from which we have, as it were, gained a first glimpse of the
Assyrian Under-world; but we shall never, in all probability, know it as we
already know that of the Egyptians. This is partly, perhaps, because it was
less complex, and partly because the fascination it exercised over the mind
of man was not so great.
History contains no mention of a people more preoccupied with the affairs
of the grave than the Egyptians. Doubtless the Chaldaeans had to give a
certain amount of their attention to the same problem, and we know that it
was resolved in the same sense and by the same sequence of beliefs both on
the banks of the Euphrates and on those of the Nile; but other questions
were more attractive to the peoples of Mesopotamia. Their curiosity was
roused chiefly by the phenomena of the skies, by the complicated
phantasmagoria offered nightly in the depths above. These they set
themselves to observe with patience and exactitude, and it is to the habits
thus formed that they, in part at least, owed their scientific superiority
and the honour they derive from the incontestable fact that they have
furnished to modern civilization elements more useful and more readily
assimilated than any other great people of the remote past.
And yet the Semites of Chaldaea were not without myths relating to the abode
of departed souls of which some features may be grasped. In order to get a
better comprehension of them, we must not only look to the discovery and
translation of new texts, but to the intelligent study of figured
representations. At least this seems to be the lesson of a curious monument
recently discovered.[439]
People may differ as to the significance of this or that detail, but no one
will deny that the plaque is religious and funerary in its general
character, and that, whatever may have been its purpose, it is as a whole
connected with the memory and worship of the dead, and therefore that this
is the place for such remarks as we have to make upon it.
The object in question is a bronze plaque, sculptured on both faces, which
Peretie acquired at Hama in Northern Syria. The dealer from whom he bought
it declared that it came into his hands from a peasant of Palmyra. As to
where the latter found it we know nothing. In any case the oasis of Tadmor
was a dependency of Mesopotamia as long as the power of the Chaldaean and
Assyrian monarchies lasted, and the characteristic features of the work in
question are entirely Assyrian. In that respect neither Peretie nor
Clermont-Ganneau made any mistake.
This plaque is a tall rectangle in shape. At its two upper angles there are
salient rings or staples, apparently meant to receive a cord or chain. At
the bottom it has a slight ledge, suggesting that it stood upon its base
and was suspended at the same time. However this may have been, it should
be carefully noticed that both of its faces were meant to be seen.
The face we call the obverse is entirely occupied by the body of a
fantastic quadruped, partly chiselled in slight relief, partly engraved.
This monster is upright on his hind feet; his back is turned to the
spectator, while the lower part of his body is seen almost in profile. He
clings with his two fore feet to the upper edge of the plaque, and looks
over it as over a wall. His fore paws and his head are modelled in the
round. He has four wings; two large ones with imbricated feathers grow from
his shoulders, while a smaller pair are visible beneath them. This
arrangement we have already encountered in undoubted Assyrian monuments
(see Figs. 8, 29, and 123). If we turn the plaque, we find ourselves face
to face with the beast. His skull is depressed, his features hideous, his
grinning jaws wrinkled like those of a lion or panther. His feline
character is enforced by his formidable claws.
The body, lithe and lean as that of a leopard, is covered with a
reticulated marking. His upturned tail nearly touches his loins, while
another detail of his person exactly reproduces the contours of a
snake.[440] The hind feet are those of a bird-of-prey.
[Illustration: FIG. 161.--Plaque of chiselled bronze. Obverse. From the
_Revue archeologique_.]
We must now describe the reverse of this singular monument (Fig. 162). In
the first place its upper edge is surmounted by the claws and face of the
beast just described, which thus dominates, as it were, the scenes depicted
below.
These scenes are divided by horizontal bands into four divisions, and those
divisions are by no means arbitrary; they show us what the sculptor thought
as to the four regions into which the Assyrian universe was divided. Those
regions are the _heavens_, the _atmosphere_, the _earth_, and _hell_ or
_hades_.
The highest division is the narrowest of all. It only contains the stars
and a few other symbols grouped almost exactly as we find them on not a few
monuments of Mesopotamia.[441] The non-sidereal emblems in this division
are, no doubt, the attributes of gods who live beside the stars in the
depths of the firmament.
