LECTURE I--EGYPT, BABYLON, AND PALESTINE, AND SOME TRADITIONAL ORIGINS
OF CIVILIZATION
At the present moment most of us have little time or thought to spare
for subjects not connected directly or indirectly with the war. We have
put aside our own interests and studies; and after the war we shall all
have a certain amount of leeway to make up in acquainting ourselves
with what has been going on in countries not yet involved in the great
struggle. Meanwhile the most we can do is to glance for a moment at any
discovery of exceptional interest that may come to light.
The main object of these lectures will be to examine certain Hebrew
traditions in the light of new evidence which has been published in
America since the outbreak of the war. The evidence is furnished by some
literary texts, inscribed on tablets from Nippur, one of the oldest
and most sacred cities of Babylonia. They are written in Sumerian, the
language spoken by the non-Semitic people whom the Semitic Babylonians
conquered and displaced; and they include a very primitive version of
the Deluge story and Creation myth, and some texts which throw new light
on the age of Babylonian civilization and on the area within which it
had its rise. In them we have recovered some of the material from which
Berossus derived his dynasty of Antediluvian kings, and we are thus
enabled to test the accuracy of the Greek tradition by that of the
Sumerians themselves. So far then as Babylonia is concerned, these
documents will necessitate a re-examination of more than one problem.
The myths and legends of ancient Egypt are also to some extent involved.
The trend of much recent anthropological research has been in the
direction of seeking a single place of origin for similar beliefs and
practices, at least among races which were bound to one another by
political or commercial ties. And we shall have occasion to test, by
means of our new data, a recent theory of Egyptian influence. The Nile
Valley was, of course, one the great centres from which civilization
radiated throughout the ancient East; and, even when direct contact
is unproved, Egyptian literature may furnish instructive parallels and
contrasts in any study of Western Asiatic mythology. Moreover, by a
strange coincidence, there has also been published in Egypt since the
beginning of the war a record referring to the reigns of predynastic
rulers in the Nile Valley. This, like some of the Nippur texts, takes us
back to that dim period before the dawn of actual history, and, though
the information it affords is not detailed like theirs, it provides
fresh confirmation of the general accuracy of Manetho's sources, and
suggests some interesting points for comparison.
But the people with whose traditions we are ultimately concerned are the
Hebrews. In the first series of Schweich Lectures, delivered in the year
1908, the late Canon Driver showed how the literature of Assyria and
Babylon had thrown light upon Hebrew traditions concerning the origin
and early history of the world. The majority of the cuneiform documents,
on which he based his comparison, date from a period no earlier than the
seventh century B.C., and yet it was clear that the texts themselves,
in some form or other, must have descended from a remote antiquity. He
concluded his brief reference to the Creation and Deluge Tablets with
these words: "The Babylonian narratives are both polytheistic, while
the corresponding biblical narratives (Gen. i and vi-xi) are made
the vehicle of a pure and exalted monotheism; but in spite of this
fundamental difference, and also variations in detail, the resemblances
are such as to leave no doubt that the Hebrew cosmogony and the Hebrew
story of the Deluge are both derived ultimately from the same original
as the Babylonian narratives, only transformed by the magic touch of
Israel's religion, and infused by it with a new spirit."(1) Among the
recently published documents from Nippur we have at last recovered one
at least of those primitive originals from which the Babylonian accounts
were derived, while others prove the existence of variant stories of the
world's origin and early history which have not survived in the later
cuneiform texts. In some of these early Sumerian records we may trace
a faint but remarkable parallel with the Hebrew traditions of man's
history between his Creation and the Flood. It will be our task, then,
to examine the relations which the Hebrew narratives bear both to the
early Sumerian and to the later Babylonian Versions, and to ascertain
how far the new discoveries support or modify current views with regard
to the contents of those early chapters of Genesis.
(1) Driver, _Modern Research as illustrating the Bible_ (The
Schweich Lectures, 1908), p. 23.
I need not remind you that Genesis is the book of Hebrew origins, and
that its contents mark it off to some extent from the other books of the
Hebrew Bible. The object of the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua is to
describe in their origin the fundamental institutions of the national
faith and to trace from the earliest times the course of events which
led to the Hebrew settlement in Palestine. Of this national history
the Book of Genesis forms the introductory section. Four centuries of
complete silence lie between its close and the beginning of Exodus,
where we enter on the history of a nation as contrasted with that of
a family.(1) While Exodus and the succeeding books contain national
traditions, Genesis is largely made up of individual biography. Chapters
xii-l are concerned with the immediate ancestors of the Hebrew race,
beginning with Abram's migration into Canaan and closing with Joseph's
death in Egypt. But the aim of the book is not confined to recounting
the ancestry of Israel. It seeks also to show her relation to other
peoples in the world, and probing still deeper into the past it
describes how the earth itself was prepared for man's habitation.
Thus the patriarchal biographies are preceded, in chapters i-xi, by an
account of the original of the world, the beginnings of civilization,
and the distribution of the various races of mankind. It is, of course,
with certain parts of this first group of chapters that such striking
parallels have long been recognized in the cuneiform texts.
(1) Cf., e.g., Skinner, _A Critical and Exegetical
Commentary on Genesis_ (1912), p. ii f.; Driver, _The Book
of Genesis_, 10th ed. (1916), pp. 1 ff.; Ryle, _The Book of
Genesis_ (1914), pp. x ff.
In approaching this particular body of Hebrew traditions, the necessity
for some caution will be apparent. It is not as though we were dealing
with the reported beliefs of a Malayan or Central Australian tribe. In
such a case there would be no difficulty in applying a purely objective
criticism, without regard to ulterior consequences. But here our own
feelings are involved, having their roots deep in early associations.
The ground too is well trodden; and, had there been no new material to
discuss, I think I should have preferred a less contentious theme. The
new material is my justification for the choice of subject, and also the
fact that, whatever views we may hold, it will be necessary for us to
assimilate it to them. I shall have no hesitation in giving you my own
reading of the evidence; but at the same time it will be possible to
indicate solutions which will probably appeal to those who view the
subject from more conservative standpoints. That side of the discussion
may well be postponed until after the examination of the new evidence in
detail. And first of all it will be advisable to clear up some general
aspects of the problem, and to define the limits within which our
criticism may be applied.
It must be admitted that both Egypt and Babylon bear a bad name in
Hebrew tradition. Both are synonymous with captivity, the symbols of
suffering endured at the beginning and at the close of the national
life. And during the struggle against Assyrian aggression, the
disappointment at the failure of expected help is reflected in
prophecies of the period. These great crises in Hebrew history have
tended to obscure in the national memory the part which both Babylon
and Egypt may have played in moulding the civilization of the smaller
nations with whom they came in contact. To such influence the races of
Syria were, by geographical position, peculiarly subject. The country
has often been compared to a bridge between the two great continents of
Asia and Africa, flanked by the sea on one side and the desert on the
other, a narrow causeway of highland and coastal plain connecting the
valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates.(1) For, except on the frontier of
Egypt, desert and sea do not meet. Farther north the Arabian plateau is
separated from the Mediterranean by a double mountain chain, which runs
south from the Taurus at varying elevations, and encloses in its lower
course the remarkable depression of the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, and
the 'Arabah. The Judaean hills and the mountains of Moab are merely
the southward prolongation of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, and their
neighbourhood to the sea endows this narrow tract of habitable country
with its moisture and fertility. It thus formed the natural channel of
intercourse between the two earliest centres of civilization, and was
later the battle-ground of their opposing empires.
(1) See G. A. Smith, _Historical Geography of the Holy
Land_, pp. 5 ff., 45 ff., and Myres, _Dawn of History_, pp.
137 ff.; and cf. Hogarth, _The Nearer East_, pp. 65 ff., and
Reclus, _Nouvelle Géographie universelle_, t. IX, pp. 685 ff.
The great trunk-roads of through communication run north and south,
across the eastern plateaus of the Haurân and Moab, and along the
coastal plains. The old highway from Egypt, which left the Delta at
Pelusium, at first follows the coast, then trends eastward across the
plain of Esdraelon, which breaks the coastal range, and passing under
Hermon runs northward through Damascus and reaches the Euphrates at its
most westerly point. Other through tracks in Palestine ran then as they
do to-day, by Beesheba and Hebron, or along the 'Arabah and west of the
Dead Sea, or through Edom and east of Jordan by the present Hajj route
to Damascus. But the great highway from Egypt, the most westerly of
the trunk-roads through Palestine, was that mainly followed, with some
variant sections, by both caravans and armies, and was known by the
Hebrews in its southern course as the "Way of the Philistines" and
farther north as the "Way of the East".
The plain of Esraelon, where the road first trends eastward, has been
the battle-ground for most invaders of Palestine from the north, and
though Egyptian armies often fought in the southern coastal plain, they
too have battled there when they held the southern country. Megiddo,
which commands the main pass into the plain through the low Samaritan
hills to the southeast of Carmel, was the site of Thothmes III's famous
battle against a Syrian confederation, and it inspired the writer of the
Apocalypse with his vision of an Armageddon of the future. But invading
armies always followed the beaten track of caravans, and movements
represented by the great campaigns were reflected in the daily passage
of international commerce.
With so much through traffic continually passing within her borders,
it may be matter for surprise that far more striking evidence of its
cultural effect should not have been revealed by archaeological research
in Palestine. Here again the explanation is mainly of a geographical
character. For though the plains and plateaus could be crossed by the
trunk-roads, the rest of the country is so broken up by mountain and
valley that it presented few facilities either to foreign penetration
or to external control. The physical barriers to local intercourse,
reinforced by striking differences in soil, altitude, and climate,
while they precluded Syria herself from attaining national unity, always
tended to protect her separate provinces, or "kingdoms," from the
full effects of foreign aggression. One city-state could be traversed,
devastated, or annexed, without in the least degree affecting
neighbouring areas. It is true that the population of Syria has always
been predominantly Semitic, for she was on the fringe of the great
breeding-ground of the Semitic race and her landward boundary was open
to the Arabian nomad. Indeed, in the whole course of her history the
only race that bade fair at one time to oust the Semite in Syria was the
Greek. But the Greeks remained within the cities which they founded or
rebuilt, and, as Robertson Smith pointed out, the death-rate in Eastern
cities habitually exceeds the birth-rate; the urban population must be
reinforced from the country if it is to be maintained, so that the type
of population is ultimately determined by the blood of the peasantry.(1)
Hence after the Arab conquest the Greek elements in Syria and Palestine
tended rapidly to disappear. The Moslem invasion was only the last of a
series of similar great inroads, which have followed one another since
the dawn of history, and during all that time absorption was continually
taking place from desert tribes that ranged the Syrian border. As we
have seen, the country of his adoption was such as to encourage
the Semitic nomad's particularism, which was inherent in his tribal
organization. Thus the predominance of a single racial element in the
population of Palestine and Syria did little to break down or overstep
the natural barriers and lines of cleavage.
(1) See Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, p. 12
f.; and cf. Smith, _Hist. Geogr._, p. 10 f.
