CHAPTER I.
Early Civilization of Asia.
n studying the history of Babylonia and Assyria, our attention is drawn to one of the earliest inhabited portions of the globe—so far as is now known: to the valley of the Euphrates. Biblical tradition favored the view that this was the Cradle of the Human Race. Here the Yahvistic writer placed the fabled Garden of Eden, the best explanation he could devise for the origin of mankind. The valley was a regular thoroughfare for early tribes journeying to and from Arabia, and reaching out to the east, west, or north for new homes, often remaining for long succeeding generations in the fertile region itself. It was a land where men of various tongues and dialects met, only to again diverge. The effort of the Hebrew to explain how so many languages had come into being resulted in the story of the Tower of Babel. Before the beginnings of the Hebrew race as distinct from the general Semitic family, an old civilization had developed here in Chaldea. In connection with his worship, the Chaldean built high ziqqurats—temple-towers of from three to seven platforms, rising one above the other, each platform smaller than the one below. The story handed down from one generation of the Hebrews to another was that the Chaldeans had once tried to build a tower to reach the very heavens. Alarmed at their presumption, God confounded their speech so they could no longer understand one another. Thus was man punished and thus the various speeches originated.
In following the history of the mixed race known as the Babylonians, and of those who pressed north of the home-country to found the state of Assyria, we shall become acquainted with the only great nation of antiquity whose civilization may have been older than that of the Egyptians. We have up reliable record of the Chinese until late in the third millennium, and their civilization, if more ancient still, was isolated at least, and affected no other people. When Thutmose I. penetrated to the valley of the Euphrates, some years after the expulsion of the Hyksos, he came upon a nation, of whose culture, script, and language, as the recently discovered Tell-el-Amarna tablets indicate, were already familiar to his own people.
The recorded life of Egypt reaches back more than 6,000 years; civilization in Mesopotamia may have been more ancient. Many monuments have been unearthed in the sites of ancient cities which throw light upon great antiquity. In Egypt visible monuments have borne witness through long succeeding centuries of early strength; in Babylonia and Assyria the very site of cities was forgotten, and men no longer remembered where these two influential powers of antiquity had developed. Though in the last century only anything like a complete history of Egypt has been possible, yet evidences of a nation long since extinct, were preserved in temples and tombs, and hieroglyphics covering walls and columns indicated that whoever should discover their meaning would learn of their mighty builders. Far different was the case of Babylonia and Assyria. They too had once been proud and wealthy nations, taking foremost rank; their cities filled the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, and their fertile fields yielded even more abundantly than the rich Nile valley. Their palaces rose to the glory of their kings, and their commerce penetrated to every corner of the ancient world. Then changes came upon the life of antiquity. New peoples pushed to the front; the tide of commerce shifted into other channels. These nations were conquered by their yet stronger neighbors, and their temples and palaces, built not of enduring stone but of perishable brick, fell into heaps of nameless mounds. When the waters of the mighty rivers were no longer guided through canals to irrigate the land, the soil ceased to be productive. Desert sands spread over the desolate region and reclaimed wide areas which became the tenting ground for nomadic tribes. The very words of the late writer in the Book of Isaiah concerning these nations rang true through the ages:
"And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces; and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.
"Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of a mighty man; and the sword, not of a mean man, shall devour him; but he shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall be discomfited. And he shall pass over to his stronghold for fear, and his princes shall be afraid of the ensign."[1]
Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, disappeared suddenly. In Alexander's day its site was unknown. Babylon, however, was not destroyed by Cyrus, but continued its importance until the rise of its rival Seleucia, and was still inhabited in the Middle Ages. But the two nations were forgotten in the west for hundreds of years. Then with the dawn of peace and order in Europe during the later Middle Ages, came the desire to know about the past. Monks who made pilgrimages to the Holy Land, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, sometimes pressed farther east, and made mention of strange mounds seen in the valleys of these ancient rivers. Travelers told of curious inscriptions found among the ruins there. In rare cases, they even went to the length of copying one or two, with greater or less accuracy. It was left finally for the eighteenth century to locate the old sites of Babylonian cities, and for the nineteenth century to discover the hidden meaning of the wedge-shaped letters inscribed upon their ruins.