[Illustration: FIG. 162.--Plaque of chiselled bronze. Reverse.]
In the second division we find seven animal-headed personages passing from
right to left. We need not stop to describe their appearance or gesture; we
have already encountered them at Nineveh mounting guard at the palace
gates (Figs. 6 and 7); they belong to the class of demons who, according to
circumstances, are alternately the plagues and protectors of mankind. The
place they occupy represents a middle region between heaven and earth,
namely, the atmosphere, which was believed to be entirely peopled by these
genii.
The third division contains a funerary scene by which we are at once
transported to earth. On the right there is a standard or candelabrum, and
on the left a group of three figures. One of these appears to be a man, the
other two have lions' heads and resemble the genii of the division above.
The most important group, however, is the one in the middle. A man swathed
in a kind of shroud is stretched on a bed, at the head and foot of which
appear two of those personages, half man and half fish, in which the Oannes
of Berosus has been recognized (Figs. 9 and 67).[442] The figure on the bed
must be that of a corpse wrapped in those linen bandages of which so many
fragments have been found in the tombs of Lower Chaldaea. The two fish-like
gods brandish something over the corpse which appears, so far as it can be
made out, to be a flower or bunch of grass. Their gesture appears to be one
of benediction, like that of a modern priest with the holy-water-sprinkler.
The lowest division is by far the most roomy of the four. It evidently
represents the regions under the earth, and both its size and the
complication of its arrangements show us that it was, in the opinion of the
artist, more important than either of the three above it. The whole of its
lower part is occupied by five fishes all swimming in one direction, a
conventional symbol always employed by Assyrian artists to represent a
river. The left bank is indicated by a raised line running from one side of
the plaque to the other. On this bank towards the left of the relief there
are two shrubs or reeds above which appears a group of objects whose
character is not easily made out. Are they ideographic signs or funeral
offerings? The latter more likely. At any rate we may distinguish vases,
bottles, a small box or comb and especially the foot of a horse drawn with
great precision. At the other end of this division a hideous monster
advances on the river bank. Its semi-bestial, semi-human head is flat and
scarred, with a broad upturned nose and a mouth reaching to the ears. The
upper part of its body is that of a man, although its skin is seamed all
over with short vertical lines meant to indicate hairs. One arm is raised
and the other lowered, like those of the genii in the second division. His
tail is upturned, his feet are those of a bird, and his wings show over his
left shoulder. On the whole, the resemblance between this figure and the
nondescript beast on the obverse of the plaque is so great that we are
tempted to think that they both represent the same being.
Upon the river and in the centre of this division a scene is going forward
that takes up more than a third of the whole field. It is no doubt the main
subject. A small boat glides down the stream, its poop adorned with the
head of a quadruped, its prow with that of a bird. In this boat there is a
horse, seen in profile and with its right fore leg bent at the knee. The
attitude of this animal, which seems born down by a crushing weight, is to
be explained by the rest of the composition. The poor quadruped bears on
his back, in fact, the body of a gigantic and formidable divinity, who
makes use of him not in the orthodox fashion but merely as a kind of
pedestal; his or rather her right knee rests upon the horse's back while
her left foot--which is that of a bird-of-prey--grasps the animal's head.
The legs of this strange monster are human, and so is her body, but here,
as in the personage walking by the river side, we find the short scratches
that denote hair; her head is that of a lioness. For although her sex may
appear doubtful to some it is difficult to explain the action of the two
lion-cubs that spring towards her breasts otherwise than by M.
Clermont-Ganneau's supposition that they are eager for nourishment.
The bosom attacked by the two cubs is seen from in front, but the head
above it is in profile, and so high that it rises above the line that
divides this lower division from the one immediately above it. The jaws are
open, that is to say they grin in harmony with those of the monster looking
over the top of the plaque, with the genii of the third division and that
of the river bank. All this, however, was insufficient to satisfy the
artist's desire for a terror-striking effect, and in each hand of the
goddess he has placed a long serpent which hangs vertically downwards, and
shows by its curves that it is struggling in her grip. Between the limbs of
the goddess and the horse's mane there is something that bears a vague
resemblance to a scorpion.
