CHAPTER II.
Sources of Babylonian and Assyrian History.
In considering the four important sources of Babylonian and Assyrian history, we may note first, Old Testament writings.
Unquestionably the Bible has gained more through Assyrian excavations than it has itself contributed to the history of that country. As has been said before, the Old Testament consists of Hebrew writings which portray various phases of Hebrew life, and mention is made of other nations only when the Chosen People by force of circumstances were thrown in direct contact with them. Since their kingdom was overcome by Babylonians, we could scarcely expect Hebrew writers to hold unprejudiced opinions regarding their own conquerors; nevertheless whatever facts concerning them crept into their writings have been verified by modern discovery.
Much is often revealed in a few words, as is characteristic of Biblical expression. For example, see how much is condensed in the following sentence: "And the king of Egypt came not again any more out of his land: for the king of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt unto the river Euphrates all that pertained to the king of Egypt."
Not alone have the facts recorded in the Old Testament proved useful to those engaged in reconstructing the history of the Tigris-Euphrates nations, but the desire of religious adherents to confirm the truth and accuracy of ancient Hebrew writings has served as an incentive both to those who did the work and to those who by contributions made the task possible.
The writings of the early Greeks concerning Babylonia and Assyria supply another source. Berosus was a Babylonian priest connected with a temple sacred to Bel. He lived during the fourth century before Christ, when Babylonia and Assyria had become Greek provinces. For the Antiochus he wrote a lengthy history of his country, which would have been of greatest value to us had it been preserved. Unfortunately it was destroyed, and only excerpts, made by Polyhistor and Apollodoras of the first century B.C., are now in existence.
Herodotus devoted more than twenty chapters of his first volume to Babylonia, but owing to certain faults we have found characteristic of his writings, he has led some scholars to even declare that he never saw the country at all. While they cannot be wholly depended upon, his writings have some value. Other Greek writers have thrown so little light on Babylonian life that we shall not consider them here at all.
Thirdly, we may mention Egyptian records as a source for Mesopotamian history. The Egyptian hieroglyphics and the cuneiform symbols of the Assyrian tongue were translated about the same time, so that little actual help was gained through Egyptian sources. Nevertheless, campaigns waged by Egyptian kings within the very borders of Asiatic countries, with detailed accounts as set forth upon the walls of Egyptian temples, cannot fail to aid in the reconstruction of Assyrian growth and development.
Lastly and most important of all are the monuments and remains unearthed in Mesopotamia itself. More than one hundred thousand clay record tablets have been recovered; temples and palaces have been excavated, and within these were found alabaster slabs carved with many scenes characteristic of Assyrian life; armour, utensils and numerous other articles have each thrown some light upon the ancient civilization. The value of this first hand, or original material, is priceless indeed, since without it no detailed knowledge of these old kingdoms could ever have been hoped for. Explorations among the ruins are still carried on, and it is possible that the present century may add much to what has already been gained concerning the ancient dwellers in the once fertile valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris.
Physical Geography of Babylonia and Assyria.
If you will look closely at a map of the eastern hemisphere, you will see that a great tract of desert extends across northern Africa, and reaching beyond the Mediterranean Sea, the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea, traverses the entire width of Asia to the Pacific Ocean. This desert waste is so broken by plateaus and mountain ranges that its vast extent is scarcely realized. Rivers occasionally cross it, producing fertile valleys which, generally speaking, support the life of the whole area.
We are now concerned with the location and topography of the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian kingdoms, and of those districts lying adjacent. North of the Persian Gulf some considerable distance, we find the Armenian mountains. These ranges are loftier than most in Western Asia, piercing high above the eternal snow-line. During winter their sides and gorges are massed with snow, which melts rapidly with the warmth of spring and heat of summer. The drainage of the mountains has resulted in many streams, which unite to form the Euphrates on the western slopes, and on the eastern slopes, form the Tigris. Ages ago these two rivers emptied into the Persian Gulf at points some distance from each other. But such heavy deposits of rich mountain loam have been brought down by the streams, that they have extended the land far into the gulf, pushing the water back for some hundred miles. Joining one another in the area thus formed, the waters of the two streams reach the gulf today as one mighty river with many mouths. We may judge how great changes this land-building process has wrought by the fact that the town of Ur, now nearly two hundred miles from the gulf, was a sea-port at the time of which we are now studying. The annual increase of the land is about 115 feet.
Herodotus' statement that "Egypt is the gift of the Nile," might have been made with equal truth of the Euphrates and Babylonia. Here again an annual overflow refreshes a valley, while in antiquity a network of canals provided water, fertility, and humidity for districts sloping off gently on either side.
Today this territory is held by the Turks, and with their ruinous policy of trying to extract all possible revenue from their lands while doing nothing to improve them, the old canals are abandoned, none others take their place, and the rivers wander today at will, leaving part of the area parched and unproductive, and converting the rest into fever-breeding swamps and marshes.
The Euphrates is the longer of the two rivers. Taking its rise west of a lofty mountain, it receives several tributaries near its source, but none join it during the last eight hundred miles of its course. The snows melt gradually; in March the stream begins to overflow its channel; high water mark is reached by the first of June, and July finds the waters receding. This river is very winding in its course, at one place being but one hundred miles from the Mediterranean Sea and near Babylon running along within twenty-five miles of the Tigris, only to immediately branch off again to the south. Its entire length is about eighteen hundred miles, and most of the water is spent before it reaches the Gulf.
