lately been excited by an extraordinary discovery connected with him,
which produced a startling revolution in the hitherto accepted Chaldean
chronology. This question of dates is always a most intricate and
puzzling one in dealing with ancient Oriental nations, because they did
not date their years from some particular event, as we do, and as did
the Mohammedans, the Greeks and the Romans. In the inscriptions things
are said to have happened in the year so-and-so of such a king's reign.
Where to place that king is the next question--unanswerable, unless, as
fortunately is mostly the case, some clue is supplied, to borrow a legal
term, by circumstantial evidence. Thus, if an eclipse is mentioned, the
time can easily be determined by the help of astronomy, which can
calculate backward as well as forward. Or else, an event or a person
belonging to another country is alluded to, and if they are known to us
from other sources, that is a great help. Such a coincidence (which is
called a SYNCHRONISM) is most valuable, and dates established by
synchronisms are generally reliable. Then, luckily for us, Assyrian and
Babylonian kings of a late period, whose dates are fixed and proved
beyond a doubt, were much in the habit, in their historical
inscriptions, of mentioning events that had taken place before their
time and specifying the number of years elapsed, often also the king
under whose reign the event, whatever it was, had taken place. This is
the most precious clue of all, as it is infallible, and besides
ascertaining one point, gives a firm foothold, whereby to arrive at many
others. The famous memorandum of Asshurbanipal, already so often
referred to, about the carrying away of the goddess Nana, (i.e., her
statue) from her temple at Erech is evidence of this kind. Any dates
suggested without any of these clues as basis are of necessity
untrustworthy, and no true scholar dreams of offering any such date,
except as a temporary suggestion, awaiting confirmation or abolition
from subsequent researches. So it was with Sargon I. of Agadê. There was
no positive indication of the time at which he lived, except that he
could not possibly have lived later than 2000 B.C. Scholars therefore
agreed to assign that date to him, approximatively--a little more or
less--thinking they could not go very far wrong in so doing. Great
therefore was the commotion produced by the discovery of a cylinder of
Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon (whose date is 550 B.C.), wherein he
speaks of repairs he made in the great Sun-temple at Sippar, and
declares having dug deep in its foundations for the cylinders of the
founder, thus describing his success: "Shamash (the Sun-god), the great
lord ... suffered me to behold the foundation-cylinder of NARAM-SIN, the
son of Sharrukin, which for thrice thousand and twice hundred years none
of the kings that lived before me had seen." The simple addition 3200 +
550 gives 3750 B.C. as the date of Naram-Sin, and 3800 as that of his
father Sargon, allowing for the latter's long reign! A scene-shifting of
1800 years at one slide seemed something so startling that there was
much hesitation in accepting the evidence, unanswerable as it seemed,
and the possibility of an error of the engraver was seriously
considered. Some other documents, however, were found independently of
each other and in different places, corroborating the statement on
Nabonidus' cylinder, and the tremendously ancient date of 3800 B.C. is
now generally accepted the elder Sargon of Agadê--perhaps the remotest
_authentic_ date yet arrived at in history.
25. When we survey and attempt to grasp and classify the materials we
have for an early "History of Chaldea," it appears almost presumptuous
to grace so necessarily lame an attempt with so ambitious a name. The
landmarks are so few and far between, so unconnected as yet, and there
is so much uncertainty about them, especially about placing them. The
experience with Sargon of Agadê has not been encouraging to conjectural
chronology; yet with such we must in many cases be content until more
lucky finds turn up to set us right. What, for instance, is the proper
place of GUDÊA, the _patesi_ of SIR-BURLA (also read SIR-GULLA or
SIRTILLA, and, lately, ZIRLABA), whose magnificent statues Mr. de Sarzec
found in the principal hall of the temple of which the bricks bear his
stamp? (See p. 217.) The title of _patesi_, (not "king"), points to
great antiquity, and he is pretty generally understood to have lived
somewhere between 4000 and 3000 B.C. That he was not a Semite, but an
Accadian prince, is to be concluded not only from the language of his
inscriptions and the writing, which is of the most archaic--i.e.,
ancient and old-fashioned--character, but from the fact that the head,
which was found with the statues, is strikingly Turanian in form and
features, shaved, too, and turbaned after a fashion still used in
Central Asia. Altogether it might easily be taken for that of a modern
Mongolian or Tatar.[AM] The discovery of this builder and patron of art
has greatly eclipsed the glory of a somewhat later ruler, UR-ÊA, King
of Ur,[AN] who had long enjoyed the reputation of being the earliest
known temple-builder. He remains at all events the first powerful
monarch we read of in Southern Chaldea, of which Ur appears to have been
in some measure the capital, at least in so far as to have a certain
supremacy over the other great cities of Shumir.
