THE ARCHÆOLOGICAL MATERIALS; THE EXCAVATIONS
AT SUSA AND THE ORIGIN OF BRONZE
The modern science of archæology has been derisively called “the study
of pots.” As a matter of fact, the study of ancient pottery occupies a
prominent place in it, and we cannot turn over the pages of a standard
archæological work without constantly coming across photographs and
illustrations of the ceramic art or reading descriptions of vases
and bowls, of coloured ware and fragmentary sherds. Questions of
date and origin are made to turn on the presence or absence of some
particular form of pottery on a given site, and fierce controversies
have arisen over a single fragment of a vessel of clay. A knowledge of
ancient pottery is a primary requisite in the scientific excavator and
archæologist of to-day.
The reason of this is obvious. Archæology is an inductive science;
its conclusions, therefore, are drawn from the comparison and
co-ordination of objects which can be seen and handled, as well as
tested by all competent observers. It is built upon what our German
friends would call objective facts, and the method it employs is that
carefully-disciplined and experimentally-guarded application of the
ordinary logic of life which can alone give us scientific results.
The method is one which the purely literary mind seems often curiously
incapable of comprehending; the literary student is accustomed to deal
so exclusively with matters of merely individual taste and theory
that he is as little able to understand what is meant by scientific
evidence and probability as the scholar who is not a mathematician is
able to follow the reasoning of Lord Kelvin. This is a fact which has
to be borne in mind more especially in archæological science, for the
questions with which archæology is concerned so frequently invade the
domain of literature or appear so closely connected with questions that
are more or less literary, that the purely literary scholar is apt to
think himself just as well qualified to discuss them as “the man in the
street” is apt to think himself qualified to discuss the etymology of a
word. To all such the archæologist would say, “Go and study your pots.”
For pottery is practically indestructible. Like the fossils on which
the geologist has built up the past history of life upon the earth, it
is an enduring evidence, when rightly interpreted, of the past history
of man. Like the fossils, moreover, it exhibits a multitudinous variety
of types and forms. But in all these types and forms there is an
underlying unity. The primitive needs of man are everywhere the same,
and the powers of mind called in to supply them are the same also.
The dish and bowl, the vase and its handles, meet us again and again
wherever we go; and the same materials for making them meet us also.
The hands of man, guided by the brain of man, found clay wherewith to
manufacture the vessels that he needed, and to harden it afterwards in
the sun or fire. Where or how the first pottery was made we do not
know, we probably shall never know. When palæolithic man first makes
his appearance in Europe he seems not yet to have been acquainted with
it; but it is difficult to prove a negative in archæology as in other
sciences, and the absence of palæolithic pottery may be due only to
the imperfection of the record. At any rate, as we descend the ladder
of chronology the existence of man is marked more and more by the
fragments of pottery he has left behind him; at Rome a whole mountain
of it grew up in the space of a few centuries, and the huge mounds that
encircled Cairo a hundred years ago were mainly formed of mediæval
sherds. When excavating on an Egyptian site I have sometimes been
tempted to think that the people who once lived there must have spent
their whole time in breaking their household ware.
Now not only are the primitive needs of man much the same throughout
the world and at all periods of time, the nature of man is much
the same also; and a distinguishing feature in his nature is love
of variety. The same variety which we see in the forms of life and
in the outward appearance and mental aptitudes of man himself is
reflected in the products of his skill. Yet along with this love of
variety goes a strong conservative or imitative instinct--an instinct
which finds, too, its counterpart in nature, “so careful of the
type.” On the one hand, fashions change; on the other, a fashion once
introduced spreads rapidly and maintains itself to the exclusion of
all others for a determinate period of time throughout a determinate
area. And to nothing does this apply with more truth than to pottery.
Observation has shown that not only are different tribes or countries
distinguished by a difference in their pottery, but that in each tribe
or country similar differences distinguish successive periods of time.
When to this is added the practical indestructibility of the potsherd,
it will easily be seen what a criterion is afforded by it for fixing
the age and character of ancient remains, and their relation to other
monuments of the past. It is not surprising that a study of pottery
has become the sheet-anchor of archæological chronology, and that the
first object of the scientific excavator is to determine the relative
succession of the ceramic remains he discovers and their connection
with similar remains found elsewhere. Scientific excavation means,
before all things else, careful observation and record of every piece
of pottery, however apparently worthless, which the excavator disinters.
But now, unfortunately, I have to make an admission. We have, as yet,
no ceramic record in either Babylonia or Assyria. Until very recently
there has been no attempt in either country at scientific excavation.
