From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

One does not know which to admire the more, the extraordinary accuracy of the periods which is implied by the drawing up of each of the columns of figures or the ingenuity with which these old masters contrived to combine all the factors to be considered.[536]

Recent research has also shown that some of the very accurate calculations of lunar periods which, from the time of Ptolemy, have been attributed to Hipparchus, should in reality be ascribed to the astronomers of Babylonia.[537] That these ancient observers, who had none of the instruments of precision which are now available in our observatories, should have been able to make so exact calculations is marvelous in the extreme.

Equally noteworthy were the discoveries of the hellenized Chaldean, Seleucus, who proved that the movement of the tides is due to the action of the moon and who, contrary to the view which then generally prevailed, taught the helio-centric theory of the solar system—nearly two thousand years before the epochal achievements of Copernicus and Galileo.

The foregoing paragraphs clearly evince that it was the Babylonians who laid the foundations of astronomy, and not, as Buckle, Draper, and others would have us believe, the Arabians under the Caliphate. “The place of honor in science, therefore,”—a place which for ages was conceded to the Babylonians and which, through Father Epping’s studies, has been won for them anew—“will henceforth remain to them uncontested and incontestable.”[538]

In order, however, to have a correct idea of the far-reaching influence of Babylonian civilization, one must know more about it than its contribution to science, art, and literature. One must know something about the social condition of the people and of their manners and customs as described in their history and reflected in their laws. For this a few words will suffice and these will be based on the wonderful code of Hammurabi, the king who ruled over Babylonia more than two thousand years before our era and who was the real founder of her greatness.[539]

It is true that the great legal code which bears his name was, like all other ancient codes, based to a great extent on precedent and on earlier collections of laws, some of which, there is reason to believe, antedated Hammurabi’s great compilation by more than a thousand years. But it is because it is chiefly a codification of preëxisting laws that the great code of the Babylonian King is so valuable and instructive. We find that, unlike the warlike Assyrians, the Babylonians were not only a peaceable and intelligent but also a very humane and deeply religious people. In the words of one who has made a special study of the history and laws of the people over whom Hammurabi bore rule for forty-three years:

It is startling to find how much that we have thought distinctly our own has really come down to us from that great people who ruled the Land of the Two Streams. We need not be ashamed of anything we can trace back so far. It is from no savage ancestors that it descends to us. It bears the “hall mark” not only of extreme antiquity but of sterling worth.... A right-thinking citizen of a modern city would probably feel more at home in ancient Babylon than in mediæval Europe.[540]

Among the laws of the great Babylonian legislator that are especially remarkable are those which safeguard the rights and privileges of married women. That such laws should have been enacted and enforced more than four thousand years ago shows better than anything else the high plane of social progress to which the Babylonians had thus early attained. To quote from the distinguished Orientalist, L. W. King, they “throw an interesting light on the position of the married woman in the Babylonian community, which was not only unexampled in antiquity but compares favorably in point of freedom and independence with her status in many countries in modern Europe.”[541]

One of the many results of the discovery of Hammurabi’s Code was, curiously enough, completely to demolish a favorite argument of certain Biblical critics respecting the laws of Moses. So elaborate a legislative code as that attributed to the Jewish lawgiver was, they contended, quite improbable at the early date assigned to it, and it must, therefore, have had its origin at a subsequent period when society was more highly organized. It must, then, the critics maintained, have been the work of the Jewish priesthood in the later days of Israel, who, in order to give it the necessary sanction, falsely attributed it to Moses. What then must have been their surprise and confusion, on the appearance of Father Scheil’s translation of Hammurabi’s Code, to find that it was more than five hundred years older than that of Moses, and that with its two hundred and eighty-two enactments it revealed a more elaborate social organization than that described in the violently attacked Book of Exodus? But this is only one of many similar surprises which the Higher Critics have found in the monuments of Babylonia. And in proportion as the cuneiform inscriptions continue to disclose their long-withheld secrets, so also, we may feel sure, will they, in all essential matters, be found to verify and corroborate the declarations of the Sacred Text.

Our last bird’s-eye view of the abomination of desolation that was Babylon was from the highest accessible point of the great royal palace on the Kasr. It was at the hour when the noonday sun was pouring his irradiating beams on the scattered and crumbling ruins of temples and palaces and citadels, which seemed to have been blasted by the lightnings of a wrathful heaven and to be lying under a major anathema maranatha of an offended Deity. In this accursed haunt of serpents and scorpions,—and the Arabs add—dragons and satyrs—the earth was absolutely verdureless. No four-footed thing trod the earth; no winged creature circled through the air; not a tree or a shrub adorned the brown, sun-baked mound. Where once stood the Hanging Gardens that were the glory of an arrogant potentate and the wonder of a marveling world; where once were gorgeous halls, with throne of ivory and gold; where kings and nobles feasted in bejeweled robes; where loud choruses swelled to the joyous notes of harp and cymbal and psaltery; where brazen bacchanals drank to Bel from golden goblets looted from Salem’s desecrated temple, there now was the silence and the vacuity and the oblivion of the tomb. Desolation was everywhere made desolate. Of a truth has Babylon the great, “the mother of the abominations of the earth,” “been thrown down and shall be found no more at all.”[542]