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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria,
+Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12), by G. Maspero
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12)
+
+Author: G. Maspero
+
+Editor: A.H. Sayce
+
+Translator: M.L. McClure
+
+Release Date: December 16, 2005 [EBook #17323]
+Last Updated: September 7, 2016
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF EGYPT, CHALDAEA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF EGYPT CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA
+
+
+By G. MASPERO,
+Honorable Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford;
+Member of the Institute and Professor at the College of France.
+
+Edited by A. H. SAYCE,
+Professor of Assyriology, Oxford.
+
+Translated by M. L. McCLURE,
+Member of the Committee of the Egypt Exploration Fund
+
+
+CONTAINING OVER TWELVE HUNDRED COLORED PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Volume III.
+
+
+LONDON
+
+THE GROLIER SOCIETY
+
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+[Illustration: 001.jpg El Hammam (The Bath)]
+
+
+[Illustration: 002.jpg THE BANKS OF THE EUPHRATES AT IIILLAH]
+
+     Drawn by Boudier, after J. Dieulafoy. The vignette, which is
+     by Faucher-Gudin, is reproduced from an intaglio in the
+     Cabinet des Medailles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--ANCIENT CHALDAEA
+
+
+The Creation, the Deluge, the history of the gods--The country, its
+cities its inhabitants, its early dynasties.
+
+[Illustration: 002a.jpg]
+
+“In the time when nothing which was called heaven existed above, and when
+nothing below had as yet received the name of earth,* Apsu, the Ocean,
+who first was their father, and Chaos-Tiamat, who gave birth to them
+all, mingled their waters in one, reeds which were not united, rushes
+which bore no fruit.” ** Life germinated slowly in this inert mass, in
+which the elements of our world lay still in confusion: when at length
+it did spring up, it was but feebly, and at rare intervals, through
+the hatching of divine couples devoid of personality and almost without
+form. “In the time when the gods were not created, not one as yet, when
+they had neither been called by their names, nor had their destinies
+been assigned to them by fate, gods manifested themselves. Lakhmu and
+Lakhamu were the first to appear, and waxed great for ages; then Anshar
+and Kishar were produced after them. Days were added to days, and years
+were heaped upon years: Anu, Inlil, and Ea were born in their turn, for
+Anshar and Kishar had given them birth.” As the generations emanated one
+from the other, their vitality increased, and the personality of each
+became more clearly defined; the last generation included none but
+beings of an original character and clearly marked individuality. Anu,
+the sunlit sky by day, the starlit firmament by night; Inlil-Bel,
+the king of the earth; Ea, the sovereign of the waters and the
+personification of wisdom.*** Each of them duplicated himself, Anu into
+Anat, Bel into Belit, Ea into Damkina, and united himself to the spouse
+whom he had deduced from himself. Other divinities sprang from these
+fruitful pairs, and the impulse once given, the world was rapidly
+peopled by their descendants. Sin, Shamash, and Kamman, who presided
+respectively over the moon, the sun, and the air, were all three of
+equal rank; next came the lords of the planets, Ninib, Merodach, Nergal,
+the warrior-goddess Ishtar, and Nebo; then a whole army of lesser
+deities, who ranged themselves around Anu as round a supreme master.
+Tiamat, finding her domain becoming more and more restricted owing
+to the activity of the others, desired to raise battalion against
+battalion, and set herself to create unceasingly; but her offspring,
+made in her own image, appeared like those incongruous phantoms which
+men see in dreams, and which are made up of members borrowed from a
+score of different animals. They appeared in the form of bulls with
+human heads, of horses with the snouts of dogs, of dogs with quadruple
+bodies springing from a single fish-like tail. Some of them had the beak
+of an eagle or a hawk; others, four wings and two faces; others, the
+legs and horns of a goat; others, again, the hind quarters of a horse
+and the whole body of a man. Tiamat furnished them with terrible
+weapons, placed them under the command of her husband Kingu, and set out
+to war against the gods.
+
+     * In Chaldaea, as in Egypt, nothing was supposed to have a
+     real existence until it had received its name: the sentence
+     quoted in the text means practically, that at that time
+     there was neither heaven nor earth.
+
+     ** Apsu has been transliterated kiracruv [in Greek], by the
+     author an extract from whose works has been preserved by
+     Damascius. He gives a different version of the tradition,
+     according to which the amorphous goddess Mummu-Tiamat
+     consisted of two persons. The first, Tauthe, was the wife of
+     Apason; the second, Moymis, was the son of Apason and of
+     Tauthe. The last part of the sentence is very obscure in the
+     Assyrian text, and has been translated in a variety of
+     different ways. It seems to contain a comparison between
+     Apsu and Mummu-Tiamat on the one hand, and the reeds and
+     clumps of rushes so common in Chaldaea on the other; the two
+     divinities remain inert and unfruitful, like water-plants
+     which have not yet manifested their exuberant growth.
+
+     *** The first fragments of the Chaldaean account of the
+     Creation were discovered by G. Smith, who described them in
+     the _Daily Telegraph_ (of March 4, 1875), and published them
+     in the _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_,
+     and translated in his Chaldaean account of Genesis all the
+     fragments with which he was acquainted; other fragments have
+     since been collected, but unfortunately not enough to enable
+     us to entirely reconstitute the legend. It covered at least
+     six tablets, possibly more. Portions of it have been
+     translated after Smith, by Talbot, by Oppert, by Lenormant,
+     by Schrader, by Sayce, by Jensen, by Winckler, by Zimmern,
+     and lastly by Delitzsch. Since G. Smith wrote _The Chaldaean
+     Account_, a fragment of a different version has been
+     considered to be a part of the dogma of the Creation, as it
+     was put forth at Kutha.
+
+[Illustration: 006.jpg ONE OF THE EAGLE-HEADED GENII.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from an Assyrian bas-relief from
+     Khorsabad
+
+At first they knew not whom to send against her. Anshar despatched his
+son Anu; but Anu was afraid, and made no attempt to oppose her. He sent
+Ea; but Ea, like Anu, grew pale with fear, and did not venture to attack
+her. Merodach, the son of Ea, was the only one who believed himself
+strong enough to conquer her. The gods, summoned to a solemn banquet in
+the palace of Anshar, unanimously chose him to be their champion, and
+proclaimed him king. “Thou, thou art glorious among the great gods, thy
+will is second to none, thy bidding is Anu; Marduk (Merodach), thou art
+glorious among the great gods, thy will is second to none,* thy bidding
+is Anu.** From this day, that which thou orderest may not be changed,
+the power to raise or to abase shall be in thy hand, the word of thy
+mouth shall endure, and thy commandment shall not meet with opposition.
+None of the gods shall transgress thy law; but wheresoever a sanctuary
+of the gods is decorated, the place where they shall give their oracles
+shall be thy place.*** Marduk, it is thou who art our avenger! We bestow
+on thee the attributes of a king; the whole of all that exists, thou
+hast it, and everywhere thy word shall be exalted. Thy weapons shall not
+be turned aside, they shall strike thy enemy. O master, who trusts in
+thee, spare thou, his life; but the god who hath done evil, put out
+his life like water. They clad their champion in a garment, and thus
+addressed him: ‘Thy will, master, shall be that of the gods. Speak the
+word, ‘Let it be so,’ it shall be so. Thus open thy mouth, this garment
+shall disappear; say unto it, ‘Return,’ and the garment shall be there.”
+ He spoke with his lips, the garment disappeared; he said unto it,
+“Return,” and the garment was restored.
+
+     * The Assyrian runs, “thy destiny is second to none.” This
+     refers not to the _destiny_ of the god himself, but to the
+     fate which he allots to others. I have substituted, here and
+     elsewhere, for the word “destiny,” the special meaning of
+     which would not have been understood, the word “will,”
+      which, though it does not exactly reproduce the Assyrian
+     expression, avoids the necessity for paraphrases or formulas
+     calculated to puzzle the modern reader.
+
+     ** Or, to put it less concisely, “When thou commandest, it
+     is Anu himself who commands,” and the same blind obedience
+     must be paid to thee as to Anu.
+
+     *** The meaning is uncertain. The sentence seems to convey
+     that henceforth Merodach would be at home in all temples
+     that were constructed in honour of the other gods.
+
+Merodach having been once convinced by this evidence that he had the
+power of doing everything and of undoing everything at his pleasure, the
+gods handed to him the sceptre, the throne, the crown, the insignia of
+supreme rule, and greeted him with their acclamations: “Be King!--Go!
+Cut short the life of Tiamat, and let the wind carry her blood to the
+hidden extremities of the universe.” * He equipped himself carefully for
+the struggle. “He made a bow and placed his mark upon it;” ** he had a
+spear brought to him and fitted a point to it; the god lifted the lance,
+brandished it in his right hand, then hung the bow and quiver at
+his side. He placed a thunderbolt before him, filled his body with a
+devouring flame, then made a net in which to catch the anarchic Tiamat;
+he placed the four winds in such a way that she could not escape, south
+and north, east and west, and with his own hand he brought them the net,
+the gift of his father Anu. “He created the hurricane, the evil wind, the
+storm, the tempest, the four winds, the seven winds, the waterspout, the
+wind that is second to none; then he let loose the winds he had created,
+all seven of them, in order to bewilder the anarchic Tiamat by charging
+behind her. And the master of the waterspout raised his mighty weapon,
+he mounted his chariot, a work without its equal, formidable; he
+installed himself therein, tied the four reins to the side, and darted
+forth, pitiless, torrent-like, swift.”
+
+     * Sayce was the first, I believe, to cite, in connection
+     with this mysterious order, the passage in which Berossus
+     tells how the gods created men from a little clay, moistened
+     with the blood of the god Belos. Here there seems to be a
+     fear lest the blood of Tiamat, mingling with the mud, should
+     produce a crop of monsters similar to those which the
+     goddess had already created; the blood, if carried to the
+     north, into the domain of the night, would there lose its
+     creative power, or the monsters who might spring from it
+     would at any rate remain strangers to the world of gods and
+     men.
+
+     ** “Literally, he made his weapon known; “perhaps it would
+     be better to interpret it, “and he made it known that the
+     bow would henceforth be his distinctive weapon.”
+
+[Illustration: 008.jpg BEL-MERODACH, ARMED WITH THE THUNDERBOLT, DOES
+BATTLE WITH THE TUMULTUOUS TIAMAT.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from the bas-relief from Nimrud
+     preserved in the British Museum.
+
+He passed through the serried ranks of the monsters and penetrated as
+far as Tiamat, and provoked her with his cries. “‘Thou hast rebelled
+against the sovereignty of the gods, thou hast plotted evil against
+them, and hast desired that my fathers should taste of thy malevolence;
+therefore thy host shall be reduced to slavery, thy weapons shall be
+torn from thee. Come, then, thou and I must give battle to one another!’
+Tiamat, when she heard him, flew into a fury, she became mad with rage;
+then Tiamat howled, she raised herself savagely to her full height, and
+planted her feet firmly on the earth. She pronounced an incantation,
+recited her formula, and called to her aid the gods of the combat,
+both them and their weapons. They drew near one to another, Tiamat and
+Marduk, wisest of the gods: They flung themselves into the combat, they
+met one another in the struggle. Then the master unfolded his net and
+seized her; he caused the hurricane which waited behind him to pass
+in front of him, and, when Tiamat opened her mouth to swallow him, he
+thrust the hurricane into it so that the monster could not close her
+jaws again. The mighty wind filled her paunch, her breast swelled, her
+maw was split. Marduk gave a straight thrust with his lance, burst
+open the paunch, pierced the interior, tore the breast, then bound the
+monster and deprived her of life. When he had vanquished Tiamat, who had
+been their leader, her army was disbanded, her host was scattered, and
+the gods, her allies, who had marched beside her, trembled, were scared,
+and fled.” He seized hold of them, and of Kingu their chief, and brought
+them bound in chains before the throne of his father.
+
+He had saved the gods from ruin, but this was the least part of
+his task; he had still to sweep out of space the huge carcase which
+encumbered it, and to separate its ill-assorted elements, and arrange
+them afresh for the benefit of the conquerors. He returned to Tiamat
+whom he had bound in chains. He placed his foot upon her, with his
+unerring knife he cut into the upper part of her; then he cut the
+blood-vessels, and caused the blood to be carried by the north wind to
+the hidden places. And the gods saw his face, they rejoiced, they gave
+themselves up to gladness, and sent him a present, a tribute of peace;
+then he recovered his calm, he contemplated the corpse, raised it and
+wrought marvels.
+
+[Illustration: 010.jpg A KUFA LADEN WITH STONES, AND MANNED BY A CREW OF
+FOUR MEN.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief at Koyunjik.
+     Behind the _kufa_ may be seen a fisherman seated astride on
+     an inflated skin with his fish-basket attached to his neck.
+
+He split it in two as one does a fish for drying; then he hung up one of
+the halves on high, which became the heavens; the other half he spread
+out under his feet to form the earth, and made the universe such as
+men have since known it. As in Egypt, the world was a kind of enclosed
+chamber balanced on the bosom of the eternal waters.* The earth, which
+forms the lower part of it, or floor, is something like an overturned
+boat in appearance, and hollow underneath, not like one of the narrow
+skiffs in use among other races, but a kufa, or kind of semicircular
+boat such as the tribes of the Lower Euphrates have made use of from
+earliest antiquity down to our own times.
+
+     * The description of the Egyptian world will be found in
+     vol. i. p. 21 of the present work. So far the only
+     systematic attempt to reconstruct the Chaldaean world, since
+     Lenormant, has been made by Jensen, who, after examining all
+     the elements which went to compose it, one after another,
+     sums up in a few pages, and reproduces in a plate, the
+     principal results of his inquiry. It will be seen at a
+     glance how much I have taken from his work, and in what
+     respects the drawing here reproduced differs from his.
+
+[Illustration: 012.jpg THE WORLD AS CONCEIVED BY THE CHALDAEANS]
+
+The earth rises gradually from the extremities to the centre, like a
+great mountain, of which the snow-region, where the Euphrates finds its
+source, approximately marks the summit. It was at first supposed to be
+divided into seven zones, placed one on the top of the other along its
+sides, like the stories of a temple; later on it was divided into four
+“houses,” each of which, like the “houses” of Egypt, corresponded with
+one of the four cardinal points, and was under the rule of particular
+gods. Near the foot of the mountain, the edges of the so-called boat
+curve abruptly outwards, and surround the earth with a continuous wall
+of uniform height having no opening. The waters accumulated in the
+hollow thus formed, as in a ditch; it was a narrow and mysterious sea,
+an ocean stream, which no living man might cross save with permission
+from on high, and whose waves rigorously separated the domain of men
+from the regions reserved to the gods. The heavens rose above the
+“mountain of the world” like a boldly formed dome, the circumference
+of which rested on the top of the wall in the same way as the upper
+structures of a house rest on its foundations. Merodach wrought it out
+of a hard resisting metal which shone brilliantly during the day in
+the rays of the sun, and at night appeared only as a dark blue surface,
+strewn irregularly with luminous stars. He left it quite solid in the
+southern regions, but tunnelled it in the north, by contriving within
+it a huge cavern which communicated with external space by means of two
+doors placed at the east and the west.* The sun came forth each morning
+by the first of these doors; he mounted to the zenith, following the
+internal base of the cupola from east to south; then he slowly descended
+again to the western door, and re-entered the tunnel in the firmament,
+where he spent the night,** Merodach regulated the course of the whole
+universe on the movements of the sun. He instituted the year and divided
+it into twelve months. To each month he assigned three decans, each of
+whom exercised his influence successively for a period of ten days; he
+then placed the procession of the days under the authority of Nibiru,
+in order that none of them should wander from his track and be lost. “He
+lighted the moon that she might rule the night, and made her a star of
+night that she might indicate the days:*** ‘From month to month, without
+ceasing, shape thy disk,**** and at the beginning of the month kindle
+thyself in the evening, lighting up thy horns so as to make the heavens
+distinguishable; on the seventh day, show to me thy disk; and on the
+fifteenth, let thy two halves be full from month to month.’” He cleared
+a path for the planets, and four of them he entrusted to four gods; the
+fifth, our Jupiter, he reserved for himself, and appointed him to be
+shepherd of this celestial flock; in order that all the gods might have
+their image visible in the sky, he mapped out on the vault of heaven
+groups of stars which he allotted to them, and which seemed to men like
+representations of real or fabulous beings, fishes with the heads of
+rams, lions, bulls, goats and scorpions.
+
+     * Jensen has made a collection of the texts which speak of
+     the interior of the heavens (Kirib shami) and of their
+     aspect. The expressions which have induced many
+     Assyriologists to conclude that the heavens were divided
+     into different parts subject to different gods may be
+     explained without necessarily having recourse to this
+     hypothesis; the “heaven of Ami,” for instance, is an
+     expression which merely affirms Anu’s sovereignty in the
+     heavens, and is only a more elegant way of designating the
+     heavens by the name of the god who rules them. The gates of
+     heaven are mentioned in the account of the Creation.
+
+     ** It is generally admitted that the Chaldaeans believed that
+     the sun passed over the world in the daytime, and underneath
+     it during the night. The general resemblance of their theory
+     of the universe to the Egyptian theory leads me to believe
+     that they, no less than the Egyptians (cf. vol. i. pp. 24,
+     25, of the present work), for along time believed that the
+     sun and moon revolved round the earth in a horizontal plane.
+
+     *** This obscure phrase seems to be explained, if we
+     remember that the Chaldaean, like the Egyptian day, dated
+     from the rising of one moon to the rising of the following
+     moon; for instance, from six o’clock one evening to about
+     six o’clock the next evening. The moon, the star of night,
+     thus marks the appearance of each day and “indicates the
+     days.”
+
+     **** The word here translated by “disk” is literally the
+     royal cap, decorated with horns, “Agu,” which Sin, the moon-
+     god, wears on his head.
+
+The heavens having been put in order,* he set about peopling the earth,
+and the gods, who had so far passively and perhaps powerlessly watched
+him at his work, at length made up their minds to assist him. They
+covered the soil with verdure, and all collectively “made living beings
+of many kinds. The cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the fields,
+the reptiles of the fields, they fashioned them and made of them
+creatures of life.” ** According to one legend, these first animals
+had hardly left the hands of their creators, when, not being able to
+withstand the glare of the light, they fell dead one after the other.
+Then Merodach, seeing that the earth was again becoming desolate, and
+that its fertility was of no use to any one, begged his father Ea to cut
+off his head and mix clay with the blood which welled from the trunk,
+then from this clay to fashion new beasts and men, to whom the virtues
+of this divine blood would give the necessary strength to enable them
+to resist the air and light. At first they led a somewhat wretched
+existence, and “lived without rule after the manner of beasts. But,
+in the first year, appeared a monster endowed with human reason named
+Oannes, who rose from out of the Erythraean sea, at the point where it
+borders Babylonia. He had the whole body of a fish, but above his fish’s
+head he had another head which was that of a man, and human feet emerged
+from beneath his fish’s tail; he had a human voice, and his image is
+preserved to this day. He passed the day in the midst of men without
+taking any food; he taught them the use of letters, sciences and arts of
+all kinds, the rules for the founding of cities, and the construction of
+temples, the principles of law and of surveying; he showed them how to
+sow and reap; he gave them all that contributes to the comforts of life.
+Since that time nothing excellent has been invented. At sunset this
+monster Oannes plunged back into the sea, and remained all night beneath
+the waves, for he was amphibious. He wrote a book on the origin of
+things and of civilization, which he gave to men.” These are a few of
+the fables which were current among the races of the Lower Euphrates
+with regard to the first beginnings of the universe. That they possessed
+many other legends of which we now know nothing is certain, but either
+they have perished for ever, or the works in which they were recorded
+still await discovery, it may be under the ruins of a palace or in the
+cupboards of some museum.
+
+* The arrangement of the heavens by Merodach is described at the end
+of the fourth and beginning of the fifth tablets. The text, originally
+somewhat obscure, is so mutilated in places that it is not always
+possible to make out the sense with certainty.
+
+** The creation of the animals and then of man is related on the seventh
+tablet, and on a tablet the place of which, in the series, is still
+undetermined. I have been obliged to translate the text rather freely,
+so as to make the meaning clear to the modern reader.
+
+[Illustration: 017.jpg A GOD-FISH]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from
+     Nimrud.
+
+They do not seem to have conceived the possibility of an absolute
+creation, by means of which the gods, or one of them, should have
+evolved out of nothing all that exists: the creation was for them merely
+the setting in motion of pre-existing elements, and the creator only an
+organizer of the various materials floating in chaos. Popular fancy
+in different towns varied the names of the creators and the methods
+employed by them; as centuries passed on, a pile of vague, confused, and
+contradictory traditions were amassed, no one of which was held to be
+quite satisfactory, though all found partisans to support them. Just as
+in Egypt, the theologians of local priesthoods endeavoured to classify
+them and bring them into a kind of harmony: many they rejected and
+others they recast in order to better reconcile their statements: they
+arranged them in systems, from which they undertook to unravel, under
+inspiration from on high, the true history of the universe. That which I
+have tried to set forth above is very ancient, if, as is said to be the
+case, it was in existence two or even three thousand years before our
+era; but the versions of it which we possess were drawn up much later,
+perhaps not till about the VIIth century B.C.* It had been accepted by
+the inhabitants of Babylon because it flattered their religious vanity
+by attributing the credit of having evolved order out of chaos to
+Merodach, the protector of their city.** He it was whom the Assyrian
+scribes had raised to a position of honour at the court of the last
+kings of Nineveh:*** it was Merodach’s name which Berossus inscribed at
+the beginning of his book, when he set about relating to the Greeks
+the origin of the world according to the Chaldeans, and the dawn of
+Babylonian civilization.
+
+     * The question as to whether the text was originally written
+     in Sumerian or in the Semitic tongue has frequently been
+     discussed; the form in which we have it at present is not
+     very old, and does not date much further back than the reign
+     of Assurbanipal, if it is not even contemporary with that
+     monarch. According to Sayce, the first version would date
+     back beyond the XXth century, to the reign of Khammurabi;
+     according to Jensen, beyond the XXXth century before our
+     era.
+
+     ** Sayce thinks that the myth originated at Eridu, on the
+     shores of the Persian Gulf, and afterwards received its
+     present form at Babylon, where the local schools of theology
+     adapted it to the god Merodach.
+
+     *** The tablets in which it is preserved for us come partly
+     from the library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh, partly from
+     that of the temple of Nebo at Borsippa; these latter are
+     more recent than the others, and seem to have been written
+     during the period of the Persian supremacy.
+
+Like the Egyptian civilization, it had had its birth between the sea and
+the dry land on a low, marshy, alluvial soil, flooded annually by the
+rivers which traverse it, devastated at long intervals by tidal waves of
+extraordinary violence. The Euphrates and the Tigris cannot be regarded
+as mysterious streams like the Nile, whose source so long defied
+exploration that people were tempted to place it beyond the regions
+inhabited by man. The former rise in Armenia, on the slopes of the
+Niphates, one of the chains of mountains which lie between the Black Sea
+and Mesopotamia, and the only range which at certain points reaches the
+line of eternal snow. At first they flow parallel to one another, the
+Euphrates from east to west as far as Malatiyeh, the Tigris from the
+west towards the east in the direction of Assyria. Beyond Malatiyeh, the
+Euphrates bends abruptly to the south-west, and makes its way across the
+Taurus as though desirous of reaching the Mediterranean by the shortest
+route, but it soon alters its intention, and makes for the south-east
+in search of the Persian Gulf. The Tigris runs in an oblique direction
+towards the south from the point where the mountains open out, and
+gradually approaches the Euphrates. Near Bagdad the two rivers are only
+a few leagues apart. However, they do not yet blend their waters; after
+proceeding side by side for some twenty or thirty miles, they again
+separate and only finally; unite at a point some eighty leagues lower
+down. At the beginning of our geological period their course was not
+such a long one. The sea then penetrated as far as lat. 33 deg., and was
+only arrested by the last undulations of the great plateau of secondary
+formation, which descend from the mountain group of Armenia: the two
+rivers entered the sea at a distance of about twenty leagues apart,
+falling into a gulf bounded on the east by the last spurs of the
+mountains of Iran, on the west by the sandy heights which border the
+margin of the Arabian Desert.* They filled up this gulf with their
+alluvial deposit, aided by the Adhem, the Diyaleh, the Kerkha, the
+Karun, and other rivers, which at the end of long independent courses
+became tributaries of the Tigris. The present beds of the two rivers,
+connected by numerous canals, at length meet near the village of Kornah
+and form one single river, the Shatt-el-Arab, which carries their waters
+to the sea. The mud with which they are charged is deposited when it
+reaches their mouth, and accumulates rapidly; it is said that the coast
+advances about a mile every seventy years.** In its upper reaches the
+Euphrates collects a number of small affluents, the most important of
+which, the Kara-Su, has often been confounded with it. Near the middle
+of its course, the Sadjur on the right bank carries into it the waters
+of the Taurus and the Amanus, on the left bank the Balikh and the Khabur
+contribute those of the Karadja-Dagh; from the mouth of the Khabur to
+the sea the Euphrates receives no further affluent. The Tigris is fed on
+the left by the Bitlis-Khai, the two Zabs, the Adhem, and the Diyaleh.
+The Euphrates is navigable from Sumeisat, the Tigris from Mossul, both
+of them almost as soon as they leave the mountains. They are subject
+to annual floods, which occur when the winter snow melts on the higher
+ranges of Armenia. The Tigris, which rises from the southern slope of
+the Niphates and has the more direct course, is the first to overflow
+its banks, which it does at the beginning of March, and reaches its
+greatest height about the 10th or 12th of May. The Euphrates rises in
+the middle of March, and does not attain its highest level till the
+close of May. From June onwards it falls with increasing rapidity; by
+September all the water which has not been absorbed by the soil has
+returned to the river-bed. The inundation does not possess the same
+importance for the regions covered by it, that the rise of the Nile
+does for Egypt. In fact, it does more harm than good, and the river-side
+population have always worked hard to protect themselves from it and to
+keep it away from their lands rather than facilitate its access to
+them; they regard it as a sort of necessary evil to which they resign
+themselves, while trying to minimize its effects.***
+
+     * This fact has been established by Ross and Lynch in two
+     articles in the _Journal of the Royal Geographical Society_,
+     vol. ix. pp. 446, 472. The Chaldaeans and Assyrians called
+     the gulf into which the two rivers debouched, Nar Marratum,
+     or “salt river,” a name which they extended to the Chaldaean
+     Sea, i.e. to the whole Persian Gulf.
+
+     ** Loftus estimated, about the middle of the last century,
+     the progress of alluvial deposit at about one English mile
+     in every seventy years; H. Rawlinson considers that the
+     progress must have been more considerable in ancient times,
+     and estimates it at an English mile in thirty years. Kiepert
+     thinks, taking the above estimate as a basis, that in the
+     sixth century before our era the fore-shore came from about
+     ten to twelve German miles (47 to 56 English) higher up than
+     the present fore-shore. G. Rawlinson estimates on his part
+     that between the thirtieth and twentieth centuries B.C., a
+     period in which he places the establishment of the first
+     Chaldaean Empire, the fore-shore was more than 120 miles
+     above the mouth of Shatt-el-Arab, to the north of the
+     present village of Kornah.
+
+     *** Fr. Lenormant has energetically defended this hypothesis
+     in the majority of his works: it is set forth at some length
+     in his work on _La Langue primitive de la Chaldee_. Hommel,
+     on the other hand, maintains and strives to demonstrate
+     scientifically the relationship of the non-Semitic tongue
+     with Turkish.
+
+The traveller Olivier noticed this, and writes as follows: “The land
+there is rather less fertile [than in Egypt], because it does not
+receive the alluvial deposits of the rivers with the same regularity as
+that of the Delta. It is necessary to irrigate it in order to render it
+productive, and to protect it sedulously from the inundations which are
+too destructive in their action and too irregular.”
+
+The first races to colonize this country of rivers, or at any rate
+the first of which we can find traces, seem to have belonged to three
+different types. The most important were the Semites, who spoke a
+dialect akin to Aramaic, Hebrew, and Phoenician. It was for a long
+time supposed that they came down from the north, and traces of their
+occupation have been pointed out in Armenia in the vicinity of Ararat,
+or halfway down the course of the Tigris, at the foot of the Gordysean
+mountains. It has recently been suggested that we ought rather to seek
+for their place of origin in Southern Arabia, and this view is gaining
+ground among the learned. Side by side with these Semites, the monuments
+give evidence of a race of ill-defined character, which some have
+sought, without much success, to connect with the tribes of the Urall or
+Altai; these people are for the present provisionally called Sumerians.*
+They came, it would appear, from some northern country; they brought
+with them from their original home a curious system of writing, which,
+modified, transformed, and adopted by ten different nations, has
+preserved for us all that we know in regard to the majority of the
+empires which rose and fell in Western Asia before the Persian conquest.
+Semite or Sumerian, it is still doubtful which preceded the other at the
+mouths of the Euphrates. The Sumerians, who were for a time all-powerful
+in the centuries before the dawn of history, had already mingled closely
+with the Semites when we first hear of them. Their language gave way to
+the Semitic, and tended gradually to become a language of ceremony and
+ritual, which was at last learnt less for everyday use, than for the
+drawing up of certain royal inscriptions, or for the interpretation of
+very ancient texts of a legal or sacred character. Their religion became
+assimilated to the religion, and their gods identified with the gods, of
+the Semites. The process of fusion commenced at such an early date, that
+nothing has really come down to us from the time when the two races were
+strangers to each other. We are, therefore, unable to say with certainty
+how much each borrowed from the other, what each gave, or relinquished
+of its individual instincts and customs. We must take and judge them as
+they come before us, as forming one single nation, imbued with the
+same ideas, influenced in all their acts by the same civilization, and
+possessed of such strongly marked characteristics that only in the last
+days of their existence do we find any appreciable change. In the course
+of the ages they had to submit to the invasions and domination of some
+dozen different races, of whom some--Assyrians and Chaldaeans--were
+descended from a Semitic stock, while the others--Elamites, Cossaaans,
+Persians, Macedonians, and Parthians--either were not connected with
+them by any tie of blood, or traced their origin in some distant manner
+to the Sumerian branch. They got quickly rid of a portion of these
+superfluous elements, and absorbed or assimilated the rest; like
+the Egyptians, they seem to have been one of those races which, once
+established, were incapable of ever undergoing modification, and
+remained unchanged from one end of their existence to the other.
+
+* The name _Accadian_ proposed by H. Rawlinson and by Hincks, and
+adopted by Sayce, seems to have given way to _Sumerian_, the title put
+forward by Oppert. The existence of the Sumerian or Sumero-Accadian
+has been contested by Halevy in a number of noteworthy works. M. Halevy
+wishes to recognize in the so-called Sumerian documents the Semitic
+tongue of the ordinary inscriptions, but written in a priestly syllabic
+character subject to certain rules; this would be practically a
+_cryptogram_, or rather an _allogram_. M. Halevy won over Messrs. Guyard
+and Pognon in France, Delitzsch and a part of the Delitzsch school
+in Germany, to his view of the facts. The controversy, which has been
+carried on on both sides with a somewhat unnecessary vehemence, still
+rages; it has been simplified quite recently by Delitzcsh’s return to
+the Sumerian theory. Without reviewing the arguments in detail, and
+while doing full justice to the profound learning displayed by M.
+Halevy, I feel forced to declare with Tiele that his criticisms “oblige
+scholars to carefully reconsider all that has been taken as proved in
+these matters, but that they do not warrant us in rejecting as untenable
+the hypothesis, still a very probable one, according to which the
+difference in the graphic systems corresponds to a real difference in.
+idiom.”
+
+Their country must have presented at the beginning very much the same
+aspect of disorder and neglect which it offers to modern eyes. It was
+a flat interminable moorland stretching away to the horizon, there to
+begin again seemingly more limitless than ever, with, no rise or fall in
+the ground to break the dull monotony; clumps of palm trees and slender
+mimosas, intersected by lines of water gleaming in the distance, then
+long patches of wormwood and mallow, endless vistas of burnt-up plain,
+more palms and more mimosas, make up the picture of the land, whose
+uniform soil consists of rich, stiff, heavy clay, split up by the heat
+of the sun into a network of deep narrow fissures, from which the
+shrubs and wild herbs shoot forth each year in spring-time. By an almost
+imperceptible slope it falls gently away from north to south towards
+the Persian Gulf, from east to west towards the Arabian plateau. The
+Euphrates flows through it with unstable and changing course, between
+shifting banks which it shapes and re-shapes from season to season.
+
+[Illustration: 025.jpg GIGANTIC CHALDAEAN REEDS]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief of the
+     palace of Nimrud.
+
+The slightest impulse of its current encroaches on them, breaks through
+them, and makes openings for streamlets, the majority of which are
+clogged up and obliterated by the washing away of their margins, almost
+as rapidly as they are formed. Others grow wider and longer, and,
+sending out branches, are transformed into permanent canals or regular
+rivers, navigable at certain seasons. They meet on the left bank
+detached offshoots of the Tigris, and after wandering capriciously in
+the space between the two rivers, at last rejoin their parent stream:
+such are the Shatt-el-Hai and the Shatt-en-Nil. The overflowing waters
+on the right bank, owing to the fall of the land, run towards the
+low limestone hills which shut in the basin of the Euphrates in the
+direction of the desert; they are arrested at the foot of these hills,
+and are diverted on to the low-lying ground, where they lose themselves
+in the morasses, or hollow out a series of lakes along its borders,
+the largest of which, Bahr-i-Nedjif, is shut in on three sides by steep
+cliffs, and rises or falls periodically with the floods. A broad canal,
+which takes its origin in the direction of Hit at the beginning of the
+alluvial plain, bears with it the overflow, and, skirting the lowest
+terraces of the Arabian chain, runs almost parallel to the Euphrates. In
+proportion as the canal proceeds southward the ground sinks still lower,
+and becomes saturated with the overflowing waters, until, the banks
+gradually disappearing, the whole neighbourhood is converted into a
+morass. The Euphrates and its branches do not at all times succeed in
+reaching the sea: they are lost for the most part in vast lagoons to
+which the tide comes up, and in its ebb bears their waters away with
+it. Reeds grow there luxuriantly in enormous beds, and reach sometimes
+a height of from thirteen to sixteen feet; banks of black and putrid mud
+emerge amidst the green growth, and give off deadly emanations. Winter
+is scarcely felt here: snow is unknown, hoar-frost is rarely seen,
+but sometimes in the morning a thin film of ice covers the marshes, to
+disappear under the first rays of the sun.*
+
+     * Loftus attributes the lowering of the temperature during
+     the winter to the wind blowing over a soil impregnated with
+     saltpetre. “We were,” he says, “in a kind of immense
+     freezing chamber.”
+
+[Illustration: 027.jpg THE MARSHES ABOUT THE CONFLUENCE OF THE KERKHA
+AND TIGRIS.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by J. Dieulafoy.
+For six weeks in November and December there is much rain: after this
+period there are only occasional showers, occurring at longer and longer
+intervals until May, when they entirely cease, and the summer sets in,
+to last until the following November. There are almost six continuous
+months of depressing and moist heat, which overcomes both men and
+animals and makes them incapable of any constant effort.* Sometimes
+a south or east wind suddenly arises, and bearing with it across the
+fields and canals whirlwinds of sand, burns up in its passage the little
+verdure which the sun had spared. Swarms of locusts follow in its train,
+and complete the work of devastation. A sound as of distant rain is at
+first heard, increasing in intensity as the creatures approach. Soon
+their thickly concentrated battalions fill the heavens on all sides,
+flying with slow and uniform motion at a great height. They at length
+alight, cover everything, devour everything, and, propagating their
+species, die within a few days: nothing, not a blade of vegetation,
+remains on the region where they alighted.
+
+     * Loftus says that he himself had witnessed in the
+     neighbourhood of Bagdad during the daytime birds perched on
+     the palm trees in an exhausted condition, and panting with
+     open beaks. The inhabitants of Bagdad during the summer pass
+     their nights on the housetops, and the hours of day in
+     passages within, expressly constructed to protect them from
+     the heat.
+
+Notwithstanding these drawbacks, the country was not lacking in
+resources. The soil was almost as fertile as the loam of Egypt, and,
+like the latter, rewarded a hundredfold the labour of the inhabitants.*
+Among the wild herbage which spreads over the country in the spring,
+and clothes it for a brief season with flowers, it was found that some
+plants, with a little culture, could be rendered useful to men and
+beasts. There were ten or twelve different species of pulse to choose
+from--beans, ‘lentils, chick-peas, vetches, kidney beans, onions,
+cucumbers, egg-plants, “gombo,” and pumpkins. From the seed of the
+sesame an oil was expressed which served for food, while the castor-oil
+plant furnished that required for lighting. The safflower and henna
+supplied the women with dyes for the stuffs which they manufactured from
+hemp and flax. Aquatic plants were more numerous than on the banks
+of the Nile, but they did not occupy such an important place among
+food-stuffs. The “lily bread” of the Pharaohs would have seemed meagre
+fare to people accustomed from early times to wheaten bread. Wheat and
+barley are considered to be indigenous on the plains of the Euphrates;
+it was supposed to be here that they were first cultivated in Western
+Asia, and that they spread from hence to Syria, Egypt, and the whole
+of Europe.** “The soil there is so favourable to the growth of cereals,
+that it yields usually two hundredfold, and in places of exceptional
+fertility three hundredfold. The leaves of the wheat and barley have a
+width of four digits. As for the millet and sesame, which in altitude
+are as great as trees, I will not state their height, although I know
+it from experience, being convinced that those who have not lived in
+Babylonia would regard my statement with incredulity.” Herodotus in his
+enthusiasm exaggerated the matter, or perhaps, as a general rule, he
+selected as examples the exceptional instances which had been mentioned
+to him: at present wheat and barley give a yield to the husbandman of
+some thirty or forty fold.
+
+     * Olivier, who was a physician and naturalist, and had
+     visited Egypt as well as Mesopotamia, thought that Babylonia
+     was somewhat less fertile than Egypt. Loftus, who was
+     neither, and had not visited Egypt, declares, on the
+     contrary, that the banks of the Euphrates are no less
+     productive than those of the Nile.
+
+     ** Native traditions collected by Berossus confirm this, and
+     the testimony of Olivier is usually cited as falling in with
+     that of the Chaldaean writer. Olivier is considered, indeed,
+     to have discovered wild cereals in Mesopotamia. Pie only
+     says, however, that on the banks of the Euphrates above Anah
+     he had met with “wheat, barley, and spelt in a kind of
+     ravine;” from the context it clearly follows that these were
+     plants which had reverted to a wild state--instances of
+     which have been observed several times in Mesopotamia. A. de
+     Oandolle admitted the Mesopotamian origin of the various
+     species of wheat and barley.
+
+[Illustration: 030.jpg THE GATHERING OF THE SPATHES OF THE MALE PALM
+TREE]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a cylinder in the Museum at the
+     Hague. The original measures almost an inch in height.
+
+“The date palm meets all the other needs of the population; they make
+from it a kind of bread, wine, vinegar, honey, cakes, and numerous kinds
+of stuffs; the smiths use the stones of its fruit for charcoal; these
+same stones, broken and macerated, are given as a fattening food to
+cattle and sheep.” Such a useful tree was tended with a loving care,
+the vicissitudes in its growth were observed, and its reproduction was
+facilitated by the process of shaking the flowers of the male palm over
+those of the female: the gods themselves had taught this artifice to
+men, and they were frequently represented with a bunch of flowers in
+their right hand, in the attitude assumed by a peasant in fertilizing
+a palm tree. Fruit trees were everywhere mingled with ornamental
+trees--the fig, apple, almond, walnut, apricot, pistachio, vine, with
+the plane tree, cypress, tamarisk, and acacia; in the prosperous period
+of the country the plain of the Euphrates was a great orchard which
+extended uninterruptedly from the plateau of Mesopotamia to the shores
+of the Persian Gulf.
+
+The flora would not have been so abundant if the fauna had been
+sufficient for the supply of a large population. A considerable
+proportion of the tribes on the Lower Euphrates lived for a long time
+on fish only. They consumed them either fresh, salted, or smoked: they
+dried them in the sun, crushed them in a mortar, strained the pulp
+through linen, and worked it up into a kind of bread or into cakes. The
+barbel and carp attained a great size in these sluggish waters, and if
+the Chalaeans, like the Arabs who have succeeded them in these regions,
+clearly preferred these fish above others, they did not despise at the
+same time such less delicate species as the eel, murena, silurus, and
+even that singular gurnard whose habits are an object of wonder to our
+naturalists. This fish spends its existence usually in the water, but
+a life in the open air has no terrors for it: it leaps out on the bank,
+climbs trees without much difficulty, finds a congenial habitat on the
+banks of mud exposed by the falling tide, and basks there in the sun,
+prepared to vanish in the ooze in the twinkling of an eye if some
+approaching bird should catch sight of it. Pelicans, herons, cranes,
+storks, cormorants, hundreds of varieties of seagulls, ducks, swans,
+wild geese, secure in the possession of an inexhaustible supply of food,
+sport and prosper among the reeds. The ostrich, greater bustard, the
+common and red-legged partridge and quail, find their habitat on the
+borders of the desert; while the thrush, blackbird, ortolan, pigeon,
+and turtle-dove abound on every side, in spite of daily onslaughts from
+eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey.
+
+[Illustration: 032.jpg A WINGED GENIUS HOLDING IN HIS HAND THE SPATHE OF
+THE MALE DATE-PALM.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Nimrud, in
+     the British Museum.
+
+[Illustration: 033.jpg THE HEAVILY MANED LION WOUNDED BY AN ARROW AND
+VOMITING BLOOD.]
+
+Snakes are found here and there, but they are for the most part of
+innocuous species: three poisonous varieties only are known, and their
+bite does not produce such terrible consequences as that of the horned
+viper or Egyptian uraeus. There are two kinds of lion--one without mane,
+and the other hooded, with a heavy mass of black and tangled hair: the
+proper signification of the old Chaldaean name was “the great ‘dog,” and
+they have, indeed, a greater resemblance to large dogs than to the
+red lions of Africa.* They fly at the approach of man; they betake
+themselves in the daytime to retreats among the marshes or in the
+thickets which border the rivers, sallying forth at night, like
+the jackal, to scour the country. Driven to bay, they turn upon the
+assailant and fight desperately. The Chaldaean kings, like the Pharaohs,
+did not shrink from entering into a close conflict with them,
+and boasted of having rendered a service to their subjects by the
+destruction of many of these beasts.
+
+* The Sumerian name of the lion is ur-malch “the great dog.” The best
+description of the first-mentioned species is still that of Olivier, who
+saw in the house oL the Pasha of Bagdad five of them in captivity; cf.
+Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, p. 487. Father Scheil tells me the lions
+have disappeared completely since the last twenty years.
+
+[Illustration: 034.jpg THE URUS IN ACT OF CHARGING]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from
+     Nimrud (Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, 1st series, pi. 11).
+
+[Illustration: 035.jpg a herd of onagers pursued by dogs and wounded by
+arrows.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the British
+     Museum.
+
+The elephant seems to have roamed for some time over the steppes of
+the middle Euphrates;* there is no indication of its presence after the
+XIIIth century before our era, and from that time forward it was merely
+an object of curiosity brought at great expense from distant countries.
+This is not the only instance of animals which have disappeared in
+the course of centuries; the rulers of Nineveh were so addicted to the
+pursuit of the urus that they ended by exterminating it. Several sorts
+of panthers and smaller felidae had their lairs in the thickets of
+Mesopotamia. The wild ass and onager roamed in small herds between the
+Balikh and the Tigris. Attempts were made, it would seem, at a very
+early period to tame them and make use of them to draw chariots; but
+this attempt either did not succeed at all, or issued in such uncertain
+results, that it was given up as soon as other less refractory animals
+were made the subjects of successful experiment.
+
+     * The existence of the elephant in Mesopotamia and Northern
+     Syria is well established by the Egyptian inscription of
+     Amenemhabi in the XVth century before our era.
+
+[Illustration: 036.jpg THE CHIEF DOMESTIC ANIMALS OP THE REGIONS OF THE
+EUPHRATES.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from
+     Kouyunjik.
+
+The wild boar, and his relative, the domestic hog, inhabited the
+morasses. Assyrian sculptors amused themselves sometimes by representing
+long gaunt sows making their way through the cane-brakes, followed by
+their interminable offspring. The hog remained here, as in Egypt, in
+a semi-tamed condition, and the people were possessed of only a small
+number of domesticated animals besides the dog--namely, the ass, ox,
+goat, and sheep; the horse and camel were at first unknown, and were
+introduced at a later period.*
+
+[Illustration: 037.jpg THE SOW AND HER LITTER MAKING THEIR WAY THROUGH A
+BED OF REEDS.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Kouyunjik.
+
+     * The horse is denoted in the Assyrian texts by a group of
+     signs which mean “the ass of the East,” and the camel by
+     other signs in which the character for “ass” also appears.
+     The methods of rendering these two names show that the
+     subjects of them were unknown in the earliest times; the
+     epoch of their introduction is uncertain. A chariot drawn by
+     horses appears on the “Stele of the Vultures.” Camels are
+     mentioned among the booty obtained from the Bedouin of the
+     desert.
+
+We know nothing of the efforts which the first inhabitants--Sumerians
+and Semites--had to make in order to control the waters and to bring the
+land under culture: the most ancient monuments exhibit them as already
+possessors of the soil, and in a forward state of civilization.* Their
+chief cities were divided into two groups: one in the south, in the
+neighbourhood of the sea; the other in a northern direction, in the
+region where the Euphrates and Tigris are separated from each other by
+merely a narrow strip of land. The southern group consisted of seven, of
+which Eridu lay nearest to the coast. This town stood on the left bank
+of the Euphrates, at a point which is now called Abu-Shahrein. A little
+to the west, on the opposite bank, but at some distance from the stream,
+the mound of Mugheir marks the site of Uru, the most important, if not
+the oldest, of the southern cities. Lagash occupied the site of the
+modern Telloh to the north of Eridu, not far from the Shatt-el-Hai;
+Nisin and Mar, Larsam and Uruk, occupied positions at short distances
+from each other on the marshy ground which extends between the Euphrates
+and the Shatt-en-Nil. The inscriptions mention here and there other
+less important places, of which the ruins have not yet been
+discovered--Zirlab and Shurippak, places of embarkation at the mouth
+of the Euphrates for the passage of the Persian Gulf; and the island of
+Dilmun, situated some forty leagues to the south in the centre of the
+Salt Sea,--“Nar-Marratum.” The northern group comprised Nipur, the
+“incomparable;” Barsip, on the branch which flows parallel to the
+Euphrates and falls into the Bahr-i-Nedjif; Babylon, the “gate of the
+god,” the “residence of life,” the only metropolis of the Euphrates
+region of which posterity never lost a reminiscence; Kishu, Kuta,
+Agade;** and lastly the two Sipparas, that of Shamash and that of
+Anunit. The earliest Chaldaean civilization was confined almost entirely
+to the two banks of the Lower Euphrates: except at its northern
+boundary, it did not reach the Tigris, and did not cross this river.
+Separated from the rest of the world--on the east by the marshes which
+border the river in its lower course, on the north by the badly watered
+and sparsely inhabited table-land of Mesopotamia, on the west by the
+Arabian desert--it was able to develop its civilization, as Egypt had
+done, in an isolated area, and to follow out its destiny in peace. The
+only point from which it might anticipate serious danger was on the
+east, whence the Kashshi and the Elamites, organized into military
+states, incessantly harassed it year after year by their attacks. The
+Kashshi were scarcely better than half-civilized mountain hordes, but
+the Elamites were advanced in civilization, and their capital, Susa,
+vied with the richest cities of the Euphrates, Uru and Babylon, in
+antiquity and magnificence.
+
+     * For an ideal picture of what may have been the beginnings
+     of that civilization, see Delitzsch, Die Entstehung des
+     altesten Schriflssystems, p. 214, et seq. I will not enter
+     into the question as to whether it did or did not come by
+     sea to the mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris. The legend of
+     the fish-god Oannes (Berossus, frag. 1), which seems to
+     conceal some indication on the subject, is merely a
+     mythological tradition, from which it would be wrong to
+     deduce historical conclusions.
+
+     ** Agade, or Agane, has been identified with one of the two
+     towns of which Sippara is made up, more especially with that
+     which was called Anunit Sippara; the reading Agadi, Agacle,
+     was especially assumed to lead to its identification with
+     the Accad of _Genesis x. 10_, and with the Akkad of native
+     tradition. This opinion has been generally abandoned by
+     Assyriologists, and Agane has not yet found a site. Was it
+     only a name for Babylon?
+
+[Illustration: 040.jpg MAP OF CHALDAEA]
+
+There was nothing serious to fear from the Guti, on the branch of the
+Tigris to the north-east, or from the Shuti to the north of these; they
+were merely marauding tribes, and, however troublesome they might be
+to their neighbours in their devastating incursions, they could not
+compromise the existence of the country, or bring it into subjection.
+It would appear that the Chaldseans had already begun to encroach upon
+these tribes and to establish colonies among them--El-Ashshur on the
+banks of the Tigris, Harran on the furthest point of the Mesopotamian
+plain, towards the sources of the Balikh. Beyond these were vague and
+unknown regions--Tidanum, Martu, the sea of the setting sun, the vast
+territories of Milukhkha and Magan.* Egypt, from the time they were
+acquainted with its existence, was a semi-fabulous country at the ends
+of the earth.
+
+     * The question concerning Milukhkha and Magan has exercised
+     Assyriologists for twenty years. The prevailing opinion
+     appears to be that which identifies Magan with the Sinaitic
+     Peninsula, and Milukhkha with the country to the north of
+     Magan as far as the Wady Arish and the Mediterranean; others
+     maintain, not the theory of Delitzsch, according to whom
+     Magan and Milukhkha are synonyms for Shumir and Akkad, and
+     consequently two of the great divisions of Babylonia, but an
+     analogous hypothesis, in which they are regarded as
+     districts to the west of the Euphrates, either in Chaldaean
+     regions or on the margin of the desert, or even in the
+     desert itself towards the Sinaitic Peninsula. What we know
+     of the texts induces me, in common with H. Rawlinson, to
+     place these countries on the shores of the Persian Gulf,
+     between the mouth of the Euphrates and the Bahrein islands;
+     possibly the Makse and the Melangitso of classical
+     historians and geographers were the descendants of the
+     people of Magan (Makan) and Milukhkha (Melugga), who had
+     been driven towards the entrance to the Persian Gulf by some
+     such event as the increase in these regions of the Kashdi
+     (Chaldaeans). The names, emigrated to the western parts of
+     Arabia and to the Sinaitic Peninsula in after-times, as the
+     name of India passed to America in the XVIth century of our
+     era.
+
+How long did it take to bring this people out of savagery, and to
+build up so many flourishing cities? The learned did not readily resign
+themselves to a confession of ignorance on the subject. As they
+had depicted the primordial chaos, the birth of the gods, and their
+struggles over the creation, so they related unhesitatingly everything
+which had happened since the creation of mankind, and they laid claim to
+being able to calculate the number of centuries which lay between their
+own day and the origin of things. The tradition to which most credence
+was attached in the Greek period at Babylon, that which has been
+preserved for us in the histories of Berossue, asserts that there was
+a somewhat long interval between the manifestation of Oannes and
+the foundation of a dynasty. The first king was Aloros of Babylon, a
+Chaldaean of whom nothing is related except that he was chosen by the
+divinity himself to be a shepherd of the people. He reigned for ten
+sari, amounting in all to 36,000 years; for the saros is 3600 years, the
+ner 600 years, and the soss 60 years.
+
+[Illustration: 041.jpg TWO FISH-LIKE DEITIES OF THE CHALDAEANS.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an intaglio in the British Museum.
+
+After the death of Aloros, his son Alaparos ruled for three sari, after
+which Amillaros, of the city of Pantibibla, reigned thirteen sari. It
+was under him that there issued from the Bed Sea a second Annedotos,
+resembling Oannes in his semi-divine shape, half man and half fish.
+After him Ammenon, also from Pantibibla, a Chaldaean, ruled for a term
+of twelve sari; under him, they say, the mysterious Oannes appeared.
+Afterwards Amelagaros of Pantibibla governed for eighteen sari; then
+Davos, the shepherd from Pantibibla, reigned ten sari: under him there
+issued from the Red Sea a fourth Annedotos, who had a form similar to
+the others, being made up of man and fish. After him Bvedoranchos of
+Pantibibla reigned for eighteen sari; in his time there issued yet
+another monster, named Anodaphos, from the sea. These various monsters
+developed carefully and in detail that which Oannes had set forth in a
+brief way. Then Amempsinos of Larancha, a Chalaean, reigned ten sari; and
+Obartes, also a Chaldaean, of Larancha, eight sari. Finally, on the death
+of Obartes, his son Xisuthros held the sceptre for eighteen sari. It
+was under him that the great deluge took place. Thus ten kings are to
+be reckoned in all, and the duration of their combined reigns amounts
+to one hundred and twenty sari. From the beginning of the world to the
+Deluge they reckoned 691,200 years, of which 259,200 had passed
+before the coming of Aloros, and the remaining 432,000 were generously
+distributed between this prince and his immediate successors: the Greek
+and Latin writers had certainly a fine occasion for amusement over these
+fabulous numbers of years which the Chaldaeans assigned to the lives and
+reigns of their first kings.
+
+Men in the mean time became wicked; they lost the habit of offering
+sacrifices to the gods, and the gods, justly indignant at this
+negligence, resolved to be avenged.* Now, Shamashnapishtim I was
+reigning at this time in Shurippak, the “town of the ship:” he and
+all his family were saved, and he related afterwards to one of his
+descendants how Ea had snatched him from the disaster which fell upon
+his people.** “Shurippak, the city which thou thyself knowest, is
+situated on the bank of the Euphrates; it was already an ancient town
+when the hearts of the gods who resided in it impelled them to bring the
+deluge upon it--the great gods as many as they are; their father Anu,
+their counsellor Bel the warrior, their throne-bearer Ninib, their
+prince Innugi. The master of wisdom, Ea, took his seat with them,***
+and, moved with pity, was anxious to warn Shamashnapishtim, his servant,
+of the peril which threatened him;” but it was a very serious affair to
+betray to a mortal a secret of heaven, and as he did not venture to do
+so in a direct manner, his inventive mind suggested to him an artifice.
+
+     * The account of Bcrossus implies this as a cause of the
+     Deluge, since he mentions the injunction imposed upon the
+     survivors by a mysterious voice to be henceforward
+     respectful towards the gods, [Greek word]. The Chalaean
+     account considers the Deluge to have been sent as a
+     punishment upon men for their sins against the gods, since
+     it represents towards the end (cf. p. 52 of this History) Ea
+     as reproaching Bel for having confounded the innocent and
+     the guilty in one punishment.
+
+     ** The name of this individual has been read in various
+     ways: Shamashnapishtim, “sun of life,” Sitnapishtim, “the
+     saved,” and Pirnapishtim. In one passage at least we find,
+     in place of Shamashnapishtim, the name or epithet of
+     Aclrakhasis, or by inversion Khasisadra, which appears to
+     signify “the very shrewd,” and is explained by the skill
+     with which he interpreted the oracle of Ea. Khasisadra is
+     most probably the form which the Greeks have transcribed by
+     Xisuthros, Sisuthros, Sisithes.
+
+     *** The account of the Deluge covers the eleventh tablet of
+     the poem of Gilgames. The hero, threatened with death,
+     proceeds to rejoin his ancestor Shamashnapishtim to demand
+     from him the secret of immortality, and the latter tells him
+     the manner in which he escaped from the waters: he had saved
+     his life only at the expense of the destruction of men. The
+     text of it was published by Smith and by Haupt, fragment by
+     fragment, and then restored consecutively. The studies of
+     which it is the object would make a complete library. The
+     principal translations are those of Smith, of Oppert, of
+     Lenor-mant, of Haupt, of Jensen, of A. Jeremias, of
+     Sauveplane, and of Zimmern.
+
+[Illustration: 045.jpg Page with ONE OF THE TABLETS OF THE DELUGE
+SERIES.]
+
+     Facsimile by Faucher-Gudin, from the photograph published by
+     G. Smith, Chaldaean Account of the Deluge from terra-cotta
+     tablets found at Nineveh.
+
+He confided to a hedge of reeds the resolution that had been adopted:*
+“Hedge, hedge, wall, wall! Hearken, hedge, and understand well, wall!
+Man of Shurippak, son of Ubaratutu, construct a wooden house, build a
+ship, abandon thy goods, seek life; throw away thy possessions, save thy
+life, and place in the vessel all the seed of life. The ship which thou
+shalt build, let its proportions be exactly measured, let its dimensions
+and shape be well arranged, then launch it in the sea.” Shamashnapishtim
+heard the address to the field of reeds, or perhaps the reeds repeated
+it to him. “I understood it, and I said to my master Ea ‘The command,
+O my master, which thou hast thus enunciated, I myself will respect it,
+and I will execute it: but what shall I say to the town, the people and
+the elders?’” Ea opened his mouth and spake; he said to his servant:
+“Answer thus and say to them: ‘Because Bel hates me, I will no longer
+dwell in your town, and upon the land of Bel I will no longer lay my
+head, but I will go upon the sea, and will dwell with Ea my master. Now
+Bel will make rain to fall upon you, upon the swarm of birds and the
+multitude of fishes, upon all the animals of the field, and upon all
+the crops; but Ea will give you a sign: the god who rules the rain will
+cause to fall upon you, on a certain evening, an abundant rain. When the
+dawn of the next day appears, the deluge will begin, which will cover
+the earth and drown all living things.’” Shamashnapishtim repeated the
+warning to the people, but the people refused to believe it, and turned
+him into ridicule. The work went rapidly forward: the hull was a hundred
+and forty cubits long, the deck one hundred and forty broad; all the
+joints were caulked with pitch and bitumen. A solemn festival was
+observed at its completion, and the embarkation began.** “All that I
+possessed I filled the ship with it all that I had of silver, I filled
+it with it; all that I had of gold I filled it with it, all that I had
+of the seed of life of every kind I filled it with it; I caused all
+my family and my servants to go up into it; beasts of the field, wild
+beasts of the field, I caused them to go up all together. Shamash had
+given me a sign: ‘When the god who rules the rain, in the evening shall
+cause an abundant rain to fall, enter into the ship and close thy door.’
+The sign was revealed: the god who rules the rain caused to fall one
+night an abundant rain. The day, I feared its dawning; I feared to see
+the daylight; I entered into the ship and I shut the door; that the ship
+might be guided, I handed over to Buzur-Bel, the pilot, the great ark
+and its fortunes.”