The pioneers, Layard and Botta and Loftus, lived and worked before it
was known or thought of, and we cannot, therefore, be too thankful to
Layard for having nevertheless given us so full and accurate an account
of what he found, and the conditions under which he found it. The
excavations controlled by the British Museum have, I am sorry to say,
been for the most part destructive rather than scientific; such objects
as were wanted by the Museum were alone sought after; little or no
record has been kept of their discovery, and they have been mixed with
objects bought from natives, of whose origin nothing was known. At one
spot, Carchemish, the old Hittite capital, which, though not strictly
in Assyria, formed part of the Assyrian Empire, and was the seat of an
Assyrian governor, the so-called excavations conducted by the Museum in
1880 were simply a scandal, which Dr. Hayes Ward, who visited the spot
shortly afterwards, has characterized as “wicked.” The archæological
evidence there, which would have thrown so much light on the Hittite
problem, has been irretrievably lost.
Matters are better now, and if I may judge from the work done by Mr.
H. R. Hall at Dêr el-Bâharî in Egypt for the Egypt Exploration Fund,
his colleague, Mr. L. W. King, who has recently been excavating for
the British Museum in Assyria, will have done something to retrieve
the archæological good name of our British excavators in the East.
M. de Sarzec’s excavations at Tello in Southern Babylonia were also
conducted with some consideration for archæological method, at all
events on the architectural side, and in the capable hands of M.
Heuzey the works of art found there have been made to yield valuable
results. Moreover, the history of Tello may be said to be comprised
in a single epoch of archaic Babylonia, and all objects discovered
on the site may consequently be regarded as belonging to one age
and phase of Babylonian civilization. Of the American excavations
at Niffer it is difficult to speak at present. The work there has
been careful and patient, and has extended over a long series of
years. The architectural facts have been accurately recorded, at
all events in the case of the great temple of Bel, and about the
sequence of the inscribed monuments there is little room for
doubt. But accusations of carelessness have lately been brought by
the excavators one against the other, and when we find the sharpest
critic among them unable to substantiate his own account of the
discovery of a library and implicitly endorsing the assignment of a
Parthian palace to the “Mykenæan” age, it is impossible to put much
faith in their descriptions of archæological details. Some years ago
the Germans explored a cemetery at El-Hibba with considerable care
and thoroughness, and thus revealed to us pretty much all we know at
present about Babylonian funereal customs; yet here again too little
attention was paid to the pottery, and the actual date of the cemetery
is still uncertain. It may belong to the Babylonian period, but it may
also not be older than the Persian or even Parthian age.
[Illustration:
THE TELL OF JERABIS (PROBABLY THE ANCIENT CARCHEMISH).]
The Germans are once more working in the lands of the Euphrates and
Tigris, but in Babylonia their labours have been mainly confined
to the Babylon of Nebuchadrezzar, where comparatively little has
been discovered. Since 1904, however, the chief strength of the
expedition has been directed upon Qal’at Shirqât, where Assur, the
primitive capital of Assyria, formerly stood, and here we may expect
that archæological results of first-class importance will at last be
obtained. But the work there has not yet advanced far enough for more
to be done than the mapping out of the old city, the ascertainment of
certain architectural facts, and the recovery of inscriptions of great
historical value.
It will be seen, therefore, that the reproach brought against
excavations in Egypt by Mr. Rhind in 1862 still holds good of
excavations in Babylonia and Assyria. The first stage in their
history is only just passing away. The idea that excavation is a trade
which any one can take up without previous training, and that all the
excavator need think about is the discovery of objects for a museum,
is only beginning to disappear. In 1862 Rhind could write of Egyptian
tombs: “I am not aware that there can be found the contents of a
single sepulchre duly authenticated with satisfactory precision as to
what objects were present, and as to the relative positions all these
occupied when deposited by contemporary hands. Indeed, for many of the
Egyptian sepulchral antiquities scattered over Europe there exists
no record to determine even the part of the country where they were
exhumed.... There have thus been swept away unrecorded into the past
illustrative facts of very great interest, which cannot now, according
to any reasonable probability, be replaced, at all events in the degree
which there are grounds to believe were then possible.”[41] Happily,
Mr. Rhind’s words are no longer true of Egypt, where he himself set the
first example of showing how scientific exploration ought to be carried
on, and the result is that the ancient civilization and culture of
Egypt are now known to us even better than those of classical Greece or
Rome.
But what was true in 1862 of Egypt is still very largely true of
Assyria and Babylonia. We are beginning to know something about the
history of Assyro-Babylonian architecture; we know a little about the
early work of the Babylonians in metal and stone; but the history of
Assyro-Babylonian pottery is still, speaking broadly, a blank. For
most of his knowledge of the ancient Euphratean civilizations the
archæologist has to turn to the inscriptions and written literature of
which such vast quantities have survived, and hence, besides being an
archæologist in the strict sense, he must be also a decipherer and a
philologist. He is still precluded from appealing to the evidence which
can be handled and felt.
From the point of view of the archæologist written evidence is usually
unsatisfactory because it admits of more than one interpretation. A
translation which seems certain to one scholar may be questioned by
another; an inference drawn from the words of a text by one student
may be denied by another. The statements in the texts themselves may
be contradictory, or their imperfection may lead to wrong conclusions.
