CHAPTER I--THE FIRST CHALDÆAN EMPIRE AND

Produced by David Widger

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HISTORY OF EGYPT CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA

By G. MASPERO, Honorable Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of Queen’s

College, Oxford; Member of the Institute and Professor at the College of

France

Edited by A. H. SAYCE, Professor of Assyriology, Oxford

Translated by M. L. McCLURE, Member of the Committee of the Egypt

Exploration Fund

CONTAINING OVER TWELVE HUNDRED COLORED PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Volume IV.

LONDON

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

PUBLISHERS

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_THE FIRST CHALDEAN EMPIRE AND THE HYKSÔS IN EGYPT_

_SYRIA: THE PART PLAYED BY IT IN THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD--

BABYLON AND THE FIRST CHALDÆAN EMPIRE--THE DOMINION OF THE HYKSÔS:

ÂHMOSIS._

_Syria, owing to its geographical position, condemned to be subject to

neighbouring powers-Lebanon, Anti-Lebanon, the valley of the Orontes

and of the Litâny, and surrounding regions: the northern table-land, the

country about Damascus, the Mediterranean coast, the Jordan and the Dead

Sea-Civilization and primitive inhabitants, Semites and Asiatics: the

almost entire absence of Egyptian influence, the predominance of that of

Chaldæa._

_Babylon, its ruins and its environs--It extends its rule over

Mesopotamia; its earliest dynasty and its struggle with Central

Chaldæa-Elam, its geographical position, its peoples; Kutur-Nakhunta

conquers Larsam-Bimsin (Eri-Aku); Khammurabi founds the first Babylonian

empire; Ids victories, his buildings, his canals--The Elamites in

Syria: Kudurlagamar--Syria recognizes the authority of Hammurabi and his

successors._

_The Hyksôs conquer Egypt at the end of the XIVth dynasty; the founding

of Avaris--Uncertainty both of ancients and moderns with regard to the

origin of the Hyksôs: probability of their being the Khati--Their kings

adopt the manners and civilization of the Egyptians: the monuments of

Khiani and of Apôphis I. and II--The XVth dynasty._

_Semitic incursions following the Hyksôs--The migration of the

Phoenicians and the Israelites into Syria: Terah, Abraham and his

sojourn in the land of Canaan--Isaac, Jacob, Joseph: the Israelites go

down into Egypt and settle in the land of Goshen._

_Thébes revolts against the Hyksôs: popular traditions as to the origin

of the war, the romance of Apôphis and Saquinri--The Theban princesses

and the last Icings of the XVIIth dynasty: Tiûdqni Kamosis, Ahmosis

I.--The lords of El-Kab, and the part they played during the war of

independence--The taking of Avaris and the expulsion of the Ilylcsôs._

_The reorganization of Egypt--Ahmosis I. and his Nubian wars, the

reopening of the quarries of Turah--Amenôthes I. and his mother

Nofrîtari: the jewellery of Queen Âhhotpû--The wars of Amenôthes I.,

the apotheosis of Nofrîtari--The accession of Thûtmosis I. and the

re-generation of Egypt._

CHAPTER I--THE FIRST CHALDÆAN EMPIRE AND THE HYKSÔS IN EGYPT

_Syria: the part played by it in the ancient world--Babylon and the

first Chaldæan empire--The dominion of the Hyksôs: Âhmosis._

Some countries seem destined from their origin to become the

battle-fields of the contending nations which environ them. Into such

regions, and to their cost, neighbouring peoples come from century to

century to settle their quarrels and bring to an issue the questions of

supremacy which disturb their little corner of the world. The nations

around are eager for the possession of a country thus situated; it

is seized upon bit by bit, and in the strife dismembered and trodden

underfoot: at best the only course open to its inhabitants is to join

forces with one of its invaders, and while helping the intruder to

overcome the rest, to secure for themselves a position of permanent

servitude. Should some unlooked-for chance relieve them from the

presence of their foreign lord, they will probably be quite incapable of

profiting by the respite which fortune puts in their way, or of making

any effectual attempt to organize themselves in view of future attacks.

They tend to become split up into numerous rival communities, of which

even the pettiest will aim at autonomy, keeping up a perpetual frontier

war for the sake of becoming possessed of or of retaining a glorious

sovereignty over a few acres of corn in the plains, or some wooded

ravines in the mountains. Year after year there will be scenes of bloody

conflict, in which petty armies will fight petty battles on behalf of

petty interests, but so fiercely, and with such furious animosity, that

the country will suffer from the strife as much as, or even more than,

from an invasion. There will be no truce to their struggles until they

all fall under the sway of a foreign master, and, except in the interval

between two conquests, they will have no national existence, their

history being almost entirely merged in that of other nations.

From remote antiquity Syria was in the condition just described,

and thus destined to become subject to foreign rule. Chaldæa, Egypt,

Assyria, and Persia presided in turn over its destinies, while Macedonia

and the empires of the West were only waiting their opportunity to lay

hold of it. By its position it formed a kind of meeting-place where most

of the military nations of the ancient world were bound sooner or later

to come violently into collision. Confined between the sea and the

desert, Syria offers the only route of easy access to an army marching

northwards from Africa into Asia, and all conquerors, whether attracted

to Mesopotamia or to Egypt by the accumulated riches on the banks of the

Euphrates or the Nile, were obliged to pass through it in order to reach

the object of their cupidity. It might, perhaps, have escaped this fatal

consequence of its position, had the formation of the country permitted

its tribes to mass themselves together, and oppose a compact body to

the invading hosts; but the range of mountains which forms its backbone

subdivides it into isolated districts, and by thus restricting each

tribe to a narrow existence maintained among them a mutual antagonism.

The twin chains, the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon, which divide the

country down the centre, are composed of the same kind of calcareous

rocks and sandstone, while the same sort of reddish clay has been

deposited on their slopes by the glaciers of the same geological

period.*

* Drake remarked in the Lebanon several varieties of

limestone, which have been carefully catalogued by Blanche

and Lartet. Above these strata, which belong to the Jurassic

formation, come reddish sandstone, then beds of very hard

yellowish limestone, and finally marl. The name Lebanon, in

Assyrian Libnana, would appear to signify “the white

mountain;” the Amorites called the Anti-Lebanon Saniru,

Shenir, according to the Assyrian texts and the Hebrew

books.

Arid and bare on the northern side, they sent out towards the south

featureless monotonous ridges, furrowed here and there by short narrow

valleys, hollowed out in places into basins or funnel-shaped ravines,

which are widened year by year by the down-rush of torrents. These

ridges, as they proceed southwards, become clothed with verdure and

offer a more varied outline, the ravines being more thickly wooded, and

the summits less uniform in contour and colouring. Lebanon becomes white

and ice-crowned in winter, but none of its peaks rises to the altitude

of perpetual snows: the highest of them, Mount Timarun, reaches 10,526

feet, while only three others exceed 9000.* Anti-Lebanon is, speaking

generally, 1000 or 1300 feet lower than its neighbour: it becomes

higher, however, towards the south, where the triple peak of Mount

Hermon rises to a height of 9184 feet. The Orontes and the Litâny drain

the intermediate space. The Orontes rising on the west side of the

Anti-Lebanon, near the ruins of Baalbek, rushes northwards in such a

violent manner, that the dwellers on its banks call it the rebel--Nahr

el-Asi.** About a third of the way towards its mouth it enters a

depression, which ancient dykes help to transform into a lake; it flows

thence, almost parallel to the sea-coast, as far as the 36th degree of

latitude. There it meets the last spurs of the Amanos, but, failing to

cut its way through them, it turns abruptly to the west, and then to the

south, falling into the Mediterranean after having received an increase

to its volume from the waters of the Afrîn.

* Bukton-Drake, Unexplored Syria, vol. i. p. 88, attributed

to it an altitude of 9175 English feet; others estimate it

at 10,539 feet. The mountains which exceed 3000 metres are

Dahr el-Kozîb, 3046 metres; Jebel-Mislriyah, 3080 metres;

and Jebel-Makhmal or Makmal, 3040 metres. As a matter of

fact, these heights are not yet determined with the accuracy

desirable.

** The Egyptians knew it in early times by the name of

Aûnrati, or Araûnti; it is mentioned in Assyrian

inscriptions under the name of Arantû. All are agreed in

acknowledging that this name is not Semitic, and an Aryan

origin is attributed to it, but without convincing proof;

according to Strabo (xvi. ii. § 7, p. 750), it was

originally called Typhon, and was only styled Orontes after

a certain Orontes had built the first bridge across it. The

name of Axios which it sometimes bears appears to have been

given to it by Greek colonists, in memory of a river in

Macedonia. This is probably the origin of the modern name of

Asi, and the meaning, _rebellious river_, which Arab

tradition attaches to the latter term, probably comes from a

popular etymology which likened Axios to Asi, the

identification was all the easier since it justifies the

epithet by the violence of its current.

The Litâny rises a short distance from the Orontes; it flows at first

through a wide and fertile plain, which soon contracts, however, and

forces it into a channel between the spurs of the Lebanon and the

Galilæan hills. The water thence makes its way between two cliffs of

perpendicular rock, the ravine being in several places so narrow that

the branches of the trees on the opposite sides interlace, and an active

man could readily leap across it. Near Yakhmur some detached rocks

appear to have been arrested in their fall, and, leaning like flying

buttresses against the mountain face, constitute a natural bridge over

the torrent. The basins of the two rivers lie in one valley, extending

eighty leagues in length, divided by an almost imperceptible watershed

into two beds of unequal slope. The central part of the valley is given

up to marshes. It is only towards the south that we find cornfields,

vineyards, plantations of mulberry and olive trees, spread out over the

plain, or disposed in terraces on the hillsides. Towards the north,

the alluvial deposits of, the Orontes have gradually formed a black

and fertile soil, upon which grow luxuriant crops of cereals and other

produce. Cole-Syria, after having generously nourished the Oriental

empires which had preyed upon her, became one of the granaries of the

Roman world, under the capable rule of the Cæsars.

Syria is surrounded on all sides by countries of varying aspect and

soil. That to the north, flanked by the Amanos, is a gloomy mountainous

region, with its greatest elevation on the seaboard: it slopes gradually

towards the interior, spreading out into chalky table-lands, dotted over

with bare and rounded hills, and seamed with tortuous valleys which

open out to the Euphrates, the Orontes, or the desert. Vast, slightly

undulating plains succeed the table-lands: the soil is dry and stony,

the streams are few in number and contain but little water. The Sajur

flows into the Euphrates, the Afrîn and the Karasu when united yield

their tribute to the Orontes, while the others for the most part pour

their waters into enclosed basins. The Khalus of the Greeks sluggishly

pursues its course southward, and after reluctantly leaving the gardens

of Aleppo, finally loses itself on the borders of the desert in a small

salt lake full of islets: about halfway between the Khalus and the

Euphrates a second salt lake receives the Nahr ed-Dahab, the “golden

river.” The climate is mild, and the temperature tolerably uniform. The

sea-breeze which rises every afternoon tempers the summer heat: the

cold in winter is never piercing, except when the south wind blows which

comes from the mountains, and the snow rarely lies on the ground for

more than twenty-four hours. It seldom rains during the autumn and

winter months, but frequent showers fall in the early days of spring.

Vegetation then awakes again, and the soil lends itself to cultivation

in the hollows of the valleys and on the table-lands wherever

irrigation is possible. The ancients dotted these now all but desert

spaces with wells and cisterns; they intersected them with canals,

and covered them with farms and villages, with fortresses and populous

cities. Primæval forests clothed the slopes of the Amanos, and pinewood

from this region was famous both at Babylon and in the towns of Lower

Chaldæa. The plains produced barley and wheat in enormous quantities,

the vine throve there, the gardens teemed with flowers and fruit, and

pistachio and olive trees grew on every slope. The desert was always

threatening to invade the plain, and gained rapidly upon it whenever

a prolonged war disturbed cultivation, or when the negligence of the

inhabitants slackened the work of defence: beyond the lakes and salt

marshes it had obtained a secure hold. At the present time the greater

part of the country between the Orontes and the Euphrates is nothing

but a rocky table-land, ridged with low hills and dotted over with some

impoverished oases, excepting at the foot of Anti-Lebanon, where two

rivers, fed by innumerable streams, have served to create a garden of

marvellous beauty. The Barada, dashing from cascade to cascade, flows

for some distance through gorges before emerging on the plain: scarcely

has it reached level ground than it widens out, divides, and forms

around Damascus a miniature delta, into which a thousand interlacing

channels carry refreshment and fertility. Below the town these streams

rejoin the river, which, after having flowed merrily along for a day’s

journey, is swallowed up in a kind of elongated chasm from whence it

never again emerges. At the melting of the snows a regular lake is

formed here, whose blue waters are surrounded by wide grassy margins

“like a sapphire set in emeralds.” This lake dries up almost completely

in summer, and is converted into swampy meadows, filled with gigantic

rushes, among which the birds build their nests, and multiply as

unmolested as in the marshes of Chaldæa. The Awaj, unfed by any

tributary, fills a second deeper though smaller basin, while to

the south two other lesser depressions receive the waters of the

Anti-Lebanon and the Hauran. Syria is protected from the encroachments

of the desert by a continuous barrier of pools and beds of reeds:

towards the east the space reclaimed resembles a verdant promontory

thrust boldly out into an ocean of sand. The extent of the cultivated

area is limited on the west by the narrow strip of rock and clay which

forms the littoral. From the mouth of the Litâny to that of the Orontes,

the coast presents a rugged, precipitous, and inhospitable appearance.

