CHAPTER I--ANCIENT CHALDAEA

Produced by David Widger

HISTORY OF EGYPT CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA

By G. MASPERO,

Honorable Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford;

Member of the Institute and Professor at the College of France.

Edited by A. H. SAYCE,

Professor of Assyriology, Oxford.

Translated by M. L. McCLURE,

Member of the Committee of the Egypt Exploration Fund

CONTAINING OVER TWELVE HUNDRED COLORED PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Volume III.

LONDON

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

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[Illustration: 001.jpg El Hammam (The Bath)]

[Illustration: 002.jpg THE BANKS OF THE EUPHRATES AT IIILLAH]

Drawn by Boudier, after J. Dieulafoy. The vignette, which is

by Faucher-Gudin, is reproduced from an intaglio in the

Cabinet des Medailles.

CHAPTER I--ANCIENT CHALDAEA

The Creation, the Deluge, the history of the gods--The country, its

cities its inhabitants, its early dynasties.

[Illustration: 002a.jpg]

“In the time when nothing which was called heaven existed above, and when

nothing below had as yet received the name of earth,* Apsu, the Ocean,

who first was their father, and Chaos-Tiamat, who gave birth to them

all, mingled their waters in one, reeds which were not united, rushes

which bore no fruit.” ** Life germinated slowly in this inert mass, in

which the elements of our world lay still in confusion: when at length

it did spring up, it was but feebly, and at rare intervals, through

the hatching of divine couples devoid of personality and almost without

form. “In the time when the gods were not created, not one as yet, when

they had neither been called by their names, nor had their destinies

been assigned to them by fate, gods manifested themselves. Lakhmu and

Lakhamu were the first to appear, and waxed great for ages; then Anshar

and Kishar were produced after them. Days were added to days, and years

were heaped upon years: Anu, Inlil, and Ea were born in their turn, for

Anshar and Kishar had given them birth.” As the generations emanated one

from the other, their vitality increased, and the personality of each

became more clearly defined; the last generation included none but

beings of an original character and clearly marked individuality. Anu,

the sunlit sky by day, the starlit firmament by night; Inlil-Bel,

the king of the earth; Ea, the sovereign of the waters and the

personification of wisdom.*** Each of them duplicated himself, Anu into

Anat, Bel into Belit, Ea into Damkina, and united himself to the spouse

whom he had deduced from himself. Other divinities sprang from these

fruitful pairs, and the impulse once given, the world was rapidly

peopled by their descendants. Sin, Shamash, and Kamman, who presided

respectively over the moon, the sun, and the air, were all three of

equal rank; next came the lords of the planets, Ninib, Merodach, Nergal,

the warrior-goddess Ishtar, and Nebo; then a whole army of lesser

deities, who ranged themselves around Anu as round a supreme master.

Tiamat, finding her domain becoming more and more restricted owing

to the activity of the others, desired to raise battalion against

battalion, and set herself to create unceasingly; but her offspring,

made in her own image, appeared like those incongruous phantoms which

men see in dreams, and which are made up of members borrowed from a

score of different animals. They appeared in the form of bulls with

human heads, of horses with the snouts of dogs, of dogs with quadruple

bodies springing from a single fish-like tail. Some of them had the beak

of an eagle or a hawk; others, four wings and two faces; others, the

legs and horns of a goat; others, again, the hind quarters of a horse

and the whole body of a man. Tiamat furnished them with terrible

weapons, placed them under the command of her husband Kingu, and set out

to war against the gods.

* In Chaldaea, as in Egypt, nothing was supposed to have a

real existence until it had received its name: the sentence

quoted in the text means practically, that at that time

there was neither heaven nor earth.

** Apsu has been transliterated kiracruv [in Greek], by the

author an extract from whose works has been preserved by

Damascius. He gives a different version of the tradition,

according to which the amorphous goddess Mummu-Tiamat

consisted of two persons. The first, Tauthe, was the wife of

Apason; the second, Moymis, was the son of Apason and of

Tauthe. The last part of the sentence is very obscure in the

Assyrian text, and has been translated in a variety of

different ways. It seems to contain a comparison between

Apsu and Mummu-Tiamat on the one hand, and the reeds and

clumps of rushes so common in Chaldaea on the other; the two

divinities remain inert and unfruitful, like water-plants

which have not yet manifested their exuberant growth.

*** The first fragments of the Chaldaean account of the

Creation were discovered by G. Smith, who described them in

the _Daily Telegraph_ (of March 4, 1875), and published them

in the _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_,

and translated in his Chaldaean account of Genesis all the

fragments with which he was acquainted; other fragments have

since been collected, but unfortunately not enough to enable

us to entirely reconstitute the legend. It covered at least

six tablets, possibly more. Portions of it have been

translated after Smith, by Talbot, by Oppert, by Lenormant,

by Schrader, by Sayce, by Jensen, by Winckler, by Zimmern,

and lastly by Delitzsch. Since G. Smith wrote _The Chaldaean

Account_, a fragment of a different version has been

considered to be a part of the dogma of the Creation, as it

was put forth at Kutha.

[Illustration: 006.jpg ONE OF THE EAGLE-HEADED GENII.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from an Assyrian bas-relief from

Khorsabad

At first they knew not whom to send against her. Anshar despatched his

son Anu; but Anu was afraid, and made no attempt to oppose her. He sent

Ea; but Ea, like Anu, grew pale with fear, and did not venture to attack

her. Merodach, the son of Ea, was the only one who believed himself

strong enough to conquer her. The gods, summoned to a solemn banquet in

the palace of Anshar, unanimously chose him to be their champion, and

proclaimed him king. “Thou, thou art glorious among the great gods, thy

will is second to none, thy bidding is Anu; Marduk (Merodach), thou art

glorious among the great gods, thy will is second to none,* thy bidding

is Anu.** From this day, that which thou orderest may not be changed,

the power to raise or to abase shall be in thy hand, the word of thy

mouth shall endure, and thy commandment shall not meet with opposition.

None of the gods shall transgress thy law; but wheresoever a sanctuary

of the gods is decorated, the place where they shall give their oracles

shall be thy place.*** Marduk, it is thou who art our avenger! We bestow

on thee the attributes of a king; the whole of all that exists, thou

hast it, and everywhere thy word shall be exalted. Thy weapons shall not

be turned aside, they shall strike thy enemy. O master, who trusts in

thee, spare thou, his life; but the god who hath done evil, put out

his life like water. They clad their champion in a garment, and thus

addressed him: ‘Thy will, master, shall be that of the gods. Speak the

word, ‘Let it be so,’ it shall be so. Thus open thy mouth, this garment

shall disappear; say unto it, ‘Return,’ and the garment shall be there.”

He spoke with his lips, the garment disappeared; he said unto it,

“Return,” and the garment was restored.

* The Assyrian runs, “thy destiny is second to none.” This

refers not to the _destiny_ of the god himself, but to the

fate which he allots to others. I have substituted, here and

elsewhere, for the word “destiny,” the special meaning of

which would not have been understood, the word “will,”

which, though it does not exactly reproduce the Assyrian

expression, avoids the necessity for paraphrases or formulas

calculated to puzzle the modern reader.

** Or, to put it less concisely, “When thou commandest, it

is Anu himself who commands,” and the same blind obedience

must be paid to thee as to Anu.

*** The meaning is uncertain. The sentence seems to convey

that henceforth Merodach would be at home in all temples

that were constructed in honour of the other gods.

Merodach having been once convinced by this evidence that he had the

power of doing everything and of undoing everything at his pleasure, the

gods handed to him the sceptre, the throne, the crown, the insignia of

supreme rule, and greeted him with their acclamations: “Be King!--Go!

Cut short the life of Tiamat, and let the wind carry her blood to the

hidden extremities of the universe.” * He equipped himself carefully for

the struggle. “He made a bow and placed his mark upon it;” ** he had a

spear brought to him and fitted a point to it; the god lifted the lance,

brandished it in his right hand, then hung the bow and quiver at

his side. He placed a thunderbolt before him, filled his body with a

devouring flame, then made a net in which to catch the anarchic Tiamat;

he placed the four winds in such a way that she could not escape, south

and north, east and west, and with his own hand he brought them the net,

the gift of his father Anu. “He created the hurricane, the evil wind, the

storm, the tempest, the four winds, the seven winds, the waterspout, the

wind that is second to none; then he let loose the winds he had created,

all seven of them, in order to bewilder the anarchic Tiamat by charging

behind her. And the master of the waterspout raised his mighty weapon,

he mounted his chariot, a work without its equal, formidable; he

installed himself therein, tied the four reins to the side, and darted

forth, pitiless, torrent-like, swift.”

* Sayce was the first, I believe, to cite, in connection

with this mysterious order, the passage in which Berossus

tells how the gods created men from a little clay, moistened

with the blood of the god Belos. Here there seems to be a

fear lest the blood of Tiamat, mingling with the mud, should

produce a crop of monsters similar to those which the

goddess had already created; the blood, if carried to the

north, into the domain of the night, would there lose its

creative power, or the monsters who might spring from it

would at any rate remain strangers to the world of gods and

men.

** “Literally, he made his weapon known; “perhaps it would

be better to interpret it, “and he made it known that the

bow would henceforth be his distinctive weapon.”

[Illustration: 008.jpg BEL-MERODACH, ARMED WITH THE THUNDERBOLT, DOES

BATTLE WITH THE TUMULTUOUS TIAMAT.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from the bas-relief from Nimrud

preserved in the British Museum.