Above all, the evidence may come to the archæologist from a philologist
whose bent of mind is literary rather than scientific, and who will
therefore be unable either to appreciate or to understand scientific
testimony. Nothing is more common than to come across literary critics
who cannot be made to understand the nature of inductive proof.
On the other hand, the decipherer of a lost language must necessarily
be an archæologist as well. The clues he follows will be largely
archæological, and he has to appeal to archæology at every step.
The method he must pursue is the method of archæology and of other
inductive sciences, and the materials he uses are in part the materials
of archæology also. The philologist who knows nothing of history and
geography, who is unable to follow a scientific argument and appreciate
scientific reasoning, can never decipher; he may take the materials
given him by the decipherer and work them into philological shape,
but that is all. We must listen to him on questions of grammar and
vocabulary; on questions of archæology his opinions are worth no more
than those of the ordinary man.
I have insisted on this point because it is a very important one in
a study like Assyriology. The public naturally thinks that in all
Assyriological matters the opinion of one Assyriologist is as good as
that of another. We might just as well suppose that in all matters
which come under the head of astronomy the opinions of every class
of astronomer are equally authoritative. But in astronomy there are
questions which are purely mathematical, and there are other questions
which are more or less chemical, and the astronomer who has devoted
his attention to the spectrum analysis is contented to leave to his
mathematical colleague abstruse calculations in advanced mathematics.
The Assyriologist who is a grammarian pure and simple is just as little
an authority on the archæological side of his study as any one else who
is ignorant of archæology, and the materials he provides must be dealt
with by the archæologist like the literary materials provided for him
by the classical philologist; the materials in both cases stand on the
same footing.
At the same time, there is a difference between them. In the first
place, the literary materials with which the Assyriologist deals are
in a very large number of instances autographs. They are the actual
documents of the writers whose names they bear or to whose age they
belong. And there is all the difference in the world between the
letters of a Plato or a Cicero which have come down to us through
numerous copyists and the letters of Khammu-rabi of Babylon, the
originals of which are now in our hands. The inscriptions in which
Nebuchadrezzar describes his building operations or the contemporaneous
annals of the Assyrian kings are, from the historical point of view,
of far more value than the books written about them at a later date,
however admirable the latter may be as works of literature; in other
words, they are first-hand sources, and, as such, objective facts of
much the same character as ancient pottery or stone implements. Then,
in the second place, the documents have to be deciphered before they
can be treated philologically; and, as I have already said, the task
of decipherment is in itself an archæological pursuit. If carried
out on correct lines it is itself an instance of the application of
the inductive method, and it is, moreover, constantly compelled to
call archæology or history to its aid. Assyriology is thus primarily
an archæological study, using the methods of archæological science
and demanding the help of the archæologist, even though there are
Assyriologists who are not archæologists themselves.
But for the present our archæological facts have to be taken
mainly from the results of the decipherment of the inscriptions.
They are for the most part epigraphical; the excavator has not yet
supplemented them, as in Egypt or prehistoric Greece, on what I would
term the ceramic side. This, at least, is the case in Babylonia and
Assyria. It is no longer the case, however, throughout the ancient
Assyro-Babylonian world. There is one exception to the charge brought
by modern archæology against the excavators in the lands of the Tigris
and Euphrates. M. de Morgan has been working for the last ten years
on the site of Susa, the capital of Elam, and he has brought to his
labours the knowledge and experience of an excavator who has been
trained in modern methods and is fully awake to the requirements of
modern science. At last, at Susa, we have an archæological record of
the history of culture, based not only on written monuments, but also
on the more tangible evidence of scientifically-observed strata of
human remains. It is true that Elam is not Babylonia; but one of the
surprises of M. de Morgan’s discoveries is that in the early days of
Babylonian history Elam was a Babylonian province, and Susa the seat of
a Babylonian governor. The same culture extended from Sippara on the
Euphrates to Susa in Elam, and this culture was Babylonian. Hence, in
default of materials from Babylonia itself, we may see in the history
of cultural development at Susa a counterpart of that in Babylonia, at
any rate during the period when Elam and Babylonia were alike under
Semitic rule.[42]
[Illustration: THE TUMULUS OF SUSA, AS IT APPEARED TOWARDS THE MIDDLE
OF LAST CENTURY.]
At Susa the line of division between the prehistoric or neolithic
age and the historical epoch is very clearly marked. The prehistoric
stratum lies twenty-five metres below the surface of the mounds, and
is divided by M. de Morgan and his fellow-workers into two periods.
