[Illustration: 208a.jpg Chaldean houses at Uru.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by Taylor.

[Illustration: 208b plans of houses excavated at Eridu and Ubu.]

These plans were drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from sketches by

Taylor. The houses reproduced to the left of the plan were

those uncovered in the ruins of Uru; those on the right

belong to the ruins of Eridu. On the latter, the niches

mentioned in the text will be found indicated.

In the interior may still be distinguished the small oblong rooms,

sometimes vaulted, sometimes roofed with a flat, ceiling supported by

trunks of palm trees;* the walls are often of a considerable thickness,

in which are found narrow niches here and there. The majority of the

rooms were merely store-chambers, and contained the family provisions

and treasures; others served as living-rooms, and were provided with

furniture. The latter, in the houses of the richer citizens no less

than in those of the people, was of a very simple kind, and was mostly

composed of chairs and stools, similar to those in the royal palaces;

the bedrooms contained the linen chests and the beds with their thin

mattresses, coverings, and cushions, and perhaps wooden head-rests,

resembling those found in Africa,** but the Chaldaeans slept mostly on

mats spread on the ground.

* Taylor, _Notes on the Ruins of Mugeyer_, in the _Journ. of

the Royal As. Soc_, vol. xv. p. 266, found the remains of

the palm-tree beams which formed the terrace still existing.

He thinks (_Notes on Tel-el-Lahm_, etc., in the _Journ, of

the Royal As. Soc._, vol. xv. p. 411) with Loftus that some

of the chambers were vaulted. Cf. upon the custom of

vaulting in Chaldaean houses, Piereot-Cupiez, _Histoire de

l’Art_, vol. ii. p. 163, et seq.

** The dressing of the hair in coils and elaborate

erections, as seen in the various figures engraved upon

Chaldaean intaglios (cf. what is said of the different ways

of arranging the hair on p. 262 of this volume), appears to

have necessitated the use of these articles of furniture;

such complicated erections of hair must have lasted several

days at least, and would not have kept in condition so long

except for the use of the head-rest.

An oven for baking occupied a corner of the courtyard, side by side with

the stones for grinding the corn; the ashes on the hearth were always

aglow, and if by chance the fire went out, the fire-stick was always

at hand to relight it, as in Egypt. The kitchen utensils and household

pottery comprised a few large copper pans and earthenware pots rounded

at the base, dishes, water and wine jars, and heavy plates of coarse

ware; metal had not as yet superseded stone, and in the same house we

meet with bronze axes and hammers side by side with the same implements

in cut flint, besides knives, scrapers, and mace-heads.*

* Implements in flint and other kinds of stone have been

discovered by Taylor, and are now in the British Museum. The

bronze implements come partly from the tombs of Mugheir, and

partly from the ruins explored by Loftus at Tell-Sifr--that

is to say, the ancient cities of Uru and Larsam: the name of

Tell-Sifr, the “mound of copper,” comes from the quantity of

objects in copper which have been discovered there.

[Illustration: 300.jpg CHALDAEAN HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS IN TERRA-COTTA]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by G. Rawlinson, and

the heliogravure in Heuzey-Sarzec.

At the present day the women of the country of the Euphrates spend a

great part of their time on the roofs of their dwellings.* They install

themselves there in the morning, till they are driven away by the heat;

as soon as the sun gets low in the heavens, they return to their post,

and either pass the day on neighbouring roofs whilst they bake, cook,

wash and dry the linen; or, if they have slaves to attend to such menial

occupations, they sew and embroider in the open air.

* Olivier, _Voyage dans l’Empire Othoman,_ vol. ii. pp. 356,

357, 381, 382, 392, 393.

They come down into the interior of the house during the hottest hours

of the day. In most of the wealthy houses, the coolest room is one below

the level of the courtyard, into which but little light can penetrate.

It is paved with plaques of polished gypsum, which resembles our finest

grey-and-white marble, and the walls are covered with a coat of delicate

plastering, smooth to the touch and agreeable to the eye. This is

watered several times during the day in hot weather, and the evaporation

from it cools the air. The few ruined habitations which have as yet been

explored seem to bear witness to a considerable similarity between the

requirements and customs of ancient times and those of to-day. Like the

modern women of Bagdad and Mosul, the Chaldaean women of old preferred

an existence in the open air, in spite of its publicity, to a seclusion

within stuffy rooms or narrow courts. The heat of the sun, cold, rain,

and illness obliged them at times to seek a refuge within four walls,

but as soon as they could conveniently escape from them, they climbed up

on to their roof to pass the greater part of their time there.

Many families of the lower and middle classes owned the houses which

they occupied. They constituted a patrimony which the owners made every

effort to preserve intact through all reverses of fortune.* The head

of the family bequeathed it to his widow or his eldest son, or left it

undivided to his heirs, in the assurance, no doubt, that one of them

would buy up the rights of the others.

* A house could be let for various lengths of time--for

three months, for a year, for five years, for an indefinite

term, but with a minimum of six months, since the rent is

payable at the beginning and in the middle of each year.

The remainder of his goods, farms, gardens, corn-lands, slaves,

furniture, and jewels, were divided among the brothers or natural

descendants, “from the mouth to the gold;” that is to say, from the

moment of announcing the beginning of the business, to that when

each one received his share. In order to invest this act with greater

solemnity, it took place usually in the presence of a priest. Those

interested repaired to the temple, “to the gate of the god;” they placed

the whole of the inheritance in the hands of the chosen arbitrator,

and demanded of him to divide it justly; or the eldest brother perhaps

anticipated the apportionment, and the priest had merely to sanction

the result, or settle the differences which might arise among the lawful

recipients in the course of the operation. When this was accomplished,

the legatees had to declare themselves satisfied; and when no further

claims arose, they had to sign an engagement before the priestly

arbitrator that they would henceforth refrain from all quarrelling on

the subject, and that they would never make a complaint one against the

other. By dint of these continual redistributions from one generation

to another, the largest fortunes soon became dispersed: the individual

shares became smaller and smaller, and scarcely sufficed to keep a

family, so that the slightest reverse obliged the possessor to

have recourse to usurers. The Chaldaeans, like the Egyptians, were

unacquainted with the use of money, but from the earliest times the

employment of precious metals for purposes of exchange was practised

among them to an enormous extent. Though copper and gold were both used,

silver was the principal medium in these transactions, and formed the

standard value of all purchaseable objects. It was never cut into flat

rings or twists of wire, as was the case with the Egyptian “tabnu;” it

was melted into small unstamped ingots, which were passed from hand

to hand by weight, being tested in the scales at each transaction.

“To weigh” was in the ordinary language the equivalent for “payment in

metal,” whereas “to measure” denoted that the payment was in grain.

The ingots for exchange were, therefore, designated by the name of

the weights to which they corresponded. The lowest unit was a shekel,

weighing on an average nearly half an ounce, sixty shekels making a

mina, and sixty minas a talent. It is a question whether the Chaldaeanns

possessed in early times, as did the Assyrians of a later period, two

kinds of shekels and minas, one heavy and the other light. Whether the

loan were in metal, grain, or any other substance, the interest was very

high.* A very ancient law fixed it in certain cases at twelve drachmas

per mina, per annum--that is to say, at twenty per cent.--and more

recent texts show us that, when raised to twenty-five per cent., it did

not appear to them abnormal.

* We find several different examples, during the Second

Chaldaeann Empire, of an exchange of corn for provisions and

liquids, or of beams for dates. As a fact, exchange has

never completely died out in these regions, and at the

present day, in Chaldaea, as in Egypt, corn is used in many

cases either to pay Government taxes or to discharge

commercial debts.

The commerce of the chief cities was almost entirely concentrated in the

temples. The large quantities of metals and cereals constantly brought

to the god, either as part of the fixed temple revenue, or as daily

offerings, accumulated so rapidly, that they would have overflowed the

storehouses, had not a means been devised of utilizing them quickly: the

priests treated them as articles of commerce and made a profit out of

them.* Every bargain necessitated the calling in of a public scribe. The

bill, drawn up before witnesses on a clay tablet, enumerated the sums

paid out, the names of the parties, the rate per cent., the date

of repayment, and sometimes a penal clause in the event of fraud or

insolvency; the tablet remained in the possession of the creditor until

the debt had been completely discharged. The borrower often gave as a

pledge either slaves, a field, or a house, or certain of his friends

would pledge on his behalf their own personal fortune; at times he would

pay by the labour of his own hands the interest which he would otherwise

have been unable to meet, and the stipulation was previously made in the

contract of the number of days of corvee which he should periodically

fulfil for his creditor. If, in spite of all this, the debtor was unable

to procure the necessary funds to meet his engagements, the principal

became augmented by a fixed sum--for instance, one-third--and continued

to increase at this rate until the total value of the amount reached

that of the security:** the slave, the field, or the house then ceased

to belong to their former, master, subject to a right of redemption, of

which he was rarely able to avail himself for lack of means.***

* It was to the god himself--Shamash, for example--that the

loan was supposed to be made, and it is to him that the

contracts stipulate that the capital and interest shall be

paid. It is curious to lind among the most successful money-

lenders several princesses consecrated to the sun-god.

** It is easy to foresee, from the contracts of the New

Assyrian or Babylonian Empire, how in this manner the

original sum lent became doubled and trebled; generally the

interest accumulated till it was quadrupled, after which, no

doubt, the security was taken by the creditor. They probably

calculated that the capital and compound interest was by

then equal in value to the person or object given as a

security.