He passed through the serried ranks of the monsters and penetrated as

far as Tiamat, and provoked her with his cries. “‘Thou hast rebelled

against the sovereignty of the gods, thou hast plotted evil against

them, and hast desired that my fathers should taste of thy malevolence;

therefore thy host shall be reduced to slavery, thy weapons shall be

torn from thee. Come, then, thou and I must give battle to one another!’

Tiamat, when she heard him, flew into a fury, she became mad with rage;

then Tiamat howled, she raised herself savagely to her full height, and

planted her feet firmly on the earth. She pronounced an incantation,

recited her formula, and called to her aid the gods of the combat,

both them and their weapons. They drew near one to another, Tiamat and

Marduk, wisest of the gods: They flung themselves into the combat, they

met one another in the struggle. Then the master unfolded his net and

seized her; he caused the hurricane which waited behind him to pass

in front of him, and, when Tiamat opened her mouth to swallow him, he

thrust the hurricane into it so that the monster could not close her

jaws again. The mighty wind filled her paunch, her breast swelled, her

maw was split. Marduk gave a straight thrust with his lance, burst

open the paunch, pierced the interior, tore the breast, then bound the

monster and deprived her of life. When he had vanquished Tiamat, who had

been their leader, her army was disbanded, her host was scattered, and

the gods, her allies, who had marched beside her, trembled, were scared,

and fled.” He seized hold of them, and of Kingu their chief, and brought

them bound in chains before the throne of his father.

He had saved the gods from ruin, but this was the least part of

his task; he had still to sweep out of space the huge carcase which

encumbered it, and to separate its ill-assorted elements, and arrange

them afresh for the benefit of the conquerors. He returned to Tiamat

whom he had bound in chains. He placed his foot upon her, with his

unerring knife he cut into the upper part of her; then he cut the

blood-vessels, and caused the blood to be carried by the north wind to

the hidden places. And the gods saw his face, they rejoiced, they gave

themselves up to gladness, and sent him a present, a tribute of peace;

then he recovered his calm, he contemplated the corpse, raised it and

wrought marvels.

[Illustration: 010.jpg A KUFA LADEN WITH STONES, AND MANNED BY A CREW OF

FOUR MEN.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief at Koyunjik.

Behind the _kufa_ may be seen a fisherman seated astride on

an inflated skin with his fish-basket attached to his neck.

He split it in two as one does a fish for drying; then he hung up one of

the halves on high, which became the heavens; the other half he spread

out under his feet to form the earth, and made the universe such as

men have since known it. As in Egypt, the world was a kind of enclosed

chamber balanced on the bosom of the eternal waters.* The earth, which

forms the lower part of it, or floor, is something like an overturned

boat in appearance, and hollow underneath, not like one of the narrow

skiffs in use among other races, but a kufa, or kind of semicircular

boat such as the tribes of the Lower Euphrates have made use of from

earliest antiquity down to our own times.

* The description of the Egyptian world will be found in

vol. i. p. 21 of the present work. So far the only

systematic attempt to reconstruct the Chaldaean world, since

Lenormant, has been made by Jensen, who, after examining all

the elements which went to compose it, one after another,

sums up in a few pages, and reproduces in a plate, the

principal results of his inquiry. It will be seen at a

glance how much I have taken from his work, and in what

respects the drawing here reproduced differs from his.

[Illustration: 012.jpg THE WORLD AS CONCEIVED BY THE CHALDAEANS]

The earth rises gradually from the extremities to the centre, like a

great mountain, of which the snow-region, where the Euphrates finds its

source, approximately marks the summit. It was at first supposed to be

divided into seven zones, placed one on the top of the other along its

sides, like the stories of a temple; later on it was divided into four

“houses,” each of which, like the “houses” of Egypt, corresponded with

one of the four cardinal points, and was under the rule of particular

gods. Near the foot of the mountain, the edges of the so-called boat

curve abruptly outwards, and surround the earth with a continuous wall

of uniform height having no opening. The waters accumulated in the

hollow thus formed, as in a ditch; it was a narrow and mysterious sea,

an ocean stream, which no living man might cross save with permission

from on high, and whose waves rigorously separated the domain of men

from the regions reserved to the gods. The heavens rose above the

“mountain of the world” like a boldly formed dome, the circumference

of which rested on the top of the wall in the same way as the upper

structures of a house rest on its foundations. Merodach wrought it out

of a hard resisting metal which shone brilliantly during the day in

the rays of the sun, and at night appeared only as a dark blue surface,

strewn irregularly with luminous stars. He left it quite solid in the

southern regions, but tunnelled it in the north, by contriving within

it a huge cavern which communicated with external space by means of two

doors placed at the east and the west.* The sun came forth each morning

by the first of these doors; he mounted to the zenith, following the

internal base of the cupola from east to south; then he slowly descended

again to the western door, and re-entered the tunnel in the firmament,

where he spent the night,** Merodach regulated the course of the whole

universe on the movements of the sun. He instituted the year and divided

it into twelve months. To each month he assigned three decans, each of

whom exercised his influence successively for a period of ten days; he

then placed the procession of the days under the authority of Nibiru,

in order that none of them should wander from his track and be lost. “He

lighted the moon that she might rule the night, and made her a star of

night that she might indicate the days:*** ‘From month to month, without

ceasing, shape thy disk,**** and at the beginning of the month kindle

thyself in the evening, lighting up thy horns so as to make the heavens

distinguishable; on the seventh day, show to me thy disk; and on the

fifteenth, let thy two halves be full from month to month.’” He cleared

a path for the planets, and four of them he entrusted to four gods; the

fifth, our Jupiter, he reserved for himself, and appointed him to be

shepherd of this celestial flock; in order that all the gods might have

their image visible in the sky, he mapped out on the vault of heaven

groups of stars which he allotted to them, and which seemed to men like

representations of real or fabulous beings, fishes with the heads of

rams, lions, bulls, goats and scorpions.

* Jensen has made a collection of the texts which speak of

the interior of the heavens (Kirib shami) and of their

aspect. The expressions which have induced many

Assyriologists to conclude that the heavens were divided

into different parts subject to different gods may be

explained without necessarily having recourse to this

hypothesis; the “heaven of Ami,” for instance, is an

expression which merely affirms Anu’s sovereignty in the

heavens, and is only a more elegant way of designating the

heavens by the name of the god who rules them. The gates of

heaven are mentioned in the account of the Creation.

** It is generally admitted that the Chaldaeans believed that

the sun passed over the world in the daytime, and underneath

it during the night. The general resemblance of their theory

of the universe to the Egyptian theory leads me to believe

that they, no less than the Egyptians (cf. vol. i. pp. 24,

25, of the present work), for along time believed that the

sun and moon revolved round the earth in a horizontal plane.

*** This obscure phrase seems to be explained, if we

remember that the Chaldaean, like the Egyptian day, dated

from the rising of one moon to the rising of the following

moon; for instance, from six o’clock one evening to about

six o’clock the next evening. The moon, the star of night,

thus marks the appearance of each day and “indicates the

days.”

**** The word here translated by “disk” is literally the

royal cap, decorated with horns, “Agu,” which Sin, the moon-

god, wears on his head.

The heavens having been put in order,* he set about peopling the earth,

and the gods, who had so far passively and perhaps powerlessly watched

him at his work, at length made up their minds to assist him. They

covered the soil with verdure, and all collectively “made living beings

of many kinds. The cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the fields,

the reptiles of the fields, they fashioned them and made of them

creatures of life.” ** According to one legend, these first animals

had hardly left the hands of their creators, when, not being able to

withstand the glare of the light, they fell dead one after the other.

Then Merodach, seeing that the earth was again becoming desolate, and

that its fertility was of no use to any one, begged his father Ea to cut

off his head and mix clay with the blood which welled from the trunk,

then from this clay to fashion new beasts and men, to whom the virtues

of this divine blood would give the necessary strength to enable them

to resist the air and light. At first they led a somewhat wretched

existence, and “lived without rule after the manner of beasts. But,

in the first year, appeared a monster endowed with human reason named

Oannes, who rose from out of the Erythraean sea, at the point where it

borders Babylonia. He had the whole body of a fish, but above his fish’s

head he had another head which was that of a man, and human feet emerged

from beneath his fish’s tail; he had a human voice, and his image is

preserved to this day. He passed the day in the midst of men without

taking any food; he taught them the use of letters, sciences and arts of

all kinds, the rules for the founding of cities, and the construction of

temples, the principles of law and of surveying; he showed them how to

sow and reap; he gave them all that contributes to the comforts of life.

Since that time nothing excellent has been invented. At sunset this

monster Oannes plunged back into the sea, and remained all night beneath

the waves, for he was amphibious. He wrote a book on the origin of

things and of civilization, which he gave to men.” These are a few of

the fables which were current among the races of the Lower Euphrates

with regard to the first beginnings of the universe. That they possessed

many other legends of which we now know nothing is certain, but either

they have perished for ever, or the works in which they were recorded

still await discovery, it may be under the ruins of a palace or in the

cupboards of some museum.

* The arrangement of the heavens by Merodach is described at the end

of the fourth and beginning of the fifth tablets. The text, originally

somewhat obscure, is so mutilated in places that it is not always

possible to make out the sense with certainty.

** The creation of the animals and then of man is related on the seventh

tablet, and on a tablet the place of which, in the series, is still

undetermined. I have been obliged to translate the text rather freely,

so as to make the meaning clear to the modern reader.