We cannot pretend to notice every detail of this curious monument as their
explanation would lead us too far, and, with all the care we could give
them, we should still have to leave some unexplained. We shall be satisfied
with pointing out those features of the composition whose meaning seems to
be clear.
In the first place the division of the field into four zones should be
noticed; it coincides with what we know of the Assyrian mode of dividing
the universe among the powers of heaven, the demons, mankind, and the dead.
The chief incident of the third zone shows us that, like the Egyptians, the
Assyrians wished to assure themselves of the protection of some benevolent
deity after death. In the Nile valley that protector was Osiris, in
Mesopotamia Anou, Oannes, or Dagon, the fish god to whom man owed the
advantages of civilization in this world and his safety in the next. The
kingdom of shadows, into which he had to descend after death, was peopled
with monstrous shapes, to give some idea of which sculptors had gone far
afield among the wild beasts of the earth, and had brought together
attributes and weapons that nature never combines in a single animal, such
as the claws of the scorpion, the wings and talons of the eagle, the coils
of the serpent, the mane and muzzle of the great carnivora. The conception
which governs all this is similar to that of which we see the expression in
those Theban tombs where the dead man prosecutes his voyage along the
streams of Ament, and runs the gauntlet of the grimacing demons who would
seize and destroy him but for the shielding presence of Osiris. And the
resemblance is continued in the details. The boat is shaped like the
Egyptian boats;[443] the river may be compared to the subterranean Nile of
the Theban tombs, while it reminds us of the Styx and Acheron of the
Grecian Hades. We remember too the line of the chant we have quoted:
"There too stand the foundations of the earth, the meeting of the
mighty waters."
Certain obscure points that still exist in connection with the
Chaldaeo-Assyrian _inferno_ and with the personages by whom it is peopled,
will, no doubt, be removed as the study of the remains progresses. We have
been satisfied for the moment to explain, with the help of previous
explorers, the notions of the Semites of Mesopotamia upon death and a
second life, and to show that they did not differ sensibly from those of
the Egyptians or of any other ancient people whose ideas are sufficiently
known to us.
NOTES:
[419] See _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. chapter 3.
[420] Upon the tombs found at Nimroud see LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. i. pp.
17-19 and p. 352; vol. ii. pp. 37, 38. Some funerary urns discovered at
Khorsabad are figured in BOTTA, _Monument_, &c. plate 165. There is one
necropolis in Assyria that, in the employment of terra-cotta coffins,
resembles the graveyards of Chaldaea; it is that of Kaleh-Shergat, which has
long been under process of rifling by the Arabs, who find cylinders,
engraved stones, and jewels among its graves. PLACE judges from the
appearance of the coffins and other objects found that this necropolis
dates from the Parthian times (_Ninive_, vol. ii. pp. 183-185). LAYARD is
of the same opinion (_Nineveh_, vol. ii. pp. 58, 154, 155). Mr. Rassam
found tombs at Kouyundjik, but much too late to be Assyrian (LOFTUS,
_Travels and Researches_, p. 198, note). Loftus found some bones in a
roughly-built vault some seventeen feet below the level of the
south-eastern palace at Nimroud, but he acknowledges he saw nothing to lead
him to assign these remains to the Assyrian epoch more than to any other
(_Travels and Researches_, p. 198). Layard was disposed to see in the long
and narrow gallery cleared by him at Nimroud (in the middle of the staged
tower that rises at the north-western corner of the mound) a sepulchral
vault in which the body of a king must once have been deposited
(_Discoveries_, pp. 126, 128), but he confesses that he found nothing in
it, neither human remains nor any trace of sepulchral furniture. His
conjecture is therefore entirely in the air, and he himself only puts it
forth under all reserve. The difficulty of this inquiry is increased by the
fact that the people of different religions by whom the Assyrians were
succeeded always chose by preference to bury their dead at high levels.
