The archæology of the cuneiform inscriptions

by A. H. Sayce

But the reflection of the divine upon the human brought with it not only the exaltation of sovereignty, but also the rise of a priesthood. There were priests of a sort in Sumer of whom many different classes are enumerated. But when we examine the signification of the names attached to them we find that they were not priests in the true sense of the word. They were rather magicians, sorcerers, wizards, masters of charms. They do not develop into priests until after the Semite has entered upon the scene. The god and the priest make their appearance together.

I do not think, however, that we are justified in concluding that the elaborate hierarchy of Babylonia was of purely Semitic origin. On the contrary, like the theological system with which it was associated, it was a composite product. Behind the gods and goddesses of Semitic Babylonia lay the primitive “spirits” and fetishes of Sumer; its mythology and cosmological theories rested on Sumerian foundations; and in the same way the priestly hierarchy was the result of a racial amalgamation in which the Semitic element had adopted and adapted the ideas and institutions of the older people. We do not find the theology and priesthood of Babylonia among other Semitic populations, except where they had been borrowed from the Babylonians (as in Assyria); in the form in which we know them they were peculiarly and distinctively Babylonian. Like the language of Semitic Babylonia, which is permeated with Sumerian elements, or the script, which is a Semitic adaptation of the Sumerian system of writing, they presuppose a mixture of race.

The priesthood eventually proved irreconcilable with “the divine right” of the monarch, though both alike had the same origin. The priests prevailed over the king, and as in England the doctrine of divine right was unable to survive the accession of a German line of princes, so in Babylonia the accession of a foreign, non-Semitic dynasty (that of the Kassites) dealt a death-blow to the belief in a deified king. The king became merely the representative and deputy of the divine “Lord” of heaven, deriving his right to rule from his adoption by the god as a son; Bel-Merodach came to be regarded as the true ruler of Babylonia, lord of the earth as well as of the heavens, and a theocratic state affords but little room for a secular king. The priests of Bel decided whom their god should recognize or not, and little by little the controlling power of the state passed into their hands It was in a sense a triumph for the non-Semitic element in the population. While the deification of the sovereign may be said to have been purely Semitic in its origin, the necessary corollary of an anthropomorphic conception of the deity, the supernatural powers supposed to be inherent in the priesthood went back to Sumerian times. It was because he had once been a master of spells that the priest of the anthropomorphic god could influence the spiritual world. The final triumph of the theocratic principle in Babylonia, where the Semite had been so long dominant, showed that the old racial element was still strong, and ready to reassert itself when the favourable moment arrived. Such, indeed, is generally the history of a mixed people: the conquering or immigrant race may seem to have suppressed or absorbed the earlier population of the country, but as generations pass the foreign element becomes weaker, and the nation in greater or less degree reverts to the older type.