These facts suffice to show why the influence of both Egypt and Babylon
upon the various peoples and kingdoms of Palestine was only intensified
at certain periods, when ambition for extended empire dictated the
reduction of her provinces in detail. But in the long intervals,
during which there was no attempt to enforce political control, regular
relations were maintained along the lines of trade and barter. And in
any estimate of the possible effect of foreign influence upon Hebrew
thought, it is important to realize that some of the channels through
which in later periods it may have acted had been flowing since the dawn
of history, and even perhaps in prehistoric times. It is probable that
Syria formed one of the links by which we may explain the Babylonian
elements that are attested in prehistoric Egyptian culture.(1) But
another possible line of advance may have been by way of Arabia and
across the Red Sea into Upper Egypt.
(1) Cf. _Sumer and Akkad_, pp. 322 ff.; and for a full
discussion of the points of resemblance between the early
Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations, see Sayce, _The
Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions_, chap. iv, pp.
101 ff.
The latter line of contact is suggested by an interesting piece of
evidence that has recently been obtained. A prehistoric flint knife,
with a handle carved from the tooth of a hippopotamus, has been
purchased lately by the Louvre,(1) and is said to have been found at
Gebel el-'Arak near Naga' Hamâdi, which lies on the Nile not far below
Koptos, where an ancient caravan-track leads by Wâdi Hammâmât to the
Red Sea. On one side of the handle is a battle-scene including some
remarkable representations of ancient boats. All the warriors are nude
with the exception of a loin girdle, but, while one set of combatants
have shaven heads or short hair, the others have abundant locks falling
in a thick mass upon the shoulder. On the other face of the handle is
carved a hunting scene, two hunters with dogs and desert animals
being arranged around a central boss. But in the upper field is a very
remarkable group, consisting of a personage struggling with two lions
arranged symmetrically. The rest of the composition is not very unlike
other examples of prehistoric Egyptian carving in low relief, but here
attitude, figure, and clothing are quite un-Egyptian. The hero wears
a sort of turban on his abundant hair, and a full and rounded beard
descends upon his breast. A long garment clothes him from the waist and
falls below the knees, his muscular calves ending in the claws of a bird
of prey. There is nothing like this in prehistoric Egyptian art.
(1) See Bénédite, "Le couteau de Gebel al-'Arak", in
_Foundation Eugène Piot, Mon. et. Mém._, XXII. i. (1916).
Perhaps Monsieur Bénédite is pressing his theme too far when he compares
the close-cropped warriors on the handle with the shaven Sumerians and
Elamites upon steles from Telloh and Susa, for their loin-girdles are
African and quite foreign to the Euphrates Valley. And his suggestion
that two of the boats, flat-bottomed and with high curved ends, seem
only to have navigated the Tigris and Euphrates,(1) will hardly command
acceptance. But there is no doubt that the heroic personage upon the
other face is represented in the familiar attitude of the Babylonian
hero Gilgamesh struggling with lions, which formed so favourite a
subject upon early Sumerian and Babylonian seals. His garment is
Sumerian or Semitic rather than Egyptian, and the mixture of human and
bird elements in the figure, though not precisely paralleled at
this early period, is not out of harmony with Mesopotamian or Susan
tradition. His beard, too, is quite different from that of the Libyan
desert tribes which the early Egyptian kings adopted. Though the
treatment of the lions is suggestive of proto-Elamite rather than
of early Babylonian models, the design itself is unmistakably of
Mesopotamian origin. This discovery intensifies the significance of
other early parallels that have been noted between the civilizations of
the Euphrates and the Nile, but its evidence, so far as it goes, does
not point to Syria as the medium of prehistoric intercourse. Yet then,
as later, there can have been no physical barrier to the use of the
river-route from Mesopotamia into Syria and of the tracks thence
southward along the land-bridge to the Nile's delta.
(1) Op. cit., p. 32.
In the early historic periods we have definite evidence that the eastern
coast of the Levant exercised a strong fascination upon the rulers of
both Egypt and Babylonia. It may be admitted that Syria had little to
give in comparison to what she could borrow, but her local trade in wine
and oil must have benefited by an increase in the through traffic which
followed the working of copper in Cyprus and Sinai and of silver in
the Taurus. Moreover, in the cedar forests of Lebanon and the north
she possessed a product which was highly valued both in Egypt and
the treeless plains of Babylonia. The cedars procured by Sneferu from
Lebanon at the close of the IIIrd Dynasty were doubtless floated as
rafts down the coast, and we may see in them evidence of a regular
traffic in timber. It has long been known that the early Babylonian
king Sharru-kin, or Sargon of Akkad, had pressed up the Euphrates to the
Mediterranean, and we now have information that he too was fired by a
desire for precious wood and metal. One of the recently published Nippur
inscriptions contains copies of a number of his texts, collected by
an ancient scribe from his statues at Nippur, and from these we gather
additional details of his campaigns. We learn that after his complete
subjugation of Southern Babylonia he turned his attention to the west,
and that Enlil gave him the lands "from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea",
i.e. from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Fortunately this rather
vague phrase, which survived in later tradition, is restated in greater
detail in one of the contemporary versions, which records that Enlil
"gave him the upper land, Mari, Iarmuti, and Ibla, as far as the Cedar
Forest and the Silver Mountains".(1)
(1) See Poebel, _Historical Texts_ (Univ. of Penns. Mus.
Publ., Bab. Sect., Vol. IV, No. 1, 1914), pp. 177 f., 222
ff.
Mari was a city on the middle Euphrates, but the name may here signify
the district of Mari which lay in the upper course of Sargon's march.
Now we know that the later Sumerian monarch Gudea obtained his cedar
beams from the Amanus range, which he names _Amanum_ and describes as
the "cedar mountains".(1) Doubtless he felled his trees on the eastern
slopes of the mountain. But we may infer from his texts that Sargon
actually reached the coast, and his "Cedar Forest" may have lain
farther to the south, perhaps as far south as the Lebanon. The "Silver
Mountains" can only be identified with the Taurus, where silver mines
were worked in antiquity. The reference to Iarmuti is interesting, for
it is clearly the same place as Iarimuta or Iarimmuta, of which we
find mention in the Tell el-Amarna letters. From the references to this
district in the letters of Rib-Adda, governor of Byblos, we may infer
that it was a level district on the coast, capable of producing a
considerable quantity of grain for export, and that it was under
Egyptian control at the time of Amenophis IV. Hitherto its position has
been conjecturally placed in the Nile Delta, but from Sargon's reference
we must probably seek it on the North Syrian or possibly the Cilician
coast. Perhaps, as Dr. Poebel suggests, it was the plain of Antioch,
along the lower course and at the mouth of the Orontes. But his further
suggestion that the term is used by Sargon for the whole stretch of
country between the sea and the Euphrates is hardly probable. For
the geographical references need not be treated as exhaustive, but as
confined to the more important districts through which the expedition
passed. The district of Ibla which is also mentioned by Narâm-Sin and
Gudea, lay probably to the north of Iarmuti, perhaps on the southern
slopes of Taurus. It, too, we may regard as a district of restricted
extent rather than as a general geographical term for the extreme north
of Syria.
(1) Thureau-Dangin, _Les inscriptions de Sumer de d'Akkad_,
p. 108 f., Statue B, col. v. 1. 28; Germ. ed., p. 68 f.
It is significant that Sargon does not allude to any battle when
describing this expedition, nor does he claim to have devastated the
western countries.(1) Indeed, most of these early expeditions to the
west appear to have been inspired by motives of commercial enterprise
rather than of conquest. But increase of wealth was naturally followed
by political expansion, and Egypt's dream of an Asiatic empire was
realized by Pharaohs of the XVIIIth Dynasty. The fact that Babylonian
should then have been adopted as the medium of official intercourse in
Syria points to the closeness of the commercial ties which had already
united the Euphrates Valley with the west. Egyptian control had passed
from Canaan at the time of the Hebrew settlement, which was indeed a
comparatively late episode in the early history of Syria. Whether or not
we identify the Khabiri with the Hebrews, the character of the latter's
incursion is strikingly illustrated by some of the Tell el-Amarna
letters. We see a nomad folk pressing in upon settled peoples and
gaining a foothold here and there.(2)
(1) In some versions of his new records Sargon states that
"5,400 men daily eat bread before him" (see Poebel, op.
cit., p. 178); though the figure may be intended to convey
an idea of the size of Sargon's court, we may perhaps see in
it a not inaccurate estimate of the total strength of his
armed forces.
(2) See especially Professor Burney's forthcoming commentary
on Judges (passim), and his forthcoming Schweich Lectures
(now delivered, in 1917).
The great change from desert life consists in the adoption of
agriculture, and when once that was made by the Hebrews any further
advance in economic development was dictated by their new surroundings.
The same process had been going on, as we have seen, in Syria since the
dawn of history, the Semitic nomad passing gradually through the stages
of agricultural and village life into that of the city. The country
favoured the retention of tribal exclusiveness, but ultimate survival
could only be purchased at the cost of some amalgamation with their new
neighbours. Below the surface of Hebrew history these two tendencies
may be traced in varying action and reaction. Some sections of the
race engaged readily in the social and commercial life of Canaanite
civilization with its rich inheritance from the past. Others, especially
in the highlands of Judah and the south, at first succeeded in keeping
themselves remote from foreign influence. During the later periods of
the national life the country was again subjected, and in an intensified
degree, to those forces of political aggression from Mesopotamia and
Egypt which we have already noted as operating in Canaan. But throughout
the settled Hebrew community as a whole the spark of desert fire was
not extinguished, and by kindling the zeal of the Prophets it eventually
affected nearly all the white races of mankind.
In his Presidential Address before the British Association at
Newcastle,(1) Sir Arthur Evans emphasized the part which recent
archaeology has played in proving the continuity of human culture from
the most remote periods. He showed how gaps in our knowledge had been
bridged, and he traced the part which each great race had taken in
increasing its inheritance. We have, in fact, ample grounds for assuming
an interchange, not only of commercial products, but, in a minor degree,
of ideas within areas geographically connected; and it is surely not
derogatory to any Hebrew writer to suggest that he may have adopted, and
used for his own purposes, conceptions current among his contemporaries.
In other words, the vehicle of religious ideas may well be of composite
origin; and, in the course of our study of early Hebrew tradition, I
suggest that we hold ourselves justified in applying the comparative
method to some at any rate of the ingredients which went to form the
finished product. The process is purely literary, but it finds an
analogy in the study of Semitic art, especially in the later periods.
And I think it will make my meaning clearer if we consider for a moment
a few examples of sculpture produced by races of Semitic origin. I do
not suggest that we should regard the one process as in any way proving
the existence of the other. We should rather treat the comparison as
illustrating in another medium the effect of forces which, it is clear,
were operative at various periods upon races of the same stock from
which the Hebrews themselves were descended. In such material products
the eye at once detects the Semite's readiness to avail himself of
foreign models. In some cases direct borrowing is obvious; in others, to
adapt a metaphor from music, it is possible to trace extraneous _motifs_
in the design.(2)
(1) "New Archaeological Lights on the Origins of
Civilization in Europe," British Association, Newcastle-on-
Tyne, 1916.
(2) The necessary omission of plates, representing the
slides shown in the lectures, has involved a recasting of
most passages in which points of archaeological detail were
discussed; see Preface. But the following paragraphs have
been retained as the majority of the monuments referred to
are well known.
Some of the most famous monuments of Semitic art date from the Persian
and Hellenistic periods, and if we glance at them in this connexion it
is in order to illustrate during its most obvious phase a tendency of
which the earlier effects are less pronounced. In the sarcophagus of the
Sidonian king Eshmu-'azar II, which is preserved in the Louvre,(1)
we have indeed a monument to which no Semitic sculptor can lay claim.