The Tigris is somewhat different from its sister stream. Its name signifies "the swift," or the "arrowy," and indicates its rapid current, whereas the Euphrates flows more gently. Not so broad as the Euphrates, the Tigris is much deeper. On the east of the high mountains wherein this river has its rise, spring comes quickly; the water rises rapidly, and the period of its overflow is short. Beginning to rise in March, the first of May sees the high water mark, and by the last of June the stream is fast finding its usual volume.
The territory between the Tigris and Euphrates the Greeks called Mesopotamia, meaning "between two rivers," but they applied the name to the northern portion of the district—the home of the Assyrians. As generally used today, the term Mesopotamia signifies the whole region.
The southern portion, bordering on the Persian Gulf, has a deep alluvial soil, built up by the yearly deposit of the rivers. Like the valley of the Nile, it has been the repository of fine silt. This portion from its capital city Babylon was called Babylonia. As we might expect, this was the country first settled because it was the more accessible. Its wide, monotonous plains, enriched with the fertile mountain loam, afforded the most productive farm lands in the world. Herodotus told of their prodigious yield of grain: "This territory is of all that we know the best by far for producing grain; as to trees, it does not attempt to bear them, either fig, or vine or olive, but for producing grain it is so good that it returns as much as two-hundred-fold for the average, and, when it bears its best, it produces three-hundred-fold. The blades of the wheat and barley there grew to be four fingers broad; and from millet and sesame seed, how large a tree grows, I know myself, but shall not record, being well aware that even what has already been said relating to the crops produced has been enough to cause disbelief in those who have not visited Babylonia." Theophrastus wrote: "In Babylon the wheat fields are regularly mown twice, and then fed off with beasts to keep down the luxuriance of the leaf; otherwise the plant does not run to ear. When this is done the return in lands that are badly cultivated is fiftyfold, while in those that are well farmed it is a hundredfold."
The land of Babylonia has been happily compared with the southern half of our state of Louisiana, which it resembles in marshy districts. Again it might be likened to the Egyptian Delta, being of course, larger,—something like Denmark in point of area. Possessing no rocks or mountains, the country seemed at first to be devoid of building material. It has been supposed that its primitive people first sheltered themselves in huts built of reeds which grew abundantly along the river banks. After awhile it was discovered that clay mud furnished a fair material when shaped into bricks and dried in the sun. A more enduring brick was later made by baking the brick in ovens. This oven-baked brick as well as the sun-dried brick constituted the great building material of Babylonia for all subsequent time.
The district north of the alluvial line, enclosed by rivers and mountains, in time became the kingdom of Assyria. This region differed greatly from the southern land. It was made up of low ranges on the north, rolled gently to the south, and supplied excellent pasturage. Stone and material suitable to building purposes were available, but the people, accustomed to the clay bricks of their old home in Babylonia, never made use of the more substantial building stuff. Indeed the Assyrians were not at all of an inventive mind, as another illustration will plainly show. In Babylonia, because the ground was low and level, the people were obliged to construct artificial heights for building sites, thus to escape marshy exhalations and troublesome insects. They erected huge piles of sun-dried brick and crowned these with their palaces and temples.
Now the Assyrians were in the beginning colonists who had gone out of the mother state to find less populated regions farther north. There were hills and elevations in abundance in Assyria, but holding to the custom they had so long followed, they continued to construct great foundations of bricks for their buildings. It is curious indeed to find them, throughout their history, expending time, labor and resources to produce what nature had already provided.
Assyria was somewhat larger than Babylonia, and has been compared to the state of Illinois in size. While the northern mountains and the Gulf afforded definite boundaries, the limits to the east and west were never certain and both Babylonians and Assyrians pushed out in each direction as they became more powerful, contracting again if their strength weakened. On the west a desert separated them from the Mediterranean, and while various tribes held the country east of the Tigris in early times, the Medes later conquered the region east of Assyria, and Persia reached away to the southeast.
There are two seasons in these valleys—the rainy period, lasting from November to March, and the dry season, filling out the remainder of the year. Babylonia was never subject to the cold storms of Assyria, and the kings of the latter country, after they conquered Babylonia, frequently maintained winter palaces in the old capital, Babylon. Summer is intensely hot near the Gulf. In recent years this has been a serious obstacle to confront those carrying on excavations here.
In ancient times an extensive system of canals and ditches made it possible to keep the land under constant cultivation, thus preventing in a large measure the sand storms that now spread over the country, causing much suffering and even death. Under Turkish rule at present, the whole region is left desolate.
In spite of Herodotus to the contrary, certain kinds of trees grew in Babylonia. The fig, apple, almond and walnut were native. The date palm ministered to the wants of the people in manifold ways. An old Persian poem sung of its 360 uses, while the Greeks claimed that it supplied the Babylonians with bread, wine, vinegar, honey, rope, fuel, wood for furniture, and food for cattle. A wide variety of grains and vegetables were produced.
Wild animals were plentiful. The Mesopotamian lion was thought milder than its jungle cousin. Buffaloes were domesticated. Leopards, hyænas, wild boars, gazelles, foxes and hares were found, while birds and fishes abounded.
Altogether this was a spot where life was favorable for man, and it was natural that wandering tribes that came thither should soon abandon their roving habits for the surer livelihood promised by a fixed home.
SARGON'S STANDARD
(WITH FIGURE OF ASSHUR).