“I was afraid,” said he, in finishing his narrative,* “and I did not

approach him. He had filled up the pit which I had dug to trap him, he

broke the nets which I had spread, he delivered from my hands the cattle

and the beasts of the field, he did not allow me to search the country

through.” Shamash thought that where the strongest man might fail by the

employment of force, a woman might possibly succeed by the attractions

of pleasure; he commanded Saidu to go quickly to Uruk and there to

choose from among the priestesses of Ishtar one of the most beautiful.**

The hunter presented himself before Grilgames, recounted to him his

adventures, and sought his permission to take away with him one of the

sacred courtesans. “‘Go, my hunter, take the priestess; when the beasts

come to the watering-place, let her display her beauty; he will see

her, he will approach her, and his beasts that troop around him will be

scattered.’”*** The hunter went, he took with him the priestess, he took

the straight road; the third day they arrived at the fatal plain. The

hunter and the priestess sat down to rest; one day, two days, they sat

at the entrance of the watering-place from whose waters Eabani drank

along with the animals, where he sported with the beasts of the water.

* Haupt, Das Babylonische Nimrodepos, p. 9, 11. 42-50. The

beginning of each line is destroyed, and the translation of

the whole is only approximate.

** The priestesses of Ishtar were young and beautiful women,

devoted to the service of the goddess and her worshippers.

Besides the title _qadishtu,_ priestess, they bore various

names, _kizireti, ukhati, kharimati_; the priestess who

accompanied Saidu was an _ukhat_.

*** As far as can be guessed from the narrative, interrupted

as it is by so many lacunae, the power of Eabani over the

beasts of the field seems to have depended on his

continence. From the moment in which he yields to his

passions the beasts fly from him as they would do from an

ordinary mortal; there is then no other resource for him but

to leave the solitudes to live among men in towns. This

explains the means devised by Shamash against him: cf. in

the _Arabian Nights_ the story of Shehabeddin.

“When Eabani arrived, he who dwells in the mountains, and who browses

upon the grass like the gazelles, who drinks with the animals, who

sports with the beasts of the water, the priestess saw the satyr.” She

was afraid and blushed, but the hunter recalled her to her duty. “It is

he, priestess. Undo thy garment, show him thy form, that he may be

taken with thy beauty; be not ashamed, but deprive him of his soul. He

perceives thee, he is rushing towards thee, arrange thy garment; he is

coming upon thee, receive him with every art of woman; his beasts

which troop around him will be scattered, and he will press thee to his

breast.” The priestess did as she was commanded; she received him with

every art of woman, and he pressed her to his breast. Six days and seven

nights, Eabani remained near the priestess, his well-beloved. When he

got tired of pleasure he turned his face towards his cattle, and he saw

that the gazelles had turned aside and that the beasts of the field had

fled far from him. Eabani was alarmed, he fell into a swoon, his knees

became stiff because his cattle had fled from him. While he lay as if

dead, he heard the voice of the priestess: he recovered his senses,

he came to himself full of love; he seated himself at the feet of the

priestess, he looked into her face, and while the priestess spoke his

ears listened. For it was to him the priestess spoke--to him, Eabani.

“Thou who art superb, Eabani, as a god, why dost thou live among

the beasts of the field? Come, I will conduct thee to Uruk the

well-protected, to the glorious house, the dwelling of Anu and

Ishtar--to the place where is Gilgames, whose strength is supreme, and

who, like a Urus, excels the heroes in strength.” While she thus spoke

to him, he hung upon her words, he the wise of heart, he realized

by anticipation a friend. Eabani said to the priestess: “Let us go,

priestess; lead me to the glorious and holy abode of Anu and Ishtar--to

the place where is Gilgames, whose strength is supreme, and who, like

a Urus, prevails over the heroes by his strength. I will fight with him

and manifest to him my power; I will send forth a panther against Uruk,

and he must struggle with it.” * The priestess conducted her prisoner

to Uruk, but the city at that moment was celebrating the festival of

Tammuz, and Gilgames did not care to interrupt the solemnities in order

to face the tasks to which Eabani had invited him: what was the use of

such trials since the gods themselves had deigned to point out to him in

a dream the line of conduct he was to pursue, and had taken up the

cause of their children. Shamash, in fact, began the instruction of the

monster, and sketched an alluring picture of the life which awaited him

if he would agree not to return to his mountain home. Not only would

the priestess belong to him for ever, having none other than him for

husband, but Gilgames would shower upon him riches and honours. “He will

give thee wherein to sleep a great bed cunningly wrought; he will seat

thee on his divan, he will give thee a place on his left hand, and

the princes of the earth shall kiss thy feet, the people of Uruk

shall grovel on the ground before thee.” It was by such flatteries

and promises for the future that Gilgames gained the affection of his

servant Eabani, whom he loved for ever.

* I have softened down a good deal the account of the

seduction, which is described with a sincerity and precision

truly primitive.

Shamash had reasons for being urgent. Khumbaba, King of Elam, had

invaded the country of the Euphrates, destroyed the temples, and

substituted for the national worship the cult of foreign deities;* the

two heroes in concert could alone check his advance, and kill him. They

collected their troops, set out on the march, having learned from a

female magician that the enemy had concealed himself in a sacred grove.

They entered it in disguise, “and stopped in rapture for a moment before

the cedar trees; they contemplated the height of them, they contemplated

the thickness of them; the place where Khumbaba was accustomed to walk

up and down with rapid strides, alleys were made in it, paths kept up

with great care. They saw at length the hill of cedars, the abode of the

gods, the sanctuary of Irnini, and before the hill, a magnificent cedar,

and pleasant grateful shade.” They surprised Khumbaba at the moment when

he was about to take his outdoor exercise, cut off his head, and came

back in triumph to Uruk.** “Gilgames brightened his weapons, he polished

his weapons. He put aside his war-harness, he put on his white garments,

he adorned himself with the royal insignia, and bound on the diadem:

Gilgames put his tiara on his head, and bound on his diadem.”

* Khumbaba contains the name of the Elamite god, Khumba,

whichenters into the composition of names of towns, like Ti-

Khumbi; or into those of princes, as Khumbanigash,

Khumbasundasa, Khumbasidh. The comparison between Khumbaba

and Combabos, the hero of a singular legend, current in the

second century of our era, does not seem to be admissible,

at least for the present. The names agree well in sound,

but, as Oppert has rightly said, no event in the history of

Combabos finds a counterpart in anything we know of that of

Khumbaba up to the present.

** G. Smith places at this juncture Gilgames’s accession to

the throne; this is not confirmed by the fragments of the

text known up to the present, and it is not even certain

that the poem relates anywhere the exaltation and coronation

of the hero. It would appear even that Gilgames is

recognized from the beginning as King of Uruk, the well-

protected.

Ishtar saw him thus adorned, and the same passion consumed her which

inflames mortals.* “To the love of Gilgames she raised her eyes, the

mighty Ishtar, and she said, ‘Come, Gilgames, be my husband, thou! Thy

love, give it to me, as a gift to me, and thou shalt be my spouse, and

I shall be thy wife. I will place thee in a chariot of lapis and gold,

with golden wheels and mountings of onyx: thou shalt be drawn in it by

great lions, and thou shalt enter our house with the odorous incense of

cedar-wood. When thou shalt have entered our house, all the country by

the sea shall embrace thy feet, kings shall bow down before thee, the

nobles and the great ones, the gifts of the mountains and of the plain

they will bring to thee as tribute. Thy oxen shall prosper, thy sheep

shall be doubly fruitful, thy mules shall spontaneously come under the

yoke, thy chariot-horse shall be strong and shall galop, thy bull

under the yoke shall have no rival.’” Gilgames repels this unexpected

declaration with a mixed feeling of contempt and apprehension: he abuses

the goddess, and insolently questions her as to what has become of her

mortal husbands during her long divine life. “Tammuz, the spouse of thy

youth, thou hast condemned him to weep from year to year.** Nilala, the

spotted sparrow-hawk, thou lovedst him, afterward thou didst strike

him and break his wing: he continues in the wood and cries: ‘O, my

wings!’ *** Thou didst afterwards love a lion of mature strength, and

then didst cause him to be rent by blows, seven at a time.**** Thou

lovedst also a stallion magnificent in the battle; thou didst devote him

to death by the goad and whip: thou didst compel him to galop for ten

leagues, thou didst devote him to exhaustion and thirst, thou didst

devote to tears his mother Silili.

* Ishtar’s declaration to Gilgames and the hero’s reply have

been frequently translated and summarized since the

discovery of the poem. Smith thought to connect this episode

with the “Descent of Ishtar to Hades,” which we shall meet

with further on in this History, but his opinion is no

longer accepted. The “Descent of Ishtar” in its present

condition is the beginning of a magical formula: it has

nothing to do with the acts of Gilgames.

** Tammuz-Adonis is the only one known to us among this long

list of the lovers of the goddess. The others must have been

fairly celebrated among the Chaldaeans, since the few words

devoted to each is sufficient to recall them to the memory

of the reader, but we have not as yet found anything

bearing upon their adventures in the table of the ancient

Chaldaeo-Assyrian classics, which had been copied out by a

Ninevite scribe for the use of Assur-bani-pal, the title of

the poems is wanting.

*** The text gives _kappi_, and the legend evidently refers

to a bird whose cry resembles the word meaning “my

wings.” The spotted sparrow-hawk utters a cry which may be

strictly understood and interpreted in this way.

**** This is evidently the origin of our fable of the

“Amorous Lion.”