Even in our own day it is, as a rule, upon the heights studded over the
plains that Christians, Mussulmans, and Yezidis establish their cemeteries;
and these have become grave obstacles to the explorer in consequence of the
natural disinclination on the part of the peasantry to disturb what may be
the ashes of their ancestors. BENNDORF (_Gesichtshelme_, plate xiv. figs. 1
and 2) reproduces two golden masks similar to those found at Mycenae, which
were found, the one at Kouyundjik, the other at some unknown point in the
same district; he mentions (pp. 66, 67) a third discovery of the same kind.
But the character of the objects found with these masks seems clearly to
show that the tombs from which they were taken were at least as late as the
Seleucidae, if not as the Roman emperors (Cf. HOFFMANN, in the
_Archaeologische Zeitung_ for 1878, pp. 25-27).
[421] When we come to speak of Chaldaean sculpture, we shall give a
reproduction of this relief. We cannot make much use of it in the present
inquiry, because its meaning is so obscure. The stone is broken, and the
imperfections of the design are such that we can hardly tell what the
artist meant to represent. The two figures with baskets on their heads for
instance--are they bringing funeral offerings, or covering with earth the
heaped-up corpses on which they mount?
[422] LAYARD, _Monuments_, 1st series, plates 14, 21, 26, 57, 64, &c.
[423] In more than one battle scene do we find these birds floating over
the heads of the combatants (LAYARD, _Monuments_, 1st series, plates 18,
22, 26, &c). We may also refer to the curious monument from Tell-loh, in
which vultures carrying off human heads and limbs in the clouds are
represented. For an engraving of it see our chapter on Chaldaean sculpture.
[424] See an article published by M. J. HALEVY in the _Revue
archeologique_, vol. xliv. p. 44, under the title: _L'Immortalite de l'Ame
chez les Peuples semitiques_.
[425] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. ii. p. 184.
[426] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, pp. 198, 199.
[427] LOFTUS especially speaks strongly upon this point (_Travels_, &c. p.
199). "By far the most important of these sepulchral cities is Warka, where
the enormous accumulation of human remains proves that it was a peculiarly
sacred spot, and that it was so esteemed for many centuries. It is
difficult to convey anything like a correct notion of the piles upon piles
of human relics which there utterly astound the beholder. Excepting only
the triangular space between the three principal ruins, the whole remainder
of the platform, the whole space between the walls, and an unknown extent
of desert beyond them, are everywhere filled with the bones and sepulchres
of the dead. There is probably no other site in the world which can compare
with Warka in this respect; even the tombs of Ancient Thebes do not contain
such an aggregate amount of mortality. From its foundation by Urukh until
finally abandoned by the Parthians--a period of probably 2,500 years--Warka
appears to have been a sacred burial-place!"
[428] See the curious paper of M. E. LE BLANT entitled: _Tables egyptiennes
a Inscriptions grecques_ (_Revue archeologique_, 1874).
[429] In his sixth and seventh chapters LOFTUS gives a very interesting
account of his visits to the sanctuaries of Nedjef and Kerbela.
[430] The work he alludes to as his Assurioi logoi (i. 184).
[431] HERODOTUS, i. 198.
[432] See above, pp. 158-9 and fig. 49. The details that here follow are
borrowed from the narrations of those who have explored the sepulchral
mounds of lower Chaldaea. Perhaps the most important of these relations is
that of Mr. J. E. TAYLOR, to which we have already referred so often
(_Notes on the Ruins of Mugheir_, to which may be added his _Notes on
Abou-Sharein and Tell-el-Lahm_, p. 413, in the same volume of the
_Journal_). Cf. LOFTUS's eighteenth chapter (_Travels_, &c. p. 198) and the
pages in LAYARD's _Discoveries_, from 556 to 561.
[433] "Each of the Babylonians," says HERODOTUS (i. 195), "carries a seal
and a walking-stick carved at the top into the form of an apple, a rose, a
lily, an eagle, or something similar, for it is not their habit to use a
stick without an ornament."
[434] LOFTUS, _Travels_, p. 212.
[435] See _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. p. 145, note 3.
