Since Layard dug up the vanished cities of Nineveh and Calah on the
banks of the Tigris three-quarters of a century ago, many gifted men
have followed in his footsteps, and wielded pick and shovel among the
mounds dotting Mesopotamia. No one coming upon the utter desolation
of Abu Shahrein could imagine that this great mound of sand, with
the ruined brick tower peeping out at the top, was some six thousand
years ago the flourishing port of Eridu.
Eridu to-day is a dead city, buried under a sea of sand, yet
this desolation marks, so far as we know, the very beginnings of
civilization in Mesopotamia. Here it was that the Sumerians rose out
of the dim past, with a culture that was far higher than that of many
nations still peopling the world. They wrote on clay tablets, and had
their code of laws, and traded by ship with distant places.
For long it was thought that Eridu in that far-off time must have
stood upon the seashore. The evidence that it was a port, and that
ships discharged their cargoes at the quays of the city, is beyond
all dispute. Yet to-day Eridu stands inland over a hundred miles—the
seashore is a long journey from the one-time seaport.
Men of science strove to solve the seeming contradiction of a seaport
so far inland. They studied the question very carefully. Measurements
were taken as to the amount of silt deposited by the Euphrates and
the Tigris at their deltas, and it was proved that in the last six
thousand years the area of land at the mouths of the rivers has been
very considerably extended, indicating that the ancient seashore
has receded inland. The only uncertainty was whether the rivers had
created a new belt of land over 90 miles wide since the Sumerians
lived their peaceful lives at Eridu of old. It was thought that the
rivers must have accomplished this feat, and it came to be accepted
as the explanation of why Eridu is now so far away from the coast.
But there is another explanation, and the correct one. The Sumerians
were the people who taught the Babylonians the art of making canals.
In the days of the Sumerians a system of canals spread over the
country to irrigate the land, and we now know that the Babylonians
and Assyrians obtained their knowledge of irrigation from the
Sumerians, for the latter were highly capable engineers.
The site of Eridu, about 20 miles from the Euphrates, stands on the
edge of a big depression in the desert. The skill of the Sumerians
in building canals is beyond question, and herein lies the answer
to the puzzle of an inland seaport. The big sandy depression sixty
centuries ago was a lake, and the outlet from the lake was by canal
to the Euphrates, and so to the sea. Eridu of old was merely the
forerunner of Manchester of to-day, and the ancient people solved
the problem of bringing the galleys to their very doors, in the same
way that the people of Manchester solved the problem of bringing
the steamers into the heart of their city six thousand years later.
Solomon spoke truly when he said that under the sun there is nothing
new.
Mr. Campbell Thomson, who has done fine work in Mesopotamia during
the past few years on behalf of the British Museum, was the man who
solved the mystery of ancient Eridu, and definitely proved that it
never stood on the seashore. His Arabs were digging there, to throw
some light on the vexed question of the past, when they came across
quantities of shells, just as the kitchen middens of Denmark are
marked by the shells of the fish the ancient peoples ate. The shells
at Eridu were similarly the sole remains of repasts eaten seventy or
eighty centuries ago, perhaps longer.
The average man would shovel such debris aside, and take no further
notice of it, but Campbell Thomson knew only too well the importance
of trifles in reconstituting the past. He put specimens of the
shells aside, and brought them to England with his other finds.
These shells were submitted to an expert, who was asked to identify
them. The expert found that the shells were those of fresh-water
mussels.
Instantly all the theories of those who asserted that the city once
stood on the seashore were refuted. If Eridu actually stood on the
seashore, the mussels eaten by these primitive inhabitants would have
been salt-water fish. As the shells found were those of fresh-water
fish, they revealed that Eridu stood on a lake, which the Sumerians
undoubtedly connected up by canal with the Euphrates. In this way did
a simple thing like a mussel shell reveal another long-lost secret.
About four thousand years ago Eridu was deserted by man, and the
encroaching sands have gradually silted up the canal and lake. The
fact that human beings ceased to live there so long ago might be
considered a disadvantage to those exploring the spot, but actually
it has proved a tremendous advantage. Human beings have a habit of
destroying the remains of those who go before them. They knock down
former habitations and rebuild, using previous materials, until all
traces of former peoples are lost.
At Eridu, Campbell Thomson set his diggers to cut through the layers
of the mound, until they came to the bottom layer of sand, which had
never been disturbed by human hands. He found that men of the Stone
Age lived here, men who used flints to cultivate the soil in the days
when the use of metal was unknown. They cut their corn with sickles
made of clay baked hard, and they were intelligent and clever enough
to make pottery, although the use of the potter’s wheel was not then
known. It was a pottery of a fine texture, painted with taste in a
number of designs. The hands that made it were skilled, and the eyes
of the potters were true enough to guide their hands aright.
