fool attain understanding! The god who knows the unknown, may
he be conciliated! The goddess who knows the unknown, may she
be conciliated!--I eat the food of wrath and drink the waters
of anguish.... O my god, my transgressions are very great, very
great my sins.... I transgress, and know it not. I sin, and
know it not. I feed on transgressions, and know it not. I
wander on wrong paths, and know it not.--The Lord, in the wrath
of his heart, has overwhelmed me with confusion.... I lie on
the ground, and none reaches a hand to me. I am silent and in
tears, and none takes me by the hand. I cry out, and there is
none that hears me. I am exhausted, oppressed, and none
releases me.... My god, who knowest the unknown, be
merciful!... My goddess, who knowest the unknown, be
merciful!... How long, O my god?... How long, O my goddess?...
Lord, thou wilt not repulse thy servant. In the midst of the
stormy waters, come to my assistance, take me by the hand! I
commit sins--turn them into blessedness! I commit
transgressions--let the wind sweep them away! My blasphemies
are very many--rend them like a garment!... God who knowest the
unknown,[AF] my sins are seven times seven,--forgive my
sins!..."
27. The religious feeling once roused to this extent, it is not to be
wondered at that in some invocations the distress or disease which had
formerly been taken as a gratuitous visitation, begins to be considered
in the light of a divine punishment, even though the afflicted person be
the king himself. This is very evident from the concluding passage of a
hymn to the Sun, in which it is the conjurer who speaks on behalf of the
patient, while presenting an offering:--
"O Sun, leave not my uplifted hands unregarded!--Eat his food,
refuse not his sacrifice, bring back his god to him, to be a
support unto his hand!--May his sin, at thy behest, be forgiven
him, his misdeed be forgotten!--May his trouble leave him! May
he recover from his illness!--Give to the king new vital
strength.... Escort the king, who lies at thy feet!--Also me,
the conjurer, thy respectful servant!"
28. There is another hymn of the same kind, not less remarkable for its
artistic and regular construction than for its beauty of feeling and
diction. The penitent speaks five double lines, and the priest adds two
more, as though endorsing the prayer and supporting it with the weight
of his own sacred character. This gives very regular strophes, of which,
unfortunately, only two have been well preserved:--
_Penitent._--"I, thy servant, full of sighs, I call to thee.
Whoever is beset with sin, his ardent supplication thou
acceptest. If thou lookest on a man with pity, that man liveth.
Ruler of all, mistress of mankind! Merciful one, to whom it is
good to turn, who dost receive sighs!" _Priest._--"While his
god and his goddess are wroth with him he calls on thee. Thy
countenance turn on him, take hold of his hand."
_Penitent._--"Besides thee there is no deity to lead in
righteousness. Kindly look on me, accept my sighs. Speak: how
long? and let thine heart be appeased. When, O Lady, will thy
countenance turn on me? Even like doves I moan, I feed on
sighs." _Priest._--"His heart is full of woe and trouble, and
full of sighs. Tears he sheds and breaks out into
lamentation."[AG]
29. Such is a not incomplete outline of this strange and primitive
religion, the religion of a people whose existence was not suspected
twenty-five years ago, yet which claims, with the Egyptians and the
Chinese, the distinction of being one of the oldest on earth, and in all
probability was older than both. This discovery is one of the most
important conquests of modern science, not only from its being highly
interesting in itself, but from the light it throws on innumerable
hitherto obscure points in the history of the ancient world, nay, on
many curious facts which reach down to our own time. Thus, the numerous
Turanian tribes which exist in a wholly or half nomadic condition in the
immense plains of Eastern and South-eastern Russia, in the forests and
wastes of Siberia, on the steppes and highlands of Central Asia, have no
other religion now than this of the old Shumiro-Accads, in its earliest
and most material shape. Everything to them is a spirit or has a spirit
of its own; they have no worship, no moral teaching, but only conjuring,
sorcerers, not priests. These men are called _Shamans_ and have great
influence among the tribes. The more advanced and cultivated Turanians,
like the Mongols and Mandchous, accord to one great Spirit the supremacy
over all others and call that Spirit which they conceive as absolutely
good, merciful and just, "Heaven," just as the Shumiro-Accads invoked
"Ana." This has been and still is the oldest national religion of the
Chinese. They say "Heaven" wherever we would say "God," and with the
same idea of loving adoration and reverent dread, which does not prevent
them from invoking the spirit of every hill, river, wind or forest, and
numbering among this host also the souls of the deceased. This clearly
corresponds to the second and higher stage of the Accadian religion, and
marks the utmost limit which the Yellow Race have been able to attain in
spiritual life. True, the greater part of the Chinese now have another
religion; they are Buddhists; while the Turks and the great majority of
the Tatars, Mongols and Mandchous, not to speak of other less important
divisions, are Mussulmans. But both Buddhism and Mahometanism are
foreign religions, which they have borrowed, adopted, not worked out for
themselves. Here then we are also met by that fatal law of limitation,
which through all ages seems to have said to the men of yellow skin and
high cheek-bones, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no further." Thus it was
in Chaldea. The work of civilization and spiritual development begun by
the people of Shumir and Accad was soon taken out of their hands and
carried on by newcomers from the east, those descendants of Noah, who
"found a plain in the land of Shinar and dwelt there."