Workmanship and material are Egyptian, and there is no doubt that it was
sculptured in Egypt and transported to Sidon by sea. But the king's own
engravers added the long Phoenician inscription, in which he adjures
princes and men not to open his resting-place since there are no jewels
therein, concluding with some potent curses against any violation of his
tomb. One of the latter implores the holy gods to deliver such violators
up "to a mighty prince who shall rule over them", and was probably
suggested by Alexander's recent occupation of Sidon in 332 B.C. after
his reduction and drastic punishment of Tyre. King Eshmun-'zar was not
unique in his choice of burial in an Egyptian coffin, for he merely
followed the example of his royal father, Tabnîth, "priest of
'Ashtart and king of the Sidonians", whose sarcophagus, preserved at
Constantinople, still bears in addition to his own epitaph that of
its former occupant, a certain Egyptian general Penptah. But more
instructive than these borrowed memorials is a genuine example of
Phoenician work, the stele set up by Yehaw-milk, king of Byblos, and
dating from the fourth or fifth century B.C.(2) In the sculptured panel
at the head of the stele the king is represented in the Persian dress of
the period standing in the presence of 'Ashtart or Astarte, his "Lady,
Mistress of Byblos". There is no doubt that the stele is of native
workmanship, but the influence of Egypt may be seen in the technique of
the carving, in the winged disk above the figures, and still more in the
representation of the goddess in her character as the Egyptian Hathor,
with disk and horns, vulture head-dress and papyrus-sceptre. The
inscription records the dedication of an altar and shrine to the
goddess, and these too we may conjecture were fashioned on Egyptian
lines.
(1) _Corp. Inscr. Semit._, I. i, tab. II.
(2) _C.I.S._, I. i, tab. I.
The representation of Semitic deities under Egyptian forms and with
Egyptian attributes was encouraged by the introduction of their cults
into Egypt itself. In addition to Astarte of Byblos, Ba'al, Anath, and
Reshef were all borrowed from Syria in comparatively early times and
given Egyptian characters. The conical Syrian helmet of Reshef, a god
of war and thunder, gradually gave place to the white Egyptian crown,
so that as Reshpu he was represented as a royal warrior; and Qadesh,
another form of Astarte, becoming popular with Egyptian women as
a patroness of love and fecundity, was also sometimes modelled on
Hathor.(1)
(1) See W. Max Müller, _Egyptological Researches_, I, p. 32
f., pl. 41, and S. A. Cook, _Religion of Ancient Palestine_,
pp. 83 ff.
Semitic colonists on the Egyptian border were ever ready to adopt
Egyptian symbolism in delineating the native gods to whom they owed
allegiance, and a particularly striking example of this may be seen on
a stele of the Persian period preserved in the Cairo Museum.(1) It was
found at Tell Defenneh, on the right bank of the Pelusiac branch of the
Nile, close to the old Egyptian highway into Syria, a site which may be
identified with that of the biblical Tahpanhes and the Daphnae of the
Greeks. Here it was that the Jewish fugitives, fleeing with Jeremiah
after the fall of Jerusalem, founded a Jewish colony beside a
flourishing Phoenician and Aramaean settlement. One of the local gods of
Tahpanhes is represented on the Cairo monument, an Egyptian stele in the
form of a naos with the winged solar disk upon its frieze. He stands
on the back of a lion and is clothed in Asiatic costume with the high
Syrian tiara crowning his abundant hair. The Syrian workmanship is
obvious, and the Syrian character of the cult may be recognized in such
details as the small brazen fire-altar before the god, and the sacred
pillar which is being anointed by the officiating priest. But the god
holds in his left hand a purely Egyptian sceptre and in his right an
emblem as purely Babylonian, the weapon of Marduk and Gilgamesh which
was also wielded by early Sumerian kings.
(1) Müller, op. cit., p. 30 f., pl. 40. Numismatic evidence
exhibits a similar readiness on the part of local Syrian
cults to adopt the veneer of Hellenistic civilization while
retaining in great measure their own individuality; see
Hill, "Some Palestinian Cults in the Graeco-Roman Age", in
_Proceedings of the British Academy_, Vol. V (1912).
The Elephantine papyri have shown that the early Jews of the Diaspora,
though untrammeled by the orthodoxy of Jerusalem, maintained the purity
of their local cult in the face of considerable difficulties. Hence the
gravestones of their Aramaean contemporaries, which have been found in
Egypt, can only be cited to illustrate the temptations to which they
were exposed.(1) Such was the memorial erected by Abseli to the memory
of his parents, Abbâ and Ahatbû, in the fourth year of Xerxes, 481
B.C.(2) They had evidently adopted the religion of Osiris, and were
buried at Saqqârah in accordance with the Egyptian rites. The upper
scene engraved upon the stele represents Abbâ and his wife in the
presence of Osiris, who is attended by Isis and Nephthys; and in the
lower panel is the funeral scene, in which all the mourners with
one exception are Asiatics. Certain details of the rites that are
represented, and mistakes in the hieroglyphic version of the text, prove
that the work is Aramaean throughout.(3)
(1) It may be admitted that the Greek platonized cult of
Isis and Osiris had its origin in the fusion of Greeks and
Egyptians which took place in Ptolemaic times (cf. Scott-
Moncrieff, _Paganism and Christianity in Egypt_, p. 33 f.).
But we may assume that already in the Persian period the
Osiris cult had begun to acquire a tinge of mysticism,
which, though it did not affect the mechanical reproduction
of the native texts, appealed to the Oriental mind as well
as to certain elements in Greek religion. Persian influence
probably prepared the way for the Platonic exegesis of the
Osiris and Isis legends which we find in Plutarch; and the
latter may have been in great measure a development, and
not, as is often assumed, a complete misunderstanding of the
later Egyptian cult.
(2) _C.I.S._, II. i, tab. XI, No. 122.
(3) A very similar monument is the Carpentras Stele
(_C.I.S._, II., i, tab. XIII, No. 141), commemorating Taba,
daughter of Tahapi, an Aramaean lady who was also a convert
to Osiris. It is rather later than that of Abbâ and his
wife, since the Aramaic characters are transitional from the
archaic to the square alphabet; see Driver, _Notes on the
Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel_, pp. xviii ff., and
Cooke, _North Semitic Inscriptions_, p. 205 f. The Vatican
Stele (op. cit. tab. XIV. No. 142), which dates from the
fourth century, represents inferior work.
If our examples of Semitic art were confined to the Persian and later
periods, they could only be employed to throw light on their own
epoch, when through communication had been organized, and there was
consequently a certain pooling of commercial and artistic products
throughout the empire.(1) It is true that under the Great King the
various petty states and provinces were encouraged to manage their own
affairs so long as they paid the required tribute, but their horizon
naturally expanded with increase of commerce and the necessity for
service in the king's armies. At this time Aramaic was the speech of
Syria, and the population, especially in the cities, was still
largely Aramaean. As early as the thirteenth century sections of this
interesting Semitic race had begun to press into Northern Syria from
the middle Euphrates, and they absorbed not only the old Canaanite
population but also the Hittite immigrants from Cappadocia. The latter
indeed may for a time have furnished rulers to the vigorous North Syrian
principalities which resulted from this racial combination, but the
Aramaean element, thanks to continual reinforcement, was numerically
dominant, and their art may legitimately be regarded as in great measure
a Semitic product. Fortunately we have recovered examples of sculpture
which prove that tendencies already noted in the Persian period were
at work, though in a minor degree, under the later Assyrian empire.
The discoveries made at Zenjirli, for example, illustrate the gradually
increasing effect of Assyrian influence upon the artistic output of a
small North Syrian state.
(1) Cf. Bevan, _House of Seleucus_, Vol. I, pp. 5, 260 f.
The artistic influence of Mesopotamia was even more widely
spread than that of Egypt during the Persian period. This is
suggested, for example, by the famous lion-weight discovered
at Abydos in Mysia, the town on the Hellespont famed for the
loves of Hero and Leander. The letters of its Aramaic
inscription (_C.I.S._, II. i, tab. VII, No. 108) prove by
their form that it dates from the Persian period, and its
provenance is sufficiently attested. Its weight moreover
suggests that it was not merely a Babylonian or Persian
importation, but cast for local use, yet in design and
technique it is scarcely distinguishable from the best
Assyrian work of the seventh century.
This village in north-western Syria, on the road between Antioch and
Mar'ash, marks the site of a town which lay near the southern border or
just within the Syrian district of Sam'al. The latter is first mentioned
in the Assyrian inscriptions by Shalmaneser III, the son and successor
of the great conqueror, Ashur-nasir-pal; and in the first half of the
eighth century, though within the radius of Assyrian influence, it was
still an independent kingdom. It is to this period that we must assign
the earliest of the inscribed monuments discovered at Zenjirli and
its neighbourhood. At Gerjin, not far to the north-west, was found
the colossal statue of Hadad, chief god of the Aramaeans, which was
fashioned and set up in his honour by Panammu I, son of Qaral and king
of Ya'di.(1) In the long Aramaic inscription engraved upon the statue
Panammu records the prosperity of his reign, which he ascribes to the
support he has received from Hadad and his other gods, El, Reshef,
Rekub-el, and Shamash. He had evidently been left in peace by Assyria,
and the monument he erected to his god is of Aramaean workmanship and
design. But the influence of Assyria may be traced in Hadad's beard
and in his horned head-dress, modelled on that worn by Babylonian and
Assyrian gods as the symbol of divine power.
(1) See F. von Luschan, _Sendschirli_, I. (1893), pp. 49
ff., pl. vi; and cf. Cooke, _North Sem. Inscr._, pp. 159 ff.
The characters of the inscription on the statue are of the
same archaic type as those of the Moabite Stone, though
unlike them they are engraved in relief; so too are the
inscriptions of Panammu's later successor Bar-rekub (see
below). Gerjin was certainly in Ya'di, and Winckler's
suggestion that Zenjirli itself also lay in that district
but near the border of Sam'al may be provisionally accepted;
the occurrence of the names in the inscriptions can be
explained in more than one way (see Cooke, op. cit., p.
183).
The political changes introduced into Ya'di and Sam'al by
Tiglath-pileser IV are reflected in the inscriptions and monuments of
Bar-rekub, a later king of the district. Internal strife had brought
disaster upon Ya'di and the throne had been secured by Panammu II, son
of Bar-sur, whose claims received Assyrian support. In the words of
his son Bar-rekub, "he laid hold of the skirt of his lord, the king of
Assyria", who was gracious to him; and it was probably at this time, and
as a reward for his loyalty, that Ya'di was united with the neighbouring
district of Sam'al. But Panammu's devotion to his foreign master led to
his death, for he died at the siege of Damascus, in 733 or 732 B.C., "in
the camp, while following his lord, Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria".
