LANGUAGE AND WRITING.
Greek phrase [--]--HEROD. iv. 137.
There has never been much difference of opinion among the learned with
regard to the language spoken by the Assyrians. As the Biblical
genealogy connected Asshur with Eber and Aram, while the Greeks plainly
regarded the Syrians, Assyrians, and Babylonians as a single race, it
was always supposed that the people thus associated must have possessed
a tongue allied, more or less closely, to the Hebrew, the Syriac, and
the Chaldee. These tongues were known to be dialectic varieties of a
single form of speech the Semitic; and it was consequently the general
belief, before any Assyrian inscriptions had been disinterred, that the
Assyrian language was of this type, either a sister tongue to the three
above mentioned, or else identical with some one of them. The only
difficulty in the way of this theory was the supposed Medo-Persic or
Arian character of a certain number of Assyrian royal names; but this
difficulty was thought to be sufficiently met by a suggestion that the
ruling tribe might have been of Median descent, and have maintained its
own national appellatives, while the mass of the population belonged to
a different race. Recent discoveries have shown that this last
suggestion was needless, as the difficulty which it was intended to meet
does not exist. The Assyrian names which either _history_ or the
monuments have handed down to us are Semitic, and not Arian. It is only
among the fabulous accounts of the Assyrian Empire put forth by Ctesias
that Arian names, such as Xerxes, Arius, Armamithres, Mithraus, etc.,
are to be found.
Together with the true names of the Assyrian kings, the mounds of
Mesopotamia have yielded up a mass of documents in the Assyrian
language, from which it is possible that we may one day acquire as full
a knowledge of its structure and vocabulary as we possess at present of
Greek or Latin. These documents have confirmed the previous belief that
the tongue is Semitic. They consist, in the first place, of long
inscriptions upon the slabs of stone with which the walls of palaces
were panelled, sometimes occupying the stone to the exclusion of any
sculpture, sometimes carried across the dress of figures, always
carefully cut, and generally in good preservation. Next in importance to
these memorials are the hollow cylinders, or, more strictly speaking,
hexagonal or octagonal prisms, made in extremely fine and thin terra
cotta, which the Assyrian kings used to deposit at the corners of
temples, inscribed with an account of their chief acts and with
numerous religious invocations. [PLATE XXXIX., Fig. 1.] These cylinders
vary from a foot and a half to three feet in height, and are covered
closely with a small writing, which it often requires a good magnifying
glass to decipher. A cylinder of Tiglath-Pileser I. (about B.C. 1180)
contains thirty lines in a space of six inches, or five lines to an
inch, which is nearly as close as the type of the present volume. This
degree of closeness is exceeded on a cylinder of Asshur-bani-pal’s
(about B.C. 660), where the lines are six to the inch, or as near
together as the type of the _Edinburgh Review_. If the complexity of the
Assyrian characters be taken into account, and if it be remembered that
the whole inscription was in every ease impressed by the hand, this
minuteness must be allowed to be very surprising. It is not favorable to
legibility; and the patience of cuneiform scholars has been severely
tried by a mode of writing which sacrifices everything to the desire of
crowding the greatest possible quantity of words into the smallest
possible space. In one respect, however, facility of reading is
consulted, for the inscriptions on the cylinders are not carried on in
continuous lines round all the sides, but are written in columns, each
column occupying a side. The lines are thus tolerably short; and the
whole of a sentence is brought before the eye at once.
[Illustration: PLATE 39]
Besides slabs and cylinders, the written memorials of Assyria comprise
inscribed bulls and lions, stone obelisks, clay tablets, bricks, and
engraved seals. Tin seals generally resemble those of the Chaldaeans,
which have been already described: but are somewhat more elaborate, and
more varied in their character. [PLATE XXXIX., Fig. 2.] They do not very
often exhibit any writing; but occasionally they are inscribed with the
name of their owner, while in a few instances they show an inscription
of some length. The clay tablets are both numerous and curious. They are
of various sizes, ranging from nine inches long by six and a half wide,
to an inch and a half long by an inch wide, or even less. [PLATE XL.,
Fig. 2.] Sometimes they are entirely covered with writing; while
sometimes they exhibit on a portion of their surface the impressions of
seals, mythological emblems, and the like. Some thousands of them have
been recovered; and they are found to be of the most varied character.
