THE path of our alphabet seems to be taking us far afield when we turn
to Chinese systems of writing and to the origin and development of
cuneiform. Nevertheless, it is in this course that some of the richest
developments have appeared and the greatest rewards have been obtained
by scholars in this special direction of research.
In the narrative given of the decipherment of cuneiform writing
reference was made to the three distinct combinations of the
arrow-headed or wedge-shaped characters in the trilingual inscriptions
at first deciphered.
It was found that these three distinct combinations of cuneiform signs
represented three languages of three distinct races of men, the
Persian, an Aryan people speaking an inflectional language; the
Assyro-Babylonians, Semitic people who spoke a language related to the
Hebrew, and the third a Turanian people who spoke an agglutinative
language, allied to that of the modern Turks or Finns.
It was some time after the decipherment of the Persian version of the
cuneiform texts before these facts became fully understood. The Semitic
text presented unusual difficulties, while the language of the other
version remained for a time unknown.
The discoveries of Mr. Layard, shortly after, on the site of ancient
Nineveh, were to throw more light upon the subject.
With the unearthing of the royal palace of Assur-bani-pal, at Keyunji,
the remains of the great library founded by this monarch were discovered
beneath the ruins.
These remains consisted of more than twenty thousand bricks, tablets and
cylinders, some of which were in fragments, but a greater part entire,
and the inscriptions thereon as distinct as when first impressed in the
soft clay.
This was a fine, tenacious clay of the region which had been moulded
into bricks and cylinders of various sizes, upon which when moist the
cuneiform letters had been impressed by a wooden or metal stylus. They
had then, for the greater part, been hardened by a slow fire, and were
thus made practically indestructible. These cuneiform books were soon
distributed in the great libraries and museums of Europe, and thus
became accessible to scholars.
Among these literary documents were found a large number which consisted
of translations, either interlinear or in parallel passages, from a
non-Semitic language into Assyro-Babylonian.
It appeared in two dialects, the speech of the early people of northern
Babylonia—the people of Accad—and the speech of the primitive
inhabitants of southern Babylonia—the people of Sumir or Shinar.
The close alliance of the peoples of Accad and Sumir in race and
language has led to the general application of the name of Accadians to
both families. A closer distinction in general terms now adopted by
scholars is Sumerian.
Further discoveries rapidly following the unearthing of the Ninevite
tablets, confirmed the evidences that these people were the inventors of
cuneiform, and that the Sumerian dialect represented the most ancient of
the cuneiform scripts.
In the oldest inscriptions which have yet been found the characters are
hardly as yet cuneiform. The lines are straight and simple, resembling
somewhat the strokes and dashes appearing in words spelled by the
electric telegraphic code.
The arrangement of these is pictorial, forming picture hieroglyphics,
and these were found to be ideographic and not phonetic.
By degrees the wedge-shaped and arrow-headed characters appear, the
pictorial forms are not so distinct and these characters express sound
as well as ideas.
The story revealed by these older inscriptions was a genuine surprise to
scholars. It not only presented the remoter occupation of Mesopotamia by
a hitherto unknown people, but also that while to Mesopotamia is to be
accorded the distinction as the “mother land” of the arts and sciences,
it was not to its Semitic inhabitants, the Assyrians and Babylonians of
history, that this is due.
Here, long before the appearance of a Semitic people in the land,
scientific applications to the industrial arts were abundant. An
extensive system of irrigation and canals were in use in the arid
regions and drainage for the low lands near the sea. The arts of
metallurgy were practised. Mathematics and geometry were applied to
structures, and astronomy to measurements of time and planetary
movements.
They were builders of cities. As we have seen, they had invented a
system of writing. In certain cities they had schools for scribes, and
they had libraries where the literature thus developed was collected.
When we learn that this testimony takes us back to a date older than the
pyramids and to the earlier Egyptian dynasties, we may well exclaim at
the astonishing facts archæology is presenting.
Until recently there were no evidences of a civilization in Babylonia
which approached the antiquity of Egyptian monuments.
