great Library at Nineveh) have established beyond a doubt the first
positive date that has been secured for the History of Chaldea. That
king was for a long time at war with the neighboring kingdom of ELAM,
and ended by conquering and destroying its capital, SHUSHAN (Susa),
after carrying away all the riches from the royal palace and all the
statues from the great temple. This happened in the year 645 B.C. In the
inscriptions in which he records this event, the king informs us that in
that temple he found a statue of the Chaldean goddess NANA, which had
been carried away from her own temple in the city of URUKH (Erech, now
Warka) by a king of Elam of the name of KHUDUR-NANKHUNDI, who invaded
the land of Accad 1635 years before, and that he, Asshurbanipal, by the
goddess's own express command, took her from where she had dwelt in
Elam, "a place not appointed her," and reinstated her in her own
sanctuary "which she had delighted in." 1635 added to 645 make 2280, a
date not to be disputed. Now if a successful Elamite invasion in 2280
found in Chaldea famous sanctuaries to desecrate, the religion to which
these sanctuaries belonged, that of the Cushite, or Semitic colonists,
must have been established in the country already for several, if not
many, centuries. Indeed, quite recent discoveries show that it had been
so considerably over a thousand years, so that we cannot possibly accept
a date later than 4000 B.C. for the foreign immigration. The
Shumiro-Accadian culture was too firmly rooted then and too completely
worked out--as far as it went--to allow less than about 1000 years for
its establishment. This takes us as far back as 5000 B.C.--a pretty
respectable figure, especially when we think of the vista of time which
opens behind it, and for which calculation fairly fails us. For if the
Turanian settlers brought the rudiments of that culture from the
highlands of Elam, how long had they sojourned there before they
descended into the plains? And how long had it taken them to reach that
station on their way from the race's mountain home in the far
Northeast, in the Altaï valleys?
10. However that may be, 5000 B.C. is a moderate and probable date. But
ancient nations were not content with such, when they tried to locate
and classify their own beginnings. These being necessarily obscure and
only vaguely shadowed out in traditions which gained in fancifulness and
lost in probability with every succeeding generation that received them
and handed them down to the next, they loved to magnify them by
enshrouding them in the mystery of innumerable ages. The more appalling
the figures, the greater the glory. Thus we gather from some fragments
of Berosus that, according to the national Chaldean tradition, there was
an interval of over 259,000 years between the first appearance of Oannes
and the first king. Then come ten successive kings, each of whom reigns
a no less extravagant number of years (one 36,000, another 43,000, even
64,000; 10,800 being the most modest figure), till the aggregate of all
these different periods makes up the pretty sum total of 691,200 years,
supposed to have elapsed from the first appearance of Oannes to the
Deluge. It is so impossible to imagine so prodigious a number of years
or couple with it anything at all real, that we might just as well
substitute for such a figure the simpler "very, very long ago," or still
better, the approved fairy tale beginning, "There was once upon a time,
..." It conveys quite as definite a notion, and would, in such a case,
be the more appropriate, that all a nation's most marvellous
traditions, most fabulous legends, are naturally placed in those
stupendously remote ages which no record could reach, no experience
control. Although these traditions and legends generally had a certain
body of actual truth and dimly remembered fact in them, which might
still be apparent to the learned and the cultivated few, the ignorant
masses of the people swallowed the thing whole, as real history, and
found things acknowledged as impossible easy to believe, for the simple
reason that "it was so very long ago!" A Chaldean of Alexander's time
certainly did not expect to meet a divine Man-Fish in his walks along
the sea-shore, but--there was no knowing what might or might not have
happened seven hundred thousand years ago! In the legend of the six
successive apparitions under the first ten long-lived kings, he would
not have descried the simple sense so lucidly set forth by Mr. Maspero,
one of the most distinguished of French Orientalists:--"The times
preceding the Deluge represented an experimental period, during which
mankind, being as yet barbarous, had need of divine assistance to
overcome the difficulties with which it was surrounded. Those times were
filled up with six manifestations of the deity, doubtless answering to
the number of sacred books in which the priests saw the most complete
expression of revealed law."[AI] This presents another and more probable
explanation of the legend than the one suggested above, (end of § 7);
but there is no more actual _proof_ of the one than of the other being
the correct one.