26. Of these Shumir had many, even more venerable for their age and
holiness than those of Accad. For the South was the home of the old race
and most ancient culture, and thence both had advanced northward. Hence
it was that the old stock was hardier there and endured longer in its
language, religion and nationality, and was slower in yielding to the
Semitic counter-current of race and culture, which, as a natural
consequence, obtained an earlier and stronger hold in the North, and
from there radiated over the whole of Mesopotamia. There was ERIDHU, by
the sea "at the mouth of the Rivers," the immemorial sanctuary of Êa;
there was SIR-GULLA, so lately unknown, now the most promising mine for
research; there was LARSAM, famous with the glories of its "House of the
Sun" (_Ê-Babbara_ in the old language), the rival of Ur, the city of the
Moon-god, whose kings UR-ÊA and his son DUNGI were, it appears, the
first to take the ambitious title of "Kings of Shumir and Accad" and
"Kings of the Four Regions." As for Babylon, proud Babylon, which we
have so long been accustomed to think of as the very beginning of state
life and political rule in Chaldea, it was perhaps not yet built at all,
or only modestly beginning its existence under its Accadian name of
TIN-TIR-KI ("the Place of Life"), or, somewhat later, KA-DIMIRRA ("Gate
of God"), when already the above named cities, and several more, had
each its famous temple with ministering college of priests, and,
probably, library, and each its king. But political power was for a long
time centred at Ur. The first kings of Ur authentically known to us are
Ur-êa and his son Dungi, who have left abundant traces of their
existence in the numerous temples they built, not in Ur alone, but in
most other cities too. Their bricks have been identified at Larsam
(Senkereh), and, it appears, at Sir-burla (Tel-Loh), at Nipur (Niffer)
and at Urukh (Erech, Warka), and as the two latter cities belonged to
Accad, they seem to have ruled at least part of that country and thus to
have been justified in assuming their high-sounding title.
[Illustration: 59.--STATUE OF GUDÊA, WITH INSCRIPTION; FROM TELL-LOH,
(SIR-BURLA OR SIR-GULLA). SARZEC COLLECTION. (Hommel).]
27. It has been noticed that the bricks bearing the name of Ur-êa "are
found in a lower position than any others, at the very foundation of
buildings;" that "they are of a rude and coarse make, of many sizes and
ill-fitted together;" that baked bricks are rare among them; that they
are held together by the oldest substitutes for mortar--mud and
bitumen--and that the writing upon them is curiously rude and
imperfect.[AO] But whatever King Ur-êa's architectural efforts may lack
in perfection, they certainly make up in size and number. Those that he
did not complete, his son Dungi continued after him. It is remarkable
that these great builders seem to have devoted their energies
exclusively to religious purposes; also that, while their names are
Shumiro-Accadian, and their inscriptions are often in that language, the
temples they constructed were dedicated to various deities of the new,
or rather reformed religion. When we see the princes of the South,
according to an ingenious remark of Mr. Lenormant, thus begin a sort of
practical preaching of the Semitized religion, we may take it as a sign
of the times, as an unmistakable proof of the influence of the North,
political as well as religious. A very curious relic of King Ur-êa was
found--his own signet cylinder--which was lost by an accident, then
turned up again and is now in the British Museum. It represents the
Moon-god seated on a throne,--as is but meet for the king of the
Moon-god's special city--with priests presenting worshippers. No
definite date is of course assignable to Ur-êa and the important epoch
of Chaldean history which he represents. But a very probable
approximative one can be arrived at, thanks to a clue supplied by the