His kinsfolk and the whole camp bewailed him, and his body was sent
back to Ya'di, where it was interred by his son, who set up an inscribed
statue to his memory. Bar-rekub followed in his father's footsteps, as
he leads us to infer in his palace-inscription found at Zenjirli: "I
ran at the wheel of my lord, the king of Assyria, in the midst of mighty
kings, possessors of silver and possessors of gold." It is not strange
therefore that his art should reflect Assyrian influence far more
strikingly than that of Panammu I. The figure of himself which he caused
to be carved in relief on the left side of the palace-inscription is
in the Assyrian style,(1) and so too is another of his reliefs from
Zenjirli. On the latter Bar-rekub is represented seated upon his throne
with eunuch and scribe in attendance, while in the field is the emblem
of full moon and crescent, here ascribed to "Ba'al of Harran", the
famous centre of moon-worship in Northern Mesopotamia.(2)
(1) _Sendschirli_, IV (1911), pl. lxvii. Attitude and
treatment of robes are both Assyrian, and so is the
arrangement of divine symbols in the upper field, though
some of the latter are given under unfamiliar forms. The
king's close-fitting peaked cap was evidently the royal
headdress of Sam'al; see the royal figure on a smaller stele
of inferior design, op. cit., pl. lxvi.
(2) Op. cit. pp. 257, 346 ff., and pl. lx. The general style
of the sculpture and much of the detail are obviously
Assyrian. Assyrian influence is particularly noticeable in
Bar-rekub's throne; the details of its decoration are
precisely similar to those of an Assyrian bronze throne in
the British Museum. The full moon and crescent are not of
the familiar form, but are mounted on a standard with
tassels.
The detailed history and artistic development of Sam'al and Ya'di convey
a very vivid impression of the social and material effects upon the
native population of Syria, which followed the westward advance of
Assyria in the eighth century. We realize not only the readiness of
one party in the state to defeat its rival with the help of Assyrian
support, but also the manner in which the life and activities of the
nation as a whole were unavoidably affected by their action. Other
Hittite-Aramaean and Phoenician monuments, as yet undocumented with
literary records, exhibit a strange but not unpleasing mixture of
foreign _motifs_, such as we see on the stele from Amrith(1) in the
inland district of Arvad. But perhaps the most remarkable example
of Syrian art we possess is the king's gate recently discovered at
Carchemish.(2) The presence of the hieroglyphic inscriptions points to
the survival of Hittite tradition, but the figures represented in
the reliefs are of Aramaean, not Hittite, type. Here the king is seen
leading his eldest son by the hand in some stately ceremonial, and
ranged in registers behind them are the younger members of the royal
family, whose ages are indicated by their occupations.(3) The employment
of basalt in place of limestone does not disguise the sculptor's debt
to Assyria. But the design is entirely his own, and the combined dignity
and homeliness of the composition are refreshingly superior to the
arrogant spirit and hard execution which mar so much Assyrian work. This
example is particularly instructive, as it shows how a borrowed art may
be developed in skilled hands and made to serve a purpose in complete
harmony with its new environment.
(1) _Collection de Clercq_, t. II, pl. xxxvi. The stele is
sculptured in relief with the figure of a North Syrian god.
Here the winged disk is Egyptian, as well as the god's
helmet with uraeus, and his loin-cloth; his attitude and his
supporting lion are Hittite; and the lozenge-mountains, on
which the lion stands, and the technique of the carving are
Assyrian. But in spite of its composite character the design
is quite successful and not in the least incongruous.
(2) Hogarth, _Carchemish_, Pt. I (1914), pl. B. 7 f.
(3) Two of the older boys play at knuckle-bones, others whip
spinning-tops, and a little naked girl runs behind
supporting herself with a stick, on the head of which is
carved a bird. The procession is brought up by the queen-
mother, who carries the youngest baby and leads a pet lamb.
Such monuments surely illustrate the adaptability of the Semitic
craftsman among men of Phoenician and Aramaean strain. Excavation in
Palestine has failed to furnish examples of Hebrew work. But Hebrew
tradition itself justifies us in regarding this _trait_ as of more
general application, or at any rate as not repugnant to Hebrew thought,
when it relates that Solomon employed Tyrian craftsmen for work upon the
Temple and its furniture; for Phoenician art was essentially Egyptian in
its origin and general character. Even Eshmun-'zar's desire for burial
in an Egyptian sarcophagus may be paralleled in Hebrew tradition of
a much earlier period, when, in the last verse of Genesis,(1) it is
recorded that Joseph died, "and they embalmed him, and he was put in a
coffin in Egypt". Since it formed the subject of prophetic denunciation,
I refrain for the moment from citing the notorious adoption of Assyrian
customs at certain periods of the later Judaean monarchy. The two
records I have referred to will suffice, for we have in them cherished
traditions, of which the Hebrews themselves were proud, concerning the
most famous example of Hebrew religious architecture and the burial of
one of the patriarchs of the race. A similar readiness to make use of
the best available resources, even of foreign origin, may on analogy be
regarded as at least possible in the composition of Hebrew literature.
(1) Gen. l. 26, assigned by critics to E.
We shall see that the problems we have to face concern the possible
influence of Babylon, rather than of Egypt, upon Hebrew tradition. And
one last example, drawn from the later period, will serve to demonstrate
how Babylonian influence penetrated the ancient world and has even left
some trace upon modern civilization. It is a fact, though one perhaps
not generally realized, that the twelve divisions on the dials of
our clocks and watches have a Babylonian, and ultimately a Sumerian,
ancestry. For why is it we divide the day into twenty-four hours? We
have a decimal system of reckoning, we count by tens; why then should we
divide the day and night into twelve hours each, instead of into ten or
some multiple of ten? The reason is that the Babylonians divided the day
into twelve double-hours; and the Greeks took over their ancient system
of time-division along with their knowledge of astronomy and passed it
on to us. So if we ourselves, after more than two thousand years, are
making use of an old custom from Babylon, it would not be surprising if
the Hebrews, a contemporary race, should have fallen under her influence
even before they were carried away as captives and settled forcibly upon
her river-banks.
We may pass on, then, to the site from which our new material has been
obtained--the ancient city of Nippur, in central Babylonia. Though the
place has been deserted for at least nine hundred years, its ancient
name still lingers on in local tradition, and to this day _Niffer_ or
_Nuffar_ is the name the Arabs give the mounds which cover its extensive
ruins. No modern town or village has been built upon them or in their
immediate neighbourhood. The nearest considerable town is Dîwânîyah, on
the left bank of the Hillah branch of the Euphrates, twenty miles to the
south-west; but some four miles to the south of the ruins is the village
of Sûq el-'Afej, on the eastern edge of the 'Afej marshes, which begin
to the south of Nippur and stretch away westward. Protected by its
swamps, the region contains a few primitive settlements of the wild
'Afej tribesmen, each a group of reed-huts clustering around the mud
fort of its ruling sheikh. Their chief enemies are the Shammâr, who
dispute with them possession of the pastures. In summer the marshes near
the mounds are merely pools of water connected by channels through
the reed-beds, but in spring the flood-water converts them into a vast
lagoon, and all that meets the eye are a few small hamlets built on
rising knolls above the water-level. Thus Nippur may be almost isolated
during the floods, but the mounds are protected from the waters'
encroachment by an outer ring of former habitation which has slightly
raised the level of the encircling area. The ruins of the city stand
from thirty to seventy feet above the plain, and in the north-eastern
corner there rose, before the excavations, a conical mound, known by
the Arabs as _Bint el-Emîr_ or "The Princess". This prominent landmark
represents the temple-tower of Enlil's famous sanctuary, and even after
excavation it is still the first object that the approaching traveller
sees on the horizon. When he has climbed its summit he enjoys an
uninterrupted view over desert and swamp.
The cause of Nippur's present desolation is to be traced to the change
in the bed of the Euphrates, which now lies far to the west. But in
antiquity the stream flowed through the centre of the city, along the
dry bed of the Shatt en-Nîl, which divides the mounds into an eastern
and a western group. The latter covers the remains of the city proper
and was occupied in part by the great business-houses and bazaars. Here
more than thirty thousand contracts and accounts, dating from the fourth
millennium to the fifth century B.C., were found in houses along the
former river-bank. In the eastern half of the city was Enlil's great
temple Ekur, with its temple-tower Imkharsag rising in successive stages
beside it. The huge temple-enclosure contained not only the sacrificial
shrines, but also the priests' apartments, store-chambers, and
temple-magazines. Outside its enclosing wall, to the south-west, a large
triangular mound, christened "Tablet Hill" by the excavators, yielded
a further supply of records. In addition to business-documents of the
First Dynasty of Babylon and of the later Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian,
and Persian periods, between two and three thousand literary texts and
fragments were discovered here, many of them dating from the Sumerian
period. And it is possible that some of the early literary texts that
have been published were obtained in other parts of the city.
No less than twenty-one different strata, representing separate periods
of occupation, have been noted by the American excavators at various
levels within the Nippur mounds,(1) the earliest descending to virgin
soil some twenty feet below the present level of the surrounding plain.
The remote date of Nippur's foundation as a city and cult-centre
is attested by the fact that the pavement laid by Narâm-Sin in the
south-eastern temple-court lies thirty feet above virgin soil, while
only thirty-six feet of superimposed _débris_ represent the succeeding
millennia of occupation down to Sassanian and early Arab times. In
the period of the Hebrew captivity the city still ranked as a great
commercial market and as one of the most sacred repositories of
Babylonian religious tradition. We know that not far off was Tel-abib,
the seat of one of the colonies of Jewish exiles, for that lay "by the
river of Chebar",(2) which we may identify with the Kabaru Canal in
Nippur's immediate neighbourhood. It was "among the captives by the
river Chebar" that Ezekiel lived and prophesied, and it was on Chebar's
banks that he saw his first vision of the Cherubim.(3) He and other of
the Jewish exiles may perhaps have mingled with the motley crowd that
once thronged the streets of Nippur, and they may often have gazed on
the huge temple-tower which rose above the city's flat roofs. We know
that the later population of Nippur itself included a considerable
Jewish element, for the upper strata of the mounds have yielded numerous
clay bowls with Hebrew, Mandaean, and Syriac magical inscriptions;(4)
and not the least interesting of the objects recovered was the wooden
box of a Jewish scribe, containing his pen and ink-vessel and a little
scrap of crumbling parchment inscribed with a few Hebrew characters.(5)
(1) See Hilprecht, _Explorations in Bible Lands_, pp. 289
ff., 540 ff.; and Fisher, _Excavations at Nippur_, Pt. I
(1905), Pt. II (1906).
(2) Ezek. iii. 15.
(3) Ezek. i. 1, 3; iii. 23; and cf. x. 15, 20, 22, and
xliii. 3.
(4) See J. A. Montgomery, _Aramaic Incantation Texts from
Nippur_, 1913
(5) Hilprecht, _Explorations_, p. 555 f.
Of the many thousands of inscribed clay tablets which were found in
the course of the expeditions, some were kept at Constantinople, while
others were presented by the Sultan Abdul Hamid to the excavators, who
had them conveyed to America. Since that time a large number have been
published. The work was necessarily slow, for many of the texts were
found to be in an extremely bad state of preservation. So it happened
that a great number of the boxes containing tablets remained until
recently still packed up in the store-rooms of the Pennsylvania Museum.
But under the present energetic Director of the Museum, Dr. G. B.
Gordon, the process of arranging and publishing the mass of literary
material has been "speeded up". A staff of skilled workmen has been
employed on the laborious task of cleaning the broken tablets and
fitting the fragments together. At the same time the help of several
Assyriologists was welcomed in the further task of running over and
sorting the collections as they were prepared for study. Professor Clay,
Professor Barton, Dr. Langdon, Dr. Edward Chiera, and Dr. Arno Poebel
have all participated in the work. But the lion's share has fallen to
the last-named scholar, who was given leave of absence by John
Hopkins University in order to take up a temporary appointment at the
Pennsylvania Museum. The result of his labours was published by the
Museum at the end of 1914.(1) The texts thus made available for study
are of very varied interest. A great body of them are grammatical
and represent compilations made by Semitic scribes of the period
of Hammurabi's dynasty for their study of the old Sumerian tongue.