There are no ports, and merely a few ill-protected harbours, or narrow

beaches lying under formidable headlands. One river, the Nahr el-Kebir,

which elsewhere would not attract the traveller’s attention, is here

noticeable as being the only stream whose waters flow constantly and

with tolerable regularity; the others, the Leon, the Adonis,* and the

Nahr el-Kelb,* can scarcely even be called torrents, being precipitated

as it were in one leap from the Lebanon to the Mediterranean. Olives,

vines, and corn cover the maritime plain, while in ancient times the

heights were clothed with impenetrable forests of oak, pine, larch,

cypress, spruce, and cedar. The mountain range drops in altitude towards

the centre of the country and becomes merely a line of low hills,

connecting Gebel Ansarieh with the Lebanon proper; beyond the latter

it continues without interruption, till at length, above the narrow

Phoenician coast road, it rises in the form of an almost insurmountable

wall. Near to the termination of Coele-Syria, but separated from it

by a range of hills, there opens out on the western slopes of Hermon a

valley unlike any other in the world. At this point the surface of the

earth has been rent in prehistoric times by volcanic action, leaving a

chasm which has never since closed up. A river, unique in character--the

Jordan--flows down this gigantic crevasse, fertilizing the valley formed

by it from end to end.***

* The Adonis of classical authors is now Nahr-Ibrahim. We

have as yet no direct evidence as to the Phoenician name of

this river; it was probably identical with that of the

divinity worshipped on its banks. The fact of a river

bearing the name of a god is not surprising: the Belos, in

the neighbourhood of Acre, affords us a parallel case to the

Adonis.

** The present Nahr el-Kelb is the Lykos of classical

authors. The Due de Luynes thought he recognized a

corruption of the Phoenician name in that of Alcobile, which

is mentioned hereabouts in the Itinerary of the pilgrim of

Bordeaux. The order of the Itinerary does not favour this

identification, and Alcobile is probably Jebail: it is none

the less probable that the original name of the Nahr el Kelb

contained from earliest times the Phoenician equivalent of

the Arab word _kelb_, “dog.”

*** The Jordan is mentioned in the Egyptian texts under the

name of Yorduna: the name appears to mean _the descender,

the down-flowing._

Its principal source is at Tell el-Qadi, where it rises out of a

basaltic mound whose summit is crowned by the ruins of Laish.*

* This source is mentioned by Josephus as being that of the

Little Jordan.

[Illustration: 014.jpg THE MOST NORTHERN SOURCE OF THE JORDAN, THE

NAIIR-EL-HASBANY]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by the Duc de Luynes.

The water collects in an oval rocky basin hidden by bushes, and flows

down among the brushwood to join the Nahr el-Hasbany, which brings the

waters of the upper torrents to swell its stream; a little lower down it

mingles with the Banias branch, and winds for some time amidst desolate

marshy meadows before disappearing in the thick beds of rushes bordering

Lake Huleh.*

* Lake Huleh is called the Waters of Merom, Mê-Merom, in the

Book of Joshua, xi. 5, 7; and Lake Sammochonitis in

Josephus. The name of Ulatha, which was given to the

surrounding country, shows that the modern word Huleh is

derived from an ancient form, of which unfortunately the

original has not come down to us.

[Illustration 014b.jpg LAKE OF GENESARATH]

At this point the Jordan reaches the level of the Mediterranean, but

instead of maintaining it, the river makes a sudden drop on leaving the

lake, cutting for itself a deeply grooved channel. It has a fall of

some 300 feet before reaching the Lake of Grenesareth, where it is only

momentarily arrested, as if to gather fresh strength for its headlong

career southwards.

[Illustration: 017.jpg ONE OF THE REACHES OF THE JORDAN]

Drawn by Boudier, from several photographs brought back by

Lortet.

Here and there it makes furious assaults on its right and left banks,

as if to escape from its bed, but the rocky escarpments which hem it in

present an insurmountable barrier to it; from rapid to rapid it descends

with such capricious windings that it covers a course of more than 62

miles before reaching, the Dead Sea, nearly 1300 feet below the level of

the Mediterranean.*

* The exact figures are: the Lake of Hûleh 7 feet above the

Mediterranean; the Lake of Genesareth 68245 feet, and the

Dead Sea 1292 feet below the sea-level; to the south of

the Dead Sea, towards the water-parting of the Akabah, the

ground is over 720 feet higher than the level of the Red

Sea.

[Illustration: 018.jpg THE DEAD SEA AND THE MOUNTAINS OF MOAB, SEEN FKOM

THE HEIGHTS OF ENGEDI]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by the Duc de Luynes.

Nothing could offer more striking contrasts than the country on either

bank. On the east, the ground rises abruptly to a height of about 3000

feet, resembling a natural rampart flanked with towers and bastions:

behind this extends an immense table-land, slightly undulating and

intersected in all directions by the affluents of the Jordan and the

Dead Sea--the Yarmuk,* the Jabbok,** and the Arnon.***

* The Yarmuk does not occur in the Bible, but we meet with

its name in the Talmud, and the Greeks adopted it under the

form Hieromax.

** _Gen._ xxxii. 22; Numb, xxi. 24. The name has been

Grecized under the forms lôbacchos, labacchos, Iambykes. It

is the present Nahr Zerqa.

*** _Numb._ xxi. 13-26; Beut. ii. 24; the present Wady

Môjib. [Shephelah = “low country,” plain (Josh. xi. 16).

With the article it means the plain along the Mediterranean

from Joppa to Gaza.--Te.]

The whole of this district forms a little world in itself, whose

inhabitants, half shepherds, half bandits, live a life of isolation,

with no ambition to take part in general history. West of the Jordan, a

confused mass of hills rises into sight, their sparsely covered slopes

affording an impoverished soil for the cultivation of corn, vines, and

olives. One ridge--Mount Carmel--detached from the principal chain

near the southern end of the Lake of Genesareth, runs obliquely to

the north-west, and finally projects into the sea. North of this range

extends Galilee, abounding in refreshing streams and fertile fields;

while to the south, the country falls naturally into three parallel

zones--the littoral, composed alternately of dunes and marshes--an

expanse of plain, a “Shephelah,” dotted about with woods and watered by

intermittent rivers,--and finally the mountains. The region of dunes

is not necessarily barren, and the towns situated in it--Gaza, Jaffa,

Ashdod, and Ascalon--are surrounded by flourishing orchards and gardens.

The plain yields plentiful harvests every year, the ground needing no

manure and very little labour. The higher ground and the hill-tops are

sometimes covered with verdure, but as they advance southwards, they

become denuded and burnt by the sun. The valleys, too, are watered only

by springs, which are dried up for the most part during the summer, and

the soil, parched by the continuous heat, can scarcely be distinguished

from the desert. In fact, till the Sinaitic Peninsula and the frontiers

of Egypt are reached, the eye merely encounters desolate and almost

uninhabited solitudes, devastated by winter torrents, and overshadowed

by the volcanic summits of Mount Seir. The spring rains, however,

cause an early crop of vegetation to spring up, which for a few weeks

furnishes the flocks of the nomad tribes with food.

We may summarise the physical characteristics of Syria by saying that

Nature has divided the country into five or six regions of unequal

area, isolated by rivers and mountains, each one of which, however, is

admirably suited to become the seat of a separate independent state.

In the north, we have the country of the two rivers--the

Naharaim--extending from the Orontes to the Euphrates and the Balikh, or

even as far as the Khabur:* in the centre, between the two ranges of

the Lebanon, lie Coele-Syria and its two unequal neighbours, Aram of

Damascus and Phoenicia; while to the south is the varied collection of

provinces bordering the valley of the Jordan.

* The Naharaim of the Egyptians was first identified with

Mesopotamia; it was located between the Orontes and the

Balikh or the Euphrates by Maspero. This opinion is now

adopted by the majority of Egyptologists, with slight

differences in detail. Ed. Meyer has accurately compared the

Egyptian Naharaim with the Parapotamia of the administration

of the Seleucidæ.

It is impossible at the present day to assert, with any approach to

accuracy, what peoples inhabited these different regions towards the

fourth millennium before our era. Wherever excavations are made, relics

are brought to light of a very ancient semi-civilization, in which we

find stone weapons and implements, besides pottery, often elegant in

contour, but for the most part coarse in texture and execution. These

remains, however, are not accompanied by any monument of definite

characteristics, and they yield no information with regard to the

origin or affinities of the tribes who fashioned them.* The study of the

geographical nomenclature in use about the XVIth century B.C. reveals

the existence, at all events at that period, of several peoples and

several languages. The mountains, rivers, towns, and fortresses in

Palestine and Coele-Syria are designated by words of Semitic origin: it

is easy to detect, even in the hieroglyphic disguise which they bear

on the Egyptian geographical lists, names familiar to us in Hebrew or

Assyrian.

* Researches with regard to the primitive inhabitants of

Syria and their remains have not as yet been prosecuted to

any extent. The caves noticed by Hedenborg at Ant-Elias,

near Tripoli, and by Botta at Nahr el-Kelb, and at Adlun by

the Duc de Luynes, have been successively explored by

Lartet, Tristram, Lortet, and Dawson. The grottoes of

Palestine proper, at Bethzur, at Gilgal near Jericho, and at

Tibneh, have been the subject of keen controversy ever since

their discovery. The Abbé Richard desired to identify the

flints of Gilgal and Tibneh with the stone knives used by

Joshua for the circumcision of the Israelites after the

passage of the Jordan (_Josh._ v- 2-9), some of which might

have been buried in that hero’s tomb.

But once across the Orontes, other forms present themselves which reveal

no affinities to these languages, but are apparently connected with one

or other of the dialects of Asia Minor.* The tenacity with which the

place-names, once given, cling to the soil, leads us to believe that a

certain number at least of those we know in Syria were in use there long

before they were noted down by the Egyptians, and that they must have

been heirlooms from very early peoples. As they take a Semitic or

non-Semitic form according to their geographical position, we may

conclude that the centre and south were colonized by Semites, and the

north by the immigrant tribes from beyond the Taurus. Facts are not

wanting to support this conclusion, and they prove that it is not so

entirely arbitrary as we might be inclined to believe. The Asiatic

visitors who, under a king of the XIIth dynasty, came to offer gifts to

Khnûmhotpû, the Lord of Beni-Hasan, are completely Semitic in type,

and closely resemble the Bedouins of the present day. Their

chief--Abisha--bears a Semitic name,** as too does the Sheikh Ammianshi,

with whom Sinûhit took refuge.***

* The non-Semitic origin of the names of a number of towns

in Northern Syria preserved in the Egyptian lists, is

admitted by the majority of scholars who have studied the

question.

** His name has been shown to be cognate with the Hebrew

Abishai (1 Sam. xxvi. 6-9; 2 Sam. ii. 18, 24; xxi. 17) and

with the Chaldæo-Assyrian Abeshukh.

*** The name Ammianshi at once recalls those of Ammisatana,

Ammiza-dugga, and perhaps Ammurabi, or Khammurabi, of one of

the Babylonian dynasties; it contains, with the element

Ammi, a final _anshi_. Chabas connects it with two Hebrew

words _Am-nesh_, which he does not translate.

Ammianshi himself reigned over the province of Kadimâ, a word which in

Semitic denotes the East. Finally, the only one of their gods known to

us, Hadad, was a Semite deity, who presided over the atmosphere, and

whom we find later on ruling over the destinies of Damascus. Peoples

of Semitic speech and religion must, indeed, have already occupied the

greater part of that region on the shores of the Mediterranean which we

find still in their possession many centuries later, at the time of the

Egyptian conquest.

[Illustration: 028.jpg ASIATIC WOMEN FROM THE TOMB OF KHNÛMHOTPÛ]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

For a time Egypt preferred not to meddle in their affairs. When,

however, the “lords of the sands” grew too insolent, the Pharaoh sent a

column of light troops against them, and inflicted on them such a severe

punishment, that the remembrance of it kept them within bounds for

years. Offenders banished from Egypt sought refuge with the turbulent

kinglets, who were in a perpetual state of unrest between Sinai and

the Dead Sea. Egyptian sailors used to set out to traffic along the

seaboard, taking to piracy when hard pressed; Egyptian merchants were

accustomed to penetrate by easy stages into the interior. The accounts

they gave of their journeys were not reassuring. The traveller had first

to face the solitudes which confronted him before reaching the Isthmus,

and then to avoid as best he might the attacks of the pillaging tribes

who inhabited it.

[Illustration: 024.jpg TWO ASIATICS FKOM THE TOMB OF KHNÛMHOPTÛ.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger

Should he escape these initial perils, the Amu--an agricultural and

settled people inhabiting the fertile region--would give the stranger

but a sorry reception: he would have to submit to their demands, and

the most exorbitant levies of toll did not always preserve caravans from

their attacks.* The country seems to have been but thinly populated;

tracts now denuded were then covered by large forests in which herds of

elephants still roamed,** and wild beasts, including lions and leopards,

rendered the route through them dangerous.

* The merchant who sets out for foreign lands “leaves his

possessions to his children--for fear of lions and

Asiatics.”

