Even with the excavations that are now going on and the discoveries that are being made almost daily, our evidence is still too scanty and imperfect, the gaps in it are too numerous,[124] as Professor Sayce says, apropos of the Babylonian religion, to make it possible for us to discuss with any definiteness the attitude of these first civilized peoples toward children. Years will pass before the tablets already in the museums will have been deciphered, to say nothing of those that are being dug out now. A library of 30,000 tablets was discovered by M. de Srazec at Telloh in Northern Babylonia, at Nippur in the great temple of Bel, and five times as many were discovered later by the American excavators. Once the British Museum was the sole repository of these treasures, containing everything from business contracts to prayers to the gods, but now they are in the Louvre, the Berlin Museum, the Museum of Constantinople, the University of Pennsylvania, and even in private collections.
From these Semitic conquerors of the Sumerians, however, there came the first civilization and the first humanization, for in this rich valley with its abundance of water and its rich soil, the Nomads became an agricultural people; there was plenty for all, and the germ of human tolerance that the world was to show later toward the child, was there in that long ago pre-Semitic civilization of Babylonia.
Traces there are, however, of an earlier attitude, when the first-born was sacrificed. Speaking of a Babylonian text, that he believed established the fact that there were sacrifices of the first-born among the Sumerians, Professor Sayce said:
“My interpretation of the text has been disputed, but it still appears to me to be the sole legitimate one. The text is bilingual, in both Sumerian and Semitic, and therefore probably goes back to Sumerian times. Literally rendered, it is as follows: ‘Let the abgal proclaim: the offspring who raises his head among men, the offspring for his life he must give; the head of his head among men, the offspring for the head of the man he must give, the neck of the offspring for the neck of the man he must give, the breast of the offspring for the breast of the man he must give.’” It is difficult to attach any other meaning to this than that which makes it refer to the sacrifice of children.[125]
Further corroboration of this belief of Professor Sayce was furnished by the recently dug up Stele of the Vultures, now in the Louvre. Here there is a representation of a wicker cage, filled with captives who are waiting to be put to death by the god Ningirsu, who holds in his hand the heraldic emblem of the city of Lagash. The Stele of the Vultures records the triumph of the King of Lagash, the great Eannatum, over the men of Umma who are undoubtedly the captives and are about to be sacrificed.[126] These few examples of human sacrifice indicate, however, that the practice had disappeared at an early date, but, as we shall see, it did not entirely disappear, or rather reappeared among the Semites of Palestine at a later period.[127]
A POMEIOC CHIEFTAIN’S WIFE AND CHILD
(FROM THE ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR DRAWING IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM BY JOHN WHITE, GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA IN 1587.)
ESKIMO MOTHER CARRYING INFANT IN HER HOOD
(FROM ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR DRAWING IN BRITISH MUSEUM BY JOHN WHITE, GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA, 1587.)