To the patient efforts of the men who persisted in their difficult and often disheartening task of unearthing ruins, and to the scholars who toiled year after year to read the forgotten language these ruins brought to light, we owe most that is now known regarding the early inhabitants of the Euphrates valley. These nations, so long destroyed, their cities, so long abandoned, we shall try to bring before us as they have been reconstructed by historians in more pretentious volumes. Naturally, any account of the Babylonians and Assyrians will involve some consideration of their neighbors, whose civilizations developed by their side, and whose fortunes frequently mingled with theirs.
The Recovery of Forgotten Cities.
Were we to proceed at once to the development of the Babylonian and Assyrian states without first pausing to note what far-reaching efforts have been made to read their early civilization from their remains, entombed within the earth, we would deprive ourselves of one of the most interesting pages in modern historical research.
Since the middle of the twelfth century we find references made to the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh, by monks and travellers who greatly confused the ancient cities, repeatedly mistaking Baghdad for Babylon. In 1613 there was published by an English nobleman an account of his distant travels. "Sir Anthony Sherley; His Relation of His Travels into Persia." This is what he wrote of these ancient capitals: "I will speak ... of Babylon; not to the intent to tell stories, either of the huge ruins of the first Towne or the splendour of the second, but because nothing doth impose anything in man's nature more than example—to shew the truth of God's word, whose vengeances, threatened by His Prophets, are truely succeeded in all those parts....
"All the ground on which Babylon was spred is left now desolate; nothing standing in that Peninsula between the Euphrates and the Tigris, but only part, and that a small part, of the greate Tower, which God hath suffered to stand (if man may speake so confidently of His greate impenetrable counsels) for an eternal testimony of His work in the confusion of Man's pride, and that Arke of Nebuchadnezzar for as perpetual a memory of his greate idolatry and condigne punishment....
"Nineve, that which God himself called That greate Citie, hath not one stone standing which may give memory of the being of a towne. One English mile from it is a place called Mosul, a small thing, rather to be a witness of the other's mightinesse and God's judgment than of any fashion of magnificence in it selfe."[2]
These words struck the note which was to lead to extensive labors for discovery. Europe was at the time passing through a period of deep religious fervor, which was felt in many classes of society and walks of life, and people who cared not at all for the history of ancient nations were roused by the possibility offered to verify statements found in the Old Testament and prove its inspiration by showing the fulfillment of its prophecies. Although nothing of importance was accomplished at this time, the religious motive survived.
The first systematic investigation was made by Claudius James Rich, appointed in 1811 as resident of the East India Company at Baghdad. He made a thorough examination of all the large mounds in that particular locality and prepared a survey of the most important ones. This proved very useful to those who came later to the field. He had besides made a small collection of finds at Hillah and Mosul—a box only three feet square—which were sent with his charts to the British Museum. These later furnished the inspiration to further exploration.
In 1842 the French government sent Paul Emil Botta to Mosul as consular agent, and his name was destined to be connected with all discoveries made in Assyria during the early part of the nineteenth century. Stimulated by Julius Mohl, who had examined Rich's meagre but suggestive finds, he was the first to actually dig into the mounds of ruins. After coming upon nothing noteworthy during three months' excavation in Kujundjik, a peasant told him that strange objects had been found at Khorsabad, about four hours to the northeast, and thither Botta sent his workmen.
The poor Arabian laborers of this region are ignorant Mohammedans, and they suspected that Botta was digging for gold, while they conceived the unique idea that the fragments bearing inscriptions, now and then brought to light, were charms which in some way guided him on to hidden treasure. The Turkish Pasha put all possible obstacles in his way, but the very first shaft Botta sank came upon the walls of an old palace—a find especially valuable at a time when only the most enthusiastic scholars had faith in the undertaking, and people generally regarded the project as misguided. No less than 209 rooms were laid bare by Botta and his successor, Victor Place.