same Nabonidus, last King of Babylon, who settled the Sargon question
for us so unexpectedly. That monarch was as zealous a repairer of
temples as his predecessors had been zealous builders. He had reasons of
his own to court popularity, and could think of nothing better than to
restore the time-honored sanctuaries of the land. Among others he
repaired the Sun-temple (Ê-Babbara) at Larsam, whereof we are duly
informed by a special cylinder. In it he tells posterity that he found a
cylinder of King Hammurabi intact in its chamber under the
corner-stone, which cylinder states that the temple was founded 700
years before Hammurabi's time; as Ur-êa was the founder, it only remains
to determine the latter king's date in order to know that of the earlier
one.[AP] Here unfortunately scholars differ, not having as yet any
decisive authority to build upon. Some place Hammurabi _before_ 2000
B.C., others a little later. It is perhaps safest, therefore, to assume
that Ur-êa can scarcely have lived much earlier than 2800 or much later
than 2500 B.C. At all events, he must necessarily have lived somewhat
before 2300 B.C., for about this latter year took place the Elamite
invasion recorded by Asshurbanipal, an invasion which, as this King
expressly mentions, laid waste the land of Accad and desecrated its
temples--evidently the same ones which Ur-êa and Dungi so piously
constructed. Nor was this a passing inroad or raid of booty-seeking
mountaineers. It was a real conquest. Khudur-Nankhundi and his
successors remained in Southern Chaldea, called themselves kings of the
country, and reigned, several of them in succession, so that this series
of foreign rulers has become known in history as "the Elamite dynasty."
There was no room then for a powerful and temple-building national
dynasty like that of the kings of Ur.
28. This is the first time we meet authentic monumental records of a
country which was destined through the next sixteen centuries to be in
continual contact, mostly hostile, with both Babylonia and her northern
rival Assyria, until its final annihilation by the latter. Its capital
was SHUSHAN, (afterwards pronounced by foreigners "Susa"), and its own
original name SHUSHINAK. Its people were of Turanian stock, its language
was nearly akin to that of Shumir and Accad. But at some time or other
Semites came and settled in Shushinak. Though too few in number to
change the country's language or customs, the superiority of their race
asserted itself. They became the nobility of the land, the ruling
aristocracy from which the kings were taken, the generals and the high
functionaries. That the Turanian mass of the population was kept in
subjection and looked down upon, and that the Semitic nobility avoided
intermarrying with them is highly probable; and it would be difficult
otherwise to explain the difference of type between the two classes, as
shown in the representations of captives and warriors belonging to both
on the Assyrian sculptures. The common herd of prisoners employed on
public labor and driven by overseers brandishing sticks have an
unmistakably Turanian type of features--high cheek-bones, broad,
flattened face, etc., while the generals, ministers and nobles have all
the dignity and beauty of the handsomest Jewish type. "Elam," the name
under which the country is best known both from the Bible and later
monuments, is a Turanian word, which means, like "Accad," "Highlands."
It is the only name under which the historian of Chap. X. of Genesis
admits it into his list of nations, and, consistently following out his
system of ignoring all members of the great yellow race, he takes into
consideration only the Semitic aristocracy, and makes of Elam a son of
Shem, a brother of Asshur and Arphakhshad. (Gen. x. 22.)
29. One of Khudur-Nankhundi's next successors, KHUDUR-LAGAMAR, was not
content with the addition of Chaldea to his kingdom of Elam. He had the
ambition of a born conqueror and the generalship of one. The Chap. XIV.
