General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

THE THREE GREAT MONARCHIES.—Within the Tigris-Euphrates basin, three great empires—the Chaldæan, the Assyrian, and the Babylonian— successively rose to prominence and dominion. Each, in turn, not only extended its authority over the valley, but also made the power of its arms felt throughout the adjoining regions. We shall now trace the rise and the varied fortunes of these empires, and the slow growth of the arts and sciences from rude beginnings among the early Chaldæans to their fuller and richer development under the Assyrian and Babylonian monarchies.

THE CHALDÆANS A MIXED PEOPLE.—In the earliest times Lower Chaldæa was known as Shumir, the Shinar of the Bible, while Upper Chaldæa bore the name of Accad. The original inhabitants were conjecturally of Turanian race, and are called Accadians.

[Illustration: ANCIENT BABYLONIAN CANALS.]

These people laid the basis of civilization in the Euphrates valley, so that with them the history of Asian culture begins. They brought with them into the valley the art of hieroglyphical writing, which later developed into the well-known cuneiform system. They also had quite an extensive literature, and had made considerable advance in the art of building.

The civilization of the Accadians was given a great impulse by the arrival of a Semitic people. These foreigners were nomadic in habits, and altogether much less cultured than the Accadians. Gradually, however, they adopted the arts and literature of the people among whom they had settled; yet they retained their own language, which in the course of time superseded the less perfect Turanian speech of the original inhabitants; consequently the mixed people, known later as Chaldæans, that arose from the blending of the two races, spoke a language essentially the same as that used by their northern neighbors, the Semitic Assyrians.

SARGON (SHARRUKIN) I. (3800? B.C.).—We know scarcely anything about the political affairs of the Accadians until after the arrival of the Semites. Then, powerful kings, sometimes of Semitic and then again of Turanian, or Accadian origin, appear ruling in the cities of Accad and Shumir, and the political history of Chaldæa begins.

The first prominent monarch is called Sargon I. (Sharrukin), a Semitic king of Agade, one of the great early cities. An inscription recently deciphered makes this king to have reigned as early as 3800 B.C. He appears to have been the first great organizer of the peoples of the Chaldæan plains.

Yet not as a warrior, but as a patron and protector of letters, is Sargon's name destined to a sure place in history. He classified and translated into the Semitic, or Assyrian tongue the religious, mythological, and astronomical literature of the Accadians, and deposited the books in great libraries, which he established or enlarged,—the oldest and most valuable libraries of the ancient world. The scholar Sayce calls him the Chaldæan Solomon.

CONQUEST OF CHALDÆA BY THE ELAMITES (2286 B.C.).—While the Chaldæan kings were ruling in the great cities of Lower Babylonia, the princes of the Elamites, a people of Turanian race, were setting up a rival kingdom to the northeast, just at the foot of the hills of Persia.

In the year 2286 B.C., a king of Elam, Kudur-Nakhunta by name, overran Chaldæa, took all the cities founded by Sargon and his successors, and from the temples bore off in triumph to his capital, Susa, the statues of the Chaldæan gods, and set up in these lowland regions what is known as the Elamite Dynasty.