Thou didst also love the shepherd Tabulu, who lavished incessantly upon

thee the smoke of sacrifices, and daily slaughtered goats to thee; thou

didst strike him and turn him into a leopard; his own servants went in

pursuit of him, and his dogs followed his trail.* Thou didst love

Ishullanu, thy father’s gardener, who ceaselessly brought thee presents

of fruit, and decorated every day thy table. Thou raisedst thine eyes to

him, thou seizedst him: ‘My Ishullanu, we shall eat melons, then shalt

thou stretch forth thy hand and remove that which separates us.’

Ishullanu said to thee: ‘I, what dost thou require from me? O my mother,

prepare no food for me, I myself will not eat: anything I should eat

would be for me a misfortune and a curse, and my body would be stricken

by a mortal coldness.’ Then thou didst hear him and didst become angry,

thou didst strike him, thou didst transform him into a dwarf, thou didst

set him up on the middle of a couch; he could not rise up, he could not

get down from where he was. Thou lovest me now, afterwards thou wilt

strike me as thou didst these.” **

* The changing of a lover, by the goddess or sorceress

who loves him, into a beast, occurs pretty frequently in

Oriental tales; as to the man changed by Ishtar into a

brute, which she caused to be torn by his own hounds, we may

compare the classic story of Artemis surprised at her bath

by Actseon.

** As to the misfortune of Ishullanu, we may compare the

story in the _Abrabian Nights_ of the Fisherman and the

Genie shut up in the leaden bottle. The king of the Black

Islands was transformed into a statue from the waist to the

feet by the sorceress, whom he had married and afterwards

offended; he remained lying on a bed, from which he could

not get down, and the unfaithful one came daily to whip him.

“When Ishtar heard him, she fell into a fury, she ascended to heaven.

The mighty Ishtar presented herself before her father Anu, before her

mother Anatu she presented herself, and said: ‘My father, Grilgames

has despised me. Grilgames has enumerated my unfaithfulnesses, my

unfaithfulnesses and my ignominies.’ Anu opened his mouth and spake to

the mighty Ishtar: ‘Canst thou not remain quiet now that Gilgames

has enumerated to thee thy unfaithfulnesses, thy unfaithfulnesses and

ignominies?’” But she refused to allow the outrage to go unpunished.

She desired her father to make a celestial urus who would execute her

vengeance on the hero; and, as he hesitated, she threatened to destroy

every living thing in the entire universe by suspending the impulses of

desire, and the effect of love. Anu finally gives way to her rage: he

creates a frightful urus, whose ravages soon rendered uninhabitable the

neighbourhood of Uruk the well-protected. The two heroes, Gilgames and

Eabani, touched by the miseries and terror of the people, set out on the

chase, and hastened to rouse the beast from its lair on the banks of

the Euphrates in the marshes, to which it resorted after each murderous

onslaught.

[Illustration: 068.jpg GILGAMES AND EABANI FIGHTING WITH MONSTERS.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the New

York Museum. The original is about an inch and a half in

height.

A troop of three hundred valiant warriors penetrated into the thickets

in three lines to drive the animal towards the heroes. The beast with

head lowered charged them; but Eabani seized it with one hand by the

right horn, and with the other by the tail, and forced it to rear.

Gilgames at the same instant, seizing it by the leg, plunged his dagger

into its heart. The beast being despatched, they celebrated their

victory by a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and poured out a libation to

Sharnash, whose protection had not failed them in this last danger.

Ishtar, her projects of vengeance having been defeated, “ascended the

ramparts of Uruk the well-protected. She sent forth a loud cry, she

hurled forth a malediction: ‘Cursed be Gilgames, who has insulted me,

and who has killed the celestial urus.’ Eabani heard these words of

Ishtar, he tore a limb from the celestial urus and threw it in the face

of the goddess: ‘Thou also I will conquer, and I will treat thee like

him: I will fasten the curse upon thy sides.’ Ishtar assembled her

priestesses, her female votaries, her frenzied women, and together they

intoned a dirge over the limb of the celestial urus. Gilgames assembled

all the turners in ivory, and the workmen were astonished at the

enormous size of the horns; they were worth thirty _mimae_ of lapis,

their diameter was a half-cubit, and both of them could contain six

measures of oil.” He dedicated them to Shamash, and suspended them on

the corners of the altar; then he washed his hands in the Euphrates,

re-entered Uruk, and passed through the streets in triumph. A riotous

banquet ended the day, but on that very night Eabani felt himself

haunted by an inexplicable and baleful dream, and fortune abandoned the

two heroes. Gilgames had cried in the intoxication of success to the

women of Uruk: “Who shines forth among the valiant? Who is glorious

above all men? Gilgames shines forth among the valiant, Gilgames is

glorious above all men.” Ishtar made him feel her vengeance in the

destruction of that beauty of which he was so proud; she covered him

with leprosy from head to foot, and made him an object of horror to his

friends of the previous day. A life of pain and a frightful death--he

alone could escape them who dared to go to the confines of the world in

quest of the Fountain of Youth and the Tree of Life which were said to

be there hidden; but the road was rough, unknown, beset by dangers, and

no one of those who had ventured upon it had ever returned. Gilgames

resolved to brave every peril rather than submit to his fate, and

proposed this fresh adventure to his friend Eabani, who, notwithstanding

his sad forebodings, consented to accompany him. They killed a tiger

on the way, but Eabani was mortally wounded in a struggle in which they

engaged in the neighbourhood of Nipur, and breathed his last after an

agony of twelve days’ duration.

“Gilgames wept bitterly over his friend Eabani, grovelling on the bare

earth.” The selfish fear of death struggled in his spirit with regret at

having lost so dear a companion, a tried friend in so many encounters.

“I do not wish to die like Eabani: sorrow has entered my heart, the fear

of death has taken possession of me, and I am overcome. But I will go

with rapid steps to the strong Shamashnapishtim, son of Ubaratutu,

to learn from him how to become immortal.” He leaves the plain of the

Euphrates, he plunges boldly into the desert, he loses himself for a

whole day amid frightful solitudes. “I reached at nightfall a ravine in

the mountain, I beheld lions and trembled, but I raised my face towards

the moon-god, and I prayed: my supplication ascended even to the father

of the gods, and he extended over me his protection.” A vision from on

high revealed to him the road he was to take. With axe and dagger

in hand, he reached the entrance of a dark passage leading into the

mountain of Mashu,* “whose gate is guarded day and night by supernatural

beings.”

* The land of Mashu is the land to the west of the

Euphrates, coterminous on one part with the northern regions

of the Red Sea, on the other with the Persian Gulf; the name

appears to be preserved in that of the classic Mesene, and

possibly in the land of Massa of the Hebrews.

[Illustration: 071.jpg THE SCORPION-MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS OF MASHU.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian intaglio.

“The scorpion-men, of whom the stature extends upwards as far as the

supports of heaven, and of whom the breasts descend as low as Hades,

guard the door. The terror which they inspire strikes down like a

thunderbolt; their look kills, their splendour confounds and overturns

the mountains; they watch over the sun at his rising and setting.

Grilgames perceived them, and his features were distorted with fear and

horror; their savage appearance disturbed his mind. The scorpion-man

said to his wife: ‘He who comes towards us, his body is marked by the

gods.’* The scorpion-woman replied to him: ‘In his mind he is a god, in

his mortal covering he is a man.’ The scorpion-man spoke and said:

‘It is as the father of the gods, has commanded, he has travelled over

distant regions before joining us, thee and me.’” Gilgames learns

that the guardians are not evilly disposed towards him, and becomes

reassured, tell them his misfortunes and implores permission to pass

beyond them so as to reach “Sha-mashnapishtim, his father, who was

translated to the gods, and who has at his disposal both life and

death.” The scorpion-man in vain shows to him the perils before him, of

which the horrible darkness enveloping the Mashu mountains is not the

least: Gilgames proceeds through the depths of the darkness for long

hours, and afterwards comes out in the neighbourhood of a marvellous

forest upon the shore of the ocean which encircles the world. One tree

especially excites his wonder: “As soon as he sees it he runs towards

it. Its fruits are so many precious stones, its boughs are splendid

to look upon, for the branches are weighed down with lapis, and their

fruits are superb.” When his astonishment had calmed down, Gilgames

begins to grieve, and to curse the ocean which stays his steps. “Sabitu,

the virgin who is seated on the throne of the seas,” perceiving him

from a distance, retires at first to her castle, and barricades herself

within it. He calls out to her from the strand, implores and threatens

her in turn, adjures her to help him in his voyage. “If it can be done,

I will cross the sea; if it cannot be done, I will lay me down on the

land to die.” The goddess is at length touched by his tears. “Gilgames,

there has never been a passage hither, and no one from time immemorial

has been able to cross the sea. Shamash the valiant crossed the sea;

after Shamash, who can cross it? The crossing is troublesome, the way

difficult, perilous the Water of Death, which, like a bolt, is drawn

between thee and thy aim. Even if, Gilgames, thou didst cross the

sea, what wouldest thou do on arriving at the Water of Death?” Arad-Ea,

Shamashnapishtim’s mariner, can alone bring the enterprise to a happy

ending: “if it is possible, thou shalt cross the sea with him; if it is

not possible, thou shalt retrace thy steps.”

* We must not forget that Gilgames is covered with leprosy; this is the

disease with which the Chaldaean gods mark their enemies when they wish

to punish them in a severe fashion.

[Illustration: 073.jpg GILGAMES AND ARAD-EA NAVIGATING THEIR VESSEL.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the

British Museum. The original measures a little over an inch.

Arad-Ea and the hero took ship: forty days’ tempestuous cruising brought

them to the Waters of Death, which with a supreme effort they passed.

Beyond these they rested on their oars and loosed their girdles: the

happy island rose up before them, and Shamashnapishtim stood upon the

shore, ready to answer the questions of his grandson.