[Illustration: 017.jpg A GOD-FISH]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from

Nimrud.

They do not seem to have conceived the possibility of an absolute

creation, by means of which the gods, or one of them, should have

evolved out of nothing all that exists: the creation was for them merely

the setting in motion of pre-existing elements, and the creator only an

organizer of the various materials floating in chaos. Popular fancy

in different towns varied the names of the creators and the methods

employed by them; as centuries passed on, a pile of vague, confused, and

contradictory traditions were amassed, no one of which was held to be

quite satisfactory, though all found partisans to support them. Just as

in Egypt, the theologians of local priesthoods endeavoured to classify

them and bring them into a kind of harmony: many they rejected and

others they recast in order to better reconcile their statements: they

arranged them in systems, from which they undertook to unravel, under

inspiration from on high, the true history of the universe. That which I

have tried to set forth above is very ancient, if, as is said to be the

case, it was in existence two or even three thousand years before our

era; but the versions of it which we possess were drawn up much later,

perhaps not till about the VIIth century B.C.* It had been accepted by

the inhabitants of Babylon because it flattered their religious vanity

by attributing the credit of having evolved order out of chaos to

Merodach, the protector of their city.** He it was whom the Assyrian

scribes had raised to a position of honour at the court of the last

kings of Nineveh:*** it was Merodach’s name which Berossus inscribed at

the beginning of his book, when he set about relating to the Greeks

the origin of the world according to the Chaldeans, and the dawn of

Babylonian civilization.

* The question as to whether the text was originally written

in Sumerian or in the Semitic tongue has frequently been

discussed; the form in which we have it at present is not

very old, and does not date much further back than the reign

of Assurbanipal, if it is not even contemporary with that

monarch. According to Sayce, the first version would date

back beyond the XXth century, to the reign of Khammurabi;

according to Jensen, beyond the XXXth century before our

era.

** Sayce thinks that the myth originated at Eridu, on the

shores of the Persian Gulf, and afterwards received its

present form at Babylon, where the local schools of theology

adapted it to the god Merodach.

*** The tablets in which it is preserved for us come partly

from the library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh, partly from

that of the temple of Nebo at Borsippa; these latter are

more recent than the others, and seem to have been written

during the period of the Persian supremacy.

Like the Egyptian civilization, it had had its birth between the sea and

the dry land on a low, marshy, alluvial soil, flooded annually by the

rivers which traverse it, devastated at long intervals by tidal waves of

extraordinary violence. The Euphrates and the Tigris cannot be regarded

as mysterious streams like the Nile, whose source so long defied

exploration that people were tempted to place it beyond the regions

inhabited by man. The former rise in Armenia, on the slopes of the

Niphates, one of the chains of mountains which lie between the Black Sea

and Mesopotamia, and the only range which at certain points reaches the

line of eternal snow. At first they flow parallel to one another, the

Euphrates from east to west as far as Malatiyeh, the Tigris from the

west towards the east in the direction of Assyria. Beyond Malatiyeh, the

Euphrates bends abruptly to the south-west, and makes its way across the

Taurus as though desirous of reaching the Mediterranean by the shortest

route, but it soon alters its intention, and makes for the south-east

in search of the Persian Gulf. The Tigris runs in an oblique direction

towards the south from the point where the mountains open out, and

gradually approaches the Euphrates. Near Bagdad the two rivers are only

a few leagues apart. However, they do not yet blend their waters; after

proceeding side by side for some twenty or thirty miles, they again

separate and only finally; unite at a point some eighty leagues lower

down. At the beginning of our geological period their course was not

such a long one. The sea then penetrated as far as lat. 33 deg., and was

only arrested by the last undulations of the great plateau of secondary

formation, which descend from the mountain group of Armenia: the two

rivers entered the sea at a distance of about twenty leagues apart,

falling into a gulf bounded on the east by the last spurs of the

mountains of Iran, on the west by the sandy heights which border the

margin of the Arabian Desert.* They filled up this gulf with their

alluvial deposit, aided by the Adhem, the Diyaleh, the Kerkha, the

Karun, and other rivers, which at the end of long independent courses

became tributaries of the Tigris. The present beds of the two rivers,

connected by numerous canals, at length meet near the village of Kornah

and form one single river, the Shatt-el-Arab, which carries their waters

to the sea. The mud with which they are charged is deposited when it

reaches their mouth, and accumulates rapidly; it is said that the coast

advances about a mile every seventy years.** In its upper reaches the

Euphrates collects a number of small affluents, the most important of

which, the Kara-Su, has often been confounded with it. Near the middle

of its course, the Sadjur on the right bank carries into it the waters

of the Taurus and the Amanus, on the left bank the Balikh and the Khabur

contribute those of the Karadja-Dagh; from the mouth of the Khabur to

the sea the Euphrates receives no further affluent. The Tigris is fed on

the left by the Bitlis-Khai, the two Zabs, the Adhem, and the Diyaleh.

The Euphrates is navigable from Sumeisat, the Tigris from Mossul, both

of them almost as soon as they leave the mountains. They are subject

to annual floods, which occur when the winter snow melts on the higher

ranges of Armenia. The Tigris, which rises from the southern slope of

the Niphates and has the more direct course, is the first to overflow

its banks, which it does at the beginning of March, and reaches its

greatest height about the 10th or 12th of May. The Euphrates rises in

the middle of March, and does not attain its highest level till the

close of May. From June onwards it falls with increasing rapidity; by

September all the water which has not been absorbed by the soil has

returned to the river-bed. The inundation does not possess the same

importance for the regions covered by it, that the rise of the Nile

does for Egypt. In fact, it does more harm than good, and the river-side

population have always worked hard to protect themselves from it and to

keep it away from their lands rather than facilitate its access to

them; they regard it as a sort of necessary evil to which they resign

themselves, while trying to minimize its effects.***

* This fact has been established by Ross and Lynch in two

articles in the _Journal of the Royal Geographical Society_,

vol. ix. pp. 446, 472. The Chaldaeans and Assyrians called

the gulf into which the two rivers debouched, Nar Marratum,

or “salt river,” a name which they extended to the Chaldaean

Sea, i.e. to the whole Persian Gulf.

** Loftus estimated, about the middle of the last century,

the progress of alluvial deposit at about one English mile

in every seventy years; H. Rawlinson considers that the

progress must have been more considerable in ancient times,

and estimates it at an English mile in thirty years. Kiepert

thinks, taking the above estimate as a basis, that in the

sixth century before our era the fore-shore came from about

ten to twelve German miles (47 to 56 English) higher up than

the present fore-shore. G. Rawlinson estimates on his part

that between the thirtieth and twentieth centuries B.C., a

period in which he places the establishment of the first

Chaldaean Empire, the fore-shore was more than 120 miles

above the mouth of Shatt-el-Arab, to the north of the

present village of Kornah.

*** Fr. Lenormant has energetically defended this hypothesis

in the majority of his works: it is set forth at some length

in his work on _La Langue primitive de la Chaldee_. Hommel,

on the other hand, maintains and strives to demonstrate

scientifically the relationship of the non-Semitic tongue

with Turkish.

The traveller Olivier noticed this, and writes as follows: “The land

there is rather less fertile [than in Egypt], because it does not

receive the alluvial deposits of the rivers with the same regularity as

that of the Delta. It is necessary to irrigate it in order to render it

productive, and to protect it sedulously from the inundations which are

too destructive in their action and too irregular.”

The first races to colonize this country of rivers, or at any rate

the first of which we can find traces, seem to have belonged to three

different types. The most important were the Semites, who spoke a

dialect akin to Aramaic, Hebrew, and Phoenician. It was for a long

time supposed that they came down from the north, and traces of their

occupation have been pointed out in Armenia in the vicinity of Ararat,

or halfway down the course of the Tigris, at the foot of the Gordysean

mountains. It has recently been suggested that we ought rather to seek

for their place of origin in Southern Arabia, and this view is gaining

ground among the learned. Side by side with these Semites, the monuments

give evidence of a race of ill-defined character, which some have

sought, without much success, to connect with the tribes of the Urall or

Altai; these people are for the present provisionally called Sumerians.*

They came, it would appear, from some northern country; they brought

with them from their original home a curious system of writing, which,

modified, transformed, and adopted by ten different nations, has

preserved for us all that we know in regard to the majority of the

empires which rose and fell in Western Asia before the Persian conquest.

Semite or Sumerian, it is still doubtful which preceded the other at the

mouths of the Euphrates. The Sumerians, who were for a time all-powerful

in the centuries before the dawn of history, had already mingled closely

with the Semites when we first hear of them. Their language gave way to

the Semitic, and tended gradually to become a language of ceremony and

ritual, which was at last learnt less for everyday use, than for the

drawing up of certain royal inscriptions, or for the interpretation of

very ancient texts of a legal or sacred character. Their religion became

assimilated to the religion, and their gods identified with the gods, of

the Semites. The process of fusion commenced at such an early date, that

nothing has really come down to us from the time when the two races were

strangers to each other. We are, therefore, unable to say with certainty

how much each borrowed from the other, what each gave, or relinquished

of its individual instincts and customs. We must take and judge them as

they come before us, as forming one single nation, imbued with the

same ideas, influenced in all their acts by the same civilization, and

possessed of such strongly marked characteristics that only in the last

days of their existence do we find any appreciable change. In the course

of the ages they had to submit to the invasions and domination of some

dozen different races, of whom some--Assyrians and Chaldaeans--were

descended from a Semitic stock, while the others--Elamites, Cossaaans,

Persians, Macedonians, and Parthians--either were not connected with

them by any tie of blood, or traced their origin in some distant manner

to the Sumerian branch. They got quickly rid of a portion of these

superfluous elements, and absorbed or assimilated the rest; like

the Egyptians, they seem to have been one of those races which, once

established, were incapable of ever undergoing modification, and

remained unchanged from one end of their existence to the other.

