Anthropology

by Edward B. Tylor

When the stalks rise, then the demons weep;

When the thick ears come, then the demons fly.”

So necessary were the fierce dogs which kept the wolf from the fold and the thief from the village, that there are solemn ordinances about them, how the dog who does not bark and is not right in his mind is to be muzzled and tied up, and what punishment is to be inflicted on the man who gives a dog bad food; it is as sinful (they say) as if he had done it to a well-to-do householder. One forms a lifelike picture of the sturdy farmers who made these laws to be repeated to their children’s children and carried on to future ages.

While these rough Aryans were handing on memories of the past by word of mouth in their sacred verses, more cultured nations had long since begun to write down memorials of their own times. The best way to bring to our minds what this earliest contemporary history was like, is to look at the translations of Egyptian and Assyrian documents in Records of the Past, published under the directions of the Society of Biblical Archæology. Here is to be found, for instance, Dr. Birch’s translation of the inscription recording the expeditions of Una, crown-bearer to king Teta, before 2,000 B.C. (see [page 3]), and of the account on the sanctuary walls of Karnak, of the battle of Megiddo, where Thothmes III., about 1,500 B.C., overcame the armies of Syria and Mesopotamia and opened the way into the interior of Asia. It is related how the king, marching from Gaza, reached the south of Megiddo on the shore of the waters of Kaner, where he pitched his tent and made a speech before his whole army: “Hasten ye, put on your helmets, for I shall rush to fight with the vile enemy in the morning!” The watchword was passed, “Firm, firm, watch, watch, watch actively at the king’s pavilion!” It was on the morning of the festival of the new moon that the king went forth in his golden decorated chariot in the midst of his army, the god Amun being the protection in his active limbs, and he prevailed over his enemies; they fell prostrate before him, left their horses and chariots, and fled to the fort, where the garrison shut up inside pulled off their clothes to haul them up over the walls. The Egyptians slaughtered their enemies till they lay in rows like fish, and conquering entered the fort of Megiddo, where the chiefs of the land came bearing tribute, silver and gold, lapis lazuli and alabaster, vessels of wine and flocks. The lists of spoil, made with curious minuteness, include living captives 240, hands (cut off the dead) 83, mares 2,041, fillies 191, an ark of gold of the enemy, 892 chariots of the vile army, and so on. A later part of the inscription commemorates the liberal endowments bestowed by the victorious king on the god Amen Ra, the fields and gardens to supply his temple, the pairs of geese to fill his lakes, to supply him with the two trussed geese daily at sunset, a charge to remain for ever, and so on with the loaves of bread and pots of beer for daily rations. As the king says in his inscription, he does not boast of what he has done, saying that he has done more when he has not, and so causing men to contradict him. Here we see the check of public opinion beginning to act in history. It does not really compel exact truth, it allows national victories to be exaggerated and defeats kept out of sight, but even the vainglorious scribes of Egypt would hardly venture to record events without a foundation of fact. Turning now to the inscriptions of the Babylonian-Assyrian district, we may take as an example a temple-brick of the famous city Ur of the Chaldees, now called Mugheir, which bears these words in cuneiform writing:

“To (the god) Ur, eldest son of Bel his king,

Urukh, the powerful man, the fierce warrior,

King of (the city) Ur, king of Sumir and Akkad,

Bit-timgal the house of his delight built.”

Sumir and Akkad, here mentioned, were the seats of the old Chaldæan civilisation. As early as the 16th century B.C., Hammurabi overcame these nations, a great event in the change that absorbed their ancient culture and religion into the conquering Assyrian empire. In an inscription of this king of Babylon, he says, “the favour of Bel gave into my government the people of Sumir and Akkad, for them I dug out afresh the canal called by my name, the joy of men, a stream of abundant waters for the people, all its banks I restored to newness, new supporting walls I heaped up, perennial waters I provided for the people of Sumir and Akkad.”