Austen Henry Layard, an English boy of Huguenot descent, had devoured all available books of travel and adventure. He came to the work of Assyrian exploration as an enthusiastic young man about the time of Botta's widely noised discovery. On November 9, 1845, Mr. Layard began to excavate at Nimrud, some distance south of Nineveh, and before the first day's work was done he had the promise, and, in part, the satisfaction of realizing his "visions of palaces under ground." He had discovered the North-West palace of Nimrud, built by Ashurnatsirpal, 884-861 B.C., upon the foundations of one laid by Shalmeneser, 1300 B.C. After a little more than a year and a half he returned to England having discovered no less than three palaces. The funds necessary for his work were obtained from Sir Stratford Canning, the English ambassador at Constantinople.
In 1849 excavations were begun again with the assistance of Hormuzd Rassam at the expense of the British Museum. "The excavations carried on under these auspices, and with the powers Layard then possessed, were successful beyond his wildest dream. As the trenches followed round the walls of room after room they uncovered great slabs of alabaster, with which the chamber walls were wainscoted, and these were found to be richly carved in relief with scenes of hunting, of war, and of solemn ceremony. The very life of palace, camp and field in Assyrian days came back again before the astonished eyes of the explorer, while these received an addition to their verisimilitude by the discovery in some of the ruins of pieces of iron which had once formed parts of the same kind of armor as that portrayed on the reliefs, together with iron and bronze helmets, while in others were found vases and ornamentally carved pieces of ivory. Here were the pictures and there were the objects which they represented. As the trenches were dug deeper or longer, monuments carved or inscribed were found daily."[3]
Whatever objects could be transported were sent to the British Museum in London, and went far to arouse interest and thus secure funds to enable Layard to continue his operations. During this expedition the palace of Sennacherib, the walls of which had been partly laid bare during the first period, was still further explored, and in addition to the valuable bas-reliefs an ancient library, consisting of thousands of clay tablets, was found in two of the rooms, and this was greatly increased by Rassam's discovery of the North-West palace in 1854.
In 1850 William K. Loftus began his labors in this field, but none of his discoveries proved so valuable as his descriptions of various mounds, used as guides to this day. Concerning the appearance of the mounds he wrote: "I know of nothing more exciting or impressive than the first sight of one of these great Chaldean piles looming in solitary grandeur from the surrounding plains and marshes. A thousand thoughts and surmises concerning its past eventful history and origin—its gradual rise and rapid fall—naturally present themselves to the mind of the spectator. The hazy atmosphere of early morning is peculiarly favorable to considerations and impressions of this character, and the gray mist intervening between the gazer and the object of his reflections imparts to it a dreamy existence. This fairylike effect is heightened by mirage, which strangely and fantastically magnifies its form, elevating it from the ground, and causing it to dance and quiver in the rarefied air. No wonder, therefore, that the beholder is lost in pleasing doubt as to the actual reality of the apparition before him."[4]
Of all the Assyrian discoveries which were crowded into the last century, unquestionably the most important was made by Rassam in 1852 and 1853 when he laid bare the magnificent palace of Assurbanipal, in which was found the royal library. Here the king had caused to be collected tablets embodying the literature of both Babylonia and Assyria, and numberless royal inscriptions of both states, from the earliest time. Owing to the circumstance of their having been inscribed upon tablets of clay, many had been destroyed as the building in which they were kept fell in ruins. Many were found in an almost perfect state of preservation and thousands of others have since been joined by the patient labors of scholars. At this point Assyrian excavations largely ceased, for it was felt that unless some understanding of these tablets could be gained, it was scarcely worth while to amass more of them at such great outlays. Archæologists realized that the inscriptions must be deciphered before funds would be forthcoming for fresh undertakings.
We have seen how difficult a task Egyptologists had in discovering the meaning of the hieroglyphics, and how the Rosetta stone, giving one decree in three different languages, at last led to an understanding of the whole. The Babylonians and Assyrians used a series of wedge-shaped letters or symbols, which has given the name cuneiform to their written language. These wedge-shaped signs were impressed on the clay by a stylus, and several of them are united to form a syllabic character. There are about 400 of these complex syllabic signs in the syllabary, instead of 26 letters as in English. Where the writing on the tablets is very close, as it frequently is, it is often very difficult to read the signs correctly. In the earlier Babylonian period, moreover, the form differs from that of the later Babylonian and Assyrian period. To make the reading still more puzzling they are polyphonic, i. e., have several syllabic values, and are also used ideagraphically, i. e., may be used for entire words. If we should read b either b, p, m, d, etc., and also for break, run, beside with only the context to guide us we would have a parallel case. There was no Rosetta stone to help this time, and the tablets long remained sealed books. We have only to look at a page of the characters to wonder that their meaning at last dawned upon the tireless workers.