Containing, as most of them do, Semitic renderings of the Sumerian words
and expressions collected, they are as great a help to us in our study
of Sumerian language as they were to their compilers; in particular they
have thrown much new light on the paradigms of the demonstrative and
personal pronouns and on Sumerian verbal forms. But literary texts are
also included in the recent publications.
(1) Poebel, _Historical Texts_ and _Historical and
Grammatical Texts_ (Univ. of Penns. Mus. Publ., Bab. Sect.,
Vol. IV, No. 1, and Vol. V), Philadelphia, 1914.
When the Pennsylvania Museum sent out its first expedition, lively hopes
were entertained that the site selected would yield material of interest
from the biblical standpoint. The city of Nippur, as we have seen,
was one of the most sacred and most ancient religious centres in
the country, and Enlil, its city-god, was the head of the Babylonian
pantheon. On such a site it seemed likely that we might find versions of
the Babylonian legends which were current at the dawn of history before
the city of Babylonia and its Semitic inhabitants came upon the scene.
This expectation has proved to be not unfounded, for the literary
texts include the Sumerian Deluge Version and Creation myth to which I
referred at the beginning of the lecture. Other texts of almost equal
interest consist of early though fragmentary lists of historical and
semi-mythical rulers. They prove that Berossus and the later Babylonians
depended on material of quite early origin in compiling their dynasties
of semi-mythical kings. In them we obtain a glimpse of ages more remote
than any on which excavation in Babylonia has yet thrown light, and for
the first time we have recovered genuine native tradition of early date
with regard to the cradle of Babylonian culture. Before we approach the
Sumerian legends themselves, it will be as well to-day to trace back
in this tradition the gradual merging of history into legend and myth,
comparing at the same time the ancient Egyptian's picture of his own
remote past. We will also ascertain whether any new light is thrown by
our inquiry upon Hebrew traditions concerning the earliest history of
the human race and the origins of civilization.
In the study of both Egyptian and Babylonian chronology there has been a
tendency of late years to reduce the very early dates that were formerly
in fashion. But in Egypt, while the dynasties of Manetho have been
telescoped in places, excavation has thrown light on predynastic
periods, and we can now trace the history of culture in the Nile Valley
back, through an unbroken sequence, to its neolithic stage. Quite
recently, too, as I mentioned just now, a fresh literary record of
these early predynastic periods has been recovered, on a fragment of
the famous Palermo Stele, our most valuable monument for early Egyptian
history and chronology. Egypt presents a striking contrast to Babylonia
in the comparatively small number of written records which have survived
for the reconstruction of her history. We might well spare much of
her religious literature, enshrined in endless temple-inscriptions and
papyri, if we could but exchange it for some of the royal annals of
Egyptian Pharaohs. That historical records of this character were
compiled by the Egyptian scribes, and that they were as detailed and
precise in their information as those we have recovered from Assyrian
sources, is clear from the few extracts from the annals of Thothmes
III's wars which are engraved on the walls of the temple at Karnak.(1)
As in Babylonia and Assyria, such records must have formed the
foundation on which summaries of chronicles of past Egyptian history
were based. In the Palermo Stele it is recognized that we possess a
primitive chronicle of this character.
(1) See Breasted, _Ancient Records_, I, p. 4, II, pp. 163
ff.
Drawn up as early as the Vth Dynasty, its historical summary proves that
from the beginning of the dynastic age onward a yearly record was kept
of the most important achievements of the reigning Pharaoh. In this
fragmentary but invaluable epitome, recording in outline much of the
history of the Old Kingdom,(1) some interesting parallels have long been
noted with Babylonian usage. The early system of time-reckoning, for
example, was the same in both countries, each year being given an
official title from the chief event that occurred in it. And although in
Babylonia we are still without material for tracing the process by which
this cumbrous method gave place to that of reckoning by regnal years,
the Palermo Stele demonstrates the way in which the latter system was
evolved in Egypt. For the events from which the year was named came
gradually to be confined to the fiscal "numberings" of cattle and land.
And when these, which at first had taken place at comparatively long
intervals, had become annual events, the numbered sequence of their
occurrence corresponded precisely to the years of the king's reign. On
the stele, during the dynastic period, each regnal year is allotted its
own space or rectangle,(2) arranged in horizontal sequence below the
name and titles of the ruling king.
(1) Op. cit., I, pp. 57 ff.
(2) The spaces are not strictly rectangles, as each is divided
vertically from the next by the Egyptian hieroglyph for "year".
The text, which is engraved on both sides of a great block of black
basalt, takes its name from the fact that the fragment hitherto known
has been preserved since 1877 at the Museum of Palermo. Five other
fragments of the text have now been published, of which one undoubtedly
belongs to the same monument as the Palermo fragment, while the others
may represent parts of one or more duplicate copies of that famous text.
One of the four Cairo fragments(1) was found by a digger for _sebakh_
at Mitrahîneh (Memphis); the other three, which were purchased from a
dealer, are said to have come from Minieh, while the fifth fragment,
at University College, is also said to have come from Upper Egypt,(2)
though it was purchased by Professor Petrie while at Memphis. These
reports suggest that a number of duplicate copies were engraved and set
up in different Egyptian towns, and it is possible that the whole of the
text may eventually be recovered. The choice of basalt for the records
was obviously dictated by a desire for their preservation, but it has
had the contrary effect; for the blocks of this hard and precious
stone have been cut up and reused in later times. The largest and
most interesting of the new fragments has evidently been employed as a
door-sill, with the result that its surface is much rubbed and parts of
its text are unfortunately almost undecipherable. We shall see that the
earliest section of its record has an important bearing on our knowledge
of Egyptian predynastic history and on the traditions of that remote
period which have come down to us from the history of Manetho.
(1) See Gautier, _Le Musée Égyptien_, III (1915), pp. 29 ff., pl.
xxiv ff., and Foucart, _Bulletin de l'Institut Français d'Archéologie
Orientale_, XII, ii (1916), pp. 161 ff.; and cf. Gardiner, _Journ. of
Egypt. Arch._, III, pp. 143 ff., and Petrie, _Ancient Egypt_, 1916, Pt.
III, pp. 114 ff.
(2) Cf. Petrie, op. cit., pp. 115, 120.
From the fragment of the stele preserved at Palermo we already knew that
its record went back beyond the Ist Dynasty into predynastic times.
For part of the top band of the inscription, which is there preserved,
contains nine names borne by kings of Lower Egypt or the Delta, which,
it had been conjectured, must follow the gods of Manetho and precede
the "Worshippers of Horus", the immediate predecessors of the Egyptian
dynasties.(1) But of contemporary rulers of Upper Egypt we had hitherto
no knowledge, since the supposed royal names discovered at Abydos and
assigned to the time of the "Worshippers of Horus" are probably not
royal names at all.(2) With the possible exception of two very archaic
slate palettes, the first historical memorials recovered from the
south do not date from an earlier period than the beginning of the Ist
Dynasty. The largest of the Cairo fragments now helps us to fill in this
gap in our knowledge.
(1) See Breasted, _Anc. Rec._, I, pp. 52, 57.
(2) Cf. Hall, _Ancient History of the Near East_, p. 99 f.
On the top of the new fragment(1) we meet the same band of rectangles as
at Palermo,(2) but here their upper portions are broken away, and there
only remains at the base of each of them the outlined figure of a royal
personage, seated in the same attitude as those on the Palermo stone.
The remarkable fact about these figures is that, with the apparent
exception of the third figure from the right,(3) each wears, not the
Crown of the North, as at Palermo, but the Crown of the South. We have
then to do with kings of Upper Egypt, not the Delta, and it is no longer
possible to suppose that the predynastic rulers of the Palermo Stele
were confined to those of Lower Egypt, as reflecting northern tradition.
Rulers of both halves of the country are represented, and Monsieur
Gautier has shown,(4) from data on the reverse of the inscription, that
the kings of the Delta were arranged on the original stone before the
rulers of the south who are outlined upon our new fragment. Moreover, we
have now recovered definite proof that this band of the inscription is
concerned with predynastic Egyptian princes; for the cartouche of the
king, whose years are enumerated in the second band immediately below
the kings of the south, reads Athet, a name we may with certainty
identify with Athothes, the second successor of Menes, founder of the
Ist Dynasty, which is already given under the form Ateth in the Abydos
List of Kings.(5) It is thus quite certain that the first band of the
inscription relates to the earlier periods before the two halves of the
country were brought together under a single ruler.
(1) Cairo No. 1; see Gautier, _Mus. Égypt._, III, pl. xxiv
f.
(2) In this upper band the spaces are true rectangles, being
separated by vertical lines, not by the hieroglyph for
"year" as in the lower bands; and each rectangle is assigned
to a separate king, and not, as in the other bands, to a
year of a king's reign.
(3) The difference in the crown worn by this figure is
probably only apparent and not intentional; M. Foucart,
after a careful examination of the fragment, concludes that
it is due to subsequent damage or to an original defect in
the stone; cf. _Bulletin_, XII, ii, p. 162.
(4) Op. cit., p. 32 f.
(5) In Manetho's list he corresponds to {Kenkenos}, the
second successor of Menes according to both Africanus and
Eusebius, who assign the name Athothis to the second ruler
of the dynasty only, the Teta of the Abydos List. The form
Athothes is preserved by Eratosthenes for both of Menes'
immediate successors.
Though the tradition of these remote times is here recorded on a
monument of the Vth Dynasty, there is no reason to doubt its general
accuracy, or to suppose that we are dealing with purely mythological
personages. It is perhaps possible, as Monsieur Foucart suggests, that
missing portions of the text may have carried the record back through
purely mythical periods to Ptah and the Creation. In that case we should
have, as we shall see, a striking parallel to early Sumerian tradition.
But in the first extant portions of the Palermo text we are already in
the realm of genuine tradition. The names preserved appear to be those
of individuals, not of mythological creations, and we may assume that
their owners really existed. For though the invention of writing had
not at that time been achieved, its place was probably taken by oral
tradition. We know that with certain tribes of Africa at the present
day, who possess no knowledge of writing, there are functionaries
charged with the duty of preserving tribal traditions, who transmit
orally to their successors a remembrance of past chiefs and some details
of events that occurred centuries before.(1) The predynastic Egyptians
may well have adopted similar means for preserving a remembrance of
their past history.
(1) M. Foucart illustrates this point by citing the case of
the Bushongos, who have in this way preserved a list of no
less than a hundred and twenty-one of their past kings; op.
cit., p. 182, and cf. Tordey and Joyce, "Les Bushongos", in
_Annales du Musée du Congo Belge_, sér. III, t. II, fasc. i
(Brussels, 1911).
Moreover, the new text furnishes fresh proof of the general accuracy of
Manetho, even when dealing with traditions of this prehistoric age.