The first is distinguished by a fine thin pottery, with yellow paste,
which is already made upon a wheel. It does not exceed from two to
seven millimetres in thickness; it is polished, and decorated with
black bands and various patterns in a brown colour produced by oxide
of iron. The designs are not only geometric, but also represent animal
and vegetable forms. Among them are rows of ostriches identical with
those found on the painted prehistoric pottery of Egypt. Indeed, the
explorers were especially struck by the resemblance of the pottery as a
whole to that of Egypt in the prehistoric age, though it is difficult
to see what connection there can have been between the two countries at
so remote a date, and the curious similarity between the rows of birds
depicted on the vases must remain for the present an archæological
puzzle. There is also a certain amount of resemblance between the
geometric pottery and that disinterred by M. Chantre at the early
Assyrian colony at Kara Eyuk in Cappadocia, which will be discussed
more fully in a later chapter.[43] Among the geometrical patterns of
the Susian ware spherical forms are common; the herring-bone pattern is
also met with, as well as a pattern like the Greek _sigma_. The
under-part of the vases is often decorated, so also is the inside. A
form of vase frequently found is the water-jar with a rounded foot; the
goblet is another common shape. Sometimes the vases are supplied with
four handles for suspension.
This fine yellow pottery occurs not only at Susa, but also throughout
Elam, but practically none of it has hitherto been discovered in
Babylonia.[44] One cause of this is doubtless that in the alluvial
plain of Babylonia a purely neolithic stratum, if it existed at all,
would lie below the water-level. Maritime shells are met with as far
north as the site of Babylon, showing that the Persian Gulf once
extended thus far, and the water of the Euphrates still infiltrates
through the soil.
The period of the fine thin pottery in Elam comes suddenly to an
end, and the people of the second prehistoric period seem to have
been intruders who were less civilized than their predecessors and
unacquainted with the art of making the older ware. Their pottery is
coarse and porous, and the geometric designs upon it are traced with
the pen, not freely painted as in the case of the earlier ceramic. The
animal and vegetable designs of the older ware have disappeared, and
the zones, triangles and other geometric figures which take their place
are traced in black or maroon-red upon a yellow clay. The resemblance
between this pottery and that of Kara Eyuk is even greater than in the
case of the pottery of the first period. Thick cylindrical vases are
common, as well as bowls with a flat bottom and broad sides. Some of
the vases resemble the bulbous vases of the Egyptian Twelfth dynasty;
there are others with flat bottoms and angular sides which are also
like Egyptian water-jars of the same Twelfth-dynasty period. Along with
these more characteristic forms of pottery many small, unpainted cups
have been found, as well as a few finer wheel-made vases of ovoid shape
and yellow or reddish colour. It should be added that coarse, red,
hand-made pottery abounds in both the prehistoric periods, as indeed it
does also in the later historic epoch.
As the second prehistoric epoch drew to a close at Susa, many
indications of an advance in culture began to show themselves. Vases
and flat-bottomed cups of soft stone were introduced, among them
being a few of alabaster; the bricks began to be burnt in a kiln, and
even seals with a species of writing upon them made their appearance.
Nevertheless, the neolithic age does not pass into the age of metal
through any transitional stages.
The earliest stratum which marks the historic age yields for the first
time clay tablets with inscriptions, the characters of which are
already developing out of pictures into the cursive cuneiform. The
inscribed cylinder-seals of Babylonia naturally appear along with them;
alabaster vases, cups and bowls become common, and some of them are cut
into the forms of animals. Comparatively little pottery has been found
in this stratum; but this is probably an accident.
The next stratum brings us to the period of Babylonian supremacy,
when the viceroys of the Babylonian king ruled at Susa, and Semitic
influence was already predominant in the Babylonian plain. It is
the age of Sargon of Akkad, and its commencement may approximately
be placed about B.C. 4000. The pottery still consists of
a yellow paste, though there are also many specimens of a coarse
black clay decorated with incrustations in white. The yellow ware is
occasionally ornamented with mouldings of trees and other natural
objects. A typical vase of the period is one of globular shape and
small rim, and with a moulded or incised rope-pattern running round
the centre and lower part of the rim. Another type is one which looks
like an inverted vase, with a series of rope-patterns encircling it,
while another seems to have been copied from the pile of cylindrical
vases into which, as into a drain, the body of the dead Babylonian
was inserted. These types of vase appear to have lasted, with
little variation, down to the end of the Persian period, though,
unfortunately, the disturbance of the ground and the consequent mixture
of objects under the temple of In-Susinak, where the excavations
were carried on, makes certainty on the point unattainable. Immense
quantities of bronze votive offerings, of all kinds and sorts,
were, however, found here, along with fragments of glass, and, as
inscriptions show that they must all have been buried on the spot
before the tenth century B.C., we have a time-limit for dating
the forms of the bronze weapons and tools.
