* The existence of the elephant in Mesopotamia and Northern
Syria is well established by the Egyptian inscription of
Amenemhabi in the XVth century before our era.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from
Kouyunjik.
The wild boar, and his relative, the domestic hog, inhabited the morasses. Assyrian sculptors amused themselves sometimes by representing long gaunt sows making their way through the cane-brakes, followed by their interminable offspring. The hog remained here, as in Egypt, in a semi-tamed condition, and the people were possessed of only a small number of domesticated animals besides the dog—namely, the ass, ox, goat, and sheep; the horse and camel were at first unknown, and were introduced at a later period.*
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Kouyunjik.
* The horse is denoted in the Assyrian texts by a group of
signs which mean “the ass of the East,” and the camel by
other signs in which the character for “ass” also appears.
The methods of rendering these two names show that the
subjects of them were unknown in the earliest times; the
epoch of their introduction is uncertain. A chariot drawn by
horses appears on the “Stele of the Vultures.” Camels are
mentioned among the booty obtained from the Bedouin of the
desert.
We know nothing of the efforts which the first inhabitants—Sumerians and Semites—had to make in order to control the waters and to bring the land under culture: the most ancient monuments exhibit them as already possessors of the soil, and in a forward state of civilization.* Their chief cities were divided into two groups: one in the south, in the neighbourhood of the sea; the other in a northern direction, in the region where the Euphrates and Tigris are separated from each other by merely a narrow strip of land. The southern group consisted of seven, of which Eridu lay nearest to the coast. This town stood on the left bank of the Euphrates, at a point which is now called Abu-Shahrein. A little to the west, on the opposite bank, but at some distance from the stream, the mound of Mugheîr marks the site of Uru, the most important, if not the oldest, of the southern cities. Lagash occupied the site of the modern Telloh to the north of Eridu, not far from the Shatt-el-Haî; Nisin and Mar, Larsam and Uruk, occupied positions at short distances from each other on the marshy ground which extends between the Euphrates and the Shatt-en-Nîl. The inscriptions mention here and there other less important places, of which the ruins have not yet been discovered—Zirlab and Shurippak, places of embarkation at the mouth of the Euphrates for the passage of the Persian Gulf; and the island of Dilmun, situated some forty leagues to the south in the centre of the Salt Sea,—“Nar-Marratum.” The northern group comprised Nipur, the “incomparable;” Barsip, on the branch which flows parallel to the Euphrates and falls into the Bahr-î-Nedjîf; Babylon, the “gate of the god,” the “residence of life,” the only metropolis of the Euphrates region of which posterity never lost a reminiscence; Kishu, Kuta, Agade;** and lastly the two Sipparas, that of Shamash and that of Anunit. The earliest Chaldæan civilization was confined almost entirely to the two banks of the Lower Euphrates: except at its northern boundary, it did not reach the Tigris, and did not cross this river. Separated from the rest of the world—on the east by the marshes which border the river in its lower course, on the north by the badly watered and sparsely inhabited table-land of Mesopotamia, on the west by the Arabian desert—it was able to develop its civilization, as Egypt had done, in an isolated area, and to follow out its destiny in peace. The only point from which it might anticipate serious danger was on the east, whence the Kashshi and the Elamites, organized into military states, incessantly harassed it year after year by their attacks. The Kashshi were scarcely better than half-civilized mountain hordes, but the Elamites were advanced in civilization, and their capital, Susa, vied with the richest cities of the Euphrates, Uru and Babylon, in antiquity and magnificence.
* For an ideal picture of what may have been the beginnings
of that civilization, see Delitzsch, Die Entstehung des
àltesten Schriflssystems, p. 214, et seq. I will not enter
into the question as to whether it did or did not come by
sea to the mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris. The legend of
the fish-god Oannes (Berossus, frag. 1), which seems to
conceal some indication on the subject, is merely a
mythological tradition, from which it would be wrong to
deduce historical conclusions.
** Agade, or Agane, has been identified with one of the two
towns of which Sippara is made up, more especially with that
which was called Anunit Sippara; the reading Agadi, Agacle,
was especially assumed to lead to its identification with
the Accad of Genesis x. 10, and with the Akkad of native
tradition. This opinion has been generally abandoned by
Assyriologists, and Agane has not yet found a site. Was it
only a name for Babylon?