11. If Chaldea was in after times a battle-ground of nations, it was in
the beginning a very nursery and hive of peoples. The various races in
their migrations must necessarily have been attracted and arrested by
the exceeding fertility of its soil, which it is said, in the times of
its highest prosperity and under proper conditions of irrigation,
yielded two hundredfold return for the grain it received. Settlement
must have followed settlement in rapid succession. But the nomadic
element was for a long time still very prevalent, and side by side with
the builders of cities and tillers of fields, shepherd tribes roamed
peacefully over the face of the land, tolerated and unmolested by the
permanent population, with which they mixed but warily, occasionally
settling down temporarily, and shifting their settlements as safety or
advantage required it,--or wandering off altogether from that common
halting-place, to the north, and west, and south-west. This makes it
very plain why Chaldea is given as the land where the tongues became
confused and the second separation of races took place.
12. Of those principally nomadic tribes the greatest part did not
belong, like the Cushites or Canaanites, to the descendants of Ham, "the
Dark," but to those of SHEM, whose name, signifying "Glory, Renown,"
stamps him as the eponymous ancestor of that race which has always
firmly believed itself to be the chosen one of God. They were Semites.
When they arrived on the plains of Chaldea, they were inferior in
civilization to the people among whom they came to dwell. They knew
nothing of city arts and had all to learn. They did learn, for superior
culture always asserts its power,--even to the language of the Cushite
settlers, which the latter were rapidly substituting for the rude and
poor Turanian idiom of Shumir and Accad. This language, or rather
various dialects of it, were common to most Hamitic and Semitic tribes,
among whom that from which the Hebrews sprang brought it to its greatest
perfection. The others worked it into different kindred dialects--the
Assyrian, the Aramaic or Syrian, the Arabic--according to their several
peculiarities. The Phoenicians of the sea-shore, and all the Canaanite
nations, also spoke languages belonging to the same family, and
therefore classed among the so-called Semitic tongues. Thus it has come
to pass that philology,--or the Science of Languages,--adopted a wrong
name for that entire group, calling the languages belonging to it,
"Semitic," while, in reality, they are originally "Hamitic." The reason
is that the Hamitic origin of those important languages which have been
called Semitic these hundred years had not been discovered until very
lately, and to change the name now would produce considerable confusion.
13. Most of the Semitic tribes who dwelt in Chaldea adopted not only the
Cushite language, but the Cushite culture and religion. Asshur carried
all three northward, where the Assyrian kingdom arose out of a few
Babylonian colonies, and Aram westward to the land which was afterwards
called Southern Syria, and where the great city of Damascus long
flourished and still exists. But there was one tribe of higher spiritual
gifts than the others. It was not numerous, for through many generations
it consisted of only one great family governed by its own eldest chief
or patriarch. It is true that such a family, with the patriarch's own
children and children's children, its wealth of horses, camels, flocks
of sheep, its host of servants and slaves, male and female, represented
quite a respectable force; Abraham could muster three hundred eighteen
armed and _trained_ servants who had been born in his own household.
This particular tribe seems to have wandered for some time on the
outskirts of Chaldea and in the land itself, as indicated by the name
given to its eponym in Chap. X.: ARPHAXAD (more correctly ARPHAKSHAD),
corrupted from AREPH-KASDÎM, which means, "bordering on the Chaldeans,"
or perhaps "boundaries"--in the sense of "land"--of the Chaldeans.
Generation after generation pushed further westward, traversed the land
of Shinar, crossed the Euphrates and reached the city of Ur, in or near
which the tribe dwelt many years.
14. Ur was then the greatest city of Southern Chaldea. The earliest
known kings of Shumir resided in it, and besides that, it was the
principal commercial mart of the country. For, strange as it may appear
when we look on a modern map, Ur, the ruins of which are now 150 miles
from the sea, was then a maritime city, with harbor and ship docks. The
waters of the Gulf reached much further inland than they do now. There
was then a distance of many miles between the mouths of the Tigris and
Euphrates, and Ur lay very near the mouth of the latter river. Like all
commercial and maritime cities, it was the resort not only of all the
different races which dwelt in the land itself, but also of foreign
traders. The active intellectual life of a capital, too, which was at
the same time a great religious centre and the seat of a powerful
priesthood, must of necessity have favored interchange of ideas, and
have exerted an influence on that Semitic tribe of whom the Bible tells
us that it "went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of
Canaan," led by the patriarch Terah and his son Abraham (Genesis xi.