*** The creditors protected themselves against this right of

redemption by a maledictory formula inserted at the end of

the contracts against those who should avail themselves of

it; it is generally inscribed on the boundary stones of the

First Chaldaean Empire.

The small tradesman or free workman, who by some accident had become

involved in debt, seldom escaped this progressive impoverishment except

by strenuous efforts and incessant labour. Foreign commerce, it is true,

entailed considerable risk, but the chances of acquiring wealth were so

great that many individuals launched upon it in preference to more

sure but less lucrative undertakings. They would set off alone or in

companies for Elam or the northern regions, for Syria, or even for so

distant a country as Egypt, and they would bring back in their caravans

all that was accounted precious in those lands. Overland routes were not

free from dangers; not only were nomad tribes and professional bandits

constantly hovering round the traveller, and obliging him to exercise

ceaseless vigilance, but the inhabitants of the villages through which

he passed, the local lords and the kings of the countries which he

traversed, had no scruple in levying blackmail upon him in obliging him

to pay dearly for right of way through their marches or territory.**

There were less risks in choosing a sea route: the Euphrates on one

side, the Tigris, the Ulai, and the Uknu on the other, ran through a

country peopled with a rich industrial population, among whom Chaldaean

merchandise was easily and profitably sold or exchanged for commodities

which would command a good price at the end of the voyage. The vessels

generally were keleks or “kufas,” but the latter were of immense size.

* We have no information from Babylonian sources relating to

the state of the roads, and the dangers which merchants

encountered in foreign lands; the Egyptian documents partly

supply what is here lacking. The “instructions” contained in

the _Sallier Papyrus,_ No. ii., show what were the miseries

of the traveller, and the _Adventures of Sinuhit_ allude to

the insecurity of the roads in Syria, by the very care with

which the hero relates all the precautions which he took for

his protection. These two documents are of the XIIth or

XIIIth dynasty--that is to say, contemporaneous with the

kings, of Uru and with Gudea.

Several individuals, as a rule, would club together to hire one of these

boats and freight it with a suitable cargo.* The body of the boat

was very light, being made of osier or willow covered with skins sewn

together; a layer of straw was spread on the bottom, on which were piled

the bales or chests, which were again protected by a rough thatch of

straw. The crew was composed of two oarsmen at least, and sometimes a

few donkeys: the merchants then pursued their way up stream till they

had disposed of their cargo, and taken in a sufficient freight for their

return voyage. The dangers, though apparently not so great as those by

the land route, were not the less real. The boat was liable to sink

or run aground near the bank, the dwellers in the neighbourhood of the

river might intercept it and pillage its contents, a war might break out

between two contiguous kingdoms and suspend all commerce: the merchants’

career continually vacillated between servitude, death, and fortune.

* The payment demanded was something considerable: the only

contract which I know of existing for such a transaction is

of the time of Darius I., and exacts a silver shekel per day

for the hire of boat and crew.

Business carried on at home in the towns was seldom the means of

enriching a man, and sometimes scarcely afforded him a means of

livelihood. Rent was high for those who had not a house of their own;

the least they could expect to pay was half a silver shekel per annum,

but the average price was a whole shekel. On taking possession they paid

a deposit which sometimes amounted to one-third of the whole sum, the

remainder being due at the end of the year. The leases lasted, as a

rule, merely a twelvemonth, though sometimes they were extended for

terms of greater length, such as two, three, or even eight years. The

cost of repairs and of keeping the house in good condition fell usually

upon the lessee, who was also allowed to build upon the land he had

leased, in which case it was declared free of all charges for a period

of about ten years, but the house, and, as a rule, all he had built,

then reverted to the landlord. Most possessors of shops made their own

goods for sale, assisted by slaves or free apprentices. Every workman

taught his own trade to his children, and these in their turn would

instruct theirs; families which had an hereditary profession, or from

generation to generation had gathered bands of workmen about them,

formed themselves into various guilds, or, to use the customary term,

into tribes, governed by chiefs and following specified customs. A

workman belonged to the tribe of the weavers, or of the blacksmiths, or

of the corn-merchants, and the description of an individual would not

have been considered as sufficiently exact, if the designation of his

tribe were not inserted after his name in addition to his paternal

affiliation. The organization was like that of Egypt, but more fully

developed. The various trades, moreover, were almost the same among the

two peoples, the exceptions being such as are readily accounted for by

the differences in the nature of the soil and physical constitution of

the respective countries. We do not meet on the banks of the Euphrates

with those corporations of stone-cutters and marble workers which were

so numerous in the valley of the Nile. The vast Chaldaean plain, in the

absence of mountains or accessible quarries, would have furnished no

occupation for them: the Chaldaeans had to go a long way in quest of

the small quantities of limestone, alabaster, or diorite which they

required, and which they reserved only for details of architectural

decoration for which a small number of artisans and sculptors were amply

sufficient. The manufacture of bricks, on the other hand, made great

progress; the crude bricks were larger than those of Egypt, and they

were more enduring, composed of finer clay and better executed; the

manufacture of burnt brick too was carried to a degree of perfection to

which Memphis or Thebes never attained. An ancient legend ascribes

the invention of the bricks, and consequently the construction of the

earliest cities, jointly to Sin, the eldest son of Bel, and Ninib his

brother: this event was said to have taken place in May-June, and from

that time forward the third month of the year, over which the twins

presided, was called, Murga in Sumerian, Simanu in the Semitic speech,

the month of brick. This was the season which was especially devoted to

the processes of their manufacture: the flood in the rivers, which was

very great in the preceding months, then began to subside, and the clay

which was deposited by the waters during the weeks of overflow, washed

and refined as it was, lent itself readily to the operation. The sun,

moreover, gave forth sufficient heat to dry the clay blocks in a uniform

and gradual manner: later, in July and August, they would crack under

the ardour of his rays, and become converted externally into a friable

mass, while their interior would remain too moist to allow them to be

prudently used in carefully built structures. The work of brick-making

was inaugurated with festivals and sacrifices to Sin, Merodach, Nebo,

and all the deities who were concerned in the art of building: further

religious ceremonies were observed at intervals during the month to

sanctify the progress of the work. The manufacture did not cease on the

last day of the month, but was continued with more or less activity,

according to the heat of the sun, and the importance of the orders

received, until the return of the inundation: but the bricks intended

for public buildings, temples, or palaces, could not be made outside a

prescribed limit of time. The shades of colour produced naturally in the

process of burning--red or yellow, grey or brown--were not pleasant to

the eye, and they were accustomed, therefore, to coat the bricks with an

attractive enamel which preserved them from the disintegrating effects

of sun and rain. The paste was laid on the edges or sides while

the brick was in a crude state, and was incorporated with it by

vitrification in the heat of the kiln. The process was known from an

early date in Egypt, but was rarely employed there in the decoration

of buildings, while in Chaldaea the use of such enamelled plaques was

common. The substructures of palaces and the exterior walls of temples

were left unadorned, but the shrines which crowned the “ziggurat,”

the reception-halls, and the headings of doors were covered with these

many-coloured tiles. Fragments of them are found to-day in the ruins of

the cities, and the analysis of these pieces shows the marvellous skill

of the ancient workers in enamel; the shades of colour are pure and

pleasant to the eye, while the material is so evenly put on and so

solid, that neither centuries of burial in a sodden soil, nor the wear

and tear of transport, nor the exposure to the damp of our museums, have

succeeded in diminishing their brilliance and freshness.

To get a clear idea of the industrial operations of the country, it

would be necessary to see the various corporations at their work, as we

are able to do, in the case of Egypt in the scenes of the mastabas of

Saqqara, or of the rock-chambers of Beni-Hasan. The manufacture of stone

implements gave considerable employment, and the equipment of the dead

in the tombs of Uru would have been a matter of small moment, if we were

to exclude its flint implements, its knives, cleavers, scrapers, adzes,

axes, and hammers. The cutting of these objects is bold, and the final

touches show skill, but we rarely meet with that purity of contour and

intensity of polish which distinguish similar objects among Western

peoples. A few examples, it is true, are of fairly artistic shape, and

bear engraved inscriptions: one of these, a flint hammer of beautiful

form, belonged to a god, probably Eamman, and seems to have come from a

temple in which one of its owners had deposited it.

[Illustration: 311a.jpg CHALDAEAN STONE IMPLEMENTS.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketches published by

Taylor and by ‘G. Rawlinson. On the left a scraper and two

knives one above the other, an axe in the middle, on the

right an axe and a hammer. All these objects were found in

Taylor’s excavations, and are now in the British Museum.

It is an exception, and a remarkable exception. Stone was the material

of the implements of the poor--implements which were coarse in shape,

and cost little: if much care were given to their execution, they would

come to be so costly that no one would buy them, or, if sold for a

moderate sum, the seller would obtain no profit from the transaction.

Beyond a certain price, it was more advantageous to purchase metal

implements, of copper in the early ages, afterwards of bronze, and

lastly of iron. Among the metal-founders and smiths all kinds of

examples of these were to be found--axes of an elegant and graceful

design, hammers and knives, as well as culinary and domestic utensils,

cups, cauldrons, dishes, mountings of doors and coffers, statuettes of

men, bulls, monsters, and gods--which could be turned to weapons of

all descriptions--arrow and lance heads, swords, daggers, and rounded

helmets with neck-piece or visor.

[Illustration: 311b.jpg CHALDAEAN STONE HAMMER BEARING AN INSCRIPTION.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the illustration published by

Fr. Lenormant.

