These merchants’ adventures and explorations, as they were not followed by any military expedition, left absolutely no mark on the industries or manners of the primitive natives: those of them only who were close to the frontiers of Egypt came under her subtle charm and felt the power of her attraction, but this slight influence never penetrated beyond the provinces lying nearest to the Dead Sea. The remaining populations looked rather to Chaldæa, and received, though at a distance, the continuous impress of the kingdoms of the Euphrates. The tradition which attributes to Sargon of Agadê, and to his son Istaramsin, the subjection of the people of the Amanos and the Orontes, probably contains but a slight element of truth; but if, while awaiting further information, we hesitate to believe that the armies of these princes ever crossed the Lebanon or landed in Cyprus, we must yet admit the very early advent of their civilization in those western countries which are regarded as having been under their rule. More than three thousand years before our era, the Asiatics who figure on the tomb of Khnûmhotpû clothed themselves according to the fashions of Uru and Lagash, and affected long robes of striped and spotted stuffs. We may well ask if they had also borrowed the cuneiform syllabary for the purposes of their official correspondence,* and if the professional scribe with his stylus and clay tablet was to be found in their cities. The Babylonian courtiers were, no doubt, more familiar visitors among them than the Memphite nobles, while the Babylonian kings sent regularly to Syria for statuary stone, precious metals, and the timber required in the building of their monuments: Urbau and Gudea, as well as their successors and contemporaries, received large convoys of materials from the Amanos, and if the forests of Lebanon were more rarely utilised, it was not because their existence was unknown, but because distance rendered their approach more difficult and transport more costly. The Mediterranean marches were, in their language, classed as a whole under one denomination—Martu, Amurru,** the West—but there were distinctive names for each of the provinces into which they were divided.
* The most ancient cuneiform tablets of Syrian origin are
not older than the XVIth century before our era; they
contain the official, correspondence of the native princes
with the Pharaohs Amenôthes III. and IV. of the XVIIIth
dynasty, as will be seen later on in this volume; they were
discovered in the ruins of one of the palaces at Tel el-
Amarna in Egypt.
** Formerly read Akharru. Martu would be the Sumerian and
Akharru the Semitic form, Akharru meaning that which is
behind. The discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets threw
doubt on the reading of the name Akharru: some thought that
it ought to be kept in any case; others, with more or less
certainty, think that it should be replaced by Amuru,
Amurru, the country of the Amorites. But the question has
now been settled by Babylonian contract and law tablets of
the period of Khaminurabi, in which the name is written A-
mu-ur-ri (ki). Hommel originated the idea that Martu might
be an abbreviation of Amartu, that is, Amar with the
feminine termination of nouns in the Canaanitish dialect:
Martu would thus actually signify the country of the
Amorites.
Probably even at that date they called the north Khati,* and Cole-Syria, Amurru, the land of the Amorites. The scattered references in their writings seem to indicate frequent intercourse with these countries, and that, too, as a matter of course which excited no surprise among their contemporaries: a journey from Lagash to the mountains of Tidanum and to Gubin, or to the Lebanon and beyond it to Byblos,** meant to them no voyage of discovery. Armies undoubtedly followed the routes already frequented by caravans and flotillas of trading boats, and the time came when kings desired to rule as sovereigns over nations with whom their subjects had peaceably traded.
* The name of the Khati, Khatti, is found in the Book of
Omens, which is supposed to contain an extract from the
annals of Sargon and Naramsin; as, however, the text which
we possess of it is merely a copy of the time of
Assurbanipal, it is possible that the word Khati is merely
the translation of a more ancient term, perhaps Martu.
Winckler thinks it to be included in Lesser Armenia and the
Melitônê of classical authors.
** Gubin is probably the Kûpûna, Kûpnû, of the Egyptians,
the Byblos of Phoenicia. Amiaud had proposed a most unlikely
identification with Koptos in Egypt. In the time of Inê-Sin,
King of Ur, mention is found of Simurru, Zimyra.
It does not appear, however, that the ancient rulers of Lagash ever extended their dominion so far. The governors of the northern cities, on the other hand, showed themselves more energetic, and inaugurated that march westwards which sooner or later brought the peoples of the Euphrates into collision with the dwellers on the Nile: for the first Babylonian empire without doubt comprised part if not the whole of Syria.*
* It is only since the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna
tablets that the fact of the dominant influence of Chaldæa
over Syria and of its conquest has been definitely realized.
It is now clear that the state of things of which the
tablets discovered in Egypt give us a picture, could only be
explained by the hypothesis of a Babylonish supremacy of
long duration over the peoples situated between the
Euphrates and the Mediterranean.
Among the most celebrated names in ancient history, that of Babylon is perhaps the only one which still suggests to our minds a sense of vague magnificence and undefined dominion. Cities in other parts of the world, it is true, have rivalled Babylon in magnificence and power: Egypt could boast of more than one such city, and their ruins to this day present to our gaze more monuments worthy of admiration than Babylon ever contained in the days of her greatest prosperity. The pyramids of Memphis and the colossal statues of Thebes still stand erect, while the ziggurâts and the palaces of Chaldæa are but mounds of clay crumbling into the plain; but the Egyptian monuments are visible and tangible objects; we can calculate to within a few inches the area they cover and the elevation of their summits, and the very precision with which we can gauge their enormous size tends to limit and lessen their effect upon us. How is it possible to give free rein to the imagination when the subject of it is strictly limited by exact and determined measurements? At Babylon, on the contrary, there is nothing remaining to check the flight of fancy: a single hillock, scoured by the rains of centuries, marks the spot where the temple of Bel stood erect in its splendour; another represents the hanging gardens, while the ridges running to the right and left were once the ramparts.
Drawn by Boudier, from a drawing reproduced in Hofer. It
shows the state of the ruins in the first half of our
century, before the excavations carried out at European
instigation.