On the stele there is no definite indication that these two sets of
predynastic kings were contemporaneous rulers of Lower and Upper Egypt
respectively; and since elsewhere the lists assign a single sovereign
to each epoch, it has been suggested that we should regard them as
successive representatives of the legitimate kingdom.(1) Now Manetho,
after his dynasties of gods and demi-gods, states that thirty Memphite
kings reigned for 1,790 years, and were followed by ten Thinite kings
whose reigns covered a period of 350 years. Neglecting the figures as
obviously erroneous, we may well admit that the Greek historian here
alludes to our two pre-Menite dynasties. But the fact that he should
regard them as ruling consecutively does not preclude the other
alternative. The modern convention of arranging lines of contemporaneous
rulers in parallel columns had not been evolved in antiquity, and
without some such method of distinction contemporaneous rulers, when
enumerated in a list, can only be registered consecutively. It would be
natural to assume that, before the unification of Egypt by the founder
of the Ist Dynasty, the rulers of North and South were independent
princes, possessing no traditions of a united throne on which any claim
to hegemony could be based. On the assumption that this was so, their
arrangement in a consecutive series would not have deceived their
immediate successors. But it would undoubtedly tend in course of time to
obliterate the tradition of their true order, which even at the period
of the Vth Dynasty may have been completely forgotten. Manetho would
thus have introduced no strange or novel confusion; and this explanation
would of course apply to other sections of his system where the
dynasties he enumerates appear to be too many for their period. But his
reproduction of two lines of predynastic rulers, supported as it now is
by the early evidence of the Palermo text, only serves to increase our
confidence in the general accuracy of his sources, while at the
same time it illustrates very effectively the way in which possible
inaccuracies, deduced from independent data, may have arisen in quite
early times.
(1) Foucart, loc. cit.
In contrast to the dynasties of Manetho, those of Berossus are
so imperfectly preserved that they have never formed the basis of
Babylonian chronology.(1) But here too, in the chronological scheme,
a similar process of reduction has taken place. Certain dynasties,
recovered from native sources and at one time regarded as consecutive,
were proved to have been contemporaneous; and archaeological evidence
suggested that some of the great gaps, so freely assumed in the royal
sequence, had no right to be there. As a result, the succession of known
rulers was thrown into truer perspective, and such gaps as remained were
being partially filled by later discoveries. Among the latter the most
important find was that of an early list of kings, recently published by
Père Scheil(2) and subsequently purchased by the British Museum shortly
before the war. This had helped us to fill in the gap between the famous
Sargon of Akkad and the later dynasties, but it did not carry us
far beyond Sargon's own time. Our archaeological evidence also comes
suddenly to an end. Thus the earliest picture we have hitherto obtained
of the Sumerians has been that of a race employing an advanced system of
writing and possessed of a knowledge of metal. We have found, in short,
abundant remains of a bronze-age culture, but no traces of preceding
ages of development such as meet us on early Egyptian sites. It was
a natural inference that the advent of the Sumerians in the Euphrates
Valley was sudden, and that they had brought their highly developed
culture with them from some region of Central or Southern Asia.
(1) While the evidence of Herodotus is extraordinarily
valuable for the details he gives of the civilizations of
both Egypt and Babylonia, and is especially full in the case
of the former, it is of little practical use for the
chronology. In Egypt his report of the early history is
confused, and he hardly attempts one for Babylonia. It is
probable that on such subjects he sometimes misunderstood
his informants, the priests, whose traditions were more
accurately reproduced by the later native writers Manetho
and Berossus. For a detailed comparison of classical
authorities in relation to both countries, see Griffith in
Hogarth's _Authority and Archaeology_, pp. 161 ff.
(2) See _Comptes rendus_, 1911 (Oct.), pp. 606 ff., and
_Rev. d'Assyr._, IX (1912), p. 69.
The newly published Nippur documents will cause us to modify that view.
The lists of early kings were themselves drawn up under the Dynasty
of Nîsin in the twenty-second century B.C., and they give us traces of
possibly ten and at least eight other "kingdoms" before the earliest
dynasty of the known lists.(1) One of their novel features is that they
include summaries at the end, in which it is stated how often a city or
district enjoyed the privilege of being the seat of supreme authority
in Babylonia. The earliest of their sections lie within the legendary
period, and though in the third dynasty preserved we begin to note signs
of a firmer historical tradition, the great break that then occurs in
the text is at present only bridged by titles of various "kingdoms"
which the summaries give; a few even of these are missing and the
relative order of the rest is not assured. But in spite of their
imperfect state of preservation, these documents are of great historical
value and will furnish a framework for future chronological schemes.
Meanwhile we may attribute to some of the later dynasties titles in
complete agreement with Sumerian tradition. The dynasty of Ur-Engur, for
example, which preceded that of Nîsin, becomes, if we like, the Third
Dynasty of Ur. Another important fact which strikes us after a scrutiny
of the early royal names recovered is that, while two or three are
Semitic,(2) the great majority of those borne by the earliest rulers of
Kish, Erech, and Ur are as obviously Sumerian.
(1) See Poebel, _Historical Texts_, pp. 73 ff. and
_Historical and Grammatical Texts_, pl. ii-iv, Nos. 2-5. The
best preserved of the lists is No. 2; Nos. 3 and 4 are
comparatively small fragments; and of No. 5 the obverse only
is here published for the first time, the contents of the
reverse having been made known some years ago by Hilprecht
(cf. _Mathematical, Metrological, and Chronological
Tablets_, p. 46 f., pl. 30, No. 47). The fragments belong to
separate copies of the Sumerian dynastic record, and it
happens that the extant portions of their text in some
places cover the same period and are duplicates of one
another.
(2) Cf., e.g., two of the earliest kings of Kish, Galumum
and Zugagib. The former is probably the Semitic-Babylonian
word _kalumum_, "young animal, lamb," the latter
_zukakîbum_, "scorpion"; cf. Poebel, _Hist. Texts_, p. 111.
The occurrence of these names points to Semitic infiltration
into Northern Babylonia since the dawn of history, a state
of things we should naturally expect. It is improbable that
on this point Sumerian tradition should have merely
reflected the conditions of a later period.
It is clear that in native tradition, current among the Sumerians
themselves before the close of the third millennium, their race was
regarded as in possession of Babylonia since the dawn of history. This
at any rate proves that their advent was not sudden nor comparatively
recent, and it further suggests that Babylonia itself was the cradle
of their civilization. It will be the province of future archaeological
research to fill out the missing dynasties and to determine at what
points in the list their strictly historical basis disappears. Some,
which are fortunately preserved near the beginning, bear on their face
their legendary character. But for our purpose they are none the worse
for that.
In the first two dynasties, which had their seats at the cities of Kish
and Erech, we see gods mingling with men upon the earth. Tammuz, the god
of vegetation, for whose annual death Ezekiel saw women weeping beside
the Temple at Jerusalem, is here an earthly monarch. He appears to be
described as "a hunter", a phrase which recalls the death of Adonis in
Greek mythology. According to our Sumerian text he reigned in Erech for
a hundred years.
Another attractive Babylonian legend is that of Etana, the prototype of
Icarus and hero of the earliest dream of human flight.(1) Clinging
to the pinions of his friend the Eagle he beheld the world and its
encircling stream recede beneath him; and he flew through the gate of
heaven, only to fall headlong back to earth. He is here duly entered
in the list, where we read that "Etana, the shepherd who ascended to
heaven, who subdued all lands", ruled in the city of Kish for 635 years.
(1) The Egyptian conception of the deceased Pharaoh
ascending to heaven as a falcon and becoming merged into the
sun, which first occurs in the Pyramid texts (see Gardiner
in Cumont's _Études Syriennes_, pp. 109 ff.), belongs to a
different range of ideas. But it may well have been combined
with the Etana tradition to produce the funerary eagle
employed so commonly in Roman Syria in representations of
the emperor's apotheosis (cf. Cumont, op. cit., pp. 37 ff.,
115).
The god Lugal-banda is another hero of legend. When the hearts of the
other gods failed them, he alone recovered the Tablets of Fate, stolen
by the bird-god Zû from Enlil's palace. He is here recorded to have
reigned in Erech for 1,200 years.
Tradition already told us that Erech was the native city of Gilgamesh,
the hero of the national epic, to whom his ancestor Ut-napishtim related
the story of the Flood. Gilgamesh too is in our list, as king of Erech
for 126 years.
We have here in fact recovered traditions of Post-diluvian kings.
Unfortunately our list goes no farther back than that, but it is
probable that in its original form it presented a general correspondence
to the system preserved from Berossus, which enumerates ten Antediluvian
kings, the last of them Xisuthros, the hero of the Deluge. Indeed, for
the dynastic period, the agreement of these old Sumerian lists with the
chronological system of Berossus is striking. The latter, according to
Syncellus, gives 34,090 or 34,080 years as the total duration of the
historical period, apart from his preceding mythical ages, while the
figure as preserved by Eusebius is 33,091 years.(1) The compiler of one
of our new lists,(2) writing some 1,900 years earlier, reckons that the
dynastic period in his day had lasted for 32,243 years. Of course all
these figures are mythical, and even at the time of the Sumerian Dynasty
of Nîsin variant traditions were current with regard to the number of
historical and semi-mythical kings of Babylonia and the duration of
their rule. For the earlier writer of another of our lists,(3) separated
from the one already quoted by an interval of only sixty-seven years,
gives 28,876(4) years as the total duration of the dynasties at his
time. But in spite of these discrepancies, the general resemblance
presented by the huge totals in the variant copies of the list to the
alternative figures of Berossus, if we ignore his mythical period,
is remarkable. They indicate a far closer correspondence of the Greek
tradition with that of the early Sumerians themselves than was formerly
suspected.
(1) The figure 34,090 is that given by Syncellus (ed.
Dindorf, p. 147); but it is 34,080 in the equivalent which
is added in "sars", &c. The discrepancy is explained by some
as due to an intentional omission of the units in the second
reckoning; others would regard 34,080 as the correct figure
(cf. _Hist. of Bab._, p. 114 f.). The reading of ninety
against eighty is supported by the 33,091 of Eusebius
(_Chron. lib. pri._, ed. Schoene, col. 25).
(2) No. 4.
(3) No. 2.
(4) The figures are broken, but the reading given may be
accepted with some confidence; see Poebel, _Hist. Inscr._,
p. 103.
Further proof of this correspondence may be seen in the fact that the
new Sumerian Version of the Deluge Story, which I propose to discuss in
the second lecture, gives us a connected account of the world's history
down to that point. The Deluge hero is there a Sumerian king named
Ziusudu, ruling in one of the newly created cities of Babylonia and
ministering at the shrine of his city-god. He is continually given the
royal title, and the foundation of the Babylonian "kingdom" is treated
as an essential part of Creation. We may therefore assume that an
Antediluvian period existed in Sumerian tradition as in Berossus.(1) And
I think Dr. Poebel is right in assuming that the Nippur copies of the
Dynastic List begin with the Post-diluvian period.(2)
(1) Of course it does not necessarily follow that the figure
assigned to the duration of the Antediluvian or mythical
period by the Sumerians would show so close a resemblance to
that of Berossus as we have already noted in their estimates
of the dynastic or historical period. But there is no need
to assume that Berossus' huge total of a hundred and twenty
"sars" (432,000 years) is entirely a product of Neo-
Babylonian speculation; the total 432,000 is explained as
representing ten months of a cosmic year, each month
consisting of twelve "sars", i.e. 12 x 3600 = 43,200 years.