None but a god dare enter his mysterious paradise: the bark bearing

an ordinary mortal must stop at some distance from the shore, and the

conversation is carried on from on board. Gilgames narrated once

more the story of his life, and makes known the object of his visit;

Shamashnapishtim answers him stoically that death follows from an

inexorable law, to which it is better to submit with a good grace.

“However long the time we shall build houses, however long the time we

shall put our seal to contracts, however long the time brothers shall

quarrel with each other, however long the time there shall be hostility

between kings, however long the time rivers shall overflow their banks,

we shall not be able to portray any image of death. When the spirits

salute a man at his birth, then the genii of the earth, the great gods,

Mamitu the moulder of destinies, all of them together assign a fate to

him, they determine for him his life and death; but the day of his death

remains unknown to him.” Gilgames thinks, doubtless, that his forefather

is amusing himself at his expense in preaching resignation, seeing that

he himself had been able to escape this destiny. “I look upon thee,

Shamashnapishtim, and thy appearance has not changed: thou art like me

and not different, thou art like me and I am like thee. Thou wouldest

be strong enough of heart to enter upon a combat, to judge by thy

appearance; tell me, then, how thou hast obtained this existence among

the gods to which thou hast aspired?” Shamashnapishtim yields to his

wish, if only to show him how abnormal his own case was, and indicate

the merits which had marked him out for a destiny superior to that of

the common herd of humanity. He describes the deluge to him, and relates

how he was able to escape from it by the favour of Ea, and how by that

of Bel he was made while living a member of the army of the gods. “‘And

now,’ he adds, ‘as far as thou art concerned, which one of the Gods will

bestow upon thee the strength to obtain the life which thou seekest?

Come, go to sleep!’ Six days and seven nights he is as a man whose

strength appears suspended, for sleep has fallen upon him like a blast

of wind. Shamashnapishtim spoke to his wife: ‘Behold this man who asks

for life, and upon whom sleep has fallen like a blast of wind.’ The wife

answers Shamashnapishtim, the man of distant lands: ‘Cast a spell upon

him, this man, and he will eat of the magic broth; and the road by which

he has come, he will retrace it in health of body; and the great gate

through which he has come forth, he will return by it to his country.’

Shamashnapishtim spoke to his wife: ‘The misfortunes of this man

distress thee: very well, cook the broth, and place it by his head.’

And while Gilgames still slept on board his vessel, the material for the

broth was gathered; on the second day it was picked, on the third it was

steeped, on the fourth Shamashnapishtim prepared his pot, on the fifth

he put into it ‘Senility,’ on the sixth the broth was cooked, on the

seventh he cast his spell suddenly on his man, and the latter consumed

the broth. Then Gilgames spoke to Shamashnapishtim, the inhabitant of

distant lands: ‘I hesitated, slumber laid hold of me; thou hast cast a

spell upon me, thou hast given me the broth.’” The effect would not have

been lasting, if other ceremonies had not followed in addition to this

spell from the sorcerer’s kitchen: Gilgames after this preparation could

now land upon the shore of the happy island and purify himself there.

Shamashnapishtim confided this business to his mariner Arad-Ea: “‘The

man whom thou hast brought, his body is covered with ulcers, the leprous

scabs have spoiled the beauty of his body. Take him, Arad-Ea, lead him

to the place of purification, let him wash his ulcers white as snow in

the water, let him get rid of his scabs, and let the sea bear them away

so that at length his body may appear healthy. He will then change

the fillet which binds his brows, and the loin-cloth which hides his

nakedness: until he returns to his country, until he reaches the end of

his journey, let him by no means put off the loin-cloth, however ragged;

then only shall he have always a clean one.’ Then Arad-Ea took him and

conducted him to the place of purification: he washed his ulcers white

as snow in the water, he got rid of his scabs, and the sea carried them

away, so that at length his body appeared healthy. He changed the fillet

which bound his brows, the loincloth which hid his nakedness: until

he should reach the end of his journey, he was not to put off the

loin-cloth, however ragged; then alone was he to have a clean one.” The

cure effected, Gilgames goes again on board his bark, and returns to the

place where Shamashnapishtim was awaiting him.

Shamashnapishtim would not send his descendant back to the land of the

living without making him a princely present. “His wife spoke to him,

to him Shamashnapishtim, the inhabitant of distant lands: ‘Gilgames has

come, he is comforted, he is cured; what wilt thou give to him, now that

he is about to return to his country?’ He took the oars, Gilgames, he

brought the bark near the shore, and Shamashnapishtim spoke to him, to

Gilgames: ‘Gilgames, thou art going from here comforted; what shall I

give thee, now that thou art about to return to thy country? I am about

to reveal to thee, Gilgames, a secret, and the judgment of the gods I am

about to tell it thee. There is a plant similar to the hawthorn in its

flower, and whose thorns prick like the viper. If thy hand can lay hold

of that plant without being torn, break from it a branch, and bear it

with thee; it will secure for thee an eternal youth.’Gilgames gathers

the branch, and in his joy plans with Arad-Ea future enterprises:

‘Arad-Ea, this plant is the plant of renovation, by which a man

obtains life; I will bear it with me to Uruk the well-protected, I will

cultivate a bush from it, I will cut some of it, and its name shall

be, “the old man becomes young by it;” I will eat of it, and I shall

repossess the vigour of my youth.’” He reckoned without the gods, whose

jealous minds will not allow men to participate in their privileges.

The first place on which they set foot on shore, “he perceived a well of

fresh water, went down to it, and whilst he was drawing water, a serpent

came out of it, and snatched from him the plant, yea--the serpent rushed

out and bore away the plant, and while escaping uttered a malediction.

That day Gilgames sat down, he wept, and his tears streamed down his

cheeks he said to the mariner Arad-Ba: ‘What is the use, Arad-Ea, of my

renewed strength; what is the use of my heart’s rejoicing in my return

to life? It is not myself I have served; it is this earthly lion I have

served. Hardly twenty leagues on the road, and he for himself alone has

already taken possession of the plant. As I opened the well, the plant

was lost to me, and the genius of the fountain took possession of it:

who am I that I should tear it from him?’” He re-embarks in sadness,

he re-enters Uruk the well-protected, and at length begins to think of

celebrating the funeral solemnities of Eabani, to whom he was not able

to show respect at the time of his death. He supervises them, fulfils

the rites, intones the final chant: “The temples, thou shalt enter them

no more; the white vestments, thou shalt no longer put them on; the

sweet-smelling ointments, thou shalt no longer anoint thyself with them

to envelop thee with their perfume. Thou shalt no longer press thy

bow to the ground to bend it, but those that the bow has wounded shall

surround thee; thou no longer holdest thy sceptre in thy hand, but

spectres fascinate thee; thou no longer adornest thy feet with wings,

thou no longer givest forth a sound upon the earth. Thy wife whom thou

lovedst thou embracest her no more; thy wife whom thou hatedst thou

beatest her no more. Thy daughter whom thou lovedst thou embracest her

no more; thy daughter whom thou hatedst, thou beatest her no more. The

resounding earth lies heavy upon thee, she who is dark, she who is

dark, Tjinazu the mother, she who is dark, whose side is-not veiled with

splendid vestments, whose bosom, like a new-born animal, is not covered.

Eabani has descended from the earth to Hades; it is not the messenger

of Nergal the implacable who has snatched him away, it is not the plague

which has carried him off, it is not consumption that has carried him

off, it is the earth which has carried him off; it is not the field of

battle which has carried him off, it is the earth which has carried him

off!” Gilgames dragged himself along from temple to temple, repeating

his complaint before Bel and before Sin, and at length threw himself

at the feet of the god of the Dead, Nergal: “‘Burst open the sepulchral

cavern, open the ground, that the spirit of Eabani may issue from the

soil like a blast of wind.’ As soon as Nergal the valiant heard him,

he burst open the sepulchral vault, he opened the earth, he caused the

spirit of Eabani to issue from the earth like a blast of wind.” Gilgames

interrogates him, and asks him with anxiety what the state of the dead

may be: “‘Tell, my friend, tell, my friend, open the earth and what thou

seest tell it.’--‘I cannot tell it thee, my friend, I cannot tell it

thee; if I should open the earth before thee, if I were to tell to thee

that which I have seen, terror would overthrow thee, thou wouldest faint

away, thou wouldest weep.’--‘Terror will overthrow me, I shall faint

away, I shall weep, but tell it to me.’” And the ghost depicts for him

the sorrows of the abode and the miseries of the shades. Those only

enjoy some happiness who have fallen with arms in their hands, and who

have been solemnly buried after the fight; the manes neglected by their

relatives succumb to hunger and thirst.* “On a sleeping couch he lies,

drinking pure water, he who has been killed in battle. ‘Thou hast seen

him?’--‘I have seen him; his father and his mother support his head, and

his wife bends over him wailing.’ ‘But he whose body remains forgotten

in the fields,--thou hast seen him?’--‘I have seen him; his soul has no

rest at all in the earth.’ ‘He whose soul no one cares for,--thou hast

seen him?’--‘I have seen him; the dregs of the cup, the remains of a

repast, that which is thrown among the refuse of the street, that is

what he has to nourish him.’” This poem did not proceed in its entirety,

or at one time, from the imagination of a single individual. Each

episode of it answers to some separate legend concerning Gilgames, or

the origin of Uruk the well-protected: the greater part preserves under

a later form an air of extreme antiquity, and, if the events dealt with

have not a precise bearing on the life of a king, they paint in a lively

way the vicissitudes of the life of the people.** These lions, leopards,

or gigantic uruses with which Grilgames and his faithful Eabani carry

on so fierce a warfare, are not, as is sometimes said, mythological

animals.

* Cf. vol. i. pp. 160, 161 of this History for analogous

ideas among the Egyptians as to the condition of the dead

who were neglected by their relatives: the Egyptian double

had to live on the same refuse as the Chaldaean soul.