of Genesis--which calls him Chedorlaomer--is the only document we have
descriptive of this king's warlike career, and a very striking picture
it gives of it, sufficient to show us that we have to do with a very
remarkable character. Supported by three allied and probably tributary
kings, that of Shumir (Shineâr), of Larsam, (Ellassar) and of the GOÏM,
(in the unrevised translation of the Bible "king of nations") i.e., the
nomadic tribes which roamed on the outskirts and in the yet unsettled,
more distant portions of Chaldea, Khudur-Lagamar marched an army 1200
miles across the desert into the fertile, wealthy and populous valleys
of the Jordan and the lake or sea of Siddim, afterwards called the Dead
Sea, where five great cities--Sodom, Gomorrah, and three others--were
governed by as many kings. Not only did he subdue these kings and impose
his rule on them, but contrived, even after he returned to the Persian
Gulf, to keep on them so firm a hand, that for twelve years they
"served" him, i.e., paid him tribute regularly, and only in the
thirteenth year, encouraged by his prolonged absence, ventured to
rebel. But they had underrated Khudur-Lagamar's vigilance and activity.
The very next year he was among them again, together with his three
faithful allies, encountered them in the vale of Siddim and beat them,
so that they all fled. This was the battle of the "four kings with
five." As to the treatment to which the victor subjected the conquered
country it is very briefly but clearly described: "And they took all the
goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their
way."
30. Now there dwelt in Sodom a man of foreign race and great wealth,
Lot, the nephew of Abraham. For Abraham and his tribe no longer lived at
Chaldean Ur. The change of masters, and very probably the harsher rule,
if not positive oppression, consequent on the Elamite conquest, had
driven them thence. It was then they went forth into the land of Canaan,
led by Terah and his son Abraham, and when Terah died, Abraham became
the patriarch and chief of the tribe, which from this time begins to be
called in the Bible "Hebrews," from an eponymous ancestor, Heber or
Eber, whose name alludes to the passing of the Euphrates, or, perhaps,
in a wider sense, to the passage of the tribe through the land of
Chaldea.[AQ] For years the tribe travelled without dividing, from
pasture to pasture, over the vast land where dwelt the Canaanites, well
seen and even favored of them, into Egypt and out of it again, until the
quarrel occurred between Abraham's herdsmen and Lot's, (see Genesis,
Chap. XIII.), and the separation, when Lot chose the plain of the Jordan
and pitched his tent toward Sodom, while Abraham dwelt in the land of
Canaan as heretofore, with his family, servants and cattle, in the plain
of Mamre. It was while dwelling there, in friendship and close alliance
with the princes of the land, that one who had escaped from the battle
in the vale of Siddim, came to Abraham and told him how that among the
captives whom Khudur-Lagamar had taken from Sodom, was Lot, his
brother's son, with all his goods. Then Abraham armed his trained
servants, born in his own household, three hundred and eighteen, took
with him his friends, Mamre and his brothers, with their young men, and
starting in hot pursuit of the victorious army, which was now carelessly
marching home towards the desert with its long train of captives and
booty, overtook it near Damascus in the night, when his own small
numbers could not be detected, and produced such a panic by a sudden and
vigorous onslaught that he put it to flight, and not only rescued his
nephew Lot with his goods and women, but brought back all the captured
goods and the people too. And the King of Sodom came out to meet him on
his return, and thanked him, and wanted him to keep all the goods for
himself, only restoring the persons. Abraham consented that a proper
share of the rescued goods should be given to his friends and their
young men, but refused all presents offered to himself, with the haughty
words: "I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the
possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread, even to a
shoe-latchet, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou
shouldest say, I have made Abraham rich."
31. Khudur-Lagamar, of whom the spirited Biblical narrative gives us so
life-like a sketch, lived, according to the most probable calculations,
about 2200 B.C. Among the few vague forms whose blurred outlines loom
out of the twilight of those dim and doubtful ages, he is the second
with any flesh-and-blood reality about him, probably the first conqueror
of whom the world has any authentic record. For Egypt, the only country
which rivals in antiquity the primitive states of Mesopotamia, although
it had at this time already reached the height of its culture and
prosperity, was as yet confined by its rulers strictly to the valley of
the Nile, and had not entered on that career of foreign wars and
conquests which, some thousand years later, made it a terror from the
Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.