+
+     * The sense of this passage is far from being certain; I
+     have followed the interpretation proposed, with some
+     variations, by Pinches, by Haupt, and by Jensen. The
+     stratagem at once recalls the history of King Midas, and the
+     talking reeds which knew the secret of his ass’s ears. In
+     the version of Berossus, it is Kronos who plays the part
+     here assigned to Ea in regard to Xisuthros.
+
+     ** The text is mutilated, and does not furnish enough
+     information to follow in every detail the building of the
+     ark. From what we can understand, the vessel of
+     Shamashnapishtim was a kind of immense kelek, decked, but
+     without masts or rigging of any sort. The text identifies
+     the festival celebrated by the hero before the embarkation
+     with the festival Akitu of Merodach, at Babylon, during
+     which “Nebo, the powerful son, sailed from Borsippa to
+     Babylon in the bark of the river Asmu, of beauty.” The
+     embarkation of Nebo and his voyage on the stream had
+     probably inspired the information according to which the
+     embarkation of Shamashnapishtim was made the occasion of a
+     festival Akitu, celebrated at Shurippak; the time of the
+     Babylonian festival was probably thought to coincide with
+     the anniversary of the Deluge.
+
+“As soon as the morning became clear, a black cloud arose from the
+foundations of heaven. Bamman growled in its bosom; Nebo and Marduk
+ran before it--ran like two throne-bearers over hill and dale. Nera
+the Great tore up the stake to which the ark was moored. Ninib came up
+quickly; he began the attack; the Anunnaki raised their torches and made
+the earth to tremble at their brilliancy; the tempest of Ramman scaled
+the heaven, changed all the light to darkness, flooded the earth like a
+lake.* For a whole day the hurricane raged, and blew violently over the
+mountains and over the country; the tempest rushed upon men like the
+shock of an army, brother no longer beheld brother, men recognized each
+other no more.
+
+     * The progress of the tempest is described as the attack of
+     the gods, who had resolved on the destruction of men. Ramman
+     is the thunder which growls in the cloud; Nebo, Merodach,
+     Nera the Great (Nergal), and Ninib, denote the different
+     phases of the hurricane from the moment when the wind gets
+     up until it is at its height; the Anunnaki represent the
+     lightning which flashes carelessly across the heaven.
+
+[Illustration: 048.jpg SHAMASHNAPISHTIM SHUT INTO THE ARK.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chalaean intaglio.
+
+In heaven, the gods were afraid of the deluge;* they betook themselves
+to flight, they clambered to the firmament of Anu; the gods, howling
+like dogs, cowered upon the parapet.** Ishtar wailed like a woman
+in travail; she cried out, “the lady of life, the goddess with the
+beautiful voice: ‘The past returns to clay, because I have prophesied
+evil before the gods! Prophesying evil before the gods, I have
+counselled the attack to bring my men to nothing; and these to whom I
+myself have given birth, where are they? Like the spawn of fish they
+encumber the sea! ‘The gods wept with her over the affair of the
+Anunnaki;’ the gods, in the place where they sat weeping, their lips
+were closed.” It was not pity only which made their tears to flow:
+there were mixed up with it feelings of regret and fears for the future.
+Mankind once destroyed, who would then make the accustomed offerings?
+The inconsiderate anger of Bel, while punishing the impiety of their
+creatures, had inflicted injury upon themselves. “Six days and nights
+the wind continued, the deluge and the tempest raged. The seventh day at
+daybreak the storm abated; the deluge, which had carried on warfare like
+an army, ceased, the sea became calm and the hurricane disappeared, the
+deluge ceased. I surveyed the sea with my eyes, raising my voice; but
+all mankind had returned to clay, neither fields nor woods could be
+distinguished.*** I opened the hatchway and the light fell upon my face;
+I sank down, I cowered, I wept, and my tears ran down my cheeks when I
+beheld the world all terror and all sea. At the end of twelve days, a
+point of land stood up from the waters, the ship touched the land of
+Nisir:**** the mountain of Nisir stopped the ship and permitted it to
+float no longer. One day, two days, the mountain of Nisir stopped the
+ship and permitted it to float no longer.
+
+     * The gods enumerated above alone took part in the drama of
+     the Deluge: they were the confederates and emissaries of
+     Bel. The others were present as spectators of the disaster,
+     and were terrified.
+
+     ** The upper part of the mountain wall is here referred to,
+     upon which the heaven is supported. There was a narrow space
+     between the escarpment and the place upon which the vault of
+     the firmament rested: the Babylonian poet represented the
+     gods as crowded like a pack of hounds upon this parapet, and
+     beholding from it the outburst of the tempest and the
+     waters.
+
+     ***The translation is uncertain: the text refers to a legend
+     which has not come down to us, in which Ishtar is related to
+     have counselled the destruction of men.
+
+     **** The Anunnaki represent here the evil genii whom the
+     gods that produced the deluge had let loose, and whom
+     Ramman, Nebo, Merodach, Nergal, and Ninib, all the followers
+     of Bel, had led to the attack upon men: the other deities
+     shared the fears and grief of Ishtar in regard to the
+     ravages which these Anunnaki had brought about (cf. below,
+     pp. 141-143 of this History).
+
+
+
+Three days, four days, the mountain of Nisir* stopped the ship and
+permitted it to float no longer. Five days, six days, the mountain of
+Nisir stopped the ship and permitted it to float no longer. The seventh
+day, at dawn, I took out a dove and let it go: the dove went, turned
+about, and as there was no place to alight upon, came back. I took out a
+swallow and let it go: the swallow went, turned about, and as there was
+no place to alight upon, came back. I took out a raven and let it go:
+the raven went, and saw that the water had abated, and came near the
+ship flapping its wings, croaking, and returned no more.”
+ Shamashnapishtim escaped from the deluge, but he did not know whether
+the divine wrath was appeased, or what would be done with him when it
+became known that he still lived.** He resolved to conciliate the
+gods by expiatory ceremonies. “I sent forth the inhabitants of the ark
+towards the four winds, I made an offering, I poured out a propitiatory
+libation on the summit of the mountain. I set up seven and seven
+vessels, and I placed there some sweet-smelling rushes, some cedar-wood,
+and storax.” He thereupon re-entered the ship to await there the effect
+of his sacrifice.
+
+     * I have adopted, in the translation of this difficult
+     passage, the meaning suggested by Haupt, according to which
+     it ought to be translated, “The field makes nothing more
+     than one with the mountain;” that is to say, “mountains and
+     fields are no longer distinguishable one from another.” I
+     have merely substituted for mountain the version wood, piece
+     of land covered with trees, which Jensen has suggested.
+
+     ** The mountain of Nisir is replaced in the version of
+     Berossus by the Gordyaean mountains of classical geography; a
+     passage of Assur-nazir-pal informs us that it was situated
+     between the Tigris and the Great Zab, according to Delitzsch
+     between 35 deg. and 36 deg. N. latitude. The Assyrian-speaking
+     people interpreted the name as _Salvation_, and a play upon
+     words probably decided the placing upon its slopes the
+     locality where those _saved_ from the deluge landed on the
+     abating of the waters. Fr. Lenormant proposes to identify it
+     with the peak Rowandiz.
+
+The gods, who no longer hoped for such a wind-fall, accepted the
+sacrifice with a wondering joy. “The gods sniffed up the odour, the gods
+sniffed up the excellent odour, the gods gathered like flies above the
+offering. “When Ishtar, the mistress of life, came in her turn, she held
+up the great amulet which Anu had made for her.” * She was still furious
+against those who had determined upon the destruction of mankind,
+especially against Bel: “These gods, I swear it on the necklace of my
+neck! I will not forget them; these days I will remember, and will not
+forget them for ever. Let the other gods come quickly to take part in
+the offering. Bel shall have no part in the offering, for he was not
+wise: but he has caused the deluge, and he has devoted my people to
+destruction.” Bel himself had not recovered his temper: “When he arrived
+in his turn and saw the ship, he remained immovable before it, and his
+heart was filled with rage against the gods of heaven. ‘Who is he who
+has come out of it living? No man must survive the destruction!’” The
+gods had everything to fear from his anger: Ninib was eager to exculpate
+himself, and to put the blame upon the right person. Ea did not disavow
+his acts: “he opened his mouth and spake; he said to Bel the warrior:
+‘Thou, the wisest among the gods, O warrior, why wert thou not wise, and
+didst cause the deluge? The sinner, make him responsible for his sin;
+the criminal, make him responsible for his crime: but be calm, and do
+not cut off all; be patient, and do not drown all. What was the good of
+causing the deluge? A lion had only to come to decimate the people.
+What was the good of causing the deluge? A leopard had only to come to
+decimate the people. What was the good of causing the deluge? Famine
+had only to present itself to desolate the country. What was the good
+of causing the deluge? Nera the Plague had only to come to destroy the
+people. As for me, I did, not reveal the judgment of the gods: I caused
+Khasisadra to dream a dream, and he became aware of the judgment of the
+gods, and then he made his resolve.’” Bel was pacified at the words of
+Ea: “he went up into the interior of the ship; he took hold of my hand
+and made me go up, even me; he made my wife go up, and he pushed her to
+my side; he turned our faces towards him, he placed himself between
+us, and blessed us: ‘Up to this time Shamashnapishtim was a man:
+henceforward let Shamashnapishtim and his wife be reverenced like us,
+the gods, and let Shamashnapishtim dwell afar off, at the mouth of the
+seas, and he carried us away and placed us afar off, at the mouth of the
+seas.’” Another form of the legend relates that by an order of the god,
+Xisuthros, before embarking, had buried in the town of Sippara all the
+books in which his ancestors had set forth the sacred sciences--books
+of oracles and omens, “in which were recorded the beginning, the middle,
+and the end. When he had disappeared, those of his companions who
+remained on board, seeing that he did not return, went out and set off
+in search of him, calling him by name. He did not show himself to them,
+but a voice from heaven enjoined upon them to be devout towards the
+gods, to return to Babylon and dig up the books in order that they might
+be handed down to future generations; the voice also informed them that
+the country in which they were was Armenia. They offered sacrifice in
+turn, they regained their country on foot, they dug up the books of
+Sippara and wrote many more; afterwards they refounded Babylon.” It was
+even maintained in the time of the Seleucido, that a portion of the ark
+existed on one of the summits of the Gordyaean mountains.** Pilgrimages
+were made to it, and the faithful scraped off the bitumen which covered
+it, to make out of it amulets of sovereign virtue against evil spells.
+
+[Illustration: 051.jpg THE JUDI MOUNTAINS SOMETIMES IDENTIFIED WITH TUB
+NTSIB MOUNTAINS.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by G. Smith, _Assyrian
+     Discoveries_, p. 108.
+
+     * We are ignorant of the object which the goddess lifted up:
+     it may have been the sceptre surmounted by a radiating star,
+     such as we see on certain cylinders. Several Assyriologists
+     translate it arrows or lightning. Ishtar is, in fact, an
+     armed goddess who throws the arrow or lightning made by her
+     father Anu, the heaven.
+
+     ** Bekossus, fragm. xv. The legend about the remains of the
+     ark has passed into Jewish tradition concerning the Deluge.
+     Nicholas of Damascus relates, like Berossus, that they were
+     still to be seen on the top of Mount Baris. From that time
+     they have been continuously seen, sometimes on one peak and
+     sometimes on another. In the last century they were pointed
+     out to Chardin, and the memory of them has not died out in
+     our own century. Discoveries of charcoal and bitumen, such
+     as those made at Gebel Judi, upon one of the mountains
+     identified with Nisir, probably explain many of these local
+     traditions.
+
+The chronicle of these fabulous times placed, soon after the abating of
+the waters, the foundation of a new dynasty, as extraordinary or almost
+as extraordinary in character as that before the flood. According to
+Berossus it was of Chaldaean origin, and comprised eighty-six kings, who
+bore rule during 34,080 years; the first two, Evechous and Khomasbelos,
+reigned 2400 and 2700 years, while the later reigns did not exceed
+the ordinary limits of human life. An attempt was afterwards made to
+harmonize them with probability: the number of kings was reduced to
+six, and their combined reigns to 225 years. This attempt arose from
+a misapprehension of their true character; names and deeds, everything
+connected with them belongs to myth and fiction only, and is irreducible
+to history proper. They supplied to priests and poets material for
+scores of different stories, of which several have come down to us in
+fragments. Some are short, and serve as preambles to prayers or magical
+formulas; others are of some length, and may pass for real epics. The
+gods intervene in them, and along with kings play an important part. It
+is Nera, for instance, the lord of the plague, who declares war against
+mankind in order to punish them for having despised the authority of
+Anu. He makes Babylon to feel his wrath first: “The children of Babel,
+they were as birds, and the bird-catcher, thou wert he! thou takest them
+in the net, thou enclosest them, thou decimatest them--hero Nera!”
+ One after the other he attacks the mother cities of the Euphrates and
+obliges them to render homage to him--even Uruk, “the dwelling of Anu
+and Ishtar--the town of the priestesses, of the _almehs_, and the sacred
+courtesans; “then he turns upon the foreign nations and carries his
+ravages as far as Phoenicia. In other fragments, the hero Etana makes an
+attempt to raise himself to heaven, and the eagle, his companion, flies
+away with him, without, however, being able to bring the enterprise to
+a successful issue. Nimrod and his exploits are known to us from the
+Bible.* “He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said,
+Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of
+his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of
+Shinar.” Almost all the characteristics which are attributed by Hebrew
+tradition to Nimrod we find in G-ilgames, King of Uruk and descendant of
+the Shamashnapishtim who had witnessed the deluge.**
+
+     * Genesis x. 9, 10. Among the Jews and Mussulmans a complete
+     cycle of legends have developed around Nimrod. He built the
+     Tower of Babel; he threw Abraham into a fiery furnace, and
+     he tried to mount to heaven on the back of an eagle. Sayce
+     and Grivel saw in Nimrod an heroic form of Merodach, the god
+     of Babylonia: the majority of living Assyriologists prefer
+     to follow Smith’s example, and identify him with the hero
+     Gilgames.
+
+     ** The name of this hero is composed of three signs, which
+     Smith provisionally rendered Isdubar--a reading which,
+     modified into Gishdhubar, Gistubar, is still retained by
+     many Assyriologists. There have been proposed one after
+     another the renderings Dhubar, Namrudu, Anamarutu, Numarad,
+     Namrasit, all of which exhibit in the name of the hero that
+     of Nimrod. Pinches discovered, in 1890, what appears to be
+     the true signification of the three signs,Gilgamesh,
+     Gilgames; Sayce and Oppert have compared this name with that
+     of Gilgamos, a Babylonian hero, of whom. AElian has preserved
+     the memory. A. Jeremias continued to reject both the reading
+     and the identification.
+
+Several copies of a poem, in which an unknown scribe had celebrated his
+exploits, existed about the middle of the VIIth century before our era
+in the Royal Library at Nineveh; they had been transcribed by order of
+Assur-banipal from a more ancient copy, and the fragments of them which
+have come down to us, in spite of their lacunae, enable us to restore
+the original text, if not in its entirety, at least in regard to
+the succession of events. They were divided into twelve episodes
+corresponding with the twelve divisions of the year, and the ancient
+Babylonian author was guided in his choice of these divisions by
+something more than mere chance. Gilgames, at first an ordinary mortal
+under the patronage of the gods, had himself become a god and son of the
+goddess Aruru: “he had seen the abyss, he had learned everything that
+is kept secret and hidden, he had even made known to men what had taken
+place before the deluge.” The sun, who had protected him in his human
+condition, had placed him beside himself on the judgment-seat, and
+delegated to him authority to pronounce decisions from which there was
+no appeal: he was, as it were, a sun on a small scale, before whom the
+kings, princes, and great ones of the earth humbly bowed their heads.*
+The scribes had, therefore, some authority for treating the events of
+his life after the model of the year, and for expressing them in twelve
+chants, which answered to the annual course of the sun through the
+twelve months.
+
+     * The identity of Gilgames with the Accadian fire-god, or
+     rather with the sun, was recognized from the first by H.
+     Rawlinson, and has been accepted since by almost all
+     Assyriologists. A tablet brought back by G. Smith, called
+     attention to by Fr. Delitzsch, and published by Haupt,
+     contains the remains of a hymn addressed to Gilgames, “the
+     powerful king, the king of the Spirits of the Earth.”
+
+[Illustration: 057.jpg GILGAMES STRANGLES A LION.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from
+     Khorsabad, in the Museum of the Louvre
+
+The whole story is essentially an account of his struggles with Ishtar,
+and the first pages reveal him as already at issue with the goddess. His
+portrait, such as the monuments have preserved it for us, is singularly
+unlike the ordinary type: one would be inclined to regard it as
+representing an individual of a different race, a survival of some very
+ancient nation which had held rule on the plains of the Euphrates before
+the arrival of the Sumerian or Semitic* tribes.
+
+     * Smith (The Chaldaean Account of Genesis, p. 194) remarked
+     the difference between the representations of Gilgames and
+     the typical Babylonian: he concluded from this that the hero
+     was of Ethiopian origin. Hommel declares that his features
+     have neither a Sumerian nor Semitic aspect, and that they
+     raise an insoluble question in ethnology.
+
+His figure is tall, broad, muscular to an astonishing degree, and
+expresses at once vigour and activity; his head is massive, bony, almost
+square, with a somewhat flattened face, a large nose, and prominent
+cheek-bones, the whole framed by an abundance of hair, and a thick beard
+symmetrically curled. All the young men of Uruk, the well-protected,
+were captivated by the prodigious strength and beauty of the hero; the
+elders of the city betook themselves to Ishtar to complain of the state
+of neglect to which the young generation had relegated them. “He has no
+longer a rival in their hearts, but thy subjects are led to battle, and
+Gilgames does not send one child back to his father. Night and day they
+cry after him: ‘It is he the shepherd of Uruk, the well-protected, he
+is its shepherd and master, he the powerful, the perfect and the wise.’”
+ Even the women did not escape the general enthusiasm: “he leaves not a
+single virgin to her mother, a single daughter to a warrior, a single
+wife to her master. Ishtar heard their complaint, the gods heard it, and
+cried with a loud voice to Aruru: ‘It is thou, Aruru, who hast given him
+birth; create for him now his fellow, that he may be able to meet him on
+a day when it pleaseth him, in order that they may fight with each other
+and Uruk may be delivered.’When Aruru heard them, she created in her
+heart a man of Anu. Aruru washed her hands, took a bit of clay, cast it
+upon the earth, kneaded it and created Babani, the warrior, the exalted
+scion, the man of Ninib, whose whole body is covered with hair, whose
+tresses are as long as those of a woman; the locks of his hair bristle
+on his head like those on the corn-god; he is clad in a vestment
+like that of the god of the fields; he browses with the gazelles, he
+quenches his thirst with the beasts of the field, he sports with the
+beasts of the waters.” Frequent representations of Eabani are found upon
+the monuments; he has the horns of a goat, the legs and tail of a bull.*
+He possessed not only the strength of a brute, but his intelligence also
+embraced all things, the past and the future: he would probably have
+triumphed over Gilgames if Shamash had not succeeded in attaching them
+to one another by an indissoluble tie of friendship. The difficulty was
+to draw these two future friends together, and to bring them face to
+face without their coming to blows; the god sent his courier Saidu,
+the hunter, to study the habits of the monster, and to find out the
+necessary means to persuade him to come down peaceably to Uruk.
+“Saidu, the hunter, proceeded to meet Eabani near the entrance of the
+watering-place. One day, two days, three days, Eabani met him at the
+entrance of the watering-place. He perceived Saidu, and his countenance
+darkened: he entered the enclosure, he became sad, he groaned, he cried
+with a loud voice, his heart was heavy, his features were distorted,
+sobs burst from his breast. The hunter saw from a distance that his face
+was inflamed with anger,” and judging it more prudent not to persevere
+farther in his enterprise, returned to impart to the god what he had
+observed.
+
+     * Smith was the first, I believe, to compare his form to
+     that of a satyr or faun; this comparison is rendered more
+     probable by the fact that the modern inhabitants of Chaldaea
+     believe in the existence of similar monsters. A. Jeremias
+     places Eabani alongside Priapus, who is generally a god of
+     the fields, and a clever soothsayer. Following out these
+     ideas, we might compare our Eabani with the Graico-Roman
+     Proteus, who pastures the flocks of the sea, and whom it was
+     necessary to pursue and seize by force or cunning words to
+     compel him to give oracular predictions.
+
+[Illustration: 060.jpg GILGAMES FIGHTS, ON THE LEFT WITH A BULL, ON THE
+RIGHT WITH EABANI.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the
+     Museum at the Hague. The original measures about 1 7/10 inch
+     in height.
+
+“I was afraid,” said he, in finishing his narrative,* “and I did not
+approach him. He had filled up the pit which I had dug to trap him, he
+broke the nets which I had spread, he delivered from my hands the cattle
+and the beasts of the field, he did not allow me to search the country
+through.” Shamash thought that where the strongest man might fail by the
+employment of force, a woman might possibly succeed by the attractions
+of pleasure; he commanded Saidu to go quickly to Uruk and there to
+choose from among the priestesses of Ishtar one of the most beautiful.**
+The hunter presented himself before Grilgames, recounted to him his
+adventures, and sought his permission to take away with him one of the
+sacred courtesans. “‘Go, my hunter, take the priestess; when the beasts
+come to the watering-place, let her display her beauty; he will see
+her, he will approach her, and his beasts that troop around him will be
+scattered.’”*** The hunter went, he took with him the priestess, he took
+the straight road; the third day they arrived at the fatal plain. The
+hunter and the priestess sat down to rest; one day, two days, they sat
+at the entrance of the watering-place from whose waters Eabani drank
+along with the animals, where he sported with the beasts of the water.
+
+     * Haupt, Das Babylonische Nimrodepos, p. 9, 11. 42-50. The
+     beginning of each line is destroyed, and the translation of
+     the whole is only approximate.
+
+     ** The priestesses of Ishtar were young and beautiful women,
+     devoted to the service of the goddess and her worshippers.
+     Besides the title _qadishtu,_ priestess, they bore various
+     names, _kizireti, ukhati, kharimati_; the priestess who
+     accompanied Saidu was an _ukhat_.
+
+     *** As far as can be guessed from the narrative, interrupted
+     as it is by so many lacunae, the power of Eabani over the
+     beasts of the field seems to have depended on his
+     continence. From the moment in which he yields to his
+     passions the beasts fly from him as they would do from an
+     ordinary mortal; there is then no other resource for him but
+     to leave the solitudes to live among men in towns. This
+     explains the means devised by Shamash against him: cf. in
+     the _Arabian Nights_ the story of Shehabeddin.
+
+“When Eabani arrived, he who dwells in the mountains, and who browses
+upon the grass like the gazelles, who drinks with the animals, who
+sports with the beasts of the water, the priestess saw the satyr.” She
+was afraid and blushed, but the hunter recalled her to her duty. “It is
+he, priestess. Undo thy garment, show him thy form, that he may be
+taken with thy beauty; be not ashamed, but deprive him of his soul. He
+perceives thee, he is rushing towards thee, arrange thy garment; he is
+coming upon thee, receive him with every art of woman; his beasts
+which troop around him will be scattered, and he will press thee to his
+breast.” The priestess did as she was commanded; she received him with
+every art of woman, and he pressed her to his breast. Six days and seven
+nights, Eabani remained near the priestess, his well-beloved. When he
+got tired of pleasure he turned his face towards his cattle, and he saw
+that the gazelles had turned aside and that the beasts of the field had
+fled far from him. Eabani was alarmed, he fell into a swoon, his knees
+became stiff because his cattle had fled from him. While he lay as if
+dead, he heard the voice of the priestess: he recovered his senses,
+he came to himself full of love; he seated himself at the feet of the
+priestess, he looked into her face, and while the priestess spoke his
+ears listened. For it was to him the priestess spoke--to him, Eabani.
+“Thou who art superb, Eabani, as a god, why dost thou live among
+the beasts of the field? Come, I will conduct thee to Uruk the
+well-protected, to the glorious house, the dwelling of Anu and
+Ishtar--to the place where is Gilgames, whose strength is supreme, and
+who, like a Urus, excels the heroes in strength.” While she thus spoke
+to him, he hung upon her words, he the wise of heart, he realized
+by anticipation a friend. Eabani said to the priestess: “Let us go,
+priestess; lead me to the glorious and holy abode of Anu and Ishtar--to
+the place where is Gilgames, whose strength is supreme, and who, like
+a Urus, prevails over the heroes by his strength. I will fight with him
+and manifest to him my power; I will send forth a panther against Uruk,
+and he must struggle with it.” * The priestess conducted her prisoner
+to Uruk, but the city at that moment was celebrating the festival of
+Tammuz, and Gilgames did not care to interrupt the solemnities in order
+to face the tasks to which Eabani had invited him: what was the use of
+such trials since the gods themselves had deigned to point out to him in
+a dream the line of conduct he was to pursue, and had taken up the
+cause of their children. Shamash, in fact, began the instruction of the
+monster, and sketched an alluring picture of the life which awaited him
+if he would agree not to return to his mountain home. Not only would
+the priestess belong to him for ever, having none other than him for
+husband, but Gilgames would shower upon him riches and honours. “He will
+give thee wherein to sleep a great bed cunningly wrought; he will seat
+thee on his divan, he will give thee a place on his left hand, and
+the princes of the earth shall kiss thy feet, the people of Uruk
+shall grovel on the ground before thee.” It was by such flatteries
+and promises for the future that Gilgames gained the affection of his
+servant Eabani, whom he loved for ever.
+
+     * I have softened down a good deal the account of the
+     seduction, which is described with a sincerity and precision
+     truly primitive.
+
+Shamash had reasons for being urgent. Khumbaba, King of Elam, had
+invaded the country of the Euphrates, destroyed the temples, and
+substituted for the national worship the cult of foreign deities;* the
+two heroes in concert could alone check his advance, and kill him. They
+collected their troops, set out on the march, having learned from a
+female magician that the enemy had concealed himself in a sacred grove.
+They entered it in disguise, “and stopped in rapture for a moment before
+the cedar trees; they contemplated the height of them, they contemplated
+the thickness of them; the place where Khumbaba was accustomed to walk
+up and down with rapid strides, alleys were made in it, paths kept up
+with great care. They saw at length the hill of cedars, the abode of the
+gods, the sanctuary of Irnini, and before the hill, a magnificent cedar,
+and pleasant grateful shade.” They surprised Khumbaba at the moment when
+he was about to take his outdoor exercise, cut off his head, and came
+back in triumph to Uruk.** “Gilgames brightened his weapons, he polished
+his weapons. He put aside his war-harness, he put on his white garments,
+he adorned himself with the royal insignia, and bound on the diadem:
+Gilgames put his tiara on his head, and bound on his diadem.”
+
+     * Khumbaba contains the name of the Elamite god, Khumba,
+     whichenters into the composition of names of towns, like Ti-
+     Khumbi; or into those of princes, as Khumbanigash,
+     Khumbasundasa, Khumbasidh. The comparison between Khumbaba
+     and Combabos, the hero of a singular legend, current in the
+     second century of our era, does not seem to be admissible,
+     at least for the present. The names agree well in sound,
+     but, as Oppert has rightly said, no event in the history of
+     Combabos finds a counterpart in anything we know of that of
+     Khumbaba up to the present.
+
+     ** G. Smith places at this juncture Gilgames’s accession to
+     the throne; this is not confirmed by the fragments of the
+     text known up to the present, and it is not even certain
+     that the poem relates anywhere the exaltation and coronation
+     of the hero. It would appear even that Gilgames is
+     recognized from the beginning as King of Uruk, the well-
+     protected.
+
+Ishtar saw him thus adorned, and the same passion consumed her which
+inflames mortals.* “To the love of Gilgames she raised her eyes, the
+mighty Ishtar, and she said, ‘Come, Gilgames, be my husband, thou! Thy
+love, give it to me, as a gift to me, and thou shalt be my spouse, and
+I shall be thy wife. I will place thee in a chariot of lapis and gold,
+with golden wheels and mountings of onyx: thou shalt be drawn in it by
+great lions, and thou shalt enter our house with the odorous incense of
+cedar-wood. When thou shalt have entered our house, all the country by
+the sea shall embrace thy feet, kings shall bow down before thee, the
+nobles and the great ones, the gifts of the mountains and of the plain
+they will bring to thee as tribute. Thy oxen shall prosper, thy sheep
+shall be doubly fruitful, thy mules shall spontaneously come under the
+yoke, thy chariot-horse shall be strong and shall galop, thy bull
+under the yoke shall have no rival.’” Gilgames repels this unexpected
+declaration with a mixed feeling of contempt and apprehension: he abuses
+the goddess, and insolently questions her as to what has become of her
+mortal husbands during her long divine life. “Tammuz, the spouse of thy
+youth, thou hast condemned him to weep from year to year.** Nilala, the
+spotted sparrow-hawk, thou lovedst him, afterward thou didst strike
+him and break his wing: he continues in the wood and cries: ‘O, my
+wings!’ *** Thou didst afterwards love a lion of mature strength, and
+then didst cause him to be rent by blows, seven at a time.**** Thou
+lovedst also a stallion magnificent in the battle; thou didst devote him
+to death by the goad and whip: thou didst compel him to galop for ten
+leagues, thou didst devote him to exhaustion and thirst, thou didst
+devote to tears his mother Silili.
+
+     * Ishtar’s declaration to Gilgames and the hero’s reply have
+     been frequently translated and summarized since the
+     discovery of the poem. Smith thought to connect this episode
+     with the “Descent of Ishtar to Hades,” which we shall meet
+     with further on in this History, but his opinion is no
+     longer accepted. The “Descent of Ishtar” in its present
+     condition is the beginning of a magical formula: it has
+     nothing to do with the acts of Gilgames.
+
+     ** Tammuz-Adonis is the only one known to us among this long
+     list of the lovers of the goddess. The others must have been
+     fairly celebrated among the Chaldaeans, since the few words
+     devoted to each is sufficient to recall them to the memory
+     of the reader, but we have not as yet found anything
+     bearing upon their adventures in the table of the ancient
+     Chaldaeo-Assyrian classics, which had been copied out by a
+     Ninevite scribe for the use of Assur-bani-pal, the title of
+     the poems is wanting.
+
+     *** The text gives _kappi_, and the legend evidently refers
+     to a bird whose cry resembles the word meaning “my
+     wings.” The spotted sparrow-hawk utters a cry which may be
+     strictly understood and interpreted in this way.
+
+     **** This is evidently the origin of our fable of the
+     “Amorous Lion.”
+
+Thou didst also love the shepherd Tabulu, who lavished incessantly upon
+thee the smoke of sacrifices, and daily slaughtered goats to thee; thou
+didst strike him and turn him into a leopard; his own servants went in
+pursuit of him, and his dogs followed his trail.* Thou didst love
+Ishullanu, thy father’s gardener, who ceaselessly brought thee presents
+of fruit, and decorated every day thy table. Thou raisedst thine eyes to
+him, thou seizedst him: ‘My Ishullanu, we shall eat melons, then shalt
+thou stretch forth thy hand and remove that which separates us.’
+Ishullanu said to thee: ‘I, what dost thou require from me? O my mother,
+prepare no food for me, I myself will not eat: anything I should eat
+would be for me a misfortune and a curse, and my body would be stricken
+by a mortal coldness.’ Then thou didst hear him and didst become angry,
+thou didst strike him, thou didst transform him into a dwarf, thou didst
+set him up on the middle of a couch; he could not rise up, he could not
+get down from where he was. Thou lovest me now, afterwards thou wilt
+strike me as thou didst these.” **
+
+     * The changing of a lover, by the goddess or sorceress
+     who loves him, into a beast, occurs pretty frequently in
+     Oriental tales; as to the man changed by Ishtar into a
+     brute, which she caused to be torn by his own hounds, we may
+     compare the classic story of Artemis surprised at her bath
+     by Actseon.
+
+     ** As to the misfortune of Ishullanu, we may compare the
+     story in the _Abrabian Nights_ of the Fisherman and the
+     Genie shut up in the leaden bottle. The king of the Black
+     Islands was transformed into a statue from the waist to the
+     feet by the sorceress, whom he had married and afterwards
+     offended; he remained lying on a bed, from which he could
+     not get down, and the unfaithful one came daily to whip him.
+
+“When Ishtar heard him, she fell into a fury, she ascended to heaven.
+The mighty Ishtar presented herself before her father Anu, before her
+mother Anatu she presented herself, and said: ‘My father, Grilgames
+has despised me. Grilgames has enumerated my unfaithfulnesses, my
+unfaithfulnesses and my ignominies.’ Anu opened his mouth and spake to
+the mighty Ishtar: ‘Canst thou not remain quiet now that Gilgames
+has enumerated to thee thy unfaithfulnesses, thy unfaithfulnesses and
+ignominies?’” But she refused to allow the outrage to go unpunished.
+She desired her father to make a celestial urus who would execute her
+vengeance on the hero; and, as he hesitated, she threatened to destroy
+every living thing in the entire universe by suspending the impulses of
+desire, and the effect of love. Anu finally gives way to her rage: he
+creates a frightful urus, whose ravages soon rendered uninhabitable the
+neighbourhood of Uruk the well-protected. The two heroes, Gilgames and
+Eabani, touched by the miseries and terror of the people, set out on the
+chase, and hastened to rouse the beast from its lair on the banks of
+the Euphrates in the marshes, to which it resorted after each murderous
+onslaught.
+
+[Illustration: 068.jpg GILGAMES AND EABANI FIGHTING WITH MONSTERS.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the New
+     York Museum. The original is about an inch and a half in
+     height.
+
+A troop of three hundred valiant warriors penetrated into the thickets
+in three lines to drive the animal towards the heroes. The beast with
+head lowered charged them; but Eabani seized it with one hand by the
+right horn, and with the other by the tail, and forced it to rear.
+Gilgames at the same instant, seizing it by the leg, plunged his dagger
+into its heart. The beast being despatched, they celebrated their
+victory by a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and poured out a libation to
+Sharnash, whose protection had not failed them in this last danger.
+Ishtar, her projects of vengeance having been defeated, “ascended the
+ramparts of Uruk the well-protected. She sent forth a loud cry, she
+hurled forth a malediction: ‘Cursed be Gilgames, who has insulted me,
+and who has killed the celestial urus.’ Eabani heard these words of
+Ishtar, he tore a limb from the celestial urus and threw it in the face
+of the goddess: ‘Thou also I will conquer, and I will treat thee like
+him: I will fasten the curse upon thy sides.’ Ishtar assembled her
+priestesses, her female votaries, her frenzied women, and together they
+intoned a dirge over the limb of the celestial urus. Gilgames assembled
+all the turners in ivory, and the workmen were astonished at the
+enormous size of the horns; they were worth thirty _mimae_ of lapis,
+their diameter was a half-cubit, and both of them could contain six
+measures of oil.” He dedicated them to Shamash, and suspended them on
+the corners of the altar; then he washed his hands in the Euphrates,
+re-entered Uruk, and passed through the streets in triumph. A riotous
+banquet ended the day, but on that very night Eabani felt himself
+haunted by an inexplicable and baleful dream, and fortune abandoned the
+two heroes. Gilgames had cried in the intoxication of success to the
+women of Uruk: “Who shines forth among the valiant? Who is glorious
+above all men? Gilgames shines forth among the valiant, Gilgames is
+glorious above all men.” Ishtar made him feel her vengeance in the
+destruction of that beauty of which he was so proud; she covered him
+with leprosy from head to foot, and made him an object of horror to his
+friends of the previous day. A life of pain and a frightful death--he
+alone could escape them who dared to go to the confines of the world in
+quest of the Fountain of Youth and the Tree of Life which were said to
+be there hidden; but the road was rough, unknown, beset by dangers, and
+no one of those who had ventured upon it had ever returned. Gilgames
+resolved to brave every peril rather than submit to his fate, and
+proposed this fresh adventure to his friend Eabani, who, notwithstanding
+his sad forebodings, consented to accompany him. They killed a tiger
+on the way, but Eabani was mortally wounded in a struggle in which they
+engaged in the neighbourhood of Nipur, and breathed his last after an
+agony of twelve days’ duration.
+
+“Gilgames wept bitterly over his friend Eabani, grovelling on the bare
+earth.” The selfish fear of death struggled in his spirit with regret at
+having lost so dear a companion, a tried friend in so many encounters.
+“I do not wish to die like Eabani: sorrow has entered my heart, the fear
+of death has taken possession of me, and I am overcome. But I will go
+with rapid steps to the strong Shamashnapishtim, son of Ubaratutu,
+to learn from him how to become immortal.” He leaves the plain of the
+Euphrates, he plunges boldly into the desert, he loses himself for a
+whole day amid frightful solitudes. “I reached at nightfall a ravine in
+the mountain, I beheld lions and trembled, but I raised my face towards
+the moon-god, and I prayed: my supplication ascended even to the father
+of the gods, and he extended over me his protection.” A vision from on
+high revealed to him the road he was to take. With axe and dagger
+in hand, he reached the entrance of a dark passage leading into the
+mountain of Mashu,* “whose gate is guarded day and night by supernatural
+beings.”
+
+     * The land of Mashu is the land to the west of the
+     Euphrates, coterminous on one part with the northern regions
+     of the Red Sea, on the other with the Persian Gulf; the name
+     appears to be preserved in that of the classic Mesene, and
+     possibly in the land of Massa of the Hebrews.
+
+[Illustration: 071.jpg THE SCORPION-MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS OF MASHU.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian intaglio.
+
+“The scorpion-men, of whom the stature extends upwards as far as the
+supports of heaven, and of whom the breasts descend as low as Hades,
+guard the door. The terror which they inspire strikes down like a
+thunderbolt; their look kills, their splendour confounds and overturns
+the mountains; they watch over the sun at his rising and setting.
+Grilgames perceived them, and his features were distorted with fear and
+horror; their savage appearance disturbed his mind. The scorpion-man
+said to his wife: ‘He who comes towards us, his body is marked by the
+gods.’* The scorpion-woman replied to him: ‘In his mind he is a god, in
+his mortal covering he is a man.’ The scorpion-man spoke and said:
+‘It is as the father of the gods, has commanded, he has travelled over
+distant regions before joining us, thee and me.’” Gilgames learns
+that the guardians are not evilly disposed towards him, and becomes
+reassured, tell them his misfortunes and implores permission to pass
+beyond them so as to reach “Sha-mashnapishtim, his father, who was
+translated to the gods, and who has at his disposal both life and
+death.” The scorpion-man in vain shows to him the perils before him, of
+which the horrible darkness enveloping the Mashu mountains is not the
+least: Gilgames proceeds through the depths of the darkness for long
+hours, and afterwards comes out in the neighbourhood of a marvellous
+forest upon the shore of the ocean which encircles the world. One tree
+especially excites his wonder: “As soon as he sees it he runs towards
+it. Its fruits are so many precious stones, its boughs are splendid
+to look upon, for the branches are weighed down with lapis, and their
+fruits are superb.” When his astonishment had calmed down, Gilgames
+begins to grieve, and to curse the ocean which stays his steps. “Sabitu,
+the virgin who is seated on the throne of the seas,” perceiving him
+from a distance, retires at first to her castle, and barricades herself
+within it. He calls out to her from the strand, implores and threatens
+her in turn, adjures her to help him in his voyage. “If it can be done,
+I will cross the sea; if it cannot be done, I will lay me down on the
+land to die.” The goddess is at length touched by his tears. “Gilgames,
+there has never been a passage hither, and no one from time immemorial
+has been able to cross the sea. Shamash the valiant crossed the sea;
+after Shamash, who can cross it? The crossing is troublesome, the way
+difficult, perilous the Water of Death, which, like a bolt, is drawn
+between thee and thy aim. Even if, Gilgames, thou didst cross the
+sea, what wouldest thou do on arriving at the Water of Death?” Arad-Ea,
+Shamashnapishtim’s mariner, can alone bring the enterprise to a happy
+ending: “if it is possible, thou shalt cross the sea with him; if it is
+not possible, thou shalt retrace thy steps.”
+
+* We must not forget that Gilgames is covered with leprosy; this is the
+disease with which the Chaldaean gods mark their enemies when they wish
+to punish them in a severe fashion.
+
+[Illustration: 073.jpg GILGAMES AND ARAD-EA NAVIGATING THEIR VESSEL.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the
+     British Museum. The original measures a little over an inch.
+
+Arad-Ea and the hero took ship: forty days’ tempestuous cruising brought
+them to the Waters of Death, which with a supreme effort they passed.
+Beyond these they rested on their oars and loosed their girdles: the
+happy island rose up before them, and Shamashnapishtim stood upon the
+shore, ready to answer the questions of his grandson.
+
+None but a god dare enter his mysterious paradise: the bark bearing
+an ordinary mortal must stop at some distance from the shore, and the
+conversation is carried on from on board. Gilgames narrated once
+more the story of his life, and makes known the object of his visit;
+Shamashnapishtim answers him stoically that death follows from an
+inexorable law, to which it is better to submit with a good grace.
+“However long the time we shall build houses, however long the time we
+shall put our seal to contracts, however long the time brothers shall
+quarrel with each other, however long the time there shall be hostility
+between kings, however long the time rivers shall overflow their banks,
+we shall not be able to portray any image of death. When the spirits
+salute a man at his birth, then the genii of the earth, the great gods,
+Mamitu the moulder of destinies, all of them together assign a fate to
+him, they determine for him his life and death; but the day of his death
+remains unknown to him.” Gilgames thinks, doubtless, that his forefather
+is amusing himself at his expense in preaching resignation, seeing that
+he himself had been able to escape this destiny. “I look upon thee,
+Shamashnapishtim, and thy appearance has not changed: thou art like me
+and not different, thou art like me and I am like thee. Thou wouldest
+be strong enough of heart to enter upon a combat, to judge by thy
+appearance; tell me, then, how thou hast obtained this existence among
+the gods to which thou hast aspired?” Shamashnapishtim yields to his
+wish, if only to show him how abnormal his own case was, and indicate
+the merits which had marked him out for a destiny superior to that of
+the common herd of humanity. He describes the deluge to him, and relates
+how he was able to escape from it by the favour of Ea, and how by that
+of Bel he was made while living a member of the army of the gods. “‘And
+now,’ he adds, ‘as far as thou art concerned, which one of the Gods will
+bestow upon thee the strength to obtain the life which thou seekest?
+Come, go to sleep!’ Six days and seven nights he is as a man whose
+strength appears suspended, for sleep has fallen upon him like a blast
+of wind. Shamashnapishtim spoke to his wife: ‘Behold this man who asks
+for life, and upon whom sleep has fallen like a blast of wind.’ The wife
+answers Shamashnapishtim, the man of distant lands: ‘Cast a spell upon
+him, this man, and he will eat of the magic broth; and the road by which
+he has come, he will retrace it in health of body; and the great gate
+through which he has come forth, he will return by it to his country.’
+Shamashnapishtim spoke to his wife: ‘The misfortunes of this man
+distress thee: very well, cook the broth, and place it by his head.’
+And while Gilgames still slept on board his vessel, the material for the
+broth was gathered; on the second day it was picked, on the third it was
+steeped, on the fourth Shamashnapishtim prepared his pot, on the fifth
+he put into it ‘Senility,’ on the sixth the broth was cooked, on the
+seventh he cast his spell suddenly on his man, and the latter consumed
+the broth. Then Gilgames spoke to Shamashnapishtim, the inhabitant of
+distant lands: ‘I hesitated, slumber laid hold of me; thou hast cast a
+spell upon me, thou hast given me the broth.’” The effect would not have
+been lasting, if other ceremonies had not followed in addition to this
+spell from the sorcerer’s kitchen: Gilgames after this preparation could
+now land upon the shore of the happy island and purify himself there.
+Shamashnapishtim confided this business to his mariner Arad-Ea: “‘The
+man whom thou hast brought, his body is covered with ulcers, the leprous
+scabs have spoiled the beauty of his body. Take him, Arad-Ea, lead him
+to the place of purification, let him wash his ulcers white as snow in
+the water, let him get rid of his scabs, and let the sea bear them away
+so that at length his body may appear healthy. He will then change
+the fillet which binds his brows, and the loin-cloth which hides his
+nakedness: until he returns to his country, until he reaches the end of
+his journey, let him by no means put off the loin-cloth, however ragged;
+then only shall he have always a clean one.’ Then Arad-Ea took him and
+conducted him to the place of purification: he washed his ulcers white
+as snow in the water, he got rid of his scabs, and the sea carried them
+away, so that at length his body appeared healthy. He changed the fillet
+which bound his brows, the loincloth which hid his nakedness: until
+he should reach the end of his journey, he was not to put off the
+loin-cloth, however ragged; then alone was he to have a clean one.” The
+cure effected, Gilgames goes again on board his bark, and returns to the
+place where Shamashnapishtim was awaiting him.
+
+Shamashnapishtim would not send his descendant back to the land of the
+living without making him a princely present. “His wife spoke to him,
+to him Shamashnapishtim, the inhabitant of distant lands: ‘Gilgames has
+come, he is comforted, he is cured; what wilt thou give to him, now that
+he is about to return to his country?’ He took the oars, Gilgames, he
+brought the bark near the shore, and Shamashnapishtim spoke to him, to
+Gilgames: ‘Gilgames, thou art going from here comforted; what shall I
+give thee, now that thou art about to return to thy country? I am about
+to reveal to thee, Gilgames, a secret, and the judgment of the gods I am
+about to tell it thee. There is a plant similar to the hawthorn in its
+flower, and whose thorns prick like the viper. If thy hand can lay hold
+of that plant without being torn, break from it a branch, and bear it
+with thee; it will secure for thee an eternal youth.’Gilgames gathers
+the branch, and in his joy plans with Arad-Ea future enterprises:
+‘Arad-Ea, this plant is the plant of renovation, by which a man
+obtains life; I will bear it with me to Uruk the well-protected, I will
+cultivate a bush from it, I will cut some of it, and its name shall
+be, “the old man becomes young by it;” I will eat of it, and I shall
+repossess the vigour of my youth.’” He reckoned without the gods, whose
+jealous minds will not allow men to participate in their privileges.
+The first place on which they set foot on shore, “he perceived a well of
+fresh water, went down to it, and whilst he was drawing water, a serpent
+came out of it, and snatched from him the plant, yea--the serpent rushed
+out and bore away the plant, and while escaping uttered a malediction.
+That day Gilgames sat down, he wept, and his tears streamed down his
+cheeks he said to the mariner Arad-Ba: ‘What is the use, Arad-Ea, of my
+renewed strength; what is the use of my heart’s rejoicing in my return
+to life? It is not myself I have served; it is this earthly lion I have
+served. Hardly twenty leagues on the road, and he for himself alone has
+already taken possession of the plant. As I opened the well, the plant
+was lost to me, and the genius of the fountain took possession of it:
+who am I that I should tear it from him?’” He re-embarks in sadness,
+he re-enters Uruk the well-protected, and at length begins to think of
+celebrating the funeral solemnities of Eabani, to whom he was not able
+to show respect at the time of his death. He supervises them, fulfils
+the rites, intones the final chant: “The temples, thou shalt enter them
+no more; the white vestments, thou shalt no longer put them on; the
+sweet-smelling ointments, thou shalt no longer anoint thyself with them
+to envelop thee with their perfume. Thou shalt no longer press thy
+bow to the ground to bend it, but those that the bow has wounded shall
+surround thee; thou no longer holdest thy sceptre in thy hand, but
+spectres fascinate thee; thou no longer adornest thy feet with wings,
+thou no longer givest forth a sound upon the earth. Thy wife whom thou
+lovedst thou embracest her no more; thy wife whom thou hatedst thou
+beatest her no more. Thy daughter whom thou lovedst thou embracest her
+no more; thy daughter whom thou hatedst, thou beatest her no more. The
+resounding earth lies heavy upon thee, she who is dark, she who is
+dark, Tjinazu the mother, she who is dark, whose side is-not veiled with
+splendid vestments, whose bosom, like a new-born animal, is not covered.
+Eabani has descended from the earth to Hades; it is not the messenger
+of Nergal the implacable who has snatched him away, it is not the plague
+which has carried him off, it is not consumption that has carried him
+off, it is the earth which has carried him off; it is not the field of
+battle which has carried him off, it is the earth which has carried him
+off!” Gilgames dragged himself along from temple to temple, repeating
+his complaint before Bel and before Sin, and at length threw himself
+at the feet of the god of the Dead, Nergal: “‘Burst open the sepulchral
+cavern, open the ground, that the spirit of Eabani may issue from the
+soil like a blast of wind.’ As soon as Nergal the valiant heard him,
+he burst open the sepulchral vault, he opened the earth, he caused the
+spirit of Eabani to issue from the earth like a blast of wind.” Gilgames
+interrogates him, and asks him with anxiety what the state of the dead
+may be: “‘Tell, my friend, tell, my friend, open the earth and what thou
+seest tell it.’--‘I cannot tell it thee, my friend, I cannot tell it
+thee; if I should open the earth before thee, if I were to tell to thee
+that which I have seen, terror would overthrow thee, thou wouldest faint
+away, thou wouldest weep.’--‘Terror will overthrow me, I shall faint
+away, I shall weep, but tell it to me.’” And the ghost depicts for him
+the sorrows of the abode and the miseries of the shades. Those only
+enjoy some happiness who have fallen with arms in their hands, and who
+have been solemnly buried after the fight; the manes neglected by their
+relatives succumb to hunger and thirst.* “On a sleeping couch he lies,
+drinking pure water, he who has been killed in battle. ‘Thou hast seen
+him?’--‘I have seen him; his father and his mother support his head, and
+his wife bends over him wailing.’ ‘But he whose body remains forgotten
+in the fields,--thou hast seen him?’--‘I have seen him; his soul has no
+rest at all in the earth.’ ‘He whose soul no one cares for,--thou hast
+seen him?’--‘I have seen him; the dregs of the cup, the remains of a
+repast, that which is thrown among the refuse of the street, that is
+what he has to nourish him.’” This poem did not proceed in its entirety,
+or at one time, from the imagination of a single individual. Each
+episode of it answers to some separate legend concerning Gilgames, or
+the origin of Uruk the well-protected: the greater part preserves under
+a later form an air of extreme antiquity, and, if the events dealt with
+have not a precise bearing on the life of a king, they paint in a lively
+way the vicissitudes of the life of the people.** These lions, leopards,
+or gigantic uruses with which Grilgames and his faithful Eabani carry
+on so fierce a warfare, are not, as is sometimes said, mythological
+animals.
+
+     * Cf. vol. i. pp. 160, 161 of this History for analogous
+     ideas among the Egyptians as to the condition of the dead
+     who were neglected by their relatives: the Egyptian double
+     had to live on the same refuse as the Chaldaean soul.
+
+     ** G. Smith, identifying Gilgames with Nimrod, believes, on
+     the other hand, that Nimrod was a real king, who reigned in
+     Mesopotamia about 2250 B.C.; the poem contains, according to
+     him, episodes, more or less embellished, in the life of the
+     sovereign.
+
+Similar monsters, it was believed, appeared from time to time in the
+marshes of Chaldaea, and gave proof of their existence to the inhabitants
+of neighbouring villages by such ravages as real lions and tigers commit
+in India or the Sahara. It was the duty of chiefs on the border lands of
+the Euphrates, as on the banks of the Nile, as among all peoples still
+sunk in semi-barbarism, to go forth to the attack of these beasts
+single-handed, and to sacrifice themselves one after the other, until
+one of them more fortunate or stronger than the rest should triumph
+over these mischievous brutes. The kings of Babylon and Nineveh in later
+times converted into a pleasure that which had been an official duty of
+their early predecessors: Gilgames had not yet arrived at that stage,
+and the seriousness, not to speak of the fear, with which he entered
+on the fight with such beasts, is an evidence of the early date of the
+portions of his history which are concerned with his hunting exploits.
+The scenes are represented on the seals of princes who reigned prior to
+the year 3000 B.C., and the work of the ancient engraver harmonizes so
+perfectly with the description of the comparatively modern scribe that
+it seems like an anticipated illustration of the latter; the engravings
+represent so persistently and with so little variation the images of
+the monsters, and those of Gilgames and his faithful Eabani, that the
+corresponding episodes in the poem must have already existed as we know
+them, if not in form, at least in their main drift. Other portions of
+the poem are more recent, and it would seem that the expedition against
+Khumbaba contains allusions to the Elamite* invasions from which Chaldaea
+had suffered so much towards the XXth century before our era. The
+traditions which we possess of the times following the Deluge, embody,
+like the adventures of Gilganes, very ancient elements, which the
+scribes or narrators wove together in a more or less skilful manner
+around the name of some king or divinity.
+
+     * Smith thought he could restore from the poem a part of
+     Chaldaean history: he supposed Izdubar-Nimrod to have been,
+     about 2250, the liberator of Babylon, oppressed by Elam, and
+     the date of the foundation of a great Babylonian empire to
+     have coincided with his victory over the Elamites. The
+     annals of Assurbanipal show us, in fact, that an Elamite
+     king, Kudurnankhundi, had pillaged Uruk about 2280 B.C., and
+     had transported to Susa a statue of the goddess Ishtar.
+
+[Illustration: 082.jpg GILGAMES STRUGGLES WITH A LION]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the
+     British Museum. The original measures about 1 2/5 inch in
+     height.
+
+The fabulous chronicle of the cities of the Euphrates existed,
+therefore, in a piecemeal condition--in the memory of the people or in
+the books of the priests--before even their primitive history began;
+the learned who collected it later on had only to select some of the
+materials with which it furnished them, in order to form out of them a
+connected narrative, in which the earliest ages were distinguished from
+the most recent only in the assumption of more frequent and more direct
+interpositions of the powers of heaven in the affairs of men. Every city
+had naturally its own version, in which its own protecting deities, its
+heroes and princes, played the most important parts. That of Babylon
+threw all the rest into the shade; not that it was superior to them,
+but because this city had speedily become strong enough to assert its
+political supremacy over the whole region of the Euphrates. Its scribes
+were accustomed to see their master treat the lords of other towns as
+subjects or vassals. They fancied that this must have always been
+the case, and that from its origin Babylon had been recognized as the
+queen-city to which its contemporaries rendered homage. They made its
+individual annals the framework for the history of the entire country,
+and from the succession of its princely families on the throne, diverse
+as they were in origin, they constructed a complete canon of the kings
+of Chaldaea.
+
+But the manner of grouping the names and of dividing the dynasties
+varied according to the period in which the lists were drawn up, and at
+the present time we are in possession of at least two systems which the
+Babylonian historians attempted to construct. Berossus, who communicated
+one of them to the Greeks about the beginning of the IInd century B.C.,
+would not admit more than eight dynasties in the period of thirty-six
+thousand years between the Deluge and the Persian invasion. The lists,
+which he had copied from originals in the cuneiform character, have
+suffered severely at the hands of his abbreviators, who omitted the
+majority of the names which seemed to them very barbarous in form, while
+those who copied these abbreviated lists have made such further havoc
+with them that they are now for the most part unintelligible. Modern
+criticism has frequently attempted to restore them, with varying
+results; the reconstruction here given, which passes for the most
+probable, is not equally certain in all its parts:--*
+
+[Illustration: 084.jpg CHRONOLOGIC TABLE]
+
+It was not without reason that Berossus and his authorities had put the
+sum total of reigns at thirty-six thousand years; this number falls in
+with a certain astrological period, during which the gods had granted to
+the Chaldaeans glory, prosperity, and independence, and whose termination
+coincided with the capture of Babylon by Cyrus.** Others before them had
+employed the same artifice, but they reckoned ten dynasties in the place
+of the eight accepted by Berossus:--
+
+     * After the example of G. B. Niebuhr, Gutschmid admitted
+     here, as Oppert did, 45 Assyrians; he based his view on
+     Herodotus, in which it is said that the Assyrians held sway
+     in Asia for 520 years, until its conquest by the Medes. Upon
+     the improbability of this opinion, see Schrader’s
+     demonstration.
+
+     ** The existence of this astronomical or astrological scheme
+     on which Berossus founded his chronology, was pointed out by
+     Brandis, afterwards by Gutschmid; it is now generally
+     accepted.
+
+[Illustration: 085.jpg TABLE]
+
+Attempts have been made to bring the two lists* into harmony, with
+varying results; in my opinion, a waste of time and labour. For even
+comparatively recent periods of their history, the Chaldaeans, like
+the Egyptians, had to depend upon a collection of certain abbreviated,
+incoherent, and often contradictory documents, from which they found it
+difficult to make a choice: they could not, therefore, always come to an
+agreement when they wished to determine how many dynasties had succeeded
+each other during these doubtful epochs, how many kings were included in
+each dynasty, and what length of reign was to be assigned to each king.
+We do not know the motives which influenced Berossus in his preference
+of one tradition over others; perhaps he had no choice in the matter,
+and that of which he constituted himself the interpreter was the only
+one which was then known. In any case, the tradition he followed forms a
+system which we cannot, modify without misinterpreting the intention of
+those who drew it up or who have handed it down to us. We must accept
+or reject it just as it is, in its entirety and without alteration:
+to attempt to adapt it to the testimony of the monuments would be
+equivalent to the creation of a new system, and not to the correction
+simply of the old one. The right course is to put it aside for the
+moment, and confine ourselves to the original lists whose fragments have
+come down to us: they do not furnish us, it is true, with a history of
+Chaldaea such as it unfolded itself from age to age, but they teach us
+what the later Chaldaeans knew, or thought they knew, of that history.
+Still it is wise to treat them with some reserve, and not to forget that
+if they agree with each other in the main, they differ frequently in
+details. Thus the small dynasties, which are called the VIth and VIIth,
+include the same number of kings on both the tablets which establish
+their existence, but the number of years assigned to the names of
+the kings and the total years of each dynasty vary a little from one
+another:--
+
+     * The first document having claim to the title of Royal
+     Canon was found among the tablets of the British Museum, and
+     was published by G. Smith. The others were successively
+     discovered by Pinches; some erroneous readings in them have
+     been corrected by Fr. Delitzsch, and an exact edition has
+     been published by Knudtzon. Smith’s list is the fragment of
+     a chronicle in which the VIth, VIIth, and VIIIth dynasties
+     only are almost complete. One of Pinches’s lists consists
+     merely of a number of royal names not arranged in any
+     consistent order, and containing their non-Semitic as well
+     as their Semitic forms. The other two lists are actual
+     canons, giving the names of the kings and the years of their
+     reigns; unfortunately they are much mutilated, and the
+     lacunae in them cannot yet be filled up. All of them have
+     been translated by Sayce.