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.
Professor Louis Dyer, of Harvard University, has attempted a rendering
into English verse of the famous incantation of the Seven Maskim. The
result of the experiment is a translation most faithful in the spirit
and main features, if not always literal; and which, by his kind
permission, we here offer to our readers.
A CHARM.
I.
Seven are they, they are seven;
In the caverns of ocean they dwell,
They are clothed in the lightnings of heaven,
Of their growth the deep waters can tell;
Seven are they, they are seven.
II.
Broad is their way and their course is wide,
Where the seeds of destruction they sow,
O'er the tops of the hills where they stride,
To lay waste the smooth highways below,--
Broad is their way and their course is wide.
III.
Man they are not, nor womankind,
For in fury they sweep from the main,
And have wedded no wife but the wind,
And no child have begotten but pain,--
Man they are not, nor womankind.
IV.
Fear is not in them, not awe;
Supplication they heed not, nor prayer,
For they know no compassion nor law,
And are deaf to the cries of despair,--
Fear is not in them, not awe.
V.
Curséd they are, they are curséd,
They are foes to wise Êa's great name;
By the whirlwind are all things disperséd
On the paths of the flash of their flame,--
Curséd they are, they are curséd.
VI.
Spirit of Heaven, oh, help! Help, oh, Spirit of Earth!
They are seven, thrice said they are seven;
For the gods they are Bearers of Thrones,
But for men they are Breeders of Dearth
And the authors of sorrows and moans.
They are seven, thrice said they are seven.
Spirit of Heaven, oh, help! Help, oh, Spirit of Earth!
FOOTNOTES:
[AC] "La Magie et la Divination chez les Chaldéens," 1874-5. German
translation of it, 1878.
[AD] Alfred Maury, "La Magie et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquité et au
Moyen-âge." Introduction, p. 1.
[AE] "UD" not being a proper name, but the name of the sun in the
language of Shumir and Accad, it can be rendered in translation by
"Sun," with a capital.
[AF] Another and more recent translator renders this line: "God who
knowest I knew not." Whichever rendering is right, the thought is
beautiful and profound.
[AG] This hymn is given by H. Zimmern, as the text to a dissertation on
the language and grammar.
IV.
CUSHITES AND SEMITES.--EARLY CHALDEAN HISTORY.
1. We have just seen that the hymns and prayers which compose the third
part of the great Magic Collection really mark a later and higher stage
in the religious conceptions of the Turanian settlers of Chaldea, the
people of Shumir and Accad. This improvement was not entirely due to a
process of natural development, but in a great measure to the influence
of that other and nobler race, who came from the East. When the priestly
historian of Babylon, Berosus, calls the older population "men of
foreign race," it is because he belonged himself to that second race,
who remained in the land, introduced their own superior culture, and
asserted their supremacy to the end of Babylon. The national legends
have preserved the memory of this important event, which they represent
as a direct divine revelation. Êa, the all-wise himself, it was
believed, had appeared to men and taught them things human and divine.
Berosus faithfully reports the legend, but seems to have given the God's
name "Êa-Han" ("Êa the Fish") under the corrupted Greek form of OANNES.
This is the narrative, of which we already know the first line:
"There was originally at Babylon a multitude of men of foreign race who
had colonized Chaldea, and they lived without order, like animals. But
in the first year" (meaning the first year of the new order of things,
the new dispensation) "there appeared, from out of the Erythrean Sea
(the ancient Greek name for the Persian Gulf) where it borders upon
Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, who was called OANNES. The
whole body of the animal was that of a fish, but under the fish's head
he had another head, and also feet below, growing out of his fish's
tail, similar to those of a man; also human speech, and his image is
preserved to this day. This being used to spend the whole day amidst
men, without taking any food, and he gave them an insight into letters,
and sciences, and every kind of art; he taught them how to found cities,
to construct temples, to introduce laws and to measure land; he showed
them how to sow seeds and gather in crops; in short, he instructed them
in everything that softens manners and makes up civilization, so that
from that time no one has invented anything new. Then, when the sun went
down, this monstrous Oannes used to plunge back into the sea and spend
the night in the midst of the boundless waves, for he was amphibious."
