SIR A. H. LAYARD’S EXCAVATORS LOWERING ONE OF THE GREAT WINGED BULLS FOUND IN NINEVEH
These bulls weighed fifty tons each. Layard found that three hundred men were necessary to pull the cart on which the bulls were placed.
LARGER IMAGE
A CAMP SCENE IN THE DAYS OF NINEVEH’S POWER
The interior of a castle, indicated by a kind of ground-plan with towers and battlements, is divided into four compartments. In each is a group of figures, either engaged in domestic occupations or in preparations for a religious ceremony. The pavilion is supported by columns, probably of painted wood, and the canopy is adorned with a fringe of alternate flowers and buds, like the usual Egyptian border. Beneath the canopy is a groom cleaning a horse with a curry-comb. A eunuch at the entrance is receiving four prisoners. Above are two mummers dressed in the skins of lions, while a figure with a staff appears to be the keeper of these monsters.
On the other hand, the civilisation of Babylonia is expressly stated to have been given by Ea, or Oannes, who rose from the sea of the Persian Gulf; he passed the day among men, and taught letters and sciences and arts—the building of cities and temples, and the use of laws and geometry. Also he showed the uses of seeds and fruits, and softened and humanised the people, who had lived in a lawless manner like wild beasts. This full ascription of civilisation to sea immigrants shows that it cannot be set down as an indigenous growth, or as due to the Sumerian, or still less to the Semite. The date of this movement is roughly indicated by Ea, belonging to the city of Eridu; and 5000 B.C. is the earliest date at which we can suppose the ground of that city to have been dry land. Such must be taken as the extreme limit of the early civilisation, and what we find of the early kings of about 4700 B.C. is the first efficient rise of monumental history in the land. All this is parallel to the early civilisation in Egypt. That also came in apparently from the Red Sea at about 5800 B.C., as the civilising movement which changed the prehistoric age to the dynastic. And it came only a few centuries earlier than the mission of Ea. It may be possible that there is one common source of a seafaring people for both civilisations, and, if so, we might look to Hadhramot as being in the most likely common centre. At least, it is always convenient to explain the unknown by the unknown.
The nature gods of Apsu and Tiamat, the ocean and the chaos, described in the first tablet of the Creation series, belong to the primitive Sumerian. “The waters of these mingled in union, and no fields were embanked, no islands were seen; when the gods had not come forth, not one; when they neither had being nor destinies.” And afterward “Evil they plotted against the great gods.” After an attempt of Anshar (perhaps the same as the Egyptian Anher, the sky god) to subdue Tiamat (tablet 2), Marduk, the sun god, gains the victory; and in tablets 3 and 4, the supremacy of Marduk is finally confirmed by all the gods. In this we seem to have the echoes of a tribal history as in the Egyptian theology. The Shamanistic worship of a confused host of warring and malignant spirits, is at last subdued by the worshippers of personal gods under Semitic influence, and of these the people of the sun god take in the end the leading place. All of these changes were, however, long before the political domination of the Semite, which began about 3800 B.C., with Sargon.
