General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

2. ARTS AND GENERAL CULTURE.

TOWER-TEMPLES.—In the art of building, the Chaldæans, though their edifices fall far short of attaining the perfection exhibited by the earliest Egyptian structures, displayed no inconsiderable architectural knowledge and skill.

The most important of their constructions were their tower-temples. These were simple in plan, consisting of two or three terraces, or stages, placed one upon another so as to form a sort of rude pyramid. The material used in their construction was chiefly sun-dried brick. The edifice was sometimes protected by outer courses of burnt brick. The temple proper surmounted the upper platform.

All these tower-temples have crumbled into vast mounds, with only here and there a projecting mass of masonry to distinguish them from natural hills, for which they were at first mistaken.

CUNEIFORM WRITING.—We have already mentioned the fact that the Accadians, when they entered the Euphrates valley, were in possession of a system of writing. This was a simple pictorial, or hieroglyphical system, which they gradually developed into the cuneiform.

In the cuneiform system, the characters, instead of being formed of unbroken lines, are composed of wedge-like marks; hence the name (from cuneus, a wedge). This form, according to the scholar Sayce, arose when the Accadians, having entered the low country, substituted tablets of clay for the papyrus or other similar material which they had formerly used. The characters were impressed upon the soft tablet by means of a triangular writing-instrument, which gave them their peculiar wedge-shaped form.

The cuneiform mode of writing, improved and simplified by the Assyrians and the Persians, was in use about two thousand years, being employed by the nations in and near the Euphrates basin, down to the time of the conquest of the East by the Macedonians.

BOOKS AND LIBRARIES.—The books of the Chaldæans were in general clay tablets, varying in length from one inch to twelve inches, and being about one inch thick. Those holding records of special importance, after having been once written over and baked, were covered with a thin coating of clay, and then the matter was written in duplicate and the tablets again baked. If the outer writing were defaced by accident or altered by design, the removal of the outer coating would at once show the true text.

The tablets were carefully preserved in great public libraries. Even during the Turanian period, before the Semites had entered the land, one or more of these collections existed in each of the chief cities of Accad and Shumir. "Accad," says Sayce, "was the China of Asia. Almost every one could read and write." Erech was especially renowned for its great library, and was known as "the City of Books."

[Illustration: CHALDÆAN TABLET.]

THE RELIGION.—The Accadian religion, as revealed by the tablets, was essentially the same as that held today by the nomadic Turanian tribes of Northern Asia—what is known as Shamanism. It consisted in a belief in good and evil spirits, of which the latter held by far the most prominent place. To avert the malign influence of these wicked spirits, the Accadians had resort to charms and magic rites. The religion of the Semites was a form of Sabæanism,—that is, a worship of the heavenly bodies,—in which the sun was naturally the central object of adoration.

When the Accadians and the Semites intermingled, their religious systems blended to form one of the most influential religions of the world—one which spread far and wide under the form of Baal worship. There were in the perfected system twelve primary gods, at whose head stood Il, or Ra. Besides these great divinities, there were numerous lesser and local deities.

There were features of this old Chaldæan religion which were destined to exert a wide-spread and potent influence upon the minds of men. Out of the Sabæan Semitic element grew astrology, the pretended art of forecasting events by the aspect of the stars, which was most elaborately and ingeniously developed, until the fame of the Chaldæan astrologers was spread throughout the ancient world, while the spell of that art held in thraldom the mind of mediæval Europe.

Out of the Shamanistic element contributed by the Turanian Accadians, grew a system of magic and divination which had a most profound influence not only upon all the Eastern nations, including the Jews, but also upon the later peoples of the West. mediæval magic and witchcraft were, in large part, an unchanged inheritance from Chaldæa.

THE CHALDÆAN GENESIS.—The cosmological myths of the Chaldæans, that is, their stories of the origin of things, are remarkably like the first chapters of Genesis.

[Illustration: ASSYRIAN TABLET WITH PARTS OF THE DELUGE LEGEND.]

The discoveries and patient labors of various scholars have reproduced, in a more or less perfect form, from the legendary tablets, the Chaldæan account of the Creation of the World, of an ancestral Paradise and the Tree of Life with its angel guardians, of the Deluge, and of the Tower of Babel. [Footnote: Consult especially George Smith's The Chaldæan Account of Genesis; see also Records of the Past, Vol. VII. pp. 127, 131.]

THE CHALDÆAN EPIC OF IZDUBAR.—Beside their cosmological myths, the Chaldæans had a vast number of so-called heroic and nature myths. The most noted of these form what is known as the Epic of Izdubar (Nimrod?), which is doubtless the oldest epic of the race. This is in twelve parts, and is really a solar myth, which recounts the twelve labors of the sun in his yearly passage through the twelve signs of the Chaldæan zodiac.

This epic was carried to the West, by the way of Phoenicia and Asia Minor, and played a great part in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans. "The twelve labors of Heracles may be traced back to the adventures of Gisdhubar [Izdubar] as recorded in the twelve books of the great epic of Chaldæa." (Sayce.)

SCIENCE.—In astronomy and arithmetic the Chaldæans made substantial progress. The clear sky and unbroken horizon of the Chaldæan plains, lending an unusually brilliant aspect to the heavens, naturally led the Chaldæans to the study of the stars. They early divided the zodiac into twelve signs, and named the zodiacal constellations, a memorial of their astronomical attainments which will remain forever inscribed upon the great circle of the heavens; they foretold eclipses, constructed sun-dials of various patterns, divided the year into twelve months, and the day and night into twelve hours each, and invented or devised the week of seven days, the number of days in the week being determined by the course of the moon. "The 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of the lunar month were kept like the Jewish Sabbath, and were actually so named in Assyria."

In arithmetic, also, the Chaldæans made considerable advance. A tablet has been found which contains the squares and cubes of the numbers from one to sixty.

CONCLUSION.-This hasty glance at the beginnings of civilization among the primitive peoples of the Euphrates valley, will serve to give us at least some little idea of how much modern culture owes to the old Chaldæans. We may say that Chaldæa was one of the main sources—Egypt was the other—of the stream of universal history.