[436] _Les Fouilles de Chaldee, communication d'une Lettre de M. de
Sarzec_, par LEON HEUZEY, Sec. 1 (in the _Revue archeologique_ for November,
1881).
[437] _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. pp. 127 _et seq._
[438] M. OPPERT has translated this text in full in a work entitled:
_L'Immortalite de l'Ame chez les Chaldeens_ (_Annales de philosophie
chretienne_, vol. viii. 1884), and he has reproduced his version with a few
modifications of detail in _Fragments Mythologiques_ (Quantin, 1881, 18mo).
M. HALEVY has given long extracts from the same document in an article in
the _Revue des Etudes Juives_ (October-December, 1881), entitled: _Les
Inscriptions peintes de Citium_, Sec. 2; he has returned to the same subject
in an article in the _Revue archeologique_ (July, 1882), _L'Immortalite de
l'Ame chez les Peuples semitiques_. We reproduce his translation as the
most recent. Herr SCHRADER has devoted a whole book to the translation and
explanation of this same myth (_Die Hoellenfahrt der Istar_, Giessen,
1874).
[439] See M. CLERMONT-GANNEAU'S _L'Enfer assyrien_, first part (_Revue
archeologique_ vol. xxxviii. and plate xxv.). The second article, which
should have contained the explanation of this little monument, has never
appeared, to the great regret of all who appreciate the knowledge and
penetration of that learned writer at their proper value. The first article
is nothing but a detailed description, which we abridge. Certain doubts
were expressed at the time of its publication as to the authenticity of
this object; nothing, however, has happened to confirm them. Both in
composition and execution it is excellent. M. Peretie, moreover, was not
one to be easily deceived. M. Clermont-Ganneau described and illustrated
this bronze plate from photographs, but since his paper appeared he has
again visited the East and seen and handled the original.
[440] M. CLERMONT-GANNEAU reminds us that this peculiarity is repeated in a
monster on one of the Nimroud reliefs (see LAYARD, _Monuments_, series ii.
plate 3).
[441] See above, p. 72, and Figs. 3, 10, 11, 12. See also the notes to M.
Clermont-Ganneau's article. He has no difficulty in showing how general was
the use of these emblems.
[442] See page 65.
[443] Compare Figs. 23, 31, and especially 159 and 209 of _Art in Ancient
Egypt_, vol. i.
Sec. 2.--_The Chaldaean Tomb._
The principle of the Chaldaean sepulchre was similar to that of the Egyptian
mastaba or hypogeum; it had to supply the same wants and to render the same
services; the task imposed upon the architect was in each case governed by
the same general idea. Why then have we found nothing in Mesopotamia that
may be compared, even at the most respectful distance, with the splendid
tomb-houses of the Theban necropolis, nor even with those of Phoenicia,
Asia Minor, or Etruria? The reason for the difference is easily told; it is
to be found in the nature and configuration of the country itself. There
were no mountains in whose sides tomb-chambers could be cut, and in the
loose permeable soil of the plain it would have been practically impossible
to establish pits that should be at once spacious and durable.
We shall find, no doubt, in almost every country, sepulchres constructed
above the soil like palaces and temples. In Egypt we have already
encountered the pyramid, but even there the tomb-chamber is in most cases
cut in the rock itself, and the huge mass of stone above it is nothing more
than a sort of colossal lid. Funerary architecture is not content, like
that of civil or religious buildings, to borrow its materials from the
rock; it cuts and chisels the living rock itself. In every country the
first idea that seems to occur to man, when he has the mortal remains of
his own people to make away with, is to confide them to the earth. In
mountainous countries rock is everywhere near the soil and rises through it
here and there, especially on the slopes of the hills. It is as a rule both
soft enough to be easily cut with a proper tool, and hard enough, or at
least sufficiently capable of hardening when exposed to the air, faithfully
to preserve any form that may be given to it. As soon as man emerged from
barbarism and conceived the desire to carry with him into the next world
the goods he had enjoyed in this, the hastily cut hole of the savage became
first an ample chamber and then a collection of chambers. It became a
richly furnished habitation, a real palace. But even then the features that
distinguish a house of the living from one of the dead were carefully
preserved. The largest of the tombs in the Biban-el-Molouk is no more than
the development of the primitive grave. As for those tombs in which the
sepulchral chamber is above the ground, as in the famous Mausoleum of
Halicarnassus, they are merely brilliant exceptions, embodiments of
princely caprice or architectural ambition. Funerary architecture is, in
virtue of its destination, a subterranean architecture, an architecture of
the rock. The countries in which it has been managed with the greatest
power and originality are those whose soil lent itself most kindly to the
work of excavation. The limestone and sandstone chains of the Nile valley,
the abrupt flanks of Persian ravines, of Cappadocian and Lycian hillsides,
and the rocky slopes of Greece and Etruria, were excellently fitted for the
work of the funerary architect.