** Thûtmosis III. went elephant-hunting near the Syrian town

of Niî.

The notion that Syria was a sort of preserve for both big and small

game was so strongly implanted in the minds of the Egyptians, that their

popular literature was full of it: the hero of their romances betook

himself there for the chase, as a prelude to meeting with the princess

whom he was destined to marry,* or, as in the case of Kazarâti, chief

of Assur, that he might encounter there a monstrous hyena with which to

engage in combat.

* As, for instance, the hero in the _Story of the

Predestined Prince_, exiled from Egypt with his dog, pursues

his way hunting till he reaches the confines of Naharaim,

where he is to marry the prince’s daughter.

These merchants’ adventures and explorations, as they were not followed

by any military expedition, left absolutely no mark on the industries or

manners of the primitive natives: those of them only who were close to

the frontiers of Egypt came under her subtle charm and felt the power

of her attraction, but this slight influence never penetrated beyond

the provinces lying nearest to the Dead Sea. The remaining populations

looked rather to Chaldæa, and received, though at a distance, the

continuous impress of the kingdoms of the Euphrates. The tradition which

attributes to Sargon of Agadê, and to his son Istaramsin, the subjection

of the people of the Amanos and the Orontes, probably contains but a

slight element of truth; but if, while awaiting further information, we

hesitate to believe that the armies of these princes ever crossed the

Lebanon or landed in Cyprus, we must yet admit the very early advent

of their civilization in those western countries which are regarded as

having been under their rule. More than three thousand years before

our era, the Asiatics who figure on the tomb of Khnûmhotpû clothed

themselves according to the fashions of Uru and Lagash, and affected

long robes of striped and spotted stuffs. We may well ask if they had

also borrowed the cuneiform syllabary for the purposes of their official

correspondence,* and if the professional scribe with his stylus and clay

tablet was to be found in their cities. The Babylonian courtiers were,

no doubt, more familiar visitors among them than the Memphite nobles,

while the Babylonian kings sent regularly to Syria for statuary stone,

precious metals, and the timber required in the building of

their monuments: Urbau and Gudea, as well as their successors and

contemporaries, received large convoys of materials from the Amanos, and

if the forests of Lebanon were more rarely utilised, it was not because

their existence was unknown, but because distance rendered their

approach more difficult and transport more costly. The Mediterranean

marches were, in their language, classed as a whole under one

denomination--Martu, Amurru,** the West--but there were distinctive

names for each of the provinces into which they were divided.

* The most ancient cuneiform tablets of Syrian origin are

not older than the XVIth century before our era; they

contain the official, correspondence of the native princes

with the Pharaohs Amenôthes III. and IV. of the XVIIIth

dynasty, as will be seen later on in this volume; they were

discovered in the ruins of one of the palaces at Tel el-

Amarna in Egypt.

** Formerly read Akharru. Martu would be the Sumerian and

Akharru the Semitic form, Akharru meaning _that which is

behind_. The discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets threw

doubt on the reading of the name Akharru: some thought that

it ought to be kept in any case; others, with more or less

certainty, think that it should be replaced by Amuru,

Amurru, the country of the Amorites. But the question has

now been settled by Babylonian contract and law tablets of

the period of Khaminurabi, in which the name is written _A-

mu-ur-ri (ki)_. Hommel originated the idea that Martu might

be an abbreviation of Amartu, that is, Amar with the

feminine termination of nouns in the Canaanitish dialect:

Martu would thus actually signify _the country of the

Amorites_.

Probably even at that date they called the north Khati,* and Cole-Syria,

Amurru, the land of the Amorites. The scattered references in their

writings seem to indicate frequent intercourse with these countries, and

that, too, as a matter of course which excited no surprise among their

contemporaries: a journey from Lagash to the mountains of Tidanum and

to Gubin, or to the Lebanon and beyond it to Byblos,** meant to them

no voyage of discovery. Armies undoubtedly followed the routes already

frequented by caravans and flotillas of trading boats, and the time came

when kings desired to rule as sovereigns over nations with whom their

subjects had peaceably traded.

* The name of the Khati, Khatti, is found in the _Book of

Omens_, which is supposed to contain an extract from the

annals of Sargon and Naramsin; as, however, the text which

we possess of it is merely a copy of the time of

Assurbanipal, it is possible that the word Khati is merely

the translation of a more ancient term, perhaps Martu.

Winckler thinks it to be included in Lesser Armenia and the

Melitônê of classical authors.

** Gubin is probably the Kûpûna, Kûpnû, of the Egyptians,

the Byblos of Phoenicia. Amiaud had proposed a most unlikely

identification with Koptos in Egypt. In the time of Inê-Sin,

King of Ur, mention is found of Simurru, Zimyra.

It does not appear, however, that the ancient rulers of Lagash ever

extended their dominion so far. The governors of the northern cities, on

the other hand, showed themselves more energetic, and inaugurated

that march westwards which sooner or later brought the peoples of the

Euphrates into collision with the dwellers on the Nile: for the first

Babylonian empire without doubt comprised part if not the whole of

Syria.*

* It is only since the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna

tablets that the fact of the dominant influence of Chaldæa

over Syria and of its conquest has been definitely realized.

It is now clear that the state of things of which the

tablets discovered in Egypt give us a picture, could only be

explained by the hypothesis of a Babylonish supremacy of

long duration over the peoples situated between the

Euphrates and the Mediterranean.

Among the most celebrated names in ancient history, that of Babylon is

perhaps the only one which still suggests to our minds a sense of vague

magnificence and undefined dominion. Cities in other parts of the world,

it is true, have rivalled Babylon in magnificence and power: Egypt could

boast of more than one such city, and their ruins to this day present to

our gaze more monuments worthy of admiration than Babylon ever contained

in the days of her greatest prosperity. The pyramids of Memphis and the

colossal statues of Thebes still stand erect, while the ziggurâts and

the palaces of Chaldæa are but mounds of clay crumbling into the plain;

but the Egyptian monuments are visible and tangible objects; we can

calculate to within a few inches the area they cover and the elevation

of their summits, and the very precision with which we can gauge their

enormous size tends to limit and lessen their effect upon us. How is it

possible to give free rein to the imagination when the subject of it is

strictly limited by exact and determined measurements? At Babylon, on

the contrary, there is nothing remaining to check the flight of fancy: a

single hillock, scoured by the rains of centuries, marks the spot where

the temple of Bel stood erect in its splendour; another represents the

hanging gardens, while the ridges running to the right and left were

once the ramparts.

[Illustration: 029.jpg THE RUINS OF BABYLON]

Drawn by Boudier, from a drawing reproduced in Hofer. It

shows the state of the ruins in the first half of our

century, before the excavations carried out at European

instigation.

The vestiges of a few buildings remain above the mounds of rubble,

and as soon as the pickaxe is applied to any spot, irregular layers of

bricks, enamelled tiles, and inscribed tablets are brought to light--in

fine, all those numberless objects which bear witness to the presence

of man and to his long sojourn on the spot. But these vestiges are so

mutilated and disfigured that the principal outlines of the buildings

cannot be determined with any certainty, and afford us no data for

guessing their dimensions. He who would attempt to restore the ancient

appearance of the place would find at his disposal nothing but vague

indications, from which he might draw almost any conclusion he pleased.

[Illustration: 030.jpg PLAN OF THE RUINS OF BABYLON]

Prepared by Thuillier, from a plan reproduced in G.

Rawlinson, _Herodotus_

Palaces and temples would take a shape in his imagination on a plan

which never entered the architect’s mind; the sacred towers as they rose

would be disposed in more numerous stages than they actually possessed;

the enclosing walls would reach such an elevation that they must have

quickly fallen under their own weight if they had ever been carried

so high: the whole restoration, accomplished without any certain data,

embodies the concept of something vast and superhuman, well befitting

the city of blood and tears, cursed by the Hebrew prophets. Babylon was,

however, at the outset, but a poor town, situated on both banks of the

Euphrates, in a low-lying, flat district, intersected by canals and

liable at times to become marshy. The river at this point runs almost

directly north and south, between two banks of black mud, the base of

which it is perpetually undermining. As long as the city existed, the

vertical thrust of the public buildings and houses kept the river within

bounds, and even since it was finally abandoned, the masses of _debris_

have almost everywhere had the effect of resisting its encroachment;

towards the north, however, the line of its ancient quays has given

way and sunk beneath the waters, while the stream, turning its course

westwards, has transferred to the eastern bank the gardens and mounds

originally on the opposite side. E-sagilla, the temple of the lofty

summit, the sanctuary of Merodach, probably occupied the vacant space in

the depression between the Babil and the hill of the Kasr.*

* The temple of Merodach, called by the Greeks the temple of

Belos, has been placed on the site called Babîl by the two

Rawlinsons; and by Oppert; Hormuzd Rassam and Fr. Delitzsch

locate it between the hill of Junjuma and the Kasr, and

considers Babîl to be a palace of Nebuchadrezzar.

In early times it must have presented much the same appearance as

the sanctuaries of Central Chaldæa: a mound of crude brick formed the

substructure of the dwellings of the priests and the household of the

god, of the shops for the offerings and for provisions, of the treasury,

and of the apartments for purification or for sacrifice, while the whole

was surmounted by a ziggurât. On other neighbouring platforms rose the

royal palace and the temples of lesser divinities,* elevated above the

crowd of private habitations.

* As, for instance, the temple E-temenanki on the actual

hill of Amrân-ibn-Ali, the temple of Shamash, and others,

which there will be occasion to mention later on in dealing

with the second Chaldæan empire.

[Illustration: 032.jpg THE KASK SEEN FROM THE SOUTH]

Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving by Thomas in Perrot-

Chipiez.

The houses of the people were closely built around these stately piles,

on either side of narrow lanes. A massive wall surrounded the whole,

shutting out the view on all sides; it even ran along the bank of the

Euphrates, for fear of a surprise from that quarter, and excluded the

inhabitants from the sight of their own river. On the right bank rose

a suburb, which was promptly fortified and enlarged, so as to become a

second Babylon, almost equalling the first in extent and population.

[Illustration: 033.jpg THE TELL OF BORSIPPA, THE PRESENT BIRS-NIMRUD]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after the plate published in

Ohesney.

Beyond this, on the outskirts, extended gardens and fields, finding at

length their limit at the territorial boundaries of two other towns,

Kutha and Borsippa, whose black outlines are visible to the east and

south-west respectively, standing isolated above the plain. Sippara on

the north, Nippur on the south, and the mysterious Agadê, completed the

circle of sovereign states which so closely hemmed in the city of Bel.

We may surmise with all probability that the history of Babylon in early

times resembled in the main that of the Egyptian Thebes. It was a small

seigneury in the hands of petty princes ceaselessly at war with petty

neighbours: bloody struggles, with alternating successes and reverses,

were carried on for centuries with no decisive results, until the day

came when some more energetic or fortunate dynasty at length crushed its

rivals, and united under one rule first all the kingdoms of Northern and

finally those of Southern Chaldæa.

The lords of Babylon had, ordinarily, a twofold function, religious

and military, the priest at first taking precedence of the soldier, but

gradually yielding to the latter as the town increased in power.

They were merely the priestly representatives or administrators of

Babel--_shakannaku Babili_--and their authority was not considered

legitimate until officially confirmed by the god. Each ruler was obliged

to go in state to the temple of Bel Merodach within a year of his

accession: there he had to take the hands of the divine statue, just

as a vassal would do homage to his liege, and those only of the native

sovereigns or the foreign conquerors could legally call themselves Kings

of Babylon--_sharru Babili_--who had not only performed this rite, but

renewed it annually.*

* The meaning of the ceremony in which the kings of Babylon

“took the hands of Bel” has been given by Winckler; Tiele

compares it very aptly with the rite performed by the

Egyptian kings--at Heliopolis, for example, when they

entered alone the sanctuary of Râ, and there contemplated

the god face to face. The rite was probably repeated

annually, at the time of the Zakmuku, that is, the New Year

festival.

Sargon the Elder had lived in Babylon, and had built himself a palace

there: hence the tradition of later times attributed to this city the

glory of having been the capital of the great empire founded by the

Akkadian dynasties. The actual sway of Babylon, though arrested to the

south by the petty states of Lower Chaldæa, had not encountered to the

north or north-west any enemy to menace seriously its progress in that

semi-fabulous period of its history. The vast plain extending between

the Euphrates and the Tigris is as it were a continuation of the

Arabian desert, and is composed of a grey, or in parts a whitish, soil

impregnated with selenite and common salt, and irregularly superimposed

upon a bed of gypsum, from which asphalt oozes up here and there,

forming slimy pits. Frost is of rare occurrence in winter, and rain is

infrequent at any season; the sun soon burns up the scanty herbage

which the spring showers have encouraged, but fleshy plants successfully

resist its heat, such as the common salsola, the salsola soda, the

pallasia, a small mimosa, and a species of very fragrant wormwood,

forming together a vari-coloured vegetation which gives shelter to

the ostrich and the wild ass, and affords the flocks of the nomads a

grateful pasturage when the autumn has set in. The Euphrates bounds

these solitudes, but without watering them. The river flows, as far as

the eye can see, between two ranges of rock or bare hills, at the foot

of which a narrow strip of alluvial soil supports rows of date-palms

intermingled here and there with poplars, sumachs, and willows. Wherever

there is a break in the two cliffs, or where they recede from the river,

a series of shadufs takes possession of the bank, and every inch of the

soil is brought under cultivation. The aspect of the country remains

unchanged as far as the embouchure of the Khabur; but there a black

alluvial soil replaces the saliferous clay, and if only the water were

to remain on the land in sufficient quantity, the country would be

unrivalled in the world for the abundance and variety of its crops.