The Sumerians themselves had no difficulty in picturing two
of their dynastic rulers as each reigning for two "ners"
(1,200 years), and it would not be unlikely that "sars" were
distributed among still earlier rulers; the numbers were
easily written. For the unequal distribution of his hundred
and twenty "sars" by Berossus among his ten Antediluvian
kings, see Appendix II.
(2) The exclusion of the Antediluvian period from the list
may perhaps be explained on the assumption that its compiler
confined his record to "kingdoms", and that the mythical
rulers who preceded them did not form a "kingdom" within his
definition of the term. In any case we have a clear
indication that an earlier period was included before the
true "kingdoms", or dynasties, in an Assyrian copy of the
list, a fragment of which is preserved in the British Museum
from the Library of Ashur-bani-pal at Nineveh; see _Chron.
conc. Early Bab. Kings_ (Studies in East. Hist., II f.),
Vol. I, pp. 182 ff., Vol. II, pp. 48 ff., 143 f. There we
find traces of an extra column of text preceding that in
which the first Kingdom of Kish was recorded. It would seem
almost certain that this extra column was devoted to
Antediluvian kings. The only alternative explanation would
be that it was inscribed with the summaries which conclude
the Sumerian copies of our list. But later scribes do not so
transpose their material, and the proper place for summaries
is at the close, not at the beginning, of a list. In the
Assyrian copy the Dynastic List is brought up to date, and
extends down to the later Assyrian period. Formerly its
compiler could only be credited with incorporating
traditions of earlier times. But the correspondence of the
small fragment preserved of its Second Column with part of
the First Column of the Nippur texts (including the name of
"Enmennunna") proves that the Assyrian scribe reproduced an
actual copy of the Sumerian document.
Though Professor Barton, on the other hand, holds that the Dynastic
List had no concern with the Deluge, his suggestion that the early
names preserved by it may have been the original source of Berossus'
Antediluvian rulers(1) may yet be accepted in a modified form. In coming
to his conclusion he may have been influenced by what seems to me an
undoubted correspondence between one of the rulers in our list and the
sixth Antediluvian king of Berossus. I think few will be disposed to
dispute the equation
{Daonos poimon} = Etana, a shepherd.
Each list preserves the hero's shepherd origin and the correspondence of
the names is very close, Daonos merely transposing the initial vowel
of Etana.(2) That Berossus should have translated a Post-diluvian ruler
into the Antediluvian dynasty would not be at all surprising in view of
the absence of detailed correspondence between his later dynasties and
those we know actually occupied the Babylonian throne. Moreover, the
inclusion of Babylon in his list of Antediluvian cities should make us
hesitate to regard all the rulers he assigns to his earliest dynasty
as necessarily retaining in his list their original order in Sumerian
tradition. Thus we may with a clear conscience seek equations between
the names of Berossus' Antediluvian rulers and those preserved in the
early part of our Dynastic List, although we may regard the latter as
equally Post-diluvian in Sumerian belief.
(1) See the brief statement he makes in the course of a
review of Dr. Poebel's volumes in the _American Journal of
Semitic Languages and Literature_, XXXI, April 1915, p. 225.
He does not compare any of the names, but he promises a
study of those preserved and a comparison of the list with
Berossus and with Gen. iv and v. It is possible that
Professor Barton has already fulfilled his promise of
further discussion, perhaps in his _Archaeology and the
Bible_, to the publication of which I have seen a reference
in another connexion (cf. _Journ. Amer. Or. Soc._, Vol.
XXXVI, p. 291); but I have not yet been able to obtain sight
of a copy.
(2) The variant form {Daos} is evidently a mere contraction,
and any claim it may have had to represent more closely the
original form of the name is to be disregarded in view of
our new equation.
This reflection, and the result already obtained, encourage us to accept
the following further equation, which is yielded by a renewed scrutiny
of the lists:
{'Ammenon} = Enmenunna.
Here Ammenon, the fourth of Berossus' Antediluvian kings, presents a
wonderfully close transcription of the Sumerian name. The _n_ of the
first syllable has been assimilated to the following consonant in
accordance with a recognized law of euphony, and the resultant doubling
of the _m_ is faithfully preserved in the Greek. Precisely the same
initial component, _Enme_, occurs in the name Enmeduranki, borne by a
mythical king of Sippar, who has long been recognized as the original
of Berossus' seventh Antediluvian king, {Euedorakhos}.(1) There too
the original _n_ has been assimilated, but the Greek form retains no
doubling of the _m_ and points to its further weakening.
(1) Var. {Euedoreskhos}; the second half of the original
name, Enmeduranki, is more closely preserved in
_Edoranchus_, the form given by the Armenian translator of
Eusebius.
I do not propose to detain you with a detailed discussion of Sumerian
royal names and their possible Greek equivalents. I will merely point
out that the two suggested equations, which I venture to think we
may regard as established, throw the study of Berossus' mythological
personages upon a new plane. No equivalent has hitherto been suggested
for {Daonos}; but {'Ammenon} has been confidently explained as the
equivalent of a conjectured Babylonian original, Ummânu, lit. "Workman".
The fact that we should now have recovered the Sumerian original of
the name, which proves to have no connexion in form or meaning with the
previously suggested Semitic equivalent, tends to cast doubt on other
Semitic equations proposed. Perhaps {'Amelon} or {'Amillaros} may after
all not prove to be the equivalent of Amêlu, "Man", nor {'Amempsinos}
that of Amêl-Sin. Both may find their true equivalents in some of the
missing royal names at the head of the Sumerian Dynastic List. There too
we may provisionally seek {'Aloros}, the "first king", whose equation
with Aruru, the Babylonian mother-goddess, never appeared a very happy
suggestion.(1) The ingenious proposal,(2) on the other hand, that his
successor, {'Alaparos}, represents a miscopied {'Adaparos}, a Greek
rendering of the name of Adapa, may still hold good in view of Etana's
presence in the Sumerian dynastic record. Ut-napishtim's title,
Khasisatra or Atrakhasis, "the Very Wise", still of course remains
the established equivalent of {Xisouthros}; but for {'Otiartes} (?
{'Opartes}), a rival to Ubar-Tutu, Ut-napishtim's father, may perhaps
appear. The new identifications do not of course dispose of the old
ones, except in the case of Ummânu; but they open up a new line of
approach and provide a fresh field for conjecture.(3) Semitic, and
possibly contracted, originals are still possible for unidentified
mythical kings of Berossus; but such equations will inspire greater
confidence, should we be able to establish Sumerian originals for the
Semitic renderings, from new material already in hand or to be obtained
in the future.
(1) Dr. Poebel (_Hist Inscr._, p. 42, n. 1) makes the
interesting suggestion that {'Aloros} may represent an
abbreviated and corrupt form of the name Lal-ur-alimma,
which has come down to us as that of an early and mythical
king of Nippur; see Rawlinson, _W.A.I._, IV, 60 (67), V, 47
and 44, and cf. _Sev. Tabl. of Creat._, Vol. I, p. 217, No.
32574, Rev., l. 2 f. It may be added that the sufferings
with which the latter is associated in the tradition are
perhaps such as might have attached themselves to the first
human ruler of the world; but the suggested equation, though
tempting by reason of the remote parallel it would thus
furnish to Adam's fate, can at present hardly be accepted in
view of the possibility that a closer equation to {'Aloros}
may be forthcoming.
(2) Hommel, _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch._, Vol. XV (1893), p.
243.
(3) See further Appendix II.
But it is time I read you extracts from the earlier extant portions of
the Sumerian Dynastic List, in order to illustrate the class of document
with which we are dealing. From them it will be seen that the record
is not a tabular list of names like the well-known King's Lists of the
Neo-Babylonian period. It is cast in the form of an epitomized chronicle
and gives under set formulae the length of each king's reign, and his
father's name in cases of direct succession to father or brother. Short
phrases are also sometimes added, or inserted in the sentence referring
to a king, in order to indicate his humble origin or the achievement
which made his name famous in tradition. The head of the First Column
of the text is wanting, and the first royal name that is completely
preserved is that of Galumum, the ninth or tenth ruler of the earliest
"kingdom", or dynasty, of Kish. The text then runs on connectedly for
several lines:
Galumum ruled for nine hundred years.
Zugagib ruled for eight hundred and forty years.
Arpi, son of a man of the people, ruled for seven hundred and
twenty
years.
Etana, the shepherd who ascended to heaven, who subdued all lands,
ruled for six hundred and thirty-five years.(1)
Pili . . ., son of Etana, ruled for four hundred and ten years.
Enmenunna ruled for six hundred and eleven years.
Melamkish, son of Enmenunna, ruled for nine hundred years.
Barsalnunna, son of Enmenunna, ruled for twelve hundred years.
Mesza(. . .), son of Barsalnunna, ruled for (. . .) years.
(. . .), son of Barsalnunna, ruled for (. . .) years.
(1) Possibly 625 years.
A small gap then occurs in the text, but we know that the last two
representatives of this dynasty of twenty-three kings are related to
have ruled for nine hundred years and six hundred and twenty-five
years respectively. In the Second Column of the text the lines are also
fortunately preserved which record the passing of the first hegemony
of Kish to the "Kingdom of Eanna", the latter taking its name from
the famous temple of Anu and Ishtar in the old city of Erech. The text
continues:
The kingdom of Kish passed to Eanna.
In Eanna, Meskingasher, son of the Sun-god, ruled as high
priest and king for three hundred and twenty-five years.
Meskingasher entered into(1) (. . .) and ascended to (. .
.).
Enmerkar, son of Meskingasher, the king of Erech who built
(. . .) with the people of Erech,(2) ruled as king for four
hundred and twenty years.
Lugalbanda, the shepherd, ruled for twelve hundred years.
Dumuzi,(3), the hunter(?), whose city was . . ., ruled for a
hundred years.
Gishbilgames,(4) whose father was A,(5) the high priest of
Kullab, ruled for one hundred and twenty-six(6) years.
(. . .)lugal, son of Gishbilgames, ruled for (. . .) years.
(1) The verb may also imply descent into.
(2) The phrase appears to have been imperfectly copied by
the scribe. As it stands the subordinate sentence reads "the
king of Erech who built with the people of Erech". Either
the object governed by the verb has been omitted, in which
case we might restore some such phrase as "the city"; or,
perhaps, by a slight transposition, we should read "the king
who built Erech with the people of Erech". In any case the
first building of the city of Erech, as distinguished from
its ancient cult-centre Eanna, appears to be recorded here
in the tradition. This is the first reference to Erech in
the text; and Enmerkar's father was high priest as well as
king.
(3) i.e. Tammuz.
(4) i.e. Gilgamesh.
(5) The name of the father of Gilgamesh is rather strangely
expressed by the single sign for the vowel _a_ and must
apparently be read as A. As there is a small break in the
text at the end of this line, Dr. Poebel not unnaturally
assumed that A was merely the first syllable of the name, of
which the end was wanting. But it has now been shown that
the complete name was A; see Förtsch, _Orient. Lit.-Zeit._,
Vol. XVIII, No. 12 (Dec., 1915), col. 367 ff. The reading is
deduced from the following entry in an Assyrian explanatory
list of gods (_Cun. Texts in the Brit. Mus._, Pt. XXIV, pl.