[Illustration: CHALDAEN IMPLEMENTS OF BRONZE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Rawlinson’s _Five Great

Monarchies_. On the right two axes, in the middle a hammer,

on the left a knife, and below the head of a lance.

Some of the metal objects manufactured by the Chaldaeans attained large

dimensions; for instance, the “brazen seas” which were set up before

each sanctuary, either for the purpose of receiving the libations, or

for the prescribed rites of purification. As is often the case among

half-civilized peoples, the goldsmiths worked in the precious metals

with much facility and skill. We have not, succeeded up to the present

in finding any of those golden images which the kings were accustomed

to dedicate in the temples out of their own possessions, or the spoil

obtained from the enemy; but a silver vase dedicated to Ningirsu by

Entena, vicegerent of Lagash, gives us some idea of this department

of the temple furniture. It stands upright on a small square bronze

pedestal with four feet. A piously expressed inscription runs round

the neck, and the bowl of the vase is divided horizontally into two

divisions, framed above and below by twisted cord-work. Four two-headed

eagles, with outspread wings and tail, occupy the lower division; they

are in the act of seizing with their claws two animals, placed back

to back, represented in the act of walking: the intervals between the

eagles are filled up alternatively by two lions, two wild goats, and

two stags. Above, and close to the rise of the neck, are disposed seven

heifers lying down and all looking in the same direction: they are all

engraved upon the flat metal, and are without relief or incrustation.

The whole composition is harmoniously put together, the posture of the

animals and their general form are well conceived and boldly rendered,

but the details of the mane of the lions and the feathers of the eagles

are reproduced with a realism and attention to minutio which belong to

the infancy of art. This single example of ancient goldsmiths’work would

be sufficient to prove that the early Chaldaens were not a whit behind

the Egyptians in this handicraft, even if we had not the golden

ornaments, the bracelets, ear and finger rings to judge from, with which

the tombs have furnished us in considerable numbers.

[Illustration: VASE OF SILVER. AND BULL OF COPPER.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec

Alongside the goldsmiths there must have been a whole army of lapidaries

and gem-cutters occupied in the engraving of cylinders. Numerous and

delicate operations were required to metamorphose a scrap of crude

rock, marble, granite, agate, onyx, green and red jasper, crystal or

lapis-lazuli, into one of those marvellous seals which are now found by

the hundred scattered throughout the museums of Europe. They had to be

rounded, reduced to the proper proportions, and polished, before the

subject or legend could be engraved upon them with the burin. To drill a

hole through them required great dexterity, and some of the lapidaries,

from a dread of breaking the cylinder, either did not pierce it at all,

or merely bored a shallow hole into each extremity to allow it to

roll freely in its metallic mounting. The tools used in engraving were

similar to those employed at the present day, but of a rougher kind. The

burin, which was often nothing more than a flint point, marked out the

area of the design, and sketched out the figures; the saw was largely

employed to cut away the depressions when these required no detailed

handling; and lastly, the drill, either worked with the hand or in

a kind of lathe, was made to indicate the joints and muscles of the

individual by a series of round holes. The object thus summarily dealt

with might be regarded as sufficiently worked for ordinary clients; but

those who were willing to pay for them could obtain cylinders from which

every mark of the tool had been adroitly removed, and where the beauty

of the workmanship vied with the costliness of the material.

[Illustration: 315.jpg CHALDAEAN CYLINDER EXHIBITING TRACES OF THE

DIFFERENT TOOLS USED BY THE ENGRAVER]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure in Menant’s

_Catalogue de la collection de M. de Clercq_

The seal of Shargani, King of Agade, that of Bingani-shar-ali, and many

others which have been picked up by chance in the excavations, are

true bas-reliefs, reduced and condensed, so to speak, to the space of

something like a square inch of surface, but conceived with an artistic

ingenuity and executed with a boldness which modern engravers have

rarely equalled and never surpassed. There are traces on them, it is

true, of some of the defects which disfigured the latter work of the

Assyrians--heaviness of form, exaggerated prominence of muscles

and hardness of outline--but there are also all the qualities which

distinguish an original and forcible art.

The countries of the Euphrates were renowned in classic times for the

beauty of the embroidered and painted stuffs which they manufactured.*

Nothing has come down to us of these Babylonian tissues of which the

Greek and Latin writers extolled the magnificence, but we may form some

idea, from the statues and the figures engraved on cylinders, of what

the weavers and embroiderers of this ancient time were capable. The loom

which they made use of differed but slightly from the horizontal loom

commonly employed in the Nile Valley, and everything tends to show that

their plain linen cloths were of the kind represented in the swathings

and fragments of clothing still to be found in the sepulchral chambers

of Memphis and Thebes. The manufacture of fleecy woollen garments so

much affected by men and women alike indicates a great dexterity. When

once the threads of the woof had been stretched, those of the warp

were attached to them by knots in as many parallel lines--at regular

intervals--as there were rows of fringe to be displayed on the surface

of the cloth, the loops thus formed being allowed to hang down in their

respective places: sometimes these loops were retained just as they

stood, sometimes they were cut and the ends frayed out so as to give the

appearance of a shaggy texture.

* Most modern writers understand by tapestry what the

ancients were accustomed to call needle embroidery or

painting on stuffs: I can find no indication on the most

ancient monuments of Chaldaean or Egypt of the manufacturing

of real tapestry.

[Illustration: 316.jpg Egyptian Manuscript]

Part of an Egyptian Manuscript found in the Swathing of a

Mummy

[Illustration: 316-text.jpg Egyptian Manuscript]

Most of these stuffs preserved their original white or creamy

colour--especially those woven at home by the women for the requirements

of their own toilet, and for the ordinary uses of the household. The

Chaldaeans, however, like many other Asiatic peoples, had a strong

preference for lively colours, and the outdoor garments and gala attire

of the rich were distinguished by a profusion of blue patterns on a red

ground, or red upon blue, arranged in stripes, zigzags, checks, and

dots or circles. There must, therefore, have been as much occupation

for dyers as there was for weavers; and it is possible that the two

operations were carried out by the same hands. We know nothing of the

bakers, butchers, carriers, masons, and other artisans who supplied the

necessities of the cities: they were doubtless able to make two ends

meet and nothing more, and if we should succeed some day in obtaining

information about them, we shall probably find that their condition was

as miserable as that of their Egyptian contemporaries. The course

of their lives was monotonous enough, except when it was broken at

prescribed intervals by the ordinary festivals in honour of the gods

of the city, or by the casual suspensions of work occasioned by the

triumphant return of the king from some warlike expedition, or by his

inauguration of a new temple.

The gaiety of the people on such occasions was the more exuberant in

proportion to the undisturbed monotony or misery of the days which

preceded them. As soon, for instance, as Gudea had brought to completion

Ininnu, the house of his patron Ningirsu, “he felt relieved from the

strain and washed his hands. For seven days, no grain was bruised in the

quern, the maid was the equal of her mistress, the servant walked in the

same rank as his master, the strong and the weak rested side by side in

the city.” The world seemed topsy-turvy as during the Roman Saturnalia;

the classes mingled together, and the inferiors were probably accustomed

to abuse the unusual licence which they momentarily enjoyed: when the

festival was over, social distinctions reasserted themselves, and each

one fell back into his accustomed position. Life was not so pleasant

in Chaldaea as in Egypt. The innumerable promissory notes, the receipted

accounts, the contracts of sale and purchase--these cunningly drawn up

deeds which have been deciphered by the hundred--reveal to us a people

greedy of gain, exacting, litigious, of artisans in Egypt. This is taken

from a source belonging to the XIIth or possibly the XIIIth dynasty. We

may assume, from the fact that the two civilizations were about on

the same level, that the information supplied in this respect by the

Egyptian monuments is generally applicable to the condition of Chaldaean

workmen of the same period.

(Unreadable) and almost exclusively absorbed by material concerns.

The climate, too, variable and oppressive in summer and winter alike,

imposed upon the Chaldaean painful exactions, and obliged him to work

with an energy of which the majority of Egyptians would not have felt

themselves capable. The Chaldaean, suffering greater and more prolonged

hardships, earned more doubtless, but was not on this account the

happier. However lucrative his calling might be, it was not sufficiently

so to supply him always with domestic necessities, and both tradespeople

and operatives were obliged to run into debt to supplement their

straitened means. When they had once fallen into the hands of the

usurer, the exorbitant interest which they had to pay kept them a long

time in his power. If when the bill fell due there was nothing to meet

it, it had to be renewed under still more disastrous conditions; as the

pledge given was usually the homestead, or the slave who assisted in the

trade, or the garden which supplied food for the family, the mortgagor

was reduced to the extreme of misery if he could not satisfy his

creditors, This plague of usury was not, moreover, confined to the

towns; it raged with equal violence in the country, and the farmers also

became its victims.

If, theoretically, the earth belonged to the gods, and under them to

the kings, the latter had made, and continued daily to make, such large

concessions of it to their vassals, that the greater part of their

domains were always in the hands of the nobles or private individuals.

These could dispose of their landed property at pleasure, farm it out,

sell it or distribute it among their heirs and friends.