[Illustration: 036.jpg THE BANKS OF THE EUPHRATES AT ZULEIBEH]

Drawn by Boudier, from the plate in Chesney.

The fields, which are regularly sown in the neighbourhood of the small

towns, yield magnificent harvests of wheat and barley: while in the

prairie-land beyond the cultivated ground the grass grows so high that

it comes up to the horses’ girths. In some places the meadows are so

covered with varieties of flowers, growing in dense masses, that the

effect produced is that of a variegated carpet; dogs sent in among them

in search of game, emerge covered with red, blue, and yellow pollen.

This fragrant prairie-land is the delight of bees, which produce

excellent and abundant honey, while the vine and olive find there a

congenial soil. The population was unequally distributed in this region.

Some half-savage tribes were accustomed to wander over the plain,

dwelling in tents, and supporting life by the chase and by the rearing

of cattle; but the bulk of the inhabitants were concentrated around the

affluents of the Euphrates and Tigris, or at the foot of the northern

mountains wherever springs could be found, as in Assur, Singar, Nisibis,

Tilli,* Kharranu, and in all the small fortified towns and nameless

townlets whose ruins are scattered over the tract of country between the

Khabur and the Balikh. Kharranu, or Harran, stood, like an advance guard

of Chaldæan civilization, near the frontiers of Syria and Asia Minor.**

To the north it commanded the passes which opened on to the basins of

the Upper Euphrates and Tigris; it protected the roads leading to the

east and south-east in the direction of the table-land of Iran and the

Persian Gulf, and it was the key to the route by which the commerce of

Babylon reached the countries lying around the Mediterranean. We have no

means of knowing what affinities as regards origin or race connected

it with Uru, but the same moon-god presided over the destinies of both

towns, and the Sin of Harran enjoyed in very early times a renown nearly

equal to that of his namesake.

* Tilli, the only one of these towns mentioned with any

certainty in the inscriptions of the first Chaldæan empire,

is the Tela of classical authors, and probably the present

Werânshaher, near the sources of the Balikh.

** Kharranu was identified by the earlier Assyriologists

with the Harran of the Hebrews (_Gen._ v. 12), the Carrhse

of classical authors, and this identification is still

generally accepted.

He was worshipped under the symbol of a conical stone, probably an

aerolite, surmounted by a gilded crescent, and the ground-plan of the

town roughly described a crescent-shaped curve in honour of its patron.

His cult, even down to late times, was connected with cruel practices;

generations after the advent to power of the Abbasside caliphs, his

faithful worshippers continued to sacrifice to him human victims, whose

heads, prepared according to the ancient rite, were accustomed to give

oracular responses.* The government of the surrounding country was

in the hands of princes who were merely vicegerents:** Chaldæan

civilization before the beginnings of history had more or less laid hold

of them, and made them willing subjects to the kings of Babylon.***

* Without seeking to specify exactly which were the

doctrines introduced into Harranian religion subsequently to

the Christian era, we may yet affirm that the base of this

system of faith was merely a very distorted form of the

ancient Chaldæan worship practised in the town.

** Only one vicegerent of Mesopotamia is known at present,

and he belongs to the Assyrian epoch. His seal is preserved

in the British Museum.

*** The importance of Harran in the development of the

history of the first Chaldæan empire was pointed out by

Winckler; but the theory according to which this town was

the capital of the kingdom, called by the Chaldæan and

Assyrian scribes “the kingdom of the world,” is justly

combated by Tiele.

These sovereigns were probably at the outset somewhat obscure

personages, without much prestige, being sometimes independent and

sometimes subject to the rulers of neighbouring states, among others to

those of Agadê. In later times, when Babylon had attained to universal

power, and it was desired to furnish her kings with a continuous

history, the names of these earlier rulers were sought out, and added

to those of such foreign princes as had from time to time enjoyed the

sovereignty over them--thus forming an interminable list which for

materials and authenticity would well compare with that of the Thinite

Pharaohs. This list has come down to us incomplete, and its remains do

not permit of our determining the exact order of reigns, or the status

of the individuals who composed it. We find in it, in the period

immediately subsequent to the Deluge, mention of mythical heroes,

followed by names which are still semi-legendary, such as Sargon the

Elder; the princes of the series were, however, for the most part

real beings, whose memories had been preserved by tradition, or whose

monuments were still existing in certain localities. Towards the end of

the XXVth century before our era, however, a dynasty rose into power of

which all the members come within the range of history.*

* This dynasty, which is known to us in its entirety by the

two lists of G. Smith and by Pinches, was legitimately

composed of only eleven kings, and was known as the

Babylonian dynasty, although Sayce suspects it to be of

Arabian origin. It is composed as follows:--

[Illustration: 039.jpg TABLE]

The dates of this dynasty are not fixed with entire certainty. The first

of them, Sumuabîm, has left us some contracts bearing the dates of one

or other of the fifteen years of his reign, and documents of public or

private interest abound in proportion as we follow down the line of his

successors. Sumulaîlu, who reigned after him, was only distantly related

to his predecessor; but from Sumulaîlu to Sam-shusatana the kingly power

was transmitted from father to son without a break for nine generations,

if we may credit the testimony of the official lists.*

* Simulaîlu, also written Samu-la-ilu, whom Mr. Pinches has

found in a contract tablet associated with Pungunila as

king, was not the son of Sumuabîm, since the lists do not

mention him as such; he must, however, have been connected

with some sort of relationship, or by marriage, with his

predecessor, since both are placed in the same dynasty. A

few contracts of Sumulaîlu are given by Meissner. Samsuiluna

calls him “my forefather (d-gula-mu), the fifth king before

me.”

Hommel believes that the order of the dynasties has been

reversed, and that the first upon the lists we possess was

historically the second; he thus places the Babylonian

dynasty between 2035 and 1731 B.C. His opinion has not been

generally adopted, but every Assyriologist dealing with this

period proposes a different date for the reigns in this

dynasty; to take only one characteristic example, Khammurabi

is placed by Oppert in the year 2394-2339, by Delitzsch-

Murdter in 2287-2232, by Winckler in 2264-2210, and by

Peiser in 2139-2084, and by Carl Niebuhr in 2081-2026.

Contemporary records, however, prove that the course of affairs did

not always run so smoothly. They betray the existence of at least

one usurper--Immêru--who, even if he did not assume the royal titles,

enjoyed the supreme power for several years between the reigns of Zabu

and Abilsin. The lives of these rulers closely resembled those of their

contemporaries of Southern Chaldæa. They dredged the ancient canals, or

constructed new ones; they restored the walls of their fortresses, or

built fresh strongholds on the frontier;* they religiously kept the

festivals of the divinities belonging to their terrestrial domain, to

whom they annually rendered solemn homage.

* Sumulaîlu had built six such large strongholds of brick,

which were repaired by Samsuiluna five generations later. A

contract of Sinmuballit is dated the year in which he built

the great wall of a strong place, the name of which is

unfortunately illegible on the fragment which we possess.

They repaired the temples as a matter of course, and enriched them

according to their means; we even know that Zabu, the third in order

of the line of sovereigns, occupied himself in building the sanctuary

Eulbar of Anunit, in Sippara. There is evidence that they possessed the

small neighbouring kingdoms of Kishu, Sippara, and Kuta, and that they

had consolidated them into a single state, of which Babylon was the

capital. To the south their possessions touched upon those of the kings

of Uru, but the frontier was constantly shifting, so that at one time an

important city such as Nippur belonged to them, while at another it fell

under the dominion of the southern provinces. Perpetual war was waged

in the narrow borderland which separated the two rival states, resulting

apparently in the balance of power being kept tolerably equal between

them under the immediate successors of Sumuabîm* --the obscure Sumulaîlu,

Zabum, the usurper Immeru, Abîlsin and Sinmuballit--until the reign of

Khammurabi (the son of Sinmuballit), who finally made it incline to

his side.** The struggle in which he was engaged, and which, after many

vicissitudes, he brought to a successful issue, was the more decisive,

since he had to contend against a skilful and energetic adversary who

had considerable forces at his disposal. Birnsin*** was, in reality, of

Elamite race, and as he held the province of Yamutbal in appanage, he

was enabled to muster, in addition to his Chaldæan battalions, the army

of foreigners who had conquered the maritime regions at the mouth of the

Tigris and the Euphrates.

* None of these facts are as yet historically proved: we

may, however, conjecture with some probability what was the

general state of things, when we remember that the first

kings of Babylon were contemporaries of the last independent

sovereigns of Southern Chaldæa.

** The name of this prince has been read in several ways--

Hammurabi, Khammurabi, by the earlier Assyriologists,

subsequently Hammuragash, Khammuragash, as being of Elamite

or Cossoan extraction: the reading Khammurabi is at present

the prevailing one. The bilingual list published by Pinches

makes Khammurabi an equivalent of the Semitic names Kimta-

rapashtum. Hence Halévy concluded that Khammurabi was a

series of ideograms, and that Kimtarapashtum was the true

reading of the name; his proposal, partially admitted by

Hommel, furnishes us with a mixed reading of Khammurapaltu,

Amraphel. [Hommel is now convinced of the identity of the

Amraphel of _Gen._ xiv. I with Khammurabi.--Te.] Sayce,

moreover, adopts the reading Khammurabi, and assigns to him

an Arabian origin. The part played by this prince was

pointed out at an early date by Menant. Recent discoveries

have shown the important share which he had in developing

the Chaldæan empire, and have, increased his reputation with

Assyriologists.

*** The name of this king has been the theme of heated

discussions: it was at first pronounced Aradsin, Ardusin, or

Zikarsin; it is now read in several different ways--Rimsin,

or Eriaku, Riaku, Rimagu. Others have made a distinction

between the two forms, and have made out of them the names

of two different kings. They are all variants of the same

name. I have adopted the form Rimsin, which is preferred by

a few Assyriologists. [The tablets recently discovered by

Mr. Pinches, referring to Kudur-lagamar and Tudkhula, which

he has published in a Paper road before the Victoria

Institute, Jan. 20, 1896, have shown that the true reading

is Eri-Aku. The Elamite name Eri-Aku, “servant of the moon-

god,” was changed by some of his subjects into the

Babylonian Rim-Sin, “Have mercy, O Moon-god!” just as

Abêsukh, the Hebrew Absihu’a (“the father of welfare”) was

transformed into the Babylonian Ebisum (“the actor”).--Ed.]

It was not the first time that Elam had audaciously interfered in

the affairs of her neighbours. In fabulous times, one of her mythical

kings--Khumbaba the Ferocious--had oppressed. Uruk, and Gilgames with

all his valour was barely able to deliver the town. Sargon the Elder is

credited with having subdued Elam; the kings and vicegerents of Lagash,

as well as those of Uru and. Larsam, had measured forces with Anshan,

but with no decisive issue. From time to time they obtained an

advantage, and we find recorded in the annals victories gained by Gudea,

Inê-sin, or Bursin, but to be followed only by fresh reverses; at the

close of such campaigns, and in order to seal the ensuing peace, à

princess of Susa would be sent as a bride to one of the Chaldæan cities,

or a Chaldæan lady of royal birth would enter the harem of a king of

Anshân. Elam was protected along the course of the Tigris and on the

shores of the Nâr-Marratum by a wide marshy region, impassable except

at a few fixed and easily defended places. The alluvial plain extending

behind the marshes was as rich and fertile as that of Chaldæa. Wheat and

barley ordinarily yielded an hundred and at times two hundredfold; the

towns were surrounded by a shadeless belt of palms; the almond, fig,

acacia, poplar, and willow extended in narrow belts along the rivers’

edge. The climate closely resembles that of Chaldaja: if the midday heat

in summer is more pitiless, it is at least tempered by more frequent

east winds. The ground, however, soon begins to rise, ascending

gradually towards the north-east. The distant and uniform line of

mountain-peaks grows loftier on the approach of the traveller, and the

hills begin to appear one behind another, clothed halfway up with thick

forests, but bare on their summits, or scantily covered with meagre

vegetation. They comprise, in fact, six or seven parallel ranges,

resembling natural ramparts piled up between the country of the Tigris

and the table-land of Iran. The intervening valleys were formerly lakes,

having had for the most part no communication with each other and no

outlet into the sea. In the course of centuries they had dried up,

leaving a thick deposit of mud in the hollows of their ancient beds,

from which sprang luxurious and abundant harvests. The rivers--the

Uknu,* the Ididi,** and the Ulaî***--which water this region are, on

reaching more level ground, connected by canals, and are constantly

shifting their beds in the light soil of the Susian plain: they soon

attain a width equal to that of the Euphrates, but after a short time

lose half their volume in swamps, and empty themselves at the present

day into the Shatt-el-Arab. They flowed formerly into that part of the

Persian Gulf which extended as far as Kornah, and the sea thus formed

the southern frontier of the kingdom.

* The Uknu is the Kerkhah of the present day, the Choaspes

of the Greeks.

