NO ROD, ALTHOUGH CLOSE INTERCOURSE WITH EGYPT
There is no delineation or suggestion of the Rod, or of Angling on any
sculpture or any seal, Sumerian, Babylonian, or Assyrian.[889]
The omission does not preclude the existence or use of the Rod. If
it did exist, and were used, we are surprised that there should not
survive amongst the thousands of things mentioned and the many pursuits
represented a single indication of it. Our wonder, indeed, grows
stronger when we call to mind that the Assyrians:
(_a_) Were a people much given to sport of all kinds:
(_b_) Were keenly addicted to the eating of fish, which was not, as
in Israel or Egypt, half-banned by a prophet, or whole-barred to a
priesthood by custom, totemistic or other:
(_c_) Did attach very real importance to the maintenance of an
ample supply of fish. Their dams and _vivaria_, the adjuncts of
every important temple or every self-respecting township, and their
enforcement of Fish Regulations, attest the economic value:
(_d_) Do mention and do represent other kinds of fishing, _e.g._ with
the hand-line and the net. The latter, for both fowling and fishing,
often finds place in their, and Israelitish, metaphors. Examples occur
in the story of the defeat of Marduk and Tiāmat, “They (the enemies)
were cast into the net,” and in the prayer of Eannatum to the god Enki
that, if the citizens of Umma in future break the recent treaty, he
will destroy them in his net. But in the legend of the taking of Zu,
the stealer of the destiny-tablets, the net of the Sun-god is certainly
a fowling one:
(_e_) Did possess near at hand, and had not to import (as the
Romans from Africa) ample material for the Rod in reeds, which were
abundant near Babylon and were utilised in the construction of
furniture, light boats, and fences. In the lists of private property
these reeds—employed for household not angling purposes—figure not
infrequently:
(_f_) Were for hundreds of years closely associated in intercourse
and trade with the Egyptians, whose use of the Rod can be carried
back to about the XIIth Dynasty, _c._ 2000, or, according to Petrie’s
chronology, _c._ 3500 B.C.
Before discussing the date of the first contact or connection between
the two countries, it is advisable shortly to distinguish between
the three peoples whom I group under the term Assyrians, and roughly
apportion the periods of the four thousand odd years of Assyrian
history during which each was predominant.
The first, the Sumerians, occupied before—perhaps long before—the close
of the fourth millennium the land on the lower plain of the Tigris and
Euphrates and on the sea coast, as it then was.[890] They possessed an
advanced civilisation, with an organised government, many large cities,
and considerable agricultural and industrial development.
Whence their emigration, to what family, Mongol or other, they belong,
is not clear. It is settled they were _not_ Semites, like the
Babylonians and Assyrians. Their language (preserved in liturgies,
etc.,[891] down even to the time of the Persian conquest) and their
writing, adopted by the Babylonians and Assyrians, which runs, unlike
the Hebrew, from left to right,[892] disprove Sumerian descent from
Shem.
It is impossible at present to fix a definite period for their
immigration. The dates assigned vary from 7000 to 4000 B.C. The
statement, however, that “Aryans, Turanians, Semites were all in a
nomadic condition, when the early Sumerian settlers in Lower Babylonia
betook themselves to agriculture, builded great cities, and established
a stable government,” seems hardly exaggerated, even though it
postulates a very ancient era.
The second, the Semitic Babylonians, starting possibly from South
Arabia by way of the Syrian coast, reached the lower part of the
Tigris and Euphrates about 3800 B.C.[893] It was not, however, until
some thousand years afterwards, that they effected a conquest of the
Sumerians.
Like other defeated peoples, such as the Canaanites with the Jews, the
Irish with the English, “Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores,” they grafted
their policy on that of their victors, and perpetuated many of their
racial characteristics and customs, as well as their religion. “The
Semitic invaders seem to have been completely converted. In fact
Babylonian religion has scarcely anything characteristically Semitic in
it.”[894]
The third, the Assyrians proper, an offshoot from Babylonia, are found
(before 2300 B.C.) pushing their way north along the Tigris, on whose
western bank they founded their first city and earliest capital—Asur.
Wars between them and Babylonia mark the history of centuries.
Their definite suzerainty over that country was only established by
Tiglath-Pileser III., _c._ 730 B.C.
