The Chaldean account of Genesis

by George Smith

Each subject or series of tablets had a title, the title consisting of the first phrase or part of a phrase in it. Thus, the series of Astrological tablets, numbering over seventy tablets, bore the title “When the gods Anu (and) Bel,” this being the commencement of the first tablet. At the end of every tablet in each series was written its number in the work, thus: “the first tablet of When the gods Anu, Bel,” “the second tablet of When the gods Anu, Bel,” &c. &c.; and, further to preserve the proper position of each tablet, every one except the last in a series had at the end a catch phrase, consisting of the first line of the following tablet. There were besides, catalogues of these documents written like them on clay tablets, and other small oval tablets with titles upon them, apparently labels for the various series of works. All these arrangements show the care taken with respect to literary matters. There were regular libraries or chambers, probably on the upper floors of the palaces, appointed for the reception of the tablets, and custodians or librarians to take charge of them. These regulations were all of great antiquity, and like the tablets had a Babylonian origin.

Judging from the fragments discovered, it appears probable that there were in the Royal Library at Nineveh over 10,000 inscribed tablets, treating of almost every branch of knowledge existing at the time.

In considering a subject like the present one it is a point of the utmost importance to define as closely as possible the date of our present copies of the legends, and the most probable period at which the original copies may have been inscribed. By far the greatest number of the tablets brought from Nineveh belong to the age of Assur-bani-pal, who reigned over Assyria from B.C. 670, and every copy of what we will term the Genesis legends yet found was inscribed with one exception during his reign. The statements made on the tablets themselves are conclusive on this point, and have not been called in question, but it is equally stated and acknowledged on all hands that most of these tablets are not the originals, but are only copies from earlier texts. It is unfortunate that the date of the original copies is never preserved, and thus a wide door is thrown open for difference of opinion on the point. The Assyrians acknowledged that this class of literature was borrowed from Babylonian sources, and of course it is to Babylonia that we have to look to ascertain the approximate dates of the original documents. But here we are met by the following difficulty. It appears that at an early period in Babylonian history a great literary development took place, and numerous works were produced which embodied the prevailing myths, religion, and science of the day. Written many of them in a noble style of poetry, and appealing to the strongest feelings of the people on one side, or registering the highest efforts of their science on the other, these texts became the standards of Babylonian literature, and later generations were content to copy them instead of composing new works for themselves. Clay, the material on which they were written, was everywhere abundant, copies were multiplied, and the veneration in which the texts were held fixed and stereotyped their style. Even the language in which they were written remained the language of literature up to the period of the Persian conquest. Thus it happens that texts of Rim-agu, Sargon, and Khammuragas, who lived at least a thousand years before Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus, are composed in the same language as the texts of these later kings, there being no sensible difference in style to match the long interval between them.

We have, however, clear proof that, although the language of devotion and literature remained fixed, the speech of the bulk of the people was gradually modified; and in the time of Assur-bani-pal, when the texts of the Genesis legends which we possess were copied by Assyrian scribes, the common speech of the day was widely different from that of literature. The private letters and despatches of this age which have been discovered differ considerably in language from the contemporary public documents and religious writings, showing the change the language had undergone since the style of the latter had been fixed. So, too, in our own country the language of devotion and the style of the Bible differ in several respects from those of the English of to-day.

These considerations show the difficulty of fixing the age of a cuneiform document from its style, and the difficulty is further increased by the uncertainty which hangs over all Babylonian chronology—an uncertainty that can be cleared away only when the ruined cities of Babylonia are excavated.

Chronology is always a thorny subject, and dry and unsatisfactory to most persons besides; some notice must, however, be taken of it here, in order to fix something like an approximate date or epoch for the original composition of the Genesis legends.

The so-called Assyrian Canon affords us an exact chronology up to the year B.C. 909, and a series of contemporaneous monuments, together with one or two chronological allusions in later inscriptions, enables us to work back from this date to a period falling between B.C. 1450 and 1400 when Assyria was brought into close relation with the southern kingdom of Babylonia. Babylonia was at the time under the sway of a foreign dynasty of Kossæan princes from the mountains of Elam, which was overthrown, as we learn from the Assyrian records, about B.C. 1270. It had been in possession of the country for a considerable time, since a fragmentary list which gives the names of the first nine sovereigns composing it does not come down to the time when the first of the princes who came into close contact with Assyria was reigning. Indeed, a considerable interval must be allowed between the latter period and the last of the nine kings mentioned in the list, in which to insert the isolated names of more than one monarch of the dynasty incidentally mentioned on later monuments. Supposing that not more than fifteen kings preceded Cara-indas in B.C. 1450, and that the average length of their reigns was twenty years, we should have B.C. 1750 as the approximate date of the leader of the dynasty. He could not have been later than this, and there are many reasons which would lead us to suppose that he was earlier.

Khammuragas was the leader of the dynasty in question. He had conquered the rulers of the two kingdoms into which Babylonia was at this time divided. One of these was a queen, with whom ended a dynasty, famous in the annals of early Babylonia, whose seat was at Agané or Agadé, near Sepharvaim. She had been the successor of Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon, who, like his father, had extended his power far and wide, and had even penetrated as far as the shores of the Mediterranean. Sargon had been a great patron of learning as well as a conqueror; he had established a famous library at Agané, and had caused a work on astronomy and astrology to be compiled, which remained the standard authority on the subject up to the end of the Assyrian Empire. It was entitled, “The Illumination of Bel,” and was in seventy-two books. Berosus, the historian, seems to have translated it into Greek.

Like the Babylonians and Assyrians of a later day, Sargon and his subjects belonged to the Semitic stock, and were therefore related to the Hebrews and the Arabians. But they were really intruders in Chaldea. The primitive inhabitants of the country, the builders of its cities, the inventors of the cuneiform system of writing, and the founders of the culture and civilization which was afterwards borrowed by the Semites, were of a wholly different race. They spoke an agglutinative language of the same character as that of the modern Turks or Finns, and were originally divided into two sections—the inhabitants of Sumir or Shinar, the plain country, and the Accadians or “Highlanders,” who had descended from the mountains of Elam subsequently to the first settlement of their kinsfolk in Shinar. At some date between B.C. 3000 and 2000, the Semitic population which bordered upon Babylonia on the west, and had long been settled in some of its western cities, such as Ur (now Mugheir), conquered Shinar or Sumir. The Accadians, however, maintained their independence for a considerable time after this conquest, until, finally, Accad also was reduced under the sway of the Semitic kings. The old population of the country was gradually absorbed, and its language became extinct. The extinction of the Accadian or Sumerian language had already taken place—at all events among the educated classes—at the time that Sargon founded his library at Agané, and one of the chief reasons which led to the compilation of the great work on astronomy, was the necessity of preserving the astronomical and astrological observations recorded in a language which was beginning to be forgotten. At the same time Semitic translations of other portions of the old Accadian literature were made. The library at Agané, however, was not the only place where the work of translation went on; many other libraries existed, and their scribes and readers had alike become Semites, who required works written in their own tongue. The Semitic translations of Accadian works which were made for the library of Erech, one of the earliest seats of Semitic power, must have been considerably older than those made for the library of Sargon.

The extinction of the Accadian language and the translation of Accadian works into Semitic Babylonian are important facts for settling the chronology of a document or inscription. Wherever we can show that a Babylonian or Assyrian text is translated from an Accadian original, or wherever we have a copy of that original itself, we may feel pretty sure that we are dealing with something older than the eighteenth century before the Christian era.