SOURCES OF BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN HISTORY.
In considering the four important sources of Babylonian and Assyrian
history, we may note first, Old Testament writings.
Unquestionably the Bible has gained more through Assyrian excavations
than it has itself contributed to the history of that country. As has
been said before, the Old Testament consists of Hebrew writings which
portray various phases of Hebrew life, and mention is made of other
nations only when the Chosen People by force of circumstances were
thrown in direct contact with them. Since their kingdom was overcome by
Babylonians, we could scarcely expect Hebrew writers to hold
unprejudiced opinions regarding their own conquerors; nevertheless
whatever facts concerning them crept into their writings have been
verified by modern discovery.
Much is often revealed in a few words, as is characteristic of Biblical
expression. For example, see how much is condensed in the following
sentence: "And the king of Egypt came not again any more out of his
land: for the king of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt unto the
river Euphrates all that pertained to the king of Egypt."
Not alone have the facts recorded in the Old Testament proved useful to
those engaged in reconstructing the history of the Tigris-Euphrates
nations, but the desire of religious adherents to confirm the truth and
accuracy of ancient Hebrew writings has served as an incentive both to
those who did the work and to those who by contributions made the task
possible.
The writings of the early Greeks concerning Babylonia and Assyria supply
another source. Berosus was a Babylonian priest connected with a temple
sacred to Bel. He lived during the fourth century before Christ, when
Babylonia and Assyria had become Greek provinces. For the Antiochus he
wrote a lengthy history of his country, which would have been of
greatest value to us had it been preserved. Unfortunately it was
destroyed, and only excerpts, made by Polyhistor and Apollodoras of the
first century B.C., are now in existence.
Herodotus devoted more than twenty chapters of his first volume to
Babylonia, but owing to certain faults we have found characteristic of
his writings, he has led some scholars to even declare that he never saw
the country at all. While they cannot be wholly depended upon, his
writings have some value. Other Greek writers have thrown so little
light on Babylonian life that we shall not consider them here at all.
Thirdly, we may mention Egyptian records as a source for Mesopotamian
history. The Egyptian hieroglyphics and the cuneiform symbols of the
Assyrian tongue were translated about the same time, so that little
actual help was gained through Egyptian sources. Nevertheless, campaigns
waged by Egyptian kings within the very borders of Asiatic countries,
with detailed accounts as set forth upon the walls of Egyptian temples,
cannot fail to aid in the reconstruction of Assyrian growth and
development.
Lastly and most important of all are the monuments and remains unearthed
in Mesopotamia itself. More than one hundred thousand clay record
tablets have been recovered; temples and palaces have been excavated,
and within these were found alabaster slabs carved with many scenes
characteristic of Assyrian life; armour, utensils and numerous other
articles have each thrown some light upon the ancient civilization. The
value of this first hand, or original material, is priceless indeed,
since without it no detailed knowledge of these old kingdoms could ever
have been hoped for. Explorations among the ruins are still carried on,
and it is possible that the present century may add much to what has
already been gained concerning the ancient dwellers in the once fertile
valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris.
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.
If you will look closely at a map of the eastern hemisphere, you will
see that a great tract of desert extends across northern Africa, and
reaching beyond the Mediterranean Sea, the Isthmus of Suez and the Red
Sea, traverses the entire width of Asia to the Pacific Ocean. This
desert waste is so broken by plateaus and mountain ranges that its vast
extent is scarcely realized. Rivers occasionally cross it, producing
fertile valleys which, generally speaking, support the life of the whole
area.
We are now concerned with the location and topography of the ancient
Babylonian and Assyrian kingdoms, and of those districts lying adjacent.
North of the Persian Gulf some considerable distance, we find the
Armenian mountains. These ranges are loftier than most in Western Asia,
piercing high above the eternal snow-line. During winter their sides and
gorges are massed with snow, which melts rapidly with the warmth of
spring and heat of summer. The drainage of the mountains has resulted in
many streams, which unite to form the Euphrates on the western slopes,
and on the eastern slopes, form the Tigris. Ages ago these two rivers
emptied into the Persian Gulf at points some distance from each other.
But such heavy deposits of rich mountain loam have been brought down by
the streams, that they have extended the land far into the gulf, pushing
the water back for some hundred miles. Joining one another in the area
thus formed, the waters of the two streams reach the gulf today as one
mighty river with many mouths. We may judge how great changes this
land-building process has wrought by the fact that the town of Ur, now
nearly two hundred miles from the gulf, was a sea-port at the time of
which we are now studying. The annual increase of the land is about 115
feet.
Herodotus' statement that "Egypt is the gift of the Nile," might have
been made with equal truth of the Euphrates and Babylonia. Here again an
annual overflow refreshes a valley, while in antiquity a network of
canals provided water, fertility, and humidity for districts sloping off
gently on either side.
Today this territory is held by the Turks, and with their ruinous policy
of trying to extract all possible revenue from their lands while doing
nothing to improve them, the old canals are abandoned, none others take
their place, and the rivers wander today at will, leaving part of the
area parched and unproductive, and converting the rest into
fever-breeding swamps and marshes.
The Euphrates is the longer of the two rivers. Taking its rise west of
a lofty mountain, it receives several tributaries near its source, but
none join it during the last eight hundred miles of its course. The
snows melt gradually; in March the stream begins to overflow its
channel; high water mark is reached by the first of June, and July finds
the waters receding. This river is very winding in its course, at one
place being but one hundred miles from the Mediterranean Sea and near
Babylon running along within twenty-five miles of the Tigris, only to
immediately branch off again to the south. Its entire length is about
eighteen hundred miles, and most of the water is spent before it reaches
the Gulf.