The archæological evidence obtained at Susa has been supplemented by
excavations made some ninety miles to the west of it, at a place called
Mussian, on the eastern bank of the river Tib. Here there are graves,
as well as the remains of a temple and houses with vaults, columns and
walls of burnt brick. Where the strata have allowed a section to be
cut down to the virgin soil the results are found to agree with those
revealed by the excavations at Susa. The earliest layer belongs to the
neolithic age, flint and obsidian, as at Susa, being the materials
employed for tools and weapons. The pottery is thick and hand-made,
the paste being either yellow or red in colour, and the surface is
often polished, while many of the vases are furnished with holes for
suspension. This layer seems older than anything discovered at Susa. It
is followed by a second layer, in which the pottery is wheel-made, and
is decorated with animal and vegetable figures in black or red, like
the first prehistoric ware of the Susa mounds. Among the animal figures
are those of men, and one fragment of yellow ware is ornamented with
the so-called swastika. In the upper part of the layer a few fragments
of copper have been met with, indicating that the neolithic age was
beginning to pass into that of copper.
Above this layer is a third, characterized by a fine ware, usually
yellow but sometimes greenish in colour, and decorated with designs
in lustrous black. In the fine specimens the decoration has been laid
on before firing, in other cases after firing. The pottery as a whole
has a general resemblance to that of prehistoric Egypt. The culture
represented by this layer was still neolithic, but objects of copper
were making their appearance, and the flint instruments of the past
were beginning to be superseded by metal, a knowledge of which appears
to have come from abroad. With the introduction of copper the Elamite
or historical epoch may be said to have begun. It was now that the
temple was first built of crude bricks, reeds taking the place of
wood, and so pointing to the influence of Babylonia, where reeds were
plentiful and wood was scarce.
Another proof of Babylonian influence must be seen not only in ware
of Babylonian origin, but also in the figures of a nude goddess with
the hands placed upon the breasts, which originally represented the
divinity called Istar by the Semitic Babylonians. Indeed, from the
fact that the goddess was represented in human form we may infer
that the figures, though first met with in the Sumerian age, were
of Semitic derivation, and show that Sumerian culture was already
being affected by the influence of Semitic religious ideas.[45] The
pottery found along with the figures is of a very varied description,
including coarse red and fine yellow ware. Among the fine yellow ware
are goblets with a tall cup supported on a foot. A typical form of
the yellow ware is the vase with angular sides; this, together with
vases of more bulbous shape and terra-cotta stands, is remarkably like
some of the Egyptian Twelfth-dynasty pottery in form. The stands, more
especially, remind us of Twelfth-dynasty Egypt. There is also a black
ware decorated with incised lines which are filled in with white.
This black ware is also found in Egypt, where Professor Petrie is now
inclined to associate it with the Hyksos. At all events it is absent
there during the interval that elapsed between the prehistoric period
and the epoch of the Twelfth dynasty, and it characterizes the Hyksos
sites of the Delta, while its foreign and non-Egyptian character has
been recognized from the first. A few fragments of the same class of
pottery have been brought to light at Tello in Babylonia, where they
would appear to belong to the age of Gudea (B.C. 2700). One of
these formed part of a cylindrical vase or pyxis, identical in shape
with the black incised pyxides found at Susa at a depth of from five to
ten metres below the surface. On another fragment are spirited drawings
of a water-bird, a fish seized by a gull, a four-footed animal, and
a boat with reeds growing behind it, each in a separate panel.[46]
Similar ware has been discovered in Southern Palestine, on the eastern
coast of Cyprus, in Spain and in the Greek islands. At Syros, for
instance, where it goes back to the neolithic age, it is associated
with alabaster vases, just as it is at Mussian. Here the bowls and
vases of alabaster are strikingly Egyptian in form.
The clay figures of the Babylonian goddess testify to the same
extension of culture in the copper age of Western Asia as do the black
incised vases with their white fillings. M. Chantre has found them
at Kara Eyuk in Cappadocia, on the borders of the Hittite region,
though in these the arms are no longer folded across the breast.