** G. Smith, identifying Gilgames with Nimrod, believes, on

the other hand, that Nimrod was a real king, who reigned in

Mesopotamia about 2250 B.C.; the poem contains, according to

him, episodes, more or less embellished, in the life of the

sovereign.

Similar monsters, it was believed, appeared from time to time in the

marshes of Chaldaea, and gave proof of their existence to the inhabitants

of neighbouring villages by such ravages as real lions and tigers commit

in India or the Sahara. It was the duty of chiefs on the border lands of

the Euphrates, as on the banks of the Nile, as among all peoples still

sunk in semi-barbarism, to go forth to the attack of these beasts

single-handed, and to sacrifice themselves one after the other, until

one of them more fortunate or stronger than the rest should triumph

over these mischievous brutes. The kings of Babylon and Nineveh in later

times converted into a pleasure that which had been an official duty of

their early predecessors: Gilgames had not yet arrived at that stage,

and the seriousness, not to speak of the fear, with which he entered

on the fight with such beasts, is an evidence of the early date of the

portions of his history which are concerned with his hunting exploits.

The scenes are represented on the seals of princes who reigned prior to

the year 3000 B.C., and the work of the ancient engraver harmonizes so

perfectly with the description of the comparatively modern scribe that

it seems like an anticipated illustration of the latter; the engravings

represent so persistently and with so little variation the images of

the monsters, and those of Gilgames and his faithful Eabani, that the

corresponding episodes in the poem must have already existed as we know

them, if not in form, at least in their main drift. Other portions of

the poem are more recent, and it would seem that the expedition against

Khumbaba contains allusions to the Elamite* invasions from which Chaldaea

had suffered so much towards the XXth century before our era. The

traditions which we possess of the times following the Deluge, embody,

like the adventures of Gilganes, very ancient elements, which the

scribes or narrators wove together in a more or less skilful manner

around the name of some king or divinity.

* Smith thought he could restore from the poem a part of

Chaldaean history: he supposed Izdubar-Nimrod to have been,

about 2250, the liberator of Babylon, oppressed by Elam, and

the date of the foundation of a great Babylonian empire to

have coincided with his victory over the Elamites. The

annals of Assurbanipal show us, in fact, that an Elamite

king, Kudurnankhundi, had pillaged Uruk about 2280 B.C., and

had transported to Susa a statue of the goddess Ishtar.

[Illustration: 082.jpg GILGAMES STRUGGLES WITH A LION]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the

British Museum. The original measures about 1 2/5 inch in

height.

The fabulous chronicle of the cities of the Euphrates existed,

therefore, in a piecemeal condition--in the memory of the people or in

the books of the priests--before even their primitive history began;

the learned who collected it later on had only to select some of the

materials with which it furnished them, in order to form out of them a

connected narrative, in which the earliest ages were distinguished from

the most recent only in the assumption of more frequent and more direct

interpositions of the powers of heaven in the affairs of men. Every city

had naturally its own version, in which its own protecting deities, its

heroes and princes, played the most important parts. That of Babylon

threw all the rest into the shade; not that it was superior to them,

but because this city had speedily become strong enough to assert its

political supremacy over the whole region of the Euphrates. Its scribes

were accustomed to see their master treat the lords of other towns as

subjects or vassals. They fancied that this must have always been

the case, and that from its origin Babylon had been recognized as the

queen-city to which its contemporaries rendered homage. They made its

individual annals the framework for the history of the entire country,

and from the succession of its princely families on the throne, diverse

as they were in origin, they constructed a complete canon of the kings

of Chaldaea.

But the manner of grouping the names and of dividing the dynasties

varied according to the period in which the lists were drawn up, and at

the present time we are in possession of at least two systems which the

Babylonian historians attempted to construct. Berossus, who communicated

one of them to the Greeks about the beginning of the IInd century B.C.,

would not admit more than eight dynasties in the period of thirty-six

thousand years between the Deluge and the Persian invasion. The lists,

which he had copied from originals in the cuneiform character, have

suffered severely at the hands of his abbreviators, who omitted the

majority of the names which seemed to them very barbarous in form, while

those who copied these abbreviated lists have made such further havoc

with them that they are now for the most part unintelligible. Modern

criticism has frequently attempted to restore them, with varying

results; the reconstruction here given, which passes for the most

probable, is not equally certain in all its parts:--*

[Illustration: 084.jpg CHRONOLOGIC TABLE]

It was not without reason that Berossus and his authorities had put the

sum total of reigns at thirty-six thousand years; this number falls in

with a certain astrological period, during which the gods had granted to

the Chaldaeans glory, prosperity, and independence, and whose termination

coincided with the capture of Babylon by Cyrus.** Others before them had

employed the same artifice, but they reckoned ten dynasties in the place

of the eight accepted by Berossus:--

* After the example of G. B. Niebuhr, Gutschmid admitted

here, as Oppert did, 45 Assyrians; he based his view on

Herodotus, in which it is said that the Assyrians held sway

in Asia for 520 years, until its conquest by the Medes. Upon

the improbability of this opinion, see Schrader’s

demonstration.

** The existence of this astronomical or astrological scheme

on which Berossus founded his chronology, was pointed out by

Brandis, afterwards by Gutschmid; it is now generally

accepted.

[Illustration: 085.jpg TABLE]

Attempts have been made to bring the two lists* into harmony, with

varying results; in my opinion, a waste of time and labour. For even

comparatively recent periods of their history, the Chaldaeans, like

the Egyptians, had to depend upon a collection of certain abbreviated,

incoherent, and often contradictory documents, from which they found it

difficult to make a choice: they could not, therefore, always come to an

agreement when they wished to determine how many dynasties had succeeded

each other during these doubtful epochs, how many kings were included in

each dynasty, and what length of reign was to be assigned to each king.

We do not know the motives which influenced Berossus in his preference

of one tradition over others; perhaps he had no choice in the matter,

and that of which he constituted himself the interpreter was the only

one which was then known. In any case, the tradition he followed forms a

system which we cannot, modify without misinterpreting the intention of

those who drew it up or who have handed it down to us. We must accept

or reject it just as it is, in its entirety and without alteration:

to attempt to adapt it to the testimony of the monuments would be

equivalent to the creation of a new system, and not to the correction

simply of the old one. The right course is to put it aside for the

moment, and confine ourselves to the original lists whose fragments have

come down to us: they do not furnish us, it is true, with a history of

Chaldaea such as it unfolded itself from age to age, but they teach us

what the later Chaldaeans knew, or thought they knew, of that history.

Still it is wise to treat them with some reserve, and not to forget that

if they agree with each other in the main, they differ frequently in

details. Thus the small dynasties, which are called the VIth and VIIth,

include the same number of kings on both the tablets which establish

their existence, but the number of years assigned to the names of

the kings and the total years of each dynasty vary a little from one

another:--

* The first document having claim to the title of Royal

Canon was found among the tablets of the British Museum, and

was published by G. Smith. The others were successively

discovered by Pinches; some erroneous readings in them have

been corrected by Fr. Delitzsch, and an exact edition has

been published by Knudtzon. Smith’s list is the fragment of

a chronicle in which the VIth, VIIth, and VIIIth dynasties

only are almost complete. One of Pinches’s lists consists

merely of a number of royal names not arranged in any

consistent order, and containing their non-Semitic as well

as their Semitic forms. The other two lists are actual

canons, giving the names of the kings and the years of their

reigns; unfortunately they are much mutilated, and the

lacunae in them cannot yet be filled up. All of them have

been translated by Sayce.

[Illustration: 080.jpg TABLE]

[Illustration: 081.jpg TABLE]

Is the difference in the calculations the fault of the scribes, who,

in mechanically copying and recopying, ended by fatally altering the

figures? Or is it to be explained by some circumstance of which we are

ignorant--an association on the throne, of which the duration is at one

time neglected with regard to one of the co-regents, and at another time

with regard to the other; or was it owing to a question of legitimacy,

by which, according to the decision arrived at, a reign was prolonged or

abbreviated? Cotemporaneous monuments will some day, perhaps, enable

us to solve the problem which the later Chaldaeans did not succeed in

clearing up. While awaiting the means to restore a rigorously exact

chronology, we must be content with the approximate information

furnished by the tablets as to the succession of the Babylonian kings.

Actual history occupied but a small space in the lists--barely twenty

centuries out of a whole of three hundred and sixty: beyond the historic

period the imagination was given a free rein, and the few facts which

were known disappeared almost completely under the accumulation of

mythical narratives and popular stories. It was not that the documents

were entirely wanting, for the Chaldaeans took a great interest in their

past history, and made a diligent search for any memorials of it. Each

time they succeeded in disinterring an inscription from the ruins of a

town, they were accustomed to make-several copies of it, and to deposit

them among the archives, where they would be open to the examination

of their archaeologists.* When a prince undertook the rebuilding of

a temple, he always made excavations under the first courses of the

ancient structure in order to recover the documents which preserved the

memory of its foundation: if he discovered them, he recorded on the new

cylinders, in which he boasted of his own work, the name of the first

builder, and sometimes the number of years which had elapsed since its

erection.**

* We have a considerable number of examples of copies of

ancient texts made in this manner. For instance, the

dedication of a temple at Uruk by King Singashid, copied by

the scribe Nabubalatsuikbi, son of Mizirai (“the Egyptian

“), for the temple of Ezida; the legendary history of King

Sargon of Agade, copied from the inscription on the base of

his statue, of which there will be further mention (pp. 91-

93 of this History); a dedication of the King Khammurabi;

the inscription of Agumkakrimi, which came from the library

of Assurbanipal.

** Nabonidos, for instance, the last king of Babylon before

the Persian conquest, has left us a memorial of his

excavations. He found in this manner the cylinders of

Shagashaltiburiash at Sippara, those of Khammurabi, and

those of Naramsin.