* The name _Accadian_ proposed by H. Rawlinson and by Hincks, and

adopted by Sayce, seems to have given way to _Sumerian_, the title put

forward by Oppert. The existence of the Sumerian or Sumero-Accadian

has been contested by Halevy in a number of noteworthy works. M. Halevy

wishes to recognize in the so-called Sumerian documents the Semitic

tongue of the ordinary inscriptions, but written in a priestly syllabic

character subject to certain rules; this would be practically a

_cryptogram_, or rather an _allogram_. M. Halevy won over Messrs. Guyard

and Pognon in France, Delitzsch and a part of the Delitzsch school

in Germany, to his view of the facts. The controversy, which has been

carried on on both sides with a somewhat unnecessary vehemence, still

rages; it has been simplified quite recently by Delitzcsh’s return to

the Sumerian theory. Without reviewing the arguments in detail, and

while doing full justice to the profound learning displayed by M.

Halevy, I feel forced to declare with Tiele that his criticisms “oblige

scholars to carefully reconsider all that has been taken as proved in

these matters, but that they do not warrant us in rejecting as untenable

the hypothesis, still a very probable one, according to which the

difference in the graphic systems corresponds to a real difference in.

idiom.”

Their country must have presented at the beginning very much the same

aspect of disorder and neglect which it offers to modern eyes. It was

a flat interminable moorland stretching away to the horizon, there to

begin again seemingly more limitless than ever, with, no rise or fall in

the ground to break the dull monotony; clumps of palm trees and slender

mimosas, intersected by lines of water gleaming in the distance, then

long patches of wormwood and mallow, endless vistas of burnt-up plain,

more palms and more mimosas, make up the picture of the land, whose

uniform soil consists of rich, stiff, heavy clay, split up by the heat

of the sun into a network of deep narrow fissures, from which the

shrubs and wild herbs shoot forth each year in spring-time. By an almost

imperceptible slope it falls gently away from north to south towards

the Persian Gulf, from east to west towards the Arabian plateau. The

Euphrates flows through it with unstable and changing course, between

shifting banks which it shapes and re-shapes from season to season.

[Illustration: 025.jpg GIGANTIC CHALDAEAN REEDS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief of the

palace of Nimrud.

The slightest impulse of its current encroaches on them, breaks through

them, and makes openings for streamlets, the majority of which are

clogged up and obliterated by the washing away of their margins, almost

as rapidly as they are formed. Others grow wider and longer, and,

sending out branches, are transformed into permanent canals or regular

rivers, navigable at certain seasons. They meet on the left bank

detached offshoots of the Tigris, and after wandering capriciously in

the space between the two rivers, at last rejoin their parent stream:

such are the Shatt-el-Hai and the Shatt-en-Nil. The overflowing waters

on the right bank, owing to the fall of the land, run towards the

low limestone hills which shut in the basin of the Euphrates in the

direction of the desert; they are arrested at the foot of these hills,

and are diverted on to the low-lying ground, where they lose themselves

in the morasses, or hollow out a series of lakes along its borders,

the largest of which, Bahr-i-Nedjif, is shut in on three sides by steep

cliffs, and rises or falls periodically with the floods. A broad canal,

which takes its origin in the direction of Hit at the beginning of the

alluvial plain, bears with it the overflow, and, skirting the lowest

terraces of the Arabian chain, runs almost parallel to the Euphrates. In

proportion as the canal proceeds southward the ground sinks still lower,

and becomes saturated with the overflowing waters, until, the banks

gradually disappearing, the whole neighbourhood is converted into a

morass. The Euphrates and its branches do not at all times succeed in

reaching the sea: they are lost for the most part in vast lagoons to

which the tide comes up, and in its ebb bears their waters away with

it. Reeds grow there luxuriantly in enormous beds, and reach sometimes

a height of from thirteen to sixteen feet; banks of black and putrid mud

emerge amidst the green growth, and give off deadly emanations. Winter

is scarcely felt here: snow is unknown, hoar-frost is rarely seen,

but sometimes in the morning a thin film of ice covers the marshes, to

disappear under the first rays of the sun.*

* Loftus attributes the lowering of the temperature during

the winter to the wind blowing over a soil impregnated with

saltpetre. “We were,” he says, “in a kind of immense

freezing chamber.”

[Illustration: 027.jpg THE MARSHES ABOUT THE CONFLUENCE OF THE KERKHA

AND TIGRIS.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by J. Dieulafoy.

For six weeks in November and December there is much rain: after this

period there are only occasional showers, occurring at longer and longer

intervals until May, when they entirely cease, and the summer sets in,

to last until the following November. There are almost six continuous

months of depressing and moist heat, which overcomes both men and

animals and makes them incapable of any constant effort.* Sometimes

a south or east wind suddenly arises, and bearing with it across the

fields and canals whirlwinds of sand, burns up in its passage the little

verdure which the sun had spared. Swarms of locusts follow in its train,

and complete the work of devastation. A sound as of distant rain is at

first heard, increasing in intensity as the creatures approach. Soon

their thickly concentrated battalions fill the heavens on all sides,

flying with slow and uniform motion at a great height. They at length

alight, cover everything, devour everything, and, propagating their

species, die within a few days: nothing, not a blade of vegetation,

remains on the region where they alighted.

* Loftus says that he himself had witnessed in the

neighbourhood of Bagdad during the daytime birds perched on

the palm trees in an exhausted condition, and panting with

open beaks. The inhabitants of Bagdad during the summer pass

their nights on the housetops, and the hours of day in

passages within, expressly constructed to protect them from

the heat.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, the country was not lacking in

resources. The soil was almost as fertile as the loam of Egypt, and,

like the latter, rewarded a hundredfold the labour of the inhabitants.*

Among the wild herbage which spreads over the country in the spring,

and clothes it for a brief season with flowers, it was found that some

plants, with a little culture, could be rendered useful to men and

beasts. There were ten or twelve different species of pulse to choose

from--beans, ‘lentils, chick-peas, vetches, kidney beans, onions,

cucumbers, egg-plants, “gombo,” and pumpkins. From the seed of the

sesame an oil was expressed which served for food, while the castor-oil

plant furnished that required for lighting. The safflower and henna

supplied the women with dyes for the stuffs which they manufactured from

hemp and flax. Aquatic plants were more numerous than on the banks

of the Nile, but they did not occupy such an important place among

food-stuffs. The “lily bread” of the Pharaohs would have seemed meagre

fare to people accustomed from early times to wheaten bread. Wheat and

barley are considered to be indigenous on the plains of the Euphrates;

it was supposed to be here that they were first cultivated in Western

Asia, and that they spread from hence to Syria, Egypt, and the whole

of Europe.** “The soil there is so favourable to the growth of cereals,

that it yields usually two hundredfold, and in places of exceptional

fertility three hundredfold. The leaves of the wheat and barley have a

width of four digits. As for the millet and sesame, which in altitude

are as great as trees, I will not state their height, although I know

it from experience, being convinced that those who have not lived in

Babylonia would regard my statement with incredulity.” Herodotus in his

enthusiasm exaggerated the matter, or perhaps, as a general rule, he

selected as examples the exceptional instances which had been mentioned

to him: at present wheat and barley give a yield to the husbandman of

some thirty or forty fold.

* Olivier, who was a physician and naturalist, and had

visited Egypt as well as Mesopotamia, thought that Babylonia

was somewhat less fertile than Egypt. Loftus, who was

neither, and had not visited Egypt, declares, on the

contrary, that the banks of the Euphrates are no less

productive than those of the Nile.

** Native traditions collected by Berossus confirm this, and

the testimony of Olivier is usually cited as falling in with

that of the Chaldaean writer. Olivier is considered, indeed,

to have discovered wild cereals in Mesopotamia. Pie only

says, however, that on the banks of the Euphrates above Anah

he had met with “wheat, barley, and spelt in a kind of

ravine;” from the context it clearly follows that these were

plants which had reverted to a wild state--instances of

which have been observed several times in Mesopotamia. A. de

Oandolle admitted the Mesopotamian origin of the various

species of wheat and barley.

[Illustration: 030.jpg THE GATHERING OF THE SPATHES OF THE MALE PALM

TREE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a cylinder in the Museum at the

Hague. The original measures almost an inch in height.

“The date palm meets all the other needs of the population; they make

from it a kind of bread, wine, vinegar, honey, cakes, and numerous kinds

of stuffs; the smiths use the stones of its fruit for charcoal; these

same stones, broken and macerated, are given as a fattening food to

cattle and sheep.” Such a useful tree was tended with a loving care,

the vicissitudes in its growth were observed, and its reproduction was

facilitated by the process of shaking the flowers of the male palm over

those of the female: the gods themselves had taught this artifice to

men, and they were frequently represented with a bunch of flowers in

their right hand, in the attitude assumed by a peasant in fertilizing

a palm tree. Fruit trees were everywhere mingled with ornamental

trees--the fig, apple, almond, walnut, apricot, pistachio, vine, with

the plane tree, cypress, tamarisk, and acacia; in the prosperous period

of the country the plain of the Euphrates was a great orchard which

extended uninterruptedly from the plateau of Mesopotamia to the shores

of the Persian Gulf.