31). The historian of Genesis here, as throughout the narrative, does
not mention any date whatever for the event he relates; nor does he hint
at the cause of this removal. On the first of these points the study of
Chaldean cuneiform monuments throws considerable light, while the latter
does not admit of more than guesses--of which something hereafter.
15. Such is a broad and cursory outline of the theory according to which
Cushite immigrations preceded the arrival of the Semites in the land of
Shumir and Accad. Those who uphold it give several reasons for their
opinion, such as that the Bible several times mentions a Cush located in
the East and evidently different from the Cush which has been identified
as Ethiopia; that, in Chap. X. of Genesis (8-12), Nimrod, the legendary
hero, whose empire at first was in "the land of Shinar," and who is
said to have "gone forth out of that land into Assyria," is called a son
of Cush; that the most ancient Greek poets knew of "Ethiopians" in the
far East as opposed to those of the South--and several more. Those
scholars who oppose this theory dismiss it wholesale. They will not
admit the existence of a Cushite element or migration in the East at
all, and put down the expressions in the Bible as simple mistakes,
either of the writers or copyists. According to them, there was only one
immigration in the land of Shumir and Accad, that of the Semites,
achieved through many ages and in numerous instalments. The language
which superseded the ancient Shumiro-Accadian idiom is to them a Semitic
one in the directest and most exclusive sense; the culture grafted on
that of the earlier population is by them called purely "Semitic;" while
their opponents frequently use the compound designation of
"Cushito-Semitic," to indicate the two distinct elements of which, to
them, it appears composed. It must be owned that the anti-Cushite
opinion is gaining ground. Yet the Cushite theory cannot be considered
as disposed of, only "not proven,"--or not sufficiently so, and
therefore in abeyance and fallen into some disfavor. With this proviso
we shall adopt the word "Semitic," as the simpler and more generally
used.
16. It is only with the rise of Semitic culture in Southern Mesopotamia
that we enter on a period which, however remote, misty, and full of
blanks, may still be called, in a measure, "historical," because there
is a certain number of facts, of which contemporary monuments give
positive evidence. True, the connection between those facts is often not
apparent; their causes and effects are frequently not to be made out
save by more or less daring conjectures; still there are numerous
landmarks of proven fact, and with these real history begins. No matter
if broad gaps have to be left open or temporarily filled with guesses.
New discoveries are almost daily turning up, inscriptions, texts, which
unexpectedly here supply a missing link, there confirm or demolish a
conjecture, establish or correct dates which had long been puzzles or
suggested on insufficient foundations. In short, details may be supplied
as yet brokenly and sparingly, but the general outline of the condition
of Chaldea may be made out as far back as forty centuries before Christ.
17. Of one thing there can be no doubt: that our earliest glimpse of the
political condition of Chaldea shows us the country divided into
numerous small states, each headed by a great city, made famous and
powerful by the sanctuary or temple of some particular deity, and ruled
by a _patesi_, a title which is now thought to mean _priest-king_, i.e.,
priest and king in one. There can be little doubt that the beginning of
the city was everywhere the temple, with its college of ministering
priests, and that the surrounding settlement was gradually formed by
pilgrims and worshippers. That royalty developed out of the priesthood
is also more than probable, and consequently must have been, in its
first stage, a form of priestly rule, and, in a great measure,
subordinate to priestly influence. There comes a time when for the title
of _patesi_ is substituted that of "king" simply--a change which very
possibly indicates the assumption by the kings of a more independent
attitude towards the class from which their power originally sprang. It
is noticeable that the distinction between the Semitic newcomers and the
indigenous Shumiro-Accadians continues long to be traceable in the names
of the royal temple-builders, even after the new Semitic idiom, which we
call the Assyrian, had entirely ousted the old language--a process which
must have taken considerable time, for it appears, and indeed stands to
reason, that the newcomers, in order to secure the wished for influence
and propagate their own culture, at first not only learned to understand
but actually used themselves the language of the people among whom they
came, at least in their public documents. This it is that explains the
fact that so many inscriptions and tablets, while written in the dialect
of Shumir or Accad, are Semitic in spirit and in the grade of culture
they betray. Furthermore, even superficial observation shows that the
old language and the old names survive longest in Shumir,--the South.