If the civilization of the Mesopotamian Semites had originated in the
country above Nineveh, at the foot of those hills in which the Tigris has
its springs, the fathers of the people would perhaps have cut tomb chambers
like those of Egypt in the soft gypsum, and, in later years, their
descendants, instead of breaking entirely with the traditions of the past
would have raised _tumuli_ in the plains and constructed within them brick
chambers to take the place of vaults cut in the living rock. Chaldaea would
then have been dotted over with sepulchral mounds like those with which the
steppes of central Russia are covered. Nothing of the kind has as yet been
discovered; none of the _tells_ or mounds of sun-dried bricks have yet been
identified as tombs, and that is because, as we have seen, the course of
civilization was from south to north; the first impulse came from the
shores of the Persian Gulf, from the people inhabiting alluvial plains
consisting merely of sand and broken stone. From the very first hour these
people had to compel clay, kneaded and dried in the sun or the brick kiln,
to render the services which are demanded from stone elsewhere. They were
content therefore with entombing their dead either in small brick vaults,
under large terra-cotta covers, or in coffins of the latter material.
The tomb chamber illustrated in our Fig. 89 may be taken as a type. It is
five feet high by seven feet long, and three feet seven inches wide. The
vault is closed at the top by a single row of bricks and at each end by a
double wall of the same material. There are no doors. The tombs once shut
must have been inaccessible. The structure was put together with such care
that neither dust nor water could get within it. Some of these graves, and
among them this particular one, inclosed only one skeleton. Taylor found
fourteen clay vases in it, not to mention other objects such as a walking
stick, rings, cylinders, and bronze cups. Besides these there was a gold
waist-band about an inch wide, showing it to be the grave of a rich man. In
other tombs as many as three, four, and even eleven skeletons were found.
In these the brick under the head and the bronze cup in the hand were
sometimes missing, but the water jars were always there.
[Illustration: FIG. 163.--Tomb at Mugheir; from Taylor.]
In other parts of the same cemetery the dead instead of being placed in a
vault were laid upon an area paved with large well burnt bricks and covered
with a huge terra-cotta lid. These lids were in several pieces, joined
together with reeds soaked in bitumen. We give a section (Fig. 163) and
elevation (Fig. 164) of one of these peculiar sepulchres. The whole was
about seven feet long, three high, and three wide.
The body of the lid is formed of several rings decreasing in thickness with
their distance from the ground. The top is an oval plateau divided into
eight symmetrical compartments by flat bands. The skeleton always lies on
its side, generally the left, the limbs being drawn up as shown in the
engraving (163). Taylor gives a complete list of the objects found in this
tomb together with notes as to their exact position.
[Illustration: FIG. 164.--Tomb at Mugheir; from Taylor.]
[Illustration: FIG. 165.--Tomb at Mugheir; from Taylor.]
Sometimes the covering is more simple in construction and has a domed top
(Fig. 165). Elsewhere in the same necropolis numerous examples of a still
more elementary form of burial were discovered. The skeletons of children
were found between two hollow plates, and full grown bodies in a kind of
double vase into which they could only have been thrust with some
difficulty and that after being doubled up. Still more often coffins were
of the form shown in our Fig. 166. The diameter of these cylindrical jars
was about two feet. The joint between them was sealed with bitumen. At one
end there was a hole to allow the gases generated by decomposition to
escape. None of these coffins contained more than one skeleton, but narrow
as they were room had been found for the vases and dishes. These were
mostly of earthenware, but a few of bronze were also encountered. Each
coffin held an arrow-head of the latter material, while the feet and hands
of the skeleton were adorned with iron rings. In several cases the remains
of gold ornaments, of sculptured ivories and engraved shells, were
discovered.