They paid on account of it a tax which varied at different epochs, but

which was always burthensome; but when they had once satisfied this

exaction, and paid the dues which the temples might claim on behalf

of the gods, neither the State nor any individual had the right to

interfere in their administration of it, or put any restrictions upon

them. Some proprietors cultivated their lands themselves--the poor by

their own labour, the rich by the aid of some trustworthy slave whom

they interested in the success of his farming by assigning him a certain

percentage on the net return. Sometimes the lands were leased out in

whole or in part to free peasants who relieved the proprietors of all

the worry and risks of managing it themselves. A survey of the area of

each state had been made at an early age, and the lots into which it had

been divided were registered on clay tablets containing the name of

the proprietor as well as those of his neighbours, together with such

indications of the features of the land, dykes, canals, rivers,

and buildings as would serve to define its boundaries: rough plans

accompanied the description, and in the most complicated instances

interpreted it to the eye. This survey was frequently repeated, and

enabled the sovereign to arrange his scheme of taxation on a solid

basis, and to calculate the product of it without material error.

Gardens and groves of date-palms, together with large regions devoted

to rough attempts at vegetable culture, were often to be met with,

especially in the neighbourhood of towns; these paid their contributions

to the State, as well as the owners’rent, in kind--in fruit, vegetables,

and fresh or dried dates. The best soil was reserved, for the growth of

wheat and other cereals, and its extent was measured in terms of corn;

corn was also the standard in which the revenue was reckoned both in

public and private contracts. Such and such a field required about fifty

litres of seed to the arura. Another needed sixty-two or seventy-five

according to the fertility of the land and its locality. Landed property

was placed under the guardianship of the gods, and its transfer or

cession was accompanied by formalities of a half-religious, half-magical

character: the party giving delivery of it called down upon the head

of any one who would dare in the future to dispute the validity of the

deed, imprecations of which the text was inserted on a portion of the

surface of an egg-shaped nodule of flint, basalt, or other hard stone.

These little monuments display on their cone-shaped end a series

of figures, sometimes arranged in two parallel divisions, sometimes

scattered over the surface, which represent the deities invoked to watch

over the sanctity of the contract. It was a kind of representation in

miniature of the aspect which the heavens presented to the Chaldaeans.

The disks of the sun and moon, together with Venus-Ashtar, are the

prominent elements in the scene: the zodiacal figures, or the symbols

employed to represent them, are arranged in an apparent orbit around

these--such as the Scorpion, the Bird, the Dog, the Thunderbolt of

Ramman, the mace, the horned monsters, half hidden by the temples they

guard, and the enormous Dragon who embraces in his folds half the entire

firmament. “If ever, in the course of days, any one of the brothers,

children, family, men or women, slaves or servants of the house, or any

governor or functionary whatsoever, arises and intends to steal this

field, and remove this landmark, either to make a gift of it to a god,

or to assign it to a competitor, or to appropriate it to himself; if he

modifies the area of it, the limits and the landmark; if he divides it

into portions, and if he says: ‘The field has no owner, since there has

been no donation of it; ‘--if, from dread of the terrible imprecations

which protect this stele and this field, he sends a fool, a deaf or

blind person, a wicked wretch, an idiot, a stranger, or an ignorant one,

and should cause this stele to be taken away,* and should throw it

into the water, cover it with dust, mutilate it by scratching it with a

stone, burn it in the fire and destroy it, or write anything else upon

it, or carry,it away to a place where it will be no longer seen,--this

man, may Anu, Bel, Ea, the exalted lady, the great gods, cast upon him

looks of wrath, may they destroy his strength, may they exterminate his

race.” All the immortals are associated in this excommunication, and

each one promises in his turn the aid of his power.

* All the people enumerated in this passage might, in

ignorance of what they were doing, be induced to tear up the

stone, and unconsciously commit a sacrilege from which every

Chaldaean in his senses would have shrunk back. The formula

provides for such cases, and it secures that the curse shall

fall not only on the irresponsible instruments, but reach

the instigator of the crime, even when he had taken no

actual part in the deed.

[Illustration: 322.jpg THE MICHAUX STONE (left)]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin. The original is in the medal cabinet

of the Bibliotheque Nationale.

[Illustration: 323.jpg THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MICHAUX STONE (right)]

Merodach, by whose spells the sick are re stored, will inflict upon the

guilty one a dropsy which no incantation can cure. Shamas, the supreme

judge, will send forth against him one of his inexorable judgments. Sin,

the inhabitant of the brilliant heavens, will cover him with leprosy as

with a garment. Adar, the warrior, will break his weapons; and Zamama,

the king of strifes, will not stand by him on the field of battle.

Eamman will let loose his tempest upon his fields, and will overwhelm

them. The whole band of the invisibles hold themselves ready to defend

the rights of the proprietor against all attacks. In no part of the

ancient world was the sacred character of property so forcibly laid

down, or the possession of the soil more firmly secured by religion.

In instruments of agriculture and modes of cultivation Chaldaea was no

better off than Egypt. The rapidity with which the river rose in the

spring, and its variable subsidence from year to year, furnished little

inducement to the Chaldaeans to entrust to it the work of watering their

lands; on the contrary, they were compelled to protect themselves from

it, and to keep at a distance the volume of waters it brought down.

Each property, whether of square, triangular, or any other shape, was

surrounded with a continuous earth-built barrier which bounded it

on every side, and served at the same time as a rampart against the

inundation.

[Illustration: 324.jpg TWO ROWS OF SHADUFS ON THE BANK OF A RIVER.]

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

Koyunjik.

Rows of shadufs installed along the banks of the canals or streams

provided for the irrigation of the lands.* The fields were laid out like

a chess-board, and the squares, separated from each other by earthen

ridges, formed as it were so many basins: when the elevation of the

ground arrested the flow of the waters, these were collected into

reservoirs, whence by the use of other shadufs they were raised to a

higher level.

* In Mesopotamia and Chaldaea there may still be seen

“everywhere ruins of ancient canals; and there are also to

be met with, in many places, ridges of earth, which stretch

for considerable distances in a straight line, and surround

lands perfectly level.” (Olivier).

The plough was nothing more than an obliquely placed mattock, whose

handle was lengthened in order to harness oxen to it. Whilst the

ploughman pressed heavily on the handle, two attendants kept incessantly

goading the beasts, or urging them forward with voice and whip, and

a third scattered the seed in the furrow. A considerable capital was

needed to ensure success in agricultural undertakings: contracts were

made for three years, and stipulated that payments should be made partly

in metal and partly in the products of the soil.

[Illustration: 325.jpg CHALDAEAN FARMING OPERATIONS.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio reproduced

in Layard. The original is in the cabinet of medals in the

Bibliotheque Nationale.

The farmer paid a small sum when entering into possession, and the

remainder of the debt was gradually liquidated at the end of each

twelve months, the payment being in silver one year, and in corn the two

following. The rent varied according to the quality of the soil and the

facilities which it afforded for cultivation: a field, for instance, of

three bushels was made to pay nine hundred measures, while another of

ten bushels had only eighteen hundred to pay. In many instances the

peasant preferred to take the proprietor into partnership, the latter

in such case providing all the expenses of cultivation, on the

understanding that he should receive two-thirds of the gross product.

The tenant was obliged to administer the estate as a careful householder

during the term of his lease: he was to maintain the buildings and

implements in good repair, to see that the hedges were kept up, to keep

the shadufs in working order, and to secure the good condition of the

watercourses. He had rarely enough slaves to manage the business with

profit: those he had purchased were sufficient, with the aid of his

wives and children, to carry on ordinary operations, but when any

pressure arose, especially at harvest-time, he had to seek elsewhere the

additional labourers he required. The temples were the chief sources for

the supply of these. The majority of the supplementary labourers were

free men, who were hired out by their family, or engaged themselves for

a fixed term, during which they were subject to a sort of slavery, the

conditions of which were determined by law. The workman renounced his

liberty for fifteen days, or a month, or for a whole year; he disposed,

so to speak, of a portion of his life to the provisional master of his

choice, and if he did not enter upon his work at the day agreed upon,

or if he showed himself inactive in the duties assigned to him, he was

liable to severe punishment. He received in exchange for his labour

his food, lodging, and clothing; and if an accident should occur to

him during the term of his service, the law granted him an indemnity in

proportion to the injury he had sustained.

[Illustration: 327.jpg THE FARM OXEN]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a green marble cylinder in the

Louvre.

His average wage was from four to six shekels of silver per annum. He

was also entitled by custom to another shekel in the form of a retaining

fee, and he could claim his pay, which was given to him mostly in corn,

in monthly instalments, if his agreement were for a considerable time,

and daily if it were for a short period.

The mercenary never fell into the condition of the ordinary serf: he

retained his rights as a man, and possessed in the person of the patron

for whom he laboured, or whom he himself had selected, a defender of his

interests. When he came to the end of his engagement, he returned to

his family, and resumed his ordinary occupation until the next occasion.

Many of the farmers in a small way earned thus, in a few weeks,

sufficient means to supplement their own modest personal income. Others

sought out more permanent occupations, and hired themselves out as

regular farm-servants.

The lands which neither the rise of the river nor the irrigation system

could reach so as to render fit for agriculture, were reserved for the

pasture of the flocks in the springtime, when they were covered with

rich grass. The presence of lions in the neighbourhood, however, obliged

the husbandmen to take precautions for the safety of their flocks. They

constructed provisional enclosures into which the animals were driven

every evening, when the pastures were too far off to allow of the flocks

being brought back to the sheepfold. The chase was a favourite pastime

among them, and few days passed without the hunter’s bringing back with

him a young gazelle caught in a trap, or a hare killed by an arrow.