We act in a similar way to-day, and our excavations, like those of the

Chaldaeans, end in singularly disconnected results: the materials which

the earth yields for the reconstruction of the first centuries consist

almost entirely of mutilated records of local dynasties, isolated

names of sovereigns, dedications of temples to gods, on sites no longer

identifiable, of whose nature we know nothing, and too brief allusions

to conquests or victories over vaguely designated nations.* The

population was dense and life active in the plains of the Lower

Euphrates. The cities in this region formed at their origin so many

individual and, for the most part, petty states, whose kings and patron

gods claimed to be independent of all the neighbouring kings and gods:

one city, one god, one lord--this was the rule here as in the ancient

feudal districts from which the nomes of Egypt arose. The strongest

of these principalities imposed its laws upon the weakest: formed into

unions of two or three under a single ruler, they came to constitute a

dozen kingdoms of almost equal strength on the banks of the Euphrates.

On the north we are acquainted with those of Agade, Babylon, Kuta,

Kharsag-Kalama, and that of Kishu, which comprised a part of Mesopotamia

and possibly the distant fortress of Harran: petty as these States were,

their rulers attempted to conceal their weakness by assuming such titles

as “Kings of the Four Houses of the World,” “Kings of the Universe,”

“Kings of Shumir and Akkad.” Northern Babylonia seems to have possessed

a supremacy amongst them. We are probably wise in not giving too much

credit to the fragmentary tablet which assigns to it a dynasty of

kings, of which we have no confirmatory information from other

sources--Amilgula, Shamashnazir, Amilsin, and several others: this list,

however, places among these phantom rulers one individual at least,

Shargina-Sharrukin, who has left us material evidences of his existence.

This Sargon the Elder, whose complete name is Shargani-shar-ali, was

the son of a certain Ittibel, who does not appear to have been king.

At first his possessions were confined to the city of Agade and some

undetermined portions of the environs of Babylon, but he soon succeeded

in annexing Babylon itself, Sippara, Kishu, Uruk, Kuta, and Nipur: the

contemporary records attest his conquest of Elam, Guti, and even of the

far-off land of Syria, which was already known to him under the name of

Amuru. His activity as a builder was in no way behind his warlike zeal.

He built Ekur, the sanctuary of Bel in Nipur, and the great temple

Eulbar in Agade, in honour of Anunit, the goddess presiding over the

morning star. He erected in Babylon a palace which afterwards became a

royal burying-place. He founded a new capital, a city which he peopled

with families brought from Kishu and Babylon: for a long time after his

day it bore the name which he bestowed upon it, Dur-Sharrukin. This

sums up all the positive knowledge we have about him, and the later

Chaldseans seem not to have been much better informed than ourselves.

* The earliest Assyriologists, H. Rawlinson, Oppert,

considered the local kings as having been, for the most

part, kings of all Chaldaea, and placed them in succession

one after the other in the framework of the most ancient

dynasties of Berossus. The merit of having established the

existence of series of local dynasties, and of having given

to Chaldaean history its modern form, belongs to G. Smith.

Smith’s idea was adopted by Menant, by Delitzsch-Murdter, by

Tiele, by Winckler, and by all Assyriologists, with

modifications suggested by the progress of decipherment.

They filled up the lacunae of his history with legends. As he seemed

to them to have appeared suddenly on the scene, without any apparent

connection with the king who preceded him, they assumed that he was a

usurper of unknown origin, irregularly introduced by the favour of the

gods into the lawful series of kings. An inscription engraved, it was

said, on one of his statues, and afterwards, about the VIIth century

B.C., copied and deposited in the library of Nineveh, related at length

the circumstances of his mysterious birth. “Sharrukin, the mighty king,

the king of Agade, am I. My mother was a princess; my father, I did not

know him; the brother of my father lived in the mountains. My town was

Azupirani, which is situated on the bank of the Euphrates. My mother,

the princess, conceived me, and secretly gave birth to me: she placed

me in a basket of reeds, she shut up the mouth of it with bitumen, she

abandoned me to the river, which did not overwhelm me. The river bore

me; it brought me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of

water, received me in the goodness of his heart; Akki, the drawer of

water, made me a gardener. As gardener, the goddess Ishtar loved me, and

during forty-four years I held royal sway; I commanded the Black Heads,*

and ruled them.” This is no unusual origin for the founders of empires

and dynasties; witness the cases of Cyrus and Bomulus.* Sargon, like

Moses, and many other heroes of history or fable, is exposed to the

waters: he owes his safety to a poor fellah who works his shadouf on the

banks of the Euphrates to water the fields, and he passes his infancy in

obscurity, if not in misery. Having reached the age of manhood, Ishtar

falls in love with him as she did with his fellow-craftsman, the

gardener Ishullanu, and he becomes king, we know not by what means.

* The phrase “Black Heads,” _nishi salmat hahhadi_, has been

taken in an ethnological sense as designating one of the

races of Chaldaea, the Semitic; other Assyriologists consider

it as denoting mankind in general. The latter meaning seems

the more probable.

** Smith had already compared the infancy of Sargon with

that of Moses; the comparison with Cyrus, Bacchus, and

Romulus was made by Talbot. Traditions of the same kind are

frequent in history or folk-tales.

The same inscription which reveals the romance of his youth, recounts

the successes of his manhood, and boasts of the uniformly victorious

issue of his warlike exploits. Owing to lacunae, the end of the account

is in the main wanting, and we are thus prevented from following the

development of his career, but other documents come to the rescue and

claim to furnish its most important vicissitudes. He had reduced the

cities of the Lower Euphrates, the island of Dilmun, Durilu, Elam, the

country of Kazalla: he had invaded Syria, conquered Phoenicia, crossed

the arm of the sea which separates Cyprus from the coast, and only

returned to his palace after an absence of three years, and after having

erected his statues on the Syrian coast. He had hardly settled down to

rest when a rebellion broke out suddenly; the chiefs of Chaldaea formed

a league against him, and blockaded him in Agade: Ishtar, exceptionally

faithful to the end, obtains for him the victory, and he comes out of a

crisis, in which he might have been utterly ruined, with a more secure

position than ever. All these events are regarded as having occurred

sometime about 3800 B.C., at a period when the VIth dynasty was

flourishing in Egypt. Some of them have been proved to be true by recent

discoveries, and the rest are not at all improbable in themselves,

though the work in which they are recorded is a later astrological

treatise. The writer was anxious to prove, by examples drawn from the

chronicles, the use of portents of victory or defeat, of civic peace

or rebellion--portents which he deduced from the configuration of the

heavens on the various days of the month: by going back as far as Sargon

of Agade for his instances, he must have at once increased the respect

for himself on account of his knowledge of antiquity, and the difficulty

which the common herd must have felt in verifying his assertions. His

zeal in collecting examples was probably stimulated by the fact that

some of the exploits which he attributes to the ancient Sargon had been

recently accomplished by a king of the same name: the brilliant career

of Sargon of Agade would seem to have been in his estimation something

like an anticipation of the still more glorious life of the Sargon of

Nineveh.* What better proof of the high veneration in which the learned

men of Assyria held the memory of the ancient Chaldaean conqueror?

Naramsin, who succeeded Sargon about 3750 B.C.** inherited his

authority, and to some extent his renown.

* Hommel (Gescamede, p. 307) believes that the life of our

Sargon was modelled, not on the Assyrian Sargon, but on a

second Sargon, whom he places about 2000 B.C. Tiele refuses

to accept the hypothesis, but his objections are not

weighty, in my opinion; Hilprecht and Sayce accepted the

authenticity of the facts in their details, and the recent

discoveries have shown that they were right in so doing.

There is a distant resemblance between the life of the

legendary Sargon and the account of the victories of Ramses

II. ending in a conspiracy on his return.

** The date of Naramsin is given us by the cylinder of

Nabonidos, who is cited lower down. It was discovered by

Pinches. Its authenticity is maintained by Oppert, by

Latrille, by Tiele, by Hommel, who felt at first some

hesitation, by Delitzsch-Murdter; it has been called in

question, with hesitation, by Ed. Meyer, and more boldly by

Winckler. There is at present no serious reason to question

its accuracy, at least relatively, except the instinctive

repugnance of modern critics to consider as legitimate,

dates which carry them back further into the past than they

are accustomed to go.

The astrological tablets assert that he attacked the city of Apirak, on

the borders of Elam, killed the Sing, Rish-ramman, and led the people

away into slavery. He conquered at least part, if not the whole of Elam,

and one of the few monuments which have come down to us was raised at

Sippara in commemoration of his prowess against the mountaineers of the

Zagros. He is represented on it overpowering their chief: his warriors

follow after him and charge up the hill, carrying everything before

their steady onslaught. Another of his warlike expeditions is said to

have had as its field of operations a district of Magan, which, in the

view of the writer, undoubtedly represented the Sinaitic Peninsula and

perhaps Egypt. This expedition against Magan no doubt took place, and

one of the few monuments of Naramsin which have reached us refers to it.

Other inscriptions tell us incidentally that Naramsin reigned over the

“four Houses of the world,” Babylon, Sippara, Nipur, and Lagash. Like

his father, he had worked at the building of the Ekur of Nipur and the

Bulbar of Agade; he erected, moreover, at his own cost, the temple

of the Sun at Sippara.* The latter passed through many and varied

vicissitudes. Restored, enlarged, ruined on several occasions, the date

of its construction and the name of its founder were lost in the course

of ages.

* The text giving us this information is that in which

Nabonidos affirms that Naramsin, son of Sargon of Agado, had

founded the temple of the Sun at Sippara, 3200 years before

himself, which would give us 3750 B.C. for the reign of

Naramsin.