+
+[Illustration: 080.jpg TABLE]
+
+[Illustration: 081.jpg TABLE]
+
+Is the difference in the calculations the fault of the scribes, who,
+in mechanically copying and recopying, ended by fatally altering the
+figures? Or is it to be explained by some circumstance of which we are
+ignorant--an association on the throne, of which the duration is at one
+time neglected with regard to one of the co-regents, and at another time
+with regard to the other; or was it owing to a question of legitimacy,
+by which, according to the decision arrived at, a reign was prolonged or
+abbreviated? Cotemporaneous monuments will some day, perhaps, enable
+us to solve the problem which the later Chaldaeans did not succeed in
+clearing up. While awaiting the means to restore a rigorously exact
+chronology, we must be content with the approximate information
+furnished by the tablets as to the succession of the Babylonian kings.
+
+Actual history occupied but a small space in the lists--barely twenty
+centuries out of a whole of three hundred and sixty: beyond the historic
+period the imagination was given a free rein, and the few facts which
+were known disappeared almost completely under the accumulation of
+mythical narratives and popular stories. It was not that the documents
+were entirely wanting, for the Chaldaeans took a great interest in their
+past history, and made a diligent search for any memorials of it. Each
+time they succeeded in disinterring an inscription from the ruins of a
+town, they were accustomed to make-several copies of it, and to deposit
+them among the archives, where they would be open to the examination
+of their archaeologists.* When a prince undertook the rebuilding of
+a temple, he always made excavations under the first courses of the
+ancient structure in order to recover the documents which preserved the
+memory of its foundation: if he discovered them, he recorded on the new
+cylinders, in which he boasted of his own work, the name of the first
+builder, and sometimes the number of years which had elapsed since its
+erection.**
+
+     * We have a considerable number of examples of copies of
+     ancient texts made in this manner. For instance, the
+     dedication of a temple at Uruk by King Singashid, copied by
+     the scribe Nabubalatsuikbi, son of Mizirai (“the Egyptian
+     “), for the temple of Ezida; the legendary history of King
+     Sargon of Agade, copied from the inscription on the base of
+     his statue, of which there will be further mention (pp. 91-
+     93 of this History); a dedication of the King Khammurabi;
+     the inscription of Agumkakrimi, which came from the library
+     of Assurbanipal.
+
+     ** Nabonidos, for instance, the last king of Babylon before
+     the Persian conquest, has left us a memorial of his
+     excavations. He found in this manner the cylinders of
+     Shagashaltiburiash at Sippara, those of Khammurabi, and
+     those of Naramsin.
+
+We act in a similar way to-day, and our excavations, like those of the
+Chaldaeans, end in singularly disconnected results: the materials which
+the earth yields for the reconstruction of the first centuries consist
+almost entirely of mutilated records of local dynasties, isolated
+names of sovereigns, dedications of temples to gods, on sites no longer
+identifiable, of whose nature we know nothing, and too brief allusions
+to conquests or victories over vaguely designated nations.* The
+population was dense and life active in the plains of the Lower
+Euphrates. The cities in this region formed at their origin so many
+individual and, for the most part, petty states, whose kings and patron
+gods claimed to be independent of all the neighbouring kings and gods:
+one city, one god, one lord--this was the rule here as in the ancient
+feudal districts from which the nomes of Egypt arose. The strongest
+of these principalities imposed its laws upon the weakest: formed into
+unions of two or three under a single ruler, they came to constitute a
+dozen kingdoms of almost equal strength on the banks of the Euphrates.
+On the north we are acquainted with those of Agade, Babylon, Kuta,
+Kharsag-Kalama, and that of Kishu, which comprised a part of Mesopotamia
+and possibly the distant fortress of Harran: petty as these States were,
+their rulers attempted to conceal their weakness by assuming such titles
+as “Kings of the Four Houses of the World,” “Kings of the Universe,”
+ “Kings of Shumir and Akkad.” Northern Babylonia seems to have possessed
+a supremacy amongst them. We are probably wise in not giving too much
+credit to the fragmentary tablet which assigns to it a dynasty of
+kings, of which we have no confirmatory information from other
+sources--Amilgula, Shamashnazir, Amilsin, and several others: this list,
+however, places among these phantom rulers one individual at least,
+Shargina-Sharrukin, who has left us material evidences of his existence.
+This Sargon the Elder, whose complete name is Shargani-shar-ali, was
+the son of a certain Ittibel, who does not appear to have been king.
+At first his possessions were confined to the city of Agade and some
+undetermined portions of the environs of Babylon, but he soon succeeded
+in annexing Babylon itself, Sippara, Kishu, Uruk, Kuta, and Nipur: the
+contemporary records attest his conquest of Elam, Guti, and even of the
+far-off land of Syria, which was already known to him under the name of
+Amuru. His activity as a builder was in no way behind his warlike zeal.
+He built Ekur, the sanctuary of Bel in Nipur, and the great temple
+Eulbar in Agade, in honour of Anunit, the goddess presiding over the
+morning star. He erected in Babylon a palace which afterwards became a
+royal burying-place. He founded a new capital, a city which he peopled
+with families brought from Kishu and Babylon: for a long time after his
+day it bore the name which he bestowed upon it, Dur-Sharrukin. This
+sums up all the positive knowledge we have about him, and the later
+Chaldseans seem not to have been much better informed than ourselves.
+
+     * The earliest Assyriologists, H. Rawlinson, Oppert,
+     considered the local kings as having been, for the most
+     part, kings of all Chaldaea, and placed them in succession
+     one after the other in the framework of the most ancient
+     dynasties of Berossus. The merit of having established the
+     existence of series of local dynasties, and of having given
+     to Chaldaean history its modern form, belongs to G. Smith.
+     Smith’s idea was adopted by Menant, by Delitzsch-Murdter, by
+     Tiele, by Winckler, and by all Assyriologists, with
+     modifications suggested by the progress of decipherment.
+
+They filled up the lacunae of his history with legends. As he seemed
+to them to have appeared suddenly on the scene, without any apparent
+connection with the king who preceded him, they assumed that he was a
+usurper of unknown origin, irregularly introduced by the favour of the
+gods into the lawful series of kings. An inscription engraved, it was
+said, on one of his statues, and afterwards, about the VIIth century
+B.C., copied and deposited in the library of Nineveh, related at length
+the circumstances of his mysterious birth. “Sharrukin, the mighty king,
+the king of Agade, am I. My mother was a princess; my father, I did not
+know him; the brother of my father lived in the mountains. My town was
+Azupirani, which is situated on the bank of the Euphrates. My mother,
+the princess, conceived me, and secretly gave birth to me: she placed
+me in a basket of reeds, she shut up the mouth of it with bitumen, she
+abandoned me to the river, which did not overwhelm me. The river bore
+me; it brought me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of
+water, received me in the goodness of his heart; Akki, the drawer of
+water, made me a gardener. As gardener, the goddess Ishtar loved me, and
+during forty-four years I held royal sway; I commanded the Black Heads,*
+and ruled them.” This is no unusual origin for the founders of empires
+and dynasties; witness the cases of Cyrus and Bomulus.* Sargon, like
+Moses, and many other heroes of history or fable, is exposed to the
+waters: he owes his safety to a poor fellah who works his shadouf on the
+banks of the Euphrates to water the fields, and he passes his infancy in
+obscurity, if not in misery. Having reached the age of manhood, Ishtar
+falls in love with him as she did with his fellow-craftsman, the
+gardener Ishullanu, and he becomes king, we know not by what means.
+
+     * The phrase “Black Heads,” _nishi salmat hahhadi_, has been
+     taken in an ethnological sense as designating one of the
+     races of Chaldaea, the Semitic; other Assyriologists consider
+     it as denoting mankind in general. The latter meaning seems
+     the more probable.
+
+     ** Smith had already compared the infancy of Sargon with
+     that of Moses; the comparison with Cyrus, Bacchus, and
+     Romulus was made by Talbot. Traditions of the same kind are
+     frequent in history or folk-tales.
+
+The same inscription which reveals the romance of his youth, recounts
+the successes of his manhood, and boasts of the uniformly victorious
+issue of his warlike exploits. Owing to lacunae, the end of the account
+is in the main wanting, and we are thus prevented from following the
+development of his career, but other documents come to the rescue and
+claim to furnish its most important vicissitudes. He had reduced the
+cities of the Lower Euphrates, the island of Dilmun, Durilu, Elam, the
+country of Kazalla: he had invaded Syria, conquered Phoenicia, crossed
+the arm of the sea which separates Cyprus from the coast, and only
+returned to his palace after an absence of three years, and after having
+erected his statues on the Syrian coast. He had hardly settled down to
+rest when a rebellion broke out suddenly; the chiefs of Chaldaea formed
+a league against him, and blockaded him in Agade: Ishtar, exceptionally
+faithful to the end, obtains for him the victory, and he comes out of a
+crisis, in which he might have been utterly ruined, with a more secure
+position than ever. All these events are regarded as having occurred
+sometime about 3800 B.C., at a period when the VIth dynasty was
+flourishing in Egypt. Some of them have been proved to be true by recent
+discoveries, and the rest are not at all improbable in themselves,
+though the work in which they are recorded is a later astrological
+treatise. The writer was anxious to prove, by examples drawn from the
+chronicles, the use of portents of victory or defeat, of civic peace
+or rebellion--portents which he deduced from the configuration of the
+heavens on the various days of the month: by going back as far as Sargon
+of Agade for his instances, he must have at once increased the respect
+for himself on account of his knowledge of antiquity, and the difficulty
+which the common herd must have felt in verifying his assertions. His
+zeal in collecting examples was probably stimulated by the fact that
+some of the exploits which he attributes to the ancient Sargon had been
+recently accomplished by a king of the same name: the brilliant career
+of Sargon of Agade would seem to have been in his estimation something
+like an anticipation of the still more glorious life of the Sargon of
+Nineveh.* What better proof of the high veneration in which the learned
+men of Assyria held the memory of the ancient Chaldaean conqueror?
+Naramsin, who succeeded Sargon about 3750 B.C.** inherited his
+authority, and to some extent his renown.
+
+     * Hommel (Gescamede, p. 307) believes that the life of our
+     Sargon was modelled, not on the Assyrian Sargon, but on a
+     second Sargon, whom he places about 2000 B.C. Tiele refuses
+     to accept the hypothesis, but his objections are not
+     weighty, in my opinion; Hilprecht and Sayce accepted the
+     authenticity of the facts in their details, and the recent
+     discoveries have shown that they were right in so doing.
+     There is a distant resemblance between the life of the
+     legendary Sargon and the account of the victories of Ramses
+     II. ending in a conspiracy on his return.
+
+
+     ** The date of Naramsin is given us by the cylinder of
+     Nabonidos, who is cited lower down. It was discovered by
+     Pinches. Its authenticity is maintained by Oppert, by
+     Latrille, by Tiele, by Hommel, who felt at first some
+     hesitation, by Delitzsch-Murdter; it has been called in
+     question, with hesitation, by Ed. Meyer, and more boldly by
+     Winckler. There is at present no serious reason to question
+     its accuracy, at least relatively, except the instinctive
+     repugnance of modern critics to consider as legitimate,
+     dates which carry them back further into the past than they
+     are accustomed to go.
+
+The astrological tablets assert that he attacked the city of Apirak, on
+the borders of Elam, killed the Sing, Rish-ramman, and led the people
+away into slavery. He conquered at least part, if not the whole of Elam,
+and one of the few monuments which have come down to us was raised at
+Sippara in commemoration of his prowess against the mountaineers of the
+Zagros. He is represented on it overpowering their chief: his warriors
+follow after him and charge up the hill, carrying everything before
+their steady onslaught. Another of his warlike expeditions is said to
+have had as its field of operations a district of Magan, which, in the
+view of the writer, undoubtedly represented the Sinaitic Peninsula and
+perhaps Egypt. This expedition against Magan no doubt took place, and
+one of the few monuments of Naramsin which have reached us refers to it.
+Other inscriptions tell us incidentally that Naramsin reigned over the
+“four Houses of the world,” Babylon, Sippara, Nipur, and Lagash. Like
+his father, he had worked at the building of the Ekur of Nipur and the
+Bulbar of Agade; he erected, moreover, at his own cost, the temple
+of the Sun at Sippara.* The latter passed through many and varied
+vicissitudes. Restored, enlarged, ruined on several occasions, the date
+of its construction and the name of its founder were lost in the course
+of ages.
+
+     * The text giving us this information is that in which
+     Nabonidos affirms that Naramsin, son of Sargon of Agado, had
+     founded the temple of the Sun at Sippara, 3200 years before
+     himself, which would give us 3750 B.C. for the reign of
+     Naramsin.
+
+The last independent King of Babylon, Nabonaid [Nabonidos], at length
+discovered the cylinders in which Naramsin, son of Sargon, had signified
+to posterity all that he had done towards the erection of a temple
+worthy of the deity to the god of Sippara: “for three thousand two
+hundred years not one of the kings had been able to find them.” We
+have no means of judging what these edifices were like for which
+the Chaldaeans themselves showed such veneration; they have entirely
+disappeared, or, if anything remains of them, the excavations hitherto
+carried out have not revealed it. Many small objects, however, which
+have accidentally escaped destruction give us a fair idea of the artists
+who lived in Babylon at this time, and of their skill in handling the
+graving-tool and chisel. An alabaster vase with the name of
+Naramsin, and a mace-head of exquisitely veined marble, dedicated by
+Shargani-shar-ali to the sun-god of Sippara, are valued only on account
+of the beauty of the material and the rarity of the inscription; but a
+porphyry cylinder, which belonged to Ibnishar, scribe of the above-named
+Shargani, must be ranked among the masterpieces of Oriental engraving.
+It represents the hero Gilgames, kneeling and holding with both hands
+a spherically shaped vase, from which flow two copious jets forming a
+stream running through the country; an ox, armed with a pair of gigantic
+crescent-shaped horns, throws back its head to catch one of the jets
+as it falls. Everything in this little specimen is equally worthy of
+admiration--the purity of outline, the skilful and delicate cutting of
+the intaglio, the fidelity of the action, and the accuracy of form.
+A fragment of a bas-relief of the reign of Naramsin shows that the
+sculptors were not a bit behind the engravers of gems. This consists now
+only of a single figure, a god, who is standing on the right, wearing a
+conical head-dress and clothed in a hairy garment which leaves his right
+arm free. The legs are wanting, the left arm and the hair are for
+the most part broken away, while the features have also suffered; its
+distinguishing characteristic is a sublety of workmanship which is
+lacking in the artistic products of a later age. The outline stands out
+from the background with a rare delicacy, the details of the muscles
+being in no sense exaggerated: were it not for the costume and pointed
+beard, one would fancy it a specimen of Egyptian work of the best
+Memphite period.
+
+[Illustration 096.jpg THE SEAL OF SHARGANI-SHAR-ALI: GILGAMES WATERS THE
+CELESTIAL OX.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Menant.
+
+One is almost tempted to believe in the truth of the tradition which
+ascribes to Naramsin the conquest of Egypt, or of the neighbouring
+countries.
+
+[Illustration: 096a.jpg Painting in Color of Charioteer]
+
+     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph published by Father
+     Schiel.
+
+[Illustration: 097.jpg Page image]
+
+Did Sargon and Naramsin live at so early a date as that assigned to
+them by Nabonidos? The scribes who assisted the kings of the second
+Babylonian empire in their archaeological researches had perhaps
+insufficient reasons for placing the date of these kings so far back in
+the misty past: should evidence of a serious character A constrain us to
+attribute to them a later origin, we ought not to be surprised. In the
+mean time our best course is to accept the opinion of the Chaldaeans,
+and to leave Sargon and Naramsin in the century assigned to them by
+Nabonidos, although from this point they look down as from a high
+eminence upon all the rest of Chaldaean antiquity. Excavations have
+brought to light several personages of a similar date, whether a
+little earlier, or a little later: Bingani-sharali, Man-ish-turba,
+and especially Alusharshid, who lived at Kishu and Nipur, and gained
+victories over Elam.
+
+[Illustration: 098.jpg Page image: the arms op the city and kings of
+Lagash]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Lagash, now
+     in the Louvre
+
+After this glimpse of light on these shadowy kings darkness once more
+closes in upon us, and conceals from us the majority of the sovereigns
+who ruled afterwards in Babylon. The facts and names which can be
+referred with certainty to the following centuries belong not to
+Babylon, but to the southern States, Lagash, Uruk, Uru, Nishin, and
+Larsam. The national writers had neglected these principalities;
+we possess neither a resume of their chronicles nor a list of their
+dynasties, and the inscriptions which speak of their the arms of the
+city gods and princes are still very rare and kings of Lagash. Lagash,
+as far as our evidence goes, was, perhaps, the most illustrious of
+all these cities.* It occupied the heart of the country, and its site
+covered both sides of the Shatt-el-Hai; the Tigris separated it on the
+east from Anshan, the westernmost of the Elamite districts, with which
+it carried on a perpetual frontier war.
+
+     * We are indebted almost exclusively to the researches of M.
+     de Sarzec, and his discoveries at Telloh, for what we know
+     of it. The results of his excavations, acquired by the
+     French government, are now in the Louvre. The description of
+     the ruins, the text of the inscriptions, and an account of
+     the statues and other objects found in the course of the
+     work, have been published by Heuzey-Sakzec, _Decouvertes en
+     Chaldee_. The name of the ancient town has been read
+     Sirpurla, Zirgulla, etc.
+
+All parts of the country were not equally fertile: the fruitful and
+well-cultivated district in the neighbourhood of the Shatt-el-Hai gave
+place to impoverished lands ending to the eastward, finally in swampy
+marshes, which with great difficulty furnished means of sustenance to a
+poor and thinly scattered population of fisher-folk.
+
+[Illustration: 099.jpg FRAGMENT OF BAS-RELIEF BY URNINA, KING OF
+LAGASH.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a stone in the Louvre.
+
+The capital, built on the left bank of the river, stretched out to the
+north-east and south-west a distance of some five miles. It was not so
+much a city as an agglomeration of large villages, each grouped around a
+temple or palace--Uruazagga, Gishgalla, G-irsu, Nina, and Lagash,
+which latter imposed its name upon the whole. A branch of the river
+Shatt-el-Hai protected it on the south, and supplied the village of
+Nina with water; no trace of an inclosing wall has been found, and the
+temples and palaces seem to have served as refuges in case of attack.
+It had as its arms, or totem, a double-headed eagle standing on a lion
+passant, or on two demi-lions placed back to back. Its chief god was
+called Ningirsu, that is, the lord of Girsu, where his temple stood: his
+companion Bau, and his associates Ninagal, Innanna and Ninsia, were
+the deities of the other divisions of the city. The princes were first
+called kings, but afterwards vicegerents--_patesi_--when they came under
+the suzerainty of a more powerful king, the King of Uruk or of Babylon.
+
+The earlier history of this remarkable town is made up of the
+scanty memoirs of its rulers, together with those of the princes of
+Gishban--“the land of the Bow,” of which Ishin seems to have been the
+principal town. A very ancient document states, that, at the instigation
+of Inlil, the god of Nipur, the local deities, Ningirsu and Kirsig, set
+up a boundary between the two cities. In the course of time, Meshilim,
+a king of Kishu, which, before the rise of Agade, was the chief town in
+those parts, extended his dominion over Lagash and erected his stele at
+its border; Ush, vicegerent of Gishban, however, removed it, and had to
+suffer defeat before he would recognize the new order of things. After
+the lapse of some years, of which we possess no records, we find the
+mention of a certain Urukagina, who assumes the title of king: he
+restored or enlarged several temples, and dug the canal which supplied
+the town of Nina with water. A few generations later we find the ruling
+authority in the hands of a certain Urnina, whose father Ninigaldun and
+grandfather Gurshar received no titles--a fact which proves that they
+could not have been reigning sovereigns. Urnina appears to have been of
+a peaceful and devout disposition, as the inscriptions contain frequent
+references to the edifices he had erected in honour of the gods, the
+sacred objects he had dedicated to them, and the timber for building
+purposes which he had brought from Magan, but there is no mention in
+them of any war. His son Akurgal was also a builder of temples, but
+his grandson Idingiranagin, who succeeded Akurgal, was a warlike and
+combative prince.
+
+[Illustration: 101.jpg IDINGIRANAGIN HOLDING THE TOTEM OF LAGASH.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the bas-relief F2 in the
+     Louvre.
+
+It seems probable that, about that time, the kingdom of Gishban had
+become a really powerful state. It had triumphed not only over
+Babylonia proper, but over Kish, Uru, Uruk, and Larsam, while one of its
+sovereigns had actually established his rule in some parts of Northern
+Syria. Idingiranagin vanquished the troops of Gishban, and there is now
+in the Louvre a trophy which he dedicated in the temple of Ninglrsu on
+his return from the campaign.
+
+     * Hilpeecht, Bab. Expcd. of the Univ. of Pennsylvania, vol.
+     i., 2nd part, p. 47 sqq.
+
+[Illustration: 102.jpg IDINGIRANAGIN IN HIS CHARIOT LEADING HIS TROOPS.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the Louvre. The
+     attendant standing behind the king has been obliterated, but
+     we see clearly the contour of his shoulder, and his hands
+     holding the reins. It is a large stele of close-grained
+     white limestone, rounded at the top, and covered with scenes
+     and inscriptions on both its faces. One of these faces
+     treats only of religious subjects. Two warlike goddesses,
+     crowned with plumed head-dresses and crescent-shaped horns,
+     are placed before a heap of weapons and various other
+     objects, which probably represent some of the booty
+     collected in the campaign. It would appear that they
+     accompany a tall figure of a god or king, possibly that of
+     the deity Ningirsu, patron of Lagash and its kings. Ningirsu
+     raises in one hand an ensign, of which the staff bears at
+     the top the royal totem, the eagle with outspread wings
+     laying hold by his talons of two half-lions back to back;
+     with the other hand he brings a, club down heavily upon a
+     group of prisoners, who struggle at his feet in the meshes
+     of a large net.
+
+
+[Illustration: 103.jpg Page image. VULTURES FEEDING UPON THE DEAD.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the fragment of a bas-relief in
+     the Louvre. This is the human sacrifice after the victory,
+     such as we find it in Egypt--the offering to the national
+     god of a tenth of the captives, who struggle in vain to
+     escape from fate. On the other stele the battle is at its
+     height. Idingiranagin, standing upright in his chariot,
+     which is guided by an attendant, charges the enemy at the
+     head of his troops, and the plain is covered with corpses
+     cut down by his fierce blows: a flock of vultures accompany
+     him, and peck at each other in their struggles over the
+     arms, legs, and decapitated heads of the vanquished. Victory
+     once secured, he retraces his steps to bestow funeral
+     honours upon the dead.
+
+
+[Illustration: 104.jpg PILING UP THE MOUND OF THE DEAD AFTER THE
+BATTLE.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the fragment of a bas-relief in
+     the Louvre. The bodies raised regularly in layers form an
+     enormous heap: priests or soldiers wearing loin-cloths mount
+     to its top, where they pile the offerings and the earth
+     which are to form the funerary mound. The sovereign,
+     moreover, has, in honour of the dead, consigned to execution
+     some of the prisoners, and deigns to kill with his own hand
+     one of the principal chiefs of the enemy.
+
+The design and execution of these scenes are singularly rude; men and
+beasts--indeed, all the figures--have exaggerated proportions, uncouth
+forms, awkward positions, and an uncertain and heavy gait. The war ended
+in a treaty concluded with Enakalli, vicegerent of Grishban, by which
+Lagash obtained considerable advantages. Idingiranagin replaced the
+stele of Meshilim, overthrown by one of Enakalli’s predecessors, and
+dug a ditch from the Euphrates to the provinces of Guedln to serve
+henceforth as a boundary. He further levied a tribute of corn for the
+benefit of the goddess Nina and her consort Ningirsu, and applied
+the spoils of the campaign to the building of new sanctuaries for the
+patron-gods of his city.
+
+[Illustration: 105.jpg KING URNINA AND HIS FAMILY.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the Louvre. Cf.
+     another bas-relief of the same king, p. 244; and for the
+     probable explanation of these pierced plaques, see p. 258 of
+     the present work.
+
+His reign was, on the whole, a glorious and successful one. He conquered
+the mountain district of Elam, rescued Uruk and Uru, which had both
+fallen into the hands of the people of Gishban, organized an expedition
+against the town of Az and killed its vicegerent, in addition to which
+he burnt Arsua, and devastated the district of Mishime. He next directed
+an attack against Zuran, king of Udban, and, by vanquishing this Prince
+on the field of battle, he extended his dominion over nearly the whole
+of Babylonia.
+
+The prosperity of his dynasty was subjected to numerous and strange
+vicissitudes. Whether it was that its resources were too feeble to
+stand the exigencies and strain of war for any length of time, or that
+intestine strife had been the chief cause of its decline, we cannot
+say. Its kings married many wives and became surrounded with a numerous
+progeny: Urnina had at least four sons. They often entrusted to their
+children or their sons-in-law the government of the small towns which
+together made up the city: these represented so many temporary fiefs, of
+which the holders were distinguished by the title of “vicegerents.” This
+dismemberment of the supreme authority in the interest of princes, who
+believed for the most part that they had stronger claims to the throne
+than its occupant, was attended with dangers to peace and to the
+permanence of the dynasty. The texts furnish us with evidence of the
+existence of at least half a dozen descendants of Akurgal--Inannatuma
+I., Intemena, his grandson Inannatuma II, all of whom seem to have been
+vigorous rulers who energetically maintained the supremacy of their city
+over the neighbouring estates. Inannatuma I., however, proved no match
+in the end against Urlamma, the vicegerent of Gishban, and lost part, at
+least, of the territory acquired by Idingiranagin, but his son Intemena
+defeated Urlamma on the banks of the Lumasirta Canal, and, having killed
+or deposed him, gave the vicegerency of Gishban to a certain Hi, priest
+of Ninab, who remained his loyal vassal to the end of his days. With
+his aid Intemena restored the stelae and walls which had been destroyed
+during the war; he also cleared out the old canals and dug new ones, the
+most important of which was apparently an arm of the Shatt-el-Hai, and
+ran from the Euphrates to the Tigris, through the very centre of the
+domains of Ghirsu.
+
+Other kings and vicegerents of doubtful sequence were followed lastly by
+Urbau and his son Gudea. These were all piously devoted to Ningirsu in
+general, and in particular to the patron of their choice from among
+the divinities of the country--Papsukal, Dunziranna, and Ninagal. They
+restored and enriched the temples of these gods: they dedicated to
+them statues or oblation vases for the welfare of themselves and their
+families. It would seem, if we are to trust the accounts which they give
+of themselves, that their lives were passed in profound peace, without
+other care than that of fulfilling their duties to heaven and its
+ministers. Their actual condition, if we could examine it, would
+doubtless appear less agreeable and especially less equable; revolutions
+in the palace would not be wanting, nor struggles with the other peoples
+of Chaldaea, with Susiana and even more distant nations. When Agade rose
+into power in Northern Babylonia, they fell under its rule, and one of
+them, Lugal-ushum-gal, acknowledged himself a dependant of Sargon. On
+the decline of Agade, and when that city was superseded by Uru in the
+hegemony of Babylonia proper, the vicegerents of Lagash were transferred
+with the other great towns to the jurisdiction of Uru, and flourished
+under the supremacy of the new dynasty.
+
+Grudea, son of Urbau, who, if not the most powerful of its princes,
+is at least the sovereign of whom we possess the greatest number of
+monuments, captured the town of Anshan in Elam, and this is probably not
+the only campaign in which he took part, for he speaks of his success
+in an incidental manner, and as if he were in a hurry to pass to more
+interesting subjects.
+
+[Illustration: 108.jpg THE SACRIFICE]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a stone in the Louvre.
+
+That which seemed to him important in his reign, and which especially
+called forth the recognition of posterity, was the number of his pious
+foundations, distinguished as they were by beauty and magnificence. The
+gods themselves had inspired him in his devout undertakings, and had
+even revealed to him the plans which he was to carry out. An old man of
+venerable aspect appeared to him in a vision, and commanded him to build
+a temple: as he did not know with whom he had to do, Nina his mother
+informed him that it was his brother, the god Ningirsu. This having been
+made clear, a young woman furnished with style and writing tablet was
+presented to him--Nisaba, the sister of Nina; she made a drawing in his
+presence, and put before him the complete model of a building. He set
+to work on it _con amore_, and sent for materials to the most distant
+countries--to Magan, Amanus, the Lebanon, and into the mountains which
+separate the valley of the Upper Tigris from that of the Euphrates.
+
+[Illustration: 109.jpg SITTING STATUE OF GUDEA]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin
+
+The sanctuaries which he decorated, and of which he felt so proud, are
+to-day mere heaps of bricks, now returned to their original clay; but
+many of the objects which he placed in them, and especially the statues,
+have traversed the centuries without serious damage before finding a
+resting-place in the Louvre. The sculptors of Lagash, after the time of
+Idingi-ranagin, had been instructed in a good school, and had learned
+their business. Their bas-reliefs are not so good as those of Naramsin;
+the execution of them is not so refined, the drawing less delicate, and
+the modelling of the parts not so well thought out. A good illustration
+of their work is the fragment of a square stele which represents a scene
+of offering or sacrifice. We see in the lower part of the picture a
+female singer, who is accompanied by a musician, playing on a lyre
+ornamented with the head of an ox, and a bull in the act of walking.
+In the upper part an individual advances, clad in a fringed mantle, and
+bearing in his right hand a kind of round paten, and in his left a short
+staff. An acolyte follows him, his arms brought up to his breast, while
+another individual marks, by clapping his hands, the rhythm of the ode
+which a singer like the one below is reciting. The fragment is much
+abraded, and its details, not being clearly exhibited, have rather to
+be guessed at; but the defaced aspect which time has produced is of some
+service to it, since it conceals in some respect the rudeness of
+its workmanship. The statues, on the other hand, bear evidence of a
+precision of chiselling and a skill beyond question. Not that there are
+no faults to be found in the work. They are squat, thick, and heavy
+in form, and seem oppressed by the weight of the woollen covering with
+which the Chaldeans enveloped themselves; when viewed closely, they
+excite at once the wonder and repulsion of an eye accustomed to the
+delicate grace, and at times somewhat slender form, which usually
+characterized the good statues of the ancient and middle empire of
+Egypt. But when we have got over the effect of first impressions, we can
+but admire the audacity with which the artists attacked their material.
+This is of hard dolerite, offering great resistance to the tool--harder,
+perhaps, than the diorite out of which the Memphite sculptor had to
+cut his Khephren: they succeeded in mastering it, and in handling it as
+freely as if it were a block of limestone or marble.
+
+[Illustration: 111.jpg Plan of the Ruins of Mughier]
+
+The surface of the breast and back, the muscular development of the
+shoulders and arms, the details of the hands and feet, all the nude
+portions, are treated at once with a boldness and attention to minutiae
+rarely met with in similar works. The pose is lacking in variety; the
+individual, whether male or female, is sometimes represented standing
+and sometimes sitting on a low seat, the legs brought together, the bust
+rising squarely from the hips, the hands crossed upon the breast, in a
+posture of submission or respectful adoration. The mantle passes over
+the left shoulder, leaving the right free, and is fastened on the right
+breast, the drapery displaying awkward and inartistic folds: the latter
+widens in the form of a funnel from top to bottom, being bell-shaped
+around the lower part of the body, and barely leaves the ankles exposed.
+
+[Illustration: 112.jpg STATUES FROM TELLOH. and HEAD OF ONE OF THE
+STATUE OF GUDEA.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec.
+
+All the large statues to be seen at the Louvre have lost their heads;
+fortunately we possess a few separate heads. Some are completely shaven,
+others wear a kind of turban affording shade to the forehead and eyes;
+among them all we see the same qualities and defects which we find in
+the bodies: a hardness of expression, heaviness, absence of vivacity,
+and yet withal a vigour of reproduction and an accurate knowledge of
+human anatomy. These are instances of what could be accomplished in a
+city of secondary rank; better things were doubtless produced in the
+great cities, such as Uru and Babylon. Chaldaean art, as we are able
+to catch a glimpse of it in the monuments of Lagash, had neither the
+litheness, nor animation, nor elegance of the Egyptian, but it was
+nevertheless not lacking in force, breadth, and originality. Urningirsu
+succeeded his father Gudea, to be followed rapidly by several successive
+vicegerents, ending, it would appear, in Gala-lama. Their inscriptions
+are short and insignificant, and show that they did not enjoy the same
+resources or the same favour which enabled Gudea to reign gloriously.
+The prosperity of Lagash decreased steadily under their administration,
+and they were all the humble vassals of the King of Uru, Dungi, son of
+Urbau; a fact which tends to make us regard Urbau as having been the
+suzerain upon whom Gudea himself was dependent. Uru, the only city among
+those of Lower Chaldaea which stands on the right bank of the Euphrates,
+was a small but strong place, and favourably situated for becoming one
+of the commercial and industrial centres in these distant ages. The
+Wady Eummein, not far distant, brought to it the riches of Central and
+Southern Arabia, gold, precious stones, gums, and odoriferous resins for
+the exigencies of worship. Another route, marked out by wells, traversed
+the desert to the land of the semi-fabulous Mashu, and from thence
+perhaps penetrated as far as Southern Syria and the Sinaitic
+Peninsula--Magan and Milukhkha on the shores of the Red Sea: this was
+not the easiest but it was the most direct route for those bound for
+Africa, and products of Egypt were no doubt carried along it in order
+to reach in the shortest time the markets of Uru. The Euphrates now
+runs nearly five miles to the north of the town, but from the regions
+bordering the Black Sea.
+
+[Illustration: 114.jpg Plan of the Ruins of Abu-Shahreyn]
+
+In ancient times it was not so distant, but passed almost by its
+gates. The cedars, cypresses, and pines of Amamis and the Lebanon,the
+limestones, marbles, and hard stones of Upper Syria, were brought down
+to it by boat; and probably also metals--iron, copper and lead.
+
+The Shatt-el-Hai, moreover, poured its waters into the Euphrates almost
+opposite the city, and opened up to it commercial relations with the
+Upper and Middle Tigris. And this was not all; whilst some of its
+boatmen used its canals and rivers as highways, another section made
+their way to the waters of the Persian Gulf and traded with the ports on
+its coast. Eridu, the only city which could have barred their access
+to the sea, was a town given up to religion, and existed only for its
+temples and its gods. It was not long before it fell under the influence
+of its powerful neighbour, becoming the first port of call for vessels
+proceeding up the Euphrates.
+
+[Illustration: 115.jpg AN ARAB CROSSING THE TIGRIS IN A “KUFA.”]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Chesney.
+
+In the time of the Greeks and Romans the Chaldaeans were accustomed
+to navigate the Tigris either in round flat-bottomed boats, of little
+draught--“kufas,” in fact--or on rafts placed upon inflated skins,
+exactly similar in appearance and construction to the “keleks” of our
+own day. These keleks were as much at home on the sea as upon the river,
+and they may still be found in the Persian Gulf engaged in the coasting
+trade. Doubtless many of these were included among the vessels of Uru
+mentioned in the texts, but there were also among the latter those
+long large rowing-boats with curved stem and stern, Egyptian in their
+appearance, which are to be found roughly incised on some ancient
+cylinders. These primitive fleets were not disposed to risk the
+navigation of the open sea. They preferred to proceed slowly along the
+shore, hugging it in all cases, except when it was necessary to reach
+some group of neighbouring islands; many days of navigation were thus
+required to make a passage which one of our smallest sail-boats would
+effect in a few hours, and at the end of their longest voyages they
+were not very distant from their point of departure. It would be a great
+mistake to suppose them capable of sailing round Arabia and of fetching
+blocks of stone by sea from the Sinaitic Peninsula; such an expedition,
+which would have been dangerous even for Greek or Roman Galleys, would
+have been simply impossible for them. If they ever crossed the Strait
+of Ormuzd, it was an exceptional thing, their ordinary voyages being
+confined within the limits of the gulf. The merchants of Uru were
+accustomed to visit regularly the island of Dilmun, the land of Magan,
+the countries of Milukhkha and Gubin; from these places they brought
+cargoes of diorite for their sculptors, building-timber for their
+architects, perfumes and metals transported from Yemen by land, and
+possibly pearls from the Bahrein Islands. They encountered serious
+rivalry from the sailors of Dilmun and Magan, whose maritime tribes were
+then as now accustomed to scour the seas. The risk was great for those
+who set out on such expeditions, perhaps never to return, but the profit
+was considerable.
+
+[Illustration: 117.jpg AN ASSYRIAN KELEK LADEN WITH BUILDING-STONE.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from “Kouyunjik”
+      (Layard, _The Monuments of Nineveh_, 2nd series, pi. 13; cf.
+     Place, _Ninive et l’Assyrie_, pl. 43, No. 1.)
+
+Uru, enriched by its commerce, was soon in a position to subjugate
+the petty neighbouring states--Uruk, Larsam, Lagash, and Nipur. Its
+territory formed a fairly extended sovereignty, whose lords entitled
+themselves kings of Shumir and Akkad, and ruled over all Southern
+Chaldaea for many centuries.
+
+Several of these kings, the Lugalkigubnidudu and the Lugalkisalsi, of
+whom some monuments have been preserved to us, seem to have extended
+their influence beyond these limits prior to the time of Sargon the
+Elder; and we can date the earliest of them with tolerable probability.
+Urbau reigned some time about 2900 B.C. He was an energetic builder, and
+material traces of his activity are to be found everywhere throughout
+the country. The temple of the Sun at Larsam, the temple of Nina in
+Uruk, and the temples of Inlilla and Ninlilla in Nipur were indebted
+to him for their origin or restoration: he decorated or repaired
+all structures which were not of his own erection: in Uru itself
+the sanctuary of the moon-god owes its foundation to him, and the
+fortifications of the city were his work. Dungi, his son, was an
+indefatigable bricklayer, like his father: he completed the sanctuary
+of the moon-god, and constructed buildings in Uruk, Lagash, and Kutha.
+There is no indication in the inscriptions of his having been engaged
+in any civil struggle or in war with a foreign nation; we should make a
+serious mistake, however, if we concluded from this silence that peace
+was not disturbed in his time. The tie which bound together the petty
+states of which Uru was composed was of the slightest. The sovereign
+could barely claim as his own more than the capital and the district
+surrounding it; the other cities recognized his authority, paid him
+tribute, did homage to him in religious matters, and doubtless rendered
+him military service also, but each one of them nevertheless maintained
+its particular constitution and obeyed its hereditary lords. These
+lords, it is true, lost their title of king, which now belonged
+exclusively to their suzerain, and each one had to be content in his
+district with the simple designation of “vicegerent;” but having once
+fulfilled their feudal obligations, they had absolute power over
+their ancient domains, and were able to transmit to their progeny the
+inheritance they had received from their fathers. Gudea probably, and
+most certainly his successors, ruled in this way over Lagash, as a fief
+depending on the crown of Uru. After the manner of the Egyptian barons,
+the vassals of the kings of Chaldaea submitted to the control of their
+suzerain without resenting his authority as long as they felt the
+curbing influence of a strong hand: but on the least sign of feebleness
+in their master they reasserted themselves, and endeavoured to recover
+their independence. A reign of any length was sure to be disturbed by
+rebellions sometimes difficult to repress: if we are ignorant of any
+such, it is owing to the fact that inscriptions hitherto discovered are
+found upon objects upon which an account of a battle would hardly find
+a fitting place, such as bricks from a temple, votive cones or cylinders
+of terra-cotta, amulets or private seals. We are still in ignorance as
+to Dungi’s successors, and the number of years during which this first
+dynasty was able to prolong its existence. We can but guess that its
+empire broke up by disintegration after a period of no long duration.
+Its cities for the most part became emancipated, and their rulers
+proclaimed themselves kings once more. We see that the kingdom of
+Amnanu, for instance, was established on the left bank of the Euphrates,
+with Uruk as its capital, and that three successive sovereigns at
+least--of whom Singashid seems to have been the most active--were able
+to hold their own there. Uru had still, however, sufficient prestige and
+wealth to make it the actual metropolis of the entire country. No one
+could become the legitimate lord of Shumir and Accad before he had
+been solemnly enthroned in the temple at Uru. For many centuries every
+ambitious kinglet in turn contended for its possession and made it
+his residence. The first of these, about 2500 B.C., were the lords
+of Nishin, Libitanunit, Gamiladar, Inedin, Bursin I., and Ismidagan:
+afterwards, about 2400 B.C., Gungunum of Nipur made himself master of
+it. The descendants of Gungunum, amongst others Bursin II., Gimilsin,
+Inesin, reigned gloriously for a few years. Their records show that
+they conquered not only a part of Elam, but part of Syria. They were
+dispossessed in their turn by a family belonging to Larsam, whose two
+chief representatives, as far as we know, were Nurramman and his son
+Sinidinnam (about 2300 B.C.). Naturally enough, Sinidinnam was a builder
+or repairer of temples, but he added to such work the clearing of the
+Shatt-el-Hai and the excavation of a new canal giving a more direct
+communication between the Shatt and the Tigris, and in thus controlling
+the water-system of the country became worthy of being considered one of
+the benefactors of Chaldaea.
+
+We have here the mere dust of history, rather than history itself: here
+an isolated individual makes his appearance in the record of his name,
+to vanish when we attempt to lay hold of him; there, the stem of a
+dynasty which breaks abruptly off, pompous preambles, devout formulas,
+dedications of objects or buildings, here and there the account of some
+battle, or the indication of some foreign country with which relations
+of friendship or commerce were maintained--these are the scanty
+materials out of which to construct a connected narrative. Egypt has not
+much more to offer us in regard to many of her Pharaohs, but we have in
+her case at least the ascertained framework of her dynasties, in
+which each fact and each new name falls eventually, and after some
+uncertainty, into its proper place. The main outlines of the picture are
+drawn with sufficient exactitude to require no readjustment, the groups
+are for the most part in their fitting positions, the blank spaces or
+positions not properly occupied are gradually restricted, and filled in
+from day to day; the expected moment is in sight when, the arrangement
+of the whole being accomplished, it will be necessary only to fill in
+the details. In the case of Chaldaea the framework itself is wanting,
+and expedients must be resorted to in order to classify the elements
+entering into its composition. Naramsin is in his proper place, or
+nearly so; but as for Gudea, what interval separates him from Naramsin,
+and at what distance from Gudea are we to place the kings of Uru? The
+beginnings of Chaldaea have merely a provisional history: the facts in
+it are certain, but the connection of the facts with one another is too
+often a matter of speculation. The arrangement which is put forward at
+present can be regarded only as probable, but it would be difficult
+to propose a better until the excavations have furnished us with fresh
+material; it must be accepted merely as an attempt, without pledging to
+it our confidence on the one hand, or regarding it with scepticism on
+the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE TEMPLES AND THE GODS OF CHALDAEA
+
+_THE CONSTRUCTION AND REVENUES OF THE TEMPLES--THE POPULAR GODS AND THE
+THEOLOGICAL TRIADS----THE DEAD AND HADES_.
+
+_Chaldaean cities: the resemblance of their ruins to natural mounds
+caused by their exclusive use of brick as a building material--Their
+city walls: the temples and local gods; reconstruction of their history
+by means of the stamped bricks of which they were built--The two types
+of ziggurat: the arrangement of the temple of Nannar at Uru.
+
+The tribes of the Chaldaean gods--Genii hostile to men, their monstrous
+shapes; the south-west wind; friendly genii--The Seven, and their
+attacks on the moon-god; Gibil, the fire-god, overcomes them and their
+snares--The Sumerian gods; Ningirsu: the difficulty of defining them and
+of understanding the nature of them; they become merged in the Semitic
+deities.
+
+Characteristics and dispositions of the Chaldaean gods--the goddesses,
+like women of the harem, are practically nonentities; Mylitta and
+her meretricious rites--The divine aristocracy and its principal
+representatives: their relations to the earth, oracles, speaking
+statues, household gods--The gods of each city do not exclude those
+of neighbouring cities: their alliances and their borrowings from one
+another--The sky-gods and the earth-gods, the sidereal gods: the moon
+and the sun.
+
+The feudal gods: several among them unite to govern the world; the two
+triads of Eridu--The supreme triad: Anu the heaven; Bel the earth and
+his fusion with the Babylonian Merodach; Ea, the god of the waters--The
+second triad: Sin the moon and Shamash the sun; substitution of Bamman
+for Ishtar in this triad; the winds and the legend of Adapa, the
+attributes of Ramman--The addition of goddesses to these two triads;
+the insignificant position which they occupy.
+
+The assembly of the gods governs the world: the bird Zu steals the
+tablets of destiny--Destinies are written in the heavens and determined
+by the movements of the stars; comets and their presiding deities, Nebo
+and Ishtai--The numerical value of the gods--The arrangement of the
+temples, the local priesthood, festivals, revenues of the gods and gifts
+made to them--Sacrifices, the expiation of crimes--Death and the future
+of the soul--Tombs and the cremation of the dead; the royal sepulchres
+and funerary rites--Hades and its sovereigns: Nergal, Allat, the
+descent of Ishtar into the infernal regions, and the possibility of a
+resurrection The invocation of the dead--The ascension of Etana._
+
+
+[Illustration: 124.jpg Chapter II]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE TEMPLES AND THE GODS OF CHALDAEA
+
+_The construction and revenues of the temples--Popular gods and
+theological triads--The dead and Hades_.
+
+
+The cities of the Euphrates attract no attention, like those of the
+Nile, by the magnificence of their ruins, which are witnesses,
+even after centuries of neglect, to the activity of a powerful and
+industrious people: on the contrary, they are merely heaps of rubbish in
+which no architectural outline can be distinguished--mounds of stiff
+and greyish clay, cracked by the sun, washed into deep crevasses by the
+rain, and bearing no apparent traces of the handiwork of man.
+
+[Illustration: 126.jpg PLAN OF THE RUINS OF WAKKA]
+
+In the estimation of the Chaldaean architects, stone was a material of
+secondary consideration: as it was necessary to bring it from a great
+distance and at considerable expense, they used it very sparingly, and
+then merely for lintels, uprights, thresholds, for hinges on which to
+hang their doors, for dressings in some of their state apartments, in
+cornices or sculptured friezes on the external walls of their buildings;
+and even then its employment suggested rather that of a band of
+embroidery carefully disposed on some garment to relieve the plainness
+of the material. Crude brick, burnt brick, enamelled brick, but always
+and everywhere brick was the principal element in their construction.
+The soil of the marshes or of the plains, separated from the pebbles
+and foreign substances which it contained, mixed with grass or chopped
+straw, moistened with water, and assiduously trodden underfoot,
+furnished the ancient builders with materials of incredible tenacity.
+This was moulded into thin square bricks, eight inches to a foot across,
+and three to four inches thick, but rarely larger: they were stamped on
+the flat side, by means of an incised wooden block, with the name of
+the reigning sovereign, and were then dried in the sun.* A layer of
+fine mortar or of bitumen was sometimes spread between the courses, or
+handfuls of reeds would be strewn at intervals between the brickwork to
+increase the cohesion: more frequently the crude bricks were piled one
+upon another, and their natural softness and moisture brought about
+their rapid agglutination.** As the building proceeded, the weight
+of the courses served to increase still further the adherence of the
+layers: the walls soon became consolidated into a compact mass, in which
+the horizontal strata were distinguishable only by the varied tints of
+the clay used to make the different relays of bricks.
+
+     * The making of bricks for the Assyrian monuments of the
+     time of the Sargonids has been minutely described by Place,
+     _Ninive et l’Assyrie_, vol. i. pp. 211-214. The methods of
+     procedure were exactly the same as those used under the
+     earliest king known, as has been proved by the examination
+     of the bricks taken from the monuments of Uru and Lagash.
+
+     ** This method of building was noticed by classical writers.
+     The word “Bowarieh,” borne by several ancient mounds in
+     Chaldoa, signifies, properly speaking, a mat of reeds; it is
+     applied only to such buildings as are apparently constructed
+     with alternate layers of brick and dried reeds. The
+     proportion of these layers differs in certain localities: in
+     the ruins of the ancient temple of Belos at Babylon, now
+     called the “Mujelibeh,” the lines of straw and reeds run
+     uninterruptedly between each course of bricks; in the ruins
+     of Akkerkuf, they only occur at wider intervals--according
+     to Niebuhr and Ives, every seventh or eighth course;
+     according to Raymond, every seventh course, or sometimes
+     every fifth or sixth course, but in these cases the layer of
+     reeds becomes 3 1/2 to 3 3/4 inches wide. H. Rawlin-son
+     thinks, on the other hand, that all the monuments in which
+     we find layers of straw and reeds between the brick courses
+     belong to the Parthian period.
+
+[Illustration: 128.jpg A CHALDAEAN STAMPED BRICK.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a brick preserved in the
+     Louvre. The bricks bearing historical inscriptions, which
+     are sometimes met with, appear to have been mostly ex-voto
+     offerings placed somewhere prominently, and not building
+     materials hidden in the masonry.
+
+
+Monuments constructed of such a plastic material required constant
+attention and frequent repairs, to keep them in good condition: after a
+few years of neglect they became quite disfigured, the houses suffered
+a partial dissolution in every storm, the streets were covered with
+a coating of fine mud, and the general outline of the buildings and
+habitations grew blurred and defaced. Whilst in Egypt the main features
+of the towns are still traceable above ground, and are so well preserved
+in places that, while excavating them, we are carried away from
+the present into the world of the past, the Chaldaean cities, on the
+contrary, are so overthrown and seem to have returned so thoroughly to
+the dust from which their founders raised them, that the most patient
+research and the most enlightened imagination can only imperfectly
+reconstitute their arrangement.
+
+The towns were not enclosed within those square or rectangular
+enclosures with which the engineers of the Pharaohs fortified their
+strongholds. The ground-plan of Uru was an oval, that of Larsam formed
+almost a circle upon the soil, while Uruk and Eridu resembled in shape
+a sort of irregular trapezium. The curtain of the citadel looked down on
+the plain from a great height, so that the defenders were almost out
+of reach of the arrows or slings of the besiegers: the remains of the
+ramparts at Uruk at the present day are still forty to fifty feet
+high, and twenty or more feet in thickness at the top. Narrow turrets
+projected at intervals of every fifty feet along the face of the wall:
+the excavations have not been sufficiently pursued to permit of our
+seeing what system of defence was applied to the entrances. The area
+described by these cities was often very large, but the population
+in them was distributed very unequally; the temples in the different
+quarters formed centres around which were clustered the dwellings of the
+inhabitants, sometimes densely packed, and elsewhere thinly scattered.
+The largest and richest of these temples was usually reserved for the
+principal deity, whose edifices were being continually decorated by
+the ruling princes, and the extent of whose ruins still attracts the
+traveller. The walls, constructed and repaired with bricks stamped
+with the names of lords of the locality, contain in themselves alone an
+almost complete history. Did Urbau, we may ask, found the ziggurat of
+Nannar in Uru? We meet with his bricks at the base of the most ancient
+portions of the building, and we moreover learn, from cylinders
+unearthed not far from it, that “for Nannar, the powerful bull of Anu,
+the son of Bel, his King, Urbau, the brave hero, King of Uru, had built
+E-Timila, his favourite temple.” The bricks of his son Dungi are found
+mixed with his own, while here and there other bricks belonging to
+subsequent kings, with cylinders, cones, and minor objects, strewn
+between the courses, mark restorations at various later periods. What
+is true of one Chaldaean city is equally true of all of them, and the
+dynasties of Uruk and of Lagash, like those of Uru, can be reconstructed
+from the revelations of their brickwork. The lords of heaven promised
+to the lords of the earth, as a reward of their piety, both glory and
+wealth in this life, and an eternal fame after death: they have, indeed,
+kept their word. The majority of the earliest Chaldaean heroes would be
+unknown to us, were it not for the witness of the ruined sanctuaries
+which they built, and that which they did in the service of their
+heavenly patrons has alone preserved their names from oblivion. Their
+most extravagant devotion, however, cost them less money and effort than
+that of the Pharaohs their contemporaries. While the latter had to
+bring from a distance, even from the remotest parts of the desert, the
+different kinds of stone which they considered worthy to form part of
+the decoration of the houses of their gods, the Chaldaean kings gathered
+up outside their very doors the principal material for their buildings:
+should they require any other accessories, they could obtain, at
+the worst, hard stone for their statues and thresholds in Magan and
+Milukhkha, and beams of cedar and cypress in the forests of the Amanus
+and the Upper Tigris. Under these conditions a temple was soon erected,
+and its construction did not demand centuries of continuous labour, like
+the great limestone and granite sanctuaries of Egypt: the same ruler who
+laid the first brick, almost always placed the final one, and succeeding
+generations had only to keep the building in ordinary repair, without
+altering its original plan. The work of construction was in almost
+every case carried out all at one time, designed and finished from
+the drawings of one architect, and bears traces but rarely of those
+deviations from the earlier plans which sometimes make the comprehension
+of the Theban temples so difficult a matter: if the state of decay of
+certain parts, or more often inadequate excavation, frequently prevent
+us from appreciating their details, we can at least reinstate their
+general outline with tolerable accuracy.
+
+While the Egyptian temple was spread superficially over a large area,
+the Chalaean temple strove to attain as high an elevation as possible.
+The “ziggurats,” whose angular profile is a special characteristic of
+the landscapes of the Euphrates, were composed of several immense cubes,
+piled up on one another, and diminishing in size up to the small shrine
+by which they were crowned and wherein the god himself was supposed to
+dwell. There are two principal types of these ziggurats. In the first,
+for which the builders of Lower Chaldaea showed a marked preference,
+the vertical axis, common to all the superimposed stories, did not pass
+through the centre of the rectangle which served as the base of the
+whole building; it was carried back and placed near to one of the narrow
+ends of the base, so that the back elevation of the temple rose abruptly
+in steep narrow ledges above the plain, while the terraces of the front
+broadened out into wide platforms. The stories are composed of solid
+blocks of crude brick; up to the present, at least, no traces of
+internal chambers have been found.* The chapel on the summit could not
+contain more than one apartment: an altar stood before the door, and
+access to it was obtained by a straight external staircase, interrupted
+at each terrace by a more or less spacious landing.** The second type
+of temple frequently found in Northern Chaldaea was represented by a
+building on a square base with seven stories, all of equal height,
+connected by one or two lateral staircases, having on the summit, the
+pavilion of the god; this is the “terraced tower” which excited the
+admiration of the Greeks at Babylon, and of which the temple of Bel was
+the most remarkable example. The ruins of it still exist, but it has
+been so frequently and so completely restored in the course of ages,
+that it is impossible to say how much now remains of the original
+construction. We know of several examples, however, of the other type
+of ziggurat--one at Uru, another at Bridu, a third at Uruk, without
+mentioning those which have not as yet been methodically explored. None
+of them rises directly from the surface of the ground, but they are all
+built on a raised platform, which consequently places the foundations of
+the temple nearly on a level with the roofs of the surrounding houses.
+The raised platform of the temple of Nannar at Uru still measures 20
+feet in height, and its four angles are orientated exactly to the four
+cardinal points. Its facade was approached by an inclined plane, or by
+a flight of low steps, and the summit, which was surrounded by a low
+balustrade, was paved with enormous burnt bricks. On this terrace,
+processions at solemn festivals would have ample space to perform their
+evolutions. The lower story of the temple occupies a parallelogram of
+198 feet in length by 173 feet in width, and rises about 27 feet in
+height.
+
+     * Perrot-Ohipiez admit that between the first and second
+     story there was a sort of plinth seven feet in height which
+     corresponded to the foundation platform below the first
+     story. It appears to me, as it did to Loftus, that the slope
+     which now separates the two vertical masses of brickwork “is
+     accidental, and owes its existence to the destruction of the
+     upper portion of the second story.” Taylor mentions only two
+     stories, and evidently considers the slope in question to be
+     a bank of rubbish.
+
+     ** Perrot-Chipiez place the staircase leading from the
+     ground-level to the terrace inside the building--“an
+     arrangement which would have the advantage of not
+     interfering with the outline of this immense platform, and
+     would not detract from the strength and solidity of its
+     appearance;” Reber proposes a different combination. At Uru,
+     the whole staircase projects in front of the platform and
+     “loads up to the edge of the basement of the second story,”
+      then continues as an inclined plane from the edge of the
+     first story to the terrace of the second, forming one single
+     staircase, perhaps of the same width as this second story,
+     leading from the base to the summit of the building.
+
+[Illustration: 134.jpg THE TEMPLE OF NANNAR AT URU, APPROXIMATELY
+RESTORED.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin. The restoration differs from that
+     proposed by Perrot-Chipiez. I have made it by working out
+     the description taken down on the spot by Taylor.
+
+The central mass of crude brick has preserved its casing of red tiles,
+cemented with bitumen, almost intact up to the top; it is
+strengthened by buttresses--nine on the longer and six on the shorter
+sides--projecting about a foot, which relieve its rather bare surface.
+The second story rises to the height of only 20 feet above, the first,
+and when intact could not have been more than 26 to 30 feet high.* Many
+bricks bearing the stamp of Dungi are found among the materials used in
+the latest restoration, which took place about the VIth century before
+our era; they have a smooth surface, are broken here and there by
+air-holes, and their very simplicity seems to bear witness to the fact
+that Nabonidos confined himself to the task of merely restoring things
+to the state in which the earlier kings of Uru had left them.**
+
+[Illustration: 135.jpg THE TEMPLE OF URU IN ITS PRESENT STATE, ACCORDING
+TO TAYLOR]
+
+     Facsimile, by Faucher-Gudin, of the drawing published by
+     Taylor.
+
+
+     * At the present time 14 feet high, plus 5 feet of rubbish,
+     119 feet long, 75 feet wide (Loftus, _Travels and Researches
+     in Olialdsea and Susiana_, p. 129).
+
+     ** The cylinders of Nabonidos describing the restoration of
+     the temple were found at the four angles of the second story
+     by Taylor.
+
+Till within the last century, traces of a third story to this temple
+might have been distinguished; unlike the lower ones, it was not of
+solid brickwork, but contained at least one chamber: this was the Holy
+of Holies, the sanctuary of Nannar. The external walls were covered with
+pale blue enamelled tiles, having a polished surface. The interior
+was panelled with cedar or cypress--rare woods procured as articles
+of commerce from the peoples of the North and West; this woodwork was
+inlaid in parts with thin leaves of gold, alternating with panels of
+mosaics composed of small pieces of white marble, alabaster, onyx, and
+agate, cut and polished.
+
+[Illustration: 136.jpg FURTHER VIEW OF THE TEMPLE OF URU]
+
+     In Its Present State, According To Loftus. Drawn by
+     Bouchier, from Loftus.