These formed substantial additions to the larder, for the Chaldaeans

do not seem to have kept about them, as the Egyptians did, such tamed

animals as cranes or herons, gazelles or deer: they contented themselves

with the useful species, oxen, asses, sheep, and goats. Some of the

ancient monuments, cylinders, and clay tablets reproduce in a rough

manner scenes from pastoral life. The door of the fold opens, and we see

a flock of goats sallying forth to the cracking of the herdsman’s whip:

when they reach the pasture they scatter over the meadows, and while the

shepherd keeps his eye upon them, he plays upon his reed to the delight

of his dog. In the mean time the farm-people are engaged in the careful

preparation of the evening meal: two individuals on opposite sides of

the hearth watch the pot boiling between them, while a baker makes his

dough into round cakes.

[Illustration: 329a.jpg COOKING: A QUARREL.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the terra-cotta plaques

discovered by Loftus.

Sometimes a quarrel breaks out among the comrades, and leads to a

stand-up fight with the fists; or a lion, perhaps, in quest of a meal,

surprises and kills one of the bulls: the shepherd runs up, his axe in

his hand, to contend bravely with the marauder for the possession of his

beast. The shepherd was accustomed to provide himself with assistance

in the shape of enormous dogs, who had no more hesitation in attacking

beasts of prey than they had in pursuing game. In these combats the

natural courage of the shepherd was stimulated by interest: for he was

personally responsible for the safety of his flock, and if a lion should

find an entrance into one of the enclosures.

[Illustration: 329b.jpg SCENES OF PASTORAL LIFE IN CHALDAEA.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio from

Layard. Another cylinder of the same kind is reproduced at

p. 233 of the present work; it represents Etana arising to

heaven by the aid of his friend the eagle, while the

pastoral scene below resembles in nearly all particulars

that given above.

[Illustration: 330.jpg FIGHT WITH A LION]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the terra-cotta tablets

discovered by Loftus.

Fishing was not so much a pastime as a source of livelihood; for fish

occupied a high place in the bill of fare of the common folk. Caught by

the line, net, or trap, it was dried,in the sun, smoked, or salted. The

chase was essentially the pastime of the great noble--the pursuit of

the lion and the bear in the wooded covers or the marshy thickets of the

river-bank; the pursuit of the gazelle, the ostrich, and bustard on

the elevated plains or rocky tablelands of the desert. The onager of

Mesopotamia is a very beautiful animal, with its grey glossy coat, and

its lively and rapid action.

[Illustration: 331.jpg THE DOG IN TUB LEASH]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a terra-cotta tablet discovered

by Sir H. Rawlinson in the ruins of Babylon, and now in the

British Museum

If it is disturbed, it gives forth a cry, kicks up its heels, and dashes

off: when at a safe distance, it stops, turns round, and faces its

pursuer: as soon as he approaches, it starts off again, stops, and takes

to its heels again, continuing this procedure as long as it is followed.

The Chaldaeans found it difficult to catch by the aid of dogs, but they

could bring it down by arrows, or perhaps catch it alive by stratagem.

A running noose was thrown round its neck, and two men held the ends of

the ropes. The animal struggled, made a rush, and attempted to bite, but

its efforts tended only to tighten the noose still more firmly, and

it at length gave in, half strangled; after alternating struggles and

suffocating paroxysms, it became somewhat calmer, and allowed itself to

be led. It was finally tamed, if not to the extent of becoming useful

in agriculture, at least for the purposes of war: before the horse was

known in Chaldaea, it was used to draw the chariot. The original habitat

of the horse was the great table-lands of Central Asia: it is doubtful

whether it was brought suddenly into the region of the Tigrus and

Euphrates by some barbaric invasion, or whether it was passed on from

tribe to tribe, and thus gradually reached that country. It soon became

acclimatized, and its cross-breeding with the ass led for centuries to

the production of magnificent mules. The horse was known to the kings

of Lagash, who used it in harness. The sovereigns of neighbouring cities

were also acquainted with it, but it seems to have been employed solely

by the upper classes of society, and never to have been generally used

in the war-chariot or as a charger in cavalry operations.

[Illustration: 332.jpg CHALDAEAN CARRYING A FISH. (left)]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the terra-cotta tablets

discovered by Loftus.

The Chaldaeans carried agriculture to a high degree of perfection, and

succeeded in obtaining from the soil everything it could be made to

yield.

[Illustration: 333.jpg THE ONAGER TAKEN WITH THE LASSO.]

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

Nimrud. See p. 35 of the present work for an illustration of

onagers pierced by arrows in the chase.

Their methods, transmitted in the first place to the Greeks, and

afterwards to the Arabs, were perpetuated long after their civilization

had disappeared, and were even practised by the people of Iraq under the

Abbasside Caliphs. Agricultural treatises on clay, which contained an

account of these matters, were deposited in one or other of the sacred

libraries in which the priests of each city were long accustomed to

collect together documents from every source on which they could lay

their hands. There were to be found in each of these collections a

certain number of works which were unique, either because the authors

were natives of the city, or because all copies of them had been

destroyed in the course of centuries--the Epic of Grilgames, for

instance, at Uruk; a history of the Creation, and of the battles of

the gods with the monsters at Kutha: all of them had their special

collections of hymns or psalms, religious and magical formulas, their

lists of words and grammatical phraseology, their glossaries and

syllabaries, which enabled them to understand and translate texts drawn

up in Sumerian, or to decipher those whose writing presented more than

ordinary difficulty. In these libraries there was, we find, as in

the inscriptions of Egypt, a complete literature, of which only some

shattered fragments have come down to us. The little we are able to

examine has produced upon our modern investigators a complex impression,

in which astonishment rather than admiration contends with a sense

of tedious-ness. There may be recognized here and there, among the

wearisome successions of phrases, with their rugged proper names,

episodes which seem something like a Chaldaean “Genesis” or “Veda;” now

and then a bold flight of fancy, a sudden exaltation of thought, or a

felicitous expression, arrests the attention and holds it captive for

a time. In the narrative of the adventures of Grilgames, for instance,

there is a certain nobility of character, and the sequence of events, in

their natural and marvellous development, are handled with gravity and

freedom: if we sometimes encounter episodes which provoke a smile or

excite our repugnance, we must take into account the rudeness of the age

with which they deal, and remember that the men and gods of the later

Homeric epic are not a whit behind the heroes of Babylonian story in

coarseness. The recognition of divine omnipotence, and the keenly felt

afflictions of the soul, awakened in the Chaldaean psalmist feelings of

adoration and penitence which still find, in spite of the differences of

religion, an echo in our own hearts; and the unknown scribe, who related

the story of the descent of Ishtar to the infernal regions, was able to

express with a certain gloomy energy the miseries of the “Land without

return. “These instances are to be regarded, however, as exceptional:

the bulk of Chaldaean literature seems nothing more than a heap of

pretentious trash, in which even the best-equipped reader can see no

meaning, or, if he can, it is of such a character as to seem unworthy

of record. His judgment is natural in the circumstances, for the ancient

East is not, like Greece and Italy, the dead of yesterday whose soul

still hovers around us, and whose legacies constitute more than the half

of our patrimony: on the contrary, it was buried soul and body, gods

and cities, men and circumstances, ages ago, and even its heirs, in the

lapse of years, have become extinct. In proportion as we are able to

bring its civilization to light, we become more and more conscious that

we have little or nothing in common with it. Its laws and customs, its

methods of action and its modes of thought, are so far apart from those

of the present day, that they seem to us to belong to a humanity utterly

different from our own. The names of its deities do not appeal to our

imagination like those of the Olympian cycle, and no traditional respect

serves to do away with the sense of uncouthness which we experience

from the jingle of syllables which enter into them. Its artists did not

regard the world from the same point of view as we do, and its writers,

drawing their inspiration from an entirely different source, made use of

obsolete methods to express their feelings and co-ordinate their ideas.

It thus happens that while we understand to a shade the classical

language of the Greeks and Romans, and can read their works almost

without effort, the great primitive literatures of the world, the

Egyptian and Chaldaean, have nothing to offer us for the most part but a

sequence of problems to solve or of enigmas to unriddle with patience.

How many phrases, how many words at which we stumble, require a

painstaking analysis before we can make ourselves master of their

meaning! And even when we have determined to our satisfaction their

literal signification, what a number of excursions we must make in the

domain of religious, ethical, and political history before we can compel

them to render up to us their full import, or make them as intelligible

to others as they are to ourselves! When so many commentaries are

required to interpret the thought of an individual or a people, some

difficulty must be experienced in estimating the value of the expression

which they have given to it. Elements of beauty were certainly, and

perhaps are still, within it; but in proportion as we clear away

the rubbish which encumbers it, the mass of glossaries necessary to

interpret it fall in and bury it so as to stifle it afresh.

While the obstacles to our appreciation of Chaldaeann literature are of

such a serious character, we are much more at home in our efforts to

estimate the extent and depth of their scientific knowledge. They

were as well versed as the Egyptians, but not more, in arithmetic

and geometry in as far as these had an application to the affairs of

everyday life: the difference between the two peoples consisted chiefly

in their respective numerical systems--the Egyptians employing almost

exclusively the decimal system of notation, while the Chaldaeans combined

its use with the duodecimal.