From this fact it is to be inferred with little chance of mistake that
the North,--the land of Accad,--was earlier Semitized, that the Semitic
immigrants established their first headquarters in that part of the
country, that their power and influence thence spread to the South.
18. Fully in accordance with these indications, the first grand
historical figure that meets us at the threshold of Chaldean history,
dim with the mists of ages and fabulous traditions, yet unmistakably
real, is that of the Semite SHARRUKIN, king of Accad--or AGADÊ, as the
great Northern city came to be called--more generally known in history
under the corrupt modern reading of SARGON, and called Sargon I., "the
First," to distinguish him from another monarch of the same name who was
found to have reigned many centuries later. As to the city of Agadê, it
is no other than the city of Accad mentioned in Genesis x., 10. It was
situated close to the Euphrates on a wide canal just opposite Sippar, so
that in time the two cities came to be considered as one double city,
and the Hebrews always called it "the two Sippars"--SEPHARVAIM, which is
often spoken of in the Bible. It was there that Sharrukin established
his rule, and a statue was afterwards raised to him there, the
inscription on which, making him speak, as usual, in the first person,
begins with the proud declaration: "Sharrukin, the mighty king, the king
of Agadê, am I." Yet, although his reforms and conquests were of lasting
importance, and himself remained one of the favorite heroes of Chaldean
tradition, he appears to have been an adventurer and usurper. Perhaps he
was, for this very reason, all the dearer to the popular fancy, which,
in the absence of positive facts concerning his birth and origin, wove
around them a halo of romance, and told of him a story which must be
nearly as old as mankind, for it has been told over and over again, in
different countries and ages, of a great many famous kings and heroes.
This of Sharrukin is the oldest known version of it, and the inscription
on his statue puts it into the king's own mouth. It makes him say that
he knew not his father, and that his mother, a princess, gave him birth
in a hiding-place, (or "an inaccessible place"), near the Euphrates, but
that his family were the rulers of the land. "She placed me in a basket
of rushes," the king is further made to say; "with bitumen the door of
my ark she closed. She launched me on the river, which drowned me not.
The river bore me along; to Akki, the water-carrier, it brought me.
Akki, the water-carrier, in the tenderness of his heart lifted me up.
Akki, the water-carrier, as his own child brought me up. Akki, the
water-carrier, made me his gardener. And in my gardenership the goddess
Ishtar loved me...."
19. Whatever his origin and however he came by the royal power, Sargon
was a great monarch. It is said that he undertook successful expeditions
into Syria, and a campaign into Elam; that with captives of the
conquered races he partly peopled his new capital, Agadê, where he built
a palace and a magnificent temple; that on one occasion he was absent
three years, during which time he advanced to the very shores of the
Mediterranean, which he calls "the sea of the setting sun," and where he
left memorial records of his deeds, and returned home in triumph,
bringing with him immense spoils. The inscription contains only the
following very moderate mention of his military career: "For forty-five
years the kingdom I have ruled. And the black-head race (Accadian) I
have governed. In multitudes of bronze chariots I rode over rugged
lands. I governed the upper countries. Three times to the coast of the
(Persian) sea I advanced...."[AJ]
[Illustration: 58.--CYLINDER OF SARGON, FROM AGADÊ. (Hommel, "Gesch.
Babyloniens u. Assyriens.")]
20. This Sharrukin must not be confounded with another king of the same
name, who reigned also in Agadê, some 1800 years later (about 2000
B.C.), and in whose time was completed and brought into definite shape a
vast religious reform which had been slowly working itself out ever
since the Semitic and Accadian elements began to mix in matters of
spiritual speculation and worship. What was the result of the
amalgamation will form the subject of the next chapter. Suffice it here
to say that the religion of Chaldea in the form which it assumed under
the second Sharrukin remained fixed forever, and when Babylonian
religion is spoken of, it is that which is understood by that name. The
great theological work demanded a literary undertaking no less great.