+
+Here stood the statue of Nannar, one of those stiff and conventionalized
+figures in the traditional pose handed down from generation to
+generation, and which lingered even in the Chaldaean statues of Greek
+times. The spirit of the god dwelt within it in the same way as the
+double resided in the Egyptian idols, and from thence he watched over
+the restless movements of the people below, the noise of whose turmoil
+scarcely reached him at that elevation. The gods of the Euphrates, like
+those of the Nile, constituted a countless multitude of visible and
+invisible beings, distributed into tribes and empires throughout all the
+regions of the universe. A particular function or occupation formed,
+so to speak, the principality of each one, in which he worked with an
+indefatigable zeal, under the orders of his respective prince or king;
+but, whereas in Egypt they were on the whole friendly to man, or at the
+best indifferent in regard to him, in Chaldaea they for the most part
+pursued him with an implacable hatred, and only seemed to exist in order
+to destroy him. These monsters of alarming aspect, armed with knives and
+lances, whom the theologians of Heliopolis and Thebes confined within
+the caverns of Hades in the depths of eternal darkness, were believed
+by the Chaldaeans to be let loose in broad daylight over the earth,--such
+were the “gallu” and the “mas-kim,” the “alu” and the “utukku,” besides
+a score of other demoniacal tribes bearing curious and mysterious names.
+
+[Illustration: 137.jpg Lion-headed genius.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a small terra-cotta figure of
+     the Assyrian period, and now in the Louvre. It was one of
+     the figures buried under the threshold of one of the gates
+     of the town at Khorsabad, to keep off baleful influences.
+
+Some floated in the air and presided over the unhealthy winds. The
+South-West Wind, the most cruel of them all, stalked over the solitudes
+of Arabia, whence he suddenly issued during the most oppressive months
+of the year: he collected round him as he passed the malarial vapours
+given off by the marshes under the heat of the sun, and he spread them
+over the country, striking down in his violence not only man and beast,
+but destroying harvests, pasturage, and even trees.
+
+[Illustration: 138.jpg THE SOUTH-WEST WIND]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the bronze original now in the
+     Louvre. The latter museum and the British Museum possess
+     several other figures of the same demon.
+
+The genii of fevers and madness crept in silently everywhere, insidious
+and traitorous as they were. The plague alternately slumbered or made
+furious onslaughts among crowded populations. Imps haunted the houses,
+goblins wandered about the water’s edge, ghouls lay in wait for
+travellers in unfrequented places, and the dead quitting their tombs in
+the night stole stealthily among the living to satiate themselves with
+their blood. The material shapes attributed to these murderous beings
+were supposed to convey to the eye their perverse and ferocious
+characters. They were represented as composite creatures in whom the
+body of a man would be joined grotesquely to the limbs of animals in the
+most unexpected combinations. They worked in as best they could, birds’
+claws, fishes’ scales, a bull’s tail, several pairs of wings, the head
+of a lion, vulture, hyaena, or wolf; when they left the creature a human
+head, they made it as hideous and distorted as possible. The South-West
+Wind was distinguished from all the rest by the multiplicity of the
+incongruous elements of which his person was composed. His dog-like body
+was supported upon two legs terminating in eagle’s claws; in addition to
+his arms, which were furnished with sharp talons, he had four outspread
+wings, two of which fell behind him, while the other two rose up and
+surrounded his head; he had a scorpion’s tail, a human face with large
+goggle-eyes, bushy eyebrows, fleshless cheeks, and retreating lips,
+showing a formidable row of threatening teeth, while from his flattened
+skull protruded the horns of a goat: the entire combination was so
+hideous, that it even alarmed the god and put him to flight, when he was
+unexpectedly confronted with his own portrait. There was no lack of
+good genii to combat this deformed and vicious band. They too
+were represented as monsters, but monsters of a fine and noble
+bearing,--griffins, winged lions, lion-headed men, and more especially
+those splendid human-headed bulls, those “lamassi” crowned with mitres,
+whose gigantic statues kept watch before the palace and temple gates.
+Between these two races hostility was constantly displayed: restrained
+at one point, it broke out afresh at another, and the evil genii,
+invariably beaten, as invariably refused to accept their defeat. Man,
+less securely armed against them than were the gods, was ever meeting
+with them. “Up there, they are howling, here they lie in wait,--they are
+great worms let loose by heaven--powerful ones whose clamour rises above
+the city--who pour water in torrents from heaven, sons who have come
+out of the bosom of the earth.--They twine around the high rafters,
+the great rafters, like a crown;--they take their way from house to
+house,--for the door cannot stop them, nor bar the way, nor repulse
+them,--for they creep like a serpent under the door--they insinuate
+themselves like the air between the folding doors,--they separate the
+bride from the embraces of the bridegroom,--they snatch the child from
+between the knees of the man,--they entice the unwary from out of his
+fruitful house,--they are the threatening voice which pursues him from
+behind.” Their malice extended even to animals: “They force the raven
+to fly away on the wing,--and they make the swallow to escape from its
+nest;--they cause the bull to flee, they cause the lamb to flee--they,
+the bad demons who lay snares.”
+
+The most audacious among them did not fear at times to attack the gods
+of light; on one occasion, in the infancy of the world, they had sought
+to dispossess them and reign in their stead. Without any warning they
+had climbed the heavens, and fallen upon Sin, the moon-god; they had
+repulsed Shamash, the Sun, and Eamman, both of whom had come to the
+rescue; they had driven Ishtar and Anu from their thrones: the whole
+firmament would have become a prey to them, had not Bel and Nusku, Ea
+and Merodach, intervened at the eleventh hour, and succeeded in hurling
+them down to the earth, after a terrible battle. They never completely
+recovered from this reverse, and the gods raised up as rivals to them a
+class of friendly genii--the “Igigi,” who were governed by five heavenly
+Anunnas.
+
+[Illustration: 141.jpg SIN DELIVERED BY MERODACH FROM THE ASSAULT OF THE
+SEVEN EVIL SPIRITS.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian intaglio published
+     by Layard.
+
+The earthly Anunnas, the Anunnaki, had as their chiefs seven sons
+of Bel, with bodies of lions, tigers, and serpents: “the sixth was a
+tempestuous wind which obeyed neither god nor king,--the seventh, a
+whirlwind, a desolating storm which destroys everything,”--“Seven,
+seven,--in the depth of the abyss of waters they are seven,--and
+destroyers of heaven they are seven.--They have grown up in the depths
+of the abyss, in the palace;--males they are not, females they are
+not,--they are storms which pass quickly.--They take no wife, they give
+birth to no child,--they know neither compassion nor kindness,--they
+listen to no prayer nor supplication.--As wild horses they are born in
+the mountains,--they are the enemies of Ba,--they are the agents of the
+gods;--they are evil, they are evil--and they are seven, they are seven,
+they are twice seven.” Man, if reduced to his own resources, could have
+no chance of success in struggling against beings who had almost reduced
+the gods to submission. He invoked in his defence the help of the whole
+universe, the spirits of heaven and earth, the spirit of Bel and of
+Belit, that of Ninib and of Nebo, those of Sin, of Ishtar, and of
+Bamman; but Gibir or Gibil, the Lord of Fire, was the most powerful
+auxiliary in this incessant warfare. The offspring of night and of dark
+waters, the Anunnaki had no greater enemy than fire; whether kindled
+on the household hearth or upon the altars, its appearance put them to
+flight and dispelled their power.
+
+[Illustration: 142.jpg STRUGGLE BETWEEN A GOOD AND AN EVIL GENIUS.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.
+
+“Gibil, renowned hero in the land,--valiant, son of the Abyss, exalted
+in the land,--Gibil, thy clear flame, breaking forth,--when it lightens
+up the darkness,--assigns to all that bears a name its own destiny.
+--The copper and tin, it is thou who dost mix them,--gold and silver,
+it is thou who meltest them,--thou art the companion of the goddess
+Ninkasi--thou art he who exposes his breast to the nightly enemy!--Cause
+then the limbs of man, son of his god, to shine,--make him to be bright
+like the sky,--may he shine like the earth,--may he be bright like the
+interior of the heavens,--may the evil word be kept far from him,” and
+with it the malignant spirits. The very insistence with which help is
+claimed against the Anunnaki shows how much their power was dreaded.
+The Chaldean felt them everywhere about him, and could not move without
+incurring the danger of coming into contact with them. He did not fear
+them so much during the day, as the presence of the luminary deities in
+the heavens reassured him; but the night belonged to them, and he was
+open to their attacks. If he lingered in the country at dusk, they were
+there, under the hedges, behind walls and trunks of trees, ready to
+rush out upon him at every turn. If he ventured after sundown into the
+streets of his village or town, he again met with them quarrelling with
+dogs over the offal on a rubbish heap, crouched in the shelter of a
+doorway, lying hidden in corners where the shadows were darkest. Even
+when barricaded within his house, under the immediate protection of
+his domestic idols, these genii still threatened him and left him not a
+moment’s repose.* The number of them was so great that he was unable to
+protect himself adequately from all of them: when he had disarmed the
+greater portion of them, there were always several remaining against
+whom he had forgotten to take necessary precautions. What must have
+been the total of the subordinate genii, when, towards the IXth century
+before our era, the official census of the invisible beings stated
+the number of the great gods in heaven and earth to be sixty-five
+thousand!**
+
+     * The presence of the evil spirits everywhere is shown,
+     among other magical formulas, by the incantation in
+     Rawlinson, _Cun, Ins. W. As._, vol. ii. pi. 18, where we
+     find enumerated at length the places from which they are to
+     be kept out. The magician closes the house to them, the
+     hedge which surrounds the house, the yoke laid upon the
+     oxen, the tomb, the prison, the well, the furnace, the
+     shade, the vase for libation, the ravines, the valleys, the
+     mountains, the door.
+
+     ** Assurnazirpal, King of Assyria, speaks in one of his
+     inscriptions of these sixty-five thousand great gods of
+     heaven and earth.
+
+We are often much puzzled to say what these various divinities, whose
+names we decipher on the monuments, could possibly have represented. The
+sovereigns of Lagash addressed their prayers to Ningirsu, the valiant
+champion of Inlil; to Ninursag, the lady of the terrestrial mountain:
+to Ninsia, the lord of fate; to the King Ninagal; to Inzu, of whose real
+name no one has an idea; to Inanna, the queen of battles; to Pasag, to
+Galalim, to Dunshagana, to Ninmar, to Ningishzida. Gudea raised temples
+to them in all the cities over which his authority extended, and he
+devoted to these pious foundations a yearly income out of his domain
+land or from the spoils of his wars. “Gudea, the ‘vicegerent’ of
+Lagash, after having built the temple Ininnu for Ningirsu, constructed a
+treasury; a house decorated with sculptures, such as no ‘vicegerent’
+had ever before constructed for Ningirsu; he constructed it for him,
+he wrote his name in it, he made in it all that was needful, and he
+executed faithfully all the words from the mouth of Ningirsu.” The
+dedication of these edifices was accompanied with solemn festivals, in
+which the whole population took an active part. “During seven years no
+grain was ground, and the maidservant was the equal of her mistress, the
+slave walked beside his master, and in my town the weak rested by
+the side of the strong.” Henceforward Gudea watched scrupulously lest
+anything impure should enter and mar the sanctity of the place.
+
+[Illustration: 145.jpg THE GOD NINGIBSU, PATRON OF LAGASH.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec. The attribution
+     of this figure to Ningirsu is very probable, but not wholly
+     certain.
+
+Those we have enumerated were the ancient Sumerian divinities, but the
+characteristics of most of them would have been lost to us, had we
+not learned, by means of other documents, to what gods the Semites
+assimilated them, gods who are better known and who are represented
+under a less barbarous aspect. Ningirsu, the lord of the division of
+Lagash which was called Girsu, was identified with Ninib; Inlil is Bel,
+Ninursag is Beltis, Inzu is Sin, Inanna is Ishtar, and so on with the
+rest. The cultus of each, too, was not a local cultus, confined to some
+obscure corner of the country; they all were rulers over the whole of
+Chaldaea, in the north as in the south, at Uruk, at Urn, at Larsam, at
+Nipur, even in Babylon itself. Inlil was the ruler of the earth and of
+Hades, Babbar was the sun, Inzu the moon, Inanna-Antmit the morning and
+evening star and the goddess or love, at a time when two distinct
+religious and two rival groups of gods existed side by side on the banks
+of the Euphrates. The Sumerian language is for us, at the present day,
+but a collection of strange names, of whose meaning and pronunciation we
+are often ignorant. We may well ask what beings and beliefs were
+originally hidden under these barbaric combinations of syllables which
+are constantly recurring in the inscriptions of the oldest dynasties,
+such as Pasag, Dunshagana, Dumuzi-. Zuaba, and a score of others. The
+priests of subsequent times claimed to define exactly the attributes of
+each of them, and probably their statements are, in the main, correct.
+But it is impossible for us to gauge the motives which determined the
+assimilation of some of these divinities, the fashion in which it was
+carried out, the mutual concessions which Semite and Sumerian must have
+made before they could arrive at an understanding, and before the
+primitive characteristics of each deity were softened down or entirely
+effaced in the process. Many of these divine personages, such as Ea,
+Merodach, Ishtar, are so completely transformed, that we may well ask to
+which of the two peoples they owed their origin. The Semites finally
+gained the ascendency over their rivals, and the Sumerian gods from
+thenceforward preserved an independent existence only in connection with
+magic, divination, and the science of foretelling events, and also in
+the formulas of exorcists and physicians, to which the harshness of
+their names lent a greater weight. Elsewhere it was Bel and Sin, Shamash
+and Eamman, who were universally worshipped, but a Bel, a Sin, a
+Shamash, who still betrayed traces of their former connection with the
+Sumerian Inlil and Inzu, with Babbar and Mermer. In whatever language,
+however, they were addressed, by whatever name they were called upon,
+they did not fail to hear and grant a favourable reply to the appeals of
+the faithful.
+
+Whether Sumerian or Semitic, the gods, like those of Egypt, were not
+abstract personages, guiding in a metaphysical fashion the forces of
+nature. Each of them contained in himself one of the principal elements
+of which our universe is composed,--earth, water, sky, sun, moon, and
+the stars which moved around the terrestrial mountain. The succession of
+natural phenomena with them was not the result of unalterable laws; it
+was due entirely to a series of voluntary acts, accomplished by beings
+of different grades of intelligence and power. Every part of the great
+whole is represented by a god, a god who is a man, a Chaldaean, who,
+although of a finer and more lasting nature than other Chaldaeans,
+possesses nevertheless the same instincts and is swayed by the same
+passions. He is, as a rule, wanting in that somewhat lithe grace of
+form, and in that rather easy-going good-nature, which were the primary
+characteristics of the Egyptian gods: the Chaldaean divinity has the
+broad shoulders, the thick-set figure and projecting muscles of the
+people over whom he rules; he has their hasty and violent temperament,
+their coarse sensuality, their cruel and warlike propensities, their
+boldness in conceiving undertakings, and their obstinate tenacity in
+carrying them out. Their goddesses are modelled on the tyra of the
+Chaldaen women, or, more properly speaking, on that of their queens. The
+majority of them do not quit the harem, and have no other ambition than
+to become speedily the mother of a numerous offspring. Those who openly
+reject the rigid constraints of such a life, and who seek to share the
+rank of the gods, seem to lose all self-restraint when they put off
+the veil: like Ishtar, they exchange a life of severe chastity for
+the lowest debauchery, and they subject their followers to the same
+irregular life which they themselves have led. “Every woman born in the
+country must enter once during her lifetime the enclosure of the temple
+of Aphrodite, must there sit down and unite herself to a stranger. Many
+who are wealthy are too proud to mix with the rest, and repair thither
+in closed chariots, followed by a considerable train of slaves. The
+greater number seat themselves on the sacred pavement, with a cord
+twisted about their heads,--and there is always a great crowd there,
+coming and going; the women being divided by ropes into long lanes, down
+which strangers pass to make their choice. A woman who has once taken
+her place here cannot return home until a stranger has thrown into her
+lap a silver coin, and has led her away with him beyond the limits of
+the sacred enclosure. As he throws the money he pronounces these words:
+‘May the goddess Mylitta make thee happy! ‘--Now, among the Assyrians,
+Aphrodite is called Mylitta. The silver coin may be of any value, but
+none may refuse it, that is forbidden by the law, for, once thrown, it
+is sacred. The woman follows the first man who throws her the money, and
+repels no one. When once she has accompanied him, and has thus satisfied
+the goddess, she returns to her home, and from thenceforth, however
+large the sum offered to her, she will yield to no one. The women who
+are tall or beautiful soon return to their homes, but those who are ugly
+remain a long time before they are able to comply with the law; some
+of them are obliged to wait three or four years within the enclosure.” *
+This custom still existed in the Vth century before our era, and the
+Greeks who visited Babylon about that time found it still in full force.
+
+     * Herodotus, i. 199: of. Stabo, xvi. p. 1058, who probably
+     has merely quoted this passage from Herodotus, or some
+     writer who copied from Herodotus. We meet with a direct
+     allusion to this same custom in the Bible, in the _Book of
+     Barueh_; “The women also, with cords about them, sitting in
+     the ways, burn bran for perfume; but if any of them, drawn
+     by some that passeth by, lie with him, she reproacheth her
+     fellow, that she was not thought as worthy as herself, nor
+     her cord broken.”
+
+The gods, who had begun by being the actual material of the element
+which was their attribute, became successively the spirit of it, then
+its ruler.* They continued at first to reside in it, but in the course
+of time they were separated from it, and each was allowed to enter the
+domain of another, dwell in it, and even command it, as they could
+have done in their own, till finally the greater number of them were
+identified with the firmament.
+
+     * Pk. Lbnoemant, _La Magie chez les Chaldeens_, p. 144, et
+     seq., where the author shows how Anu, after having at
+     first been the Heaven itself, the starry vault stretched
+     above the earth, became successively the Spirit of Heaven
+     (_Zi-ana_), and finally the supreme ruler of the world:
+     according to Lenormant, it was the Semites in particular who
+     transformed the primitive spirit into an actual god-king.
+
+Bel, the lord of the earth, and Ea, the ruler of the waters, passed info
+the heavens, which did not belong to them, and took their places beside
+Ami: the pathways were pointed out which they had made for themselves
+across the celestial vault, in order to inspect their kingdoms from the
+exalted heights to which they had been raised; that of Bel was in the
+Tropic of Cancer, that of Ea in the Tropic of Capricorn. They gathered
+around them all the divinities who could easily be abstracted from the
+function or object to which they were united, and they thus constituted
+a kind of divine aristocracy, comprising all the most powerful
+beings who guided the fortunes of the world. The number of them was
+considerable, for they reckoned seven supreme and magnificent gods,
+fifty great gods of heaven and earth, three hundred celestial
+spirits, and six hundred terrestrial spirits. Each of them deputed
+representatives here below, who received the homage of mankind for him,
+and signified to them his will. The god revealed himself in dreams to
+his seers and imparted to them the course of coming events,* or, in
+some cases, inspired them suddenly and spoke by their mouth: their
+utterances, taken down and commented on by their assistants, were
+regarded as infallible oracles. But the number of mortal men possessing
+adequate powers, and gifted with sufficiently acute senses to bear
+without danger the near presence of a god, was necessarily limited;
+communications were, therefore, more often established by means of
+various objects, whose grosser substance lessened for human intelligence
+and flesh and blood the dangers of direct contact with an immortal. The
+statues hidden in the recesses of the temples or erected on the summits
+of the “ziggurats” became imbued, by virtue of their consecration, with
+the actual body of the god whom they represented, and whose name was
+written either on the base or garment of the statue.** The sovereign
+who dedicated them, summoned them to speak in the days to come, and from
+thenceforth they spoke: when they were interrogated according to the
+rite instituted specially for each one, that part of the celestial soul,
+which by means of the prayers had been attracted to and held captive
+by the statue, could not refuse to reply.** Were there for this purpose
+special images, as in Egypt, which were cleverly contrived so as to
+emit sounds by the pulling of a string by the hidden prophet? Voices
+resounded at night in the darkness of the sanctuaries, and particularly
+when a king came there to prostrate himself for the purpose of learning
+the future: his rank alone, which raised him halfway to heaven, prepared
+him to receive the word from on high by the mouth of the image.
+
+     * A prophetic dream is mentioned upon, one of the statues of
+     Telloh. In the records of Assurbanipal we find mention of
+     several “seers”--_shabru_--one of whom predicts the
+     general triumph of the king over his enemies, and of whom
+     another announces in the name of Ishtar the victory over the
+     Elamites and encourages the Assyrian army to cross a torrent
+     swollen by rains, while a third sees in a dream the defeat
+     and death of the King of Elam. These “seers” are mentioned in
+     the texts of Gudea with the prophetesses “who tell the
+     message” of the gods.
+
+     ** In a formula drawn up against evil spirits, for the
+     purpose of making talismanic figures for the protection of
+     houses, it is said of Merodach that he “inhabits the image”
+      --_ashibu salam_--which has been made of him by the magician.
+
+     ** This is what Gudea says, when, describing his own statue
+     which he had placed in the temple of Telloh, he adds that
+     “he gave the order to the statue: ‘To the statue of my king,
+     speak!’” The statue of the king, inspired by that of the
+     god, would thenceforth speak when interrogated according to
+     the formularies. Cf. what is said of the divine or royal
+     statues dedicated in the temples of Egypt, vol. i. pp. 169,
+     170. A number of oracles regularly obtained in the time of
+     Asarhaddon and Assurbanabal have been published by Knudtzon.
+
+[Illustration: 152.jpg THE ADORATION OF THE MACE AND THE WHIP.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the Chaldaean intaglio
+     reproduced in Heuzey-Sarzec, _Decouvertes en Chaldee_, pl.
+     30bis, No. 13b.
+
+More frequently a priest, accustomed from childhood to the office,
+possessed the privilege of asking the desired questions and of
+interpreting to the faithful the various signs by means of which the
+divine will was made known. The spirit of the god inspired, moreover,
+whatever seemed good to him, and frequently entered into objects
+where we should least have expected to find it. It animated stones,
+particularly such as fell from heaven; also trees, as, for example, the
+tree of Eridu which pronounced oracles; and, besides the battle-mace,
+with a granite head fixed on a wooden handle, the axe of Ramman, lances
+made on the model of Gilgames’ fairy javelin, which came and went at its
+master’s orders, without needing to be touched. Such objects, when it
+was once ascertained that they were imbued with the divine spirit, were
+placed upon the altar and worshipped with as much veneration as were the
+statues themselves.
+
+[Illustration: 153.jpg A protecting amulet.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the terra-cotta figurine of
+     Assyrian date now in the Louvre.
+
+Animals never became objects of habitual worship as in Egypt: some of
+them, however, such as the bull and lion, were closely allied to the
+gods, and birds unconsciously betrayed by their flight or cries the
+secrets of futurity.* In addition to all these, each family possessed
+its household gods, to whom its members recited prayers and poured
+libations night and morning, and whose statues set up over the domestic
+hearth defended it from the snares of the evil ones.** The State
+religion, which all the inhabitants of the same city, from the king down
+to the lowest slave, were solemnly bound to observe, really represented
+to the Chaldaeans but a tithe of their religious life: it included some
+dozen gods, no doubt the most important, but it more or less left out of
+account all the others, whose anger, if aroused by neglect, might become
+dangerous. The private devotion of individuals supplemented the State
+religion by furnishing worshippers for most of the neglected divinities,
+and thus compensated for what was lacking in the official public worship
+of the community.
+
+     * Animal forms are almost always restricted either to the
+     genii, the constellations, or the secondary forms of the
+     greater divinities: Ea, however, is represented by a man
+     with a fish’s tail, or as a man clothed with a fish-skin,
+     which would appear to indicate that at the outset he was
+     considered to be an actual fish.
+
+     ** The images of these gods acted as amulets, and the fact
+     of their presence alone repelled the evil spirits. At
+     Khorsabad they were found buried under the threshold of the
+     city gates. A bilingual tablet in the British Museum has
+     preserved for us the formula of consecration which was
+     supposed to invest these protecting statuettes with divine
+     powers.
+
+If the idea of uniting all these divine beings into a single supreme
+one, who would combine within himself all their elements and the whole
+of their powers, ever for a moment crossed the mind of some Chaldaean
+theologian, it never spread to the people as a whole. Among all the
+thousands of tablets or inscribed stones on which we find recorded
+prayers and magical formulas, we have as yet discovered no document
+treating of the existence of a supreme god, or even containing the
+faintest allusion to a divine unity. We meet indeed with many passages
+in which this or that divinity boasts of his power, eloquently
+depreciating that of his rivals, and ending his discourse with the
+injunction to worship him alone: “Man who shall come after, trust
+in Nebo, trust in no other god!” The very expressions which are used,
+commanding future races to abandon the rest of the immortals in
+favour of Nebo, prove that even those who prided themselves on being
+worshippers of one god realized how far they were from believing in the
+unity of God. They strenuously asserted that the idol of their choice
+was far superior to many others, but it never occurred to them to
+proclaim that he had absorbed them all into himself, and that he
+remained alone in his glory, contemplating the world, his creature. Side
+by side with those who expressed this belief in Nebo, an inhabitant
+of Babylon would say as much and more of Merodach, the patron of
+his birthplace, without, however, ceasing to believe in the actual
+independence and royalty of Nebo. “When thy power manifests itself, who
+can withdraw himself from it?--Thy word is a powerful net which thou
+spreadest in heaven and over the earth:--it falls upon the sea, and
+the sea retires,--it falls upon the plain, and the fields make great
+mourning,--it falls upon the upper waters of the Euphrates, and the word
+of Merodach stirs up the flood in them.--O Lord, thou art sovereign,
+who can resist thee?--Merodach, among the gods who bear a name, thou art
+sovereign.” Merodach is for his worshippers the king of the gods, he is
+not the sole god. Each of the chief divinities received in a similar
+manner the assurance of his omnipotence, but, for all that, his most
+zealous followers never regarded them as the only God, beside whom there
+was none other, and whose existence and rule precluded those of any
+other. The simultaneous elevation of certain divinities to the supreme
+rank had a reactionary influence on the ideas held with regard to the
+nature of each. Anu, Bel, and Ea, not to mention others, had enjoyed
+at the outset but a limited and incomplete personality, confined to a
+single concept, and were regarded as possessing only such attributes as
+were indispensable to the exercise of their power within a prescribed
+sphere, whether in heaven, or on the earth, or in the waters; as each in
+his turn gained the ascendency over his rivals, he became invested with
+the qualities which were exercised by the others in their own domain.
+His personality became enlarged, and instead of remaining merely a
+god of heaven or earth or of the waters, he became god of all three
+simultaneously. Anu reigned in the province of Bel or of Ea as he ruled
+in his own; Bel joined to his own authority that of Anu and Ea; Ea
+treated Anu and Bel with the same absence of ceremony which they had
+shown to him, and added their supremacy to his own. The personality
+of each god was thenceforward composed of many divers elements: each
+preserved a nucleus of his original being, but superadded to this were
+the peculiar characteristics of all the gods above whom he had been
+successively raised. Anu took to himself somewhat of the temperaments
+of Bel and of Ea, and the latter in exchange borrowed from him
+many personal traits. The same work of levelling which altered the
+characteristics of the Egyptian divinities, and transformed them
+little by little into local variants of Osiris and the Sun, went on as
+vigorously among the Chaldaean gods: those who were incarnations of
+the earth, the waters, the stars, or the heavens, became thenceforth
+so nearly allied to each other that we are tempted to consider them
+as being doubles of a single god, worshipped under different names
+in different localities. Their primitive forms can only be clearly
+distinguished when they are stripped of the uniform in which they are
+all clothed.
+
+The sky-gods and the earth-gods had been more numerous at the outset
+than they were subsequently. We recognize as such Anu, the immovable
+firmament, and the ancient Bel, the lord of men and of the soil on which
+they live, and into whose bosom they return after, death; but there
+were others, who in historic times had partially or entirely lost their
+primitive character,--such as Nergal, Ninib, Dumuzi; or, among the
+goddesses, Damkina, Esharra, and even Ishtar herself, who, at the
+beginning of their existence, had represented only the earth, or one
+of its most striking aspects. For instance, Nergal and Ninib were the
+patrons of agriculture and protectors of the soil, Dumuzi was the
+ground in spring whose garment withered at the first approach of summer,
+Damkina was the leafy mould in union with fertilizing moisture, Esharra
+was the field whence sprang the crops, Ishtar was the clod which again
+grew green after the heat of the dog days and the winter frosts. All
+these beings had been forced to submit in a greater or less degree to
+the fate which among most primitive races awaits those older earth-gods,
+whose manifestations are usually too vague and shadowy to admit of their
+being grasped or represented by any precise imagery without limiting and
+curtailing their spheres. New deities had arisen of a more definite and
+tangible kind, and hence more easily understood, and having a real or
+supposed province which could be more easily realized, such as the sun,
+the moon, and the fixed or wandering stars. The moon is the measure of
+time; it determines the months, leads the course of the years, and the
+entire life of mankind and of great cities depends upon the regularity
+of its movements: the Chaldaeans, therefore, made it, or rather the
+spirit which animated it, the father and king of the gods; but
+its suzerainty was everywhere a conventional rather than an actual
+superiority, and the sun, which in theory was its vassal, attracted more
+worshippers than the pale and frigid luminary. Some adored the sun under
+its ordinary title of Shamash, corresponding to the Egyptian Ra; others
+designated it as Merodach, Ninib, Nergal, Dumuzi, not to mention other
+less usual appellations. Nergal in the beginning had nothing in common
+with Ninib, and Merodach differed alike from Shamash, Ninib, Nergal,
+and Dumuzi; but the same movement which instigated the fusion of so many
+Egyptian divinities of diverse nature, led the gods of the Chaldaeans to
+divest themselves little by little of their individuality and to lose
+themselves in the sun. Each one at first became a complete sun, and
+united in himself all the innate virtues of the sun--its brilliancy
+and its dominion over the world, its gentle and beneficent heat, its
+fertilizing warmth, its goodness and justice, its emblematic character
+of truth and peace; besides the incontestable vices which darken certain
+phases of its being--the fierceness of its rays at midday and in summer,
+the inexorable strength of its will, its combative temperament, its
+irresistible harshness and cruelty. By degrees they lost this uniform
+character, and distributed the various attributes among themselves. If
+Shamash continued to be the sun in general, Ninib restricted himself,
+after the example of the Egyptian Harmakhis, to being merely the rising
+and setting sun, the sun on the two horizons. Nergal became the feverish
+and destructive summer sun.* Merodach was transformed into the youthful
+sun of spring and early morning;** Dumuzi, like Merodach, became the sun
+before the summer. Their moral qualities naturally were affected by the
+process of restriction which had been applied to their physical being,
+and the external aspect now assigned to each in accordance with their
+several functions differed considerably from that formerly attributed
+to the unique type from which they had sprung. Ninib was represented as
+valiant, bold, and combative; he was a soldier who dreamed but of
+battle and great feats of arms. Nergal united a crafty fierceness to
+his bravery: not content with being lord of battles, he became the
+pestilence which breaks out unexpectedly in a country, the death which
+comes like a thief, and carries off his prey before there is time
+to take up arms against him. Merodach united wisdom with courage and
+strength: he attacked the wicked, protected the good, and used his power
+in the cause of order and justice. A very ancient legend, which was
+subsequently fully developed among the Canaanites, related the story of
+the unhappy passion of Ishtar for Dumuzi. The goddess broke out yearly
+into a fresh frenzy, but the tragic death of the hero finally moderated
+the ardour of her devotion. She wept distractedly for him, went to beg
+the lords of the infernal regions for his return, and brought him back
+triumphantly to the earth: every year there was a repetition of the same
+passionate infatuation, suddenly interrupted by the same mourning. The
+earth was united to the young sun with every recurring spring, and under
+the influence of his caresses became covered with verdure; then followed
+autumn and winter, and the sun, grown old, sank into the tomb, from
+whence his mistress had to call him up, in order to plunge afresh with
+him by a common impulse into the joys and sorrows of another year.
+
+     * The solar character of Nergal, at least in later times, is
+     admitted, but with restrictions, by all Assyriologists. The
+     evident connection between him and Ninib, of which we have
+     proofs, was the ground of Delitzsch’s theory that he was
+     likewise the burning and destructive sun, and also of
+     Jensen’s analogous concept of a midday and summer sun.
+
+     ** Pr. Lenormant seems to have been the first to distinguish
+     in Merodach, besides the god of the planet Jupiter, a solar
+     personage. This notion, which has been generally admitted by
+     most Assyriologists, has been defined with greater
+     exactitude by Jensen, who is inclined to see in Merodach
+     both the morning sun and the spring sun; and this is the
+     opinion held at present.
+
+The differences between the gods were all the more accentuated, for the
+reason that many who had a common origin were often separated from one
+another by, relatively speaking, considerable distances. Having divided
+the earth’s surface between them, they formed, as in Egypt, a complete
+feudal system, whose chiefs severally took up their residence in a
+particular city. Anu was worshipped in Uruk, Enlil-Bel reigned in Nipur,
+Eridu belonged to Ea, the lord of the waters. The moon-god, Sin, alone
+governed two large fiefs, Uru in the extreme south, and Harran towards
+the extreme north-west; Shamash had Larsam and one of the Sipparas for
+his dominion, and the other sun-gods were not less well provided for,
+Nergal possessing Kutha, Zamama having Kish, Ninib side by side with Bel
+reigning in Nipur, while Merodach ruled at Babylon. Each was absolute
+master in his own territory, and it is quite exceptional to find two of
+them co-regnant in one locality, as were Ninib and Bel at Nipur, or Ea
+and Ishtar in Uruk; not that they raised any opposition on principle
+to the presence of a stranger divinity in their dominions, but they
+welcomed them only under the titles of allies or subjects. Each,
+moreover, had fair play, and Nebo or Shamash, after having filled
+the _role_ of sovereign at Borsippa or at Larsam, did not consider it
+derogatory to his dignity to accept a lower rank in Babylon or at Uru.
+Hence all the feudal gods played a double part, and had, as it were,
+a double civil portion--that of suzerain in one or two localities, and
+that of vassals everywhere else--and this dual condition was the surest
+guarantee not only of their prosperity, but of their existence. Sin
+would have run great risk of sinking into oblivion if his resources had
+been confined to the subventions from his domain temples of Harran and
+Uru. Their impoverishment would in such case have brought about his
+complete failure: after having enjoyed an existence amid riches and
+splendour in the beginning of history, he would have ended his life in a
+condition of misery and obscurity. But the sanctuaries erected to him in
+the majority of the other cities, the honours which these bestowed upon
+him, and the offerings which they made to him, compensated him for the
+poverty and neglect which he experienced in his own domains; and he was
+thus able to maintain his divine dignity on a suitable footing. All
+the gods were, therefore, worshipped by the Chaldeans, and the only
+difference among them in this respect arose from the fact that some
+exalted one special deity above the others. The gods of the richest and
+most ancient principalities naturally enjoyed the greatest popularity.
+The greatness of Uru had been the source of Sin’s prestige, and Merodach
+owed his prosperity to the supremacy which Babylon had acquired over the
+districts of the north. Merodach was regarded as the son of Ba, as the
+star which had risen from the abyss to illuminate the world, and to
+confer upon mankind the decrees of eternal wisdom. He was proclaimed as
+lord--“bilu”--_par excellence_, in comparison with whom all other lords
+sank into insignificance, and this title soon procured for him a second,
+which was no less widely recognized than the first: he was spoken of
+everywhere as the Bel of Babylon, Bel-Merodach--before whom Bel of Nipur
+was gradually thrown into the shade. The relations between these feudal
+deities were not always pacific: jealousies arose among them like those
+which disturbed the cities over which they ruled; they conspired against
+each other, and on occasions broke out into open warfare. Instead of
+forming a coalition against the evil genii who threatened their rule,
+and as a consequence tended to bring everything into jeopardy, they
+sometimes made alliances with these malign powers and mutually betrayed
+each other. Their history, if we could recover it in its entirety, would
+be marked by as violent deeds as those which distinguished the princes
+and kings who worshipped them. Attempts were made, however, and that too
+from an early date, to establish among them a hierarchy like that which
+existed among the great ones of the earth. The faithful, who, instead of
+praying to each one separately, preferred to address them all, invoked
+them always in the same order: they began with Anu, the heaven, and
+followed with Bel, Ea, Sin, Shamash, and Bamman. They divided these six
+into two groups of three, one trio consisting of Anu, Bel, and Ea, the
+other of Sin, Shamash, and Bamman. All these deities were associated
+with Southern Chaldoa, and the system which grouped them must have taken
+its rise in this region, probably at Uruk, whose patron Anu V occupied
+the first rank among them. The theologians who classified them in this
+manner seem never to have dreamt of explaining, like the authors of
+the Heliopolitan Ennead, the successive steps in their creation: these
+triads were not, moreover, copies of the human family, consisting of
+a father and mother whose marriage brings into the world a new being.
+Others had already given an account of the origin of things, and of
+Merodach’s struggles with chaos; these theologians accepted the universe
+as it was, already made, and contented themselves with summing up its
+elements by enumerating the gods which actuated them.* They assigned the
+first place to those elements which make the most forcible impression
+upon man--beginning with Anu, for the heaven was the god of their city;
+following with Bel of Nipur, the earth which from all antiquity has
+been associated with the heaven; and concluding with Ea of Eridu, the
+terrestrial waters and primordial Ocean whence Anu and Bel, together
+with all living creatures, had sprung--Ea being a god whom, had they
+not been guided by local vanity, they would have made sovereign lord
+of all. Anu owed his supremacy to an historical accident rather than a
+religious conception: he held his high position, not by his own merits,
+but because the prevailing theology of an early period had been the work
+of his priesthood.
+
+     * I know of Sayce only who has endeavoured to explain the
+     historical formation of the triads. They are considered by
+     him as of Accadian origin, and probably began in an
+     astronomical triad, composed of the moon-god, the sun-god,
+     and the evening star, Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar; alongside
+     this elementary trinity, “the only authentic one to be found
+     in the religious faith of primitive Chaldaea,” the Semites
+     may have placed the cosmogonical trinity of Anu, Bel, and
+     Ea, formed by the reunion of the gods of Uruk, Nipur, and
+     Eridu.
+
+The characters of the three personages who formed the supreme triad can
+be readily deduced from the nature of the elements which they represent.
+Anu is the heaven itself--“ana”--the immense vault which spreads itself
+above our heads, clear during the day when glorified by the sun, obscure
+and strewn with innumerable star clusters during the night. Afterwards
+it becomes the spirit which animates the firmament, or the god which
+rules it: he resides in the north towards the pole, and the ordinary
+route chosen by him when inspecting his domain is that marked out by our
+ecliptic. He occupies the high regions of the universe, sheltered from
+winds and tempests, in an atmosphere always serene, and a light always
+brilliant. The terrestrial gods and those of middle-space take refuge in
+this “heaven of Anu,” when they are threatened by any great danger, but
+they dare not penetrate its depths, and stop, shortly after passing its
+boundary, on the ledge which supports the vault, where they loll and
+howl like dogs. It is but rarely that it may be entered, and then
+only by the highly privileged--kings whose destiny marked them out for
+admittance, and heroes who have fallen valiantly on the field of
+battle. In his remote position on unapproachable summits Anu seems to
+participate in the calm and immobility of his dwelling. If he is quick
+in forming an opinion and coming to a conclusion, he himself never puts
+into execution the plans which he has matured or the judgments which
+he has pronounced: he relieves himself of the trouble of acting, by
+assigning the duty to Bel-Merodach, Ea, or Eamman, and he often employs
+inferior genii to execute his will. “They are seven, the messengers of
+Anu their king; it is they who from town to town raise the stormy wind;
+they are the south wind which drives mightily in the heavens; they are
+the destroying clouds which overturn the heavens; they are the rapid
+tempests which bring darkness in the midst of clear day, they roam here
+and there with the wicked wind and the ill-omened hurricane.” Anu sends
+forth all the gods as he pleases, recalls them again, and then, to make
+them his pliant instruments, enfeebles their personality, reducing it to
+nothing by absorbing it into his own. He blends himself with them, and
+their designations seem to be nothing more than doublets of his own: he
+is Anu the Lakhmu who appeared on the first days of creation; Ahu Urash
+or Ninib is the sun-warrior of Nipur; and Anu is also the eagle Alala
+whom Ishtar enfeebled by her caresses. Anu regarded in this light ceases
+to be the god _par excellence_: he becomes the only chief god, and the
+idea of authority is so closely attached to his name that the latter
+alone is sufficient in common speech to render the idea of God. Bel
+would have been entirely thrown into the shade by him, as the earth-gods
+generally are by the sky-gods, if it had not been that he was confounded
+with his namesake Bel-Merodach of Babylon: to this alliance he owed
+to the end the safety of his life, in presence of Anu. Ea was the
+most active and energetic member of the triad.* As he represented the
+bottomless abyss, the dark waters which had filled the universe until
+the day of the creation, there had been attributed to him a complete
+knowledge of the past, present, and future, whose germs had lain within
+him, as in a womb. The attribute of supreme wisdom was revered in Ea,
+the lord of spells and charms, to which gods and men were alike subject:
+no strength could prevail against his strength, no voice against his
+voice: when once he opened his mouth to give a decision, his will became
+law, and no one might gainsay it. If a peril should arise against
+which the other gods found themselves impotent, they resorted to
+him immediately for help, which was never refused. He had saved
+Shamashnapishtirn from the Deluge; every day he freed his votaries from
+sickness and the thousand demons which were the causes of it. He was
+a potter, and had modelled men out of the clay of the plains. From him
+smiths and workers in gold obtained the art of rendering malleable
+and of fashioning the metals. Weavers and stone-cutters, gardeners,
+husbandmen, and sailors hailed him as their teacher and patron. From his
+incomparable knowledge the scribes derived theirs, and physicians and
+wizards invoked spirits in his name alone by the virtue of prayers which
+he had condescended to teach them.
+
+     * The name of this god was read “Nisrok” by Oppert,
+     “Nouah” by Hincks and Lenormant. The true reading is Ia, Ea,
+     usually translated “house,” “water-house”; this is a popular
+     interpretation which appears to have occurred to the
+     Chaldaeans from the values of the signs entering into the
+     name of the god. From the outset H. Rawlinson recognized in
+     Ea, which he read Hea, Hoa, the divinity presiding over the
+     abyss of waters; he compared him with the serpent of Holy
+     Scripture, in its relation to the Tree of Knowledge and the
+     Tree of Life, and deduced therefrom his character of lord of
+     wisdom. His position as lord of the primordial waters, from
+     which all things proceeded, clearly denned by Lenormant, is
+     now fully recognized. His name was transcribed Aos by
+     Damascius, a form which is not easily explained; the most
+     probable hypothesis is that of Hommel who considers Aos as a
+     shortened form of Iaos = Ia, Ea.
+
+Subordinate to these limitless and vague beings, the theologians placed
+their second triad, made up of gods of restricted power and invariable
+form. They recognized in the unswerving regularity with which the moon
+waxed and waned, or with which the sun rose and set every day, a
+proof of their subjection to the control of a superior will, and they
+signalized this dependence by making them sons of one or other of the
+three great gods. Sin was the offspring of Bel, Shamash of Sin,
+Kamman of Anu. Sin was indebted for this primacy among the subordinate
+divinities to the preponderating influence which Uru exercised over
+Southern Chaldaea. Mar, where Ramman was the chief deity, never emerged
+from its obscurity, and Larsam acquired supremacy only many centuries
+after its neighbour, and did not succeed in maintaining it for any
+length of time. The god of the suzerain city necessarily took precedence
+of those of the vassal towns, and when once his superiority was admitted
+by the people, he was able to maintain his place in spite of all
+political revolutions. Sin was called in Uru, “Uruki,” or “Nannar the
+glorious,” and his priests sometimes succeeded in identifying him
+with Anu. “Lord, prince of the gods, who alone in heaven and earth is
+exalted,--father Nannar, lord of the hosts of heaven, prince of the
+gods,--father Nannar, lord, great Anu, prince of the gods,--father
+Nannar, lord, moon-god, prince of the gods,--father Nannar, lord of Uni,
+prince of the gods....--Lord, thy deity fills the far-off heavens,
+like the vast sea, with reverential fear! Master of the earth, thou who
+fixest there the boundaries [of the towns] and assignest to them their
+names,--father, begetter of gods and men, who establishest for them
+dwellings and institutest for them that which is good, who proclaimest
+royalty and bestowest the exalted sceptre on those whose destiny was
+determined from distant times,--chief, mighty, whose heart is great, god
+whom no one can name, whose limbs are steadfast, whose knees never bend,
+who preparest the paths of thy brothers the gods....--In heaven, who is
+supreme? As for thee, it is thou alone who art supreme! As for thee, thy
+decree is made known in heaven, and the Igigi bow their faces!--As for
+thee, thy decree is made known upon earth, and the spirits of the abyss
+kiss the dust!--As for thee, thy decree blows above like the wind,
+and stall and pasture become fertile!--As for thee, thy decree is
+accomplished upon earth below, and the grass and green things grow!--As
+for thee, thy degree is seen in the cattle-folds and in the lairs of the
+wild beasts, and it multiplies living things!--As for thee, thy
+decree has called into being equity and justice, and the peoples have
+promulgated thy law!--As for thee, thy decree, neither in the far-off
+heaven, nor in the hidden depths of the earth, can any one recognize
+it!--As for thee, thy decree, who can learn it, who can try conclusions
+with it?--O Lord, mighty in heaven, sovereign upon earth, among the gods
+thy brothers, thou hast no rival.” Outside Uru and Harran, Sin did not
+obtain this rank of creator and ruler of things; he was simply the
+moon-god, and was represented in human form, usually accompanied by a
+thin crescent, upon which he sometimes stands upright, sometimes appears
+with the bust only rising out of it, in royal costume and pose.
+
+[Illustration: 169.jpg THE GOD SUN RECEIVES THE HOMAGE OF TWO
+WORSHIPPERS.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure by Menant.
+
+His mitre is so closely associated with him that it takes his place on
+the astrological tablets; the name he bears--“agu”--often indicates
+the moon regarded simply as a celestial body and without connotation
+of deity. Babbar-Shamash, “the light of the gods, his fathers,” “the
+illustrious scion of Sin,” passed the night in the depths of the north,
+behind the polished metal walls which shut in the part of the firmament
+visible to human eyes.
+
+[Illustration: 170.jpg SHAMASH SETS OUT, IN THE MORNING, FROM THE
+INTERIOR OF THE HEAVEN BY THE EASTERN GATE.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio of green
+     jasper in the Louvre. The original measures about 1 3/10
+     inch in height.
+
+As soon as the dawn had opened the gates for him, he rose in the east
+all aflame, his club in his hand, and he set forth on his headlong
+course over the chain of mountains which surrounds the world;* six hours
+later he had attained the limit of his journey towards the south, he
+then continued his journey to the west, gradually lessening his heat,
+and at length re-entered his accustomed resting-place by the western
+gate, there to remain until the succeeding morning. He accomplished his
+journey round the earth in a chariot conducted by two charioteers,
+and drawn by two vigorous onagers, “whose legs never grew weary;” the
+flaming disk which was seen from earth was one of the wheels of his
+chariot.**
+
+     * His course along the embankment which runs round the
+     celestial vault was the origin of the title, _Line of Union
+     between Heaven and Earth_; he moved, in fact, where the
+     heavens and the earth come into contact, and appeared to
+     weld them into one by the circle of fire which he described.
+     Another expression of this idea occurs in the preamble of
+     Nergal and Ninib, who were called “the separators”; the
+     course of the sun might, in fact, be regarded as separating,
+     as well as uniting, the two parts of the universe.
+
+     ** The disk has sometimes four, sometimes eight rays
+     inscribed on it, indicating wheels with four or eight spokes
+     respectively. Rawlinson supposed “that these two figures
+     indicate a distinction between the male and female power of
+     the deity, the disk with four rays symbolizing Shamash, the
+     orb with eight rays being the emblem of Ai, Gula, or
+     Anunit.”
+
+[Illustration: 171.jpg SHAMASH IN HIS SHRINE, HIS EMBLEM BEFORE HIM ON
+THE ALTAR.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Rassam. The
+     busts of the two deities on the front of the roof of the
+     shrine are the two charioteers of the sun; they uphold and
+     guide the rayed disk upon the altar. Cf. in the Assyrian
+     period the winged disk led with cords by two genii.
+
+As soon as he appeared he was hailed with the chanting of hymns: “O Sun,
+thou appearest on the foundation of the heavens,--thou drawest back the
+bolts which bar the scintillating heavens, thou openest the gate of
+the heavens! O Sun, thou raisest thy head above the earth,--Sun, thou
+extendest over the earth the brilliant vaults of the heavens.”
+ The powers of darkness fly at his approach or take refuge in their
+mysterious caverns, for “he destroys the wicked, he scatters them, the
+omens and gloomy portents, dreams, and wicked ghouls--he converts evil
+to good, and he drives to their destruction the countries and men--who
+devote themselves to black magic.” In addition to natural light, he sheds
+upon the earth truth and justice abundantly; he is the “high judge”
+ before whom everything makes obeisance, his laws never waver, his
+decrees are never set at naught. “O Sun, when thou goest to rest in the
+middle of the heavens--may the bars of the bright heaven salute thee
+in peace, and may the gate of heaven bless thee!--May Misharu, thy
+well-beloved servant, guide aright thy progress, so that on Rbarra,
+the seat of thy rule, thy greatness may rise, and that A, thy cherished
+spouse, may receive thee joyfully! May thy glad heart find in her thy
+rest!--May the food of thy divinity be brought to thee by her,--warrior,
+hero, sun, and may she increase thy vigour;--lord of Ebarra, when
+thou ap-proachest, mayest thou direct thy course aright!---0 Sun, urge
+rightly thy way along the fixed road determined for thee,--O Sun, thou
+who art the judge of the land, and the arbiter of its laws!”
+
+It would appear that the triad had begun by having in the third place a
+goddess, Ishtar of Dilbat. Ishtar is the evening star which precedes the
+appearance of the moon, and the morning star which heralds the approach
+of the sun: the brilliance of its light justifies the choice which
+made it an associate of the greater heavenly bodies. “In the days of
+the past.... Ea charged Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar with the ruling of the
+firmament of heaven; he distributed among them, with Anu, the command
+of the army of heaven, and among these three gods, his children,
+he apportioned the day and the night, and compelled them to work
+ceaselessly.”
+
+[Illustration: 173.jpg ISHTAR HOLDING HER STAR BEFORE SIN.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an intaglio at Rome.
+
+Ishtar was separated from her two companions, when the group of the
+planets was definitely organized and claimed the adoration of the
+devout; the theologians then put in her place an individual of a less
+original aspect, Ramman. Ramman embraced within him the elements of many
+very ancient genii, all of whom had been set over the atmosphere, and
+the phenomena which are daily displayed in it--wind, rain, and thunder.
+These genii occupied an important place in the popular religion which
+had been cleverly formulated by the theologians of Uruk, and there have
+come down to us many legends in which their incarnations play a part.
+They are usually represented as enormous birds flocking on their swift
+wings from below the horizon, and breathing flame or torrents of water
+upon the countries over which they hovered. The most terrible of them
+was Zu, who presided over tempests: he gathered the clouds together,
+causing them to burst in torrents of rain or hail; he let loose the
+winds and lightnings, and nothing remained standing where he had passed.
+He had a numerous family: among them cross-breeds of extraordinary
+species which would puzzle a modern naturalist, but were matters of
+course to the ancient priests. His mother Siris, lady of the rain and
+clouds, was a bird like himself; but Zu had as son a vigorous bull,
+which, pasturing in the meadows, scattered abundance and fertility
+around him. The caprices of these strange beings, their malice, and
+their crafty attacks, often brought upon them vexatious misfortunes.
+Shutu, the south wind, one day beheld Adapa, one of the numerous
+offspring of Ea, fishing in order to provide food for his family. In
+spite of his exalted origin, Adapa was no god; he did not possess the
+gift of immortality, and he was not at liberty to appear in the presence
+of Anu in heaven. He enjoyed, nevertheless, certain privileges, thanks
+to his familiar intercourse with his father Ea, and owing to his birth
+he was strong enough to repel the assaults of more than one deity. When,
+therefore, Shutu, falling upon him unexpectedly, had overthrown him, his
+anger knew no bounds: “‘Shutu, thou hast overwhelmed me with thy hatred,
+great as it is,--I will break thy wings! ‘Having thus spoken with his
+mouth unto Shutu, Adapa broke his wings. For seven days,--Shutu breathed
+no longer upon the earth.” Anu, being disturbed at this quiet, which
+seemed to him not very consonant with the meddling temperament of the
+wind, made inquiries as to its cause through his messenger Ilabrat. “His
+messenger Ilabrat answered him: ‘My master,--Adapa, the son of Ea,
+has broken Shutu’s wings.’--Anu, when he heard these words, cried out:
+‘Help!’” and he sent to Ea Barku, the genius of the lightning, with an
+order to bring the guilty one before him. Adapa was not quite at his
+ease, although he had right on his side; but Ea, the cleverest of the
+immortals, prescribed a line of conduct for him. He was to put on at
+once a garment of mourning, and to show himself along with the messenger
+at the gates of heaven. Having arrived there, he would not fail to meet
+the two divinities who guarded them,--Dumuzi and Gishzida: “‘In whose
+honour this garb, in whose honour, Adapa, this garment of mourning?’
+‘On our earth two gods have disappeared--it is on this account I am as
+I am.’ Dumuzi and Gishzida will look at each other,* they will begin
+to lament, they will say a friendly word--to the god Anu for thee, they
+will render clear the countenance of Anu,--in thy favour. When thou
+shalt appear before the face of Anu, the food of death, it shall be
+offered to thee, do not eat it. The drink of death, it shall be offered
+to thee, drink it not. A garment, it shall be offered to the, put it on.
+Oil, it shall be offered to thee, anoint thyself with it. The command I
+have given thee observe it well.’”
+
+     * Dumuzi and Gishzida are the two gods whom Adapa indicates
+     without naming them; insinuating that he has put on mourning
+     on their account, Adapa is secure of gaining their sympathy,
+     and of obtaining their intervention with the god Anu in his
+     favour. As to Dumuzi, see pp. 158, 159 of the present work;
+     the part played by Gishzida, as well as the event noted in
+     the text regarding him, is unknown.
+
+Everything takes place as Ea had foreseen. Dumuzi and Gishzida
+welcome the poor wretch, speak in his favour, and present him: “as he
+approached, Anu perceived him, and said to him: ‘Come, Adapa, why didst
+thou break the wings of Shutu?’ Adapa answered Anu: ‘My lord,--for the
+household of my lord Ea, in the middle of the sea,---I was fishing,
+and the sea was all smooth.--Shutu breathed, he, he overthrew me, and
+I plunged into the abode of fish. Hence the anger of my heart,--that he
+might not begin again his acts of ill will,--I broke his wings.’” Whilst
+he pleaded his cause the furious heart of Anu became calm. The presence
+of a mortal in the halls of heaven was a kind of sacrilege, to be
+severely punished unless the god should determine its expiation by
+giving the philtre of immortality to the intruder. Anu decided on the
+latter course, and addressed Adapa: “‘Why, then, did Ea allow an unclean
+mortal to see--the interior of heaven and earth?’ He handed him a cup,
+he himself reassured him.--‘We, what shall we give him? The food of
+life--take some to him that he may eat.’ The food of life, some was
+taken to him, but he did not eat of it. The water of life, some was
+taken to him, but he drank not of it. A garment, it was taken to him,
+and he put it on. Oil, some was taken to him, and he anointed himself
+with it.” Anu looked upon him; he lamented over him: “‘Well, Adapa, why
+hast thou not eaten--why hast thou not drunk? Thou shalt not now have
+eternal life.’ Ea, my lord, has commanded me: thou shalt not eat, thou
+shalt not drink.” Adapa thus lost, by remembering too well the commands
+of his father, the opportunity which was offered to him of rising to
+the rank of the immortals; Anu sent him back to his home just as he had
+come, and Shutu had to put up with his broken wings.
+
+Bamman absorbed one after the other all these genii of tempest and
+contention, and out of their combined characters his own personality of
+a hundred diverse aspects was built up.
+
+[Illustration: 177.jpg THE BIRDS OF THE TEMPEST]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean cylinder in the
+     Museum of New York. Lenormant, in a long article, which he
+     published under the pseudonym of Mansell, fancied he
+     recognized here the encounter between Sabitum and Gilgames
+     on the shores of the Ocean.
+
+He was endowed with the capricious and changing disposition of the
+element incarnate in him, and passed from tears to laughter, from anger
+to calm, with a promptitude which made him one of the most disconcerting
+deities. The tempest was his favourite role. Sometimes he would burst
+suddenly on the heavens at the head of a troop of savage subordinates,
+whose chiefs were known as Matu, the squall, and Barku, the lightning;
+sometimes these were only the various manifestations of his own nature,
+and it was he himself who was called Matu and Barku. He collected the
+clouds, sent forth the thunder-bolt, shook the mountains, and “before
+his rage and violence, his bellowings, his thunder, the gods of heaven
+arose to the firmament--the gods of the earth sank into the earth” in
+their terror. The monuments represent him as armed for battle with
+club, axe, or the two-bladed flaming sword which was usually employed to
+signify the thunderbolt. As he destroyed everything in his blind
+rage, the kings of Chaldaea were accustomed to invoke him against their
+enemies, and to implore him to “hurl the hurricane upon the rebel
+peoples and the insubordinate nations.” When his wrath was appeased, and
+he had returned to more gentle ways, his kindness knew no limits. From
+having been the waterspout which overthrew the forests, he became the
+gentle breeze which caresses and refreshes them: with his warm showers
+he fertilizes the fields: he lightens the air and tempers the summer
+heat.
+
+[Illustration: 178.jpg RAMMAN ARMED WITH AN AXE.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Loftus. The
+     original, a small stele of terra-cotta, is in the British
+     Museum. The date of this representation is uncertain. Ramman
+     stands upon the mountain which supports the heaven.
+
+He causes the rivers to swell and overflow their banks; he pours out the
+waters over the fields, he makes channels for them, he directs them to
+every place where the need of water is felt.
+
+But his fiery temperament is stirred up by the slightest provocation,
+and then “his flaming sword scatters pestilence over the land: he
+destroys the harvest, brings the ingathering to nothing, tears up trees,
+and beats down and roots up the corn.”
+
+[Illustration: 179.jpg RAMMAN, THE GOD OF TEMPESTS AND THUNDER.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard. Properly speaking, this
+     is a Susian deity brought by the soldiers of Assurbanipal
+     into Assyria, but it carries the usual insignia of Ramman.
