These Kashshu, who spring up suddenly out of obscurity, had from the earliest times inhabited the mountainous districts of Zagros, on the confines of Elymai’s and Media, where the Cossæans of the classical historians flourished in the time of Alexander.*
* The Kashshu are identified with the Cossæans by Sayce, by Schrader, by Fr. Delitzsch, by Halévy, by Tiele, by Hommel, and by Jensen. Oppert maintains that they answer to the Kissians of Herodotus, that is to say, to the inhabitants of the district of which Susa is the capital. Lehmann supports this opinion. Winckler gives none, and several Assyriologists incline to that of Kiepert, according to which the Kissians are identical with the Cossæans.
It was a rugged and unattractive country, protected by nature and easy to defend, made up as it was of narrow tortuous valleys, of plains of moderate extent but of rare fertility, of mountain chains whose grim sides were covered with forests, and whose peaks were snow-crowned during half the year, and of rivers, or, more correctly speaking, torrents, for the rains and the melting of the snow rendered them impassable in spring and autumn. The entrance to this region was by two or three well-fortified passes: if an enemy were unwilling to incur the loss of time and men needed to carry these by main force, he had to make a detour by narrow goat-tracks, along which the assailants were obliged to advance in single file, as best they could, exposed to the assaults of a foe concealed among the rocks and trees. The tribes who were entrenched behind this natural rampart made frequent and unexpected raids upon the marshy meadows and fat pastures of Chaldæa: they dashed through the country, pillaging and burning all that came in their way, and then, quickly regaining their hiding-places, were able to place their booty in safety before the frontier garrisons had recovered from the first alarm.* These tribes were governed by numerous chiefs acknowledging a single king—ianzi—whose will was supreme over nearly the whole country:** some of them had a slight veneer of Chaldæan civilization, while among the rest almost every stage of barbarism might be found. The remains of their language show that it was remotely allied to the dialect of Susa, and contained many Semitic words.*** What is recorded of their religion reaches us merely at second hand, and the groundwork of it has doubtless been modified by the Babylonian scribes who have transmitted it to us.****
* It was thus in the time of Alexander and his successors,
and the information given by the classical historians about
this period is equally applicable to earlier times, as we
may conclude from the numerous passages from Assyrian
inscriptions which have been collected by Fr. Delitzsch.
** Delitzsch conjectures that Ianzi, or Ianzu, had
become a kind of proper name, analogous to the term
Pharaoh employed by the Egyptians.
*** A certain number of Cossæan words has been preserved and
translated, some in one of the royal Babylonian lists, and
some on a tablet in the British Museum, discovered and
interpreted by Fr. Delitzsch. Several Assyriologists think
that they showed a marked affinity with the idiom of the
Susa inscriptions, and with that of the Achæmenian
inscriptions of the second type; others deny the proposed
connection, or suggest that the Cossæan language was a
Semitic dialect, related to the Chaldæo-Assyrian. Oppert,
who was the first to point out the existence of this
dialect, thirty years ago, believed it to be the Elamite; he
still persists in his opinion, and has published several
notes in defence of it.
**** It has been studied by Pr. Delitzsch, who insists on
the influence which daily intercourse with the Chaldæans had
on it after the conquest; Halévy, in most of the names of
the gods given as Cossæan, sees merely the names of Chaldæan
divinities slightly disguised in the writing.
They worshipped twelve great gods, of whom the chief—Kashshu, the lord of heaven-gave his name to the principal tribe, and possibly to the whole race:* Shûmalia, queen of the snowy heights, was enthroned beside him,** and the divinities next in order were, as in the cities of the Euphrates, the Moon, the Sun (Sakh or Shuriash), the air or the tempest (Ubriash), and Khudkha.*** Then followed the stellar deities or secondary incarnations of the sun,—Mirizir, who represented both Istar and Beltis; and Khala, answering to Gula.****
* The existence of Kashshu is proved by the name of
Kashshunadinakhé: Ashshur also bore a name identical with
that of his worshippers.
** She is mentioned in a rescript of Nebuchadrezzar I., at
the head of the gods of Namar, that is to say, the Cossæan
deities, as “the lady of the shining mountains, the
inhabitants of the summits, the frequenter of peaks.” She is
called Shimalia in Rawlinson, but Delitzsch has restored her
name which was slightly mutilated; one of her statues was
taken by Samsirammân III., King of Assyria, in one of that
sovereign’s campaigns against Chaldæa.
*** All these identifications are furnished by the glossary
of Delitzsch. Ubriash, under the form of Buriash, is met
with in a large number of proper names, Burnaburiash,
Shagashaltiburiash, Ulamburiash, Kadashmanburiash, where the
Assyrian scribe translates it Bel-matâti, lord of the
world: Buriash is, therefore, an epithet of the god who was
called Rammân in Chaldæa. The name of the moon-god is
mutilated, and only the initial syllable Shi... remains,
followed by an indistinct sign: it has not yet been
restored.
**** Halévy considers Khala, or Khali, as a harsh form of
Gula: if this is the case, the Cossæans must have borrowed
the name, and perhaps the goddess herself, from their
Chaldæan neighbours.
The Chaldæan Ninip corresponded both to Gidar and Maruttash, Bel to Kharbe and Turgu, Merodach to Shipak, Nergal to Shugab.* The Cossæan kings, already enriched by the spoils of their neighbours, and supported by a warlike youth, eager to enlist under their banner at the first call,** must have been often tempted to quit their barren domains and to swoop down on the rich country which lay at their feet. We are ignorant of the course of events which, towards the close of the XVIIIth century B.C., led to their gaining possession of it. The Cossæan king who seized on Babylon was named Gandish, and the few inscriptions we possess of his reign are cut with a clumsiness that betrays the barbarism of the conqueror. They cover the pivot stones on which Sargon of Agadê or one of the Bursins had hung the doors of the temple of Nippur, but which Gandish dedicated afresh in order to win for himself, in the eyes of posterity, the credit of the work of these sovereigns.***
* Hilprecht has established the identity of Turgu with Bel
of Nippur.
** Strabo relates, from some forgotten historian of
Alexander, that the Cossæans “had formerly been able to
place as many as thirteen thousand archers in line, in the
wars which they waged with the help of the Elymæans against
the inhabitants of Susa and Babylon.”
*** The full name of this king, Gandish or Gandash, which is
furnished by the royal lists, is written Gaddash on a
monument in the British Museum discovered by Pinches, whose
conclusions have been erroneously denied by Winckler. A
process of abbreviation, of which there are examples in the
names of other kings of the same dynasty, reduced the name
to Gandê in the current language.
Bel found favour in the eyes of the Cossæans who saw in him Kharbê or Turgu, the recognised patron of their royal family: for this reason Gandish and his successors regarded Bel with peculiar devotion. These kings did all they could for the decoration and endowment of the ancient temple of Ekur, which had been somewhat neglected by the sovereigns of purely Babylonian extraction, and this devotion to one of the most venerated Chaldæan sanctuaries contributed largely towards their winning the hearts of the conquered people.*