Many are historical, still more mythological; some are linguistic, some
geographic, some again astronomical. It is anticipated that, when they
are deciphered, we shall obtain a complete eneyclopaedia of Assyrian
science, and shall be able by this means to trace a large portion of the
knowledge of the Greeks to an Oriental source. Here is a mine still very
little worked, from which patient and cautious investigators may one day
extract the most valuable literary treasures. The stone obelisks are but
few, and are mostly in a fragmentary condition. One alone is
perfect--the obelisk in black basalt, discovered by Mr. Layard at
Nimrud, which has now for many years been in the British Museum. [PLATE
XL., Fig. 1.] This monument is sculptured on each of its four sides, in
part with writing and in part with bas-reliefs. It is about seven feet
high, and two feet broad at the base, tapering gently towards the
summit, which is crowned with three low steps, or gradines. The
inscription, which occupies the upper and lower portion of each side,
and is also carried along the spaces between the bas-reliefs, consists
of 210 clearly cut lines, and is one of the most important documents
that has come down to us. It gives an account of various victories
gained by the monarch who set it up, and of the tribute brought him by
several princes. The inscribed lions and bulls are numerous. They
commonly guard the portals of palaces, and are raised in a bold relief
on alabaster slabs. The writing does not often trench upon the
sculpture, but covers all those portions of the slabs which are not
occupied by the animal. It is usually a full account of some particular
campaign, which was thus specially commemorated, giving in detail what
is far more briefly expressed in the obelisk and slab inscriptions.
[Illustration: PLATE 40]
This review of the various kinds of documents which have been discovered
in the ancient cities of Assyria, seems to show that two materials were
principally in use among the people for literary purposes, namely, stone
and moist clay. The monarchs used the former most commonly, though
sometimes they condescended for some special object to the coarser and
more fragile material. Private persons in their business transactions,
literary and scientific men in their compositions, employed the latter,
on which it was possible to write rapidly with a triangular instrument,
and which was no doubt far cheaper than the slabs of fine stone, which
were preferred for the royal inscriptions. The clay documents, when
wanted for instruction or as evidence, were carefully baked; and thus it
is that they have come down to us, despite their fragility, often in as
legible a condition, with the letters as clear and sharp, as any legend
on marble, stone, or metal that we possess belonging to Greek or even to
Roman times. The best clay, skilfully baked, is a material quite as
enduring as either stone or metal, resisting many influences better than
either of those materials.
It may still be asked, did not the Assyrians use other materials also?
Did they not write with ink of some kind on paper, or leather, or
parchment? It is certain that the Egyptians had invented a kind of thick
paper many centuries before the Assyrian power arose; and it is further
certain that the later Assyrian kings had a good deal of intercourse
with Egypt. Under such circumstances, can we suppose that they did not
import paper from that country? Again, the Persians, we are told, used
parchment for their public records. Are not the Assyrians a much more
ingenious people, likely to have done the same, at any rate to some
extent? There is no direct evidence by which these questions can be
determinately answered. No document on any of the materials suggested
has been found. No ancient author states that the Assyrians or the
Babylonians used them. Had it not been for one piece of indirect
evidence, it would have seemed nearly certain that they were not
employed by the Mesopotamian races. In some of the royal palaces,
however, small humps of fine clay have been found, bearing the
impressions of seals, and exhibiting traces of the string by which they
were attached to documents, while the documents themselves, being of a
different material, have perished. It seems probable that in these
instances some substance like paper or parchment was used; and thus we
are led to the conclusion that, while clay was the most common, and
stone an ordinary writing material among the Assyrians, some third
substance, probably Egyptian paper, was also known, and was used
occasionally, though somewhat rarely, for public documents.
[Illustration: Partial PAGE 171]
The number of characters is very great. Sir H. Rawlinson, in the year
1851, published a list of 216, or, including variants, 366 characters,
as occurring in the inscriptions known to him. M. Oppei t, in 1858, gave
318 forms as those “most in use.” Of course it is at once evident that
this alphabet cannot represent elementary sounds. The Assyrian
characters do, in fact, correspond, not to letters, according to our
notion of letters, but to syllables. These syllables are either mere
vowel sounds, such as we represent by our vowels and diphthongs, or such
sounds accompanied by one or two consonants.