2. The question, _Who_ were the bringers of this advanced civilization?
has caused much division among the most eminent scholars. Two solutions
are offered. Both being based on many and serious grounds and supported
by illustrious names, and the point being far from settled yet, it is
but fair to state them both. The two greatest of German assyriologists,
Professors Eberhard Schrader and Friedrich Delitzsch, and the German
school which acknowledges them as leaders, hold that the bringers of the
new and more perfect civilization were Semites--descendants of Shem,
i.e., people of the same race as the Hebrews--while the late François
Lenormant and his followers contend that they were Cushites in the first
instance,--i.e., belonged to that important family of nations which we
find grouped, in Chapter X. of Genesis, under the name of Cush, himself
a son of Ham--and that the Semitic immigration came second. As the
latter hypothesis puts forward, among other arguments, the authority of
the Biblical historians, and moreover involves the destinies of a very
numerous and vastly important branch of ancient humanity, we will yield
to it the right of precedence.
[Illustration: 57.--OANNES. (Smith's "Chaldean Genesis.")]
3. The name "HAM" signifies "brown, dark" (not "black"). Therefore, to
speak of certain nations as "sons of Ham," is to say that they belonged
to "the Dark Race." Yet, originally, this great section of Noah's
posterity was as white of color as the other two. It seems to have first
existed as a separate race in a region not very distant from the high
table-land of Central Asia, the probable first cradle of mankind. That
division of this great section which again separated and became the race
of Cush, appears to have been drawn southwards by reasons which it is,
of course, impossible to ascertain. It is easier to guess at the route
they must have taken along the HINDU CUSH,[AH] a range of mountains
which must have been to it a barrier in the west, and which joins the
western end of the Himâlaya, the mightiest mountain-chain in the world.
The break between the Hindu-Cush and the Himâlaya forms a mountain pass,
just at the spot where the river INDUS (most probably the PISCHON of
Gen., Ch. II.) turns abruptly to the south, to water the rich plains of
India. Through this pass, and following the course of the river, further
Cushite detachments must have penetrated into that vast and attractive
peninsula, even to the south of it, where they found a population mostly
belonging to the Black branch of humanity, so persistently ignored by
the writer of Chap. X. Hundreds of years spent under a tropical clime
and intermarriage with the Negro natives altered not only the color of
their skin, but also the shape of their features. So that when Cushite
tribes, with the restless migratory spirit so characteristic of all
early ages, began to work their way back again to the north, then to the
west, along the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, they
were both dark-skinned and thick-lipped, with a decided tendency towards
the Negro type, lesser or greater according to the degree of mixture
with the inferior race. That this type was foreign to them is proved by
the facility with which their features resumed the nobler cast of the
white races wherever they stayed long enough among these, as was the
case in Chaldea, in Arabia, in the countries of Canaan, whither many of
these tribes wandered at various times.
4. Some Cushite detachments, who reached the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb,
crossed over into Africa, and settling there amidst the barbarous native
negro tribes, formed a nation which became known to its northern
neighbors, the Egyptians, to the Hebrews, and throughout the ancient
East under its own proper name of CUSH, and whose outward
characteristics came, in the course of time, so near to the pure Negro
type as to be scarcely recognizable from it. This is the same nation
which, to us moderns, is better known under the name of ETHIOPIANS,
given to it by the Greeks, as well as to the eastern division of the
same race. The Egyptians themselves were another branch of the same
great section of humanity, represented in the genealogy of Chap. X. by
the name of MIZRAIM, second son of Ham. These must have come from the
east along the Persian Gulf, then across Northern Arabia and the Isthmus
of Suez. In the color and features of the Egyptians the mixture with
black races is also noticeable, but not enough to destroy the beauty and
expressiveness of the original type, at all events far less than in
their southern neighbors, the Ethiopians, with whom, moreover, they were
throughout on the worst of terms, whom they loathed and invariably
designated under the name of "vile Cush."
5. A third and very important branch of the Hamite family, the
CANAANITES, after reaching the Persian Gulf, and probably sojourning
there some time, spread, not to the south, but to the west, across the
plains of Syria, across the mountain chain of LEBANON and to the very
edge of the Mediterranean Sea, occupying all the land which later became
Palestine, also to the north-west, as far as the mountain chain of
TAURUS. This group was very numerous, and broken up into a great many
peoples, as we can judge from the list of nations given in Chap. X. (v.
15-18) as "sons of Canaan." In its migrations over this comparatively
northern region, Canaan found and displaced not black natives, but
Turanian nomadic tribes, who roamed at large over grassy wildernesses
and sandy wastes and are possibly to be accounted as the representatives
of that portion of the race which the biblical historian embodies in the
pastoral names of Jabal and Jubal--(Gen. iv., 20-22)--"The father of
such as dwell in tents and have cattle," and "the father of all such as
handle the harp and pipe." In which case the Turanian settlers and
builders of cities would answer to Tubalcain, the smith and artificer.