The last independent King of Babylon, Nabonaid [Nabonidos], at length

discovered the cylinders in which Naramsin, son of Sargon, had signified

to posterity all that he had done towards the erection of a temple

worthy of the deity to the god of Sippara: “for three thousand two

hundred years not one of the kings had been able to find them.” We

have no means of judging what these edifices were like for which

the Chaldaeans themselves showed such veneration; they have entirely

disappeared, or, if anything remains of them, the excavations hitherto

carried out have not revealed it. Many small objects, however, which

have accidentally escaped destruction give us a fair idea of the artists

who lived in Babylon at this time, and of their skill in handling the

graving-tool and chisel. An alabaster vase with the name of

Naramsin, and a mace-head of exquisitely veined marble, dedicated by

Shargani-shar-ali to the sun-god of Sippara, are valued only on account

of the beauty of the material and the rarity of the inscription; but a

porphyry cylinder, which belonged to Ibnishar, scribe of the above-named

Shargani, must be ranked among the masterpieces of Oriental engraving.

It represents the hero Gilgames, kneeling and holding with both hands

a spherically shaped vase, from which flow two copious jets forming a

stream running through the country; an ox, armed with a pair of gigantic

crescent-shaped horns, throws back its head to catch one of the jets

as it falls. Everything in this little specimen is equally worthy of

admiration--the purity of outline, the skilful and delicate cutting of

the intaglio, the fidelity of the action, and the accuracy of form.

A fragment of a bas-relief of the reign of Naramsin shows that the

sculptors were not a bit behind the engravers of gems. This consists now

only of a single figure, a god, who is standing on the right, wearing a

conical head-dress and clothed in a hairy garment which leaves his right

arm free. The legs are wanting, the left arm and the hair are for

the most part broken away, while the features have also suffered; its

distinguishing characteristic is a sublety of workmanship which is

lacking in the artistic products of a later age. The outline stands out

from the background with a rare delicacy, the details of the muscles

being in no sense exaggerated: were it not for the costume and pointed

beard, one would fancy it a specimen of Egyptian work of the best

Memphite period.

[Illustration 096.jpg THE SEAL OF SHARGANI-SHAR-ALI: GILGAMES WATERS THE

CELESTIAL OX.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Menant.

One is almost tempted to believe in the truth of the tradition which

ascribes to Naramsin the conquest of Egypt, or of the neighbouring

countries.

[Illustration: 096a.jpg Painting in Color of Charioteer]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph published by Father

Schiel.

[Illustration: 097.jpg Page image]

Did Sargon and Naramsin live at so early a date as that assigned to

them by Nabonidos? The scribes who assisted the kings of the second

Babylonian empire in their archaeological researches had perhaps

insufficient reasons for placing the date of these kings so far back in

the misty past: should evidence of a serious character A constrain us to

attribute to them a later origin, we ought not to be surprised. In the

mean time our best course is to accept the opinion of the Chaldaeans,

and to leave Sargon and Naramsin in the century assigned to them by

Nabonidos, although from this point they look down as from a high

eminence upon all the rest of Chaldaean antiquity. Excavations have

brought to light several personages of a similar date, whether a

little earlier, or a little later: Bingani-sharali, Man-ish-turba,

and especially Alusharshid, who lived at Kishu and Nipur, and gained

victories over Elam.

[Illustration: 098.jpg Page image: the arms op the city and kings of

Lagash]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Lagash, now

in the Louvre

After this glimpse of light on these shadowy kings darkness once more

closes in upon us, and conceals from us the majority of the sovereigns

who ruled afterwards in Babylon. The facts and names which can be

referred with certainty to the following centuries belong not to

Babylon, but to the southern States, Lagash, Uruk, Uru, Nishin, and

Larsam. The national writers had neglected these principalities;

we possess neither a resume of their chronicles nor a list of their

dynasties, and the inscriptions which speak of their the arms of the

city gods and princes are still very rare and kings of Lagash. Lagash,

as far as our evidence goes, was, perhaps, the most illustrious of

all these cities.* It occupied the heart of the country, and its site

covered both sides of the Shatt-el-Hai; the Tigris separated it on the

east from Anshan, the westernmost of the Elamite districts, with which

it carried on a perpetual frontier war.

* We are indebted almost exclusively to the researches of M.

de Sarzec, and his discoveries at Telloh, for what we know

of it. The results of his excavations, acquired by the

French government, are now in the Louvre. The description of

the ruins, the text of the inscriptions, and an account of

the statues and other objects found in the course of the

work, have been published by Heuzey-Sakzec, _Decouvertes en

Chaldee_. The name of the ancient town has been read

Sirpurla, Zirgulla, etc.

All parts of the country were not equally fertile: the fruitful and

well-cultivated district in the neighbourhood of the Shatt-el-Hai gave

place to impoverished lands ending to the eastward, finally in swampy

marshes, which with great difficulty furnished means of sustenance to a

poor and thinly scattered population of fisher-folk.

[Illustration: 099.jpg FRAGMENT OF BAS-RELIEF BY URNINA, KING OF

LAGASH.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a stone in the Louvre.

The capital, built on the left bank of the river, stretched out to the

north-east and south-west a distance of some five miles. It was not so

much a city as an agglomeration of large villages, each grouped around a

temple or palace--Uruazagga, Gishgalla, G-irsu, Nina, and Lagash,

which latter imposed its name upon the whole. A branch of the river

Shatt-el-Hai protected it on the south, and supplied the village of

Nina with water; no trace of an inclosing wall has been found, and the

temples and palaces seem to have served as refuges in case of attack.

It had as its arms, or totem, a double-headed eagle standing on a lion

passant, or on two demi-lions placed back to back. Its chief god was

called Ningirsu, that is, the lord of Girsu, where his temple stood: his

companion Bau, and his associates Ninagal, Innanna and Ninsia, were

the deities of the other divisions of the city. The princes were first

called kings, but afterwards vicegerents--_patesi_--when they came under

the suzerainty of a more powerful king, the King of Uruk or of Babylon.

The earlier history of this remarkable town is made up of the

scanty memoirs of its rulers, together with those of the princes of

Gishban--“the land of the Bow,” of which Ishin seems to have been the

principal town. A very ancient document states, that, at the instigation

of Inlil, the god of Nipur, the local deities, Ningirsu and Kirsig, set

up a boundary between the two cities. In the course of time, Meshilim,

a king of Kishu, which, before the rise of Agade, was the chief town in

those parts, extended his dominion over Lagash and erected his stele at

its border; Ush, vicegerent of Gishban, however, removed it, and had to

suffer defeat before he would recognize the new order of things. After

the lapse of some years, of which we possess no records, we find the

mention of a certain Urukagina, who assumes the title of king: he

restored or enlarged several temples, and dug the canal which supplied

the town of Nina with water. A few generations later we find the ruling

authority in the hands of a certain Urnina, whose father Ninigaldun and

grandfather Gurshar received no titles--a fact which proves that they

could not have been reigning sovereigns. Urnina appears to have been of

a peaceful and devout disposition, as the inscriptions contain frequent

references to the edifices he had erected in honour of the gods, the

sacred objects he had dedicated to them, and the timber for building

purposes which he had brought from Magan, but there is no mention in

them of any war. His son Akurgal was also a builder of temples, but

his grandson Idingiranagin, who succeeded Akurgal, was a warlike and

combative prince.

[Illustration: 101.jpg IDINGIRANAGIN HOLDING THE TOTEM OF LAGASH.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the bas-relief F2 in the

Louvre.

It seems probable that, about that time, the kingdom of Gishban had

become a really powerful state. It had triumphed not only over

Babylonia proper, but over Kish, Uru, Uruk, and Larsam, while one of its

sovereigns had actually established his rule in some parts of Northern

Syria. Idingiranagin vanquished the troops of Gishban, and there is now

in the Louvre a trophy which he dedicated in the temple of Ninglrsu on

his return from the campaign.

* Hilpeecht, Bab. Expcd. of the Univ. of Pennsylvania, vol.

i., 2nd part, p. 47 sqq.

[Illustration: 102.jpg IDINGIRANAGIN IN HIS CHARIOT LEADING HIS TROOPS.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the Louvre. The

attendant standing behind the king has been obliterated, but

we see clearly the contour of his shoulder, and his hands

holding the reins. It is a large stele of close-grained

white limestone, rounded at the top, and covered with scenes

and inscriptions on both its faces. One of these faces

treats only of religious subjects. Two warlike goddesses,

crowned with plumed head-dresses and crescent-shaped horns,

are placed before a heap of weapons and various other

objects, which probably represent some of the booty

collected in the campaign. It would appear that they

accompany a tall figure of a god or king, possibly that of

the deity Ningirsu, patron of Lagash and its kings. Ningirsu

raises in one hand an ensign, of which the staff bears at

the top the royal totem, the eagle with outspread wings

laying hold by his talons of two half-lions back to back;

with the other hand he brings a, club down heavily upon a

group of prisoners, who struggle at his feet in the meshes

of a large net.

[Illustration: 103.jpg Page image. VULTURES FEEDING UPON THE DEAD.]

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

the Louvre. This is the human sacrifice after the victory,

such as we find it in Egypt--the offering to the national

god of a tenth of the captives, who struggle in vain to

escape from fate. On the other stele the battle is at its

height. Idingiranagin, standing upright in his chariot,

which is guided by an attendant, charges the enemy at the

head of his troops, and the plain is covered with corpses

cut down by his fierce blows: a flock of vultures accompany

him, and peck at each other in their struggles over the

arms, legs, and decapitated heads of the vanquished. Victory

once secured, he retraces his steps to bestow funeral

honours upon the dead.

[Illustration: 104.jpg PILING UP THE MOUND OF THE DEAD AFTER THE

BATTLE.]