The vowels are not very numerous. The Assyrians recognize three only as
fundamental--_a, i_, and _u_. Besides these they have the diphthongs
_ai_, nearly equivalent to _e_, and _au_, nearly equivalent to _o_. The
vowels _i_ and _u_ have also the powers, respectively, of _y_ and _v_.
[Illustration: Partial PAGE 172]
From these sounds, combined with the simple vowels, comes the Assyrian
syllabarium, to which, and not to the consonants themselves, the
characters were assigned. In the first place, each consonant being
capable of two combinations with each simple vowel, could give birth
naturally to six simple syllables, each of which would be in the
Assyrian system represented by a character. Six characters, for
instance, entirely different from one another, represented _pa, pi, pu,
ap, ip, up_; six others, _ka, ki, ke, ak, ik, uk_; six others again,
_ta, ti, tu, at, it, ut_.
If this rule were carried out in every case, the sixteen consonant
sounds would, it is evident, produce ninety-six characters. The actual
number, however, formed in this way, is only seventy-five. Since these
are seven of the consonants which only combine with the vowels in one
way. Thus we have _ba, bi, bu_, but not _ab, ib, ub; ga, qi, gu_, but
not _ay, iq,ug_; and so on. The sounds regarded as capable of only one
combination are the _mediae, b, q, d_; the aspirates _kh, tj_; and the
sibilants _ts and z_.
Such is the first and simplest syllabarium: but the Assyrian system does
not stop here. It proceeds to combine with each simple vowel sound two
consonants, one preceding the vowel and the other following it. If this
plan were followed out to the utmost possible extent, the result would
be an addition to the syllabarium of seven hundred and sixty-eight
sounds, each having its proper character, which would raise the number
of characters to between eight and nine hundred! Fortunately for the
student, phonetic laws and other causes have intervened to check this
extreme luxuriance; and the combinations of this kind which are known to
exist, instead of amounting to the full limit of seven hundred and
sixty-eight, are under one hundred and fifty. The known Assyrian
alphabet is, however, in this way raised from eighty, or, including
variants, one hundred, to between two hundred and forty and two hundred
and fifty characters.
[Illustration: Partial PAGE 173]
Finally, there are a certain number of characters which have been called
“ideographs,” or “monograms.” Most of the gods, and various cities and
countries, are represented by a group of wedges, which is thought not to
have a real phonetic force, but to be a conventional sign for an idea,
much as the Arabic numerals, 1, 2, 3. etc., are non-phonetic signs
representing the ideas, one, two, three, etc. The known characters of
this description are between twenty and thirty.
The known Assyrian characters are thus brought up nearly to three
hundred! There still remain a considerable number which are either
wholly unknown, or of which the meaning is known, while the phonetic
value cannot at present be determined. M. Oppert’s Catalogue contains
fourteen of the former and fifty-nine of the latter class.
It has already been observed that the monumental evidence accords with
the traditional belief in regard to the character of the Assyrian
language, which is unmistakably Semitic. Not only does the vocabulary
present constant analogies to other Semitic dialects, but the phonetic
laws and the grammatical forms are equally of this type. At the same
time the language has peculiarities of its own, which separate it from
its kindred tongues, and constitute it a distinct form of Semitic
speech, not a mere variety of any known form. It is neither Hebrew, nor
Arabic, nor Phoenician, nor Chaldee, nor Syriac, but a sister tongue to
these, having some analogies with all of them, and others, more or
fewer, with each. On the whole, its closest relationship seems to be
with the Hebrew, and its greatest divergence from the Aramaic or Syriac,
with which it was yet, locally, in immediate connection.
To attempt anything like a full illustration of these statements in the
present place would be manifestly unfitting. It would be to quit the
province of the historian and archeologist, in order to enter upon that
of the comparative philologer or the grammarian. At the same time a
certain amount of illustration seems necessary, in order to show that
the statements above made are not mere theories, but have a substantial
basis.
The Semitic character of the vocabulary will probably be felt to be
sufficiently established by the following lists:
[Illustration: Partial PAGE 174]
[Illustration: PAGE 175]
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