NOTE

So far as the primitive culture of Sumer may be recovered from such of the primitive pictographs as can be at present identified, it may be described as follows. The inventors of them lived on the sea-coast within sight of mountains, but in a marshy district where reeds abounded. Trees also grew there, and the cedar was known. Stone was scarce, but was already cut into blocks and seals. Tablets were used for writing purposes, and copper, gold and silver were worked by the smith. Daggers with metal blades and wooden handles were worn, and copper was hammered into plates, while necklaces or collars were made of gold. Brick was the ordinary building material, and with it cities, forts, temples and houses were constructed. The city was provided with towers and stood on an artificial platform; the house also had a tower-like appearance. It was provided with a door which turned on a hinge, and could be opened with a sort of key; the city gate was on a larger scale, and seems to have been double. By the side of the house was an enclosed garden planted with trees and other plants; wheat and probably other cereals were sown in the fields, and the shaddûf was already employed for the purpose of irrigation. Plants were also grown in pots or vases. That floods took place is evident from the existence of a pictograph denoting “inundation,” and representing a fish left stranded above the foliage of a tree. Canals or aqueducts had already been dug. The sheep, goat, ox and probably ass had been domesticated, the ox being used for draught, and woollen clothing as well as rugs were made from the wool or hair of the two first. A feathered head-dress was worn on the head. Beds, stools and chairs were used, with carved legs resembling those of an ox. There were fire-places and fire-altars, and apparently chimneys also. Pottery was very plentiful, and the forms of the vases, bowls and dishes were manifold; there were special jars for honey, butter, oil and wine, which was probably made from dates, and one form of vase had a spout protruding from its side. Some of the vases had pointed feet, and stood on stands with crossed legs; others were flat-bottomed, and were set on square or rectangular frames of wood. The oil-jars—and probably others also—were sealed with clay, precisely as in early Egypt. Vases and dishes of stone were made in imitation of those of clay, and baskets were woven of reeds or formed of leather. Knives, drills, wedges and an instrument which looks like a saw were all known, while bows, arrows and daggers (but not swords nor, probably, spears) were employed in war. Time was reckoned in lunar months. Sacred cakes were offered to the gods, whose images were symbolized sometimes by a bearded human head with a feather crown, sometimes by a two-legged table of offerings on which stand two vases (of incense?). Demons were feared who had wings like a bird, and the foundation stones—or rather bricks—of a house were consecrated by certain objects that were deposited under them. A “year” was denoted by the branch of a tree, as in Egypt, and a “name” by a bird placed over the sacred table of offerings. The country was full of snakes and other creeping things, and wild beasts lurked in the jungle. The pictographs were read from left to right, and various expedients were devised for making them express ideas. Thus mud, “to beget,” was denoted by the picture of a bird dropping an egg. At other times the pictograph was used to express an idea, the pronunciation of which was the same as that of the object which it represented. The bent knee, for example, was used to express dug or tuk, “to have,” since it represented a “knee,” which was called dug in Sumerian.

CHAPTER IV
THE RELATION OF BABYLONIAN TO EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION

In dealing with the question of origins, science is constantly confronted with the problem of unity or polygeneity. Has language one origin or many; are the various races of mankind traceable to one ancestor or to several? Do the older civilizations presuppose the same primeval starting-point, or were there independent centres of culture which grew up unknown to one another in different parts of the world? Under the influences of theology the belief long prevailed that they were all sprung from the same source; of late the tendency has been in an opposite direction. While the biologist has inclined to a belief in the unity of species, the anthropologist has seen reason to maintain the diversity of origin in culture.

The two earliest civilizations with which we are acquainted were those of Babylonia and Egypt. To a certain extent the conditions under which they both arose were similar. They grew up alike on the banks of great rivers and in a warm, though not tropical, climate. They rested, moreover, on organized systems of agriculture, which again had been made possible by irrigation engineering. In Babylonia the first settlers had found a plain which was little more than a swamp, over which the swollen streams of the Euphrates and Tigris wandered at will during the annual period of inundation, and which needed engineering works on a large scale before it could be made habitable. The rivers had to be confined within their channels by means of embankments, and canals had to be cut in order to draw off the surplus supply of water and regulate its distribution to the land. While the swamp was thus being made possible for habitation, the population must have lived on the edge of the desert plateau which bordered it, and have there developed a civilization which not only produced the engineers and their science, but also the concentrated authority which enabled the science to be utilized.

In Egypt it was the banks and delta of the Nile which took the place of the Babylonian plain. Recent discoveries have shown that in the prehistoric age, when the natives still lived in the desert and led a pastoral life, all this was a morass, the haunt of beasts of prey and venomous reptiles. But here again the swamp was rendered habitable by engineering works similar to those of primeval Babylonia. The swamp was transformed into fertile fields, the annual flood of the river was regulated, and an elaborate network of canals and embankments spread over the country. The pastoral nomads of the neolithic age became agriculturists, or were employed in constructing and repairing the works of irrigation, or in erecting monumental buildings for their rulers. There is evidence of the same centralized government, the same directing brain and organizing force that there is in primitive Babylonia.

Is it possible that two systems of engineering science, so similar in their objects, their methods and their results, should have been invented independently in two different countries? There are scholars who answer in the negative. But the possibility cannot be denied, since an even more elaborate system of irrigation was invented in China without any suggestion, as far as we know, from outside. The geographical conditions of Babylonia and Egypt, moreover, resemble one another, and the question of draining the swamps and regulating the overflow of the rivers once raised, the answer to it seems fairly obvious. By itself, therefore, the fact that the cultures of ancient Babylonia and Egypt alike rested on a similar system of irrigation engineering would be no proof of their common origin.