In 1883, Dr. Taylor placed the earliest dates from the cuneiform at
between 2700 and 3000, B. C. Recent discoveries, however, refer back to
a period, according to Prof. Hilfrecht, at least three milleniums
earlier, and point to a civilization distinct and original with the
Turanian races of Asia preceding that of other races and people in these
regions.
Mesopotamia, “The land between the rivers,” is a tract of country
extending about seven hundred miles from its northernmost boundaries,
near the mountains of Armenia, to the southernmost limit, the Persian
Gulf. A range of hills crosses this region near the center, running east
and west, from the Euphrates to the Tigris. North of these hills the
country is the ancient Assyria, with its capital, Nineveh, situated on
the Tigris. South of these hills to the Persian Gulf, is the ancient
Babylonia, or Chaldea, where, on the Euphrates, its later capital,
Babylon, was situated.
In the more ancient records Assyria appears as “Accad,” or “Agade;” the
southern portion, or Babylonia, as “Sumir,” or the land of “Shinar,” and
later as Chaldea.
For the greater portion, this region is a dead level, its monotony
unbroken but for the rich verdure of the lands bordering upon these
great rivers, and the long lines of slightly elevated embankments
marking the course of ancient, or more recent canals, and the solitary
mounds rising here and there from the plain.
These are the sites of ancient temples and cities and are sometimes very
extensive. The mounds of Warka, the ancient Erech, are nearly six miles
in circumference and in some places rise to the height of one hundred
feet.
The great mound of Koyunjik covers an area of over one hundred acres in
extent, and is ninety-five feet high at its most elevated point. That of
Nippur, with the ruins of the great temple of Bel, rose over one hundred
feet above the plain. Others are smaller, and sometimes were intended to
support but one palace or temple.
These mounds are artificial, their foundations consisting of earth mixed
with burned bricks in alternate layers, the whole encased by a wall of
bricks cemented with bitumen, or as in Assyria, where stone could be
obtained, by a facing of stone masonry.
Upon these artificial hills or mounds, the inhabitants of Mesopotamia,
from the most remote to later times, built their cities, their palaces,
their temples and other important structures.
The heavy rains of the winter season coursing down these declivities for
so many centuries, have in places worn deep ravines in the mounds,
through which the torrents have carried the crumbling debris far out
upon the plain. In this way many valuable relics have come to light;
bits of pottery, inscribed bricks, seals and cylinders, the form and
style of the inscriptions upon some of these indicating great antiquity.
These indications of greater antiquity include inscriptions on bricks
for building purposes as well as those used for record and literature.
They include also the form and character of the inscriptions, whether
archaic or later cuneiform, and again the use of bitumen or cement in
masonry.
In primitive times the first bricks which succeeded the mud wall were
sun-dried and were laid up with reeds and plastered with soft mud or
bitumen. This bitumen was applied hot and adhered so firmly to the
bricks that it is almost impossible to break them apart to obtain the
cement and is one cause why the masonry consisting of sun-dried bricks
has in many cases withstood the ages. Later the sun-dried bricks came to
be used only for interior walls, while for the outer walls bricks were
made from selected clay and were carefully prepared and burned, forming
bricks of superior quality and strength. So well have these withstood
the ravages of time that some of the mounds, notably those of the later
Babylonian period, are veritable quarries of building brick.
It is stated that the bricks of which the temples and palaces of Babylon
were built, have for the past two thousand years supplied cities of the
surrounding region with the material used in the construction of public
and private edifices, and that certain families of the Babili tribe, who
claim to be direct descendants of the Babylonians, are exclusively
employed in quarrying them.
As has been stated, bitumen was used for laying the masonry in the
remoter times long before Babylon was built. Of this substance an
abundant supply was to be obtained at various places in southern
Mesopotamia, near the Arabian desert, notably in the neighborhood of Ur,
now Mugheir, “the bitumened,” so called from the bitumenous springs of
the vicinity. In time, the use of this for masonry gave place to a fine
white mortar made from a peculiar calcareous clay, found near the
Arabian frontier to the west of the Euphrates in southern Mesopotamia,
which for lightness and strength has never been surpassed.