Prominent among linguists engaged upon Assyrian inscriptions were Sir Henry Rawlinson, Fox Talbot, Jules Oppert, and a talented Irish scholar by the name of Hincks. At last translations of certain inscriptions were offered by these men, but critics looked at the apparently meaningless signs and questioned the versions rendered. At least, they insisted, there was no way to prove that a meaning had not been worked into them, rather than out of them.
Finally it was suggested that a single inscription, hitherto unread, be sent to the four scholars just mentioned, and that they be asked to return their renderings sealed, to a committee appointed to examine them. To the amazement of the world, the translations made were almost identical, differences occurring in those portions which the translators themselves had marked as uncertain. This was, indeed, a triumph for students of the Assyrian language, and compelled a general agreement that the cuneiform tongue had at last been mastered. Rapid advances were made after this test, which was made in 1857. The translation of numerous tablets was at once eagerly begun.
George Smith, a young man engaged to copy inscriptions required by Rawlinson for some material he was about to publish, was not content to copy meaningless signs, but set to work to understand them. So rapidly did he advance in mastering the language that he became most helpful in classifying the tablets stored in the British Museum. In connection with his work there one incident deserves notice.
The clay tablets had been removed as carefully as possible from the ruins of the library at Nineveh, and had been brought to the London Museum with as little mishap as could be expected. Some were perfect, some partly missing, some in fragments. One day George Smith came upon a deluge story which so strongly resembled the version given in the Old Testament that he was struck by the similarity. Now recent years have disclosed that the flood legend has been common among all Semitic peoples, but the fact was not established in the middle part of the last century. Finding many portions of the story lacking, Smith felt that he would like to go in search of them. The whole affair was widely published, and Edwin Arnold, then editor of the Daily Telegraph of London, became interested in it. Through his influence the Telegraph offered five thousand guineas to pay the expenses of an expedition to Nineveh, under the direction of George Smith, to recover, if possible, the missing portions of the story. In 1872, accordingly, Smith started out upon his search for the "Deluge Fragments," under contract to telegraph his experiences and discoveries to the London paper. When he actually came upon a fragment of the deluge epic, it was regarded in England as a great and unexpected triumph. Two other fragments were found, and then the Telegraph, probably thinking it had been sufficiently advertised, decided that its venture had succeeded, and Smith was recalled. Returning in 1873, he died in Assyria three years later of a fever contracted in the marshy, fever-breeding country.
In recent years, excavations have been carried on in the valley of the Euphrates under auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. Most of this work has been done at Nippur, and accounts of the discoveries have been published. An agreement was made with the Turkish government to the effect that all remains uncovered be turned over to the Imperial Museum at Constantinople. So generous did the leaders of this college band prove in aiding the Turks to classify objects found, accepting no remuneration for their services, that the Sultan was pleased to present a large number of them to the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, where they are today exhibited.
TRANSPORT OF TIMBER FOR SARGON'S PALACE.
(The God Ea, represented in the lower left-hand corner as half man, half fish, escorts the fleet.)
[1] Isaiah 13, 19-22; 31, 8-9. Note.—This is the A. V. version. It should read:
The Assyrian shall fall by a sword, not a man's,
And a sword, not a human one, shall devour him.
[And he shall flee from the face of the sword,
And his brave ones shall become tributary,
And his rock he will run by in terror,
And his princes in fright shall abandon their flag.]
The destruction is to be supernatural, according to Isaiah. The lines in brackets are probably a later addition.—(Craig.)
[2] Sherley: His Relation of His Travels Into Persia.
[3] Rogers: Hist. of Babylonia and Assyria, 154.
[4] Loftus: Travels and Researches in Chaldea and Susiana.