Further west I have lately shown[47] that the so-called figure of
Niobê on Mount Sipylus in Lydia is a Hittite modification of them,
and Dr. Schliemann discovered one of them, of lead, in the ruins of
the Second (prehistoric) city at Troy.[48] At Troy, however, the type
was more usually modified in the Hittite direction, as it was also
in the islands of the Ægean, where marble figures of the goddess are
plentiful.[49] In Egypt clay figures closely resembling those of
Babylonia and Elam, but with the arms outstretched, have been met with
from time to time at Karnak, and supposed to be dolls of the Roman
period; but since the discovery by M. Legrain of remains which prove
that the history of Karnak reaches back to the prehistoric or early
dynastic period, there is no longer any reason for not connecting them
with their analogues elsewhere. And the discoveries recently made by
Professor Pumpelly in the tumuli near Askabad, west of Khiva and Herat,
go far towards supporting the identification. Here the explorers have
brought to light two periods of neolithic culture, in the earlier of
which no animals were as yet domesticated, and the pottery was of the
rudest description. During the second period the domesticated animals
were introduced, including the horse and camel. Then came an age of
copper, accompanied by figurines representing the Babylonian goddess,
sometimes with the arms outstretched, sometimes with them lying against
the sides, as in Cappadocia. The figurines are evidence that the art
of working copper was derived from Babylonia, a conclusion which is
confirmed by M. Henri de Morgan’s excavations in the tumuli of Talîsh
in Gîlân, on the south-western shore of the Caspian.[50]
As far back as our knowledge of Babylonian history extends the
inhabitants of the country were acquainted with copper, and its use
lasted century after century into quite recent times. Of a stone age,
as I have already said, there is no clear trace. It is true that
Captain Cros has sunk shafts at Tello, and reached the virgin soil at
a depth of seventeen metres, finding there mace-heads of alabaster and
hard stone similar to those of primitive Egypt, as well as other stone
objects; but no flint flakes were met with, and the pottery was similar
to that of the higher strata.[51] On the other hand, objects of copper,
great and small, including helmets and a colossal spear dedicated by a
king of Kis, have been disinterred, though nothing of bronze has been
discovered among the earlier remains, It was the same at Muqayyar, the
ancient Ur, as well as on the site of Eridu, where Taylor found only
copper bowls and the like in the graves, even in those of so late a
date as to contain objects of iron and an Egyptian scarab.[52] At
Niffer, moreover, the ancient Nippur, American excavation has the
same tale to tell. According to Dr. Peters,[53] though iron knives,
hatchets, spear-heads and arrow-heads have been exhumed, the date of
which is said to be between 2000 and 1000 B.C., there is no
trace of bronze, the multitudinous objects, which further west would
have been of bronze, being here of copper. As at Ur, the copper age
lasts down to the very end of the Babylonian kingdom. Hilprecht, on the
authority of Haynes, does indeed say[54] that in the very lowest strata
of the temple mound, far below the pavements of Sargon and Naram-Sin
(B.C. 3750), “fragments of copper, bronze and terra-cotta
vessels” were disinterred. But no attempt seems to have been made to
analyze the so-called “bronze,” which may have been a natural alloy
of copper with a small percentage of lead or antimony, and the age
ascribed to the fragments is rendered doubtful by the accompanying
statement, that “fragments of red and black lacquered pottery” were
discovered in the same place which were indistinguishable from the red
and black pottery of classical Greece. As yet, therefore, excavation in
Babylonian lands has failed to tell us when the art of mixing tin with
the copper was discovered and copper was superseded by bronze.
This, however, had taken place before the commencement of the Assyrian
age. The bronze scimitar of Hadad-nirari I. (B.C. 1330)[55]
finds an exact copy in a scimitar discovered by Mr. Macalister at Gezer
in Palestine,[56] and the tools and weapons exhumed at Nineveh are of
bronze and not copper. Analysis shows that the bronze usually consisted
of about one part of tin to ten of copper, though for special objects
like bells the amount of tin was considerably increased.[57] When was
it that the tin was first imported and intentionally mixed with the
copper in order to harden the metal?
In default of archæological evidence, the only possibility there is
of discovering an answer to this question lies in an examination
of the primitive pictures out of which the cuneiform characters
eventually developed. Here we are at once struck by a curious fact. The
“determinative” attached to ideographs signifying “knife,” “weapon”
and the like is not an ideograph which expresses the name of a metal;
nor is it an ideograph denoting “stone,” but one which means “wood.”
That is to say, the material of which cutting instruments were made at
the time when the picture-writing of Babylonia came into existence was
neither metal nor stone, but wood. That it should not have been stone
is explained by the geology of the Babylonian plain, which consists of
alluvial soil devoid of stones. That it should not have been of metal
can only mean that the inventors of the pictorial script were not yet
acquainted with the use of copper, bronze or iron. In default of metal
and stone they had to content themselves with hard wood.
On the other hand, copper, as well as gold and silver, had become
known to them when the primitive pictographs were still in process of
formation, and long before they had passed into cursive cuneiform.
Copper was represented by the picture of an ingot or square plate of
the metal with a handle attached to it, showing that it was already
in a fused and worked state when it was imported into Babylonia. Gold
seems to have originally been denoted by the picture of a collar or
necklace, which signified “shining,” and was afterwards employed
before the names of the precious metals. I have, however, never found
this collar actually used to signify “gold”; in the earliest texts
yet discovered the phonetic syllable _gi_ is attached to it when
“gold” is denoted, the Sumerian word for “gold” being _azag-gi_.
“Silver” was “the white precious metal,” the symbol for “white” being
attached to the picture of the collar, and so forming a compound
ideograph. This implies that silver became known to the inventors
of the hieroglyphs at a later period than gold, though still before
what I will call the cuneiform age. Even iron was known to them at
the same early epoch, and was expressed by ideographs which literally
mean “stone of heaven,”[58] an indication that meteoric iron must be
referred to.