The flora would not have been so abundant if the fauna had been

sufficient for the supply of a large population. A considerable

proportion of the tribes on the Lower Euphrates lived for a long time

on fish only. They consumed them either fresh, salted, or smoked: they

dried them in the sun, crushed them in a mortar, strained the pulp

through linen, and worked it up into a kind of bread or into cakes. The

barbel and carp attained a great size in these sluggish waters, and if

the Chalaeans, like the Arabs who have succeeded them in these regions,

clearly preferred these fish above others, they did not despise at the

same time such less delicate species as the eel, murena, silurus, and

even that singular gurnard whose habits are an object of wonder to our

naturalists. This fish spends its existence usually in the water, but

a life in the open air has no terrors for it: it leaps out on the bank,

climbs trees without much difficulty, finds a congenial habitat on the

banks of mud exposed by the falling tide, and basks there in the sun,

prepared to vanish in the ooze in the twinkling of an eye if some

approaching bird should catch sight of it. Pelicans, herons, cranes,

storks, cormorants, hundreds of varieties of seagulls, ducks, swans,

wild geese, secure in the possession of an inexhaustible supply of food,

sport and prosper among the reeds. The ostrich, greater bustard, the

common and red-legged partridge and quail, find their habitat on the

borders of the desert; while the thrush, blackbird, ortolan, pigeon,

and turtle-dove abound on every side, in spite of daily onslaughts from

eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey.

[Illustration: 032.jpg A WINGED GENIUS HOLDING IN HIS HAND THE SPATHE OF

THE MALE DATE-PALM.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Nimrud, in

the British Museum.

[Illustration: 033.jpg THE HEAVILY MANED LION WOUNDED BY AN ARROW AND

VOMITING BLOOD.]

Snakes are found here and there, but they are for the most part of

innocuous species: three poisonous varieties only are known, and their

bite does not produce such terrible consequences as that of the horned

viper or Egyptian uraeus. There are two kinds of lion--one without mane,

and the other hooded, with a heavy mass of black and tangled hair: the

proper signification of the old Chaldaean name was “the great ‘dog,” and

they have, indeed, a greater resemblance to large dogs than to the

red lions of Africa.* They fly at the approach of man; they betake

themselves in the daytime to retreats among the marshes or in the

thickets which border the rivers, sallying forth at night, like

the jackal, to scour the country. Driven to bay, they turn upon the

assailant and fight desperately. The Chaldaean kings, like the Pharaohs,

did not shrink from entering into a close conflict with them,

and boasted of having rendered a service to their subjects by the

destruction of many of these beasts.

* The Sumerian name of the lion is ur-malch “the great dog.” The best

description of the first-mentioned species is still that of Olivier, who

saw in the house oL the Pasha of Bagdad five of them in captivity; cf.

Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, p. 487. Father Scheil tells me the lions

have disappeared completely since the last twenty years.

[Illustration: 034.jpg THE URUS IN ACT OF CHARGING]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from

Nimrud (Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, 1st series, pi. 11).

[Illustration: 035.jpg a herd of onagers pursued by dogs and wounded by

arrows.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the British

Museum.

The elephant seems to have roamed for some time over the steppes of

the middle Euphrates;* there is no indication of its presence after the

XIIIth century before our era, and from that time forward it was merely

an object of curiosity brought at great expense from distant countries.

This is not the only instance of animals which have disappeared in

the course of centuries; the rulers of Nineveh were so addicted to the

pursuit of the urus that they ended by exterminating it. Several sorts

of panthers and smaller felidae had their lairs in the thickets of

Mesopotamia. The wild ass and onager roamed in small herds between the

Balikh and the Tigris. Attempts were made, it would seem, at a very

early period to tame them and make use of them to draw chariots; but

this attempt either did not succeed at all, or issued in such uncertain

results, that it was given up as soon as other less refractory animals

were made the subjects of successful experiment.

* The existence of the elephant in Mesopotamia and Northern

Syria is well established by the Egyptian inscription of

Amenemhabi in the XVth century before our era.

[Illustration: 036.jpg THE CHIEF DOMESTIC ANIMALS OP THE REGIONS OF THE

EUPHRATES.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from

Kouyunjik.

The wild boar, and his relative, the domestic hog, inhabited the

morasses. Assyrian sculptors amused themselves sometimes by representing

long gaunt sows making their way through the cane-brakes, followed by

their interminable offspring. The hog remained here, as in Egypt, in

a semi-tamed condition, and the people were possessed of only a small

number of domesticated animals besides the dog--namely, the ass, ox,

goat, and sheep; the horse and camel were at first unknown, and were

introduced at a later period.*

[Illustration: 037.jpg THE SOW AND HER LITTER MAKING THEIR WAY THROUGH A

BED OF REEDS.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Kouyunjik.

* The horse is denoted in the Assyrian texts by a group of

signs which mean “the ass of the East,” and the camel by

other signs in which the character for “ass” also appears.

The methods of rendering these two names show that the

subjects of them were unknown in the earliest times; the

epoch of their introduction is uncertain. A chariot drawn by

horses appears on the “Stele of the Vultures.” Camels are

mentioned among the booty obtained from the Bedouin of the

desert.

We know nothing of the efforts which the first inhabitants--Sumerians

and Semites--had to make in order to control the waters and to bring the

land under culture: the most ancient monuments exhibit them as already

possessors of the soil, and in a forward state of civilization.* Their

chief cities were divided into two groups: one in the south, in the

neighbourhood of the sea; the other in a northern direction, in the

region where the Euphrates and Tigris are separated from each other by

merely a narrow strip of land. The southern group consisted of seven, of

which Eridu lay nearest to the coast. This town stood on the left bank

of the Euphrates, at a point which is now called Abu-Shahrein. A little

to the west, on the opposite bank, but at some distance from the stream,

the mound of Mugheir marks the site of Uru, the most important, if not

the oldest, of the southern cities. Lagash occupied the site of the

modern Telloh to the north of Eridu, not far from the Shatt-el-Hai;

Nisin and Mar, Larsam and Uruk, occupied positions at short distances

from each other on the marshy ground which extends between the Euphrates

and the Shatt-en-Nil. The inscriptions mention here and there other

less important places, of which the ruins have not yet been

discovered--Zirlab and Shurippak, places of embarkation at the mouth

of the Euphrates for the passage of the Persian Gulf; and the island of

Dilmun, situated some forty leagues to the south in the centre of the

Salt Sea,--“Nar-Marratum.” The northern group comprised Nipur, the

“incomparable;” Barsip, on the branch which flows parallel to the

Euphrates and falls into the Bahr-i-Nedjif; Babylon, the “gate of the

god,” the “residence of life,” the only metropolis of the Euphrates

region of which posterity never lost a reminiscence; Kishu, Kuta,

Agade;** and lastly the two Sipparas, that of Shamash and that of

Anunit. The earliest Chaldaean civilization was confined almost entirely

to the two banks of the Lower Euphrates: except at its northern

boundary, it did not reach the Tigris, and did not cross this river.

Separated from the rest of the world--on the east by the marshes which

border the river in its lower course, on the north by the badly watered

and sparsely inhabited table-land of Mesopotamia, on the west by the

Arabian desert--it was able to develop its civilization, as Egypt had

done, in an isolated area, and to follow out its destiny in peace. The

only point from which it might anticipate serious danger was on the

east, whence the Kashshi and the Elamites, organized into military

states, incessantly harassed it year after year by their attacks. The

Kashshi were scarcely better than half-civilized mountain hordes, but

the Elamites were advanced in civilization, and their capital, Susa,

vied with the richest cities of the Euphrates, Uru and Babylon, in

antiquity and magnificence.

* For an ideal picture of what may have been the beginnings

of that civilization, see Delitzsch, Die Entstehung des

altesten Schriflssystems, p. 214, et seq. I will not enter

into the question as to whether it did or did not come by

sea to the mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris. The legend of

the fish-god Oannes (Berossus, frag. 1), which seems to

conceal some indication on the subject, is merely a

mythological tradition, from which it would be wrong to

deduce historical conclusions.

** Agade, or Agane, has been identified with one of the two

towns of which Sippara is made up, more especially with that

which was called Anunit Sippara; the reading Agadi, Agacle,

was especially assumed to lead to its identification with

the Accad of _Genesis x. 10_, and with the Akkad of native

tradition. This opinion has been generally abandoned by

Assyriologists, and Agane has not yet found a site. Was it

only a name for Babylon?

[Illustration: 040.jpg MAP OF CHALDAEA]

There was nothing serious to fear from the Guti, on the branch of the

Tigris to the north-east, or from the Shuti to the north of these; they

were merely marauding tribes, and, however troublesome they might be

to their neighbours in their devastating incursions, they could not

compromise the existence of the country, or bring it into subjection.

It would appear that the Chaldseans had already begun to encroach upon

these tribes and to establish colonies among them--El-Ashshur on the

banks of the Tigris, Harran on the furthest point of the Mesopotamian

plain, towards the sources of the Balikh. Beyond these were vague and

unknown regions--Tidanum, Martu, the sea of the setting sun, the vast

territories of Milukhkha and Magan.* Egypt, from the time they were

acquainted with its existence, was a semi-fabulous country at the ends

of the earth.