+
+In a word, the second triad formed a more homogeneous whole when Ishtar
+still belonged to it, and it is entirely owing to the presence of this
+goddess in it that we are able to understand its plan and purpose; it
+was essentially astrological, and it was intended that none should be
+enrolled in it but the manifest leaders of the constellations. Ramman,
+on the contrary, had nothing to commend him for a position alongside the
+moon and sun; he was not a celestial body, he had no definitely shaped
+form, but resembled an aggregation of gods rather than a single deity.
+By the addition of Ramman to the triad, the void occasioned by the
+removal of Ishtar was filled up in a blundering way. We must, however,
+admit that the theologians must have found it difficult to find any one
+better fitted for the purpose: when Venus was once set along with the
+rest of the planets, there was nothing left in the heavens which
+was sufficiently brilliant to replace her worthily. The priests were
+compelled to take the most powerful deity they knew after the other
+five--the lord of the atmosphere and the thunder.*
+
+     * Their embarrassment is shown in the way in which they have
+     classed this god. In the original triad, Ishtar, being the
+     smallest of the three heavenly bodies, naturally took the
+     third place. Ramman, on the contrary, had natural affinities
+     with the elemental group, and belonged to Anu, Bel, Ea,
+     rather than to Sin and Shamash. So we find him sometimes in
+     the third place, sometimes in the first of the second triad,
+     and this post of eminence is so natural to him, that
+     Assyriologists have preserved it from the beginning, and
+     describe the triad as composed, not of Sin, Shamash, and
+     Ramman, but of Ramman, Sin, and Shamash, or even of Sin,
+     Ramman, and Shamash.
+
+The gods of the triads were married, but their goddesses for the most
+part had neither the liberty nor the important functions of the Egyptian
+goddesses.* They were content, in their modesty, to be eclipsed behind
+the personages of their husbands, and to spend their lives in the shade,
+as the women of Asiatic countries still do. It would appear, moreover,
+that there was no trouble taken about them until it was too late--when
+it was desired, for instance, to explain the affiliation of the
+immortals. Anu and Bel were bachelors to start with. When it was
+determined to assign to them female companions, recourse was had to the
+procedure adopted by the Egyptians in a similar case: there was added to
+their names the distinctive suffix of the feminine gender, and in this
+manner two grammatical goddesses were formed, Anat and Belit, whose
+dispositions give some indications of this accidental birth. There was
+always a vague uncertainty about the parts they had to play, and their
+existence itself was hardly more than a seeming one. Anat sometimes
+represented a feminine heaven, and differed from Anu only in her sex.
+At times she was regarded as the antithesis of Anu, i.e. as the earth in
+contradistinction to the heaven. Belit, as far as we can distinguish her
+from other persons to whom the title “lady” was attributed, shared with
+Bel the rule over the earth and the regions of darkness where the dead
+were confined. The wife of Ea was distinguished by a name which was not
+derived from that of her husband, but she was not animated by a more
+intense vitality than Anat or Belit: she was called Damkina, the lady
+of the soil, and she personified in an almost passive manner the earth
+united to the water which fertilized it. The goddesses of the second
+triad were perhaps rather less artificial in their functions. Ningal,
+doubtless, who ruled along with Sin at Uru, was little more than an
+incarnate epithet. Her name means “the great lady,” “the queen,” and her
+person is the double of that of her husband; as he is the man-moon, she
+is the woman-moon, his beloved, and the mother of his children Shamash
+and Ishtar. But A or Sirrida enjoyed an indisputable authority alongside
+Shamash: she never lost sight of the fact that she had been a sun like
+Shamash, a disk-god before she was transformed into a goddess. Shamash,
+moreover, was surrounded by an actual harem, of which Sirrida was the
+acknowledged queen, as he himself was its king, and among its members
+Gula, the great, and Anunit, the daughter of Sin, the morning star,
+found a place. Shala, the compassionate, was also included among them;
+she was subsequently bestowed upon Ramman. They were all goddesses of
+ancient lineage, and each had been previously worshipped on her own
+account when the Sumerian people held sway in Chaldaea: as soon as the
+Semites gained the upper hand, the powers of these female deities became
+enfeebled, and they were distributed among the gods. There was but one
+of them, Nana, the doublet of Ishtar, who had succeeded in preserving
+her liberty: when her companions had been reduced to comparative
+insignificance, she was still acknowledged as queen and mistress in her
+city of Eridu. The others, notwithstanding the enervating influence
+to which they were usually subject in the harem, experienced at times
+inclinations to break into rebellion, and more than one of them, shaking
+off the yoke of her lord, had proclaimed her independence: Anunit, for
+instance, tearing herself away from the arms of Shamash, had vindicated,
+as his sister and his equal, her claim to the half of his dominion.
+Sippara was a double city, or rather there were two neighbouring
+Sipparas, one distinguished as the city of the Sun, “Sippara sha
+Shamash,” while the other gave lustre to Anunit in assuming the
+designation of “Sippara sha Anunitum.” Rightly interpreted, these family
+arrangements of the gods had but one reason for their existence--the
+necessity of explaining without coarseness those parental connections
+which the theological classification found it needful to establish
+between the deities constituting the two triads. In Chaldaea as in Egypt
+there was no inclination to represent the divine families as propagating
+their species otherwise than by the procedure observed in human
+families: the union of the goddesses with the gods thus legitimated
+their offspring.
+
+     * The passive and almost impersonal character of the
+     majority of the Babylonian and Assyrian goddesses is well
+     known. The majority must have been independent at the
+     outset, in the Sumerian period, and were married later on,
+     under the influence of Semitic ideas.
+
+The triads were, therefore, nothing more than theological fictions. Each
+of them was really composed of six members, and it was thus really a
+council of twelve divinities which the priests of Uruk had instituted to
+attend to the affairs of the universe; with this qualification, that the
+feminine half of the assembly rarely asserted itself, and contributed
+but an insignificant part to the common work. When once the great
+divisions had been arranged, and the principal functionaries designated,
+it was still necessary to work out the details, and to select v agents
+to preserve an order among them. Nothing happens by chance in this
+world, and the most insignificant events are determined by previsional
+arrangements, and decisions arrived at a long time previously. The gods
+assembled every morning in a hall, situated near the gates of the sun in
+the east, and there deliberated on the events of the day. The sagacious
+Ea submitted to them the fates which are about to be fulfilled, and
+caused a record of them to be made in the chamber of destiny on tablets
+which Shamash or Merodach carried with them to scatter everywhere on his
+way; but he who should be lucky enough to snatch these tablets from him
+would make himself master of the world for that day. This misfortune had
+arisen only once, at the beginning of the ages. Zu, the storm-bird, who
+lives with his wife and children on Mount Sabu under the protection of
+Bel, and who from this elevation pounces down upon the country to ravage
+it, once took it into his head to make himself equal to the supreme
+gods. He forced his way at an early hour into the chamber of destiny
+before the sun had risen: he perceived within it the royal insignia of
+Bel, “the mitre of his power, the garment of his divinity,--the fatal
+tablets of his divinity, Zu perceived them. He perceived the father
+of the gods, the god who is the tie between heaven and earth,--and the
+desire of ruling took possession of his heart;--yea, Zu perceived
+the father of the gods, the god who is the tie between heaven and
+earth,--and the desire of ruling took possession of his heart,--‘I will
+take the fatal tablets of the gods, I myself,--and the oracles of all
+the gods, it is I who will give them forth;--I will install myself on
+the throne, I will send forth decrees,--I will manage the whole of the
+Igigi.’--And his heart plotted warfare;--lying in wait on the threshold
+of the hall, he watched for the dawn.--When Bel had poured out the
+shining waters,--had installed himself on the throne, and donned the
+crown, Zu took away the fatal tablets from his hand,--he seized power,
+and the authority to give forth decrees,--the god Zu, he flew away and
+concealed himself in the mountains.” Bel immediately cried out, he was
+inflamed with anger, and ravaged the world with the fire of his
+wrath. “Anu opened his mouth, he spake,--he said to the gods his
+offspring:--‘Who will conquer the god Zu?--He will make his name great
+in every land.’--Bamman, the supreme, the son of Anu, was called, and
+Anu himself gave to him his orders;--yea, Bamman, the supreme, the son
+of Anu, was called, and Anu himself gave to him his orders.--‘Go, my son
+Kamman, the valiant, since nothing resists thy attack;--conquer Zu by
+thine arm, and thy name shall be great among the great gods,--among the
+gods, thy brothers, thou shalt have no equal: sanctuaries shall be built
+to thee, and if thou buildest for thyself thy cities in the “four houses
+of the world,” * --thy cities shall extend over all the terrestrial
+mountain! ‘Be valiant, then, in the sight of the gods, and may thy
+name be strong.’ Bamman answers, he addresses this bpeech to Anu his
+father:--‘Father, who will go to the inaccessible mountains? Who is the
+equal of Zu among the gods, thy offspring? He has carried off in his
+hand the fatal tablets,--he has seized power and authority to give forth
+decrees,--Zu thereupon flew away and hid himself in his mountain.--Now,
+the word of his mouth is like that of the god who unites heaven and
+earth;---my power is no more than clay,--and all the gods must bow
+before him.’” Anu sent for the god Bara, the son of Ishtar, to help him,
+and exhorted him in the same language he had addressed to Ramman: Bara
+refused to attempt the enterprise. Shamash, called in his turn, at
+length consented to set out for Mount Sabu: he triumphed over the
+storm-bird, tore the fatal tablets from him, and brought him before Ea
+as a prisoner.
+
+     * Literally, “Construct thy cities in the four regions of
+     the world (cf. pp. 12, 13 of the present work), and thy
+     cities will extend to the mountain of the earth.” Anu would
+     appear to have promised to Ramman a monopoly; if he wished
+     to build cities which would recognize him as their patron,
+     these cities will cover the entire earth.
+
+[Illustration: 186.jpg SHAMASH FIGHTS WITH ZU AND THE STORM BIRDS.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.
+
+[Illustration: 186a.jpg The Plenisphere taken from the Temple of
+Tentyra]
+
+[Illustration: 186b.jpg Text of The Plenisphere]
+
+The sun of the complete day, the sun in the full possession of his
+strength, could alone win back the attributes of power which the morning
+sun had allowed himself to be despoiled of. From that time forth the
+privilege of delivering immortal decrees to mortals was never taken out
+of the hands of the gods of light.
+
+Destinies once fixed on the earth became a law--“mamit”--a good or bad
+fate, from which no one could escape, but of which any one might learn
+the disposition beforehand if he were capable of interpreting the
+formulas of it inscribed on the book of the sky. The stars, even those
+which were most distant from the earth, were not unconcerned in the
+events which took place upon it. They were so many living beings endowed
+with various characteristics, and their rays as they passed across the
+celestial spaces exercised from above an active control on everything
+they touched. Their influences became modified, increased or weakened
+according to the intensity with which they shed them, according to the
+respective places they occupied in the firmament, and according to the
+hour of the night and the month of the year in which they rose or
+set. Each division of time, each portion of space, each category of
+existences--and in each category each individual--was placed under their
+rule and was subject to their implacable tyranny. The infant was born
+their slave, and continued in this condition of slavery until his life’s
+end: the star which was in the ascendent at the instant of his birth
+became his star, and ruled his destiny. The Chaldaeans, like the
+Egyptians, fancied they discerned in the points of light which
+illuminate the nightly sky, the outline of a great number of various
+figures--men, animals, monsters, real and imaginary objects, a lance, a
+bow, a fish, a scorpion, ears of wheat, a bull, and a lion. The majority
+of these were spread out above their heads on the surface of the
+celestial vault; but twelve of these figures, distinguishable by their
+brilliancy, were arranged along the celestial horizon in the pathway of
+the sun, and watched over his daily course along the walls of the world.
+These divided this part of the sky into as many domains or “houses,” in
+which they exercised absolute authority, and across which the god could
+not go without having previously obtained their consent, or having
+brought them into subjection beforehand. This arrangement is a
+reminiscence of the wars by which Bel-Merodach, the divine bull, the
+god of Babylon, had succeeded in bringing order out of chaos: he had not
+only killed Tiamat, but he had overthrown and subjugated the monsters
+which led the armies of darkness. He meets afresh, every year and every
+day, on the confines of heaven and earth, the scorpion-men of his ancient
+enemy, the fish with heads of men or goats, and many more. The twelve
+constellations were combined into a zodiac, whose twelve signs,
+transmitted to the Greeks and modified by them, may still be read on
+our astronomical charts. The constellations, immovable, or actuated by a
+slow motion, in longitude only, contain the problems of the future,
+but they are not sufficient of themselves alone to furnish man with the
+solution of these problems. The heavenly bodies capable of explaining
+them, the real interpreters of destiny, were at first the two divinities
+who rule the empires of night and day--the moon and the sun; afterwards
+there took part in this work of explanation the five planets which we
+call Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Mercury, or rather the five gods
+who actuate them, and who have controlled their course from the moment
+of creation--Merodach, Ishtar, Ninib, Nergal, and Nebo. The planets
+seemed to traverse the heavens in every direction, to cross their own
+and each other’s paths, and to approach the fixed stars or recede from
+them; and the species of rhythmical dance in which they are carried
+unceasingly across the celestial spaces revealed to men, if they
+examined it attentively, the irresistible march of their own destinies,
+as surely as if they had made themselves master of the fatal tablets of
+Shamash, and could spell them out line by line.
+
+The Chaldaens were disposed to regard the planets as perverse sheep who
+had escaped from the fold of the stars to wander wilfully in search of
+pasture.* At first they were considered to be so many sovereign deities,
+without other function than that of running through the heavens and
+furnishing there predictions of the future; afterwards two of them
+descended to the earth, and received upon it the homage of men* --Ishtar
+from the inhabitants of the city of Dilbat, and Nebo* from those of
+Borsippa. Nebo assumed the _role_ of a soothsayer and a prophet. He
+knew and foresaw everything, and was ready to give his advice upon any
+subject: he was the inventor of the method of making clay tablets,
+and of writing upon them. Ishtar was a combination of contradictory
+characteristics.****
+
+     * Their generic name, read as “lubat,” in Sumero-Accadian,
+     “bibbu” in Semitic speech (Fr. Lenormant, _Essai de
+     Commentaire de Berose_, pp. 370, 371), denoted a quadruped,
+     the species of which Lenormant was not able to define;
+     Jensen (_Die Kosmologie_, pp. 95-99) identified it with the
+     sheep and the ram. At the end of the account of the
+     creation, Merodach-Jupiter is compared with a shepherd who
+     feeds the flock of the gods on the pastures of heaven (cf.
+     p. 15 of the present work).
+
+     ** The site of Dilbat is unknown: it has been sought in the
+     neighbourhood of Kishu and Babylon (Delitzsch, _Wo lag das
+     Paradies?_ p. 219); it is probable that it was in the
+     suburbs of Sippara. The name given to the goddess was
+     transcribed AeXckit (Hesychius, _sub voce_), and signifies
+     the herald, the messenger of the day.
+
+     *** The role of Nebo was determined by the early
+     Assyriologists (Rawlin-son, _On the Religion of the
+     Babylonians and Assyrians_, pp. 523-52G; Oppeet, _Expedition
+     en Mesopotamie_, vol. ii. p. 257; Lenormant, _Essai de
+     Commentaire de Berose_, pp. 114-116). He owed his functions
+     partly to his alliance with other gods (Sayce, _Religion of
+     the Ancient Babylonians_, pp. 118, 119).
+
+     **** See the chapter devoted by Sayce to the consideration
+     of Ishtar in his Religion of the Ancient Babylonians (IV.
+     Tammuz and Ishtar, p. 221, et seq.), and the observations
+     made by Jeremias on the subject in the sequel of his
+     Izdubar-Nimrod (Ishtar-Astarte im Izdubar-Epos), pp. 56-66.
+
+[Illustration: 190.jpg ISHTAR AS A WARRIOR-GODDESS]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure in Menant’s
+     _Recherches sur la Glyptique orientale_.
+
+In Southern Chaldaea she was worshipped under the name of Nana,
+the supreme mistress.* The identity of this lady of the gods,
+“Belit-ilanit,” the Evening Star, with Anunit, the Morning Star, was
+at first ignored, and hence two distinct goddesses were formed from the
+twofold manifestation of a single deity: having at length discovered
+their error, the Chaldaeans merged these two beings in one, and their
+names became merely two different designations for the same star under a
+twofold aspect. The double character, however, which had been attributed
+to them continued to be attached to the single personality.
+
+     * With regard to Nana, consult, with reserve, Fk. Lenormant,
+     Essai de Commentaire de Berose, pp. 100-103, 378, 379, where
+     the identity of Ishtar and Nana is still unrecognized.
+
+[Illustration: 191.jpg NEBO]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian statue in alabaster
+     in the British Museum.
+
+The Evening Star had symbolized the goddess of love, who attracted
+the sexes towards one another, and bound them together by the chain
+of desire; the Morning Star, on the other hand, was regarded as the
+cold-blooded and cruel warrior who despised the pleasures of love and
+rejoiced in warfare: Ishtar thus combined in her person chastity and
+lasciviousness, kindness and ferocity, and a peaceful and warlike
+disposition, but this incongruity in her characteristics did not seem
+to disconcert the devotion of her worshippers. The three other planets
+would have had a wretched part to play in comparison with Nebo and
+Ishtar, if they had not been placed under new patronage. The secondary
+solar gods, Merodach, Ninib, and Nergal, led, if we examine their role
+carefully, but an incomplete existence: they were merely portions of the
+sun, while Shamash represented the entire orb. What became of them apart
+from the moment in the day and year in which they were actively engaged
+in their career? Where did they spend their nights, the hours during
+which Shamash had retired into the firmament, and lay hidden behind the
+mountains of the north? As in Egypt the Horuses identified at first with
+the sun became at length the rulers of the planets, so in Chaldaea
+the three suns of Ninib, Merodach, and Nergal became respectively
+assimilated to Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars;* and this identification was
+all the more easy in the case of Saturn, as he had been considered from
+the beginning as a bull belonging to Shamash. Henceforward, therefore,
+there was a group of five powerful gods--distributed among the stars
+of heaven, and having abodes also in the cities of the earth--whose
+function it was to announce the destinies of the universe. Some,
+deceived by the size and brilliancy of Jupiter, gave the chief command
+to Merodach, and this opinion naturally found a welcome reception at
+Babylon, of which he was the feudal deity. Others, taking into account
+only the preponderating influence exercised by the planets over the
+fortunes of men, accorded the primacy to Ninib, placing Merodach next,
+followed respectively by Ishtar, Nergal, and Nebo. The five planets,
+like the six triads, were not long before they took to themselves
+consorts, if indeed they had not already been married before they were
+brought together in a collective whole. Ninib chose for wife, in the
+first place, Bau, the daughter of Anu, the mistress of Uru, highly
+venerated from the most remote times; afterwards Gula, the queen of
+physicians, whose wisdom alleviated the ills of humanity, and who was
+one of the goddesses sometimes placed in the harem of Shamash himself.
+Merodach associated with him Zirbanit, the fruitful, who secures from
+generation to generation the permanence and increase of living beings.
+Nergal distributed his favours sometimes to Laz, and sometimes to
+Esharra, who was, like himself, warlike and always victorious in battle.
+Nebo provided himself with a mate in Tashmit, the great bride, or
+even in Ishtar herself. But Ishtar could not be content with a single
+husband: after she had lost Dumuzi-Tammuz, the spouse of her youth, she
+gave herself freely to the impulses of her passions, distributing her
+favours to men as well as gods, and was sometimes subject to be repelled
+with contempt by the heroes upon whom she was inclined to bestow her
+love. The five planets came thus to be actually ten, and advantage was
+taken of these alliances to weave fresh schemes of affiliation: Nebo was
+proclaimed to be the son of Merodach and Zirbanit, Merodach the son of
+Ba, and Ninib the offspring of Bel and Esharra.
+
+     * Ishtar, Nebo, Sin, and Shamash being heavenly bodies, to
+     begin with, and the other great gods, Anu, Bel, Ea, and
+     Ramman having their stars in the heavens, the Chaldaeans
+     were led by analogy to ascribe to the gods which represented
+     the phases of the sun, Merodach, Ninib, and Nergal, three
+     stars befitting their importance, i.e. three planets.
+
+There were two councils, one consisting of twelve members, the other
+of ten; the former was composed of the most popular gods of Southern
+Chaldaea, representing the essential elements of the world, while
+the latter consisted of the great deities of Northern Chaldaea, whose
+function it was to regulate or make known the destinies of men. The
+authors of this system, who belonged to Southern Chaldaea, naturally
+gave the position to their patron gods, and placed the twelve above
+the ten. It is well known that Orientals display a great respect for
+numbers, and attribute to them an almost irresistible power; we can
+thus understand how it was that the Chaldaeans applied them to designate
+their divine masters, and we may calculate from these numbers the
+estimation in which each of these masters was held. The goddesses had
+no value assigned to them in this celestial arithmetic, Ishtar excepted,
+who was not a mere duplication, more or less ingenious, of a previously
+existing deity, but possessed from the beginning an independent life,
+and could thus claim to be called goddess in her own right. The members
+of the two triads were arranged on a descending scale, Anu taking the
+highest place: the scale was considered to consist of a soss of sixty
+units in length, and each of the deities who followed Anu was placed ten
+of these units below his predecessor, Bel at 50 units, Ea at 40, Sin at
+30, Shamash at 20, Ramman at 10 or 6. The gods of the planets were not
+arranged in a regular series like those of the triads, but the numbers
+attached to them expressed their proportionate influence on terrestrial
+affairs: to Ninib was assigned the same number as had been given to Bel,
+50, to Merodach perhaps 25, to Ishtar 15, to Nergal 12, and to Nebo
+10. The various spirits were also fractionally estimated, but this as a
+class, and not as individuals: the priests would not have known how to
+have solved the problem if they had been obliged to ascribe values
+to the infinity of existences.* As the Heliopolitans were obliged to
+eliminate from the Ennead many feudal divinities, so the Chaldaeans
+had left out of account many of their sovereign deities, especially
+goddesses, Bau of Uru, Nana of Uruk, and Allat; or if they did introduce
+them into their calculations, it was by a subterfuge, by identifying
+them with other goddesses, to whom places had been already assigned;
+Bau being thus coupled with Ohila, Nana with Ishtar, and Allat with
+Ninhl-Beltis. If figures had been assigned to the latter proportionate
+to the importance of the parts they played, and the number of their
+votaries, how comes it that they were excluded from the cycle of the
+great gods? They were actually placed alongside rather than below the
+two councils, and without insistence upon the rank which they enjoyed
+in the hierarchy. But the confusion which soon arose among divinities
+of identical or analogous nature opened the way for inserting all the
+neglected personalities in the framework already prepared for them. A
+sky-god, like Dagan, would mingle naturally with Anu, and enjoy like
+honours with him. The gods of all ranks associated with the sun or fire,
+Nusku, Gibil, and Dumuzi, who had not been at first received among the
+privileged group, obtained a place there by virtue of their assimilation
+to Shamash, and his secondary forms, Bel-Merodach, Ninib, and Nergal.
+Ishtar absorbed all her companions, and her name put in the plural,
+Ishtarati, “the Ishtars,” embraced all goddesses in general, just as the
+name Hani took in all the gods. Thanks to this compromise, the system
+flourished, and was widely accepted: local vanity was always able to
+find a means for placing in a prominent place within it the feudal
+deity, and for reconciling his pretensions to the highest rank with the
+order of precedence laid down by the theologians of Uruk. The local
+god was always the king of the gods, the father of the gods, he who
+was worshipped above the others in everyday life, and whose public cult
+constituted the religion of the State or city.
+
+     * As far as we can at present determine, the most ancient
+     series established was that of the planetary gods, whose
+     values, following each other irregularly, are not calculated
+     on a scheme of mathematical progression, but according to
+     the empirical importance, which a study of predictions had
+     ascribed to each planet. The regular series, that of the
+     great gods, bears in its regularity the stamp of its later
+     introduction: it was instituted after the example of the
+     former, but with corrections of what seemed capricious, and
+     fixing the interval between the gods always at the same
+     figure.
+
+The temples were miniature reproductions of the arrangement of the
+universe. The “ziggurat” represented in its form the mountain of the
+world, and the halls ranged at its feet resembled approximately
+the accessory parts of the world: the temple of Merodach at Babylon
+comprised them all up to the chambers of fate, where the sun received
+every morning the tablets of destiny. The name often indicated the
+nature of the patron deity or one of his attributes: the temple of
+Shamash at Larsam, for instance was called E-Babbara, “the house of
+the sun,” and that of Nebo at Borsippa, E-Zida, “the eternal house.” No
+matter where the sanctuary of a specific god might be placed, it always
+bore the same name; Shamash, for example, dwelt at Sippara as at Larsam
+in an E-Babbara. In Chaldaea, as in Egypt, the king or chief of the
+State was the priest _par excellence_, and the title of “vicegerent,”
+ so frequent in the early period, shows that the chief was regarded as
+representing the divinity among his own people; but a priestly body,
+partly hereditary, partly selected, fulfilled for him his daily
+sacerdotal functions, and secured the regularity of the services. A
+chief priest--“ishshakku”--was at their head, and his principal duty was
+the pouring out of the libation. Each temple had its “ishshakku,” but he
+who presided over the worship of the feudal deity took precedence of
+all the others in the city, as in the case of the chief priests of
+Bel-Merodach at Babylon, of Sin at Uru, and of Shamash at Larsam or
+Sippara. He presided over various categories of priests and priestesses
+whose titles and positions in the hierarchy are not well known. The
+“sangutu” appear to have occupied after him the most important place, as
+chamberlains attached to the house of the god, and as his liegemen.
+To some of these was entrusted the management of the harem of the god,
+while others were overseers of the remaining departments of his
+palace. The “kipu” and the “shatammu” were especially charged with the
+management of his financial interests, while the “pashishu” anointed
+with holy and perfumed oil his statues of stone, metal, or wood, the
+votive stelae set up in the chapels, and the objects used in worship
+and sacrifice, such as the great basins, the “seas” of copper which
+contained the water employed in the ritual ablutions, and the victims
+led to the altar. After these came a host of officials, butchers and
+their assistants, soothsayers, augurs, prophets,--in fact, all the
+attendants that the complicated rites, as numerous in Chaldaea as in
+Egypt, required, not to speak of the bands of women and men who honoured
+the god in meretricious rites. Occupation for this motley crowd was
+never lacking. Every day and almost every hour a fresh ceremony required
+the services of one or other member of the staff, from the monarch
+himself, or his deputy in the temple, down to the lowest sacristan. The
+12th of the month Blul was set apart at Babylon for the worship of Bel
+and Beltis: the sovereign made a donation to them according as he was
+disposed, and then celebrated before them the customary sacrifices, and
+if he raised his hand to plead for any favour, he obtained it without
+fail. The 13th was dedicated to the moon, the supreme god; the 14th to
+Beltis and Nergal; the 15th to Shamash; the 16th was a fast in honour
+of Merodach and Zirbanit; the 17th was the annual festival of Nebo and
+Tashmit; the 18th was devoted to the laudation of Sin and Shamash; while
+the 19th was a “white day” for the great goddess Gula. The whole year
+was taken up in a way similar to this casual specimen from the calendar.
+The kings, in founding a temple, not only bestowed upon it the objects
+and furniture required for present exigencies, such as lambs and oxen,
+birds, fish, bread, liquors, incense, and odoriferous essences;
+they assigned to it an annual income from the treasury, slaves, and
+cultivated lands; and their royal successors were accustomed to renew
+these gifts or increase them on every opportunity. Every victorious
+campaign brought him his share in the spoils and captives; every
+fortunate or unfortunate event which occurred in connection with the
+State or royal family meant an increase in the gifts to the god, as
+an act of thanksgiving on the one hand for the divine favour, or as an
+offering on the other to appease the wrath of the god. Gold, silver,
+copper, lapis-lazuli, gems and precious woods, accumulated in the sacred
+treasury; fields were added to fields, flocks to flocks, slaves to
+slaves; and the result of such increase would in a few generations
+have made the possessions of the god equal to those of the reigning
+sovereign, if the attacks of neighbouring peoples had not from time to
+time issued in the loss of a part of it, or if the king himself had not,
+under financial pressure, replenished his treasury at the expense of the
+priests. To prevent such usurpations as far as possible, maledictions
+were hurled at every one who should dare to lay a sacrilegious hand on
+the least object belonging to the divine domain; it was predicted of
+such “that he would be killed like an ox in the midst of his prosperity,
+and slaughtered like a wild urus in the fulness of his strength!... May
+his name be effaced from his stelae in the temple of his god! May his
+god see pitilessly the disaster of his country, may the god ravage his
+land with the waters of heaven, ravage it with the waters of the
+earth. May he be pursued as a nameless wretch, and his seed fall under
+servitude! May this man, like every one who acts adversely to his
+master, find nowhere a refuge, afar off, under the vault of the skies or
+in any abode of man whatsoever.” These threats, terrible as they were,
+did not succeed in deterring the daring, and the mighty men of the
+time were willing to brave them, when their interests promoted them.
+Gulkishar, Lord of the “land of the sea,” had vowed a wheat-field to
+Nina, his lady, near the town of Deri, on the Tigris. Seven hundred
+years later, in the reign of Belnadinabal, Ekarrakais, governor of
+Bitsinmagir, took possession of it, and added it to the provincial
+possessions, contrary to all equity. The priest of the goddess appealed
+to the king, and prostrating himself before the throne with many prayers
+and mystic formulas, begged for the restitution of the alienated land.
+Belnadinabal acceded to the request, and renewed the imprecations which
+had been inserted on the original deed of gift: “If ever, in the
+course of days, the man of law, or the governor of a suzerain who will
+superintend the town of Bitsinmagir, fears the vengeance of the god
+Zikum or the goddess Nina, may then Zikum and Nina, the mistress of the
+goddesses, come to him with the benediction of the prince of the gods;
+may they grant to him the destiny of a happy life, and may they accord
+to him days of old age, and years of uprightness! But as for thee, who
+hast a mind to change this, step not across its limits, do not covet
+the land: hate evil and love justice.” If all sovereigns were not so
+accommodating in their benevolence as Belnadinabal, the piety of private
+individuals, stimulated by fear, would be enough to repair the loss,
+and frequent legacies would soon make up for the detriment caused to
+the temple possessions by the enemy’s sword or the rapacity of an
+unscrupulous lord. The residue, after the vicissitudes of revolutions,
+was increased and diminished from time to time, to form at length in the
+city an indestructible fief whose administration was a function of the
+chief priest for life, and whose revenue furnished means in abundance
+for the personal exigencies of the gods as well as the support of his
+ministers.
+
+This was nothing more than justice would prescribe. A loyal and
+universal faith would not only acknowledge the whole world to be the
+creation of the gods, but also their inalienable domain. It belonged to
+them at the beginning; every one in the State of which the god was
+the sovereign lord, all those, whether nobles or serfs, vicegerents
+or kings, who claimed to have any possession in it, were but ephemeral
+lease-holders of portions of which they fancied themselves the owners.
+Donations to the temples were, therefore, nothing more than voluntary
+restitutions, which the gods consented to accept graciously, deigning
+to be well pleased with the givers, when, after all-, they might have
+considered the gifts as merely displays of strict honesty, which merited
+neither recognition nor thanks. They allowed, however, the best part of
+their patrimony to remain in the hands of strangers, and they contented
+themselves with what the pretended generosity of the faithful might see
+fit to assign to them. Of their lands, some were directly cultivated by
+the priests themselves; others were leased to lay people of every rank,
+who took off the shoulders of the priesthood all the burden of managing
+them, while rendering at the same time the profit that accrued from
+them; others were let at a fixed rent according to contract. The
+tribute of dates, corn, and fruit, which was rendered to the temples to
+celebrate certain commemorative ceremonies in the honour of this or that
+deity, were fixed charges upon certain lands, which at length usually
+fell entirely into the hands of the priesthood as mortmain possessions.
+These were the sources of the fixed revenues of the gods, by means of
+which they and their people were able to live, if not luxuriously, at
+least in a manner befitting their dignity. The offerings and sacrifices
+were a kind of windfall, of which the quantity varied strangely with the
+seasons; at certain times few were received, while at other times there
+was a superabundance. The greatest portion of them was consumed on
+the spot by the officials of the sanctuary; the part which could be
+preserved without injury was added to the produce of the domain, and
+constituted a kind of reserve for a rainy day, or was used to produce
+more of its kind. The priests made great profit out of corn and metals,
+and the skill with which they conducted commercial operations in silver
+was so notorious that no private person hesitated to entrust them with
+the management of his capital: they were the intermediaries between
+lenders and borrowers, and the commissions which they obtained in these
+transactions was not the smallest or the least certain of their profits.
+They maintained troops of slaves, labourers, gardeners, workmen, and
+even women-singers and sacred courtesans of which mention has been made
+above, all of whom either worked directly for them in their several
+trades, or were let out to those who needed their services. The god was
+not only the greatest cultivator in the State after the king, sometimes
+even excelling him in this respect, but he was also the most active
+manufacturer, and many of the utensils in daily use, as well as articles
+of luxury, proceeded from his workshops. His possessions secured for him
+a paramount authority in the city, and also an influence in the councils
+of the king: the priests who represented him on earth thus became mixed
+up in State affairs, and exercised authority on his behalf in the same
+measure as the officers of the crown.
+
+[Illustration: 203.jpg A VOTARY LED TO THE GOD TO RECEIVE THE REWARD OF
+THE SACRIFICE]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the
+     Berlin Museum.
+
+He, had, indeed, as much need of riches and renown as the least of his
+clients. As he was subject to all human failings, and experienced all
+the appetites of mankind, he had to be nourished, clothed, and amused,
+and this could be done only at great expense. The stone or wooden
+statues erected to him in the sanctuaries furnished him with bodies,
+which he animated with his breath, and accredited to his clients as the
+receivers of all things needful to him in his mysterious kingdom. The
+images of the gods were clothed in vestments, they were anointed with
+odoriferous oils, covered with jewels, served with food and drink; and
+during these operations the divinities themselves, above in the heaven,
+or down in the abyss, or in the bosom of the earth, were arrayed in
+garments, their bodies were perfumed with unguents, and their appetites
+fully satisfied: all that was further required for this purpose was the
+offering of sacrifices together with prayers and prescribed rites. The
+priest began by solemnly inviting the gods to the feast: as soon as they
+sniffed from afar the smell of the good cheer that awaited them, they
+ran “like a swarm of flies” and prepared themselves to partake of it.
+
+[Illustration: 204.jpg THE SACRIFICE: A GOAT PRESENTED TO ISHTAR.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian intaglio
+     illustrated in A. Rich, _Narrative of a Journey to the Site
+     of Babylon in 1811_. The sacrifice of the goat, or rather
+     its presentation to the god, is not infrequently represented
+     on the Assyrian bas-reliefs.
+
+The supplications having been heard, water was brought to the gods for
+the necessary ablutions before a repast. “Wash thy hands, cleanse thy
+hands,--may the gods thy brothers wash their hands!--From a clean dish
+eat a pure repast,--from a clean cup drink pure water.” The statue, from
+the rigidity of the material out of which it was carved, was at a loss
+how to profit by the exquisite things which had been lavished upon it:
+the difficulty was removed by the opening of its mouth at the moment
+of consecration, thus enabling it to partake of the good fare to its
+satisfaction.* The banquet lasted a long time, and consisted of every
+delicacy which the culinary skill of the time could prepare: the courses
+consisted of dates, wheaten flour, honey, butter, various kinds of
+wines, and fruits, together with roast and boiled meats.
+
+     * This operation, which was also resorted to in Egypt in the
+     case of the statues of the gods and deceased persons, is
+     clearly indicated in a text of the second Chaldaean empire
+     published in _W. A. Insc_, vol. iv. pi. 25. The priest who
+     consecrates an image makes clear in the first place that
+     “its mouth not being open it can partake of no refreshment:
+     it neither eats food nor drinks water.” Thereupon he performs
+     certain rites, which he declares were celebrated, if not at
+     that moment, at least for the first time by Ea himself: “Ea
+     has brought thee to thy glorious place,--to thy glorious
+     place he has brought thee,--brought thee with his splendid
+     hand,--brought also butter and honey;--_he has poured
+     consecrated water into thy mouth--and by magic has opened
+     thy mouth._” Henceforward the statue can eat and drink like
+     an ordinary living being the meat and beverages offered to
+     it during the sacrifice.
+
+[Illustration: 205.jpg THE GOD SHAMASH SEIZES WITH HIS LEFT HAND THE
+SMOKE OF THE SACRIFICE.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio pointed out
+     by Heuzey-Sarzcc; the original is in the Louvre. The scene
+     depicted behind Shamash deals with a legend still unknown. A
+     goddess, pursued by a genius with a double face, has taken
+     refuge under a tree, which bows down to protect her; while
+     the monster endeavours to break down the obstacle branch by
+     branch, a god rises from the stem and hands to the goddess a
+     stone-headed mace to protect her against her enemy.
+
+In the most ancient times it would appear that even human sacrifices
+were offered, but this custom was obsolete except on rare occasions, and
+lambs, oxen, sometimes swine’s flesh, formed the usual elements of
+the sacrifice. The gods seized as it arose from the altar the unctuous
+smoke, and fed on it with delight. When they had finished their repast,
+the supplication of a favour was adroitly added, to which they gave a
+favourable hearing. Services were frequent in the temples: there was one
+in the morning and another in the evening on ordinary days, in addition
+to those which private individuals might require at any hour of the day.
+The festivals assigned to the local god and his colleagues, together
+with the acts of praise in which the whole nation joined, such as that
+of the New Year, required an abundance of extravagant sacrifices, in
+which the blood of the victims flowed like water. Days of sorrow and
+mourning alternated with these days of joy, during which the people and
+the magnates gave themselves up to severe fasting and acts of penitence.
+The Chaldeans had a lively sense of human frailty, and of the risks
+entailed upon the sinner by disobedience to the gods. The dread of
+sinning haunted them during their whole life; they continually
+subjected the motives of their actions to a strict scrutiny, and once
+self-examination had revealed to them the shadow of an evil intent, they
+were accustomed to implore pardon for it in a humble manner. “Lord, my
+sins are many, great are my misdeeds!--O my god, my sins are many, great
+my misdeeds!--O my goddess, my sins are many, great my misdeeds!--I have
+committed faults and I knew them not; I have committed sin and I knew
+it not; I have fed upon misdeeds and I knew them not; I have walked in
+omissions and I knew them not.--The lord, in the anger of his heart,
+he has stricken me,--the god, in the wrath of his heart, has abandoned
+me,--Ishtar is enraged against me, and has treated me harshly!--I make
+an effort, and no one offers me a hand,--I weep, and no one comes to
+me,--I cry aloud, and no one hears me:--I sink under affliction, I am
+overwhelmed, I can no longer raise up my head,--I turn to my merciful
+god to call upon him, and I groan!... Lord reject not thy servant,--and
+if he is hurled into the roaring waters, stretch to him thy hand;--the
+sins I have committed, have mercy upon them,--the misdeeds I have
+committed, scatter them to the winds--and my numerous faults, tear them
+to pieces like a garment.” Sin in the eyes of the Chaldaean was not, as
+with us, an infirmity of the soul; it assaulted the body like an actual
+virus, and the fear of physical suffering or death engendered by it,
+inspired these complaints with a note of sincerity which cannot be
+mistaken.
+
+Every individual is placed, from the moment of his birth, under the
+protection of a god and goddess, of whom he is the servant, or rather
+the son, and whom he never addresses otherwise than as his god and
+his goddess. These deities accompany him night and day, not so much to
+protect him from visible dangers, as to guard him from the invisible
+beings which ceaselessly hover round him, and attack him on every side.
+If he is devout, piously disposed towards his divine patrons and the
+deities of his country, if he observes the prescribed rites, recites the
+prayers, performs the sacrifices--in a word, if he acts rightly--their
+aid is never lacking; they bestow upon him a numerous posterity, a
+happy old age, prolonged to the term fixed by fate, when he must resign
+himself to close his eyes for ever to the light of day. If, on the
+contrary, he is wicked, violent, one whose word cannot be trusted, “his
+god cuts him down like a reed,” extirpates his race, shortens his days,
+delivers him over to demons who possess themselves of his body and
+afflict it with sicknesses before finally despatching him. Penitence
+is of avail against the evil of sin, and serves to re-establish a right
+course of life, but its efficacy is not permanent, and the moment at
+last arrives in which death, getting the upper hand, carries its victim
+away. The Chaldaeans had not such clear ideas as to what awaited them in
+the other world as the Egyptians possessed: whilst the tomb, the mummy,
+the perpetuity of the funeral revenues, and the safety of the double,
+were the engrossing subjects in Egypt, the Chaldaean texts are almost
+entirely silent as to the condition of the soul, and the living seem to
+have had no further concern about the dead than to get rid of them
+as quickly and as completely as possible. They did not believe that
+everything was over at the last breath, but they did not on that account
+think that the fate of that which survived was indissolubly associated
+with the perishable part, and that the disembodied soul was either
+annihilated or survived, according as the flesh in which it was
+sustained was annihilated or survived in the tomb. The soul was
+doubtless not utterly unconcerned about the fate of the _larva_ it had
+quitted: its pains were intensified on being despoiled of its earthly
+case if the latter were mutilated, or left without sepulture, a prey
+to the fowls, of the air. This feeling, however, was not sufficiently
+developed to create a desire for escape from corruption entirely, and to
+cause a resort to the mummifying process of the Egyptians.
+
+[Illustration: 208.jpg DECORATED WRAPPINGS FROM A MUMMY (Color)]
+
+The Chaldaeans did not subject the body, therefore, to those injections,
+to those prolonged baths in preserving fluids, to that laborious
+swaddling which rendered it indestructible; whilst the family wept and
+lamented, old women who exercised the sad function of mourners washed
+the dead body, perfumed it, clad it in its best apparel, painted its
+cheeks, blackened its eyelids, placed a collar on its neck, rings on its
+fingers, arranged its arms upon its breast, and stretched it on a bed,
+setting up at its head a little altar for the customary offerings of
+water, incense, and cakes.
+
+[Illustration: 209.jpg Chaldaean coffin in the form of a jar]
+
+[Illustration: 209a.jpg A VAULTED TOMB IN URU]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Taylor.
+
+[Illustration: 210.jpg CHALDAEAN TOMB WITH DOMED ROOF.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Taylor.
+
+Evil spirits, prowled incessantly around the dead bodies of the
+Chaldaeans, either to feed upon them, or to use them in their sorcery:
+should they succeed in slipping into a corpse, from that moment it could
+be metamorphosed into a vampire, and return to the world to suck the
+blood of the living. The Chaldaeans were, therefore, accustomed to invite
+by prayers beneficent genii and gods to watch over the dead. Two of
+these would take their invisible places at the head and foot of the bed,
+and wave their hands in the act of blessing: these were the vassals
+of Ea, and, like their master, were usually clad in fish-skins. Others
+placed themselves in the sepulchral chamber, and stood ready to strike
+any one who dared to enter: these had human figures, or lions’ heads
+joined to the bodies of men. Others, moreover, hovered over the house in
+order to drive off the spectres who might endeavour to enter through the
+roof. During the last hours in which the dead body remained among its
+kindred, it reposed under the protection of a legion of gods.
+
+We must not expect to find on the plains of the Euphrates the rock-cut
+tombs, the mastabas or pyramids, of Egypt. No mountain chain ran on
+either side of the river, formed of rock soft enough to be cut and
+hollowed easily into chambers or sepulchral halls, and at the same time
+sufficiently hard to prevent the tunnels once cut from falling in.
+
+[Illustration: 111.jpg CHALDEAN TOMB WITH FLAT ROOF.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Taylor.
+
+The alluvial soil upon which the Chaldaean cities were built, far from,
+preserving the dead body, rapidly decomposed it under the influence of
+heat and moisture: vaults constructed in it would soon be invaded by
+water in spite of masonry; paintings and sculpture would soon be
+eaten away by nitre, and the funereal furniture and the coffin quickly
+destroyed. The dwelling-house of the Chaldaean dead could not, therefore,
+properly be called, as those of Egypt, an “eternal house.” It was
+constructed of dried or burnt brick, and its form varied much from
+the most ancient times. Sometimes it was a great vaulted chamber, the
+courses forming the roof being arranged corbel-wise, and contained the
+remains of one or two bodies walled up within it.* At other times
+it consisted merely of an earthen jar, in which the corpse had
+been inserted in a bent-up posture, or was composed of two enormous
+cylindrical jars, which, when united and cemented with bitumen, formed a
+kind of barrel around the body. Other tombs are represented by wretched
+structures, sometimes oval and sometimes round in shape, placed upon a
+brick base and covered by a flat or domed roof. The interior was not of
+large dimensions, and to enter it was necessary to stoop to a creeping
+posture. The occupant of the smallest chambers was content to have with
+him his linen, his ornaments, some bronze arrowheads, and metal or clay
+vessels. Others contained furniture which, though not as complete as
+that found in Egyptian sepulchres, must have ministered to all the
+needs of the spirit. The body was stretched, fully clothed, upon a
+mat impregnated with bitumen, the head supported by a cushion or flat
+brick,** the arms laid across the breast, and the shroud adjusted by
+bands to the loins and legs. Sometimes the corpse was placed on its left
+side, with the legs slightly bent, and the right hand, extending
+over the left shoulder, was inserted into a vase, as if to convey the
+contents to the mouth.
+
+     * Vaulted chambers are confined chiefly to the ancient
+     cemeteries of Uru at Mugheir; they are rather over six to
+     seven feet long, with a breadth of five and a half feet. The
+     walls are not quite perpendicular, but are somewhat splayed
+     up to two-thirds of their height, where they begin to narrow
+     into the vaulted roof.
+
+     ** The object placed under the head of the skeleton is the
+     dried brick mentioned in the text; the vessel to which the
+     hand is stretched out was of copper; the other vessels were
+     of earthenware, and contained water, or dates, of which the
+     stones were found. The small cylinders on the side were of
+     stone; the two large cylinders, between the copper vessel
+     and those of earthenware, were pieces of bamboo, of whose
+     use we are ignorant.
+
+[Illustration: 213.jpg THE INTERIOR OF THE TOMB]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Taylor
+
+Clay jars and dishes, arranged around the body, contained the food and
+drink required for the dead man’s daily fare--his favourite wine,
+dates, fish, fowl, game, occasionally also a boar’s head--and even stone
+representations of provisions, which, like those of Egypt, were lasting
+substitutes for the reality. The dead man required weapons also to
+enable him to protect his food-store, and his lance, javelins and baton
+of office were placed alongside him, together with a cylinder bearing
+his name, which he had employed as his seal in his lifetime. Beside
+the body of a woman or young girl was arranged an abundance of spare
+ornaments, flowers, scent-bottles, combs, cosmetic pencils, and cakes
+of the black paste with which they were accustomed to paint the eyebrows
+and the edges of the eyelids.
+
+Cremation seems in many cases to have been preferred to burial in a
+tomb. The funeral pile was constructed at some distance from the town,
+on a specially reserved area in the middle of the marshes. The body,
+wrapped up in coarse matting, was placed upon a heap of reeds and rushes
+saturated with bitumen: a brick wall, coated with moist clay, was built
+around this to circumscribe the action of the flames, and, the customary
+prayers having been recited, the pile was set on fire, masses of fresh
+material, together with the funerary furniture and usual viaticum,
+being added to the pyre. When the work of cremation was considered to
+be complete, the fire was extinguished, and an examination made of the
+residue. It frequently happened that only the most accessible and most
+easily destroyed parts of the body had been attacked by the flames, and
+that there remained a black and disfigured mass which the fire had
+not consumed. The previously prepared coating of mud was then made to
+furnish a clay covering for the body, so as to conceal the sickening
+spectacle from the view of the relatives and spectators. Sometimes,
+however, the furnace accomplished its work satisfactorily, and there was
+nothing to be seen at the end but greasy ashes and scraps of calcined
+bones. The remains were frequently left where they were, and the funeral
+pile became their tomb. They were, however, often collected and disposed
+of in a manner which varied with their more or less complete combustion.
+Bodies insufficiently burnt were interred in graves, or in public
+chapels; while the ashes of those fully cremated, together with the
+scraps of bones and the _debris_ of the offerings, were placed in long
+urns. The heat had contorted the weapons and half melted the vessels
+of copper; and the deceased was thus obliged to be content with the
+fragments only of the things provided for him. These were, however,
+sufficient for the purpose, and his possessions, once put to the test
+of the flames, now accompanied him whither he went: water alone was
+lacking, but provision was made for this by the construction on the
+spot of cisterns to collect it. For this purpose several cylinders of
+pottery, some twenty inches broad, were inserted in the ground one
+above the other from a depth of from ten to twelve feet, and the last
+cylinder, reaching the level of the ground, was provided with a narrow
+neck, through which the rainwater or infiltrations from the river flowed
+into this novel cistern. Many examples of these are found in one and the
+same chamber,* thus giving the soul an opportunity of finding water in
+one or other of them. The tombs at Uruk, arranged closely together
+with coterminous walls, and gradually covered by the sand or by the
+accumulation and _debris_ of new tombs, came at length to form an actual
+mound. In cities where space was less valuable, and where they were free
+to extend, the tombs quickly disappeared without leaving any vestiges
+above the surface, and it would now be necessary to turn up a great
+deal of rubbish before discovering their remains. The Chaldaea of to-day
+presents the singular aspect of a country almost without cemeteries, and
+one would be inclined to think that its ancient inhabitants had taken
+pains to hide them.** The sepulture of royal personages alone furnishes
+us with monuments of which we can determine the site. At Babylon these
+were found in the ancient palaces in which the living were no longer
+inclined to dwell: that of Shargina, for instance, furnished a
+burying-place for kings more than two thousand years after the death
+of its founder. The chronicles devoutly indicate the spot where each
+monarch, when his earthly reign was over, found a last resting-place;
+and where, as the subject of a ceremonial worship similar to that of
+Egypt, his memory was preserved from the oblivion which had overtaken
+most of his illustrious subjects.
+
+     * The German expedition of 1886-87 found four of these
+     reservoirs in a single chamber, and nine distributed in the
+     chambers of a house entirely devoted to the burial of the
+     dead.
+
+     ** Various explanations have been offered to account for
+     this absence of tombs, Without mentioning the desperate
+     attempt to get rid of the difficulty by the assumption that
+     the dead bodies were cast into the river, Loftus thinks that
+     the Chaldaeans and Assyrians were accustomed to send them to
+     some sanctuary in Southern Chaldaea, especially to Uru and
+     Uruk, whose vast cemeteries, he contends, would have
+     absorbed during the centuries the greater part of the
+     Euphratean population; his opinion has been adopted by some
+     historians, and, as far only as the later period is
+     concerned, by Hommel.
+
+The dead man, or rather that part of him which survived--his
+“ekimmu”--dwelt in the tomb, and it was for his comfort that there were
+provided, at the time of sepulture or cremation, the provisions and
+clothing, the ornaments and weapons, of which he was considered to stand
+in need. Furnished with these necessities by his children and heirs, he
+preserved for the donors the same affection which he had felt for them
+in his lifetime, and gave evidence of it in every way he could, watching
+over their welfare, and protecting them from malign influences. If
+they abandoned or forgot him, he avenged himself for their neglect by
+returning to torment them in their homes, by letting sickness attack
+them, and by ruining them with his imprecations: he became thus no
+less hurtful than the “luminous ghost” of the Egyptians, and if he were
+accidentally deprived of sepulture, he would not be merely a plague
+to his relations, but a danger to the entire city. The dead, who were
+unable to earn an honest living, showed little pity to those who were
+in the same position as themselves: when a new-comer arrived among them
+without prayers, libations, or offerings, they declined to receive him,
+and would not give him so much as a piece of bread out of their meagre
+store. The spirit of the unburied dead man, having neither place of
+repose nor means of subsistence, wandered through the town and country,
+occupied with no other thought than that of attacking and robbing the
+living. He it was who, gliding into the house during the night, revealed
+himself to its inhabitants with such a frightful visage as to drive them
+distracted with terror. Always on the watch, no sooner does he surprise
+one of his victims than he falls upon him, “his head against his
+victim’s head, his hand against his hand, his foot against his foot.”
+ He who has been thus attacked, whether man or beast, would undoubtedly
+perish if magic were not able to furnish its all-powerful defence
+against this deadly embrace.* This human survival, who is so forcibly
+represented both in his good and evil aspects, was nevertheless nothing
+more than a sort of vague and fluid existence--a double, in fact,
+analogous in appearance to that of the Egyptians.
+
+     * The majority of the spells employed against sickness
+     contain references to the spirits against which they
+     contend--“the wicked ekimmu who oppresses men during the
+     night,” or simply “the wicked ekimmu,” the ghost.
+
+With the faculty of roaming at will through space, and of going forth
+from and returning to his abode, it was impossible to regard him as
+condemned always to dwell in the case of terra-cotta in which his body
+lay mouldering: he was transferred, therefore, or rather he
+transferred himself, into the dark land--the Aralu--situated very far
+away--according to some, beneath the surface of the earth; according to
+others, in the eastern or northern extremities of the universe. A river
+which opens into this region and separates it from the sunlit earth,
+finds its source in the primordial waters into whose bosom this world
+of ours is plunged. This dark country is surrounded by seven high walls,
+and is approached through seven gates, each of which is guarded by a
+pitiless warder. Two deities rule within it--Nergal, “the lord of the
+great city,” and Beltis-Allat, “the lady of the great land,” whither
+everything which has breathed in this world descends after death. A
+legend relates that Allat, called in Sumerian Erishkigal, reigned alone
+in Hades, and was invited by the gods to a feast which they had prepared
+in heaven. Owing to her hatred of the light, she sent a refusal by her
+messenger Narntar, who acquitted himself on this mission with such a
+bad grace, that Ann and Ea were incensed against his mistress, and
+commissioned Nergal to descend and chastise her; he went, and finding
+the gates of hell open, dragged the queen by her hair from the throne,
+and was about to decapitate her, but she mollified him by her prayers,
+and saved her life by becoming his wife. The nature of Nergal fitted
+him well to play the part of a prince of the departed: for he was the
+destroying sun of summer, and the genius of pestilence and battle. His
+functions, however, in heaven and earth took up so much of his time
+that he had little leisure to visit his nether kingdom, and he was
+consequently obliged to content himself with the _role_ of providing
+subjects for it by despatching thither the thousands of recruits which
+he gathered daily from the abodes of men or from the field of battle.
+Allat was the actual sovereign of the country. She was represented with
+the body of a woman, ill-formed and shaggy, the grinning muzzle of a
+lion, and the claws of a bird of prey. She brandished in each hand a
+large serpent--a real animated javelin, whose poisonous bite inflicted
+a fatal wound upon the enemy. Her children were two lions, which she is
+represented as suckling, and she passed through her empire, not seated
+in the saddle, but standing upright or kneeling on the back of a
+horse, which seems oppressed by her weight. Sometimes she set out on
+an expedition upon the river which communicates with the countries
+of light, in order to meet the procession of newly arrived souls
+ceaselessly despatched to her: she embarked in this case upon an
+enchanted vessel, which made its way without sail or oars, its prow
+projecting like the beak of a bird, and its stern terminating in the
+head of an ox. She overcomes all resistance, and nothing can escape from
+her: the gods themselves can pass into her empire only on the condition
+of submitting to death like mortals, and of humbly avowing themselves
+her slaves.
+
+[Illustration: 220.jpg THE GODDESS ALLAT PASSES THROUGH THE NETHER
+REGIONS IN HER BARK.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze plaque of which an
+     engraving was published by Clermont-Ganneau. The original,
+     which belonged to M. Peretie, is now in the collection of M.
+     de Clercq
+
+[Illustration: 221.jpg NERGAL, THE GOD OF HADES; BACK VIEW.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin. This is the back of the bronze plate
+     represented on the preceding page; the animal-head of the
+     god appears in relief at the top of the illustration.
+
+The warders at the gates despoiled the new-comers of everything which
+they had brought with them, and conducted them in a naked condition
+before Allat, who pronounced sentence upon them, and assigned to each
+his place in the nether world. The good or evil committed on earth by
+such souls was of little moment in determining the sentence: to secure
+the favour of the judge, it was of far greater importance to have
+exhibited devotion to the gods and to Allat herself, to have lavished
+sacrifices and offerings upon them and to have enriched their temples.