** The Ididi was at first identified with the ancient

Pasitigris, which scholars then desired to distinguish from

the Eulseos: it is now known to be the arm of the Karun

which runs to Dizful, the Koprates of classical times, which

has sometimes been confounded with the Eulaws.

*** The Ulaî, mentioned in the Hebrew texts (Ban. viii. 2,

16), the Euloos of classical writers, also called

Pasitigris. It is the Karun of the present day, until its

confluence with the Shaûr, and subsequently the Shaûr

itself, which waters the foot of the Susian hills.

From earliest times this country was inhabited by three distinct

peoples, whose descendants may still be distinguished at the present

day, and although they have dwindled in numbers and become mixed with

elements of more recent origin, the resemblance to their forefathers

is still very remarkable. There were, in the first place, the short

and robust people of well-knit figure, with brown skins, black hair and

eyes, who belonged to that negritic race which inhabited a considerable

part of Asia in prehistoric times.*

* The connection of the negroid type of Susians with the

negritic races of India and Oceania, has been proved, in the

course of M. Dieulafoy’s expedition to the Susian plains and

the ancient provinces of Elam.

[Illustration: 045.jpg MAP OF CHALDÆA AND ELAM.]

[Illustration: 046.jpg AN ANCIENT SUSIAN OF NEGRETIC RACE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief of Sargon II. in

the Louvre.

These prevailed in the lowlands and the valleys, where the warm, damp

climate favoured their development; but they also spread into the

mountain region, and had pushed their outposts as far as the first

slopes of the Iranian table-land. They there contact with white-skinned

of medium height, who were probably allied to the nations of Northern

and Central Asia--to the Scythians,* for instance, if it is permissible

to use a vague term employed by the Ancients.

* This last-mentioned people is, by some authors, for

reasons which, so far, can hardly be considered conclusive,

connected with the so-called Sumerian race, which we find

settled in Chaldæa. They are said to have been the first to

employ horses and chariots in warfare.

[Illustration: 047.jpg NATIVE OF MIXED NEGRITIC RACE FROM SUSIANA]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph furnished by

Marcel Dieulafoy.

Semites of the same stock as those of Chaldæa pushed forward as far as

the east bank of the Tigris, and settling mainly among the marshes led a

precarious life by fishing and pillaging.* The country of the plain

was called Anzân, or Anshân,** and the mountain region Numma, or Ilamma,

“the high lands:” these two names were subsequently used to denote the

whole country, and Ilamma has survived in the Hebrew word Elam.*** Susa,

the most important and flourishing town in the kingdom, was situated

between the Ulaî and the Ididi, some twenty-five or thirty miles from

the nearest of the mountain ranges.

* From the earliest times we meet beyond the Tigris with

names like that of Durilu, a fact which proves the existence

of races speaking a Semitic dialect in the countries under

the suzerainty of the King of Elam: in the last days of the

Chaldæan empire they had assumed such importance that the

Hebrews made out Elam to be one of the sons of Shem (_Gen._

x. 22).

** Anzân, Anshân, and, by assimilation of the nasal with the

sibilant, Ashshân. This name has already been mentioned in

the inscriptions of the kings and vicegerents of Lagash and

in the _Book of Prophecies_ of the ancient Chaldæan

astronomers; it also occurs in the royal preamble of Cyrus

and his ancestors, who like him were styled “kings of

Anshân.” It had been applied to the whole country of Elam,

and afterwards to Persia. Some are of opinion that it was

the name of a part of Elam, viz. that inhabited by the

Turanian Medes who spoke the second language of the

Achæmenian inscriptions, the eastern half, bounded by the

Tigris and the Persian Gulf, consisting of a flat and swampy

land. These differences of opinion gave rise to a heated

controversy; it is now, however, pretty generally admitted

that Anzân-Anshân was really the plain of Elam, from the

mountains to the sea, and one set of authorities affirms

that the word Anzân may have meant “plain” in the language

of the country, while others hesitate as yet to pronounce

definitely on this point.

*** The meaning of “Nunima,” “Ilamma,” “Ilamtu,” in the

group of words used to indicate Elam, had been recognised

even by the earliest Assyriologists; the name originally

referred to the hilly country on the north and east of Susa.

To the Hebrews, Elam was one of the sons of Shem (Gen. x.

22). The Greek form of the name is Elymais, and some of the

classical geographers were well enough acquainted with the

meaning of the word to be able to distinguish the region to

which it referred from Susiana proper.

[Illustration: 048.jpg THE TUMULUS OF SUSA, AS IT APPEARED TOWARDS THE

MIDDLE OF THE XIXth CENTURY]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after a plate in Chesney.

Its fortress and palace were raised upon the slopes of a mound which

overlooked the surrounding country:* at its base, to the eastward,

stretched the town, with its houses of sun-dried bricks.**

* Susa, in the language of the country, was called Shushun;

this name was transliterated into Chaldæo-Assyrian, by

Shushan, Shushi.

** Strabo tells us, on the authority of Polycletus, that the

town had no walls in the time of Alexander, and extended

over a space two hundred stadia in length; in the

VIII century B.C. it was enclosed by walls with bastions,

which are shown on a bas-relief of Assurbanipal, but it was

surrounded by unfortified suburbs.

Further up the course of the Uknu, lay the following cities: Madaktu,

the Badaca of classical authors,* rivalling Susa in strength and

importance; Naditu,** Til-Khumba,*** Dur-Undash,**** Khaidalu.^--all

large walled towns, most of which assumed the title of royal cities.

Elam in reality constituted a kind of feudal empire, composed of several

tribes--the Habardip, the Khushshi, the Umliyash, the people of Yamutbal

and of Yatbur^^--all independent of each other, but often united under

the authority of one sovereign, who as a rule chose Susa as the seat of

government.

* Madaktu, Mataktu, the Badaka of Diodorus, situated on the

Eulaaos, between Susa and Ecbatana, has been placed by

Rawlinson near the bifurcation of the Kerkhah, either at

Paipul or near Aiwân-i-Kherkah, where there are some rather

important and ancient ruins; Billerbeck prefers to put it at

the mouth of the valley of Zal-fer, on the site at present

occupied by the citadel of Kala-i-Riza.

** Naditu is identified by Finzi with the village of

Natanzah, near Ispahan; it ought rather to be looked for in

the neighbourhood of Sarna.

*** Til-Khumba, the Mound of Khumba, so named after one of

the principal Elamite gods, was, perhaps, situated among the

ruins of Budbar, towards the confluence of the Ab-i-Kirind

and Kerkhah, or possibly higher up in the mountain, in the

vicinity of Asmanabad.

**** Dur-Undash, Dur-Undasi, has been identified, without

absolutely conclusive reason, with the fortress of Kala-i-

Dis on the Disful-Rud.

^ Khaidalu, Khidalu, is perhaps the present fortress of Dis-

Malkan.

^^ The countries of Yatbur and Yamutbal extended into the

plain between the marshes of the Tigris and the mountain;

the town of Durilu was near the Yamutbal region, if not in

that country itself. Umliyash lay between the Uknu and the

Tigris.

[Illustration: 050.jpg Page Image]

The language is not represented by any idioms now spoken, and its

affinities with the Sumerian which some writers have attempted to

establish, are too uncertain to make it safe to base any theory upon

them.*

* A great part of the Susian inscriptions have been

collected by Fr. Lenormant. An attempt has been made to

identify the language in which they are written with the

Sumero-accadian, and authorities now generally agree in

considering the Arcæmenian inscriptions of the second type

as representative of its modern form. Hommel connects it

with Georgian, and includes it in a great linguistic family,

which comprises, besides these two idioms, the Hittite, the

Cappadocian, the Armenian of the Van inscriptions, and the

Cosstean. Oppert claims to have discovered on a tablet in

the British Museum a list of words belonging to one of the

idioms (probably Semitic) of Susiana, which differs alike

from the Suso-Medic and the Assyrian.

The little that we know of Elamite religion reveals to us a mysterious

world, full of strange names and vague forms. Over their hierarchy

there presided a deity who was called Shushinak (the Susian), Dimesh or

Samesh, Dagbag, As-siga, Adaene, and possibly Khumba and Æmmân, whom

the Chaldæns identified with their god Ninip; his statue was concealed

in a sanctuary inaccessible to the profane, but it was dragged from

thence by Assurbanipal of Nineveh in the VIIth century B.C.* This deity

was associated with six others of the first rank, who were divided into

two triads--Shumudu, Lagamaru, Partikira; Ammankasibar, Uduran, and

Sapak: of these names, the least repellent, Ammankasibar, may possibly

be the Memnon of the Greeks. The dwelling of these divinities was near

Susa, in the depths of a sacred forest to which the priests and kings

alone had access: their images were brought out on certain days to

receive solemn homage, and were afterwards carried back to their shrine

accompanied by a devout and reverent multitude. These deities received

a tenth of the spoil after any successful campaign--the offerings

comprising statues of the enemies’ gods, valuable vases, ingots of

gold and silver, furniture, and stuffs. The Elamite armies were well

organized, and under a skilful general became irresistible. In other

respects the Elamites closely resembled the Chaldæans, pursuing the same

industries and having the same agricultural and commercial instincts. In

the absence of any bas-reliefs and inscriptions peculiar to this people,

we may glean from the monuments of Lagash and Babylon a fair idea of the

extent of their civilization in its earliest stages.

* _Shushinak_ is an adjective derived from the name of the

town of Susa. The real name of the god was probably kept

secret and rarely uttered. The names which appear by the

side of Shushinak in the text published by H. Rawlinson, as

equivalents of the Babylonian Ninip, perhaps represent

different deities; we may well ask whether the deity may not

be the Khumba, Umma, Ummân, who recurs so frequently in the

names of men and places, and who has hitherto never been met

with alone in any formula or dedicatory tablet.

The cities of the Euphrates, therefore, could have been sensible of but

little change, when the chances of war transferred them from the rule of

their native princes to that of an Elamite. The struggle once over, and

the resulting evils repaired as far as practicable, the people of these

towns resumed their usual ways, hardly conscious of the presence of

their foreign ruler. The victors, for their part, became assimilated so

rapidly with the vanquished, that at the close of a generation or so

the conquering dynasty was regarded legitimate and national one, loyally

attached to the traditions and religion of its adopted country. In the

year 2285 B.C., towards the close of the reign of Nurrammân, or in

the earlier part of that of Siniddinam, a King of Elam, by name

Kudur-nakhunta, triumphantly marched through Chaldæa from end to end,

devastating the country and sparing neither town nor temple: Uruk lost

its statue of Nana, which was carried off as a trophy and placed in the

sanctuary of Susa. The inhabitants long mourned the detention of their

goddess, and a hymn of lamentation, probably composed for the occasion

by one of their priests, kept the remembrance of the disaster fresh in

their memories. “Until when, oh lady, shall the impious enemy ravage the

country!--In thy queen-city, Uruk, the destruction is accomplished,--in

Eulbar, the temple of thy oracle, blood has flowed like water,--upon the

whole of thy lands has he poured out flame, and it is spread abroad like

smoke.--Oh, lady, verily it is hard for me to bend under the yoke of

misfortune!--? Oh, lady, thou hast wrapped me about, thou hast plunged

me, in sorrow!--The impious mighty one has broken me in pieces like a

reèd,--and I know not what to resolve, I trust not in myself,--like a

bed of reeds I sigh day and night!--I, thy servant, I bow myself before

thee!” It would appear that the whole of Chaldæa, including Babylon

itself, was forced to acknowledge the supremacy of the invader;* a

Susian empire thus absorbed Chaldæa, reducing its states to feudal

provinces, and its princes to humble vassals. Kudur-nakhunta having

departed, the people of Larsa exerted themselves to the utmost to repair

the harm that he had done, and they succeeded but too well, since their

very prosperity was the cause only a short time after of the outburst

of another storm. Siniddinam, perhaps, desired to shake off the Elamite

yoke. Simtishilkhak, one of the successors of Kudur-nakhunta, had

conceded the principality of Yamutbal as a fief to Kudur-mabug, one

of his sons. Kudur-mabug appears to have been a conqueror of no mean

ability, for he claims, in his inscriptions, the possession of the whole

of Syria.**

* The submission of Babylon is evident from the title Adda

Martu, “sovereign of the West,” assumed by several of the

Elamite princes (of. p. 65 of the present work): in order to

extend his authority beyond the Euphrates, it was necessary

for the King of Elam to be first of all master of Babylon.

In the early days of Assyriology it was supposed that this

period of Elamite supremacy coincided with the Median

dynasty of Berosus.

** His preamble contains the titles _adda Martu,_ “prince of

Syria;” _adda lamutbal_, “prince of Yamutbal.” The word

_adda_ seems properly to mean “lather,” and the literal

translation of the full title would probably be “father of

Syria,” “_father_ of Yamutbal,” whence the secondary

meanings “master, lord, prince,” which have been

provisionally accepted by most Assyriologists. Tiele, and

Winckler after him, have suggested that Martu is here

equivalent to Yamutbal, and that it was merely used to

indicate the western part of Elam; Winckler afterwards

rejected this hypothesis, and has come round to the general

opinion.

He obtained a victory over Siniddinam, and having dethroned him, placed

the administration of the kingdom in the hands of his own son Eimsin.

