The earliest study on the ground was by Rich (1818–20), who gathered some few sculptures and formed an idea of Assyrian art. The French Consul, Botta, excavated Khorsabad (founded 700 B. C.) in 1834–35, and Layard excavated Nimrud in 1845–47; these were both Assyrian sites. The older Babylonian civilization was touched at Erech by Loftus, in 1849–52; and this age has attracted the most important excavations made since, at Tello by Sarzec (1876–81), and at Nippur by Peters and Haynes, of Philadelphia, during the last few years.
The cuneiform characters were absolutely unexplained until Grotefend, in 1800, resolved several of them by taking inscriptions which he presumed might contain names of Persian kings and comparing them alongside of the known names; thus—without a single fixed point to start from—he tried a series of hypotheses until he found one which fitted the facts. Bournouf (in 1836) and Lassen (1836–44) rectified and completed the alphabet. But the cuneiform signs were used to write many diverse languages, as the Roman alphabet is used at present; and the short Persian alphabet was only a fraction of the great syllabary of six hundred signs used for Assyrian. Rawlinson had independently made out the Persian alphabet, using the Zend and Sanskrit for the language. He next, from the trilingual Behistun inscription in Persian, Assyrian, and Vannic, resolved the long Assyrian syllabary, using Hebrew for the language. Since then other more obscure languages written in cuneiform have been worked with more or less success; the most important is the Turanian language, used by the earlier inhabitants of Babylonia before the Semitic invasion; this is recorded by many syllabaries and dictionaries, and translations compiled by the literary Semitic kings.
The general view of the civilization which has been obtained by these labors of the century shows it to have been more important to the world than any other. Cuneiform was the literary script of the world for at least six thousand years, the only medium of writing from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. The Babylonian culture was almost certainly the source of the oldest present civilization—that of China. And the arts were developed probably even earlier than in Egypt. The first inhabitants were called Sumirian (or river folk) in distinction from the Accadian (or highland) people, who came from Elam down into the Euphrates valley, bringing with them the use of writing. Their earliest writing was of figure symbols (like the Egyptian and Hittite); but as in the valley clay tablets were the only material for writing, the figures became gradually transformed into groups of straight lines and spots impressed on the clay; hence the signs were formalized into what we call cuneiform. The Semitic invaders were using cuneiform characters by about 3000 B. C.
The early civilization was intensely religious, the main buildings being the temples, which were placed on enormous piles of brick-work. The sculpture was at a high level in the time of Naram-Sinn, about 3750 B. C.; and yet below his ruins at Nippur there are no less than thirty-five feet depth of earlier ruins, which must extend back to 6000 or 7000 B. C. In early times stone implements were used alongside of copper and bronze, as we find in Egypt 4000 B. C. Pottery was well made, and also reliefs in terra-cotta. Personal ornaments of engraved gems and gold-work were common.
The main landmarks in the later time of this civilization are the Elamite invasion of Kudur-nan-khundi (2280 B. C.) which upset the Semitic rulers, and the Assyrian invasion of Tiglath-Adar (1270 B. C.), after which interest centres in the Assyrian kingdom and its development of the Mesopotamian culture which it borrowed. The main buildings of the Assyrian kings were their enormous palaces, the mass of which was of unbaked bricks, faced with alabaster slabs; such were the works of Assurnazir-pal (Nimrud, 880 B. C.), Sargon (Khorsabad, 710 B. C.), Sennacherib and Assurbani-pal (Kouyunjik, 700 B. C.). The later, Assyrian, form of the civilization was to the earlier Chaldean much what Rome was to Greece, a rather clumsy borrower, who laboriously preserved the literature and art. Some of the Assyrian sculpture of animals is, however, perhaps unsurpassed for vivid action. The systematic libraries, containing copies of all the older literature for general study, were most creditable, though the Assyrian himself composed nothing better than chronicles. Nearly all that we possess of Babylonian religion, and much of the history, is in the copies scrupulously made from the ancient tablets by the Assyrian scribes, who noted every defect in the original with critical fidelity.
The Mesopotamian civilization has left its mark on the modern world. Its religion greatly influenced Hebrew, and thence Christian, thought, the psalms, for instance, being a Babylonian form of piety. Its science fixed the signs of the zodiac, the months of the year, the days of the week, and the division of the circle in degrees, all of which are now universal. And its art, carried by the Phœnicians, was copied by the Greeks and Etruscans, and thus passed on into modern design.
SYRIA
The knowledge of Palestine was but slight, and of northern Syria nothing to speak of, a century ago. Travellers with some scientific ability, such as Robinson (1838 and 1852), De Saulcy (1853), and Van de Velde (1854), greatly extended our view and led up to the splendid survey by the Palestine Exploration Fund (1866 and on), which exhausted the surface study of the land. The more archæological work of excavation was begun at Jerusalem (1867–70), and resumed (1892–99) at Lachish, Jerusalem, etc. The topographical results are all important, and leave nothing to be done until excavation can be freely applied; and the small amount of digging yet done has fixed the varieties of pottery back to 2000 B. C. and given some early architecture. But the ruins of Syria, and indeed of Turkey in general, are practically yet untouched. The discovery (1868) of the inscription of Mesha, King of Moab (896 B. C.), opened a new prospect of research which cannot yet be entered upon. In the north of Syria nothing has been done except the German work at Singerli, from which came an Aramean inscription of about 740 B. C. And in the south a large number of early inscriptions of the Arabian dynasties, reaching back some centuries B. C., have been copied; but there, also, excavation is impossible.
The main new light from Syria has been on the Hittite power. Burckhardt, in 1812, had noticed a new kind of hieroglyph at Hamath. After several ineffective copies, Wright made casts of the stones in 1872. Several other such inscriptions have been found, and from these and the Egyptian and Assyrian references to the Hittites we now realize that they were a northern people, with a great capital on the Euphrates, at Karkhemish, and ruling over nearly all Syria and Asia Minor. Little has yet been fixed about the writing; a few signs are read and some have passed into the Cypriote alphabet. A striking proof of the spread of Babylonian culture is seen in the tablets found in Egypt at Tel-el-Amarna in 1887, which show that all the correspondence between Egypt and Syria in the fifteenth century B. C. was carried on in cuneiform. These hundreds of letters give a vivid picture of life in Syria at that early date.