Authors and their public in ancient times

by George Haven Putnam

Chaldea.

—The earliest literature of which the archæologists have thus far found trustworthy evidence appears to be that of the Chaldeans. Their “books,” consisting of baked clay tablets, on which the cuneiform characters had been imprinted with a stylus, were well fitted to withstand the ravages of time, being practically imperishable by either fire or water. The important discovery of specimens of the earlier literature of Chaldea was due to Sir Henry Layard. In 1845 he was fortunate enough, while investigating the mounds at Koyunjik (ancient Nineveh) now identified with the ruins of the palaces of Sennacherib and Asshurbanipal (B.C. 650), to stumble into the chambers which had contained the royal library. Although he was not himself able to decipher the early cuneiform characters with which were covered the masses of clay tablets and fragments of tablets brought to light by his excavations, he readily recognized the importance of the discovery, and took pains to forward to the British Museum a large number of those in the best state of preservation. There they lay until 1870, when George Smith undertook the task of arranging and deciphering them. Smith had been originally employed in the Museum as an engraver, but in the course of his work in engraving cuneiform texts, he had become interested in their study, and by dint of persistent application he soon came to be one of the few acknowledged authorities on the subject.

Months of patient labor were given to the piecing together of the thousands of scattered fragments contained in Layard’s shipment. Then, owing to the enterprise of the London Daily Telegraph (which in 1876 made a novel precedent in journalism by printing from week to week, in juxtaposition with the news of the day, decipherings of the Chaldean writings of five thousand years back), Smith was enabled to go to Mesopotamia, and in three successive journeys very largely to increase the collections of tablets, which finally comprised over 10,000 specimens.

Smith’s untimely death by fever during his third sojourn in the East put a check for a time upon both the collecting and the deciphering, but the latter was later continued by workers who became equally skilled, and of a large number of the tablets translations have been put into print. During the past ten years, a great development has been given to the collecting and deciphering of the tablets by the labors of such scholars as Dieulafoy, Fritz Hommel, John P. Peters, and others.

Smith had found specimens of Chaldean literature in such departments as agriculture, irrigation, astrology, the science of government, the art of war, prayers and invocations to the gods, and above all and most frequent, records of campaigns. There were also a few tablets which appeared to be examples of children’s primers and children’s scribbling. As far as it was practicable to judge from those fragments that have been preserved of the literature of the nation, the several works had for the most part been prepared under the instructions and often apparently for the special use of successive monarchs or of the rulers of provinces. These books existed, therefore, in strictly “limited editions,” comprising either single copies or but two or three copies for the royal residences. The writers were apparently for the most part officials in the public service and often members of the royal household. On the campaigns, the king, or the commander who took the place of the king, appears to have been accompanied by scribes, who were expected to keep note of the number of cities taken, the enemies slain, and the prisoners captured, and of the amount of the spoils appropriated, and the records of campaign triumphs form by far the largest portion of the literature discovered. These campaign narratives finally came to take the shape of annual records, often beginning with the formula “and when the springtime came, the time when kings go out to war.”

The next largest division of the Chaldean literature is made up of invocations to the gods, narratives of the doings of the gods, and prayers and psalms. Many of these last bear a very close family resemblance to the war psalms of the Hebrews, the composition of which took place ten or twelve hundred years later. This religious literature was the work of the priests whose annual stipends came from the royal treasury, augmented probably by the offerings of the faithful. Remains of these priestly libraries were discovered by Layard and Smith in the ruins of Agadê, Sippar, and Cutha.

In the records that have come down to us, there is absolutely no trace of compensation being paid for the different classes of literary undertakings except in the shape of annual stipends to the writers, whose work included other services besides their literary labors, although it is, of course, probable that special gifts may have been given from time to time for exceptionally eloquent and satisfactory accounts of successful campaigns. Whatever property existed in these productions must, therefore, have been vested in the king, but this hardly constituted a distinctive feature of literary property, as the kings claimed and exercised a complete control over all the property and all the lives within their realms.

The earliest specimen of Chaldean literature which has as yet been discovered, and which is probably the oldest example of writing at present known, is given on a tablet of baked clay now in the British Museum. This tablet was made up by George Smith out of a mass of scattered fragments which had been brought from the Assyrian mounds. In going over the collection of inscribed tiles, Smith came across a small fragment the inscription on which evidently referred to the Flood, and in the course of his own three sojourns in Mesopotamia he was fortunate enough, after many months of patient labor, to find a large portion of the fragments required to complete the tablet and to give the main portion of the narrative. Such success could hardly have been possible if the royal library of Nineveh had not contained several copies of the Flood tablet, as was evinced by the finding of duplicates or triplicates of certain of the portions. The tablet, as now put together, comprises eighteen pieces, and presents, notwithstanding a number of gaps, a fairly complete account of the Flood. The incidents are so far paralleled by those given in the Genesis narrative, that it is evident either that the two scribes derived their information from the same sources, or that the Hebrew story has been based upon the Chaldean record. According to Lenormant, Smith, and Hommel, the former was inscribed about 4000 B.C., in that case ante-dating by more than two thousand years the actual writing of the Book of Genesis. Ragozin speaks of “the ancestors of the Hebrews, during their long sojourn in the land of Shinar, having become familiar with the legends and stories contained in the collection of the Assyrian priests, and after working these over after their own superior religious lights, having shaped from them the narrative which was written down many centuries later as part of the Book of Genesis.”[1]