25, ll. 29-31): "The god A, who is also equated to the god
Dubbisaguri (i.e. 'Scribe of Ur'), is the priest of Kullab;
his wife is the goddess Ninguesirka (i.e. 'Lady of the edge
of the street')." A, the priest of Kullab and the husband of
a goddess, is clearly to be identified with A, the priest of
Kullab and father of Gilgamesh, for we know from the
Gilgamesh Epic that the hero's mother was the goddess
Ninsun. Whether Ninguesirka was a title of Ninsun, or
represents a variant tradition with regard to the parentage
of Gilgamesh on the mother's side, we have in any case
confirmation of his descent from priest and goddess. It was
natural that A should be subsequently deified. This was not
the case at the time our text was inscribed, as the name is
written without the divine determinative.
(6) Possibly 186 years.
This group of early kings of Erech is of exceptional interest. Apart
from its inclusion of Gilgamesh and the gods Tammuz and Lugalbanda,
its record of Meskingasher's reign possibly refers to one of the lost
legends of Erech. Like him Melchizedek, who comes to us in a chapter of
Genesis reflecting the troubled times of Babylon's First Dynasty,(1)
was priest as well as king.(2) Tradition appears to have credited
Meskingasher's son and successor, Enmerkar, with the building of Erech
as a city around the first settlement Eanna, which had already given its
name to the "kingdom". If so, Sumerian tradition confirms the assumption
of modern research that the great cities of Babylonia arose around the
still more ancient cult-centres of the land. We shall have occasion
to revert to the traditions here recorded concerning the parentage of
Meskingasher, the founder of this line of kings, and that of its most
famous member, Gilgamesh. Meanwhile we may note that the closing rulers
of the "Kingdom of Eanna" are wanting. When the text is again preserved,
we read of the hegemony passing from Erech to Ur and thence to Awan:
The k(ingdom of Erech(3) passed to) Ur.
In Ur Mesannipada became king and ruled for eighty years.
Meskiagunna, son of Mesannipada, ruled for thirty years.
Elu(. . .) ruled for twenty-five years.
Balu(. . .) ruled for thirty-six years.
Four kings (thus) ruled for a hundred and seventy-one years.
The kingdom of Ur passed to Awan.
In Awan . . .
(1) Cf. _Hist. of Bab._, p. 159 f.
(2) Gen. xiv. 18.
(3) The restoration of Erech here, in place of Eanna, is
based on the absence of the latter name in the summary;
after the building of Erech by Enmerkar, the kingdom was
probably reckoned as that of Erech.
With the "Kingdom of Ur" we appear to be approaching a firmer historical
tradition, for the reigns of its rulers are recorded in decades, not
hundreds of years. But we find in the summary, which concludes the main
copy of our Dynastic List, that the kingdom of Awan, though it consisted
of but three rulers, is credited with a total duration of three hundred
and fifty-six years, implying that we are not yet out of the legendary
stratum. Since Awan is proved by newly published historical inscriptions
from Nippur to have been an important deity of Elam at the time of the
Dynasty of Akkad,(1) we gather that the "Kingdom of Awan" represented in
Sumerian tradition the first occasion on which the country passed for a
time under Elamite rule. At this point a great gap occurs in the text,
and when the detailed dynastic succession in Babylonia is again assured,
we have passed definitely from the realm of myth and legend into that of
history.(2)
(1) Poebel, _Hist. Inscr._, p. 128.
(2) See further, Appendix II.
What new light, then, do these old Sumerian records throw on Hebrew
traditions concerning the early ages of mankind? I think it will be
admitted that there is something strangely familiar about some of those
Sumerian extracts I read just now. We seem to hear in them the faint
echo of another narrative, like them but not quite the same.
And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and
thirty years; and he died.
And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enosh:
and Seth lived after he begat Enosh eight hundred and seven
years, and begat sons and daughters: and all the days of
Seth were nine hundred and twelve years: and he died.
. . . and all the days of Enosh were nine hundred and five
years: and he died.
. . . and all the days of Kenan were nine hundred and ten
years: and he died. . . . and all the days of Mahalalel were
eight hundred ninety and five years: and he died.
. . . and all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and
two years: and he died.
. . . and all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and
five years: and Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for
God took him.
. . . and all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty
and nine years: and he died.
. . . and all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy
and seven years: and he died.
And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem,
Ham, and Japheth.
Throughout these extracts from "the book of the generations of Adam",(1)
Galumum's nine hundred years(2) seem to run almost like a refrain; and
Methuselah's great age, the recognized symbol for longevity, is even
exceeded by two of the Sumerian patriarchs. The names in the two lists
are not the same,(3) but in both we are moving in the same atmosphere
and along similar lines of thought. Though each list adheres to its own
set formulae, it estimates the length of human life in the early ages
of the world on much the same gigantic scale as the other. Our Sumerian
records are not quite so formal in their structure as the Hebrew
narrative, but the short notes which here and there relieve their stiff
monotony may be paralleled in the Cainite genealogy of the preceding
chapter in Genesis.(4) There Cain's city-building, for example, may pair
with that of Enmerkar; and though our new records may afford no precise
equivalents to Jabal's patronage of nomad life, or to the invention of
music and metal-working ascribed to Jubal and Tubal-cain, these too
are quite in the spirit of Sumerian and Babylonian tradition, in their
attempt to picture the beginnings of civilization. Thus Enmeduranki,
the prototype of the seventh Antediluvian patriarch of Berossus, was
traditionally revered as the first exponent of divination.(5) It is in
the chronological and general setting, rather than in the Hebrew names
and details, that an echo seems here to reach us from Sumer through
Babylon.
(1) Gen. v. 1 ff. (P).
(2) The same length of reign is credited to Melamkish and to
one and perhaps two other rulers of that first Sumerian
"kingdom".
(3) The possibility of the Babylonian origin of some of the
Hebrew names in this geneaology and its Cainite parallel has
long been canvassed; and considerable ingenuity has been
expended in obtaining equations between Hebrew names and
those of the Antediluvian kings of Berossus by tracing a
common meaning for each suggested pair. It is unfortunate
that our new identification of {'Ammenon} with the Sumerian
_Enmenunna_ should dispose of one of the best parallels
obtained, viz. {'Ammenon} = Bab. _ummânu_, "workman" ||
Cain, Kenan = "smith". Another satisfactory pair suggested
is {'Amelon} = Bab. _amêlu_, "man" || Enosh = "man"; but the
resemblance of the former to _amêlu_ may prove to be
fortuitous, in view of the possibility of descent from a
quite different Sumerian original. The alternative may
perhaps have to be faced that the Hebrew parallels to
Sumerian and Babylonian traditions are here confined to
chronological structure and general contents, and do not
extend to Hebrew renderings of Babylonian names. It may be
added that such correspondence between personal names in
different languages is not very significant by itself. The
name of Zugagib of Kish, for example, is paralleled by the
title borne by one of the earliest kings of the Ist Dynasty
of Egypt, Narmer, whose carved slate palettes have been
found at Kierakonpolis; he too was known as "the Scorpion."
(4) Gen. iv. 17 ff. (J).
(5) It may be noted that an account of the origin of
divination is included in his description of the descendents
of Noah by the writer of the Biblical Antiquities of Philo,
a product of the same school as the Fourth Book of Esdras
and the Apocalypse of Baruch; see James, _The Biblical
Antiquities of Philo_, p. 86.
I may add that a parallel is provided by the new Sumerian records to the
circumstances preceding the birth of the Nephilim at the beginning
of the sixth chapter of Genesis.(1) For in them also great prowess or
distinction is ascribed to the progeny of human and divine unions. We
have already noted that, according to the traditions the records embody,
the Sumerians looked back to a time when gods lived upon the earth with
men, and we have seen such deities as Tammuz and Lugalbanda figuring as
rulers of cities in the dynastic sequence. As in later periods, their
names are there preceded by the determinative for divinity. But more
significant still is the fact that we read of two Sumerian heroes, also
rulers of cities, who were divine on the father's or mother's side
but not on both. Meskingasher is entered in the list as "son of the
Sun-god",(2) and no divine parentage is recorded on the mother's side.
On the other hand, the human father of Gilgamesh is described as the
high priest of Kullab, and we know from other sources that his mother
was the goddess Ninsun.(3) That this is not a fanciful interpretation is
proved by a passage in the Gilgamesh Epic itself,(4) in which its
hero is described as two-thirds god and one-third man. We again find
ourselves back in the same stratum of tradition with which the Hebrew
narratives have made us so familiar.
(1) Gen. vi. 1-4 (J).
(2) The phrase recalls the familiar Egyptian royal
designation "son of the Sun," and it is possible that we may
connect with this same idea the Palermo Stele's inclusion of
the mother's and omission of the father's name in its record
of the early dynastic Pharaohs. This suggestion does not
exclude the possibility of the prevalence of matrilineal
(and perhaps originally also of matrilocal and
matripotestal) conditions among the earliest inhabitants of
Egypt. Indeed the early existence of some form of mother-
right may have originated, and would certainly have
encouraged, the growth of a tradition of solar parentage for
the head of the state.
(3) Poebel, _Hist. Inscr._, p. 124 f.
(4) Tablet I, Col. ii, l. 1; and cf. Tablet IX, Col. ii. l.
16.
What light then does our new material throw upon traditional origins of
civilization? We have seen that in Egypt a new fragment of the Palermo
Stele has confirmed in a remarkable way the tradition of the predynastic
period which was incorporated in his history by Manetho. It has long
been recognized that in Babylonia the sources of Berossus must have
been refracted by the political atmosphere of that country during
the preceding nineteen hundred years. This inference our new material
supports; but when due allowance has been made for a resulting
disturbance of vision, the Sumerian origin of the remainder of his
evidence is notably confirmed. Two of his ten Antediluvian kings rejoin
their Sumerian prototypes, and we shall see that two of his three
Antediluvian cities find their place among the five of primitive
Sumerian belief. It is clear that in Babylonia, as in Egypt, the local
traditions of the dawn of history, current in the Hellenistic period,
were modelled on very early lines. Both countries were the seats of
ancient civilizations, and it is natural that each should stage its
picture of beginnings upon its own soil and embellish it with local
colouring.
It is a tribute to the historical accuracy of Hebrew tradition to
recognize that it never represented Palestine as the cradle of the human
race. It looked to the East rather than to the South for evidence of
man's earliest history and first progress in the arts of life. And it
is in the East, in the soil of Babylonia, that we may legitimately seek
material in which to verify the sources of that traditional belief.
The new parallels I have to-day attempted to trace between some of
the Hebrew traditions, preserved in Gen. iv-vi, and those of the early
Sumerians, as presented by their great Dynastic List, are essentially
general in character and do not apply to details of narrative or to
proper names. If they stood alone, we should still have to consider
whether they are such as to suggest cultural influence or independent
origin. But fortunately they do not exhaust the evidence we have lately
recovered from the site of Nippur, and we will postpone formulating our
conclusions with regard to them until the whole field has been surveyed.
From the biblical standpoint by far the most valuable of our new
documents is one that incorporates a Sumerian version of the Deluge
story. We shall see that it presents a variant and more primitive
picture of that great catastrophe than those of the Babylonian and
Hebrew versions. And what is of even greater interest, it connects the
narrative of the Flood with that of Creation, and supplies a brief but
intermediate account of the Antediluvian period. How then are we to
explain this striking literary resemblance to the structure of the
narrative in Genesis, a resemblance that is completely wanting in the
Babylonian versions? But that is a problem we must reserve for the next
lecture.