Only a dozen miles across the desert is Ur of the Chaldees, where Mr.
Taylor, who was British vice-consul at Basra in the days when Layard
was making a stir, managed to find the remains of the temple of the
Moon God. Seas of sand have been shifted since on behalf of the
British Museum, and the mighty walls of the temple are now laid bare,
while in the background rises the huge mound covering the city.
The luck of digging was never better exemplified than at Ur. A
Persian and a Babylonian pavement adjoined, and Mr. Woolley, who was
in charge of the digging operations, states that he was anxious to
know whether there were any traces of a Babylonian pavement below the
Persian pavement. He describes how he set his diggers to take up a
portion of the Persian pavement, and left them wielding their picks
while he betook himself to another part of the diggings.
In a little while a small Arab boy came rushing up, his black eyes
aglow with astonishment, words coming breathlessly from his mouth.
“Come quick, Sahib! Come quick and see what the diggers have found!”
he cried.
Mr. Woolley wasted no time in returning. Directly he entered the
ruins he saw an old cloak spread on the floor, and lying upon it
were gold and silver ornaments, which had lain undiscovered under
the pavement for twenty-five centuries or more. Giving a few sharp
orders, he cleared the room of the diggers. Then he undertook further
operations with his own hands, and brought up beads and bits of gold
necklaces, with lapis lazuli and other semi-precious stones. But the
gem of the find was a beautiful gold statuette of a woman.
Quickly he sent out for boxes and packing materials, and he was
placing the treasure trove in the boxes, when he was still further
astonished. The Arab in charge of the diggers came up.
“Here, Sahib!” he exclaimed, and began to take more jewels from his
capacious pockets. “I was afraid to let the men see them, in case
they murdered me for the treasure,” he added simply.
This discovery of ancient treasure follows another important
Mesopotamian find, by Dr. Hall, of the British Museum, at Tell el
Obeid in 1919. Wonderful life-size heads of lions, most cunningly
modelled in bitumen, were uncovered. The Sumerian artists, striving
after realism, simulated the fiery eyes and red tongues of the
animals by imitating them in red jasper. Originally the heads were
covered with fine copper masks, but the metal became corroded and
only the grey-green fragments of the masks remain. The heads, now
among the treasures of the British Museum, are undoubtedly some of
the finest examples of early Sumerian art in existence.
Richer treasures still may await the spade of the excavator, for the
deserts of Mesopotamia hide the relics of many nations; traces of
many a hard-fought battle are swallowed up in the sands. Bits of the
mighty past peep out of Babylon, great gateways and walls that have
been uncovered by the hands of strangers, men who speak in divers
tongues, even as the slaves who toiled to build the Tower of Babel.
No longer is there any uncertainty as to the site of the Tower of
Babel. Here in Babylon itself was the Tower erected that was to reach
to Heaven. The power of Babylon went to the building of the enormous
square tower which, rising terrace on terrace, dominated the plains
for many miles, a landmark for the whole country-side, and a symbol
of the Strength of Babylon. Thousands of slaves toiled at making the
bricks, thousands more expended their energies in the building of the
gigantic square platforms which gradually rose above the city like a
series of boxes, each smaller than that below.
A flick of the Finger of Time and the mighty tower toppled, changed
into a mountain of broken brick and debris. Amid the debris, the
lower platform of the tower stood firm, to prove to us that Babel
existed in the days of old.
Here in Babylon Nebuchadnezzar reigned, the city echoed to the tramp
of his armies as he led them forth to triumph; out on the plains he
caused the golden image to be set up for his subjects to worship;
here followed the ordeal by fire of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego,
the madness which drove the monarch to eat grass as the beasts of
the field. Daniel once paced the palaces that stood here in their
glory, found favour with the king, saw the writing on the wall and
prophesied the downfall of the city when Belshazzar came to the
throne. “God has numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Thou art
weighed in the balance and found wanting. Thy kingdom is divided and
given to the Medes and Persians,” says the prophet in the Book of
Daniel. The pages of the Bible whisper to us the history of the world.
Gone is the glory. Only thousands of bricks stamped with the name
of Nebuchadnezzar remain to call up visions of the pleasure-loving
Babylonians who were swept away by fire and sword.
