CHAPTER XXI.
Contributions of Babylonia, Assyria and Persia to Modern Civilization.
It is often difficult to correctly estimate the power exerted by a statesman upon his country. The movements he has espoused, the reforms he may have championed, the institutions he helped to call into being, all stand as monuments to his memory. But the subtle effects of his influence, his personality and character upon his own generation and others still to come, are seldom understood or adequately judged. In the case of a nation the task becomes still more complicated, and we cannot today know how many of our ideas, inventions, and attainments have been shaped by nations whose light went out long centuries ago. Nevertheless, our inability to estimate these various inheritances aright need not deter us from an attempt to classify such bequeathments as are universally acknowledged, and we may be sure that the present world owes much to the earliest nations of Western Asia. Their contributions, however, have not come down to us directly, but have been passed along, like legends, from one people to another, until their present form scarcely suggests their origins.
Let us consider first our indebtedness to Babylonia. In recent years discoveries in the Euphrates valley and the mastery of the cuneiform style of writing have given us masses of material wherefrom to reconstruct the past. Not only has light thus been thrown upon the early history of Babylonia and Assyria, but aid has been rendered biblical study. The tribal life of the Hebrews, and the civilization of other contemporary peoples has been better understood because of these revelations. However, acquisitions of the last century have had no part in molding modern civilization, and we pass on to matters of earlier significance.
No people could have worked as diligently in the field of science as the Babylonians did and failed to leave important results of their investigations. "In Geometry the Chaldeans made about the same progress as the Egyptians; in Arithmetic more. Their notation combined the decimal and duodecimal systems. Sixty was a favorite unit, used as the hundred is by us. Scientific Medicine was hindered by the belief in charms and amulets; and even Astronomy was studied chiefly as a means of fortune-telling by the stars,—so that in Europe through the Middle Ages an astrologer was known as a Chaldean. However, the level plains and clear skies, as in Egypt, invited to an early study of the constellations, and some important progress was made. As we get from the Egyptians our year and months, so from the Chaldeans we get the week, with its 'day of rest for the heart,' as they called the seventh day, and the division of day and night into twelve hours each, with the subdivisions into minutes. They also invented the water clock and the sundial. They foretold eclipses, made star maps, and marked out on the heavens the apparent yearly path of the sun. The zodiacal 'signs' of our almanacs commemorate these early astronomers. Every great city had its lofty observatory and its royal astronomer; and in Babylon, in 331 B.C., Alexander the Great found a continuous series of observations running back nineteen hundred and three years.
"To a degree peculiar among the ancients, the men of the Euphrates made practical use of their science. They understood the lever and pulley, and used the arch in vaulted drains and aqueducts. They invented the potter's wheel, and an excellent system of weights and measures. Their treatises on agriculture passed on their knowledge in that subject to the later Greeks and Arabs. They had surpassing skill in cutting gems, and in enameling and inlaying; and their looms produced the finest of muslins and of fleecy woolens, to which the dyer gave the most brilliant colors. In many such industries little advance has been made since, so far as results are concerned."[1]
Certain unfortunate bequests were left by them. Babylonian belief in demons was handed down through the Hebrews, and in the Middle Ages took the form of the devil, with horns and a cloven foot. Their faith in magic and incantations also descended to Mediæval times, and as scientific interest superseded religious fervor, inspired men to search for the "philosopher's stone."
The intensely practical turn of mind in Mesopotamia revealed itself in the literature, which was bare of imagery. Material beauty—artistic carpets, tapestries, and rugs, was developed, but for beauty of conceptions, we must turn to the Greeks.
What did the war-loving, blood-thirsting Assyrians leave for future ages? At first the question seems not to be easily answered. One calls to mind their ravaging raids and unparalleled carnage, and remembering that their palaces and stores of inscribed tablets were recovered only within the last fifty years, their contributions are not so apparent. Yet, having studied the government enforced by Darius upon his empire, we are compelled to admit that he but improved upon the system evolved by the Assyrian kings, unknown before their time in Asia. Again, the very conquests themselves were helpful, in spite of their cruelty, for they brought the best civilization of their day to half-barbarous tribes who otherwise might have passed century after century before reaching the degree of progress so rudely thrust upon them. These conquests opened up routes of commerce, and trade has always exceeded all other factors as a civilizing force.
To science the Assyrians appear to have made no contributions whatever.
Coming to ancient Persia, we find a wholly different culture. The people of this country lacked the practical turn of mind so characteristic of the Babylonian, and his mercenary point of view was quite unknown to them. Persian literature, while scanty, embodied poetical conceptions, and several of the ancient poems possess much art. "The Persians had fancy and imagination, a relish for poetry and art, and they were not without a certain power of political combination. Yet we cannot justly ascribe to them any high degree of intellectual excellence. If the great work of Firdausi represents to us, as it probably does, the true spirit of their ancient poetry, their efforts were but of moderate merit. A tone of exaggeration, an imagination exuberant and unrestrained, a preference for glitter over solid excellence, a love of far-fetched conceits, characterize the Shahnameh; and, though we may ascribe something of this to the individuality of the poet, still the conviction presses upon us that there was a childish and grotesque character in the mass of old Persian poetry, which marked it as the creation of moderate rather than of high intellectual power, and prevents us from regarding it with the respect with which we view the labors of the Greeks and Romans, or again, of the Hebrews, in this department. A want of seriousness, a want of reality, and, again, a want of depth, characterize the poetry of Iran, whose bards do not touch the chords which rouse what is noblest and highest in our nature. They give us sparkle, prettiness, quaint and ingenious fancies, grotesque marvels, an inflated kind of human heroism; but they have none of the higher excellences of the poetic art, none of the divine fire which renders the true poet, and the true prophet, one."[2]
The Persian religion was both noble and sublime, and its teaching concerning the two opposing forces of good and evil, affected the philosophy of the Greeks, and indirectly, the thought of the later Christian world.
By carrying the plan of Assyrian conquest further, the Persians opened districts remote from social centers and helped the course of civilization. Their systematic government improved upon the one developed by Assyria in this particular: each governor was made supreme in his province under Assyrian administration, none other being accountable to the king for conditions in his territory. An opportunity thus offered for the governor to seize any favorable moment to shake off allegiance to the state and attempt to establish his own supremacy. Darius, on the other hand, posted troops in each satrapy, and both the commander of these troops and the governor were required to submit reports, and to act jointly in certain matters. In this way, one served as a check upon the other.
Fine roads were built to allow rapid communication between the capital and distant provinces; these naturally facilitated commerce, and made travel safe—as one has graphically expressed it, "helped set the world a-mixing."
A new day was dawning for humanity, and an age coming when one might look back to the infancy of the world, likening its progress to that of a man who has gained some perceptions, some ideas and experiences in childhood days which unconsciously but surely, influence his later life, illuminated by wider experiences and deeper truths.
[1] West: Ancient History.
[2] Rawlinson: Persia.