[Illustration: FIG. 166.--Tomb, or coffin, at Mugheir; from Taylor.]
Finally the fashion seems to have changed, and a more elegant form of
coffin to have come into use. It was still of terra-cotta, but its surface
was covered with a rich glaze originally blue but now mostly of a dark
green. Here and there, on the parts shielded best from the atmosphere, the
blue has preserved its colour. The general shape of these coffins is that
of a shoe or slipper; the oval opening through which the body was
introduced has a grooved edge for the adjustment of the lid. The small hole
for the escape of gas is at the narrow end. This type seems to date from
the last centuries of antiquity rather than from the time of the Chaldaean
Empire; its examples are found close to the surface of the cemeteries,
whence we may fairly conclude that they were the last accessions. It is
still more significant that the images stamped upon the panels with which
the lids are decorated have little to remind us of the bas-reliefs of
Assyria and Chaldaea, and it is not until we turn to the medals of the
Parthians and Sassanids that we find anything to which they can be readily
compared.[444]
In the cemeteries of Lower Chaldaea the various receptacles for human dust
that we have described are heaped vertically one upon another, so that with
the passage of time they have formed huge mounds covering vast spaces and
rising conspicuously above the plain (see Fig. 167, letter c). Loftus tells
us that at Warka he dug trenches between thirty and forty feet deep without
reaching the lowest stratum of sepulchres. There was no apparent order in
their arrangement. Sometimes brick divisions were found for a certain
length, as if used to separate the tombs of one family from those of
another. A layer of fine dust, spread evenly by the winds from the desert,
separated the coffins. Terra-cotta cones inscribed with prayers had been
thrown into the interstices. Sometimes, as at Mugheir, the mound thus
formed is surmounted by a paved platform upon which open the drains that
traverse the mass.[445] In most cases these mounds have been turned over in
all their upper parts by the Arabs. It is probable that in ancient days
each of these huge cemeteries had priests and superintendents told off to
watch over them, to assign his place to each new comer, and to levy fees
like those paid in our day to the mollahs attached to the Mosques of Nedjef
and Kerbela. They guarded the integrity of the mound, and when it had
reached the regulation height, caused it to be paved and finally closed.
In none of these cemeteries has any tomb been discovered that by its size,
richness, or isolation, proclaimed itself the burial place of royalty, and
yet the sovereigns of Mesopotamia must have had something analogous to the
vast and magnificent sepulchres of the Egyptian kings. Their tombs must at
least have been larger and more splendid than those of private individuals.
In the case of Susiana we know that it was so through an inscription of
Assurbanipal. The Assyrian king gives a narrative of his campaign. He tells
us how his soldiers penetrated into the sacred forests and set fire to
them, and then to show more clearly with how stern a vengeance he had
visited the revolted Elamites, he added: "The tombs both of their ancient
and their modern kings, of those kings who did not fear Assur and Istar, my
lords, and had troubled the kings, my fathers, I threw them down, I
demolished them, I let in the light of the sun upon them, then I carried
away their corpses into Assyria. I left their shades without sepulture and
deprived them of the offerings of those who owed them libations."[446]
If the Elamite dynasty had its royal necropolis near Susa, in which
funerary rites were celebrated down to the moment of the Assyrian conquest,
it could hardly have been otherwise with the powerful and pious monarchies
of Chaldaea. History has in fact preserved a few traditions of the royal
sepulchres of that country. Herodotus mentions the tomb of that Queen
Nitocris to whom he attributes so many great works;[447] it is supposed
that she was an Egyptian princess and the wife of Nabopolassar. According
to the historian she caused a sepulchral chamber to be constructed for
herself in the walls of Babylon, above one of the principal gates. So far
as the terms of the inscription are concerned he may have been hoaxed by
the native dragomans, but there is nothing to rouse our scepticism in the
fact of a tomb having been contrived in the thickness of the wall. At
Sinkara Loftus discovered two corbel-vaulted tombs imbedded in a mass of
masonry which had apparently served as basement to a temple rebuilt by
Nebuchadnezzar.[448]
Some of the Babylonian princes, however, were buried in that part of the
Chaldaean territory that was inclosed by the Euphrates and Tigris and
contained most of the cemeteries of which we have been speaking. According
to Arrian, Alexander, on his way back from Lake Pallacopas, passed close to
the tomb of one of the ancient kings, "They say," adds the historian, "that
most of the former kings of Assyria were buried among the lakes and
swamps."[449]
[Illustration: FIG. 167.--Map of the ruins of Mugheir; from Taylor.