The Tigris is somewhat different from its sister stream. Its name
signifies "the swift," or the "arrowy," and indicates its rapid current,
whereas the Euphrates flows more gently. Not so broad as the Euphrates,
the Tigris is much deeper. On the east of the high mountains wherein
this river has its rise, spring comes quickly; the water rises rapidly,
and the period of its overflow is short. Beginning to rise in March, the
first of May sees the high water mark, and by the last of June the
stream is fast finding its usual volume.
The territory between the Tigris and Euphrates the Greeks called
Mesopotamia, meaning "between two rivers," but they applied the name to
the northern portion of the district--the home of the Assyrians. As
generally used today, the term Mesopotamia signifies the whole region.
The southern portion, bordering on the Persian Gulf, has a deep alluvial
soil, built up by the yearly deposit of the rivers. Like the valley of
the Nile, it has been the repository of fine silt. This portion from its
capital city Babylon was called Babylonia. As we might expect, this was
the country first settled because it was the more accessible. Its wide,
monotonous plains, enriched with the fertile mountain loam, afforded the
most productive farm lands in the world. Herodotus told of their
prodigious yield of grain: "This territory is of all that we know the
best by far for producing grain; as to trees, it does not attempt to
bear them, either fig, or vine or olive, but for producing grain it is
so good that it returns as much as two-hundred-fold for the average,
and, when it bears its best, it produces three-hundred-fold. The blades
of the wheat and barley there grew to be four fingers broad; and from
millet and sesame seed, how large a tree grows, I know myself, but shall
not record, being well aware that even what has already been said
relating to the crops produced has been enough to cause disbelief in
those who have not visited Babylonia." Theophrastus wrote: "In Babylon
the wheat fields are regularly mown twice, and then fed off with beasts
to keep down the luxuriance of the leaf; otherwise the plant does not
run to ear. When this is done the return in lands that are badly
cultivated is fiftyfold, while in those that are well farmed it is a
hundredfold."
The land of Babylonia has been happily compared with the southern half
of our state of Louisiana, which it resembles in marshy districts. Again
it might be likened to the Egyptian Delta, being of course,
larger,--something like Denmark in point of area. Possessing no rocks or
mountains, the country seemed at first to be devoid of building
material. It has been supposed that its primitive people first sheltered
themselves in huts built of reeds which grew abundantly along the river
banks. After awhile it was discovered that clay mud furnished a fair
material when shaped into bricks and dried in the sun. A more enduring
brick was later made by baking the brick in ovens. This oven-baked brick
as well as the sun-dried brick constituted the great building material
of Babylonia for all subsequent time.
The district north of the alluvial line, enclosed by rivers and
mountains, in time became the kingdom of Assyria. This region differed
greatly from the southern land. It was made up of low ranges on the
north, rolled gently to the south, and supplied excellent pasturage.
Stone and material suitable to building purposes were available, but the
people, accustomed to the clay bricks of their old home in Babylonia,
never made use of the more substantial building stuff. Indeed the
Assyrians were not at all of an inventive mind, as another illustration
will plainly show. In Babylonia, because the ground was low and level,
the people were obliged to construct artificial heights for building
sites, thus to escape marshy exhalations and troublesome insects. They
erected huge piles of sun-dried brick and crowned these with their
palaces and temples.
Now the Assyrians were in the beginning colonists who had gone out of
the mother state to find less populated regions farther north. There
were hills and elevations in abundance in Assyria, but holding to the
custom they had so long followed, they continued to construct great
foundations of bricks for their buildings. It is curious indeed to find
them, throughout their history, expending time, labor and resources to
produce what nature had already provided.
Assyria was somewhat larger than Babylonia, and has been compared to the
state of Illinois in size. While the northern mountains and the Gulf
afforded definite boundaries, the limits to the east and west were never
certain and both Babylonians and Assyrians pushed out in each direction
as they became more powerful, contracting again if their strength
weakened. On the west a desert separated them from the Mediterranean,
and while various tribes held the country east of the Tigris in early
times, the Medes later conquered the region east of Assyria, and Persia
reached away to the southeast.
There are two seasons in these valleys--the rainy period, lasting from
November to March, and the dry season, filling out the remainder of the
year. Babylonia was never subject to the cold storms of Assyria, and the
kings of the latter country, after they conquered Babylonia, frequently
maintained winter palaces in the old capital, Babylon. Summer is
intensely hot near the Gulf. In recent years this has been a serious
obstacle to confront those carrying on excavations here.
In ancient times an extensive system of canals and ditches made it
possible to keep the land under constant cultivation, thus preventing in
a large measure the sand storms that now spread over the country,
causing much suffering and even death. Under Turkish rule at present,
the whole region is left desolate.
In spite of Herodotus to the contrary, certain kinds of trees grew in
Babylonia. The fig, apple, almond and walnut were native. The date palm
ministered to the wants of the people in manifold ways. An old Persian
poem sung of its 360 uses, while the Greeks claimed that it supplied the
Babylonians with bread, wine, vinegar, honey, rope, fuel, wood for
furniture, and food for cattle. A wide variety of grains and vegetables
were produced.
Wild animals were plentiful. The Mesopotamian lion was thought milder
than its jungle cousin. Buffaloes were domesticated. Leopards, hyænas,
wild boars, gazelles, foxes and hares were found, while birds and fishes
abounded.
Altogether this was a spot where life was favorable for man, and it was
natural that wandering tribes that came thither should soon abandon
their roving habits for the surer livelihood promised by a fixed home.
[Illustration: SARGON'S STANDARD (WITH FIGURE OF ASSHUR).]