This prince, who was at first a feudatory, afterwards associated in the

government with his father, and finally sole monarch after the

latter’s death, married a princess of Chaldæan blood, and by this means

legitimatized his usurpation in the eyes of his subjects. His domain,

which lay on both sides of the Tigris and of the Euphrates, comprised,

besides the principality of Yamutbal, all the towns dependent on Sumer

and Accad--Uru, Larsa, Uruk, and Nippur, He acquitted himself as a good

sovereign in the sight of gods and men: he repaired the brickwork in the

temple of Nannar at Uru; he embellished the temple of Shamash at Larsa,

and caused two statues of copper to be cast in honour of the god; he

also rebuilt Lagash and Grirsu. The city of Uruk had been left a heap of

ruins after the withdrawal of Kudur-nakhunta: he set about the work of

restoration, constructed a sanctuary to Papsukal, raised the ziggurât of

Nana, and consecrated to the goddess an entire set of temple furniture

to replace that carried off by the Elamites. He won the adhesion of the

priests by piously augmenting their revenues, and throughout his reign

displayed remarkable energy. Documents exist which attribute to him the

reduction of Durilu, on the borders of Elam and the Chaldæan states;

others contain discreet allusions to a perverse enemy who disturbed

his peace in the north, and whom he successfully repulsed. He drove

Sinmuballit out of Ishin, and this victory so forcibly impressed

his contemporaries, that they made it the starting-point of a new

semi-official era; twenty-eight years after the event, private contracts

still continued to be dated by reference to the taking of Ishin.

Sinmuballit’s son, Khammurabi, was more fortunate. Eimsin vainly

appealed for help against him to his relative and suzerain

Kudur-lagamar, who had succeeded Simtishilkhak at Susa. Eimsin was

defeated, and disappeared from the scene of action, leaving no trace

behind him, though we may infer that he took refuge in his fief of

Yamutbal. The conquest by Khammurabi was by no means achieved at one

blow, the enemy offering an obstinate resistance. He was forced to

destroy several fortresses, the inhabitants of which had either risen

against him or had refused to do him homage, among them being those

of Meîr* and Malgu. When the last revolt had been put down, all the

countries speaking the language of Chaldæa and sharing its civilization

were finally united into a single kingdom, of which Khammurabi

proclaimed himself the head. Other princes who had preceded him had

enjoyed the same opportunities, but their efforts had never been

successful in establishing an empire of any duration; the various

elements had been bound together for a moment, merely to be dispersed

again after a short interval. The work of Khammurabi, on the contrary,

was placed on a solid foundation, and remained unimpaired under his

successors. Not only did he hold sway without a rival in the south as

in the north, but the titles indicating the rights he had acquired over

Sumer and Accad were inserted in his Protocol after those denoting his

hereditary possessions,--the city of Bel and the four houses of the

world. Khammurabi’s victory marks the close of those long centuries of

gradual evolution during which the peoples of the Lower Euphrates passed

from division to unity. Before his reign there had been as many states

as cities, and as many dynasties as there were states; after him there

was but one kingdom under one line of kings.

* Maîru, Meîr, has been identified with Shurippak; but it

is, rather, the town of Mar, now Tell-Id. A and Lagamal, the

Elamite Lagamar, were worshipped there. It was the seat of a

linen manufacture, and possessed large shipping.

Khammurabi’s long reign of fifty-five years has hitherto yielded us but

a small number of monuments--seals, heads of sceptres, alabaster vases,

and pompous inscriptions, scarcely any of them being of historical

interest. He was famous for the number of his campaigns, no details of

which, however, have come to light, but the dedication of one of his

statues celebrates his good fortune on the battlefield. “Bel has lent

thee sovereign majesty: thou, what awaitest thou?--Sin has lent thee

royalty: thou, what awaitest thou?--Ninip has lent thee his supreme

weapon: thou, what awaitest thou?--The goddess of light, Ishtar,

has lent thee the shock of arms and the fray: thou, what awaitest

thou?--Shamash and Bamman are thy varlets: thou, what awaitest thou?--It

is Khammurabi, the king, the powerful chieftain--who cuts the enemies

in pieces,--the whirlwind of battle--who overthrows the country of the

rebels--who stays combats, who crushes rebellions,--who destroys

the stubborn like images of clay,--who overcomes the obstacles of

inaccessible mountains.” The majority of these expeditions were, no

doubt, consequent on the victory which destroyed the power of Kimsin.

It would not have sufficed merely to drive back the Elamites beyond the

Tigris; it was necessary to strike a blow within their own territory to

avoid a recurrence of hostilities, which might have endangered the still

recent work of conquest. Here, again, Khammurabi seems to have met with

his habitual success.

[Illustration: 057.jpg HEAD OF A SCEPTRE IN COPPER, BEARING THE NAME OF

KHAM-MURABI]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a rapid sketch made at the

British Museum.

Ashnunak was a border district, and shared the fate of all the provinces

on the eastern bank of the Tigris, being held sometimes by Elam and

sometimes by Chaldæa; properly speaking, it was a country of Semitic

speech, and was governed by viceroys owning allegiance, now to Babylon,

now to Susa.* Khammurabi seized this province, and permanently secured

its frontier by building along the river a line of fortresses surrounded

by earthworks. Following the example of his predecessors, he set himself

to restore and enrich the temples.

* Pognon discovered inscriptions of four of the vicegerents

of Ashnunak, which he assigns, with some hesitation, to the

time of Khammurabi, rather than to that of the kings of

Telloh. Three of these names are Semitic, the fourth

Sumerian; the language of the inscriptions bears a

resemblance to the Semitic dialect of Chaldæa.

The house of Zamama and Ninni, at Kish, was out of repair, and the

ziggurât threatened to fall; he pulled it down and rebuilt it, carrying

it to such a height that its summit “reached the heavens.” Merodach had

delegated to him the government of the faithful, and had raised him to

the rank of supreme ruler over the whole of Chaldæa. At Babylon, close

to the great lake which served as a reservoir for the overflow of the

Euphrates, the king restored the sanctuary of Esagilla, the dimensions

of which did not appear to him to be proportionate to the growing

importance of the city. “He completed this divine dwelling with great

joy and delight, he raised the summit to the firmament,” and then

enthroned Merodach and his spouse, Zarpanit, within it, amid great

festivities. He provided for the ever-recurring requirements of the

national religion by frequent gifts; the tradition has come down to us

of the granary for wheat which he built at Babylon, the sight of which

alone rejoiced the heart of the god. While surrounding Sippar with a

great wall and a fosse, to protect its earthly inhabitants, he did

not forget Shamash and Malkatu, the celestial patrons of the town. He

enlarged in their honour the mysterious Ebarra, the sacred seat of their

worship, and that which no king from the earliest times had known how

to build for his divine master, that did he generously for Shamash

his master. He restored Ezida, the eternal dwelling of Merodach,

at Borsippa; Eturka-lamma, the temple of Anu, Ninni, and Nana, the

suzerains of Kish; and also Ezikalamma, the house of the goddess Ninna,

in the village of Zarilab. In the southern provinces, but recently added

to the crown,--at Larsa, Uruk, and Uru,--he displayed similar activity.

[Illustration: 059.jpg Page Image]

He had, doubtless, a political as well as a religious motive in all he

did; for if he succeeded in winning the allegiance of the priests by

the prodigality of his pious gifts, he could count on their gratitude in

securing for him the people’s obedience, and thus prevent the outbreak

of a revolt. He had, indeed, before him a difficult task in attempting

to allay the ills which had been growing during centuries of civil

discord and foreign conquest. The irrigation of the country demanded

constant attention, and from earliest times its sovereigns had directed

the work with real solicitude; but owing to the breaking up of the

country into small states, their respective resources could not be

combined in such general operations as were needed for controlling the

inundations and effectually remedying the excess or the scarcity of

water. Khammurabi witnessed the damage done to the whole province of

Umliyash by one of those terrible floods which still sometimes ravage

the regions of the Lower Tigris,* and possibly it may have been to

prevent the recurrence of such a disaster that he undertook the work of

canalization.

* Contracts dated the year of an inundation which laid waste

Umliyash; cf. in our own time, the inundation of April 10,

1831, which in a single night destroyed half the city of

Bagdad, and in which fifteen thousand persons lost their

lives either by drowning or by the collapse of their houses.

He was the first that we know of who attempted to organize and reduce

to a single system the complicated network of ditches and channels which

intersected the territory belonging to the great cities between Babylon

and the sea. Already, more than half a century previously, Siniddinam

had enlarged the canal on which Larsa was situated, while Bimsin had

provided an outlet for the “River of the Gods” into the Persian Gulf:*

by the junction of the two a navigable channel was formed between the

Euphrates and the marshes, and an outlet was thus made for the surplus

waters of the inundation. Khammurabi informs us how Anu and Bel, having

confided to him the government of Sumer and Accad, and having placed in

his hands the reins of power, he dug the Nâr-Khammurabi, the source of

wealth to the people, which brings abundance of water to the country

of Sumir and Accad. “I turned both its banks into cultivated ground, I

heaped up mounds of grain and I furnished perpetual water for the people

of Sumir and Accad. The country of Sumer and Accad, I gathered together

its nations who were scattered, I gave them pasture and drink, I ruled

over them in riches and abundance, I caused them to inhabit a peaceful

dwelling-place. Then it was that Khammurabi, the powerful king, the

favourite of the great gods, I myself, according to the prodigious

strength with which Merodach had endued me, I constructed a high

fortress, upon mounds of earth; its summit rises to the height of the

mountains, at the head of the Nâr-Khammurabi, the source of wealth to

the people. This fortress I called Dur-Sinmuballit-abim-uâlidiya, the

Fortress of Sinmuballit, the father who begat me, so that the name of

Sinmuballit, the father who begat me, may endure in the habitations of

the world.”

* Contract dated “the year the Tigris, river of the gods,

was canalized down to the sea”; i.e. as far as the point to

which the sea then penetrated in the environs of Kornah.

This canal of Khammurabi ran from a little south of Babylon, joining

those of Siniddinam and Rimsin, and probably cutting the alluvial plain

in its entire length.* It drained the stagnant marshes on either side

along its course, and by its fertilising effects, the dwellers on its

banks were enabled to reap full harvests from the lands which previously

had been useless for purposes of cultivation. A ditch of minor

importance pierced the isthmus which separates the Tigris and the

Euphrates in the neighbourhood of Sippar.** Khammurabi did not rest

contented with these; a system of secondary canals doubtless completed

the whole scheme of irrigation which he had planned after the

achievement of his conquest, and his successors had merely to keep up

his work in order to ensure an unrivalled prosperity to the empire.

* Delattre is of opinion that the canal dug by Khammurabi is

the Arakhtu of later epochs which began at Babylon and

extended as far as the Larsa canal. It must therefore be

approximately identified with the Shatt-en-Nil of the

present day, which joins Shatt-el-Kaher, the canal of

Siniddinam.

** The canal which Khammurabi caused to be dug or dredged

may be the Nâr-Malkâ, or “royal canal,” which ran from the

Tigris to the Euphrates, passing Sippar on the way. The

digging of this canal is mentioned in a contract.

Their efforts in this direction were not unsuccessful. Samsuîluna,

the son of Khammurabi, added to the existing system two or three

fresh canals, one at least of which still bore his name nearly fifteen

centuries later; it is mentioned in the documents of the second Assyrian

empire in the time of Assurbanipal, and it is possible that traces of

it may still be found at the present day. Abiêshukh,* Ammisatana,**

Ammizadugga,*** and Samsusatana,**** all either continued to elaborate

the network planned by their ancestors, or applied themselves to the

better distribution of the overflow in those districts where cultivation

was still open to improvement.

* Abîshukh (the Hebrew Abishua) is the form of the name

which we find in contemporary contracts. The official lists

contain the variant Ebishu, Ebîshum.

** Ammiditana is only a possible reading: others prefer

Ammisatana. The Nâr-Ammisatana is mentioned in a Sippar

contract. Another contract is dated “the year in which

Ammisatana, the king, repaired the canal of Samsuîluna.”

*** This was, at first, read Ammididugga. Ammizadugga is

mentioned in the date of a contract as having executed

certain works--of what nature it is not easy to say--on the

banks of the Tigris; another contract is dated “the year in

which Ammizadugga, the king, by supreme command of Sha-mash,

his master, [dug] the Ndr-Ammizadugga-nulchus-nishi (canal

of Ammizadugga), prosperity of men.” In the Minæan

inscriptions of Southern Arabia the name is found under the

form of Ammi-Zaduq.

**** Sometimes erroneously read Samdiusatana; but, as a

matter of fact, we have contracts of that time, in which a

royal name is plainly written as Samsusatana.

We should know nothing of these kings had not the scribes of those times

been in the habit of dating the contracts of private individuals by

reference to important national events. They appear to have chosen

by preference incidents in the religious life of the country; as, for

instance, the restoration of a temple, the annual enthronisation of one

of the great divinities, such as Shamash, Merodach, Ishtar, or Nana,

as the eponymous god of the current year, the celebration of a solemn

festival, or the consecration of a statue; while a few scattered

allusions to works of fortification show that meanwhile the defence of

the country was jealously watched over.* These sovereigns appear to have

enjoyed long reigns, the shortest extending over a period of five and

twenty years; and when at length the death of any king occurred, he was

immediately replaced by his son, the notaries’ acts and the judicial

documents which have come down to us betraying no confusion or abnormal

delay in the course of affairs. We may, therefore, conclude that the

last century and a half of the dynasty was a period of peace and

of material prosperity. Chaldæa was thus enabled to fully reap the

advantage of being united under the rule of one individual. It is quite

possible that those cities--Uru, Larsa, Ishin, Uruk, and Nippur--which

had played so important a part in the preceding centuries, suffered from

the loss of their prestige, and from the blow dealt to their traditional

pretensions.