Passing now to the dates of the connection between this Empire and
Egypt, the first assigned is:
(_a_) Early dynastic, say about 4400 B.C., which would probably
correspond to the early Sumerian periods. Some authorities indeed hold
that Egypt was invaded by Babylonians, or was culturally permeated by
the “proto-Babylonians,” or Sumerians. Of invasion we possess no proof,
or even strong suggestion; of cultural permeation, to which Hommel, in
especial, attributes the whole primeval culture of Egypt, some elements
and some signs are possibly noticeable, but even these are Semitic, not
Sumerian,[895] while their total compares insignificantly with those of
native origin.[896]
Of these signs, the use by the Egyptians of the cylinder seal, of which
the Royal tombs of the first Dynasty afford examples, stands out as the
most important. As this characterised Sumer and Babylonia at all times,
while it fell into disuse in the country of the Pharaohs, the seal was
inferred to be an original product of Sumer, whence it reached Egypt in
late pre-dynastic or early dynastic times.
But (as King[897] continues) “Recent research—such as Naville’s at
Abydos, and Reisner’s at Naga-ed-Dêr—leaves small room for the theory
that early Egyptian culture was subjected to any strong foreign
influence in early dynastic times; thus the theory of the invasion by
Semitic tribes must be given up.” Maspero maintains that as far back as
the IVth or Vth Dynasties there were overland relations between Egypt
and Chaldea.[898]
(_b_) Petrie[899] places the beginning of the invasion of Egypt by the
Semites about 3400 B.C. When referring to a painting of one of these
Princes of the Desert named Absha coming into Egypt, he writes that
“though 1000 years before Abram” (whom he himself dates about 2100
B.C.) “he was one of the same race: it is therefore invaluable as an
historical type of the great Semitic invasion.” Evidence from Egyptian
sources seems to show that before and after the conquest by the Hyksos,
Semitic invasions occurred after the VIth Dynasty and again _c._ 2250
B.C.
Petrie, on the strength of the cylinder of Khendy and the tablet of
Khenzerm—two Babylonians “who rose to the throne of Egypt”—concludes
that an invasion from Syro-Mesopotamia took place in the XIVth Dynasty,
say 2800 B.C.
(_c_) It is not, however, till the XVIIIth Dynasty, _c._ 1400 B.C.,
that we reach firm ground for fixing the first point of _direct_
historical contact between Babylonia and Egypt.
Authority for this dating is found in the famous tablets brought to
light in 1887 at Tel-el-Amarna, which include letters from the rulers
of Babylonia and Assyria to Amenhotep III. and his son Akhenaton. Apart
from the historical value of their presumptive indication of an earlier
intercourse, the discovery discloses three points of great interest.
First, the fact that these were written in Babylonian shows that this
language had already become the _lingua franca_ of the civilised world.
Second, a more human personal note, the probability from the red dots
(still visible) made by some Egyptian with a reed for the purpose of
marking the divisions of the foreign words, that the acquisition of
this _lingua franca_ was advisable, perhaps necessary, to qualification
for a clerkship or an embassy. Third, that Babylonian _literature_ had
found its way among the nations which used its language.
Of this we have conclusive evidence in two documents. The first
concerns the goddess Ereshkigal, the other transmits the legend of
Adapa.[900]
From the Bekten _stele_ we deduce a close intercourse between the two
countries about the XIXth Dynasty, for we read of Rameses II.[901]
being in Mesopotamia “according to his wont, year by year,” and
receiving tributes and presents from the chiefs of the countries round
about.
The connection between Assyria (proper) and Egypt rests on ample
evidence. Fish, or “beasts of the sea,” passed as presents, perhaps as
trade. On the Broken Column of Tiglath-Pileser I. (Cylinder IV. 29-30)
we read, “And a great beast of the River, a great beast of the Sea, the
king of Musrê” (probably Egypt) “sent (unto him).”
The _Select Papyri_ (pl. 75, 1, 7) tell of certain fish being brought,
perhaps as a staple of trade, from the Puharuta or Euphrates to Egypt,
and (in pl. 96, 1, 7) of another fish or fishy substance called _Rura_,
being imported from the land of the great waters, Mesopotamia.[902]
[Illustration: MEN FISHING ASTRIDE GOATSKINS.[903]
From Assyrian Sculptures in Brit. Mus., No. 430.
See n. 1, p. 355.]
FOOTNOTES:
[888] The term Assyrian in this chapter usually includes the Sumerians
and Babylonians.
