For any further inquiries as to the origin and antiquity of Egyptian civilization, we have to fall back on the state of religion, science, literature, and art, which we find prevailing in the earliest records which have come down to us, and which I will proceed to examine in subsequent chapters. But before doing so, I will endeavour to exhaust the field of positive history, and inquire how far the annals of other ancient nations contradict or confirm the date of about 5000 years b.c., which has been shown to be approximately that of the accession of Menes.
[CHAPTER II.
CHALDÆA.]
Chronology—Berosus—His Dates mythical—Dates in Genesis—Synchronisms with Egypt and Assyria—Monuments—Cuneiform Inscriptions—How deciphered—Behistan Inscription—Grotefend and Rawlinson—Layard—Library of Koyunjik—How preserved—Accadian Translations and Grammars—Historical Dates—Elamite Conquest—Commencement of Modern History—Ur-Ea and Dungi—Nabonidus—Sargon I., 3800 b.c.—Ur of the Chaldees—Sharrukin's Cylinder—His Library—His son Naram-Sin—Semites and Accadians—Accadians and Chinese—Period before Sargon I.—Patesi—De Sarzec's find at Sirgalla—Gud-Ea, 4000 to 4500 b.c.—Advance of Delta—Astronomical Records—Chaldæa and Egypt give similar results—Historic Period 6000 or 7000 years—and no trace of a beginning.
Chaldæan chronology has within the last few years been brought into the domain of history, and carried back to a date almost, if not quite, as remote as that of Egypt. And this has been effected by a process identical in the two cases, the decipherment of an unknown language in inscriptions on ancient monuments. Until this discovery the little that was known of the early history of Chaldæa was derived almost entirely from two sources: the Bible, and the fragments quoted by later writers from the lost work of Berosus. Berosus was a learned priest of Babylon, who lived about 300 b.c., shortly after the conquest of Alexander, and wrote in Greek a history of the country from the most ancient times, compiled from the annals preserved in the temples, and from the oldest traditions. He began with a Cosmogony, fragments of which only are preserved, from which little could be inferred, except that it bore some general resemblance to that of Genesis, until the complete Chaldæan Cosmogony was deciphered by Mr. George Smith from tablets in the British Museum. Then followed a mythical period of the reigns of ten gods or demi-gods, reigning for 432,000 years, in the middle of which period the divine fish-man, Ea-Han or Oannes, was said to have come up out of the Persian Gulf, and taught mankind letters, sciences, laws, and all the arts of civilization; 259,000 years after Oannes, under Xisuthros (the Greek translation of Hasisastra), the last of the ten kings, a Deluge is said to have occurred; which is described in terms so similar to the narrative of Noah's deluge in Genesis, as to leave no doubt that they are different versions of the same legend.
Prior to the appearance of Oannes, Berosus relates, "that Chaldæa had been colonized by a mixed multitude of men of foreign race, who lived without order like animals," thus carrying back the existence of mankind in large numbers, to some date anterior to 259,000 years before the Deluge. There is also a legend resembling that of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages, recorded in another fragment of Berosus. These accounts are all so obviously mythical that no historical value can be attached to them, and they have only been preserved because early Christian writers saw in them some sort of distorted confirmation of the corresponding narratives in the Old Testament.
For anything like historical dates therefore the Bible remained the principal authority, until the recent discoveries made from the monuments of Chaldæa and Assyria. This authority does not carry us very far back. The first event which can advance any claim to be considered as historical, is that of the migration of Terah from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran, and the further migration of his son Abraham from Haran to Palestine. This is said to have taken place in the ninth generation after Noah, about 290 years after the Deluge, and it presupposes the existence of a dense population and a number of large cities both in Upper and Lower Mesopotamia. It mentions also an event, apparently historical, as occurring in Abraham's time, viz. a campaign by Chedorlaomer, King of Elam, with four allies, one of whom is a King of Shinar, against five petty kings in Southern Syria. Chedorlaomer has been identified from inscriptions with Khuder-lagomer, one of the kings of the Elamite dynasty, who conquered Chaldæa about 2300 b.c., and were expelled before 2000 b.c.
A long interval then occurs during which the scattered notices in the Bible relate mainly to the intercourse of the Hebrews with Egypt, with the races of Canaan, with the Philistines, with the Phœnicians of Tyre, and with the Syrians of Damascus. Mesopotamia first appears after the rise of the Assyrian Empire had united nearly the whole of Western Asia under the warlike kings who reigned at Nineveh, and when Palestine had become the battle-field between them and the declining power of Egypt, which under the eighteenth and nineteenth Egyptian dynasties had extended to the Euphrates. The capture of Jerusalem in the reign of Rehoboam by Shishak, the first king of the twenty-second Egyptian dynasty, affords the first certain synchronism between sacred and profane history. The date may be fixed within a few years at 970 b.c. Assyria first appears on the scene two hundred years later in the reign of Menahem King of Israel, when Pul, better known as Tiglath-Pileser II., came against the land, and exacted a large ransom from Menahem, whom he confirmed as a tributary vassal.
From this time forward the succession of Assyrian kings is recorded more or less accurately in the Bible. Tiglath-Pileser accepted vassalage and a large tribute from Ahaz to come to his assistance against Rezin King of Syria, and Pekah King of Israel, who were besieging Jerusalem, and Tiglath-Pileser came to his aid and captured and sacked Damascus. Shalmaneser came up against Hoshea King of Judah, who submitted, but was deposed for intriguing with Egypt, and Shalmaneser then took Samaria and carried the ten tribes of Israel away into Assyria, placing them in the cities of the Medes. Sennacherib, in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, took all the fenced cities of Judah, and his general, Rab-shakeh, besieged Jerusalem, which was saved by the repulse of the main army under the king when marching to invade Egypt. The murder of Sennacherib by his two sons and the succession of Esarhaddon are next mentioned.
Nineveh then disappears from the scene, and the great Babylonian conqueror, Nebuchadnezzar, puts an end to the kingdom of Judæa, by taking Jerusalem and carrying the people captive to Babylon. This historical retrospect carries us back a very short distance, and little can be gathered in the way of accurate chronology from the few vague references prior to this date. So stood the question until the date of Chaldæan history and civilization was unexpectedly carried back at least 3000 years by the discovery of its monuments.