* Samsuîluna repaired the five fortresses which his ancestor

Sumulaîlu had built. Contract dated “the year in which

Ammisatana, the king, built Dur-Ammisatana, near the Sin

river,” and “the year in which Ammisatana, the king, gave

its name to Dur-Iskunsin, near the canal of

Ammisatana.” Contract dated “the year in which the King

Ammisatana repaired Dur-Iskunsin.” Contract dated “the year in

which Samsuîluna caused ‘the wall of Uru and Uruk’ to be

built.”

Up to this time they had claimed the privilege of controlling the

history of their country, and they had bravely striven among themselves

for the supremacy over the southern states; but the revolutions which

had raised each in turn to the zenith of power, had never exalted any

one of them to such an eminence as to deprive its rivals of all hope of

supplanting it and of enjoying the highest place. The rise of Babylon

destroyed the last chance which any of them had of ever becoming the

capital; the new city was so favourably situated, and possessed so much

wealth and so many soldiers, while its kings displayed such tenacious

energy, that its neighbours were forced to bow before it and resign

themselves to the subordinate position of leading provincial towns. They

gave a loyal obedience to the officers sent them from the north, and

sank gradually into obscurity, the loss of their political supremacy

being somewhat compensated for by the religious respect in which they

were always held. Their ancient divinities--Nana, Sin, Anu, and Ra--were

adopted, if we may use the term, by the Babylonians, who claimed the

protection of these gods as fully as they did that of Merodach or of

Nebo, and prided themselves on amply supplying all their needs. As the

inhabitants of Babylon had considerable resources at their disposal,

their appeal to these deities might be regarded as productive of more

substantial results than the appeal of a merely local kinglet. The

increase of the national wealth and the concentration, under one head,

of armies hitherto owning several chiefs, enabled the rulers, not

of Babylon or Larsa alone, but of the whole of Chaldæa, to offer

an invincible resistance to foreign enemies, and to establish their

dominion in countries where their ancestors had enjoyed merely a

precarious sovereignty. Hostilities never completely ceased between

Elam and Babylon; if arrested for a time, they broke out again in

some frontier disturbance, at times speedily suppressed, but at others

entailing violent consequences and ending in a regular war. No document

furnishes us with any detailed account of these outbreaks, but it

would appear that the balance of power was maintained on the whole with

tolerable regularity, both kingdoms at the close of each generation

finding themselves in much the same position as they had occupied at its

commencement. The two empires were separated from south to north by

the sea and the Tigris, the frontier leaving the river near the present

village of Amara and running in the direction of the mountains. Durîlu

probably fell ordinarily under Chaldæan jurisdiction. Umliyash was

included in the original domain of Kham-murabi, and there is no reason

to believe that it was evacuated by his descendants. There is every

probability that they possessed the plain east of the Tigris, comprising

Nineveh and Arbela, and that the majority of the civilized peoples

scattered over the lower slopes of the Kurdish mountains rendered them

homage. They kept the Mesopotamian table-land under their suzerainty,

and we may affirm, without exaggeration, that their power extended

northwards as far as Mount Masios, and westwards to the middle course of

the Euphrates.

At what period the Chaldæans first crossed that river is as yet unknown.

Many of their rulers in their inscriptions claim the title of suzerains

over Syria, and we have no evidence for denying their pretensions.

Kudur-mabug proclaims himself “adda” of Martu, Lord of the countries of

the West, and we are in the possession of several facts which suggest

the idea of a great Blamite empire, with a dominion extending for some

period over Western Asia, the existence of which was vaguely hinted

at by the Greeks, who attributed its glory to the fabulous Memnon.*

Contemporary records are still wanting which might show whether

Kudur-mabug inherited these distant possessions from one of his

predecessors--such as Kudur-nakhunta, for instance--or whether he

won them himself at the point of the sword; but a fragment of an old

chronicle, inserted in the Hebrew Scriptures, speaks distinctly of

another Elamite, who made war in person almost up to the Egyptian

frontier.** This is the Kudur-lagamar (Chedorlaomer) who helped Eimsin

against Hammurabi, but was unable to prevent his overthrow.

* We know that to Herodotus (v. 55) Susa was the city of

Memnon, and that Strabo attributes its foundation to

Tithonus, father of Memnon. According to Oppert, the word

Memnon is the equivalent of the Susian Umman-anîn, “the

house of the king:” Weissbach declares that “anin” does not

mean king, and contradicts Oppert’s view, though he does not

venture to suggest a new explanation of the name.

** _Gen._ xiv. Prom the outset Assyriologists have never

doubted the historical accuracy of this chapter, and they

have connected the facts which it contains with those which

seem to be revealed by the Assyrian monuments. The two

Rawlinsons intercalate Kudur-lagamar between Kudur-nakhunta

and Kudur-mabug, and Oppert places him about the same

period. Fr. Lenormant regards him as one of the successors

of Kudur-mabug, possibly his immediate successor. G. Smith

does not hesitate to declare positively that the Kudur-mabug

and Kudur-nakhunta of the inscriptions are one and the same

with the Kudur-lagamar (Chedor-laomer) of the Bible.

Finally, Schrader, while he repudiates Smith’s view, agrees

in the main fact with the other Assyriologists. On the other

hand, the majority of modern Biblical critics have

absolutely refused to credit the story in Genesis. Sayce

thinks that the Bible story rests on an historic basis, and

his view is strongly confirmed by Pinches’discovery of a

Chaldæan document which mentions Kudur-lagamar and two of

his allies. The Hebrew historiographer reproduced an

authentic fact from the chronicles of Babylon, and connected

it with one of the events in the life of Abraham. The very

late date generally assigned to Gen. xiv. in no way

diminishes the intrinsic probability of the facts narrated

by the Chaldæan document which is preserved to us in the

pages of the Hebrew book.

In the thirteenth year of his reign over the East, the cities of the

Dead Sea--Sodom, Gomorrah, Adamah, Zeboîm, and Belâ--revolted against

him: he immediately convoked his great vassals, Amraphel of Chaldæa,

Ariôch of Ellasar,* Tida’lo the Guti, and marched with them to the

confines of his dominions. Tradition has invested many of the tribes

then inhabiting Southern Syria with semi-mythical names and attributes.

They are represented as being giants--Rephalm; men of prodigious

strength--Zuzîm; as having a buzzing and indistinct manner of

speech--Zamzummîm; as formidable monsters**--Emîm or Anakîm, before

whom other nations appeared as grasshoppers;*** as the Horîm who were

encamped on the confines of the Sinaitic desert, and as the Amalekites

who ranged over the mountains to the west of the Dead Sea. Kudur-lagamar

defeated them one after another--the Rephaîm near to Ashtaroth-Karnaîm,

the Zuzîm near Ham,**** the Amîm at Shaveh-Kiriathaim, and the Horîm

on the spurs of Mount Seir as far as El-Paran; then retracing

his footsteps, he entered the country of the Amalekites by way of

En-mishpat, and pillaged the Amorites of Hazazôn-Tamar.

* Ellasar has been identified with Larsa since the

researches of Rawlin-son and Norris; the Goîm, over whom

Tidal was king, with the Guti.

** Sayce considers Zuzîm and Zamzummîm to be two readings of

the same word Zamzum, written in cuneiform characters on the

original document. The sounds represented, in the Hebrew

alphabet, by the letters m and w, are expressed in the

Chaldæan syllabary by the same character, and a Hebrew or

Babylonian scribe, who had no other means of telling the

true pronunciation of a race-name mentioned in the story of

this campaign, would have been quite as much at a loss as

any modern scholar to say whether he ought to transcribe the

word as Z-m-z-m or as Z-w-z-vo; some scribes read it

_Zuzîm,_ others preferred _Zamzummîm._

*** _Numb._ xiii. 33.

**** In Deut. ii. 20 it is stated that the Zamzummîm lived

in the country of Ammon. Sayce points out that we often find

the variant Am for the character usually read _Ham_ or

_Kham_--the name Khammurabi, for instance, is often found

written Ammurabi; the Ham in the narrative of Genesis would,

therefore, be identical with the land of Ammon in

Deuteronomy, and the difference between the spelling of the

two would be due to the fact that the document reproduced in

the XIVIIth chapter of Genesis had been originally copied from

a cuneiform tablet in which the name of the place was

expressed by the sign _Ham-Am._

In the mean time, the kings of the five towns had concentrated their

troops in the vale of Siddîm, and were there resolutely awaiting

Kudur-lagamar. They were, however, completely routed, some of the

fugitives being swallowed up in the pits of bitumen with which the

soil abounded, while others with difficulty reached the mountains.

Kudur-lagamar sacked Sodom and Gomorrah, re-established his dominion on

all sides, and returned laden with booty, Hebrew tradition adding

that he was overtaken near the sources of the Jordan by the patriarch

Abraham.*

* An attempt has been made to identify the three vassals of

Kudur-lagamar with kings mentioned on the Chaldæan

monuments. Tidcal, or, if we adopt the Septuagint variant,

Thorgal, has been considered by some as the bearer of a

Sumorian name, Turgal= “great chief,” “great son,” while

others put him on one side as not having been a Babylonian;

Pinches, Sayce, and Hommel identify him with Tudkhula, an

ally of Kudur-lagamar against Khammurabi. Schrader was the

first to suggest that Amraphel was really Khammurabi, and

emended the Amraphel of the biblical text into Amraphi or

Amrabi, in order to support this identification. Halévy,

while on the whole accepting this theory, derives the name

from the pronunciation Kimtarapashtum or Kimtarapaltum,

which he attributes to the name generally read Khammurabi,

and in this he is partly supported by Hommel, who reads

“Khammurapaltu.”

After his victory over Kudur-lagamar, Khammurabi assumed the title of

King of Martu,* which we find still borne by Ammisatana sixty years

later.** We see repeated here almost exactly what took place in Ethiopia

at the time of its conquest by Egypt: merchants had prepared the way for

military occupation, and the civilization of Babylon had taken hold

on the people long before its kings had become sufficiently powerful

to claim them as vassals. The empire may be said to have been virtually

established from the day when the states of the Middle and Lower

Euphrates formed but one kingdom in the hands of a single ruler. We must

not, however, imagine it to have been a compact territory, divided into

provinces under military occupation, ruled by a uniform code of laws

and statutes, and administered throughout by functionaries of various

grades, who received their orders from Babylon or Susa, according as

the chances of war favoured the ascendency of Chaldæa or Elam. It was

in reality a motley assemblage of tribes and principalities, whose sole

bond of union was subjection to a common yoke.

* It is, indeed, the sole title which he attributes to

himself on a stone tablet now in the British Museum.

** In an inscription by this prince, copied probably about

the time of Nabonidus by the scribe Belushallîm, he is

called “king of the vast land of Martu.”

They were under obligation to pay tribute, and furnish military

contingents and show other external marks of obedience, but their

particular constitution, customs, and religion were alike respected:

they had to purchase, at the cost of a periodical ransom, the right to

live in their own country after their own fashion, and the head of the

empire forbore all interference in their affairs, except in cases where

the internecine quarrels and dissensions threatened the security of his

suzerainty. Their subordination lasted as best it could, sometimes for a

year or for ten years, at the end of which period they would neglect

the obligations of their vassalage, or openly refuse to fulfil them:

a revolt would then break out at one point or another, and it was

necessary to suppress it without delay to prevent the bad example

from spreading far and wide. The empire was maintained by perpetual

re-conquests, and its extent varied with the energy shown by its chiefs,

or with the resources which were for the moment available.

Separated from the confines of the empire by only a narrow isthmus,

Egypt loomed on the horizon, and appeared to beckon to her rival. Her

natural fertility, the industry of her inhabitants, the stores of gold

and perfumes which she received from the heart of Ethiopia, were well

known by the passage to and fro of her caravans, and the recollection of

her treasures must have frequently provoked the envy of Asiatic courts.

Egypt had, however, strangely declined from her former greatness, and

the line of princes who governed her had little in common with the

Pharaohs who had rendered her name so formidable under the XIIth

dynasty. She was now under the rule of the Xoites, whose influence was

probably confined to the Delta, and extended merely in name over

the Said and Nubia. The feudal lords, ever ready to reassert their

independence as soon as the central power waned, shared between them the

possession of the Nile valley below Memphis: the princes of Thebes, who

were probably descendants of Usirtasen, owned the largest fiefdom, and

though some slight scruple may have prevented them from donning

the pschënt or placing their names within a cartouche, they assumed

notwithstanding the plenitude of royal power. A favourable opportunity

was therefore offered to an invader, and the Chaldæans might have

attacked with impunity a people thus divided among themselves.* They

stopped short, however, at the southern frontier of Syria, or if they

pushed further forward, it was without any important result: distance

from head-quarters, or possibly reiterated attacks of the Elamites,

prevented them from placing in the field an adequate force for such a

momentous undertaking. What they had not dared to venture, others more

audacious were to accomplish. At this juncture, so runs the Egyptian

record, “there came to us a king named Timaios. Under this king, then,

I know not wherefore, the god caused to blow upon us a baleful wind, and

in the face of all probability bands from the East, people of ignoble

race, came upon us unawares, attacked the country, and subdued it easily

and without fighting.”