32. The Elamitic invasion was not a passing raid. It was a real
conquest, and established a heavy foreign rule in a highly prosperous
and flourishing land--a rule which endured, it would appear, about three
hundred years. That the people chafed under it, and were either gloomily
despondent or angrily rebellious as long as it lasted, there is plenty
of evidence in their later literature. It is even thought, and with
great moral probability, that the special branch of religious poetry
which has been called "Penitential Psalms" has arisen out of the
sufferings of this long period of national bondage and humiliation, and
if, as seems to be proved by some lately discovered interesting
fragments of texts, these psalms were sung centuries later in Assyrian
temples on mournful or very solemn public occasions, they must have
perpetuated the memory of the great national calamity that fell on the
mother-country as indelibly as the Hebrew psalms, of which they were the
models, have perpetuated that of King David's wanderings and Israel's
tribulations.
33. But there seems to have been one Semitic royal house which preserved
a certain independence and quietly gathered power against better days.
To do this they must have dissembled and done as much homage to the
victorious barbarians as would ensure their safety and serve as a blind
while they strengthened their home rule. This dynasty, destined to the
glorious task of restoring the country's independence and founding a new
national monarchy, was that of Tin-tir-ki, or Ka-dimirra--a name now
already translated into the Semitic BAB-ILU, ("the Gate of God"); they
reigned over the large and important district of KARDUNYASH, important
from its central position, and from the fact that it seems to have
belonged neither to Accad, nor to Shumir, but to have been politically
independent, since it is always mentioned by itself. Still, to the
Hebrews, Babylon lay in the land of Shinar, and it is strongly supposed
that the "Amraphel king of Shinar" who marched with Khudur-Lagamar, as
his ally, against the five kings of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, was no
other than a king of Babylon, one of whose names has been read AMARPAL,
while "Ariokh of Ellassar" was an Elamite, ERI-AKU, brother or cousin of
Khudur-Lagamar, and King of Larsam, where the conquerors had established
a powerful dynasty, closely allied by blood to the principal one, which
had made the venerable Ur its headquarters. This Amarpal, more
frequently mentioned under his other name of SIN-MUBALLIT, is thought to
have been the father of HAMMURABI, the deliverer of Chaldea and the
founder of the new empire.
34. The inscriptions which Hammurabi left are numerous, and afford us
ample means of judging of his greatness as warrior, statesman and
administrator. In his long reign of fifty-five years he had, indeed,
time to achieve much, but what he did achieve _was_ much even for so
long a reign. In what manner he drove out the foreigners we are not
told, but so much is clear that the decisive victory was that which he
gained over the Elamite king of Larsam. It was probably by expelling the
hated race by turns from every district they occupied, that Hammurabi
gathered the entire land into his own hands and was enabled to keep it
together and weld it into one united empire, including both Accad and
Shumir, with all their time-honored cities and sanctuaries, making his
own ancestral city, Babylon, the head and capital of them all. This king
was in every respect a great and wise ruler, for, after freeing and
uniting the country, he was very careful of its good and watchful of its
agricultural interests. Like all the other kings, he restored many
temples and built several new ones. But he also devoted much energy to
public works of a more generally useful kind. During the first part of
his reign inundations seem to have been frequent and disastrous,
possibly in consequence of the canals and waterworks having been
neglected under the oppressive foreign rule. The inscriptions speak of a
city having been destroyed "by a great flood," and mention "a great wall
along the Tigris"--probably an embankment, as having been built by
Hammurabi for protection against the river. But probably finding the
remedy inadequate, he undertook and completed one of the greatest public
works that have ever been carried out in any country: the excavation of
a gigantic canal, which he called by his own name, but which was
afterwards famous under that of "Royal Canal of Babylon." From this
canal innumerable branches carried the fertilizing waters through the
country. It was and remained the greatest work of the kind, and was,
fifteen centuries later, the wonder of the foreigners who visited
Babylon. Its constructor did not overrate the benefit he had conferred
when he wrote in an inscription which can scarcely be called boastful:
"I have caused to be dug the Nahr-Hammurabi, a benediction for the
people of Shumir and Accad. I have directed the waters of its branches
over the desert plains; I have caused them to run in the dry channels
and thus given unfailing waters to the people.... I have changed desert
plains into well-watered lands. I have given them fertility and plenty,
and made them the abode of happiness."