+The souls which could not justify themselves were subjected to horrible
+punishment: leprosy consumed them to the end of time, and the most
+painful maladies attacked them, to torture them ceaselessly without any
+hope of release. Those who were fortunate enough to be spared from
+her rage, dragged out a miserable and joyless existence. They were
+continually suffering from the pangs of thirst and hunger, and found
+nothing to satisfy their appetites but clay and dust. They shivered with
+cold, and they obtained no other garment to protect them than mantles of
+feathers--the great silent wings of the night-birds, invested with which
+they fluttered about and filled the air with their screams. This gloomy
+and cruel conception of ordinary life in this strange kingdom was still
+worse than the idea formed of the existence in the tomb to which it
+succeeded. In the cemetery the soul was, at least, alone with the dead
+body; in the house of Allat, on the contrary, it was lost as it were
+among spirits as much afflicted as itself, and among the genii born of
+darkness. None of these genii had a simple form, or approached the
+human figure in shape; each individual was a hideous medley of human
+and animal parts, in which the most repellent features were artistically
+combined. Lions’ heads stood out from the bodies of scorpion-tailed
+jackals, whose feet were armed with eagles’ claws: and among such
+monsters the genii of pestilence, fever, and the south-west wind took
+the chief place. When once the dead had become naturalized among this
+terrible population, they could not escape from their condition,
+unless by the exceptional mandate of the gods above. They possessed
+no recollection of what they had done upon earth. Domestic affection,
+friendships, and the memory of good offices rendered to one
+another,--all were effaced from their minds: nothing remained there but
+an inexpressible regret at having been exiled from the world of light,
+and an excruciating desire to reach it once more. The threshold of
+Allat’s palace stood upon a spring which had the property of restoring
+to life all who bathed in it or drank of its waters: they gushed forth
+as soon as the stone was raised, but the earth-spirits guarded it with a
+jealous care, and kept at a distance all who attempted to appropriate a
+drop of it. They permitted access to it only by order of Ea himself, or
+one of the supreme gods, and even then with a rebellious heart at seeing
+their prey escape them. Ancient legends related how the shepherd Dumuzi,
+son of Ea and Damkina, having excited the love of Ishtar while he was
+pasturing his flocks under the mysterious tree of Eridu, which covers
+the earth with its shade, was chosen by the goddess from among all
+others to be the spouse of her youth, and how, being mortally wounded by
+a wild boar, he was cast into the kingdom of Allat. One means remained
+by which he might be restored to the light of day: his wounds must be
+washed in the waters of the wonderful spring, and Ishtar resolved to
+go in quest of this marvellous liquid. The undertaking was fraught with
+danger, for no one might travel to the infernal regions without having
+previously gone through the extreme terrors of death, and even the gods
+themselves could not transgress this fatal law. “To the land without
+return, to the land which thou knowest--Ishtar, the daughter of Sin,
+turned her thoughts: she, the daughter of Sin, turned her thoughts--to
+the house of darkness, the abode of Irkalla--to the house from which he
+who enters can never emerge--to the path upon which he who goes shall
+never come back--to the house into which he who enters bids farewell
+to the light--the place where dust is nourishment and clay is food; the
+light is not seen, darkness is the dwelling, where the garments are the
+wings of birds--where dust accumulates on door and bolt.” Ishtar
+arrives at the porch, she knocks at it, she addresses the guardian in an
+imperious voice: “‘Guardian of the waters, open thy gate--open thy
+gate that I may enter, even I.--If thou openest not the door that I may
+enter, even I,--I will burst open the door, I will break the bars, I
+will break the threshold, I will burst in the panels, I will excite the
+dead that they may eat the living,--and the dead shall be more numerous
+than the living.’--The guardian opened his mouth and spake, he announced
+to the mighty Ishtar: ‘Stop, O lady, and do not overturn the door until
+I go and apprise the Queen Allat of thy name.’ Allat hesitates, and then
+gives him permission to receive the goddess: ‘Go, guardian, open the
+gate to her--but treat her according to the ancient laws. Mortals
+enter naked into the world, and naked must they leave it: and since
+Ishtar has decided to accept their lot, she too must be prepared to
+divest herself of her garments.’” The guardian went, he opened his mouth:
+‘Enter, my lady, and may Kutha rejoice--may the palace and the land
+without return exult in thy presence! ‘He causes her to pass through the
+first gate, divests her, removes the great crown from her head:--‘Why,
+guardian, dost thou remove the great crown from my head?’--‘Enter, my
+lady, such is the law of Allat.’ The second gate, he causes her to pass
+through it, he divests her--removes the rings from her ears:--‘Why,
+guardian, dost thou remove the rings from my ears?’--‘Enter, my lady,
+such is the law of Allat.’” And from gate to gate he removes some
+ornament from the distressed lady--now her necklace with its attached
+amulets, now the tunic which covers her bosom, now her enamelled girdle,
+her bracelets, and the rings on her ankles: and at length, at the
+seventh gate, takes from her her last covering. When she at length
+arrives in the presence of Allat, she throws herself upon her in order
+to wrest from her in a terrible struggle the life of Dumuzi; but Allat
+sends for Namtar, her messenger of misfortune, to punish, the rebellious
+Ishtar. “Strike her eyes with the affliction of the eyes--strike
+her loins with the affliction of the loins--strike her feet with the
+affliction of the feet--strike her heart with the affliction of the
+heart--strike her head with the affliction of the head--strike violently
+at her, at her whole body!” While Ishtar was suffering the torments of
+the infernal regions, the world of the living was wearing mourning on
+account of her death. In the absence of the goddess of love, the rites
+of love could no longer be performed. The passions of animals and men
+were suspended. If she did not return quickly to the daylight, the
+races of men and animals would become extinct, the earth would become a
+desert, and the gods would have neither votaries nor offerings.
+
+[Illustration: 226.jpg ISHTAR DESPOILED OF HER GARMENTS IN HADES]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the
+     Hague Museum. Salomon Reinach has demonstrated that the
+     naked figure is not the goddess herself, but a statue of the
+     goddess which was adored in one of the temples.
+
+“Papsukal, the servant of the great gods, tore his face before
+Shamash--clothed in mourning, filled with sorrow. Shamash went--he
+wept in the presence of Sin, his father,--and his tears flowed in the
+presence of Ea, the king:--‘Ishtar has gone down into the earth, and
+she has not come up again!--And ever since Ishtar has descended into
+the land without return... [the passions of men and beasts have been
+suspended]... the master goes to sleep while giving his command, the
+servant goes to sleep on his duty.’” The resurrection of the goddess
+is the only remedy for such ills, but this is dependent upon the
+resurrection of Damuzi: Ishtar will never consent to reappear in the
+world, if she cannot bring back her husband with her. Ea, the supreme
+god, the infallible executor of the divine will--he who alone can modify
+the laws imposed upon creation--at length decides to accord to her
+what she desires. “Ea, in the wisdom of his heart, formed a male
+being,--formed Uddushunamir, the servant of the gods:--‘Go then,
+Uddushunamir, turn thy face towards the gate of the land without return;
+--the seven gates of the land without return--may they become open at
+thy presence--may Allat behold thee, and rejoice in thy presence! When
+her heart shall be calm, and her wrath appeased, charm her in the name
+of the great gods--turn thy thoughts to the spring’--‘May the spring, my
+lady, give me of its waters that I may drink of them.’” Allat broke
+out into a terrible rage, when she saw herself obliged to yield to her
+rival; “she beat her sides, she gnawed her fingers,” she broke out into
+curses against the messenger of misfortune. “‘Thou hast expressed to me
+a wish which should not be made!--Fly, Uddushunamir, or I will shut thee
+up in the great prison--the mud of the drains of the city shall be thy
+food--the gutters of the town shall be thy drink--the shadow of
+the walls shall be thy abode--the thresholds shall be thy
+habitation--confinement and isolation shall weaken thy strength.’”* She
+is obliged to obey, notwithstanding; she calls her messenger Namtar and
+commands him to make all the preparations for resuscitating the goddess.
+It was necessary to break the threshold of the palace in order to get at
+the spring, and its waters would have their full effect only in presence
+of the Anunnas. “Namtar went, he rent open the eternal palace,--he
+twisted the uprights so that the stones of the threshold trembled;--he
+made the Anunnaki come forth, and seated them on thrones of gold,--he
+poured upon Ishtar the waters of life, and brought her away.” She
+received again at each gate the articles of apparel she had abandoned
+in her passage across the seven circles of hell: as soon as she saw the
+daylight once more, it was revealed to her that the fate of her husband
+was henceforward in her own hands. Every year she must bathe him in pure
+water, and anoint him with the most precious perfumes, clothe him in a
+robe of mourning, and play to him sad airs upon a crystal flute, whilst
+her priestesses intoned their doleful chants, and tore their breasts
+in sorrow: his heart would then take fresh life, and his youth flourish
+once more, from springtime to springtime, as long as she should
+celebrate on his behalf the ceremonies already prescribed by the deities
+of the infernal world.
+
+     * It follows from this passage that Ishtar could be
+     delivered only at the cost of another life: it was for this
+     reason, doubtless, that Ea, instead of sending the ordinary
+     messenger of the gods, created a special messenger. Allat,
+     furious at the insignificance of the victim sent to her,
+     contents herself with threatening Uddushanamir with an
+     ignominious treatment if he does not escape as quickly as
+     possible.
+
+Dumuzi was a god, the lover, moreover, of a goddess, and the deity
+succeeded where mortals failed.* Ea, Nebo, Gula, Ishtar, and their
+fellows possessed, no doubt, the faculty of recalling the dead to life,
+but they rarely made use of it on behalf of their creatures, and their
+most pious votaries pleaded in vain from temple to temple for the
+resurrection of their dead friends; they could never obtain the favour
+which had been granted by Allat to Dumuzi.
+
+     * Merodach is called “the merciful one who takes pleasure in
+     raising the dead to life,” and “the lord of the pure
+     libation,” the “merciful one who has power to give life.” In
+     Jeremias may be found the list of the gods who up to the
+     present are known to have had the power to resuscitate the
+     dead; it is probable that this power belonged to all the
+     gods and goddesses of the first rank.
+
+[Illustration: 229.jpg DUMUZI REJUVENATED ON THE KNEES OF ISHTAR.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio.
+
+When the dead body was once placed in the tomb, it rose up no more, it
+could no more be reinstated in the place in the household it had
+lost, it never could begin once more a new earthly existence. The
+necromancers, indeed, might snatch away death’s prey for a few moments.
+The earth gaped at the words of their invocations, the soul burst forth
+like a puff of wind and answered gloomily the questions proposed to it;
+but when the charm was once broken, it had to retrace its steps to
+the country without return, to be plunged once more in darkness. This
+prospect of a dreary and joyless eternity was not so terrifying to the
+Chaldaeans as it was to the Egyptians. The few years of their earthly
+existence were of far more concern to them than the endless ages which
+were to begin their monotonous course on the morrow of their funeral.
+The sum of good and evil fortune assigned to them by destiny they
+preferred to spend continuously in the light of day on the fair plains
+of the Euphrates and Tigris: if they were to economize during this
+period with the view of laying up a posthumous treasure of felicity,
+their store would have no current value beyond the tomb, and would thus
+become so much waste. The gods, therefore, whom they served faithfully
+would recoup them, here in their native city, with present prosperity,
+with health, riches, power, glory, and a numerous offspring, for the
+offerings of their devotion; while, if they irritated the deities
+by their shortcomings, they had nothing to expect but overwhelming
+calamities and sufferings. The gods would “cut them down like a reed,”
+ and their “names would be annihilated, their seed destroyed;--they would
+end their days in affliction and hunger,--their dead bodies would be at
+the mercy of chance, and would receive no sepulture.” They were content
+to resign themselves, therefore, to the dreary lot of eternal misery
+which awaited them after death, provided they enjoyed in this world a
+long and prosperous existence. Some of them felt and rebelled against
+the injustice of the idea, which assigned one and the same fate, without
+discrimination, to the coward and the hero killed on the battle-field,
+to the tyrant and the mild ruler of his people, to the wicked and
+the righteous. These therefore supposed that the gods would make
+distinctions, that they would separate such heroes from the common herd,
+welcome them in a fertile, sunlit island, separated from the abode of
+men by the waters of death--the impassable river which leads to the
+house of Allat. The tree of life flourished there, the spring of life
+poured forth there its revivifying waters; thither Ea transferred
+Xisuthros after the Deluge; Gilgames saw the shores of this island and
+returned from it, strong and healthy as in the days of his youth. The
+site of this region of delights was at first placed in the centre of
+the marshes of the Euphrates, where this river flows into the sea;
+afterwards when the country became better known, it was transferred
+beyond the ocean. In proportion as the limits of the Chaldaean
+horizon were thrust further and further away by mercantile or warlike
+expeditions, this mysterious island was placed more and more to the
+east, afterwards to the north, and at length at a distance so great that
+it tended to vanish altogether. As a final resource, the gods of heaven
+themselves became the hosts, and welcomed into their own kingdom the
+purified souls of the heroes.
+
+These souls were not so securely isolated from humanity that the
+inhabitants of the world were not at times tempted to rejoin them before
+their last hour had come. Just as Gilgames had dared of old the
+dangers of the desert and the ocean in order to discover the island of
+Khasisadra, so Etana darted through the air in order to ascend to the
+sky of Anu, to become incorporated while still living in the choir of
+the blessed. The legend gives an account of his friendship with the
+eagle of Shamash, and of the many favours he had obtained from and
+rendered to the bird. It happened at last, that his wife could not bring
+forth the son which lay in her womb; the hero, addressing himself to
+the eagle, asked from her the plant which alleviates the birth-pangs
+of women and facilitates their delivery. This was only to be found,
+however, in the heaven of Anu, and how could any one run the risk of
+mounting so high, without being destroyed on the way by the anger of the
+gods? The eagle takes pity upon the sorrow of his comrade, and resolves
+to attempt the enterprise with him. “‘Friend,’ she says, ‘banish the
+cloud from thy face! Come, and I will carry thee to the heaven of the
+god Anu. Place thy breast against my breast--place thy two hands upon
+the pinions of my wings--place thy side against my side.’ He places his
+breast against the breast of the eagle, he places his two hands upon the
+pinions of the wings, he places his side against her side;--he adjusts
+himself firmly, and his weight was great.” The Chaldaean artists have
+more than once represented the departure of the hero. They exhibit him
+closely attached to the body of his ally, and holding her in a strong
+embrace. A first flight has already lifted them above the earth, and the
+shepherds scattered over the country are stupefied at the unaccustomed
+sight: one announces the prodigy to another, while their dogs seated at
+their feet extend their muzzles as if in the act of howling with terror.
+“For the space of a double hour the eagle bore him--then the eagle spake
+to him, to him Etana: ‘Behold, my friend, the earth what it is; regard
+the sea which the ocean contains! See, the earth is no more than a
+mountain, and the sea is no more than a lake.’ The space of a second
+double hour she bore him, then the eagle spake to him, to him Etana:
+‘Behold, my friend, the earth what it is; the sea appears as the girdle
+of the earth! ‘The space of a third double hour she bore him, then the
+eagle spake to him, to him Etana: ‘See, my friend, the earth, what it
+is:--the sea is no more than the rivulet made by a gardener.’”
+
+[Illustration: 233.jpg ETANA CARRIED TO HEAVEN BY AN EAGLE.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio.
+
+“They at length arrive at the heaven of Anu, and rest there for a
+moment. Etana sees around him nothing but empty space--no living thing
+within it--not even a bird: he is struck with terror, but the eagle
+reassures him, and tells him to proceed on his way to the heaven of
+Ishtar. “‘Come, my friend, let me bear thee to Ishtar,--and I will place
+thee near Ishtar, the lady,--and at the feet of Ishtar, the lady, thou
+shalt throw thyself.--Place thy side against my side, place thy hands
+on the pinions of my wings.’ The space of a double hour she bore him:
+‘Friend, behold the earth what it is.--The face of the earth stretches
+out quite flat--and the sea is no greater than a mere.’ The space of
+a second double hour she bore him: ‘Friend, behold the earth what it
+is,--the earth is no more than a square plot in a garden, and the great
+sea is not greater than a puddle of water.’” At the third hour Etana
+lost courage, and cried, “Stop!” and the eagle immediately descended
+again; but, Etana’s strength being exhausted, he let go his hold, and
+was dashed to pieces on the ground.
+
+The eagle escaped unhurt this time, but she soon suffered a more painful
+death than that of Etana. She was at war with the serpent, though the
+records which we as yet possess do not vouchsafe the reason, when she
+discovered in the roots of a tree the nest in which her enemy concealed
+its brood. She immediately proposed to her young ones to pounce down
+upon the growing snakes; one of her eaglets, wiser than the rest,
+reminded her that they were under the protection of Shamash, the great
+righter of wrongs, and cautioned her against any transgression of the
+divine laws. The old eagle felt herself wiser than her son, and rebuked
+him after the manner of wise mothers: she carried away the serpent’s
+young, and gave them as food to her own brood. The hissing serpent
+crawled as far as Shamash, crying for vengeance: “The evil she has done
+me, Shamash--behold it! Come to my help, Shamash! thy net is as wide as
+the earth--thy snares reach to the distant mountain--who can escape
+thy net?--The criminal Zu, Zu who was the first to act wickedly, did he
+escape it?” Shamash refused to interfere personally, but he pointed out
+to the serpent an artifice by which he might satisfy his vengeance as
+securely as if Shamash himself had accomplished it. “Set out upon the
+way, ascend the mountain,--and conceal thyself in a dead bull;--make
+an incision in his inside--tear open his belly,--take up thy
+abode--establish thyself in his belly. All the birds of the air will
+pounce upon it....--and the eagle herself will come with them, ignorant
+that thou art within it;--she will wish to possess herself of the
+flesh, she will come swiftly--she will think of nothing but the entrails
+within. As soon as she begins to attack the inside, seize her by her
+wings, beat down her wings, the pinions of her wings and her claws, tear
+her and throw her into a ravine of the mountain, that she may die there
+a death of hunger and thirst.”
+
+The serpent did as Shamash advised, and the birds of the air began to
+flock round the carcase in which she was hidden. The eagle came with the
+rest, and at first kept aloof, looking for what should happen. When she
+saw that the birds flew away unharmed all fear left her. In vain did the
+wise eaglet warn her of the danger that was lurking within the prey; she
+mocked at him and his predictions, dug her beak into the carrion, and
+the serpent leaping out seized her by the wing. Then “the eagle her
+mouth opened, and spake unto the snake, ‘Have mercy upon me, and
+according to thy pleasure a gift I will lavish upon thee!’ The snake
+opened her mouth and spake unto the eagle, ‘Did I release thee, Shamash
+would take part against me; and the doom would fall upon me, which now
+I fulfil upon thee.’ She tore out her wings, her feathers, her pinions;
+she tore her to pieces, she threw her into a cleft, and there she died a
+death of hunger and of thirst.”
+
+The gods allowed no living being to penetrate with impunity into their
+empire: he who was desirous of ascending thither, however brave he might
+be, could do so only by death. The mass of humanity had no pretensions
+to mount so high. Their religion gave them the choice between a
+perpetual abode in the tomb, or confinement in the prison of Allat; if
+at times they strove to escape from these alternatives, and to picture
+otherwise their condition in the world beyond, their ideas as to the
+other life continued to remain vague, and never approached the minute
+precision of the Egyptian conception. The cares of the present life were
+too absorbing to allow them leisure to speculate upon the conditions of
+a future existence.
+
+[Illustration: 230.jpg Endplate]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--CHALDAEAN CIVILIZATION
+
+
+_CHALDAEAN CIVILIZATION--ROYALTY--THE CONSTITUTION OF THE FAMILY AND ITS
+PROPERTY--CHALMAN COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY._
+
+_The kings not gods, but the vicegerents of the gods: their sacerdotal
+character--The queens and the women of the royal family: the sons and
+the order of succession to the throne--The royal palaces: description
+of the palace of Gudea at Lagash, the facades, the zigurat, the private
+apartments, the furniture, the external decoration--Costume of the
+men and women: the employees of the palace and the method of royal
+administration; the military and the great lords._
+
+_The scribe and the clay books.--Cuneiform writing: its hieroglyphic
+origin; the Protean character of the sounds which may be assigned to the
+ideograms, grammatical tablets, and dictionaries--Their contracts, and
+their numerous copies of them: the finger-nail mark, the seal._
+
+_The constitution of the family: the position held by the
+wife--Marriage, the contract, the religious ceremonies--Divorce:
+the rights of wealthy women; woman and marriage among the lower
+classes--Adopted children, their position in the family; ordinary
+motives for adoption--Slaves, their condition, their enfranchisement._
+
+_The Chaldaean towns: the aspect and distribution of the houses, domestic
+life--The family patrimony: division of the inheritance--Lending
+on usury, the rate of interest, commercial intercourse by land and
+sea--Trade corporations: brick-making, industrial implements in stone
+and metal, goldsmiths, engravers of cylinders, weavers; the state of the
+working classes._
+
+_Farming and cultivation of the ground: landmarks, slaves,
+and agricultural labourers--Scenes of pastoral life: fishing,
+hunting--Archaic literature; positive sciences: arithmetic and geometry,
+astronomy and astrology, the science of foretelling the future--The
+physician; magic and its influence on neighbouring countries._
+
+[Illustration: 239.jpg CHAPTER III.]
+
+     Drawn by Boudier, from the sketch by Loftus. The initial
+     vignette, which is by Faucher-Gudin, represents a royal
+     figure kneeling and holding a large nail in both hands. The
+     nail serves to keep the figure fixed firmly in the earth. It
+     is a reproduction of the bronze figurine in the Louvre,
+     already published by Heuzey-Sakzeo, _Decouvertes en
+     Chaldee_, pl. 28, No. 4.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--CHALDAEAN CIVILIZATION
+
+
+_Royalty--The constitution of the family and its property--Chaldaean
+commerce and industry_.
+
+
+The Chaldaean kings, unlike their contemporaries the Pharaohs, rarely
+put forward any pretensions to divinity. They contented themselves with
+occupying an intermediate position between their subjects and the gods,
+and for the purpose of mediation they believed themselves to be endowed
+with powers not possessed by ordinary mortals. They sometimes designated
+themselves the sons of Ea, or of Ninsun, or some other deity, but
+this involved no belief in a divine parentage, and was merely pious
+hyperbole: they entertained no illusions with regard to any descent from
+a god or even from one of his doubles, but they desired to be recognized
+as his vicegerents here below, as his prophets, his well-beloved,
+his pastors, elected by him to rule his human flocks, or as priests
+devotedly attached to his service. While, however, the ordinary priest
+chose for himself a single master to whom he devoted himself, the
+priest-king exercised universal sacerdotal functions and claimed to be
+pontiff of all the national religions. His choice naturally was directed
+by preference to the patrons of his city, those who had raised his
+ancestors from the dust, and had exalted him to the supreme rank, but
+there were other divinities who claimed their share of his homage
+and expected of him a devotion suited to their importance. If he had
+attempted to carry out these duties personally in detail, he would have
+had to spend his whole life at the foot of the altar; even when he had
+delegated as many of them as he could to the regular clergy, there still
+remained sufficient to occupy a large part of his time. Every month,
+every day, brought its inevitable round of sacrifices, prayers, and
+processions. On the 1st of the second Elul, the King of Babylon had to
+present a gazelle without blemish to Sin; he then made an offering of
+his own choosing to Shamash, and cut the throats of his victims
+before the god. These ceremonies were repeated on the 2nd without any
+alteration, but from the 3rd to the 12th they took place during the
+night, before the statues of Merodach and Ishtar, in turn with those
+of Nebo and Tashmit, of Mullil and Ninlil, of Eamman and of Zirbanit;
+sometimes at the rising of a particular constellation--as, for instance,
+that of the Great Bear, or that of the sons of Ishtar; sometimes at the
+moment when the moon “raised above the earth her luminous crown.” On such
+a date a penitential psalm or a litany was to be recited; at another
+time it was forbidden to eat of meat either cooked or smoked, to change
+the body-linen, to wear white garments, to drink medicine, to sacrifice,
+to put forth an edict, or to drive out in a chariot. Not only at
+Babylon, but everywhere else, obedience to the religious rites weighed
+heavily on the local princes; at Uru, at Lagash, at Nipur, and in
+the ruling cities of Upper and Lower Chaldaea. The king, as soon as he
+succeeded to the throne, repaired to the temple to receive his solemn
+investiture, which differed in form according to the gods he worshipped:
+at Babylon, he addressed himself to the statue of Bel-Merodach in the
+first days of the month Nisan which followed his accession, and he “took
+him by the hands” to do homage to him. From thenceforth, he officiated
+for Merodach here below, and the scrupulously minute devotions, which
+daily occupied hours of his time, were so many acts of allegiance which
+his fealty as a vassal constrained him to perform to his suzerain. They
+were, in fact, analogous to the daily audiences demanded of a great
+lord by his steward, for the purpose of rendering his accounts and of
+informing him of current business: any interruption not justified by a
+matter of supreme importance would be liable to be interpreted as a want
+of respect or as revealing an inclination to rebel. By neglecting the
+slightest ceremonial detail the king would arouse the suspicions of
+the gods, and excite their anger against himself and his subjects: the
+people had, therefore, a direct interest in his careful fulfilment of
+the priestly functions, and his piety was not the least of his virtues
+in their eyes. All other virtues--bravery, equity, justice--depended on
+it, and were only valuable from the divine aid which piety obtained for
+them. The gods and heroes of the earliest ages had taken upon themselves
+the task of protecting the faithful from all their enemies, whether men
+or beasts. If a lion decimated their flocks, or a urus of gigantic size
+devastated their crops, it was the king’s duty to follow the example
+of his fabulous predecessors and to set out and overcome them. The
+enterprise demanded all the more courage and supernatural help, since
+these beasts were believed to be no mere ordinary animals, but were
+looked on as instruments of divine wrath the cause of which was often
+unknown, and whoever assailed these monsters, provoked not only them but
+the god who instigated them. Piety and confidence in the patron of the
+city alone sustained the king when he set forth to drive the animal back
+to its lair; he engaged in close combat with it, and no sooner had he
+pierced it with his arrows or his lance, or felled it with axe and
+dagger, than he hastened to pour a libation upon it, and to dedicate it
+as a trophy in one of the temples. His exalted position entailed on him
+no less perils in time of war: if he did not personally direct the first
+attacking column, he placed himself at the head of the band composed of
+the flower of the army, whose charge at an opportune moment was wont to
+secure the victory.
+
+What would have been the use of his valour, if the dread of the gods had
+not preceded his march, and if the light of their countenances had not
+struck terror into the ranks of the enemy? As soon as he had triumphed
+by their command, he sought before all else to reward them amply for the
+assistance they had given him. He poured a tithe of the spoil into the
+coffers of their treasury, he made over a part of the conquered country
+to their domain, he granted them a tale of the prisoners to cultivate
+their lands or to work at their buildings. Even the idols of the
+vanquished shared the fate of their people: the king tore them from
+the sanctuaries which had hitherto sheltered them, and took them as
+prisoners in his train to form a court of captive gods about his patron
+divinity. Shamash, the great judge of heaven, inspired him with justice,
+and the prosperity which his good administration obtained for the people
+was less the work of the sovereign than that of the immortals.
+
+We know too little of the inner family life of the kings, to attempt
+to say how they were able to combine the strict sacerdotal obligations
+incumbent on them with the routine of daily life. We merely observe that
+on great days of festival or sacrifice, when they themselves officiated,
+they laid aside all the insignia of royalty during the ceremony and were
+clad as ordinary priests. We see them on such occasions represented
+with short-cut hair and naked breast, the loin-cloth about their waist,
+advancing foremost in the rank, carrying the heavily laden “kufa,” or
+reed basket, as if they were ordinary slaves; and, as a fact, they
+had for the moment put aside their sovereignty and were merely temple
+servants, or slaves appearing before their divine master to do his
+bidding, and disguising themselves for the nonce in the garb of
+servitors. The wives of the sovereign do not seem to have been invested
+with that semi-sacred character which led the Egyptian women to be
+associated with the devotions of the man, and made them indispensable
+auxiliaries in all religious ceremonies; they did not, moreover, occupy
+that important position side by side with the man which the Egyptian
+law assigned to the queens of the Pharaohs. Whereas the monuments on the
+banks of the Nile reveal to us princesses sharing the throne of their
+husbands whom they embrace with a gesture of frank affection, in Chaldaea
+the wives of the prince, his mother, sisters, daughters, and even his
+slaves, remain invisible to posterity.
+
+[Illustration: 244.jpg THE KING URNINA BEARING THE “KUFA.”]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey Sarzec.
+
+The harem in which they were shut up by custom, rarely opened its doors:
+the people seldom caught sight of them, their relatives spoke of them
+as little as possible, those in power avoided associating them in any
+public acts of worship or government, and we could count on our fingers
+the number of those whom the inscriptions mention by name. Some of them
+were drawn from the noble families of the capital, others came from the
+kingdoms of Chaldaea or from foreign courts; a certain number never rose
+above the condition of mere concubines, many assumed the title of queen,
+while almost all served as living pledges of alliances made with rival
+states, or had been given as hostages at the concluding of a peace on
+the termination of a war.* As the kings, who put forward no pretensions
+to a divine origin, were not constrained, after the fashion of the
+Pharaohs, to marry their sisters in order to keep up the purity of their
+race, it was rare to find one among their wives who possessed an equal
+right to the crown with themselves: such a case could be found only in
+troublous times, when an aspirant to the throne, of base extraction,
+legitimated his usurpation by marrying a sister or daughter of his
+predecessor.
+
+     * Political marriage-alliances between Egypt and Chaldaea
+     were of frequent occurrence, according to the Tel el-Amarna
+     tablets, and at a later period between Chaldaea and Assyria;
+     among the few queens of the very earliest times, the wife of
+     Nammaghani is the daughter of Urbau, vicegerent of Lagash,
+     and consequently the cousin or niece of her husband, while
+     the wife of Rimsin appears to be the daughter of a nobleman
+     of the name of Rimnannar.
+
+The original status of the mother almost always determined that of her
+children, and the sons of a princess were born princes, even if their
+father were of obscure or unknown origin.* These princes exercised
+important functions at court, or they received possessions which
+they administered under the suzerainty of the head of the family;
+the daughters were given to foreign kings, or to scions of the most
+distinguished families. The sovereign was under no obligation to hand
+down his crown to any particular member of his family; the eldest son
+usually succeeded him, but the king could, if he preferred, select his
+favourite child as his successor even if he happened to be the youngest,
+or the only one born of a slave. As soon as the sovereign had made known
+his will, the custom of primogeniture was set aside, and his word became
+law. We can well imagine the secret intrigues formed both by mothers and
+sons to curry favour with the father and bias his choice; we can picture
+the jealousy with which they mutually watched each other, and the bitter
+hatred which any preference shown to one would arouse in the breasts
+of all the others. Often brothers who had been disappointed in their
+expectations would combine secretly against the chosen or supposed heir;
+a conspiracy would break out, and the people suddenly learn that their
+ruler of yesterday had died by the hand of an assassin and that a new
+one filled his place.
+
+     * This fact is apparent from the introduction to the
+     inscription in which Sargon I. is supposed to give an
+     account of his life: “My father was unknown, my mother was a
+     princess;” and it was, indeed, from his mother that he
+     inherited his rights to the crown of Agade.
+
+Sometimes discontent spread beyond the confines of the palace, the army
+became divided into two hostile camps, the citizens took the side of one
+or other of the aspirants, and civil war raged for several years till
+some decisive action brought it to a close. Meantime tributary vassals
+took advantage of the consequent disorder to shake off the yoke, the
+Blamites and various neighbouring cities joined in the dispute and
+ranged themselves on the side of the party from which there was most
+to be gained: the victorious faction always had to pay dearly for this
+somewhat dubious help, and came out impoverished from the struggle. Such
+an internecine war often caused the downfall of a dynasty--at times,
+indeed, that of the entire state.*
+
+     * The above is perfectly true of the later Assyrian and
+     Chalaean periods: it is scarcely needful to recall to the
+     reader the murders of Sargon II. and Sennacherib, or the
+     revolt of Assurdainpal against his father Shalmaneser III.
+     With regard to the earliest period we have merely
+     indications of what took place; the succession of King
+     Urnina of Lagash appears to have been accompanied by
+     troubles of this kind, and it is certain that his successor
+     Akurgal was not the eldest of his sons, but we do not at
+     present know to what events Akurgal owed his elevation.
+
+The palaces of the Chaldaean kings, like those of the Egyptians,
+presented the appearance of an actual citadel: the walls had to be
+sufficiently thick to withstand an army for an indefinite period, and
+to protect the garrison from every emergency, except that of treason or
+famine. One of the statues found at Telloh holds in its lap the plan
+of one of these residences: the external outline alone is given, but by
+means of it we can easily picture to ourselves a fortified place, with
+its towers, its forts, and its gateways placed between two bastions.
+It represents the ancient palace of Lagash, subsequently enlarged and
+altered by Oudea or one of the vicegerents who succeeded him, in which
+many a great lord of the place must have resided down to the time of the
+Christian era. The site on which it was built in the Girsu quarter of.
+the city was not entirely unoccupied at the time of its foundation.
+Urbau had raised a ziggurat on that very spot some centuries previously,
+and the walls which he had constructed were falling into ruin.
+
+[Illustration: 248.jpg THE PLAN OF A PALACE BUILT BY GUDEA.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec. The plan is
+     traced upon the tablet held in the lap of Statue E in the
+     Louvre. Below the plan can be seen the ruler marked with the
+     divisions used by the architect for drawing his designs to
+     the desired scale; the scribe’s stylus is represented lying
+     on the left of the plan. [Prof. Petrie has shown that the
+     unit of measurement represented on this ruler is the cubit
+     of the Pyramid-builders of Egypt.--Te.]
+
+Gudea did not destroy the work of his remote predecessor, he merely
+incorporated it into the substructures of the new building, thus
+showing an indifference similar to that evinced by the Pharaohs for the
+monuments of a former dynasty. The palaces, like the temples, never
+rose directly from the soil, but were invariably built on the top of an
+artificial mound of crude brick. At Lagash, this solid platform rises to
+the height of 40 feet above the plain, and the only means of access
+to the top is by a single narrow steep staircase, easily cut off or
+defended.
+
+[Illustration: 249.jpg TERRA-COTTA BARREL-right]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the facsimile by Place.
+
+The palace which surmounts this artificial eminence describes a sort of
+irregular rectangle, 174 feet long by 69 feet wide, and had, contrary
+to the custom in Egypt, the four angles orientated to the four cardinal
+points. The two principal sides are not parallel, but swell out slightly
+towards the middle, and the flexion of the lines almost follows the
+contour of one of those little clay cones upon which the kings were wont
+to inscribe their annals or dedications. This flexure was probably
+not intentional on the part of the architect, but was owing to the
+difficulty of keeping a wall of such considerable extent in a straight
+line from one end to another; and all Eastern nations, whether Chaldaeans
+or Egyptians, troubled themselves but little about correctness of
+alignment, since defects of this kind were scarcely ever perceptible in
+the actual edifice, and are only clearly revealed in the plan drawn out
+to scale with modern precision.*
+
+     * Mons. Heuzey thinks that the outward deflection of the
+     lines is owing “merely to a primitive method of obtaining
+     greater solidity of construction, and of giving a better
+     foundation to these long facades, which are placed upon
+     artificial terraces of crude brick always subject to cracks
+     and settlements.” I think that the explanation of the facts
+     which I have given in the text is simpler than that
+     ingeniously proposed by Mons. Heuzey: the masons, having
+     begun to build the wall at one end, were unable to carry it
+     on in a straight line until it reached the spot denoted on
+     the architect’s plan, and therefore altered the direction of
+     the wall when they detected their error; or, having begun to
+     build the wall from both ends simultaneously, were not
+     successful in making the two lines meet correctly, and they
+     have frankly patched up the junction by a mass of projecting
+     brickwork which conceals their unskilfulness.
+
+[Illustration: 250.jpg PLAN OF THE EXISTING BUILDINGS OF TELLOH.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec.
+
+The facade of the building faces south-east, and is divided into three
+blocks of unequal size. The centre of the middle block for a length
+of 18 feet projects some 3 feet from the main front, and, by directly
+facing the spectator, ingeniously masks the obtuse angle formed by the
+meeting of the two walls. This projection is flanked right and left by
+rectangular grooves, similar to those which ornament the facades of the
+fortresses and brick houses of the Ancient Empire in Egypt: the regular
+alternation of projections and hollows breaks the monotony of the facing
+by the play of light and shade. Beyond these, again, the wall surface
+is broken by semicircular pilasters some 17 inches in diameter, without
+bases, capitals, or even a moulding, but placed side by side like so
+many tree-trunks or posts forming a palisade.
+
+[Illustration: 251.jpg DECORATION OF COLOURED CONES ON THE FACADE AT URUK]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by Loftus.
+
+Various schemes of decoration succeed each other in progressive
+sequence, less ornate and at greater distances apart, the further
+they recede from the central block and the nearer they approach to the
+extremities of the facade. They stop short at the southern angle, and
+the two sides of the edifice running from south to west, and again from
+west to north, are flat, bare surfaces, unbroken by projection or groove
+to relieve the poverty and monotony of their appearance. The decoration
+reappears on the north-east front, where the arrangement of the
+principal facade is partly reproduced. The grooved divisions here start
+from the angles, and the engaged columns are wanting, or rather they
+are transferred to the central projection, and from a distance have the
+effect of a row of gigantic organ-pipes. We may well ask if this squat
+and heavy mass of building, which must have attracted the eye from all
+parts of the town, had nothing to relieve the dull and dismal colour of
+its component bricks.
+
+[Illustration: 252.jpg PILASTERS OF THE FACADE OF GUDEA’S PALACE]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec
+
+The idea might not have occurred to us had we not found elsewhere an
+attempt to lessen the gloomy appearance of the architecture by coloured
+plastering. At Uruk, the walls of the palace are decorated by means of
+terra-cotta cones, fixed deep into the solid plaster and painted red,
+black, or yellow, forming interlaced or diaper patterns of chevrons,
+spirals, lozenges, and triangles, with a very fair result: this mosaic
+of coloured plaster covered all the surfaces, both flat and curved,
+giving to the building a cheerful aspect entirely wanting in that of
+Lagash.
+
+A long narrow trough of yellowish limestone stood in front of the
+palace, and was raised on two steps: it was carved in relief on the
+outside with figures of women standing with outstretched hands, passing
+to each other vases from which gushed forth two streams of water. This
+trough formed a reservoir, which was filled every morning for the use of
+the men and beasts, and those whom some business or a command brought to
+the palace could refresh themselves there while waiting to be received
+by the master. The gates which gave access to the interior were placed
+at somewhat irregular intervals: two opened from the principal facade,
+but on each of the other sides there was only one entrance. They were
+arched and so low that admittance was not easily gained; they were
+closed with two-leaved doors of cedar or cypress, provided with bronze
+hinges, which turned upon two blackish stones firmly set in the masonry
+on either side, and usually inscribed with the name of the founder or
+that of the reigning sovereign. Two of the entrances possessed a sort
+of covered way, in which the soldiers of the external watch could take
+shelter from the heat of the sun by day, from the cold at night, and
+from the dews at dawn. On crossing the threshold, a corridor, flanked
+with two small rooms for porters or warders, led into a courtyard
+surrounded with buildings of sufficient depth to take up nearly half
+of the area enclosed within the walls. This court was moreover a
+semi-public place, to which tradesmen, merchants, suppliants, and
+functionaries of all ranks had easy access. A suite of three rooms shut
+off in the north-east angle did duty for a magazine or arsenal. The
+southern portion of the building was occupied by the State apartments,
+the largest of which measures only 40 feet in length. In these rooms
+Gudea and his successors gave audience to their nobles and administered
+justice. The administrative officers and the staff who had charge of
+them were probably located in the remaining part of the building. The
+roof was flat, and ran all round the enclosing wall, forming a terrace,
+access to it being gained by a staircase built between the principal
+entrance and the arsenal. At the northern angle rose a ziggurat. Custom
+demanded that the sovereign should possess a temple within his dwelling,
+where he could fulfil his religious duties without going into the town
+and mixing with the crowd. At Lagash the sacred tower was of older date
+than the palace, and possibly formed part of the ancient building of
+Urbau. It was originally composed of three stories, but the lower one
+was altered by Gudea, and disappeared entirely in the thickness of the
+basal platform. The second story thus became the bottom one; it was
+enlarged, slightly raised above the neighbouring roofs, and was probably
+crowned by a sanctuary dedicated to Ningirsu. It was, indeed, a monument
+of modest proportions, and most of the public temples soared far above
+it; but, small as it was, the whole town might be seen from the summit,
+with its separate quarters and its belt of gardens; and beyond, the
+open country intersected with streams, studded with isolated villages,
+patches of wood, pools and weedy marshes left by the retiring
+inundation, and in the far distance the lines of trees and bushes which
+bordered the banks of the Euphrates and its confluents. Should a troop
+of enemies venture within the range of sight, or should a suspicious
+tumult arise within the city, the watchers posted on the highest terrace
+would immediately give the alarm, and ‘through their warning the king
+would have time to close his gates, and take measures to resist the
+invading enemy or crush the revolt of his subjects.
+
+[Illustration: 255.jpg STONE SOCKET OF ONE OF THE DOORS IN THE PALACE OF
+GUDEA.( right)]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec.
+
+The northern apartments of the palace were appropriated to Gudea and his
+family. They were placed with their back to the entrance court, and
+were divided into two groups; the sovereign, his male children and their
+attendants, inhabited the western one, while the women and their slaves
+were cloistered, so to speak, in the northern set. The royal dwelling
+had an external exit by means of a passage issuing on the north-west of
+the enclosure, and it also communicated with the great courtyard by a
+vaulted corridor which ran along one side of the base of the ziggurat:
+the doors which, closed these two entrances opened wide enough to admit
+only one person at a time, and to the right and left were recesses in
+the wall which enabled the guards to examine all comers unobserved, and
+stab them promptly if there were anything suspicious in their behaviour.
+Eight chambers were lighted from the courtyard. In one of them were kept
+all the provisions for the day, while another served as a kitchen:
+the head, cook carried on his work at a sort of rectangular dresser of
+moderate size, on which several fireplaces were marked out by little
+dividing walls of burnt bricks, to accommodate as many pots or pans
+of various sizes. A well sunk in the corner right down below the
+substructure provided the water needed for culinary purposes. The king
+and his belongings accommodated themselves in the remaining five or six
+rooms as best they could. A corridor, guarded as carefully as the one
+previously described, led to his private apartments and to those of his
+wives: these comprised a yard, some half-dozen cells varying in size,
+a kitchen, a well, and a door through which the servants could come and
+go, without passing through the men’s quarters. The whole description in
+no way corresponds with the marvellous ideal of an Oriental palace which
+we form for ourselves: the apartments are mean and dismal, imperfectly
+lighted by the door or by some small aperture timidly cut in the
+ceiling, arranged so as to protect the inmates from the heat and
+dust, but without a thought given to luxury or display. The walls were
+entirely void of any cedar woodwork inlaid with gold, or panels of
+mosaic such as we find in the temples, nor were they hung with dyed or
+embroidered draperies such as we moderns love to imagine, and which we
+spread about in profusion, when we attempt to reproduce the interior of
+an ancient house or palace.*
+
+     * Mons. de Sarzec expressly states that he was unable to
+     find anywhere in the palace of Gudea “the slightest trace of
+     any coating on the walls, either of colour or glazed brick.
+     The walls appear to have been left bare, without any
+     decoration except the regular joining of the courses of
+     brickwork.” The wood panelling was usually reserved for the
+     temples or sacred edifices: Mons. de Sarzec found the
+     remains of carbonized cedar panels in the ruins of a
+     sanctuary dedicated to Ningirsu. According to Mons. Heuzey,
+     the wall-hangings were probably covered with geometrical
+     designs, similar to those formed by the terra-cotta cones on
+     the walls of the palace at Uruk; the inscriptions, however,
+     which are full of minute details with regard to the
+     construction and ornamentation of the temples and palaces,
+     have hitherto contained nothing which would lead us to infer
+     that hangings were used for mural decoration in Chaldoa or
+     Assyria.
+
+The walls had to remain bare for the sake of coolness: at the most they
+were only covered with a coat of white plaster, on which were painted,
+in one or two colours, some scene of civil or religious life, or troops
+of fantastic monsters struggling with one another, or men each with a
+bird seated on his Wrist. The furniture was not less scanty than the
+decoration; there were mats on the ground, coffers in which were kept
+the linen and wearing apparel, low beds inlaid with ivory and metal and
+provided with coverings and a thin mattress, copper or wooden stands to
+support lamps or vases, square stools on four legs united by crossbars,
+armchairs with lions’ claw feet, resembling the Egyptian armchairs
+in outline, and making us ask if they were brought into Chaldaea by
+caravans, or made from models which had come from some other country.
+A few rare objects of artistic character might be found, which bore
+witness to a certain taste for elegance and refinement; as, for
+instance, a kind of circular trough of black stone, probably used to
+support a vase. Three rows of imbricated scales surrounded the base of
+this, while seven small sitting figures lean back against the upper
+part with an air of satisfaction which is most cleverly rendered.
+The decoration of the larger chambers used for public receptions and
+official ceremonies, while never assuming the monumental character which
+we observe in contemporary Egyptian buildings, afforded more scope for
+richness and variety than was offered by the living-rooms.
+
+[Illustration: 258.jpg STAND OF BLACK STONE FROM THE PALACE OF TELLOH.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec.
+
+Small tablets of brownish limestone, let into the wall or affixed to
+its surface by terra-cotta pegs, and decorated with inscriptions,
+represented in a more or less artless fashion the figure of the
+sovereign officiating before some divinity, while his children and
+servants took part in the ceremony by their chanting. Inscribed
+bricks celebrating the king’s exploits were placed here and there in
+conspicuous places. These were not embedded like the others in two
+layers of bitumen or lime, but were placed in full view upon bronze
+statues of divinities or priests, fixed into the ground or into some
+part of the masonry as magical nails destined to preserve the bricks
+from destruction, and consequently to keep the memory of the dedicator
+continually before posterity. Stelaa engraved on both sides recalled the
+wars of past times, the battle-field, the scenes of horror which took
+place there, and the return of the victor and his triumph. Sitting
+or standing figures of diorite, silicious sandstone or hard limestone,
+bearing inscriptions on their robes or shoulders, perpetuated the
+features of the founder or of members of his family, and commemorated
+the pious donations which had obtained for him the favour of the gods:
+the palace of Lagash contained dozens of such statues, several of which
+have come down to us almost intact--one of the ancient Urbau, and nine
+of Gudea.
+
+To judge by the space covered and the arrangement of the rooms, the
+vicegerents of Lagash and the chiefs of towns of minor importance
+must, as a rule, have been content with a comparatively small number of
+servants; their court probably resembled that of the Egyptian barons who
+lived much about the same period, such as Khnumhotpu of the nome of the
+Gazelle, or Thothotpu of Hermopolis. In great cities such as Babylon
+the palace occupied a much larger area, and the crowd of courtiers was
+doubtless as great as that which thronged about the Pharaohs. No exact
+enumeration of them has come down to us, but the titles which we come
+across show with what minuteness they defined the offices about the
+person of the sovereign. His costume alone required almost as many
+persons as there were garments. The men wore the light loin-cloth or
+short-sleeved tunic which scarcely covered the knees; after the fashion
+of the Egyptians, they threw over the loin-cloth and the tunic a large
+“abayah,” whose shape and material varied with the caprice of fashion.
+They often chose for this purpose a sort of shawl of a plain material,
+fringed or ornamented with a flat stripe round the edge; often they seem
+to have preferred it ribbed, or artificially kilted from top to bottom.*
+
+     * The relatively modern costume was described by Herodotus,
+     i. 114; it was almost identical with the ancient one, as
+     proved by the representations on the cylinders and monuments
+     of Telloh. The short-sleeved tunic is more rarely
+     represented, and the loin-cloth is usually hidden under the
+     abayah in the case of nobles and kings. We see the princes
+     of Lagash wearing the simple loin-cloth, on the monuments of
+     Urnina, for example. For the Egyptian abayah, and the manner
+     of representing it, cf. vol. i. pp. 69, 71.
+
+The favourite material in ancient times, however, seems to have been
+a hairy, shaggy cloth or woollen stuff, whose close fleecy thread hung
+sometimes straight, sometimes crimped or waved, in regular rows like
+flounces one above another. This could be arranged squarely around the
+neck, like a mantel, but was more often draped crosswise over the left
+shoulder and brought under the right arm-pit, so as to leave the upper
+part of the breast and the arm bare on that side. It made a convenient
+and useful garment--an excellent protection in summer from the sun, and
+from the icy north wind in the winter. The feet were shod with sandals,
+a tight-fitting cap covered the head, and round it was rolled a thick
+strip of linen, forming a sort of rudimentary turban, which completed
+the costume.*
+
+     *Cf. the head belonging to one of the statues of Telloh,
+     which is reproduced on p. 112 of this volume. We notice the
+     same head-dress on several intaglios and monuments, and also
+     on the terra-cotta plaque which will be found on p. 330 of
+     this volume, and which represents a herdsman wrestling with
+     a lion. Until we have further evidence, we cannot state, as
+     G. Raw-linson did, that this strip forming a turban was of
+     camel’s hair; the date of the introduction of the camel into
+     Chaldoa still remains uncertain.
+
+It is questionable whether, as in Egypt, wigs and false beards formed
+part of the toilette. On some monuments we notice smooth faces and
+close-cropped heads; on others the men appear with long hair, either
+falling loose or twisted into a knot on the back of the neck.* While
+the Egyptians delighted in garments of thin white linen, but slightly
+plaited or crimped, the dwellers on the banks of the Euphrates preferred
+thick and heavy stuffs patterned and striped with many colours. The
+kings wore the same costume as their subjects, but composed of richer
+and finer materials, dyed red or blue, decorated with floral, animal,
+or geometrical designs;** a high tower-shaped tiara covered the
+forehead,*** unless replaced by a diadem of Sin or some of the other
+gods, which was a conical mitre supporting a double pair of horns, and
+sometimes surmounted by a sort of diadem of feathers and mysterious
+figures, embroidered or painted on the cap. Their arms were loaded with
+massive bracelets and their fingers with rings; they wore necklaces and
+earrings, and carried each a dagger in the belt.
+
+     * Dignitaries went bareheaded and shaved the chin; see, for
+     example, the two bas-reliefs given on pp. 105 and 244 of
+     this volume; cf. the heads reproduced as tailpieces on pp.
+     2, 124. The knot of hair behind on the central figure is
+     easily distinguished in the vignette on p. 266 of this
+     volume.
+
+     ** The details of colour and ornamentation, not furnished by
+     the Chaldaean monuments, are given in the wall-painting at
+     Beni-Nasan representing the arrival of Asiatics in Egypt,
+     which belongs to a period contemporary with or slightly
+     anterior to the reign of Gudea. The resemblance of the
+     stuffs in which they are clothed to those of the Chaldaean
+     garments, and the identity of the patterns on them with the
+     geometrical decoration of painted cones on the palace at
+     Uruk, have been pointed out with justice by H. G. Tomkins
+
+     *** The high tiara is represented among others on the head
+     of Mardukna-dinakhe, King of Babylon: cf. what is said of
+     the conical mitre, the headdress of Sin, on pp. 14, 169 of
+     this volume.
+
+[Illustration: 262.jpg FEMALE SERVANT BARE TO THE WAIST.(left)]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the bronze figure in the
+     Louvre, published by Heuzey-Sarzec, _Decouvertes en
+     Chaldee_, pl. 14.
+
+The royal wardrobe, jewels, arms, and insignia formed so many distinct
+departments, and each was further divided into minor sections for
+body-linen, washing, or for this or that kind of headdress or sceptre.
+The dress of the women, which was singularly like that of the men,
+required no less a staff of attendants. The female servants, as well
+as the male, went about bare to the waist, at all events while working
+indoors. When they went out, they wore the same sort of tunic or
+loin-cloth, but longer and more resembling a petticoat; they had the
+same “abayah” drawn round the shoulders or rolled about the body like
+a cloak, but with the women it nearly touched the ground; sometimes an
+actual dress seems to have been substituted for the “abayah,” drawn in
+to the figure by a belt and cut out of the same hairy material as that
+of which the mantles were made. The boots were of soft leather, laced,
+and without heels; the women’s ornaments were more numerous than those
+of the men, and comprised necklaces, bracelets, ankle, finger, and ear
+rings; their hair was separated into bands and kept in place on the
+forehead by a fillet, falling in thick plaits or twisted into a coil on
+the nape of the neck.
+
+[Illustration: 262.jpg COSTUME OF A CHALDAEN LADY (right)]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the alabaster statuette in the
+     Louvre, published in Heuzey. She holds in her hand the jar
+     full of water, analogous to the streaming vase mentioned
+     above.
+
+A great deal of the work was performed by foreign or native slaves,
+generally under the command of eunuchs, to whom the king and royal
+princes entrusted most of the superintendence of their domestic
+arrangements; they guarded and looked after the sleeping apartments,
+they fanned and kept the flies from their master, and handed him his
+food and drink. Eunuchs in Egypt were either unknown or but little
+esteemed: they never seem to have been used, even in times when
+relations with Asia were of daily occurrence, and when they might have
+been supplied from the Babylonian slave-markets.
+
+All these various officials closely attached to the person of the
+sovereign--heads of the wardrobe, chamberlains, cupbearers, bearers of
+the royal sword or of the flabella, commanders of the eunuchs or of
+the guards--had, by the nature of their duties, daily opportunities of
+gaining a direct influence over their master and his government,
+and from among them he often chose the generals of his army or the
+administrators of his domains. Here, again, as far as the few
+monuments and the obscurity of the texts permit of our judging, we find
+indications of a civil and military organization analogous to that
+of Egypt: the divergencies which contemporaries may have been able to
+detect in the two national systems are effaced by the distance of
+time, and we are struck merely by the resemblances. As all business
+transactions were carried on by barter or by the exchange of merchandise
+for weighed quantities of the precious metals, the taxes were
+consequently paid in kind: the principal media being corn and other
+cereals, dates, fruits, stuffs, live animals and slaves, as well as
+gold, silver, lead, and copper, either in its native state or melted
+into bars fashioned into implements or ornamented vases. Hence we
+continually come across fiscal storehouses, both in town and country,
+which demanded the services of a whole troop of functionaries and
+workmen: administrators of corn, cattle, precious metals, wine and oil;
+in fine, as many administrators as there were cultures or industries in
+the country presided over the gathering of the products into the
+central depots and regulated their redistribution. A certain portion
+was reserved for the salaries of the employes and the pay of the workmen
+engaged in executing public works: the surplus accumulated in the
+treasury and formed a reserve, which was not drawn upon except in cases
+of extreme necessity. Every palace, in addition to its living-rooms,
+contained within its walls large store-chambers filled with provisions
+and weapons, which made it more or less a fortress, furnished with
+indispensable requisites for sustaining a prolonged siege either against
+an enemy’s troops or the king’s own subjects in revolt. The king always
+kept about him bodies of soldiers who perhaps were foreign mercenaries,
+like the Mazaiu of the armies of the Pharaohs, and who formed his
+permanent body-guard in times of peace. When a war was imminent, a
+military levy was made upon his domains, but we are unable to find out
+whether the recruits thus raised were drawn indiscriminately from the
+population in general, or merely from a special class, analogous to that
+of the warriors which we find in Egypt, who were paid in the same way by
+grants of land. The equipment of these soldiers was of the rudest kind:
+they had no cuirass, but carried a rectangular shield, and, in the case
+of those of higher rank at all events, a conical metal helmet, probably
+of beaten copper, provided with a piece to protect the back of the neck;
+the heavy infantry were armed with a pike tipped with bronze ox-copper,
+an axe or sharp adze, a stone-headed mace, and a dagger; the light
+troops were provided only with the bow and sling. As early as the third
+millennium b.c., the king went to battle in a chariot drawn by onagers,
+or perhaps horses; he had his own peculiar weapon, which was a curved
+baton probably terminating in a metal point, and resembling the sceptre
+of the Pharaohs. Considerable quantities of all these arms were stored
+in the arsenals, which contained depots for bows, maces, and pikes, and
+even the stones needed for the slings had their special department for
+storage. At the beginning of each campaign, a distribution of weapons
+to the newly levied troops took place; but as soon as the war was at an
+end, the men brought back their accoutrements, which were stored till
+they were again required. The valour of the soldiers and their chiefs
+was then rewarded; the share of the spoil for some consisted of cattle,
+gold, corn, a female slave, and vessels of value; for others, lands or
+towns in the conquered country, regulated by the rank of the recipients
+or the extent of the services they had rendered.
+
+[Illustration: 266.jpg A SOLDIER BRINGING PRISONERS AND SPOIL.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the Chaldaean intaglio in the
+     British. Museum.
+
+Property thus given was hereditary, and privileges were often added to
+it which raised the holder to the rank of a petty prince: for instance,
+no royal official was permitted to impose a tax upon such lands, or take
+the cattle off them, or levy provisions upon them; no troop of soldiers
+might enter them, not even for the purpose of arresting a fugitive. Most
+of the noble families possessed domains of this kind, and constituted in
+each kingdom a powerful and wealthy feudal aristocracy, whose relations
+to their sovereign were probably much the same as those which bound
+the nomarchs to the Pharaoh. The position of these nobles was not more
+stable than that of the dynasties under which they lived: while some
+among them gained power by marriages or by continued acquisitions of
+land, others fell into disgrace and were ruined. As the soil belonged to
+the gods, it is possible that these nobles were supposed, in theory, ‘to
+depend upon the gods; but as the kings were the vicegerents of the gods
+upon earth, it was to the king, as a matter of fact, that they owed
+their elevation. Every state, therefore, comprised two parts, each
+subject to a distinct regime: one being the personal domain of the
+suzerain, which he managed himself, and from which he drew the revenues;
+the other was composed of fiefs, whose lords paid tribute and owed
+certain obligations to the king, the nature of which we are as yet
+unable to define.
+
+The Chaldaean, like the Egyptian scribe, was the pivot on which the
+machinery of this double royal and seignorial administration turned.
+He does not appear to have enjoyed as much consideration as his
+fellow-official in the Nile Valley: the Chaldaean princes, nobles,
+priests, soldiers, and temple or royal officials, did not covet the
+title of scribe, or pride themselves upon holding that office side
+by side with their other dignities, as we see was the case with their
+Egyptian contemporaries. The position of a scribe, nevertheless, was an
+important one. We continually meet with it in all grades of society--in
+the palace, in the temples, in the storehouses, in private dwellings; in
+fine, the scribe was ubiquitous, at court, in the town, in the country,
+in the army, managing affairs both small and great, and seeing that they
+were carried on regularly. His education differed but little from that
+given to the Egyptian scribe; he learned the routine of administrative
+or judicial affairs, the formularies for correspondence either with
+nobles or with ordinary people, the art of writing, of calculating
+quickly, and of making out bills correctly. We may well ask whether he
+ever employed papyrus or prepared skins for these purposes. It would,
+indeed, seem strange that, after centuries of intercourse, no caravan
+should have brought into Chaldaean any of those materials which were in
+such constant use for literary purposes in Africa;* yet the same clay
+which furnished the architect with such an abundant building material
+appears to have been the only medium for transmitting the language which
+the scribes possessed. They were always provided with slabs of a fine
+plastic clay, carefully mixed and kept sufficiently moist to take easily
+the impression of an object, but at the same time sufficiently firm to
+prevent the marks once made from becoming either blurred or effaced.
+When a scribe had a text to copy or a document to draw up, he chose out
+one of his slabs, which he placed flat upon his left palm, and taking in
+the right hand a triangular stylus of flint, copper, bronze, or bone,**
+he at once set to work. The instrument, in early times, terminated in a
+fine point, and the marks made by it when it was gently pressed upon
+the clay were slender and of uniform thickness; in later times, the
+extremity of the stylus was cut with a bevel, and the impression then
+took the shape of a metal nail or a wedge.
+
+     * On the Assyrian monuments we frequently see scribes taking
+     a list of the spoil, or writing letters on tablets and some
+     other soft material, either papyrus or prepared skin. Sayce
+     has given good reasons for believing that the Chaldaeanns of
+     the early dynasties knew of the papyrus, and either made it
+     themselves, or had it brought from Egypt.
+
+     ** See the triangular stylus of copper or bronze reproduced
+     by the side of the measuring-rule, and the plan on the
+     tablet of Gudea, p. 248 of this volume. The Assyrian Museum
+     in the Louvre possesses several large, flat styli of bone,
+     cut to a point at one end, which appear to have belonged to
+     the Assyrian scribes. Taylor discovered in a tomb at Eridu a
+     flint tool, which may have served for the same purpose as
+     the metal or bone styli.