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

the Louvre. The bodies raised regularly in layers form an

enormous heap: priests or soldiers wearing loin-cloths mount

to its top, where they pile the offerings and the earth

which are to form the funerary mound. The sovereign,

moreover, has, in honour of the dead, consigned to execution

some of the prisoners, and deigns to kill with his own hand

one of the principal chiefs of the enemy.

The design and execution of these scenes are singularly rude; men and

beasts--indeed, all the figures--have exaggerated proportions, uncouth

forms, awkward positions, and an uncertain and heavy gait. The war ended

in a treaty concluded with Enakalli, vicegerent of Grishban, by which

Lagash obtained considerable advantages. Idingiranagin replaced the

stele of Meshilim, overthrown by one of Enakalli’s predecessors, and

dug a ditch from the Euphrates to the provinces of Guedln to serve

henceforth as a boundary. He further levied a tribute of corn for the

benefit of the goddess Nina and her consort Ningirsu, and applied

the spoils of the campaign to the building of new sanctuaries for the

patron-gods of his city.

[Illustration: 105.jpg KING URNINA AND HIS FAMILY.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the Louvre. Cf.

another bas-relief of the same king, p. 244; and for the

probable explanation of these pierced plaques, see p. 258 of

the present work.

His reign was, on the whole, a glorious and successful one. He conquered

the mountain district of Elam, rescued Uruk and Uru, which had both

fallen into the hands of the people of Gishban, organized an expedition

against the town of Az and killed its vicegerent, in addition to which

he burnt Arsua, and devastated the district of Mishime. He next directed

an attack against Zuran, king of Udban, and, by vanquishing this Prince

on the field of battle, he extended his dominion over nearly the whole

of Babylonia.

The prosperity of his dynasty was subjected to numerous and strange

vicissitudes. Whether it was that its resources were too feeble to

stand the exigencies and strain of war for any length of time, or that

intestine strife had been the chief cause of its decline, we cannot

say. Its kings married many wives and became surrounded with a numerous

progeny: Urnina had at least four sons. They often entrusted to their

children or their sons-in-law the government of the small towns which

together made up the city: these represented so many temporary fiefs, of

which the holders were distinguished by the title of “vicegerents.” This

dismemberment of the supreme authority in the interest of princes, who

believed for the most part that they had stronger claims to the throne

than its occupant, was attended with dangers to peace and to the

permanence of the dynasty. The texts furnish us with evidence of the

existence of at least half a dozen descendants of Akurgal--Inannatuma

I., Intemena, his grandson Inannatuma II, all of whom seem to have been

vigorous rulers who energetically maintained the supremacy of their city

over the neighbouring estates. Inannatuma I., however, proved no match

in the end against Urlamma, the vicegerent of Gishban, and lost part, at

least, of the territory acquired by Idingiranagin, but his son Intemena

defeated Urlamma on the banks of the Lumasirta Canal, and, having killed

or deposed him, gave the vicegerency of Gishban to a certain Hi, priest

of Ninab, who remained his loyal vassal to the end of his days. With

his aid Intemena restored the stelae and walls which had been destroyed

during the war; he also cleared out the old canals and dug new ones, the

most important of which was apparently an arm of the Shatt-el-Hai, and

ran from the Euphrates to the Tigris, through the very centre of the

domains of Ghirsu.

Other kings and vicegerents of doubtful sequence were followed lastly by

Urbau and his son Gudea. These were all piously devoted to Ningirsu in

general, and in particular to the patron of their choice from among

the divinities of the country--Papsukal, Dunziranna, and Ninagal. They

restored and enriched the temples of these gods: they dedicated to

them statues or oblation vases for the welfare of themselves and their

families. It would seem, if we are to trust the accounts which they give

of themselves, that their lives were passed in profound peace, without

other care than that of fulfilling their duties to heaven and its

ministers. Their actual condition, if we could examine it, would

doubtless appear less agreeable and especially less equable; revolutions

in the palace would not be wanting, nor struggles with the other peoples

of Chaldaea, with Susiana and even more distant nations. When Agade rose

into power in Northern Babylonia, they fell under its rule, and one of

them, Lugal-ushum-gal, acknowledged himself a dependant of Sargon. On

the decline of Agade, and when that city was superseded by Uru in the

hegemony of Babylonia proper, the vicegerents of Lagash were transferred

with the other great towns to the jurisdiction of Uru, and flourished

under the supremacy of the new dynasty.

Grudea, son of Urbau, who, if not the most powerful of its princes,

is at least the sovereign of whom we possess the greatest number of

monuments, captured the town of Anshan in Elam, and this is probably not

the only campaign in which he took part, for he speaks of his success

in an incidental manner, and as if he were in a hurry to pass to more

interesting subjects.

[Illustration: 108.jpg THE SACRIFICE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a stone in the Louvre.

That which seemed to him important in his reign, and which especially

called forth the recognition of posterity, was the number of his pious

foundations, distinguished as they were by beauty and magnificence. The

gods themselves had inspired him in his devout undertakings, and had

even revealed to him the plans which he was to carry out. An old man of

venerable aspect appeared to him in a vision, and commanded him to build

a temple: as he did not know with whom he had to do, Nina his mother

informed him that it was his brother, the god Ningirsu. This having been

made clear, a young woman furnished with style and writing tablet was

presented to him--Nisaba, the sister of Nina; she made a drawing in his

presence, and put before him the complete model of a building. He set

to work on it _con amore_, and sent for materials to the most distant

countries--to Magan, Amanus, the Lebanon, and into the mountains which

separate the valley of the Upper Tigris from that of the Euphrates.

[Illustration: 109.jpg SITTING STATUE OF GUDEA]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin

The sanctuaries which he decorated, and of which he felt so proud, are

to-day mere heaps of bricks, now returned to their original clay; but

many of the objects which he placed in them, and especially the statues,

have traversed the centuries without serious damage before finding a

resting-place in the Louvre. The sculptors of Lagash, after the time of

Idingi-ranagin, had been instructed in a good school, and had learned

their business. Their bas-reliefs are not so good as those of Naramsin;

the execution of them is not so refined, the drawing less delicate, and

the modelling of the parts not so well thought out. A good illustration

of their work is the fragment of a square stele which represents a scene

of offering or sacrifice. We see in the lower part of the picture a

female singer, who is accompanied by a musician, playing on a lyre

ornamented with the head of an ox, and a bull in the act of walking.

In the upper part an individual advances, clad in a fringed mantle, and

bearing in his right hand a kind of round paten, and in his left a short

staff. An acolyte follows him, his arms brought up to his breast, while

another individual marks, by clapping his hands, the rhythm of the ode

which a singer like the one below is reciting. The fragment is much

abraded, and its details, not being clearly exhibited, have rather to

be guessed at; but the defaced aspect which time has produced is of some

service to it, since it conceals in some respect the rudeness of

its workmanship. The statues, on the other hand, bear evidence of a

precision of chiselling and a skill beyond question. Not that there are

no faults to be found in the work. They are squat, thick, and heavy

in form, and seem oppressed by the weight of the woollen covering with

which the Chaldeans enveloped themselves; when viewed closely, they

excite at once the wonder and repulsion of an eye accustomed to the

delicate grace, and at times somewhat slender form, which usually

characterized the good statues of the ancient and middle empire of

Egypt. But when we have got over the effect of first impressions, we can

but admire the audacity with which the artists attacked their material.

This is of hard dolerite, offering great resistance to the tool--harder,

perhaps, than the diorite out of which the Memphite sculptor had to

cut his Khephren: they succeeded in mastering it, and in handling it as

freely as if it were a block of limestone or marble.

[Illustration: 111.jpg Plan of the Ruins of Mughier]

The surface of the breast and back, the muscular development of the

shoulders and arms, the details of the hands and feet, all the nude

portions, are treated at once with a boldness and attention to minutiae

rarely met with in similar works. The pose is lacking in variety; the

individual, whether male or female, is sometimes represented standing

and sometimes sitting on a low seat, the legs brought together, the bust

rising squarely from the hips, the hands crossed upon the breast, in a

posture of submission or respectful adoration. The mantle passes over

the left shoulder, leaving the right free, and is fastened on the right

breast, the drapery displaying awkward and inartistic folds: the latter

widens in the form of a funnel from top to bottom, being bell-shaped

around the lower part of the body, and barely leaves the ankles exposed.

[Illustration: 112.jpg STATUES FROM TELLOH. and HEAD OF ONE OF THE

STATUE OF GUDEA.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec.

All the large statues to be seen at the Louvre have lost their heads;

fortunately we possess a few separate heads. Some are completely shaven,

others wear a kind of turban affording shade to the forehead and eyes;

among them all we see the same qualities and defects which we find in

the bodies: a hardness of expression, heaviness, absence of vivacity,

and yet withal a vigour of reproduction and an accurate knowledge of

human anatomy. These are instances of what could be accomplished in a

city of secondary rank; better things were doubtless produced in the

great cities, such as Uru and Babylon. Chaldaean art, as we are able

to catch a glimpse of it in the monuments of Lagash, had neither the

litheness, nor animation, nor elegance of the Egyptian, but it was

nevertheless not lacking in force, breadth, and originality. Urningirsu

succeeded his father Gudea, to be followed rapidly by several successive

vicegerents, ending, it would appear, in Gala-lama. Their inscriptions

are short and insignificant, and show that they did not enjoy the same

resources or the same favour which enabled Gudea to reign gloriously.