[Illustration: 337.jpg Page image]

To express the units, they made use of so many vertical “nails”

placed one after, or above, each other, thus [symbols] etc.; tens were

represented by bent brackets [symbols], up to 60; beyond this figure

they had the choice of two methods of notation: they could express the

further tens by the continuous additions of brackets thus, [symbols]

or they could represent 50 by a vertical “nail,” and add for every

additional ten a bracket to the right of it, thus: [symbols]. The

notation of a hundred was represented by the vertical “nail” with

a horizontal stroke to the right thus [symbols], and the number of

hundreds by the symbols placed before this sign, thus [symbols], etc.:

a thousand was written [symbols] i.e. ten times one hundred, and the

series of thousands by the combination of different notations which

served to express units, tens, and hundreds. They subdivided the unit,

moreover, into sixty equal parts, and each of these parts into sixty

further equal subdivisions, and this system of fractions was used in all

kinds of quantitive measurements. The fathom, the foot and its square,

talents and bushels, the complete system of Chaldaean weights and

measures, were based on the intimate alliance and parallel use of

the decimal and duodecimal systems of notation. The sixtieth was more

frequently employed than the hundredth when large quantities were in

question: it was called a “soss,” and ten sosses were equal to a “ner,”

while sixty ners were equivalent to a “sar;” the series, sosses,

ners, and sars, being employed in all estimations of values. Years and

measures of length were reckoned in sosses, while talents and bushels

were measured in sosses and sars. The fact that these subdivisions were

all divisible by 10 or 12, rendered calculations by means of them easy

to the merchant and workmen as well as to the mathematical expert. The

glimpses that we have been able to obtain up to the present of Chaldaean

scientific methods indicate that they were on a low level, but they

were sufficiently advanced to furnish practical rules for application in

everyday affairs: helps to memory of different kinds, lists of figures

with their names phonetically rendered in Sumerian and Semitic speech,

tables of squares and cubes, and rudimentary formulas and figures for

land-surveying, furnished sufficient instructions to enable any one

to make complicated calculations in a ready manner, and to work out in

figures, with tolerable accuracy, the superficial area of irregularly

shaped plots of land. The Chaldaeans could draw out, with a fair amount

of exactness, plans of properties or of towns, and their ambition

impelled them even to attempt to make maps of the world. The latter

were, it is true, but rough sketches, in which mythological beliefs

vitiated the information which merchants and soldiers had collected in

their journeys. The earth was represented as a disk surrounded by the

ocean stream: Chaldaea took up the greater part of it, and foreign

countries did not appear in it at all, or held a position out in the

cold at its extremities. Actual knowledge was woven in an extraordinary

manner with mystic considerations, in which the virtues of numbers,

their connections with the gods, and the application of geometrical

diagrams to the prediction of the future, played an important part.

We know what a brilliant fortune these speculations attained in

after-years, and the firm hold they obtained for centuries over Western

nations, as formerly over the Bast. It was not in arithmetic and

geometry alone, moreover, that the Chaldaeans were led away by such

deceits: each branch of science in its turn was vitiated by them,

and, indeed, it could hardly be otherwise when we come to consider the

Chaldaean outlook upon the universe. Its operations, in their eyes, were

not carried on under impersonal and unswerving laws, but by voluntary

and rational agents, swayed by an inexorable fate against which they

dared not rebel, but still free enough and powerful enough to avert by

magic the decrees of destiny, or at least to retard their execution.

From this conception of things each subordinate science was obliged to

make its investigations in two perfectly distinct regions: it had at

first to determine the material facts within its competence--such as the

position of the stars, for instance, or the symptoms of a malady; it

had then to discover the beings which revealed themselves through these

material manifestations, their names and their characteristics. When

once it had obtained this information, and could lay its hands upon

them, it could compel them to work on its behalf: science was thus

nothing else than the application of magic to a particular class of

phenomena.

The number of astronomical facts with which the Chaldaeans had made

themselves acquainted was considerable.

[Illustration: 340.jpg CHALDAEAN MAP OF THE WORLD.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Peiser.

It was a question in ancient times whether they or the Egyptians had

been the first to carry their investigations into the infinite depths

of celestial space: when it came to be a question as to which of the two

peoples had made the greater progress in this branch of knowledge, all

hesitation vanished, and the pre-eminence was accorded by the ancients

to the priests of Babylon rather than to those of Heliopolis and

Memphis.*

* Clement of Alexandria, Lucien, Diogenes Laertius, Macrobius, attribute

the origin of astronomy to the Egyptians, and Diodorus Sioulus asserts

that they were the teachers of the Babylonians; Josephus maintains, on

the contrary, that the Egyptians were the pupils of the Chaldaeans.

[Illustration: 340.jpg ASTRONOMICAL TABLE]

The Chaldaeans had conducted astronomical observations from remote

antiquity.* Callisthenes collected and sent to his uncle Aristotle a

number of these observations, of which the oldest had been made nineteen

hundred and three years before his time--that is, about the middle of

the twenty-third century before our era: he could have transcribed

many of a still earlier date if the archives of Babylon had been fully

accessible to him.

* Epigenes asserts that their observations extended back to

720,000 years before the time of Alexander, while Berossus

and Critodemus limit their antiquity to 490,000 years, which

was further reduced to 473,000 years by Diodorus, to 470,000

by Cicero, and to 270,000 by Hipparchus.

The Chaldaean priests had been accustomed from an early date to record on

their clay tablets the aspect of the heavens and the changes which took

place in them night after night, the appearance of the constellations,

their comparative brilliancy, the precise moments of their rising and

setting and culmination, together with the more or less rapid movements

of the planets, and their motions towards or from one another. To their

unaided eyes, sharpened by practice and favoured by the transparency

of the air, many stars were visible, as to the Egyptians, which we can

perceive only by the aid of the telescope. These thousands of brilliant

bodies, scattered apparently at random over the face of the sky, moved,

however, with perfect regularity, and the period between their departure

from and their return to the same point in the heavens was determined

at an early date: their position could be predicted at any hour, their

course in the firmament being traced so accurately that its various

stages were marked out and indicated beforehand. The moon, they

discovered, had to complete two hundred and twenty-three revolutions of

twenty-nine days and a half each, before it returned to the point from

which it had set out. This period of its career being accomplished, it

began a second of equal length, then a third, and so on, in an infinite

series, during which it traversed the same celestial houses and repeated

in them the same acts of its life: all the eclipses which it had

undergone in one period would again afflict it in another, and would

be manifest in the same places of the earth in the same order of time.*

Whether they ascribed these eclipses to some mechanical cause, or

regarded them as so many unfortunate attacks made upon Sin by the seven,

they recognized their periodical character, and they were acquainted

with the system of the two hundred and twenty-three lunations by which

their occurrence and duration could be predicted. Further observations

encouraged the astronomers to endeavour to do for the sun what they had

so successfully accomplished in regard to the moon.

* This period of two hundred and twenty-three lunations is

that described by Ptolemy in the fourth book of his

“Astronomy,” in which he deals with the average motion of

the moon. The Chaldaeans seem not to have been able to make a

skilful use of it, for their books indicate the occurrence

of lunar eclipses outside the predicted periods.

No long experience was needed to discover the fact that the majority of

solar eclipses were followed some fourteen days and a half after by an

eclipse of the moon; but they were unable to take sufficient advantage

of this experience to predict with certainty the instant of a future

eclipse of the sun, although they had been so struck with the connection

of the two phenomena as to believe that they were in a position to

announce it approximately.* They were frequently deceived in their

predictions, and more than one eclipse which they had promised did not

take place at the time expected:** but their successful prognostications

were sufficiently frequent to console them for their failures, and to

maintain the respect of the people and the rulers for their knowledge.

Their years were vague years of three hundred and sixty days. The twelve

equal months of which they were composed bore names which were borrowed,

on the one hand, from events in civil life, such as “Simanu,” from the

making of brick, and “Addaru,” from the sowing of seed, and, on the

other, from mythological occurrences whose origin is still obscure, such

as “Nisanu,” from the altar of Ea, and “Elul,” from a message of Ishtar.

The adjustment of this year to astronomical demands was roughly carried

out by the addition of a month every six years, which was called a

second Adar, Blul, or Nisan, according to the place in which it was

intercalated.

* Tannery is of opinion that the Chaldaeans must have

predicted eclipses of the sun by means of the period of two

hundred and twenty-three lunations, and shows by what a

simple means they could have arrived at it.

** An astronomer mentions, in the time of Assurbanipal, that

on the 28th, 29th, and 30th of the month he prepared for the

observation of an eclipse; but the sun continued brilliant,

and the eclipse did not take place.

The neglect of the hours and minutes in their calculation of the length

of the year became with them, as with the Egyptians, a source of serious

embarrassment, and we are still ignorant as to the means employed

to meet the difficulty. The months had relations to the signs of the

zodiac, and the days composing them were made up of twelve double hours

each. The Chaldaens had invented two instruments, both of them of a

simple character, to measure time--the clepsydra and the solar clock,

the latter of which in later times became the source of the Greek

“polos.” The sun-dial served to determine a number of simple facts

which were indispensable in astronomical calculations, such as the

four cardinal points, the meridian of the place, the solstitial and

equinoctial epochs, and the elevation of the pole at the position of

observation. The construction of the sundial and clepsydra, if not of

the polos also, is doubtless to be referred back to a very ancient date,

but none of the texts already brought to light makes mention of the

employment of these instruments.*

* Herodotus (ii. 109) formally attributes the invention of

the sun-dial and polos to the Babylonians. The “polos” was a

solar clock. It consisted of a concave hemisphere with a

style rising from its centre: the shadow of the style

described every day an arc of a circle parallel to the

equator, and the daily parallels were divided into twelve or

twenty-four equal parts. Smith discovered, in the palace of

Sennacherib at Koyunjik, a portion of an astrolabe, which is

now in the British Museum.