H, H, H, H, circumference of 2,946 yards; _a_, platform of house; _b_,
pavement at edge of platform; _c_, tomb mound; _d, e, g, h, k, l, m_,
points at which excavations were made; _f, f, f, f_, comparatively open
space with very low mounds; _n, n_, graves; _o_, the great two-storied
ruin.]
Loftus suggests that these royal tombs should be sought at Warka, but he
found no ruin to which any such character could be certainly assigned. The
only mention of a royal Assyrian tomb in history is of a kind that tells us
nothing. "Semiramis," says Diodorus, "buried Ninus within the boundary
walls of the palace, she raised a mound of extraordinary size over his
tomb; Ctesias says it was nine stades high and ten wide. The town
stretching to the middle of the plain, near the Euphrates,[450] the
funerary mound was conspicuous at many stades' distance like an acropolis;
they tell me that it still exists although Nineveh was overthrown by the
Medes when they destroyed the Assyrian empire." The exaggerations in which
Ctesias indulged may here be recognized. It is impossible to take seriously
statements which make the tomb of Ninus some 5,500 feet high and 6,100 in
diameter. The history of Ninus and Semiramis as Ctesias tells it, is no
more than a romantic tale like those of the _Shah-Nameh_. All that we may
surely gather from the passage in question is that, at the time of
Ctesias, and perhaps a little later, the remains of a great staged-tower
were to be seen among the ruins of Nineveh. The popular imagination had
dubbed this the tomb of Ninus, just as one of the great heaps of debris
that now mark the site is called the tomb of Jonah.
All that has hitherto been recovered in the way of Mesopotamian tomb
architecture is of little importance so far as beauty is concerned, and we
may perhaps be blamed for dwelling upon these remains at such length in a
history of art. But we had our reasons for endeavouring to reunite and
interpret the scanty facts by which some light is thrown on the subject. Of
all the creations of man, his tomb is that, perhaps, which enables us to
penetrate farthest into his inner self; there is no work of his hands into
which he puts more of his true soul, in which he speaks more naively and
with a more complete acknowledgment of his real beliefs and the bases of
his hopes. To pass over the Chaldaean tomb in silence because it is a
mediocre work of art would be to turn a blind eye to the whole of one side
of the life of a great people, a people whose _role_ in the development of
the ancient civilization was such as to demand that we should leave no
stone unturned to make ourselves masters of their every thought.
NOTES:
[444] LOFTUS, _Travels_, &c., pp. 203-4. The British Museum possesses
several fine specimens of these glazed-ware coffins. The details given by
LOFTUS (chapter xx.), upon the necropolis of Sinkara may be read with
interest.
[445] See above, p. 158, and fig. 49.
[446] M. Stanislas GUYARD published a translation of this passage in the
_Journal asiatique_, for May-June, 1880, p. 514; some terms which had
remained doubtful, were explained by M. AMIAUD, in the same journal for
August-September, 1881, p. 237.
[447] HERODOTUS, i. 187.
[448] LOFTUS, _Travels_, &c., pp. 248-9.
[449] ARRIAN, _Anabasis_, vii. 22.
[450] DIODORUS, ii. 7, 1-2.
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