* The question concerning Milukhkha and Magan has exercised

Assyriologists for twenty years. The prevailing opinion

appears to be that which identifies Magan with the Sinaitic

Peninsula, and Milukhkha with the country to the north of

Magan as far as the Wady Arish and the Mediterranean; others

maintain, not the theory of Delitzsch, according to whom

Magan and Milukhkha are synonyms for Shumir and Akkad, and

consequently two of the great divisions of Babylonia, but an

analogous hypothesis, in which they are regarded as

districts to the west of the Euphrates, either in Chaldaean

regions or on the margin of the desert, or even in the

desert itself towards the Sinaitic Peninsula. What we know

of the texts induces me, in common with H. Rawlinson, to

place these countries on the shores of the Persian Gulf,

between the mouth of the Euphrates and the Bahrein islands;

possibly the Makse and the Melangitso of classical

historians and geographers were the descendants of the

people of Magan (Makan) and Milukhkha (Melugga), who had

been driven towards the entrance to the Persian Gulf by some

such event as the increase in these regions of the Kashdi

(Chaldaeans). The names, emigrated to the western parts of

Arabia and to the Sinaitic Peninsula in after-times, as the

name of India passed to America in the XVIth century of our

era.

How long did it take to bring this people out of savagery, and to

build up so many flourishing cities? The learned did not readily resign

themselves to a confession of ignorance on the subject. As they

had depicted the primordial chaos, the birth of the gods, and their

struggles over the creation, so they related unhesitatingly everything

which had happened since the creation of mankind, and they laid claim to

being able to calculate the number of centuries which lay between their

own day and the origin of things. The tradition to which most credence

was attached in the Greek period at Babylon, that which has been

preserved for us in the histories of Berossue, asserts that there was

a somewhat long interval between the manifestation of Oannes and

the foundation of a dynasty. The first king was Aloros of Babylon, a

Chaldaean of whom nothing is related except that he was chosen by the

divinity himself to be a shepherd of the people. He reigned for ten

sari, amounting in all to 36,000 years; for the saros is 3600 years, the

ner 600 years, and the soss 60 years.

[Illustration: 041.jpg TWO FISH-LIKE DEITIES OF THE CHALDAEANS.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an intaglio in the British Museum.

After the death of Aloros, his son Alaparos ruled for three sari, after

which Amillaros, of the city of Pantibibla, reigned thirteen sari. It

was under him that there issued from the Bed Sea a second Annedotos,

resembling Oannes in his semi-divine shape, half man and half fish.

After him Ammenon, also from Pantibibla, a Chaldaean, ruled for a term

of twelve sari; under him, they say, the mysterious Oannes appeared.

Afterwards Amelagaros of Pantibibla governed for eighteen sari; then

Davos, the shepherd from Pantibibla, reigned ten sari: under him there

issued from the Red Sea a fourth Annedotos, who had a form similar to

the others, being made up of man and fish. After him Bvedoranchos of

Pantibibla reigned for eighteen sari; in his time there issued yet

another monster, named Anodaphos, from the sea. These various monsters

developed carefully and in detail that which Oannes had set forth in a

brief way. Then Amempsinos of Larancha, a Chalaean, reigned ten sari; and

Obartes, also a Chaldaean, of Larancha, eight sari. Finally, on the death

of Obartes, his son Xisuthros held the sceptre for eighteen sari. It

was under him that the great deluge took place. Thus ten kings are to

be reckoned in all, and the duration of their combined reigns amounts

to one hundred and twenty sari. From the beginning of the world to the

Deluge they reckoned 691,200 years, of which 259,200 had passed

before the coming of Aloros, and the remaining 432,000 were generously

distributed between this prince and his immediate successors: the Greek

and Latin writers had certainly a fine occasion for amusement over these

fabulous numbers of years which the Chaldaeans assigned to the lives and

reigns of their first kings.

Men in the mean time became wicked; they lost the habit of offering

sacrifices to the gods, and the gods, justly indignant at this

negligence, resolved to be avenged.* Now, Shamashnapishtim I was

reigning at this time in Shurippak, the “town of the ship:” he and

all his family were saved, and he related afterwards to one of his

descendants how Ea had snatched him from the disaster which fell upon

his people.** “Shurippak, the city which thou thyself knowest, is

situated on the bank of the Euphrates; it was already an ancient town

when the hearts of the gods who resided in it impelled them to bring the

deluge upon it--the great gods as many as they are; their father Anu,

their counsellor Bel the warrior, their throne-bearer Ninib, their

prince Innugi. The master of wisdom, Ea, took his seat with them,***

and, moved with pity, was anxious to warn Shamashnapishtim, his servant,

of the peril which threatened him;” but it was a very serious affair to

betray to a mortal a secret of heaven, and as he did not venture to do

so in a direct manner, his inventive mind suggested to him an artifice.

* The account of Bcrossus implies this as a cause of the

Deluge, since he mentions the injunction imposed upon the

survivors by a mysterious voice to be henceforward

respectful towards the gods, [Greek word]. The Chalaean

account considers the Deluge to have been sent as a

punishment upon men for their sins against the gods, since

it represents towards the end (cf. p. 52 of this History) Ea

as reproaching Bel for having confounded the innocent and

the guilty in one punishment.

** The name of this individual has been read in various

ways: Shamashnapishtim, “sun of life,” Sitnapishtim, “the

saved,” and Pirnapishtim. In one passage at least we find,

in place of Shamashnapishtim, the name or epithet of

Aclrakhasis, or by inversion Khasisadra, which appears to

signify “the very shrewd,” and is explained by the skill

with which he interpreted the oracle of Ea. Khasisadra is

most probably the form which the Greeks have transcribed by

Xisuthros, Sisuthros, Sisithes.

*** The account of the Deluge covers the eleventh tablet of

the poem of Gilgames. The hero, threatened with death,

proceeds to rejoin his ancestor Shamashnapishtim to demand

from him the secret of immortality, and the latter tells him

the manner in which he escaped from the waters: he had saved

his life only at the expense of the destruction of men. The

text of it was published by Smith and by Haupt, fragment by

fragment, and then restored consecutively. The studies of

which it is the object would make a complete library. The

principal translations are those of Smith, of Oppert, of

Lenor-mant, of Haupt, of Jensen, of A. Jeremias, of

Sauveplane, and of Zimmern.

[Illustration: 045.jpg Page with ONE OF THE TABLETS OF THE DELUGE

SERIES.]

Facsimile by Faucher-Gudin, from the photograph published by

G. Smith, Chaldaean Account of the Deluge from terra-cotta

tablets found at Nineveh.

He confided to a hedge of reeds the resolution that had been adopted:*

“Hedge, hedge, wall, wall! Hearken, hedge, and understand well, wall!

Man of Shurippak, son of Ubaratutu, construct a wooden house, build a

ship, abandon thy goods, seek life; throw away thy possessions, save thy

life, and place in the vessel all the seed of life. The ship which thou

shalt build, let its proportions be exactly measured, let its dimensions

and shape be well arranged, then launch it in the sea.” Shamashnapishtim

heard the address to the field of reeds, or perhaps the reeds repeated

it to him. “I understood it, and I said to my master Ea ‘The command,

O my master, which thou hast thus enunciated, I myself will respect it,

and I will execute it: but what shall I say to the town, the people and

the elders?’” Ea opened his mouth and spake; he said to his servant:

“Answer thus and say to them: ‘Because Bel hates me, I will no longer

dwell in your town, and upon the land of Bel I will no longer lay my

head, but I will go upon the sea, and will dwell with Ea my master. Now

Bel will make rain to fall upon you, upon the swarm of birds and the

multitude of fishes, upon all the animals of the field, and upon all

the crops; but Ea will give you a sign: the god who rules the rain will

cause to fall upon you, on a certain evening, an abundant rain. When the

dawn of the next day appears, the deluge will begin, which will cover

the earth and drown all living things.’” Shamashnapishtim repeated the

warning to the people, but the people refused to believe it, and turned

him into ridicule. The work went rapidly forward: the hull was a hundred

and forty cubits long, the deck one hundred and forty broad; all the

joints were caulked with pitch and bitumen. A solemn festival was

observed at its completion, and the embarkation began.** “All that I

possessed I filled the ship with it all that I had of silver, I filled

it with it; all that I had of gold I filled it with it, all that I had

of the seed of life of every kind I filled it with it; I caused all

my family and my servants to go up into it; beasts of the field, wild

beasts of the field, I caused them to go up all together. Shamash had

given me a sign: ‘When the god who rules the rain, in the evening shall

cause an abundant rain to fall, enter into the ship and close thy door.’

The sign was revealed: the god who rules the rain caused to fall one

night an abundant rain. The day, I feared its dawning; I feared to see

the daylight; I entered into the ship and I shut the door; that the ship

might be guided, I handed over to Buzur-Bel, the pilot, the great ark

and its fortunes.”

* The sense of this passage is far from being certain; I

have followed the interpretation proposed, with some

variations, by Pinches, by Haupt, and by Jensen. The

stratagem at once recalls the history of King Midas, and the

talking reeds which knew the secret of his ass’s ears. In

the version of Berossus, it is Kronos who plays the part

here assigned to Ea in regard to Xisuthros.