* The theory that the divisions of Egypt, under the XIVth

dynasty, and the discords between its feudatory princes,

were one of the main causes of the success of the Shepherds,

is now admitted to be correct.

It is possible that they owed this rapid victory to the presence

in their armies of a factor hitherto unknown to the African--the

war-chariot--and before the horse and his driver the Egyptians gave way

in a body.* The invaders appeared as a cloud of locusts on the banks of

the Nile. Towns and temples were alike pillaged, burnt, and ruined;

they massacred all they could of the male population, reduced to slavery

those of the women and children whose lives they spared, and then

proclaimed as king Salatis, one of their chiefs.** He established a

semblance of regular government, chose Memphis as his capital, and

imposed a tax upon the vanquished. Two perils, however, immediately

threatened the security of his triumph: in the south the Theban lords,

taking matters into their own hands after the downfall of the Xoites,

refused the oath of allegiance to Salatis, and organized an obstinate

resistance;*** in the north he had to take measures to protect

himself against an attack of the Chaldæans or of the Élamites who were

oppressing Chaldæa.****

* The horse was unknown, or at any rate had not been

employed in. Egypt prior to the invasion; we find it,

however, in general use immediately after the expulsion of

the Shepherds, see the tomb of Pihiri. Moreover, all

historians agree in admitting that it was introduced into

the country under the rule of the Shepherds. The use of the

war-chariot in Chaldæa at an epoch prior to the Hyksôs

invasion, is proved by a fragment of the Vulture Stele; it

is therefore, natural to suppose that the Hyksôs used the

chariot in war, and that the rapidity of their conquest was

due to it.

** The name Salatis (var. Saitôs) seems to be derived from a

Semitic word, Siialît = “the chief,” “the governor;” this

was the title which Joseph received when Pharaoh gave him

authority over the whole of Egypt (Gen. xli. 43). Salatis

may not, therefore, have been the real name of the first

Hyksôs king, but his title, which the Egyptians

misunderstood, and from which they evolved a proper name:

Uhlemann has, indeed, deduced from this that Manetho, being

familiar with the passage referring to Joseph, had forged

the name of Salatis. Ebers imagined that he could decipher

the Egyptian form of this prince’s name on the Colossus of

Tell-Mokdam, where Naville has since read with certainty the

name of a Pharaoh of the XIIIth and XIVth dynasties,

Nahsiri.

*** The text of Manetho speaks of taxes which he imposed on

the high and low lands, which would seem to include the

Thebaid in the kingdom; it is, however, stated in the next

few pages that the successors of Salatis waged an incessant

war against the Egyptians, which can only refer to

hostilities against the Thebans. We are forced, therefore,

to admit, either that Manetho took the title of lord of the

high and low lands which belonged to Salatis, literally, or

that the Thebans, after submitting at first, subsequently

refused to pay tribute, thus provoking a war.

**** Manetho here speaks of Assyrians; this is an error

which is to be explained by the imperfect state of

historical knowledge in Greece at the time of the Macedonian

supremacy. We need not for this reason be led to cast doubt

upon the historic value of the narrative: we must remember

the suzerainty which the kings of Babylon exercised over

Syria, and read _Chaldæans_ where Manetho has written

_Assyrians_. In Herodotus “Assyria” is the regular term for

“Babylonia,” and Babylonia is called “the land of the

Assyrians.”

From the natives of the Delta, who were temporarily paralysed by their

reverses, he had, for the moment, little to fear: restricting himself,

therefore, to establishing forts at the strategic points in the Nile

valley in order to keep the Thebans in check, he led the main body of

his troops to the frontier on the isthmus. Pacific immigrations had

already introduced Asiatic settlers into the Delta, and thus prepared

the way for securing the supremacy of the new rulers; in the midst of

these strangers, and on the ruins of the ancient town of Hâwârît-Avaris,

in the Sethro’ifce nome--a place connected by tradition with the myth

of Osiris and Typhon--Salatis constructed an immense entrenched camp,

capable of sheltering two hundred and forty thousand men. He visited it

yearly to witness the military manoeuvres, to pay his soldiers, and

to preside over the distribution of rations. This permanent garrison

protected him from a Chaldæan invasion, a not unlikely event as long as

Syria remained under the supremacy of the Babylonian kings; it furnished

his successors also with an inexhaustible supply of trained soldiers,

thus enabling them to complete the conquest of Lower Egypt. Years

elapsed before the princes of the south would declare themselves

vanquished, and five kings--Anôn, Apachnas, Apôphis I., Iannas, and

Asses--passed their lifetime “in a perpetual warfare, desirous of

tearing up Egypt to the very root.” These Theban kings, who were

continually under arms against the barbarians, were subsequently classed

in a dynasty by themselves, the XVth of Manetho, but they at last

succumbed to the invader, and Asses became master of the entire country.

His successors in their turn formed a dynasty, the XVIth, the few

remaining monuments of which are found scattered over the length and

breadth of the valley from the shores of the Mediterranean to the rocks

of the first cataract.

The Egyptians who witnessed the advent of this Asiatic people called

them by the general term Amûû, Asiatics, or Monâtiû, the men of the

desert.* They had already given the Bedouin the opprobrious epithet of

Shaûsû--pillagers or robbers--which aptly described them;** and they

subsequently applied the same name to the intruders--Hiq Shaûsû--from

which the Greeks derived their word Hyksôs, or Hykoussôs, for this

people.***

* The meaning of the term _Monîti_ was discovered by E. de

Rougé, who translated it _Shepherd_, and applied it to the

Hyksôs; from thence it passed into the works of all the

Egyptologists who concerned themselves with this question,

but _Shepherd_ has not been universally accepted as the

meaning of the word. It is generally agreed that it was a

generic term, indicating the races with which their

conquerors were supposed to be connected, and not the

particular term of which Manetho’s word _Hoiveves_ would be

the literal translation.

** The name seems, in fact, to be derived from a word which

meant “to rob,” “to pillage.” The name Shausu, Shosu, was

not used by the Egyptians to indicate a particular race. It

was used of all Bedouins, and in general of all the

marauding tribes who infested the desert or the mountains.

The Shausu most frequently referred to on the monuments are

those from the desert between Egypt and Syria, but there is

a reference, in the time of Ramses II., to those from the

Lebanon and the valley of Orontes. Krall finds an allusion

to them in a word (_Shosim_) in _Judges_ ii. 14, which is

generally translated by a generic expression, “the

spoilers.”

*** Manetho declares that the people were called Hyksôs,

from _Syk_, which means “king” in the sacred language, and

_sôs_, which means “shepherd” in the popular language. As a

matter of fact, the word _Hyku_ means “prince “in the

classical language of Egypt, or, as Manetho styles it, the

_sacred language_, i.e. in the idiom of the old religious,

historical, and literary texts, which in later ages the

populace no longer understood. Shôs, on the contrary,

belongs to the spoken language of the later time, and does

not occur in the ancient inscriptions, so that Manetho’s

explanation is valueless; there is but one material fact to

be retained from his evidence, and that is the name _Hyk-

Shôs_ or _Hyku-Shôs_ given by its inventors to the alien

kings. Cham-pollion and Rosellini were the first to identify

these Shôs with the Shaûsû whom they found represented on

the monuments, and their opinion, adopted by some, seems to

me an extremely plausible one: the Egyptians, at a given

moment, bestowed the generic name of Shaûsû on these

strangers, just as they had given those of Amûû and Manâtiû.

The texts or writers from whom Manetho drew his information

evidently mentioned certain kings _hyku_-Shaûsû; other

passages, or, the same passages wrongly interpreted, were

applied to the race, and were rendered _hyku_-Shaûsû = “the

_prisoners_ taken from the Shaûsû,” a substantive derived

from the root _haka_ = “to take” being substituted for the

noun _hyqu_ = “prince.” Josephus declares, on the authority

of Manetho, that some manuscripts actually suggested this

derivation--a fact which is easily explained by the custom

of the Egyptian record offices. I may mention, in passing,

that Mariette recognised in the element “_Sôs_” an Egyptian

word _shôs_ = “soldiers,” and in the name of King Mîrmâshâû,

which he read Mîrshôsû, an equivalent of the title Hyq-

Shôsû.

But we are without any clue as to their real name, language, or origin.

The writers of classical times were unable to come to an agreement on

these questions: some confounded the Hyksôs with the Phoenicians, others

regarded them as Arabs.* Modern scholars have put forward at least

a dozen contradictory hypotheses on the matter. The Hyksôs have been

asserted to have been Canaanites, Elamites, Hittites, Accadians,

Scythians. The last opinion found great favour with the learned, as

long as they could believe that the sphinxes discovered by Mariette

represented Apôphis or one of his predecessors. As a matter of fact,

these monuments present all the characteristics of the Mongoloid type

of countenance--the small and slightly oblique eyes, the arched but

somewhat flattened nose, the pronounced cheekbones and well-covered

jaw, the salient chin and full lips slightly depressed at the corners.**

These peculiarities are also observed in the three heads found at

Damanhur, in the colossal torso dug up at Mit-Farês in the Fayum, in

the twin figures of the Nile removed to the Bulaq Museum from Tanis, and

upon the remains of a statue in the collection at the Villa Ludovisi in

Rome. The same foreign type of face is also found to exist among the

present inhabitants of the villages scattered over the eastern part

of the Delta, particularly on the shores of Lake Menzaleh, and the

conclusion was drawn that these people were the direct descendants of

the Hyksôs.

* Manetho takes them to be Phoenicians, but he adds that

certain writers thought them to be Arabs: Brugsch favours

this latter view, but the Arab legend of a conquest of Egypt

by Sheddâd and the Adites is of recent origin, and was

inspired by traditions in regard to the Hyksôs current

during the Byzantine epoch; we cannot, therefore, allow it

to influence us. We must wait before expressing a definite

opinion in regard to the facts which Glaser believes he has

obtained from the Minoan inscriptions which date from the

time of the Hyksôs.

** Mariette, who was the first to describe these curious

monuments, recognised in them all the incontestable

characteristics of a Semitic type, and the correctness of

his view was, at first, universally admitted. Later on Hamy

imagined that he could distinguish traces of Mongolian

influences, and Er. Lenormant, and then Mariette himself

came round to this view; it has recently been supported in

England by Flower, and in Germany by Virchow.

This theory was abandoned, however, when it was ascertained that the

sphinxes of San had been carved, many centuries before the invasion, for

Amenemhâît III., a king of the XIIth dynasty. In spite of the facts we

possess, the problem therefore still remains unsolved, and the origin of

the Hyksôs is as mysterious as ever. We gather, however, that the third

millennium before our era was repeatedly disturbed by considerable

migratory movements. The expeditions far afield of Elamite and Chaldæan

princes could not have taken place without seriously perturbing the

regions over which they passed. They must have encountered by the

way many nomadic or unsettled tribes whom a slight shock would easily

displace. An impulse once given, it needed but little to accelerate

or increase the movement: a collision with one horde reacted on its

neighbours, who either displaced or carried others with them, and the

whole multitude, gathering momentum as they went, were precipitated in

the direction first given.*

* The Hyksôs invasion has been regarded as a natural result

of the Elamite conquest.

A tradition, picked up by Herodotus on his travels, relates that the

Phoenicians had originally peopled the eastern and southern shores of

the Persian Gulf;* it was also said that Indathyrses, a Scythian king,

had victoriously scoured the whole of Asia, and had penetrated as far as

Egypt.** Either of these invasions may have been the cause of the Syrian

migration. In. comparison with the meagre information which has come

down to us under the form of legends, it is provoking to think how much

actual fact has been lost, a tithe of which would explain the cause

of the movement and the mode of its execution. The least improbable

hypothesis is that which attributes the appearance of the Shepherds

about the XXIIIrd century B.C., to the arrival in Naharaim of those

Khati who subsequently fought so obstinately against the armies both of

the Pharaohs and the Ninevite kings. They descended from the mountain

region in which the Halys and the Euphrates take their rise, and if the

bulk of them proceeded no further than the valleys of the Taurus and the

Amanos, some at least must have pushed forward as far as the provinces

on the western shores of the Dead Sea. The most adventurous among them,

reinforced by the Canaanites and other tribes who had joined them on

their southward course, crossed the isthmus of Suez, and finding a

people weakened by discord, experienced no difficulty in replacing the

native dynasties by their own barbarian chiefs.***

* It was to the exodus of this race, in the last analysis,

that the invasion of the shepherds may be attributed

** A certain number of commentators are of opinion that the

wars attributed to Indathyrses have been confounded with

what Herodotus tells of the exploits of Madyes, and are

nothing more than a distorted remembrance of the great

Scythian invasion which took place in the latter half of the

VIIth century B.C.

*** At the present time, those scholars who admit the

Turanian origin of the Hyksôs are of opinion that only the

nucleus of the race, the royal tribe, was composed of

Mongols, while the main body consisted of elements of all

kinds--Canaanitish, or, more generally, Semitic.

[Illustration: 079.jpg PALLATE OF HYKSÔS SCRIBE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by M. de Mertons.

It is the palette of a scribe, now in the Berlin Museum, and

given by King Apôpi II Âusirrî to a scribe named Atu.