The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 01

by Unknown

A Babylonian furnished with these elements of intellectual culture must, in spite of his superstitions and the real gaps in his knowledge, have seemed a superior being to the neighbouring tribes which had the same racial instincts, but whose development was still embryonic and had taken place under totally different conditions. It is nothing astonishing, then, that the most capable of these semi-savages hastened to adopt, in different degrees, a large part of the Babylonian civilisation, the advantages of which they had learned to appreciate. As usual, it is the apparent and material side that was accepted first; after a more intimate acquaintance with the Babylonian mode of life, these peoples were captivated by the religious conceptions and the powerful attraction of the legends and the magic. All this slowly filtered into the mind of the other Semitic peoples, and became so well embodied there that some centuries later it formed an integral part of their national substance, and to such a degree that it has been possible to disentangle their true origin only by means of an arduous research which has not yet said the last word.

The extension of Babylonian civilisation beyond its primitive cradle had its greatest strength during the glorious reign of Sargon I, the first monarch known to have made military expeditions into the countries of the west. We shall have, then, to consider, first, the pre-Sargonic, second, the post-Sargonic, epochs.

Before the reign of Sargon, about thirty-eight hundred years before our common era, Babylonia had succeeded in forming itself into a national body, having the same manners, speaking the same language, and using the same alphabet. No alien people broke into this unity of race and genius, which included on its eastern side the inhabitants of the Elamitic plain, forming a simple annex to Babylonia on that side of the Tigris. The great excess of population flowed into the fertile plains extending between the Tigris and the mighty chain of the Zagros, and founded the little kingdoms of Suti, Lulubi, Namar, and with greater success the powerful kingdom of Assyria, which during the years of its prosperity became the most powerful military state of the oriental world.

These very ancient colonies were often in conflict with the mother country, and Assyria even succeeded in imposing its iron yoke for several generations; but, save for Sennacherib’s moment of violent passion, Babylonia remained for all of them a centre of light and of religious mystery. The Babylonian divinities have their temples and serve as types for various localisations. In Assyria, especially, Ishtar of Nineveh, Ishtar of Arbela, Ishtar of Kidmur, etc., are worshipped. The Babylonian origin is perpetuated in the new capital Ninua (Nineveh), which is the name of a locality of Babylonia, while the ancient capital Asshur recalls the name of the most ancient god of the Babylonian epic of creation.

It goes without saying that among the neighbouring tribes of different languages Babylonian influence could not penetrate so completely. In the south the numerous Aramæan tribes persisted in their nomadic state; in the mountainous districts of the east the Susio-Amardians, in the north the Vannians and the Mitannians, while accepting Babylonian civilisation, use along with the ordinary Babylonian syllabary a more limited one for writing their own languages. Traces of Assyrian influences in ancient epochs have been proved in Cappadocia, which shows the great antiquity of the kingdom of Assyria. But the most important and most enduring influence manifests itself in the Semitic region of the extreme west, in Syrio-Phœnicia and in Palestine.

Through the discovery of the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna, which date from the reigns of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV, it was learned with astonishment that in the fourteenth century before our era, Babylonian was the diplomatic language, not only of the western Semites, but also of the sovereigns of Egypt. Syria and Phœnicia then formed a vassal province of the Pharaohs, probably as a result of the conquests of Tehutimes III; the use of Egyptian writing, or at least of the special Assyrian type, was to be expected there, but it is the Babylonian alphabet, the Babylonian dialect, that we find in use. We are forced to conclude that the extension of Babylonian culture was due to an occupation of Syria by the Babylonians at an extremely early period, when Assyria was still too feeble to bar the way to the country of its origin. History shows the truth of this, for it tells us that Sargon I spent three years in Syria, and finally made himself master of it; in one of his maritime expeditions he even crossed to the island of Cyprus and took possession. It is probable that this vassalage of Syria to Babylonia underwent frequent reactions and interruptions of continuity, due in great part to the policy of Egypt, which was seeking an outlet to the north. The plan of thwarting the covetousness of the Pharaohs for this province, if not of simply annexing the valley of the Nile to the great empire of the East, was carried out by Sargon I in an invasion of Egypt, the success of which is recorded in the account of the haruspices [Tablet of Omens]. His son Naram-Sin, according to the same documents, likewise invaded Egypt and killed its king, whose name has unfortunately disappeared on account of the breaking of the tablet. Egypt, intimidated, made no hostile movement for several centuries, which undoubtedly strengthened the Babylonian authority in Syria under all the dynasties that successively occupied the throne in the capital of Chaldea.

In the age of Abraham, when Elam exercised supremacy over Babylonia, the king of the latter country, Khammurabi, the Amraphel of Genesis, figures among the kings who had accompanied the Elamite suzerain in his expedition against several tribes of eastern and southern Palestine (Gen. xiv.). Seven centuries later the Egyptian functionaries of Syrio-Phœnicia correspond in Babylonian with the court of Thebes. This province had been conquered a half-century before by Tehutimes III; and the Egyptian supremacy left its trace in the invention of the Phœnician alphabet, which marks the decision to break with Babylonian sympathies in favour of the intellectual culture of Egypt, of which the city of Byblus was to be the principal centre.

A remarkable circumstance furnished the occasion for this decision. In this city, where mystic tendencies seem to have prevailed over the desire for the riches that navigation and commerce bring, a local goddess was worshipped, called Baal-Gebal, “Lady of Byblus,” who represented one of the numerous Semitic goddesses known under the name of Baalat or Belit. She was identified with the great Egyptian goddess Isis, and the myth of Osiris was attached to the shore of this city to such an extent that the priesthood of Byblus was believed to be in possession of the true meaning of these mysteries. At the bottom of this process was the desire of finding a ground of agreement for all the religious conceptions of the civilised nations of the age. In the matter of religion, as in the arts and industry, the rôle of the Phœnicians consisted in serving as intermediaries, as zealous apostles who saw the advantage of being useful to the barbarians after having obtained profit from them, and hoped to profit further in the future.

So, after this reconcilement with the Egyptian religion, the exportation of manufactured articles to the valley of the Nile, or of imitations of Egyptian art, which was so strongly marked with a religious stamp, could develop indefinitely in all the Mediterranean regions and contribute to the prosperity of the mother country and her colonies. So, after the fourteenth century before the common era, the invention of alphabetic writing had barred the way for the extension of Babylonian writing into the European world. The ancient spiritual legacy of Babylonia’s thousand years of domination, a natural product of the Semitic genius, was too strongly anchored in Syrio-Phœnicia to be totally eclipsed, or even to descend to an inferior rank under the pressure of Egyptian influence.

Egypt, with its language deprived of all outlet and with its essentially funereal mythology, was incapable of producing a movement of renaissance in foreign peoples. The spiritual condition remained without notable change, but, direct contact with Babylonia having become more difficult, the Phœnicians were obliged to record in their own language their ancestral and divine traditions, in which the universal elements received from Babylonia always remained preponderant.