These evidences, including also the inscriptions originally stamped upon
the bricks, with the name of the king or ruler under whose orders they
had been prepared, furnish indications of their time and place in
history.
It thus came about that explorers following the work of Botta, Layard,
George Smith and others, found their way to sites more ancient by many
centuries than the beginnings of Nineveh or Babylon, and have obtained
from these records of great historical importance.
The more ancient of these sites are in the southern portion of the
country, in that region anciently known as Sumir, or Shinar, and later
as Chaldea.
This was on the lower courses of the great rivers, the Tigris and
Euphrates, towards the Persian Gulf. This region abounds with the ruins
of ancient cities as yet unexplored. The most important of the cities of
this region were Eridu, the most ancient and sacred, now marked by the
mud heaps of Abu Sharein; the city of Ur, now Mugheir, once a maritime
and commercial city of these earlier times, and of special interest as
that “Ur of the Chaldees,” the early home of Abraham; Nippur, or Neffur,
the seat of older Bel; Tel-Loh, the ancient Sirgulla, and Larsa.
The sites of Ur and Eridu, once near the sea, are now far inland. Eridu,
formerly directly upon the shores of the Persian Gulf, is now one
hundred and fifty miles distant, while Ur, once situated at the mouth of
the Euphrates, is now about one hundred and fifty miles distant from the
sea, and about six miles to the west of the present course of the
Euphrates on the western banks of the older bed of the river, nearly
opposite the point—though six miles away—where the Shat-el-Hic enters
the Euphrates from the east, as it approaches from its source in the
Tigris.
It is estimated that the alluvium brought down by these great rivers has
encroached upon the Persian Gulf by the formation of land about sixty
feet annually, creating a delta at the head of the gulf of ninety miles
in three thousand years.
These deposits have been more rapid in later times than anciently. The
great cause of the difference between ancient and modern Chaldea is the
neglect of the water courses. In ancient times, a well arranged system
of embankments and irrigating canals held these great rivers in their
courses by distributing the superabundant waters of the great flood
times to all parts of the country, thus enriching the soil with abundant
water supply at all seasons.
In the present neglected condition of this region the floods as they
come down from the mountain sources of the Euphrates are liable to wash
away the banks, sometimes changing the course of the river, and
overflowing large tracts at slightly lower levels, which have become
unwholesome marshes, while other large tracts which are never inundated,
in the fierce heats become parched and desolate sand wastes. It is said
that such is the spread and waste of the Euphrates in its lower course,
that, except in flood time, but a small proportion of this great volume
of water reaches the sea.
These conditions do not so seriously affect the Tigris, which for the
greater part of its course flows over a rocky bed, between high
embankments, and which, though a narrower, is a deeper and swifter
stream than the Euphrates.
Within historic times, the Tigris and Euphrates entered the sea by
separate channels nearly thirty miles apart. At the present time, and
for many centuries, these two rivers have been united, forming the great
river, the Shat-el-Arab, through which, in a course of about one hundred
and twenty miles, their united waters reach the sea.
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HIEROGLYPHIC TEXT AND TRANSLATION.
_Hieroglyphic Transcription._
[Illustration]
_A free Translation of the above._
Praise ye Amen-Râ,—the mighty one who dwells in Heliopolis,
great above all the gods!—A gracious god is he to those who
love him.—His rays of life enlighten—All his grand
creation.—Hail to thee, oh Amen-Râ, whose seat is Egypt’s
double throne!—Thou art the prince in Southern Thebes,—Grand
sovereign in thy realm.—Thou goest through the Southern
land,—And nations call thee lord, Arabia calls thee
prince.—Thou Ancient One of Heaven, and Oldest One of
Earth,—Who didst produce existences and govern things, doest
still support creation.—Thou art unchangeable amid the
changes of the gods.—Thou art benign, a ruler of the
heavenly cycle,—Yea, lord of all the deities,—The prince of
truth and sire of the gods.
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