[889] Lest Forlong’s sentence (_Rivers of Life_ (London, 1883), II.
89), “A beautiful Assyrian cylinder exhibits the worship of the Fish
God; there we see the mitred Man-God with Rod and basket,” etc.,
be quoted in opposition, I would point out that this so-called Rod
is merely a cut sapling, like the one in the hands of Heracles,
but without a sign of any line, which in the Greek vase in the
British Museum is obviously attached. Cf. _Élite des monuments
Céramographiques_, vol. III., Plate I.
[890] From the find (made during the war by a Sikh regiment on the
Tigris above Samara) of an alabaster vase (now in the Ashmolean
Museum), which from archæological reasons must be placed among the very
earliest remnants of Sumerian civilisation, it is evident that—given
the discovery was _in situ_—the frontiers of the Sumerian Empire must
have extended much farther north than has been hitherto generally
supposed. Owing to the deposits of the two rivers, the sea has receded
some hundred and twenty miles.
[891] The Sumerians made extensive use of music, especially in their
religious ceremonies; they were the founders, according to Langdon, of
liturgical music, which unfortunately it is impossible to reconstruct,
as the notes themselves have not survived.
[892] The Sumerian language was not well adapted to express peculiarly
Semitic sounds.
[893] Petrie (_Egypt and Israel_ (London, 1911), p. 15): “The Turanian
race akin to the modern Mongols, known as Sumerians, had civilised the
Euphrates valley for some thousands of years and produced a strong
commercial and mathematical culture. The wandering Semite had at last
been drawn into this settled system of life.”
[894] S. Langdon, _Babylonian Magic_, Bologna, 1914.
[895] The carved ivory handle of a flint knife in the Louvre proves
(according to Petrie) that the art of slate-palettes in Egypt
originated from Elamite civilisation, which flourished before its
rise. It must be of prehistoric age, yet shows a well-developed art
with Mesopotamian or Elamite affinities earlier than the sculptured
slate-palettes and maceheads. M. G. Bénédite (_Monuments Pict._) holds
that in this knife-handle we have the most tangible evidence yet
found of a connection in _very early_ times between the Egyptian and
Mesopotamian civilisations. King (_Jour. Egypt. Archæology_, vol. IV.,
p. 64) suggests that there was a connection with Babylonian-Elamite
seals from Susa.
[896] Thus the general conception of pictographic writing might perhaps
be borrowed from the Euphrates valley, but not a single sign taken from
the Babylonian script can be found (W. Max Müller, _Encly. Bibl._,
p. 1233). Dr. Alan Gardiner, on the origin of the Semitic and Greek
alphabets, concludes that the evidence does point to the alphabet being
Semitic in origin and based upon acrophonic picture signs (_Journal of
Egyptian Archæology_, vol. III., p. 1).
[897] _History of Sumer and Akkad_ (London, 1910), p. 322.
[898] _Egyptian Archæology_ (1902), p. 366.
[899] _Historical Studies_ (London, 1910), II. p. 22. Others would make
the invasion about 2466.
[900] The Babylonian legend of Adapa is thus known to have circulated
in Palestine and Egypt before the Hebrew Exodus. The story of Adapa is
thought by some to have influenced the Hebrew version of the story of
Adam and Eve and the loss of Paradise. See the excellent discussion
in T. Skinner, _Genesis_ (in the _International Critical Commentary_
(1912), p. 91 ff), and Langdon, _The Sumerian Epic of Paradise_
(University of Pennsylvania, Publications of the Babylonia Section,
1915), vol. X., pp. 38-49.
[901] Rameses II. was held in high esteem as a rain-maker—perhaps
rain-god—as is evidenced by the sacrifices offered by the Hittites that
their princess should on her journey to Egypt to marry Rameses enjoy
fair weather, despite that it was the season of the winter storms.
In consequence of this power over the elements, the Hittite chiefs
strongly advocated friendship with Egypt, as otherwise Rameses II.
would probably stop rain and cause a famine in their country (Breasted,
_Ancient Records_, III. 423, 426).
[902] Layard, _Nineveh_ (London, 1849), vol. II. p. 438.
[903] “Fishing, fishing everywhere” is the key-note of the picture;
the crab in the top left-hand corner is also well into his fish. The
picture facing p. 349 comes from the Assyrian sculptures in British
Museum: in Mansell’s collection, No. 430.