All these discoveries, which constitute in our eyes the scientific

patrimony of the Chaldaeans, were regarded by themselves as the least

important results of their investigations. Did they not know, thanks to

these investigations, that the stars shone for other purposes than to

lighten up the nights--to rule, in fact, the destinies of men and kings,

and, in ruling that of kings, to determine the fortune of empires? Their

earliest astronomers, by their assiduous contemplation of the nightly

heavens, had come to the conclusion that the vicissitudes of the

heavenly bodies were in fixed relations with mundane phenomena and

events. If Mercury, for instance, displayed an unusual brilliancy at

his rising, and his disk appeared as a two-edged sword, riches and

abundance, due to the position of the luminous halo which surrounded

him, would be scattered over Chaldaea, while discords would cease

therein, and justice would triumph over iniquity. The first observer who

was struck by this coincidence noted it down; his successors confirmed

his observations, and at length deduced, in the process of the years,

from their accumulated knowledge, a general law. Henceforward, each time

that Mercury assumed the same aspect it was of favourable augury, and

kings and their subjects became the recipients of his bounty. As long as

he maintained this appearance no foreign ruler could install himself in

Chaldaea, tyranny would be divided against itself, equity would prevail,

and a strong monarch bear sway; while the landholders and the king

would be confirmed in their privileges, and obedience, together with

tranquillity, would rule everywhere in the land. The number of these

observations increased to such a degree that it was found necessary to

classify them methodically to avoid confusion. Tables of them were drawn

up, in which the reader could see at one and the same moment the aspect

of the heavens on such and such a night and hour, and the corresponding

events either then happening, or about to happen, in Chaldaean, Syria,

or some foreign land. If, for instance, the moon displayed the same

appearance on the 1st and 27th of the month, Elam was threatened; but

“if the sun, at his setting, appears double his usual size, with

three groups of bluish rays, the King of Chaldaea is ruined.” To the

indications of the heavenly bodies, the Chaldaeans added the portents

which could be deduced from atmospheric phenomena: if it thundered on

the 27th of Tammuz, the wheat-harvest would be excellent and the produce

of the ears magnificent; but if this, should occur six days later, that

is, on the 2nd of Abu, floods and rains were to be apprehended in a

short time, together with the death of the king and the division of

his empire. It was not for nothing that the sun and moon surrounded

themselves in the evening with blood-red vapours or veiled themselves

in dark clouds; that they grew suddenly pale or red after having been

intensely bright; that unexpected fires blazed out on the confines of

the air, and that on certain nights the stars seemed to have become

detached from the firmament and to be falling upon the earth. These

prodigies were so many warnings granted by the gods to the people

and their kings before great crises in human affairs: the astronomer

investigated and interpreted them, and his predictions had a greater

influence than we are prepared to believe upon the fortunes of

individuals and even of states. The rulers consulted and imposed upon

the astronomers the duty of selecting the most favourable moment for

the execution of the projects they had in view. From an early date each

temple contained a library of astrological writings, where the people

might find, drawn up as in a. code, the signs which bore upon their

destinies. One of these libraries, consisting of not less than seventy

clay tablets, is considered to have been first drawn up in the reign

of Sargon of Agade, but to have been so modified and enriched with new

examples from time to time that the original is well-nigh lost. This was

the classical work on the subject in the VIIth century before our era,

and the astronomers-royal, to whom applications were accustomed to be

made to explain a natural phenomenon or a prodigy, drew their answers

ready-made from it. Astronomy, as thus understood, was not merely the

queen of sciences, it was the mistress of the world: taught secretly

in the temples, its adepts--at least, those who had passed through the

regular curriculum of study which it required--became almost a

distinct class in society. The occupation was a lucrative one, and

its accomplished professors had numerous rivals whose educational

antecedents were unknown, but who excited the envy of the experts in

their trading upon the credulity of the people. These quacks went about

the country drawing up horoscopes, and arranging schemes of birthday

prognostications, of which the majority were without any authentic

warranty. The law sometimes took note of the fact that they were

competing with the official experts, and interfered with their business:

but if they happened to be exiled from one city, they found some

neighbouring one ready to receive them.

Chaldaea abounded with soothsayers and necromancers no less than with

astrologers; she possessed no real school of medicine, such as we find

in Egypt, in which were taught rational methods of diagnosing maladies

and of curing them by the use of simples. The Chaldaeans were content

to confide the care of their bodies to sorcerers and exorcists, who were

experts in the art of casting out demons and spirits, whose presence in

a living being brought about those disorders to which humanity is prone.

The facial expression of the patient during the crisis, the words which

escaped from him in delirium, were, for these clever individuals, so

many signs revealing the nature and sometimes the name of the enemy

to be combated--the Fever-god, the Plague-god, the Headache-god.

Consultations and medical treatment were, therefore, religious offices,

in which were involved purifications, offerings, and a whole ritual of

mysterious words and gestures. The magician lighted a fire of herbs

and sweet-smelling plants in front of his patient, and the clear flame

arising from this put the spectres to flight and dispelled the malign

influences, a prayer describing the enchantments and their effects being

afterwards recited. “The baleful imprecation like a demon has fallen

upon a man;--wail and pain have fallen upon him,--direful wail has

fallen upon him,--the baleful imprecation, the spell, the pains in

the head!--This man, the baleful imprecation slaughters him like a

sheep,--for his god has quitted his body--his goddess has withdrawn

herself in displeasure from him,--a wail of pain has spread itself as a

garment upon him and has overtaken him!” The harm done by the magician,

though terrible, could be repaired by the gods, and Merodach was moved

to compassion betimes. Merodach cast his eyes on the patient, Merodach

entered into the house of his father Ea, saying: “My father, the baleful

curse has fallen like a demon upon the man!” Twice he thus speaks,

and then adds: “What this man ought to do, I know not; how shall he be

healed?” Ea replies to his son Merodach: “My son, what is there that I

could add to thy knowledge?--Merodach, what is there that I could add

to thy knowledge?--That which I know, thou knowest it:--go then, my son,

Merodach,--lead him to the house of purification of the god who prepares

remedies,--and break the spell that is upon him, draw away the charm

which is upon him,--the ill which afflicts his body,--which he suffers

by reason of the curse of his father,--or the curse of his mother,--or

the curse of his eldest brother,--or by the curse of a murderess who is

unknown to the man.--The curse, may it be taken from him by the charm

of Ea,--like a clove of garlic which is stripped skin by skin,--like a

cluster of dates may it be cut off,--like a bunch of flowers may it be

uprooted! The spell, may heaven avert it,--may the earth avert it!” The

god himself deigned to point out the remedy: the sick man was to take

a clove of garlic, some dates, and a stalk bearing flowers, and was to

throw them into the fire, bit by bit, repeating appropriate prayers at

each stage of the operation. “In like manner as this garlic is peeled

and thrown into the fire,--and the burning flame consumes it,--as

it will never be planted in the vegetable garden, it will never draw

moisture from the pond or from the ditch,--its root will never again

spread in the earth,--its stalk will not pierce the ground and behold

the sun,--it will not serve as food for the gods or the king,--so may it

remove the baleful curse, so may it loose the bond--of sickness, of sin,

of shortcomings, of perversity, of crime!--The sickness which is in my

body, in my flesh, in my muscles,--like this garlic may it be stripped

off,--and may the burning flame consume it in this day;--may the spell

of the sorcerer be cast out, that I may behold the light!” The ceremony

could be prolonged at will: the sick person pulled to pieces the cluster

of dates, the bunch of flowers, a fleece of wool, some goats’ hair, a

skein of dyed thread, and a bean, which were all in turn consumed in

the fire. At each stage of the operation he repeated the formula,

introducing into it one or two expressions characterizing the nature of

the particular offering; as, for instance, “the dates will no more hang

from their stalks, the leaves of the branch will never again be united

to the tree, the wool and the hair will never again lie on the back

of the animal on which they grew, and will never be used for weaving

garments.” The use of magical words was often accompanied by remedies,

which were for the most part both grotesque and disgusting in their

composition: they comprised bitter or stinking wood-shavings, raw meat,

snake’s flesh, wine and oil, the whole reduced to a pulp, or made into

a sort of pill and swallowed on the chance of its bringing relief. The

Egyptian physicians employed similar compounds, to which they

attributed wonderful effects, but they made use of them in exceptional

circumstances only. The medical authorities in Chaldaea recommended them

before all others, and their very strangeness reassured the patient as

to their efficacy: they filled the possessing spirits with disgust, and

became a means of relief owing to the invincible horror with which

they inspired the persecuting demons. The Chaldaeans were not, however,

ignorant of the natural virtues of herbs, and at times made use of them;

but they were not held in very high esteem, and the physicians preferred

the prescriptions which pandered to the popular craving for the

supernatural. Amulets further confirmed the effect produced by the

recipes, and prevented the enemy, once cast out, from re-entering the

body; these amulets were made of knots of cord, pierced shells, bronze

or terra-cotta statuettes, and plaques fastened to the arms or worn

round the neck. On each of the latter kind were roughly drawn the most

terrible images that they could conceive, a shortened incantation

was scrawled on its surface, or it was covered with extraordinary

characters, which when the spirits perceived they at once took flight,

and the possessor of the talisman escaped the threatened illness.