The incantations and magic forms of the first, purely Turanian, period
had to be collected and put in order, as well as the hymns and prayers
of the second period, composed under the influence of a higher and more
spiritual religious feeling. But all this literature was in the language
of the older population, while the ruling class--the royal houses and
the priesthood--were becoming almost exclusively Semitic. It was
necessary, therefore, that they should study the old language and learn
it so thoroughly as not only to understand and read it, but to be able
to use it, in speaking and writing. For that purpose Sargon not only
ordered the ancient texts, when collected and sorted, to be copied on
clay tablets with the translation--either between the lines, or on
opposite columns--into the now generally used modern Semitic language,
which we may as well begin to call by its usual name, Assyrian, but gave
directions for the compilation of grammars and vocabularies,--the very
works which have enabled the scholars of the present day to arrive at
the understanding of that prodigiously ancient tongue which, without
such assistance, must have remained a sealed book forever.
21. Such is the origin of the great collection in three books and two
hundred tablets, the contents of which made the subject of the preceding
chapter. To this must be added another great work, in seventy tablets,
in Assyrian, on astrology, i.e., the supposed influence of the heavenly
bodies, according to their positions and conjunctions, on the fate of
nations and individuals and on the course of things on earth
generally--an influence which was firmly believed in; and probably yet a
third work, on omens, prodigies and divination. To carry out these
extensive literary labors, to treasure the results worthily and safely,
Sargon II. either founded or greatly enlarged the library of the
priestly college at Urukh (Erech), so that this city came to be called
"the City of Books." This repository became the most important one in
all Chaldea, and when, fourteen centuries later, the Assyrian
Asshurbanipal sent his scribes all over the country, to collect copies
of the ancient, sacred and scientific texts for his own royal library at
Nineveh, it was at Erech that they gathered their most abundant harvest,
being specially favored there by the priests, who were on excellent
terms with the king after he had brought back from Shushan and restored
to them the statue of their goddess Nana. Agadê thus became the
headquarters, as it were, of the Semitic influence and reform, which
spread thence towards the South, forming a counter-current to the
culture of Shumir, which had steadily progressed from the Gulf
northward.
22. It is just possible that Sargon's collection may have also comprised
literature of a lighter nature than those ponderous works on magic and
astrology. At least, a work on agriculture has been found, which is
thought to have been compiled for the same king's library,[AK] and which
contains bits of popular poetry (maxims, riddles, short peasant songs)
of the kind that is now called "folk-lore." Of the correctness of the
supposition there is, as yet, no absolute proof, but as some of these
fragments, of which unfortunately but few could be recovered, are very
interesting and pretty in their way, this is perhaps the best place to
insert them. The following four may be called "Maxims," and the first is
singularly pithy and powerfully expressed.
1. Like an oven that is old
Against thy foes be hard and strong.
2. May he suffer vengeance,
May it be returned to him,
Who gives the provocation.
3. If evil thou doest,
To the everlasting sea
Thou shalt surely go.
4. Thou wentest, thou spoiledst
The land of the foe,
For the foe came and spoiled
Thy land, even thine.
23. It will be noticed that No. 3 alone expresses moral feeling of a
high standard, and is distinctively Semitic in spirit, the same spirit
which is expressed in a loftier and purely religious vein, and a more
poetical form in one of the "Penitential Psalms," where it says:
Whoso fears not his god--will be cut off even like a reed.
Whoso honors not the goddess--his bodily strength shall waste away;
Like a star of heaven, his light shall wane; like waters of the night
he shall disappear.
Some fragments can be well imagined as being sung by the peasant at work
to his ploughing team, in whose person he sometimes speaks:
5. A heifer am I,--to the cow I am yoked;
The plough handle is strong--lift it up! lift it up!
6. My knees are marching--my feet are not resting;
With no wealth of thy own--grain thou makest for me.[AL]