. The common signs eventually acquired phonetic values. The Assyrian writing is made up of ideograms, phonograms, and determinatives.
When by the victory of Alexander at Arbe’la (331 B.C.) the great Persian Empire fell, cuneiform writing ceased to be practised, and cuneiform literature was buried in the mounds of Assyria and Babylonia for two thousand years. During the present century it has been disinterred by inquisitive scholars, whose labors have resulted in the restoration of a forgotten history, through the wonderful literature of a people long known only in name. (See Sayce’s “Hibbert Lectures.”)
ASSYRIO-BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
Writing Materials.—The cuneiform letters heretofore spoken of as in use among the Persians at a later date (p. 66) were doubtless originally intended to be cut on rocks with chisels, and hence were angular instead of round. But the ancient Babylonians preferred bricks and tablets of clay, on which, when moist and soft, they traced their legends, annals, and scientific items, with an ivory or bronze stylus, hardening the surface thus inscribed by drying in the sun. The tablets, from one inch in length upward, are pillow-shaped and covered with characters so minute as to be almost illegible without a glass. After drying, to insure their preservation, they were often enclosed in cases of clay, and on these the inscriptions were duplicated. Such are known as “case-tablets.”
The Assyrians used similar kiln-baked tablets, and, besides, carved their records exquisitely on the stone panels of their palaces, and on colossal human-headed bulls. The tablets above described, together with terra-cotta cylinders, formed the books of this inventive nation, who also engraved with wonderful delicacy glass, metals, the amethyst, jasper, and onyx.
Stone slabs were generally reserved for royal inscriptions; the literary classes of Assyria preferred the cheaper clay, on which they could write more rapidly and quite as legibly with their triangular instruments. Something like paper or parchment seems to have been used to a very limited extent; but if so, it has entirely disappeared. It is also thought that the Chaldeans may have practised a simple method of printing, as wedge-like types of stone have been found among the ruins of their cities.
Golden Age of Babylonian Literature (2000-1550 B.C.).—Not a little of the Assyrio-Babylonian literature has been recovered; but a mine of literary wealth in the valley of the Euphrates still awaits the persevering student, for before 2000 B.C. important works were written in Chaldea. In the twentieth century, a golden age dawned on this ancient land; its great cities became centres of literary refinement, as well as of commerce and art, and a lofty poetical style characterized the writings of the time. Standard texts on religion, science, and history were then and shortly thereafter produced, the copying of which appears to have satisfied the ambition of subsequent generations.
In 1887, numerous Babylonian tablets, dating from the 15th century B.C., were found at Tell-Amarna, Egypt. They contain letters addressed by Asiatic kings to the third and fourth Amenophis (a portion of the correspondence relating to the marriage of an Egyptian monarch with the princess of Mitanni), and imply that the cuneiform writing of Babylonia was in that day the vehicle of correspondence, as was the Aramaic in the time of Persian supremacy.
Among early specimens of Chaldean writing is a set of bricks, discovered near the site of E’rech. They are thought to have been made about 2008 B.C. As these bricks illustrate the most ancient cuneiform character, two of them are here presented, accompanied with a translation.