** The text is mutilated, and does not furnish enough

information to follow in every detail the building of the

ark. From what we can understand, the vessel of

Shamashnapishtim was a kind of immense kelek, decked, but

without masts or rigging of any sort. The text identifies

the festival celebrated by the hero before the embarkation

with the festival Akitu of Merodach, at Babylon, during

which “Nebo, the powerful son, sailed from Borsippa to

Babylon in the bark of the river Asmu, of beauty.” The

embarkation of Nebo and his voyage on the stream had

probably inspired the information according to which the

embarkation of Shamashnapishtim was made the occasion of a

festival Akitu, celebrated at Shurippak; the time of the

Babylonian festival was probably thought to coincide with

the anniversary of the Deluge.

“As soon as the morning became clear, a black cloud arose from the

foundations of heaven. Bamman growled in its bosom; Nebo and Marduk

ran before it--ran like two throne-bearers over hill and dale. Nera

the Great tore up the stake to which the ark was moored. Ninib came up

quickly; he began the attack; the Anunnaki raised their torches and made

the earth to tremble at their brilliancy; the tempest of Ramman scaled

the heaven, changed all the light to darkness, flooded the earth like a

lake.* For a whole day the hurricane raged, and blew violently over the

mountains and over the country; the tempest rushed upon men like the

shock of an army, brother no longer beheld brother, men recognized each

other no more.

* The progress of the tempest is described as the attack of

the gods, who had resolved on the destruction of men. Ramman

is the thunder which growls in the cloud; Nebo, Merodach,

Nera the Great (Nergal), and Ninib, denote the different

phases of the hurricane from the moment when the wind gets

up until it is at its height; the Anunnaki represent the

lightning which flashes carelessly across the heaven.

[Illustration: 048.jpg SHAMASHNAPISHTIM SHUT INTO THE ARK.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chalaean intaglio.

In heaven, the gods were afraid of the deluge;* they betook themselves

to flight, they clambered to the firmament of Anu; the gods, howling

like dogs, cowered upon the parapet.** Ishtar wailed like a woman

in travail; she cried out, “the lady of life, the goddess with the

beautiful voice: ‘The past returns to clay, because I have prophesied

evil before the gods! Prophesying evil before the gods, I have

counselled the attack to bring my men to nothing; and these to whom I

myself have given birth, where are they? Like the spawn of fish they

encumber the sea! ‘The gods wept with her over the affair of the

Anunnaki;’ the gods, in the place where they sat weeping, their lips

were closed.” It was not pity only which made their tears to flow:

there were mixed up with it feelings of regret and fears for the future.

Mankind once destroyed, who would then make the accustomed offerings?

The inconsiderate anger of Bel, while punishing the impiety of their

creatures, had inflicted injury upon themselves. “Six days and nights

the wind continued, the deluge and the tempest raged. The seventh day at

daybreak the storm abated; the deluge, which had carried on warfare like

an army, ceased, the sea became calm and the hurricane disappeared, the

deluge ceased. I surveyed the sea with my eyes, raising my voice; but

all mankind had returned to clay, neither fields nor woods could be

distinguished.*** I opened the hatchway and the light fell upon my face;

I sank down, I cowered, I wept, and my tears ran down my cheeks when I

beheld the world all terror and all sea. At the end of twelve days, a

point of land stood up from the waters, the ship touched the land of

Nisir:**** the mountain of Nisir stopped the ship and permitted it to

float no longer. One day, two days, the mountain of Nisir stopped the

ship and permitted it to float no longer.

* The gods enumerated above alone took part in the drama of

the Deluge: they were the confederates and emissaries of

Bel. The others were present as spectators of the disaster,

and were terrified.

** The upper part of the mountain wall is here referred to,

upon which the heaven is supported. There was a narrow space

between the escarpment and the place upon which the vault of

the firmament rested: the Babylonian poet represented the

gods as crowded like a pack of hounds upon this parapet, and

beholding from it the outburst of the tempest and the

waters.

***The translation is uncertain: the text refers to a legend

which has not come down to us, in which Ishtar is related to

have counselled the destruction of men.

**** The Anunnaki represent here the evil genii whom the

gods that produced the deluge had let loose, and whom

Ramman, Nebo, Merodach, Nergal, and Ninib, all the followers

of Bel, had led to the attack upon men: the other deities

shared the fears and grief of Ishtar in regard to the

ravages which these Anunnaki had brought about (cf. below,

pp. 141-143 of this History).

Three days, four days, the mountain of Nisir* stopped the ship and

permitted it to float no longer. Five days, six days, the mountain of

Nisir stopped the ship and permitted it to float no longer. The seventh

day, at dawn, I took out a dove and let it go: the dove went, turned

about, and as there was no place to alight upon, came back. I took out a

swallow and let it go: the swallow went, turned about, and as there was

no place to alight upon, came back. I took out a raven and let it go:

the raven went, and saw that the water had abated, and came near the

ship flapping its wings, croaking, and returned no more.”

Shamashnapishtim escaped from the deluge, but he did not know whether

the divine wrath was appeased, or what would be done with him when it

became known that he still lived.** He resolved to conciliate the

gods by expiatory ceremonies. “I sent forth the inhabitants of the ark

towards the four winds, I made an offering, I poured out a propitiatory

libation on the summit of the mountain. I set up seven and seven

vessels, and I placed there some sweet-smelling rushes, some cedar-wood,

and storax.” He thereupon re-entered the ship to await there the effect

of his sacrifice.

* I have adopted, in the translation of this difficult

passage, the meaning suggested by Haupt, according to which

it ought to be translated, “The field makes nothing more

than one with the mountain;” that is to say, “mountains and

fields are no longer distinguishable one from another.” I

have merely substituted for mountain the version wood, piece

of land covered with trees, which Jensen has suggested.

** The mountain of Nisir is replaced in the version of

Berossus by the Gordyaean mountains of classical geography; a

passage of Assur-nazir-pal informs us that it was situated

between the Tigris and the Great Zab, according to Delitzsch

between 35 deg. and 36 deg. N. latitude. The Assyrian-speaking

people interpreted the name as _Salvation_, and a play upon

words probably decided the placing upon its slopes the

locality where those _saved_ from the deluge landed on the

abating of the waters. Fr. Lenormant proposes to identify it

with the peak Rowandiz.

The gods, who no longer hoped for such a wind-fall, accepted the

sacrifice with a wondering joy. “The gods sniffed up the odour, the gods

sniffed up the excellent odour, the gods gathered like flies above the

offering. “When Ishtar, the mistress of life, came in her turn, she held

up the great amulet which Anu had made for her.” * She was still furious

against those who had determined upon the destruction of mankind,

especially against Bel: “These gods, I swear it on the necklace of my

neck! I will not forget them; these days I will remember, and will not

forget them for ever. Let the other gods come quickly to take part in

the offering. Bel shall have no part in the offering, for he was not

wise: but he has caused the deluge, and he has devoted my people to

destruction.” Bel himself had not recovered his temper: “When he arrived

in his turn and saw the ship, he remained immovable before it, and his

heart was filled with rage against the gods of heaven. ‘Who is he who

has come out of it living? No man must survive the destruction!’” The

gods had everything to fear from his anger: Ninib was eager to exculpate

himself, and to put the blame upon the right person. Ea did not disavow

his acts: “he opened his mouth and spake; he said to Bel the warrior:

‘Thou, the wisest among the gods, O warrior, why wert thou not wise, and

didst cause the deluge? The sinner, make him responsible for his sin;

the criminal, make him responsible for his crime: but be calm, and do

not cut off all; be patient, and do not drown all. What was the good of

causing the deluge? A lion had only to come to decimate the people.

What was the good of causing the deluge? A leopard had only to come to

decimate the people. What was the good of causing the deluge? Famine

had only to present itself to desolate the country. What was the good

of causing the deluge? Nera the Plague had only to come to destroy the

people. As for me, I did, not reveal the judgment of the gods: I caused

Khasisadra to dream a dream, and he became aware of the judgment of the

gods, and then he made his resolve.’” Bel was pacified at the words of

Ea: “he went up into the interior of the ship; he took hold of my hand

and made me go up, even me; he made my wife go up, and he pushed her to

my side; he turned our faces towards him, he placed himself between

us, and blessed us: ‘Up to this time Shamashnapishtim was a man:

henceforward let Shamashnapishtim and his wife be reverenced like us,

the gods, and let Shamashnapishtim dwell afar off, at the mouth of the

seas, and he carried us away and placed us afar off, at the mouth of the

seas.’” Another form of the legend relates that by an order of the god,

Xisuthros, before embarking, had buried in the town of Sippara all the

books in which his ancestors had set forth the sacred sciences--books

of oracles and omens, “in which were recorded the beginning, the middle,

and the end. When he had disappeared, those of his companions who

remained on board, seeing that he did not return, went out and set off

in search of him, calling him by name. He did not show himself to them,

but a voice from heaven enjoined upon them to be devout towards the

gods, to return to Babylon and dig up the books in order that they might

be handed down to future generations; the voice also informed them that

the country in which they were was Armenia. They offered sacrifice in

turn, they regained their country on foot, they dug up the books of

Sippara and wrote many more; afterwards they refounded Babylon.” It was

even maintained in the time of the Seleucido, that a portion of the ark

existed on one of the summits of the Gordyaean mountains.** Pilgrimages

were made to it, and the faithful scraped off the bitumen which covered

it, to make out of it amulets of sovereign virtue against evil spells.

[Illustration: 051.jpg THE JUDI MOUNTAINS SOMETIMES IDENTIFIED WITH TUB

NTSIB MOUNTAINS.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by G. Smith, _Assyrian

Discoveries_, p. 108.