The prosperity of Lagash decreased steadily under their administration,

and they were all the humble vassals of the King of Uru, Dungi, son of

Urbau; a fact which tends to make us regard Urbau as having been the

suzerain upon whom Gudea himself was dependent. Uru, the only city among

those of Lower Chaldaea which stands on the right bank of the Euphrates,

was a small but strong place, and favourably situated for becoming one

of the commercial and industrial centres in these distant ages. The

Wady Eummein, not far distant, brought to it the riches of Central and

Southern Arabia, gold, precious stones, gums, and odoriferous resins for

the exigencies of worship. Another route, marked out by wells, traversed

the desert to the land of the semi-fabulous Mashu, and from thence

perhaps penetrated as far as Southern Syria and the Sinaitic

Peninsula--Magan and Milukhkha on the shores of the Red Sea: this was

not the easiest but it was the most direct route for those bound for

Africa, and products of Egypt were no doubt carried along it in order

to reach in the shortest time the markets of Uru. The Euphrates now

runs nearly five miles to the north of the town, but from the regions

bordering the Black Sea.

[Illustration: 114.jpg Plan of the Ruins of Abu-Shahreyn]

In ancient times it was not so distant, but passed almost by its

gates. The cedars, cypresses, and pines of Amamis and the Lebanon,the

limestones, marbles, and hard stones of Upper Syria, were brought down

to it by boat; and probably also metals--iron, copper and lead.

The Shatt-el-Hai, moreover, poured its waters into the Euphrates almost

opposite the city, and opened up to it commercial relations with the

Upper and Middle Tigris. And this was not all; whilst some of its

boatmen used its canals and rivers as highways, another section made

their way to the waters of the Persian Gulf and traded with the ports on

its coast. Eridu, the only city which could have barred their access

to the sea, was a town given up to religion, and existed only for its

temples and its gods. It was not long before it fell under the influence

of its powerful neighbour, becoming the first port of call for vessels

proceeding up the Euphrates.

[Illustration: 115.jpg AN ARAB CROSSING THE TIGRIS IN A “KUFA.”]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Chesney.

In the time of the Greeks and Romans the Chaldaeans were accustomed

to navigate the Tigris either in round flat-bottomed boats, of little

draught--“kufas,” in fact--or on rafts placed upon inflated skins,

exactly similar in appearance and construction to the “keleks” of our

own day. These keleks were as much at home on the sea as upon the river,

and they may still be found in the Persian Gulf engaged in the coasting

trade. Doubtless many of these were included among the vessels of Uru

mentioned in the texts, but there were also among the latter those

long large rowing-boats with curved stem and stern, Egyptian in their

appearance, which are to be found roughly incised on some ancient

cylinders. These primitive fleets were not disposed to risk the

navigation of the open sea. They preferred to proceed slowly along the

shore, hugging it in all cases, except when it was necessary to reach

some group of neighbouring islands; many days of navigation were thus

required to make a passage which one of our smallest sail-boats would

effect in a few hours, and at the end of their longest voyages they

were not very distant from their point of departure. It would be a great

mistake to suppose them capable of sailing round Arabia and of fetching

blocks of stone by sea from the Sinaitic Peninsula; such an expedition,

which would have been dangerous even for Greek or Roman Galleys, would

have been simply impossible for them. If they ever crossed the Strait

of Ormuzd, it was an exceptional thing, their ordinary voyages being

confined within the limits of the gulf. The merchants of Uru were

accustomed to visit regularly the island of Dilmun, the land of Magan,

the countries of Milukhkha and Gubin; from these places they brought

cargoes of diorite for their sculptors, building-timber for their

architects, perfumes and metals transported from Yemen by land, and

possibly pearls from the Bahrein Islands. They encountered serious

rivalry from the sailors of Dilmun and Magan, whose maritime tribes were

then as now accustomed to scour the seas. The risk was great for those

who set out on such expeditions, perhaps never to return, but the profit

was considerable.

[Illustration: 117.jpg AN ASSYRIAN KELEK LADEN WITH BUILDING-STONE.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from “Kouyunjik”

(Layard, _The Monuments of Nineveh_, 2nd series, pi. 13; cf.

Place, _Ninive et l’Assyrie_, pl. 43, No. 1.)

Uru, enriched by its commerce, was soon in a position to subjugate

the petty neighbouring states--Uruk, Larsam, Lagash, and Nipur. Its

territory formed a fairly extended sovereignty, whose lords entitled

themselves kings of Shumir and Akkad, and ruled over all Southern

Chaldaea for many centuries.

Several of these kings, the Lugalkigubnidudu and the Lugalkisalsi, of

whom some monuments have been preserved to us, seem to have extended

their influence beyond these limits prior to the time of Sargon the

Elder; and we can date the earliest of them with tolerable probability.

Urbau reigned some time about 2900 B.C. He was an energetic builder, and

material traces of his activity are to be found everywhere throughout

the country. The temple of the Sun at Larsam, the temple of Nina in

Uruk, and the temples of Inlilla and Ninlilla in Nipur were indebted

to him for their origin or restoration: he decorated or repaired

all structures which were not of his own erection: in Uru itself

the sanctuary of the moon-god owes its foundation to him, and the

fortifications of the city were his work. Dungi, his son, was an

indefatigable bricklayer, like his father: he completed the sanctuary

of the moon-god, and constructed buildings in Uruk, Lagash, and Kutha.

There is no indication in the inscriptions of his having been engaged

in any civil struggle or in war with a foreign nation; we should make a

serious mistake, however, if we concluded from this silence that peace

was not disturbed in his time. The tie which bound together the petty

states of which Uru was composed was of the slightest. The sovereign

could barely claim as his own more than the capital and the district

surrounding it; the other cities recognized his authority, paid him

tribute, did homage to him in religious matters, and doubtless rendered

him military service also, but each one of them nevertheless maintained

its particular constitution and obeyed its hereditary lords. These

lords, it is true, lost their title of king, which now belonged

exclusively to their suzerain, and each one had to be content in his

district with the simple designation of “vicegerent;” but having once

fulfilled their feudal obligations, they had absolute power over

their ancient domains, and were able to transmit to their progeny the

inheritance they had received from their fathers. Gudea probably, and

most certainly his successors, ruled in this way over Lagash, as a fief

depending on the crown of Uru. After the manner of the Egyptian barons,

the vassals of the kings of Chaldaea submitted to the control of their

suzerain without resenting his authority as long as they felt the

curbing influence of a strong hand: but on the least sign of feebleness

in their master they reasserted themselves, and endeavoured to recover

their independence. A reign of any length was sure to be disturbed by

rebellions sometimes difficult to repress: if we are ignorant of any

such, it is owing to the fact that inscriptions hitherto discovered are

found upon objects upon which an account of a battle would hardly find

a fitting place, such as bricks from a temple, votive cones or cylinders

of terra-cotta, amulets or private seals. We are still in ignorance as

to Dungi’s successors, and the number of years during which this first

dynasty was able to prolong its existence. We can but guess that its

empire broke up by disintegration after a period of no long duration.

Its cities for the most part became emancipated, and their rulers

proclaimed themselves kings once more. We see that the kingdom of

Amnanu, for instance, was established on the left bank of the Euphrates,

with Uruk as its capital, and that three successive sovereigns at

least--of whom Singashid seems to have been the most active--were able

to hold their own there. Uru had still, however, sufficient prestige and

wealth to make it the actual metropolis of the entire country. No one

could become the legitimate lord of Shumir and Accad before he had

been solemnly enthroned in the temple at Uru. For many centuries every

ambitious kinglet in turn contended for its possession and made it

his residence. The first of these, about 2500 B.C., were the lords

of Nishin, Libitanunit, Gamiladar, Inedin, Bursin I., and Ismidagan:

afterwards, about 2400 B.C., Gungunum of Nipur made himself master of

it. The descendants of Gungunum, amongst others Bursin II., Gimilsin,

Inesin, reigned gloriously for a few years. Their records show that

they conquered not only a part of Elam, but part of Syria. They were

dispossessed in their turn by a family belonging to Larsam, whose two

chief representatives, as far as we know, were Nurramman and his son

Sinidinnam (about 2300 B.C.). Naturally enough, Sinidinnam was a builder

or repairer of temples, but he added to such work the clearing of the

Shatt-el-Hai and the excavation of a new canal giving a more direct

communication between the Shatt and the Tigris, and in thus controlling

the water-system of the country became worthy of being considered one of

the benefactors of Chaldaea.

We have here the mere dust of history, rather than history itself: here

an isolated individual makes his appearance in the record of his name,

to vanish when we attempt to lay hold of him; there, the stem of a

dynasty which breaks abruptly off, pompous preambles, devout formulas,

dedications of objects or buildings, here and there the account of some

battle, or the indication of some foreign country with which relations

of friendship or commerce were maintained--these are the scanty

materials out of which to construct a connected narrative. Egypt has not

much more to offer us in regard to many of her Pharaohs, but we have in

her case at least the ascertained framework of her dynasties, in

which each fact and each new name falls eventually, and after some

uncertainty, into its proper place. The main outlines of the picture are

drawn with sufficient exactitude to require no readjustment, the groups

are for the most part in their fitting positions, the blank spaces or

positions not properly occupied are gradually restricted, and filled in

from day to day; the expected moment is in sight when, the arrangement

of the whole being accomplished, it will be necessary only to fill in

the details. In the case of Chaldaea the framework itself is wanting,

and expedients must be resorted to in order to classify the elements

entering into its composition. Naramsin is in his proper place, or

nearly so; but as for Gudea, what interval separates him from Naramsin,

and at what distance from Gudea are we to place the kings of Uru? The

beginnings of Chaldaea have merely a provisional history: the facts in

it are certain, but the connection of the facts with one another is too

often a matter of speculation. The arrangement which is put forward at

present can be regarded only as probable, but it would be difficult

to propose a better until the excavations have furnished us with fresh

material; it must be accepted merely as an attempt, without pledging to

it our confidence on the one hand, or regarding it with scepticism on

the other.