+
+[Illustration: 268.jpg MANUSCRIPT ON PAPYRUS IN HEIROGLYPHICS]
+
+They wrote from left to right along the upper part of the tablet, and
+covered both sides of it with closely written lines, which sometimes ran
+over on to the edges. When the writing was finished, the scribe sent his
+work to the potter, who put it in the kiln and baked it, or the writer
+may have had a small oven at his own disposition, as a clerk with us
+would have his table or desk. The shape of these documents varied, and
+sometimes strikes us as being peculiar: besides the tablets and the
+bricks, we find small solid cones, or hollow cylinders of considerable
+size, on which the kings related their exploits or recorded the history
+of their wars or the dedication of their buildings. This method had a
+few inconveniences, but many advantages. These clay books were heavy to
+hold and clumsy to handle, while the characters did not stand out well
+from the brown, yellow, and whitish background of the material; but, on
+the other hand, a poem, baked and incorporated into the page itself,
+ran less danger of destruction than if scribbled in ink on sheets of
+papyrus. Fire could make no impression on it; it could withstand water
+for a considerable length of time; even if broken, the pieces were still
+of use: as long as it was not pulverized, the entire document could be
+restored, with the exception, perhaps, of a few signs, or ‘some
+scraps of a sentence. The inscriptions which have been saved from the
+foundations of the most ancient temples, several of which date back
+forty or fifty centuries, are for the most part as clear and legible
+as when they left the hands of the writer who engraved them or of the
+workmen who baked them. It is owing to the material to which they were
+committed that we possess the principal works of Chaldaean literature
+which have come down to us--poems, annals, hymns, magical incantations;
+how few fragments of these would ever have reached us had their authors
+confided them to parchment or paper, after the manner of the Egyptian
+scribes! The greatest danger that they ran was that of being left
+forgotten in the corner of the chamber in which they had been kept,
+or buried under the rubbish of a building after a fire or some violent
+catastrophe; even then the _debris_ were the means of preserving them,
+by falling over them and covering them up. Protected under the ruins,
+they would lie there for centuries, till the fortunate explorer should
+bring them to light and deliver them over to the patient study of the
+learned.
+
+The cuneiform character in itself is neither picturesque nor decorative.
+It does not offer that delightful assemblage of birds and snakes, of men
+and quadrupeds, of heads and limbs, of tools, weapons, stars, trees,
+and boats, which succeed each other in perplexing order on the Egyptian
+monuments, to give permanence to the glory of Pharaoh and the greatness
+of his gods. Cuneiform writing is essentially composed of thin short
+lines, placed in juxtaposition or crossing each other in a somewhat
+clumsy fashion; it has the appearance of numbers of nails scattered
+about at haphazard, and its angular configuration, and its stiff and
+spiny appearance, gives the inscriptions a dull and forbidding aspect
+which no artifice of the engraver can overcome.
+
+[Illustration: 271.jpg Page image]
+
+[Illustration: 272.jpg Page Image]
+
+Yet, in spite of their seemingly arbitrary character, this mass of
+strokes had its source in actual hieroglyphs. As in the origin of the
+Egyptian script the earliest writers had begun by drawing on stone or
+clay the outline of the object of which they desired to convey the idea.
+But, whereas in Egypt the artistic temperament of the race, and the
+increasing skill of their sculptors, had by degrees brought the drawing
+of each sign to such perfection that it became a miniature portrait of
+the being or object to be reproduced, in Chaldaea, on the contrary,
+the signs became degraded from their original forms on account of the
+difficulty experienced in copying them with the stylus on the clay
+tablets: they lost their original vertical position, and were placed
+horizontally, retaining finally but the very faintest resemblance to the
+original model. For instance, the Chaldaean conception of the sky was
+that of a vault divided into eight segments by diameters running from
+the four cardinal points and from their principal subdivisions [symbol]
+the external circle was soon omitted, the transverse lines alone
+remaining [symbol], which again was simplified into a kind of irregular
+cross [symbol]. The figure of a man standing, indicated by the lines
+resembling his contour, was placed on its side [symbol] and reduced
+little by little till it came to be merely a series of ill-balanced
+lines [symbol] [symbol]. We may still recognize in [symbol] the five
+fingers and palm of a human hand [symbol]; but who would guess at the
+first glance that [symbol] stands for the foot which the scribes strove
+to place beside each character the special hieroglyph from which it had
+been derived. Several fragments of these still exist, a study of which
+seems to show that the Assyrian scribes of a more recent period were at
+times as much puzzled as we are ourselves when they strove to get at the
+principles of their own script: they had come to look on it as nothing
+more than a system of arbitrary combinations, whose original form had
+passed all the more readily into oblivion, because it had been borrowed
+from a foreign race, who, as far as they were concerned, had ceased to
+have a separate existence. The script had been invented by the Sumerians
+in the very earliest times, and even they may have brought it in an
+elemental condition from their distant fatherland. The first articulate
+sounds which, being attached to the hieroglyphs, gave to each
+an unalterable pronunciation, were words in the Sumerian tongue;
+subsequently, when the natural progress of human thought led
+thi Chaldaeans to replace, as in Egypt, the majority of the signs
+representing ideas by those representing sounds, the syllabic values
+which were developed side by side with the ideographic values were
+purely Sumerian. The group [symbol] throughout all its forms,
+designates in the first place the sky, then the god of the sky, and
+finally the concept of divinity in general. In its first two senses it
+is read ana, but in the last it becomes dingir, dimir; and though it
+never lost its double force, it was soon separated from the ideas which
+it evoked, to be used merely to denote the syllable an wherever it
+occurred, even in cases where it had no connection with the sky or
+heavenly things. The same process was applied to other signs with
+similar results: after having merely denoted ideas, they came to stand
+for the sounds corresponding to them, and then passed on to be mere
+syllables--complex syllables in which several consonants may be
+distinguished, or simple syllables composed of only one consonant and
+one vowel, or vice versa. The Egyptians had carried this system still
+further, and in many cases had kept only one part of the syllable,
+namely, a mute consonant: they detached, for example, the final u from
+pu and bu, and gave only the values b and p to the human leg J and the
+mat Q. The peoples of the Euphrates stopped halfway, and admitted actual
+letters for the vowel sounds a, i, and u only. Their system remained a
+syllabary interspersed with ideograms, but excluded an alphabet.
+
+[Illustration: 274.jpg Page image]
+
+It was eminently wanting in simplicity, but, taken as a whole, it would
+not have presented as many difficulties as the script of the Egyptians,
+had it not been forced, at a very early period, to adapt itself to the
+exigencies of a language for which it had not been made. When it came to
+be appropriated by the Semites, the ideographs, which up till then had
+been read in Sumerian, did not lose the sounds which they possessed in
+that tongue, but borrowed others from the new language. For example,
+“god” was called ilu, and “heaven” called shami: [symbol], when
+encountered in inscriptions by the Semites, were read [symbol] when
+the context showed the sense to be “god,” and shami when the character
+evidently meant “heaven.” They added these two vocables to the preceding
+ana, an, dingir, dimir; but they did not stop there: they confounded
+the picture of the star [symbol] with that of the sky, and sometimes
+attributed to [symbol], the pronunciation kakkabu, and the meaning of
+star. The same process was applied to all the groups, and the Semitic
+values being added to the Sumerian, the scribes soon found themselves in
+possession of a double set of syllables both simple and compound. This
+multiplicity of sounds, this polyphonous character attached to their
+signs, became a cause of embarrassment even to them. For instance,
+[symbol] when found in the body of a word, stood for the syllables hi
+or hat, mid, mit, til, ziz; as an ideogram it was used for a score of
+different concepts: that of lord or master, inu, bilu; that of blood,
+damu; for a corpse, pagru, shalamtu; for the feeble or oppressed, kahtu,
+nagpu; as the hollow and the spring, nakbu; for the state of old age,
+labaru; of dying, matu; of killing, mitu; of opening, pitu; besides
+other meanings. Several phonetic complements were added to it; it was
+preceded by ideograms which determined the sense in which it was to be
+read, but which, like the Egyptian determinatives, were not pronounced,
+and in this manner they succeeded in limiting the number of mistakes
+which it was possible to make. With a final [symbol] it would always
+mean [symbol] bilu, the master, but with an initial [symbol] (thus
+[symbol]) it denoted the gods Bel or Ea; with [symbol]. which indicates
+a man [symbol], it would be the corpse, pagru and shalamtu; with
+[symbol] prefixed, it meant [symbol]--mutanu, the plague or death and
+so on. In spite of these restrictions and explanations, the obscurity of
+the meaning was so great, that in many cases the scribes ran the risk of
+being unable to make out certain words and understand certain passages;
+many of the values occurred but rarely, and remained unknown to those
+who did not take the trouble to make a careful study of the syllabary
+and its history. It became necessary to draw up tables for their use,
+in which all the signs were classified and arranged, with their meanings
+and phonetic transcriptions. These signs occupied one column, and in
+three or four corresponding columns would be found, first, the name
+assigned to it; secondly, the spelling, in syllables, of the phonetic
+values which the signs expressed, thirdly, the Sumerian and Assyrian
+words which they served to render, and sometimes glosses which completed
+the explanation.
+
+[Illustration: 276.jpg Tables]
+
+Even this is far from exhausting the matter. Several of these
+dictionaries went back to a very early date, and tradition ascribes to
+Sargon of Agade the merit of having them drawn up or of having collected
+them in his palace. The number of them naturally increased in the course
+of centuries; in the later times of the Assyrian empire they were so
+numerous as to form nearly one-fourth of the works in the library at
+Nineveh under Assurbanipal. Other tablets contained dictionaries of
+archaic or obsolete terms, grammatical paradigms, extracts from laws
+or ancient hymns analyzed sentence by sentence and often word by word,
+interlinear glosses, collections of Sumerian formulas translated into
+Semitic speech--a child’s guide, in fact, which the savants of those
+times consulted with as much advantage as those of our own day have
+done, and which must have saved them from many a blunder.
+
+When once accustomed to the difficulties and intricacies of their
+calling, the scribes were never at a standstill. The stylus was plied
+in Chaldaea no less assiduously than was the calamus in Egypt, and the
+indestructible clay, which the Chaldaeans were as a rule content to use,
+proved a better medium in the long run than the more refined material
+employed by their rivals: the baked or merely dried clay tablets have
+withstood the assaults of time in surprising quantities, while the
+majority of papyri have disappeared without leaving a trace behind.
+If at Babylon we rarely meet with those representations, which we find
+everywhere in the tombs of Saqqara or Gizeh, of the people themselves
+and their families, their occupations, amusements, and daily
+intercourse, we possess, on the other hand, that of which the ruins of
+Memphis have furnished us but scanty instances up to the present time,
+namely, judicial documents, regulating the mutual relations of the
+people and conferring a legal sanction on the various events of their
+life. Whether it were a question of buying lands or contracting a
+marriage, of a loan on interest, or the sale of slaves, the scribe was
+called in with his soft tablets to engross the necessary agreement. In
+this he would insert as many details as possible--the day of the month,
+the year of the reigning sovereign, and at times, to be still more
+precise, an allusion to some important event which had just taken place,
+and a memorial of which was inserted in official annals, such as the
+taking of a town, the defeat of a neighbouring king, the dedication of
+a temple, the building of a wall or fortress, the opening of a canal, or
+the ravages of an inundation: the names of the witnesses and magistrates
+before whom the act was confirmed were also added to those of the
+contracting parties. The method of sanctioning it was curious. An
+indentation was made with the finger-nail on one of the sides of the
+tablet, and this mark, followed or preceded by the mention of a name,
+“Nail of Zabudamik,” “Nail of Abzii,” took the place of our more or less
+complicated sign-manuals. In later times, only the buyer and witnesses
+approved by a nail-mark, while the seller appended his seal; an
+inscription incised above the impress indicating the position of the
+signatory. Every one of any importance possessed a seal, which he wore
+attached to his wrist or hung round his neck by a cord; he scarcely
+ever allowed it to be separated from his person during his lifetime, and
+after death it was placed with him in the tomb in order to prevent any
+improper use being made of it. It was usually a cylinder, sometimes
+a truncated cone with a convex base, either of marble, red or green
+jasper, agate, cornelian, onyx or rock crystal, but rarely of metal.
+Engraved upon it in intaglio was an emblem or subject chosen by
+the owner, such as the single figure of a god or goddess, an act of
+adoration, a sacrifice, or an episode in the story of Gilgames, followed
+sometimes by the inscription of a name and title. The cylinder was
+rolled, or, in the case of the cone, merely pressed on the clay, in the
+space reserved for it. In several localities the contracting parties had
+recourse to a very ingenious procedure to prevent the agreements being
+altered or added to by unscrupulous persons. When the document had been
+impressed on the tablet, it was enveloped in a second coating of clay,
+upon which an exact copy of the original was made, the latter thus
+becoming inaccessible to forgers: if by chance, in course of time, any
+disagreement should take place, and an alteration of the visible text
+should be suspected, the outer envelope was broken in the presence of
+witnesses, and a comparison was made to see if the exterior corresponded
+exactly with the interior version. Families thus had their private
+archives, to which additions were rapidly made by every generation;
+every household thus accumulated not only the evidences of its own
+history, but to some extent that of other families with whom they had
+formed alliances, or had business or friendly relations.*
+
+     * The tablets of Tell-Sifr come from one of these family
+     collections. They all, in number about one hundred, rested
+     on three enormous bricks, and they had been covered with a
+     mat of which the half-decayed remains were still visible:
+     three other crude bricks covered the heap. The documents
+     contained in them relate for the most part to the families
+     of Sininana and Amililani, and form part of their archives.
+
+[Illustration: 279.jpg THE TABLET OF TELL-SIFR, BROKEN TO SHOW THE TWO
+TEXTS.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Loftus.
+
+
+[Illustration: 280.jpg TABLET BEARING THE IMPRESS OF A SEAL]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Layard.
+
+The constitution of the family was of a complex character. It would
+appear that the people of each city were divided into clans, all of
+whose members claimed to be descended from a common ancestor, who had
+flourished at a more or less remote period. The members of each clan
+were by no means all in the same social position, some having gone down
+in the world, others having raised themselves; and amongst them we find
+many different callings--from agricultural labourers to scribes, and
+from merchants to artisans. No mutual tie existed among the majority
+of these members except the remembrance of their common origin, perhaps
+also a common religion, and eventual rights of succession or claims upon
+what belonged to each one individually. The branches which had become
+gradually separated from the parent stock, and which, taken all
+together, formed the clan, possessed each, on the contrary, a very
+strict organization. It is possible that, at the outset, the woman
+occupied the more important position, but at an early date the man
+became the head of the family,* and around him were ranged the wives,
+children, servants, and slaves, all of whom had their various duties and
+privileges.
+
+     * The change in the condition of women would be due to the
+     influence of Semitic ideas and customs in Chaldaea.
+
+He offered the household worship to the gods of his race, in accordance
+with special rites which had come down to him from his father; he made
+at the tombs of his ancestors, at such times as were customary, the
+offerings and prayers which assured their repose in the other world, and
+his powers were as extensive in civil as in religious matters. He had
+absolute authority over all the members of his household, and anything
+undertaken by them without his consent was held invalid in the eyes of
+the law; his sons could not marry unless he had duly authorized them
+to do so. For this purpose he appeared before the magistrate with the
+future couple, and the projected union could not be held as an actual
+marriage, until he had affixed his seal or made his nail-mark on the
+contract tablet. It amounted, in fact, to a formal deed of sale, and the
+parents of the girl parted with her only in exchange for a proportionate
+gift from the bridegroom. One girl would be valued at a silver shekel by
+weight, while another was worth a mina, another much less;* the handing
+over of the price was accompanied with a certain solemnity. When the
+young man possessed no property as yet of his own, his family advanced
+him the sum needed for the purchase. On her side, the maiden did not
+enter upon her new life empty handed; her father, or, in the case of
+his death, the head of the family at the time being, provided her with
+a dowry suited to her social position, which was often augmented by
+considerable presents from her grandmother, aunts, and cousins.**
+
+     * Shamashnazir receives, as the price of his daughter, ten
+     shekels of silver, which appears to have been an average
+     price in the class of life to which he belonged.
+
+     ** The nature of the dowry in ancient times is clear from
+     the Sumero-Assyrian tablets in which the old legal texts are
+     explained, and again from the contents of the contracts of
+     Tell-Sifr, and the documents on stone, such as the Micliaux
+     stone, in which we see women bringing their possessions into
+     the community by marriage, and yet retaining the entire
+     disposition of them.
+
+The dowry would consist of a carefully marked out field of corn, a grove
+of date-palms, a house in the town, a trousseau, furniture, slaves, or
+ready money; the whole would be committed to clay, of which there
+would be three copies at least, two being given by the scribe to the
+contracting parties, while the third would be deposited in the hands of
+the magistrate. When the bride and bridegroom both belonged to the same
+class, or were possessed of equal fortunes, the relatives of the woman
+could exact an oath from the man that he would abstain from taking
+a second wife during her lifetime; a special article of the marriage
+agreement permitted the woman to go free should the husband break his
+faith, and bound him to pay an indemnity as a compensation for the
+insult he had offered her. This engagement on the part of the man,
+however, did not affect his relations with his female servants. In
+Chaldaea, as in Egypt, and indeed in the whole of the ancient world,
+they were always completely at the mercy of their purchaser, and the
+permission to treat them as he would had become so much of a custom
+that the begetting of children by their master was desired rather than
+otherwise: the complaints of the despised slave, who had not been taken
+into her master’s favour, formed one of the themes of popular poetry at
+a very early period. When the contract tablet was finally sealed, one
+of the witnesses, who was required to be a free man, joined the hands
+of the young couple; nothing then remained to be done but to invite the
+blessing of the gods, and to end the day by a feast, which would unite
+both families and their guests. The evil spirits, however, always in
+quest of an easy prey, were liable to find their way into the nuptial
+chamber, favoured by the confusion inseparable from all household
+rejoicing: prudence demanded that their attempts should be frustrated,
+and that the newly married couple should be protected from their
+attacks. The companions of the bridegroom took possession of him, and,
+hand to hand and foot to foot, formed as it were a rampart round him
+with their bodies, and carried him off solemnly to his expectant bride.
+He then again repeated the words which he had said in the morning: “I
+am the son of a prince, gold and silver shall fill thy bosom; thou, even
+thou, shalt be my wife, I myself will be thy husband;” and he continued:
+“As the fruits borne by an orchard, so great shall be the abundance
+which I shall pour out upon this woman.” * The priest then called down
+upon him benedictions from on high: “Therefore, O ye (gods), all that is
+bad and that is not good in this man, drive it far from him and give him
+strength. As for thee, O man, exhibit thy manhood, that this woman may
+be thy wife; thou, O woman, give that which makes thy womanhood, that
+this man may be thy husband.” On the following morning, a thanksgiving
+sacrifice celebrated the completion of the marriage, and by purifying
+the new household drove from it the host of evil spirits.**
+
+     * This part of the ceremony is described on a Sumero-
+     Assyrian tablet, of which two copies exist, discovered and
+     translated by Pinches. The interpretation appears to me to
+     result from the fact that mention is made, at the
+     commencement of the column, of impious beings without gods,
+     who might approach the man; in other places magical
+     exorcisms indicate how much those spirits were dreaded “who
+     deprived the bride of the embraces of the man.” As Pinches
+     remarks, the formula is also found in the part of the poem
+     of Gilgames, where Ishtar wishes to marry the hero, which
+     shows that the rite and its accompanying words belong to a
+     remote past.
+
+     ** The text that describes these ceremonies was discovered
+     and published by Pinches. As far as I can judge, it
+     contained an exorcism against the “knotting of the tag,” and
+     the mention of this subject called up that of the marriage
+     rites. The ceremony commanded on the day following the
+     marriage was probably a purification: as late as the time of
+     Herodotus, the union of man and woman rendered both impure,
+     and they had to perform an ablution before recommencing
+     their occupations.
+
+The woman, once bound, could only escape from the sovereign power of her
+husband by death or divorce; but divorce for her was rather a trial to
+which she submitted than a right of which she could freely make use. Her
+husband could repudiate her at will without any complicated ceremonies.
+It was enough for him to say: “Thou art not my wife!” and to restore
+to her a sum of money equalling in value the dowry he had received with
+her;* he then sent her back to her father, with a letter informing
+him of the dissolution of the conjugal tie.** But if in a moment of
+weariness or anger she hurled the fatal formula at him: “Thou are not
+my husband!” her fate was sealed: she was thrown into the river and
+drowned.***
+
+     * The sum is fixed at half a mina by the text of the
+     Sumerian laws; but it was sometimes less, e.g. ten shekels,
+     and sometimes more, e.g. a whole mina.
+
+     ** Repudiation of a wife, and the ceremonial connected with
+     it, are summarized, as far as ancient times are concerned,
+     by a passage in the Sumero-Assyrian tablet, published by
+     Rawlinson, and translated by Oppert-Menant. Bertin, on the
+     contrary, takes the same text to be a description of the
+     principal marriage-rites, and from it he draws the
+     conclusion that the possibility of divorce was not admitted
+     in Chaldaea between persons of noble family. Meissner very
+     rightly returns to Oppert’s interpretation, a few details in
+     which he corrects.
+
+     *** This fact was evident from the text of the so-called
+     _Sumerian Laws concerning the Organization of the Family_,
+     according to the generally received interpretation:
+     according to that proposed by Oppert-Menant, it was the
+     woman who had the right of causing the husband who had
+     wronged her to be thrown into the river. The publication of
+     the contracts of Iltani and of Bashtum appear to have shown
+     conclusively the correctness of the ordinary translation:
+     uncertainty with regard to one word prevents us from knowing
+     whether the guilty wife were strangled before being thrown
+     into the water, or if she were committed to the river alive.
+
+The adulteress was also punished with death, but with death by the
+sword: and when the use of iron became widespread, the blade was to be
+of that metal. Another ancient custom only spared the criminal to devote
+her to a life of infamy: the outraged husband stripped her of her fleecy
+garments, giving her merely the loin-cloth in its place, which left her
+half naked, and then turned-her out of the house into the street, where
+she was at the mercy of the first passer-by. Women of noble or wealthy
+families found in their fortune a certain protection from the abuse of
+marital authority. The property which they brought with them by their
+marriage contract, remained at their own disposal.* They had the entire
+management of it, they farmed it out, they sold it, they spent the
+income from it as they liked, without interference from any one: the man
+enjoyed the comforts which it procured, but he could not touch it, and
+his hold upon it was so slight that his creditors could not lay their
+hands on it.
+
+     * In the documents of the New Chaldaean Empire we find
+     instances of married women selling their property
+     themselves, and even of their being present, seated, at the
+     conclusion of the sale, or of their ceding to a married
+     daughter some property in their own possession, thus
+     renouncing the power of disposing of it, and keeping merely
+     the income from it; we have also instances of women
+     reclaiming valuables of gold which their husbands had given
+     away without their authorisation, and also obtaining an
+     indemnity for the wrong they had suffered; also of their
+     lending money to the mother-in-law of their brother; in
+     fine, empowered to deal with their own property in every
+     respect like an ordinary proprietor.
+
+If by his own act he divorced his wife, he not only lost all benefit
+from her property, but he was obliged to make her an allowance or to pay
+her an indemnity;* at his death, the widow succeeded to these, without
+prejudice to what she was entitled to by her marriage contract or the
+will of the deceased. The woman with a dowry, therefore, became more or
+less emancipated by virtue of her money. As her departure deprived the
+household of as much as, and sometimes more than, she had brought into
+it, every care was taken that she should have no cause to retire from
+it, and that no pretext should be given to her parents for her recall
+to her old home; her wealth thus obtained for her the consideration and
+fair treatment which the law had, at the outset, denied to her.
+
+     * The restitution of the dowry after divorce is ascertained,
+     as far as later times are concerned, from documents similar
+     to that published by Kohler-Peiser, in which we see the
+     second husband of a divorced wife claiming the dowry from
+     the first husband. The indemnity was fixed beforehand at six
+     silver minae, in the marriage contract published by Oppert.
+
+When, however, the wife was poor, she had to bear without complaint the
+whole burden of her inferior position. Her parents had no other resource
+than to ask the highest possible price for her, according to the rank
+in which they lived, or in virtue of the personal qualities she was
+supposed to possess, and this amount, paid into their hands when they
+delivered her over to the husband, formed, if not an actual dowry for
+her, at least a provision for her in case of repudiation or widowhood:
+she was not, however, any less the slave of her husband--a privileged
+slave, it is true, and one whom he could not sell like his other
+slaves,* but of whom he could easily rid himself when her first youth
+was passed, or when she ceased to please him.**
+
+     * It appears, however, in certain cases not clearly
+     specified, that the husband could sell his wife, if she were
+     a shrew, as a slave.
+
+     ** This form of marriage, which was of frequent occurrence
+     in ancient times, fell into disuse among the upper classes,
+     at least of Babylonian society. A few examples, however, are
+     found in late times. It continued in use among the lower
+     classes, and Herodotus affirms that in his time marriage
+     markets were held regularly, as in our own time fairs are
+     held for hiring male and female servants.
+
+In many cases the fiction of purchase was set aside, and mutual consent
+took the place of all other formalities, marriage then becoming merely
+cohabitation, terminating at will. The consent of the father was not
+required for this irregular union, and many a son contracted a marriage
+after this fashion, unknown to his relatives, with some young girl
+either in his own or in an inferior station: but the law refused to
+allow her any title except that of concubine, and forced her to wear a
+distinctive mark, perhaps that of servitude, namely, the representation
+of an olive in some valuable stone or in terra-cotta, bearing her own
+and her husband’s name, with the date of their union, which she kept
+hung round her neck by a cord. Whether they were legitimate wives
+or not, the women of the lower and middle classes enjoyed as much
+independence as did the Egyptian women of a similar rank. As all the
+household cares fell to their share, it was necessary that they should
+be free to go about at all hours of the day: and they could be seen
+in the streets and the markets, with bare feet, their head and face
+uncovered, wearing their linen loin-cloth or their long draped garments
+of hairy texture.* Their whole life was expended in a ceaseless toil for
+their husbands and children: night and morning they went to fetch water
+from the public well or the river, they bruised the corn, made the
+bread, spun, wove, and clothed the entire household in spite of the
+frequent demands of maternity.** The Chaldaean women of wealth or noble
+birth, whose civil status gave them a higher position, did not enjoy so
+much freedom. They were scarcely affected by the cares of daily life,
+and if they did any work within their houses, it was more from a natural
+instinct, a sense of duty, or to relieve the tedium of their existence,
+than from constraint or necessity; but the exigencies of their rank
+reduced them to the state of prisoners. All the luxuries and comforts
+which money could procure were lavished on them, or they obtained them
+for themselves, but all the while they were obliged to remain shut in
+the harem within their own houses; when they went out, it was only to
+visit their female friends or their relatives, to go to some temple
+or festival, and on such occasions they were surrounded with servants,
+eunuchs, and pages, whose serried ranks shut out the external world.
+
+     * For the long garment of the women, see the statue
+     represented on p. 263 of the present work; for the loin-
+     cloth, which left the shoulders and bust exposed, see the
+     bronze figure on p. 262. The latter was no doubt the garment
+     worn at home by respectable women; we see by the punishment
+     inflicted on adulteresses that it was an outdoor garment for
+     courtesans, and also, doubtless, for slaves and women of the
+     lower classes.
+
+     ** Women’s occupations are mentioned in several texts and on
+     several ancient monuments. On the seal, an impress of which
+     is given on p. 233 of this volume, we see above, on the
+     left, a woman kneeling and crushing the corn, and before her
+     a row of little disks, representing, no doubt, the loaves
+     prepared for baking. The length of time for suckling a child
+     is fixed at three years by the Sumero-Assyrian tablet
+     relating the history of the foundling; protracted suckling
+     was customary also in Egypt.
+
+There was no lack of children in these houses when the man had several
+mistresses, either simultaneously or successively. Maternity was before
+all things a woman’s first duty: should she delay in bearing children,
+or should anything happen to them, she was considered as accursed or
+possessed, and she was banished from the family lest her presence should
+be a source of danger to it.* In spite of this many households remained
+childless, either because a clause inserted in the contract prevented
+the dismissal of the wife if barren, or because the children had died
+when the father was stricken in years, and there was little hope of
+further offspring. In such places adoption filled the gaps left by
+nature, and furnished the family with desired heirs. For this purpose
+some chance orphan might be brought into the household--one of those
+poor little creatures consigned by their mothers to the river, as in
+the case of Shargani, according to the ancient legend; or who had been
+exposed at the cross-roads to excite the pity of passers-by,** like the
+foundling whose story is given us in an old ballad. “He who had neither
+father nor mother,--he who knew not his father or mother, but whose
+earliest memory is of a well--whose entry into the world was in the
+street,” his benefactor “snatched him from the jaws of dogs--and took
+him from the beaks of ravens.--He seized the seal before witnesses--and
+he marked him on the sole of the foot with the seal of the
+witness,--then he entrusted him to a nurse,--and for three years he
+provided the nurse with flour, oil, and clothing.” When the weaning was
+accomplished, “he appointed him to be his child,--he brought him up
+to be his child,--he inscribed him as his child,--and he gave him the
+education of a scribe.” The rites of adoption in these cases did not
+differ from those attendant upon birth. On both occasions the newly born
+infant was shown to witnesses, and it was marked on the soles of its
+feet to establish its identity; its registration in the family archives
+did not take place until these precautions had been observed, and
+children adopted in this manner were regarded thenceforward in the eyes
+of the world as the legitimate heirs of the family.
+
+     * Divorce for sterility was customary in very early times.
+     Complete sterility or miscarriage was thought to be
+     occasioned by evil spirits; a woman thus possessed with a
+     devil came to be looked on as a dangerous being whom it was
+     necessary to exorcise.
+
+
+     ** Many of these children were those of courtesans or women
+     who had been repudiated, as we learn from the Sumero-
+     Assyrian tablet of Rawlinson: “She will expose her child
+     alone in the street, where the serpents in the road may bite
+     it, and its father and mother will know it no more.”
+
+People desiring to adopt a child usually made inquiries among their
+acquaintances, or poor friends, or cousins who might consent to give up
+one of their sons, in the hope of securing a better future for him. When
+he happened to be a minor, the real father and mother, or, in the case
+of the death of one, the surviving parent, appeared before the scribe,
+and relinquished all their rights in favour of the adopting parents; the
+latter, in accepting this act of renunciation, promised henceforth to
+treat the child as if he were of their own flesh and blood, and often
+settled upon him, at the same time, a certain sum chargeable on their
+own patrimony. When the adopted son was of age, his consent to the
+agreement was required, in addition to that of his parents. The adoption
+was sometimes prompted by an interested motive, and not merely by the
+desire for posterity or its semblance. Labour was expensive, slaves were
+scarce, and children, by working for their father, took the place of
+hired servants, and were content, like them, with food and clothing. The
+adoption of adults was, therefore, most frequent in ancient times. The
+introduction of a person into a fresh household severed the ties which
+bound him to the old one; he became a stranger to those who had borne
+him; he had no filial obligations to discharge to them, nor had he
+any right to whatever property they might possess, unless, indeed, any
+unforeseen circumstance prevented the carrying out of the agreement, and
+legally obliged him to return to the status of his birth. In return, he
+undertook all the duties and enjoyed the privileges of his new position;
+he owed to his adopted parents the same amount of work, obedience, and
+respect that he would have given to his natural parents; he shared
+in their condition, whether for good or ill, and he inherited their
+possessions. Provision was made for him in case of his repudiation by
+those who had adopted him, and they had to make him compensation: he
+received the portion which would have accrued to him after their death,
+and he then left them. Families appear to have been fairly united, in
+spite of the elasticity of the laws which governed them, and of the
+divers elements of which they were sometimes composed. No doubt polygamy
+and frequently divorce exercised here as elsewhere a deleterious
+influence; the harems of Babylon were constantly the scenes of endless
+intrigues and quarrels among the women and children of varied condition
+and different parentage who filled them. Among the people of the middle
+classes, where restricted means necessarily prevented a man having
+many wives, the course of family life appears to have been as calm
+and affectionate as in Egypt, under the unquestioned supremacy of the
+father: and in the event of his early death, the widow, and later the
+son or son-in-law, took the direction of affairs. Should quarrels arise
+and reach the point of bringing about a complete rupture between parents
+and children, the law intervened, not to reconcile them, but to repress
+any violence of which either side might be guilty towards the other.
+It was reckoned as a misdemeanour for any father or mother to disown a
+child, and they were punished by being kept shut up in their own house,
+as long, doubtless, as they persisted in disowning it; but it was a
+crime in a son, even if he were an adopted son, to renounce his parents,
+and he was punished severely. If he had said to his father, “Thou art
+not my father!” the latter marked him with a conspicuous sign and sold
+him in the market. If he had said to his mother, “As for thee, thou art
+not my mother!” he was similarly branded, and led through the streets or
+along the roads, where with hue and cry he was driven from the town and
+province.*
+
+     * I have adopted the generally received meaning of this
+     document as a whole, but I am obliged to state that Oppert-
+     Menant admit quite a different interpretation. According to
+     them, it would appear to be a sweeping renunciation of
+     children by parents, and of parents by children, at the
+     close of a judicial condemnation. Oppert has upheld this
+     interpretation against Haupt, and still keeps to his
+     opinion. The documents published by Meissner show that the
+     text of the ancient Sumerian laws applied equally to adopted
+     children, but made no distinction between the insult offered
+     to the father and that offered to the mother: the same
+     penalty was applicable in both cases.
+
+The slaves were numerous, but distributed in unequal proportion among
+the various classes of the population: whilst in the palace they might
+be found literally in crowds, it was rare among the middle classes to
+meet with any family possessing more than two or three at a time. They
+were drawn partly from foreign races; prisoners who had been wounded and
+carried from the field of battle, or fugitives who had fallen into the
+hands of the victors after a defeat, or Elamites or Gutis who had been
+surprised in their own villages during some expedition; not to mention
+people of every category carried off by the Bedouin during their raids
+in distant parts, such as Syria or Egypt, whom they were continually
+bringing for sale to Babylon and Uru, and, indeed, to all those cities
+to which they had easy access. The kings, the vicegerents, the temple
+administration, and the feudal lords, provided employment for vast
+numbers in the construction of their buildings or in the cultivation of
+their domains; the work was hard and the mortality great, but gaps were
+soon filled up by the influx of fresh gangs. The survivors intermarried,
+and their children, brought up to speak the Chaldaean tongue and
+conforming to the customs of the country, became assimilated to the
+ruling race; they formed, beneath the superior native Semite and
+Sumerian population,an inferior servile class, spread alike throughout
+the towns and country, who were continually reinforced by individuals of
+the native race, such as foundlings, women and children sold by husband
+or father, debtors deprived by creditors of their liberty, and criminals
+judicially condemned. The law took no individual account of them,
+but counted them by heads, as so many cattle: they belonged to their
+respective masters in the same fashion as did the beasts of his flock or
+the trees of his garden, and their life or death was dependent upon
+his will, though the exercise of his rights was naturally restrained
+by interest and custom. He could use them as pledges or for payment of
+debt, could exchange them or sell them in the market. The price of a
+slave never rose very high: a woman might be bought for four and a half
+shekels of silver by weight, and the value of a male adult fluctuated
+between ten shekels and the third of a mina. The bill of sale was
+inscribed on clay, and given to the purchaser at the time of payment:
+the tablets which were the vouchers of the rights of the former
+proprietor were then broken, and the transfer was completed. The
+master seldom ill-treated his slaves, except in cases of reiterated
+disobedience, rebellion, or flight; he could arrest his runaway slaves
+wherever he could lay his hands on them; he could shackle their ankles,
+fetter their wrists, and whip them mercilessly. As a rule, he permitted
+them to marry and bring up a family; he apprenticed their children,
+and as soon as they knew a trade, he set them up in business in his own
+name, allowing them a share in the profits. The more intelligent among
+them were trained to be clerks or stewards; they were taught to read,
+write, and calculate, the essential accomplishments of a skilful scribe;
+they were appointed as superintendents over their former comrades, or
+overseers of the administration of property, and they ended by becoming
+confidential servants in the household. The savings which they had
+accumulated in their earlier years furnished them with the means of
+procuring some few consolations: they could hire themselves out for
+wages, and could even acquire slaves who would go out to work for them,
+in the same way as they themselves had been a source of income to their
+proprietors. If they followed a lucrative profession and were successful
+in it, their savings sometimes permitted them to buy their own freedom,
+and, if they were married, to pay the ransom of their wife and children.
+At times, their master, desirous of rewarding long and faithful service,
+liberated them of his own accord, without waiting till they had saved
+up the necessary money or goods for their enfranchisement: in such cases
+they remained his dependants, and continued in his service as freemen
+to perform the services they had formerly rendered as slaves. They then
+enjoyed the same rights and advantages as the old native race; they
+could leave legacies, inherit property, claim legal rights, and acquire
+and possess houses and lands. Their sons could make good matches among
+the daughters of the middle classes, according to their education and
+fortune; when they were intelligent, active, and industrious, there was
+nothing to prevent them from rising to the highest offices about the
+person of the sovereign.
+
+[Illustration: 294.jpg AN EGYPTIAN SLAVE MERCHANT]
+
+[Illustration: 294-text.jpg]
+
+If we knew more of the internal history of the great Chaldaean cities, we
+should no doubt come to see what an important part the servile element
+played in them; and could we trace it back for a few generations, we
+should probably discover that there were few great families who did
+not reckon a slave or a freedman among their ancestors. It would be
+interesting to follow this people, made up of such complex elements, in
+all their daily work and recreation, as we are able to do in the case
+of contemporary Egyptians; but the monuments which might furnish us with
+the necessary materials are scarce, and the positive information to be
+gleaned from them amounts to but little. We are tolerably safe, however,
+in supposing the more wealthy cities to have been, as a whole, very
+similar in appearance to those existing at the present day in the
+regions which as yet have been scarcely touched by the advent of
+European civilization. Sinuous, narrow, muddy streets, littered with
+domestic refuse and organic detritus, in which flocks of ravens and
+wandering packs of dogs perform with more or less efficiency the duties
+of sanitary officers; whole quarters of the town composed of huts made
+of reeds and puddled clay, low houses of crude brick, surmounted perhaps
+even in those times with the conical domes we find later on the Assyrian
+bas-reliefs; crowded and noisy bazaars, where each trade is located in
+its special lanes and blind alleys; silent and desolate spaces occupied
+by palaces and gardens, in which the private life of the wealthy
+was concealed from public gaze; and looking down upon this medley of
+individual dwellings, the palaces and temples with their ziggurats
+crowned with gilded and painted sanctuaries. In the ruins of Uru,
+Eridu, and Uruk, the remains of houses belonging doubtless to well-to-do
+families have been brought to light. They are built of fine bricks,
+whose courses are cemented together with a thin layer of bitumen, but
+they they are only lighted internally by small appertures pierced at
+irregular distances in the upper part of the walls: the low arched
+doorway, closed by a heavy two-leaved door, leads into a blind passage,
+which opens as a rule on the courtyard in the centre of the building.
+
+
+[Illustration: 208a.jpg Chaldean houses at Uru.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by Taylor.
+
+[Illustration: 208b plans of houses excavated at Eridu and Ubu.]
+
+     These plans were drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from sketches by
+     Taylor. The houses reproduced to the left of the plan were
+     those uncovered in the ruins of Uru; those on the right
+     belong to the ruins of Eridu. On the latter, the niches
+     mentioned in the text will be found indicated.
+
+In the interior may still be distinguished the small oblong rooms,
+sometimes vaulted, sometimes roofed with a flat, ceiling supported by
+trunks of palm trees;* the walls are often of a considerable thickness,
+in which are found narrow niches here and there. The majority of the
+rooms were merely store-chambers, and contained the family provisions
+and treasures; others served as living-rooms, and were provided with
+furniture. The latter, in the houses of the richer citizens no less
+than in those of the people, was of a very simple kind, and was mostly
+composed of chairs and stools, similar to those in the royal palaces;
+the bedrooms contained the linen chests and the beds with their thin
+mattresses, coverings, and cushions, and perhaps wooden head-rests,
+resembling those found in Africa,** but the Chaldaeans slept mostly on
+mats spread on the ground.
+
+     * Taylor, _Notes on the Ruins of Mugeyer_, in the _Journ. of
+     the Royal As. Soc_, vol. xv. p. 266, found the remains of
+     the palm-tree beams which formed the terrace still existing.
+     He thinks (_Notes on Tel-el-Lahm_, etc., in the _Journ, of
+     the Royal As. Soc._, vol. xv. p. 411) with Loftus that some
+     of the chambers were vaulted. Cf. upon the custom of
+     vaulting in Chaldaean houses, Piereot-Cupiez, _Histoire de
+     l’Art_, vol. ii. p. 163, et seq.
+
+     ** The dressing of the hair in coils and elaborate
+     erections, as seen in the various figures engraved upon
+     Chaldaean intaglios (cf. what is said of the different ways
+     of arranging the hair on p. 262 of this volume), appears to
+     have necessitated the use of these articles of furniture;
+     such complicated erections of hair must have lasted several
+     days at least, and would not have kept in condition so long
+     except for the use of the head-rest.
+
+An oven for baking occupied a corner of the courtyard, side by side with
+the stones for grinding the corn; the ashes on the hearth were always
+aglow, and if by chance the fire went out, the fire-stick was always
+at hand to relight it, as in Egypt. The kitchen utensils and household
+pottery comprised a few large copper pans and earthenware pots rounded
+at the base, dishes, water and wine jars, and heavy plates of coarse
+ware; metal had not as yet superseded stone, and in the same house we
+meet with bronze axes and hammers side by side with the same implements
+in cut flint, besides knives, scrapers, and mace-heads.*
+
+     * Implements in flint and other kinds of stone have been
+     discovered by Taylor, and are now in the British Museum. The
+     bronze implements come partly from the tombs of Mugheir, and
+     partly from the ruins explored by Loftus at Tell-Sifr--that
+     is to say, the ancient cities of Uru and Larsam: the name of
+     Tell-Sifr, the “mound of copper,” comes from the quantity of
+     objects in copper which have been discovered there.
+
+[Illustration: 300.jpg CHALDAEAN HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS IN TERRA-COTTA]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by G. Rawlinson, and
+     the heliogravure in Heuzey-Sarzec.
+
+
+At the present day the women of the country of the Euphrates spend a
+great part of their time on the roofs of their dwellings.* They install
+themselves there in the morning, till they are driven away by the heat;
+as soon as the sun gets low in the heavens, they return to their post,
+and either pass the day on neighbouring roofs whilst they bake, cook,
+wash and dry the linen; or, if they have slaves to attend to such menial
+occupations, they sew and embroider in the open air.
+
+     * Olivier, _Voyage dans l’Empire Othoman,_ vol. ii. pp. 356,
+     357, 381, 382, 392, 393.
+
+They come down into the interior of the house during the hottest hours
+of the day. In most of the wealthy houses, the coolest room is one below
+the level of the courtyard, into which but little light can penetrate.
+It is paved with plaques of polished gypsum, which resembles our finest
+grey-and-white marble, and the walls are covered with a coat of delicate
+plastering, smooth to the touch and agreeable to the eye. This is
+watered several times during the day in hot weather, and the evaporation
+from it cools the air. The few ruined habitations which have as yet been
+explored seem to bear witness to a considerable similarity between the
+requirements and customs of ancient times and those of to-day. Like the
+modern women of Bagdad and Mosul, the Chaldaean women of old preferred
+an existence in the open air, in spite of its publicity, to a seclusion
+within stuffy rooms or narrow courts. The heat of the sun, cold, rain,
+and illness obliged them at times to seek a refuge within four walls,
+but as soon as they could conveniently escape from them, they climbed up
+on to their roof to pass the greater part of their time there.
+
+Many families of the lower and middle classes owned the houses which
+they occupied. They constituted a patrimony which the owners made every
+effort to preserve intact through all reverses of fortune.* The head
+of the family bequeathed it to his widow or his eldest son, or left it
+undivided to his heirs, in the assurance, no doubt, that one of them
+would buy up the rights of the others.
+
+     * A house could be let for various lengths of time--for
+     three months, for a year, for five years, for an indefinite
+     term, but with a minimum of six months, since the rent is
+     payable at the beginning and in the middle of each year.
+
+The remainder of his goods, farms, gardens, corn-lands, slaves,
+furniture, and jewels, were divided among the brothers or natural
+descendants, “from the mouth to the gold;” that is to say, from the
+moment of announcing the beginning of the business, to that when
+each one received his share. In order to invest this act with greater
+solemnity, it took place usually in the presence of a priest. Those
+interested repaired to the temple, “to the gate of the god;” they placed
+the whole of the inheritance in the hands of the chosen arbitrator,
+and demanded of him to divide it justly; or the eldest brother perhaps
+anticipated the apportionment, and the priest had merely to sanction
+the result, or settle the differences which might arise among the lawful
+recipients in the course of the operation. When this was accomplished,
+the legatees had to declare themselves satisfied; and when no further
+claims arose, they had to sign an engagement before the priestly
+arbitrator that they would henceforth refrain from all quarrelling on
+the subject, and that they would never make a complaint one against the
+other. By dint of these continual redistributions from one generation
+to another, the largest fortunes soon became dispersed: the individual
+shares became smaller and smaller, and scarcely sufficed to keep a
+family, so that the slightest reverse obliged the possessor to
+have recourse to usurers. The Chaldaeans, like the Egyptians, were
+unacquainted with the use of money, but from the earliest times the
+employment of precious metals for purposes of exchange was practised
+among them to an enormous extent. Though copper and gold were both used,
+silver was the principal medium in these transactions, and formed the
+standard value of all purchaseable objects. It was never cut into flat
+rings or twists of wire, as was the case with the Egyptian “tabnu;” it
+was melted into small unstamped ingots, which were passed from hand
+to hand by weight, being tested in the scales at each transaction.
+“To weigh” was in the ordinary language the equivalent for “payment in
+metal,” whereas “to measure” denoted that the payment was in grain.
+The ingots for exchange were, therefore, designated by the name of
+the weights to which they corresponded. The lowest unit was a shekel,
+weighing on an average nearly half an ounce, sixty shekels making a
+mina, and sixty minas a talent. It is a question whether the Chaldaeanns
+possessed in early times, as did the Assyrians of a later period, two
+kinds of shekels and minas, one heavy and the other light. Whether the
+loan were in metal, grain, or any other substance, the interest was very
+high.* A very ancient law fixed it in certain cases at twelve drachmas
+per mina, per annum--that is to say, at twenty per cent.--and more
+recent texts show us that, when raised to twenty-five per cent., it did
+not appear to them abnormal.
+
+     * We find several different examples, during the Second
+     Chaldaeann Empire, of an exchange of corn for provisions and
+     liquids, or of beams for dates. As a fact, exchange has
+     never completely died out in these regions, and at the
+     present day, in Chaldaea, as in Egypt, corn is used in many
+     cases either to pay Government taxes or to discharge
+     commercial debts.
+
+The commerce of the chief cities was almost entirely concentrated in the
+temples. The large quantities of metals and cereals constantly brought
+to the god, either as part of the fixed temple revenue, or as daily
+offerings, accumulated so rapidly, that they would have overflowed the
+storehouses, had not a means been devised of utilizing them quickly: the
+priests treated them as articles of commerce and made a profit out of
+them.* Every bargain necessitated the calling in of a public scribe. The
+bill, drawn up before witnesses on a clay tablet, enumerated the sums
+paid out, the names of the parties, the rate per cent., the date
+of repayment, and sometimes a penal clause in the event of fraud or
+insolvency; the tablet remained in the possession of the creditor until
+the debt had been completely discharged. The borrower often gave as a
+pledge either slaves, a field, or a house, or certain of his friends
+would pledge on his behalf their own personal fortune; at times he would
+pay by the labour of his own hands the interest which he would otherwise
+have been unable to meet, and the stipulation was previously made in the
+contract of the number of days of corvee which he should periodically
+fulfil for his creditor. If, in spite of all this, the debtor was unable
+to procure the necessary funds to meet his engagements, the principal
+became augmented by a fixed sum--for instance, one-third--and continued
+to increase at this rate until the total value of the amount reached
+that of the security:** the slave, the field, or the house then ceased
+to belong to their former, master, subject to a right of redemption, of
+which he was rarely able to avail himself for lack of means.***
+
+     * It was to the god himself--Shamash, for example--that the
+     loan was supposed to be made, and it is to him that the
+     contracts stipulate that the capital and interest shall be
+     paid. It is curious to lind among the most successful money-
+     lenders several princesses consecrated to the sun-god.
+
+     ** It is easy to foresee, from the contracts of the New
+     Assyrian or Babylonian Empire, how in this manner the
+     original sum lent became doubled and trebled; generally the
+     interest accumulated till it was quadrupled, after which, no
+     doubt, the security was taken by the creditor. They probably
+     calculated that the capital and compound interest was by
+     then equal in value to the person or object given as a
+     security.
+
+     *** The creditors protected themselves against this right of
+     redemption by a maledictory formula inserted at the end of
+     the contracts against those who should avail themselves of
+     it; it is generally inscribed on the boundary stones of the
+     First Chaldaean Empire.
+
+The small tradesman or free workman, who by some accident had become
+involved in debt, seldom escaped this progressive impoverishment except
+by strenuous efforts and incessant labour. Foreign commerce, it is true,
+entailed considerable risk, but the chances of acquiring wealth were so
+great that many individuals launched upon it in preference to more
+sure but less lucrative undertakings. They would set off alone or in
+companies for Elam or the northern regions, for Syria, or even for so
+distant a country as Egypt, and they would bring back in their caravans
+all that was accounted precious in those lands. Overland routes were not
+free from dangers; not only were nomad tribes and professional bandits
+constantly hovering round the traveller, and obliging him to exercise
+ceaseless vigilance, but the inhabitants of the villages through which
+he passed, the local lords and the kings of the countries which he
+traversed, had no scruple in levying blackmail upon him in obliging him
+to pay dearly for right of way through their marches or territory.**
+There were less risks in choosing a sea route: the Euphrates on one
+side, the Tigris, the Ulai, and the Uknu on the other, ran through a
+country peopled with a rich industrial population, among whom Chaldaean
+merchandise was easily and profitably sold or exchanged for commodities
+which would command a good price at the end of the voyage. The vessels
+generally were keleks or “kufas,” but the latter were of immense size.
+
+     * We have no information from Babylonian sources relating to
+     the state of the roads, and the dangers which merchants
+     encountered in foreign lands; the Egyptian documents partly
+     supply what is here lacking. The “instructions” contained in
+     the _Sallier Papyrus,_ No. ii., show what were the miseries
+     of the traveller, and the _Adventures of Sinuhit_ allude to
+     the insecurity of the roads in Syria, by the very care with
+     which the hero relates all the precautions which he took for
+     his protection. These two documents are of the XIIth or
+     XIIIth dynasty--that is to say, contemporaneous with the
+     kings, of Uru and with Gudea.
+
+Several individuals, as a rule, would club together to hire one of these
+boats and freight it with a suitable cargo.* The body of the boat
+was very light, being made of osier or willow covered with skins sewn
+together; a layer of straw was spread on the bottom, on which were piled
+the bales or chests, which were again protected by a rough thatch of
+straw. The crew was composed of two oarsmen at least, and sometimes a
+few donkeys: the merchants then pursued their way up stream till they
+had disposed of their cargo, and taken in a sufficient freight for their
+return voyage. The dangers, though apparently not so great as those by
+the land route, were not the less real. The boat was liable to sink
+or run aground near the bank, the dwellers in the neighbourhood of the
+river might intercept it and pillage its contents, a war might break out
+between two contiguous kingdoms and suspend all commerce: the merchants’
+career continually vacillated between servitude, death, and fortune.
+
+     * The payment demanded was something considerable: the only
+     contract which I know of existing for such a transaction is
+     of the time of Darius I., and exacts a silver shekel per day
+     for the hire of boat and crew.
+
+Business carried on at home in the towns was seldom the means of
+enriching a man, and sometimes scarcely afforded him a means of
+livelihood. Rent was high for those who had not a house of their own;
+the least they could expect to pay was half a silver shekel per annum,
+but the average price was a whole shekel. On taking possession they paid
+a deposit which sometimes amounted to one-third of the whole sum, the
+remainder being due at the end of the year. The leases lasted, as a
+rule, merely a twelvemonth, though sometimes they were extended for
+terms of greater length, such as two, three, or even eight years. The
+cost of repairs and of keeping the house in good condition fell usually
+upon the lessee, who was also allowed to build upon the land he had
+leased, in which case it was declared free of all charges for a period
+of about ten years, but the house, and, as a rule, all he had built,
+then reverted to the landlord. Most possessors of shops made their own
+goods for sale, assisted by slaves or free apprentices. Every workman
+taught his own trade to his children, and these in their turn would
+instruct theirs; families which had an hereditary profession, or from
+generation to generation had gathered bands of workmen about them,
+formed themselves into various guilds, or, to use the customary term,
+into tribes, governed by chiefs and following specified customs. A
+workman belonged to the tribe of the weavers, or of the blacksmiths, or
+of the corn-merchants, and the description of an individual would not
+have been considered as sufficiently exact, if the designation of his
+tribe were not inserted after his name in addition to his paternal
+affiliation. The organization was like that of Egypt, but more fully
+developed. The various trades, moreover, were almost the same among the
+two peoples, the exceptions being such as are readily accounted for by
+the differences in the nature of the soil and physical constitution of
+the respective countries. We do not meet on the banks of the Euphrates
+with those corporations of stone-cutters and marble workers which were
+so numerous in the valley of the Nile. The vast Chaldaean plain, in the
+absence of mountains or accessible quarries, would have furnished no
+occupation for them: the Chaldaeans had to go a long way in quest of
+the small quantities of limestone, alabaster, or diorite which they
+required, and which they reserved only for details of architectural
+decoration for which a small number of artisans and sculptors were amply
+sufficient. The manufacture of bricks, on the other hand, made great
+progress; the crude bricks were larger than those of Egypt, and they
+were more enduring, composed of finer clay and better executed; the
+manufacture of burnt brick too was carried to a degree of perfection to
+which Memphis or Thebes never attained. An ancient legend ascribes
+the invention of the bricks, and consequently the construction of the
+earliest cities, jointly to Sin, the eldest son of Bel, and Ninib his
+brother: this event was said to have taken place in May-June, and from
+that time forward the third month of the year, over which the twins
+presided, was called, Murga in Sumerian, Simanu in the Semitic speech,
+the month of brick. This was the season which was especially devoted to
+the processes of their manufacture: the flood in the rivers, which was
+very great in the preceding months, then began to subside, and the clay
+which was deposited by the waters during the weeks of overflow, washed
+and refined as it was, lent itself readily to the operation. The sun,
+moreover, gave forth sufficient heat to dry the clay blocks in a uniform
+and gradual manner: later, in July and August, they would crack under
+the ardour of his rays, and become converted externally into a friable
+mass, while their interior would remain too moist to allow them to be
+prudently used in carefully built structures. The work of brick-making
+was inaugurated with festivals and sacrifices to Sin, Merodach, Nebo,
+and all the deities who were concerned in the art of building: further
+religious ceremonies were observed at intervals during the month to
+sanctify the progress of the work. The manufacture did not cease on the
+last day of the month, but was continued with more or less activity,
+according to the heat of the sun, and the importance of the orders
+received, until the return of the inundation: but the bricks intended
+for public buildings, temples, or palaces, could not be made outside a
+prescribed limit of time. The shades of colour produced naturally in the
+process of burning--red or yellow, grey or brown--were not pleasant to
+the eye, and they were accustomed, therefore, to coat the bricks with an
+attractive enamel which preserved them from the disintegrating effects
+of sun and rain. The paste was laid on the edges or sides while
+the brick was in a crude state, and was incorporated with it by
+vitrification in the heat of the kiln. The process was known from an
+early date in Egypt, but was rarely employed there in the decoration
+of buildings, while in Chaldaea the use of such enamelled plaques was
+common. The substructures of palaces and the exterior walls of temples
+were left unadorned, but the shrines which crowned the “ziggurat,”
+ the reception-halls, and the headings of doors were covered with these
+many-coloured tiles. Fragments of them are found to-day in the ruins of
+the cities, and the analysis of these pieces shows the marvellous skill
+of the ancient workers in enamel; the shades of colour are pure and
+pleasant to the eye, while the material is so evenly put on and so
+solid, that neither centuries of burial in a sodden soil, nor the wear
+and tear of transport, nor the exposure to the damp of our museums, have
+succeeded in diminishing their brilliance and freshness.
+
+To get a clear idea of the industrial operations of the country, it
+would be necessary to see the various corporations at their work, as we
+are able to do, in the case of Egypt in the scenes of the mastabas of
+Saqqara, or of the rock-chambers of Beni-Hasan. The manufacture of stone
+implements gave considerable employment, and the equipment of the dead
+in the tombs of Uru would have been a matter of small moment, if we were
+to exclude its flint implements, its knives, cleavers, scrapers, adzes,
+axes, and hammers. The cutting of these objects is bold, and the final
+touches show skill, but we rarely meet with that purity of contour and
+intensity of polish which distinguish similar objects among Western
+peoples. A few examples, it is true, are of fairly artistic shape, and
+bear engraved inscriptions: one of these, a flint hammer of beautiful
+form, belonged to a god, probably Eamman, and seems to have come from a
+temple in which one of its owners had deposited it.
+
+[Illustration: 311a.jpg CHALDAEAN STONE IMPLEMENTS.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketches published by
+     Taylor and by ‘G. Rawlinson. On the left a scraper and two
+     knives one above the other, an axe in the middle, on the
+     right an axe and a hammer. All these objects were found in
+     Taylor’s excavations, and are now in the British Museum.
+
+It is an exception, and a remarkable exception. Stone was the material
+of the implements of the poor--implements which were coarse in shape,
+and cost little: if much care were given to their execution, they would
+come to be so costly that no one would buy them, or, if sold for a
+moderate sum, the seller would obtain no profit from the transaction.
+Beyond a certain price, it was more advantageous to purchase metal
+implements, of copper in the early ages, afterwards of bronze, and
+lastly of iron. Among the metal-founders and smiths all kinds of
+examples of these were to be found--axes of an elegant and graceful
+design, hammers and knives, as well as culinary and domestic utensils,
+cups, cauldrons, dishes, mountings of doors and coffers, statuettes of
+men, bulls, monsters, and gods--which could be turned to weapons of
+all descriptions--arrow and lance heads, swords, daggers, and rounded
+helmets with neck-piece or visor.