[Illustration: HEAD OF ONE OF THE STATUES FROM TELLO.
[_See p. 73._]
[Illustration:
VASE OF SILVER, DEDICATED TO NINGIRSU, BY ENTENA PATESI OF LAGAS.
[_See p. 58._]
But now comes a fact which is difficult to explain, so contrary is
it to the archæological evidence. As we have seen, no traces of
bronze have been found in the Assyro-Babylonian region before the
beginning of the Assyrian age--let us say about B.C. 2000.
Nevertheless, by the side of the simple ideograph which denotes the
Sumerian _urudu_, “copper”--_erû_ in Semitic Babylonian--we
find a compound ideograph signifying “bronze,” called _zabar_ in
Sumerian, from which the Semites borrowed their _’siparru_. It is
true that it is a compound ideograph, but it occurs in the cuneiform
texts, not only in the era of Gudea (B.C. 2700), but even
before the age of Sargon of Akkad (B.C. 3800). And an analysis
of its earliest form seems to indicate that it really must have meant
bronze from the first, and that consequently there was no transference
of signification in later days. Literally it means “white copper,” the
word for “copper” being phonetically-written _ka-mas_, with which
the Semitic Babylonian _kemassu_ is closely connected. Lead cannot
be intended, as that was denoted by a different word and different
ideographs, and I do not see what else “white copper” can be in
contradistinction to red copper except bronze. Polished copper could
be termed “bright,” but hardly “white.”[59]
The possibility remains that tin might have been the metal originally
denoted by the compound ideograph. If so, both the ideograph and
the words expressed by it had lost all reference to tin before the
beginning of the Assyrian period, and neither the Assyrian word for
“tin” nor the Sumerian word, if any existed, is now known. Tin,
moreover, was archæologically late in making its appearance. The
earliest examples of pure tin of which I know are of the time of the
Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. On the other hand, bronze first appears in
Egypt in the age of the Twelfth dynasty,[60] though it does not become
common until the Hyksos predecessors of the Eighteenth dynasty had made
themselves masters of the valley of the Nile. From about B.C.
1600 onwards, enormous quantities of it were employed in the eastern
basin of the Mediterranean and the adjoining lands, necessitating an
equally large supply of tin. What the source of this tin may have been
it is not my present purpose to inquire. But the persistence of the
copper age in Babylonia, as well as in the tumuli of Askabad, east
of the Caspian, indicates that the manufacture of bronze must have
migrated from the north-west to the Babylonian plain. We find it first
in Assyria, not in Babylonia, and it may well be that the Assyrians
derived it from Armenia and the population of Cappadocia, where, as I
shall show in a subsequent chapter, they had established colonies at an
early period. At all events, the earliest examples of bronze yet met
with were discovered by Dr. Schliemann in the Second prehistoric city
at Troy.
It was to this region that classical tradition referred the origin of
working in iron. An analysis of the gold of the first six Egyptian
dynasties submitted to Dr. Gladstone by Professor Petrie proved that
it was mixed with silver, and hence must have been derived from Asia
Minor.[61] Egyptian legend made “the followers of Horus,” who founded
dynastic Egypt, metallurgists and smiths whose metal weapons enabled
them to subdue the older neolithic population. The story as it has come
down to us declares the smiths to have been workers in iron; iron,
however, must be the substitute of the later version of the story for
some other metal, since, though Vyse claims to have discovered an iron
clamp in the great pyramid of Giza,[62] and Petrie has found a mass of
iron in a Sixth-dynasty deposit in the temple of Osiris at Abydos,[63]
ironsmiths can hardly have existed in the pre-dynastic age. It is
probable, therefore, that copper was the metal which the dynastic
Egyptians introduced into their new home, and which was already in use
in Babylonia. But the intercourse with Asia Minor, which the gold of
the First dynasty indicates must even then have been going on, makes it
possible that it was from this quarter of the world that the earliest
knowledge of the manufacture of bronze was brought to the valley of
the Nile. Even in the time of the Twelfth dynasty, however, the tools
found by Professor Petrie in the workmen’s huts at Kahûn are of copper
rather than of bronze.[64] The colossal statue of King Pepi of the
Sixth dynasty, discovered at Hierakonpolis, is of hammered copper, and
we have to wait for the advent of the Eighteenth dynasty before bronze
becomes the predominant metal.
That such was the case points to the Hyksos period as that in which
bronze succeeded in superseding the older copper. It may be that the
Hyksos brought the extended use of it with them from Syria. In Southern
Palestine, Mr. Macalister’s excavations at Gezer have shown that bronze
rather than copper was largely employed throughout the so-called
Amorite period, which went back to an earlier age than that of the
Twelfth dynasty, and it is just here that in the time of the Eighteenth
dynasty bronze itself began to make way for iron. Mr. J. L. Myres
has recently traced the polychrome pottery of Southern Canaan to the
Hittite lands of Cappadocia,[65] where the red ochre was found by which
it was characterized, and a knowledge of bronze may have travelled
along the same road.