However laughable, and at the same time deplorable, this hopeless medley

of exact knowledge and gross superstition may appear to us at the

present day, it was the means of bringing a prosperity to the cities of

Chaldaea which no amount of actual science would ever have produced. The

neighbouring barbaric peoples were imbued with the same ideas as the

Chaldaens regarding the constitution of the world and the nature of the

laws which governed it. They lived likewise in perpetual fear of those

invisible beings whose changeable and arbitrary will actuated all

visible phenomena; they attributed all the reverses and misfortunes

which overtook them to the direct action of these malevolent beings;

they believed firmly in the influence of stars on the course of events;

they were constantly on the look out for prodigies, and were greatly

alarmed by them, since they had no certain knowledge of the number and

nature of their enemies, and the means they had invented for protecting

themselves from them or of overcoming them too often proved inefficient.

In the eyes of these barbarians, the Chaldeans seemed to be possessed of

the very powers which they themselves lacked. The magicians of Chaldaea

had forced the demons to obey them and to unmask themselves before them;

they read with ease in the heavens the present and future of men and

nations; they interpreted the will of the immortals in its smallest

manifestations, and with them this faculty was not a limited and

ephemeral power, quickly exhausted by use: the rites and formulas known

to them enabled them to exercise it freely at all times, in all places,

alike upon the most exalted of the gods and the most dreaded of mortals,

without its ever becoming weakened.

[Illustration:352.jpg A CHALDAEAN AMULET.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Loftus. The

original is in the British Museum.

A race so endowed with wisdom was, indeed, destined to triumph over

its neighbours, and the latter would have no chance of resisting such

a nation unless they borrowed from it its manners, customs, industry,

writing, and all the arts and sciences which had brought about their

superiority. Chaldaeann civilization spread into Elam and took possession

of the inhabitants of the shores of the Persian Gulf, and then, since

its course was impeded on the south by the sea, on the west by the

desert, and on the east by the mountains, it turned in the direction of

the great northern plains and proceeded up the two rivers, beside whose

lower waters it had been cradled. It was at this very time that the

Pharaohs of the XIIIth dynasty had just completed the conquest of

Nubia. Greater Egypt, made what she was by the efforts of twenty

generations, had become an African power. The sea formed her northern

boundary, the desert and the mountains enclosed her on all sides, and

the Nile appeared the only natural outlet into a new world: she followed

it indefatigably from one cataract to another, colonizing as she passed

all the lands fertilized by its waters. Every step which she made in

this direction increased the distance between her capitals and the

Mediterranean, and brought her armies further south. Asia would have

practically ceased to exist, as far as Egypt was concerned, had not the

repeated incursions of the Bedouin obliged her to make advances from

time to time in that direction; still she crossed the frontier as seldom

as possible, and recalled her troops as soon as they had reduced the

marauders to order: Ethiopia alone attracted her, and it was there that

she firmly established her empire. The two great civilized peoples of

the ancient world, therefore, had each their field of action clearly

marked out, and neither of them had ever ventured into that of the

other. There had been no lack of intercourse between them, and the

encounter of their armies, if it ever really had taken place, had been

accidental, had merely produced passing results, and up till then had

terminated without bringing to either side a decisive advantage.

[Illustration: 354.jpg MAGIC NAIL OF TERRA COTTA]

[Illustration: 355.jpg EGYPTIAN CORNICE BEARING THE CARTOUCHES OF RAMSES

I.]

APPENDIX--THE PHARAOHS OF THE ANCIENT AND MIDDLE EMPIRES

(Dynasties I.-XIV.)

The lists of the Pharaohs of the Memphite period appear to have been

drawn up in much the same order as we now possess them, as early as

the XIIth dynasty: it is certain that the sequence was definitely fixed

about the time of the XXth dynasty, since it was under this that the

Canon of Turin was copied. The lists which have come down to us appear

to follow two traditions, which differ completely in certain cases:

one has been preserved for us by the abbreviators of Manetho, while

the other was the authority followed by the compilers of the tables of

Abydos and Saqqara, as well as by the author of the Turin Papyrus.

There appear to have been in the first five dynasties a certain number

of kings whose exact order and filiation were supposed to be well known

to the compilers; but, at the same time, there were others whose names

were found on the monuments, but whose position with regard to their

predecessors was indicated neither by historical documents nor by

popular romance. We find, therefore, in these two traditional lists

a series of sovereigns always occupying the same position, and others

hovering around them, who have no decided place. The hieroglyphic lists

and the Royal Canon appear to have been chiefly concerned with the

former; but the authorities followed by Manetho have studiously

collected the names of the latter, and have intercalated them in

different places, sometimes in the middle, but mostly at the end of the

dynasty, where they form a kind of _caput mortuum_. The most striking

example of this arrangement is afforded us in the IVth dynasty. The

contemporary monuments show that its kings formed a compact group, to

which are appended the first three sovereigns of the Vth dynasty,

always in the same order: Menkauri succeeded Khafri, Shopsiskaf followed

Menkauri, Usirkaf followed Shopsiskaf, and so on to the end. The lists

of Manetho suppress Shopsiskaf, and substitute four other individuals

in his place, namely, Katoises, Bikheris, Seberkheres, Thamphthis, whose

reigns must have occupied more than half a century; these four were

doubtless aspirants to the throne, or local kings belonging to the time

between the IVth and Vth dynasties, whom Manetho’s authorities inserted

between the compact groups made up of Kheops and his sons on the one

hand, and of Usirkaf and his two real of supposed brothers on the other,

omitting Shopsiskaf, and having no idea that Usirkaf was his immediate

successor, with or without rivals to the throne.

In a course of lectures given at the _College de France_ (1893-95), I

have examined at length the questions raised by a study of the various

lists, and I may be able, perhaps, some day to publish the result of

my researches: for the present I must confine myself merely to what

is necessary to the elucidation of the present work, namely, the

Manethonian tradition on the one hand, and the tradition of the

monumental tables on the other. The text which I propose to follow for

the latter, during the first five dynasties, is that of the second table

of Abydos; the names placed between brackets [ ] are taken either from

the table of Saqqara or from the Royal Canon of Turin. The numbers of

the years, months, and days are those furnished by the last-mentioned

document.

[Illustration: 357.jpg LISTS OF THE PHARAOHS OF THE ANCIENT EMPIRE]

[Illustration: 358.jpg LISTS ON THE MONUMENTS]

From the VIth to the XIIth dynasty, the lists of Manetho are at fault:

they give the origin and duration of the dynasties, without furnishing

us with the names of the kings.

[Illustration: 359.jpg LISTS ON THE MONUMENTS]

This blank is partially filled by the table of Abydos, by the fragments

of the Turin Papyrus, and by information supplied by the monuments. No

such definitely established sequence appears to have existed for this

period, as for the preceding ones. The Heracleopolitan dynasties

figure, perhaps, in the Canon of Turin only; as for the later Memphite

dynasties, the table of Abydos gives one series of Pharaohs, while the

Canon adopts a different one. After the close of the VIth dynasty, and

before the accession of the IXth, there was, doubtless, a period when

several branches of the royal family claimed the supremacy and ruled in

different parts of Egypt: this is what we know to have taken place later

between the XXIInd and the XXIVth dynasties. The tradition of Abydos

had, perhaps, adopted one of these contemporaneous dynasties, while

the Turin Papyrus had chosen another: Manetho, on the other hand,

had selected from among them, as representatives of the legitimate

succession, the line reigning at Memphis which immediately followed

the sovereigns of the VIth dynasty. The following table gives both the

series known, as far as it is possible for the present to re-establish

the order:--

[Illustration: 360.jpg LISTS ON THE MONUMENTS]

The XIth (Theban) dynasty contains but a small number of kings according

to the official lists. The tables on the monuments recognize only two,

Nibkhrouri and Sonkhkari, but the Turin Canon admits at least half a

dozen. These differences probably arose from the fact that, the second

Heracleopolitan dynasty having reigned at the same time as the earlier

Theban princes, the tables on the monuments, while rejecting the

Heracleopolitans, recognized as legitimate Pharaohs only those of the

Theban kings who had ruled over the whole of Egypt, namely, the first

and last of the series; the Canon, on the contrary, replaced the later

Heracleopolitans by those among the contemporary Thebans who had

assumed the royal titles. Whatever may have been the cause of these

combinations, we find the lists again harmonizing with the accession of

the XIIth (Theban) dynasty.

For the succeeding dynasties we possess merely the names enumerated on

the fragments of the Turin Papyrus, several of which, however, are

also found either in the royal chamber at Karnak, or on contemporary

monuments. The order of the names is not always certain: it is, perhaps,

best to transcribe the sequence as we are able to gather it from the

fragments of the Royal Papyrus, without attempting to distinguish

between those which belong to the XIIIth and those which must be.

relegated to the following dynasties.

[Illustration: 361.jpg LISTS ON THE MONUMENTS]

About fifty names still remain, but so mutilated and scattered over

such small fragments of papyrus, that their order is most uncertain. We

possess monuments of about one-fifth of these kings, and the lengths of

their reigns, as far as we know them, all appear to have been short:

we have no reason to doubt that they did really govern, and we can only

hope that in time the progress of excavation will yield us records of

them one after another. They bring us down to the period of the invasion

of the Shepherds, and it is possible that some among them may be found

to be contemporaries of the XVth and XVIth dynasties.

[Illustration: 362.jpg Tailpiece]