+
+[Illustration: 311b.jpg CHALDAEAN STONE HAMMER BEARING AN INSCRIPTION.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the illustration published by
+     Fr. Lenormant.
+
+[Illustration: CHALDAEN IMPLEMENTS OF BRONZE]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Rawlinson’s _Five Great
+     Monarchies_. On the right two axes, in the middle a hammer,
+     on the left a knife, and below the head of a lance.
+
+Some of the metal objects manufactured by the Chaldaeans attained large
+dimensions; for instance, the “brazen seas” which were set up before
+each sanctuary, either for the purpose of receiving the libations, or
+for the prescribed rites of purification. As is often the case among
+half-civilized peoples, the goldsmiths worked in the precious metals
+with much facility and skill. We have not, succeeded up to the present
+in finding any of those golden images which the kings were accustomed
+to dedicate in the temples out of their own possessions, or the spoil
+obtained from the enemy; but a silver vase dedicated to Ningirsu by
+Entena, vicegerent of Lagash, gives us some idea of this department
+of the temple furniture. It stands upright on a small square bronze
+pedestal with four feet. A piously expressed inscription runs round
+the neck, and the bowl of the vase is divided horizontally into two
+divisions, framed above and below by twisted cord-work. Four two-headed
+eagles, with outspread wings and tail, occupy the lower division; they
+are in the act of seizing with their claws two animals, placed back
+to back, represented in the act of walking: the intervals between the
+eagles are filled up alternatively by two lions, two wild goats, and
+two stags. Above, and close to the rise of the neck, are disposed seven
+heifers lying down and all looking in the same direction: they are all
+engraved upon the flat metal, and are without relief or incrustation.
+The whole composition is harmoniously put together, the posture of the
+animals and their general form are well conceived and boldly rendered,
+but the details of the mane of the lions and the feathers of the eagles
+are reproduced with a realism and attention to minutio which belong to
+the infancy of art. This single example of ancient goldsmiths’work would
+be sufficient to prove that the early Chaldaens were not a whit behind
+the Egyptians in this handicraft, even if we had not the golden
+ornaments, the bracelets, ear and finger rings to judge from, with which
+the tombs have furnished us in considerable numbers.
+
+[Illustration: VASE OF SILVER. AND BULL OF COPPER.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec
+
+Alongside the goldsmiths there must have been a whole army of lapidaries
+and gem-cutters occupied in the engraving of cylinders. Numerous and
+delicate operations were required to metamorphose a scrap of crude
+rock, marble, granite, agate, onyx, green and red jasper, crystal or
+lapis-lazuli, into one of those marvellous seals which are now found by
+the hundred scattered throughout the museums of Europe. They had to be
+rounded, reduced to the proper proportions, and polished, before the
+subject or legend could be engraved upon them with the burin. To drill a
+hole through them required great dexterity, and some of the lapidaries,
+from a dread of breaking the cylinder, either did not pierce it at all,
+or merely bored a shallow hole into each extremity to allow it to
+roll freely in its metallic mounting. The tools used in engraving were
+similar to those employed at the present day, but of a rougher kind. The
+burin, which was often nothing more than a flint point, marked out the
+area of the design, and sketched out the figures; the saw was largely
+employed to cut away the depressions when these required no detailed
+handling; and lastly, the drill, either worked with the hand or in
+a kind of lathe, was made to indicate the joints and muscles of the
+individual by a series of round holes. The object thus summarily dealt
+with might be regarded as sufficiently worked for ordinary clients; but
+those who were willing to pay for them could obtain cylinders from which
+every mark of the tool had been adroitly removed, and where the beauty
+of the workmanship vied with the costliness of the material.
+
+[Illustration: 315.jpg CHALDAEAN CYLINDER EXHIBITING TRACES OF THE
+DIFFERENT TOOLS USED BY THE ENGRAVER]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure in Menant’s
+     _Catalogue de la collection de M. de Clercq_
+
+
+The seal of Shargani, King of Agade, that of Bingani-shar-ali, and many
+others which have been picked up by chance in the excavations, are
+true bas-reliefs, reduced and condensed, so to speak, to the space of
+something like a square inch of surface, but conceived with an artistic
+ingenuity and executed with a boldness which modern engravers have
+rarely equalled and never surpassed. There are traces on them, it is
+true, of some of the defects which disfigured the latter work of the
+Assyrians--heaviness of form, exaggerated prominence of muscles
+and hardness of outline--but there are also all the qualities which
+distinguish an original and forcible art.
+
+The countries of the Euphrates were renowned in classic times for the
+beauty of the embroidered and painted stuffs which they manufactured.*
+Nothing has come down to us of these Babylonian tissues of which the
+Greek and Latin writers extolled the magnificence, but we may form some
+idea, from the statues and the figures engraved on cylinders, of what
+the weavers and embroiderers of this ancient time were capable. The loom
+which they made use of differed but slightly from the horizontal loom
+commonly employed in the Nile Valley, and everything tends to show that
+their plain linen cloths were of the kind represented in the swathings
+and fragments of clothing still to be found in the sepulchral chambers
+of Memphis and Thebes. The manufacture of fleecy woollen garments so
+much affected by men and women alike indicates a great dexterity. When
+once the threads of the woof had been stretched, those of the warp
+were attached to them by knots in as many parallel lines--at regular
+intervals--as there were rows of fringe to be displayed on the surface
+of the cloth, the loops thus formed being allowed to hang down in their
+respective places: sometimes these loops were retained just as they
+stood, sometimes they were cut and the ends frayed out so as to give the
+appearance of a shaggy texture.
+
+     * Most modern writers understand by tapestry what the
+     ancients were accustomed to call needle embroidery or
+     painting on stuffs: I can find no indication on the most
+     ancient monuments of Chaldaean or Egypt of the manufacturing
+     of real tapestry.
+
+[Illustration: 316.jpg Egyptian Manuscript]
+
+     Part of an Egyptian Manuscript found in the Swathing of a
+     Mummy
+
+[Illustration: 316-text.jpg Egyptian Manuscript]
+
+
+Most of these stuffs preserved their original white or creamy
+colour--especially those woven at home by the women for the requirements
+of their own toilet, and for the ordinary uses of the household. The
+Chaldaeans, however, like many other Asiatic peoples, had a strong
+preference for lively colours, and the outdoor garments and gala attire
+of the rich were distinguished by a profusion of blue patterns on a red
+ground, or red upon blue, arranged in stripes, zigzags, checks, and
+dots or circles. There must, therefore, have been as much occupation
+for dyers as there was for weavers; and it is possible that the two
+operations were carried out by the same hands. We know nothing of the
+bakers, butchers, carriers, masons, and other artisans who supplied the
+necessities of the cities: they were doubtless able to make two ends
+meet and nothing more, and if we should succeed some day in obtaining
+information about them, we shall probably find that their condition was
+as miserable as that of their Egyptian contemporaries. The course
+of their lives was monotonous enough, except when it was broken at
+prescribed intervals by the ordinary festivals in honour of the gods
+of the city, or by the casual suspensions of work occasioned by the
+triumphant return of the king from some warlike expedition, or by his
+inauguration of a new temple.
+
+The gaiety of the people on such occasions was the more exuberant in
+proportion to the undisturbed monotony or misery of the days which
+preceded them. As soon, for instance, as Gudea had brought to completion
+Ininnu, the house of his patron Ningirsu, “he felt relieved from the
+strain and washed his hands. For seven days, no grain was bruised in the
+quern, the maid was the equal of her mistress, the servant walked in the
+same rank as his master, the strong and the weak rested side by side in
+the city.” The world seemed topsy-turvy as during the Roman Saturnalia;
+the classes mingled together, and the inferiors were probably accustomed
+to abuse the unusual licence which they momentarily enjoyed: when the
+festival was over, social distinctions reasserted themselves, and each
+one fell back into his accustomed position. Life was not so pleasant
+in Chaldaea as in Egypt. The innumerable promissory notes, the receipted
+accounts, the contracts of sale and purchase--these cunningly drawn up
+deeds which have been deciphered by the hundred--reveal to us a people
+greedy of gain, exacting, litigious, of artisans in Egypt. This is taken
+from a source belonging to the XIIth or possibly the XIIIth dynasty. We
+may assume, from the fact that the two civilizations were about on
+the same level, that the information supplied in this respect by the
+Egyptian monuments is generally applicable to the condition of Chaldaean
+workmen of the same period.
+
+(Unreadable) and almost exclusively absorbed by material concerns.
+The climate, too, variable and oppressive in summer and winter alike,
+imposed upon the Chaldaean painful exactions, and obliged him to work
+with an energy of which the majority of Egyptians would not have felt
+themselves capable. The Chaldaean, suffering greater and more prolonged
+hardships, earned more doubtless, but was not on this account the
+happier. However lucrative his calling might be, it was not sufficiently
+so to supply him always with domestic necessities, and both tradespeople
+and operatives were obliged to run into debt to supplement their
+straitened means. When they had once fallen into the hands of the
+usurer, the exorbitant interest which they had to pay kept them a long
+time in his power. If when the bill fell due there was nothing to meet
+it, it had to be renewed under still more disastrous conditions; as the
+pledge given was usually the homestead, or the slave who assisted in the
+trade, or the garden which supplied food for the family, the mortgagor
+was reduced to the extreme of misery if he could not satisfy his
+creditors, This plague of usury was not, moreover, confined to the
+towns; it raged with equal violence in the country, and the farmers also
+became its victims.
+
+If, theoretically, the earth belonged to the gods, and under them to
+the kings, the latter had made, and continued daily to make, such large
+concessions of it to their vassals, that the greater part of their
+domains were always in the hands of the nobles or private individuals.
+These could dispose of their landed property at pleasure, farm it out,
+sell it or distribute it among their heirs and friends.
+
+They paid on account of it a tax which varied at different epochs, but
+which was always burthensome; but when they had once satisfied this
+exaction, and paid the dues which the temples might claim on behalf
+of the gods, neither the State nor any individual had the right to
+interfere in their administration of it, or put any restrictions upon
+them. Some proprietors cultivated their lands themselves--the poor by
+their own labour, the rich by the aid of some trustworthy slave whom
+they interested in the success of his farming by assigning him a certain
+percentage on the net return. Sometimes the lands were leased out in
+whole or in part to free peasants who relieved the proprietors of all
+the worry and risks of managing it themselves. A survey of the area of
+each state had been made at an early age, and the lots into which it had
+been divided were registered on clay tablets containing the name of
+the proprietor as well as those of his neighbours, together with such
+indications of the features of the land, dykes, canals, rivers,
+and buildings as would serve to define its boundaries: rough plans
+accompanied the description, and in the most complicated instances
+interpreted it to the eye. This survey was frequently repeated, and
+enabled the sovereign to arrange his scheme of taxation on a solid
+basis, and to calculate the product of it without material error.
+Gardens and groves of date-palms, together with large regions devoted
+to rough attempts at vegetable culture, were often to be met with,
+especially in the neighbourhood of towns; these paid their contributions
+to the State, as well as the owners’rent, in kind--in fruit, vegetables,
+and fresh or dried dates. The best soil was reserved, for the growth of
+wheat and other cereals, and its extent was measured in terms of corn;
+corn was also the standard in which the revenue was reckoned both in
+public and private contracts. Such and such a field required about fifty
+litres of seed to the arura. Another needed sixty-two or seventy-five
+according to the fertility of the land and its locality. Landed property
+was placed under the guardianship of the gods, and its transfer or
+cession was accompanied by formalities of a half-religious, half-magical
+character: the party giving delivery of it called down upon the head
+of any one who would dare in the future to dispute the validity of the
+deed, imprecations of which the text was inserted on a portion of the
+surface of an egg-shaped nodule of flint, basalt, or other hard stone.
+These little monuments display on their cone-shaped end a series
+of figures, sometimes arranged in two parallel divisions, sometimes
+scattered over the surface, which represent the deities invoked to watch
+over the sanctity of the contract. It was a kind of representation in
+miniature of the aspect which the heavens presented to the Chaldaeans.
+The disks of the sun and moon, together with Venus-Ashtar, are the
+prominent elements in the scene: the zodiacal figures, or the symbols
+employed to represent them, are arranged in an apparent orbit around
+these--such as the Scorpion, the Bird, the Dog, the Thunderbolt of
+Ramman, the mace, the horned monsters, half hidden by the temples they
+guard, and the enormous Dragon who embraces in his folds half the entire
+firmament. “If ever, in the course of days, any one of the brothers,
+children, family, men or women, slaves or servants of the house, or any
+governor or functionary whatsoever, arises and intends to steal this
+field, and remove this landmark, either to make a gift of it to a god,
+or to assign it to a competitor, or to appropriate it to himself; if he
+modifies the area of it, the limits and the landmark; if he divides it
+into portions, and if he says: ‘The field has no owner, since there has
+been no donation of it; ‘--if, from dread of the terrible imprecations
+which protect this stele and this field, he sends a fool, a deaf or
+blind person, a wicked wretch, an idiot, a stranger, or an ignorant one,
+and should cause this stele to be taken away,* and should throw it
+into the water, cover it with dust, mutilate it by scratching it with a
+stone, burn it in the fire and destroy it, or write anything else upon
+it, or carry,it away to a place where it will be no longer seen,--this
+man, may Anu, Bel, Ea, the exalted lady, the great gods, cast upon him
+looks of wrath, may they destroy his strength, may they exterminate his
+race.” All the immortals are associated in this excommunication, and
+each one promises in his turn the aid of his power.
+
+     * All the people enumerated in this passage might, in
+     ignorance of what they were doing, be induced to tear up the
+     stone, and unconsciously commit a sacrilege from which every
+     Chaldaean in his senses would have shrunk back. The formula
+     provides for such cases, and it secures that the curse shall
+     fall not only on the irresponsible instruments, but reach
+     the instigator of the crime, even when he had taken no
+     actual part in the deed.
+
+[Illustration: 322.jpg THE MICHAUX STONE (left)]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin. The original is in the medal cabinet
+     of the Bibliotheque Nationale.
+
+[Illustration: 323.jpg THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MICHAUX STONE (right)]
+
+Merodach, by whose spells the sick are re stored, will inflict upon the
+guilty one a dropsy which no incantation can cure. Shamas, the supreme
+judge, will send forth against him one of his inexorable judgments. Sin,
+the inhabitant of the brilliant heavens, will cover him with leprosy as
+with a garment. Adar, the warrior, will break his weapons; and Zamama,
+the king of strifes, will not stand by him on the field of battle.
+Eamman will let loose his tempest upon his fields, and will overwhelm
+them. The whole band of the invisibles hold themselves ready to defend
+the rights of the proprietor against all attacks. In no part of the
+ancient world was the sacred character of property so forcibly laid
+down, or the possession of the soil more firmly secured by religion.
+
+In instruments of agriculture and modes of cultivation Chaldaea was no
+better off than Egypt. The rapidity with which the river rose in the
+spring, and its variable subsidence from year to year, furnished little
+inducement to the Chaldaeans to entrust to it the work of watering their
+lands; on the contrary, they were compelled to protect themselves from
+it, and to keep at a distance the volume of waters it brought down.
+Each property, whether of square, triangular, or any other shape, was
+surrounded with a continuous earth-built barrier which bounded it
+on every side, and served at the same time as a rampart against the
+inundation.
+
+[Illustration: 324.jpg TWO ROWS OF SHADUFS ON THE BANK OF A RIVER.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from
+     Koyunjik.
+
+Rows of shadufs installed along the banks of the canals or streams
+provided for the irrigation of the lands.* The fields were laid out like
+a chess-board, and the squares, separated from each other by earthen
+ridges, formed as it were so many basins: when the elevation of the
+ground arrested the flow of the waters, these were collected into
+reservoirs, whence by the use of other shadufs they were raised to a
+higher level.
+
+     * In Mesopotamia and Chaldaea there may still be seen
+     “everywhere ruins of ancient canals; and there are also to
+     be met with, in many places, ridges of earth, which stretch
+     for considerable distances in a straight line, and surround
+     lands perfectly level.” (Olivier).
+
+The plough was nothing more than an obliquely placed mattock, whose
+handle was lengthened in order to harness oxen to it. Whilst the
+ploughman pressed heavily on the handle, two attendants kept incessantly
+goading the beasts, or urging them forward with voice and whip, and
+a third scattered the seed in the furrow. A considerable capital was
+needed to ensure success in agricultural undertakings: contracts were
+made for three years, and stipulated that payments should be made partly
+in metal and partly in the products of the soil.
+
+[Illustration: 325.jpg CHALDAEAN FARMING OPERATIONS.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio reproduced
+     in Layard. The original is in the cabinet of medals in the
+     Bibliotheque Nationale.
+
+The farmer paid a small sum when entering into possession, and the
+remainder of the debt was gradually liquidated at the end of each
+twelve months, the payment being in silver one year, and in corn the two
+following. The rent varied according to the quality of the soil and the
+facilities which it afforded for cultivation: a field, for instance, of
+three bushels was made to pay nine hundred measures, while another of
+ten bushels had only eighteen hundred to pay. In many instances the
+peasant preferred to take the proprietor into partnership, the latter
+in such case providing all the expenses of cultivation, on the
+understanding that he should receive two-thirds of the gross product.
+The tenant was obliged to administer the estate as a careful householder
+during the term of his lease: he was to maintain the buildings and
+implements in good repair, to see that the hedges were kept up, to keep
+the shadufs in working order, and to secure the good condition of the
+watercourses. He had rarely enough slaves to manage the business with
+profit: those he had purchased were sufficient, with the aid of his
+wives and children, to carry on ordinary operations, but when any
+pressure arose, especially at harvest-time, he had to seek elsewhere the
+additional labourers he required. The temples were the chief sources for
+the supply of these. The majority of the supplementary labourers were
+free men, who were hired out by their family, or engaged themselves for
+a fixed term, during which they were subject to a sort of slavery, the
+conditions of which were determined by law. The workman renounced his
+liberty for fifteen days, or a month, or for a whole year; he disposed,
+so to speak, of a portion of his life to the provisional master of his
+choice, and if he did not enter upon his work at the day agreed upon,
+or if he showed himself inactive in the duties assigned to him, he was
+liable to severe punishment. He received in exchange for his labour
+his food, lodging, and clothing; and if an accident should occur to
+him during the term of his service, the law granted him an indemnity in
+proportion to the injury he had sustained.
+
+[Illustration: 327.jpg THE FARM OXEN]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a green marble cylinder in the
+     Louvre.
+
+His average wage was from four to six shekels of silver per annum. He
+was also entitled by custom to another shekel in the form of a retaining
+fee, and he could claim his pay, which was given to him mostly in corn,
+in monthly instalments, if his agreement were for a considerable time,
+and daily if it were for a short period.
+
+The mercenary never fell into the condition of the ordinary serf: he
+retained his rights as a man, and possessed in the person of the patron
+for whom he laboured, or whom he himself had selected, a defender of his
+interests. When he came to the end of his engagement, he returned to
+his family, and resumed his ordinary occupation until the next occasion.
+Many of the farmers in a small way earned thus, in a few weeks,
+sufficient means to supplement their own modest personal income. Others
+sought out more permanent occupations, and hired themselves out as
+regular farm-servants.
+
+The lands which neither the rise of the river nor the irrigation system
+could reach so as to render fit for agriculture, were reserved for the
+pasture of the flocks in the springtime, when they were covered with
+rich grass. The presence of lions in the neighbourhood, however, obliged
+the husbandmen to take precautions for the safety of their flocks. They
+constructed provisional enclosures into which the animals were driven
+every evening, when the pastures were too far off to allow of the flocks
+being brought back to the sheepfold. The chase was a favourite pastime
+among them, and few days passed without the hunter’s bringing back with
+him a young gazelle caught in a trap, or a hare killed by an arrow.
+These formed substantial additions to the larder, for the Chaldaeans
+do not seem to have kept about them, as the Egyptians did, such tamed
+animals as cranes or herons, gazelles or deer: they contented themselves
+with the useful species, oxen, asses, sheep, and goats. Some of the
+ancient monuments, cylinders, and clay tablets reproduce in a rough
+manner scenes from pastoral life. The door of the fold opens, and we see
+a flock of goats sallying forth to the cracking of the herdsman’s whip:
+when they reach the pasture they scatter over the meadows, and while the
+shepherd keeps his eye upon them, he plays upon his reed to the delight
+of his dog. In the mean time the farm-people are engaged in the careful
+preparation of the evening meal: two individuals on opposite sides of
+the hearth watch the pot boiling between them, while a baker makes his
+dough into round cakes.
+
+[Illustration: 329a.jpg COOKING: A QUARREL.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the terra-cotta plaques
+     discovered by Loftus.
+
+Sometimes a quarrel breaks out among the comrades, and leads to a
+stand-up fight with the fists; or a lion, perhaps, in quest of a meal,
+surprises and kills one of the bulls: the shepherd runs up, his axe in
+his hand, to contend bravely with the marauder for the possession of his
+beast. The shepherd was accustomed to provide himself with assistance
+in the shape of enormous dogs, who had no more hesitation in attacking
+beasts of prey than they had in pursuing game. In these combats the
+natural courage of the shepherd was stimulated by interest: for he was
+personally responsible for the safety of his flock, and if a lion should
+find an entrance into one of the enclosures.
+
+[Illustration: 329b.jpg SCENES OF PASTORAL LIFE IN CHALDAEA.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio from
+     Layard. Another cylinder of the same kind is reproduced at
+     p. 233 of the present work; it represents Etana arising to
+     heaven by the aid of his friend the eagle, while the
+     pastoral scene below resembles in nearly all particulars
+     that given above.
+
+[Illustration: 330.jpg FIGHT WITH A LION]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the terra-cotta tablets
+     discovered by Loftus.
+
+Fishing was not so much a pastime as a source of livelihood; for fish
+occupied a high place in the bill of fare of the common folk. Caught by
+the line, net, or trap, it was dried,in the sun, smoked, or salted. The
+chase was essentially the pastime of the great noble--the pursuit of
+the lion and the bear in the wooded covers or the marshy thickets of the
+river-bank; the pursuit of the gazelle, the ostrich, and bustard on
+the elevated plains or rocky tablelands of the desert. The onager of
+Mesopotamia is a very beautiful animal, with its grey glossy coat, and
+its lively and rapid action.
+
+[Illustration: 331.jpg THE DOG IN TUB LEASH]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a terra-cotta tablet discovered
+     by Sir H. Rawlinson in the ruins of Babylon, and now in the
+     British Museum
+
+If it is disturbed, it gives forth a cry, kicks up its heels, and dashes
+off: when at a safe distance, it stops, turns round, and faces its
+pursuer: as soon as he approaches, it starts off again, stops, and takes
+to its heels again, continuing this procedure as long as it is followed.
+The Chaldaeans found it difficult to catch by the aid of dogs, but they
+could bring it down by arrows, or perhaps catch it alive by stratagem.
+A running noose was thrown round its neck, and two men held the ends of
+the ropes. The animal struggled, made a rush, and attempted to bite, but
+its efforts tended only to tighten the noose still more firmly, and
+it at length gave in, half strangled; after alternating struggles and
+suffocating paroxysms, it became somewhat calmer, and allowed itself to
+be led. It was finally tamed, if not to the extent of becoming useful
+in agriculture, at least for the purposes of war: before the horse was
+known in Chaldaea, it was used to draw the chariot. The original habitat
+of the horse was the great table-lands of Central Asia: it is doubtful
+whether it was brought suddenly into the region of the Tigrus and
+Euphrates by some barbaric invasion, or whether it was passed on from
+tribe to tribe, and thus gradually reached that country. It soon became
+acclimatized, and its cross-breeding with the ass led for centuries to
+the production of magnificent mules. The horse was known to the kings
+of Lagash, who used it in harness. The sovereigns of neighbouring cities
+were also acquainted with it, but it seems to have been employed solely
+by the upper classes of society, and never to have been generally used
+in the war-chariot or as a charger in cavalry operations.
+
+[Illustration: 332.jpg CHALDAEAN CARRYING A FISH. (left)]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the terra-cotta tablets
+     discovered by Loftus.
+
+The Chaldaeans carried agriculture to a high degree of perfection, and
+succeeded in obtaining from the soil everything it could be made to
+yield.
+
+[Illustration: 333.jpg THE ONAGER TAKEN WITH THE LASSO.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the Assyrian bas-relief of
+     Nimrud. See p. 35 of the present work for an illustration of
+     onagers pierced by arrows in the chase.
+
+Their methods, transmitted in the first place to the Greeks, and
+afterwards to the Arabs, were perpetuated long after their civilization
+had disappeared, and were even practised by the people of Iraq under the
+Abbasside Caliphs. Agricultural treatises on clay, which contained an
+account of these matters, were deposited in one or other of the sacred
+libraries in which the priests of each city were long accustomed to
+collect together documents from every source on which they could lay
+their hands. There were to be found in each of these collections a
+certain number of works which were unique, either because the authors
+were natives of the city, or because all copies of them had been
+destroyed in the course of centuries--the Epic of Grilgames, for
+instance, at Uruk; a history of the Creation, and of the battles of
+the gods with the monsters at Kutha: all of them had their special
+collections of hymns or psalms, religious and magical formulas, their
+lists of words and grammatical phraseology, their glossaries and
+syllabaries, which enabled them to understand and translate texts drawn
+up in Sumerian, or to decipher those whose writing presented more than
+ordinary difficulty. In these libraries there was, we find, as in
+the inscriptions of Egypt, a complete literature, of which only some
+shattered fragments have come down to us. The little we are able to
+examine has produced upon our modern investigators a complex impression,
+in which astonishment rather than admiration contends with a sense
+of tedious-ness. There may be recognized here and there, among the
+wearisome successions of phrases, with their rugged proper names,
+episodes which seem something like a Chaldaean “Genesis” or “Veda;” now
+and then a bold flight of fancy, a sudden exaltation of thought, or a
+felicitous expression, arrests the attention and holds it captive for
+a time. In the narrative of the adventures of Grilgames, for instance,
+there is a certain nobility of character, and the sequence of events, in
+their natural and marvellous development, are handled with gravity and
+freedom: if we sometimes encounter episodes which provoke a smile or
+excite our repugnance, we must take into account the rudeness of the age
+with which they deal, and remember that the men and gods of the later
+Homeric epic are not a whit behind the heroes of Babylonian story in
+coarseness. The recognition of divine omnipotence, and the keenly felt
+afflictions of the soul, awakened in the Chaldaean psalmist feelings of
+adoration and penitence which still find, in spite of the differences of
+religion, an echo in our own hearts; and the unknown scribe, who related
+the story of the descent of Ishtar to the infernal regions, was able to
+express with a certain gloomy energy the miseries of the “Land without
+return. “These instances are to be regarded, however, as exceptional:
+the bulk of Chaldaean literature seems nothing more than a heap of
+pretentious trash, in which even the best-equipped reader can see no
+meaning, or, if he can, it is of such a character as to seem unworthy
+of record. His judgment is natural in the circumstances, for the ancient
+East is not, like Greece and Italy, the dead of yesterday whose soul
+still hovers around us, and whose legacies constitute more than the half
+of our patrimony: on the contrary, it was buried soul and body, gods
+and cities, men and circumstances, ages ago, and even its heirs, in the
+lapse of years, have become extinct. In proportion as we are able to
+bring its civilization to light, we become more and more conscious that
+we have little or nothing in common with it. Its laws and customs, its
+methods of action and its modes of thought, are so far apart from those
+of the present day, that they seem to us to belong to a humanity utterly
+different from our own. The names of its deities do not appeal to our
+imagination like those of the Olympian cycle, and no traditional respect
+serves to do away with the sense of uncouthness which we experience
+from the jingle of syllables which enter into them. Its artists did not
+regard the world from the same point of view as we do, and its writers,
+drawing their inspiration from an entirely different source, made use of
+obsolete methods to express their feelings and co-ordinate their ideas.
+It thus happens that while we understand to a shade the classical
+language of the Greeks and Romans, and can read their works almost
+without effort, the great primitive literatures of the world, the
+Egyptian and Chaldaean, have nothing to offer us for the most part but a
+sequence of problems to solve or of enigmas to unriddle with patience.
+How many phrases, how many words at which we stumble, require a
+painstaking analysis before we can make ourselves master of their
+meaning! And even when we have determined to our satisfaction their
+literal signification, what a number of excursions we must make in the
+domain of religious, ethical, and political history before we can compel
+them to render up to us their full import, or make them as intelligible
+to others as they are to ourselves! When so many commentaries are
+required to interpret the thought of an individual or a people, some
+difficulty must be experienced in estimating the value of the expression
+which they have given to it. Elements of beauty were certainly, and
+perhaps are still, within it; but in proportion as we clear away
+the rubbish which encumbers it, the mass of glossaries necessary to
+interpret it fall in and bury it so as to stifle it afresh.
+
+While the obstacles to our appreciation of Chaldaeann literature are of
+such a serious character, we are much more at home in our efforts to
+estimate the extent and depth of their scientific knowledge. They
+were as well versed as the Egyptians, but not more, in arithmetic
+and geometry in as far as these had an application to the affairs of
+everyday life: the difference between the two peoples consisted chiefly
+in their respective numerical systems--the Egyptians employing almost
+exclusively the decimal system of notation, while the Chaldaeans combined
+its use with the duodecimal.
+
+[Illustration: 337.jpg Page image]
+
+To express the units, they made use of so many vertical “nails”
+ placed one after, or above, each other, thus [symbols] etc.; tens were
+represented by bent brackets [symbols], up to 60; beyond this figure
+they had the choice of two methods of notation: they could express the
+further tens by the continuous additions of brackets thus, [symbols]
+or they could represent 50 by a vertical “nail,” and add for every
+additional ten a bracket to the right of it, thus: [symbols]. The
+notation of a hundred was represented by the vertical “nail” with
+a horizontal stroke to the right thus [symbols], and the number of
+hundreds by the symbols placed before this sign, thus [symbols], etc.:
+a thousand was written [symbols] i.e. ten times one hundred, and the
+series of thousands by the combination of different notations which
+served to express units, tens, and hundreds. They subdivided the unit,
+moreover, into sixty equal parts, and each of these parts into sixty
+further equal subdivisions, and this system of fractions was used in all
+kinds of quantitive measurements. The fathom, the foot and its square,
+talents and bushels, the complete system of Chaldaean weights and
+measures, were based on the intimate alliance and parallel use of
+the decimal and duodecimal systems of notation. The sixtieth was more
+frequently employed than the hundredth when large quantities were in
+question: it was called a “soss,” and ten sosses were equal to a “ner,”
+ while sixty ners were equivalent to a “sar;” the series, sosses,
+ners, and sars, being employed in all estimations of values. Years and
+measures of length were reckoned in sosses, while talents and bushels
+were measured in sosses and sars. The fact that these subdivisions were
+all divisible by 10 or 12, rendered calculations by means of them easy
+to the merchant and workmen as well as to the mathematical expert. The
+glimpses that we have been able to obtain up to the present of Chaldaean
+scientific methods indicate that they were on a low level, but they
+were sufficiently advanced to furnish practical rules for application in
+everyday affairs: helps to memory of different kinds, lists of figures
+with their names phonetically rendered in Sumerian and Semitic speech,
+tables of squares and cubes, and rudimentary formulas and figures for
+land-surveying, furnished sufficient instructions to enable any one
+to make complicated calculations in a ready manner, and to work out in
+figures, with tolerable accuracy, the superficial area of irregularly
+shaped plots of land. The Chaldaeans could draw out, with a fair amount
+of exactness, plans of properties or of towns, and their ambition
+impelled them even to attempt to make maps of the world. The latter
+were, it is true, but rough sketches, in which mythological beliefs
+vitiated the information which merchants and soldiers had collected in
+their journeys. The earth was represented as a disk surrounded by the
+ocean stream: Chaldaea took up the greater part of it, and foreign
+countries did not appear in it at all, or held a position out in the
+cold at its extremities. Actual knowledge was woven in an extraordinary
+manner with mystic considerations, in which the virtues of numbers,
+their connections with the gods, and the application of geometrical
+diagrams to the prediction of the future, played an important part.
+We know what a brilliant fortune these speculations attained in
+after-years, and the firm hold they obtained for centuries over Western
+nations, as formerly over the Bast. It was not in arithmetic and
+geometry alone, moreover, that the Chaldaeans were led away by such
+deceits: each branch of science in its turn was vitiated by them,
+and, indeed, it could hardly be otherwise when we come to consider the
+Chaldaean outlook upon the universe. Its operations, in their eyes, were
+not carried on under impersonal and unswerving laws, but by voluntary
+and rational agents, swayed by an inexorable fate against which they
+dared not rebel, but still free enough and powerful enough to avert by
+magic the decrees of destiny, or at least to retard their execution.
+From this conception of things each subordinate science was obliged to
+make its investigations in two perfectly distinct regions: it had at
+first to determine the material facts within its competence--such as the
+position of the stars, for instance, or the symptoms of a malady; it
+had then to discover the beings which revealed themselves through these
+material manifestations, their names and their characteristics. When
+once it had obtained this information, and could lay its hands upon
+them, it could compel them to work on its behalf: science was thus
+nothing else than the application of magic to a particular class of
+phenomena.
+
+The number of astronomical facts with which the Chaldaeans had made
+themselves acquainted was considerable.
+
+[Illustration: 340.jpg CHALDAEAN MAP OF THE WORLD.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Peiser.
+
+It was a question in ancient times whether they or the Egyptians had
+been the first to carry their investigations into the infinite depths
+of celestial space: when it came to be a question as to which of the two
+peoples had made the greater progress in this branch of knowledge, all
+hesitation vanished, and the pre-eminence was accorded by the ancients
+to the priests of Babylon rather than to those of Heliopolis and
+Memphis.*
+
+* Clement of Alexandria, Lucien, Diogenes Laertius, Macrobius, attribute
+the origin of astronomy to the Egyptians, and Diodorus Sioulus asserts
+that they were the teachers of the Babylonians; Josephus maintains, on
+the contrary, that the Egyptians were the pupils of the Chaldaeans.
+
+[Illustration: 340.jpg ASTRONOMICAL TABLE]
+
+The Chaldaeans had conducted astronomical observations from remote
+antiquity.* Callisthenes collected and sent to his uncle Aristotle a
+number of these observations, of which the oldest had been made nineteen
+hundred and three years before his time--that is, about the middle of
+the twenty-third century before our era: he could have transcribed
+many of a still earlier date if the archives of Babylon had been fully
+accessible to him.
+
+     * Epigenes asserts that their observations extended back to
+     720,000 years before the time of Alexander, while Berossus
+     and Critodemus limit their antiquity to 490,000 years, which
+     was further reduced to 473,000 years by Diodorus, to 470,000
+     by Cicero, and to 270,000 by Hipparchus.
+
+The Chaldaean priests had been accustomed from an early date to record on
+their clay tablets the aspect of the heavens and the changes which took
+place in them night after night, the appearance of the constellations,
+their comparative brilliancy, the precise moments of their rising and
+setting and culmination, together with the more or less rapid movements
+of the planets, and their motions towards or from one another. To their
+unaided eyes, sharpened by practice and favoured by the transparency
+of the air, many stars were visible, as to the Egyptians, which we can
+perceive only by the aid of the telescope. These thousands of brilliant
+bodies, scattered apparently at random over the face of the sky, moved,
+however, with perfect regularity, and the period between their departure
+from and their return to the same point in the heavens was determined
+at an early date: their position could be predicted at any hour, their
+course in the firmament being traced so accurately that its various
+stages were marked out and indicated beforehand. The moon, they
+discovered, had to complete two hundred and twenty-three revolutions of
+twenty-nine days and a half each, before it returned to the point from
+which it had set out. This period of its career being accomplished, it
+began a second of equal length, then a third, and so on, in an infinite
+series, during which it traversed the same celestial houses and repeated
+in them the same acts of its life: all the eclipses which it had
+undergone in one period would again afflict it in another, and would
+be manifest in the same places of the earth in the same order of time.*
+Whether they ascribed these eclipses to some mechanical cause, or
+regarded them as so many unfortunate attacks made upon Sin by the seven,
+they recognized their periodical character, and they were acquainted
+with the system of the two hundred and twenty-three lunations by which
+their occurrence and duration could be predicted. Further observations
+encouraged the astronomers to endeavour to do for the sun what they had
+so successfully accomplished in regard to the moon.
+
+     * This period of two hundred and twenty-three lunations is
+     that described by Ptolemy in the fourth book of his
+     “Astronomy,” in which he deals with the average motion of
+     the moon. The Chaldaeans seem not to have been able to make a
+     skilful use of it, for their books indicate the occurrence
+     of lunar eclipses outside the predicted periods.
+
+No long experience was needed to discover the fact that the majority of
+solar eclipses were followed some fourteen days and a half after by an
+eclipse of the moon; but they were unable to take sufficient advantage
+of this experience to predict with certainty the instant of a future
+eclipse of the sun, although they had been so struck with the connection
+of the two phenomena as to believe that they were in a position to
+announce it approximately.* They were frequently deceived in their
+predictions, and more than one eclipse which they had promised did not
+take place at the time expected:** but their successful prognostications
+were sufficiently frequent to console them for their failures, and to
+maintain the respect of the people and the rulers for their knowledge.
+Their years were vague years of three hundred and sixty days. The twelve
+equal months of which they were composed bore names which were borrowed,
+on the one hand, from events in civil life, such as “Simanu,” from the
+making of brick, and “Addaru,” from the sowing of seed, and, on the
+other, from mythological occurrences whose origin is still obscure, such
+as “Nisanu,” from the altar of Ea, and “Elul,” from a message of Ishtar.
+The adjustment of this year to astronomical demands was roughly carried
+out by the addition of a month every six years, which was called a
+second Adar, Blul, or Nisan, according to the place in which it was
+intercalated.
+
+     * Tannery is of opinion that the Chaldaeans must have
+     predicted eclipses of the sun by means of the period of two
+     hundred and twenty-three lunations, and shows by what a
+     simple means they could have arrived at it.
+
+     ** An astronomer mentions, in the time of Assurbanipal, that
+     on the 28th, 29th, and 30th of the month he prepared for the
+     observation of an eclipse; but the sun continued brilliant,
+     and the eclipse did not take place.
+
+The neglect of the hours and minutes in their calculation of the length
+of the year became with them, as with the Egyptians, a source of serious
+embarrassment, and we are still ignorant as to the means employed
+to meet the difficulty. The months had relations to the signs of the
+zodiac, and the days composing them were made up of twelve double hours
+each. The Chaldaens had invented two instruments, both of them of a
+simple character, to measure time--the clepsydra and the solar clock,
+the latter of which in later times became the source of the Greek
+“polos.” The sun-dial served to determine a number of simple facts
+which were indispensable in astronomical calculations, such as the
+four cardinal points, the meridian of the place, the solstitial and
+equinoctial epochs, and the elevation of the pole at the position of
+observation. The construction of the sundial and clepsydra, if not of
+the polos also, is doubtless to be referred back to a very ancient date,
+but none of the texts already brought to light makes mention of the
+employment of these instruments.*
+
+     * Herodotus (ii. 109) formally attributes the invention of
+     the sun-dial and polos to the Babylonians. The “polos” was a
+     solar clock. It consisted of a concave hemisphere with a
+     style rising from its centre: the shadow of the style
+     described every day an arc of a circle parallel to the
+     equator, and the daily parallels were divided into twelve or
+     twenty-four equal parts. Smith discovered, in the palace of
+     Sennacherib at Koyunjik, a portion of an astrolabe, which is
+     now in the British Museum.
+
+All these discoveries, which constitute in our eyes the scientific
+patrimony of the Chaldaeans, were regarded by themselves as the least
+important results of their investigations. Did they not know, thanks to
+these investigations, that the stars shone for other purposes than to
+lighten up the nights--to rule, in fact, the destinies of men and kings,
+and, in ruling that of kings, to determine the fortune of empires? Their
+earliest astronomers, by their assiduous contemplation of the nightly
+heavens, had come to the conclusion that the vicissitudes of the
+heavenly bodies were in fixed relations with mundane phenomena and
+events. If Mercury, for instance, displayed an unusual brilliancy at
+his rising, and his disk appeared as a two-edged sword, riches and
+abundance, due to the position of the luminous halo which surrounded
+him, would be scattered over Chaldaea, while discords would cease
+therein, and justice would triumph over iniquity. The first observer who
+was struck by this coincidence noted it down; his successors confirmed
+his observations, and at length deduced, in the process of the years,
+from their accumulated knowledge, a general law. Henceforward, each time
+that Mercury assumed the same aspect it was of favourable augury, and
+kings and their subjects became the recipients of his bounty. As long as
+he maintained this appearance no foreign ruler could install himself in
+Chaldaea, tyranny would be divided against itself, equity would prevail,
+and a strong monarch bear sway; while the landholders and the king
+would be confirmed in their privileges, and obedience, together with
+tranquillity, would rule everywhere in the land. The number of these
+observations increased to such a degree that it was found necessary to
+classify them methodically to avoid confusion. Tables of them were drawn
+up, in which the reader could see at one and the same moment the aspect
+of the heavens on such and such a night and hour, and the corresponding
+events either then happening, or about to happen, in Chaldaean, Syria,
+or some foreign land. If, for instance, the moon displayed the same
+appearance on the 1st and 27th of the month, Elam was threatened; but
+“if the sun, at his setting, appears double his usual size, with
+three groups of bluish rays, the King of Chaldaea is ruined.” To the
+indications of the heavenly bodies, the Chaldaeans added the portents
+which could be deduced from atmospheric phenomena: if it thundered on
+the 27th of Tammuz, the wheat-harvest would be excellent and the produce
+of the ears magnificent; but if this, should occur six days later, that
+is, on the 2nd of Abu, floods and rains were to be apprehended in a
+short time, together with the death of the king and the division of
+his empire. It was not for nothing that the sun and moon surrounded
+themselves in the evening with blood-red vapours or veiled themselves
+in dark clouds; that they grew suddenly pale or red after having been
+intensely bright; that unexpected fires blazed out on the confines of
+the air, and that on certain nights the stars seemed to have become
+detached from the firmament and to be falling upon the earth. These
+prodigies were so many warnings granted by the gods to the people
+and their kings before great crises in human affairs: the astronomer
+investigated and interpreted them, and his predictions had a greater
+influence than we are prepared to believe upon the fortunes of
+individuals and even of states. The rulers consulted and imposed upon
+the astronomers the duty of selecting the most favourable moment for
+the execution of the projects they had in view. From an early date each
+temple contained a library of astrological writings, where the people
+might find, drawn up as in a. code, the signs which bore upon their
+destinies. One of these libraries, consisting of not less than seventy
+clay tablets, is considered to have been first drawn up in the reign
+of Sargon of Agade, but to have been so modified and enriched with new
+examples from time to time that the original is well-nigh lost. This was
+the classical work on the subject in the VIIth century before our era,
+and the astronomers-royal, to whom applications were accustomed to be
+made to explain a natural phenomenon or a prodigy, drew their answers
+ready-made from it. Astronomy, as thus understood, was not merely the
+queen of sciences, it was the mistress of the world: taught secretly
+in the temples, its adepts--at least, those who had passed through the
+regular curriculum of study which it required--became almost a
+distinct class in society. The occupation was a lucrative one, and
+its accomplished professors had numerous rivals whose educational
+antecedents were unknown, but who excited the envy of the experts in
+their trading upon the credulity of the people. These quacks went about
+the country drawing up horoscopes, and arranging schemes of birthday
+prognostications, of which the majority were without any authentic
+warranty. The law sometimes took note of the fact that they were
+competing with the official experts, and interfered with their business:
+but if they happened to be exiled from one city, they found some
+neighbouring one ready to receive them.
+
+Chaldaea abounded with soothsayers and necromancers no less than with
+astrologers; she possessed no real school of medicine, such as we find
+in Egypt, in which were taught rational methods of diagnosing maladies
+and of curing them by the use of simples. The Chaldaeans were content
+to confide the care of their bodies to sorcerers and exorcists, who were
+experts in the art of casting out demons and spirits, whose presence in
+a living being brought about those disorders to which humanity is prone.
+The facial expression of the patient during the crisis, the words which
+escaped from him in delirium, were, for these clever individuals, so
+many signs revealing the nature and sometimes the name of the enemy
+to be combated--the Fever-god, the Plague-god, the Headache-god.
+Consultations and medical treatment were, therefore, religious offices,
+in which were involved purifications, offerings, and a whole ritual of
+mysterious words and gestures. The magician lighted a fire of herbs
+and sweet-smelling plants in front of his patient, and the clear flame
+arising from this put the spectres to flight and dispelled the malign
+influences, a prayer describing the enchantments and their effects being
+afterwards recited. “The baleful imprecation like a demon has fallen
+upon a man;--wail and pain have fallen upon him,--direful wail has
+fallen upon him,--the baleful imprecation, the spell, the pains in
+the head!--This man, the baleful imprecation slaughters him like a
+sheep,--for his god has quitted his body--his goddess has withdrawn
+herself in displeasure from him,--a wail of pain has spread itself as a
+garment upon him and has overtaken him!” The harm done by the magician,
+though terrible, could be repaired by the gods, and Merodach was moved
+to compassion betimes. Merodach cast his eyes on the patient, Merodach
+entered into the house of his father Ea, saying: “My father, the baleful
+curse has fallen like a demon upon the man!” Twice he thus speaks,
+and then adds: “What this man ought to do, I know not; how shall he be
+healed?” Ea replies to his son Merodach: “My son, what is there that I
+could add to thy knowledge?--Merodach, what is there that I could add
+to thy knowledge?--That which I know, thou knowest it:--go then, my son,
+Merodach,--lead him to the house of purification of the god who prepares
+remedies,--and break the spell that is upon him, draw away the charm
+which is upon him,--the ill which afflicts his body,--which he suffers
+by reason of the curse of his father,--or the curse of his mother,--or
+the curse of his eldest brother,--or by the curse of a murderess who is
+unknown to the man.--The curse, may it be taken from him by the charm
+of Ea,--like a clove of garlic which is stripped skin by skin,--like a
+cluster of dates may it be cut off,--like a bunch of flowers may it be
+uprooted! The spell, may heaven avert it,--may the earth avert it!” The
+god himself deigned to point out the remedy: the sick man was to take
+a clove of garlic, some dates, and a stalk bearing flowers, and was to
+throw them into the fire, bit by bit, repeating appropriate prayers at
+each stage of the operation. “In like manner as this garlic is peeled
+and thrown into the fire,--and the burning flame consumes it,--as
+it will never be planted in the vegetable garden, it will never draw
+moisture from the pond or from the ditch,--its root will never again
+spread in the earth,--its stalk will not pierce the ground and behold
+the sun,--it will not serve as food for the gods or the king,--so may it
+remove the baleful curse, so may it loose the bond--of sickness, of sin,
+of shortcomings, of perversity, of crime!--The sickness which is in my
+body, in my flesh, in my muscles,--like this garlic may it be stripped
+off,--and may the burning flame consume it in this day;--may the spell
+of the sorcerer be cast out, that I may behold the light!” The ceremony
+could be prolonged at will: the sick person pulled to pieces the cluster
+of dates, the bunch of flowers, a fleece of wool, some goats’ hair, a
+skein of dyed thread, and a bean, which were all in turn consumed in
+the fire. At each stage of the operation he repeated the formula,
+introducing into it one or two expressions characterizing the nature of
+the particular offering; as, for instance, “the dates will no more hang
+from their stalks, the leaves of the branch will never again be united
+to the tree, the wool and the hair will never again lie on the back
+of the animal on which they grew, and will never be used for weaving
+garments.” The use of magical words was often accompanied by remedies,
+which were for the most part both grotesque and disgusting in their
+composition: they comprised bitter or stinking wood-shavings, raw meat,
+snake’s flesh, wine and oil, the whole reduced to a pulp, or made into
+a sort of pill and swallowed on the chance of its bringing relief. The
+Egyptian physicians employed similar compounds, to which they
+attributed wonderful effects, but they made use of them in exceptional
+circumstances only. The medical authorities in Chaldaea recommended them
+before all others, and their very strangeness reassured the patient as
+to their efficacy: they filled the possessing spirits with disgust, and
+became a means of relief owing to the invincible horror with which
+they inspired the persecuting demons. The Chaldaeans were not, however,
+ignorant of the natural virtues of herbs, and at times made use of them;
+but they were not held in very high esteem, and the physicians preferred
+the prescriptions which pandered to the popular craving for the
+supernatural. Amulets further confirmed the effect produced by the
+recipes, and prevented the enemy, once cast out, from re-entering the
+body; these amulets were made of knots of cord, pierced shells, bronze
+or terra-cotta statuettes, and plaques fastened to the arms or worn
+round the neck. On each of the latter kind were roughly drawn the most
+terrible images that they could conceive, a shortened incantation
+was scrawled on its surface, or it was covered with extraordinary
+characters, which when the spirits perceived they at once took flight,
+and the possessor of the talisman escaped the threatened illness.
+
+However laughable, and at the same time deplorable, this hopeless medley
+of exact knowledge and gross superstition may appear to us at the
+present day, it was the means of bringing a prosperity to the cities of
+Chaldaea which no amount of actual science would ever have produced. The
+neighbouring barbaric peoples were imbued with the same ideas as the
+Chaldaens regarding the constitution of the world and the nature of the
+laws which governed it. They lived likewise in perpetual fear of those
+invisible beings whose changeable and arbitrary will actuated all
+visible phenomena; they attributed all the reverses and misfortunes
+which overtook them to the direct action of these malevolent beings;
+they believed firmly in the influence of stars on the course of events;
+they were constantly on the look out for prodigies, and were greatly
+alarmed by them, since they had no certain knowledge of the number and
+nature of their enemies, and the means they had invented for protecting
+themselves from them or of overcoming them too often proved inefficient.
+In the eyes of these barbarians, the Chaldeans seemed to be possessed of
+the very powers which they themselves lacked. The magicians of Chaldaea
+had forced the demons to obey them and to unmask themselves before them;
+they read with ease in the heavens the present and future of men and
+nations; they interpreted the will of the immortals in its smallest
+manifestations, and with them this faculty was not a limited and
+ephemeral power, quickly exhausted by use: the rites and formulas known
+to them enabled them to exercise it freely at all times, in all places,
+alike upon the most exalted of the gods and the most dreaded of mortals,
+without its ever becoming weakened.
+
+[Illustration:352.jpg A CHALDAEAN AMULET.]
+
+     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Loftus. The
+     original is in the British Museum.
+
+A race so endowed with wisdom was, indeed, destined to triumph over
+its neighbours, and the latter would have no chance of resisting such
+a nation unless they borrowed from it its manners, customs, industry,
+writing, and all the arts and sciences which had brought about their
+superiority. Chaldaeann civilization spread into Elam and took possession
+of the inhabitants of the shores of the Persian Gulf, and then, since
+its course was impeded on the south by the sea, on the west by the
+desert, and on the east by the mountains, it turned in the direction of
+the great northern plains and proceeded up the two rivers, beside whose
+lower waters it had been cradled. It was at this very time that the
+Pharaohs of the XIIIth dynasty had just completed the conquest of
+Nubia. Greater Egypt, made what she was by the efforts of twenty
+generations, had become an African power. The sea formed her northern
+boundary, the desert and the mountains enclosed her on all sides, and
+the Nile appeared the only natural outlet into a new world: she followed
+it indefatigably from one cataract to another, colonizing as she passed
+all the lands fertilized by its waters. Every step which she made in
+this direction increased the distance between her capitals and the
+Mediterranean, and brought her armies further south. Asia would have
+practically ceased to exist, as far as Egypt was concerned, had not the
+repeated incursions of the Bedouin obliged her to make advances from
+time to time in that direction; still she crossed the frontier as seldom
+as possible, and recalled her troops as soon as they had reduced the
+marauders to order: Ethiopia alone attracted her, and it was there that
+she firmly established her empire. The two great civilized peoples of
+the ancient world, therefore, had each their field of action clearly
+marked out, and neither of them had ever ventured into that of the
+other. There had been no lack of intercourse between them, and the
+encounter of their armies, if it ever really had taken place, had been
+accidental, had merely produced passing results, and up till then had
+terminated without bringing to either side a decisive advantage.
+
+[Illustration: 354.jpg MAGIC NAIL OF TERRA COTTA]
+
+[Illustration: 355.jpg EGYPTIAN CORNICE BEARING THE CARTOUCHES OF RAMSES
+I.]
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX--THE PHARAOHS OF THE ANCIENT AND MIDDLE EMPIRES
+
+(Dynasties I.-XIV.)
+
+
+The lists of the Pharaohs of the Memphite period appear to have been
+drawn up in much the same order as we now possess them, as early as
+the XIIth dynasty: it is certain that the sequence was definitely fixed
+about the time of the XXth dynasty, since it was under this that the
+Canon of Turin was copied. The lists which have come down to us appear
+to follow two traditions, which differ completely in certain cases:
+one has been preserved for us by the abbreviators of Manetho, while
+the other was the authority followed by the compilers of the tables of
+Abydos and Saqqara, as well as by the author of the Turin Papyrus.
+
+There appear to have been in the first five dynasties a certain number
+of kings whose exact order and filiation were supposed to be well known
+to the compilers; but, at the same time, there were others whose names
+were found on the monuments, but whose position with regard to their
+predecessors was indicated neither by historical documents nor by
+popular romance. We find, therefore, in these two traditional lists
+a series of sovereigns always occupying the same position, and others
+hovering around them, who have no decided place. The hieroglyphic lists
+and the Royal Canon appear to have been chiefly concerned with the
+former; but the authorities followed by Manetho have studiously
+collected the names of the latter, and have intercalated them in
+different places, sometimes in the middle, but mostly at the end of the
+dynasty, where they form a kind of _caput mortuum_. The most striking
+example of this arrangement is afforded us in the IVth dynasty. The
+contemporary monuments show that its kings formed a compact group, to
+which are appended the first three sovereigns of the Vth dynasty,
+always in the same order: Menkauri succeeded Khafri, Shopsiskaf followed
+Menkauri, Usirkaf followed Shopsiskaf, and so on to the end. The lists
+of Manetho suppress Shopsiskaf, and substitute four other individuals
+in his place, namely, Katoises, Bikheris, Seberkheres, Thamphthis, whose
+reigns must have occupied more than half a century; these four were
+doubtless aspirants to the throne, or local kings belonging to the time
+between the IVth and Vth dynasties, whom Manetho’s authorities inserted
+between the compact groups made up of Kheops and his sons on the one
+hand, and of Usirkaf and his two real of supposed brothers on the other,
+omitting Shopsiskaf, and having no idea that Usirkaf was his immediate
+successor, with or without rivals to the throne.
+
+In a course of lectures given at the _College de France_ (1893-95), I
+have examined at length the questions raised by a study of the various
+lists, and I may be able, perhaps, some day to publish the result of
+my researches: for the present I must confine myself merely to what
+is necessary to the elucidation of the present work, namely, the
+Manethonian tradition on the one hand, and the tradition of the
+monumental tables on the other. The text which I propose to follow for
+the latter, during the first five dynasties, is that of the second table
+of Abydos; the names placed between brackets [ ] are taken either from
+the table of Saqqara or from the Royal Canon of Turin. The numbers of
+the years, months, and days are those furnished by the last-mentioned
+document.
+
+[Illustration: 357.jpg LISTS OF THE PHARAOHS OF THE ANCIENT EMPIRE]
+
+[Illustration: 358.jpg LISTS ON THE MONUMENTS]
+
+From the VIth to the XIIth dynasty, the lists of Manetho are at fault:
+they give the origin and duration of the dynasties, without furnishing
+us with the names of the kings.
+
+[Illustration: 359.jpg LISTS ON THE MONUMENTS]
+
+This blank is partially filled by the table of Abydos, by the fragments
+of the Turin Papyrus, and by information supplied by the monuments. No
+such definitely established sequence appears to have existed for this
+period, as for the preceding ones. The Heracleopolitan dynasties
+figure, perhaps, in the Canon of Turin only; as for the later Memphite
+dynasties, the table of Abydos gives one series of Pharaohs, while the
+Canon adopts a different one. After the close of the VIth dynasty, and
+before the accession of the IXth, there was, doubtless, a period when
+several branches of the royal family claimed the supremacy and ruled in
+different parts of Egypt: this is what we know to have taken place later
+between the XXIInd and the XXIVth dynasties. The tradition of Abydos
+had, perhaps, adopted one of these contemporaneous dynasties, while
+the Turin Papyrus had chosen another: Manetho, on the other hand,
+had selected from among them, as representatives of the legitimate
+succession, the line reigning at Memphis which immediately followed
+the sovereigns of the VIth dynasty. The following table gives both the
+series known, as far as it is possible for the present to re-establish
+the order:--
+
+[Illustration: 360.jpg LISTS ON THE MONUMENTS]
+
+The XIth (Theban) dynasty contains but a small number of kings according
+to the official lists. The tables on the monuments recognize only two,
+Nibkhrouri and Sonkhkari, but the Turin Canon admits at least half a
+dozen. These differences probably arose from the fact that, the second
+Heracleopolitan dynasty having reigned at the same time as the earlier
+Theban princes, the tables on the monuments, while rejecting the
+Heracleopolitans, recognized as legitimate Pharaohs only those of the
+Theban kings who had ruled over the whole of Egypt, namely, the first
+and last of the series; the Canon, on the contrary, replaced the later
+Heracleopolitans by those among the contemporary Thebans who had
+assumed the royal titles. Whatever may have been the cause of these
+combinations, we find the lists again harmonizing with the accession of
+the XIIth (Theban) dynasty.
+
+For the succeeding dynasties we possess merely the names enumerated on
+the fragments of the Turin Papyrus, several of which, however, are
+also found either in the royal chamber at Karnak, or on contemporary
+monuments. The order of the names is not always certain: it is, perhaps,
+best to transcribe the sequence as we are able to gather it from the
+fragments of the Royal Papyrus, without attempting to distinguish
+between those which belong to the XIIIth and those which must be.
+relegated to the following dynasties.
+
+[Illustration: 361.jpg LISTS ON THE MONUMENTS]
+
+About fifty names still remain, but so mutilated and scattered over
+such small fragments of papyrus, that their order is most uncertain. We
+possess monuments of about one-fifth of these kings, and the lengths of
+their reigns, as far as we know them, all appear to have been short:
+we have no reason to doubt that they did really govern, and we can only
+hope that in time the progress of excavation will yield us records of
+them one after another. They bring us down to the period of the invasion
+of the Shepherds, and it is possible that some among them may be found
+to be contemporaries of the XVth and XVIth dynasties.
+
+[Illustration: 362.jpg Tailpiece]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria,
+Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12), by G. Maspero
+
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