But these are speculations which may or may not be verified by future
research. For the present we must be content with the fact that, in
spite of the philological evidence to the contrary, copper, and not
bronze, was the metal which preceded the use of iron in Babylonia,
whereas in the northern kingdom of Assyria bronze was already known at
a comparatively early date. So far as the existing evidence can carry
us, it seems to indicate that Babylonia was the primitive home of the
copper industry, while bronze, on the other hand, made its way eastward
from Asia Minor and the north of Syria. Where bronze was first invented
is still unknown to us; all that seems certain is that it must have
been in a land where copper and tin are found together.
NOTE
According to the mineralogists, in the western part of the northern
hemisphere tin is found only in Britain, Spain and the neighbourhood
of Askabad, the scanty surface-tin of Saxony, France and Tuscany being
too poor and insignificant to have attracted attention in antiquity
(see de Morgan, _Mission Scientifique au Caucase_, ii. pp. 16–28).
The American excavations at Askabad under Professor Pumpelly appear to
have made it clear that bronze was not invented in that part of the
world, or indeed used in early days, and we are thus thrown back on
Britain and Spain. It is quite certain, however, that bronze made its
way to the west of Europe from the east, and the Hon. John Abercromby
has proved (_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxxii. pp.
375–94, and _Proceedings of Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_,
1903–4, pp. 323–410) that the bronze culture came to this country from
the valley of the central Rhine where it cuts the river at Mayence. On
the other hand, the bronze-age civilization of the Danube valley, the
Balkan peninsula and Italy forms a whole with that of the south-eastern
basin of the Mediterranean, which again is closely connected with
the bronze-age culture of the Ægean, Asia Minor and Egypt, while the
civilization of the Danube valley leads on to that of Central Europe
and, to a less extent, of Scandinavia and Northern Germany. Montelius
(_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1900, pp. 89
_sqq._) has pointed out that the early bronze culture of Northern
Italy was carried to Scandinavia along the route of the amber trade as
far back as the close of the neolithic age in Sweden, and the numerous
objects of Irish gold found in Scandinavia--though, it is true, of
somewhat later date--show that commercial relations must have existed
between the British Islands and the Scandinavian peninsula. Tin might
have followed the gold route until it met the amber route, by which it
would have been carried southward to Central Europe and the Adriatic.
In Western Europe the sword, like the socketed celt, is first met
with in the third and last period into which the bronze age has been
divided. The earliest examples of the sword, in fact, are those
discovered at Mykenæ, which belong to the age of the Eighteenth
Egyptian dynasty. Schliemann found only the dirk at Troy, and, so far
as our present evidence goes, the dirk alone was used by the Hittites
and Proto-Armenians down to the seventh century B.C. The
scimitar, however, was known in Assyria and at Gezer at least as early
as the fourteenth century B.C. (see p. 57 above), and in
Cyprus the sword makes its appearance along with the knife and fibula
in the later bronze age after the close of the age of copper. Similarly
in Krete it was only in tombs of the Late Mykenæan (or Late Minoan)
period that the cemetery of Knossos yielded swords of bronze (_Annual
of the British School at Athens_, x. p. 4). The dirk of the copper
age was stanged as at Troy and in the Danube valley, the Cyprian and
Hungarian forms being practically identical. From the Danube valley the
stanged spear-head passed to Western Europe during the second period
of the bronze age. The fibula is not found at Troy, where the early
bronze age will have corresponded with the copper age of Cyprus.
All this goes to show (1) that the scimitar--the _harpê_ of
the Perseus myth--was a Semitic invention, while the long sword was
of European origin; (2) that at Troy, and possibly also in Southern
Palestine, to which Hittite polychrome pottery was carried at an early
date, bronze was known at a time when only copper was used in Cyprus
and Egypt; and (3) that the characteristic weapon of this primitive
bronze age was the dirk, which continued to characterize Asia Minor
long after the sword and scimitar had been invented elsewhere. Taken
in connection with the fact that the pottery and decorative designs
of Asia Minor can be linked with those of the Balkan peninsula and
the valley of the Danube, we may provisionally conclude that Northern
Asia Minor was the home of the invention of bronze. Against this is
the fact that no tin has hitherto been found there, and we should
accordingly have to explain the origin of bronze by the theory that
after the discovery of various processes for hardening copper, further
experiments were made with imported tin. Unfortunately, neither the
south of Cornwall nor Asia Minor, with the exception of the Troad, has
as yet been scientifically explored from an archæological point of
view. But it deserves mention that the curious needles with a double
head of twisted wire, which are met with among the remains of the
bronze age in Britain, are characteristic of the copper age in Cyprus
and of the early bronze age at Troy.