* We are ignorant of the object which the goddess lifted up:

it may have been the sceptre surmounted by a radiating star,

such as we see on certain cylinders. Several Assyriologists

translate it arrows or lightning. Ishtar is, in fact, an

armed goddess who throws the arrow or lightning made by her

father Anu, the heaven.

** Bekossus, fragm. xv. The legend about the remains of the

ark has passed into Jewish tradition concerning the Deluge.

Nicholas of Damascus relates, like Berossus, that they were

still to be seen on the top of Mount Baris. From that time

they have been continuously seen, sometimes on one peak and

sometimes on another. In the last century they were pointed

out to Chardin, and the memory of them has not died out in

our own century. Discoveries of charcoal and bitumen, such

as those made at Gebel Judi, upon one of the mountains

identified with Nisir, probably explain many of these local

traditions.

The chronicle of these fabulous times placed, soon after the abating of

the waters, the foundation of a new dynasty, as extraordinary or almost

as extraordinary in character as that before the flood. According to

Berossus it was of Chaldaean origin, and comprised eighty-six kings, who

bore rule during 34,080 years; the first two, Evechous and Khomasbelos,

reigned 2400 and 2700 years, while the later reigns did not exceed

the ordinary limits of human life. An attempt was afterwards made to

harmonize them with probability: the number of kings was reduced to

six, and their combined reigns to 225 years. This attempt arose from

a misapprehension of their true character; names and deeds, everything

connected with them belongs to myth and fiction only, and is irreducible

to history proper. They supplied to priests and poets material for

scores of different stories, of which several have come down to us in

fragments. Some are short, and serve as preambles to prayers or magical

formulas; others are of some length, and may pass for real epics. The

gods intervene in them, and along with kings play an important part. It

is Nera, for instance, the lord of the plague, who declares war against

mankind in order to punish them for having despised the authority of

Anu. He makes Babylon to feel his wrath first: “The children of Babel,

they were as birds, and the bird-catcher, thou wert he! thou takest them

in the net, thou enclosest them, thou decimatest them--hero Nera!”

One after the other he attacks the mother cities of the Euphrates and

obliges them to render homage to him--even Uruk, “the dwelling of Anu

and Ishtar--the town of the priestesses, of the _almehs_, and the sacred

courtesans; “then he turns upon the foreign nations and carries his

ravages as far as Phoenicia. In other fragments, the hero Etana makes an

attempt to raise himself to heaven, and the eagle, his companion, flies

away with him, without, however, being able to bring the enterprise to

a successful issue. Nimrod and his exploits are known to us from the

Bible.* “He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said,

Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of

his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of

Shinar.” Almost all the characteristics which are attributed by Hebrew

tradition to Nimrod we find in G-ilgames, King of Uruk and descendant of

the Shamashnapishtim who had witnessed the deluge.**

* Genesis x. 9, 10. Among the Jews and Mussulmans a complete

cycle of legends have developed around Nimrod. He built the

Tower of Babel; he threw Abraham into a fiery furnace, and

he tried to mount to heaven on the back of an eagle. Sayce

and Grivel saw in Nimrod an heroic form of Merodach, the god

of Babylonia: the majority of living Assyriologists prefer

to follow Smith’s example, and identify him with the hero

Gilgames.

** The name of this hero is composed of three signs, which

Smith provisionally rendered Isdubar--a reading which,

modified into Gishdhubar, Gistubar, is still retained by

many Assyriologists. There have been proposed one after

another the renderings Dhubar, Namrudu, Anamarutu, Numarad,

Namrasit, all of which exhibit in the name of the hero that

of Nimrod. Pinches discovered, in 1890, what appears to be

the true signification of the three signs,Gilgamesh,

Gilgames; Sayce and Oppert have compared this name with that

of Gilgamos, a Babylonian hero, of whom. AElian has preserved

the memory. A. Jeremias continued to reject both the reading

and the identification.

Several copies of a poem, in which an unknown scribe had celebrated his

exploits, existed about the middle of the VIIth century before our era

in the Royal Library at Nineveh; they had been transcribed by order of

Assur-banipal from a more ancient copy, and the fragments of them which

have come down to us, in spite of their lacunae, enable us to restore

the original text, if not in its entirety, at least in regard to

the succession of events. They were divided into twelve episodes

corresponding with the twelve divisions of the year, and the ancient

Babylonian author was guided in his choice of these divisions by

something more than mere chance. Gilgames, at first an ordinary mortal

under the patronage of the gods, had himself become a god and son of the

goddess Aruru: “he had seen the abyss, he had learned everything that

is kept secret and hidden, he had even made known to men what had taken

place before the deluge.” The sun, who had protected him in his human

condition, had placed him beside himself on the judgment-seat, and

delegated to him authority to pronounce decisions from which there was

no appeal: he was, as it were, a sun on a small scale, before whom the

kings, princes, and great ones of the earth humbly bowed their heads.*

The scribes had, therefore, some authority for treating the events of

his life after the model of the year, and for expressing them in twelve

chants, which answered to the annual course of the sun through the

twelve months.

* The identity of Gilgames with the Accadian fire-god, or

rather with the sun, was recognized from the first by H.

Rawlinson, and has been accepted since by almost all

Assyriologists. A tablet brought back by G. Smith, called

attention to by Fr. Delitzsch, and published by Haupt,

contains the remains of a hymn addressed to Gilgames, “the

powerful king, the king of the Spirits of the Earth.”

[Illustration: 057.jpg GILGAMES STRANGLES A LION.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from

Khorsabad, in the Museum of the Louvre

The whole story is essentially an account of his struggles with Ishtar,

and the first pages reveal him as already at issue with the goddess. His

portrait, such as the monuments have preserved it for us, is singularly

unlike the ordinary type: one would be inclined to regard it as

representing an individual of a different race, a survival of some very

ancient nation which had held rule on the plains of the Euphrates before

the arrival of the Sumerian or Semitic* tribes.

* Smith (The Chaldaean Account of Genesis, p. 194) remarked

the difference between the representations of Gilgames and

the typical Babylonian: he concluded from this that the hero

was of Ethiopian origin. Hommel declares that his features

have neither a Sumerian nor Semitic aspect, and that they

raise an insoluble question in ethnology.

His figure is tall, broad, muscular to an astonishing degree, and

expresses at once vigour and activity; his head is massive, bony, almost

square, with a somewhat flattened face, a large nose, and prominent

cheek-bones, the whole framed by an abundance of hair, and a thick beard

symmetrically curled. All the young men of Uruk, the well-protected,

were captivated by the prodigious strength and beauty of the hero; the

elders of the city betook themselves to Ishtar to complain of the state

of neglect to which the young generation had relegated them. “He has no

longer a rival in their hearts, but thy subjects are led to battle, and

Gilgames does not send one child back to his father. Night and day they

cry after him: ‘It is he the shepherd of Uruk, the well-protected, he

is its shepherd and master, he the powerful, the perfect and the wise.’”

Even the women did not escape the general enthusiasm: “he leaves not a

single virgin to her mother, a single daughter to a warrior, a single

wife to her master. Ishtar heard their complaint, the gods heard it, and

cried with a loud voice to Aruru: ‘It is thou, Aruru, who hast given him

birth; create for him now his fellow, that he may be able to meet him on

a day when it pleaseth him, in order that they may fight with each other

and Uruk may be delivered.’When Aruru heard them, she created in her

heart a man of Anu. Aruru washed her hands, took a bit of clay, cast it

upon the earth, kneaded it and created Babani, the warrior, the exalted

scion, the man of Ninib, whose whole body is covered with hair, whose

tresses are as long as those of a woman; the locks of his hair bristle

on his head like those on the corn-god; he is clad in a vestment

like that of the god of the fields; he browses with the gazelles, he

quenches his thirst with the beasts of the field, he sports with the

beasts of the waters.” Frequent representations of Eabani are found upon

the monuments; he has the horns of a goat, the legs and tail of a bull.*

He possessed not only the strength of a brute, but his intelligence also

embraced all things, the past and the future: he would probably have

triumphed over Gilgames if Shamash had not succeeded in attaching them

to one another by an indissoluble tie of friendship. The difficulty was

to draw these two future friends together, and to bring them face to

face without their coming to blows; the god sent his courier Saidu,

the hunter, to study the habits of the monster, and to find out the

necessary means to persuade him to come down peaceably to Uruk.

“Saidu, the hunter, proceeded to meet Eabani near the entrance of the

watering-place. One day, two days, three days, Eabani met him at the

entrance of the watering-place. He perceived Saidu, and his countenance

darkened: he entered the enclosure, he became sad, he groaned, he cried

with a loud voice, his heart was heavy, his features were distorted,

sobs burst from his breast. The hunter saw from a distance that his face

was inflamed with anger,” and judging it more prudent not to persevere

farther in his enterprise, returned to impart to the god what he had

observed.

* Smith was the first, I believe, to compare his form to

that of a satyr or faun; this comparison is rendered more

probable by the fact that the modern inhabitants of Chaldaea

believe in the existence of similar monsters. A. Jeremias

places Eabani alongside Priapus, who is generally a god of

the fields, and a clever soothsayer. Following out these

ideas, we might compare our Eabani with the Graico-Roman

Proteus, who pastures the flocks of the sea, and whom it was

necessary to pursue and seize by force or cunning words to

compel him to give oracular predictions.

[Illustration: 060.jpg GILGAMES FIGHTS, ON THE LEFT WITH A BULL, ON THE

RIGHT WITH EABANI.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the

Museum at the Hague. The original measures about 1 7/10 inch

in height.