The Canaanites, therefore, are those among the Hamites who, in point of
color and features, have least differed from their kindred white races,
though still sufficiently bronzed to be entitled to the name of "sons of
Ham," i.e., "belonging to the dark-skinned race."
6. Migrating races do not traverse continents with the same rapidity as
marching armies. The progress is slow, the stations are many. Every
station becomes a settlement, sometimes the beginning of a new
nation--so many landmarks along the way. And the distance between the
starting-point and the furthest point reached by the race is measured
not only by thousands of miles, but also by hundreds and hundreds of
years; only the space can be actually measured; while the time can be
computed merely by conjecture. The route from the south of India, along
the shore of Malabar, the Persian Gulf, across the Arabian deserts, then
down along the Red Sea and across the straits into Africa, is of such
tremendous length that the settlements which the Cushite race left
scattered along it must have been more than usually numerous. According
to the upholders of a Cushite colonization of Chaldea, one important
detachment appears to have taken possession of the small islands along
the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf and to have stayed there for
several centuries, probably choosing these island homes on account of
their seclusion and safety from invasion. There, unmolested and
undisturbed, they could develop a certain spirit of abstract speculation
to which their natural bent inclined them. They were great star-gazers
and calculators--two tastes which go well together, for Astronomy cannot
exist without Mathematics. But star-gazing is also favorable to
dreaming, and the Cushite islanders had time for dreams. Thoughts of
heavenly things occupied them much; they worked out a religion beautiful
in many ways and full of deep sense; their priests dwelt in communities
or colleges, probably one on every island, and spent their time not only
in scientific study and religious contemplation, but also in the more
practical art of government, for there do not appear as yet to have
been any kings among them.
7. But there came a time when the small islands were overcrowded with
the increased population, and detachments began to cross the water and
land at the furthest point of the Gulf, in the land of the great rivers.
Here they found a people not unpractised in several primitive arts, and
possessed of some important fundamental inventions--writing, irrigation
by means of canals--but deplorably deficient in spiritual development,
and positively barbarous in the presence of an altogether higher
culture. The Cushites rapidly spread through the land of Shumir and
Accad, and taught the people with whom they afterwards, as usual,
intermarried, until both formed but one nation--with this difference,
that towards the north of Chaldea the Cushite element became
predominant, while in the south numbers remained on the side of the
Turanians. Whether this result was attained altogether peacefully or was
preceded by a period of resistance and fighting, we have no means of
ascertaining. If there was such a period, it cannot have lasted long,
for intellect was on the side of the newcomers, and that is a power
which soon wins the day. At all events the final fusion must have been
complete and friendly, since the old national legend reported by Berosus
cleverly combines the two elements, by attributing the part of teacher
and revealer to the Shumiro-Accad's own favorite divine being Êa, while
it is not impossible that it alludes to the coming of the Cushites in
making the amphibious Oannes rise out of the Persian Gulf, "where it
borders on Chaldea." The legend goes on to say that Oannes set down his
revelations in books which he consigned into the keeping of men, and
that several more divine animals of the same kind continued to appear at
long intervals. Who knows but the latter strange detail may have been
meant to allude fantastically to the arrival of successive Cushite
colonies? In the long run of time, of course all such meaning would be
forgotten and the legend remain as a miraculous and inexplicable
incident.
8. It would be vain to attempt to fix any dates for events which took
place in such remote antiquity, in the absence of any evidence or
document that might be grasped. Yet, by close study of facts, by
laborious and ingenious comparing of later texts, of every scrap of
evidence furnished by monuments, of information contained in the
fragments of Berosus and of other writers, mostly Greek, it has been
possible, with due caution, to arrive at some approximative dates,
which, after all, are all that is needed to classify things in an order
intelligible and correct in the main. Even should further discoveries
and researches arrive at more exact results, the gain will be
comparatively small. At such a distance, differences of a couple of
centuries do not matter much. When we look down a long line of houses or
trees, the more distant ones appear to run together, and we do not
always see where it ends--yet we can perfectly well pursue its
direction. The same with the so-called double stars in astronomy: they
are stars which, though really separated by thousands of miles, appear
as one on account of the immense distance between them and our eye, and
only the strongest telescope lenses show them to be separate bodies,
though still close together. Yet this is sufficient to assign them their
place so correctly on the map of the heavens, that they do not disturb
the calculations in which they are included. The same kind of
perspective applies to the history of remote antiquity. As the gloom
which has covered it so long slowly rolls back before the light of
scientific research, we begin to discern outlines and landmarks, at
first so dim and wavering as rather to mislead than to instruct; but
soon the searcher's eye, sharpened by practice, fixes them sufficiently
to bring them into connection with the later and more fully illumined
portions of the eternally unrolling picture. Chance, to which all
discoverers are so much indebted, frequently supplies such a landmark,
and now and then one so firm and distinct as to become a trustworthy
centre for a whole group.