The archæology of the cuneiform inscriptions

by A. H. Sayce

THE RUINS OF A PALACE OF URARTU AT TOPRAK-KALEH.

The existence of a language of the Caucasian type in Armenia, and its association with a powerful kingdom and an advanced culture, is not the only revelation of the kind that we owe to cuneiform decipherment. We have learned that at a much earlier epoch Northern Mesopotamia was occupied by a people who spoke a language of similar type but of far more complicated form; and that here, too, the language in question was accompanied by a high civilization, a powerful monarchy, and the use of the cuneiform syllabary. The monarchy was that of Mitanni, and its culture and script had been borrowed from Babylonia in the age of Khammu-rabi, instead of from Assyria in the age of Assur-natsir-pal. But it is interesting to observe that in borrowing the script the people of Mitanni had adapted and simplified it in precisely the same way as did the people of Van in after days. Superfluous characters were discarded, a single phonetic value only assigned to each character, and large use made of those which expressed vowels. In fact, in both Mitannian and Vannic the system of writing begins to approach the alphabetic. Whether this similarity in adaptation was due to a similarity of phonetic structure in the two languages or to conscious imitation on the part of the Vannic scribes it is difficult to say; it is a point, however, which cannot be passed over.

The name of Mitanni meets us on the Egyptian monuments of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties. The kingdom played a considerable part at that period of time in the politics of Western Asia, and the daughters of its kings were married to the Egyptian Pharaohs. The boundaries of the Egyptian Empire were coterminous with those of Mitanni, and we gather from the Tel el-Amarna correspondence that the Mitannian forces had more than once made their way into Palestine, perhaps as far south as Jerusalem, and that Mitannian intrigue was active in that portion of the Pharaoh’s dominions. Among the Canaanitish governors are some who bear Mitannian names, and testify to the continuance of a Mitannian element in that common meeting-place of nationalities.

Several letters from the Mitannian king have been found among the Tel el-Amarna tablets. Most of them are written in the Babylonian language, but one—and fortunately an exceptionally long one—though in cuneiform characters, is in the native language of the country. A comparison of it with its companion letters, assisted by the determinatives and ideographs which are employed in it from time to time, has enabled Jensen, Leopold Messerschmidt and myself to decipher a very considerable part of the letter, and so to compile a grammar and vocabulary of the Mitannian language. That it is distantly related to Vannic seems to admit of little doubt, but it comes before us in a much more developed form; indeed, its system of suffixes is so elaborate and ponderous as to remind us of the polysynthetic languages of America.

A legal document found in Babylonia and dated in the epoch of Khammu-rabi contains a number of proper names which are of Mitannian or allied origin, and show that persons of that race were already settled in Babylonia.[137] As the Mitannian form of cuneiform script must have been borrowed about the same time, we may infer that the advanced guard of the northern race had already made its way as far south as Mesopotamia, and there established its power in the midst of a Semitic population. From that time forward a constant struggle went on between the two races, the Semitic race striving to push back the northern intruders and planting its own colonies in the very heart of the northern area, while the northerners pressed ever more and more to the southward, and at one time even seemed likely to possess themselves of the heritage of the Babylonian Empire in Western Asia. Like Armenia, Northern Mesopotamia was occupied by a people of Caucasian and Asianic affinities, whose armies had crossed the Euphrates and won territory in Syria and Palestine.

On the west, however, the Mitannians found themselves confronted by another northern population, the Hittites, whose first home was in Cappadocia. The Hittites also had passed under the spell of Babylonian culture, and the cuneiform script had been carried to them at an early date. Thanks to recent discoveries, we can now trace in some measure the earlier fortunes of a race who made a profound impression, not only on the future history of Asia Minor and its relations with Greece, but also on the history of Palestine.

As far back as about B.C. 2000, Babylonian or Assyrian troops had already made their way along the northern banks of the Tigris and Euphrates to the borders of Cappadocia and the neighbourhood of the Halys. I say Babylonian or Assyrian, for Assyria was at the time a province of Babylonia, though as the colonies which settled in the track of the invaders were distinctively Assyrian in their municipal customs and the names of their inhabitants, the troops were probably drafted from Assyria.[138] The mineral wealth of Cappadocia was doubtless the attraction which led them to such distant and semibarbarous lands; Dr. Gladstone’s analysis of the gold of the Sixth Egyptian dynasty, with its admixture of silver, has shown that it was imported from the north of Asia Minor,[139] and the silver itself was probably already worked. Further south, in the Taurus, were mines of copper.

However this may be, the remains of one of these early Assyro-Babylonian colonies has been partially excavated a few miles (twenty-three kilometres) to the north-east of Kaisariyeh.[140] The site is now known as Kara Eyuk, “the Black Mound,” and numerous cuneiform tablets have come from it. It has obtained its present name from the marks of fire which are everywhere visible upon it, and bear eloquent testimony to its final fate. Established as an outpost of the Assyrian Empire in the distant west, a time came when, deserted by the Government at home, its strong walls were battered down by the besieging foe and the Assyrian settlers massacred among the ruins of their burning town. According to M. Chantre, its excavator (who, however, believes that it was destroyed by a volcanic eruption), the whole mound is a mass of charred and burnt remains.

The construction of the walls, as well as the pottery found within them, marks it off with great distinctness from the ruins of the Hittite or native Cappadocian cities in its neighbourhood. While in their case the city wall is made of unmortared blocks of stone, the walls of Kara Eyuk are built of brick, and where stones are used they are of small size and cemented with mortar. The pottery differs considerably from that of the Hittite capital at Boghaz Keui. Some of it is of black ware, especially characterized by the vases with long spouts, which are also found in Phrygia and the Troad. Some of it, again, is of the dark-red lustrous ware which has been met with at Toprak Kaleh, near Van, and Boz Eyuk in Phrygia, while the yellow ware with geometrical patterns in black and maroon-red which has been discovered in Phrygia occurs in large quantities. This latter ware is of the class known as “Mykenæan.”[141]