THE RECORDS OF THE PAST
By MORRIS JASTROW, JR., PH.D.,
Professor of Semitic Languages, University of Pennsylvania.

The present century has so many distinguishing features that it is a hazardous undertaking to summarize its achievements. All branches of science—Philology, History, Mathematics, Medicine, Theology, and Philosophy—have felt the stimulating influence of a new spirit that made its appearance after the French Revolution. New methods of investigation have not only led to profound modification of views in all departments of science, but have brought about considerable additions to the sum of human knowledge. In the domain of natural science, the discovery of new principles and of hitherto unknown forces has widened the horizon of humanity and created new mental disciplines; but while perhaps less conspicuous, because not so directly connected with the actual concerns and needs of the present, the fertility of historical research during this century is not less remarkable. The larger area now embraced under the caption “history of mankind” furnishes the best proof for the success that has signalized the labors of scholars—philologists, historians, and explorers—devoted to the study of the past. Ancient history no longer begins with the Greeks or the Hebrews. Its certain limits have been removed to as remote a date as 3000 B. C., while the anthropologist, supplementing the work of the historian, has furnished a picture in detail of the life led by man in various quarters of the globe during that indefinite period which preceded the rise of culture in the true sense of the word. This extension of knowledge in the domain of human history is primarily due to the spade of the explorer, though it required the patience and ingenuity of the philologist and archæologist to interpret the material furnished in abundance by the soil that happily preserved the records of lost empires. Documents in stone, clay, and papyrus have been brought forth from their long resting-places to testify to the antiquity and splendor of human culture. By the side of written records, monuments of early civilization have been dug up, palaces, forts, and temples filled with works of art and skill, to confirm by their testimony the story preserved by those who belonged to the age of which they wrote.

THE “BLACK OBELISK” OF SHALMANESER II., KING OF ASSYRIA. B. C. 860–824.

(British Museum.)

Researches in Mesopotamia.—The archæological researches conducted during this century have definitely established the fact that the earliest civilizations flourished in the Valley of the Euphrates and in the district of the Nile. Until the beginning of this century, Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria were little more than names. The spirit of skepticism which accompanies the keen desire for investigation led scholars to question the tales found in classical writers of the great achievements of the Babylonians and Egyptians. At the beginning of this century scarcely a vestige remained of the cities of ancient Mesopotamia. The site of Nineveh was unknown, and that of Babylon was in dispute. A profound sensation was created when, in 1842, P. E. Botta, the French Consul at Mosul, discovered the remains of a palace beneath a mound at Khorsabad, some miles to the north of Mosul on the east bank of the Tigris. Botta’s discovery marked the beginning of an activity and exploration in Mesopotamia which continues to the present day. At first the excavations were confined to the mounds in the north, in which the palaces of the great Assyrian kings, Sargon, Esarhaddon, Sennacharib and Asurbanibal (or Sardanapalus as he was called by Greek writers) were unearthed, as well as the great sacred edifices that formed one of the glories of ancient Assyria. The buildings exhumed abound in long series of sculptured slabs, on which are depicted incidents in the campaigns of the kings and in their private life. Historical records on stone and clay furnished the needed details in illustration of the scenes, and lastly, literary remains in profusion were found, which revealed the intellectual life and religious aspirations of the masses and of the secular and religious leaders. To England and France belongs the glory of these early explorations. Through Botta and Sir Austen Henry Layard, the ancient cities of Nineveh, Calah, and Ashur, were rediscovered. But as the field of activity extended to the mounds in the south, in the Valley of the Euphrates, other countries, notably Germany and the United States, joined in the work. The excavation of the remains of the city of Babylon were first conducted by Sir Henry Rawlinson in 1854, and much work was afterward done by Hormuzd Rassam; but the most notable achievements of recent years are the excavations conducted by DeSarzec, under the auspices of the French Government, at Telloh, from 1881 to 1895, and those of the University of Pennsylvania at Nippur, begun in 1888, and which are still going on.

Through these excavations the history of Babylonia has been carried back to the fourth millenium B. C., and while there are still some important gaps to be filled out, the course of events in Babylonia and Assyria from this remote period down to the year 587 B. C., when Cyrus the Mede established a new empire on the ruins of Babylonia and Assyria, is tolerably clear. Hand in hand with the excavations has gone the decipherment of the inscriptions found in such abundance beneath the mounds. On clay, stone, and metals, rulers inscribed records of their reigns; and added to pictorial illustrations accounts of their achievements in war as well as in the internal improvements of their empires. Clay, so readily furnished by the soil, became the ordinary writing material both in Babylonia and in Assyria, and in the course of time an extensive library, embracing hymns and prayers, omens and portents, epics, myths, legends, and creation stories, arose. In every important centre there gathered around the temples bodies of priests devoted to the preservation and the extension of this literature. Assyrian culture being but an offshoot of the civilization in the south, Assyria reaped the benefit of the literary work accomplished by the scribes of Babylonia, and the most extensive collection of the literary remains of Babylonia has come to us from a library collected through the exertions of Asurbanibal, and discovered in 1849 by Layard in the ruins of that king’s palace at Nineveh.

THE “MOABITE STONE.” ABOUT B. C. 850.

(Paris, Museum of the Louvre.)