[Illustration:
_By courtesy of Major Kenneth Mason, M.C., R.E._
THE REMAINS OF MIGHTY BABYLON, WHICH WERE BURIED UNDER THE DRIFT OF
CENTURIES UNTIL OUR OWN TIME. THE ISHTAR TOWER SEEN TO THE LEFT WAS
COMPLETELY COVERED WITH DEBRIS BEFORE PROFESSOR KOLDEWEY EXCAVATED IT]
[Illustration:
_By courtesy of Major Kenneth Mason, M.C., R.E._
THE RUINS OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR’S PALACE IN BABYLON. THE SEEMING CLIFFS
HERE AND IN THE TOP PHOTOGRAPH SHOW THE MODERN GROUND LEVEL AND
INDICATE THE ENORMOUS QUANTITIES OF SOIL WHICH THE DIGGERS HAVE
REMOVED IN ORDER TO UNCOVER THE RUINS]
The clay tablets of Mesopotamia have told us many things since
Rawlinson stripped them of their secret; they are pages from the
Book of Mankind. Not the least remarkable discovery we owe to George
Smith, who, going out to the East on an expedition for the _Daily
Telegraph_, found among hundreds of the clay books of the ancients an
account of the Flood. He crowded some fine work into his short life,
before succumbing at Aleppo in 1876 at the age of thirty-six.
Just across the borders in Persia the French have explored many an
ancient site in the quest for knowledge. De Morgan, in the remaining
years of last century, dug down and down at Susa for 80 feet, until
he came to the virgin soil. Throughout this huge deposit were
scattered the relics of many civilizations, among them a stone which
has provided us with a unique record of the time when the Sumerians
held sway over the land. Inscribed on this stone is the code of laws
made by Hammurabi, the Sumerian king who reigned about four thousand
years ago.
Throughout the ages history has been repeating itself. Just as we
carried off the Rosetta Stone from Egypt as one of the spoils of war,
so the people of Susa, setting their heel on Babylon, conveyed the
stone of Hammurabi back in triumph to Susa. Then the sword of the
Assyrians swept through Susa, and the code of Hammurabi was engulfed
in the ruins, to await the spade of de Morgan.
The laws of Hammurabi set forth on his stone are good laws, and they
indicate a people governed justly. The sun god himself is shown
taking the stylus from the king in order to set down the laws,
implying that the laws were derived from the god himself.
Instinctively the mind reverts to the vision of Moses coming down
from the mountain, with the Ten Commandments graven on two tablets of
stone. It may be that some such stone as that of Hammurabi was itself
the foundation of the Ten Commandments, that the very code of laws on
which all Christian morality is based may one day reward some ardent
excavator. It is impossible to say. What was unknown to us yesterday
may be revealed to us to-day.
England has cause to be proud of the part played by Britons in
reading the story of mankind. Young in deciphering hieroglyphics,
Rawlinson in reading cuneiform, and Professor Sayce in mastering the
mysterious Armenian writing of Van—now known as Vannic—provide a
glowing tribute to the intelligence and determination of the British
race.
Mesopotamia, despite the many things to be found there, has no
tombs like those of Egypt to yield up the secrets of its lost
civilizations. The bodies of the dead were mostly burned. Sometimes
they were buried in two huge jars placed mouth to mouth, at other
times in a pottery coffin shaped something like a foot-bath, on which
a stone cover was placed; sites of ancient cemeteries have been
found, revealing strangely shaped pottery coffins, highly glazed in
blue.
These things have told the diggers much, but the records written on
clay bricks and barrel-shaped cylinders found in the temples and
palaces have yielded more information than has yet been deciphered or
translated. The ancient peoples used to place baked clay records in a
special niche in the foundations of their buildings, and these have
proved invaluable. The same custom persists to this day in our own
land, for it is a common practice to place coins and other records
under the foundation stones of modern large buildings of public
importance.
It may truly be said that Layard gave the impetus to digging in
the East, that all the men working in those parched lands are the
disciples of the Englishman who gave up his best years to the science
he loved. He suffered untold hardships, his life was often in dire
danger, illness afflicted him, but through it all he went on digging.
He was subjected to bitter attacks and intrigues, but he countered
them to perform his lifework. The hardships did not weigh with him,
the lack of money for carrying on the work was not an insuperable
handicap, but he was terribly disappointed at the lack of interest
shown by his countrymen in his discoveries, and by the way his
priceless relics were damaged during transit. Apparently people
thought they were so much rubbish, hardly worth the taking away.
He entered politics and gained honours as a diplomat, but his name
and his fame will ever rest on his wonderful work in digging up
ancient Assyria out of the deserts of Mesopotamia.